We've just come back from our walk around the village. A chap whose dog we've been admiring told us last week that he's selling up to be with his ailing father. This morning we met him again. "Are you still selling? I haven't seen your house on the internet", I said. "It's sold already", he replied.
He had bought it in 2020 for $460,000, and listed it for sale last week for $950,000. Before they could even put up the FOR SALE-sign and the advertisement onto the internet, someone walked in and paid full price. (It had sold in 2000 for $107,000 and in 2006 again for only $320,000)
Which makes my friends' question even more pertinent: "Where would you go if Riverbend suddenly sold?" I don't think the word 'suddenly' comes into it as cashed-up buyers in my price range aren't all that plentiful.
As long as the sale will be a pre-Deceased Estate Sale and I can still drive out in my own car before they drive me out in a hearse, I'm happy to keep looking for my next dream house wherever that may be - see floorplan.
Instead of burying your millions like a past neighbour used to do - see here - invest them in an asset-test-exempt home so you can still qualify for your age pension - click here. Every other Australian seems to do it!
A recent visit to Sydney brought back literary memories as we walked down King Street and saw the fish 'n' chips shop "Lord of the Fries". Nice play on words, I thought, but does anyone still remember William Golding's book, published in 1954, or the 1963 movie of the same name?
(There was a second film adaptation in 1990 which, in my opinion, is not as good as the 1963 original. Alex Garland's book "The Beach", and the adventure drama film of the same name, starring teenage idol Leonardo DiCaprio, have much in common with the original "Lord of the Flies".)
Of course, the story of "Lord of the Flies" never happened. An English schoolmaster made it up in 1951. "Wouldn't it be a good idea", William Golding asked his wife one day, "to write a story about some boys on an island, showing how they would really behave?"
Golding's book "Lord of the Flies" would ultimately sell tens of millions of copies, be translated into more than thirty languages and be hailed as one of the classics of the twentieth century.
In hindsight, the secret to the book's success is clear. Golding had a masterful ability to portray the darkest depths of mankind. "Even if we start with a clean slate", he wrote in his first letter to his publisher, "our nature compels us to make a muck of it." Or as he later put it, "Man produces evil as a bee produces honey."
Unlike English-speaking children who read "Lord of the Flies" at school, my schooling - as limited as it was - in post-war Germany required no special reading about the evil that human nature was capable of, as the legacy of it could still be seen all around. It was only in the late sixties here in Australia, while still reduced to linguistic toddlerhood in my newly-adopted language English, that I first tried to read this book.
Fast-forward to 7:40 to start the documentary
Perhaps "Lord of the Flies" is not the most apropriate reading in these troubled times as it may easily get you trapped into hopelessness. Because if you believe most people are rotten, you no longer need to get worked up about injustice. The world is going to hell either way.
If you are tempted by such cynical thoughts, please do NOT click on these links to read the book or watch the 1990 movie adaptation.
It was reported that a movie theatre displayed a short film which began with a snapshot of a room ceiling. No details, no colours. Just a ceiling fan on a white ceiling. The same scene remained displayed for six long minutes when the moviegoers started to get frustrated. Some complained about the film wasting their time.
Suddenly, the camera lens slowly started to move until it reached down towards the floor. A small child who appeared handicapped was lying on a bed, suffering from a spinal cord inquiry.
The camera then pans back up to the ceiling with the following words:
"We showed you only six minutes of this child's daily activity, only six minutes from the scene that this handicapped child watches all hours of his life, and you complained and weren't patient for even six minutes, you couldn't bear to watch it ..."
Sometimes we need to put ourselves in another person's situation in order to realise just how lucky we are and to be thankful for all our blessings.
Volker Kluge / Wolfgang Ihlemann / Joachim Schumacher / Helmut Ullrich / Ulrich Schäfer / Andreas Morgenroth / Helmut Bolle / Volker Wisse / Hendrik Heinemann / Jürgen Kreul
Middle Row (left-to-right)
Klaus Kratzenstein / Herbert Becker / Dagmar Kroll / Jutta Veste / Heidi Werner / Christa Funke / Wenzel Tappe / moi / Joachim Stut
Front Row (left-to-right)
Gudrun Otto / Heidi Nabert / Petra Küster / Sigrid Röseling / Herr Sapper, teacher / Barbara Ziegert / Margret Brandenburg / Ingrid Behrens / Waltraud Häupler / Karin Käsehage
And I was still wide awake when late one night some years go this email arrived: "Ich hoffe Du bist etwas überrascht eine E-Mail zu bekommen, aber wir sind in die selbe Klasse in der Heinrichschule gegangen, auf dem Klassenfoto bin ich unter dem Namen DAGMAR KROLL. Würde mich freuen etwas von Dir zu hören! "
Let me translate before you rush out and enrol in a Berlitz German Language Course: "I hope you're surprised to receive this email because we attended the same class at primary school. My name is Dagmar Kroll and I'm the third from the left in the middle row in this photo taken on the last day at school. Would love to hear from you!"
What a surprise indeed! Dagmar found the photos another schoolfriend had sent to me previously and which I had put up on my German blog - here and here - and she's busy scanning some more to send to me. This seems to be a case of "good things come to those who wait" - for over sixty years! - because we were refugees from East Germany and had little money, and none at all for such frivolities as school photos.
Of course, she also asked the obvious question, "Why did you leave Germany?" Well, no one ever emigrates because of the success they've enjoyed at home. No one ever says, "Well, I have a happy home life, I'm rich and I have many friends - so I'm off." The only reason anyone has for going to live in another country is because they've cocked everything up in their own.
Being just nineteen years old, my opportunities for cocking things up had been rather limited by the time I left; in fact, my only - and certainly biggest - cock-up until then had been that I allowed myself to be born to parents who were so dirt-poor that they packed me off to work as soon as I had reached the minimum school-leaving age of 14.
