My once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage is still going ahead

Never met Lutz Preusche but I want to do what he did: stand in front of the super-sized photo of the entrance to the Bonegilla Reception Centre and have my picture taken

 

Muslims have their pilgrimage to Mecca; Australia's "assisted migrants" have their pilgrimage to Bonegilla which they should go on at least once in their lifetime.

I passed through those gates in early August 1965. As I wrote elsewhere:

"We disembarked in some sort of organised chaos at Port Melbourne and soon afterwards boarded a train for the inland town of Albury from where we were taken to the Migrant Centre at Bonegilla. Remember the movie "The Great Escape"? Well, Bonegilla was a camp along the lines of what you saw in that movie - except that Bonegilla was a darn sight worse. We were put into corrugated-iron huts in what had been an old Army Camp - and I believe the old Spartans enjoyed more comforts than did the inmates of the "Bonegilla Migrant Centre". Although we were in the depth of the Australian winter (which can be pretty cold in the Australian inland), there was no heating, and only a threadbare ex-Army blanket to ward off the cold at night. For somebody who had just avoided conscription into the German "Bundeswehr", it seemed a poor exchange.

Deep blue skies and brilliant sunshine during the day made up for the freezing nights. It was two days after I had arrived in camp and while I was "thawing" out in the midday sun when another German who had come off the ship with me, told me about a "German Lady", a Mrs Haermeyer, at the camp's reception centre who was offering to take three or four recently arrived German migrants back to Melbourne to board at her house. I had been "processed" by the camp's administration on the first day and knew that in all likelihood I was destined to be sent to Sydney to work as labourer for the Sydney Water Board. So what did I have to lose? In record time I had myself signed out by the "Camp Commandant", my few things packed, and was sitting, with three other former ship-mates, in a VW Beetle enroute back to Melbourne.

My Bonegilla Reception Centre registration card
Date of Arrival 8 Aug 1965; MOI (?) 10/8/65

The "German Lady" had turned out to be a very enterprising roly-poly German housewife who with her German husband, a bricklayer, operated something of a boarding-house from their quaint little place at 456 Brunswick Road in West Brunswick in Melbourne. The place seemed already full to overflowing with young Germans from a previous intake, with bodies occupying the lounge-room sofa, a make-shift annex, and an egg-shaped plywood caravan in the backyard. My ship-mates joined that happy crowd but I was "farmed out" to a nice English lady across the road who had a spare room. The very next day the "German Lady" took me to the local Labour Exchange and in seemingly no time had secured me a job as 'Trainee Manager' with Coles & Company which had foodstores all over Melbourne. There I was, refilling shelves with groceries whose names I did not know, and had I known them would not have been able to pronounce, and helping blue-rinsed ladies take their boxes full of shopping out to their Austin cars. I still joined the others for breakfast and dinner in the "German house" and also had my laundry looked after by the "German Lady" but I was already making my own way in Australia. Looking back, my life seems to have been full of such serendipitous encounters because more good luck was to follow!

Full of hope and full of myself in 1965

During the first days in Melbourne I had written to Hans in Canberra
[... Sometime during the voyage and under circumstances which I have long forgotten, I had made friends with a young German who had come out to Australia many years before with his parents as a child. He was now married and on his way back from a trip to Europe with his wife, baby, and mother-in-law with whom he had revisited his own hometown and that of his Yugoslav wife. This friendship was going to have a major impact on my future life in Australia, and to this day Hans and I have remained good friends ...] to let him know where I was, and before long he was on the 'phone to me suggesting that I might want to come up to Canberra. I didn't need much persuading! Hans got me a job as storeman/driver in the hardware & plumbing supplies company of Ingram & Sons in Canberra's industrial suburb of Fyshwick. I drove an INTERNATIONAL truck and delivered anything from ceramic floor tiles to bathtubs and roofing iron to building sites all over Canberra. Not that I had a driver's license for a truck or had ever driven a truck before in my life but this was Australia, a young and vigorous country still largely devoid of formalities, and an even younger city, Canberra, still in the making: Hans simply took me down to the local Police Station where everybody seemed very impressed with my elaborate German "Führerschein" and where I was promptly issued with a much simpler but oh so much more useful Australian driving license. I kept at this job for a few months but after I had almost burnt out the truck's diff at Deakin High School while bogged down in the mud with a full load on the back, and a slight but still embarrassing collision with the rear-end of another vehicle just outside the British High Commission, I thought it best to cash in my chips while I was still ahead.

