Lithgow, Bathurst & the Central West

I still think the greatest danger of social media isn’t misinformation. It’s the subtle way it’s replaced community life itself, it’s where we actually live now In ‘vertical’ online communities. Facebook is a US…

From tonight the public forum at Bathurst Council meetings will be included in live streaming. It's interesting, that idea of 'the public'. Very often it's the same handful of people who dominate forums like this,…

I posted about the new way they’re regenerating forest in desserts, where instead of just planting new trees (which usually fails), they’re targeting the roots of old trees that have been cut down over generations,…

I’m always up early, about 4.30am. I love early mornings. Today I’ve been listening to the beautiful gentle rain here, that has been falling for hours. It makes me think about information I saw yesterday about other…

I’m serious that social media is entrenching Year 9 as our permanent adult culture. This group shows it, and is getting more granular and personal as time goes on, to the extent that some people seem incapable of doing…

Again I can’t comment on behalf of Bathurst Regional Council. But I can express a personal and general view about local government, and use Bathurst as an example. Pretty much every council in Australia is ‘broke’.…

The Busby Street developments have been controlversial in Bathurst, but that isn’t saying a lot, as anything that happens in a community now generates a pile-on. That’s social media culture, you can see it in the…

When I use the word ‘kidult’, it’s not meant to be just some cheap insult. It’s an analytical term invented by people who study societies, to describe a type of culture, where adult life is replaced by an extended…

Prize for wally of the day to the parent who thought it would be a good idea to do a session with their L-plate child all the way from Mt Victoria to Lithgow, via the current diversion along the Darling Causeway and…

For those who like everyday comparisons, Kell just quarter-filled our Kluger (hybrid). The fuel cost $55, for a quarter of a tank. To fully charge the Tesla costs us either nothing, if we use solar and the home…

I often post about how culture is invisible to the people living it. Fish don’t know water exists until they’re beached. And that Western culture has no idea of ‘place’. No meaningful connection to the ground under its…

One of the strident critics of Bathurst Council.

Lithgow is Australia’s Strait of Hormuz. Maybe it should start a blockade ;)

I’ve been using Tesla’s supervised self-driving for my entire round trip to work each day, a 130km commute on both urban and regional roads. It’s been absolutely flawless. Coming down Tunnel Hill in Lithgow yesterday,…

I post so much about status because it really is the key that unlocks all human behaviour. Another example, maybe 20-25 years ago I noticed quite a few more luxury European cars circulating in Lithgow. That wasn’t…

It seems big and grunty diesel trucks can't get up Scenic Hill in Lithgow.

I’ve been driving the newer Tesla Model Y all this week, the YL. Patrick gets why this is the best car ever made. But it’s now even better, the YL even has adaptive suspension that allows you to move between fast…

This was the energy use of the new Tesla, driving 62km to Bathurst yesterday. To translate that into a comparision with a petrol or diesel vehicle, the standard dual cab ute (Australia’s favourite cars), if it could use…

Just one of Bathurst’s stormwater channels that run through the town, collecting run-off. It’s incredible how fast these become raging torrents, even with light rain. Why people end up dead playing in stormwater drains.…

The most common trick populists use is to relentlessly imply that a town or nation is ‘heading in the wrong direction’, is being led by ‘incompetent and corrupt’ people, and that your town or country is being taken away…

Ask anybody how our democracies work and they’ll trot out the usual guff about parliaments and elections and voting etc. Since the 1990s all of that is gone. Social media algorithms govern our societies. Humans are…

I shared that the main Bathurst Facebook group had been suspended. I wanted to share the reason the group admins gave for doing it. Like I say, simple imitation of even innocent things leads to rivalry. Rivalry leads to…

This is the nonsense of 'community consultation' today. A stack of locals in a hall or on the socials, having a whinge. Lithgow should be begging for multiple AI data centres. I challenge anybody to identify another…

The Bathurst ‘Current Affairs Group’, meeting with the local member. Highlighting something I’ve posted about before here, the big growth in retirees in our community, often highly capable and with long careers behind…

Brian showing his age. And that even smart people are swept up in dumb viral outrages. Incidentally I asked an AI chatbot the same question and it gave me the exact album cover. Meta AI is social media AI. There’s your…

The times they are a 'chargin'. The Bathurst Tesla Superchargers used to sit empty most of the time, except on busy holidays. (Which is normal, most charge at home.) Absolutely packed today, and a new car arrived with…

One of the most glaring symptoms of the problem with all Western cultures is their total neglect of regional life. You only need to look at the highway system to see it. Tens of billions spent creating smooth multi-lane…

With Bathurst coming up, even if you’re not a car racing fan, there’s a genius to V8 Supercars that I think it’s still super important for everybody to understand. A specific Australian genius, that goes well beyond car…

Dick Smith is sponsoring this, another one of his fact-free crusades, like Dick Smith peanut butter. What does nuclear mean for Lithgow? Nothing. Australia will never build nuclear reactors for electricity. Nobody will…

The Nerd Reich is well underway. Simpletons still think this is a battle of Left vs Right, like those who think the Bathurst 1000 is still a battle of Fords and Holdens. Decades of slogans on ‘red tape’ and…

This person is using Facebook as if Facebook IS Bathurst. That’s the new norm, we live inside social media platforms, we’re not talking about our towns here, this IS our towns. Seamless, people don’t see them as two…

The Facebook franchise we used to call Bathurst is furious. Prepare for an ‘onslaught’, apparently. ‘We know who they are’, ‘not a big enough town to hide’! This is the switch in the social media bait and switch. The…

That’s Lithgow to Bathurst. It’s one of the main reasons I went with Tesla, that efficiency almost unparalleled in electric cars. Most of them struggle to do less than 20 kW hours per hundred kilometres. The Tesla did…

On the way into work yesterday, one of the local politicians was doing election shots in the park. My attention was drawn more to the glorious, colourful corruption and incompetence of Council, on display in the flower…

For people with the debilitating condition of range anxiety, more real world examples. To drive to Sydney from Lithgow with an EV battery at 100% to start, you arrive all the way over on the coast with a battery still…

My $3.60 in electricity for a week of commuting between Bathurst and Lithgow was based on an estimate. I re-did the calculation using actual data from the car this morning. It's $2.40. Per week. If I was working in the…

The beauty of a home battery is that you get to control your energy costs. As an example, I program the battery to top up if needed between midnight and 6am, when we get super cheap electricity from the grid, and also…

Beautiful Lithgow.

The car lobby is also the parking lobby. Nothing exercises Bathurst more for example than parking spaces. What causes increased traffic and increased need for parking, is new roads and new parking spaces. It induces…

Social media had a big Bathurst victory yesterday. You’ll read about it in Council news in the coming days. Meanwhile in the US a social media cult destroying America is under assault from a social media mob destroying…

Bathurst is going to awaken every day to the consequences of wanting to spend more on dining out, take away food and recreational travel, than on its civic life.

