Bunnings

Australian retailing is dominated by very few large organisations, especially Woolworths and Wesfarmers. The former has nothing to do with the UK and US versions and is hugely profitable; the latter started out as a farmer's cooperative, developed into a hardware chain (Bunnings) and has since branched out into supermarkets and so on. Bunnings hardware stores are on a massive scale and they've just opened an Armidale Branch, which Dot and I visited this afternoon to sticky-beak before the official opening on Friday.

We guessed it would be a scaled down version of the ones we've visited in Sydney, Canberra and other places, but it wasn't! In fact, it's probably a little larger than the Belconnen version in Canberra, which Dot loves to visit from time to time. Now, the Canberra store possibly has 100,000or more people living in its catchment, whereas Armidale has 30,000 residents nearby and another 20,000 within an hour's drive. I can't see how the economics stacks up, though the land cost would be cheap, but I suppose the second largest retail chain in the country can easily bear the cost.

To give people some idea of the building's size, it would be double the size of a soccer pitch (see the photos of the site and the subsequent building). The car park is as large again. And the opening this week is revving up to be something special as you can see if you go to: http://www.bunnings.com.au/stores_224_Armidale.aspx . It looks to me larger than anything comparable I've seen in the UK. Judge for yourselves. The building is not only long, but has great depth.

To put things futher in perspective, Plymouth UK, (where some of my readers live) has a population of 250,000. To service that city, a Bunnings store would have to be the size of 20 soccer pitches - 10 for the store and 10 for the car park.

AS

Lemons

Some people are adept at buying lemons. We grow our own. When Dot retired, her parting gift was a couple of large terracotta tubs and we wondered for a while what to put in them. They adorn our westerly patio and get a fair bit of sun, so we hit on the idea of planting lemon trees.

Although the pots are large by garden standards, they have still bonzied the roots and the trees are only growing slowly. However, we're just in the process of harvesting the first quite impressive crop as the photo shows. Having picked and used several lemons already, I'm surprised how large and juicy they were - much better than those found in the supermarkets.

AS

Lovely Old Cars

As the attached pictures show, there were lots of lovely old cars on display this morning, all in excellent condition for their age. As far as I could tell, they were all from either the UK or the US, except perhaps for the Volkswagen Beetle I saw at one stage. I guess this reflects the dominant imports into Australia in a pre-Japanese, pre-Korean, and pre-European era. Now, of course, Australia is importing Great Wall cars from guess where.







The dominant makes were the Morris - Austin stable, including lots of MGs, and Chevrolets. They were augmented by a Bentley, a Rolls, a lovely Ford Thunderbird, a couple of Triumphs (of the sportier variety), and lots more. We often see older vehicles like these on our roads and I sometimes wonder if Armidale's (and Australia's) drier climate greatly aids vehicle preservation. Perhaps, also, Australians took to the roads earlier and in proportionately much greater numbers than Europeans, which could explain why we have a lot more older vehicles per capita. Perhaps the vehicle I liked most was the 1925 Crossley, made in the UK (second from the top of the 5 pictures). Can anyone remember seeing a Crossley before? I can't.

Given that I worked for a couple of years from 1969 to 1971 in Oxford at the Morris factory, I was especially interested in the cars associated with the company or that vicinity. They include, by the way, the Rolls because I was amazed to find that the Morris plant also made bodies for Rolls Royce, tucked away out of sight at the rear. I always wanted a 2 seater MG while I worked at that factory and I recalled vividly the models on display. In fact, I once rode during my last year at university up the A1 from Newcastle to Alnwick in one of the models on display today and in the same green colour. That was about 41 years ago and I maybe lucky to still be alive because I remember the speedo cranking past about 165 kph (or a little over 100 mph). I wasn't driving at the time and I won't say who was less the fuzz want to mount a belated prosecution.

Has anyone thought about buying a classic car? I'm now interested, especially if it's an old MG.

AS

Another Sunday

Dot and I were on our way to do some shopping this morning when we passed by Dumaresq Creek in the middle of town and noticed three simultaneous but unconnected events under way. We ditched the shopping for a while to explore them in turn.