Being the youngest solo-migrant on board the migrant ship FLAVIA, a television crew had asked me the same question before it left Bremerhaven in 1965. I had no answer in front of the whirring newsreel camera and still have no answer today. I mean, how do I explain the sense of dissatisfaction and frustration that affected me at the time?
We can't choose our parents and are born into the prison of our race, religion and nationality. I had no problem with my race which, being blond and blue-eyed, helped me to slip into Australia under its "White Australia" policy, but I'd already renounced my Lutheran upbringing and joined the German Freethinkers, and many years later also changed my nationality by becoming an Australian. Two out of three isn't bad, is it?
True to her word, Dagmar sent me three photos of a class reunion in 1983 which, come to think of it, I could've attended as I was at the time working in Jeddah and Athens. Another missed opportunity? Perhaps not, as my life had moved in a completely different direction from those stay-at-homes with whom I had little in common during my school days and would have had even less in common twenty-three years later.
Class Reunion 1983 - for names see last photo
Class reunion 1983 Get-together at Teacher's house after the reunion from left to right: Joachim Stut - Dagmar Kroll - Franz Sapper (retired teacher) - Barbara Zieger - Gudrun Otto - Volker Kluge
Class Reunion 1983 from left to right; back row: Volker Kluge - Herbert Becker - Wolfgang Ihlemann - Wenzel Tappe - Helmut Ullrich - Ulrich Schäfer; middle row: Heidi Werner - Ingrid Behrens - Jutta Veste - Dagmar Kroll - Christa Funke; front row: Gudrun Otto - Petra Küster - Sigrid Röseling - Franz Sapper (retired teacher) - Barbara Zieger - Waltraud Häuptler
However, I would've liked to have met "Herr Sapper" again before he passed away sometime in 1987. He was a great teacher who helped me overcome my lack of a tertiary education by giving me this personal letter which helped me into my first job after completing my articles.
My favourite author, Somerset W. Maugham, wrote a story entitled "The Verger" about a man without formal education who ended up more successful than he might've been with the right kind of schooling.
I count my blessings every time I watch the movie as I count my blessings to have had such a wonderful teacher, a real "Mr. Chips".
Late last year an old friend of mine in Greece sent me an email: "January 1 is the first page of a new book and I wonder what will happen in this book. I’m sorry to bother you with this, but I needed to tell you about my fear of what is inevitable soon. You are such a good friend."
Bozenna is an old friend of mine - in both senses of the world - and she was a dedicated employee when she worked for me in Greece. Perhaps I should send her a copy of Julian Barnes' book "Nothing to be frightened of" or its more bluntly titled twin "Death", a disarmingly witty book in which Julian Barnes confronts our unending obsession with the end. He reflects on what it means to miss God, whether death can be good for our careers and why we eventually turn into our parents. Barnes is the perfect guide to the weirdness of the only thing that binds us all.
The book may not get there in time, but in the meantime there's always "Appointment in Samarra" to console her. It's a Mesopotamian tale about the deadly inescapability of coincidence and fate and death, all bound in a parable designed to both frighten and make sense of life's madness.
At a time when we're fighting illness as if it were an invader, we're really just fighting ourselves, the bits of us that want to kill the rest of us. Towards the end - if we live long enough - we are left with the competition between the declining and decaying parts of us as to which will get top billing on our death certificate. As Flaubert put it, "No sooner do we come into this world than bits of us start dropping off."
Which is perhaps not a bad thought on which to end this post. We've already had more than our three score and ten, so let's not get greedy.
I'm amazed at how many Australians have not heard of - or perhaps forgotten - some of the most quintessential Australian movies - or have I become more Australian than the quintessential Australian?
"The Shiralee", based on D'Arcy Niland's book by the same name, is one such movie. It's the story of the itinerant rural worker Macauley - sometimes described as a 'swagman' or 'swaggie' - who suddenly finds himself taking responsibility for his child. Having returned from 'walkabout', he finds his wife entwined in the arms of another, and so he takes his four-year-old daughter, Buster, with him. The child is the 'shiralee', an Aboriginal word meaning 'burden'. In their time together, father and daughter explore new depths of understanding and bonding. The barren landscapes of the outback are central to the swagman's love for his country and provide a backdrop to the richness of his developing relationship with Buster.
Of course, there's nothing like curling up with D'Arcy Niland's book ...
... but if you're more visually than cerebrally inclined, you'll find both the 1957 movie version with Peter Finch and the 1987 remake with Bryan Brown faithful screen adaptations of this wonderful book.
The original black-and-white movie from 1957 starring Peter Finch
D'Arcy Niland wrote another masterpiece, "Dead Men Running", which was made into a TV mini series in 1971. I wasn't in Australia then and so I missed it. If you can find it on YouTube or on DVD, please let me know.
I absolutely enjoyed watching "The Efficiency Expert", set in the Australia of the 1960s, the one I fell in love with when I arrived here in 1965. It all came back in a sudden rush: the way people dressed and spoke back then; the way people worked (or not!); and all those walnut-coloured furnishings that surrounded us.
But what really got my attention was the noticeboard on the wall that had diagonally-placed straps across to hold in place whatever was on it.
Front of BARTON HOUSE facing Brisbane Avenue in Canberra
One such now old-fashioned noticeboard was in the entrance hall of Barton House (I nearly wrote 'foyer' but it wasn't that kind of place). The manager would place all incoming letters on that board, roughly in alphabetical order, with the A's in the top left-hand corner and the Z's at the bottom right, and each evening on coming "home" from work, we would check the noticeboard for mail before heading to our rooms.
I might as well admit it because it's far too late to sack me now: I sometimes used the Bank's aerogrammes to write to family and friends (yes, that's how I used to write my capital-A's; I was a lot squarer then)
For some of us, including 'yours truly', "mail" was often nothing more than a plain-looking envelope containing a note from the manager that we had (once again!) fallen behind paying our boarding-house fees.
