Dr Tafe Safaris

19/11/2024

WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?
Has it even dawned on Peter Dutton that in the event of an invasion the first targets will be nuclear power stations? It has happened in Ukraine by the Russians and Israel is also targeting nuclear facilities in Iran. Australia cannot just rely on the USA or the UK if a foreign power threatens us. Dutton and his Energy Minister, Ted O'brien, appear to be running on a whim. They have not even calculated costs and risks of storing high level nuclear waste. But the one thing that Dutton has dwelled on is "I want a turn at being PM."

18/11/2024

HOW DID CAPTAIN COOK DIE?
When we were young children at school we were told some white lies and yet still some people like Scott Morrison believe them. No, Captain Cook did not discover Australia. The Indigenous people were here for about 65,000 years. In 1616 Dirk Hartog placed a pewter plate on a beach in WA and in 1629 a Dutch ship named the Batavia ran aground in the Abrolhos Islands near Shark Bay, WA. Captain Cook arrived on the Endeavour in 1770 and he died in 1779 in the Hawaiian Islands. But it was not from a spear in the back by a native Hawaiin as we were led to believe. A recent account entitled James Cook by Peter Fitzsimons (2019), states that Cook did die at the hands of Hawaiin natives as one of his men, Lieutenant Phillips, fired a shot as spears and stones started flying from aggressive natives on the beach front. Captain Cook, close to the water's edge, turned to signal to the waiting boats when a native wielding a club stuck him square in the back of the head. Captain Cook staggered forward, dropped his musket and fell to the ground with his hands lapping the water. As he attempted to stand a dagger cut swiftly down into the middle of his back and then other natives rushed forward and dealt further blows until he was dead. The process of retrieving Cook's body to give him a Christian burial was a grisly one because the native chiefs decided to hack him to pieces with individual chunks shared amongst the chiefs of different tribes. Cannibalism was widely practiced in the Islands at that time. There were threats of reprisals so one of the high-ranking Hawaiian chiefs rowed out to the HMS Resolution and brought the dismembered parts including two hands, most of the head, with bones of the arms, thighs and legs. Next morning his fellow seamen placed the body parts in a coffin, covered it with a Union Jack and committed it to the deep with a funeral service and military honours. His crew believed he had been an outstanding commander. This account of the death of Captain Cook may have been too gruesome for young school children to hear.

17/11/2024

SHADOW MINISTER FOR CLIMATE CHANGE AND ENERGY
Ted O'brien is the Shadow Minister for Climate Change and Energy. He has focused on building congestion busting infrastructure for the Sunshine Coast in Queensland but he has not done anything meaningful to support Peter Dutton's push for nuclear power plants around the country. He took a trip at tax-payer expense to Japan to investigate what happened since the 2011 nuclear power disaster at Fukushima. Months later he stated that the Japanese were lovely people. Ted, you were there to investigate the earthquake , tsunami and subsequent disaster at the nuclear power plant, which caused leakage of radioactive waste such that a large area is no longer habitable by people. The subsequent inability to sufficiently cool reactors after the shutdown resulted in the release of radioactive contaminants into the surrounding environment. The accident was rated seven (the maximum severity) on the International Nuclear Even Scale by the Safety Agency. It is regarded as the worst nuclear accident since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. Radioactive water has been released into the Pacific Ocean and the adverse effects on fish and marine life are expected to be low but nobody knows for sure. As a result of radioactive leakage into the neighbouring area 164,000 local residents had to be permanently evacuated. Investigations stated there were lapses in safety and oversights in risk assessment. In 2015 the number of residents displaced due to the accident was around 119,000.
Prior to the nuclear accident in 2011 over 25% of domestic electricity generation in Japan used nuclear power. This plan has now been abandoned. Now the contribution of nuclear energy has dropped to less that 1% and a number of nuclear reactors in the country were shut down by 2013. The question now arises - Parts of Japan and some other countries experience a large number of earthquakes each year so it is not wise to build nuclear power plants in these areas.
All this information can be sourced through Google and our own Shadow Climate Change Minister, Ted O'brien, has been deathly quiet on the problems following the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Disaster in 2011. Below is a photo of Ted O'brien trying to convince an audience that Australia should build 7 nuclear power plants around the country. No actual figures or costings have been given.

25/11/2023

Toondah Bungle
As we move towards 2024 we can see that the Redlands and Cleveland in particular, do not want 10-storey blocks of units on the intertidal zone, which is protected under the Ramsar Convention. Those councillors and state government members who were conned by the Walker Corporation, now are starting to realise their mistake. If Walker Corp destroys the shore-bird zone at Cleveland it cannot be rectified and if profits from sales are well below what was expected Walker have openly stated that they will just walk away. That would be highly embarrassing for the Redland City Council and the Qld Labor State Government and it would leave a huge mess to be cleaned up. Check out this false image of a 3,600 unit construction. Some gullible people actually fall for these artist's impressions.

04/08/2023

29/05/2022

WE need both Redland City Council and the QLD State Government to spend more time on ensuring that our coastal wildlife is protected rather than pushing for more medium and high density housing in inappropriate locations.

26/03/2022

WARNING POLITICAL
I don't know how many of you agree that we have some real dummies on both sides of politics. I think they would struggle to land a job in the real world yet they are paid over $200,000 per annum by the tax payer. I'll just leave you with a few names, most of whom don't believe that climate change is real. The PM, the deputy PM, Clive Palmer, Craig Kelly, the federal environment minister, the federal energy minister and the list goes on.

01/02/2022

Check out some of the wildlife here in Sheldon amongst the trees. Let's make sure the councils and state government hear us loud and clear about the need to conserve koala habitat.

22/01/2022

Looking forward to another African Safari but we need to wait a little longer till Covid settles, perhaps later this year.

18/11/2021

Photo taken at Western Plains Zoo out at Dubbo, NSW. The male lion is quite interested in Leah and just as well there is a thick sheet of glass between them. The aging male lion has his female partner for company but cannot see his three sons who occupy the adjoining large area with rocks and space to play.

This photo looks scary but in fact there is a thick sheet of glass between Leah and the male lion at Dubbo Western Plains Zoo.

12/11/2021

We will arrange another wildlife safari to the Serengeti Plains in Tanzania just as soon as it is safe to travel again. The price will still be about half of the big travel companies.