Equal pay for equal work

I remember years ago fighting for the rights of women. Great you may say well no . I also remember that the clerks and office workers were old and had limps. This was classed as light duties and this is where you were looked after. Long gone are those days now we have a woman the head of the ACTU,   What trade did she do? I am told that my trade was out of date and would have to do work experience at the age of 59. What a joke to be told this by a teenage girl new in the workforce, that work experience was the go. How the times change to chucked onto the scrap heap in my prime.. I am lucky though Pension supplied by the tax payers,  I am able to play at the other things I like. BOATS

The Mighty Murtoa Stick Shed

Gday. Leigh Hammerton from Murtoa here.

I am standing inside what is probably the most interesting and unusual building in Australia, bar none! It is certainly unique in the world, being the only one of its type left, although there were many others erected around Southern and Western Australia during WW2 when they were used as temporary storage for wheat, which could not be exported at the time.

It is BIG. In Imperial terms it is nearly 900ft long, 200ft wide and about 60ft high in the centre, with the entire roof supported on slender mountain ash poles straight from the bush. There are an incredible 560 poles inside, so you can appreciated the adopted name of this building – the Murtoa Stick Shed.

This shed, built in 1941, is the largest rustically-built structure in the world. It is currently under protection from Heritage Victoria (since 1992), and is noted in the Australian heritage listings for many, and varied, excellent reasons. Principally, its construction method is unique to Australia, and it also represents a huge leap forward in the handling of harvested crops, with the monumental change from bags to bulk handling. How the poor farmers must have enjoyed that! It employed trucks, elevators, conveyor belts and other ‘modern’ machinery to move wheat. However, the practical structural aspects pale into significance compared to its aesthetics! Its interior presents a fabulous experience, which, once viewed, is never forgotten. A massive forest of trees with a soaring overhead, vaulted canopy produces subdued natural lighting, and gives the impression of a huge empty natural space, with considerable religious overtones. The sheer volume of the structure is certainly impressive, and the two and one half acres of under-cover concrete floor is expansive in the extreme. It is both HUGE and peacefully QUIET, with wonderful acoustics! An amazing and indeed, unique experience, akin to some European cathedrals, but with so much more ethereal and natural characteristics - and MUCH larger!
The whole building however, is flexible in design to allow for the varying stresses of being filled gradually with wheat, using the in-built conveyer belt inside its highest point. The entire roof structure is tied to the vertical poles using only metal straps, which allows considerable movement. This is never more obvious than being inside during high winds - the whole building creaks and groans like a living thing. A total lack of maintenance over the last 20 years has unfortunately resulted in much damage, both internal and external, with two very large holes in the roof at present, many broken or damaged poles and other roof misalignments. All repairable of course.

The Stick Shed was the first one of its type built, and survived largely due to its concrete floor, which allowed it to remain in service long after other sheds, as they had tin floors which were prone to infestations of vermin and other wheat diseases. It was last used to hold wheat in 1989-90. It holds around 100,000 tons of wheat. The roofline is sloped to the same angle a pile of wheat forms naturally, and the shed was filled almost completely up to the roof when full. It is attached at one end to a massive concrete structure which houses the elevator. This elevator raised the wheat to the level of the top conveyor belt which ran the full length of the roof peak and dropped the wheat off the sides. It was emptied in reverse largely, with side conveyor belts. The mail Melbourne-Adelaide rail is adjacent the elevator, which allowed both emptying and filling from this source, although in recent years most wheat is trucked away via the nearby Wimmera Highway, which also runs through Murtoa.
The Stick Shed has featured on the 1994 Heritage Victoria poster/calendar and in countless articles about Australia’s heritage since then. It is probably better known and appreciated outside the immediate area, where there has been a long history of rejection, mainly due to its location within a major wheat handling facility - the largest inland one in Australia.

I see it as the potential saviour of Tourism in the whole Wimmera area, as this building alone has the ability to not only put itself on the Victorian Heritage list, but the Australian one too. It has endless possibilities for usage due to its enormous undercover area, and the interest by many others to simply view and experience its amazing interior. It should become an icon for the farming community who built and used it during a time when few male farmers were still on the land. It has served the people well and can do so in an entirely different way for many years to come.

I think the pictures say it all... the first 3 are recent, the others from the 1990s.

If you are as impressed as I am with this building, let me know, as support for it locally is surprisingly limited, and our small group of supporters would love to hear from you. The main part of the building is currently ‘owned’ by the Victorian Government Property Group, part of DSE. There is supposed to be restoration work taking place this year, but nothing has as yet happened. It could easily languish forever and finally become irrepairable eventually.

