Robins primus 71 part 2

Here is Robin's Robins Primus 71 stove, with the stand and the billy/container.

Here is a photo of just the stove.

Here is the Primus stamp on the base of the stove.

The stove in the billy (pot) stand.

Here is the underside of the base of the stove with the 'AU' date stamp clearly visible. As we know, according to the Primus Date Chart, 'AU' means Robin's stove is the 1955 model.

Today I lit it, boiled some water and made a small plunger of coffee. As I sipped I raised my mug in salute to Robin.

Robins Primus 71 stove

Robin's tramping and climbing stove is a 1955 Swedish Primus 71E.

The website "Classic Camp Stoves" has a gallery of Primus 71 stoves.

Robin's Primus 71E stove set includes a cylinder-shaped stand and a pot that doubles as a container for the stove. That is in distinction to the Primus 71 or 71L stoves that have a square 'tea caddy' shaped stand and container but without a pot.

It still works. I started it yesterday. Robin bought it new in the 1950s in Christchurch when he was very actively mountaineering with the Canterbury Mountaineering Club (CMC).

I have fond memories of the stove's roaring sound as it cooked our "de-hi" curry on many a tramp with Robin in the 1970s and 1980s.

Here is a video of lighting a Primus 71.

Here is a You Tube instructional video, helpfully in Swedish, on how to light a Primus 71.

This is a gallery about Primus 71 stoves.

Primus stoves can be dated via a stamp on the base. Robin's stove is stamped 'AU' on the bottom, which confirms 1955.

There are more shiny primus photos at Google. Are they not beautiful?

Summertime

Yes it is. Its also February. That's my month.

This video of 'Summertime' by Janis Joplin really seems to jump out of the speakers.

Joplin's music always reminds me of driving out across Porters Pass, the Torlesse range and the Craigieburn range on the way to the upper Waimakariri River and Arthurs Pass to go tramping.

I used to have a couple of well-used Janis Joplin tapes in my Nissan Bluebird station wagon.

Summertime!.

New Zealand's overseas debt

There is a lot of talk about New Zealand's overseas debt. Usually described as "ballooning". And sometimes the debt levels are compared to those of Ireland and Greece. According to the Reserve Bank, at 24 December 2010, New Zealand as a whole owed international creditors $253 billion NZ dollars. This is equal to 132% of GDP. The Reserve Bank provides the debt data analysed between Government and corporate (private) debt in this spreadsheet I made it into the chart with R.

The first step is saving the data into a Comma Separated Values file with a spreadsheet programme. The R code is then:

d <- read.csv("he3.csv", skip = 2,header=TRUE, sep=",", na.strings="na", dec=".", strip.white=TRUE)
attach(d)
totdebt<-c(Total/1000)
tmax<-max(totdebt,na.rm = TRUE)
plot(totdebt, ylim=c(0,tmax),type="n", main="New Zealand Overseas Debt 1993 to 2010",las=0,xlab="", ylab="$NZ billion",xaxt="n")
axis(side=1, las=0,at=c(8,28,48,68), labels=c("1995", "2000", "2005","2010"))
points(totdebt,type="l",col=2,lwd=2)
points(Govt/1000,type="l",col=4,lwd=2)
points(Corp/1000,type="l",col=3,lwd=2)
mtext(side=1,line=2.4,cex=0.9,"Source: New Zealand Reserve Bank")
mtext(side=1,line=3.4,cex=0.8,"http://rbnz.govt.nz/statistics/extfin/e3/he3.xls")
legend(1,250,bty="n",c("Total Debt","Private Debt","Government Debt"),lty = 1,lwd=2,col=c(2,3,4))

The chart makes it pretty obvious it is the private sector overseas debt that has steadily increased and not Government overseas debt.

Mt Aspiring reminiscence

I have just seen this NZ On Screen documentary about Brian Brake and James K Baxter filming on Mount Aspiring.

It brings back some wonderful memories. Robin always had several black and white photos of Mt Aspiring, including one very iconic photo taken by Mike Nelson of Robin nearing the final pyramidal summit in the 1950s.