Queensland drought: WILL IT EVER RAIN AGAIN in Central Queensland and New South Wales?

Posted on November 21, 2019 by wp-admin

WILL IT EVER RAIN AGAIN? WILL THIS QUEENSLAND DROUGHT EVER BREAK? First published Nov 21 2019.

Of course it will.

WILL IT EVER RAIN SUFFICIENTLY AGAIN ?

Possibly not.

OUR CLIMATE IS NOTORIOUS; ‘land of drought and flooding rains’, but the overall trend is to more drought and less rain. Concerning rain, it seems the events are as regular as ever, within the limits of our short history of weather-recording, but the amount of rain that falls during those events seems to be diminishing. Rain periods are increasing in intensity and decreasing in duration.

As a large island in the middle of a vast roaring ocean and huge weather-systems, it is a mysterious fact that usually these systems swirl around Australia like a river around a rock. As if the land-mass repels the rain-clouds.

In the Northern Hemisphere, for example, the lands exposed to to the Atlantic Ocean and the prevailing Westerlies, are constantly soaked as rain-clouds roll on their course. Those clouds do not veer away, leaving Ireland as a desert.

The Westerlies that could bring regular soaking rain to the exposed Australian coast almost always are repelled by the land. A constant feature of satellite images of Australia shows cloud-formations swirling around and away from the coast, seldom crossing the country. Why is this so? What phenomenon diverts the prevailing gyres away from the land-mass?

One would expect this continent, which sits un-sheltered in the midst of swirling storms, to be a land of constant tropical rains, and carpeted with jungle from coast to coast. And those jungles do exist in North Queensland, as do giant eucalypts in Tasmania, but the majority of the country is desert-dry, and the coastal fringe not much greener.

It is true that high mountain ranges cause local rainfall, and that most of Australia is flat. As Henry Lawson says in Some Popular Australian Mistakes, ‘There are no “mountains” out West, only ridges on the floors of hell’. Rainclouds that do penetrate the coastline continue on their course without interruption, retaining their moisture, causing deserts. This is the current reasoning. However, the very aspect of this land features water-leveled plains, and where small hills and ranges do exist there are wide valley-bottoms; all created by rainfall of huge extent. To form a level plain out of mountain ranges requires not time, of which there is plenty, but non-stop rainfall. At one time, every level plain bounded by ranges of hills must regularly have flooded to great depth, in order to both erode the hills and deposit the flood-silt.

These floodings obviously have not occurred within any geological period recognised, and possibly not since human settlement. To extend the puzzle, Australian coal-fields certainly are dateable, to when the country existed in a different location on the planet, in an atmosphere rich in carbon dioxide, with weather of staggering rainfall.

Our planet has changed as CO2 has been depleted. Vegetation is less successful. But why, in certain defined areas, has rainfall either decreased or increased dramatically? Australia has definitely lost most of its rainfall. Has this been a sudden or a gradual decline? Is rainfall itself governed to any extent by CO2 levels? What is the real reason for the Queensland drought today?

Why do these events happen? When one area of the globe suffers a prolonged period of rain, and another area drought? And why is Australia becoming progressively more dry? Climate agencies have since the 1950s benefited from increasing scientific data, as can be seen from the proliferation of weather-based acronyms, and the predictions are worrying. Adverse climate-change seems to be our fault. But the long-term history of climate needs to be examined.

So, considering this, the long-term; given sufficient rainfall, any area of sterile sand will grow massive forest; no soil-nutrients necessary, no humus formed. Rainfall equals tree-cover in warmer climates. Where has the rain gone in Australia? It used to be there, and has gone; shrunk to the north and south extremities, and still shrinking, it seems, even in our short recorded history. And the Queensland drought rolls on.

Note, recorded.

The ocean gyres of rain-clouds avoid the land-mass of Australia. Why? What is the repellent force that steers most rain away from the coast? Why, sometimes, do rain-formations actually traverse Australia, bucking the trend? How much, and why, does Sudden Stratospheric Warming change our weather, and how permanent are these changes? The Drying of Australia is a problem yet to be solved.

Not ‘where’ has the rain gone, but ‘why’.

Weather forecasting and prediction of rainfall-trends in Australia is based on information collected from 1900, with accuracy increasing from about 1950. The trends are there to be accessed by all, the patterns of change apparent. But what of pre-industrial trends, and pre-settlement 50,000 years ago? What has been happening to the climate of Australia prior to human occupation?

Mention was made of the floods affecting Brisbane in 2010/2011, in a previous blog. A small area received water-bourne silt to a depth varying between ten and twenty centimetres. Valuable top-soil, but un-appreciated by the recipients. All the current agricultural plains in Australia were created this way: deep floods and deposited silt. The critical question: are these deposits dateable? Is there a signature within the silt-layer which could be translated to a year, or era? We have an excellent test-sample to examine within the Yerongpilly and surrounding area in Brisbane. This top-soil was created exactly in 2011. Other floods at other places since European settlement have left dateable silt.

Excavation of any level plain will reveal strata of silt deposits which may be measured for each flooding event, from surface to bedrock, with possible interruptions due to meandering creek-beds, etc.. But can these individual deposits be dated? If so, the information would give a true and exact record of climate and its change over time. We would discover real trends prior to industry, to European settlement, and to human occupation, and major questions could be answered concerning the drying of any area and the time-scale involved.

Information of climate trends prior to, and during these three periods is vital to current concept of climate. Can this information be accessed through geology? Radiocarbon and photoluminescence dating is apparently difficult for shallow silt layers exposed at the surface. Dating of surviving vegetable material is possible and accurate, but rarely available, especially at depth.

The dating of each flood-deposit layer, and an estimation of the depth of floodwater responsible, would open a window onto the real climate of the past at any time and place, and answer so many questions concerning our responsibility for climate-change.

How informative to actually know the date and extent of the rains that caused the deposits of silt on valley farm-land. And the pattern of floods through time, from most recent to ancient. Can it be done? Is it possible?

THE ROMANCE OF THE SWAG, Leasowe Sandhills.

Posted on November 20, 2019 by wp-admin

THE ROMANCE OF THE SWAG, Pommy version Leasowe sandhills.

WELL, NO, THERE’S NO POMMY SWAG as far as I know, but I’ve just finished reading Henry Lawson’s description and explanation of the Australian swag, its development and refinement for the Outback, and its mode of carry.

His fine story-telling is interrupted for this most factual and informative account, The Romance Of The Swag, which explains in perfect detail the make-up and contents of the Aussie swag as it existed over 100 years ago.

I mention this because as a child in bleakest Merseyside in the ever-bleak North of England, my playground was the Wirral Peninsula, where a sometime-sun shone if there was a break in the Atlantic gloom. I was aware of Waltzing Matilda, and a Swagman, and had a vague idea of the purpose of a swag, and perhaps this subconscious image led me to one of my happiest pastimes.

There was then, in my home landscape, a coastal strip of market-gardens called Leasowe, meaning exactly that. The gardens were sheltered from the North Sea and the Westerlies by a range of sand-hills, and stretched from Wallasey Village to the old lighthouse ruin, a ruin now marvellously restored.

The Leasowe sandhills (never called dunes) were the site of wartime rifle-ranges; the reason we children were attracted to the area, because to this day the sand is littered with spent ammunition of every calibre and type. The brass existed still in those days, but now there’s mostly only lead, which survives the salt air, as do the vegetables in the gardens which are improved thereby. Even today one can quickly fill pockets with old bullets.

The tops of the Leasowe sandhills usually had depressions where the star-grass didn’t grow; perfect shelters from the wind and the sand, with delightful views over the sea to the west and the Wirral inland. The miles of beach from the now-erased but once stylish Derby Pool at Harrison Drive, to the old Leasowe lighthouse, were seldom populated; only the occasional walkers with dogs, and no-one swam there in those days. The water was feared on that stretch.

One fine day I decided to camp on one of the dunes. Summer holidays. I was fifteen, and remember no opposition from the parents. Perhaps Waltzing Matilda was embedded. I made, and there’s no other word for it, a swag. But my version.

My swag was based on a long, wide rectangle of tarpaulin, and a sleeping-bag. Everything I needed was rolled in the folded tarp. Absolutely a swag, bound with an old belt. But with one necessary addition: a handle-less umbrella.

I set out from home on foot, without the encumbrance of a bicycle. My swag had an approximation of the food, drink, clothing and reading needed for a few days, plus torch, matches, etc.. Just camping without a tent.

I chose a sand-hill with the best view and the most sheltered hollow on top. Formed the sand into a raised bed-place and head-rest, and rolled my swag out onto it. The tarp worked well; belongings at the bottom, a double fold over the sleeping-bag, under at the bottom, over at the pillow-end, a lap under my chin, and the umbrella stuck into the sand by by head in case of rain. Which it did briefly the first night. Not a drip or a leak; perfect comfort.

That first time I stayed just two nights and three days in a luxury of self-sufficiency; sun-bathing, swimming, lazing, reading. My water-bottle re-filled at the market-gardens.

Returning to civilisation even after that baby experience was delightful. I tingled with sun and sea-spray and confidence. My swag had worked. Tents were a definite encumbrance. I was, though I didn’t know it, ready for Australia. And 50 years later to read Henry Lawson, and the real swag.

Footnote; Leasowe is , or was, a narrow strip of sand market gardens, sheltered by the wind-driven ‘dunes’ from the beach and the North Sea, on the Wirral Peninsula, Cheshire, England. The area stretches between Wallasey Village to the North, and the old Lighthouse to the South, and what used to be Bidston Marsh to the east. Much has changed, but the sandhills are still there, and the old Leasowe lighthouse has been restored marvellously. That small stretch of coast still has a touch of wild mystery about it, and beach-combing there is rewarding, though the Twenty Row Inn has gone, sadly: no beers after the walk …….on to Wallasey Village then.

WITTA DOGS

Posted on November 18, 2019 by wp-admin

WITTA DOGS………..IS IT JUST ME?

PERHAPS I’M JUST A MISERABLE OLD COMPLAINING SOD (don’t answer that). BUT.

Witta is a paradise, but this Garden of Eden is not polluted with talking snakes, neither am I in danger of being cast-out for scrumping apples.

There is, however, pollution of an unusual sort. Noise pollution; day and night. The night variety worse, in this otherwise peaceful rural landscape of beautiful jungley scrub and tree-shaded gardens.

Now, the chain-saw and ride-on mower cause temporary pain. They will eventually stop, and usually before dark. And I do contribute, so can’t complain.

Now, the native birds are rowdy, from dawn to dusk, and there’s the occasional illegal rooster, and cars do go past; then there’s the school bus, and the garbage truck on Wednesday mornings, and some folk will practice carpentry and piano with various skill, but there’s a much, much worse noise.

It will start when a neighbour goes out in the evening; drives to the film-night in Maleny, or to visit friends. Worse, visits friends and stays the night.

Worse still, neighbours that go away for the weekend, or for a few days.

LEAVING THEIR TWO OR THREE DOGS AT HOME ALONE, IN THE YARD.

We know the instant they drive off.

