Here Today - Gone Tomorrow

Camp on the Eastern outskirts of Miles.

I've been traveling through Miles now for years, almost on a fortnightly basis.

It's interesting to review the effect the Surat basin mining boom has had on this once sleepy town.

There was a time when you could land in Miles and expect to pick up a motel room on spec. Not any more. You need to phone at least a month ahead, and you'll get a room if you're lucky.

You'll also pay a good 30% more for it than you did before the "boom".

I put "boom" in inverted commas for very good reason.

It is really an oversold myth if you're a local. Sure, if you run a motel, a service station, or a supermarket, you've probably done OK.

Funny thing is, any small business that looks like it's going to do well invariably gets bought out by a large business. The mining corporations generally buy the motels.

The effect of this is that the locals get shoved aside, literally as well as metaphorically. Local kids don't get employed on the mine sites. Most of the workers come from far away - not only other parts of Oz, but other parts of the world.

Mining rigs have taken over the centre of town. Some are so long that they block access to shops and motels when parked in the main street. If I parked across a driveway I'd be booked pretty swiftly by the local plod, but these characters seem to get away with it.

I got a bit lost between Grosmont and Wandoan the other day, so pulled into a mining camp in the middle of nowhere to ask directions. 

The problem was finding someone who spoke English. I was reminded of being lost in Vung Tau a few years ago.

The first two blokes I encountered (Chinese, perhaps) didn't. Eventually I found a red haired individual who turned out to be an Irish engineer. He spoke something resembling my mother tongue, and set me on the right track to find the Leichhardt Highway.

So what the "boom"means to the locals is the following -
All costs escalate.
People from outside town get the jobs.
People from outside town get accommodation.
People from outside town fly out at the end of their shifts and spend their money somewhere else.
People from outside town couldn't give a stuff about the local community, and despite all the money their companies spend on PR, it's obvious.
No wonder the locals call them "locusts".

The panorama shows a camp built on the edge of town.
It has to be the most visually ugly construction in Miles.

As Forest Gump could have said - Ugly is as ugly does................

MH 370

http://www.pprune.org/

Image courtesy of PPRuNE

The amount of conjecture over the disappearance of this aircraft has reached ridiculous proportions.

The bottom line is that there are very few facts to report.

The aircraft took off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport on 8th March 2014 at forty minutes past midnight. It climbed to its altitude of 35,000 feet and was travelling at 471 knots true airspeed when it ceased all communications and the transponder signal was lost around 1.30am.

That's what we know.

Since there there has been speculation about hi-jacking, mid-air explosions and decompression.

The fact is, until wreckage is found, or the aircraft turns up intact somewhere, it is simply all speculation.

The mystery does have some personal resonance for me, as I flew (with my wife and daughters) from Brisbane to Kuala Lumpur in 2007 in the aircraft that disappeared. We took a stopover in KL before flying from KL to Ho Chi Minh City on a Malaysian Airways Airbus.

How do I know it was the same aircraft?

I have this weird tendency to jot down the registration of every aircraft I fly in. In this case it was  9M-MRO - same aircraft.

The decision to fly Malaysian was deliberate, based on decisions about seat pitch and fleet age. In the case of Malaysian, both were an improvement over Qantas, and similar to Singapore Airlines which took my sons and myself to South Vietnam on the first occasion I went back.

One thing is intriguing if you look at the map I posted, courtesy of PPRuNE.

Note the route which according to automated data that was transmitted after regular contact was lost, can be plotted from these transmissions.

It hugs the borders of the Air Traffic Control zones.

What does this mean? Your guess is as good as mine, but some are suggesting that if it was deliberate (and it's hard to imagine it wasn't) the person in control of the aircraft was trying to confuse ATC.

Until we know more, hope is always better than conjecture.

Dem Dreaded Double Lines

You may, dear reader, be coming to the conclusion that I have an obsession with videos captured by my trusty dash cam.

Not so.

I am on the road a great deal, the camera is always on, and every now and again I capture videos that are worth sharing.