I had earlier on answered an advertisement by the Australia & New Zealand Bank for school-leavers to join their ranks and, to my own surprise and joy, was accepted. I joined the ANZ Bank and, in keeping with my new "status" as a "Bank Johnny", moved from the migrant hostel on Capital Hill (now the site of the new Parliament House) into Barton House, one of Canberra's many boarding houses in those early years."

Well, as the saying goes, " ... and the rest is history." Today, fifty-five years later, the big WHAT IF questions in life have been replaced by "What's for dinner and what's on the telly tonight?" Somehow I've got this far! Sometimes it seemed like driving a car at night. I could see only as far as the headlights, I couldn't see where I was going and very little of what I passed along the way, but somehow I managed to make the whole trip all the same.

However, the trip won't be complete until I've come full-circle and made my pilgrimage to Bonegilla to stand in front of that super-sized photo of the entrance to the Bonegilla Reception Centre to have my photo taken.

 

 

P.S. Read the full story here.

 

What else is there?

 

Where have the last 365 days gone? Where does each day go? Well, here's a quick summary: The kookaburras' mad cackling wakes us in the morning. I roll out of bed and go to the kitchen to switch on the kettle. I then sit in the sun and enjoy my first cup of tea of the day. Going back inside, I stir the slowly-cooking porridge, then go back outside taking a carrot from the fridge to feed the possum in his possum penthouse. The almost-tame kookaburra has been following me around and it's his turn to be fed. All that effort calls for a second cup of tea!

Drinking my second cup of tea, I wander down my "Meditation Lane" to the bottom of the property where I can look far downriver and possibly spot some early-morning fishermen trying their luck. The track is full of life. The resident kangaroo watches me from a safe distance. A butterfly procession is in full swing. I sit down on a sawn-off treetrunk and, sipping my cup, ponder: 'Does a butterfly know that it used to be a caterpillar and does a caterpillar know when it goes to sleep that it will be a butterfly when it wakes up?' Life flows. Life ebbs. Knowledge has not solved its mystery. We have learned how to blow up the world and walk on the moon, but we still do not know why we are here.

If it is a weekday, I go back inside at around 10 o'clock to switch on the computer to watch the gyrations of the stock-market. As my old mate Noel Butler used to say when I questioned him once why he bought and sold some of those "penny-dreadful" shares, "What else is there?" Some days the market is good to me, on others it isn't, and on some it turns downright ugly but, as Noel put it so succinctly, what else is there? In between watching stock quotations and listening to the news on the radio, I answer some emails and walk up to the gate to await the mailman. And so, almost without realising it, lunchtime comes around.

"Happy Hour" is when I take my afternoon nap on the old sofa on the verandah. Waking up refreshed, I take a book and read for a while, sitting in the sun. Again, almost without noticing it, dinner rolls around after which it is only a couple of hours before I head off to bed to listen to Phillip Adams' "Late Night Live" at 10 past 10 on ABC Radio.

And that's it! Multiply this by 365 and you have a fair summary of the year 2020. May there be many more years like this but without the bushfires, the floods, and the corona virus!

 

 

The Drifters

You can read this book here by signing up for a free account and "borrowing" it.

 

In 1975 I worked in Burma and lived, for the first six months at least, in Rangoon's Inya Lake Hotel which, together with the Strand Hotel, was one of Rangoon's two luxury hotels. However, Burma, being then the most isolated country in South-East Asia, allowed us no access to Western goods, Western food or Western books, and so my employers, TOTAL-Compagnie Française des Pétroles, sent me on a shopping trip to Singapore.

Knowing nothing about Singapore, I had booked myself into a hotel also called the Strand which I assumed to be of a similar standard to Rangoon's. Today's website certainly suggests that it has received a major make-over but back then it was a real dive in what was a very unsanitary Bencoolen Street.

I spent my evenings along Singapore's famous (or infamous) Bugis Street which was just around the corner, and my days inside the MPH Bookshop where I became acquainted with W. Somerset Maugham's Short Stories, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and the large collection of James A. Michener's novels.

James Michener's novel The Drifters became my much-loved and much-read 'Bible' during those footloose and fancy-free years and it has stayed with me to this day. It is a fairly epic tale, following the lives of eight principal characters thrown together in a great journey from Torremolinos, Spain, through Algarve, Portugal; Pamplona, Spain; and Mozambique; to Marrakech, Morocco in turbulent 1969. Joe is escaping the draft; Britta the dark winters of Norway; Monica the shadow of her father, a failed English diplomat to Vwarda (a fictional African nation); Cato a seemingly losing battle for racial equality in Philadelphia; Yigal the tug-of-war in the choice between American or Israeli citizenship; and Gretchen the psychological scars of sexual abuse at the hands of police officers following the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Britta is the daughter of a radio operator whose mission it was to alert the Allies to the arrival of German ships in Norway, and who dreams of going to Ceylon (modern-day Sri Lanka) once the war is over. As Britta grows up she watches her father endlessly listening to Georges Bizet's The Pearl Fishers during the endless arctic nights while his dream slowly fades into a distant vision never to be realised.

All flee to the resort town Torremolinos where they meet each other and, by chance, sixty-one-year-old George Fairbanks, the story's narrator and one- or many-time acquaintance of most of the six drifters. Through what can only be described as fanciful fiction, these seventeen- to twenty-one-year-olds allow George to join them on their ensuing adventure and even let him be their guide around the world.

In the ninth chapter, a new character is introduced by the name of Harvey Holt. He works as a technical representative on radars in remote locations. He is an old friend of Mr. Fairbanks, and has been everywhere from Afghanistan to Sumatra to Thailand. He is very old-fashioned and a fan of old music and movies.

I strongly identified with the book and its characters, such as when Britta says, "... I believe that men ought to inspect their dreams. And know them for what they are." I was already too old then to be Joe and not quite old enough to be Harvey Holt and I dread to think that today I should identify with Britta's father. I don't even like Georges Bizet's The Pearl Fishers! Carmen yes; The Pearl Fishers no!

The permanent temptation of life is to confuse dreams with reality. The permanent defeat of life comes when dreams are surrendered to reality. What dreams do we have today for ourselves and for the world in which we live? Let us search them out and discover where the journey takes us while we're still young at heart. Because once we have ceased to dream, Michener seems to say, it is simply time for us to die.

"May I speak to the butler of the house?"

Noel Butler at his saksak house just outside Wewak, taken by Brian Herde at Christmas 1975 when we visited Noel just after I had returned from Burma and before I headed off again to Iran in early 1976.

 

Back in the days when you almost needed to take out a bank loan to pay for a long-distance telephone call, it wasn't often that I could afford to call my old friend Noel Butler.

He had left New Guinea some time after me and not by choice but with great reluctance as he had always thought to see out his days in New Guinea. Alas, the many years away had made him unsuitable for life in his native Australia and he felt isolated and lonely.

Hearing me ask him, "May I speak to the butler of the house?" always resulted in a yeah-I-am-pleased-to-hear-from-you chuckle, even though the time spent on the phone was never long enough. While my budget wouldn't stretch to more than a monthly phone call, we kept up a regular correspondence until his sudden and unexpected death in 1995.

I was suddenly reminded of this when a kindly soul in Norway, Kåre Vaksvik, emailed me "Is this this the correct email address to Peter Goerman ? I have some information that might be interesting for you about Noel Butler - how I met him in Stratford-on-Avon 1957, and some letters and pictures. Some years ago I googled 'Noel Butler, LAE'. The first 'hit' was yours 'And thereby hangs another tale'! Please let me hear if this is your correct address."

And so it came to pass that I received the following photos and letters which allowed me to piece together something of Noel's past because somehow we had always been far too busy and living too much in the moment to talk about what must have been an interesting past for Noel who came to New Guinea as a soldier in WWII and then remained to try his hand at almost anything, including growing coffee in the Highlands.

 

Noel Butler, Dept. of Works, Lae, Territory of New Guinea, 19/1/58

Dear Kare

You have no idea how pleased I was to receive your letter which was waiting for me when I got back to New Guinea. Thanks also for the photograph. It takes me right back to Bearley at Stratford-on-Avon. I really enjoyed the couple of weeks I spent there and also the people I met.

About my trip, Kare, I had some bad luck. My motor bike just did not seem to be good enough for the trip. I got as far as Split in Yugoslavia, and there I had a lot of trouble with the engine overheating which damaged the engine bearings. I could not get any parts for the bike in Yugoslavia, and as I did not think it was in good enough order for the long journey ahead, I rode back to Italy where I was able to get it fixed up in Trieste. By then my passport visa had expired and I could not re-enter Yugoslavia, so I rode back to England, and later ...

... caught a ship to Australia. I was very sorry to have to turn back as I would very much liked to have done the overland trip.

I did see some of Europe which was all very interesting and strange to me. The route I took was London, Paris, Strasbourg, Stuttgart, Munchen, Salzburg, Villach, Rijeka, Split, Trieste, Venitzia, Pisa, Genova, Nice, Lyon, Bruxelles, Oostende, London, so at least I did see a little of Europe, and enjoyed it very much.

I do hope to return one day and see some more of Europe especially Denmark, Norway and Sweden.

I would certainly like to take part in some skiing and skating. The only time I have ever seen snow was on the Alps in Austria. Now that I am back in the tropical heat of New Guinea England and Europe seem very far off lands. I do not think you would know much about New Guinea in your country, although I think since Holland is having a ...

... dispute with Indonesia over the Dutch half of the island, many more people will have heard of New Guinea. I do not think the Indonesians have any chance of getting it. Mostly the population here is black, and very primitive, some of them even head-hunters but that is in the interior. Lae only has 1500 whites. I have only been back in Lae two weeks. Just now I have no pictures of New Guinea, but I will take some and send them next time I write.

I saw Sputnik II go over Sydney. I had no trouble finding the town of Alisund on a map of Norway. I had heard much about your King Haakon and was sorry to hear of his death. I believe he used to even play tennis. We are very interested in sport in Australia, most likely because we have so much sunshine. I did not like the weather very much in England, but I believe you have plenty of sunshine in ...

... Norway. In New Guinea there is no change of seasons just hot all the year round about 87 degrees Fahrenheit, and very heavy rains.

I will close now wishing you all the best for 1958. I must say your English is very good. I have a few colour slides of New Guinea I am enclosing. You may even have seen them at Stratford-on-Avon.
Cheers and all the best.
Yours sincerely,
Noel Butler.

 

---

 

N.J. Butler, c/o Sub District Office, Wewak, New Guinea. 10/1/62

Dear Kare

It was a very pleasant surprise to be hearing from you once again. Thanks very much for the excellent Christmas card. I feel as if I could do with some of that cold Norway weather. The heat here has been just killing lately. Around the 100 degree F. every day with almost a maximum humidity. The only compensation is that Wewak has some good beaches, so I generally cool off with a swim each day.
I have only been here a few weeks. I think I was at Lae with Dept. of Works when last we exchanged a letter. I had some ups and downs since then. I resigned from my job early last year, ...

... and bought a block of land on the New Guinea Highlands and started planting coffee. I rather enjoyed that life, and the township, KAINANTU, where I have the block, has a very pleasant climate, being situated at an altitude of 5,500 feet. However, its the same old story. I ran out of money and have had to return to work. However, I still hold the land which has about 8,000 young coffee trees growing on it.

The job I have here is only very ordinary. I look after the native labour compound for the governments. That means feeding, and paying and generally acting as nursemaid to just over 200 natives housed in the compound.

Wewak (population 500) is the chief town of the Sepik district, and exists solely as a government post.

The whole district which is about the size of England produces nothing except what the 145,000 natives eat themselves. The district has the second largest river in New Guinea, the Sepik, which is always mud coloured, and small ships sail it for 500 miles. Some of the natives along the river are famous for their carvings.

Am enclosing three colour slides which are a pretty poor lot.

Have you been to England again on holidays, or do you go to some other part of Europe. I would certainly like to do a trip over there again, but I think I am more likely to go to Japan in the next year or two.

Well, Kare, I will close off now, wishing you all the best, and hoping for a letter from you.

Sincerely yours,
Noel Butler

 

Two letters and a couple of Christmas cards, all in Noel's impeccable copperplate handwriting and mailed after he had failed in his coffee-planting in the Highlands and joined the Department of Works in Lae before later working for them at Mumeng and then moving to Wewak. And here are the colour slides - remember colour slides? - which Noel had enclosed with his letter.

 

 

And how wrong was his comment "... Holland is having dispute with Indonesia over the Dutch half of the island ... I do not think the Indonesians have any chance of getting it", just as most "oldtimers" never expected Papua New Guinea be granted Independence so soon!

 

And here are the photos Noel received from Kåre:

 

Kåre at the Bearley Agricultural Holiday Camp

A group photo at the Bearley Agricultural Holiday Camp with Noel, aged 37, on far left

 

It was so typical of Noel to have stayed at the Bearley Agricultural Holiday Camp as he did all his travelling on the cheap, not only because he never had much money but also because he would have felt ill at ease hobnobbing it in some fancy hotel. Just to see what this "holiday camp" was all about, I tracked down this video clip:

 

 

What a pity Noel didn't stick around long enough to experience the internet - he barely managed a television and never saw a computer, fax machine, video machine, CD- or DVD-player, let alone today's smartphone - and connect up with old acquaintances like friendly Kåre who must be an exceptionally nice guy to have taken all this trouble to send me these things from far-away Norway.

Thank you, Kåre, that was very kind of you! - or perhaps I should say in my best German accent: takk, Kåre; det er veldig snilt av deg!

 

Daw Khin San Myint

 

 

She was the one who waited patiently for you to come around, to finally give yourself to her completely and realize that she's the one for you. She was the one who supported you in everything you did and you just took her for granted. Now you've lost her and you regret not being able to tell her how much you cared for her and how much you loved her. Now it's too late for could haves, would haves and should haves.

You probably thought that she would never even think about leaving you because you knew she loved you with her whole heart. You probably thought that she will stick by your side and that you still had time to have some more fun. She may be patient, but she's not a fool, she wasn't going to wait for you forever. She's proud and strong and she knows that she's worth much more than you gave her credit for. She mustered the strength and walked away, even though she loved you truly. She just couldn't take your lies and excuses anymore and she couldn't wait for you any longer.

She was naïve enough to think that you will change over time, that you will realize she's the best thing that has happened to you. She gave you all the chances she could but you just took her for granted. All she did is believe in you and your love, and all you did is fail her trust each and every time. Time and time again she forgave your misgivings and she hoped that there will be no next time. She hoped that this will be the last time you've caused her pain and that you'll finally give her the respect that she deserves. But time and time again she was wrong. That day never came and she just couldn't wait for it any longer.

She walked away and never looked back and there's just nothing you can do to change it. She will no longer tolerate your egoistic nature, your insecurities and your foolishness. She will no longer sacrifice herself for someone who doesn't appreciate her, for someone who doesn't know how to express his love, for someone who hasn't matured yet. She will no longer accept your lies and deceptions because she knows that she can have something much better. She knows that she deserves something much better, something that you will never be able to give to her.

She may be hurting, she may be in pain, but once the crying is over, she will pick herself up, dust herself off and carry on with her life. She will wipe away her tears and promise herself that she will never cry for you again. She will never let anyone else treat her badly again.

Now she starts to live again. Now she starts to love herself again, to reinvent herself and to rediscover her passions. She is finally free of your negativity, of your toxicity and she can live life to the fullest again. She can enjoy the little things, she can be happy and she can search for her soulmate. One day she will find the person who will light up her eyes and fall madly in love. She will love again and she will be loved the way she deserves.

You'll regret losing this beautiful, amazing woman who was ready to give herself to you completely. You'll regret losing this one-of-a-kind woman who was ready to be your partner and to spend her life with you. She was going to give it all to you, but you just didn't know how to cherish her.

 

---

 

 

---

 

Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage. Without her you would have never set out on the road. She has nothing more to give you. And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you. Wise as you have become, with so much experience, you must already have understood what Ithacas mean.                               --Constantine P. Cavafy

 

I've read these consoling words many times, finding curious ambiguities in them ...

 

Walk, don't run

 

A very dear person who was the most important person in my life gave me for a birthday present this bottle opener. I used it for nothing else, until the subtle message finally revealed itself to me - too late, as so much else in my life.

For years I moved from one place to another, and dreamt continually of stopping. And because my desire to stop haunted me, I didn't stop. I continued to wander without the slightest hope of ever going anywhere.

I gave myself up to the drift, veering, detouring, and circling back, always one step ahead of nowhere, inventing the road I had taken as I went along. And for all I had left behind, it still anchored me to my starting place and made me regret ever having taken the first step.

And yet I went on. For even though I lingered at times, I was incapable of taking roots, for what I wanted is what I didn't want.

In the end it was the sheer distance between myself and what I had left behind that allowed me to see what I am not but might have been.

The Ultimate Australian Christmas Movie

 

More than thirty years ago, "Bushfire Moon" aka "Miracle Down Under" was released into cinemas. You probably don’t remember it as it seems to have disappeared from our collective memory. There’s been no DVD, although occasionally you can pick it up on VHS for fifty bucks or more.

It has all the ingredients you need for a good Christmas film: a hopeful kid, a cute puppy, a stranger who may or may not be Santa Claus, a grumpy Scrooge figure, and lots of learning about the true meaning of Christmas. The only thing it was missing was snow, but we’ll come to that in a moment.

The story goes like this: in the outback of 1891 Australia, a ranching family is suffering from drought conditions, and there’s a real chance their livestock will not survive the summer. Their young son, excited by the coming of Christmas, is keen for presents that his family simply cannot afford. After seeing a picture of Father Christmas in a shop window, the kid becomes convinced that a passing swagman with a big white beard is the real Father Christmas, and pins his hopes on the drifter to save the holiday.

Meanwhile, there’s a rich property owner neighbour who refuses to allow the struggling family to use his lake for their cattle. He would get nothing out of such a transaction, so why bother? He’s preoccupied with his own society status as he prepares to throw a lavish party for the local swells, but seems to have his own mysterious past with the Santa-esque swagman.

Basically, the film is a mix of "A Christmas Carol" and "Miracle on 34th Street". The film’s best sequence comes about two-thirds of the way in. The rich landowner has invited all of his snooty friends over for a traditional Christmas dinner. None of them wants to admit that they’re no longer living in England, and they’re so desperate to hang on to familiar customs that they ignore the heat, dress up in layers of seasonal finery, and sing in front of a raging fire.

The final note of the film tells you everything you need to know about the film’s confused approach to cultural cringe. In America or Britain, the film would end with snow falling lightly and delightfully from the heavens as the characters look up in wonder. But this is Australia in the height of Summer, so our happy ending is punctuated by rain. The drought-stricken family looks up happily as the skies open and unfrozen water descends. It’s touching, but also kind of hilarious when you consider what the Christmas movie rulebook tells us is supposed to happen.

It’s a shame that this film is so hard to find, because there are so very few Christmas-themed films in the Australian canon. It would be nice to revive the one that is — perhaps by default — the best of them all.

I hope I've just saved you spending fifty bucks. Consider it my Christmas present to you!

 

Of Christmasses past

Christmas 1970 inside my donga in Camp 6 on Loloho Beach

 

It's that time of year again! This photo is from 1970 when photography was black and white but not so our lives. It's Christmas in Camp 6 on the island of Bougainville in New Guinea. I'm sitting on the most important piece of furniture, a beer fridge, flanked by Neil "Jacko" Jackson on my right, and Bob Green to my left.

Neil Jackson was Bechtel's head-timekeeper, a titular job description at best as the only time he could be relied on to keep correctly was opening time at the local "boozer". For him it was always 5 o'clock somewhere. He's shown in the photograph when he's already well into his drink but still some time away from turning ugly and disagreeable.

Bob Green was also a timekeeper who got married just before he came up to the island. He liked his drink but also his wife back in Australia who wrote him long, passionate, and multi-paged letters every day which he received by the fistful on mail-day. He replied to them after the nightly drinking was over but the mental torture became too much and he returned to Melbourne after just a few months.

"Jacko" also moved back to Melbourne where he inherited his auntie's mansion in blue-ribbon Toorak. He finished his days fighting off the neighbours who tried to have him and his dozens of cats and mountains of empties evicted from their genteel neighbourhood. It's rumoured that he was knighted for his services to the Australian brewing industry and lived out his days as Sir Osis of the Liver.

Bob Green and "Jacko" were just two of several unlikely characters who back then I called by that shifty English monosyllable that covers such a vast array of meanings that you can never be quite sure what anyone means when they use the word "friend". We were friends not because we had sought out each other's company but because we were thrown into each other's company through work and circumstances.

I still wonder how in this company of alcoholics and misfits I didn't permanently impair my young body and tender soul. I'd just turned 25. My short life until then had been a series of lucky breaks, and the word 'regret' had not yet entered my vocabulary. An endless succession of more lucky breaks and golden tomorrows seemed to lie ahead of me. How wrong and how right I was!

Looking at those old photos brings back lots of memories which make me feel young again and help me forget that these days when I try to leap over tall buildings like I used to, I always hit the wall halfway up.

Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht

Silent night! Holy night! All is calm, all is bright, / Round yon Virgin Mother and Child! / Holy Infant, so tender and mild, / Sleep in heavenly peace! / Sleep in heavenly peace!

 

As I limber up for my annual rendition of "Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht", it may be a good time to retell the story of this popular Christmas carol.

In 1818, a roving band of actors was performing in towns throughout the Austrian Alps. On December 23 they arrived at Oberndorf, a village near Salzburg where they were to re-enact the story of Christ's birth in the small Church of St. Nicholas. Unfortunately, the St. Nicholas' church organ wasn't working and would not be repaired before Christmas.

Because the church organ was out of commission, the actors presented their Christmas drama in a private home. That Christmas presentation of the events in the first chapters of Matthew and Luke put assistant pastor Josef Mohr in a meditative mood. Instead of walking straight to his house that night, Mohr took a longer way home. The longer path took him up over a hill overlooking the village.

From that hilltop, Mohr looked down on the peaceful snow-covered village. Revelling in the majestic silence of the wintry night, Mohr gazed down at the glowing Christmas-card-like scene. His thoughts about the Christmas play he had just seen made him remember a poem he had written a couple of years before. That poem was about the night when angels announced the birth of the long-awaited Messiah to shepherds on a hillside.

Mohr decided those words might make a good carol for his congregation the following evening at their Christmas eve service. The one problem was that he didn't have any music to which that poem could be sung. So, the next day Mohr went to see the church organist, Franz Xaver Gruber. Gruber only had a few hours to come up with a melody which could be sung with a guitar. However, by that evening, Gruber had managed to compose a musical setting for the poem. It no longer mattered to Mohr and Gruber that their church organ was inoperable. They now had a Christmas carol that could be sung without that organ.

 

 

On Christmas Eve, the little Oberndorf congregation heard Gruber and Mohr sing their new composition to the accompaniment of Gruber's guitar. Weeks later, well-known organ builder Karl Mauracher arrived in Oberndorf to fix the organ in St. Nicholas church. When Mauracher finished, he stepped back to let Gruber test the instrument. When Gruber sat down, his fingers began playing the simple melody he had written for Mohr's Christmas poem. Deeply impressed, Mauracher took copies of the music and words of "Silent Night" back to his own Alpine village, Kapfing. There, two well-known families of singers — the Rainers and the Strassers — heard it. Captivated by "Silent Night," both groups put the new song into their Christmas season repertoire.

The Strasser sisters spread the carol across northern Europe. In 1834, they performed "Silent Night" for King Frederick William IV of Prussia, and he then ordered his cathedral choir to sing it every Christmas eve.

 

In 1914 it even introduced a rare moment of sanity into an insane war. Joyeux Noël (English: Merry Christmas) is a 2005 French film about the World War I Christmas truce of December 1914, depicted through the eyes of French, Scottish and German soldiers.

 

In 1863, nearly fifty years after being first sung in German, "Silent Night" was translated into English. Today "Silent Night" is sung in more than 300 different languages around the world - including Humming if you don't know the words.

 

Mein Braunschweig

 

Eine Abbildung dieses wunderschönen Kalenders "Unser Braunschweig" für 2021 fand ich auf der facebook-Seite "Braunschweig - Im Wandel der Zeit". Ich verlies die Stadt in der ich aufgewachsen war, beruflich in 1963, und Deutschland als 19-jähriger Auswanderer in 1965, aber an solche Aufnahmen vor dem Wandel der Zeit erinnere ich mich immer noch gern.

Um mir ein Stückchen der (k)alten Heimat in meine australische Heimat zu holen, schrieb ich schnell an die Herausgeber, "apotheca", drei Apotheken am Hagenmarkt, Altstadtmarkt und dem Hutfiltern, "Liebe Freunde, der Ruf Eures 2021 Kalenders ist jetzt auch schon nach Australien gedrungen. Was würde es denn kosten, ihn nach Australien zu schicken?"

 

Apothekerin und Filialleiterin am Hutfiltern, Susanne Knechtel

 

Ebenso schnell erhielt ich von einer netten Dame, Frau Knechtel, diese Antwort, "Lieber Herr Goerman, das finden wir wunderbar und schicken Ihnen gerne den Kalender zu. Bitte geben Sie uns Ihre komplette Anschrift durch, die Kollegen kümmern sich um den Paketversand. Wir wünschen Ihnen frohe Festtage und liebe Grüße aus Braunschweig. Ihre apotheca"

Wie schön in dieser brutalen kommerziellen Welt noch ein "menschliches" Lebenszeichen zu erhalten! Ein netteres Weihnachtsgeschenk hätte ich mir gar nicht vorstellen können. Vielen Dank, apotheca, und auch Ihnen ein wunderschönes Weihnachten! Und hier sind Weihnachtsgrüße von mir:

 

Drücke hier um es auf YouTube anzusehen

 

Deutschland deine Werbung

Vor 49 Jahren

Am 9. Dezember 1971 erschien ich vor dem Magistrat David Bruce Moorhouse in dem kleinen Ort Arawa auf der Insel von Bougainville in Papua-Neu Guinea und schwor Königin Elizabeth II meine Treue und versprach den Gesetzen von Australien zu folgen und meine Pflichten als australischer Bürger zu erfüllen.

Und heute, neunundvierzig Jahre später, nachdem ich hunderte von tausenden von Dollars in Einkommensteuer gezahlt habe, außer ein paar Geldstrafen fürs Zuschnellfahren nie das Gesetz gebrochen habe, und nie die Regierung für irgendwelche Unterstützung gefragt habe, und auch jetzt im Ruhestand von meinen eigenen Ersparnissen und Kapitalanlagen lebe, denke ich doch daß ich meine Pflichten erfüllt habe und daß die australische Regierung ein gutes Geschäft machte als sie mir in 1965 das Geld für die Ausreise in dieses wunderschöne Land vorstreckte.

Ich bin stolz darauf mich Australier zu nennen und Australien als mein Heimatland zu betrachten, nicht durch einen Zufall der Geburt sondern durch meine eigene Entscheidung und vielen Jahren harter Arbeit!

Das deutsche Beamtentum

 

Jedes Jahr muss ich der deutschen Rentenversicherung eine Bescheingung schicken die ihnen sagt daß ich noch lebe. Irgendwas ging da in diesem Jahr verkehrt und ich erhielt einen Brief am 11. November in dem es hiess daß Teil A des Formulares nicht richtig unterschrieben war und "sollte die vollständig ausgefüllte Lebensbescheinigung nicht bis zum 31.12.2020 vorliegen, werden wir die Rentenzahlung einstellen."

Zuerst wollte ich denen das Formular mit den Worten "Ich habe den Teil A selbst unterschrieben. Was mehr soll ich machen?" zurückschicken. Dann dachte mir aber daß das mit all dem Weihnachtspostverkehr zu lange dauern würde und schickte ihnen eine Email. Schneller als eine Kaufbescheinigung vom ebay kam innerhalb von Minuten die Antwort in vier Sprachen: "Ihre Nachricht ist eingegangen. Eine Eingangsbestätigung ist wegen der Menge leider nicht möglich."

So weit so gut, aber dann kam die große Überraschung: noch am gleichen Tag kam dieser Brief per Email:

 

 

Davon könnte sich das australische Beamten(un)wesen eine Scheibe abschneiden! Hier bekommt man - falls überhaupt - monatelang keine Antwort. Dreimal hoch dem deutschen Beamtentum!

 

Hier wohnte ich auch

 

 

Die "Hauptstadt" Rabaul auf der Insel New Britain (früher Neu-Pommern) war mein erster Arbeitsplatz in Neu-Guinea. Danach wohnte ich noch für mehrere Jahre auf der Insel Bougainville und auf dem "Festland" in der richtigen Hauptstadt Port Moresby und Lae. Alles gute Erinnerungen!

 

Erinnerungen an Süd-West Afrika

 

 

Da hätte ich auch hängen bleiben können denn damals, in den sechs Monaten in 1968/69 in denen ich in Süd-West Afrika wohnte und arbeitete, war ich noch Deutscher und die kleine Stadt Lüderitz gefiel mir ganz gut.

Aber es war nur eine Zwischenstation auf dem Weg zurück nach Australien nach meinem kurzen Aufenthalt in der (k)alten Heimat Deutschland.

Für die vielen anderen Deutschen die dort ständig lebten, war es vielleicht auch so eine Zwischenstation nicht mehr so ganz deutsch zu sein aber dennoch Deutscher zu bleiben denn Süd-West Afrika war sehr deutsch und selbst die deutsche Sprache war noch eine der drei offiziellen Sprachen: Afrikaans, Deutsch und English.

 

 

So kenne ich Braunschweig auch noch

 

Ende 1963 ging ich von Braunschweig weg, und Mitte 1965 ging ich von Deutschland weg, aber an dieses Braunschweig erinnere ich mich noch: