Dr Copper

 

 

In the early 2000s, China was in the middle of the biggest infrastructure build the world has ever seen. Transforming Shenzhen from a quiet fishing village into China’s Silicon Valley, building one of the world’s tallest buildings — the Shanghai World Financial Centre — and the Nest Olympic Stadium.

This created a massive copper squeeze world-wide. The price didn’t just drift higher. It surged a massive 140% in just 18 months. Take a look:

 

 

Today, copper is woven through everything: smartphones, electric grids, EVs, AI data centres, even the backbone of military infrastructure. It’s literally the metal the modern world runs on. And we’re staring down a massive 7.7 million-ton-per-year shortfall. Morgan Stanley predicts we’ll see “the most severe deficit in over two decades by 2026.” If they’re right, copper prices could eclipse the 2005 run.

BHP is widely recognised as the world's largest copper producer, a position it solidified in 2024 and continues to hold in late 2025, thanks to major operations like Escondida in Chile and its growing portfolio in Australia (Olympic Dam, Prominent Hill, Carrapateena).

I have been a rusted-on BHP shareholder for two decades now, first for its iron ore, and now for its copper which makes up 45% of its earnings.

 

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All my life's a circle

 

All my life's a circle, sunrise and sundown The moon rolls through the night-time till the daybreak comes around All my life's a circle and I can't tell you why The seasons spinning round again, the years keep rolling by It seems like I've been here before, and I well remember when I've got this funny feeling that we'll all be together again There's no straight lines make up my life, all my roads have bends There's no clear-cut beginning and so far no dead ends I've found you a thousand times, I guess you've done the same But then we lose each other, it's just like a children's game And I see you here again the thought runs through my mind Love is like a circle, let's go round one more time

 

Remember the old Harry Chapin song "All my life's a circle"? The years had kept rolling by, and suddenly, in late 1985, after twenty years in a dozen other countries, I found myself back in Canberra where I had taken my first few tentative steps as a migrant just off the ship from Europe.

My return to Canberra had been as totally unplanned and unexpected as all my previous moves, with plenty of bends and no straight lines and even a few dead ends, but this time when I was back where I'd been before, I at least spoke the Queen's English (albeit still with a slight Teutonic accent) and had enough professional qualifications and experience to immediately start writing computer software in the PICK language for a large mailorder business for the next twelve months.

Personal computers were slowly making their presence felt, and I began to specialise in PC-based computerised accounting systems, selling and installing off-the-shelf ATTACHÉ, SYBIZ, NewViews, and other packages, and also writing custom-built solutions in TAS, under my registered business name Canberra Computer Accounting Systems.

 

I was indeed Canberra's only Accounting Software Specialist until accounting firms
realised that there was a buck to be made by setting up their own PC consultancies

 

It was strictly a one-man business, just me and a telephone answering service. Those invisible girls at the answering service did a wonderful job for me as their ever-changing voices made my clients think they were dealing with a large computer software house. Only a few knew that I was working out of the spare bedroom in my house (later TWO spare bedrooms, with the wall knocked out between them).

 

# 7 Fanning Place, Kambah A.C.T. 2902

 

Those were the days when an IBM computer with just 20MB of harddisk space retailed for around $8,000, when a monochrome monitor (you had a choice of green or amber display) cost some $700, and individual accounting software modules such as General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, or Inventory Control sold for close to a thousand dollars - EACH! Dot-matrix printers (remember dot-matrix printers?) sold for almost a thousand dollars and connecting several computers with the help of LANtastic or NOVELL took hours and hours, if not days, and meant several thousands of dollars in profit!

 

 

More years kept rolling by, and there was still very little competition as my combined expertise in accounting software, computer hardware, and networking plus a degree in accountancy wasn't matched by anybody. It took several more years before accounting firms realised there was a buck to be made by setting up their own PC consultancies.

 

I looked very different then, and so did the computers!

 

Of course, all good things must come to an end: hardware and software prices kept dropping. Who was going to stump up hundreds of dollars for installation and training after having bought a small-business accounting package such as 'Mind Your Own Business' for less than a hundred dollars?

 

 

The clear-cut beginning of the end came with WINDOWS! Computers were no longer a mystery with low-level formatting, interleaves, BIOS, interrupts, system and config.sys and autoexec.bat files. Accounting software became more "user-friendly" with pre-configured charts of accounts and financial reports. It was just a case of "switch on and go".

Suddenly everybody was a computer expert and Canberra Computer Accounting Systems was no more! I went round one more time when I rescued a university college from certain bankruptcy - click here - after which I decided to go into retirement. Life had finally come full circle!

 

 

What had once been at the forefront of my life is now stuck to the back of my workshop door at "Riverbend" in Nelligen: Canberra Computer Accounting Systems' car door signage with which I had driven my nile-blue Toyota Camry through Canberra's streets for more than ten years.

"All my life's a circle, sunrise and sundown; the moon rolls through the night-time till the daybreak comes around; All my life's a circle I can't tell you why; Seasons spinning round again, the years keep rolling by."

 

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Weihnachten bei Hoppenstedts

 

 

Keiner ist da besser als der Loriot um "Weihnachtsgefühle" so langsam zu erwecken. Also dann, "Frohe Weihnachten"! (Hier in Australien sagt man jetzt schon "Happy Holidays" damit man die ansäßigen Muselmanen nicht beleidigt.)

