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What are you Reading? (Read 473 times)
President Elect, The Mechanic
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What are you Reading?
Jul 12th, 2014 at 7:24pm
 
At the moment im reading

Kidman...

Sir Sidney Kidman was the Cattle King of Australia..

an incredible man living an extraordinary life...

a kid who ran away from home at 13 years old with little education and became the Biggest Cattleman in Australia and at one time owned more land than any other man in the world...

im a little ticked off that I've never heard of Kidman before... I grew up in a country town, my relatives had farms that I worked on when younger...

how is it I've never heard of one of Australia's greatest farmer off all time?

what are you reading.. im about 2/3 the way through this book
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Q

The STORM has arrived
Every Dog Has Its Day...
Dark to Light.
Sheep no more.
 
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Lionel Edriess
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Re: What are you Reading?
Reply #1 - Jul 12th, 2014 at 7:45pm
 
Not trying to be a smartarse but there's already a thread on books.

Drop in sometime.

I've read a bit about Kidman.

Did you know he was mates with Flynn (of the Inland - RFDS) and Bradfield (of the Sydney Harbour Bridge)?

They apparently cooked up a scheme to divert some of the ouflow of the rivers of the Northern Tablelands back into the interior - on the other side of the Range.

Shame it never happened! it would have transformed the channel country.

You could understand why Kidman would have been interested.

Ever heard of Tom Cole? An English buffalo/crocodile hunter in the Territory back in the '20's.

Love my books.



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Toughen up, Australia!
 
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President Elect, The Mechanic
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Re: What are you Reading?
Reply #2 - Jul 13th, 2014 at 7:01pm
 
yes, he was always on the outlook for water....

when he was young and droving the country he made a mental note or where the water was at different times of year etc... he tracked rivers and water holes, oh, and also flood waters coming down from Queensland into NSW..

it doesn't surprise me who he knew around Australia.. he had a finger in many businesses and contracts... ship building in Sydney, but the government pulled his contract when the war stopped leaving him 140,000 pound out of pocket... and broke... I also think he built a reservoir after another contractor went broke ...

the book is also historical in the fact that it records many droughts throughout his life and that of Australia...

we have a drought now and the loopy's go banana's about climate change...

but there was severe droughts in the late 1800, early 1900 - 03, umm around 1910 - 11.... 1917 to 20... 1927 to 30... massive floods in 1933

and not just a little drought... a drought that killed 10s of thousands of sheep and cattle... on one of his stations they put 45,000 sheep through the shearing shed... the following year only 6000 due to the drought

the last real bad drought in Victoria that I can remember was around the time of Ash Wednesday and was the major cause for such a severe fire...

the land was dry and dead... farmers were shooting their stock as they couldn't feed them... then wham... 180 fires across the state of vic and south east SA... 1983
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Q

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Every Dog Has Its Day...
Dark to Light.
Sheep no more.
 
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Lord Herbert
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Re: What are you Reading?
Reply #3 - Jul 18th, 2014 at 8:29am
 
'Doctor Sleep' by Stephen King ... his latest after several that I couldn't finish because they were too boring.

This one's pretty good.

I bought a book: 'Psychology for Dummies' ~ but my doctor hijacked it off me before I'd even taken it home. Hopefully I'll get it back before the end of the month.
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Lord Herbert
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Re: What are you Reading?
Reply #4 - Jul 18th, 2014 at 8:32am
 
President Elect, The Mechanic wrote on Jul 12th, 2014 at 7:24pm:
At the moment im reading

Kidman...

Sir Sidney Kidman was the Cattle King of Australia..

an incredible man living an extraordinary life...

a kid who ran away from home at 13 years old with little education and became the Biggest Cattleman in Australia and at one time owned more land than any other man in the world...

im a little ticked off that I've never heard of Kidman before... I grew up in a country town, my relatives had farms that I worked on when younger...

how is it I've never heard of one of Australia's greatest farmer off all time?


He must have been English. That would explain the reluctance to glamorise him.
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Grand Duke Imam Mahdi
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Re: What are you Reading?
Reply #5 - Jul 18th, 2014 at 9:21pm
 
...
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Air is provided by God, not the muslim fictitious one, enjoy it while you can.
 
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bogarde73
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Re: What are you Reading?
Reply #6 - Jul 19th, 2014 at 3:00pm
 
9/10 on the hilarity scale (I never give anybody a perfect score)
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Know the enemies of a civil society by their public behaviour, by their fraudulent claim to be liberal-progressive, by their propensity to lie and, above all, by their attachment to authoritarianism.
 
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sherri
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Re: What are you Reading?
Reply #7 - Jul 22nd, 2014 at 8:03am
 
bogarde73 wrote on Jul 19th, 2014 at 3:00pm:
9/10 on the hilarity scale (I never give anybody a perfect score)


No use having a ten in your repertoire unless you are prepared to use it sometimes.
Just saying, like. Smiley
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Defending Jacob.
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Grappler Truth Teller Feller
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Re: What are you Reading?
Reply #8 - Jul 22nd, 2014 at 11:52am
 
Just finished Prayers for the Assassin - it's about a future United States (similar to my future war book) where the US is split between a Muslim West and Christian East, due to a fraud perpetrated on the world to gain Muslim ascendancy and the desire of many for the solid virtues that Islam offers (sound familiar?).

Good story... got Fedayeen who are Special Forces types with 'shadow warriors' deep cover experts and assassins who are another group again.  Basic story is a retired Fedayeen with high contacts in government and a retired assassin named Darwin (sounds like Sleeper Cell neh?) in conflict over their loyalties and employment etc.  Bit of sex, drugs and rock and roll and off ya go.....

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“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
― John Adams
 
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Re: What are you Reading?
Reply #9 - Jul 23rd, 2014 at 11:49pm
 
I unearthed a stack of e-books on the Gutenberg Project by a bloke named Arthur
Gask. He wrote a lot of whodunits from the 1920s to the early 1950s, all with the
same central characters.

The 'hero' is an Aussie detective named Gilbert Larose, he's a bit of an Aussie
Hercule Poirot. Some of the books are set here, mostly in SA, the rest are set
in the UK.

Worth a look, if you like vintage whodunits...  Smiley
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