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8:30 AM EST Monday, July 3, 2006: Several readers have asked "Where can I buy Australian shares?"There are several ways to buy Australian stocks:

1. Vanguard retail funds: Here's all of them and their results, courtesy www.Vanguard.com.au.:

2. You can buy Australian shares through your U.S. broker if you push hard enough. For example Kagara Zinc has a symbol KZL in Australia. Here it's KZL.AU.

3. There are a number of online Australian brokers, such as Comsec, which is owned by the Commonwealth Bank and is one the biggest. Click here. You may need an Australian bank account. Call the private banking division of any Australian bank.

3. Money managers, of which there are many. I met a bunch of interesting ones. I shall start small with a couple of them.

You should be able to avoid Australian taxes, and just pay U.S. taxes on your gains. Make sure you tell them you're a foreign resident.

Australian resource plays: This chart is from a June 14 report by broker Goldman Sachs JBWere. This morning I added the last column to update the prices. Pretty neat gains in only two weeks.

The more I look at this chart, the more I like the idea of buying these stocks as my Australian resources portfolio, though I do specially like Kagara (more on them tomorrow). In case you didn't read Friday's column. Here is why I should have visited Australia two years ago. The top line is Australia's ASX 200 Material index (^AXMJ), the second is Australia's ASX 200 (the top 200 biggest Australian shares) compared with our Dow, Nasdaq and S&P. Frankly, with China and India growing and Australia being so close to them, I can't think of a single reason that Australia's mineral boom won't continue.

How good is Cramer? I watch him occasionally. I'm amused by the antics. I like his tidbits of "education." But his stock recommendations need to be treated gingerly. A few weeks ago, he detailed his five "Fast and Furious" portfolio. I was intrigued. I tracked them. In this table, I assume I bought 1,000 of each of them the day after he mentioned them on his show. Here are the results as measured to last Friday evening's close-- a 9.2% loss.

Qwest continues to rise: This stock has two things going for it:
1. Its fundamentals have improved.
2. It's on the block to be sold.
I've mentioned it before.

How to stay in touch overseas. Lessons from Australia:
1. Cell phone: Beg, borrow or buy a cheap GSM phone. There are zillions on eBay. When you get to a country, buy a pre-paid SIM card at a local corner electronics shop. Pop it into your phone, deal with the carrier. You'll now have a phone number and a cheap way of calling around that country.
2. Email. Options: Carry your laptop. High-priced hotels have broadband access, some wireless, some wired. With begging, Internet cafes will let you hook in (and charge you). Or, have all your email diverted to web mail, e.g. hotmail. Pick you mail up from a public computer. For ultra-short messages, use SMS on your cell phone. Your office or family can send you short messages. "It's a boy, called John."
3. Phoning home. Skype is the cheapest. Second cheapest is getting them to call you. Send an SMS message to ask them to call you. Don't use U.S. calling plans from companies such as AT&T or Sprint without first checking. They're usually well over $1 a minute. Or keep your conversations ultra-short. Don't use U.S. cell phones overseas, except in emergencies.

When lightning strikes many times. Or fried by the phone line: Giant thunderstorms hit our country house while we were away in Australia. All the electrical gadgets -- TVs, computers, microwave ovens -- were unplugged or protected by surge arrestors. Not so for the phone line-attached gadgetry. We lost:

+ Our DirectV receiver.
+ One phone.
+ One "surge arrestor" (bought at Staples).
+ Our DSL broadband modem.

When we can back, we had no TV, no Internet and no phones. Yuch.

Lessons:
1. The phone company's connection box on the outside of your house has no lightning protection and is useless.
2. The safest way to protect your phone line attached gadgetry is to unplug your phone lines in the phone company's connection box when you leave.
3. The second safest way is to buy industrial-grade phone line protectors (not ones you buy at your local Staples). I say "second safest" because protection doesn't always work. Here's a quote from Delta Surge Protectors' web site:

How reliable are Delta units?
A: While it is not possible to achieve one hundred percent protection when dealing with lightning and other power surges, the use of Delta products will prevent and greatly reduce damage to protected equipment.

I need some more research to find the perfect phone line protection. But, based on Internet research, I do like the $49.95 Delta Data Line Circuit Protector TA-304 -- if only because it fits snugly inside the phone company's box.



For installation instructions, click here. I also need to protect the coaxial cable that runs from the satellite antenna to the DirectV box. This $39.99 Altelicon device should do the trick.

For technical info, click here. To buy it, click here.

I don't feel 100% comfortable with these recommendations. I'll call around this morning. Anyone had experience in this area? Please email me.

Wimbledon Tennis is on. Agassi and Roddick are out.

It seems like only yesterday she was crawling around the White House on her hands and knees.

Harry Newton

This column is about my personal search for the perfect investment. I don't give investment advice. For that you have to be registered with regulatory authorities, which I am not. I am a reporter and an investor. I make my daily column -- Monday through Friday -- freely available for three reasons: Writing is good for sorting things out in my brain. Second, the column is research for a book I'm writing called "In Search of the Perfect Investment." Third, I encourage my readers to send me their ideas, concerns and experiences. That way we can all learn together. My email address is . You can't click on my email address. You have to re-type it . This protects me from software scanning the Internet for email addresses to spam. I have no role in choosing the Google ads. Thus I cannot endorse any, though some look mighty interesting. If you click on a link, Google may send me money. Please note I'm not suggesting you do. That money, if there is any, may help pay Claire's law school tuition. Read more about Google AdSense, click here and here.
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