I can't comment much on Bathurst issues, but see this mistake all the time. 'Management' of local government i.e. full-time Council staff, don't make the big decisions about what happens in a town. Those decisions are…

The thing most populations now are completely addicted to, social media, is destroying their societies as they use it. This Lithgow experience is shared by councils everywhere. If you think ‘attack’ is too strong a…

M3 = Model 3 Tesla. For those suffering from range anxiety, notice he drove Brisbane to Bathurst with no issues at all. And it’s true what he says, the driving is so pleasurable you almost hate getting out of the car at…

In Bathurst social media warriors are outraged that Council has a single electric truck. But it’s an open question whether towns even exist now anyway, or whether they’re just a collection of social media groups. (And…

Wonderful footage from the 1960s of construction by the then Department of Main Roads (the DMR) of part of the Sydney-Newcastle expressway. Lots of familiar bits of road even today. I love that post-war public optimism,…

There's a vehicle driving from Lithgow to Bathurst every day, normally at about 90 km/h. Often has a queue of traffic behind it. I went to overtake them today, and suddenly they were doing 125. This sort of driving…

Last night’s meeting was a bearpit. Bathurst is heading for a very nasty collision, on rates. I wish I could comment more on that. My personal view is add up how much you spend on recreation (including travel), dining…

This can be true, and why I encourage people who are thinking about going electric to skip hybrids and go straight to full-EV, unless they're doing lots of long distance driving in remote areas. For example our trip to…

The recently opened Flyers Creek wind farm, near Orange and Bathurst, produces enough electricity alone to power both towns. Expect to see a dramatic and welcome acceleration in renewables now the LNP have been kicked…

The beaten dog syndrome, when you inherit a pet that’s been beaten by a broom for example, and then for the rest of its life every time you sweep the dog panics and hides. I’ve noticed a similar thing driving the Tesla…

One of my favourite examples of how suggestible and manipulable people are. When wind turbines first appeared in the Central West, most people didn’t care, while for others councils even built viewing platforms to see…

I was delighted to see the Nats and some Liberals are still committed to nuclear power. That should bed them down for several more terms in opposition, by which time the grid will be mostly renewables. In Lithgow the…

I noticed yet another symptom of kidult culture this week. A preface, those with no exposure to the front line of classroom teaching decided it was a good idea to give parents a much bigger role in schools. Now ask any…

How it feels when you park your EV in the Coles car park in Lithgow.

It’s worth letting this graphic sink in, to let basic science and engineering inform car choice, rather than the pissing contest of branding. How much the fabled range of petrol and diesel cars is bought at the cost of…

Bathurst’s councillors still wrestling with the issue of revenue. I encourage everybody to go to the iPart website and have a look at the special rate variations approved for just about every Council in the State over…

Yesterday Lithgow was the coldest place in the entire country, in the morning. Today is even colder. The house is toasty warm, in every room, and has been all night. I heated up its thermal mass yesterday with free…

It's going to be challenging to transport huge wind turbines into the Central West. Who cares? It was challenging to go to the moon too. I'm sick of the whining and complaining of activists. I know people are probably…

Lithgow is having one of its annual balls tomorrow night. Will be a fantastic onramp into the school holidays for some I suspect.

I’m seeing a lot of Model Ys now, even in Bathurst and Lithgow. Like when it was originally introduced, it sells so well because it’s engineered so brilliantly to cover so many needs. Its inside space is huge, a genuine…

Sharing my own data. This is what it cost to charge the EV in June. An average of $5.50 per week. That’s 2-3 return trips to Bathurst every week, 1-2 return trips to Sydney a month and everyday driving around Lithgow.…

The most important room in Bathurst. Council’s records archive, dating back to first European settlement. This is the ‘red tape’ opinionated windbags complain about, that actually runs societies. Without this room…

For those with range anxiety. Brisbane to Bathurst and return, Tesla Model Y.

I like to share the everyday experiences of owning an electric car, because for most all they hear is the battle cries of various competing pro-and-anti EV teams. For example, in my drive from Lithgow to Bathurst every…

Bathurst Our Town doesn’t celebrate the lives of great engineers or teachers or nurses or tradies who die. But musicians, yes. Because they’re like our gods. Kidult culture. What Bathurst Our Town does most is give…

If you’re getting solar, do a shade analysis before buying (good installers will do it for you). For example this mighty tree in my street was factored into our system. By 3.30 most winter days, it shades our entire…

BYD now has a home base in Bathurst. This is a huge step forward I think, in helping people make the transition. They want their local support.

The EV not only measures how much energy is used on a trip, if you’ve driven the road before it has a memory of your last trip there. Every little peak and slope on this graph corresponds with a different part of the…

Comments by a Bathurst councillor last night calling out misinformation and disinformation movements, referring to a program on ABC’s Compass. This is the issue of our time, the Trumpian populist tricks that shock jocks…

NSW only recently had local government elections. Social media Bathurst isn’t happy with who won, so is now trying to mobilise more ongoing abuse aimed at the Council. People really should pay attention to how kidult…

The Nats are doing the rounds of Central West towns to whip people into an idiot frenzy about windmills again. You know what the future of most of these towns is right now? Nothing. Do the Nats have a single idea what…

People can be such gullible numpties. When they built the wind towers near Blayney, people were so excited to see them they even had to build a viewing platform. Then the National Party was in crisis, after Barnaby…

How well do you really understand the town you live in? Victoria right now is looking for a ‘sovcit’ (sovereign citizen) who murdered two police officers. Lithgow has already had a sovcit siege. The ‘March for…

Anybody dealing with the public now is feeling this every day. They’re under assault. As the article says, it got a lot worse after the lockdowns. Often this is given as a reason we shouldn’t have locked down, but then…

Nampijinpa Price got the boot yesterday, from her own side. One of Australia’s leading Trumpians. For Bathurst residents it’s worth noting she’s also a pin-up poster girl for the social media-led coalition dominating…

I’m old enough to remember a Bathurst where civic life was people rolling up their sleeves to help build a community. Where even when the work day ended, you joined a community organisation, like Rotary or Lions or…

The easiest social media posts to critique are the obvious hate speech type things, or scammers, or people being generally abusive. But this type of friendly innocuous post is actually the most dangerous symptom of all…

Had a quick drive in and out of Sydney yesterday, and observed driver behaviour as I always do. What I found. About 30% of drivers were consistently below or well below the speed limit. About 40% of drivers were…

Trump's decision to reject renewables is leading America into a full energy crisis. They're critically short of electricity, and coal and nuclear, his (and all the loons worldwide who ride the Trump train) favourite…

A Formula E car. All-electric. These cars only carry relatively small batteries, much smaller than modern EV road cars, less than 40 kWh. It's still enough to do nearly 100 km, at very high speeds. They flog an F1 car…

Wow, Bathurst 1000 price now. I'm sure the $25 hamburger crowd think that's reasonable.

Opponents of the pumped hydro in Lithgow cite damage to platypus populations as one of their main arguments. One of the loon things anti-renewables people do is suddenly develop a fake interest in ecology. It’s the…

I loved the F35 fly-by at the Bathurst 1000 on the weekend.

This happened in Lithgow on Friday. Cut water to much of the town for the weekend. I know people resent the idea of kidult culture, but it was another classic example of it. What was the overwhelming response, from the…

One of my favourite things to do now is use AI on my walks to learn more about the plants I see. You can even talk to AI directly, or just take photos and ask for details about what you’re seeing. The landscape opens up…

My car drove me to work today. The entire way, country highway, overtaking slower vehicles, roundabouts, traffic lights (negotiates amber beautifully), city traffic etc. Absolutely flawlessly, I didn't need to do a…

I’m using AI to do something that I think is wonderful. You may have seen me post here in the past about how our understanding of Australia is based on a set of really crazy prejudices that we brought here with European…

The Botany Bay region, as described by Cook, Banks and Parkinson upon European arrival in Australia. The Bathurst Plains recreation I posted earlier was from firsthand accounts by Evans, Macquarie and Oxley, upon…

A re-creation of the view between the Blue Mountains, Southern Tablelands and Monaro, as observed by Dawes (1788-89), Mitchell (1830s), Hume and Hovell (1824). A 'burning mosaic', alternating patches of fresh green…

The National Party's push to turn windmills into a regional political issue could end up costing councils a fortune in wasted legal fees, if they get involved. Tamworth Council for example has just had a judge more or…

Dr John isn’t a medical doctor, though a large part of his success is allowing people to believe that. He influences millions. Had a young woman turn up to work to tell me that Council should be spreading Dr John’s news…

Tonight Bathurst’s councillors decide the fate of the general manager. There is a strong belief amongst the social media crowd that removing the general manager will find a magical extra $10-$15 million a year. It’s…

Somebody wrote a very smart pushback to the populist political surge in local government, in Bathurst. The Facebook invasion. The only thing I’d add to this is that General Managers implement the decisions of elected…

Saw a lot of this sort of thing after the storms in Bathurst, with truckloads of abuse for Council staff. The 'nature strip' or verge (road reserve) is indeed Council land, and sometimes it plants trees there. If those…

I want to talk about the ‘hollowing-out’ of towns, to give more context to my deep dislike of modern travel culture. This is Bourton-on-the-Water, in the Cotswolds, one of the most photographed towns in the UK. It has…

It's so hard to talk about anything today without people defaulting to their team in whatever fake 'debate' has been set up around it. Like discussing Tesla things, it fires up the anti-Elons and the anti-EVs and…

My boy thoughtfully drove all the way to Bathurst yesterday to get us Vietnamese pork rolls for lunch. I enjoyed watching the car top itself up with free sunshine when he got home. Total fuel cost for the 130km trip?…

Two days after this happened, I was driving to work in Bathurst along the same stretch of road, and a ute towing two dirt bikes overtook me doing at least 20 km/h over the speed limit.

The new Western Sydney international airport will be open as early as 2026. Had a look at the flight paths today, some of which will go right over the Blue Mountains and Lithgow. And unlike Kingsford Smith, it’ll be…

Hopefully the FB groups trying to run Bathurst saw this. The bats in Bathurst were part of a mass starvation event. Well over a thousand pups died in Machattie Park alone. This matters in huge ways, because bats…

Great publicity for Lithgow. Councils don’t have enough money to fix or build basic infrastructure now. People don’t want to have the conversation, but pay far more for personal recreation, travel and dining out/take…

Have seen some weird accidents before, but I’ll be intrigued how the one currently just the Bathurst side of Maccas happened.

There are so many debates about housing, and like in so many other things, some of the ways these problems have been solved in the past have been forgotten. From the 17th century in Europe and 19th century here in…

There were 131 local objections to the Glanmire solar farm. Only 6 letters of support. It was approved by the State Government. If that seems strange, objections included: - risk of fire (?!) - noise (?!) - impact on…

Making fun of Lithgow is a national pastime. If you wanna ride that train, you better have something pretty special to match 8800 TONNES of Nutella, every year.

There was only one EV again at the Bathurst charging station when I was there today. (Not this one, it was a Tesla Model Y.) I had a chat to the owner, who obviously loved his car. The hysteria about chargers and range…

The storm between Bathurst and Lithgow tonight was the closest thing I’ve ever experienced to Armageddon on a road. 20km or more of cyclonic rain, lightning strikes metres from the road and overhead, maybe 100 cars…

Spotted this BYD Atto 3 in Bathurst yesterday, there are a few of them around. Have a look if you see one parked somewhere, really cool design. Lots of room inside too for a small car, and the interior is even funkier…

I love that of all the things Welsh men could have chosen to do in life, right near the top of their list was to sing. This is music, there’s not much that can rival an all-male choir for goosebumps. Lithgow has a lot…

I did the Bathurst Council meeting last night, and can’t comment more than that. But in neighbouring Orange you can see the sorts of things that now dominate politics at all levels, while societies collapse around us.…

Lithgow folk, what the hell was that? Earthquake? Explosion?

This is a social catastrophe that still has a long way to run. Cities and towns (including Bathurst) can’t even house essential workers. The standard idea that it’s all a problem of ‘supply’ isn’t right. It’s a lack of…

Big jump in fuel prices again overnight. I see north of $2.40/litre for 95 or 98 in Bathurst. The true definition of range for any vehicle: how far can you afford to drive it? 🙂 Imagine being an Australian arguing to…

The reason housing prices don’t come down, no matter how much we build, is because housing is not a ‘market’. In a market, new suppliers can always add new products for sale, which is where competition then happens with…

Crabapples growing wild, street trees in Bathurst. Ran into an elderly European couple last year picking these, to the bemusement of passers by, who had no idea what they were. They were going to make jam, said it was a…

I can’t really talk about Council business, but a couple of important general points about Mount Panorama. Council doesn’t run the racing events, and therefore isn’t entitled to a huge share of the revenue from those…

Delighted to see the BYD Seal already making inroads into Bathurst. A beautiful car with kickass grunt, great range and low price tag. Some lucky person now has zero fuel bills to boot. Aren't those recessed door…

I don’t live in Bathurst. But I grew up there, and I work there. Come September people need to decide whether they want Facebook groups to run the town. I know how I’d vote.

It'd be worth a bet that Lithgow/Wang will be on Peter Dutton's list of nuke options, given neither town tends to vote for the LNP anyway, so they're less likely to lose important votes. Which is all any of this is…

The solution is there already. Saw another BYD Seal in Bathurst yesterday. There are at least some smart people out there.

Lithgow had two coal plants. One was smack bang in the middle of Wang, and only a few minutes away. Now shut down. Mt Piper is not far away. Local doctors have tried to raise awareness for years that the health of the…

It seems the local member was excited about the prospect of nuclear power, until somebody told him Mt Piper and Wang are on the list of possible locations. How many Lithgow folk know that? Good morning Springfield!…

Cars destroyed city life. Barcelona is just one city fighting back. This is what cities used to be like. Now they’re loud, the air is filthy, and vehicles dominate everything. When Bathurst launched a ‘Streets as Shared…

“…a social trend of “petro-masculinity” in which men flamboyantly use fossil fuels to express their opposition to social progress.” Also the more aggressive style of driving the vehicles encourage that’s mentioned here…

Fellow residents of Lithgow, a ‘dying town’. What treasures await us. (Thanks @[1211100269:2048:Adam].)