This is another one on the meme of Cowboy Truckies.

At about the twenty second mark, you will see double lines appear. A few seconds later, you'll notice a road train overtaking on these same double lines.

The road is straight, and visibility good, so why are there double lines on this stretch of road? It's because there is a property access road coming in from the right, and overtaking is a very bad idea across access roads.

This truckie obviously thought he was above the law, or knew better than the engineers who designed and built the road.

It's a not a great attitude when you're responsible for thirty tonnes of kit traveling at 100km/hr.

There's a great deal of kinetic energy in that combination.

I let him go - and made no attempt to overtake. The vehicle I did overtake was the road train following, which is the rig old mate crossed the double lines to pass.

I'd much rather have someone with that attitude ahead of me where I could see him.

The road was the Warrego Highway between Chinchilla and Dalby, and the vehicle was a Nissan Dualis.

Tailgating

Tailgating is not unusual, but this was so deadly dangerous that it's worth publishing.

This was on the Warrego yesterday afternoon.

The hero driving the multiwheeled rig was about one car length behind the small sedan at 100km/hr for about 1500 metres.

I've captured the first few seconds, but it continued well beyond the point when I overtook it and moved out of camera range. Watch from about the 55 sec mark until the end. Motion stops earlier in the sequence for some unknown reason, but it doesn't matter for the purpose of illustrating stupidity.

At least the rig was empty.

Consider the consequences of the dark sedan making an emergency stop for some reason - and I am aware of the excuse that the truckie can see way down the road.

I wonder what length of road is required to stop this thing.

I've been driving since 1964, and have seen a major improvement in the standards of both rigs and drivers in that time.

The rig in this example looked to be brand new.

The driver was the weak link. He is a lunatic.

Class Action?

Smiley Tim

Like many Nashos who were in government employment when called up, for me there was a real cost in a financial sense.

Let me explain.

I was called up as a teacher. Back in 1969, my teacher's salary was $2848 per annum.

Once in the army, I earned $1248 per annum in Australia, and $1846 per annum on active service in Vietnam.

Had I not been called up, the total of my teacher's salary across those two years would have been $5696. That was what all my colleagues who didn't win the ballot earned.

In the army I earned $3094 during 1969/70.

The difference is $2602.

A pittance, you say.

Well, not really. The value of $2602 in 1970 money is, in 2014 money actually $27550.

How did I work this out? There are any number of websites that will do the calculation. The example is a US site, but the figures hold on this side of the Pacific. It's inflation, stupid.

Some states apparently provided "make-up" pay, in that they paid the difference between army pay and public service pay to the diggers called up. This did not happen in Queensland in Bjelke-Petersen's day.

I wonder if this could be grounds for a class action. I've contacted a firm of plaintiff lawyers, and they're looking at it - out of curiosity, you understand. They haven't dismissed it out of hand and are asking for more information. 

If any of this is relevant to you, dear reader, by all means get in touch, either on this blog, or by email.

Imagine Tim Nicholl's (Qld Treasurer's) reaction if he was presented with an invoice for $27550.

I doubt he'd be smiling (as per pic above).

The figures were obtained from my Army paybook, and the archives of the QTU. They're accurate. 

Fascinating stuff.....

Australians who Served

I'm proud to have served with this bloke.

Rain

Southbound near Wyandra

I'm just back from west of Charleville, working out that way all last week.

During that time the first decent rain of the summer turned up in that part of the world. The locals were rapt.

I can understand why. Prior to the rain, the country was starting to succumb to dry weather for about eighteen months. When that happens you begin to notice that any grass turns a shade of grey indicating a complete lack of nutrient.

What stock are left look skinny, and the roos and wallabies come into the roadside looking for green pick and invariably get cleaned up by road trains at night, often five or six at a time. 

The grey tinge was still evident on Monday outbound, but by the time we returned on Friday, green growth was already evident.

Bird life had also exploded, a sure sign that conditions were on the improve.

It will need more - good follow up rain - but it's a good start to the new season.

I usually bring rain - but never get any thanks.....