Komisch, die wollten von ihren eigenen Scheißländern weg und bringen dann ihre eigene Scheiße in das Land in das sie geflohen sind. Jetzt brauchen wir nur noch einen transvestiten Weihnachts-"mann" und das neue Weihnachten ist komplett. Also, noch 'mal "Frohe Weihnachten"!

 

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Not just another yachting book

 

You can read the book - in German - online at www.archive.org
The following extracts are of Rollo's meeting with Tom Neale: click here and here

 

I wrote elsewhere about Tom Neale and his book "An Island To Oneself" - click here. I only found this inspiring book in my retirement and have sometimes wondered if I had "done a Tom Neale" had I read his life-changing book fifty years earlier.
[I almost finished up living on a tiny island back in 1969 at the tender age of 24 - see here; instead, I finished up living and working on the world's second-largest island, New Guinea.]

Many years later I came across Rollo Gebhard's book "Ein Mann und sein Boot - 4 Jahre allein um die Welt" ("A Man and his Boat - 4 years alone around the world"). What made this book particularly interesting to me was Rollo's meeting with Tom Neale on Suwarrow Atoll. Not only did he visit him on his island on both his first and second circumnavigation, but he also had taped an interview with Tom in November 1976.

He wrote about it in "Ein Mann und sein Boot" in German but how much better would it be to hear it in English from the man himself! I emailed Rollo's wife Angelika Gebhard in Bad Wiessee in Germany who promptly replied, "In dem Film über die zweite Allein-Weltumsegelung (1975-79) meines Mannes ist ein Interview mit Tom Neale enthalten. Der Film wurde damals im ZDF ausgestrahlt." ("The interview is included in the movie my husband made during his second circumnavigation which back then had gone to air on the commercial television station ZDF.")

How to get hold of that movie? It was not on YouTube and not available on ebay or anywhere else. Frau Gebhard had the solution, "Das ZDF besitzt die Urheberrechte an dem Film, und ich vermute, dass es sehr schwierig bis unmöglich sein wird, ihn über das ZDF zu erwerben. Aber ich habe den Film, den wir für die Vorträge geschnitten haben. Ich könnte Ihnen den Teil mit dem Interview zukommen lassen, wenn Sie den Film nur privat einsetzen." ("The television station owns the copyrights to the movie, and it would be difficult if not impossible to get a copy. However, I could send you a copy of the part containing the interview for your own personal use.")

 

Tom Neale being interviewed by Rollo Gebhard on Suwarrow in November 1976 ..
Unfortunatey, for copyright reasons I'm not at liberty to publish the full clip on YouTube

 

And so it came to pass that for the first time ever I was able to listen to the voice of my long-time hero Tom Neale and watch him as he was interviewed on his island by Rollo Gebhard. Obviously, I cannot show you the footage for copyright reasons but I can give you a transcript:

(Rollo) "You have done something many people dream about. You are living on a small island far away from civilisation. Are you happy?"

(Tom) "Yes, yes, I'm happy here."

(Rollo) "And would you recommend this lifestyle to other people?"

(Tom) "No, not exactly. I would have to know a person very, very well first before I could recommend a life like this. You must remember, before I came here I had many years of experience of life in these Pacific islands and I knew what to expect. How could I tell if someone else could cope with things here or whether he could stand being alone. We are not all the same, you know. I'm a person who doesn't mind being alone. I've always been that way, more or less."

Here are a few frames from that film of Tom Neale on his island. I hope the film will one day be freely available on YouTube:

 

Tom's one great passion: reading

Tom's home-made calendar

Tom's only companions were two cats

Tom skippering Rollo's boat

Tom at his favourite spot at sunset; Rollo's yacht on the horizon

 

Long after the last page of "An Island To Oneself" is turned, even after Tom Neale's name is forgotten, the story of his isolation, hundreds of miles away from the nearest inhabited island, will continue to enrich the lives of all who read his book. You, too, may read it here or here.

 

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In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

 

"Zimmermann" means "carpenter" and "unbeschränkt" means "indefinite",
and, true to his word, he's still here

 

Every so often, a blogreader asks me if I have started working on my book yet. What book would that be? The only book I keep working on is my address book when, several times a year, I perform the melancholy task of crossing out the dead.

Yesterday, for a change, I added the name of a Swiss friend but, given his advanced age, only in pencil. He's eighty-nine years old but still in surprisingly good shape. They breed them tough in the Swiss Navy!

He and his German wife - another mixed marriage! - had driven up from Bermagui and we met in our favourite café and talked and talked some more and our talk drifted back to 1957 when he had come to Australia.

"Where did you find this?" he asked, looking amazed at his seventy-year-old arrival card I had brought up from naa.gov.au on my mobile phone.

"I'll send you a copy by email", I replied. "I don't have email", said the probably last man in Australia who has neither an email address nor a computer, and so I went back into town today to print out their arrival cards, his brother's arrival card, her and her family's registration cards at the Bonegilla Migrant Camp, a photo of the ship ANNA SALEN she had arrived on, and a copy of Neptune's "crossing the line" certificate.

 

 

As for writing that book of mine, let me tell you there's a lot more to writing a book than to writing these thoughtless thought bubbles which may take me ten minutes to half an hour at the most. This one took me even less as I am in a hurry to mail the letter to them before the post office shuts. Merry Christmas, Ernst & Lieselotte, and happy memories!

 

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