Leigh Hammerton
PO 77 Murtoa 3390
Ph 03 53852422
Email: murtoan@bigpond.net.au

Political message

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=k5kHACjrdEY

Cave art in Australia

While exploring the bush I came across and photographed the photo below I don't know what it means but it was huge and was a white colour on a sandstone background. The lighting was low and the flash didnt light up the true colours, Some would feel disturbed by the image But I felt the love in it. 

Gross greed

The world economy is under stress from gross greed by he elite Ceo s who rip the guts out of public companies. Dividing up public utilities and having Ceo's on massive money tearing the guts out of the users of these monopolies. Its about time that a salary cap is placed on these jobs like they do in football. Even the salvo s have a Ceo on big money and the workers are slave labour.. Volunteers are nothing but slaves. I was even at the age of fifty five asked to do work experience that is slave labour. Think about it!!!!

What do you do? as on http://tyres.wordpress.com/category/tyre-safety-maintenance/page/2/

Caught Speeding- Blame your tyres 

Les Felix, a South Australian metrology expert (metrology being the science of measurement), has come up with an interesting alibi for speeding motorists. “Blame the tyres” he says. His treatise is discussed in this article from The Tire Review .
Les measured 30 tyres on two cars, and showed that variations in speedometer readings of up to 3 kilometres per hour, with similar variation with tyre pressures on certain types of tyres (my italics). which when combined could lead to 6 km/h variation in speedo readings. Other variances which could affect accuracy were the thickness of the speedo needle, and the height of the driver, which might lead to parallax error.  Adding all these up, which would be uncommon, it can be as high an error as 8 km/h at 60 km/h, and 13-15 km/h at 110 km/h according to Felix.
“Good story” says the officer as he writes out the ticket. “Now prove it in a court of law”
Several other factors need to be identified.

Every tyre design has a set of “nominal specifications”, which in most cases are first laid down by the Tyre and Rim Association of the U.S.A., since they are still the largest automobile manufacturers in the world. But they do not act alone. An interlocking system of Standards between the European Tyre and Rim governing body (E.T.R.T.O), Japan Tyre and Rim Association, South African, Australian ensures that all “automotive oriented” countries work to the same Standards. Then the fun starts. Around each “Standard” dimension specified for a new size of tyre, there are permitted tolerances in manufacture. These tolerances, only available to the tyre manufacturers, are written into the design manual used by the tyre design engineers of any one particular tyre company. Some companies stick religiously to try to hitting the standard dimensions in mid range, others tend to the larger dimensions because it might help the tyres perform better, others to the smaller to save material. All dimensions are taken after the tyre has been inflated for 24 hours at a specified temperature because they stretch a little bit when first inflated. After that, zilch.
So it is not uncommon for tyres to vary between makes by the full extent of these tolerances, which cumulatively could add up to as high as 5%. A study of promotional leaflets published by the tyre companies will show this to be the case.
Radial tyres roll around the diameter of the (steel) belts built into the tyre, and their rolling circumference does not differ markedly with pressure. The belts restrict the tyre growth, which is what they are supposed to do. Early experiments with steel belted radial tyres showed that in excess of 200 p.s.i. pressure only caused a growth of less that .060 inches in diameter. Bias ply tyres do however, change rolling circumference with pressure and with speed. Indeed, speedway cars rely on this to give them their “fifth gear”. However, their use on passenger cars is obsolete.

The most common cause of speedo error is fitting tyres of different section width, which carries with it an increase in diameter at the same profile, or fitting plus 1 or plus 2 fitments without matching tyre rolling circumference (or diameter) within the tolerance permitted by State legislation, which varies from State to State currently, though Queensland may fall into line soon.

If you’re worried about it, most major highways out of the capital cities have a measured 5 kilometres to check your odometer, or on the Hume highway 25 km out of Melbourne, radar guns which flash your speed up as you approach. However, if the southbound lane gives a different reading to the northbound, I know which one I would accept- unless I could find a sympathetic beak to believe my story! The officer writing out the ticket won’t, for sure!

I use a credit union

I got another one of those calls again offering $700 dollars of free calls on my mobile!  He went on for some time and then asked how much was my phone bill and I said thousands. How much? Thousands of dollars.We can give you $700 free calls. Now he thinks he's got a live one and rattles on.  So I said that's good and I would accept then he wanted my bank details and I said I don't trust them. They steal all your money. Where do you keep your money? In a safe? How much do you have ? Thousands ? In a safe ? Yes . What about my free phone calls? They cost $59 . No they are free!!! No they cost. No free I will try and if I like then I would sign up for more free phone calls for free. They are not free sir ! You said they were free! After fifteen minutes he said have a nice day sir and hung up. I use a credit union and don't have a mobile! My calls are 8 cents for anywhere in the world for as long as I like! Want to know more post a comment and I will get back to you for free!!!!!