This is very embarassing. I want to go inland to Mudgee in New South Wales to visit with a friend who is, roughly, in the same line of business. I am told my train has been cancelled. Someone has stolen the power cables.

And the reason these power cables are being stolen is the coming August Olympics in Beijing. Difficult to believe but true.

Organised gangs are being blamed by authorities for stealing copper cabling worth millions of dollars, selling it (melted down) to China to help construction of buildings.

Victoria Police detective sergeant Barry Hills said, ‘The theft of this stuff has caused the train system to shut down for between five and seven hours. They are not just taking small lengths. They are taking up to 500 metres at a time.’

In recent weeks police have seized more than 15 tonnes of stolen copper cabling stashed in shipping containers and warehouses.

China is the world’s biggest copper user, with consumption expected to reach 5 million tonnes in 2008, up from 4.8 million tonnes last year.

Tens of thousands of Australian commuters — mainly in the state of Victoria — have been left stranded by several copper robberies, with thieves risking death by electric shock to steal the precious metal from rail networks for the energy-hungry Chinese market.

In New South Wales, which contains Mudgee, the state government has urged people to help prevent the theft after robbers ran off with communication cables and copper from electricity depots.

Apparently Australia is not alone in this. Surging demand in India and China is also driving a wave of copper thefts in the United States and the United Kingdom.

NSW Energy Minister Ian Macdonald this year said thieves had even stolen copper vases from a Sydney cemetery to melt down for black-market export.

Macdonald blamed copper theft for havoc on the state’s main north rail line, with hundreds of metres of copper wire stolen from signal poles.

He said, ‘The global increase in copper prices is fuelled by the Chinese construction boom, with prices increasing five fold since 2001.’

So I am driving to Mudgee. Be quicker that waiting for the Olympics and for someone to return the copper.

PS And let no one write in to tell me Mudgee station is permanently closed. It originally opened in 1884 and was closed for a while but reopened in 2000 when the first train pulled in from Sydney after the reopening of the Mudgee-Gulgong line. So there.
Source: Yahoo