Life in Barraba - November 2011

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The Highway Wanderers Chapter of the CMCA

Nov 2011

The Northern Daily Misleader

Sunday, 27th November 2011 pm.

I have recently quoted at a rally in Tamworth an inaccurate report in the Northern Daily Leader, our regional local newspaper. The report was about ""a motor vehicle accident 35 km south of Narrabri on the New England Highway". The highway through Narrabri is the Newell Highway and the New England Highway runs north of Tamworth through Armidale. My presentation made the point that the reporter who misnamed the highway was lacking in knowledge about our region and I also said that the failure of the editor to have reports checked for accuracy allowed me to call the Paper the Misleader. I was congratulated by the people at the rally because they understood the truth of my presentation and agreed that they couldn't trust the paper to be accurate.

I have a new example of inaccuracy in the Northern Daily Misleader. The report about the floods listed road closures in the region which included William Street in Barraba. When we visited to the Starrs Lane ford yesterday we discovered that Starrs Lane was closed but when we came back home we drove along William Street which is a fair height above the river and had not been affected by the flood and was not closed.

Once again the Northern Daily Misleader published an untruth which on this occasion could have been very unhelpful to people who needed to go to Williams Street.

Revised: 4th December 2011

Change in the river

Sunday , 27th November 2011

photo of Manilla River after the flood. This morning I went back to the river to check the level of flooding. The weather has changed and it is not raining any more so I thought that the flood might have dropped as it did yesterday in Mille Creek. It's obvious that the flood has removed a lot of water from the catchment. The river is back to a simple fresh flow with the pavement on the bank un flooded.

photo of the ford after the flood Because the flood had abated I went back to the ford in Starrs Lane which I had photographed yesterday. The level of water on the ford was back down to only a few centimetres. The photograph I took today shows a lot of logs on the road down to the ford. I was puzzled by that but I was told by some people who had visited the ford late yesterday afternoon that the flood level had increased dramatically and had washed lots of logs up the road. The other interesting feature was that the Connors Creek which looked like a river yesterday had come back to looking like a creek.

Revised: Sunday evening

Extreme Weather

Saturday , 26th November 2011

photo of manilla river Today we had a really heavy rainfall in the morning but the total rain for the last four days has been 142mm. As I said yesterday there was a prediction of possible flooding in the Namoi and Peel rivers. I did check the flow in the Manilla River yesterday but today we checked the flow again and found a very great increase in the flow in the river. This is probably because there has been a lot of rain in the catchment.

photo of manilla river and connors creek I did also check the local creeks today and they were both looking like rivers rather than creeks. I guess that they had lots of rain in their catchment areas as well. They have been very small creeks all the time we have been in Barraba but this has been due to the seven year drought in our region which has been overcome only in the last few days.

photo of mille creek One of the creeks, Mille Creek showed me that it had had a very big flow which flattened lots of grass on its banks. The flow today had come down to a somewhat strong creek and I guess that the great flow had drained lots of water out of the catchment area.

Most of the people in Barraba are very happy with this change in our weather. One of our friends lives on the bank of the Manilla River and I am sure she will have had some major problems with flooding in her back garden.

Vey strange weather

Wednesday , 23rd November 2011

We are having lots of rain today and the forecast for the week suggests that it will rain for several days. This is very different from the weather we have been experiencing in the last few years.

The news recently announced that the Namoi River and the Peel River might get flooded which will have some unhappy results for some of the people who live on the banks of the rivers.

I plan to check the flow in the Manilla River in Barraba, it has been very low for many years, this change might result in a good water supply to the town. for some weeks.

I did check the river. It is running a bit more than it has been doing for a long time but I assess it as still just a small amount.

Revised: this afternoon

More about truth

Thursday , 17th November 2011

Following my comments on 8th November. I have been involved in discussions about this issue.

I realised that the theory that most people only accept stuff which supports their own beliefs also affects how some people maybe most people, only think that other people are simply expressing their own beliefs which may not be true. The lack of consideration of the facts provided in support of your belief may lead them to think that the evidence does not need to be accepted because it might not be true.

In the discussion I was advised that people assess the relevance of what you say by assessing the passion you show when discussing your beliefs.

I still feel that my ability to convince people of the truth of my beliefs is not generally true so I may be right to decide to not to involve myself in debates. Of course I think that some people do not accept debates anyway. I will be happy to state my beliefs so that those who accept them will be informed but I will avoid getting involved in debates about the truth.

Revised: 19th November 2011

A Technical Problem has been solved.

Tuesday , 15th November 2011

On 28th October I wrote about my wireless modem problems. Telstra did send me a new BigPond modem but I was unable to get it to work on my MacBook because the proper software wasn't available. I have been talking to the Tech support people many times and I went to the Telstra shop in Tamworth but I still didn't get the b\necessary software so I was still suffering from no reliable connection.

Yesterday I tripped over a new download and installed the necessary software but I had to talk to the Tech Support people to ensure that the installation was OK. They did the right thing for me and the new modem was working properly. I had to talk to the account people in Telstra to ensure that my new account was activated. That worked out and now I am back to the highly reliable internet connection from my sitting room.

Today I was able to place an order on Office Works for some paper and toner supplies for my Samsung printer. Sadly the order was not confirmed but the reason for the lack of confirmation was not provided. I did think about my Credit Union account that I use to make these purchases and realised that Office Works might have got a refusal from the Credit Union because my account balance was a little less that the order amount. I went to the Credit Union and transferred a bit of money from our joint account to my small account and when I came back, Office Works confirmed my order so all is now going well.

A New Assessment of my Abilities

Tuesday , 8th November 2011

After last night's CD meeting I was thinking about one of my 21st Century problems. An article from the magazine Issues referenced in my June 2011 blog indicated that a famous psychologist had reported that many people will not accept any truth if it doesn't match their beliefs and that phenomenon this was typical of human beings. This of course is not necessarily universally true. I like to think that I believe that I only accept thoughts which have evidence to support the proposition of the truth of the thoughts. After the CDC meeting I was concerned that most of the people at the meetings only accept ideas which are in accord with their beliefs and they don't make any effort to accept evidence of the truth of other ideas. This causes me to doubt the validity of the resolutions which the CDC makes.

Thinking about this some more forced me to feel that I don't have any good ability to convince people of the truth of what I believe. If this assessment is true I feel that I should forgo any jobs that require me to do that. Sadly some of my preferred volunteer tasks would suffer from this.

I have recently emailed Rob Hopkins, the founder of the Transition Network, which is the top task in my list. He had suggested in the newsletter that cargo should be transported across the oceans in sailing ships to reduce the carbon footprint of the products being transported. In the email I told him that "I am the convenor of the Barraba Energymark Group which is part of an Australian Commonwealth Science Industry Research Organisation project which is attempting to teach people about the truth of climate change science and is seeking feedback from the groups to determine how well the project is working." Our Energymark Group. had discussed the transport carbon footprints of imported products and I had suggested that we should try encourage a policy of replacing motor driven cargo ships with sailing ships. I also told Rob that as a first fleet descendent I was really convinced that sailing ships would be good. Rob was happy with my email and congratulated me. He said "Thanks Robin, I'm glad you found the piece interesting. It was a very inspiring visit to an amazing project! Thanks, and best wishes Rob". I was impressed that this great fellow was impressed with what I was doing.

Some more research

Sunday , 6th November 2011

Eastern Water Dragon at Nundle Brisbane Dragon photo

I was trying to identify a lizard in a photo in the magazine Outback which was identified as a Frilled Lizard on a fence outside Manilla (in our area). I did realise that it didn't look like a Frilled Lizard. I checked in my encyclopaedia and found that the Frilled Lizard's area of occupation did not extend down here.

Dragon at Brisbane Art Gallery

I did some more checks in the encyclopaedia to try and identify the species of the lizard we saw in the garden outside the cafe in the Brisbane Art Gallery whichI photographed and said that I would try and identify the species when I got home but I couldn't find a picture of a species which matched the one we saw in Brisbane.

Later on I was working on my iPhoto collection of reptile photographs and found three photos of an Eastern Water Dragon which had precisely the same features as the one we had photographed in Brisbane. So now I can state that I believe it was an eastern Water Dragon (Physignathus lesueurii) because the two photographs are very similar.

A change in my exercise

Friday , 4th November 2011

My new doctor has urged me to do walking exercise every day. I had chosen not to do that because my legs complained. Today I decided to test my legs by doing a 30 minute walk in the morning. I returned pretty well and recorded the exercise and the pulse rate (96 bpm) when I got home.

Later on I realised that the weather was good and I needed to do a lot of work trimming the tall grass and weeds on the lawns with the whippersnipper because the mower is not working. I got quite a lot of what I needed done but came back indoors suffering from the hard work and sweating badly because of the warm sunny weather. I had to have a second shower to get back in a comfortable condition and now I feel pretty well. I will have to do another lot of this soon to get all the tall grass and weeds trimmed.

I still would like to get the mower working again so that I can do the lawns without suffering from the hard work.