More on the finished Armstrong Siddeley

The prize for the best photos goes to Sheena Prince. She even made us look good.

 At the Albany version of the Opera House

The Tusker team

It really does go.

More proof it is Albany.

The bad news was that two days after this public launch, the rear was stoved in -

But that did not deter an admiring crowd at the Albany show -

Edward John Eyre - the forgotten explorer

"Eyre - the forgotten explorer", by Ivan Rudolph, tells the great story of Edward John Eyre.
http://www.southaustralianhistory.com.au/johneyre.htm
Amazing that survived, with one reason being his cultivation and use of aboriginal contacts.
He was only 25 (born 1815) when he set out to cross the Nullabor in 1840, but by that time was already an experienced bush explorer. The Nullabor nearly brought him undone, but several bits of luck allowed him to survive, arriving in Albany on July 6th, 1841.

Steve Keen on the Nobel Prize for Economics

As well as an interesting perspective on Australian house prices, Steve Keen gives an opinion about the Nobel Prize for economics - i.e. it is really not a "science", in terms of providing clear answers. That does not mean that economics cannot contribute to all sorts of issues, just that it is a case of "buyer beware".

Economics’ odd couple highlights a Nobel folly

  By Steve Keen | October 21, 2013 | Debtwatch

• 5

   
  EmailShare

I would love to be in the audi­ence watch­ing the body lan­guage at this year’s “Nobel” cer­e­mony for eco­nom­ics. Robert Shiller, who is far too polite a per­son to make it obvi­ous, will nonethe­less at least fid­get as he lis­tens to Eugene Fama’s speech, since Fama con­tin­ues to dis­pute that bub­bles in asset prices can even be defined. Shiller, in con­trast, first came to pub­lic promi­nence with his warn­ings in the early 2000s that the stock and hous­ing mar­kets in the States were dis­play­ing signs of “irra­tional exuberance”.

Fama came to promi­nence within eco­nom­ics – though not in the wider body politic – in the 1970s with his PhD research that argued that asset mar­kets were “effi­cient” not just a first order (get­ting the actual val­ues right) but even to a sec­ond order (pick­ing the turn­ing points in val­u­a­tion as well).

How can two such dia­met­ri­cally opposed views receive the Nobel Prize in one year? The equiv­a­lent in physics would be to award the prize to one research team that proved that the Higgs Boson existed, and another that proved it didn’t.

- See more at: http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2013/10/21/economics-odd-couple-highlights-a-nobel-folly/#sthash.90I73Ru0.dpuf

Steve Keen hasn't given up on Australian house prices - same for farming?

How to spot a housing bubble before it bursts

Steve Keen15 October, 2013.

After a bubble has burst, no one denies that it existed. But before it does, the popular refrain is that though bubbles existed elsewhere in the world, “there’s no bubble here”. So housing bubbles are admitted to have existed in Japan, the USA, Spain and Ireland – because they’ve already burst.

But the rest of the world – and especially Australia – is different. House prices in Australia, the UK, and everywhere in between where they are still rising, are justified by … (fill in your favourite fundamental reasons here) and are not in any way manifestations of bubbles.

Read the rest here - http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2013/10/15/economy/how-spot-housing-bubble-it-bursts

Part 2 - Housing hopes: Will the souffle rise twice?

My previous post on house price data from the BIS (How to spot a housing bubble before it bursts, October 15) scotched one part of the ‘No Bubble Downunder’ case: Australia is one of four countries where house prices are more than twice as high as they were in real terms in 1985 (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: The Bubble Contenders

Part 3 - The housing bubble Whodunnit

  

• 0

   
  EmailShare

This arti­cle is the third in a series on Australia’s hous­ing mar­ket. Read the first arti­cle here and sec­ond arti­cle here.

In the last two arti­cles in this series, I argued that Australia’s house prices “walk like a duck” – using BIS data, Aus­tralia is one of only four coun­tries where prices are twice as high in real terms as they were in 1985. And they “quack like a duck” – accel­er­at­ing house­hold debt is a major dri­ver of ris­ing house prices, as in the other present and past house price bub­ble economies (the US, Spain, Japan, Nor­way, the UK and Den­mark). So hav­ing con­cluded they’re a duck, what species of duck are they?

At first glance, the Aus­tralian house price bub­ble does appear to be a dif­fer­ent species to its Euro­pean and Amer­i­can brethren. Tack­ing Nigel Stapleton’s data onto the ABS series, we can develop an index for Aus­tralia going back to 1880 – com­pared to 1890 for America’s Shiller Index and (wait for it) 1628 for the Heren­gracht Canal Index. With 350 years of data, there is clearly no trend to the Euro­pean series; and after the sub­prime crash, any argu­ment that there is a trend to US prices now looks pretty shabby – even though prices are clearly ris­ing once more in the Land of the Sur­veilled (see Fig­ure 1).

Fig­ure 1: Long term real house price indices

- See more at: http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2013/11/04/the-housing-bubble-whodunnit/#sthash.KjNFvAmy.dpuf

The completed Whitley

The Whitley completed, together with the team of workers plus hanger-on.
It will be on display at the Albany show.

Cadiz - a green manure option?

The possibility of a green manure phase in a rotation has been discussed for many years. It looks to be working here - with this crop of Cadiz, though we can't give figures on the benefit yet.

Note the large ryegrass plants in the background, which have been killed with a wick applicator.

Our soil variability problem

You would not think our soils varied so much. At least people not involved with farming could not imagine this. One way to see the soil variation, is in roadside cuttings, though these days, they tend to cover the exposed subsoil with topsoil.
But here is good photographic proof. The wheat crop is in the eastern wheatbelt, and the variation in maturity reflects soil differences. How could you apply "precision agriculture" in this situation?