3 MARCH 2011

Got a call from the Acterma people wanting me to try again tomorrow. I told them I need to think about it.
To be honest I'm scared and if I can get out of it I will..

1 APRIL 2011

I had an appointment for a bone scan today and I completely forgot about it.... oops!
I had to phone and apologise... now it's due next Friday. Lucky they're so understanding.

8 APRIL 2011

Went for bone scan today.... of course I forgot to take the form with me. Had to phone Jason to bring it for me. Lucky I went there early enough so there was plenty time up my sleeve.

When I was finished Jason was outside waiting, talking to a guy who used to deck for us on our charter fishing boat.
He talked and talked and talked... I was glad it started to rain so we could go home. It was nice catching up but my feet were aching standing in the one place.

I think I said in my last update (after commenting on all the disasters) "What next?"

Well, "Next" came this week with a 5.4 earthquake in the northern part of this state (Queensland) and minutes later a 5.3 quake was felt in Christchurch, New Zealand as well as destructive tornados in the southern parts of the United States.

We do have earthquakes here in Australia but most since the beginning of this century are offshore and cause no damage except for one in April last year in the goldfields of Western Australia. The last big one before that was in December 1989 creating $4 billion worth of damage to Newcastle on the east coast of New South Wales.

"Buy Local - Back Qld"

1500 T-shirts emblazoned with "Buy local Back Qld" were to be handed out to promote Premier Anna Bligh's Operation Queenslander campaign, touting struggling businesses after the summer natural disasters.

However, the Government has admitted to a "gross error of judgment" in ignoring local manufacturers and instead buying almost $10,000 worth of T-shirts made in Bangladesh and the US.

This is typical of our bumblling beaurocrats! They never think before acting! Between our pathetic State Premier and our pitiful, back stabbing, promise breaking, Prime Minister, Julia Gillard this country is in a heap of trouble! It's no longer the "Lucky Country"

"The Unlucky Country"

Our Federal Government insists we have come through the Global Financial Crisis with flying colours. In my opinion this is only because they fudge facts! Before they won the election in 2007 we had billions of dollars in our coffers thanks to our ex Treasurer, Peter Costello. Once the Rudd government took over (I voted for him, much to my dismay now) the coffers began dwindling and now that Ms. Gillard tossed out Kevin Rudd taking the top position for herself we are billions of dollars in debt.

She wasted billions on school buildings. That plan brought out the fleas who saw an opportunity to make money hand over fist by charging outrageous amounts for building canteens and halls, many of which were not needed or wanted. That plan was axed mid stream.

She's spending billions on a National Broadband system and that will end up a total waste of taxpayers money.

Our last government had succeeded in stopping the 'boat people'. Since she took over we've had 100's of boats arrive with these desperate people being confined to detention centres for many, many months. So many people that we have run out of space offshore on Christmas Island and detainees are now being housed in centres near Darwin and will also be housed in a new centre in Tasmania, our southernmost state. She thought she was going to fob off the detainees to other close nations like East Timor and Naru but they refused to come to the party.

17 APRIL 2011

Did shopping yesterday, got Jason to help because I still wasn't confident that I'd be pain free. He got through it without any headaches but they returned when we got home. I didn't fare much better, I was exhausted and in pain by the time I had everything put away.

Sent an email off to the specialist so she'll get it first thing in the morning.

20 APRIL 2011

My comments are in red in this article from one of our national newspapers....

POSSIBLY for the first time in her political career, Greens deputy leader Senator Christine Milne made an accurate prediction. Tropical Cyclone Yasi, she said on Wednesday, was "a tragedy of climate change".

She was right for all the wrong reasons.
For climate-changers like Milne, Cyclone Yasi was a tragedy precisely because it did not live up to its advance billing and failed to deliver the disaster she and others had predicted.

The fear-mongering Greens and the carbon tax hopefuls in the ALP have long been spruiking human responsibility for environmental disasters as the driver of their bizarre climate change policies.

According to Greens leader Bob Brown, coal mining was responsible for the flooding which occurred in North Queensland last month, (is he serious??!!) ignoring the more severe flooding of 1974 and the historically greater flooding of the 1840s and 1890s. Milne said the cyclone was another example of why it is important to cut carbon pollution. (Carbon dioxide is the 'life blood' of this planet ... it's not POLLUTION!)

"This is a tragedy, but it is a tragedy of climate change. The scientists have been saying we are going to experience more extreme weather events, their intensity is going to increase, their frequency," she said. (SHE'S tragic!!)

The scientists she cites are not dissimilar and, in some cases, the same ones who 30 years ago were promising the world would suffer from a devastating ice age by the end of the last century.

They do not include the somewhat more measured Florida State University researcher Dr Ryan Maue, a meteorologist whose work on global tropical cyclones and accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) demonstrates that there has not been any increase in cyclonic activity associated with global temperatures.

