The roads were eerily quiet this morning as we went out to get some DIY materials and soil for the garden.

Diesel’s nearly up to the $3 mark here in Australia. Petrol in Australia has only briefly and rarely approached this mark, even if you look at historical spikes in nominal terms like the ‘70s oil shocks or the 2008 crisis. We’ve had spikes before, but actually getting close? Yeah nah, as we say. And it’s hit that mark in some suburbs and in regional areas where it’s run out.

I mean, if you adjust for inflation, it’s not the first time we’ve been here. We’re roughly reaching historic prices, but we’re probably panicking more because it’s happening alongside rent, food, and energy spikes and rising interest rates.

Now, go look at graphs that show each country’s oil reserves. Scroll down. Keep scrolling. Yep, there’s Australia, right at the bottom. Fuckety fuck. Our reserves? Oh don't worry, we've got enough to last til MID APRIL.

Can you blame people for hoarding fuel and filling up at the pump?

Yeah, maybe shutting down most of our oil refineries was a bad idea?

I find it interesting to think about how we’d manage if, for example, we were limited to 20–40L a week at the pump. With our diesel VW Passat, it’d be tight going into work, but if it was tied to your licence not per household, we’d be okay. We could always borrow Mum’s car and Mum’s fuel allowance to get us by. Or maybe they'll do like they did in the '70's, go off odd number plates (that's how I learnt about odd numbers as I was born in '71)

We usually drive by hypermiling as it is. It boggles us how, despite fuel pressure, people still speed and try to overtake or fang it in the short overtaking zones. On the way to work, for example, there’s a two-mile 100 km zone on the Great Ocean Road where speeding up makes very little difference at all. You can save at least ten percent by keeping a steady speed, staying under highway speeds, and avoiding hard acceleration.

This morning, I swapped numbers with Jo, a woman who travels to our work from the same town as us. We’ll carpool if we have to. In fact, there are four or five of us who live here and commute to the same work. The only reason we don’t carpool at the moment is that we don’t really like those forced situations with people you work with. But when push comes to shove, that would make a massive difference.

That is, if we still get called into work. An economic slowdown is a reality, and it wouldn’t surprise me if we went to remote learning or disrupted work patterns like during COVID. That means no work for us.

Then there’s the economic slowdown that would follow. Empty shelves (lucky I have three months’ worth of toilet paper) and the tourism sector hit as people spend less and tighten budgets due to discretionary spending, and likely less opportunity to work as businesses cut costs. I’d be surprised if this hits us hard on the coast as we’re close to major towns and people might choose to travel less and stay closer to home instead.

We’re in a better position than most because we do live in a small town, and I think networks would kick in.

However, yep, I’m still hoarding lentils and rice — you can make a lot with a bit of stock, some spices, and some greens from the garden!

This morning, we headed off to get some garden soil, some plasterboard, some other DIY materials, went to Aldi, visited Mum - trying to be economical with our tank proportionate to what we had to do. The roads were spookily quiet. Friends in the city aren't coming down the coast as they can't afford to fill up and drive down on a whim.

I honestly haven't seen it that quiet since COVID. I mean, that is kinda a good thing, but that's only a brightside on what might be quite a tricky time for many.

With Love,

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