Welcome to the gorgeous 2023 Block of the Month designed by Natalie Bird. The design features 48, 8in blocks presenting a collection of pieced, appliqué and stitchery blocks —&from sweet little hexagons to Dresden Plates, Coff in Wheel blocks and lots of delightful elements. Each part will include a collection of the diff erent techniques to keep you engaged and challenged! This issue includes the full materials list for the entire project. The fabrics used are from Natalie's most recent fabric collection — Owl & Hare Hollow —and two previous ranges — Blume and Grow and Birdhouse Basics. You can make this quilt from your stash or perhaps some new purchases — whatever pleases you. If you wish to make it in the same fabrics that Natalie has used, including the…

With each of Prince Harry's baseless accusations against his family and emotionally charged TV rants, King Charles’ heart has sunk lower and lower. The 38-year-old's latest appearances, with 60 Minutes’ Anderson Cooper in the US and ITV's Tom Bradby in the UK, have drawn condemnation of hypocrisy from his loudest critics – but for those closest to Harry, they see a sadder side of the duke's constant need to attack the royal family from his new home in California. “Harry has made his case over and over again, and the more he goes on, the more desperate he sounds to provoke some kind of reaction from the palace,” says a source. “Charles is finally starting to understand that Harry doesn't hate him or the institution, and has started to see his public…

We all know someone who still rues the day they let go of a beloved classic and dreams of somehow being reunited with the object of their desire. Well, Blair Bryant isn’t one of them, because sitting in his Hobart garage today is the original 1957 Ford Thunderbird he purchased as an enthusiastic 16-year-old in Southern California many decades ago. Blair’s is not your run-of-the-mill T-Bird, but a rare 1957 model with race-inspired ‘E-Code’ performance options, including larger capacity 312 cubic inch (5.1-litre) V8, alloy intake manifold and twin Holley four-barrel carburettors. The Hobart consultant explains that growing up in California he was attracted by the T-Bird’s cool looks, its relative rarity, V8 performance, and the fact it was known as a movie star car, driven by the likes of Marilyn Monroe…

View offers Tablet | £499 | whf.cm/iPad2022 The iPad has officially hit double digits, and this year marks the biggest design change the standard iPad has undergone since its 2010 inception. For the bulkier chunk of change required to pick up this year’s pad (last year’s model launched at £319), you do get some beefier internals, including a processor upgrade to Apple’s A14 Bionic. This is the same chip found in the iPhone 12, and it remains blisteringly fast despite being a couple of years old. Other upgrades include 5G support on the cellular model and a camera boost from 8MP to 12MP. Gone is the traditional rounded slab with chunky bezels flanking the screen and housing the home button that has been the dependable iPad style we have come to know and…

Taurus APR 21 – MAY 21 With four planets stimulating your sign, the pace isn’t letting up. Thrown into the mix, Mars could propel you into a more public role or onto the sporting field. Some Bulls might be roped into coaching, while for singles, social stars could see you dating up a storm. TIME TO TRY Get involved with a worthwhile cause or a local fundraising project. JESSICA ALBA The businesswoman is dependable, a hard worker and also a great listener. Gemini MAY 22 – JUN 21 You can’t keep everyone happy! While your inner peacemaker is yearning to do good, you may find yourself caught in a dispute – and the waters could get murky. If a medical matter has been weighing on your mind, investigations should prove revealing. TIME TO TRY Reassess your investments while…

VIA Alpina is a classic among the long-distance hikes in Switzerland. This trail takes you once through the northern Alps of Switzerland in a series of 20 daily stages. Its 14 alpine passes and great variety of alpine culture, flora and fauna are the fuel of a hiking enthusiast’s dreams. If you go hiking for several days, not only will you discover the unknown side of Switzerland, you will also get to enjoy a great deal of Swiss hospitality. Green-blue lakes, delightful rolling hills or passes bursting with panoramic views: what you see on foot, you will remember. 1 The Via Alpina travels past glaciated peaks such as the Wildstrubel (Kandersteg to Adelboden) and the Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau. The trail itself stays solidly on trekking terrain. At times this trek…