The whole neighbouhood knows the instant the leave.

On the worst of nights and days, many neighbours near and far will leave their homes and dogs for various canine-free activities, WHILST THEIR WRETCHED PETS HOWL AND SCREAM AND YELL from the very instant the car doors slam until the gravel crunches on their owners’ return. We hear this. We suffer for the duration. We get angry.

Imagine. The evening quiet. Even the currawongs give up. An occasional lapwing calls on its twilight homeward flight. A boobook hoots like a sad cuckoo. A car starts next door and simultaneously two dogs bark. Rabid, furious, outraged barking as the car leaves. The evening destroyed, the barking frantic, unstoppable, non-stop, no stopping, double barking on and on and on.

Barking dogs are indefatigable. They do not tire. The more dogs, the more clamorous. Only starvation, thirst and death will quiet a ‘left’ dog.

Owners, as a caste, do not know this fact. As their soundproof car-doors slam, they drift in cushioned silence on their journey to oblivion, oblivious. Unaware of the cacophony in their wake. Of stay-at-homes with ruined evenings and corrupted sleep, waiting, waiting, staring in the dark, hoping for the neighbours’ return, and the instant peace it will bring.

The dog-owner returns to a quiet dog. What, my dog barks? We don’t know our own dog? It never barks. Listen: do you hear it bark?

But we know, and we are angry. We forget, after a few nights of peace, and our anger dissipates. But often, night after night, daytime too, there are many absent owners, and the never-ending barking of a dozen dogs brings thoughts of selling-up. Now there are dog-owners who are aware: they are responsible, reasonable, and their dogs likewise. And there are many neighbours in agreement regarding the problem, but no-one is sufficiently driven to instigate an official complaint. Yet.

But nights of peace are so blissful here on our perfect hill, we sleep, and we forget.

Who let the dogs out?

Post script: Neighbours of friends in The Grange in Brisbane had two incessantly-barking miniature collies. The whole street complained, with the result that the dogs were de-barked by a vet, and peace reigned. Despite the dogs’ best efforts, little sound is now emitted.

CLOTHES-HOIST ABOVE THE FIRE-PLACE

Posted on November 18, 2019 by wp-admin

IN THE HOUSE WHERE I WAS BORN, and in one or two rented places, was a clothes- hoist; sign of a wet climate, and general dampness. Rising damp, falling damp, general dampness.

Out, out, damp spot!

The clothes-hoist; superior to, but more unsightly than the clothes-horse, which could be hidden when not in use (but always was).

I have the clothes-hoist to thank for our emigration to sunny, hot, frightening Australia.

The year was 1968. The previous two or three years had been gloomily miserable. Constant cloud, rain, drizzle; I could go on: the North of England has a fine vocabulary of bad weather, more than Inuit for snow. But I had childhood memories of blue summer skies, yellow beaches of hot sand. And crystal winters of glittering frost, and snow dryly squeaking under foot. Where had that England gone?

We had had no summer for three years. Holidays planned and wrecked by rain. !968 was also planned: Cornwall, Polperro of childhood paradise; but we never went. We knew the cold July rain would never stop, and it didn’t. So I spent my hard-earned free weeks at home with the family and the clothes-hoist.

We did every holiday thing we could in the first week. Everything that could be done with three children in the pissing horizontal rain. And it wasn’t fun, just wet, cold work. I could have at least been earning wages.

It could have been worse. We could have rented a house without a kitchen-fire and clothes-hoist. Our fire, that ‘holiday’, burned night and day, and the clothes- hoist was always full to sagging with wet gear: wet blankets we wished had never got washed in the first place, wet sheets, towels, clothes, clothes, clothes. Nothing in the place was dry.

Shoes ranged around the small hearth, steaming. Shoes in cupboards with green mould; shoes that looked like new green suede but weren’t. Leather jackets like corpses of limp moss.

It took nearly three days to dry one blanket: never again, but one of the children had had an accident. The fire roared, the house warmed, the socks dried by the hundred. The old hoist became an efficient production-line, a purpose in life, a family activity, the focus of heat and warmth and dry clothing. A kitchen of glow and comfort.

THE CLOTHES-HOIST was well-made and efficient. It hung from the high ceiling on ropes to two pulleys, attached to two shapely cast-iron hangers through which the wooden rails ran. There were seven rails in two tiers, which together could support a tremendous amount of wet washing. It could be raised to the ceiling or lowered to floor-level, but when full was a struggle to lift, and no doubt there were accidents, and washing in the flames.

Never has such a small, practical device been so useful and comforting. What could we possibly have done without it? (The days before domestic electric clothes-dryers……..but where’s the comfort in sitting around a clothes-dryer?) Our half-cottage was on the cusp of modernity, hence the hoist, a throwback to recent primitive days, but the village was and is ancient. Picturesque and far from vertical.

There were, in years long ago, in tropical Brisbane, weeks of steaming wet rain, when the old clothes-hoist over a wood-stove would have been hi-tech luxury…….but the honourable height-adjustable Hills hoist was unknown in England. You win some, you lose some.

So, sitting in the laundry-steam on our summer holiday, under a sopping proscenium-arch of undies, watching the cold rain beat against the kitchen window, and the clear water run down the gutter to the stream below, we read of Australia, and jobs, and sunny days, and work done wearing shorts and big hats. Hats to keep the sun off! Why, we wondered? Who would want to keep the sun off?

It took a year to organise, once the decision was made, and, as if to confirm that decision it rained and rained until the day we left, and the boat crossed the Equator, and the sun finally shone, and the sky was blue.

AND NOW. THE SUN STILL SHINES. BUT THERE’S NO PLEASING SOME PEOPLE.

Queensland November, 2019, bushfires and never-ending drought.

THE QUEEN PASSES THE GUINEA GAP BATHS

Posted on November 16, 2019 by wp-admin

WE WAIT.

THE QUEEN IS DRIVEN PAST AT THIRTY MILES PER HOUR.

Mid-winter at Egremont. Long, long ago.

Grey, grey overcast, still, cold, with hovering drizzle.

Tiny ill-fed schoolboys in shorts. Schoolgirls in thin cotton. Blazers sparkly with mist. Red knees and chilblains. School caps, saggy socks, scuffy shoes, drippy noses. Waiting.

In a row, one child deep, on the outward-bound side of the the road. Waiting for a phenomenon regarding which we had little curiosity, having been ordained to our shivering fate by authority. Waiting, waiting.

The baths, in midwinter, were steamy-warm. Not hot, as we would have wished, as we changed into prickly woolen cozzies (swimming-costumes, togs), hugging our bony shoulders, waiting with various fear to enter the luke-warm chlorine. Waiting.

In the pool it was initially cool, then cold. Waiting to race. Always competition, seldom fun.

Then off. Action, at last; racing. A lap, two laps of the ancient, minute, indoor council pool. One more; and our spindly limbs generate a few candlepower of heat before exhaustion. Then out, then damp-dry under a wet towel, soggy dripping wool round our loins. Til the next heat: a misleading term. Waiting.

After the regimented competition was at last over, the remainder of the allotted time was finally ours to destroy; bombs and ducking and underwater grabbing, chasing and running and diving at speed. All became banned, of course. All childhood fun is banned now.

In damp-dry school uniform, again, with sopping tight roll of tog-towel, but at last warm, we exited the fug to wait for the Queen. Not warm for long. Then cold, then uncontrollable shivering, in spasms. The one or two heavier (never plump, never, ever fat) held out longer. A torture on the wet pavement, at the wet kerbside, watching the gutter trickle, with occasional glances of bored expectation down the endless suburban grime. Self-hugging, hopping, jumping, twitching line of obedient sufferers. Waiting, waiting.

Then silence. Big cars were coming, one, two, three, through the wet mist, at the speed limit, past our endless line. Dead-silent motionless line. No flag-waving, No cheering. no smiling, laughing faces. I suppose the Queen was in one of the cars. Some still stared at the gutter. I never saw anyone. The instant finally over, we ran, and ran, for the warm waiting buses to take us back to school for our long cycle back home. Even the kids who lived near the baths had to be driven back to school.

But there was time for a few of us to race into the local shop for a penny Vantas, of which all memory and history has been erased. A huge glass sphere of gassy tap-water, infinitesmally coloured and flavoured, and a small, chunky glassful for a penny. But the brief, slight sparkle soothed the chlorine. The pauper’s champagne.

We told our parents we’d seen the Queen, but we hadn’t.

SYNCHRONISED WING-BEATS OF LORIKEET FLOCKS

Posted on November 16, 2019 by wp-admin

DO LORIKEETS SYNCHRONISE WING-BEATS?

I think so. However, one’s senses are so easily fooled under certain circumstances, especially on the balcony of the Noosa Surf-Lifesaving Club on a beautiful beery late-afternoon.

I was facing landward, having had my fill of the excoriating ocean, my eyes requiring the restful green of the hill behind Hastings Street.

The sun was setting on the burned beach-goers, the traffic grinding slowly on the roundabout below, and against a technicolor violet sky the massive eucalypts near my perch swarmed with raucous lorikeets; their evening ritual preparatory to the nightly roost.

Perfectly relaxed by the ale, the day in the surf, and the exquisite sensation of a clean shirt on salty skin, I allowed my mind to examine in focused clarity the behaviour of the lorikeets, where it seemed something strangely hallucinogenic was happening.

The large noisy flock was performing its short evening ritual; settling briefly within the high branches before taking-off en-mass to circle the tree and the sky at tremendous speed.

It was as the flock raced past between my perch and theirs, not more than fifty metres away, that a strange flickering affected my vision, as if eyesight were briefly malfunctioning: perhaps the alcohol, the ocean exertions, the savage ultra-violet.

Now curious and particularly focused, I concentrated on the flock as its circuit passed: same weird effect. Not my eyes, then, but the flock itself, which for a brief second seemed to flicker as it passed me. As if the frame of a film became momentarily jerked.

As the circuits passed I realised what caused the phenomenon.

The flock was behaving in a way, like one unit. As shoals of fish do mysteriously; a million fish with one body, one brain.

Once airbourne and assembled, the lorikeets assumed one personality in their flock; completely synchronised, each wingbeat and manoevre mirrored in each bird simultaneously.

As the flock passed me, and this is the tricky part, every bird raised and lowered its wings as one. Every wing went up, then down. A thousand tightly-packed birds as one. The banked angle of turn emphasised the illusion of a flickering, faulty image, impossible, because of speed of the wingbeats, to reconcile in a limited human brain, which perceived a juddering image.

Perhaps it was just me, just my perception. I have had the phenomenon repeated a few times; on each occasion wishing for a slow-motion camera to resolve the effect.

Ain’t Life wonderful?

TEA-MAKING AT ELEVATIONS

Posted on November 14, 2019 by wp-admin

How DO you make tea if you live on a hill, or in the Alps?

What a pointless question, you ask, but I DO need an answer.

Ok; I’m addicted to my morning cuppa, have been since a child, when I put white sugar in it. Later I swapped to yummy Demarara, dark brown and damply mobile.

