onetrack

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

It's only Grandpa's that go for Grandma's. 😄

Nev, everything in Broome is at a premium during the Dry. We were lucky, we normally stay at the Habitat Resort, it's on 7 acres out near the Port and the accommodation units are self contained and nicely spread out, which is what we like. Because we've stayed there regularly for years, we got a discount calling them direct. But it's still $290 a night. The main problem was we could only get 8 days straight at the Habitat, then it was fully booked from 20th July on. But we found a nice AirBnB on the Northern outskirts of town, so we scored the last 4 days at the AirBnB, so it's all good. Even got a good deal on car hire at Thrifty through our RAC WA card, 20% off the hire rate. I'm looking forward to the warmth and relaxation.

One of the interesting things that continues to amaze me, is that the oil companies are still building new service stations on a wholesale basis. I reckon the number of service stations in W.A. has doubled in the last 6 or 7 years. Someone obviously still believes there's a great future in fossil fuels - or maybe it's just that servos are a licence to print money, with their huge markup on fuels?

Here on the Left Coast, we have had some Winter rain, but overall it's been much warmer for Winter than the average for this time of year. We are well down on annual rainfall, and the residual ground moisture levels are very low all through the State. Winter crops such as Wheat and Canola are out of the ground and away, and got a boost with good rains last week, but they had a long dry spell in early June. Many crops seeded in May had spotty germination due to low moisture levels, and some farmers did spot re-seeding. The crop areas that didn't germinate earlier are behind the rest of the crops. If we get reasonable rains in July, it may turn out to be an average cropping season, but I suspect it's going to turn out to be a spotty, below-average year for grain crops. The high pressure systems are still dominating over Australia and the cold fronts and low pressure systems are still well South of the continent when they come through from the Indian and Southern Oceans to the West. Some of the rain we've had, originated from the Northern part of the Indian Ocean, and came in from the North West in troughs, rather than from cold fronts from the South West, as we'd normally expect in Winter. Despite the warmer Winter, we're still going to head off to Broome for 12 days next month. Looking forward to a decent break, we haven't had one since before COVID started. We had two failed attempts at holidays in 2022 and 2023, both were cut short by COVID outbreaks, and we ended up locked up for a fortnight, both times.

Trump and Carlton. Both two hopeless cases that need to be put down.

Not Range Topping

The only problem with that idea is the huge weight penalty of even a small genset. A 10Kw genset, even a petrol one, would weigh at least 75kgs, probably more like 100kgs if you took into account the weight of the towbar mount. I've got a 6Kva diesel twin Kubota portable genset (GL6000), and it weighs 250kgs. Mazda have been experimenting with a "range extender" 1.0L Rotary engine mounted in the boot, to provide a major range boost, but I'm not sure if it's just been an experiment, or if it is actually planned for production.

Lack of water in drought periods kills thousands of animals and has probably contributed to species extinctions. I can recall, in July 1969, a mate and I took a "halfway around Australia" trip, driving my HK Holden ute. We drove N from Perth, through the Wheatbelt, Murchison, Pilbara and Kimberley. From Kununurra we went to Katherine, then Darwin, then back down the Centre to Port Augusta, where we turned right and headed back to Perth. There was a big drought in 1969 that affected W.A., S.A. and even the N.T., and water sources were drying up big-time. As we drove across the Nullarbor, we encountered mobs of multiple hundreds of 'roos, all heading South. They were heading South trying to find feed and water, and many were in poor shape after obviously travelling a long way. A lot were disorientated and as we slowly motored up to a large mob crossing the highway in front of us, one turned towards us and jumped onto the bonnet of the ute, trying to jump over us in total confusion! He landed on the bonnet and fell off onto the side and picked himself up and slowly hopped away. I'll wager a lot of them died, in W.A. the drought lasted from late 1968 right through to early 1972.

Because it's identical. A. shows the watch missing, B. shows different colours on the bands of the left arm, C. shows an added arm, so it must be D.

D.

