Calling a young, bespectacled Swiss chef who's now fifty years older

 

The AIR NIUGINI Pilots' Mess in Port Moresby

 

There were many a tropical night when I and the young, bespectacled Swiss chef who was in charge of all in-flight catering (as well as our own meals at the Pilots' Mess) sat on that top verandah and, with the help of quite a few 'Greenies' and punctuated by the roar of landing and departing aircraft , bemoaned the state of the world and our rather insignificant place in it.

I had just taken on the new position of Internal Auditor with Papua New Guinea's newly-formed national airline AIR NIUGINI, which meant I was busy setting up procedures and writing manuals that would assist auditors who'd come after me to follow established auditing standards.

 

 

My office was in Port Moresby's imposing ANG House but I was seldom there, with my work taking me all over Port Moresby and the country.

 

 

It was an interesting and challenging job but there are always more interesting and more challenging jobs ahead, and so, just after Christmas 1974 (which I spent on a beach in Lae, blissfully unaware that Cyclone Tracy had just wiped out Darwin) I flew out to Rangoon in Burma to take up the position of Chief Accountant with the French oil company TOTAL - Compagnie Française des Pétroles who had begun drilling for oil in the Arakan Sea.

 

My Air Niugini T-shirt, Port Moresby, 1974
still with laundry mark "15" for my room in the Pilots' Mess at Six-Mile

 

On the way, I stopped over in Hong Kong where the company had booked me into the swank PENINSULA Hotel who met me at the airport with a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce. I had not expected this nor had they expected to meet a young chap straight out of New Guinea, in shorts and wearing an AIR NIUGINI T-shirt still with the laundry mark "15" for my room in the Pilots' Mess in it, and carrying a swag over his shoulder.

As for my neighbour and confidant during those long tropical nights, the young, bespectacled Swiss chef, I am ashamed to say that I forgot his name but if somebody knows him or he himself reads this blog, please email me at riverbendnelligen[AT]mail.com . The internet is a small world and I have seen longer odds than finding an old friend this way!

 

---

 

P.S. The odds are shortening: just received a facebook message from a Raymond James Hammett: "I took up head chef position at PX in 1975 from Swiss/German Frank Gertz". That must've been him - Frank Gertz.

P.P.S. Could this Erhard Gertz be the Frank Gertz I knew at AIR NIUGINI? Erhard came to Australia aboard the 'Castel Felice' in December 1959 when 21 years old, and stayed at the Bonegilla Migrant Centre for over two months. I was 29 in 1974; was Frank seven years older? It's just possible.

Bonegilla Registration Card

 

 

Another (Fri-)day in Paradise

"Head to the Moruya District Hospital Auxiliary's Book Fair
on September 29 and 30 at the CWA Hall in Moruya"

 

We've just come home from an early morning in the pool and a long day in the Bay and Moruya where we had a beautiful lunch of silverside doused in delicious white sauce. No idea how they can serve it for ten dollars but they did which left plenty of money for the chardonnay.

Reading the free local rag I found an advertisement by something called www.dontfretpet.com.au (more of this later) and about a big house on a tiny block of land at Mossy Point on sale within the range of $3,995,000 to $4,200,000 - click here. What's this "range" business anyway? Why would anyone want to pay $4,200,000 when the lowest price is already set at $3,995,000? But even more to the point, why would anyone pay anywhere near $4,000,000 for something like this? At least they've got the headline "Beyond Comparison" right because nothing else compares to it in price.

However, all of this was instantly forgotten when I read the notice on the "Your long weekend in the Eurobodalla" page that the Moruya District Hospital Auxiliary was running a Book Fair at the CWA Hall today and tomorrow. Full of silverside and chardonnay, we drove the few hundred metres across town to stock up on books: Stephen Fry's "Mythos - The Greek Myths Retold"; Hugh Mackay's "Turning Point - Australians Choosing Their Future"; "Incredible Journeys - Exploring the Wonders of Animal Navigation" by David Barrie; "Australian History in 7 Questions" by John Hirst; Daniel Smith's "How to Think Like Stephen Hawking"; Jean-Paul Sartre's "The Age of Reason"; Alan Greenspan's "The Age of Turbulence"; and, to lighten up, the illustrated film companion to "Captain Corelli's Mandolin".

Before I get started on any of these books, I want to check out this dog-minding business. It seems like a clever business model: they charge dog owners between $65.50 to $90 a day to place a dog with some dog lovers like ourselves who receive nothing more than unconditional love from their temporary furry house guest. We would love to have a dog again for a while, so this may be the way to go as long as they only bark and not bite.