Now I savour the tea taste and abhor the sweetness. I have different teas from different climates and geography, and choose at random every morning, sometimes sticking with the same blend for months until a change is needed.

But there’s a problem.

Most of my life and tea-time has been lived at sea-level, or near. Recent visits to 400 metres above sea-level do not affect my tea quality.

But for almost 20 years my house is at 800 metres, and during all that time I haven’t made a drinkable cup. No matter how I go about it.

I’ve even toyed with the idea of making it in a pressure-cooker; that could work, I’ll let you know.

Why the problem?

Well, at 800 metres, water boils at a couple of degrees below normal boiling-point, so the brew never gets hot enough to make a good pot. You can cook away for an hour, and though it looks like boiling, it’s not at 100 degrees. At the top of Mount Everest you can put your hand in ‘boiling’ water. Tea is impossible. I think. Haven’t checked yet; silly of me, I should always check before I blog.

No-one else complains about my tea. Perhaps it’s psychological. But I can’t enjoy the stuff. Maybe the pressure-cooker will do the trick.

Ray White real estate, Stones Corner, circa 1973

Posted on November 14, 2019 by wp-admin

A NEW CHUM BATTLES ON.

WE ARRIVE WITH BABIES ON THE FAIRSTAR for ten quid, 1969, after a long and not luxurious cruise, to a paradise of banana plants, technicolour parrots, and glorious sunshine.

There’s about $200 in the bank, a kitten in the Bundaberg house, and a million frogs. Frogs everywhere.

Work peters out soon, after a year and a bit. After a happy start, nothing, absolutely nothing. It never occurred to me we were living in a depression, I thought it was normal life.

No jobs for anyone; last hired, first fired. The new chum was always put off with apologies, and bosses were kind, one exceptionally so; I was splitting blocks in a cement-product factory (three kids to feed, no shoes necessary), asked the boss to give me a challenge, a price per hundred. Andy, he said, look son, you can work here as long as you like, no problem, but I don’t need them blocks split, just keeping you in work, ok? I took the hint and we took off. For the big smoke: Brisbane, the Country Town.

No jobs in the Courier Mail each morning. No trades, no-one wanted; plumbers, electricians, carpenters (me), no joiners (me again), mechanics, librarians, shop assistants. Hard to believe now; no jobs at all advertised. I had a pocket of sixpences for the phone box across the road, but there were no jobs to apply for.

Except for salespeople. Hard selling, that is. Cold-calling; the most mentally demanding job on the planet, destructive of souls, with a burn-out period of two years, max.

There was no alternative.

I sold insurance. I lasted eighteen months and aged five years. I had been a quiet carpenter. All involved became rabid extrovert alcoholics, but we earned a good quid for the duration. There was a lot of car-throwing, into motel swimming-pools.

Then, with a small economic buffer in the bank, and a horror of further door-knocking, I knocked on one more: Ray White’s, in the big city, where kindly bosses assigned me to the Stones Corner Office.

An easy choice; there were only three offices: the City, Toowong, and Stones Corner. My territory was the South Side, all of it, every house on the south side of the river to the bay was my legitimate prey.

I met my new boss, the best of all bosses, and I’ve had some of the finest: Rene Ranke, Marinus from Holland, ship’s engineer, most patient, kindly, and generous.

I worked my arse off for month after month. Nothing, no income whatsoever. There were no other jobs to go to, no carpentry, insurance would kill me, the small savings depleted. I was in a cleft stick. I knew every house we had for sale, inside-out, every detail, every land-size, bedroom, price, rates, condition, owner and dog, rabid or friendly.

From Stones Corner to Cribb Island to Jacob’s Well I had examined every place we had for sale, hundreds of them, and updated every ancient listing, and added to them as folk confided in me.

I showed my allotted and advertised-for clients the world out there, in my $500 Valiant VIP. Petrol was cheap. Houses were plentiful. Nothing. Clients kept coming back to me, they liked me; I was a free, willing, taxi-driver of unlimited mileage. I showed house after house after house. I knew all the best buys, the bargains, the ripe-for-development. You could buy a good Queenslander in Buranda for less than $10,000.

It’s hard to believe that I earned not a single dollar for ten months, despite the experience of being a successful insurance-salesman of the toughest variety.

And it would have been longer, perhaps much longer, except for the generosity of dear Rene, who donated to me his personal perks of a southside auction: a guaranteed commission, and another, and a certain buyer. It was nearly a year before my first donated commission arrived in the bank, and fourteen months before my first actual sale.

To this day I have no idea why I was so hopeless at the job. Without Rene’s generosity I would have had to have quit and gone on the dole, never to have found out that I was actually very good at the job. One year I was Top Salesman of all Ray White’s, winning a giant silver-plated plastic eagle, but no bonus…….tough but fair. Well, not even fair sometimes. I remember four sales I made during my time, where the commission was somehow questioned by others, or by the owner himself, despite my work and my contract and my signature and my client. I was paid nothing, and with no explanation. If there was the good name of the White’s to protect, little me was the loser.

That second year saw sales mysteriously mount up. I was doing nothing differently. I had developed no sales-technique, my attitude was, if I showed the best house at the best price at the right time…….they’d buy the thing. I showed some clients houses on and off for two years and more, with prices always mounting, before they finally made a decision.

After five years, and I suppose, success, Rene’s kind faith in me paid off for us both, but the office and the car-driving and the constant telephone made me long to put on my carpenter’s apron and start restoring some of the wonderful architecture of Brisbane, on my own account.

In the great outdoors, in and on and under old Queenslanders, I learned so much, and worked so hard, that The Book got written to preserve both my re-claimed knowledge and benefit those who come after me. Despite crap, ill-informed tv programs……..(See Blog)

So, My thanks to the Whites for putting me on, Alan particularly, and the young son who once turned up late, in pyjamas, holding a younger grandson, to conduct one of my auctions. The informality was endearing if peculiar, but the sale was made, and I was paid. On yer, Brian.

But most of all thanks to Rene, kindly gentleman of good humour and comradeship, popular and perhaps loved by our Stones Corner coterie both in office and in adjacent hotel after work. I once calculated that a good 20% of my sales originated in that pub.

Good memories of fellow-phone-fiends in our cubicles, and best wishes to Michael Ball, Danny Burke, Gerry Ponych, and Robin Phillips the fellow-ex-Pom. We seldom argued, and were always gentlemen when it came to divvying the loot.

And, one last Post Script. Our Saturday-morning girl of talent and efficiency and responsibility, and of attractive exterior, was one day studying sheet-music during lulls. (I love lulls) Being a muso of sorts from way back I was curious, and we chatted more than the usual typing necessities required. Her music exams coming up. Piano her instrument. We needed a pianist; could she play jazz? No but will do, and she did, and does to acclaim right now; one of Australia’s busiest and most popular professional musos.

Jo Bloomfield, now Jo Hawthorne; she married my mate the trombone-player, both of whom I love dearly. I think she failed her exam. Good.

RESTORING THE QUEENSLAND HOUSE, Grand Designs

Posted on November 14, 2019 by wp-admin

YESTERDAY I WATCHED yet another copy-cat or franchise version of a successful tv show. So depressing, as I actually have some knowledge of this particular category.

There was featured the very sad remainder of a typical Queensland colonial house, with insufficient structure to warrant restoration, let alone inappropriate raising on inappropriate 75mmSHS posts.

The poor builder was in a cleft stick; it was a lost cause, and committed to construction. He quite rightly, and perhaps too late, explained that the ‘restoration’ was going to cost three times that of demolition, and a new building project.

The enthusiastic owner, oh dear, was showing a visitor around the initial construction. The visitor, a young woman, represented I believe, the heritage department of the local government. I could be wrong, for I watched in horror the blind leading the blind and had to turn off the tv before I smashed the screen.

The two women wandered around the elevated ruin of a once respectable utilitarian colonial house. Not a wall, a partition, a ceiling or floor remained complete, great sections having been excised or butchered to oblivion.

The critical focus and major architectural brace of the old house was totally missing: the brick chimney, along with its foundation of ashlar, laundry copper hearth, upper kitchen fireplace and range: all gone except the negative evidence of holes in floor and ceiling.

Very sad; an old house can almost be re-built around the chimney-breast with its foundation.

The heritage representative had absolutely nothing to impart, but was led like a lamb. She appeared speechless either through ignorance or fear of the camera. She smiled and offered ludicrous small remarks.

She should have been severe, outraged; her anger at the depredations of multitudes of previous owners obvious. Her presumed but obscured knowledge of colonial architecture and restoration, the point of the entire show and her part in it, offered absolutely nothing: worse, she seemed to condone the proceedings and marvel at the sad and irretrievable ruin.

The builder was quite sensible with his opinion, but way off the true situation. This project and the program it supported, purported to to be a ‘restoration’. No chance. I once heard a bloke say of a clapped-out car, ‘It wouldn’t pull a greasy stick out of a dead dog’s arse’. May as well clad the Taj Mahal in aluminium-styrofoam as restore this place.

Maybe I should have watched the entire show. But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.

The ‘PRIMROSE’, Liscard, Wallasey, Wirral.

Posted on November 13, 2019 by wp-admin

THE DEAR OLD PRIMROSE PUBLIC HOUSE.

NOW, AFTER A GOOD HALF-CENTURY, no kidding, we went for a beer or three at the Primrose.

THEN, I was eighteen years old and had just started a rather marvellous and formative new life, changing my outlook from grey to bright Mondrian colour.

From a desperate ‘job’ in the drawing office of Clayton Crane & Hoist Co., in shit-streaked Liverpool, after a failed and extended grammar school education, I had been accepted as a student at Wallasey School of Arts and Crafts, in Central Park, Liscard.

Job, in quotes, because there actually was none, with commensurate pay; beer money spent in the Pig and Whistle three times a day, for the sake of sanity. Morning tea, Lunch, and Knock-off; consecutively two pints, two pints, and four pints, then two deep-fried pork pies with English mustard for the delightful ferry-ride to my rented single room in New Brighton, in a house where mad rooters kept me awake and wondering all night.

Very demoralising and fruitless. As was Merseyside.

So from the drawing office, where I was distinctly disliked, and where I would watch pigeons kick their old rain-and-soot-soaked nests onto the heads of pedestrians far below in a derelict blackened city, I entered a new life.

WSA was housed in a delightful rambling mansion in a well-tended park near the Liscard shops, and the Primrose was the nearest pub. Once settled in, with old and new friends, in a playground of Pottery, Ceramics, Lithography, Sculpture, Art History, Drawing, and curious lectures and ‘criticisms’, I found the Primrose. I had swapped The Scouse for Paradise.

The Primrose, (and I must research its history) is, or was, (it may have been pulled down), a very ancient sandstone cottage of Tardis aspect; it seemed bigger on the inside. It looked as if it were carved from a single giant block.

In the Summer, it was surrounded by a tended rose-garden, with raked gravel paths and leafy arbours containing tables and benches, and a waiter would regularly potter around, in case anyone should want a re-fill. We always did.

I have always just managed to escape becoming alcoholic; not without trying, and became familiar with every detail of every pub on that mysterious Wirral peninsula, but the Primrose was Home. My own Cottage in its beautiful Garden.

In Winter the Primrose was even more welcoming. Being, in a way, homeless, I would put-off nights in my cold cell until late, and spend hours of cosy contentment in one of the tiny snugs of that ancient place. A comfortable upholstered bench, a long polished wooden table, a coal fire in the grate, and on the paneling by my head a bell-push to warn the barman of my requirements.

So with books on Art, and on Pottery, and a sketch-pad, sticks of conte, and a novel, I would nest in that snug every evening, mostly alone and content to be so, but sometimes joyfully joined by friends from my classes.

In later times, room-rent became better spent on food and academic materials, and I took up secret residence in the Art School itself, like a mouse in the wainscotting. From the Primrose I was minutes away from my nest; up the coke-heap in the kiln-yard, along a parapet, through a small window, to my luxurious bed amongst the mattresses and blankets of the Life Room.

It was one night, alone and studious in the Primrose, that Victor Sanderson, a handsome and charismatic older student, joined me in my snug; ‘you’re Andy, aren’t you?’

But that’s another story; life-long, and spanning the entire Earth, which spins yet, though without dear Vic.

Never, ever, go back.

But I did, fifty years later, with another dear: Lucy. And I was glad of the supportive company when we cautiously entered the almost-derelict pub in a dead drizzle. The whole neighbourhood was dismal, run-down. Un-repaired broken window-glass, weather-streaked for-sale signs, peeling paint and un-cared-for cottages.

However, a pub is a pub, and there was strange laughter and occasional shouts from the inmates. Not the clientel of old; what the hell did I expect? But I have to use the term ‘derro’, though I feel ashamed of my reaction. The snugs were gone, everything except the bones of the place was perhaps new thirty years ago, and now decayed, sordid.

We were ‘welcomed’ by a hyperactive small friendly-aggressive mostly-toothless person, who danced up to us grinning and chattering, watched by the few others from the asylum. I took refuge in boldness, quickly ordering two pints and getting a far table, talking very loudly in my best Aussie accent to confuse the natives, who settled down to stare at us, scratch, and attend to their itching eyes.

The pints gave us time to explore the surroundings; first from our table, then wandering around like landlords inspecting a tenement. The old place still had masses of charm, and though many of the interesting mechanical features were defunct, the stucco decoration was intact with the charming tobacco-brown glaze of a century or more. Much more.

A second pair of pints had us considering buying and restoring…….ah, the romance of ale, and of irretrievable memories. Madness, but so curiously beckoning. And it seemed the place actually was for sale. Like every pub in Britain.

But oh dear, the lovely beer garden and the roses.

Outside, in the solid motionless damp, was a ground of crumbling bitumen and concrete littered with stacked detritus, trucks and parts, piles of anonymous wet and dripping stuff, with the ancient building discarded like the rest, cowering in its own domain.

Never go back.

Ever.

POST SCRIPT!

HAVING CRIED INTO MY BEER, I thought I’d better Google the old place, just in case, because that 50-year re-visit was a few years ago now, and has depressed me ever since, until this rather astounding moment. I honestly thought the Primrose was finished.

Should have looked first.

What a gratifying surprise! The Primrose risen from dereliction to magnificence! Looking so pretty and cared-for and loved, as good as new…….you have no idea how I have cheered-up since recovering from the gloom of my blog.

As an old customer, to the owners, congratulations; to the staff, and the new generations of custom, my very best wishes to you all for enjoyment and long life, and may The Primrose thrive til the end of days, and longer.

Queensland drought: PROLONGED WEATHER STASIS AUSTRALIA chapter 2

Posted on November 8, 2019 by wp-admin

SUDDEN STRATOSPHERIC WARMING and THE QUEENSLAND DROUGHT. First published Nov 8 2019.

The Sudden Stratospheric Warming event over the Antarctic Region is the likely cause of the current Prolonged Weather Stasis affecting the central latitudes of Australia.

Predicted about three months ago by the Met Office as lasting until ‘Possibly January or February 2020′ this event continues to suppress rainfall generally, despite the occasional local showers giving false hope to those recipients.

My previous blog on the subject outlines the possible effect of Prolonged Weather Stasis, or PWS, on Queensland drought. Sadly the predictions are so far becoming reality for rural townships, graziers and all farmers within the affected zone, which includes most of the coastal fringe excepting the far North and South, and Tasmania; these areas may actually receive more than average rainfall.

As I wrote previously, graziers are de-stocking cattle at an alarming rate, of necessity, there being no feed. Dairy farmers likewise are downsizing, every dry day bringing disaster closer. These are the initial preventative measures in a situation which is daily becoming worse, and these are the businesses which are first affected. As PWS continues, more and more ventures and industries will be forced to close, an accelerating cascade of unemployment throughout the community, as inter-dependent services collapse.

City-dwellers are far from exempt. Critical to the well-being of our communities is the level of water in the dams. At present we have excellent storage in the major dams, and should this tide us over until rain resumes we should thank the original planners and designers for their foresight. If rain events do not resume, diminishing dam levels will become a nightmare for us all, with no viable solution except drastic rationing. Should even that fail, the last option, which should be implemented immediately, right now, Friday the Eighth of November, is the building of coastal de-salination plants: hundreds of them.

De-salination has successfully provided water for coastal market-garden greenhouses, utilising evaporation and condensation of piped sea-water direct to the growers, returning the salt-rich brine to the ocean.

Households can subsist on a relatively tiny water supply…..after severe education and rabid policing, but industry and essential services need massive quantities, which may simply not be available. Think of the staggering volume required by breweries, shock, horror. But this is serious. Industries, to remain viable, must oust residential areas from our coastline in order to operate on desalinated water, though pipelines may span distance. This situation is, of course, going to cost everyone.

As I write, dam levels are dropping. If my forward-planning is a false alarm, so be it. A double pipeline was constructed years ago to pump treated sewage-water from Luggage Point to Tarong Power Station. Excellent fore-sight for exactly this situation.

Well, not this situation exactly, for we may be on the cusp of suffering a far worse outcome. An open-ended Queensland drought.

The weeks pass. The rainy season approaches, many believe, and hold their breath. A month or so and we’ll be at Mid-Summer. We may wait and hope, but action is needed immediately, for this year, The Rains may never arrive. Then what will we do?

Politicians flutter and seem to not be aware of the catastrophe facing huge areas of the country. All are currently and rightly horrified at the fire-devastation which can never be controlled, and may affect every community within cooee of a tree, or a paddock. But this is just the initial sign of worse to come, although having your house burned down is pretty bad. Once the trees have gone there will be a period of realisation, as townships, one after the other become no longer viable: no water supply. No farm. No industry. No job. No mortgage repayments. Shops with very expensive food. The thought-process of extrapolation from events happening right now are very scary, although we watch the nightly news with comfortable trepidation. Soon each of us may be directly affected; time will tell, but really, there’s little we can do to help ourselves, and nothing we can do to change the weather.

Queensland drought: SUDDEN STRATOSPHERIC WARMING AUSTRALIA

Posted on September 16, 2019 by wp-admin

Sudden Stratospheric Warming and the result:

PROLONGED WEATHER STASIS, AUSTRALIA AND THE QUEENSLAND DROUGHT. First published Sept 16 2019

Queensland and NSW drought, September 2019, possible prognosis.

In Queensland and New South Wales we are experiencing a period of sunny days, not unusual in normal years. However, this is not a normal year.

Due to the rare phenomenon of Sudden Stratospheric Warming (SSW) over the Antarctic, the immediate effect is stagnation of local climate in its current mode: absence of cloud, the satellite images showing no foreseeable rain events.

Prediction of effect and duration, due to the scarcity of previous SSW events in the Southern Hemisphere, is at present educated guesswork based on Northern Hemisphere knowledge, but the relatively small land-mass and vast ocean may cause a different outcome.

It is thought that the southern parts of South America, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand could be affected, with cold, wet or snow to the southern extremities (Tasmania, NZ South Island, etc..) rain to the north (Cape York), and static drought and cool conditions between.

Queensland is being affected now. Already, the loss of water supply in many townships is imminent. Maintaining these areas will soon become a logistical problem with perhaps no solution, other than importing water in road tankers and instigating savage restrictions. Long-term pipe-line construction may be immediately considered.

The principal and un-answerable question is: how long will this Queensland drought last? So little information on the effect and duration of Sudden Stratospheric Warming in the southern hemisphere makes prediction most uncertain. The Bureau of Meteorology, Australia, tentatively forecasts current dry conditions until December/January, but this is of necessity guesswork.

We are in Queensland currently experiencing an event for the first time in our short technological history, though no doubt common in past eras. For the past twenty years the graph of rainfall has been trending downwards, despite occasional blips. Records for 100 years prior make assessment of trends confusing, but simple observation of geographic features make obvious the fact that large creek-beds and alluvial levels suggest that floods were massive and regular in the past.

But when was that past? In living memory creeks regularly flooded fifty years ago, but not since. Perhaps flood-plain building is a more recent phenomenon than thought. The last Brisbane flood deposited ten to twenty centimetres of alluvial silt in a small suburban area upstream from the city. There was no flooding downstream; river banks contained the flow.

Previous floods within the past 180 years were similar, but nothing compared with the massive plain-building events of the un-documented past.

Perhaps SSW in the past caused small-scale ‘Punctuated Equilibrium’ events, altering the climate at each stage, wetter or drier. Our tree-cover in Queensland is variously fragile. Right now, September 16th 2019, in, for example, the Toowoomba area, some eucalypts and wattles are on the point of dessication; a not unusual event. Within one day, as roots dry out, leaves hang limp: the tree is dead. The more substantially-rooted species last longer.

Once this stage has been reached, without rain, more trees die, the most susceptible first. Bleached white gums are the tombstones of previous dry periods, a condition we consider normal now in our recent history. Perhaps Aboriginal experience would shed light on the true situation. Fire and drought have no doubt reduced original rain- and vine-forest to the present small fraction, eucalypts once being in the minority.

Right now we are on the cusp of a Queensland drought which may not fit the ‘normal’ pattern, but which may continue over a vast area for months. Neither water-supplies nor tree-cover can survive so long. This event may well be an example of previous sudden droughts which destroyed so much rain-forest, not as a result of climate-change over thousands of years, but of sudden Prolonged Weather Stasis (SPWS); in this case drought. Six rainless months would just about kill all vegetation, leaving only seeds.

There are perhaps other examples on the planet of Prolonged Weather Stasis caused by SSW. One most obvious caused the extinction of the remaining woolly mammoths in Siberia. The startling discovery of these beasts encased in what until recently was permanent ice, revealed that they died in situ, where they were grazing. This astounding fact has only one meaning: on one single particular day, whilst the beasts were feeding, it was snowing, AND IT NEVER STOPPED. They became snow-bound, then suffocated where they stood, to be encased in a never-ending snowfall: the weather was locked in one mode.

Sudden Prolonged Weather Stasis could be to blame for many situations where civilisations small and large disappeared, leaving their cities intact. It is assumed their water supply failed, both for crops and dwellings. A dwindling supply would suggest a gradual decline of viable agriculture and consequent deterioration of buildings due to the population shrinkage, but a city deserted intact requires a sudden and permanent weather event. Otherwise it would be re-occupied.

There is also the possibility that sudden PWS is not an event after which the climate returns to normal. These events may be the tipping-points from which there is no return. We may be seeing, in Australia, not a gradual desertification from the Red Centre outwards, but a stepped series of drying-events from which the land does not recover its previous vegetation.

There are, around the planet, possible cases of SSW causing massive and continuing rain with its attendant disaster; the weather in fixed mode until SSW dissipates

So, what are we in for, here in Queensland? The next few months will tell. Extrapolating from the worst case is too dismal and obvious to describe, and calls for immediate action from engineers and planners from all Australian cities to solve what may be very long-term problems.

However, the effect of sudden Prolonged Weather Stasis on farming will be a disaster. We may be able to supply domestic water, but not food. Already, within weeks of the last small rain, there is no feed for cattle, all of which are, as I write, on their way to abattoirs. Dairy cows on many farms have no feed or no water, or neither. They may have to be culled soon. A fleet of cattle-trucks is on the road as I write.

Land-crops may be a tragedy; plant- nurseries surviving for a time on underground water. Infrastructure may survive until better times, but where will the farmers be then?

We can only hope that the present outlook is indeed temporary, and Sudden Prolonged Weather Stasis is in fact not ‘prolonged’, but just a blip on the radar of our rather unsatisfactory climate.

Andy Jenner.

Calcium

Posted on November 4, 2015 by wp-admin

CALCIUM……….

Calcium, you know what that is, yes? Bones are made of it, right, and teeth, and limestone rocks and stuff?

WRONG………..

You’ve probably never seen calcium in your life. And certainly never handled it. For calcium is a bright, silvery metal, and all the white rocky material, including your bones and teeth, are made of calcium rust.

A piece of iron, or particularly steel, if left lying around outside for a week or so, will form a red-brown powder on its surface; rust, of course. If left long enough, the entire piece will be converted to rust by the action of air and moisture. Some soil consists mainly of rust; those rich, red soils, mined as ore, are actually iron rust, just as all that limestone in the land, like the White Cliffs of Dover, is mostly calcium rust.

The bodies of all creatures use calcium rust to make bones and teeth and shells, and seek it out in the environment for food, as we do.

Strontium is a very similar metal to calcium, which is a worry, because when fallout from a a nuclear disaster contains radioactive strontium 90 ‘rust’, our bodies will absorb it as if it were useful for making bone and tooth, causing sickness and death.

Neighbouhood Pub

Posted on September 26, 2015 by wp-admin

A neighbourhood pub, what? In Queensland?

When I was a kid, in gloomiest industrial Merseyside, in the Northwest of that now overcrowded place called England, there was solace, warmth, friendship, neighbourliness and fine beer to be had within walking distance of our rented home.

At drinking age, a state far more important than puberty, and achieved with synchronicity, though years ahead of legality, the exploration of the Public House was an exciting venture into adult-land, and that first opening of the door to a smoking, laughing, riotous bar was a nerve-wracking, wide-eyed challenge, charged with the ignominy of possible rejection.

Rejection for being, or worse, looking under-age; an illegal interloper in a grown-up paradise. But those behind the bar were always understanding, sensing future custom and revenue, and complicit in the inauguration of the accolyte. The customers also accepted responsibility, making way for new blood, and easing the right of passage.

Sometimes a wary landlord would quietly usher us into an empty snug, saying ‘keep your heads down boys’, but there in the privacy of a little bar, it would be ‘now gentlemen, what would you like to drink?’ and we were in, a part of Culture, Members of the Sect, and if we behaved ourselves, within reason, and not excluding having a good time, we were certain of an adult welcome on our second visit, and allowed in the public bar, or even the lounge.

Now in my home town were three pubs within ten minutes walk, and perhaps ten half-an-hour away, and by bike the choice was endless. But neighbourhoods had pubs. And the pubs were small, cosy, and full of familiar faces, and each pub had its own peculiar romance, and its characters, and its staff, and its own particular beer.

There were hotels too, with huge and varied bars, large car-parks, restaurants, and decor in varying degree of dilapidation: some posh, some swill-houses. We visited every last one of them to assess their charm or otherwise, but it was the walk to the neighbourhood pub that was our frequent and ingrained habit, a walk we took alone, or with visiting friends, or an occasional uncle.

Then came Australia, and Queensland of the 1970s. Not one single neighbourhood pub.In a country of dedicated beer-drinking alcoholics, no local pub. Just huge hotels miles from the suburbs, necessitating motorised transport and a deliberate journey to a tiled monstrosity and a bar full of desperate strangers, and opening hours guaranteed to turn a quiet beer into a rabid swill-against-the-clock.

Well, those days have gone. It took a long time. Forever, really, to alter the insane licensing restrictions, and yet, and yet, to this day, there are no neighbourhood pubs. Bars in the commercial districts and the city, yes, accessible to the high-rise renters of Asian property; but not one neighbourhod pub.

UNTIL NOW.

It’s not really a neighbourhood, where this pub is. Actually it’s not really a pub either: it’s a tin shed in an old industrial section of Banyo. But here’s the thing: you can walk to this shed from Nudgee or Banyo. And we do, and we are all neighbours, roughly speaking. And we bring our children and our dogs, and we meet folk from the next street whom we would never otherwise meet.

No plush carpet and multi-national beer for us. The floor is concrete, but the beers are of the finest craftsmanship, and that is what counts. Beers brewed on the premises by dedicated entrepeneurs of small pockets but vast considerations of taste, led by quietly-spoken Harley, a saint of fellowship, who single-handedly is uniting a community.

I have waited since 1969 for this event. I thought it would never happen. I appreciate the massive dedication of time and expertise that has brought this boon to the suburb, where neighbours may meet in the best of circumstances: the Neighbourhood Pub.

(Check All Inn Brewery for info.)

Nuclear waste dump in Australia?

Posted on September 17, 2015 by wp-admin

Nuclear waste dump in Australia?

As with so many putative events, and actual movements that are taking place in our overloaded planet, all problems are a matter of degree; small hitches escalate rapidly to overwhelm communities. The scale of events seems to accelerate beyond the predictions of experts, time and time again.

The evergreen concept of making cash out of dumping nuclear waste in Australia nags away at politicians, generation after generation; only well-deserved fear of back-lash from the voters keeps the pot off the stove. But the pot is always handy.

The nuclear industry seemed like a good idea at the time, and so it should be, and in most cases massive quantities of power have been generated for the people in relative safety, but the on-going costs and risks are finally taking their toll, particularly as solar energy and other clean sources are starting to compete.

The key word here is CLEAN.

The few nuclear accidents that have occurred in the world’s generating plants have been disasters beyond the scope of credibility. Enormous areas of previous habitation are now and will be forever toxic, genome-disrupting, unliveable. Forever, as far as human memory is concerned: off limits, until people forget, to the horror of farmers who re-colonise the radioactive soil, and bear deformed children.

A nuclear accident is a very big accident: unapproachable except from overhead in, say, a helicopter. Even then, the danger is extreme.

Whilst everything is in control, a nuclear power station is a most satisfactory energy-producer. Maintenance is expensive but doable for many years, until, like all production structures, age forces more and greater repairs, eventually forcing shut-down.

Shutting down and razing a nuclear power plant is hugely expensive. This cost comes, of course, at the time when income has ceased. The temptation of the owners to just walk away, leaving the time-bomb for the community to deal with, could become irresistible in the near future.

In addition to the high and essential maintenance cost of nuclear power, there is the un-solvable problem of accumulating nuclear waste. Nothing, absolutely nothing, can be done with it. Refining for more high-tech power generation is a use, but not a solution. The waste is a nightmare to store and to transport. Not one satisfactory way of dealing with it has been found, otherwise the current dumps would not exist. It seems the only way is to bury, hope for the best, and forget.

Easy to say……bury. Not so easy to do. Land that is stable, un-affected by faults, water-tables, aquifers, slippage, volcanic activity, et cetera, is so scarce on this planet that most nuclear waste remains in storage in slowly-degrading containers, its danger increasing as each year passes.

So, the temptation clutches at the pollies: Australia has this stable area where waste could be stored. Not safely. Definitely not safely. And only stored, not made safe, not a solution to the problem.

A gigantic excavation would have to be made in ancient stable rock formation, tunneling deep underground in an area remote and inaccessible to normal traffic. Rail access and sophisticated machinery suitable for handling such dangerous material would have to be designed and constructed with the safety of the route, the land, and the operators foremost in mind.

Nuclear-waste generating entities would pay almost any price to rid their countries of deteriorating, dangerous stockpiles.

Australia, for a fee, would inherit the everlasting unease of those countries.

The idea of burying and sealing toxic waste deep underground in ancient, stable rock is excellent. Once there it should cause no worry for future generations, virtually, for ever. So what is the problem?

What IS the problem?

The problem is that the waste has to get to its final resting-place. Safely. Without the slightest mishap, the slightest accident or breakdown.

The opportunities for the operation to go wrong are numberless, from the original waste storage facility to the final dump.

This material is not just toxic, or poisonous, or corrosive, or inflammable, or explosive or diseased: we can deal with such such products, just, and accidents and spills and explosions are the daily news stories. But a transport disaster and spillage would require a very special and ever-ready team of trained personnel to risk their lives cleaning up, even if such a thing could be achieved.

Suppose this accident happened in transit from the docks, at night, by train, in central Sydney, during a period of intense rain, thunder, and wind. A not-unlikely circumstance. The very worst is often exactly that.

Radio-active waste flooding gutters and storm-water drains could never be cleaned up, ever, Whole suburbs could be rendered uninhabitable, possibly for many years. Radiation is hidden from our senses: we cannot feel it of see it, and its effects are delayed, slow, and inevitable. Cancers, birth defects, and utterly untreatable debilitation. Radioactivity is inhuman, alien to our being.

Despite all precautions, toxic spills occur regularly on our roads and railways. Transporting radioactive waste is just as likely to suffer accidents, regardless of the myriad of safety-measures that would be demanded.

The chain of transport from dump to Australia to burial crosses the planet. At every junction is horrendous danger. Each transfer is fraught with difficulty of access, movement, approach, security, shielding. Teams must work behind lead barriers and lead-shielded equipment. All handling equipment must somehow be scrapped safely after use. Munitions made from radioactive metals are to this day a danger in Iraq.

Radioactive waste must first be removed from decaying containers, and/or re-contained in reinforced lead-lined receptacles capable of being dropped, burned, or crushed without damage. This must take place on-site at the source, before any further transport.

Creating damage-proof containers is impossible. It is a matter of degree. The sheer weight of lead, steel, and concrete creates limits. Should the container be proofed against say, being rammed by a locomotive, or dropped from a crane, or heated by a tanker explosion? Uranium waste is also very heavy, which adds to the problem.

