Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I sometimes despair at the lack of vision demonstrated by our pollies.

I was riled this morning as I read about Stuart Chignall's attempts to float his Farmers Farm - plans he has, "for a Rural Business Incubator / Cooperative Farm that will host our Drought Proof Aquaponics System."

I don't understand why Australians have to go overseas to get anything worthwhile up and running. We have stacks of millionaire investors investing in something yet our economy is increasingly service based so we have to import most of our needs, including food, from countries who have value added our own exports. That tells me our investors are investing overseas. And people like Stuart end up in despair begging for funds to get local food and employment ventures going.

Hearing about government envoys negotiating trade agreements instead of investing in our own backyard makes me feel the government of any persuasion here seems to favour overseas investment over local development.

And then there's the scabby white fly snarfing on all my leafy greens and the endless fun of 40 + degree celcius days we are having in Perth.

There SHALL BE Chilli and Garlic Spray!

And ice blocks for the fish.

Thank you, once again, for a successful vent. I feel better now.

And have another beer it's still *frack* hot.
Pollies fall into 2 categories; the I'm only in it for the money and the perks and the, I'm going to make a difference and the country better. Of the 2 I think I prefer the former (you can push them a bit if they think it will let them hold on longer). They both end up self serving *sigh* (I'm sure this is a figure of speech but I can't remember which one).

While Stuart certainly has seemed to do his homework, every time I read that phrase, "Drought-proof Aquaponics" it sends a shiver down my spine. How can anything based on water be drought-proof?

I just think it's a bit over reaching and I wonder if people are a bit skeptical?

It's like asking to invest in a new efficient gasoline engine that will end our reliance on oil.

I am NOT saying it's not a good idea. I am just questioning the sales pitch.

This thread hasn't been used in a while, time to have a vent....

Got harassed by a security guard today for taking photos... Evidently you're not allowed to take photographs of a refinery, I didn't even know it was a refinery.

Then on the way home I got my third flat tire in just over 3 weeks, on the M1 just outside Melbourne..

So I figured on the way home tonight I'd call in and buy some food for dinner at the supermarket as well as a few beers.. I need a beer after changing a wheel on the side of the M1, only to find I didn't have my wallet... Ahhhh, oh well I had a bit of change in the car so I bought a box of bbq shapes to nibble on. Whats going on Arnotts... I thought they put the wrong biscuits in the box, they tasted totally wrong, sweet and weird. No, check the box, "New improved flavour".. Damn you messing with a classic.... Oh well, at last I have a couple of warm beers in the van, stick one in the freezer and start drinking a warm one.

As I was typing this, I look out the window and see an amazing red sunset, grab the camera, lock the van walk out the park down to the beach, there's a big sign saying no drinking, so put my beer in the bin, then look to the sunset, it's all gone, no colour. That would be right, walk back into the caravan park to my van, turn around and all the red is back again.... I'm not going back again, not with my luck the way it's going.

Still on the up side, looks like the work done to the forum has fixed things.. Yay, small mercies...

Oh and just one more.. Victoria and South Australia, your roads SUCK...!!!!!! They aren't roads, they are roller coasters.. I bent my tow hitch doing under 30km an hour down a main road.

Sounds like you should stay well back from any electric sources today Joel .

My wife accidentally got the precooked shrimp today. Usually she boils the shrimp with beer and I get the other half of the bottle. The shrimp was great but I missed that half a bottle of beer

razzin frazzin jerk in a carpark, put a huge scratch in my car, drove away without leaving a note or anything... there's no way they didn't know they'd done it! It's not a little tap, the scratch is down to the primer in a few spots and visibly dented in around it.

Asshats!

...and it's the first scratch on it, on my car, the first car I've ever owned myself and it's only six months old

I just got peanut butter on my coffee mug while reading this Damn!

Moved into this forum to aviod hijacking someone else's thread:
Our governments and utility are strongly promoting solar PV, even at a local level.
My kids come home from school telling me how great it is and that the schools are planning to install big arrays for power.
Quick, at 500-600 kwh/m2 in a year, and <1kwh/m2 daily sun for 20%of the year, how many panels do I need to install to provide a significant source of power year round, and what is the payback when my hydroelectric utility will sell me a kwh for about 12cents CAD, (10cents US, or .08 euro)? Even worse, a significant portion of the heating load in this area is electric, during those short months. No gas pipelines, and propane or heating oil delivery is more expensive than electric heat pumps, and almost as expensive as baseboards/electric radiators.
A single panel in most of Australia will generate more power in its worst three months than in a full year at my house. We do have big rivers, big mountains, and big old dams, but people get all up in arms about building new ones. I'm thankful for the governmental foresight that built our existing dams 50+ years ago that allow us the current low pricing, and it should be lower except for privatization, and free trade politics. Once the government privatized the utility, and the utility sold into the wider market for a net profit, the NAFTA free trade agreement says (basically) that they may not charge any US customer more than they charge the domestic end user. Guess what happened to my bill?

If you want better roads here, just send us more of your mineral revenue

Mineral revenue???... Emperor Col' has spent all that on "art"... and white elephants, in an attempt to get himself an OBE from Lizzie.

...and while we're on the subject of who should give whom what... How about you Eastern staters return some of our GST back to us, Hmmm???

Nahh. We need it to fix the roads in front of EB, and put up more signs to warn the old guy of our potholes

Look, if you didn't want to prop up the rest of the country....








Nope, I've got nothing :runsawayholdingbagsofWAcashgiggling

I have an anti-vent, but this is the best place I could find to vent it

Buy a solid state disk drive.

It's the first and only thing that I've ever bought that has ever improved my computer.

I can boot from nothing in 8 seconds or so (even with windows 10).

Coming out of sleep is like turning on your monitor.

Instant.

Bam!

Awesome.

We put SSD drives in all our laptops and computers. This is a big bang for the buck. Windows has a lot less issues running on a SSD drives.

I'm itinerant now....

And currently in central QLD in the middle of nowhere camped at a public fossicking area of bush about 70kms from the closest town with a pub and petrol station. Yet, the other day a little camry came bumping down the dodgy dirt track I'm camped near and a woman emerged with files and folders asking "anyone home?".

Bloody hell, census lady found me out in the middle of nowhere, I don't know how she's going to get to some of the other people camped around here, the track gets a lot worse further on and there are people about 1km further down in 4x4 territory only.

Anyway, I was a bit shocked, apart from the usual mumbo jumbo about how to go about filling it out she made a specific point of saying, "be sure you fill out something in the optional religion section, many people don't, but all the muslims say they are muslim and this means they get more allowances for building mosques."

HUH...!!! So you think everyone should say they are christian so more churches get built and not used? I told her that I didn't think it her place to suggest such things to people, that she had an important job to do and spreading bigoted propaganda surely wasn't in her job description.. Well, that's what I should have said, I was so taken aback by her comment that I just mumbled something about how I'll be listing myself as jedi like last time.

A jedi ? As you are on the road I would have thought a Wookie would be more appropriate

Although I am pissed off with our state govt (I think this is perpetual) I have a bit of a gripe with *frack* land developers (*sigh*). They put up speed limits, drive unregistered vehicles on the road THEN (this is what annoys me) leave the signs up when they are not working (weekends when I work). How they ever got the power to put them up in the first place I have no idea.
Ok in the scheme of things it is petty but I don't like what I would call the thin end of the wedge control over my life by companies I dislike intensely .