It's another long weekend coming up. Driving back to Nelligen, we were heading up against a bumper-to-bumper stream of Canberra cars coming down the Clyde Mountain. All those public servants wanting to relax at the coast after a week of hard work (question: how many public servants work in Canberra; answer: about half!) It looked like Invasion Day - no, not THAT Invasion Day! - but it's nothing more sinister than Labour Day.

 

I will vote 'YES' ...

 

 

I will vote 'YES' if they change the referendum to ask, "Do you think there should be a full and transparent audit held into Aboriginal funding and into the people who have so badly mismanaged it?"

However, there's much more to this con job than a simple feel-good 'YES'.

 

 

But I leave the last word to Bruce Alexander, someone I had never heard of before but who makes a lot of sense. Please listen to this to the end:

 

 

The Australian Human Rights Commission defines 'racism' as "... the process by which systems and policies, actions and attitudes create inequitable opportunities and outcomes for people based on race."
What a perfect definition of the proposed VOICE referendum!

 

Let's close this post with Kamahl's "The Sounds of Goodbye" which a then-girlfriend in Port Moresby in 1984 used to play day and night. Maybe she already knew something I didn't because by the end of that year I had said goodbye and was on my way to a new job in Burma. More memories!

 

 

 

Bali expats

 

 

There are all sorts of expats in Bali, hiding out in this shifting community of the planet's "homeless and assetless", languidly killing time like characters in a Graham Greene novel. They are Westerners who have been so ill-treated and badly wounded by life that they've stopped the whole struggle and decided to camp out in Bali indefinitely, where they can live in a gorgeous house for $200 a month, perhaps taking a young Balinese man or woman as a companion, where they can drink before noon without getting any static about it, where they can make a bit of money exporting a bit of furniture for somebody. But generally, all they are doing is seeing to it that nothing serious will ever be asked of them again. These are not bums, mind you. This is a very high grade of people, multinational, talented and clever. Everyone used to be something once (generally "married" or "employed"); now they are all united by the absence of the one thing they seem to have surrendered completely and forever: ambition. To quote my favourite writer Joseph Conrad: "... in all they said - in their actions, in their looks, in their persons - could be detected the soft spot, the place of decay, the determination to lounge safely through existence." Needless to say, there's a lot of drinking.

Having come to Bali after they've made a mess of their lives back home, they decide they've had it with Western women, and they go marry some tiny, sweet, obedient Balinese teenage girl. They think this pretty little girl will make them happy, make their lives easy. Good luck to them because it's still two human beings trying to get along, and so it's going to become complicated because relationships are always complicated. Some have their hearts broken, others just their bank balance, some actually make some sort of living selling real estate to other Westerners who've fallen for this misguided dream of a Balinese paradise.

Of course, Bali is not such a bad place to putter away your life, ignoring the passing of the days. Most Bali expats, when you ask them how long they've lived there, aren't really sure. For one thing, they aren't really sure how much time has passed since they moved to Bali. But for another thing, it's like they aren't really sure if they do live there. They belong to nowhere, unanchored. Some of them like to imagine that they're just hanging out for a while, just running the engine on idle at the traffic light, waiting for the signal to change. But after several years of that they start to wonder ... will they ever leave? Conrad again: "Their death was the only event of their fantastic existence that seemed to have a reasonable certitude of achievement."

There is much to enjoy in their lazy company, in those long Sunday afternoons spent at brunch, drinking beer and talking about nothing. Still, the outsider who's just passing through, feels somewhat like Dorothy in the poppy fields of Oz. Be careful! Don't fall asleep in this narcotic meadow, or you could doze away the rest of your life here!

 

 

How Noel would've loved to see these photos!

Noel's place while still under construction in 1984. He sent me this photo when I was still working in Piraeus in Greece, with the words "It's as isolated as it looks, but plenty of crows and wallabies for company" written on the back. The roof was on by the time I visited him there in early 1985 but everything else still looked just as desolate as in this photo.

 

I have written elsewhere about my old friend's "Little House on the Prairie" at Mt Perry near Bundaberg - see here. Wondering what it may look like today, I posted on the Mount Perry & Surround Forum:

"Does anyone recognise this little house which my old mate from New Guinea, Noel Butler, had built there in 1983 or 1984. It was just across from the then just starting new golf course, and he sold it in 1986 to a man (from Victoria?) whose wife died only a couple of years later. It was close to what was known as the Little Gnome House which then belonged to a pharmacist from Bundaberg. Could someone point out the location of the house on a map, or put me in contact with the current owners?"

