It is hard to fathom that in such a country as Australia, it is hard to get a decent, reliable, speedy internet connection.
Queensland's Premier, Anna Bligh, wants to turn Townsville, where I live, into the state's "Second Capital". That's all fine and good, but how about they get the basics right first? Then again, our part of the country has pretty poor infrastructure when it comes to roads etc anyway. The government is more interested in spending money on sports stadiums, toll roads, foot bridges and the like in Brisbane than doing anything up here.
Bowen has water that looks like weak coffee; Townsville has woefully indadequate roads and public transport and our 'new' Townsville hospital has less beds than the 'old' one and we cater for a population that is spread over a distance similar to the whole size of Victoria! It's funny that politicians are declaring Queensland to be the state to 'make or break' our next Federal Government. It has got nothing to do with the ousting of Kevin Rudd, and more to do with the fact that this part of the world continually gets shafted when it comes to spending that is real and beneficial.
Many of our roads, suburban roads even, get flooded for days or weeks on end every wet season. Yet I laugh whenever I see a Federal Government "Roads to Recovery" sign dotted along our highway or arterial roads. I can't even recall when some of them were put up as it's been so long!
As for Telstra, what a laugh! We've been in our new house since March and a Telstra technician came out shortly after to the section near our front fence to do some work because people in the street complained about their phone and internet connection always dropping out. Well, the wires/cables are still sticking up out of the ground, surrounded by the lovely bright yellow fence they surround everything in. We have about 28 houses in our street and at least four of these have Telstra fences in front of them with the cables sticking out. Every time it rains we seem to have phone or internet problems.
I've been at the library for over half an hour trying to upload a heap of photos because our connection at home is too slow to cope with it. So far, I've not been able to upload anything because - I don't know why. Pages are taking way too long to even load. And these photos have been taken in 'email' sized format so it shouldn't take long at all.
Anyway, I had lots of pics to show you from around home but I can't.
Maybe another time.
Hi Barefoot, The whole government thing is ridiculous. We are treated like two year olds. Told a heap of baloney and then expected to meekly hand over our tax/rate dollars and be happy with the few, if any scraps, they decide to throw us. It amazes me that every time the TV goes on here all we hear about is how the South East of the state is growing. And, that they are building satelite cities out from Brisbane to cope with that growth. The push is on for everyone to move to cities. I have a couple of questions. If we all do that. How can the infrastructure, that is struggling already, cope with a bigger population? My second question is, If all the farming communities stop producing food where will our food come from? I know, China!
ReplyDeleteWe need to break our dependence on imports and start financing more locally produced products and support our farmers and producers. The only reason companies take their manufacturing off shore is that they want to make a bigger profit. It is not because they want to pass the savings onto the consumers. Jobs are sent overseas and the people left working here in Aussie are taxed to high heaven to pay for incompetents to run our country into the ground. I think we should have Dick Smith as our PM.
Sorry for the rambling, it just gets so frustrating when you can't even have the basic things like clean water or in your case a decent internet connection.
With the whole photo thing I found that using blogger always took a long time to upload photos. I downloaded Picasa3 to my computer. I followed the link on the blogger log in page. You can use Picasa3 to edit your photos and then to blog them. It is very quick. The only thing is you can only upload four photos at a time, for each post. If I have more than four I will use Picasa and then just use blogger for the rest. Or do two posts and tell everyone to scroll down for the rest of the photos. It does save some time. Hope this helps.
Hope you have a great week.
Cheers, Deb
Thanks for the tip on the uploading of pics. I'm wondering if my computer is also to blame, My memory is almost full (thanks to photos and itunes) so I've transferred them to an external hard drive and then clear some of the memory on the computer. But I think the speed of the internet connection has a lot to do with it as well.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you about the government. I don't want the government moving excess people up this way. Just look at the state of the highway, it's only dual lanes and full of holes and you have to compete with the b-doubles or farming machinery wherever you go. Something like 20,000 extra people are forecast to move out near where we are in new subdivisions - the roads around 8am and 5pm here are shocking as it is already. And that's without the presence of the grey nomads in their Winnebagos or towing their caravans at 20-30klms below the speed limit! Hubby and I are joking that one day we'll have to move to the middle of nowhere to get away from the traffic but knowing the government, the middle of nowhere will become the centre of somewhere!
For sure, for sure! Friends of ours bought on the outskirts of town about ten years ago. A five acre block. They built their house and thought ahh peace and quite. Eight years later they were surrounded. So they sold up and bought 1000 acre block between here and Prossie. No chance of being surrounded now unless they decide to subdivide. Lol!
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