onetrack

Here's the ABC obituary about Peter Russell-Clarke, I had no idea he was as old as he was. He was married for 65 yrs, that's some record! https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-06/peter-russell-clarke-dies-aged-89/105500112

An interesting angle regarding the housing crisis is going to appear next year. From July 1, 2026, every single "professional gatekeeper" involved in the real estate industry is going to fall under AUSTRAC money-laundering reporting rules. From that date, Real estate agents, property conveyancers, lawyers and accountants, will all have to do "due diligence" during real estate transactions, and prove up their clients identity and source of funds, and report suspicious transactions. Criminal gang money and bribe money has been invested into our housing market on a wholesale basis for decades, and it has seriously distorted our house pricing. No-one has any accurate figures on how much money invested into Australian real estate is "black" money - but the cocaine trade in Australia alone is valued at $12B, and most of that money finds its way into Australian real estate via money laundering. In addition, the criminal networks are not necessarily interested in good returns, they are just interested in legalising their illegal money. It appears Canada, and Vancouver in particular, have a similar problem, and Canada is applying similar steps to Australia. Another article points out that house prices here, are 30% above "fair value" and the consequences of that inflation is that it will need a 10 year plateau in house values, or a massive economic disruption to get them to down to "fair value" pricing. https://www.watoday.com.au/business/the-economy/what-happens-to-house-prices-when-the-drug-money-tap-is-turned-off-20250627-p5mav1.html https://www.watoday.com.au/property/news/how-far-house-prices-have-jumped-above-fair-value-20250620-p5m94j.html

Below is an excellent article, originally from the British Telegraph, pointing out how Trumps Big Beautiful Bill has just handed the Chinese the advantage in energy generation, and energy saving devices. https://www.watoday.com.au/business/the-economy/trump-s-big-beautiful-mistake-will-have-china-licking-its-lips-20250704-p5mcfm.html

It's not going to break my heart, and America is well down the list of countries I'd like to visit - especially an America run by the Orange Clown. I consider America an unsafe place to visit, with the massive number of firearms in public possession, with little ownership control, and many owned by permanently angry, foamy-mouthed ferals, who are classic MAGA adherents, and who prefer to shoot anyone they disagree with, or who "disrespect" them, or who "trespass" on their land. They really are a bunch of mentally-disturbed people. Did you see where one of the Jan 6 rioters, who was pardoned by Trump, promptly set about stalking and killing 36 law enforcement officials who had made it onto his "kill" list, as regards his previous Jan 6 prosecution? I mean, what kind of sicko keeps a "kill" list? A lot of MAGA adherents, no doubt. This bloke is another Timothy McVeigh, the instigator of the Oklahoma bombing, in the making. Fortunately, U.S. law enforcement managed to nail him, and prove his murderous intent, and this obviously alarmed the entire judiciary, as he was jailed for life this time. Let's see if Trump pardons him again, seeing as he appears to be a Trump Golden Boy. I wonder how many more of these malevolently murderous Trump worshippers are out there, from the Jan 6 rioters? Of course, they're all terrific Patriots, so it must be, they're being unfairly targeted by those evil Govt thugs. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/03/us/politics/jan6-assassination-plot-sentence.html

I was talking to a bloke recently who is good friends with a former part-time employee of mine. Ron was a shearer during shearing season, but came and drove my grader and dozers, out of shearing season. I haven't seen him for about 35 years, and the last I knew, Ron had moved to Geraldton. However, this bloke I met up with, who was born and bred in the little country town where I lived and did contract earthmoving in the 70's and 80's, has kept in touch with Ron. He said Ron had moved to Barmera in S.A. and had bought a vineyard (it must have been 25 or more years ago). But the wine industry fell in a hole, so Ron has apparently turned to growing vegies, with more profitable results. He said Ron grew pumpkins and other easy-growing surface vegies, but had recently found a good market in Adelaide for garlic - so he now grows a considerable amount of garlic, and says it pays far better than grapes ever did. It's like anything I guess, if you find a market for a product, and develop that market, and become a reliable supplier/grower, then you have it made. An Italian kid I went to school with (who was dumb as a rock), became a big veggie grower N of Perth, but I see in recent times he concentrates on celery, and is a big local name in celery. A deceased friend grew vegetables on 50 acres E of Bunbury, and he reckoned that sweet corn was the easiest and simplest crop to grow, and always provided a good income. The main problem he had was Coles and Woolworths buyers, they were scumbags, screwing growers senseless. Then there were the big local vegie growers telling Coles and Woolworths buyers, that if they continued to buy off the smaller growers, they would stop supplying Coles and Woolworths. Real Mafia tactics. I can recall one year he was growing onions, and the price went through the floor, so he ploughed all 50 acres of onions in, saying it was cheaper than picking them.

Every ex-PM of Australia costs us taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. In retirement, in the Whitlam, Fraser, Keating and Howard, Rudd and Gillard era, they got a free office, free office staff, free phone service, a free "private plated" car, free air travel (business or first class, of course), as well as their massive pensions, which lends a whole new world of meaning to the word "pension". In addition, these ex-PM's charge massive sums just for giving speeches - which they do regularly. As an example, Whitlam was costing taxpayers around half a million annually in pension, former position perks, and travel, phone and car entitlements, which he maxxed out at all times. It was reported that Whitlam was paid over $3M during his retirement, out of the public purse. This is the reason why politicians entitlements were cut back in recent years, because they unjustly enriched themselves with massive pensions and perks, that they organised for themselves. Despite having a Parliamentary tribunal for politicians pensions, it was essentially a rubber stamp for increases the pollies themselves put forward. Fraser probably became a great social improvements promoter, out of guilt, when he came to the realisation that not everyone was born with a silver spoon in their mouth. He was born into squattocracy wealth, and inherited huge wealth and properties, and he wouldn't have ever known what it was like, to struggle for a living. https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/2018/10/28/former-prime-ministers-cost Compare our snout-in-the-trough PM's with Harry Truman. He ran the worlds biggest, most powerful and richest nation, and did it for $6250 a month from 1946 to 1949. Congress approved an increase in Trumans pay to $12,500 a month in 1950, part of which was to cover Presidential expenses, which were substantial. When Truman left office, he got NOTHING - No pension, no Secret Service protection, no office perks of any kind. And he consistently refused offers of big money to join corporate boards or other good-paying positions, saying to do so would demean the Office of the President of the U.S. The man stands head and shoulders above any other politician the world has ever produced - and the miserable excuse of a blatant money-grubbing, self-interested scumbag that is currently the U.S. President, is a galaxy away from Harry Truman. https://www.forbes.com/sites/taxanalysts/2014/04/23/its-good-to-be-the-ex-president-but-it-wasnt-always/#:~:text=In his last full year,reported just $34%2C176.70 in income. Here's a list of the more recent, revised levels of ex-P.M.'s pensions and perks, they are still substantial. https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/2018/10/28/former-prime-ministers-cost

It was pretty easy for him, and easy for him to say, from his exalted squattocracy/high-ranking politician position, with all the perks that come with both positions.

For the dirt-cheap low cost of electronic items today, I no longer put up with things not working. I love Logitech keyboards, and I had a great one for several years - but the letters wore off it and it became a PIA to use, so I diced it and bought a new Logitech keyboard, where I can see what button it is that I'm tapping.

"Chinese red dog" Is that where Chinese hot dogs originate from?

Spacey, Noo Zulland was part of NSW until 1841, when it decided it wanted to be a separate colony. When Federation was proposed, the Noo Zullanders actually took part in the early Federation discussions (in the early 1890's), but they soon decided they didn't want to join the Australian Federation, and wanted to proceed with independence.

I can't agree, OME. AFAIC, the "date of conception of Australia" (as a unified nation with a common purpose) was the day of Australian Federation on 1st January 1901. On that day, the six colonies, which were individual entities and populations, all operating separately under British rule, agreed to join up under a common Constitution with a common purpose.

OME, I don't believe it's accurate to say there's a finite amount of everything on this planet, especially when it come to minerals. The level of minerals available to us is defined by their ease of extraction, and how much exploration work has gone into accurately defining ore bodies. There are vast amounts of mineral reserves in the Earth, it all comes back to whether they are economically extractable, and whether our technology can be increased to reach the deeper and more-difficult-to-access ore reserves.

