Adventure Ausrama Blog

Motor cars rapidly became popular in the bush when Henry Ford introduced mass production lines that reduced their cost to within everyone’s reach. Farmers used their car to carry all sorts of ‘junk’ - from pigs to ploughs making a mess of the inside, so they resorted to cutting the back end off and fitting a tray behind the front seat. This worked, but was not very safe for the goods on the tray and dangerous when carrying livestock. In 1932 an enterprising farmer wrote to the Australian branch of the Ford Company telling them that like most farmers he was unable to afford both a car and a lorry. He was fed up with cutting his hands and his farming goods on the rough edges of the tray fitted to his makeshift car/truck. And his wife continually complained about riding to church in her Sunday best in a smelly vehicle. He asked Ford to design a purpose-built vehicle, one that he could use to take his pigs to market, pick up stock feed during the week and drive to church in comfort on Sun...

Tony Abbot said that he would like to be known as the "development" prime minister. With the deficit that the Australian Coalition government aims to reduce as soon as possible, this simply cannot happen. Investment on roads, schools and hospitals takes cash that Australia does not have. Just how he planned to invest and save is a mystery. Legacies cannot be planned. They happen due to one's behavior and circumstances that cannot be controlled. Planning the future particularly your own is difficult. Of course he stopped the boats by being ruthless and taking action that has infuriated our neighbor, Indonesia. This always was a dangerous course of action. Diplomatically it is an absolute mess with future repercussions unknown. What is certain is that he will be known as the prime minister who killed the Australian automotive industry. Blaming labor costs is tunnel vision on his part. Other input costs are high : a strong currency, power costs, transpor...

There are calls from many quarters for keeping Australia's car industry alive. I am not so sure that a country needs its own motor industry anymore. Times have changed. No vehicle is made entirely in one country today. The days of getting prestige from it are long gone. Propping up a floundering car sector is against all practical economic and social theory. It doesn't make sense to spend taxpayers money in such a wasteful way. Holden and Ford continue to take handouts while still not making any profit. Ford has already gone. The days for Holden are numbered. Holden was never a truly Australian car. It was an old General Motors design left in a drawer collecting dust until it was thrown on the table at a meeting in Australia. Australia has never been a manufacturing country. It is not like Britain which has very in the way of natural resources so must generate income somehow from industry. Large businesses have only been in the primary sector. Exporting wh...

Australia's slaughter of wildlife continues despite warnings from CSIRO. Nearly half of Australian mammals will end their existence very soon. Zoologist Fred Ford said 11 extinctions have occurred in recent years in the south-eastern forests of Australia. The reserve system is not working. They are just for show. Plants are doing well because they are surviving outside and inside reserves. Nothing is being done to protect small native mammals. Reserves are havens for introduced feral animals and invasive weeds. Rangers are not being trained to look after the endangered species. Money should be allocated more efficiently. With all the money put into reserves there must be more positive outcomes. Native animal need to be researched and the data must be analyzed. Records should be kept to formulate action. An astounding 65 per cent of reptiles in Australia have been discovered in the last 35 years. The public has not been adequately informed of this. http://www.adventure--australia...