onetrack

It always staggers me to see the number of bike riders who either ride with their feet down, or who hang their feet out well prior to stopping, or who hang their feet out, long after taking off. Seems to me that a lot of bike riders have either had bugger-all training, or they had dodgy instructors. Riding trail bikes around farms and bush soon educates you about keeping your feet on the pegs at all times, except when you're stopped. Seen more than one bike rider with a broken ankle, thanks to poor riding skills.

Headlights on at all times is the go. I do it, even in my car, utes and truck. Anything that advances your visibility is a plus for crash avoidance. Even the W.A. Police advise keeping your headlights on at all times. I get thoroughly sick of people in dark grey cars driving in gloomy weather and after sunset, with no lighting. I started to pull into a roundabout that runs around an unlit underpass several months ago, it was at least an hour after dark. As I started to move, a black car with not single light on it anywhere, flashed an indicator as it swapped lanes in the roundabout, just 30M to my right. Then he turned his headlights on. I don't know how he could even see where he was going prior to switching his lights on - and if that indicator hadn't flashed, I would've pulled straight into his path, as there was no indication of any kind that there was a vehicle there. Idiot!

Didn't know where to put this, a magpie on CCTV imitating the neigh of a horse. I've known they were reputed as clever call imitators, but I've never heard one do this. https://www.facebook.com/reel/2286842478814689

You don't have to! It crawls up by itself!

You meant LAMS? LAPD is L.A. Police Dept.

Yes, the amount of salt lakes in the W.A. wheatbelt is amazing from the air, you don't get the "whole picture" from the ground. The drainage systems in W.A. are very flat and the lakes existed when the Europeans arrived, but extensive clearing and the transition to wide agricultural use increased the level of surface salt accumulation - and where many of those lakes were originally just brackish, and sometimes even fresh water, they have now all turned much saltier over time. Extensive efforts to drain the accumulated salts from the agricultural areas have led to mixed results and it will probably be another 200-300 years before we see any more major changes to the salt levels. Possibly somewhat surprisingly to what you might think, very wet years don't flush out the salt immediately, they make the salt levels worse (due to slow drainage), and in dry years, the salt levels decrease, as the water tables go down.

It's an unfortunate part of the climate and the country we live in, that extended very dry periods are part and parcel of that climate. A read of Dorothea MacKellars, "My Country" is recommended.

The new BOM site wants to be part of social media, that seems to be the main problem. You can still access all of the old BOM site at - https://reg.bom.gov.au/

I just remembered that 2025 is the 50th anniversary of the year I started school - at Wanneroo Primary School. There was no kindy or preschool in those far-off days, and I can clearly remember bawling my eyes out all day, because it was the first time I'd ever spent a whole day away from my Mother. A major shock to my comfort system. I can recall she gave me a packet of Arnotts Arrowroot biscuits to snack on for the day. But I made a few friends that day, and in the following days, and by the end of the year I had plenty of girlfriends. That's more than I can say about the rest of my adult life, where girlfriends became very hard to find, in rural and remote and all-male environments.

Yes, the 22A prefix D8H's were built in the U.K., from 1959. They were the early "low HP" D8H's, rated at 235 engine HP, later on the mid-60's they were upgraded to 270 engine HP.

Incidentally, the brother has only recently found this D6C, the very first Cat, and the first new bulldozer we ever bought (out of about a dozen dozers in total), and it belongs to an old prospector in the W.A. Goldfields, and it's still fully operational! It's probably done around 50,000 or 60,000 hours by now. We bought this tractor new in November 1966, and sold it in 1972 (traded on a new D7F), and it had done over 13,000 hrs, back in 1972.

Oh, yes, salt lakes have claimed many a victim, I've seen a couple where the machine was never recovered. Here's a bogged episode from 1966. You can see my near-new EH Holden ute in the first of the photos. Location, Bulyee, W.A. The brother was driving the D6C, enlarging a "Table" dam. A Table dam is where the wall is positioned about 4-5 metres away from the excavation. This was a design used from the earliest days of "tank-sinking", when horses, camels, donkeys and even bullocks, were used to pull simple hand-operated scoops and road ploughs, to excavate dams. The "Table" was made to allow the animals to turn around with the towed equipment. In later years, when bulldozers appeared, it was a simple enough job to excavate the section where the Table was, to make a "straight-push" dam, and thus considerably enlarge the dam capacity. The brother got caught by a pile of accumulated sand in the front corner of the dam, washed in over many years of filling up. But the accumulated sand pile sat on a layer of greasy, muddy clay. So when he drove onto the sand pile, the entire pile "took off" down into the deep mud in the middle of the dam, sliding intact on the underlying greasy mud - so it carried the D6C out into the main mud-filled area, then broke up, and dropped the D6C "right into the sh**". He was on hard bottom, but couldn't climb out, so local farmers arrived with their "big tractors" of the day - little Massey Fergusons! We even had a little International BTD-6 dozer helping - but they couldn't even get the D6C even halfway up the dam bank! So then the Hills Bros rolled up with their "big hitter" tractor - a tandem International A-554! Two A-554's coupled together without front axles, and boasting a massive 110HP!! The tandem A-554's made short work of dragging the D6C out - just by itself! The other tractors were still hooked on at the same time, but got left behind! Unfortunately, the photos of the A-554's and BTD-6 in action were amongst those lost - but the BTD-6 can be seen at rear in the second photo. The last two photos are of another bogging event with the D6C, when extending another dam. A stunt we used to use regularly when deeply bogged, was cutting a decent-sized log from any nearby whitegum, generally about 250mm in diameter and about 3M long - then digging down at the rear of the tractor (easier access at the rear), then dropping the log into the dug-out area, then tying the log to the tracks using old 1/2" (12.7mm) steel wire rope. Once the log re-appeared at the front of the tractor, you'd cut the SWR with a few accurate blows with a sledgehammer, where it sat across a grouser (the rib on the track shoes), and the log would then fall away. We would keep short lengths of SWR on hand for de-bogging missions where a log tied on was needed. Usually, just one log was all that was required. Two logs required, was a REAL bog disaster!

Wow, that sure is, "make your own road country", Willie! Unfortunately, I have only a very small proportion of all the photos I ever took, I lost 98% of them in my house fire in 1982, which still grieves me greatly. Here's a few I managed to save or scrounge off relatives. They're mostly "bogged" photos. Getting bogged was always good reason to bring out the camera. This is one of my D7F tractors around 1974, bogged to the eyeballs, when doing clearing for road widening in the Wheatbelt, East of Kulin W.A., where I lived at the time. Another contractor I worked in conjunction with, when doing clearing via chaining, had an Allis-Chalmers HD16. Here's one of his bogged episodes. Mid-Winter in the wheatbelt of course. Having your 20 foot stick rake attached when you sank to the makers name, wasn't exactly much help, either.

Great to hear you're still alive and well, Octave, and Seasons Greetings to you and Mrs Octave. I trust you're having a great Seasonal break.

Spacey hasn't visited this site since Nov 13, and Octave last looked in on Dec 14. I trust Spacey is still alive and kicking - and I hope Octave isn't stuck somewhere remote in his EV, with a flat battery. 😄