onetrack

Australia has been the best military base in the Pacific region for America since 1942. We have an outsize importance in their military scheme of things. It's high time that relationship was reset, and America made to pay more (for using Australia as a base) - because we can be be just as transactional as Trump, too, if he wants to only work that way.

What a pack of imbecilic morons, putting tariffs on Heard Island and Macquarie Island! I bet someone wrote up an April 1st article about Macquarie Island exports, and they believed every word of it, as Gods Truth. A friend of SWMBO's who does marine/environmental research work says they've been ordered to remove any reference to "bio-diversity" in any marine or environmental research that is to be sent to America. What a pack of f****** idiots.

It's all fake news, according to Trump.

You can't see the first letter properly, it actually reads "AK-47" - the new tool in DOGE for improving efficiency and cost-cutting. Did you see where the new, cheapened, USAID Dept sent just THREE people to help in the Myanmar earthquake? What a pack of miserable a***holes Trump and Musk are.

We've survived quite well without a Bill of Rights for 125 years as a Commonwealth, I don't see any need for one now. A Bill of Rights only leads to more profits for lawyers and clogging of the court systems. We have enough of a clogged court system now, it can take 2 years to have major charges dealt with in some jurisdictions.

And 45° every day, too, I'll wager! Dubai International Airport is staggering in its size.

My positive for this week is; SWMBO and I spent an enjoyable 3 days renting a coastal AirBnB house about 200kms North of Perth (Saturday, Sunday and Monday) to celebrate our 35th anniversary and to unwind a little, and get in some beach time. It's been a very hot and humid March, really unusual for this time of year. It's been around 34° - 36° for a couple of weeks now, and the nights are staying above 20°, which is very warm for this time of year. So, we took off on Saturday morning, up the Mitchell Fwy and onto Indian Ocean Drive for an enjoyable 200km drive on a very good road. We got there around 2:00PM, checked in and kicked back for a while, then went out looking for some dinner. We weren't all that hungry, so we grabbed a couple of chicken kebabs from a local cafe, and they turned out to be pretty ordinary. Ah well, can't have top quality food, all the time! Saturday was hot (34°), but there was a threat of a thunderstorm brewing. There was a trough just offshore down the West Coast (typical Summer weather pattern) and sure enough, we had a ripper of a storm during the night. The wind (Easterly/Nth. Easterly) picked up, and we had lightning and some very loud thunder, that even woke me up! But no rain where we were. Further down, Perth and N.E. of Perth got some rain (3.4mm in Perth). However, when we woke up Sunday morning, the wind was howling! - 35-40kmh, gusting to probably 50kmh. It was quite unpleasant, so we jumped in the car and took off for a drive to Jurien Bay, about 26kms further North. JB is quite a decent-size country town now, around 3000 people, and they have big-city subdivisions and suburbs! - a lot more than the last time we visited (a few years ago now). We toured around JB and checked out all the recent development, and then stopped at the Sandpiper Tavern for lunch. We shared a Greek Lamb pizza and a large Garden Salad, and it was very good. We went back to Cervantes in the afternoon and checked out Thetis Lake and the 3,500 yr old Stromatolites there. We drove on further down, and discovered a delightful beach called Hansen Bay beach, and decided we'd come back in the morning. We went back to the house, had afternoon tea, and I had a snooze for a while! All this touring is tiring! Come dinnertime, I fired up the house BBQ, and we cooked up some delicious Aldi Scotch Fillet steak, ate it with a nice garden salad (we made it before we left), fried onions, and thick potato slices fried on the BBQ. Delicious! After dinner, we kicked back by watching a fascinating doco on SBS about the restoration of Notre Dame Cathedral! I highly recommend this doco, it's really eye-opening, from the carving of new Cathedral statues, the repair of many old damaged statues, the massive amount of woodwork and timber installation in the roof - right through to sand casting new lead sheeting (in the U.K.) for the Cathedral roof! Monday morning, the wind had totally abated, so we went down to Hansens Bay beach, and had an enjoyable nude swim, because there was no-one around! - we had kms of beach to ourselves! Late morning we headed back to the house. During Saturday night, a number of serious bushfires started up between Cervantes and Perth (mostly around Lancelin) and these fires resulted in both major highways back to Perth being closed for all Sunday, and into Monday afternoon, while the fires were fought by ground crews and water bombers. We were concerned that both highways were still closed at lunchtime Monday. Our AirBnB host was very good, and advised us we could have an extended checkout, and could stay for the rest of Monday if we wished, as it was obvious the highway closures were making it difficult for everyone, and making for a very long detour inland, to get back to Perth! There are virtually no other roads North and South in the region of the fires, because there's huge areas of Nature Reserves and original native vegetation in the fire areas. However, by 1:00PM, we found the Brand Hwy had been reopened, but this still meant a detour of probably 30 kms inland, as Indian Ocean Drive was still closed. Accordingly, we left Cervantes at 2:00PM, did the detour to the Brand Hwy, and we were back home by 4:30PM with no dramas. All in all, it was a very enjoyable break, but it would've been a lot better if the weather on Sunday had stayed the same as Saturday and Monday (warm and light winds). However, you can't alter the weather, you just have to take it as it comes. This is the place we stayed in. It's bigger than we really needed, but because we left it a bit late to book, everything else around town was booked out. It was a very nice place to camp, though. https://www.property.com.au/wa/cervantes-6511/drummond-crcs/30a-pid-14918743/