Each step on the journey to Australia is worrying, and at the shore of Sydney, or Melbourne, or at a special loading facility built away from habitation, the worry becomes ours: we who are at present free from such disturbance.

There are further ramifications. Once the route and facilities are established, there will be constant, constant deliveries from around the globe, as countries unload hundreds of thousands of tons of toxic radioactive waste to our safe-keeping. Each single convoy is an enormous risk.

We have lost our manufacturing base. Our main exports are coal, gas, and unrefined ores; industries which destroy farming and agriculture wherever they rip open the land and the aquifers. Our mines export the treasure of Australia for a one-off and short period of extraction and payment, leaving for the most part a wasteland of pits, scars, slag-heaps, spoilt water, razed townships and gassed soil.

In addition to losing fine agricultural soil to the miners, are we now of the mentality that stoops to the caretaking of the world’s rubbish for a wage?

The ramifications go yet further, with insidious implications. Supposing the enterprise so drooled-over by politicians-on-the-make came to pass, and a conduit of radioactive waste was opened to Australia. This would inevitably encourage the construction of more nuclear generators, producing more waste. The build-up of waste is at present a serious deterrent to the proliferation of nuclear power stations, along with the ever-present risk of disaster and melt-down.

In an age of burgeoning development of clean energy, the last thing the world needs is a boost to the nuclear industry.

In a future age where clean energy has closed-down all the nuclear plants on the planet, then would be the time for Australia to consider, just consider, accepting the old radio-active waste for safe keeping. All the costs to be borne by the exporting countries. But that time is not now.

As it is, failed nuclear projects can not be rectified, cleaned-up, or removed. They stand in their own extensive grave-yards of radioactive isolation. Until there is the technology to address current disasters overseas, it is inadvisable to invite the detritus of a failing industry to our shores, particularly for payment.

It is the hope of our island nation to protect our land and farm from the desecration of industry or extraction. We have already virtually destroyed the environment of the First Australians, who had little voice in the developments of the day. Now it is to be hoped that the voices of the First Australians, combined with those of the Second Australians, will fare better in the protection of what is left, and become aware of the dangers inherent in the acceptance, transfer, transportation, handling and storing of nuclear waste. As far as we humans are concerned, radiation from nuclear waste is forever.

UNEMPLOYED?

Posted on August 19, 2015 by wp-admin

UNEMPLOYED? Why won’t small operators take you on, when they need more staff?

This blog won’t help you, I’m afraid, but it may explain why it’s so hard to get a job.

HERE’S THE SITUATION:

THERE’S NOT MUCH IN THE WAY OF PRIVATE ENTEPRENEURIAL INDUSTRY IN AUSTRALIA; business is not encouraged by government, unless it’s extraction of our resources by foreign companies for sale overseas. We even have to pay exorbitant prices for stuff dug out of our own ground.

All credit to local manufacturers and businesses for employing staff: it’s a nightmare of bureaucracy. But out there in self-employed land there are thousands of workers desperate for extra pairs of hands. They can not give jobs, nor can they employ even an offsider.

WHY IS THIS SO?

A SELF-EMPLOYED PERSON WOULD NEED A SECRETARY AND A SOLICITOR TO COPE WITH THE THE ADDED LOAD OF RESPONSIBILITY, BOTH LEGAL AND PRACTICAL, to cope with the paperwork required to legitimately hire an offsider.

Every obstacle is put in the way of taking on an employee, and employers are at huge risk of retribution should the slightest mistake occur either regarding the bureaucratic or workplace-safety aspects of employment. SO NO WOULD-BE EMPLOYER IS GAME TO MAKE THE EFFORT, if he or she is self-employed and needs help. What a terrible situation, and it is country-wide.

THE INVALUABLE KNOWLEDGE AND SKILL ATTAINED BY THE EMPLOYEE, AND THE WAGES EARNED WHILST IN EMPLOYMENT, ARE THE LEAST-RECOGNISED BENEFITS.

The only satisfactory way of avoiding the nightmare of responsibility, litigation, fines and loss of licence-to-operate is to ensure that anyone helping in your business is also self-employed, self-insured, with an ABN etc., and totally self-sufficient in every way, paying their own tax, driving their own vehicle, in fact another self-employed person to whom work is parceled out to, and who is paid as a contractor.

WHEN A YOUNG BLOKE OR WOMAN TURNS UP AT YOUR CURRENT WORKPLACE, ASKING IF THERE’S JOB, WHAT DO YOU TELL THEM? The fact that they have got off their arse and fronted up is usually sufficient qualification; you know they are keen, and will learn, and will work, and you know that they may become a regular employee and help with your workload, and perhaps add a little to your income, for that is the idea of employing others. Well, knowing the stress and extra work put on yourself, plus the huge responsibility, and the fact that, far from being a help and income-booster, your new employee will be an extra weight on your shoulders and consume much of your productive time, you say ‘NO’ right away. No job. No work here. Sorry. Good luck. Even though you know he or she would be very useful and worthwhile to further the project you are working on. Either you say ‘NO’, and get the depressing meeting over quickly, or you say, ‘Look, yes, you could help here; go out, get yourself an ABN, get yourself personal insurance, income protection, third party liability insurance, do a course and get certified in workplace health and safety, et cetera et cetera, get your own tools, transport, frighten the poor kid away, who has no idea what you’re talking about, and who says, ‘I just want a job’.

If the would-be employee bites the bullet, does the research, and assembles all the paraphernalia necessary to become a bona-fide self-employed person, the responsibility of absolutely no-one as far as litigation is concerned, then he or she can find work, but note, NOT employment, but as a contractor. This happy situation is enjoyed by thousands of Australians, but is in jeopardy if the glare of the spoilers becomes focused, for in no way can it be accepted by the administration of government.

If the proliferation of regulations regarding employer-employee relations was entirely the burden of the regulators, not the employers, the way would be open for vast numbers of unemployed to find work. The boss would find the work, the pay and the training; the regulators would handle all the paperwork, the responsibility and of course, the cost. The employee would liase entirely with the regulatory bureaucracy. The boss has the vital, all-important job, which no government department can do: the boss supplies the work and the the pay and the experience.

How many one- and two-man businesses are there in Australia that used to offer work, both full- and part-time to anyone who seemed acceptable? These businesses now have no employees, because the excessive load in time and responsibility makes being an employer unviable. Work is available, pay is available, learning experience is available, but small operators will not hire staff. Legislation, litigation, bureaucracy, workplace-health-and-safety, insurance, sick pay, holidays and holiday-loading, apprenticeship schemes, portable long-service leave, all these are an impossible burden to the small operator, and the situation is even worse if the employee is Aboriginal, when much of the associated paperwork is followed by serious threats to the employer for non-compliance. Before this mass of restrictions became endemic, before workplace health and safety was invented by the government departments, along with every other legislation churned out by officious public ‘servants’, an Australian bloke could take on a young fellow and teach him a trade, and look after him, and warn him of the dangers of the job, and instill a sense of self-preservation: one hand for the ship, one hand for yourself, as the seamen of sail were taught. Of course there is danger in almost any job. Legislating for safety makes mindless idiots of un-taught workers, who now behave as if their own survival is someone else’s problem, and an opportunity to claim huge sums for injury; and it happens. One or two accidents occurring in a workforce, though tragic, can destroy the employers in question, because no matter what the facts are, the employer takes the blame and retribution. The fact is that it is impossible to avoid accidents, no matter what regime of safety is in place: that is why they are called ‘accidents’. The entire convoluted chain of responsibility is simply in order to have someone to blame, and consequently sue, and is in part a construction of the litigation industry. If a worker steps off the scaffold into space, someone must take the blame.

SO, THOUGH THERE IS NO DOUBT THAT AN ENVIRONMENT OF RIGOROUSLY-APPLIED SAFETY MEASURES HAS REDUCED ACCIDENTS, THESE MEASURES HAVE REDUCED EMPLOYMENT BY THE SAME PERCENTAGE: FEWER EMPLOYED, FEWER ACCIDENTS.

The days of freedom have gone. Trades and skills have disappeared due to the impossibility of taking on apprentices. The situation forces skilled men and women into self-employment, their knowledge evaporating into retirement.

INSTEAD OF GOVERNMENT BUREAUCRACY LOADING EMPLOYERS WITH ENDLESSLY-EXPANDING REGULATIONS, THIS VAST ENGINE OF OFFICE-WORK COULD ITSELF TAKE ON THE RESPONSIBILITY IT CURRENTLY LOADS ONTO BUSINESS. A DEPARTMENT DEVOTED ENTIRELY TO PUTTING INTO EFFECT ITS OWN REGULATIONS, AND ALLOWING BUSINESS, OR PERHAPS SPECIFICALLY SMALL BUSINESS, TO GET ON WITH THE JOB OF CREATING WORK AND EMPLOYING WORKERS.

Individual workers would have have all their bureaucratic requirements taken care of by the very departments that demand these requirements.

Since writing this (from the perspective of the building trade) I have had a similar reaction from others working in entirely different fields; printing, dairying, for example. Small businesses throughout Australia are struggling along, making ends meet, earning enough to get by without employing help. Instead of growing incomes and expanding industries, these small operations are disappearing as their owners retire. Why is this so? Not because their work is unviable; given free rein these one- and two-man operations could expand and develop in the market, their principals freed to explore new possibilities, thus engendering further employment and local sales.

In this stultifying environment, the entepreneurial instinct is nipped in the bud. The promising green shoots of future industries are crushed by the weight of bureaucratic interference and demands. Everyone knows and complains. Everyone has known and has complained for generations since the early days of industry. The dark, satanic mills are gone (except in China) but the regulators press on, their own industry of repression now bent on regulating all enterprise out of existence.

There are government programs devoted to getting young people work. Businesses are constantly offered incentives to take on staff, but for the small operator no incentive is sufficient to overcome the burden demanded by regulation. The most effective incentive to small business is relief from regulation. The nanny requirements block the road to employment. A great idea requiring staff is up against a blockade of legislation, supposedly designed to protect the employee, but in fact rendering employment impossible without limitless resources. A small family business could take on staff and expand, if it could afford also to hire unproductive accountants and secretaries to cope with the extraneous requirements of over-government.

The problem is that the regulations concerning staff employment in a vast mining operation are also applied to a one-man business. Obviously the small business can not cope. Obviously. The mine will close, the staff will lose their jobs. The one-man business, of necessity, will run for a lifetime. A lifetime of training and wages is being lost, ten thousand times over, to the unemployed of Australia.

REMEDIAL WORK FOR STEEL POST/SLAB CORROSION

Posted on August 9, 2015 by wp-admin

SHS (square hollow section) STEEL CORROSION AT CONCRETE SLAB PENETRATION.

This is a problem caused by electrolysis, where a steel post, flash-coated with zinc, is in contact with concrete, damp, and air.

In most cases the SHS is in good condition within a few centimetres of the surface of the embedding concrete, rusting taking place at the junction.

In concrete slab construction, for decades it was allowable to have the SHS posts exposed at the slab perimeter, with no insulation. Properly hot-dipped galvanised posts survive longer in this situation, but unprotected posts straight from the shop are susceptible, especially when soil, garden-beds, et cetera are built up against the footings.