Alex_Ingram@autovia.co.uk @AxleIngram Visit autoexpress.co.uk for the latest new cars and drives Performance 0-62mph/top speed 3.3 seconds/155mph THE Porsche Taycan Turbo Cross Turismo accelerates from 0-62mph in 3.3 seconds. While we’ve seen other rapid estate cars – the Mercedes-AMG E 63, for example – get close to that figure before, it’s even more mind-bending here. Maybe it’s the disconnect between such amazing speed and the accompanying noise – little more than an augmented starship hum – or the fact that the instant response from the twin electric motors (which develop 671bhp in overboost mode) can whack your head back into the headrest in a way many supercars can’t. The Taycan’s acceleration is absolutely savage. All of this is true in the standard Taycan of course, but this Cross Turismo introduces a few key differences in how you live with…

1 Get away without going away Finally, you have time to chill at home. But, before you reach for that to-do list, think again. If your spare time is all about catching up, it’s not much of a break. Instead, try the following ideas for getting downtime with your stay-at-home break. 2 Shake it up Stay up late, sleep late and eat at slightly dierent times, as you would when you’re on vacation. Aim to create an environment that gets you out of your normal routine. 3 Host a kerbside happy hour There’s nothing more relaxing than hanging out with friends on a warm evening as the sun sinks and the kids ride up and down the block on their bikes. But don’t get hung up on the formalities of throwing a party. Just declare…

THE TERM “raucous” could not be applied to the crowd at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics—perhaps because many of them were officials, attending as a reward for good conduct. So on the few occasions that spectators at the Bird’s Nest stadium did show emotion on the cold, clear evening of February 4th, their reactions were worth studying. Chaguan was among dozens of Beijing-based foreign reporters invited to the ceremony. He sat in a section of the stadium separated by fences and guards from the “closed-loop”, a secure quarantine zone created for Olympic athletes, coaches and dignitaries newly arrived from an outside world that, in contrast with China, has resigned itself to living with covid-19. Most of the stadium’s seats were kept empty, as a pandemic precaution. Olympic…

The bombshells have been coming through thick and fast since even before Prince Harry’s tell-all memoir was officially released on January 10. And as the Duke of Sussex continues his publicity tour to promote his book Spare, the revelations continue to shock. “[William’s] frustrations were growing and growing and growing. He was shouting at me. I was shouting back at him. It wasn’t nice. It wasn’t pleasant at all,” Harry explained to journalist Anderson Cooper during a recent US 60 Minutes interview regarding a previous altercation between him and his brother. “And he snapped. And he pushed me to the floor.” Along with his strained relationship with the Prince of Wales, Harry’s book details his earlier drug use, losing his virginity and being unable to comprehend his mother’s death for years.…

LOST SKILLS Not so long ago, the conversation topic at a Happy Hour group I happened to be at centred on the riveting subject of gearboxes. In particular, just how much better the latest generation torque converter gear shifters is compared with the older style automated manual transmissions (AMTs). In case you are wondering, it was a gathering of motorhomers, because it's not a topic that so much gets the attention of the caravanning brigade. The short version of this is that motorhomers were very relieved when the likes of Mercedes-Benz, IVECO and Fiat developed their respective torque converter gearboxes. The older AMT gearboxes more or less did their job but gave less-than-stellar performances. In the middle of this conversation, someone lamented that manual gearboxes, aka millennial anti-theft devices or stick shifters,…

“It hasn’t rained in weeks, so the rain has made the track slippery as hell,” one of Suzuki Australia’s techs said as I rolled out of pit garage number 49. I don’t know if hell is a slippery place or not, but I didn’t want to find out on my first trip to Phillip Island for a ride around the famous circuit by throwing a bike down the tarmac. And that bike was the fresh Gen III Hayabusa, a modern icon of motorcycles. So fresh that the new ’Busa had arrived in the country only days before my soggy spin around the Island and it was the only one on the continent. After I’d finished with it, it was to go on show at various dealerships across the country. A…

MOST ENTHUSIASTS WILL clock 1974 as the year of the Volkswagen Golf. The original Mk I Golf heralded a new era for hatchbacks – and VW – with 35 million of them (and counting) sold since. Yet the Golf had a talented sibling that carved a motoring niche in its own right, even if it hasn’t reached the same stratospheric fame: the VW Scirocco. The Scirocco is less familiar to many Australians as it took almost 40 years for the nameplate to arrive in Volkswagen showrooms here – and even then, it was a single-flavour performance variant, the Scirocco R. Yet it was worth the wait, even if many Aussies were confused by what the Scirocco’s role in the line-up actually was. The Scirocco’s place follows that of another legendary sports car.…

Glencrutchery Road, Douglas, Isle of Man. The commotion of the most famous start line in racing filters through us as we line up, single file. The ambient noise of cheering spectators and frantic mechanics slowly fades, replaced by the scream of four-cylinder engines ready for takeoff. Like parachutists leaping into an airborne battlefield via a tap on the left shoulder, each rider releases the clutch and roars down Bray Hill, which at its precipice is like riding off the edge of the world at 260km/h. I’ve hardly had time to process what I’m about to do, thanks to the rapid fire of the start procedure. At 10-second intervals, you’re constantly shuffled along to the starting area that’s signalled by a board reading: Rider and Machine Only. It’s now just you and…

Film Crazy, Not Insane Alex Gibney On Sky in the UK from 1 December and streaming on HBO in the US THERE is a scene in Crazy, Not Insane, a documentary about the work of forensic psychiatrist Dorothy Otnow Lewis, where she recalls the day Martin Scorsese rang. The director was shooting Cape Fear, and had heard of Lewis’s study of violent murderers. Robert De Niro, playing a psychopath, wanted to meet one. Could she possibly make an introduction? “It was so funny,” says Lewis in the film, clearly still tickled by the memory. “I felt like a casting director!” They compromised on an attempted murderer. Her brush with Hollywood doubles as both welcome light relief in a film otherwise trained on the darkest corners of the human psyche – and a shrewd comment on…

WITH EACH day that fresh blood is shed in Ukraine, it becomes more painfully clear that China and the West have clashing notions of how to preserve world peace. Since President Vladimir Putin first invaded his neighbour, hopeful voices in some Western capitals have called China an ideal mediator between Russia and Ukraine. Such optimists cite the supposed pragmatism of the modern Chinese Communist Party. They note the ties of trade and investment that bind the Chinese economy to Russia, Ukraine and wider Europe, and conclude that brokering peace is in China’s selfinterest. Alas, their elegant arguments cannot overcome a stark and ugly point of difference. Most Western governments and citizens want Mr Putin to lose in Ukraine, and to pay an instructively high price for his aggression. China’s rulers…

DIE coronaviruskrisis, met al die onsekerheid wat dit wêreldwyd meegebring het, was ook maak of breek vir verhoudings. Terwyl die liefde tussen sommige paartjies nog meer geblom het, het die krake in ander se verhoudings ál duideliker geblyk. Geen wonder die egskeidingsyfer het skielik die hoogte ingeskiet nie. Tog was daar pare wat tydens die inperking meer gehaltetyd as ooit tevore saam kon deurbring of nog hegter daardeur saamgesnoer is. En ander wat selfs in dié tyd van onsekerheid liefde gevind of ’n nuwe maat werklik leer ken het. Huisgenoot het met ’n paar bekende pare gepraat wie se liefde sterk staan ondanks die storms wat ons in die afgelope maande moes trotseer. Hier vertel hulle hoe hulle die liefde en hul maat opnuut leer waardeer het, van die nuwe perspektief wat hulle op…

Controlling the message was paramount for both Keith and Nicole, something that Father Paul Coleman, who was to conduct the marriage ceremony, learned very quickly. He innocently told a reporter that the service would be short, sweet and simple, and that the couple was “very much in love”. Soon after, the padre was quietly told to “cool it” by the team running the big event, headed by Nicole’s publicist, Wendy Day. Day had been down this road before, having corralled the media during the marriage of Russell Crowe, another high-profile client, to Danielle Spencer back in April 2003. A few days prior to the wedding, some twenty photographers, who had set up camp outside the Kidman family home, started to stir when the garage door began opening. But they were very surprised…

Activity snacks We already know that prolonged periods of sitting reduce the body’s ability to filter sugar from the blood following a meal. However, if you break up sedentary periods with just two minutes of walking or 15 squats, that can improve blood sugar clearance after meals. In a new study, researchers wanted to see if there might be any effect on protein metabolism. They had subjects sit for long periods across 7.5 hours, interrupting sitting every 30 minutes by two minutes of walking or 15 squats. They found that the activity improved the efficiency of amino acid use for repairing old or damaged proteins and building muscle. The researchers say that this highlights the need for breaking up long sedentary periods with what they call “activity snacks” in order to…

PROS • Comfortable ride • Approachable handling limits • More power than before CONS • Extra power offset by extra mass • Cabin feels old despite being new • Limited-slip differential only on upper trims VEHICLE LAYOUT Front-engine, RWD, 2-pass, 2-door hatchback ENGINE, TRANSMISSION 3.0L twin-turbo direct-injected DOHC 24-valve 60-degree V-6, 6-speed manual CURB WEIGHT (F/R DIST) 3,519 lb (57/43%) WHEELBASE 100.4 in LENGTH x WIDTH x HEIGHT 172.4 x 72.6 x 51.8 in ON SALE Now What’s old is new again? The 2023 Nissan Z takes that phrase literally, as it represents yet another rehash of a rear-wheel-drive platform dating back to the 2003 350Z. Nissan reanimated those old bones for the 370Z in 2010, and here they are again for the new, numberless Z. Next to its mashup of retro Z styling cues—the nose is pure, original 240Z, while the tail is more…

Personalise it Visit us in store to see how you can make it your own. Choose your Fabric on the Louis Sofa Choose your Wood Stain on the Broadway Range Bring textural timber pieces together with a stylish modular, for laidback living synonymous with Australian style. LOUIS 5-Seater Fabric Corner Lounge Suite with Ottoman in “Romo” Mink Fabric (W345 x D270 x H75cm) $5999; BROADWAY Coffee Table in Stain Colour Mimosa (W135 x D80 x H42cm) $1599; BROADWAY Lamp Table in Stain Colour Mimosa (W60 x D60 x H50cm) $899; BROADWAY 4-Door/2-Drawer Buffet in Stain Colour Mimosa (W200 x D48 x H85cm) $3199; FINLAE Table Lamp (W45 x D45 x H70cm) $249; GOLDEN BLOOM Velvet Cushions (45 x 45cm) $49ea; SANTINO Throw in Charcoal (160 x 127cm) $99.95; KOBE XL Rug (250 x 350cm) $1729. HARVEYNORMAN.COM.AU…

AMD has finally unveiled its next-generation GPU architecture, RDNA 3, and the first two cards to be built using the architecture: the Radeon RX 7900 XTX and the Radeon RX 7900 XT. Both cards will be available to purchase on December 13, 2022. We’ve been waiting a long time for details on these two cards, so let’s not dally around. AMD’s bringing some impressive specs to bear with its two brand new enthusiast-grade cards, and the RX 7900 XTX is promising to deliver up to 61 TFLOPs of compute performance – nearly three times the 23 TFLOPs from the RX 6950 XT. The RX 7900 XTX will employ the power of 96 RDNA 3 Compute Units (CUs), tantalisingly close to a triple-digit count. It will operate at a game clock of 2.3GHz,…

LAST YEAR, I walked the Overland Track with three friends. It was a long-planned trip, suggested in February and executed in November. February seems the right month to say yes to things, but this time last year I was recovering from a back operation; not capable of walking three kilometres along a beach, let alone contemplate the 60-odd kilometres of the Overland. So, to say yes seemed a small act of faith. The walk was the fancy version where you sleep in a hut, have your meals cooked for you and only carry a light pack. The luxury felt a little like cheating, but the opportunity to walk with old friends, and to ease my injured body back into a six-day walk, was ideal. I signed up. Nine months later, I met…

Street scrambler is a fitting tag for Royal Enfield’s new Scram 411, a bike allegedly designed for those who tackle the urban jungle throughout the week but who want to use the same machine to escape it on the weekends. Based on the brand’s midsize Himalayan adventure tourer, the obvious visual differences with the Scram include the deletion of the touring screen, high-mount front guard and front carrier racks, as well as the fitment of a 19-inch front wheel instead of the Himalayan’s more off-road biased 21-incher. Other visual giveaways include the Scram’s unique headlight surround, its nifty little side covers and the fitment of a one-piece seat. Mechanically, both bikes are very similar, running the same half-duplex split cradle frame, the same Euro 5-compliant 411cc air-cooled single-cylinder engine, and the same five-speed…

EVs may be the future, but current lithium-ion battery technology is not the answer EV’S BIG PICTURE HAVING READ read Andy Enright’s big drive of the Mercedes EQS, ‘Change we can believe in?’ (Wheels, October), I suggest he’s presented only one side of the very complex EV equation. Here’s the ‘darker’ side. Whilst EVs may be the future, current lithium-ion battery technology is not the answer. Such batteries require the mining, processing, transport, refining and manufacture of large quantities of lithium salts, cobalt, nickel, graphite and copper; often from poorer countries at heavy environmental and social cost. (In the Congo, impoverished families pick through rubble for ‘blue’ cobalt nuggets which currently earn them a pittance.) Then there’s the increased battery and vehicle weight problem: should we include the manufacturing/environmental impact of bigger brakes/pads/and many other components? However…

Masses of people The human population has more than doubled in the past 50 years, so has the mass of our planet and everything on it increased? John Rieuwerts Yelverton, Devon, UK The extra mass of a doubled human population has come from the soil, oceans and atmosphere, so the overall mass of the Earth system hasn’t changed. I find it humbling to know that the countless atoms that make up “me” were previously scattered across the world and have even been part of people who lived in past centuries. As such, each of us is a temporary collection of elements borrowed from the largely finite mass of the Earth system and will ultimately be recycled back into it. Ashes to ashes. Greg Harris Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates While the human population has doubled in the past 50…

THERE ARE PLENTY of things in this life on which you can’t put a price, but space is not one of them. Virgin Galactic reckons it can help you join the 62-mile-high club for $250K, while back here on earth, we’re calling it 20 grand, give or take, for the regular kind of space. That’s the rough difference between what Mazda charges for its top-spec all-wheel-drive five-seater CX-5 and its bigger brother you see here, the seven-seater CX-9 Azumi flagship. Okay, they’re not directly comparable because of equipment and tech differences, but engines and transmissions are shared, so it’s not an absurd observation: those two small seats in the third row amount to around $10,000 each. But to plenty of Aussie families, they’re so invaluable they actually are hard to…

At last! It was near enough to three years ago that I was contemplating an overdue run to Tassie – preferably with one of the motley fleet out of the shed. And yes, the dreaded C…D (use of the full name of the great plague is now frowned upon in our household) got in the way. Even so, this is Tasmania we’re talking of, so surely not too much has changed in the several years since we last graced its shores. Well, yes and no. The big news for anyone taking the vehicle ferry is the Melbourne terminal moved to Geelong just a few weeks before we were due to sail. In fact, the whole thing was so fresh that there were still some old signs up on the freeway network, pointing…

1 PROVIDE FUNCTIONAL SEATING ‘Bench seating provides a practical place to sit while putting on shoes or preparing a bag to go out for the day. Incorporating additional storage under the seating for hiding away wellies, walking boots and trainers will always prove invaluable,’ suggests Louisa Eggleston, creative director at Humphrey Munson. A seating area is also a way to add character. ‘Although a boot room is a functional space, it is still part of the home and the design should be treated with the same care as a sitting room,’ says Louise Wicksteed, design director at Sims Hilditch. ‘Choose patterned cushions for bench seating or a fun shade to paint the joinery.’ 2 GET SELECTIVE ABOUT STORAGE A boot room can quickly become a dumping ground as outdoor clothes are discarded. Creating separate…

NEW SCIENTIST closed its offices on 13 March, a week or so before the UK went into national lockdown. Since then, I have spent most of this year in a small radius around my north London flat and have been into the city centre only a handful of times. As a native Londoner, it is strange to be so cut off from the city, which is why the opening moments of Watch Dogs: Legion took my breath away. As the camera panned over incredibly realistic looking versions of the London Eye, Buckingham Palace and even a lovingly rendered Brixton tube station, I felt homesick for the city I’m living in. But this isn’t really London as I know it. The game is set in the near future, the streets full of driverless…

IN JUNE 2020, Jorge Valencia of the Point Foundation started receiving calls and emails from consultants doing due diligence on his organisation, which helps lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) students into higher education. They wanted financial statements and asked questions about how the group was responding to the pandemic. For a nonprofit organisation that relies on donations, it was nothing out of the ordinary. What came next, however, was. Just a few weeks later they received another call, this time with news that MacKenzie Scott, the former wife of Jeff Bezos, who founded Amazon, wanted to make a large gift. There were no restrictions on how the money was to be spent or plans to monitor the group’s work beyond a short annual report—just a request to keep quiet…

The Confidence Men: How Two Prisoners of War Engineered the Most Remarkable Escape in History by Margalit Fox. Random House, 329 pp., $28.00 Persuading people to like something is a trade. Persuading them to change their minds and like something else is a skill. But inducing them to believe in something that their senses and experience tell them is plainly unreal or untrue—unicorns, papal infallibility, Trump’s assertions, ghosts—requires art and almost manic self-confidence. The “confidence men” of Margalit Fox’s title, two British prisoners of war who planned the most eccentric and devious of all escapes, had plenty of both. But Fox puts their story into a broad historical setting, using it to illustrate the ways in which scientific inventions made possible not only empowerment but also credulity and manipulation. It’s often pointed out that…

Is there water on dwarf planet? ● AIM OF MISSION: In 2015, the Dawn probe reached the dwarf planet of Ceres in the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter. Dawn’s pictures indicate the existence of an underground ocean that leaks water onto the surface. ESA aims to collect samples from a crater to find out if there is water there – and perhaps even life. ● CHALLENGE: Mars’ gravity can be used to send the probe towards its destination on its way out. But on its way back it must use fuel, slowing its return. ● DISTANCE: 294 million km. ● TRAVEL TIME & COST: Launch in 2029 and arrival back on Earth in the early 2040s. The cost would be approximately A5.6bn. China to land on Jupiter moon ● AIM OF MISSION: The Chinese Gan De probe is to fly…

The victims had waited more than 10 years for this day, and Victoria’s County Court was full, the front rows occupied by those who’d been subjected to psychological manipulation so cruel and unusual it isn’t covered by a specific law. The press had packed into the back rows to witness the bizarre case. Occasionally someone would swivel to glimpse the perpetrator, slumped in her chair; a dowdy woman in white sneakers and a fuzzy purple jumper. If Lydia Abdelmalek had any comprehension of the gravity of her crimes, she didn’t show it. The 32-year-old wore a blank expression, showing no remorse for the lives she’d destroyed. Since her arrest, Lydia had maintained she was an innocent bystander. And why would she be involved? To those who knew her, Lydia appeared to…

Your say Access, AMCN, PO Box 6, Bittern, Vic, 3918 access@amcn.com.au OGIO Excelsior Win OGIO’s ultra-padded air-mesh backpack valued at $79.95! Include your full name and address in your letter, via post or email. Long letters will be cut to fit, so don’t ramble. The views expressed by readers are not necessarily those of the editor. Fair dink’em Over the last several issues of AMCN I noticed that many of the bikes featured have no pillion seat at all and the few that do are often rated “immediately hopped off and walked away laughing,” as per Pete’s better half referring to the Harley-Davidson Street Bob (AMCN Vol 70 No 19). I can’t be the only rider out there who regularly enjoys carrying a passenger, so how about a feature on the best bikes for pillions in the various…

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD! WENTWORTH (s1-8, part 1) Watch On Demand With the second half of the thrilling final season making its explosive return soon, now is the perfect time to jump into the world of Wentworth. Foxtel magazine chats to the drama’s establishing director, Kevin Carlin, to find out which episodes of the acclaimed Aussie prison series are essential as you rewatch it all On Demand ahead of the last season ever. NO PLACE LIKE HOME (s1, ep 1) The premiere episode aired in May 2013, introducing viewers to both legendary inmate Bea Smith (Danielle Cormack) and Wentworth Correctional Centre. “It’s essential viewing, in that it sets up the pivotal themes for the series: the corrosive nature of power; the actions that we’ll take to survive in a brutal environment and how those actions incrementally and irrevocably…

We all know mulch is the stuff we put on our gardens – but it’s so much more! It’s usually made from chopped up branches and trunks, but there are many other organic and inorganic options. Their specific qualities make them suitable for different applications, such as ornamental beds, vegie gardens, underneath trees and in bare areas. Mulch really is the bee’s knees, because one simple act of mulching covers many tasks. It starves weeds of sunlight and air, slows water run-off, and reduces evaporation, keeping soil moist. Over time, it helps to improve the structure of clay, which facilitates air and water movement through the soil. It adds nutrients and structure to sandy soils. Mulch reduces erosion and insulates soil, benefiting plants and soil organisms such as earthworms. It can…

Megalodon crunched down on oily noses Prehistoric whale skulls with repeated bite marks reveal that sperm whales must have been a popular meal for the biggest shark the world has ever known. ANIMALS For centuries, humans hunted sperm whales for three things: their teeth, the ambergris secreted in their intestines, and a fatty amber oil known as spermaceti, which resides in the whale’s head, and is key to its production of sound. A sperm whale’s nose is a complex system of connective tissue, air ducts, muscles, and perhaps 2000 litres of spermaceti. In less enlightened times, this oil was used in cosmetics, textiles and candles. Now scientists have discovered another hunter that went after this trove of oil – the biggest shark ever to have existed on Earth, the prehistoric megalodon. This extinct…

America is increasingly concerned about the possibility of war in the Taiwan Strait. It has good reason ON JUNE 29TH 1950 the uss Valley Forge, flagship of America’s Seventh Fleet, passed through the Taiwan Strait. A battle group defended her flanks, America’s first naval jets sat in her hangar, and a new vision of American-dominated Asian security unfurled in her wake. Only a few months before, America’s secretary of state, Dean Acheson, had declared that “The Asian peoples are on their own, and know it.” But on June 25th Stalinist North Korea launched an invasion of its southern neighbour, and a country confronting communism could no longer leave Asia alone. America would fight with South Korea. It was to join in that defence that the Valley Forge was steaming north from Subic…

• Set into a sloping site with views of MacMasters Beach on the Central Coast of New South Wales, James Headland of Pangkarra Gardens has sensitively composed a series of layered spaces woven around a carefully considered home by architect David Boyle. “I've always had an appreciation of the natural world,” explains James. “Understanding the natural environment and how it functions … [is such] an important part of designing gardens.” This notion of nature within a garden is reflected through James's work in his use of diverse planting palettes and hardscape material configurations that evoke a site-specific sense of place. Distinctive zones have been created that were informed by local ecology plant groups of sclerophyll forest, coastal heath, rainforest and riparian zones. Each of these groupings suited a specific aspect or microclimate…

⬣ Every inch a hero Two WWII navy veterans were honoured for their service at an emotional ceremony at Bentleigh RSL in Victoria earlier this year. Harold “Hiram” Ristrom and Margaret Hattersley (nee Hartley) were presented with a Quilt of Valour and a recognition of service. Harold, 98, was a landing craft coxswain in HMAS Kanimbla I, which landed US combat soldiers and their equipment onto Panaon Island in the campaign to retake the Philippines from the Japanese. Made “with love, care, and at times some tears”, the quilt Harold received is used daily on his bed. “I’m amazed; I slept for eight hours solid with this quilt, which I normally never do,” he said. Margaret’s admiration of a neighbour’s Women’s Royal Australian Naval (WRAN) Service uniform prompted her to enlist. She became…

FIND ’EM ALL on tradeuniquecars.com.au or go straight to the car by SCANNING THE QR CODES 1968 FORD FAIRMONT XT $50,000 A SIX-CYLINDER XT IS A RARE SIGHT TODAY WHEN I saw this XT Ford Fairmont it got me thinking, when did I last see one of these? I reckon it must have been at a car show or on the telly. This looks to be in pretty good nick with its grey paintwork, deep red vinyl trim and a few accessories added. It claims to be a three-owner car with its original engine rebuilt to drink the modern bowser brew and the column shift three-speed auto has also been restored. These cars and their Holden and Valiant equivalents were daily family fodder back in the day, now they’re rarer than rocking horse poo,…

LET ME lift the curtain a little on running road tests. We sometimes have very little time to get under the skin of the car, so we usually come up with a premise beforehand based on experience and heuristics and only if the car diverges from expectations does that premise get ditched. Understanding when to pivot is the difference between good and bad testers. But with long termers we have the luxury of time. Here we have hundreds of hours of seat time to craft a considered verdict. And time with the Subaru BRZ S is something I’ve come to see as a heck of a privilege. But it’s not all rosy. Only over an extended period do you discover things like the compromised front passenger seat. This is set low,…

When you learn to fly, you are told it is dangerous to launch with the wind beyond 45 degrees off “straight up the slope”. Crosswinds cause turbulence. So why would you launch in a crosswind? In hike-and-fly, you often cannot reach a perfect launch slope. It might have taken hours to get to your chosen peak, and the weather might have changed. The forecast might be wrong. Or you just need to get off the mountain before the rain comes in. If you can do it safely, there’s no reason to restrict yourself to “perfect direction”. But it can be risky to ignore the dangers of the crosswind. So what to do? In this article I’ll show you how to keep yourself safe on a steep slope. Here are 10 steps to help…

Nobody needed to convince me that Apple’s at the top of its game when it comes to designing iPad hardware. The 2018 iPad Pro was so fast that more than two years later, it can handle more or less anything that you can throw at it. The 2020 iPad Pro was essentially the same speed – and it didn’t matter. So here comes the 2021 iPad Pro, which is an even more extreme dunk in terms of features. Adding an M1 processor isn’t going to add the same boost as it did on the Mac side, because the iPad Pro was always powered by an energy-efficient Apple processor. But it’s still an upgrade of two processor generations, and that matters. A new display on the larger model allows Apple to set…

Big Sur is a major upgrade to macOS, and some people are ready for it. However, if you’ve been running Mojave or an earlier version of macOS to keep 32-bit applications running, you may still be holding back. If you’re otherwise ready to move forward, you have a few options for keeping your Mojave installation active. In each case, I’d recommend starting by making a full disk image backup of your current macOS setup with Disk Utility, SuperDuper!, or Carbon Copy Cloner. In case something goes wrong, you can revert to it or restore from it. Your easiest path is to buy or use a sufficiently large external drive and clone to it directly from your current Mac. This lets you even boot from it in a pinch, so you don’t have a…

Strikes on the United Arab Emirates may backfire on the Houthi rebels AFTER SEVEN years of fighting in Yemen, the roar and thump of missile interceptors is a familiar sound in Saudi Arabia. But it was a shock for residents of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Early on January 24th the UAE said it had shot down a pair of ballistic missiles fired from Yemen. Videos posted on social media captured loud booms over Abu Dhabi, the capital. The Houthis, an Iranian-backed militant group that controls part of Yemen, claimed responsibility. Since 2015 they have been fighting a coalition led by Saudi Arabia, and including the UAE, which invaded Yemen to depose them. A week before the missile attack, the Houthis launched a drone attack on Abu Dhabi’s airport and an industrial…

Ancestry releases Jameson Distillery employment records Family history website Ancestry (ancestry.co.uk) has published the employment records of the famous Jameson Distillery in Dublin. More than one million records are indexed and available to search, accompanied by images of the original documents. The records, which are held by the Irish Distillers Archive (irishdistillers.ie), contain detailed weekly wages books and include each employee’s name as well as their occupation, hours worked and wages paid. They span from 1862 to 1969, although records holding personal information are only available to view until 1937 because of data-protection regulations. Rhona Murray, senior content acquisition manager at Ancestry, said: “Occupation records can be a key resource for those researching their family history, as they often provide more detail and context on how their ancestors lived day-to-day. The Jameson Distillery staff…

Disorder, or entropy, inevitably increases, according to scientists. This simple assertion allows them to predict the final destiny of the universe: in the end, everything will be spread out into a cold, lifeless gas. As regards life on Earth, things have, however, developed in the opposite direction: evolution has produced a succession of well-ordered life forms – from simple biological molecules to complex animals and humans. So how can life violate a law that applies for everything in the universe? The state of disorder in a physical system is calculated based on the number of possible states in which the system can be. The more possible states, the greater the disorder – also known as entropy. So far, physicists have not taken life into consideration when they calculate the total entropy of the universe,…

Does your back twinge when you stack the dishwasher? A neck niggle when you drive? While minor complaints might not significantly affect your quality of life right now, “If ignored, they could snowball into a bigger problem,” says Hazel Anderson, UK-based women’s health specialist at Six Physio Chelsea. As we age, we become more prone to creaky joints, stubborn injuries and damaging falls – but it doesn’t have to be all downhill. Nor does keeping our bodies on track require lots of effort. Performed within small ranges of motion for short periods of time, micro-movements are easy, day-to-day exercises that can mitigate against decreasing strength and mobility. The best bit? You don’t have to hit the gym and there’s not a sit-up in sight. Use it or lose it “From our mid-30s…

Casula Hobbies expect their production run of New South Wales Government Railways (NSWGR) four-wheel water tank and shunters float wagons r-t-r in HO scale are expected to arrive about the time of publication. Auscision Models have received painted factory pilot models of their N scale r-t-r NHFF, NHJF, NHKF coal hoppers in State Rail Authority of New South Wales (SRA of NSW) with Candy and blue L7 logo, FreightCorp, Pacific National and ‘Patch’ livery and BGKF Grain hoppers in Southern Shorthaul Railroad livery. Ausicision Models has also received painted factory pilot models of their HO scale r-t-r CHS, NHVF coal hoppers in PTC blue, SRA of NSW, Freight Rail, FreightCorp, and Pacific National liveries and BGVF grain hoppers in Southern Shorthaul Railroad livery. Ausicision Models have announced a re-run of their Australian National…

After many hints and previews, Harley-Davidson’s ‘Pan America’ adventure tourer was officially unveiled in February and will be rolled out globally this year. Harley’s launch video for the upcoming model was high on style but light on content. There was also some mixed messaging, like a claim that Harley have always been in the adventure touring space, then adding the freedom of design with the Pan America came from never producing a bike like this before. The launch video also states that the Pan America is the first adventure tourer designed and built in America, ignoring the Buell XB12x Ulysses from more than 15 years ago, which was also the first bike to put Harley-Davidson in the adventure touring game, albeit indirectly. Regardless, what is clear is that the Pan America is a…