Peter, copper mining has been ongoing for millenia. It's a precious metal as well as an industrial metal, and it's never thrown away - even the lowest bottom feeder knows that copper is a valuable resource, and will recycle it. An interesting point is that copper use in coinage and currency is reducing, primarily due to cost reduction demands, and primarily due to reduced coinage use, and a lack of copper durability. Nickel and steel and other alloys are replacing copper in coins. This frees up a lot of copper demand, which can then be used in electrical equipment. You've no doubt seen the size of the Escondida copper mine in Chile, it is massive, and this mine alone produces over 5% of the worlds copper demand. Olympic Dam in South Australia is another massive copper resource of mind-boggling size and reserves. China has massive copper mines, and our information in the West, about their copper reserves is a bit murky, to say the least. Now, you may have also heard that mining companies have discovered a monstrous copper orebody on the border between Argentina and Chile, the Filo del Sol copper deposit. It reportedly contains the worlds largest copper deposit. It contains 13 million tonnes of copper, 907,000 kilograms (32 million ounces) of gold, and 18.6 million kilograms (659 million ounces) of silver - and the orebodys depth is still yet to be ascertained, meaning it could be even larger still. To take all this into perspective, gold falls into the same category of constant and increasing demand. When I was involved in mining (over 30 years ago now), a good grade of gold was 2 to 3 grams per tonne. Nowadays, miners are mining gold ores that are 0.5 and 0.3 grams to the tonne. This means a massive level of earth displacement and treatment, just to get around 3,500 tonnes globally, of this greatly sought-after precious metal, annually! But that level of mining is not decreasing, it continues unabated, and it is demand driven. I have yet to see anyone complain about the dreadful mining madness associated with gold extraction! Copper can be replaced by aluminium if necessary, and it has done in previous years when a high copper price drove manufacturers to use aluminium instead of copper. I found my 1989 Isuzu truck used aluminium starter cables from the factory, and Lincoln Electric welders started using aluminium windings instead of copper in their transformers in that same era. Electronics and improved designs have reduced the need to have heavy copper wiring to carry high levels of current - and keeping weight down is critical in car design. By now, the first EV's will be getting recycled in sizeable numbers, leading to additional copper recycling. I don't think a major fear of a huge copper shortage can be realistically sustained.

Our family business owned several 4WD dual cab LN106 Hiluxes in the late 1980's, when we first started out in mining contracting. We were working out of Marble Bar, re-treating the gold tailings at the Marble Bar State Battery by constructing large leach vats. We had a team of employees and family members living in Marble Bar, and one of them was my 20 yr old middle nephew, who's a bullet, who just need to be aimed, at all times. A huge cyclonic event brought massive rains to the Marble Bar region in March 1988, when we were there, and the Coongan River ended up in flood, running about 10M deep and 600-800 metres wide. Every minor creek around the region was also running a banker. So the nephew decided to go barrelling around the place in one of the Hiluxes, checking out all the water! Typically 20 yr old, he sees a flooded creek, so you simply gun it, to get through, don't you!! He plowed into a deep creek doing about 50 or 60kmh, the water sloshed up everywhere in a massive displacement, and the poor old 2.4L diesel Hilux sucked in a gutful of water at about 3000RPM, that went straight through the air filter, and into the guts of the engine! Now, we all know that water is incompressible, and my nephew learnt this the hard way! One cylinder ingested a full load of water - and as Toyota build very robust engine internals, the only way out for that incompressible water, was via the engine block! The cylinder burst open and then punched a hole through the outside of the block! The engine was instant scrap! A hard lesson learnt! The Coongan in flood....

I got caught out with a floodway in the W.A. Wheatbelt in Feb 2017. A huge Summer storm event came through the State and flooded most of the Wheatbelt. Creeks and Rivers were running bankers and the Phillips River Bridge on Hwy 1 on the South Coast got washed out to sea! I was silly enough to have organised to take a bootload of tools and equipment to an auction North of Lake King. We got stopped at Kondinin, as the highway to Hyden was under deep water. So we detoured 25kms to the South, to Kulin, to visit a good mate who ran the tyre shop there. After we had a good yarn and great steak sandwich in the Kulin Hotel, we set off back to Perth. We were in the Missus' Camry and I had about 200kgs of stuff in the boot, so it was riding well! We came to a modest-sized creek just West of Kulin (which I knew pretty well, as I lived in Kulin for over 20 years) - and this creek was running pretty solidly, too. The crossing was essentially just a floodway, a lowered area of bitumen through the creek width (which was about 150 metres). I stopped and looked at it, and it didn't seem to be excessively deep. The signboard was still visible and the water level read "0.2M" on the numbers. So I eased the Camry into the creek, and started to cross it - and HOLY MOLY! - the water was more than halfway up the doors! The Camry spluttered for a second, making me think it was going to stop, but then it recovered and I kept it going until we got out the other side, where I stopped. Water ran out of the car everywhere! - and horror of horrors, the back floor was soaking wet! So we went on home, and once there, I pulled the seats and floor mats out, and spent nearly a day getting all the residual water out of the car, and drying everything out! Luckily, it was stinking hot, around 40°, so everything dried out rapidly. The worst part was, Toyota use a weird, foam-type padding under the floormats, in the footwells, about 50-60mm thick, and this stuff was 100% porous, and each piece held about 20 litres of water!! I spent hours squeezing them and pressing them, trying to get all the water out. Finally, the next day, everything was nice and dry, so I re-installed all the padding and floormats and seats - and promised myself I would NEVER take notice of any floodwater gauge again, without walking through the water!! Here's a photo of the floodway, notice how the "0.2M" mark is about 0.6M above the actual road level! The "1M" mark, is more like 1.4M in water depth. This is the Google Maps location - https://maps.app.goo.gl/tUQTDd4rQGfKCC3S7

Perhaps surprisingly to a lot of us "out of the loop", you apparently have to be "vetted" today if you want a "rescue dog", to see if you're suitable and compatible with the dog in question. Stepdaughter has a friend who lost her little companion a while back, and she went to get a rescue dog, thinking it was an easy process, but it wasn't, they treat you like you're adopting a child. There's an application form, a formal interview, "a meet and greet", and checks on your background, living situation, finances, and so on. A far cry from the old days when you just picked up an unwanted dog, or an abandoned one wandered in, and you adopted it. As you'd expect, big dogs are hard to rehome, they cost a fortune in food and they're always a concern when little dogs come into contact with them. I see a lot of people with rehomed greyhounds, I can't see where a greyhound makes a good homey pet. I went through a few dogs as a kid, a couple met an untimely end with poisoning, and getting hit by cars. After being bitten by a nasty Red Heeler that Dad owned, I decided I wasn't going to own a dog again, cats were easier to handle. https://www.dogshome.org.au/the-adoption-process/

Sounds to me like a biased article spreading FUD over EV's. Possibly, the reason behind any motion sickness in EV's is the very rapid acceleration and deceleration of them, which is much higher than IC-engined cars.

Yes, the old Champs had everything sealed to the nth degree, they were quite amazing in that respect.

4WD's have a "safe" fording depth, set by the manufacturers, that is a very sensible figure. It's usually between 500mm and 800mm maximum. Over that depth, high mounted diff and transmission breathers go under water, and the cold water effect on hot transmissions and axles creates a vacuum that makes them ingest water via the breathers. Corrosion in those compartments then follows. Wheel bearings will only withstand a small level of water pressure before the seals admit water to the bearings, and bearing failure follows as corrosion pits the races and rollers when the vehicle is left parked up for a period. But the worst part is, the body of a vehicle is essentially a largely sealed bathtub on wheels. It has to be largely sealed to keep dust out and keep warm or cool air in. Once you go into deep water (deeper than 800mm), you risk the vehicle starting to float, and it loses traction, and the ability to direct it where you want it to go, via steering input. Add in a serious tonnage of water pressure from fast-flowing water and this becomes an irresistable force. The result is the vehicle simply gets washed downstream. Add in the serious level of water pressure from the tonnes of water force, being applied to the side of the car in fast-flowing floodwater, and this becomes an irresistible force.

He's obviously decided that daily, full-time application to his projects, is more important than any forum. I'd blame it on his new hip, it gave him a new lease on an active outdoor life.

Just wait until Elon's vindictiveness comes to the fore and he starts unloading on his "best mate". It will be pretty revealing. I could never understand how Trump could promote Tesla's, when he's dead set on eliminating EV's from the landscape, and promoting oil companies and more gas guzzlers. Just goes to show his sincerity is non-existent.

My stepdaughter left her cat with us when she went to live the Pilbara in the late 1990's. This cat was a half-wild tabby moggie that had regular panic attacks and need to run away and hide, as the feral cat in her came to the surface. But she had character and was quite intelligent. When she killed a little bird in the backyard, I went her crook, and she never killed a bird again. We looked after her for 12 years as the SD roamed the world, an animal we didn't really want in the first place, but which became part of our home. Then, when she was about 14 in 2010, she got stomach cancer, so I had to put her down. I buried her in the backyard, and I actually sat down and bawled when I did so, I couldn't believe the loss of a pet that I never even picked, would affect me so badly.

Ahhh, that's sad news, rgm. Nothing more hurtful than having to put a faithful companion down - and even more so, seeing as it was your late wifes. Here's wishing things pick up for you soon.

The houses they build today are only good for twenty years, anyway. After twenty years, they're going to flatten it, and build two in its place. 😞

The new Chinese Tesla copy, the Xiaomi YU7, manufactured by China's Xiaomi phone manufacturer, sold 300,000 cars of this new model, in just one hour after its release. The Xiaomi YU7 undercuts the Tesla model Y by around 4% in retail price. Elon is going to have to really apply himself now, on how to beat the Chinese EV onslaught. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-06-30/china-electric-vehicle-xiaomi-sells-289-000-suvs-tesla-model-y/105476084