THE FIX is tedious and time-consuming.

1) Clear all obstructions (paths, bricks, garden, sheds, water tanks etc..) from around each steel post.

2) Excavate a good-sized hole (say 500mm square at least) exposing the post where it penetrates the slab, down to the concrete footing. This could be any depth.

3) The extent of the corrosion should now be apparent. In the event that the post has completely rusted through, read further, but in most cases it is now necessary to expose the rust area by chipping away concrete both at the slab and footing until clean steel appears. Use a small rotary hammer with a 25mm chisel. This will entail creating a shallow pit in the footing around the post.

The necessity of having a good-sized hole in which to work will now be obvious: all debris must be cleaned out neatly.

4) Having exposed the post to clean steel, chip off all loose rust. A rattler attachment on the hammer-drill is ideal. It is not necessary to grind down to bright steel. Clean out the hole; a drum vacuum-cleaner is useful.

5) Coat the post with phosphoric acid (a Rust-Converter type of product), which will pool in a beneficial way at the footing. Brush the liquid liberally for a few minutes, then leave to dry, when it will form a protective coating, slightly glossy. Any termite-proofing that may be exposed should be left undamaged if possible.

6) At this stage prepare steel boxing that will contain concrete which will case the exposed post from the footing to the slab-capping. Order a top-hat section of sheet (say 0.75mm) that can be trimmed to the lengths needed for each post. The section must be 300mm wide and 100mm deep, with flanges of say 50mm against the slab. Corners need a bigger section, shaped similarly to cover the post 100mm thick and extending 100mm on each side. Order the stuff in long lengths and cut off what you need.

7) When each post has its boxing prepared and tested, have ready a good mix of waterproof concrete 10mm blend with some added Bond-Crete. Brush-coat Bond-Crete onto the post and surrounding concrete, put the boxing in place and carefully back-fill to hold it there. Fill the boxing with the concrete mix, and slope the top to just under the capping. There is no reason why this boxing should not stay in place: it’s an added chore to remove later. Perhaps use Color-bond. Job done.

Whether this 100mm cladding of concrete requires any anchor-bolts is a point, but the Bond-Crete usually makes a satisfactory adhesion. Time will tell. It’s a bodge anyway, trying to fix a bad initial design. Posts now must be well-wrapped at penetration to prevent electrolysis, and encased in concrete, not exposed at slab-edge.

POSTS RUSTED THROUGH; Should this be the situation, the only answer is welding. Free-standing SHS posts into individual footings often separate completely, unseen and buried in soil. A total replacement bolted onto the original footing (the hole filled with concrete) is quicker than a repair. If the post is part of the house structure, repair is the only fix. Blast away the slab and footing as above, to expose good steel, grind it clean, cut some corner sections from an offcut of SHS and weld them like splints to the post. Then rust-converter etc. as above.

I have photos of this process, taken for the benefit of the building inspector, and following the advice of a friendly engineer. I’ll try and get them up.

We’re all learning here.

Victor Sanderson, artist, Merseyside to Australia, 1940-98

Posted on August 2, 2015 by wp-admin

Victor Sanderson, artist, born New Brighton, Wirral, Merseyside, England, died Noosa Heads, Queensland, Australia.

I was vacuuming the house today, not a completely rare event, when guilt set in as the Dyson sucked carefully around two of Victor’s old pictures leaning against the wall by the piano. A pointiliste of Tewantin at the riverside, and a careful and detailed pencil drawing of familiar figures at an early jazz convention in the setting of a picnic area at Mt Coot-Tha in Brisbane. I should have framed them ages ago. Both pictures are slightly battered as a result of their travels and neglect, but treasures nevertheless. Victor was a fine artist.

Guilt has prompted me finally to start typing, without preparation, without research, and from my impoverished and moth-eaten memory.

The Dyson today provided the usual valuable purple-speckled fluff: enough for two sweaters.

Before writing, I Googled his name: sadly, and criminally, there is no match. Many victor sandersons, of course, one an artist, but no mention of my dear friend, whose work, spread thinly around the globe, would stand with any Van Goch in any gallery.

I would write that Victor was a talented artist, but that implies other occupations, dilletantism: Victor was only an artist. He knew nothing more, and all his life he lived for his work, and by his work, and provided for his two families with the tools of his trade.

He excelled in all fields, two- and three-dimensional. Drawing in pencil, charcoal, conte, ink; painting in every medium imaginable, and sculpting in stone, plaster, concrete, cast iron, wood, and any substance that suited his current idea. In Brisbane’s gardens and on verandas stand many sandstone sculptures that are treasured by their owners, and unmistakeable in their style. Most were bought or commissioned at knock-down prices in order for Vic to pay the rent and buy food for the children: his art was his only sustenance.

To be continued. This is a preface to a properly-researched and detailed account of Victor’s life and work, and a pictorial record of every example of his art that can be found in Australia and Britain. In this I hope to have the assistance and input of his daughter Sunny Sanderson, and his old friend Dr. Peter Freeman. Sunny may also have her doctorate by now, and may be Sanderson no longer: all will be checked.

This gets me started. All input, both good and bad and hilarious, will be welcomed: andrewljenner@gmail.com ………don’t forget the’l’.

HUMAN FOOD

Posted on July 6, 2015 by wp-admin

DIET is not a slimming or ‘health’ regime.

DIET is the list of everything that enters the mouth and goes down the gullet: never to come back out, so stop thinking ‘sex’.

DIETS can be good for humans, or very, very bad. The choice is entirely that of the ingester. Only fools are directed by advertising.

FOOD FOR HUMANS is a subject that clutters TV progams, magazines, newspapers, recipe books, dietary advice books, medical literature, and every cafe, restaurant and food outlet on the planet, and except for a minute minority, every offering is unsuitable as a human diet. Why is this so?

WHY IS MOST FOOD UNSUITABLE FOR HUMANS?

There are four basic problems concerning our diet.

1) We are susceptible to drugs of many kinds.

2) We are wealthy, with a huge choice of ingestibles.

3) We lack education regarding our own gut, and what it requires.

4) Cooking.

Of all diets, the so-called Palaeo diet is the most intelligent and relevant, though few understand why or use it consistently. Taking number 3 first: our gut……..

OUR GUT, the extremely complicated tube connecting the mouth to the arse, is of a design which has been the result of, say, 20 million years of natural selection which has left us with the most suitable digestive tract for the average diet throughout all that period, until about 4000 years ago, when farming became more popular than foraging. It’s all downhill from then.

No doubt the little furry creatures we were at the beginning had different guts, but the point is that the best guts survived throughout the changes to out morphology over the eons, but time was endless then. 4000 years is nothing. Our guts have not changed for at least five million years………but the stuff we put in them has.

The picture is now a common image from film and book: the small band of ‘primitive’ humans foraging through the landscape, gleaning seeds, roots, fruits, insects and the occasional dead creature, if they could get to it before the carnivores. (I put ‘primitive’ in quotes because the Neanderthals had bigger brains than us.)

The picture, the small band, foraging, must be fairly accurate. Many tribal folk ‘discovered’ within the last 200 years lived exactly that way, but we must not assume their intelligence was any less than our own, even a hundred thousand years ago, and surely they had the technology for fish- and animal-traps, and the enhancement of fruit and nut groves.

So for millions of years our guts adapted to the diet that was available, to make the optimum use of the nutrients and minerals, the times of plenty and dearth, and these are the guts we have inherited. Our present diet is most unsuitable, we make ourselves fat and ill.

There is a misconception that the primitive diet is the most suitable for us, and that may be so, but that diet often lacked in many ways. Often the small band of foragers would arrive at a once-reliable food source to find it empty. Their territory may lack vital nutrients. Available water may be polluted: lead, cadmium, salt, or radioactivity are frequently found in certain springs. In the early white settlement of Australia, the open-hearted governor Phillip encountered and looked after small bands of tribespeople which arrived close to starvation. Aborigines to this day, have the genetic capability to put on an enormous amount of weight when foraging and hunting is good, to tide them over the dearths: not a valuable attribute today.

Though the foragers’ diet is by far the best for us, our guts require a regular intake of the minimum volume, interspersed with short fasts. The author Claire Dunn, who has survived and written about twelve months in a bush environment, does not eat on Fridays: painful, but exactly what is good for us, from way back in time when unwanted fasting often occurred.

Compare, so far, the above information with the food we eat today.

A simple fact: rats given minimal food will live more than twice as long as those with unlimited food.

THE FIRST POINT: 1) We are susceptible to drugs of many kinds.

AS HUMANS, WE CRAVE MANY STRANGE FOODS, DRINKS AND EXPERIENCES, some of which are called drugs, and many that affect us like drugs and demand constant satisfaction. Even exercise can act as a drug to those deeply involved.

In a hunter-gatherer society the natural cravings of the body drive it to seek out food and drink and shelter. The intake particularly desired is usually the least available: sweet, fatty, salty, rich oily delicious food. But these foods have the most energy and nutrients, so obviously they will be sought at all times. Until they are found, anything edible must be taken: seeds, stringy roots, acidic tiny fruits, lizards, insects, etc. And water must be the only drink.

When there is an unlimited supply of anything we may crave, we tend to treat that craving as a drug.

Take shelter: at the least, waterproof, windproof and warm. As a drug, a twenty-million dollar ten-bedroom mansion for two people.

We still crave sugar, fat, and salt. Now we can get as much as we want, and more. A hundred different drinks are available instead of water. Coffee, alcohol, sweet fizzy liquids are now drugs. People are addicted to them.

ADVERTISERS PREY ON OUR WEAKNESS. We cannot resist their products, and their products are now addictions for those weak of will. Wealthy countries are now breeding gross, fat, sick giants with short life-spans, no willpower, low libido and sloth-like activity. The poor are most at risk, though only as a statistic; in reality it is the least-educated with the worst diet.

In Brisbane, on a Sunday morning at the Northey St organic markets, a place frequented by the food-concious, the faces and bodies of the shoppers are happy and healthy. It is rare to see an overweight person. In contrast, at the nearby Toombul centre, perhaps 10% are gross, 50% overweight, and most look unfit.

NUMBER 4) COOKING.

COOKING-SHOWS AND RECIPE INFORMATION make drugs out of simple foodstuffs. A piece of raw meat is tenderised, soaked in honey and spices, wrapped in salty bacon and fat-layered pastry, and roasted in oil. Of course it is delicious. But very toxic as food, especially if eaten often.

The raw meat, however, may be excellent food for humans, provided that it contains no anti-biotics, or fat with traces of farm chemicals, or parasitic cysts, or, most importantly, that it is not cooked.

COOKING, in most cases, destroys essential nutrients, and is exceptionally detrimental to our diet. There are some foods that may be indigestible or offensive without cooking: roots, tubers, grains, pulses etc., but the best food for humans is not cooked, including meat. Cooking meat renders it far less digestible, even slightly toxic if roasted in fats at high temperature, which in any case destroys the valuable enzymes and vitamins. The cooked fat and protein is also changed for the worse.