Quite soon, a very nice lady from Brisbane, who also owns a weekender at Mt Perry, replied, "That's 172 Venables Street, Mount Perry", and followed it up by telling me that my old friend Noel had been her grandfather Arnold Butler's first cousin. What an amazing coincidence!

(It's also known as 172 Smokers Gully Road and, according to realestate.com.au, was sold in 1989 for $38,000 - see here. Is this Noel's sale which he told me about when he visited me in Canberra in 1986, or did his buyer resell it three years later, and this is the resale?)

And she continued, "At the time that Noel was in Mount Perry, my grandparents were living in Gin Gin - so only thirty minutes away. Who knows if they knew Noel??? I asked Mum and she can recall the family talking of Theo Butler, Noel's father. There were certainly Butlers around at the time, but not in Mount Perry, I don't think."

 

Noel's place is highlighted in yellow.

It is close to the town's dumping ground. The irony wouldn't have been lost on Noel.  

She sent me these maps with Noel's house marked on it, and as she was heading up to Mt Perry for the weekend, also promised to take some photographs. Here are just three out of the dozen or more she took:

 

 

And the revelations continued: "My grandfather Arnold Butler, Noel's first cousion, was born in 1923 in nearby Gin Gin. Noel was one of four children. His three sisters were Constance [who rang me on that fateful day in 1995], Kathleen who passed away in 1926 when she was just three years old, and Audrey who passed away in 1938 when she was ten. I did recall seeing that it was pneumonia that caused Audrey's death." How tragic! Add to this that Noel's father Theo died in 1944 at the age of 56 when Noel was only 24 years old and serving in the Army in New Guinea, and is it any wonder he never mentioned his family?

In 1986 Noel sold his "Little House on the Prairie", which is now hidden behind large gumtrees, to a man from Melbourne. While Noel was still alive and living in Childers, I visited Mt Perry again in 1990 and met the new owner who at the time told me that his second wife had just died and that he had scattered her ashes on top of Mount Perry. He lived there until quite recently when, at age 95, he passed away. As the nice lady from Brisbane told me, "He had had failing health and went into a nursing home in Gin Gin for a couple of months, hated it, then returned home for a couple of days before having to leave once again for hospital, then passed away. They were calling him Vera but his real name was Everard John Handley. His third wife now lives there alone. She is an Indian lady and is about 60 years old. They were calling her 'Rug' - no idea how you spell it, but that’s exactly how it sounds. Mum says Rug's real name is Lucy." She also informed me that Noel's neighbour, whom he had mentioned in his letters several times as being ex-military and running a leather-working business in Mt Perry and whose home-made wine he had sampled on several occasions, was a Peter Baker, and that a Lewis Smith, who still lives at Mt Perry, had helped Noel built the house. Should I try and contact Lewis Smith?

 

From this ...

                                                                               ... to this:

 

How Noel would have loved to see these photos! They now take pride of place on our mantelpiece in memory of the life of a wonderful friend!

 

On the beach

Cape Pallarenda from the air; Magnetic Island to the right

The beach at Cape Pallarenda; Townsville's Castle Hill on the horizon

 

While surfing the net I came across these photos of my first real home in Australia: Number 3 Bay Street at Cape Pallarenda, Townsville's beachside suburb.

It was early 1981. After more than ten years overseas and the last eighteen months on the road in Australia, I'd taken up a permanent accounting position with the construction company AV Jennings in Townsville. The work was easy, the pay adequate,and I had bought this small house on the beach, which was as comfortable as an old pair of slippers with holes in them, and turned domestic.

Until eight months later the fatal phone call came in: did I want to be part of the big Ok Tedi mining job in Papua New Guinea? The call of the wild again and a new challenge! So it was back to New Guinea, and then on to Saudi Arabia, and finally Greece - "The Magic Faraway Tree" gone pathological.

A little over three years later I was back in Townsville but the magic of just walking back in and picking up from where I had left off had deserted me.

You can't step into the same river twice! --- to which a good friend added, "... but you can sure step into the same pile of shit more than once!" Well, Chris, my feet of clay have stepped into lots of them ☺

 

 

P.S. I eventually sold the little house on the beach in January 2000 for $115,000. It was given a bit of a make-over by the new owners and resold in February 2016 for $313,000 - click here. They must have picked the top of the market because a much bigger and better house next door, at # 5 Bay Street, sold seven months later for just $365,000, having been bought only five years earlier for $395,000. See also my old-neighbour-across-the-backfence, George Maxwell's house at 4 Dyer Street, which he had sold only a few months before I did.

