onetrack

One of the most amusing bumpers stickers I've seen, was on the rear bumper of an old Kombi - and it read, "QUIT HONKING! I'M PEDALLING AS FAST AS I CAN!" 😄

Willie, the Australian gold price has been over AU$7,000 for quite some time. The price was above US$5,000 for the whole of the last week in January, and again for the last week.

It all depends on how much money you've got, what your dream is, and how much determination you've got, to achieve that dream. One of the most amazing restorations I've seen is a split window Kombi, salvaged from the Higginsville Pumping station - where the entire front of it had been cut off, the body stood on its front, a huge chunk cut out of the side of it, and then it was used as a dunny!! But a bloke set his heart on having a fully restored split window Kombi, and he recovered every part of that "dunny Kombi" and restored it to superb driving condition!! It reportedly cost him $100,000! Why anyone would do this, to end up driving a gutless old pile of VW crap, is beyond me! But that's just my opinion! This is the Kombi when it was used as a dunny, I can't find photos of it when restored, I did see them on Instagram, but can't find them now.

It's raining on the Rock! Central Australia has received some very substantial falls of rain, resulting not only in waterfalls on Uluru, but also making the Todd River flow quite heavily. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-10/nt-wet-weather-rain-on-uluru-and-daly-river-flooding-peaks/106326436

It wasn't actually sold, it was a 99 yr lease. A pretty cunning way of getting around FIRB examination. But an undesirable deal, regardless, and basically a bloody outright stupid deal.

He pays them by rewarding them with good-paying Govt contracts, or with prime positions as lackeys to him, within the Govt.

I was always under the impression, anytime you printed a lot of notes without the necessary asset or productivity backing, you would only end up with a bad dose of inflation.

Now, all we need, is to get Nomadpete to do proofreading on his posts! 😄

Washington is the backer of the $US, but the Federal Reserve is charged with keeping the U.S. monetary system stable and functioning properly. The Federal Reserve is independent of any political demands and consists of 12 Reserve Banks and a committee that sets U.S. monetary policy, with particular emphasis on interest rates, which are a key monetary driver of any economy. The overwhelming belief amongst U.S. politicians is that the Federal Reserve must operate completely independently of any political interference and be allowed to make monetary policy corrections that it believes are needed to keep the U.S. economy and the $US on an even keel. However, the Tangerine Toddler believes he alone has to totally control the monetary policy of the U.S., and I reckon a lot of financiers and economists lose a lot of sleep over what would happen if the Tangerine Toddler got his way, and took control of the levers of the money machine. https://www.clevelandfed.org/about-us/understanding-the-federal-reserve

We have a cyclone following our NW coast around from Broome, past Port Hedland, Karratha, Dampier, Onslow, Exmouth and Coral Bay, and it's still coming South. The Pilbara Coast has had a fair amount of rain, 20mm to 120mm, and the forecast is nearly all the lower part of W.A. is going to get some rain over the next 2-3 days. That will be good, it's been a consistently hot December and January, especially in the wheatbelt, and the rain will cool things down a bit for a while. According to the 4 day outlook, most of Australia is forecast to get some rain over the next week, from a big trough lying NNW-SSE across the country. https://reg.bom.gov.au/products/IDW60281.shtml

I just found some great ideas for you Willie, on these FB reels ..... (turn your sound up for the best effect!) https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1CtKkxAoU7/ https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1BvZnkGqHu/ https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1AZG4WarDt/ https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1CBd6JeJGx/ https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1TtjAUx1GH/

The Ukrainians are using an Antonov AN-28 STOL twin turboprop, equipped with an M134 Minigun, and operated by civilians, to shoot down Russian drones. The M134 Minigun is a six-rotating-barrels machine gun that pumps out between 2000 to 6000 rounds a minute of standard NATO 7.62 x 51mm rounds. They effectively fill the air with lead, and when they hit a drone, they blast it to pieces. The AN-28 crew is claiming to have shot down nearly 150 Russian Shahed drones since starting operations. Now the Russians are equipping some of their drones with air-to-air missiles, to try and knock out Ukrainian air defence efforts. This is in addition to the drone already carrying a warhead that detonates on impact. https://www.twz.com/air/watch-ukraines-minigun-firing-drone-hunting-turboprop-in-action

Many tannins are a good preservative. We've got thousands of Qld Box trees for street trees in Perth, there's one right outside my house. Anytime I park my Hilux traytop under it, the floor stains purple blue from the Box tree tannins - but it never rusts. Jacaranda tree tannins are quite corrosive, and the leaves built up everywhere.

Apparently one major Chinese investor is dealing in huge amounts of gold futures, and has made a $3B fortune from doing so - that's enough to skew the market badly. Now he's shorting silver and planning on making another $3B. There's a real danger he'll do a Hunt Bros on the precious metals market. If you make $3B out of wheeling and dealing in precious metals futures, a lot of other people must have lost a lot of money? I'm reminded of the Metallgesellschaft oil futures fiasco in 1993. The company lost $1.3B on betting on oil futures - they should've kept their nose out of futures and stuck with the business they knew. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/china-trader-made-3-billion-054343617.html

The big problem is, that Govt assets are nearly always sold at below market prices to "mates in the know", who promptly turn them over for a massive profit. And the Govt then takes the money they got from the assets and pisses it up against the wall on vastly overpriced, often under-utilised, and generally vastly problematic, Defence purchases. Just look at the exorbitant and ever-increasing pricing of the MD F-35 fighter as an example. I employed a young Scottish bloke many years ago, who had worked for Marconi in the U.K. He said the rip-off profits staggered him when he sighted the figures. Marconi were supplying radar and navigation aids to the IAF in the late '60's, and he said, typically, a small electrical component that cost Marconi something like £14, was billed out to the IAF at a figure around £1,000!