We have Fuelwatch in W.A., it's run by the State Govt and is there to ensure no hourly price changes for fuel. The companies must submit their prices for tomorrow by 2:00PM each day, and the price must then be held for 24hrs from 6:00AM on that following day. Costco Perth Airport is currently on 156.7c a litre for ULP 91, and 164.7c a litre for "Brand" diesel. https://www.fuelwatch.wa.gov.au/

Well, according to the current U.S. President, the technique is, you just grab 'em by the pu**y, and they're all yours! It's that simple, apparently!

The Main Roads Dept of W.A. had their road-making division closed down many years ago under a State Liberal Govt, and all the road construction work contracted out - on the basis of it being, "more cost effective". However, after numerous poor performances by contractors involved in road construction, MRWA has now set about restoring its in-house road construction teams. What wasn't widely understood by the pollies involved in the dismantling of the MRWA road construction teams, was that the MRWA always used to sub-contract truck owners and other equipment owners, when it came to road construction, especially in rural and more remote regions. MRWA kept control and oversight of the actual road works, the sub-contractors were just employed on an hourly rate. It was well known amongst truck and equipment owners that the MRWA paid a relatively modest hourly rate, but it was consistent and steady work, and it employed locals in the area, and ot relieved MRWA of the major cost of deploying a lot more assets and employees to remote and rural regions, at high cost.

That's because you don't go to polling booths, you told us!! You're not following a consistent storyline here, GON!

Maybe GON is the Sheik from Scrubby Creek?? 😄

GON, No - I have no family, I went through a very difficult time after my return from Vietnam, and broke up with my then girlfriend, and effectively "went bush" for a long period of time, during which time I found it very hard to establish a relationship with any woman. However, I met a good woman when I was 41, and she was 39, and we clicked and "shacked up", and we just celebrated being together for 35 years yesterday. She was a divorcee who raised a girl and boy to adulthood, on her own, with outstanding results, as both her son and daughter are upstanding citizens. Perhaps being a Police Superintendents daughter and knowing right from wrong was a big help, but she has exceptional strength of character, and set strict boundaries for her kids. A major problem was, she got her reproductive system stitched up in her late 20's, deciding that she never wanted any more children. I tried to get her to reverse it, but that only produced a high level of stress in her, so I didn't push it. Her experience was that men just give you babies, and then abandon you, and it was an experience that affected her outlook for good. She had been married to a pretty useless drug-using musician initially, and her marriage barely lasted 5 years before she booted him for infidelity, and general uselessness. She never got a cent in child support from him over his entire life, and he died a couple of years ago with little by way of assets, and after suffering from multiple cancers for quite a number of years, from his mid-60's. He actually died in total squalor in a rented property, and despite treating his kids with disdain, and using them as a source of funding regularly, they still went and spent the effort to clean up his property and sort out his affairs - great credit due to them. The property was in such a state, they actually had to use breathing apparatus and pressure cleaners to clean the place up. It was full of rotten food, dog turds, uncollected waste and mounds of general rubbish. It took them 3 weeks to clean the property up! Abandoned cars from other people, knackered furniture items, the rubbish they had to clean up was mind-boggling. I've got a reasonably good relationship with my stepson and stepdaughter, despite a few rocky patches early on. Stepdaughter and SWMBO are like twins, they have a very strong bond, and my arrival caused a few problems there for a while, as SD tried everything she could, to get rid of me. But we established a relationship, that while not close, is a satisfactory one, and she accepts I'm part of the furniture now. Unfortunately, she has suffered from endometriosis since puberty, and has been unable to procreate, so that has been a bitter blow to her. Her brother insisted he was never going to have children for many years, as he spent 18 years with one partner - then that partner up and left him suddenly, for seemingly minor reasons - so he went on to find himself a divorcee who has two adult sons, and despite a late marriage, they had a son together in 2014 - and as he's an only grandchild, I think he's probably spoilt. There are many things I'd love to change if I had my life over again, but one has to accept what life dishes out, I know a lot of people have had some pretty shi**y lives, and ended up in dire straits when circumstances they had little control over, seriously affected their lives.

While it might appear I'm at risk of commercialisation of the forum with this post, I just wanted to let the other members know, that I've found the above app is quite worthwhile, and actually provides satisfactory rewards for loyalty - unlike the vast amount of other loyalty programmes that give you bugger-all a lot of the time, in relation to the amount of money spent. The Australian Venue Co has around 200 venues across the entirety of Australia (mostly pubs, but also small bars and restaurants) and you get points for money spent in their venues on food and drink. The points are quite generous, you can easily get $20 or $50 credit after spending a relatively small amount. SWMBO and I like to eat out a bit, we probably eat out 3 or 4 times a week, and our local pubs nearly always offer discounted "seniors meals" or discounted drinks, specials, and other enticements. The beauty of the PASS App is that you still get points rewards even when you buy discounted meals and drinks. As someone who doesn't have a lot of time for apps - finding a lot of them pretty useless and memory-consuming - I find the PASS App is quite user-friendly and simple enough to use. Once you register your credit card with them, you just tap on "order at the bar" or "order at the table", and you receive an order code number (4 numbers), which you simply show to the venue employee and he/she inputs the number and the transaction is done. We've found that a lot of the loyalty rewards programmes and offers declined massively during COVID, but they have started to return now. We used to use the Entertainment Book for a long time, and got good value out of our $65 payment for the book each year - but when COVID hit, the Entertainment Book system virtually collapsed, and it became difficult to find discounts anywhere. The Entertainment Book gave discounts on a wide range of products and services, but that range has shrunk considerably since COVID hit. As someone on a relatively fixed and modest income, I'm always looking for discount offers and programmes that offer real value. I've got a COSTCO membership, and that membership pays off in fuel savings, as I use a bit of fuel, and COSTCO fuel is always 4-5 cents cheaper than anyone else. But a lot of the loyalty programmes on offer today, are fairly dubious value. I won't put up a link to the PASS App, as I'm sure you can all find it yourself, with a bit of Googling. But I hope you find it and utilise it, to save a few bucks on food and drinks - every little bit helps, in todays world.

GON obviously makes it his lifes mission to constantly nurture extreme bitterness, and to keep grudges and hatreds alive for tens of decades, even centuries. He'd fit well into Ireland.