Last year was one of the lowest in terms of tropical cyclonic activity worldwide since at least 1970, and Dr Maue expects the level of activity to decrease even further.

"With the fantastic dearth of November and December global hurricane activity, it is also observed that the frequency of global hurricanes has continued an inexorable plunge into a double-dip recession status," he said. "With 2010 being a globally 'hot' year, we saw the fewest number of global tropical cyclones since at least 1970."

Queensland Premier Anna Bligh, again at the forefront, was everywhere on Wednesday, warning that the cyclone could be expected to batter the state for three days. (Hello.... anyone who checked the Bureau of Meteorology site could work that out!!)

Coastal areas were particularly under threat because a giant 9m wave had been recorded off the coast. (No kidding!!! Since the cyclone arrived from the ocean of course the coast would be hit... duh! The giant wave never eventuated. )

"Without doubt, we are set to encounter scenes of devastation and heartbreak on an unprecedented scale. This cyclone is like nothing else we've dealt with before as a nation," she said in one scene-setting interview. (She got this right)

It was not to be another disaster movie, however. Without detracting from the experience of those who endured Yasi, particularly those in Cardwell and Tully, it is now apparent that the category five event rapidly degraded into a category four after hitting the coast early yesterday and then weakened to a category three, then category two.

Bligh was yesterday saying that people would have been in the "path of danger" if they had not listened to the warnings as she continued in her new-found role as the national weather girl. (They were still in the 'path of danger', even with the warnings!)

Engineers who warned that Yasi could even blow apart "cyclone-proof" homes when its centre moved overland, despite changes to building standards designed to protect homes from giant storms predicted by environmentalists, found that homes built within the past 25 years held up remarkably well, apart from some external damage caused by flying debris and falling power poles and trees.

Notwithstanding the lack of evidence of the predicted disaster coming from Queensland, and the fact that the latest news of counter-riots in Cairo was more compelling, the ABC morning's radio host Deborah Cameron persisted in asking global warming advocates yesterday: "Is this the pattern the scientists warned us against?"

Well, no actually, this is the pattern predicted only by those scientists responsible for Al Gore's inconvenient falsehoods, and the regulars consulted by the ABC to prop up the global warming hysteria.

Even Professor Ian Lowe, president of the Australian Conservation Foundation and a die-hard global warmist, had to dissuade Cameron from pushing her ideological barrow by telling her "you cannot say that Yasi, or the Queensland floods or the Victorian bushfires" are evidence of climate change. ( Good for you Professor Lowe!!)

Bligh had warned Queenslanders to "brace ourselves for what we might find when we wake up tomorrow morning," and what they found were fellow Queenslanders telling them that "we get one of these cyclones every 10 or 20 years -- a small price to pay for living in paradise".

Those who choose to live and work in tropical Australia, be it Queensland, WA or the Northern Territory, well know what comes with the turf.

Cyclones, floods, crocodiles, poisonous snakes, lethal jellyfish. This is the sort of wild stuff that sends shivers up tourists' spines and sells books for Bill Bryson.

It is not new however. None of the creepy-crawlies or the smashed homes can be attributed to climate change.

Further, a national carbon tax will not alter the sea temperature, curb the frequency of cyclones or stop arsonists lighting fires in national parks, no matter what the Greens and ALP may claim.

Suggesting Cyclone Yasi and similar weather events are the result of human behaviour, as Senator Milne has done, implies that adjusting human activity can prevent such activity.

This is as preposterous as the Senator herself, and the notion that a carbon tax will change the weather or do anything more than provide the Labor Party with the means to take even more money from working Australians to funds further wasteful projects.

All those who shamelessly predicted without qualification that Yasi would be the worst natural disaster to hit Australia have been proved wrong.

It is as if mother nature herself, having shown how ruthless she can be during the recent floods, has shown how capricious she also is, and how foolish are those hubristic humans who dare to predict what she will do next.

APRIL 28 2011

We had the longest, long weekend in history... Friday through Tuesday because ANZAC Day fell on Easter Monday we had to have Tuesday off as well.... Not that it made any difference to me... every day is the same. The weather was good however for a change.

Jason's headaches seem to be waning... I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I'm still hoping he'll eventually get his back x-rayed, I think that is the cause of his problem. He's not put many hours in at work... because of his headaches and because of the long weekend. So this will be another lean week for him.

I did some trimming to the shrubs down the side of our house on Tuesday... big mistake, I paid for it with lots of pain afterwards. It's so damned frustrating to have arms and hands that don't work properly any more. BUT I was sick of having to put the light on in my bathroom during the day. If I waited for Jason to do it I'd still be waiting next Christmas! I didn't get it all done so he's going to have to finish it. All the cuttings are lying on the path down the side of the house... you can't walk down it... I don't have the energy to clear them. At least I get sunlight in my bathroom now!