The cost of petrol

is rising yet again and, with it, the price of everything else.

I don't own a car. I don't have a licence to drive one. I do see the petrol prices. It would be hard not to do this because I pass the petrol station going to and from the shopping centre - which incluses the chemist and the post office and like services.

There are also times when I need to call on "the Middle Cat taxi service" as my sister and I sometimes call it. I try very hard not to do that. More often than not it is because we both need to go somewhere. Her own home is five minutes driving time away and that makes sense. Even if I had a car we would do the same thing. Why take two cars if we can take one?

When the Senior Cat gave up driving - something he loathed - he bought a "gopher" and used that. Eventually he had to rely on taxis and Middle Cat's "taxi service" too. 

Yes, there was a time when there was more than one car in this family. My mother was travelling a long distance to schools with no easy access to public transport. Having a car made sense. For some years she shared the driving with another woman working in a nearby school. The other woman lived about 3OOm from us. It made sense to both of them but there were times when they both needed their own cars. 

The Senior Cat also needed a car. My siblings wanted cars - although they each had to wait until they had an income which allowed them to pay the cost of acquiring one and then using it. 

I used pedal power and public transport - the train service. (You can take your bike on a train here provided there is space available.) Yes, it did curtail my social life after dark but it was something I had to accept. If more people had used the train service it might have been safer to travel at night - might be safer now too.

All this is something I have been aware of recently. At the local station petrol prices went up 16c a litre this week. There are ominous warnings that petrol could go as high as $2.50 a litre. The war in Ukraine is one of the problems fuelling the rise but there are other issues too. 

In this country that matters. It is a nation which is generally poorly served by public transport - especially outside urban areas. People often need to travel long distances to get to work and even to access basic services. For years people have expected to be able to live in single unit dwellings - and that means the "urban sprawl" has grown ever larger. The "car industry" has been a major part of the economy - building cars, supplying parts, servicing and maintaining them, have all been services which employ people. The transport industry has been built up around road transport. It's convenient. It employs more people. The rail system only goes to major hubs - and why "double handle" containers if you can just load a B-double and send it off to the precise location it needs to reach?

I confess to wondering about the economy of the claim of "double handling" but I don't know enough about the costs to argue. 

What I do know is that we are frighteningly dependent on the cost of fuel - any sort of fuel - in order to keep the country moving.