Australia Reviews

If you are looking to take advantage of the $1600 Insulation Rebates which are offered by the Australian Government to insulate your home, then this is important. Earlier this year, the Australian government allocated $3.9 billion for what is known as the new Energy Efficient Homes Package. What this means is that if you fulfill the criteria set out by the Government, you’ll be able to insulate your home for free. By insulating your home, you could save over $200 each year in lower heating and cooling costs. To qualify for the insulation rebate, your home (like approximately 2.2 million other homes in Australia) must not have adequate (or any) ceiling or roof insulation. If you don’t have insulation, then there is a good chance that you will qualify. To be eligible for the insulation rebate, there are a number of criteria you need to fullfill. The first is that you need to go to the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage, and the Arts website online. Download the insulation rebate application and review the Homeowner Insulation Program Guidelines (dated July 1, 2009) to be sure you qualify and can comply with all requirements. Then you must contact at least two of the installers listed on the Department’s Installer Provider Register (on the website) and get written estimates for the completion of the job. The information which is required from the insulation installer must contain their contact information, a measurement of the area to be insulated, the type of insulation that will be installed and the R-Value of that insulation. Also, they will need to provide you with the cost of the work to be completed. It is then up to you to choose the insulation installer which offers the lowest quote. Again, it’s important that they are registered with the Government. Otherwise, you will not be able to claim the insulation rebate. After you are sure that the installer is registered, make an appointment for the work to begin. In most instances, the insulation installer will be able to help you fill in the forms to claim the $1600 rebate.

For more information about the $1600 insulation rebate and a quote from an insulation installer at your home, visit Insulation Rebate today.

Some years later John Slater and Sarah Elizabeth Jane Wode-Douglas visit Kuala Lumpur. Slater is an accomplished poet who has hobnobbed with anyone worth hobnobbing with, Eliot, Pound, Auden, etc. He also something of a lady’s man on the side. Sarah is an upper crust girl who developed a liking for other girls at school. Aspects of her origins are a matter of some conjecture, however. Slater seems to have played a role. Her present is clear. She is the editor in chief of a miniscule literary journal devoted mainly to new poetry. In Kuala Lumpur she discovers the story of Bob McCorkle´s fabled poetry, the fake created by Christopher Chubb.

Chubb is resident in KL and has been so for several years. He has a bicycle repair shop, but still writes his own doggerel. Sarah meets him and dismisses his work as dire, derivative at best. McCorkle´s poems, however, are blissful and she tries everything possible to get her hands on the material so that she can publish it. The problem for her is the fact that McCorkle is apparently an invention of Chubb, so the only way that she can get near to the material is through him. The Australian is now a poor artisan with ragged clothes and tropical ulcers. He speaks English strongly peppered with bits of Malay and plays hard to get. The only way that Sarah can access the McCorkle poems is to suffer Chubb’s life story, its fantasies, inventions and questionable realities.

And it’s a story that comes and goes to and from Australia. It progresses through Indonesia and peninsular Malaya. We visit Penang, sup tea in the E and O as Chubb pursues McCorkle, his own now demonic invention, across south east Asia. His alter ego becomes something real, something apart from himself.

The book is packed with literary references, but is in no way academic. There is a strong sense of place, with the sights, sounds and smells of Kuala Lumpur oozing from the page. The only aspect missing is the taste, and in Malaysia food is much more pervasive an influence in the culture than we encounter via Chubb’s adoption of it. It’s a minor point.

Eventual reconciliation of the Chubb-McCorkle conflict, Sarah’s pursuit of the poems and Slater’s apparent management of the process is truly surprising and it is for the reader to discover this empirically.

Overall the pace of the book is varied and, here and there, one feels that Peter Carey has over-complicated things and thus detracted from the directness that could have achieved increased impact. But then poetry is like that, isn’t it? If it was linear, uncomplicated, What Katy Did, then it would not have the richness that makes it poetry. It would lack the diversion, the invention. My Life As A Fake has all these things and probably stands alone, eventually, as an examination of the nature of creativity and invention. When viewed in retrospect, Chubb’s life, his haunting by the accomplished poet he has ostensibly created and his pursuit of the same to reclaim a daughter he believes is his own at times beggars belief. But just try predicting tomorrow’s news, or even, especially, your own emotions or reactions. We all become inventors, with neither a past nor a future solid in our present. Eliot again.

The month of October continues to shatter economies around the world, or rather the events of September and the 15 months leading up to it, continue to do so.

The failure of Lehman Brothers and the spate of rescues in the US and Europe in the last two and a bit weeks of September, should now be seen as the major dislocation of the credit crunch, which started as the US subprime mortgage debacle.

Not even the outbreak of the crunch in August 2007, nor the bailout of Bear Stearns in March of this year, have come close to causing the global economy, and its constituent economies around the world, the same sort of devastating blow.

Bear Stearns was a warning, but the Fed and JPMorgan pulled us through, but no one thought that when Lehman Brothers was tottering, that it would go. But go it did, down the tube to devastate financial markets, confidence and set off a chain reaction of events still clanging their way through financial markets.

US retail sales, new home starts and new home building permits all down by a record amount, or to record lows in October; US unemployment soared 254,000 (to be revised upwards) and still thousands of jobs are going every day across the US, and increasingly in Australia and Europe and parts of Asia.

Now Japan, which is already in recession, with two consecutive quarters of mild contractionary activity, faces a more damaging slump.

The engine for the country is its export machine, allied with the huge domestic manufacturing sector set up to arm and replenish the Toyotas, Nissans, Hondas, Canons, Fujitsus and other industrial giants.

If the engine splutters, the Japanese economy backfires: it’s what has been happening at increasing pace since mid year: a fall in August, a small recovery in September, and now the worst slump in almost seven years.

The Japanese Finance Ministry reported yesterday that exports fell 7.7% in October from October 2007.

That was the biggest drop since December 2001 as the US recession was deepening.

That was after a rise of 1.5% in September.

It follows the first effective deficit in 26 years, which was logged in August this year, when the economy was hit by high import prices and weak demand for Japanese goods overseas.The October figures were the first deficit for the month in 28 years, reflecting a fall in exports to the rest of Asia.

Shipments to China, which had supported demand even as shipments to the US and Europe had declined, fell 0.9%, marking the first decline since May, 2005.

Exports to the US and Europe posted double-digit declines year-on-year.

Slumping car exports, shipments of consumer electronics, industrial foods, trucks, computers: a wide range of products have been hit by the slump in the US and European economies in particular.

On top of this, the rising yen continued to hurt exports: it’s risen 22% against the euro since September and around 9% against the US dollar in the past couple of weeks.

Although the slump in US car sales is hurting, so too is falling demand in Japan, and in other markets.

That’s why Toyota is expecting to earn at best $US200 million in profits in the six months to next March (but that now looks like a loss). Nissan this week said its second half profit would be eliminated by the slump in the US and the higher yen.

Growth in China, Japan’s largest trading partner, is slowing (hence the huge reflation package revealed last week and three rate cuts in two months).

So it shouldn’t have been a surprise that the level of exports to China fell for the first time in three years, or that exports to Asia as whole fell 4% in the month.

Shipments to Europe plunged 17.2%, the biggest fall since December 2001 and by 19% to the US (although they were down 22.8% in August).

Imports rose 7.4% (despite the higher value of the yen and the continuing fall in oil prices).

That gave Japan a $US666 million trade deficit, the third this year, a rare event for the export machine.

Name: Royal Melbourne Golf Club (West Course)Location: Black Rock, VIC, AustraliaPar: 72Length: 6023m Holes: 18

Royal Melbourne Golf Club (West Course) – Hole 5

The West Course at Royal Melbourne Golf club is has been the top rated golf course in Australia for the past 8 years. It is a course to rival the best in the world and it owes its position to three important factors. The land over which its wonderful holes are played is perfectly undulating and the sandy nature of the ground must have been a dream for those charged with the construction of greens and bunkers. The clubs initial routing was altered by the great Scottish architect, Alister Mackenzie in 1926 and it, unquestionably, exploited the full potential of the land. It was Mackenzie who came up with the blind drive up over the hill at the par five fourth that was not, in itself, ideal but it opened up the chance to incorporate the best second shot on the course, down the hill to the green and he followed it with the world class par three, fifth and the brilliant sixth hole. The third part of the equation is the under rated genius of Mick Morcom, the clubs curator and the man Mackenzie entrusted with the job of bringing his ideas and plans to life. “Morcom”, said Mackenzie “was the best greenkeeper I have ever worked with”. Mackenzie’s ideals were based upon the genius of The Old Course at St Andrews where the golfer had a multitude of options to consider before both club and shot could be correctly selected. He abhorred the use of long grass as a means of punishing the wayward and it seems he enjoyed confusing the golfer as he confronted them with the golfing equivalent of a multiple choice exam. The finest examples of this aspect of the design come at two of the clubs most famous holes. The dogleg sixth hole takes up a huge piece of land and demonstrates perfectly the advantages Mackenzie had at Royal Melbourne over the tighter courses he influenced during his extraordinary twelve week visit to Australia in 1926, including Kingston Heath, Yarra Yarra and Victoria. The Verdict The West Course may not be the most difficult course in the country and many will argue it is not the most “perfectly” conditioned. Nor does it have the spectacular views of courses like The National, Laguna Quays or New South Wales Golf Clubs. What it is, however, is our greatest feat of golfing architecture and it matters not how many times one plays it, there is always another layer of subtlety to be uncovered and another series of fascinating decisions to make.

Computer based tutoring programs are fast changing the way education is brought into the home. There are several of these programs on the market aimed at developing students’ Mathematics, English and Science skills. This article provides a review of the Mathemagic Computer Tutor, a computer based maths program for students aged 5 through 18 years.
The Mathemagic Computer Tutor
The Mathemagic Computer Tutor provides excellent tuition, remediation and extension for students in the classroom and the home. The software is successfully being used in classrooms within Australia and New Zealand. It is an excellent teaching aid that has tremendous benefits for the student who wishes to improve or excel in their mathematical skills. Available in three levels: