A Quarter of a Millenium Ago

[old man emu]

I'm getting better background information in this thread than those seeking my support politically are giving me. Jerry, I'm ankle deep in the waters of the Jordan. You are enticing me to go in deeper.

[Bruce Tuncks]

There was an example of the type of "aborigine" who would benefit...  she doesn't look aborigine to me, and her salary is already 250,000 pa I think. ( professor of constitutional law ). 

How will giving the likes of her an extra $100,000 help at Indulkina?

As I have asked and not been answered, please give me an example of how it would help those at Indulkina if the voice were established.

AND why does a woman who is only 25% black claim to be "aboriginal"?

[Bruce Tuncks]

OME, I find it just amazing that superphosphate was once so cheap that it paid to drop it over the bare hills and recoup the money with extra wool. These days, it can easily cost more in shearer's pay than you get for the wool. And it can cost $100 grand to put in a crop these days, super being a big part of that.

So there was a bounty on super huh?   I wish there was a bounty on shearer's wages.

And the airtruck was a good plane, easily the equivalent of the Pawnee. I've had a few glider launches behind one.

PS In South Australia, there were no convicts ever.

[old man emu]

3 hours ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

So there was a bounty on super huh? 

Has been since 1932. I can't fine the legislation dealing with this, but there was the Superphosphate Bounty Act 1941  http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/num_act/sba194165o1941331/ This was part of wartime methods to increase food production. The bounty was paid to the manufacturer, not the end user. I can't find the mechanism by which the manufacturer showed the Government that the bounty had been applied to the retail price of Super, but there is a section that gives the power to demand presentation of records.

 

The bounty continued until 1974. During that period, manufacturers developed other variants of Super called "double" and "triple".  Addressing the House on October 1963 Senator Henty, Minister for Customs and Excise, said that since this announcement, of a bounty of £3 per ton on superphosphate manufactured and sold for use in Australia during the three years commencing  August, 1963.\, enquiries have shown that there have been considerable developments and expansion in the fertilizer industry recently and, during the next few months, there will be a marked increase in the number and type of and products produced. Until now, only one type of superphosphate has been produced in Australia - a standard superphosphate containing approximately 20% soluble phosphorus pentoxide (P2O5)· However, plant and machinery being installed by certain manufacturers will enable the production of not only "double" (40% P2O5) an(3 - "triple" (50% P2O5) superphosphate but ' also a new range of fertilizers based on ammonium phosphate.

 

On 15 February 1974, the Prime Minister, Mr Whitlam, today announced that the Government had decided that the Phosphate Fertilizers Bounty should be allowed to expire at 31 December 1974. Total payments under the bounty to 30 June 1973 amounted to just over $337 million and in 1972/73 to $56.6 million. Most of the benefit of these payments goes to users in the more prosperous rural industries. The bounty was introduced in 1963 to emphasise the benefits arising from the use of superphosphate. This aim has been well met and it is no longer appropriate for this expensive charge to be carried by the taxpayer. (Cop the Country Party)

[facthunter]

Toxic to gum trees and increases soil acidity.   Nev

[old man emu]

4 minutes ago, facthunter said:

Toxic to gum trees and increases soil acidity.   Nev

Toxic to native plants due to their evolving in low phosphorus soils. However, all living things need phosphorus because it is  a component of Adenosine triphosphate (ATP)

 

 

  which transfers energy for use and storage at the cellular level. The structure of ATP is a nucleoside triphosphate, consisting of a nitrogenous base (adenine), a ribose sugar, and three serially bonded phosphate groups.

   

 

 

 

[willedoo]

The way I remember it from school, nitrogen is primarily for leaf and stem growth, phosphorus for root growth, and potassium for flowering. So for a fruiting crop, ease off on the nitrogen and increase potassium closer to flowering, or more phosphorous for root crops.

[willedoo]

I don't know whether this is true or not, but it was told to me by a horticulture lecturer who was ex DPI. He was commenting on claims that cane farming caused phosphorus to leach into the ocean. He said phosphorus doesn't leach very far at all compared to some like nitrogen. The issue was due to the cation exchange, the positive phosphorous binding to the negative clay colloid, and erosion causing those colloids to wash out to sea taking the phosphorus with it.  Probably splitting hairs, but it was a problem of erosion, not leaching.

[old man emu]

It's easiest to consider phosphorus to be the "electricity" cables of the cell, moving energy from place to place. Therefore, to get a plant to do what you want it to do (grow to maturity;  produce healthy flowers, or afterwards produce the food storage of its fruit or seeds) the plant must have enough phosphorus then and there to have the energy or the activity.

[facthunter]

Salinity is a big problem in Australia as well as acidity. There are lots of deficiencies of trace elements in Australia and soil carbon and topsoil generally this and also a shortage of soil microorganisms that make nutrients available to the Plant. High acidity OR alkalinity make nutrients unavailable even though they may be present in the soil.   Nev

[Bruce Tuncks]

Australian soils are often deficient in phosphorous, which is why super is required to grow wheat here. The soils can have other deficiencies too...  Selenium deficiency is thought to be responsible for the aborigines of Kangaroo Island dying thousands of years ago.

As I have said here before, most Australian soils are 5 cycles ( sandstone weathering to soil then going back to sandstone is a cycle) away from the good volcanic soils.

( I spent years thinking that "advance Australia Fair" was written by a silly woman, such is my opinion of women and science . Well it turned out to be untrue, which proves that I am a bit of a doubting thomas. )

[Old Koreelah]

10 minutes ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

… most Australian soils are 5 cycles ( sandstone weathering to soil then going back to sandstone is a cycle) away from the good volcanic soils.

The downside of living on the oldest, most stable, safest continent: tired old soils that don’t get regular doses of volcanic ash. 

[willedoo]

The self mulching black soils on the Darling Downs in Queensland held a lot of natural fertility for a long time. The eastern regions immediately west of the Great Dividing Range have been farmed since the late 1800's, but a lot of the prairie land to the west of there has only been cultivated since WW2. Most of it was excised from larger cattle and sheep stations and broken up into small soldier settlement blocks. It had intensive grain cropping from the late 40's onward, and it was only in the early 70's that crops started responding to fertilisers, so it was almost thirty years before fertiliser was of any extra benefit. I can still remember when the first anhydrous ammonia tanks started appearing in the district.

[willedoo]

Those black soils are also slightly alkaline.

[spacesailor]

SO 

If our soil needs ' mulching ' .

Why !, Can't we ship that household garden mulch-refuge . Into those are,s were it could be benificial .

Take the ' Simpson desert ' we can't stop the sand move ! ,

Or can we , if er put enough mulch at the Western edge , along with tree for that region  . It could change the ' dessert ' to a woodland 

Day-dreams , but can We do something  constructive. 

spacesailor

[Old Koreelah]

6 minutes ago, spacesailor said:

SO 

If our soil needs ' mulching ' .

Why !, Can't we ship that household garden mulch-refuge . Into those are,s were it could be benificial ...

Good point, Spacey. Being such a Clever Country, we strip nutrients from our poor soils (with huge losses in soil erosion) then ship them to our human feedlots (using vast amounts of non-renewable, imported fuels). Then we pump their nutrient-rich effluent through expensive pipes into the ocean. 

[old man emu]

The climate does not help, either. If you compare the grasslands of North America and Africa to our similarly flat lands, you'll soon see the difference good rainfall makes.

 

Good rain = abundant grass growth.

Good rain = easy decomposition of the seasonal dumping of dead grass stems.

Easy decomposition = rapid return of minerals to the soil.

Well mineralised soil  + good rain = abundant grass growth.

 

A lot of Australia is in the horse latitudes. The horse latitudes are the latitudes about 30 degrees north and south of the Equator. They are characterized by sunny skies, calm winds, and very little precipitation. The horse latitudes are located in an area where there is a ridge of high pressure that circles the Earth. Warm, dry, and sunny conditions over the oceans creates Earth's major deserts that are not in the polar regions.

 

 

[spacesailor]

a lot of ' desserts ' were once fertile .

I have just watched a ' netflix ' ,Doco.

'' Ancient Apocalypse '' the scientist talked about the Dryus period .

The establishment will Not accept any theories in opposition to theirs .

But the doco has Theorized that the Earth must have been hit with Dozens of meteorites .

 

I Theorize they are wrong . my idea is .: Earth didn't get hit at all by the '' planet killer Asteroid '' (  our new one , Asteroid 2022 AP7 )

.

