Stargazing Week Ending 19th July 2019

Welcome to my Friday dribble where I talk about thinks agri, sport and life.

July has always been a big and important month for yours truly. My birthday is the 6th and its also the month man first walked on the moon. I can remember as a 6 year old taking a day off school 50 years ago and watching TV all day and not really understanding the gravity (so to speak)of the whole thing. Amazing stuff and still only 12 men have done it, the last one being back in 1972. And other than Armstrong and Aldrin, I bet no one knows any other names of men who did it....???

As part of my trip away last week I went to the Milroy Observatory for a night time viewing of the stars. Even through their small 5 foot long telescope you could see the rings on Saturn and also a weather storm that has been going for over 300 years. And NO, we didn't look at Uranus..... We did get a good shot of the moon though. 

On things agri and its still pretty dry in many regions of NSW. I drove out to Coonabarabran and back through Mudgee last week and its ordinary out there. I believe further south, below say Grenfell is a lot better and Victoria is ok.

I caught up with Alister Walsh from Duxton Water this week and the price of spot water doesn't look like coming down anytime soon. The authorities have already started releasing water from Dartmouth Dam, one of the uppermost storages. Usually this doesn't occur until into Aug/Sept.On other agri stuff Elders did an acquisition last week which saw the share price jump over 10%. They bought the Australian Independent Rural Retailers (AIRR) for approx. $187m. The acq is expected to be eps accretive and there are some synergies as well.

Some info out of the dairy industry suggests the milk pool is currently sitting around 8.2BN litres and all indications are it could fall further. One milk supplier to the wholesale market this week put its prices up 7.5-8c a litre. I'm sure this wont be the last price rise.  

On funny stuff, Waverley Council look after Bondi Beach and have installed an electric car charger down in the beach car park, with a sign saying the electricity used comes from 100% renewable sources. All good stuff, except 30 metres from the powerpoint is the winter ice skating rink which is powered by a whopping 200 horsepower diesel generator running 24 hours a day....!!!Outstanding..!!