onetrack

No, I didn't see it, but Indonesia is Corruption Central, and we who have mining industry insights and knowledge, know full well that the Chinese are happy to ignore safety and health issues in other countries, as well as their own, when they set up mining or manufacturing arrangements. I was in partnership at one time with a bloke named Don Blaxell. Don was a boatbuilder and a couple of his sons were, too (Blaxell boats and surfboards). Don owned a property (a vacant city block) in a city in Indonesia, in which city he conducted other business from other premises. He told me one day, the local Police Chief visited him. He was chatty and friendly initially, then the Police Chief talk turned to this block of land that Don owned. "That's a nice block of land", he commented. Don agreed. Next thing the Police Chief says, "I think I should own it". Don, in all innocence, says, "So you want me to sell it to you?" "No, I'm not talking about you selling it to me", came the reply. "I think you need to give it to me. Otherwise, you could possibly end up in some kind of legal troubles". Don got the message fast, and took the next flight out of town, and never went back. He said he wasn't going to risk getting locked up on trumped-up charges, simply because he wouldn't play ball, Indonesian-Police style. They are utterly corrupt - and I also note some recent travel stories about Vietnamese and Thai Police corruption when visiting Vietnamese or Thai hotels and other tourist spots. The Police run the places, and if you give bad reviews, they'll charge you with offences, and lock you up until you remove the bad reviews. https://au.news.yahoo.com/aussie-tourist-warns-of-common-scam-at-popular-holiday-spot-thousands-of-dollars-per-day-024949201.html

I find it interesting that Elon is going to suffer some serious financial losses from his best buddies rampant, random and excessive tariffs. That must strain the friendship a bit. I wouldn't be in the least surprised to see Elon turn on his best buddy with a 180° about face, and start to denigrate him.

I don't have a huge amount of positives to report right now. I went up to my block in the Wheatbelt on Friday to do some constructive work, and it rained nearly all day! I was pretty disappointed as I got only about 20% done out of what I'd planned. I'm trying to construct more shelter for all my items, and I'm in the process of re-assembling a large garden shed for additional storage. A positive is I only paid $50 for the garden shed, and it has been built with a proper frame made from 25mm SHS tubing and 75x38 roof beams. It took me 5 hrs to dismantle it, but I think it's taken me around 5 weeks to reassemble it! Part of the problems has been multiple heatwaves, then I had to reconstruct the frame as the original builder stuffed it up with missing supports in some places and doubled up supports in other places. I also made it worse by electing to extend the frame from front to back by 20cm. It has ended up 3M x 3.4M and it's 2.14M high at the back and 2.24M high at the front (skillion roof). Working in the open is also a problem, and I'll be glad when I get some decent shelter built. The garden shed will be completed this week, and I'll be able to transfer lots of parts and other items that are currently under tarps, into it. Then I've also got a 6M x 6M roof, that I'm slinging between two 20 foot sea containers, in the early construction stages. That will then give me some covered "workshop" area to operate. But the good news is, my "main" shed is under way - a 12M x 8M x 4M gable-roof, concrete floor shed, which I have probably 50% constructed - and my building engineer has just finished the plans for it, which the council requires, and he has given me all the paperwork to submit to them as well. The only downside is he's charged me $3000 (plus GST) for drawing up the plans, which came in on the high side of his original cost estimate.

Ken Crew was killed by a 4M white pointer shark at North Cottesloe beach in early November, 2000. He was in waist-deep water when the shark swam in, and took his leg off. Esperance is a particularly bad place for big man-eaters, it holds the record for the highest number of shark victims in W.A., with four of the last seven W.A. shark victims being taken at Esperance. https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2000/nov/09/features11.g23

Well, what are doing, trying to play golf in the shower? Of course, you're going to have trouble keeping your balance in that situation!

"Swimming with the fishes" has too many connotations of bad things happening to you. I like to stay in shallow water, and I prefer my water much warmer, thank you! Besides, I have an abiding fear of sighting a massive dorsal fin that's attached to a Great White, any time I get near ocean water that's over chest deep.

I think I've seen a bloke with a coffin for a sidecar. There's also a mob delivering your coffin on a flat tray on a sidecar, cheaper than an extended wheelbase funeral hearse!

Peter, where are these dangerous showers located? I've noticed a lot of European bathrooms have some cheap and dodgy setups. I always try and aim for 4 star accommodation today, trusting that a 4 star rating helps improve ones chances of getting a nice bathroom.

It's quite amazing, the number of solar panel arrays that have been installed now. The Chinese must be raking in the money with solar panel production. This one at Merredin, 260kms E of Perth, occupies 462Ha of land. It produces enough power to supply 42,000 homes. https://risenenergy.com.au/portfolio/merredin-solar-farm/

That looks like a giant Wrassecal in the first photo! 🙂

Some wives would make you turn in your coffin! 🙂

Probably just the normal Jetstar passenger experience! - fighting with each other, drunk beyond belief, trying to open an exit door - just another regular Jetstar day! 🙄

Chisel? What, a sandstone coffin?? I guess if she was a mummy, a sandstone coffin would be alright. 🙂

I hate burns, they really hurt, and those crematoriums get pretty hot, they reckon. I reckon a pine box and hole in the ground is good enough for me. But I want a spot that won't be disturbed by population encroachment and I need to think up a really good epitaph to put on my headstone to make passers-by think or laugh. There's some good epitaphs around, ones like "Here lies Lester Moore. Four slugs from a Forty Four. No Les, no more."

Trump is chaos personified. His actions are erratic, his decisions follow no order, and they're reversed in split seconds - and he loves operating like that, he believes keeping his opposition "off-balance" is a superb way to operate. But his deranged actions with no real plan, are actions that are almost certainly leading America into a major recession. But Trump will never acknowledge he's responsible for that recession, he will conveniently find a scapegoat or reason to pin the blame on, when a recession hits the U.S. He's destroying the American armaments industry by making other countries ramp up their armaments manufacturing, and armaments manufacturing is the backbone of American wealth and economic activity, and I'm amazed that leaders of the American military-industrial complex aren't rounding on Trump already.

I see no need to import rubbishy quality farmed fish from Vietnam, when we're surrounded by a couple of the worlds biggest oceans and few smaller ones. The Vietnamese fish farms are in boats sitting in the Mekong River, and the Mekong River is one of the most polluted rivers in the world, with 400 major factories all discharging their industrial waste into the Mekong with very little official checks, and certainly no waste treatment. I'm happy to pay a lot more for locally-caught fish, and even Australian farmed fish are better than any imported fish.

Yeah, you can really see Zelenskyy and the Ukrainians agreeing to that scumbags deal!! I'm surprised it doesn't include free Ukrainian land for Trump golf courses and hotels, too!

A Country & Western legend, his "Poetry in Motion" is still a classic - and "It Keeps Right On a-Hurting" is country gold, too.

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/