Happy 1st Birthday to us.

joe6pack Uncategorized

happy birthday cake gif 3I year ago ,this  https://pbxmastragics.com/2012/12/11/hello-world/” started our little blog on it’s journey.

Since then we have had just over 1.5 million views and just over 108,000 individual comments.

My thanks go to Fiona &  bushfirebill for doing most of the work, and helping me make this little place what it is. Thank you to all the guest authors as well.

I would like to thank c@tmomma for her contributions while she was here.

BK for the dawn patrol links, and CK Watt for doing the raffles deserve special mention as well.

Most of all though, thank you all for your comments,wonderful stories and insights and for taking the time to contribute to , and read “The Pub”

Edit.

Thanks to the lurkers for looking in . you are appreciated and welcome .

 

 

288 thoughts on “Happy 1st Birthday to us.”

  10. In our 2 latest editions of our local rag last friday and today Craig Thompson has recieved more coverage space than Chris Hartcher. the msm are still bashing labor as if they were still in government.

  11. This is extracted from the official GM Detroit announcement. It is the only part of the release that talks about reasons for closure.
    ______________________________________________________________________________________
    “Since 2001, the Australian dollar has risen from US$0.50 to as high as US$1.10 and from as low as 47 to as high as 79 on the Trade Weighted Index. The Australian automotive industry is heavily trade exposed. The appreciation of the currency alone means that at the Australian dollar’s peak, making things in Australia was 65 percent more expensive compared to just a decade earlier.”
    _______________________________________________________________________________________
    The $45 additional cost propery attributable to the carbon tax does not get a mention. It is absolutely insignificant in the scheme of things.

  12. Well done, Joe and associates. I enjoy the appreciation of decency that exists here, the regular exposing of the godless tories and the occasional personal tale. Congratulations, one and all. Onwards and upwards.

  15. There wouldn’t be too many Australians over 50 who at one stage of their lives haven’t owned a Holden or a Ford. Equally, there isn’t that many remote areas from the tip to the bottom and everywhere in between that you wouldn’t find rusting, burnt out shells of them either.

    These vehicles were an integral part of opening up this country while the Landcruiser was beginning to earn its stripes. Admittedly being up against, imho, the hugely unreliable Landrover, did it no harm. The Holdens and Fords were used in country that the Landcruiser and others were tested in. All with a toolkit that mainly consisted of spare fan belts, hoses, stockings, ground pepper, silver solder and iron, vulcaniser patches, a pair of pliers and half a coil of #8 fencing wire. The accessories were a roo bar, spotlights and hessian water bag. The air conditioners were 60 x 2. Two windows down, 60mph….adjust the settings by using the quarter glass.

    By todays standards they were basic and rough. But they were strong, reliable, but easily fixable, and as an added bonus most of the back seats, when at a drive in theatre, created and solved many a fertility problem.

    Recently I sold my 71 Kingswood. A vehicle I had owned for 30 or so years. The reasons aren’t important, but it has gone to a great new home…even been resprayed. The old tart. I am now left with my Kia, and don’t get me wrong, it’s a great little car. Especially in shopping centre carparks etc which don’t suit the older bigger, non power steering vehicles. It’s good on fuel, but the damned thing wont start until I do everything it tells me to do. I truly am sick of being belled, whistled and upbraided by an electronic voice.

    I miss my Kingswood. She understood me.

    Call me silly. Call me what you will. When we lose Holden and Ford we are going to lose the memories of journeys, of farm roads carved out virgin scrub, of cars parked out the front of isolated country halls where a barn dance was being held. The men, generally, ” ducking out for a minute “to have a beer in the carpark and all helping to hold up the back of Berts ute.

    We’re going to lose history, a sense of ourselves, as nothing defined Australia like the early Holden and Ford utes. We really are losing more than a manufacturing capacity.

  16. Ian,

    History is nothing to this mob, apart from the Windschuttle kind and The Wonderful Howard Years.

  20. ian

    “There wouldn’t be too many Australians over 50 who at one stage of their lives haven’t owned a Holden or a Ford “.

    I be a kiwi but had a 186 a Premier and a Statesman . Had to overcome some bias as in the late 60’s early 1970’s Holdens were called “Golden Holdens” because they rusted out in 5 minutes flat in NZ . It was a rust proofing problem which was corrected but it took years for them to shake off their reputation.

  23. Ian, my first car was an Escort panel van. And in my first act of defiance to my mum, I put a mattress in the back.

  24. kk

    Had to overcome some bias as in the late 60′s early 1970′s Holdens were called “Golden Holdens” because they rusted out in 5 minutes flat in NZ.

    The problem was, obviously, New Zealands aversion to red dirt, spinifex and sun.

  25. Sorry, that should read ‘second act of defiance’. The first was not having had a haircut for two years at that time. Ah the 70’s, when men were men, girls were girls, and you couldn’t tell the difference!

  27. Last car was a Ford Laser, stood up to the abuse I handed out to it pretty well (weekly trips with 250Kg of brewstuffs or 250Kg flour all the way from Strathalbyn to Unley, present car is a 1983 Ford Telstar, previous owner a skinflint didn’t do much maintenance but drives like a dream, big car space inside yet only 2L engine. Actually, biggest car I have owned in my life! 167K on clock, hope I can drive it to about 220k — going to sand back the rust and paint it red and yellow with bits of black with pink stripe — look like a brothel on wheels by the time I am finished! (Why not? Zero resale value!)

    I do think back sometimes to my first car, a Mazda 1100cc, could turn on a 3d, not like the front drive Fords, zippy with only me in the car.

    But FUCK the FUCKING Libs for destroying the car industry here!

  32. Another act of sheer bastardry from Morrison.
    Austalian hospitals and doctors have always been happy to treat people from overseas who cannot get the surgery they need in their own country. Not any more. Morrison disgusts me.
    Australia denies Somali woman surgery

    FEDERAL Labor has called on Immigration Minister Scott Morrison to reconsider a decision to deny a Somali woman a short-term visa that would allow her to undergo surgery for gunshot wounds.

    Ayaan Mohamed, 25, had her face shattered by a bullet as her family tried to flee violence in Somalia’s brutal civil war. She was two years old at the time.

    Because the complicated facial reconstruction surgery she requires is not available in her homeland, Brisbane’s Wesley Hospital and Rotary had offered to bring her to Australia.

    But the government has refused to grant Ayaan a short-term medical visa.

    Opposition immigration spokesman Richard Marles said the Australian identity was one characterised by compassion.

    “Mr Morrison, this decision makes no sense,” he said.

    “It appears profoundly unfair and needs to be reconsidered.”

    http://www.news.com.au/national/breaking-news/australia-denies-somali-woman-surgery/story-e6frfku9-1226780814155

  34. Escort van, Datsun 260Z , got married and the work van [Hi ace] doubled up, a pathetic Corolla, Kia Carens [written off, not my fault] a sexed up Chrysler PT Cruiser, and now a snazy little Swift

  42. http://www.canberratimes.com.au/business/comment-and-analysis/why-tony-abbott-must-change-and-govern-for-all-australians-20131211-2z5dc.html

  45. How weird, or ironic, or whatever – the political father of the Holden car was Joseph Benedict Chifley. The man who delivered the death blow to Holden is named after him.

    Joseph Benedict Hockey, the “small L” Liberal, suffers the torment of being named after “large L” Labor prime minister Joseph Benedict Chifley, the man whose postwar immigration drive brought the Hokeidonians to Sydney in 1948. Joe’s father Richard arrived at 21 in Australia as a refugee from Bethlehem – then known as the British Mandate of Palestine – and anglicised the Armenian family name to improve business in their delicatessen.

    http://www.smh.com.au/executive-style/management/no-ordinary-bloke-joe-hockey-20090518-b9me.html

  50. So, my mum’s house sold. Not quite as much as I would have liked, but very well given the imminent downturn in the Australian economy (thank you to PMBO’s adults only team …) and she’s pretty happy.

    Tomorrow morning, the Salvos come to take a few things away, we have a few things to sort out with the estate agent (who, bless him, has also agreed to sell my mother’s car for her), then I must persuade mum to pack clothes for the next week …

    Friday, final packing of things that we will be taking to Melbourne with us, and lunch with some longtime friends.

    Saturday, the removalists will pack everything and “uplift”. Moi will supervise, sort of.

    Sunday – and this is the important bit – any Canberra and District Pubster interested in a VERY informal meeting please see the UPDATE!

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