' IT ' hit the BINARY planet next to Earth .

The one third smashed off the moon fell to earth , causing the multiple hits the scientist are talking about. But cannot fathom those numbers.

One third to Earth , one third out to space & beyond . leaving OUR moon .

spacesailor

[Bruce Tuncks]

Doesn't sound right to me Spacy.  The moon's arrival was long ago i think. It has kept our axial tilt stable and allowed agriculture to take place.

A planet without a BIG moon like ours is unlikely to have a technical civilization. This is why I think we are effectively alone.

[willedoo]

5 hours ago, spacesailor said:

Take the ' Simpson desert ' we can't stop the sand move ! ,

Or can we , if er put enough mulch at the Western edge , along with tree for that region  . It could change the ' dessert ' to a woodland 

Day-dreams , but can We do something  constructive. 

spacey, you'd need more than mulch, probably a magic wand. I took this photo the last time I worked in the Simpson, around 2010 from memory. It was an exceptionally good season; you don't see it much better than this. Problem is, most of it is herbage and grasses that pop up after good rain and disappear when it's dry. The first time I flew over the Simpson in 1982, it was in drought and bone dry with hardly any vegetation at all.

Edited April 25, 2023 by willedoo

[Old Koreelah]

…but I do agree that our planet suffered that Ancient Apocalypse that Spacey mentioned. There’s mobs of evidence that advanced civilization(s) were wiped out about 12,500 years ago, along with heaps of big animal species.

 

The asteroid believed responsible probably had few mates that missed us. Still being in distant orbit, they will clobber us again one day. (Ancient prophesies may well be based on advanced astronomical observations made long ago.)

 

Who and what will survive?

Maybe Elon Musk’s Mars colony, but more likely peoples living close to the land in poor countries. New Guinea highlands might be the cradle of the next human adventure. One archaeological dig dated their drainage ditches at 11,000 years, so maybe they survived the last event.

[nomadpete]

Old K although I like your theory, unfortunately the New Guinea discovery shows the development of agriculture to be post meterorite collision.

 

UNESCO press release :-

 

"Kuk is one of the few places in the world where archaeological evidence suggests independent agricultural development and changes in agricultural practice over a 7,000 and possibly a 10,000 year time span."

 

And they state it was wetland reclaimed using wooden tools.

[nomadpete]

Well, post Younger Dryas which was estimated to end at least 11000 years ago.

[old man emu]

Nördlingen  is a town in the Donau-Ries district, in Swabia, Bavaria, Germany. It was built in an impact crater 15 million years old and 25 km in diameter—the Nördlinger Ries—of a meteorite which hit with an estimated speed of 70,000 km/h, and left the area riddled with an estimated 72,000 tons of micro-diamonds.

With modern imaging tools, especially those in satellites, we are discovering more and more impact sites. The Earth's surface would look like the Moon's if it wasn't for Earth's atmosphere which creates the tools of erosion - wind, rain and temperature fluctuations.  

 

It's easy to be sceptical of those who propose that there were advanced civilisations that were destroyed by come cosmic cataclysm a bit over 12,000 years ago because artifacts have not been found. However, to get an inkling of proof of such claims, we should not wholly rely on physical artifacts. We should collect and examine the myths and legends of people from all over the world. I will admit that to go looking for needles in haystacks immediately introduces a bias against straws, but if the examination is carried out acknowledging that bias, it becomes less of a hindrance to finding the truth.

 

We have also to look at the location of these myths and legends. If we accept Australia was inhabited for thousands of years before this 12,000 year-ago timestamp and isolated from the rest of Mankind, then those people's stories, or lack thereof provide a baseline to work from. It is believed that the cradle of civilization was what we used to call Mesopotamia. If some cosmic catastrophe happened there, then maybe stories such as The Flood, or Sodom and Gomorrah might be based on it. We know that that nearby to that area earthquakes are common. Could an earthquake have brought down the walls of Jericho, or some even more ancient city, and the story taken up to serve the needs of a monotheistic group of sheep and goat herders?

[nomadpete]

Are you suggesting that we should embrace a bias toward unseen needles just because we cannot prove they don't exist?

 

Sounds a bit like believing in gods just because I cannot prove they do not exist.

 

However. On balance a scientific approach should keep an open mind to the improbable whilst seeking proof.