It puzzles me that we want swappable batteries for our power tools, household and garden equipment, scooters, e-bikes and other equipment - but we aren't clamouring for swappable batteries (or even just simpler battery replacement) in the EV's currently being offered to us. The EV full transition has yet to play out, and recycling is the area where EV's are carrying a major burden that goes directly against their "green" credentials. We have yet to develop adequate and satisfactory methods of EV vehicle and EV battery recycling. There is only ONE fully operational EV/Lithium battery recycling facility in Australia, and its capacity is quite low, it's incapable of handling any more than a small percentage of Lithium battery recycling. The majority of Lithium battery processing here is simply shredding, burying, or sending the batteries overseas for reprocessing - a procedure that generates more waste and unnecessary consumption of resources, and even at that, there's reluctance of other countries to take our waste. Yet, the EV's and Lithium batteries are being put into production and scaled up at massively increased rates. Virtually all EV's produced in the period from 2010 to 2020 are essentially now scrap - but difficult-to-recycle scrap. We regularly try to improve our rubbish footprint, but it's not improving, it's getting worse. EV tyres are difficult to recycle, they are different to normal tyres, and we already have a massive tyre rubbish problem that is not being addressed. At least Lead-Acid batteries are recycled to the tune of around 98%-99%, and IC-engine car recycling is quite good. IC-engined cars are fully recyclable, even the lubricants and coolant are drained and recycled. But EV batteries are full of toxic chemicals and plastics and minerals, and they are very costly to try and recycle, and the Lithium battery recycling effort doesn't produce any major value at this point. No-one is properly addressing the waste factor associated with EV's, they're just continually kicking the can down the road. At some stage, very soon, EV battery manufacturers MUST concentrate on the recyclability and ease of recycling EV batteries, or we stand to leave a legacy of mounds of EV and Lithium battery waste to our future generations. As it is now, vast numbers of Lithium batteries are going to landfill and councils are being unfairly left to carry the can of dealing with this waste, the level of which they are woefully unprepared for, and unfunded to deal with it.

It's very telling that despite regular and repeated episodes of unconscionable and essentially criminal behaviour by Australian Banks, which behaviour has led to a Royal Commission and multiple number of Banking Enquiries - all of which have determined major wrongdoing by banks in their treatment of loyal customers - not a single Bank executive has ever been charged with criminal behaviour, nor gone to jail, despite their behaviour essentially being White Collar Crime. But the Banks have been obliged, even forced at times, to pay multiple billions of dollars in penalties, as a result of their misbehaviour, disobeyance of banking rules and regulations, mistreatment of customers, and other forms of outright criminality. They are a protected species, with the Govt and politicians lacking the intestinal fortitude to carry out decisive actions against bank executives who indulge in illegal, ruthless, unconscionable and criminal behaviour. I was told years later, when retelling my bank mistreatment tale to one person, that I'd made the mistake of being too conservative in dealing with my bank. This bloke said, "There's an old saying that holds true. When you owe your bank a million dollars, and its fully secured, you have a problem. When you owe the bank a hundred million dollars, and the security is dodgy, they have a problem. Your mistake was not making them concerned about what a possible upset could cost them". In hindsight (a wonderful thing), we would have been far better off to call in Administrators to the business, which is an excellent method for fending off aggressive and unconscionable conduct by banks. Administration would have enabled us to develop a different approach to protecting our assets, and one that would have meant we could have avoided a totally unnecessary fire sale of business assets. To this day, I still wonder what went on, well above our heads in banking and corporate circles. Our business was the biggest family-owned mining contracting business in Western Australia in 1994, and we regularly competed for mining contract work with the "biggies" - Leightons, Roche Bros, Eltin, Brambles, etc, etc. - and I often muse about whether, above our heads, one of these companies threatened to withdraw their business from this bank, unless they took steps to wipe us out, and thus relieve them of annoying and costly competition.

Clinton, I trust you've taken plenty of steps towards protection and preservation of your container if you're going to bury it - because they were never designed to be buried, and the corrosion is relentless and horrendous when unprotected items are buried in the ground. Acids and chemicals in the soil, combined with water travelling through the soil, are highly destructive and corrosive on buried metals. You need to coat the container with a highly protective coating, preferably an epoxy or other high quality, moisture-sealing compound. Then you need to protect it further with heavy duty plastic sheeting that covers the entire container and which sheeting is thoroughly sealed. Otherwise, you'll find your container being destroyed and unusable within a few short years, if you don't take those protective steps.

Add insult to injury.