I never forget the day a fat envelope was waiting for me which, like an hour-glass, leaked a slow trickle of sand from a torn corner. I had just returned to Australia after six months in the Namib Desert in South-West Africa, and my former colleagues had sent me a "souvenir" from "Sandhausen"; "in case you're missing all that sand", they'd written.
That's how it was in those days: there were no postal secrets and yet an unspoken "untouchability" of one's mail, even if it stayed on the board for days and weeks on end, even months if the recipient was on holiday. I knew of boarders who had cash money sent to them through the mail!
It's unthinkable in today's Australia, just as unthinkable as those same boarding-houses which have all disappeared. As for the slowly-leaking envelope, it would today be confiscated by Customs on suspicion of containing a prohibited substance. How I long for those innocent 60s!
This book is really quite disappointing. I had bought it because I know (of) David Glasheen and because I had expected a little more from a chap who has spent over twenty years all by himself on a desert island. You know, insights into why we are here and what life it all about.
Instead, as Somerset W. Maugham put it in his story, "German Harry", "If what they tell us in books were true his long communion with nature and the sea should have taught him many subtle secrets. It hadn't."
The Millionaire Castaway: The Incredible Story of How I Lost My Fortune but Found New Riches Living on a Deserted Island The book is dedicated to David's daughter Erika Ruby (10/2/78 - 20/3/13) who died an untimely death on the mainland at Lockhart River just across from the island -o-
Click here for a preview
Actually, the prologue about social distancing and the COVID pandemic, dated 7 April 2020, and added to the 2020 reprint after I had already bought it, is perhaps the best and most thoughtful part of the book.
In fairness to good ol' Dave, he may have done a better job and bared it all, had he written the book himself. Which he didn't; someone called Neil Bramwell wrote it for him, and in the retelling all that got lost.
Like Maugham's story, David's may end similarly: "I foresaw the end. One day a pearl fisher would land on the island and German Harry would not be waiting for him, silent and suspicious, at the water's edge. He would go up to the hut and there, lying on the bed, unrecognisable, he would see all that remained of what had once been a man."
David (or is it Neil?) closed the prologue like this: "Here's hoping this pandemic will bring out a little of the castaway in all of us." Not in me!
A lot is being made about the nightly unrests in Alice Springs but Canberra residents say an Alice-Springs-style curfew is also required to curb anti-social behaviour in their entirely invented city, designed for public servants to bring up their children in safety and comfort, by an American architect.
“You can’t walk past a flower bed or into a Senate Committee Hearing these days without being subjected to some drunk person babbling on incoherently,” one Canberra resident said.
While the Alice Springs curfew applies to residents under the age of 18, the Canberra version would apply to those over 50. “That’s where the majority of the problem appears to be,” another resident said.
To fix the problem in Canberra, experts say there would need to be a curfew in place between 8pm and 8am, as there is in Alice Springs. And another curfew between 8am to 8pm.
Julian Barnes' book "The Sense of an Ending" was made into an equally gripping and mesmerising movie; however, as always, for me the book, which is very British and very literary, wins out.
You can read it at www.archive.org, or you can go straight to page 105.
"Sometimes I think the purpose of life is to reconcile us to its eventual loss by wearing us down, by proving, however long it takes, that life isn't all it's cracked up to be"
To read the book, click here (SIGN UP (it's free!), LOG IN and BORROW
Regarded as a classic, this film, based on the book by the same name, takes a kind-hearted look at Sydney in the mid-60s. It's an Australia that no longer exists, making the film something of a social document worth watching.
The premise of the film is a reverse Crocdile Dundee, a fish-out-of-water comedy about a goofy, good-natured Italian who comes to Australia (rather than leaves it) and entertains the locals as he bumbles through day-to-day life, excusing his many faux pas with a nervous smile and a glassy-eyed look.
While it shows an Australia that no longer exists, it is the Australia which I came to love, warts and all, when I arrived here in 1965. Now almost sixty years old, the film is an entertaining time capsule and a compilation of the many things that haven't changed - from small gestures like returning shouts of beer at a bar to the ongoing city rivalry between Melbourne and Sydney (highlighted in a scene featuring a cameo from Graham Kennedy) and the generous and welcoming spirit of the Australian people.
"They're A Weird Mob" is a warming and optimistic story which takes me back to a less cynical time and culture which is light years away from today's competitive, money-chasing reality. As John O'Grady writes in his entertaining book (which was published as early as 1957), "Anyone who thinks he recognises himself in these pages, probably does." I do!
I had never heard of, let alone met, Gösta Brand when in 1977 I lived and worked on Thursday Island, commonly known as TI, although at that time he was still very much alive and living on Packe Island.
I came across his story many years later and had it confirmed by my late TI-friend David Richardson, after he had retired in Babinda. Balfour Ross, a long-time TI resident and regular visitor during his last years in Malaysia, also confirmed it.
Extract from "Den överkörda kängurun" published 1975 Author: Tore Zetterlund (1915-2001) Photo and photo texts: Eino Hanski (1928-2000)
Every boy's
dream comes true
I was sceptical until the last moment.
It was Eino who had heard about him and had contacted the man's brother in Sweden who confirmed that the story was true.
He had read the story in a book by a Danish travel writer. It was about a modern-day Swedish Robinson Crusoe who was said to live alone on a tropical island to the north of Australia. A real Jack London figure who had left Sweden more than 50 years ago and had lived a life of adventure as a sailor, pearl fisherman, crocodile hunter and hermit.
"It sounds like a piece of fiction" I said. "That sort of things doesn't happen anymore. It's as dead as the brontosaurus. It's just the boy inside all of us that still dreams of such adventures."
But Eino could produce evidence that this modern-day Swedish Robinson Crusoe existed. He had contacted the man's brother, a Viktor Brand, a farmer who had lived all his life on a farm in Simlångsdalen in Sweden. Viktor confirmed that he had a brother named Gösta who had left Sweden fifty-one years ago.
He had received the occasional short letter and card from his adventurous brother. The last one had been postmarked "Thursday Island", but that was more than a year ago. He thought he had been sick. Maybe he wasn't even alive any more.
Just in case we ever got as far as Thursday Island and found our modern-day Swedish Robinson Crusoe, we recorded a greeting from Viktor on Eino's tape recorder.
Thursday Island was almost as far away from Sweden as one could get. Our first stop after a long international flight was Sydney in Australia, then a domestic flight to Horn Island in the Torres Strait between Australia and New Guinea. Then a short ferry ride across to Thursday Island. (There was also a Friday Island nearby which made me think of Robinson Crusoe again) We had brought with us the cassette recording of Viktor's greetings and a bunch of family photos.
The community on Thursday Island was as large as a Swedish fishing village. It reminded me somewhat of Byxelkrok on the island of Öland. The population consisted mainly of coloured people, not Australian aborigines but South Sea islanders from Melanesia. There were no racial barriers as there seemed to be on the Australian mainland.
On our very first evening on the island we freely mixed with snooker-playing and beer-drinking blacks and whites alike in the hotel bar and were able to ask questions about Gösta. Nobody knew a Gösta Brand but they had heard of an old Swede called Ron Brand who lived on Packe Island, an hour away from Thursday Island by fast boat. But he was supposed to be seriously ill, and nobody knew if he was still alive.
Next day the postmaster confirmed that Ron was identical with Gösta - Gösta had simply been too difficult to pronounce for the local people. Two hours later we were on our way to Packe Island in a small boat owned by a South Sea Islander. About twenty minutes into our bumpy ride he yelled, "There is his boat! I am sure he is on it!"
At the risk of capsizing our little dinghy and turning us into shark-food, Eino took out his camera and started filming. The boat, an average-sized sailing boat with an auxiliary motor and a dinghy tied to her stern, lay at anchor a few hundred metres off Horn Island. We spotted the bare torso of a man inside the cockpit who disappeared into the cabin as we approached.
"I think he is sick," mumbled our boatman. However, as we got closer, he re-appeared from the cabin and we saw an emaciated, wiry, brownish man wearing a slouch-hat as protection against the sun.
I called out in Swedish, "Are you Gösta Brand? We have come from Sweden to bring you greetings from your brother Viktor."
He answered in a mixture of Swedish and "Sailor's English." Yes, he was Gösta Brand. He lived on Packe Island but had anchored his boat here because he was ill and had wanted to come a bit closer to civilisation. He thought it was his lungs, but he wasn't interested to go to a hospital. And he definitely didn't want our help to return to Sweden!
" I would die on the spot," he laughed. "I have lived far too long in the tropics. If I should die, it has to be on my island or on the boat here."
He was friendly and happy and not at all unsociable as we had anticipated. We suggested that he should follow us out to his island, so that we could film him there. He didn't seem unwilling but was probably too sick to be in front of a camera and also afraid of leaving his boat. With the help of a bottle of whisky he finally agreed to wait for us until the next day when we would come back in a larger boat to tow him back to his island.
Next day we managed to hire a twin-engined speedboat that bounced along at more than 30 knots. I helped Ron lift the anchor and sat next to him in his boat while we were towed out to sea, with Eino filming from the speedboat. It turned out to be a more dramatic film than we had anticipated as the waves became bigger and wilder until they completely drenched us and filled the dinghy with water. Close to capsizing, we desperately waved our arms to tell the speedboat to turn back.
We were wet, depressed and angry as we dropped Ron and his boat back in the same spot where we had found him. So much for our efforts to film this modern-day Robinson Crusoe's existence on his tiny island!
I don't know whether it was the influence of the whisky or the prospect of appearing on Swedish television but suddenly Ron did agree to leave his boat and come with us to his island in our speadboat. "As long as you bring me back here afterwards," he said.
An hour later, after having passed other deserted islands, we stepped ashore on a South Sea island straight out of a "Boy's Own" setting. The calm waters of the bay in front of Packe Island were absolutely clear and blue, and the sand was soft all the way up to the palm trees. Palm trees that Ron had planted himself while he had built his hut and the bamboo fence surrounding it. The hut was painted white and had a roof of corrugated metal. For almost twenty years he had lived here totally alone after having cleared a piece of land and the beach in front of it. For all this he paid a peppercorn rent of ten dollars a year to the Australian government.
He regretted that a group of cultured-pearl farmers had moved in at the other end of the bay. We thought he would have welcomed having some other people nearby but he regarded them as trespassers on his island.
He told us about the many adventures he had had and showed us some nasty scars on his legs from crocodile bites. He had become an Australian citizen and for the last few years had been getting a government pension which took care of all his material needs. But he still went crocodile-hunting on occasions or fished for barramundi, always accompanied by a native from one of the other islands. "They are my best mates," he said.
On the beach sat his canoe, named "Minnehaha"", meaning "Laughing Water" in some Red Indian language. Yes, he had lived amongst Red Indians, too. That was in Canada, before he came to Australia.
"Why did you choose this life?" we asked.
"Because I love my liberty!" he answered quickly and without hesitation. He had obviously considered this question many times.
"Didn't you ever miss a woman?"
"Yes, of course, but then I also have to get hold of a woman. I have never lived with a woman. I love my liberty!"
It sounded self-assured but by the time we had finished our filming and were to leave, we thought we knew the price he had paid for his freedom - what he called his "liberty" - and his carefree existence. He had seemed strangely touched by our visit as we recorded his message to his brother in Sweden.
"You are both welcome to come back and stay on my island," he said as we were about to depart. "Bring your wife and kids with you."
We could tell that he meant what he said although he knew quite well how unlikely another visit would be. Not many people ever come this far.
I had one last look into the cabin of his boat before I climbed down the rail. There were three guns, two with telescopic sight, a cracked mirror, an old radio, some cans and a pair of old-fashioned spectacles. The sum total of his life, plus loneliness, hardship, and the occasional sickness.
As we left, the outline of where he sat in the boat waving goodbye was getting smaller and smaller. Very soon it would be hard to believe he existed at all.
But both Eino and I had the tooth of a crocodile he had given us to prove that he was real!
The story reminds me of Somerset Maugham's short story German Harry although that particular character is said to have been a Danish fellow by the name of Henry Evolt who lived on Deliverance Island and died there in January 1928, aged 79.
Why did I leave Burma after only one year? I mean, I had it all: I was chief accountant for the French national oil company TOTAL before I had even turned 30, earned a big salary, lived in one of those big ex-British colonial houses with a circular driveway and servants' quarters, and was chauffeured around in a big car - and they had begged me to sign on again for another year! Too much hubris and the promise of another job in my favourite town in my former stamping grounds of Papua New Guinea had something to do with it.
The job had been advertised by the consulting firm W.D.Scott in all the Australian newspapers which I regularly read at the Australian embassy in Rangoon. I applied and was hired sight unseen! Maybe that should've set off alarm bells but in those days I felt indestructible and the job of "adviser" to John Kaputin, one of the 'Young Turks' in the new nation of Papua New Guinea, seemed like a challenge too good to miss.
All I knew about John Kaputin was that his had been the first marriage between a New Guinean and a white woman and that he was regarded as a troublemaker by certain people. As soon as I had arrived in Rabaul in early 1976, I found that, while he was involved in many commercial activities, he hadn't complied with statutory requirements and was chased by the Registrar of Companies for outstanding annual reports and by the Chief Collector of Taxes for outstanding tax returns. With an almost total lack of record-keeping, how was I to create something out of nothing?
Today the area sports the Kabaira Beach Hideaway which was then a stopover for local plantation owners when they transported their cocoa and copra produce to Rabaul
Then he took me some 50km along the North Coast Road (a dirt track at the best of times) to show me my accommodation, a very beautiful bungalow in a picturesque oceanfront location, but without telephone connection and on remote Kabaira Plantation, the exact spot where in 1971 District Commissioner Jack Emanuel had been speared to death.
Pacific Islands Monthly, September 1971 Click on image to read in larger print
Not that I was concerned for myself - I mentioned that in those days I felt indestructible, didn't I? - but I had to think of my wife who was to come out from Burma to join me. And so John and I parted company.
Forty years later, what I know about John Kaputin is still no more than what I read in old issues of the Pacific Islands Monthly - click here - including his jailing in 1979 for failing to produce an annual report for New Guinea Development Corporation, of which he was the chairman.
Pacific Islands Monthly, November 1979, page 11
Seems like no one picked up the slack after I had left!
Leaving the family home at the age of fourteen, and leaving the "Fatherland" at the age of nineteen to come to Australia, prepared me to pay week by week for the space I took up in the world, and to finally close my eyes in a rented house.
I was happy to wander the earth, to have only portable possessions, and to live in temporary dwellings. No family ties, no entry in the parish register, no attic full of grandmother's furniture, no family vault for me.
So what imp of perversity made me buy "Riverbend", this seemingly commonplace decision which shaped my life for the last thirty years and seems to have determined my fate for the next dozen-or-so?
For what I had not realised at the time I bought this place was that it would begin owning me. I was lured into a sort of perpetual treasure hunt for this and that and something else to fill all the rooms, forever accumulating, and increasingly tied to, more and more possessions.
And then there is probably the greatest drawback of living in a small community - the lack of anonymity. Here you recognise everyone and everyone recognises you. We all meet again, and yet again. Endlessly meeting, the same people over and over again; endlessly meeting, the same conversations, yesterday, today, tomorrow; endlessly meeting, the same shafts of malice and spite, the same behind-the-hand sniggers.
Mind you, we are lucky, as we can pull up the drawbridge and drop the portcullis. We live on the edge of it all and on rambling seven acres, far enough from the ontological baggage of others so as not to burden us.
Our neighbour is the river. As the Rat said in "The Wind in the Willows", "[I live] by it and with it and on it and in it. It's my world, and I don't want any other."
Indeed I don't! It's beautiful here; beautiful one day, perfect the next!
Perhaps it is the result of having read Robert Louis Stevenson, Louis Becke and Joseph Conrad at an impressionable age, but the South Pacific islands have always evoked a powerfully romantic image with me. Mention the South Seas and I conjure up a vision of waving coconut palms and a dusky maiden strumming her ukelele. Silhouetted against the setting sun, Trader Pete (that's me!) sits in a deck-chair in front of his hut sipping a long gin and tonic while a steamboat chugs into the lagoon, bringing mail from home.
Rabaul circa 1970
In truth, I came to the then Territory of Papua & New Guinea as an audit clerk with a firm of Chartered Accountants in Rabaul (and thereby hangs another tale). When the local newspaper, the POST-COURIER, began carrying ads for audit personnel on the Bougainville Copper Project, I applied and was invited to fly across for an interview in October 1970. In those early days, all incoming traffic stopped at the transit camp at Kobuan where one had to wait for transport to Panguna where Bechtel's "top brass" had their offices.
Transit Camp at Kobuan
The road to Panguna was still something of an adventure and it was some time before I could present myself to Sid Lhotka, Bechtel's Manager of Administrative Services.
He hired me on the spot and I returned to Rabaul to give notice and get my things and within a few weeks I was back "up top" only to be told that
I would be working at Loloho, senior auditor in charge of several large contracts such as the construction of the harbour facilities (built by Hornibrook),
the Power House construction (built by World Services), the Arawa Township (built by Morobe-ANG), and the haulage services (provided by Brambles-Kennellys.) Des Hudson and a string of time-keepers, amongst them Neil Jackson ("Jacko"), Bob Green, and
"Beau" Players, joined the team later.
Camp 6 at Loloho
We all lived in Camp Six which was idyllically situated on Loloho Beach. Every day (and often even before going to work), we would go for a swim in the beautifully warm and clear waters of Loloho Bay. Except for one, Bill Avery, our telephone operator who was ex-Navy. He claimed he had a pact with the sharks: they wouldn't come onto his land, and he wouldn't go into their water. I'll never forget the day when we had a prolonged power failure and no running water in camp, and the whole camp population washed and shaved in the surf! Ever since I've been keeping a cake of soap which lathers in seawater. The camp had a certain hierarchy with "oldtimers" occupying the front row of dongas facing the beach, also known as "Millionaires' Row." Twice a week was film night to which viewers brought their own plastic chairs and victuals and liquid supplies and watched whatever was being offered
(the Natives were crazy about Cowboy movies), against a backdrop of stars twinkling through swaying palm fronds and with the surf as background music.
Payday was the big night in Camp Six with gambling tables such as Snakes & Ladders doing a roaring trade. Flick shows (with little to be seen across the tops of a dozen boisterous guys, all drinking and smoking, crammed into a 6-by-10ft donga) were also highly sought-after.
The "boozer" (or Wet Canteen in the official language), set right on the beach of Loloho, was a great place for an evening out! Offshore, across the dark waters, several small islets marked the outer limits of the reef. We named them "Number One Island", "Number Two Island", and so on. On some night, after a sufficiently large intake of SP (also known as 'Swamp Piss'), heated debates would develop as to whether they were ships coming into port!
Sometime in 1971 I transferred to Panguna where I was put in charge of the General Accounts Department with Brian Herde doing the Accounts Payable and John Gaskill keeping the General Ledger. Neil Jackson somehow found his way "up top" as well and became offsider to Brian Herde, imitating one of the Three Musketeers by attacking all passers-by with a long wooden ruler until the day the booze got the better of him and he didn't turn up for work at all. Sid Lhotka visited him in his donga at Camp 3 and rumour has it that "Jacko" told him to f%@# off! He was on the next plane out!
Panguna mine site shrouded in clouds
Another auditor wasn't quite so outspoken to get off the island but did so even more quickly: Frank Joslin was given the monthly "perk" of hand-carrying a batch of punch cards to Bechtel's Melbourne office where he presented himself, never to be seen again thereafter. His neat little trick became known as "doing a Joslin" and was much talked about but never imitated. Some of the new recruits to the audit team were less than delighted with their posting to muddy and rain-soaked
Panguna and started counting the days to the end of their twelve-month contract - literally! They ran up an adding-machine strip list from 365 days
down to zero and pasted it to the office wall, ticking off one day at a time. Needless to say, not many survived that kind of mental torture.
There were some others who never left Aropa airstrip: they had seen the mountain range shrouded in clouds from the aircraft and, refusing to leave
the small airline building and spending a fretful night on a hard wooden bench, reboarded the same aircraft for its morning flight back to Port Moresby.
Others took to
the wild camp life with gusto, spending what little time was left after a 10-hour working day, in the "boozer" and even investing in their
own 'fridges outside their dongas. The nights were punctuated by the squeaking of 'fridge door hinges and the squishing sound of rings pulled off beer
cans. A common "status symbol" amongst serious drinkers were door-frame curtains constructed from the hundreds of pull-top rings collected from empty
beer cans. Les Feeney was put in charge of the audit group but more often than not was in charge of the carousing going on in the
"boozer" and endlessly stuffing his pipe but never succeeding in lighting it. He and Peter the "Eskimo", a lumbering polar
bear of a man hailing from Iceland, ran a constant "throat-to-throat" race as to who was the biggest drinker.
"Bulldog", a likeable Pom, tried hard to catch up with them! On one occasion he also tried to learn how to play the
electric organ. He never did but the speakers and amplifier which came with it, were put to good (and all-too-frequent) use when he played his
favourite Neil Diamond record, "Hot August Night." The whole camp rocked when "Bulldog" plugged in that organ! I shall
always associate "Hot August Night" with nights at Camp One!
During my time on the island
I became a Justice of the Peace and also obtained my registration as a tax agent (Registration No. TTA322, dated 26th April 1971) and assisted many in the camps with their tax returns. I even made successful representation to the New Zealand Inland Revenue to have the then 18-months "world income rule" set aside for the Kiwis working on Bougainville. Had I not obtained this particular ruling, they would have been liable to pay New Zealand income tax on their Bougainville earnings. I became something of a scribe for many in the camp who wanted to apply for a passport or needed documents authenticated or who - surprisingly - couldn't read or write and asked me to handle their correspondence - including some pretty red-hot love letters!!! I always toned down their replies which must have kept quite a few guys out of troubles!
After the Bechtel contract had come to an end, I hung around Sydney for a few weeks suffering from 'Bougainvillitis' for which there was only one cure: I went back to the island a second time on an even bigger and more challenging job when I helped Camp Caterimg Services set up their new operations - click here.
After Bougainville came stints in the Solomons, back to PNG (setting up the Internal Audit Department for AIR NIUGINI in Port Moresby where I run into Brian Herde again who'd taken a job with Tutt Bryants),
Rangoon in Burma, Samoa, Malaysia, Indonesia, Iran, PNG once again (setting up the tug-and-barge operations for Ok Tedi; Bechtel was back in town to manage this project and with it came Sid Lhotka with whom I had dinner at the Papuan Hotel in Port Moresby to talk about "old times"), Saudi Arabia (where I met up with Des Hudson again), Greece - but none of those assignments came ever close to the comraderie and esprit de corps of the years on Bougainville!
Over the years I repeatedly ran into "ex-Bougainvilleans" and "ex-Territorians" in Australia and elsewhere. We would swap yarns which always ended in a great deal of nostalgia and a hankering for a way of life that would never come again. Like myself, many had found it difficult to settle back into an "ordinary" life and, like myself, had moved from place to place in an attempt to recapture some of the old life style.
The 1979 film adaptation of "The Riddle of the Sands" starring Michael York
Resting on the bed in "Melbourne" and reading the 350 pages of "The Unlikely Voyage of Jack de Crow", I could think of no time when I had felt more contented - or perhaps there had been a time but I just couldn't think of it. To prolong the bliss, I switched to another nautical book, Erskine Childers' "The Riddle of the Sands".
P.S. ... and anyone who loves "The Riddle of the Sands" will love Sam Llewellyn's sequel, "The Shadow in the Sands" - click here. A more than decent sequel to the original - 'Carruthers' and 'Davies' feature under their 'real' names (and here Childers is Carruthers, though I've seen elsewhere that he is Davies) - but the action is a year later and focuses on Captain Charlie Webb, chartered to crew for former Lancers Captain Dacre on the yacht Gloria. The two books are best read back-to-back, even if 'The Riddle of the Sands' has been read previously. Re-reading that before launching into 'The Shadow in the Sands' gives the proper background for the follow-up tale, and adds to the enjoyment.
Er lebt seit dreißig Jahren allein in den Weiten Kanadas, ernährt sich von dem, was er selbst erntet oder erlegt und genießt die Einsamkeit in vollen Zügen – Jo Bentfeld ist ein Freidenker, ein Zyniker und vor allem ein kleiner Anarchist.
Menschen wie Jo Bentfeld gibt es nur selten – er ist ein Aussteiger, ein Eigenbrötler und ist ein echtes Original. Nicht alles was er sagt, ist für Jedermann sofort nachvollziehbar und doch klingt jeder Satz, als hätte er treffender nicht sein können. Nicht immer ernst gemeint, aber immer sympathisch. Er ist ein Mann, dem die Zivilisation zu viel, oder je nachdem, wie man es betrachtet, zu wenig ist.
Im Sommer 1932 wurde Jo Bentfeld, der laut der regionalen Tageszeitung „Neue Westfälische“ eigentlich Hans-Joachim Blankenburg heißt, in Ostrach, Baden-Württemberg geboren. Erst als Schreiner und später als Polizeikommissar tätig, sehnte er sich zurück an seinen Ursprung: Unberührte Natur, das einfache Leben und vor allem: Freiheit. Das Leben, das er einst als Kind lebte.
Das erste Mal abseits der Zivilisation lebte Bentfeld in Skandinavien: In seinem Wohnmobil suchte er vor ungefähr 40 Jahren die Einsamkeit des Nordens. Doch während für die meisten die Leere Skandinaviens schon zu viel ist, konnte es Bentfeld nicht abgelegen genug sein. Die Touristen, die sich vor allem im Sommer in den nordischen Ländern tummeln, störten den Mann, der die Einsamkeit so sehr liebt, und so zog es ihn an einen Ort, der noch weiter von Zuhause weg und noch abgelegener war als Europas Norden. Den Ort, der seinen Wunsch nach Einsamkeit erfüllte, fand der Aussteiger in Kanada, nahe der Grenze zu Alaska: Er folgte einer Straße, die nur wenige Monate im Jahr geöffnet war. Am Ende angekommen schlug er sich noch drei Tage durch die Wildnis Yukons und fand den Ort, der zu seinem Zuhause werden sollte.
Überwindung, sein Leben in Deutschland gegen das Leben eines Einsiedlers einzutauschen, brauchte es nicht, sagt Bentfeld. Vielmehr war es eine „Rückkehr in die Erlebniswelt meiner Jugend. Ich bin im vorläufig letzten Weltkrieg in einem kleinen Dorf in bäuerlicher Selbstverwirklichung aufgewachsen. Wir lebten von der Natur: Säen, Ernten, Sammeln, Schlachten – und was man so nicht gewinnen konnte, gab es halt nicht.“ Und genau danach sehnte er sich: Abgeschiedenheit, Einfachheit, das Leben fernab von Technik, Stadttrubel und oberflächlichen Konversationen. Ein Leben in der „wirklich unberührten Natur“, wie Bentfeld es beschreibt.
Dabei lebte er nicht immer allein: Für einige Jahre leistete ihm seine damalige Frau Sabine Gesellschaft in den Tiefen Kanadas. Er lernte sie auf einer seiner Lesungen, die den Autor hin und wieder nach Deutschland verschlagen, kennen und nahm sie kurzerhand mit in sein kleines selbstgebautes Paradies. Inzwischen ist das Paar geschieden und Bentfeld lebt wieder allein in den Wäldern. Neben seiner Frau blieben Besucher aber eine Seltenheit. In seinen 30 Jahren, die er inzwischen in seiner Hütte an Jo’s Lake lebt, bekam er nur ungefähr 30 Mal Besuch. Darunter seine beiden Söhne und ihre Familien, Reporter und ein kleines Filmteam, welches dieses Video über Bendtfelds Leben drehte.
Wie der Alltag zwischen Bären und Bäumen aussieht? „Bei mir im Urwald bin ich meine Hausfrau, ich muss also den halben Tag an meinem Wohlergehen arbeiten: Kochen, Waschen, Flicken und so weiter. Die 2. Hälfte für Jagd, Fischfang und Wanderungen“, beschreibt Bentfeld sein Leben. Wenn all das erledigt ist, richtet er sich frei nach Kurt Tucholsky und „lässt die Seele baumeln“. Ein Leben, das natürlicher nicht sein könnte und doch für die meisten Menschen kaum noch vorstellbar zu sein scheint.
Was er braucht, jagt, sammelt oder baut er selbst, ein Umstand, der seine Lebenskosten äußerst gering hält: Nur ungefähr 300 Euro benötigt er pro Jahr. Für Mehl, Kaffee, ein paar Gewürze und natürlich Munition. „Den Rest entnehme ich der Wildnis: Jagd, Fischfang, Beeren, Pilze und Naturgemüse sammeln“, erklärt der Aussteiger.
Das Bentfelds Lebensstil auch gewisse Gefahren mit sich bringt liegt auf der Hand: Unberechenbare Krankheiten, unvorhersehbare Wetterumschwünge und wilde Tiere könnten dem Einsiedler zum Verhängnis werden. Doch den Szenarien, die viele Menschen vielleicht abschrecken, steht Bentfeld entspannt gegenüber. Auf die Frage, wie er mit Krankheiten umgeht, antwortete er nur knapp: „Ich bin unheilbar gesund und habe 30 arztfreie Jahre im Blockhaus in der weglosen Wildnis verbracht. Das nächste Indianerdorf ist sieben Tage Fußmarsch durch den weglosen Urwald entfernt.“ Kein Anflug von Angst klingt in den Worten des 85-Jährigen mit, eher eine optimistische Sicht auf die Dinge. Und die Vergangenheit spricht für ihn: Trotz zunehmenden Alters ist er fit genug, um allein zu überleben. Die frische Luft und das tägliche Arbeiten in der Natur scheint ein gutes Mittel gegen das Älterwerden und seine Begleiterscheinungen zu sein.
Auch die wilden Tiere, wie Wölfe und Bären, die durch die Wälder Kanadas streifen, bereiten ihm keine Sorge. „Es gibt keine gefährlichen Tiere im Norden – nur unvorsichtige dumme Menschen“, antwortet er TRAVELBOOK. Ein entspannter Umgang mit der Natur und das Vertrauen auf seine eigenen Instinkte und sein Urteilsvermögen geben Bentfeld die Sicherheit, die man sicherlich benötigt, wenn man ein Leben wie das seine führt.
So ganz ohne Gefahren ist der Norden dennoch auch für Bentfeld nicht: Wind und Wetter können gegen den Menschen arbeiten und auch die weglose Natur hat ihre Tücken. Sein gefährlichstes Erlebnis war, als er sich auf dem siebentägigen Rückweg seines jährlichen Einkaufs in einem Schneesturm verirrte. Ein Vorfall, welcher im kanadischen Winter durchaus tödlich enden kann.
Eine gewisse Sehnsucht nach Freiheit ist wohl in jedem Menschen vorhanden. Bei einigen mehr, bei anderen weniger und bei Menschen wie Bentfeld in einem ausgesprochen hohen Maße. Dabei hat er geschafft, die so ersehnte Freiheit auch zu leben: Außerhalb der Zivilisation hat Bentfeld die größtmögliche Freiheit, sich selbst zu verwirklichen und lebt nach seinem Motto „Bedürfnislosigkeit ist die Mutter jeder Freiheit!“ Fernab der nach immer mehr Konsum strebenden Welt hat er sich sein eigenes Paradies aufgebaut und lebt sein Leben nach seinen Bedürfnissen und nicht nach denen großer Konzerne. Wie es sich anfühlt in dieser vollkommenen Freiheit allein in Kanada zu leben? Bentfeld findet eine Antwort, die schöner nicht sein könnte: „Euphorisch, nur auf rosa Wölkchen schwebend.“ Eigentlich fast so, wie man es sich immer vorgestellt hat.
Auch auf die Frage nach seinen schönsten Momenten in Kanadas Natur findet der Zyniker genau die richtigen Worte: „Jeder Tag ohne Menschen allein mit der Wildnis.“ Dennoch vermisst er etwas, was nur die Zivilisation bietet: „Nur mein tägliches ‚Viertele‘ vom roten Trollinger, das Gott einem jeden Schwaben zugestanden hat.“ Denn Weinanbau gestaltet sich im Norden Kanadas tatsächlich etwas schwieriger.
Ich hatte nie etwas über den Jo Bentfeld gehört bis ein Schweizer namens Fabio Principato eine Email schickte in der er sich über German Harry und Tom Neale erkundigte nachdem ich über sie so viel geschrieben hatte. Am Ende schrieb er: "Bis jetzt konnte ich nur ein Buch über einen Mann lesen, der in Kanada gereist ist und dort in den Wäldern einen Blockhaus alleine gebaut und dort für lange Jahre gelebt hat.
Irgendwo online konnte ich sein Buch finden (den einzigen findbaren) und noch sogar mit seiner Unterschrift aus dem 2000.
Etwa einmal im Jahr reiste er zu seinem Heimatort zurück um Vorträge über sein Leben zu geben.
Sein Name war Jo Bentfeld."
Ich wanderte im Jahre 1965 vom (k)alten Deutschland nach Australien aus. In Erinnerung an das alte Sprichwort "Gott hüte mich vor Sturm und Wind und Deutschen die im Ausland sind" wurde ich in 1971 im Dschungel von Neu-Guinea australischer Staatsbürger. Das kostete mich nur einen Umlaut und das zweite n im Nachnamen - von -mann auf -man.
Australien war der Anfang und auch das Ende: nach fünfzig Arbeiten in fünfzehn Ländern - "Die ganze Welt mein Arbeitsfeld" - lebe ich jetzt im Ruhestand in Australien an der schönen Südküste von Neusüdwales.
Ich verbringe meine Tage mit dem Lesen von Büchern, segle mein Boot den Fluss hinunter, beschäftige mich mit Holzarbeit, oder mache Pläne für eine neue Reise. Falls Du mir schreiben willst, sende mir eine Email an riverbendnelligen[AT]mail.com, und ich schreibe zurück.
In der Zwischenzeit, falls Du mein Blog in der englischen Sprache lesen willst, besuche mich At Home at Riverbend.
Transit Camp at Kobuan
Camp 6 at Loloho
Panguna mine site shrouded in clouds
Rangoon in Burma, Samoa, Malaysia, Indonesia, Iran, PNG once again (setting up 