The first was a meeting of the Armidale historic car club at which members displayed their prize vehicles. My next post deals with this event in more detail. The second was the Million Paws fund-raising day for the RSPCA where dog owners come together for a 4 km pooch walk followed by a series of events such as the dog with fastest wagging tail, or the hairiest dog. The final one was the bi-monthly farmers market where people go to buy organic produce or sheep manure and taste local wines.

By some extraordinary coincidence, all three happenings took place simultaneously in a 50m square alongside the creek - nicely compact, and attracting quite large crowds, except for the farmers market in the middle. The pictures show all three.

Cotton Gin

The completed modules are hauled by road to one of many nearby gins which are also large scale and highly mechanised in keeping with the industry's image. Just after leaving the farm shown in the last post, we reached the little village of Ashley which has one of the larger gins in the Gwydir valley, and the management willingly showed us around. It is owned by Namoi Cotton, one of the big players in the industry.

The gin has a vast storage yard where the modules are off-loaded and positioned according to owner and variety of cotton. As noted earlier, these modules are up to 20 tonnes in size, but increasingly the industry is using the more efficient - in labour cost terms - round modules which provide for better automation in the cotton fields, albeit only weighing perhaps 3 tonnes. The two types are shown in the attached illustrations.

The modules to be ginned are collected and delivered to a large factory building housing the noisy but very fast machinery to sort out the three components harvested: cotton lint, which goes to make our clothing; cotton seed, which can be processed further in either of two ways; and cotton trash - impurities or one kind or another. We were told however that most of the trash isn't quite rubbish since a lot of it goes to make jeans which apparently don't need the best quality cotton. The cotton seed ends up either as steak or oils used in medicines and other items. The former use sees cotton seed ending up as high protein cattle feed in one of the many intensive feedlots seen in this part of the world; the latter occurs after crushing of the seeds. So, if you ever see any Australian steak there is a remote, but only remote, chance that the animal in question consumed cotton seed at some stage. The third photo shows cotton seed being loaded on to a large truck. Unlike in most of Europe, trucks here are increasingly road trains with prime movers hauling up to three trailers behind them. The one shown here is a double-length trailer - nasty to get past on narrow rural raods, but just possible.

The final two illustrations show the gin itself and the final baling of refined lint ready for export. 95% of Australia's cotton crop is exported into world markets, especially SE Asia, and it is only through intense mechanisation and attention to quality that we can sell competitively into corrupt global markets where many producers receive large subsidies. The visit to the gin was an interesting diversion on the lengthy journey to St George - an opportunity not to be missed.

AS

On The Road Again

I'm on the road again, this time a 1400 km round trip from Armidale to Moree and St George. It's all part of the Cotton CRC project about innovative small businesses in cotton-growing communities and the two towns named are leading cotton producing regions in Australia. In fact, Moree Plains Shire has the greatest value of agricultural production of any local government area in Australia, much of it cotton. And the St George region on the Balonne - Condamine river system has possibly the world's largest single cotton producing enterprise whose on farm water storage capacity is large in volume than the water in Sydney harbour!

I'm typing this message up in St George after travelling through some of the massive cotton properties dotting NW New South Wales and Southern Queensland. As an example of the scale of operations and their degree of mechanisation have a look at the attached photos. The first picture shows cotton ready for picking. This entire crop was irrigated by vast artificial reservoirs whose outline appears in the second photo.

The picking system is almost entirely automated using the type of machinery shown in the third exhibit. However, this type of equipment has recently been superseded by new machines whose labour efficiency is almost three times greater. This is typical of an industry that is the most capital and research intensive in Australia and mostly in the hands of large industrial scale enterprises. Consider this. The field shown in this photo is almost unimaginably large by European standards, and probably in the US too. By our estimates it is about 20 square km or roughly 7 square miles in size.

The picker takes about 90 or 95% of the cotton off the bushes, leaving the rest to be ploughed back into the soil and the crop is stored on board as it goes up and down the rows. Periodically, it stops to unload the cotton into large 'modules' - containers capable of handling up to 20 metric tonnes of raw cotton. Photos 4 and 5 show modules lining the edge of the field and the transfer process from picker to module. This process is currently occurring over much of northern NSW where the crop is surprisingly late. However, the picking has ended in St George where some of the ground is now being prepared for winter wheat.

