willedoo

They're awful things; two things I don't miss about out there are corrugations and flies. The worst corrugations I've ever encountered were on the Kintore road after you turn off the Tanami road. From the turnoff it's about 375 klm to Kintore and about 200 klm of that was really bad corrugations with no let up hour after hour. It was the sheer distance of the corrugated section that made it so bad. We had a couple of casualties - one of the towed dongas had some suspension come apart so we had to take the wheel off and chain the axle up. The worst bit was late in the afternoon when a fuel tanker on the back of a body truck split a seam. We off loaded as much fuel as we could into trucks, machines and Toyotas but had to leave the tanker truck there overnight. Moving it would have ruptured it more and been a major fuel spill. With the level lowered, the pressure behind the leak wasn't as bad but it still lost a lot onto the road which the local council wasn't happy about. We borrowed a heap of 44's from a local station and a couple of the blokes came back with the float and a hand pump and offloaded fuel into the drums. They were going all night and into the next day to get all the fuel, about three trips they did. We found the best trucks to handle that rough country were the W series Kenworths. The cabs held up much better than Macks and other makes. You could buy some really good second hand road train rated W series trucks at fairly cheap prices. For the people selling them, they were no longer viable or economical for highway work, but they were still good for many years of desert bashing.

This article gives a variety of figures from four polls released this week, Redbridge, YouGov, Fox & Hedgehog and Morgan. The Fox & Hedgehog poll found if a Teal-style party ran it would have 6% support coming mostly at Labor's expense and having no effect on the combined Coalition and One Nation figures. https://theconversation.com/one-nation-surges-to-first-on-primary-votes-in-two-new-polls-284165

It is, but it's a very tight and strict alliance normally. Stray from the party line and you get the boot is how a lot of them operate.

Yes, I think they are far better off on their own. As a party they could end up being neither here nor there. Some of them of a similar persuasion could be loosely alligned but I doubt a party would work.

Nev, that would have been a license to print money when you think of the relative value of a pound (currency) back then.

I nearly died when I was 16 working on building concrete wheat silos. I'd put my age up, you were supposed to be 18 minimum to get a job there. They were four silos joined together and the working platform raised up as the concrete walls grew in height, a bit like a big extrusion machine. Concrete trucks would dump into a hopper which went up an elevator to the top where labourers with wheelbarrows would wheel it to the formwork rim. There wasn't much in the way of concrete pumps back then. It gives me the shivers when I think of the workplace safety standard back then. The only thing to stop you falling off the scaffold was a handrail made of tomato stakes cobb and co.'d together with tie wire. Pure luck it held up when I fell against it; it was about an 80 foot drop to the bottom at that stage. On the thread topic of positives, I made a lot of money for a 16 year old, had a big adventure and got to keep the hard hat at the end of the job.

Back on topic. Regarding recent talk of a possible Teal party forming, I was wondering what views are on that. Personally I don't think it will go far. At this point there's not enough interest among independents; a lot of them are very mindful they were elected as independents and probably also thinking they could lose their seat to a true independant if they joined a party. There's talk among journalists about the possibility of them filling a centre right void.

The coldest official temperatures we get in Qld. are always at Stanthorpe on the border and Oakey on the Darling Downs. They record winter lows of -4 to -6 on average. A big difference between official recordings and private recordings though. A mate who had a small crop farm at Stanthorpe has recorded up to -15 at rare times. I get why Stanthorpe is cold; it's a thousand feet higher than the Toowoomba range but Oakey has always baffled me. I think it must be the shape of the land around it trapping the cold air or something like that.

40c below is the coldest I've experienced, at Grand Prairie in Alberta. 30 below was quite ok with the right gear but 40 was a point where it was like being in an industrial freezer. 20 below at Calgary was quite pleasant if the wind wasn't blowing and was about equivalent in coldness to two or three above in western Qld. A different cold over there in Canada, as long as you could block the outside air you'd be quite warm. Australian cold is more insidious and can creep into your bones no matter how much clothing you have on. A bit like the difference between dry and humid heat.

Our place had a mix of self mulching black soil and areas of red soil. It was probably about 80% black, 20% red. You could always get a strike on the red soil with limited rain, but it was a gamble as it needed follow up rain to keep going. The black soil needed more rain to get a seed strike but usually held the moisture well. It's changed a lot these days with zero/minimal till and tramtracking. Seems to a lot wider row spacing as well.

Those were the days when we still rode on the sheep's back as the saying goes. My main memories of that town were the steam trains and the yellow Western Transport B-model Mack semis hauling wool bales in from the west. That and being able to consume as many free lemonade spiders as I could handle as my mates parents owned the local cafe.

Thanks octave, that brings back a lot of childhood memories. As a kid I had mates who lived in the local small town and I sometimes stayed with them on weekends and got to do town kid stuff. A few of our activities involved the steam trains that were the common train back then. The rail bridge had a small nook in the concrete abutment directly below the train line, so two or three of us could squeeze in there and watch the trains go over our heads only inches way. It was exciting stuff, a lot of anticipation when we heard the noise and vibration of the train coming, and then totally cacking ourselves as it passed overhead. Sometimes we got burnt a bit but that was ok, it was all good fun until we eventually got busted. When the train drivers were shunting wagons on the spur line they would let us ride up with them in the loco and work the brake lever and stuff like that.

I was listening to a talkback segment on the ABC radio tonight and the publican from Eulo rang in. He was on his way back home from Roma and mentioned that when he bought the car in Roma, the dealers offered a free 1,000 kilometre checkup. That's about 60 k's short of the distance to drive it home from Roma to Eulo and turn around and drive straight back to Roma.

onetrack, I'm assuming W.A. Day marks the date of formation of the colony if I'm right. Qld. Day which marks the date of independence is next Saturday but we don't as yet have a public holiday for it. It's a big mega sport and event day. The Premier has floated the idea of making it a public holiday so we might have it marked as a holiday next year.

I know where they've all gone. I can just about see them from my place.

There you go Nev, there's a post for you that's not generalised. Very specific I woud say.

Yes, correct. I'm giving generalised opinions and not expecting them to be taken as anything more. I prefer making general observations rather than picking sides and pushing one particular political wheelbarrow.

Nev, I'm a 4th. generation Queenslander so what you're saying is no news to me. It might be to others on the forum. I think by now most know what the LNP is. I started explaining it here on the forum two or three years ago when forum members were mistakedly referring to the Federal coalition as the LNP and you've mentioned it many times as well.

I knew a lot of bricklayers that went to Newcastle for the reconstruction work. One of them told me that a lot of the cavity brick walls that fell down had almost no wire brick ties left due to rusting away in the salt air environment. Whole sections of walls weren't tied together.

onetrack, are you typing that with your mudboots on? I've been looking at the weather over there.

When it comes to big majorities I always think of our classic Queensland example of how a government with a huge majority can totally stuff up and lose government. Point in case is can-do Campbell Newman where an opposition numbering seven members beat him and formed government. There's no such thing as an unbeatable majority if the voters decide they want to wield a big stick.

It looks like someone's buttons are being pushed.

A couple of years to go. I can't see the next election seeing Labor with a huge majority like they have now. Current polling estimates give them a majority of one seat, and possibly a minority struggling to form government. A lot could change in two years. It's hard to see the coalition position getting worse and I don't know what Labor could do to win back heaps of voters. By election time in 2028, Labor could have incumbency working against them combined with an unpopular PM. If Labor's polling figures drop to an election losing low point in a year's time it could trigger the infighting and implosion we saw in the Rudd/Gillard years. Musical chairs for PM and Albo getting the royal boot. Both Labor and the Coalition have previously found out how that behaviour pans out. A big majority doesn't mean much if there's a big enough swing on.

One Nation has hit a high point in their opinion poll figures in the latest Redbridge poll, leading Labor on primary vote intentions for the first time. On primary voting intentions, One Nation is up four points to 31%, Labor down three to 28%, and the coalition on 20%. The Labor drop is within the 3.5% margin of error, but as the pollsters pointed out, there has been a steady downward trend in the Labor primary vote for some time now and broadly across polls. Labor is still in a winning position on a two-party-preferred estimate, leading One Nation by 51% to 49%.

Yes, it's hard to see it at this point. They'd need to employ some experienced professional operators to organise the party structure for a start. Their problem is that to become a large effective opposition, they'd have to evolve and become basically what their new supporters are currently fleeing from. That might make some of them do the reverse trip back again. One very recent poll asked a hypothetical question on voting intention if Pauline Hanson announced her retirement and left the party and the One Nation vote almost halved.