Regrow Qld 16 March Issue 10 Vol 3 (Subscriber)
Bat boxes now available to purchase, Good News about Kiwis, whales and chickens, Arthur's Dream Car Blog and Greg wonders if his knees will fail before fuel prices fall.
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Editorial
Anna Hitchcock
My friends,
In the brief time in between COVID waves, it has been lovely to occasionally venture out without wearing a mask. I’m still wearing mine in crowded places and avoiding handshakes though, as the science says that sadly this isn’t over. I have enjoyed the limited coughs, colds and flus these last two years, and I think I might just keep reducing my risk for the next little while.
Meanwhile, the Great Resignation is changing the nature of many people’s working lives. The implications of people moving out of office work on a permanent basis are multiple. Some wealthy people who own inner city real estate must be reassessing the value of their properties right now (I wouldn’t be investing in suits and ties either).
But what if we could renovate office buildings into housing? Make them into a mix of high, medium and low cost housing to avoid the creation of slums. Let’s bring the inner cities back to life with people living there permanently.
What would that look like?
Would coffee shops provide sound proofed meeting rooms that you could book? Could restaurants and pubs offer power points and quiet areas? Astonishingly, hotel wi-fi might become strong enough to allow you to hold a video conference for an hour without selling a kidney on Etsy to raise the necessary funds.
Commuting on a daily basis would become a thing of the past, which has to save everyone money, stress and carbon pollution.
Revitalising the inner cities would take the pressure off the Australian housing market which might allow everyone to have a permanent roof over their heads.
I can see some positives to this coming real estate crisis.
Anna
GCC Project Update
We now have microbat boxes and tubes for sale at $30 each, courtesy of Fraser Coast Microbats Inc. These are made by the Howard & Hervey Bay Men’s Sheds with re-used materials and profits will go to our Community Nursery Project.
Ideally, you should put a few of these boxes or tubes around your property facing different directions. The bats will choose which ones are more comfortable, depending on wind direction, time of year and sunshine.
Buy a box here: https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/313913967775
Buy a tube here: https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/313913970959
We are offering local pickup only at this stage, but feel free to contact gladconscouncil@gmail.com if you would like them posted, or if you would like to buy in bulk. We can also arrange installation of bulk arrays of these boxes to assist with insect control.
Micro bats are known as the insect terminators of the world. Each species, according to its size, eats different sized insects, ie flies, ants, mosquitoes, moths, spiders, small birds, grasshoppers, termites, mice and even other bats.
A micro bat consumes up to 100% of its own body weight in one night which is estimated to be about 1000 mosquitoes (3 grams) and other insects an hour. As can be seen it could be an advantage to have roosts of micro bats around your home creating a biological insect control which in turn may lessen the use of chemicals and mosquito disease ie dengue fever, ross river, malaria.
More information here: https://www.allaboutbats.org.au/
Good News
For more good news check out https://futurecrunch.com/goodnews/ and sign up to the fortnightly newsletter.
New Zealand’s national bird is bouncing back from the brink, with the population of the North Island brown kiwi population of 20,000 expected to grow by more than 10% over the next three generations. Conservationists and volunteers have worked for over 30 years to save the flightless bird which struggled to survive the introduction of predators such as stoats, rats, and ferrets. Stuff
Humpback whales will be removed from Australia's threatened-species list. An independent scientific panel deemed the mammals had made a major recovery, after facing near extinction in the 1980s. The whales will still have protection in Australian waters, where it is offence to kill, injure, take, trade, keep, move, or interfere with a humpback. ABC
Without much fuss and even less public attention, America is in the midst of a multibillion-dollar shift to cage-free eggs in response to new laws and demands from restaurants. Cage-free housing has soared from 4% in 2010 to 28% in 2020, and is expected to reach 70% by 2025. The change marks one of the animal welfare movement’s biggest successes after years of battles with the food industry. AP
Tesla Dream Car blog #24
Arthur Hunt
Editor’s note: this article was written in 2021
Our car trip down south is nearly over and our Tesla Model 3 has performed up to expectations. We have had only two minor issues with charging and we would do it again, if time permitted.
After Bathurst we continued south to Canberra, charging at NRMA chargers at Cowra and Yass. At Canberra we stayed with friends in a retirement complex where we were able to plug into a power point. We enjoyed a ride on the first stage of the light rail transport system in Canberra.
Our next destination was Merimbula, with a quick charge at Cooma on the way. After an overnight stay with family, we headed into Victoria via the Princes Highway, stopping at Lakes Entrance where the motel provided free charging for Tesla cars.
