I'm buying BHP!

 

We live in troubled times and the world’s largest economy is failing miserably in its role as 'global peacekeeper'. America once ruled as a moral leader, liberating Europe from Hitler’s Nazi regime and defeating the Japanese Empire which inflicted atrocities all across Asia.

While publicly preaching restraint, behind the curtains the US continues to hand out a colossal $95 billion in military aid to Israel alone which will no doubt fatten the purse strings of the likes of Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and Raytheon, among others.

All this will be highly inflationary and affect the supply of basic minerals over the coming years. The outbreak of WW1 witnessed one of the most prolific price surges on record for copper. The graphic above shows its 120-year price history, adjusted for inflation. Copper reached the equivalent of US$9,878 per tonne in 1914 as the demand for bullets and other war munitions rose. The same thing occurred over the Vietnam War throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Demand for copper is currently outstripping supply, driving up prices. Copper supply has been strained by operational and political instability in regions where it is mined, including Congo, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and Latin America. There are no quick fixes as copper's supply response is notoriously slow. A typical copper mine takes about 10-15 years to explore, develop and bring online.

 

Today's copper price is $9,654

 

Proof that metals will be a strong performer amid political chaos and geopolitical chest beating. While I truly wish the reasons were different, history tells us that major geopolitical tensions and the build-up to war are extremely bullish for metals. These are the real reasons commodity prices are embarking on a new era of price inflation. I'm buying BHP!

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What is a Schrebergarten?

 

 

You are travelling along in Germany, and suddenly on the side of the railway tracks there is a cluster of fenced-in tiny houses surrounded by small gardens. Are these actual homes? Are they camping grounds for seasonal workers? Or is this where the garden gnomes live when they aren't in your garden?

Actually, these little plots of land are called "Schrebergarten" but how did this idea for tiny gardens get started? Because so many Germans live in apartments without yards, the Schrebergarten, a little plot of land usually at the edge of a city, gives them a chance to get out in the fresh air and work in the garden.

This movement, which is now nationwide, was the brainchild of Dr Moritz Schreber, a Leipzig University Professor who specialised in childen's health. He worried that the children growing up in the cities would be stunted physically and emotionally if they could not go out to play in the countryside, and insisted that playgrounds be built to ensure that childen would properly socialise.

After his death in 1861, Leipzig school principal Ernst Innozenz Hauschild established the first Schrebergarten as a playground for children on the outskirts of Leipzig. To supplement the healthy air and exercise, vegetable gardens were planted. Slowly, the adults took control of the green spaces, and planted family gardens in the plots. Then fences went up to make sure that their place was theirs alone.

 

 

The Schrebergarten movement spread all over Germany and beyond, with pieces of land on the edge of cities zoned for Schrebergartens which were leased out to families. There they could spent their evenings or weekends puttering away, growing their own vegetables and watching the sun set over their little patch of land. My Opa would sit there in his shorts and socks and sandals watching the world go by while Oma tended her flowers and served us "Muckefuck" and "Kuchen".

Each little plot had its own "Gartenlaube" or tiny house. It wasn't meant for sleep-overs but many people did sleep over on warm summer nights, as did my Opa whom I sometimes accompanied on his trips out to his Schrebergarten. That was in the 1950s. Much later, Schrebergarten were thought to be antiquated "Kitsch" where garden gnomes multiplied.

 

 

However, there has been a renaissance in Schrebergarten, not only in Germany but also here at "Riverbend" where I have my own little Schrebergarten and sleep-out on my own acreage - click here - where I can wear my socks and sandals and practise my German orderliness.

 

 

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My pre-Deceased Estate Sale is up and running!

 

As I've mentioned earlier, my pre-Deceased Estate Sale is now up and running! So far the online advertisement at www.realestate.com.au had 510 hits, of which some 400 are probably my own as I keep admiring my handiwork.

The resulting inquiries were just four: a promising one from a real estate mogul in Milton who seemed to be interested in adding to his portfolio, and another three from people whose arithmetic must've been way off when reading "most residential properties sell at a price ratio of 75% for the house and 25% for the land; 'Riverbend' has an inverse ratio of 25% for the house and 75% for the land (1 July 2022 Valuer-General's Valuation of the LAND ONLY was $2,637,000)". They never replied after I had told them that the price would be over $3 million.

Perhaps my home-made advertisement lacks the misleading hyperbole employed by fast-talking real estate agents; it also lacks all that tricky photography employed by fast-talking real estate agents that makes the sky look bluer and the grass look greener and the house look bigger.

It's just an honest advertisement for a house which over thirty years has become a home which I will be reluctant to leave but leave I will while I'm still able to drive my own car instead of being driven out in a hearse.

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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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When the shit hits the front gate

 

Well, the bottom gate, to be more precise! It's the coming of the sewerage system, to be followed some time later by the mains water. They call it progress! I call it a nuisance because the septic tank never failed us in over thirty years, and who wants to drink the town water laced with chemicals anyway?

 

 

As for that puny sewerage pipe which is just 40mm in diameter, we may want to go easy on the Indian curry! Short of bringing back the 100mm PVC pipe, the neighbourhood will have to take turns going to the loo.

 

 

And they call it progress!

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