COOKING-SHOWS RUIN FOOD. Heating, roasting, boiling, braising, frying, baking, simmering, seething; all these treatments reduce the essential nutrients of the original ingredients, and serve only to make them more delicious and desirable. In fact, to turn valuable food into a drug.

Food in cans, packets, boxes and jars has been processed to oblivion as far as human sustenance is concerned, and supplies simple low-grade energy, except perhaps some canned ocean-fish and vinegar-pickled products. Supermarkets follow trends of taste, and most have a small selection of ‘organic’ produce now, but beware misuse of the term.

I once had a friend whose wife, with pride, insisted on giving him ‘three cooked meals a day’. Aside from the imbalance of tasks, he ate third-rate, nutrient-poor fatty, salty, sugary food for a decade or so before dying. Cooking spoils food.

RELATIVE FOOD-WEALTH.

It is all too obvious that the rare foods that hunter-gatherers craved are now available by the dirt-cheap bucket-load, but the cravings remain to tantalize us. Each year the proportion of the overweight population in wealthy countries grows: just look around. It takes great willpower to NOT eat: we are programmed to do it, like breathing.

A reversal has taken place in the food market: the fat-rich and sugar-rich products are now the cheapest, and are mass-produced on a huge scale, being available everywhere. On the other hand, fresh, unprocessed, organic (as everything was at one time) farm fruit, vegetables and meat and eggs are now the most expensive and in least supply, as is ocean-caught local fish and seafood.

Cultured, farmed, labour-intensively-produced fish with artificially-coloured and antibiotic-tainted flesh is now half the price of the real thing, swimming wild on the reef.

THE CONCLUSION;

The general idea of which foods benefit us, and which harm, if the requirements of our guts are understood, is simple:

BENEFICIAL

Uncooked food, where possible
Unprocessed food
Unblended food
Raw food whenever possible
Organic food

HARMFUL

Processed food in cans, bottles, jars, packets etc..
All sweeteners, including honey, except in tiny amounts
All salts, except during periods of heavy sweat-loss
Meat, fish and eggs tainted with antibiotics, growth hormones and farm chemicals
Cooking where food is palatable raw
Blending food to reduce its roughage
Oils and fats except in small amounts
Commercial bread: make your own without all the chemicals and gluten
Cooking, cooking, cooking.

THE GOOD DIET

No recipes here, just don’t let the rubbish near your mouth, and don’t gorge on the good stuff. Don’t make your food so delicious that it becomes a craving, a drug. Don’t buy irresistible things for the frige: gooey cheese-cakes and quiches…….if you don’t buy them you won’t eat them,

Try Claire’s regime: no food one day of the week: the pain is worth it for the way you feel next day. But drink water. Fat people: no food at all, ever.

It’s all very well to read all this stuff; with the best of intentions nobody can stick to a diet that is perfect for them. But at least knowing what is good and bad is a start, and cutting out the rubbish is the best start: do most of your shopping at the fruit shop.

AND HERE’S THE MOST VALUABLE TIP OF ALL, AND THE MOST DIFFICULT TO FOLLOW: go to bed hungry every night (not starving). Eat you last meal between 2 and 5o’clock. You will sleep well, not being burdened with the energetic business of digestion, and wake annoyingly bright and chatty.

BOAT PEOPLE

Posted on July 4, 2015 by wp-admin

Uncontrolled immigration into Australia, or anywhere, is a terribly difficult situation to write about. Kind hearts and well-meaning actions are not far-sighted.

Australia is a big place, and although everyone is crammed into the cities and centres, of necessity, the land being what it is, there is still room for thousands more people, perhaps millions more.

We know this, despite the cities becoming less livable and traffic-clogged: there is always room for more.

We know this, and it is true, and more immigrants will no doubt be welcomed. But the unthinking person, who with kindness and humanity will welcome all those who risk death and terrible hardship on the unforgiving oceans of the planet, forgets what their welcome will encourage. Their decision is not as easy as they think, for at some stage they themselves will be forced to to reverse their attitude, their humanity, and their kindness. A point will be reached when they too will have to say no, and true sympathy and forethought would say ‘no’ before the damage is done, no matter how cruel that sounds. Recent events (5-9-2015) are heading in that direction.

Why is this so? Simple numbers, statistics.

Think, and think hard. Yes, we are lucky to live in a civilised place like Australia, where for the most part there is democracy, food, land, work. Lucky, because of generations of fair-minded lawmakers. Lucky because of imposed education standards which keep ignorance and superstition at bay.

Do you suppose others, who are also educated, without religious or racial bigotry, but who live in fear in countries bereft of government, would not prefer to live here, in Australia, or France, or Denmark, or anywhere else? Have you considered how many folk would prefer to live in Australia than in their own land? Folk who would risk their lives to get here?

If it were thousands, we’d have them. Even millions, eventually. But conservatively, a hundred million? A hundred million would sign up for Australian citizenship in twelve months, if it was offered. For each boat welcomed today, there would be ten within a month, 100 within six months; word would spread throughout the world. If you could get off a plane in Sydney and receive an Australian passport at the checkout, how many would take advantage of that?

The sad position is that huge populations would come if they could, that is why we are so lucky. We are already here, and safe. All these would-be immigrants are people, like us, and none except the tiny few mean us any harm, and yet, despite our feelings of compassion and kindness, we can not welcome all of them, it simply is not possible; this time it really is not true: we really do not have room. Someone, some time, would be forced to say no, and the situation would become obvious within days, not years, if the door were announced to be open.

This is why, by thinking ahead, the consequences of even the smallest welcome to the smallest number of boat-people must be seen as a disastrous move. The very harsh treatment instigated within the last few years has nipped in the bud an explosion of immigrant shipping, despite the undeniable cruelty involved to those who have become the scapegoats. Their fate has prevented further boats; word soon gets round. If they are seen to be integrated into the community, as must at some stage happen, only their years of imprisonment will remain as a deterrent, and many will accept even that fate to get here.

So the situation is not being cruel to be kind, it is being cruel to survive, because someone, sometime, must say ‘no’, but by the time that happens the massive unemployment and breakdown in services, education, food supply, etc. may never be fixable.

How many immigrants, therefore, can we physically take? Some, of course. All: absolutely not. The question is: how many? Who could decide, and at what stage? Because somebody, sometime, would be forced to say no.

The only solution to this horrible question is ‘no boat people whatsoever, only legitimate entry’. And that, with all its inherent cruelty, is what is happening,

We are so, so lucky to be here, and not there. Never take democracy for granted.

By this attitude I am in danger of being labelled a far-right racist bastard, but I have always considered myself a lefty tree-hugger. I certainly find it surprising to agree with a policy of the present government, but hey, that’s just another facet of democracy.

EMIGRATION FROM PIRATED COUNTRIES INTO EUROPE, OVER LAND AND SEA.

As mentioned, recent escalation of would-be immigrants into Europe, heading mainly to Germany, overland from the East, (September 2015) is proving that the slightest relaxation of border control, the smallest hint of welcome, will provide a signal to millions that a new life in a civilised country is possible. Who would blame these people? We all want a life of quiet endeavour and family security, and these millions are fleeing a tiny minority of ultra-violent monsters, who with modern weapons and stolen cash are butchering all in their path, When the murder has ceased, as the perpetrators age, what will remain will be a wasteland of un-governed, un-farmed terrain.

The thousands flooding into Europe, to escape violent criminal sects in their own countries, will become millions, as soon as there is the slightest report of successful entry to any reasonably well-governed and prosperous community. Those fleeing have every reason to escape the horrors taking place, and every reason to seek out the best that democracy has to offer. The less democratic and less wealthy countries are being by-passed, or used as corridors of transit.

Welcoming democracies, such as Germany and, surprisingly Finland, have no idea of the staggering numbers that successful migration will encourage. This is a prediction that anyone could make, but few have. No news analysts are suggesting that pirated countries will literally lose the majority of their populations in an overwhelming surge of emigration, all headed for Europe initially, as first choice, then elsewhere.

The obvious solution to this looming situation is one that no democratic community is prepared to make. Pirated countries must be made safe, and the pirates driven out, and this can only be done at great expense and inevitable loss of life, and must be done with extreme investment in occupation of enemy territory. Any half-measures have been proved unsuccessful, time and time again.

All European governments will soon realise the necessity of this action as being the only long-term solution to a problem that has yet to become overwhelming. The populations that are fleeing their pirated countries must be able to return in safety, and must have help in forming true democracy under strict supervision to safeguard against dictatorship, nepotism, corruption etcetera, and help in establishing unfettered news agencies.

Massive ground force must establish secure bases at airports and seaports, supported by air defense. Attack of pirate enclaves by air has proved to endanger civilians in disastrous humanitarian and publicity situations. Attempts to establish peace in this way have proved most unsuccessful in the past, due to limited enthusiasm where overwhelming action is needed.

Once an areas are cleared of enemy weapons and obvious enemy fighters, expansion of peaceful territory can begin. The fact that the ‘enemy’ is unrecognisable is irrelevant, once weapons and organisation are dismantled. In fact no major enemy groups may ever be found, but will melt back into their individual towns and villages, where ringleaders and murderers will become pariahs and fodder for future tribunals.

A logical course of events would be for dedicated civilians to arm and fight back: they are the massive majority. This seldom happens. Some groups have a tribal bond capable of defense against insurgents, the Curds, for example, but whole countries often lack basic community values due to generations of mis-rule by dictators, religious sects or corrupt elites, and these countries tend to become wastelands of dereliction when control is dissipated.

A frightening but successful solution to a once-autonomous area in total dissolution is colonial control by a benevolent patriarchal agency. The essence is in the benevolence. Once a generation or two of the natives have become absorbed into the system of benevolent governance, the colonisers can leave.

Initially the colonisers are of course an invading army; there is no alternative.

As I write, this is actually happening ( 7th September 2015). Russia is apparently sending troops into Syria (I’ll check this), but with no benevolent aspirations, judging by past invasions: just domination.

andyjenner.com

Author Archives: wp-admin

Queensland drought: WILL IT EVER RAIN AGAIN in Central Queensland and New South Wales?

THE ROMANCE OF THE SWAG, Leasowe Sandhills.

WITTA DOGS

CLOTHES-HOIST ABOVE THE FIRE-PLACE

THE QUEEN PASSES THE GUINEA GAP BATHS

SYNCHRONISED WING-BEATS OF LORIKEET FLOCKS

TEA-MAKING AT ELEVATIONS

Ray White real estate, Stones Corner, circa 1973

RESTORING THE QUEENSLAND HOUSE, Grand Designs

The ‘PRIMROSE’, Liscard, Wallasey, Wirral.

Queensland drought: PROLONGED WEATHER STASIS AUSTRALIA chapter 2

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Calcium

Neighbouhood Pub

Nuclear waste dump in Australia?

UNEMPLOYED?

REMEDIAL WORK FOR STEEL POST/SLAB CORROSION

Victor Sanderson, artist, Merseyside to Australia, 1940-98

HUMAN FOOD

BOAT PEOPLE