Unfortunately, we didn’t make it to Tasmania as COVID restrictions interrupted our trip after we left Lakes Entrance. Less than 24 hours before we were due to reach Melbourne and cross to Tasmania, the border was closed and travel in Victoria was banned. We just had time to divert north to Marysville and book into a cabin in the caravan park. It was an inspired choice as Marysville has been extensively rebuilt since the disastrous 2009 Black Saturday fires and the surrounding forests have been rejuvenated. The caravan park was almost empty and the town was deserted so we enjoyed five quiet days and the opportunity for some bushwalking. We had plenty of time to recharge the car from an external power point.
Leaving Marysville, we headed north to Albury, via Euroa where we shared a bank of six Tesla superchargers with one Tesla Model S. From Euroa to Albury, we enjoyed our first real taste of motorway driving in the Tesla. We travelled effortlessly on the dual lane road at 110 km/h with autopilot engaged so that the car was steering itself and changing lanes to overtake with a brief prompt from the indicator stalk.
We stayed two nights at Albury with a friend and enjoyed a side trip to historic Beechworth. It was interesting to compare the relaxed population in Albury with the consistent mask wearing just across the border in Beechworth. At Albury we again enjoyed free NRMA charging at a car park in the CBD. However, we also saw the unfortunate placement by the City Council of a lone charger some distance out of town at the rubbish dump. The charging station was out of service so it was a wasted trip, but it was an example of misguided planning as there were no other facilities nearby.
After leaving Albury. we continued up the motorway, reaching Sydney in one day without effort. We had different charging experiences at Gundagai and Mittagong. At the former, ours was the only car at the bank of six Tesla superchargers where we only spent 20 minutes. In contrast at the single NRMA unit at Mittagong, we had to wait while another car completed its charge before we could start. Before we had finished, another car arrived and had to wait for us. We limited the charge to 200 km to save time and arrived at our destination in Sydney with 29 km of range remaining. Bypassing the charger at Goulburn was not a smart move.
With these experiences behind us, the Electric Superhighway in Queensland, with installation of multiple chargers at 37 locations between the Gold Coast and Port Douglas, all part of the Chargefox network, seems very far-sighted. The NRMA network which extends across NSW is commendable but needs multiple units at each site. It would also be helpful if chargers are located as close as possible to the highways so that travellers don’t have to spend time driving into the centre of towns.
We look forward to completing our trip up the Pacific Highway and Bruce Highway to reach Yeppoon.
More in a fortnight.
Arthur
Opinion
Greg Bray
The Fuel Pool
Folks, last year I scrawled an award-winning article about the amount of bunker oil used by ships each year.
Of course I didn’t win an award for it, these things are rigged I tells ya!
But, if by some slim chance, you can’t recall the article, then the nub of it was, there are over 10,000 cargo ships plying the seven seas at any given time, and how much fuel they are using to bring us containers filled with consumables ($6 toasters, sex toys, fast food giveaways, other tatty landfill etc.)
I asked the question, is this stuff really worth burning billions of tonnes of filthy bunker oil for each year?
And, this week, I was reminded of that article as the price of fuel per litre sailed past $2.00 per litre. Now the question I’m asking daily is, ‘Do I really need to use my car to go to X?’
Often the answer is, ‘No’.
Especially since the energy sapping, breath draining, sweat dripping, humidity has shuffled off for, hopefully, another nine months, my sandshoes and pushbike are seeing a lot more action.
But it got me thinking about how much fuel we actually use in Oz? So, after a brain-numbing afternoon of research, arguments, calculations, sulking and frequent visits to land of Mathematical Despair, I came up with the following:
Australia consumes just over one million barrels of oil per day. That’s 160 million litres per day, 1 billion litres per week and 5 gigalitres per year.
Figures so immense it’s hard to wrap your head around them.
So, let me draw you a picture.
Every year, we fill up just over 2000 Olympic sized swimming pools with oil and set them on fire. (Interesting side-point, that’s roughly twice as many public swimming pools dotted around our country!)
And here’s the kicker, Australia only uses 1% of the oil pumped and shipped around the planet.
Every year, the entire world burns through 500 gigalitres of black gold, or enough to fill 200,000 swimming pools.
That’s the equivalent of pumping Sydney Harbour dry on January 1st each year, filling it to the brim with oil, setting it alight and watching it burn for 365 days until all the oil is gone on December 31st. Then doing it all over again on Jan 1st. Year after year, after year.
Think of the heat and smoke that would generate? Personally, I’d hate to be downwind of it…
And that’s just oil! I haven’t done the calculations on how much coal we’re setting fire to each year.
Maybe later. Right now I need to go for a drive to clear my head; actually, I’ll go for a walk.