This area called Townsville is looking like it may be evacuation material on Tuesday as a precationary step. Tonight I checked the harbour and general traffic in the town is basically empty. There are still probably a considerable number of hardcore veteran residents who reside in this Town who are incredibly difficult to communicate with regarding this subject. My information is telling me that a Category 4 cyclone/hurricane, whatever you want to call it is brewing up and sitting around 24 to 48 hours off this coastal area. The last one did not connect here and was like the size of a pea compared to this considerably large footprint of nature that is destined here. A diameter of wind 500km is harder to narrow down. My concern, is that simply, this area is too close to the sea for comfort. Understandably, sitting it out may be the only option for some, but if the means to relocate to an area further afield are available, I would highly endorse it.

In a house around 7km from the coast, this is not making sense to reside here until the threat has passed clearly. It will have to be a long drive tommorow likely to a more inland area, anywhere rather than taking the brunt so close.

I must rest now.

Usually, I don't like linking youtube clips, however the report above shows the situation pretty much all over Australia just now, or recently. The reason this clip was worth showing, is because when I arrived here, I was going to work in Rockhampton, probably just as well that I didn't bother. It is a great shame for these people.

Tonight, there is an equally worrying situation where I am located, however it is not flooding, but the possibility of cyclones. These original cyclones drifted past this area in March and seem to want to come back for a second run. There is 3 sitting out at sea. One is probably not that bad, but the other ones are. At the moment this area is on cyclone watch.

So interestingly, as I did a bit of research into this a while ago, the US seems to be into making privatised money now. It seems to me they have little option but to do this really. It is not the first time this has happened. $ ;)

Well, another day passes. Nothing new. The only thing of consideration, is that the weather, although technically improving, is the ideal kind of condition to make a cyclone now. It was mentioned in a online news report today.

Another week passes. Nothing really to take note of, other than the fact that the Australian economy has been affected by the weather and lots of pandemonium on the mainstream news as always. Luckily, it looks like the banks are writing off the loans on houses that were weather damadged, so therefore that is probably a good thing for the small investors. The labour market seems to be strong enough here, however, white collar jobs are being cut, according to the reports i've seen. Anyways the dam is holding at 38M tonight and slowly dropping, so this year, this town probably won't get flooded, which from a buyers agent point of view probably isn't that great, as the property can't be written off and with the downturn of office work, i'm glad that is not my chosen career path at the moment. Oh well, time for bed again.

It has been fairly obvious to all that the weather is making normal life impossible. In this area Townsville, tonight the water level at the main dam was about 38M high. From the information I can see that the max height is around 42. This dam was upgraded in 2007 from a max height of 27M. If that work had not been completed, I doubt much of this town would be around to today. My estimation, given the sporadic weather is that probably within 2 years that height could be breached by water. A warning was issued here 20 days ago when it hit 40M. The level has not really dropped that much.

About 2 weeks ago, I bought a proper cheesecake from a shop here. It is interesting how it panned out. The first shop I went to was a cake shop. After being inside a few minutes, I says to the till operator "isn't this where the cheesecake shop used to be?." The reply was yes. Now, after finding the cheesecake shop later, a bit further on. I'm sitting thinking to myself, how did I know that is where the cheesecake shop used to be? These things aren't obvious, you see. The truth is, for a split second I had a vivid flashback in time to when the cheesecake shop would have been there. Nothing graphic, just a sensation.

A few days ago, I decided to go the beach in a vain attempt to clear my head. This kite was actually towing a surfer which you can't see in this picture, but it was probably fun. About 10 minutes later, literally, heavy rain started to pour. Thankfully, I had exited the area completely and returned back to my nest.

So, Another day passes, nothing but rain and usually dark by the time I get going. The only difference today is that I can't have a shower tonight because the neighbours water pipe is burst... Even as typing now, again raining. The mainstream news is depressing as always, probably more than usual, basically it blows. I check the google news etc, never seeing any improvement. The flooding over here esp in the mines can be seen on another persons blog aka mining mayhem, if you are interested, it has recent photos/videos of mine floods etc, it can be found here. http://www.miningmayhem.com/

There is no good news, a recent check on the list of notable deaths from wikipedia confirms it. I have resigned to the fact that I hate everything, esp. lies etc. It is very lonely and crap. The only good thing I can think is that some Chinese car maker is trying to market their electric cars here, however it is a great shame it never happened around 2004, probably preventing some of the flooding, despite what other sources say.

Recently, I found this picture and can not find out who drew it. It is a favourite. Full marks for whoever made this one. It may be copyrighted work, however I can not see any author name anywhere on the picture, and also the source it was taken from did not specify this.

I decided to show this video of the rain which is happening today, down in Brisbane. Credits to the poster obviously. The media mainstream is hyping up a possible flood situation on par with a severe flooding which occured in the year 1974. Usually, I post this kind of information in a thread here http://federalnoise.blogspot.com/2010/01/blog-post_7698.html however, since this is a video and not an image, it can stay here.

Today, after about 15 mins of hard rain, a rainbow appeared over the hills while out shopping. It was very nice.

Due to the nature of the work I usually do, which is most of the time manual, over the years, it has caused me a condition which I don't think is medically understood. The name of this condition, is urban stiffness and can only be cured with rest.

The older you get, the clearer the picture becomes.

Thinking back a good few years now, with all the talk of saving money etc. Even at school, I can recall that the head people had a good way of saving a few pounds here and there. When they were audited, every now and again, basic nicities like a decent chair and pot plants were actually hired for 1 day to facilitate a pleasant entrance feeling to any inspections that may have occured. Overall, the place was always clean anyways, just a little boring without these additional items.

Around this time of year around the 90's or so, I recall going for a walk across a local river that had frozen over. It seemed hard-frozen, so I chanced it and walked over to the other side. On returning over the river the bottom caved in the ice and very suddenly things turned differently instantly hitting freezing water. The only saving grace, was somehow I had managed to grab onto the ice at the top of the hole, otherwise I'd have been sucked under the ice and downstream, obviously. It was not a good experience. When getting out of the hole, I recall suffering from hypothermia and it just wasn't good at all.

Today I went out for a jolly around town, mostly in the more offtrack areas, you know the neighbourhoods, the big ute, slab house, prolly pool in the back, when I seen this dope little chicken scratching around in the puddle, so it had to go in the book. Other things sometimes I find a good thing to do is just screenshot the screens from google earth etc, esp for some of the landscapes, when you aren't near them. This one of the hill is the type of scenery I like and find hard to stay away from for long periods. After 20 years or so of greenery, it's almost impossible to find anything good about city/towns, but I'm sure there are some things, just not easy.

A few months ago, I found some basic surface mining soft, which was interesting, showing the basic operation of this machine above aka Bagger of which there are several variants, but the original design from 1950 or so, is basically the same. The photo below is the real one which is probably working out in Germany just now, but this Bagger is the new one (I think.)

Back in around '98 or so, I recall working for various different companies that specialised in telecomms. When the search engine called Google came along, it would be fair to reason, pretty much, I was one of the first to use this on an old dialup connection. It has changed a lot since then with the Earth and other additions. Around this time, also, there was a thing called the GPS which again, very likely I was one of the first to even see them for civvy use. Nowadays everyone has them, personally, I don't use 'em. Before all this came along, some smarty made a thing called a mobile phone, which again, probably one of the first to aquire such complicated technology. It was something I never really used, and only kept in the car in case of being in an accident or something. Pretty much now, I don't use them. It puzzles me how people can be fascinated with such trivial things.
There was a car called Subaru Impreza which our organisation acquired for business use, but even after a few weeks of that, I can recall driving it back to the showroom, pretty impressed, but basically quickly bored with it all...