 

A voice from beyond the grave

 

A trailer from the movie "Ein Mann und sein Boot" which shows Rollo Gebhard's third circumnaviagtion in 1983 when he was accompanied by his wife Angelika Gebhard.

 

When Joshua Slocum left Boston in 1895 in his 11.20m-long gaff-rigged sloop oyster boat named "Spray" to become the first person to single-handedly circumnavigate the world, he was 51 years old.

The Panama Canal hadn't even been built yet, and Slocum had to take the dangerous route around Cape Horn. You can read about his more-than-three-year-year-long voyage in "Sailing Alone Around the World".

When Rollo Gebhard left Genoa in Italy in August 1967 in his 7.25m-long yacht "Solveig III" on his first of two single-handed circumnavigations, he was 46 years old. It took him just under three years, and he chose the Panama Canal instead because it was there. His second single-handed circumnavigation in the same boat at the age of 53 took him over four years, from March 1975 to November 1979, and he, too, wrote a book about it (in German), "Ein Mann und sein Boot - 4 Jahre allein um die Welt" ("A Man and his Boat - 4 years alone around the world").

 

You can read the book - in German - online at www.archive.org
The following extracts are of Rollo's meeting with Tom Neale: click here and here

 

What made this book particularly interesting to me was Rollo's meeting with Tom Neale on Suwarrow Atoll. Not only did he visit him on his "Island to Oneself" on both his first and second circumnavigation, but he also wrote that he had taped an interview with Tom in November 1976.

He wrote about it in "Ein Mann und sein Boot" in German but how much better would it be to hear it in English from the man himself! I emailed Rollo's wife Angelika Gebhard in Bad Wiessee in Germany who promptly replied, "In dem Film über die zweite Allein-Weltumsegelung (1975-79) meines Mannes ist ein Interview mit Tom Neale enthalten. Der Film wurde damals im ZDF ausgestrahlt." ("The interview is included in the movie my husband made during his second circumnavigation which back then had gone to air on the commercial television station ZDF.")

How to get hold of that movie? It was not on YouTube - except for the short trailer shown above - and not available on ebay or anywhere else. Frau Gebhard had the solution, "Das ZDF besitzt die Urheberrechte an dem Film, und ich vermute, dass es sehr schwierig bis unmöglich sein wird, ihn über das ZDF zu erwerben. Aber ich habe den Film, den wir für die Vorträge geschnitten haben. Ich könnte Ihnen den Teil mit dem Interview zukommen lassen, wenn Sie den Film nur privat einsetzen." ("The television station owns the copyrights to the movie, and it would be difficult if not impossible to get a copy. However, I could send you a copy of the part containing the interview for your own personal use.")

Tom Neale being interviewed by Rollo Gebhard on Suwarrow in November 1976 ..
Unfortunatey, for copyright reasons I'm not at liberty to publish the full clip on YouTube

 

And so it came to pass that for the first time ever I was able to listen to the voice of my long-time hero Tom Neale and watch him as he was interviewed by my new hero, Rollo Gebhard. Obviously, I cannot show you the footage for copyright reasons but I can give you a transcript:

(Rollo) "You have done something many people dream about. You are living on a small island far away from civilisation. Are you happy?" (Tom) "Yes, yes, I'm happy here." (Rollo) "And would you recommend this lifestyle to other people?" (Tom) "No, not exactly. I would have to know a person very, very well first before I could recommend a life like this. You must remember, before I came here I had many years of experience of life in these Pacific islands and I knew what to expect. How could I tell if someone else could cope with things here or whether he could stand being alone. We are not all the same, you know. I'm a person who doesn't mind being alone. I've always been that way, more or less."

One, no, two voices from beyond the grave because Tom Neale died the following year in Rarotonga, aged 75, and Rollo Gebhard passed away at his home in Bad Wiessee in 2013, aged 92. Two lives well lived!

Rollo and Angelika Gebhard promoting their "Society to Save the Dolphins"

 

Thank you, Frau Gebhard, for allowing me to view this rare and historic movie clip, and I wish you continuing success with the "Gesellschaft zur Rettung der Delphine (GRD)" ("Society to Save the Dolphins"), started in 1991 by your husband and of which you are still the chairperson.