AS

Wool Expo 2

Perhaps the most popular exhibit at Wool Expo is the wool fashion parade and today's display was no different to usual. The clothing shown was designed by young people trying to make their name in the field and the entries were judged for numerous prizes at Sydney's Royal Easter Show. In the past the judging took place in Armidale, but the move to Sydney gave the event extra exposure.

The models this year were all local school-children or university students, and, unlike the professional models who pout their way along the cat-walk looking very unhappy at what they are being forced to wear, the local models seemed to be enjoying their opportunity at the Australia Wool Fashion Parade. And, by the way, the garments showed at least as much creativity as those from supposedly top designers. Of course, all items shown contained a large proportion of wool.

The display was highly professional down to the last detail - the lighting and bouncy music; the swirling of the models up and down the walkway; their deportment (despite what were often agonisingly high heels); and their grooming / makeup. The event was even watched by tables of diners on the far side from me eating in what was described as a slow food restaurant. I didn't get a close view of the food, but I presume the menu included escargots along with ample wine from local vineyards.

The attached illustrations show some of the large number of creations on display, including the overall fashion winner in the middle at the back in the group photo. I apologise for some blurring of the images due to the photos being taken indoors.

AS

Wool Expo 1

Armidale stages an annual expo dedicated to the wool industry, one of the mainstays of the local economy, and we trotted along as usual to see the exhibits, buy a few things and meet up with old friends. Like very day just recently, the weather was surprisingly warm (about 20C) and brilliantly sunny - without a cloud in the sky. It's hard to believe we're on the verge of Winter, which begins on 1 June.

The Expo is held down on the creeklands - a green space corridor along Dumaresq Creek. There one can watch displays of sheep shearing, and this year there was a competition between teams of UNE students. There were displays of fine wool, including the champion exhibit from the recently completed Royal Easter Show in Sydney. Simultaneously we saw sheep dog trials and exhibits of leading animals providing wool - including Alpacas. These are all show in the attached photographs. Bands played popular music for the young and, this being an area of Scottish heritage, we heard an obligatory pipe band all wearing regulation kit. Despite this being called New England, it might be better named New Scotland given its array of Celtic names including Armidale itself. Dot went shopping for woollen garments around the various merchandise displays and we acquired a free native plant for the garden. All this was topped off with an excellent Moroccan lunch.

AS

A celestial evening

Nights get cold at this time of year, especially when sunny days yield to crystal clear and starry nights. Despite the cold, I ventured forth with perhaps 150 others this evening for a special event run by the University of New England and Northern Tablelands Astronomical Society (UNENTAS). They had a field full of telescopes (perhaps 6 or 7 all up) trained on different parts of the sky and invited all to take a peep at the brilliant celestial display available at this time of the year, especially when the moon was absent from the sky. Even with the naked eye it was possible to see hundreds of millions of stars in a band across the sky.

However, the telescopes revealed lots of other treasures unseen without Galileo's invention. As I meandered from one instrument to another I saw Saturn's rings, a gas cloud in Orion, the Tarantula nebula and the Jewel Box - a cluster of bright stars near the Southern Cross. They were all beautiful, though missing the colour present in images from the Hubble telescope with their long exposure. I was able to take one image with my camera, which is attached. Saturn's rings are evident, but unclear as they are virtually side on at the moment. Perhaps I should join UNENTAS to examine the night sky regularly.

AS

UK Election

I have been keeping track of the UK election results as they come in via http://www.guardian.co.uk/. As I am looking at the current and predicted vote and seat tally among the various parties or groupings I am increasingly stunned by several things.

One is the heavy weather being made by the Tories of what should be a shoo-in election. The second is the un-representativeness of the electoral system where 58% of the vote has been given to the two major parties and they will get nearly all the seats. Three cheers for our system on several grounds. Turn-outs run at about 95% (but then voting is compulsory). Secondly, we have multiple transferable votes (so that we can rank candidates in order of preferences and the votes of the candidate with the smallest number of first preference votes are then redistributed to the second preference candidates; this goes on until some candidate reaches >50% of the votes cast). Such a system acknowledges that we may have varying degrees of preference for all the candidates and that we can weight our support in an appropriate way. Thirdly, this procedure can lead to strong local independents being elected to parliament quite regularly, something that is virtually impossible in the UK. Finally, the often short shelf-life of governments - Federal elections are held every three years - keeps the bastards honest.

My home region of New England in NSW is an independents' paradise. At both Federal and State levels we have no ALP, no Liberal, and no National Party members: just two independents in the State parliament and one Federal member. This is not accidental, but the result of highly effective local members earning the right to represent us and garnering extraordinarily high personal support. Armidale's State member, Richard Torbay, has 83% two-party preferred support (after the distribution of preferences) and is the nation's most popular politician. My friend Tony Windsor holds the Federal seat of New England with a well over 60% two-party preferred vote. In my view, a bunch of independents is a great check on the power of major parties; moreover, we have substantial numbers of truly independent and effective members of parliament made possible by not having a silly first past the post system.

Modern society is highly pluralist and cannot be effectively represented in a heavily two-party system. Of course, the outcome is that coalition governments frequently result because individual parties cannot win sufficient seats to govern in their own right. Even that is not a bar to good government in most jurisdictions. Parties have to hone their debating and negotiating skills to win arguments. And the evidence of the last 25 years points to successive Federal (and even some State) governments being in the global vanguard of innovative, efficient and effective reform that has created a strong and vibrant economy / society. This is despite the short electoral cycle! I'd much rather be here than in Europe, Japan, and the US right now.

AS it happens, I suspect that whichever combination wins office in the UK will have an uphill battle to take any of the radical surgery that Britain needs in financial regulation, welfare services, taxation, infrastructure and service supply. All these are on the table here with several revolutionary proposals in the melting pot. For example, the recent Ken Henry (Secretary to the Treasury) report on taxation reform is the latest episode in almost 30 years of continuous fiscal improvement which has given Australia low government debt, low taxation, efficient taxes, and high self-provision of welfare by the standards of developed countries.

AS

Rejuvenating Warren?

During our visit to the small town of Warren on the Macquarie River about 500 km from Armidale, we had a chance to walk around the town to see how it has fared since our visit in 2009. Well, the much anticipated arrival of artist Peter Browne has occurred and his shop greatly improves the main street. He was a wide repertoire, but is known for his signature portrayal of emus as shown by the accompanying photos of his shop window and the front of the building painted in a similar style. I rather like the effect, and more businesses might adopt the idea.

This said, Warren is struggling under the weight of adverse climatic and commodity price conditions. The production of irrigated cotton, which is probably Australia's most profitable crop, has dramatically contracted with dire effects on local employment and income and therefore retail expenditure. Unsurprisingly, several main-street businesses have closed and the shopping centre is looking rather sad.

AS

2400 km One Week - 1100 the next

The last two weeks have seen a lot of travel. Two weeks ago I was in Narrabri for a 3 day conference organised by the Cotton CRC (that was a round trip of 600km). Two days later it was off to Canberra and back, a round trip of 1800 km. A week later still and I'm now in the middle of a further 1100 km round trip to the very little towns of Wee Waa and Warren on the plains of central NSW to conduct focus groups with innovative business leaders.

Fortunately, we have a chauffeur this time to pilot us around the countryside because I'm more than a little tired of driving long distances. So my colleague, Bernice Kotey, and I sit back and have learned discussion on the world at large. Bernice is Ghanaian by birth and an Associate Professor in the New England Business School teaching in areas like entrepreneurship. By the way, 3500km equates to about 2200 miles, so it's a long way.

There are no pictures accompanying this post because I assume readers know what a road looks like.

AS

Armidale Autumn

This Autumn has been one of the most beautiful on record in every respect. It is now May, which is the equivalent of November in the northern hemisphere, but the days are brilliantly clear and warm with temperatures hovering in the low 20s (degrees C). Yesterday, for example, was 23 degrees, which is more like a summer temperature in the UK. We have also had little rain recently, and the drier conditions are slowly turning the deciduous trees into brilliant shades of yellow, orange and red. Better still, the leaves are hanging in the trees for a long time as they are not dislodged by wind and rain.

Armidale has long had a policy of planting street trees everywhere, and mostly of non-native deciduous varieties. In contrast, native vegetation tends to keeps its foliage all year round. All this adds to the Autumn colour seen in the photographs: the reds of claret ash; yellows of Lombardy poplars and golden ash; or the orange of Pistachia Chinensis. The photos were taken in streets near our home and give quite a good impression of the thousands of colourful trees dotting the landscape.

AS