Have been running the reverse-cycle units (heat pumps in techno language) 24 hours a day this (cold) winter, as an experiment. You can see in the yellow circle that overnight, in a cold Lithgow winter, they use hardly…

10 in Lithgow now, the roll-out really ramping up. Most locals will charge at home. Huge list of whingers in the comments. They can go and buy some $2/litre happiness to cheer up.

By my count there are about 40 petrol bowsers in Lithgow. There are now 10 EV chargers. Some may think that means we need a lot more EV chargers. But most local drivers in a town won’t use fast-chargers, they’ll charge…

Lithgow Council pushing back hard here. And it’s a Nationals-led Council, in a LNP seat.

Government ministers visit for actual things. Nobody came to visit us for the nuclear fantasy. Without this, Lithgow is toast.

Good morning Bathurst.

I think we’re in denial about just how old our society now is. Take Lithgow as an example. Current population is over 20,000. Here’s a trivia question - how many of those people actually work? Only just over 4,500.…

A very common sight at the Bathurst Tesla superchargers. No vehicles. It might look like nobody is interested in EVs. But it’s showing the reality of something I post about here. Nearly all EV charging is done at home.…

Bathurst like many places is about to decide whether to let FB groups run the town. I can't comment on Bathurst specifically, but in general terms I wouldn't let social media run a chocolate wheel.

Immortalised! By accident. The new Centennial Park in Bathurst. Right at the front of that group of kids saying hello to the elephant are Mike and me, twins in Kindergarten. 1973.

The Bathurst 1000 will never be a river of gold for Bathurst Council because it’s not a Council event. Council owns the track, not the event. It gets a track hire fee, but not some enormous cut of the race revenue,…

The future of Lithgow is in this graph. On current trends that future is about 5 years.

NSW really can be the arse-end of the world. The only jurisdiction on the planet with average speed safety cameras that doesn’t use them for cars. FINALLY after a big surge in road deaths, NSW politicians have…

Still lots of counting to go. But in both Bathurst and Lithgow, the local government election has so far produced the same pattern we’re seeing at State and federal levels. The equivalent of a ‘hung parliament’, with no…

Thankfully FB groups are coming to power in Bathurst, to put an end to this incompetence.

The main reason we’re seeing a massive influx of bats to places like Bathurst is still the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires. Those fires destroyed enormous amounts of native habitat. Bats are actually a main way that…

“Lithgow's this wonderful hidden gem that people don't realise is here.” It sure is. Tourism won’t save it. Tourism destroys places. But festivals, sure.

Final local election results due early this week. At this stage it looks like Facebook has won the Bathurst election. Buckle up.

For those who don't follow these things, the new Bathurst Council: Ben Fry Jac Underwood Sophie Wright Natalie Cranston Stumpy Taylor Warren Aubin Elaine West Tony Gullifer Jess Jennings

I’m sure residents of Bathurst are excited about their imminent giant dinosaur tourist draw card.

Read the comments. The whole world is starting to see the problem with travel. Many Blue Mountains towns are now unlivable on weekends and in holidays.

Heard a loud bang at 1:20am here in Lithgow. Not sure if man-made, or an earth tremor. Nothing listed on the official earthquake site. Anybody else?

Bathurst elects its next Mayor and Deputy Mayor today, streamed live for your viewing pleasure from 2pm, on the Bathurst Regional Council YouTube page. (Link below.) The stream will come online a bit before 2, and just…

I see reports that Tony Shadie died, my old physics teacher. (Hans Stroeve just confirmed.) Many of my friends would have been taught by him too. Nigel were you in the physics class? I know David was, Lisa I think you…

The Bathurst 1000, the race that fascinates a nation. But not everybody in Bathurst.

Lithgow doesn’t want pumped hydro. But it probably wants a big nuclear power station.

Kell told me she saw a BYD in Lithgow yesterday, describing it is a very nice looking sedan. A Seal. You can tell she doesn’t read my FB posts ;)

This is what the Bathurst Tesla superchargers still look like most days. Not because nobody owns Teslas in Bathurst (there are lots), but because fast-chargers are used mostly by travellers, not locals. Unlike petrol…

You know EVs are taking off when you see them driving in Lithgow. I saw an Xpeng G6 this morning, fabulous mid-sized electric SUV. One of the most advanced EVs on the market, but still around that $60K mark. A steal for…

Snapshots from the kidult culture we live in. This is Bathurst’s new animal rehoming centre, its new ‘pound’. Fabulous facility. But now closed to animal drop-offs, because it’s completely overwhelmed by abandoned…

The attempt to do this in Bathurst led to community outrage. I mean everything leads to community outrage now, that’s the culture worldwide.

Get into it, Bathurst. Everything from BYD Sharks to BMW i4s, BYD Seals, Teslas, Polestars, KIAs, Hyundais etc.

The CSIRO has done detailed modelling of bushfire risk into the future for each part of Australia. You can plug in your postcode to see. Lithgow is at the upper end of increased risk. This will flow through into higher…

The Lithgow West brigade doing good work extinguishing yet another combustion engine fire.

I enjoy watching people posting about electric cars to social media, because it always prompts a pile-on from Flat Earth fossil fuel fans. Always the same idiot grinning emojis, with comments like ‘hope it won’t catch…

It’s hard to put a finger on what’s unique about Lithgow, in Australia. I’ll likely never leave. I think that it’s the transplanting of a British industrial village, into the Australian landscape. The picture below is…

Bathurst is glorious right now, with all the rain it feels more like Spring than summer.

Hybrid update, our Kluger. Latest fuel consumption figure is 4.8L/100km. For a 2.3 tonne 7-seater car. That's with majority highway driving (Lithgow-Bathurst), which is actually less efficient with a hybrid because you…

The Bathurst begonias are stunning again this year. I know pretty much nothing about begonias, not a flower I’ve ever had much to do with.

Latest Lithgow-Bathurst drive in the big hybrid Kluger - 4.7L/100km. I mention it again because one interesting geographic fact that takes many in both Bathurst and Lithgow by surprise is that Lithgow is about 300m…

The 'NSW Government’s Stronger Country Communities program' is a vote-buying slush fund, as most grant schemes are. Government first strips essential funding, then hands it back in much smaller novelty cheques precisely…

Good to see government funding new EV charging points in towns, including Lithgow. But we should electrify the whole town, everything. It would make it the cheapest place to live in NSW. We’re already a town with a long…

Beautiful Lithgow, as an example. There are over 10,000 households in Lithgow. Pretty much all of them own at least one vehicle, many own 2 or more. Average fuel price for a year is about $5000 per vehicle. That means…

The Lithgow Show fireworks are spectacular. Fireworks at regional shows are so much bigger and better than they were in my childhood.

The IPA is in our Central West communities right now, trying to drum up hysteria with mind-numbingly stupid propaganda. A really nasty, disgusting organisation.

Shale Oil was mined near Lithgow for about 10 years, from 1940-1950. Shale oil is known as ‘tight’ oil in the oil industry, tough to extract and usually uneconomic. The extraction process uses a now famous method -…

I think Australia needs many more mines, and far fewer farms. This one though is using some of the water that Lithgow historically looked to in drought times, from the coal mines. Being piped all the way to Blayney. I…

The rai line over the mountains was electrified in the 1950s. Nearly 80 years ago, we understood that electric motors are not only much more efficient, but need much less maintenance and are also more powerful. We’ve…

Lithgow has had some very wintry days already this autumn, dark and wet. A good test for the solar. The last two days a good example. On both days the solar produced easily enough to run heating, washing, clothes dryer,…

The Blayney gold mine is piping water from Lithgow. Bathurst now is looking to tap the same line, and even put a second pipe in the trench, for Bathurst to take its own supply from Lithgow. I’ll bet this will turn nasty…

The benefits of a battery. Been a wintry few weeks in Lithgow, lot of cloud and rain, but the solar still produces more than enough power. This morning when I got up the battery was still 54% full, from yesterday’s…

Lithgow isn’t even at this point. It seems to be denying anything is happening at all.

It’s always surprised me that Lithgow has a reputation for being an unpleasant place to live. The valley is beautiful. It’s also known as a ‘hole’, probably by people who failed geography in high school. It’s a valley.…

For my friends who are Panthers fans, a co-worker just stood next to Jarome Luai and Ivan Cleary buying coffee here in Bathurst, and didn't have a clue who they were, and why everybody seemed to be making such a fuss as…

A big win for towns like Lithgow. Have to get the skates on, fast.

The CWA is having a big conference in Bathurst right now. At lunch time many of them descend on the local shops for lunch. I saw a big group of them in a bakery. Imagine being a bakery owner, faced with a big group of…

Social media's assault on democracies continues. Mostly engineered by activist loons in the US, who organised and directed most of the 'Dictator Dan' rubbish in Victoria, for example, through social media. In Bathurst…

Bathurst paper this morning, the national petrolhead capital! Petrolheads will be coughing up their Fruit Loops. EV sales have tripled again in Australia this year, from last year. My hybrid was singing this morning,…

Rockers in Bathurst would like this address.

I love old photos taken on glass. Bathurst, more than 100 years old I think.

More than half of the world’s lakes are drying up. This is a major lake in Turkey, in the news this morning because it’s completely disappeared. The cause? Some of it climate change. But much more, it’s dams. The things…

What was that bang, Lithgow people?

-6.2 outside this morning in Lithgow. Happy to see that the new windows really work, it was 20 degrees warmer inside, with no heating on. 20 degrees is some difference.

The idea of place is why I’m so critical of travel, which has a very problematic relationship with place. The Bathurst 1000 is another way to explain it. I like this picture because it captures the two aspects in one…

Cockburn a good example of our relationship with the outback, and with the bush more generally. It only exists because of mining, it was a place where trains and drivers exchanged when transferring mining ore out of…

‘Near’ Lithgow?

Grid-scale batteries coming in a rush now. Three are listed as possibly coming to the Lithgow LGA. Tesla 'megapacks' are common batteries used (as in the pic). 3 MWh (enough to power 3600 homes for an hour). Can be…

Spare us all the usual tripe about private hospitals being important to reduce waiting lists in public hospitals. (They don’t.) They exist for one reason only, to make their owners and doctors seriously rich. (The…

Australians are overwhelmingly huddled in a handful of cities on the coast. As far away from confronting the reality of the country they live in as possible. Got a great example of this yesterday, Paul McCartney is…

Saw this in Bathurst. Was not aware Mary had this as a sideline, I’m sure Jesus said some pretty unkind things about moneylenders.

This is Ludwig Leichhardt. Famous explorer of Australia. Disappeared on his last expedition in 1848, nobody knows what happened to him. I remember learning about the explorers at school. What's most interesting for me…

Watch the first few minutes of last night's Bathurst Council meeting. This is happening in Councils everywhere. https://www.youtube.com/live/STvFqPF05-I?feature=share

I have a long commute each day on regional roads. Each day I think about the total cowardice of the NSW Government, the only State government in Australia that doesn't use average speed safety cameras for cars, only for…

Companies are fighting for the opportunity to install solar farms and batteries. They know it's a licence to print money. Our area (Bathurst-Lithgow) is highly prized because it's near existing high-voltage transmission…

One power station already gone, the other already planned to shut down. The coal mines will go with it. Lithgow is very well placed with the existing grid to provide renewable alternatives. There's not much appetite for…

Anna is a Bathurst girl. Covid damages the immune system, which then makes people, including kids, much more vulnerable to other infections like strep. There’s been a big surge of dangerous strep infections in kids…

Bathurst in the 1930s. Right at that point where horses were being replaced by cars, and both were on the roads. The guy in the foreground with the horse and cart will be saying 'ha, look at those cars, always catching…

I hope Wang 9 (one of the biggest batteries in the world) gets the same public enthusiasm when it opens as the original Wang coal-fired plant did in 1958. Wang 9 will have the same capacity as the old station…

The new Lithgow tip is awesome. Can’t even really call it a tip, it’s a genuine waste management centre.

It’s Bathurst 1000 week, my favourite of the year! As a sporting event, it has a crowd almost 3 times the size of any football grand final. And it runs for almost a week. The ‘Figure it Out BRC’ FB group have had lots…

Bathurst’s bats. This will happen more all the time now, as we trash the rest of the landscape and plants and animals come looking for somewhere to survive. I came up with a concept of ‘reality-based politics’, which…

Historical photo of Bathurst's famous street lamps being installed, a century ago. An interesting bit of trivia is that this caused community outrage at the time.

My dad once said it’s every generation’s responsibility to plant trees. That way every generation gets to enjoy them. It’s cheap, and quick. Imagine every street looking like this, mid-Piper Street in Bathurst. Not even…

Bathurst Our Town hitting it out of the park as usual with brain food. No doubt advice on how to run the town will follow.

Peter struggling to understand here. We do this because 99% of human behaviour is imitative rivalry. Status games. Keeping up with the Joneses, as it used to be called. I saw it in Lithgow, the rivalry even got locals…

Hard to photograph the number of bats in Machattie Park in Bathurst right now. They’ll be here for months, the sky is a constant stream of bat piss and droppings, which coats everything underneath. The places the bats…

The bats are an increasing issue not just for Bathurst, but many other towns. The Botanic Gardens in Sydney used a novel approach to drive them out about a decade ago (not sure how it's going now), and it's not simple…

These are the bats currently occupying central Bathurst, the grey-headed flying fox. Australia’s largest bat. Some facts about them that help shape how we can view what’s happening. - they only live on the east coast,…

We’ll soon have had the solar for a full year. On current calculations, we’ll end that year with zero bills for electricty, plus over $500 surplus, straight into our bank account. Add that to the around $3000-$3500 we…

Its almost miraculous that social media protest groups emerge so fast at every new renewables development. Except it isn’t, it’s very deliberately planned. The Atlas Network is a key player here, funded by fossil fuel…

Tesla Powerwall sales in Australia are booming. The thing I love about the Amber wholesale company is that it allows people with batteries to sell their excess power into the grid at peak times, which is the only time…

The bats are as good as gone in Bathurst for now, and unsurprisingly social media hysteria had no part to play in fixing anything.

This really is brilliant public policy. They'll use reverse auctions to drive prices down from bidders (what we should do for housing too). And they've put a ceiling and a floor on profits, so that the investors get a…

A new record for rooftop solar in Australia in November this year, over 330 MW of new installs in a single month. I invented a new unit of measurement, the ‘Mount Piper’, after Lithgow’s remaining coal power station.…

Again, it’s a shame not to be allowed to comment on specific things in Bathurst, because of my job. But I can observe the 2 FB groups that are assuming quasi-leadership of the town. And isn’t it inspirational.

Bathurst Coles, yesterday. Nobody is ‘panic buying’. The staff who make the goods, distribute them and put them on shelves - all of those industries are struggling with mass Covid infection.

Regions. Bathurst - 49 Orange - 89 Lithgow - 13

120 cases in Bathurst yesterday. LHD says that’s an under-count.

257 cases for Bathurst. More than doubled in one day.

Using Bathurst as an example. - 220 cases today. - actual infections are likely between 600-1000. - every person infected with Omicron tends to infect 3-4 other people. - today’s infections therefore may infect…

I walked some of the streets of Bathurst in my lunch break today. Pubs, restaurants, cafes - many deserted. Not a soul inside. Very few shoppers about either, eerily quiet. Infection has destroyed the ‘Economy’. Today…

Drove past the Lithgow drive-through Covid testing at the Showground yesterday. Not one person there. Use it, don’t spend your own money on RAT tests that aren’t as good. We don’t want government to have an excuse to…

So the NSW Government ensures there's no official data on Covid in schools. But social media usually knows. Claims of more than 100 infected kids at Bathurst High School right now. Plus staff.

From social media. The last source of Covid information in NSW. "I’m in Bathurst my daughter goes to Scots All Saints and the boarding house is riddled (with Covid). Same as the boy’s Catholic boarding school Stannies.…

For those keen to protect themselves and the ones they love from Covid. This is a risk guide produced by the University of California, which I think is excellent, to help people assess risk for themselves. Specifically,…

Now that masks are gone too, I think it’s worth looking at the data when assessing risk. Here’s Lithgow. The green line is the average of cases. It’s not going down, in fact it’s going up. And this is based on the…

To this day I struggle with the idea that even Lithgow falls over itself to vote for the National Party. It's testament to the skill of the State LNP in rorting targeted grants that the impression is given that the Nats…

Current case numbers in Lithgow. And we know many people aren't testing, so real numbers likely much higher than this again. Still a long way over 100 cases/100,000 population per day, which is more than 10 times what's…

This prompted me to come back from my FB holiday a little early. Look at what's happening in Lithgow. And remember this is only those who get tested, many aren't bothering. This is a disease OUT OF CONTROL. Has been for…

Not always clear on the suburbs of Lithgow. I think I live in ‘Lithgow’ itself, not a suburb. Sometimes called ‘Extension Estate’, though often just ‘Lithgow’ on a map. Which means my water should be fine. Anybody know?

Had a discussion yesterday about the Rockley Pub, now featuring a restaurant run by Matt Moran. My issue with some of these developments is that it’s partly a process of gentrification. Taking facilities in a poorer…

I fear for Lithgow’s future. The end of coal and of coal-fired power won’t come gradually, it will be sudden and brutal. It won’t be because of ‘greenies’. It’s basic economics, already happening everywhere in the…

I fear for Lithgow. This will have nothing to do with Greenies. Cold, hard, brutal economics will shut the coal industry, and much faster than we think.

With climate change on path to incinerate much of the planet, those who made fun of Lithgow for this are going to be our amusement, as they burn.…

I’m guessing no matter what else happens in the election today, Calare will get another term of Nationals doing nothing for Lithgow. Look at the latest NBN upgrades, as with the original rollout, Lithgow isn’t even on…

The secret sauce of Lithgow for those who don’t live here, is that it’s one of the few places where the entire town is a community. Most larger and newer towns are fractured now by cars, people live in widely dispersed…

I find many people assume Lithgow is lower than Bathurst and the Blue Mountains, in elevation terms. That it’s ‘in a hole’. (For the geographically challenged Lithgow is in a valley. Like alpine towns around the world.)…

Following up on my post yesterday about elevation of various towns in the area, here's the topographical map I'm using, which is incredible fun. Zoom in and out and click at different points to get elevations. The…

The highway between Bathurst and Lithgow tonight was ridiculous. Like Parramatta Road, the whole way. The beginning of the great aussie long weekend. Beats me why so many want to spend that 3rd day sitting in a traffic…

Lithgow is not unlike most other regional towns or even Oz cities. Some key facts which I think the city needs to come to grips with, to survive, because I think its image of itself is about 150 years old: - the biggest…

Nobody seems ‘seriously concerned’ about having enormous reservoirs in the hills above Lithgow. Lake Lyell is a man-made lake, ‘pristine beauty’, lol. Gotta keep it pure for the jet skis.

There have been: - 5160 known cases of Covid in Lithgow. - the real number would be at least twice that - more than 115 of them have been this week.

I’ll use Lithgow as an example. The idea that Covid will become ‘endemic’. The term was first used to describe out of control disease in poor countries, that we couldn’t be bothered helping. Just as we often say crime…

Buckle up, Lithgow and Bathurst people.

This tracks the increase in cases across the 70 top LGAs. Have a look at number 1, Lithgow people, I’ve added a blue arrow. To explain the graphic, the percentages show you the percentage change in cases in the past 14…

My dad and his friends emigrated to Australia at the start of the 1950s. They were part of that big wave of post-war immigration, that gave Australia the hugest rush of European culture and energy, after the war. They…

Lithgow Council suggesting rate rises of 26.5%, or cutting services. Some very hard questions need to be asked. Also employing expensive financial consultants to do work the large number of very highly paid senior staff…

Covid change in the past 2 weeks, by local government area. Have highlighted Bathurst for reference. Percentage is percentage change in the past 2 weeks. The “1 in” figure on the right is what proportion of the LGA…

Maybe fewer novelty cheques coming Lithgow's way in future. Not before time.…

I'm a bit amazed by the hostility to renewables in Lithgow. It's going to need every tiny bit of help it can get, when Piper and the coal mines close.

Public schools often don't understand public messaging. Take Bathurst High, which proudly displays signs saying 'Safe, Respectful, Learners'. I'd bet most people when reading that will think 'hmm, they've had problems…

Many parts of Lithgow are now eligible for a free upgrade to fibre all the way to your home (FTTP). You’ll need to sign up with a retailer to a high-speed plan to qualify, and keep that high-speed plan for at least 12…

Mine diving in Germany. Lithgow has some flooded mines, might be a new tourist attraction.

This is the Vogtle nuclear power station in Georgia, USA. The only nuclear power plant the US currently has under construction. For those drunk on the hopium of nuclear power slogans from politicians, here's fun facts…

Lithgow is being left high and dry by having political representation at all 3 - local, State and federal - levels by a party that denies this emergency is even happening. That party’s own core constituency, farmers, is…

This to me is the greatest modern wonder. Your home is now connected directly to the entire world, in real-time. While we travel around the world thinking it broadens our minds (it narrows them), and thinking visiting…

I love a truck and driver parade in Bathurst.

Water’s been gushing out of the ground in the hills around Lithgow for months, even when it’s not raining. At the same time, if you go up Hassans Walls Road and look up slope, a huge number of trees are well past…

Bathurst car races. Then, 2-3 days later. If you take comfort from ‘it’s only 19 people’, it’s worth remembering most people aren’t even bothering to test, and those that do don’t even have to report the result now. And…

Almost word for word everything I’ve said about Lithgow in relation to coal and power. Because it’s what the businesses themselves say, I just listen to them. The change will be fast, and brutal. The town will only…

Wyangala Dam. Bathurst has a major flood warning too.

The official update site for the gas outage. https://jemena.com.au/about/newsroom/media-release/2022/gas-supply-outage-update-bathurst,-lithgow,-oberon

So with gas non-existent in some of the Central West right now, and hugely expensive when it isn't, and petrol now back well over $2 a litre with the removal of the reduction in excise and OPEC deliberately cutting…

Lithgow, Wang and Oberon don't even have the mains to their towns restored, so you can imagine how long they'll be waiting.

Freemantle, outside Bathurst. I think climate change is often thought of as something that just impacts the weather. But our infrastructure isn't set up to cope with even this earliest phase of warming. What comes next…

Yay Lithgow. One correction, Lithgow will have full gas back inside 2 weeks. 4 weeks (more likely 6) is for the permanent fix next to the river in Bathurst, but we’ll have full gas supply by the end of next week. And…

The temporary gas being installed in Wang won't go to most households in Lithgow, Wang and Oberon. End of next week for most of us to get gas back on.

What struck me again in the middle of the Bathurst floods yesterday is how destructive ‘the economy’ is. A sensible society would have looked at that river yesterday and said ‘I think people should take a day off, this…

Took me an hour-and-a-half to get from Raglan to the centre of Bathurst this morning. ‘Stay home until we get this road properly open’, imagine a society with brains.

Used NorthConnex for the first time not long ago. Brilliant road, between Lithgow and the Central Coast now you can avoid every Sydney non-freeway street. But boy you pay for it. $25 each way.

COP 27 mostly failed, for the same reason it always fails. The $2.8 billion profit per day fossil fuel industry knee-capped it. The only win was emergency funding for the most vulnerable nations. But nobody committed to…

Have decided on a Tesla Powerwall. It will likely never fully pay for itself at current prices (though I nabbed one before the recent price hike), but with electricity prices projected to rise by as much as 80% next…

Geez. Ex-Lithgow lad, for a while anyway. Said it made him the man he is today.

Fun fact about Lithgow. The average number of people per household? 2.

Before Christmas Australia may cap the price of coal, to keep electricity prices down. Coal and gas companies are making huge windfall profits on the back of exorbitant international prices. This could be very bad news…

Testing the solar, stories. (I know many already have solar, but others not.) This morning washing machine, dishwasher, reverse cycle heating in the bathroom and jug all on at once. System dealt with it all with ease,…

Power stations in NSW will be replaced by renewable energy zones (REZ). Really worth watching this short vid to see what's planned, and how quickly. For example the Central West-Orana zone will be first, and will be…

On renewable energy zones, here's the Central West-Orana zone. All those coloured dots are projects underway or already there. And in the far bottom-right of picture - Lithgow. An existing power generation hub, one of…

This was the view under the Eglinton Bridge during the Bathurst floods.

Because politicians are doing everything they can to suppress information and data about Covid, I post updates on local cases occasionally, so people can see what’s really happening. Lithgow Hospital again restricting…

I live in an electorate that gets many of these vote-buying grants. The local members spend most days publicising more new spending. Makes them look like great members. It’s corruption. The Blue Mountains didn’t get one…

How do those who support the NSW Government and Gladys possibly justify that only 1% of the $177 million of bushfire relief money went to Labor electorates? And that the Blue Mountains electorate (Labor), that had the…

I posted about this when it happened. LNP fans defended the decision at the time, because as always they just swallowed spin without digesting. It was always a ludicrous, corrupt decision, a populist brain fart with no…

The forecast 100mm-200mm of rain for Lithgow today so far seems more like 20mm.

The Blue Mountains looks like a 'natural' wonder. But actually it's a landscape in serious trouble, once again because we either trash it, or treat it with kid gloves (make it into a national park). The Madonna-whore…

This is Bathurst. People know I love patterns, and what they show. Bathurst is not unusual for modern cities, no strong pattern at all, it's sprawl. What does that mean? It means what it shows - no cohesive social…

Haven't looked at the weather forecast for Lithgow for Wednesday. But this tells me it's going to be cloudy.…

I joked about it earlier in the week. Tempted fate. 10 minutes before the blood moon was due, Lithgow clouded over completely. Wouldn't even know there was a moon in the sky.

The government public messaging seems to have missed this, so for information. If you've been in Greater Sydney (includes the Blue Mountains), or the Central Coast, Shellharbour or Wollongong since 10 June, you MUST…

I do love that there's a 'Bogan' Shire in Oz. And no, it isn't Lithgow. https://www.bogan.nsw.gov.au/

Have any Gladys fans had a 'hmmm' moment yet? Case numbers? It spreading to both Bathurst and Dubbo now? Hospital beds filling fast? Nothing sowing the seeds of doubt?

The Covid tour of NSW arrives in Bathurst, and adds new shows in Orange. A footlong of saving the Economy, with Covid special sauce. Imagine leaving a massive bushfire to burn for 2 months, unchecked. This is much, much…

Note the sting in the tail here. Look at the date. A week ago. Contact tracing is failing. Potentially infected people have been circulating in the Bathurst and Orange communities all week.

Covid case in Bathurst.

5 cases in Bathurst now.

O dear Bathurst. Also worth noting here that cases are growing faster outside the LGAs 'of concern' than inside them. Unsurprisingly, with the NSW mockdown. The Premier yesterday released 'modelling' on hospitalisations…

I was at this concert in Hamburg in 1982. The hall was about the size of the Bathurst Civic Centre, but had the full Queen stage, lights and sound etc. So it was incredibly hot and loud, and blinding, and awesome. (We…

Assumption School in Bathurst already closed because of Covid. Only years 1 and 2 there. It took only 4 days. If the idiot NSW Government follows its idiot overlords in the UK, the next stage will be to just keep…

It’s only day 1, I know. But a few days ago Lithgow was forecast to get 40-80mm of rain today. I doubt it got even 15. And now there’s a blue sky. More forecast for coming days but percentages already dropping, we’ll…

I’ve seen several Bathurst residents suggest the solution to their water problems is to run a pipeline to Lithgow. This will be the sort of non-thinking that the imminent water crisis will be full of. What’s the…

It seems there may be community transmission of Covid-19 in Lithgow, of unknown size (likely small, but these things can grow super fast). So - bloody stay home, if you have the choice. Tell the boyfriends and…

Firtshand accounts from Bathurst and Lithgow shopping centres today. Teeming with people, little social distancing going on, whole families out shopping. Tick tick.…

Social distancing at its finest. Go Lithgow.

I’m lucky to have seen Elton years ago, before boomer rock acts charged you a week’s wages for a ticket. I wonder if people feel better in the shittiest seats in the house with ‘sapphire’ tickets? Marketing folk are…

I'm eagerly awaiting NBN at my place. If you're getting Fibre to the Curb (FTTC) in Lithgow, might be worthwhile checking your stormwater connection to the street though, look at what the NBN conduit did to ours.

This happened in Lithgow recently. The investigation as to why turned up the interesting fact that nobody even knew how the Lithgow reticulated water supply works. They still don’t, some of it is still a mystery. The…

@[580567321:2048:Kate] told me about the association researchers are seeing between algal blooms and motor neurone disease. A lot of our lakes and rivers are increasingly heavy with algae, I know the big recreation…

Lithgow air quality monitoring stations are now in place. Worth having a look, you can see either end of town has very poor to hazardous air quality (dangerous to health). This was this morning, since this time, the…

I asked a friend how many disposable plastic products here west of the Blue Mountains might end up in a whale's stomach. (I would bet - close to zero.) Public discussion follows the same, tired path. Let's set up some…

Lithgow totally rocks, water freezes at 3 degrees here.

When Charles Darwin visited Bathurst in 1836, he made this fascinating comment about the Macquarie River: "The Macquarie figures in the map as a respectable river, and it is the largest of those draining this part of…

The Melanesians built runways in the early 20th century, hoping they would bring Western aeroplanes full of more of the Western goods they'd come to love. Cargo cults. Bathurst raised its dam wall thinking it would…

This may be a genuine crisis. Even bigger towns, like Bathurst and Orange and Tamworth, may soon have no water. And Sydney's dams are not pretty either. Like Brexit in politics, I wonder if we need this sort of crisis…

When I was a kid, my grandmother said to me in front of a Blue Mountains scene a bit like this one, “it’s a mess, so untidy”. I chuckled at the time and thought she was being a typical European settler, not…

I remember and miss the days when the checkout had somebody to tally up the price, and then a separate person to pack your shopping for you into those nice big brown paper bags. That was service. Used to love the sound…

Hazard reduction burns. Sorry, yes a pet hate. The ‘hazard’ these burns reduces is mostly the risk of stupidly-positioned homes, in the middle of the bush, burning down if there’s a fire. Property damage. The problem…

I love politics. Lithgow is the only place in the entire region, and the neighbouring Riverina, that doesn't have NBN yet. And it's just been delayed another year. I looked at the Australian Electoral Commission records…

Bathurst people. Anybody know what’s inside these windows, at the top of the silos?

There are towns in danger of running out of water. Even Sydney has lost alarming amounts from its vast reservoir this past year. (In Australia we tend to think dams somehow magically create water from nothing, in…

I’ve spent a lot of the weekend browsing the Holtermann Collection. Bernhardt Holtermann was a German immigrant in the mid-19th century, and became famous because of the Holtermann Nugget, the largest gold nugget ever…

Are you an Andre? Senior managers appoint more senior managers to offload the shit parts of their own jobs they don't want to deal with. (Wave to Lithgow Council.) Job ads are a good guide here, most senior jobs will…

There are still people who think Ozzie house prices are too high because of a lack of supply. Not enough land release etc. "It's all supply and demand", that sort of rubbish. Property developers have used that one for…

Love this town. Was chatting to John Doyle tonight about life in Lithgow, not much has changed since his day, it’s a beautiful place and community and most people who live outside it don’t understand the first thing…

Well people, what's that large building under construction in this picture of Bathurst from 1873?

There’s a quality to photos taken with old techniques, like wet and dry plate collodion, daguerreotypes and tintypes. Modern example of a wet plate collodion onto glass, and an old shot from the early days of Bathurst.…

Arnold Schwarzenegger is on a mission with this same message. Pollution, particularly of air, is the globe’s greatest killer. We’re way too complacent about it. Lithgow for example has had alarming air quality for many…

Multiple choice question. This is taken in: A. Bathurst B. Orange C. Lithgow

In all seriousness, it is amazing that even today Lithgow is seen as a 'hole'. It's spectacular. Nothing else West of the mountains has anything quite like it.

The Bureau of Meteorology "MetEye" function is a bit cool. You can zoom into very specific locations and see forecasts for particular times at that location, rather than just an averaged daily forecast. Jennifer…

Anybody else in Lithgow getting the push marketing from Simply Energy lately? The con where they knock on your door and make out as if they're just passing on the good news about a cut to the official electricity rate,…

You could be excused for thinking Lithgow is an alpine resort.

Who'd have thought. Of the top 50 real estate growth areas in the country, Lithgow comes in at 11. And is the only location West of the mountains.

Lithgow's street lighting is pretty feeble. Which is a great thing.

Bathurst should be THIS week, the NRL stole the long weekend and should give it back.

Hats off to Lithgow Buslines for the decoration job this morning. There was even a big bowl of lollies, which unfortunately nobody noticed until we were getting off.

7-Eleven going up in Lithgow right now. I'm sure our idiot conservative masters and shock jocks would support the employer, pesky unions get in the way.

Oh please please please. If you're watching Lithgow City Council. Not one of you useless boneheads even acknowledge an email about internet service in Lithgow. Probably can't use the internet.

One of the reasons I've come to be a fan of chlorinated tap water, even though Lithgow's gives off enough gas to choke you. They use chloramine now in most supplies because it's much longer lasting and they can be sure…

Lithgow Village Markets

Where do the Lions celebrate beating the Wallabies? In Bathurst or Orange, chock full of rugger buggers? Nope. Beautiful Lithgow :)

is in that next town west after Lithgow, can't remember the name.

Hey Tobe, sorry to take so long to get back to you. To see the hotel google Citigate Mount Panorama.

thinks global warming is mostly the result of the energy they need to run all of the bloody traffic lights in the Blue Mountains.

thinks Bathurst has Lithgow-envy.

is watching that fine Bathurst weather on the TV.

is at Celebrate Lithgow. And no, that's not an oxymoron.

thinks they should move the Sydney NYE fireworks to Lithgow.