willedoo

I've worked wth a lot of traditional owners over the years. They vary a lot depending on the location of the traditional land. In areas where their ancestors were relocated, generally very few if any were living on traditional lands. All were mixed race and a lot born and bred in the cities. They used to come out to their traditional land to work with us as cultural heritage monitors. Very few had any experience or knowledge of it but they were put through training induction courses to teach them what was what. At times I sensed a bit of embarrassment on their part, particularly the city people who had to learn some of the most basic things like how to boil a billy. They were all generally good people but that sense of disconnect to their traditional land weighed heavy on them. On the other side of the coin, we sometimes worked with traditional full blood people who had never left their land. Some could barely speak English, but those that you could converse with were very knowledgeable about their country and the ways of their part of the world. I must admit, when I first worked with full blood traditional people in the early 80's, I got a bit of a surprise to see young men with big thick tribal cicatrices on their bodies. I thought at that stage in history it might have been a dying practice and only found on the older men, but not so. Tribal customs are still solid in some of those areas.

The stone axes are usually very easy to identify. They used to put a lot of time into smoothing them down to a sharp edge. Left fairly rough around the back end but the blade sides are usually very smooth and visually very obviously worked.

Sorry Jerry, I never thought to take any at the time. He's sold a couple but said it works out to about $1 per hour for the work that goes into it.

The old mate mentioned in the previous post who is building guitars showed me a reject. It was the back and sides (no top) of an acoustic guitar. He'd built it in humid weather and when it dried, the timber back section shrank and the wood grain separated in a lot of areas. You could hold it up to the light and see light through it. A hard way to learn a lesson; a lot of work had gone into it.

Sometimes the anthropologists on projects can be a problem, more so the inexperienced young ones fresh out of uni and on their first job in the real world. I remember in 1983 when the pilot survey line for the Moonie/Jackson pipeline was going through and it got held up at Cunnamulla. The job ground to a halt for four days because the young anthropologists has found some axe cuts on some tree roots where the pipeline was to cross the Warrego River. They were metal axe cuts and generations of local whites had camped and fished there as well as the local aboriginals, so it was anyone's guess whether a white or black person had used the axe. The anthropologists thought they were doing the right thing by checking with their bosses in the city but it was in the days before mobile phones and email, and head office had closed up on Friday afternoon for the long weekend. Eventually when their office opened the following Tuesday and contact was made they approved the crossing. It cost some companies a lot of down time money, but the anthropologists thought they were doing the right thing. Their inexperience was a bit of a problem in that area. The issue with a metal axe is that any object made by non aboriginals that aboriginals use is deemed to be a post contact artifact. That's where the grey area comes in. A shard of a broken beer bottle that some ringers left on the ground can be taken to be a possible knife used by aboriginals. The archaeologists I've worked with have generally been a fair bit more sensible than some of the anthropologists, probably because their field is more defined and direct and less guesswork involved.

It would be good if we could turn canola into urea as well. That way we could grow canola to make urea and diesel to grow canola.

I remember a few years ago the Americans were trialling alternative jet fuels. From memory it was coal gasified and then they would convert that gas to jet fuel. They successfully test ran a B-52 running four of it's eight engines on the fuel. The problem at the time was they said oil had to hit $80/barrel to gain any saving from the alternate fuel. At the time it was a fair bit below that.

Had an interesting morning this morning. I was at a funeral recently and bumped into an old mate I hadn't seen for many years. In the time since I last saw him, he's retired and has been making acoustic guitars for a hobby. Today I went around and he showed me a few of the guitars and where he makes them in his shed. He's a carpenter/builder by trade so already had quite a lot of the tools and some of the required woodworking skills. They're nice guitars, mostly all dreadnaughts, and all Australian timbers. He uses a lot of silky oak on the bodies and grey gum for necks and other parts. I seem to remember the Australian brand Maton using Australian timbers.

I'd better read back through the thread and see where it went from the Hungarian prime Minister to pubs and beer.

I calculate that at a bit over thirteen and a half stubbies or cans. That's enough to put a grin on anyone's face. The most I ever consumed in one session was twenty cans of full strength VB (Very Bad) one night at the Sand Bar at Kingfisher Bay. It's funny how it affects different people. The mate I was with had the same amount and on the night he played up like a second hand lawnmower, the full bit, thrown out by the bouncers and all that. I was well behaved on the night and was still able to drive back to the old Z Force camp where we camped the night. The next morning he got up bright as a button and I was the sickest I've ever been. That was in the mid 90's and was the last time I ever drank full strength beer. Maybe craft beer would have been a better life choice.

We've got plenty of gas and existing gas pipelines going to Gladstone, but oil might have some challenges. Small marginal fields at the moment. Jackson is done and dusted, Moonie not what it used to be and Ballera is gas. Bits of oil here and there, but making it economically feasable is the big issue.

The premier announced today that the government is in talks with some private companies regarding building a new fuel refinery, most likely in the Gladstone area. A push toward fuel sovereignty is the plan.

There was someone on the ABC radio a couple of days ago saying the high fuel prices might be here for most of the year. I think he was some type of energy consultant.

Don't worry ome, there's a reason the presenter asks the question at 0:47 in the video. They've been wrong about El Nino for the last couple of years. They told us El Nino would produce a drier than normal summer and we had one of the wettest on record, so there's hope at your place yet.

A few named English. The only French I've known of was one of our local lads in my dad's Batallion, got a posthumous VC at Milne Bay.

Had a bit of a reality check at the servo today. The last fill was early in the war at $2.20/litre, today was $3.25. The litres dial was moving very slow and the dollars dial moving very fast at the pump. $130 for 40 litres. There must be a lot of prawn trawlers tied up. A lot of money at today's fuel prices to fork out with no guarantee of a catch.

On the ABC radio yesterday there was a representative of a company speakng about their trailer auxillary drive product they are marketing. It drives the front axle of the trailer tri (or bogey) and increases the truck horsepower by about 400, so roughly doubles the total horsepower. Depending on battery size, it can weigh up to three tonnes, so that much payload is lost. He was saying it's a good or even better alternative to a full electric truck which has certain problems having that extra weight of the propulsion system on the drive of the prime mover. I'm assuming it would be easy to shut off at any time from the driver's position. I don't know what it has in the way of safety overrides, like switching off in a heavy braking situation. Having driven semis and road trains at times throughout life, I'm trying to visualise what it would be like to drive. I'd say it's best application would be on a straight uphill pull, second to that, long flat straights. I can see some road situations where it would have to be switched off. It sounds like a good concept, but would all depend on initial setup cost and permanent loss of payload vs savings in running costs. Theoretically it should extend engine life as well, so long term overhaul or engine replacement costs would be reduced.

Marty, there's also a certain connection sequence for safety that ends with a connection to the vehicle earth. Normally connect dead vehicle positive to live vehicle positive, then live vehicle negative to a non battery earth on the dead vehicle. That way if there's a spark when the circuit completes, it's further away from any possible battery gas emmissions. I wish I'd remembered that about twenty years ago when I blew a battery up. It went off like a shotgun blast, split the seams from top to bottom.

Pete, the ones I carry in the vehicle are nice and heavy. You could start a D9 with them no problems. I would have bought them about 30 years ago and am glad I did back then. I nearly had a heart attack when I saw the current price of them, hundreds of dollars.

Still paying $3.20 for diesel where I am. Petrol is a fair bit cheaper.

I miss my old 6 cylinder 4 litre Fairlane; it ran on the smell of an oily rag and rivalled a lot of 4 cylinder cars for economy. Only because it was low reving. It used to do 1850 rpm at 100 k/hr, and 2150 at 110 k/hr. My little Rodeo with the turbo 4 cylinder diesel does 3000 rpm at 100 k/hr. The Fairlane was only economical if you drove it like an old bloke. A young bloke with a heavy foot could make it drink a bit.

I know of a big kid who has mar-a-lay-go

I haven't had fritters for years but I don't ever remember any potato in them. The ones we had were corn beef fritters, just shredded corn beef in a type of batter fried.

Maybe accent is not the correct word and the word pronunciation would be more correct. In all other ways the bloke in the video speaks very much like the bloke from Warrnabool I used to work with, but that one word belt had quite a strong difference. Maybe he had a Scottish grandfather and it was just a family trait. Regarding small differences in Australian accents, it probably depends on where you are from regarding how noticeable some are from one's own pronunciations. For a Queenslander, South Australians are easy to pick but probably stand out to a lot of others as well. We can pick Victorians probably about 70% of the time but that depends on their age groups and sometimes where they live in Victoria. Sometimes the way they pronounce slang words is a giveaway. As far as NSW goes, a Queenslander generally can't pick them. We usually can't pick Tasmanians either. Probably one of the biggest accent differences is a demographic one where you get into the so-called outback areas . We always used to jokingly call the language 'ringer' as it's most predominate among station people and dilutes the closer toward the coastline you travel excepting places like the Kimberleys and the Territory. It comes from white people absorbing a lot of aboriginal accent into the speaking of English. You almost need an interpreter to understand some of the white people.

I thought I'd post this question here for want of a better place. I was watching a youtube video today of a bloke on a farm fixing a ride on mower, and a few small things about his accent made me think he was a Victorian. He had a very similar accent to a bloke from Warrnabool I used to work with in S.A.. One thing in the video stood out though, and that was the way he was pronouncing the word belt as balt. Not as in bolt, but more of a dipthong like baelt with the e part very brief. His profile said he was in southern Victoria, so the question is whether that is just some localised pronounciation or something more wide spread in the state.