 

Life was so simple then

 

My office on the top floor of the Al Bank Al Saudi Al Fransi building in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

 

I've previously reflected on my past stripped-down working life. I liked it that way and my employers did too as it meant that no domestic chores distracted me from giving my full attention to their business affairs.

My office was behind the window on the top floor on the far right

 

My work was my life and my office was my home, and there was little else besides. "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" was how I coped with life in the world's largest sandbox (a.k.a. Saudi Arabia).

 

Note my portable OLYMPIA typewriter, bought in Kieta in New Guinea in 1972. It travelled the world with me for many years

 

Not that there was much to play with: the television reception consisted of little more than re-runs of Walt Disney's "Bambi" and so-called 'newsflashes' of members of the royal family travelling to or returning from the fleshpots of the West denied to their own citizens. As for alcohol, there was none - but you could get stoned anytime.

 

 

My hotel room was equally spartan, trimmed down as it was to the basics of sleeping, eating and work brought back from the office.

 

The view from the room with no view

 

It was a room with no view and the only diversion was the men-only swimming pool, as long as the scorching sun had set behind the Red Sea and the hot desert wind didn't sandblast the skin off your face.

All up, it was an assignment that came at a huge personal cost to me and yet it contributed to what I am today. Thanks for the memories!

 

A letter from an ordinary Australian

 

This letter was written by an ordinary Australian (who shall remain nameless) about ‘The Voice' referendum. I believe it probably sums up pretty well the views of the 'quiet Australians' who don't answer telephone polls and remain quiet for fear of being accused of being racist:

 

I was born in Australia fifty-four years after the Australian Commonwealth was formed in 1901. Australia is my country as much as it is the country of any other person who was born here.

I haven’t stolen anyone's land. I have purchased legal title to the land I own and have paid it off with the sweat of my brow. To be forced to pay a reparation tax as rent or a special land tax on my land is abhorrent to me.

My paternal grandfather was shot through both legs fighting to defend this nation; my great-grandfather was killed by a shell in the same struggle. My maternal grandfather and two great uncles on both sides gave up four years of their lives to defend Australia against the Germans, who had colonised New Guinea, New Britain, New Ireland, Bougainville and Samoa. Twenty-five years later, the Japanese invaded these countries. My mother served in Bougainville, patching up Aussies who had been shot by the Japanese. My father and two paternal/maternal uncles gave up six years of their lives to fight off the Germans and Japanese, with Dad spending three-and-a-half years as a POW in Germany and coming back weighing eight stone.

Every road, building, home, farm, mine, school, hospital, airport, port, railroad, city and town that exists in Australia was built by European settlers and their descendants. Hunter/gatherer Aborigines built nothing prior to 1788 and have contributed very little to modern Australia. Their hunter/gatherer lifestyle became redundant after European farming and technology arrived here and as the benefits of the first and second industrial revolutions spread through the 19th and 20th centuries. Today, no one in the world chooses to live a hunter/gatherer lifestyle.

Now that the Australian nation has been developed, some aboriginal activists want to take control of it. They are not content to have an equal say in government with the rest of us Australian citizens. They claim they deserve more power, in perpetuity, because some of their ancestors were born here prior to 1788. They label anyone who disagrees with them a racist. What chutzpah!

As currently proposed, 'The Voice' is a blatant con job to replace the government of the people, by the people, for the people, with a race-based veto on everything we do. This will be exercised by twenty-four unelected Aboriginal activists supposedly representing the 3% of the population who claim Aboriginal descent. The effective veto comes from the power of the Voice to delay or hinder the government through the threat of litigation.

Votes in parliament will be traded for the support of the Voice in return for other programs or legislation favourable to the activists who dominate the Aboriginal Voice. In this way, the Voice will be a shadow government able to make demands of the executive, the parliament, the public service and independent statutory offices and agencies not available to any other Australian citizens. It offends the crucial democratic principle that everyone should be equal before the law.

Less than one-third of the 3% of the population who claim Aboriginal descent are living dysfunctional lives in remote areas. We Australians spend $39.5 billion each year trying to fix this problem. The solution is straightforward, although not easy. These Aboriginals need to limit their alcohol intake, provide a stable environment for their kids, and ensure they go to school. Do this every day for twenty years, and the gap between the dysfunctional Aboriginals and the rest of us will disappear. We don’t need to change our constitution for this to happen.

Not only am I fed up with being welcomed to my own country, I find the implication in the 'Welcome to Country' ceremony and in the proposed 'Voice' that I and my family are somehow not entitled to be here as equal, legitimate Australian citizens offensive and insulting.

