“Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people’s ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise.”
–The Lucky Country, Donald Horne, 1964
“It’s a small museum, but it really captures the Australian spirit.”
Australian roads
“We are investing increasingly in Tasmania … because it’s one of the cooler areas in Australia to grow grapes and if we are going to have climate change, you might as well start in a cooler climate,” said Cecil Camilleri, the manager of sustainable wine programs at Yalumba, the 165-year-old winemaking company that has snapped up three Tasmanian properties in the past 15 years. The average temperature in the Tamar Valley in the northeast of the state is around 17 degrees celsius (63 degrees Fahrenheit), peaking at 22 degrees in the summer - well below the Barossa’s typical summer spike into the upper 30s.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/14/us-climatechange-australia-wine-idUSKBN0FI10K20140714
In 2011, cultural industries directly employed 531 000 people, and indirectly generated a further 3.7 million jobs. Copyright industries were worth $93.2 billion to the Australian economy in 2007, with exports worth more than $500 million.2 According to its own figures, the mining industry is worth $121 billion a year to the Australian economy, only around 25 per cent more than the cultural industries. Mining employs significantly fewer people than the cultural sector: 187 400 directly, and a further 599 680 in support industries.3 The industry receives government assistance – to the tune of $700 million in the last financial year.4 In 2011–12, Australian industry as a whole – including agriculture, food manufacturing and service industries – was given an estimated $17.3 billion in combined assistance (a mixture of direct subsidies, tax breaks, tariffs and regulatory assistance).5 This doesn’t count a further $9.4 billion invested in research and development by the Australian government in the same financial year.6 In contrast, it’s probably safe to say that, when discussing arts funding, we’re talking about around $500 million annually, out of a total tax revenue in 2011–12 of $390 billion7 – that is, about 0.1 per cent of total government expenditure. (Assistance to industry, including research and development, is around 7 per cent.) The Australia Council, the major arts funding body, has a budget this year of $220 million.
http://overland.org.au/previous-issues/issue–212/feature-alison-croggon/
In the dusty red earth of Western Australia, robot trucks haul iron ore. The trucks themselves weigh about 500 tons when loaded — they are truly massive. They operate more or less on their own, navigating mining roads connecting the sprawling Pilbara iron mines with a guidance system provided by global positioning satellites, radars and lasers. It’s part of $13 billion mining operation by Rio Tinto, one of the world’s largest mining firms.
As things currently stand, the first two weeks of January 2013 now hold the records for the hottest Australian day on record, the hottest two-day period on record, the hottest three-day period, the hottest four-day period and, well, every sequential-days record stretching from one to 14 days for daily mean temperatures.
http://theconversation.edu.au/whats-causing-australias-heat-wave–11628
Deep purple … the Bureau of Meteorology’s interactive weather forecasting chart has added new colours. (via http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/temperatures-off-the-charts-as-australia-turns-deep-purple-20130108-2ce33.html)