I acknowledge the early settlers who came to this land which had stood undeveloped for over 50,000 years and who, in less than two hundred years, transformed it into one of the richest countries on Earth. Together, let’s enjoy and build on the legacy they left us.

 

Catch of the Day

 

 

I've also been sitting on the jetty all morning with my catch of the day, Jeremy Paxman's book "The English - A Portrait of a People", which tries to test the veracity of the old saying that God is an Englishman.

When I came to Australia in 1965, the country was almost a mirror image of England where everyone knew their place, where delivery carts, driven by men in uniforms, brought milk and bread to the front door, where everyone stood for 'Good Save The Queen', where people were decent and as industrious as was necessary to meet comparatively modest ambitions, didn't make a fuss, drank tea by the bucketload, and where there were things which were done and things which were definitely not done.

My immediate impression then was that anyone who was born Australian had won first prize in the lottery of life. I didn't know it then that Cecil Rhodes had said the same thing about the English fifty years before. Of course, the only constant in life is change, and since then we've had multiculturalism and metric measurements but also political correctness which now seems to stop us from debating openly and fairly the changes a Labor government wants to impose on us on Saturday, 14th of October.

A constitutionally enshrined VOICE will impose a reverse apartheid on this country. If the VOICE succeeds, our development as the world's most successful multicultural society will come to a . I hope it won't happen!

 

The Sense of an Ending

 

Julian Barnes' book "The Sense of an Ending" is so much more than the memories of a retired man named Tony Webster who recalls how he and his friends at school vowed to remain friends for life, and who now reflects on the paths he and his friends have taken.

It is a meditation on ageing, memory and regret, and hard to imagine to be made into a movie. I mean, how do you turn into a movie something as beautifully written as "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"? [Page 105]

"We live in time - it holds us and moulds us - but I've never felt I understood it very well. And I'm not referring to theories about how it bends and doubles back, or may exist elsewhere in parallel versions. No, I mean ordinary, everyday time, which clocks and watches assure us passes regularly: tick-tock, click-clock. Is there anything more plausible than a second hand? And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time's malleability. Some emotions speed it up, others slow it down; occasionally, it seems to go missing - until the eventual point when it really does go missing, never to return."

And then "... you get towards the end of life - no, not life itself, but of something else: the end of any likelihood of change in that life. You are allowed a long moment of pause, time enough to ask the question: what else have I done wrong?"

"The Sense of an Ending" was also the favourite book of a friend who passed away three years ago this month, and whose slow decline over a couple of years I witnessed - click here. The Sense of an Ending indeed!

 

Never on Sunday

 

Many years ago, a former girlfriend in Germany sent me a whole pile of old letters and aerogramme - remember aerogrammes? - which I had written her from the day I left Germany in 1965 and again from early 1984 after I had attended my father's funeral in Germany.

They make for some interesting reading and bring back many memories, some which I had forgotten and others which I had tried to forget, such as this old photograph of me in my favourite Piraeus bar with my favourite barmaid, Lindelia Konionikoli, after a long day in the office. It was just around the corner from my apartment at Boudouri 2 at Marina Zea.

Good old days!

 

In memory of Abdulghani Mofarrij

 

I've always kept in touch with old bosses and they did with me; perhaps only after having parted company did they appreciate what a good worker they had lost and I realised what a good boss they had been to me.

Shuffling through an old cardboard box containing bits and pieces, I've just come across this very old postcard from my boss in Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Abdulghani Mofarrij, who had been more than my boss: he had been a very kind and very gentle man - a gentleman, no less - and, I would like to think, I had also been his friend!

Well, he never wrote to me again with some details because sometime in 2005 he died of a sudden heart attack. Rest in Peace, Adbulghani!

 

What part of the sign do they not understand?

 

We've just come back from the Aquatic Centre in the Bay. Our subsequent shopping spree was cut short because some vandals had broken into our favourite op-shop, Vinnies, which was closed for the day while Forensic Services were dusting down the place for fingerprints.

Back in Nelligen, we didn't immediately return to the peace and quiet of "Riverbend" but instead crossed the bridge for a hot chocolate and vanilla slice at the River Café. Near the boatramp somehow had been settling in for the night. What part of the sign do they not understand?

I'm off to "Melbourne" now to continue with "Beyond Capricorn".

 

 

How Portuguese adventurers secretly discovered and mapped Australia and New Zealand 250 years before Captain Cook

 

I'm halfway through "Beyond Capricorn", an amazing book in which Peter Trickett argues that in 1522 - a century before the Dutch and 250 years before Captain Cook - the Portuguese discovered and mapped parts of Australia and New Zealand.

Drawing from primary and secondary historical sources, archaeological evidence and stories handed down through Aboriginal oral tradition, this book is a must-read for people interested in the early history of Australia.

 

 

If you accept what is said here, then much of our history needs re-writing. If you want to argue the toss with the author, you're a bit late as Peter Trickett died in 2018, so just read the book and be totally amazed.

 

 

One photograph; so many memories!

I named our first home in Australia after it: KARAWEIK

 

Would you rather have loved the more, and suffered the more; or loved the less, and suffered the less? That is, I think, the only real question in life. Of course, it isn't a real question because we didn't have the choice then.

If we had had the choice, then there would have been a question. But we didn't have the choice, so there isn't a question. Who can control how much they love? If you could control it, then it wouldn't be love. I don't know what you would call it instead, but it wouldn't be love.

Most of us have only one story to tell. I don't mean that only one thing happens to us in our lives: there are countless events, which we turn into countless stories. But there's only one that matters, only one finally worth telling in old age.

But here's the problem: if this is your only story, then it's the one you have most often told and retold, even if - as in my case - mainly to yourself. The question then is: do all these retellings bring you closer to the truth of what happened, or move you further away? I don't know. All I know is that I have learned to become careful over the years. I am as careful now as I was careless then.

 

A quiet morning at "Riverbend" is Hermann Hesse time

 

 

Die Brücke

"Die Brücke" is based on the West German anti-war novel written by Gregor Dorfmeister under the pseudonym of Manfred Gregor. The book is based on a true event in Germany during the last days of the Second World War.

 

May 1945. Somewhere in Germany. Only a few days before the capitulation. Seven Hitler-youth, who’ve been stuck into Wehrmacht uniforms, are deployed to defend a bridge of no strategic significance, equipped with nothing more than a few carbines and bazookas. Abandoned by their senior officer, helplessly torn between a thirst for adventure and a confused belief that they must save the Fatherland, they take up the futile struggle just as the American tanks roll in.

 

 

"The Bridge", which achieved worldwide success as a book in 1958, followed by the equally successful film in 1959 (followed by a television remake in 2008 - click for the trailer here), is a memorial to a duped generation that was sent to the slaughter in the final days of the War.

 

 

The publication of the book and the release of the film did nothing to popularise the "Wehrpflicht" (conscription) which began in 1956. My turn came in 1963 when I had turned 18. Despite fallen arches and prescription glasses, I was given the all-clear and a shiny new "Wehrpass" with the instructions not to leave town (or worse, the country) which I did, with the help of the Australian embassy, in 1965.

 

 

Better to serve two years as an assisted migrant in Australia than eighteen months under some sadistic "Feldwebel" in the "Bundeswehr".

Fifty-eight years later, I am still here!

 

"All the best to you, Peter, for keeping the memories alive."

Yours truly on Loloho Beach on Bougainville Island in 1970

 

I've worked in scores of different places and more than a dozen different countries, but there've been only two places that were absolutely life-changing for me: Papua New Guinea first in 1970 and then half-a-dozen times later, and Burma in 1975.

Being part of the team from all over the world that built the Bougainville Copper Mine created an esprit de corps that kept me in touch with people from all over the world. In early 2003 I decided to collect their reminiscing recollections on a The Bougainville Copper Project website which at first resulted in a huge avalanche of emails and phone calls from the many thousands of expatriates who built the mine and subsequently worked it.

More than fifty years after the mine was built, the ranks have thinned out, with many having gone to the 'Big Copper Mine in the Sky' and others having become too feeble to put pen to paper, let alone type along on a keyboard. Only the occasional email tells me that the website is still being read. Here is the-first-in-almost-a-year email from Rex Brooks who was one of the pioneers who helped to explore the copper deposit in 1964:

 

Hello Peter, I was randomly browsing and came across your blog. I was amused by the photo of you in the article "The die was cast", as it could have been a photo of me from that era, similar age and build, identical glasses and same dress sense. It brought back memories of a time of my life I won't forget. I was recruited in Cairns by Ken Phillips for a job with CRA Exploration. We arrived in Kieta in April 1964 and commenced geochemical sampling around Kupei mine. The team consisted of Ken, myself (field assistant), Ian Wilkie (field assistant), Edgar Mucenikas (geochemist) and Neville Robinson (Mines Dept. liaison). We moved across to the western side of the range and set up a base camp in Panguna valley, see photo attached. This spot is where the BCL Admin, warehouse and workshop later stood around 1970. I did many and varied jobs and managed to see many areas in PNG, all the while being paid for the experience. I gradually drifted into Supply and worked with Ken Nelson for several years. After three years I thought I was missing out on "life" in Australia and left, but within 6 months I was back, with a new bride, and stayed until 1970.   Rex Brooks with second child in 1970   Anne and John Barnham were our next-door neighbours at Panguna. My first daughter was born in this period and I can remember my wife being swamped at the markets by the meris wanting to touch the baby's fine white hair. I followed Ken Phillips to Ok Tedi with Kennecott Exploration but two years later, now with three daughters, I settled at Greenvale Nickel Mine for 20 years! The day Greenvale mine closed I was on a flight back to PNG for 10 years of FIFO at Porgera. My last job in PNG was with Morobe Mining at Hidden Valley in 2012. I am now retired on a small property outside Townsville and have become adept at doing absolutely nothing. In the time I spent in PNG I often came into contact with many ex-Bougainvilleans. Without exception they all portrayed the "bug" that seems to get into your blood after a stint up there. Bougainville was home and you went to Australia on leave. I am gradually reading through all the old posts but sadly age seems to be cutting down the ranks. All the best to you, Peter, for keeping the memories alive. Regards Rex Brooks Email: sandrex@activ8.net.au Mobile : 0406398743

 

And thank YOU, Rex, for helping me keep those memories alive!

 

I refuse to comment on her sartorial taste

 

Is this the Woman from Snowy River or just some misguided sartorial taste? Anyway, it confirms the rumours I had already heard that 5 Sproxton Lane was going to come up for sale. It was Nelligen's first million-dollar sale when it sold for $1.2 million in February 2012 (the previous owners, Pam & Jack, having bought it fourteen years earlier for $240,000, had quintupled their money).

 

 

And here it is again, to be auctioned on 12 October 2023 - click here. It'll be interesting to see what it sells for, as it would become the benchmark for all the other properties in Sproxton Lane - and a starting point for "Riverbend" which is so much larger and better, even if I say so myself.

 

The yellow arrow points to "Riverbend"

 

Putting this sale in the hands of a Canberra agent seems the way to go, and so I dropped them a short note: "Interesting to see this property come up for auction; its sales price would certainly set a new benchmark for properties in this lane as the last sale was several years ago. I am not a potential buyer but a potential seller as I own the 7-acre property known as "Riverbend" at 35 Sproxton Lane. So far I have stayed away from local agents as properties of this sort and at this price find their buyers not locally but in Canberra or Sydney, so don't be surprised if I contact you again once the auction result is known (any idea on the reserve price?)"

 

 

P.S. Just had the answer back from the agent: they expect a sales price of between $1,800,000 and $2,000,000. Let's see what happens on the 12th.

 

Put your money where your mouth is

 

Look, I'm not suggesting you should lash out and give them $5,000 - whoever dreamt that one up must've been dreaming! - but even a mere $30 would be a good start! At least it would prove that your money is where your mouth is! Click here!

 

 

Auch ich denke oft an Piroschka

Schaue dir den ganzen Film hier an

 

Vor fast siebzig Jahren erschien in Deutschland eines der liebenswertesten Bücher der fünfziger Jahre, das seinen Autor mit einem Schlag berühmt machte, und auch heute noch gern gelesen und in hohen Auflagen verbreitet ist.

 

Hier kann man das Buch lesen

 

"Ich denke oft an Piroschka" ist die Geschichte des deutschen Austauschstudenten Andreas der in den zwanziger Jahren nach Südungarn fährt, um dort seine Ferien zu verbringen. Die romantische Puszta-Landschaft, die überwältigende Gastfreundschaft der Menschen dort, und vor allem aber Piroschka, die deutschsprechende Tochter des Stationsvorstehers von Hódmezővásárhelykutasipuszta bezaubern ihn.

 

Rundfunk-Doku here

 

 

In 1955 erschien dann der Film und wurde zum Filmklassiker. Das Buch des Horst Hartungs habe ich leider nicht da die Portokosten nach Australien zu hoch sind, aber obwohl der Film auch auf YouTube zu haben ist, habe ich mir den DVD gekauft denn es ist ein Stück Heimat zum Sammeln. Ausserdem habe ich auch noch das Hörspiel. Höre es dir hier an: