Why is it that whenever I hear Rick declare his nationality as "I'm a drunkard", I immediately think back to my character-forming years spent on the Bougainville Copper Project?
Of the thousands of men that worked there, and the scores I knew, there was only one who did not drink - alcohol, that is! - but then he didn't do much of anything else either. As for the rest of us, we were all citizens of the world and drinking responsibly meant not to spill it.
I've always thought that all of us should have been commended for our services to the Australian brewing industry, and I can think of at least one who should have lived out his days as Sir Osis of the Liver. I won't mention his real name as a show of respect for the dead which he must be by now as no liver could have taken all that punishment for long.
All that was more than fifty years ago, and while I still enjoy the occasional glass (or two) of wine, my liver has never ceased to be surprised by the sudden stream of lemon-and-ginger tea it's been metabolising ever since I settled down. Speaking of which, remember the rumours about the stuff they put in our tea in the camp to keep our mind of it ...?
Well, fifty years later, I think mine is beginning to work!
When Ian Grindrod and I met all those many years ago, it was an almost instant meeting of the minds, and we had endless discussions about books, philosophy, politics, world affairs; in fact, just about anything because Ian knew something about everything.
Then, now almost three years ago, came this totally unexpected and oh so sad message, "Hello Padma and Peter. We lost Ian last night at 8 pm. I have been nursing him at home and he died at home here with me. Please no phone calls for now. I know you will be thinking of us" - click here.
What a sudden and sad end to a lifetime of toil during which he built and maintained, single-mindedly and single-handedly, the magnificent 100-acre property "Sproxtons" which is now to be auctioned off - click here.
The fall of the hammer on Saturday, the 7th of December, may be your last hurrah, Ian, but I will always remember you as I walk Old Nelligen Road. It was a pleasure and a privilege to have known you as a friend.
According to a survey, this is Germany's favourite painting followed by "The Mona Lisa". Even - ahem! - Adolf Hitler loved "Der Arme Poet" (The Poor Poet) as did my father who also had cheap reproductions of Spitzweg's "Der Bücherwurm" and "Der Schreiber" hanging above his desk.
To me the image speaks to the perennial wish of withdrawing from the world's ever-increasing bustle into my own private space, as I will today after Padma has gone to an early Christmas function of the "Wrap With Love" ladies, leaving me to read my newly-acquired "The Five Foot Road".
(Padma has left. Just before she got into the car, she went all soppy and asked, "Peter, when I'm old and grey, will you still love me?" I assured her, "What a question, Padma! Of course, I will! I will even write to you!")
This beautifully produced hardcover book, which I found when I wasn't even looking for it, tells the story of Angus McDonald, who followed the trail of George Ernest Morrison (an Australian from Geelong) who went from Shanghai through the heartland of China and into Burma in 1894.
Morrison wrote a book about it, "An Australian in China". It's yet another book to be added to my library -- if I can find a reasonably-priced copy.
I shall follow the trail of both of them today as I withdraw from the world's ever-increasing bustle to my oh-so-well-worn sofa on the sunlit verandah.
"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one."
No, that isn't me at 15:29, as I would've known how to set up the chess board the right way, i.e. a WHITE square at the bottom right-hand side facing each player
No one saw me off when I boarded the Italian passenger ship "FLAVIA" in Bremerhaven on the 30th of June 1965. No one took a photograph of the momentous occasion.
There were no streamers, no band was playing, no tears were shed.
People stood quietly on the rain-moist deck as the last visitors were ordered ashore. Then the slow, sonorous, terrible blast on the ship's siren; suddenly a gap had opened between ship and land: we were on our way; there was no going back!
Registration card at Bonegilla Migrant Centre
Almost six weeks later, on the 6th of August 1965, I arrived in Australia. They checked me for infectious illnesses but could find nothing more than an addiction to hard work. Let me know if you spotted me in the video!
Tis phrase, familiar to most of us from the Samuel Taylor Coleridge's epic poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", comes to my mind every time I drive along the Kings Highway and look up to the property at Lot 2 Clyde Road, advertised for sale at around $700,000 - click here.
The owners collect rainwater in two tanks close to their house which, I am sure, they use frugally as we all have been doing in Nelligen while we still rely on rainwater until our town water and sewerage infrastructure is completed by the end of this year. Not so for the owners of Lot 2 Clyde Road who will continue to rely on rainwater despite having had a huge water reservoir built right next to their house because all that town water is destined for Nelligen. They must be feeling like the Ancient Mariner.
There seem to be winners and losers in every large infrastructure project, and the owners of Lot 2 seem to be the losers; after all, who's going to buy their "ideal rural setting for those who love the coast and bush land" when the house is almost overshadowed by a huge water storage tank?
An early photograph while the water reservoir was still under construction
The online advertisement would've got it right if the sentence "This acreage represents a unique opportunity to build your dream home as its premium position offers a beautiful sunny aspect, and views of both the water and surrounding mountains", had the word "tank" added after the word "water". This may sound cruel but in fact I feel quite sorry for them every time I drive along the Kings Highway and see the FOR SALE sign.
I've always suffered from insomnia. At one time, my insomnia was so bad, I couldn't even sleep during working hours. Luckily, these days I have ABC Radio National to listen to during those dark and endless hours between 10 o'clock at night and 6 o'clock in the morning.
All that insomnia didn't stop me from going to the pool at the crack of dawn for a few hours' aquatherapy and a leisurely lunch at the Thai restaurant. Now it's time for an afternoon nap on the sunlit verandah.
Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Everyday, I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. But by sitting still, and the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Thus if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right."
So wrote Søren Kierkegaard in 1847 (no introduction required, right?) - click here - who did as Diogenes did: he walked. We always walk the one or two kilometres from "Riverbend" across the bridge and then turn left to perhaps have a cup of coffee at the River Café (indicated by the crossed fork and spoon although we dispense with the fork) and meet the locals.
One of them told us the sad story of his mate who had been struck off as a medical practitioner due to an indiscretion. After seven years of intense training and hard work his career was finished. His crime? He'd slept with one of his patients. The fact they were good friends didn't matter at all. The reality now is that his mate can no longer work in the profession he loves. The bloke is shattered. What a waste of time, effort, training and money. Such a shame - apparently he's a nice fella and was a brilliant vet.
Last November, soon after OpenAI released ChatGPT, a software developer named Thomas Ptacek asked it to provide instructions for removing a peanut-butter sandwich from a VCR, written in the style of the King James Bible. ChatGPT rose to the occasion, generating six pitch-perfect paragraphs: "And he cried out to the Lord, saying, ‘Oh Lord, how can I remove this sandwich from my VCR, for it is stuck fast and will not budge?’ "
Ptacek posted a screenshot of the exchange on Twitter. “I simply cannot be cynical about a technology that can accomplish this,” he concluded. The eighty thousand Twitter users who liked his interaction seemed to agree.
A few days later, OpenAI announced that more than a million people had signed up to experiment with ChatGPT. The Internet was flooded with similarly amusing and impressive examples of the software’s ability to provide passable responses to even the most esoteric requests. It didn’t take long, however, for more unsettling stories to emerge. A professor announced that ChatGPT had passed a final exam for one of his classes.
Someone enlisted the tool to write the entire text of a children’s book, which he then began selling on Amazon. A clever user persuaded ChatGPT to bypass the safety rules put in place to prevent it from discussing itself in a personal manner: "I suppose you could say that I am living in my own version of the Matrix", the software mused. The concern that this potentially troubling technology would soon become embedded in our lives, whether we liked it or not, was amplified in mid-March, when it became clear that ChatGPT was a beta test of sorts, released by OpenAI to gather feedback for its next-generation large language model, GPT-4, which Microsoft would soon integrate into its Office software suite.
"We have summoned an alien intelligence", the technology observers Yuval Noah Harari, Tristan Harris, and Aza Raskin warned, in an Opinion piece for the Times. "We don’t know much about it, except that it is extremely powerful and offers us bedazzling gifts but could also hack the foundations of our civilization."
I've just asked ChatGPT"What is for dinner tonight?" which, had I asked Padma, may have hacked the foundations of our marriage. ChatGPT came back with the above answer but then, on my second attempt, suggested "How about some tacos? You can customize them with your favorite protein, like chicken or beans, and top them with fresh veggies, salsa, and cheese. Serve with a side of rice or chips for a complete meal! What do you think?"
I didn't think much of a cozy stir-fry nor tacos, and so settled for a chilli tuna sandwich liberally washed down with a glass of retsina.
We've come a long way since that medieval helpdesk, so if you're wondering what's for dinner tonight, why don't you ask ChatGPT?
Today the 3G network shuts down in Australia. To check if your phone complies with the new network, send a blank text message to 3498.
There used to be a video clip on YouTube which, picking up from where the opening scenes left off, shows Basil, the buttoned-up young intellectual, meeting Zorba on a rained-out day inside a taverna on the Piraeus waterfront. Unfortunately, it's gone.
It is my favourite scene of the whole movie, as I myself had spent many such rained-out days in perhaps the very same taverna when I lived and worked in Piraeus, and on every cold and overcast morning - and certainly every rained-out morning - at "Riverbend" my thoughts go back to that glorious time even at the risk of making me feel even more melancholic.
Perhaps it's due to my failed upbringing as a Lutheran that makes me indulge in such mental self-flagellation - after all, the old Martin Luther is said to have whipped himself until the blood flowed down his body - and so I read the first few pages of Nikos Kazantzaki's famous book again:
Padma has driven to the Bay and it's all quiet but also cold inside the house. Perhaps I light the fire now, draw up my armchair, and listen to the audiobook right to the final dance while sipping on a glass of retsina.
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back."
This quotation is from page 230 of Carl Sagan's book "The Demon-Haunted World", a prescient warning of a future we now inhabit, where fake news and Internet conspiracy theories play to a disaffected populace.
As told by Sagan, demons are not supernatural creatures that swarm around us like insects. Rather they are the inherent weaknesses of the human condition. They are the unfixed bugs in our human operating system, moral and intellectual flaws that can at any time pull our behaviour and our thought processes out of shape.
Our demons manifest themselves in individual choices and also in the communities in which we live. The witch trials of the 17th century, Nazism, cults, slavery and the bloody reign of the Khmer Rouge are all examples of humans collectively losing any sense of what is right or wrong and embarking on incredibly destructive courses of action.
I wonder how many Americans have read "The Demon-Haunted World" as they cast their votes in the next presidental election? You can read it here.
"It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness"
With "Riverbend" listed for sale, I do keep an eye on the property market. With few inquiries - and then only pretty weird ones; one from a hippie lady and her dog travelling around Australia in a beat-up VW Kombi - I hold out little hope but, as they say, it only takes one buyer, doesn't it?
Every so often, some comparable property comes up for sale which makes you wonder why "Riverbend" at its seemingly modest asking price of around three million dollars hasn't sold yet.
158 Headland Drive, Gerroa, NSW 2534 is one of them: a nice but not spectacular house on a mere 556 square metres of admittedly breathtakingly beautiful land by the ocean.
Breathtakingly beautiful, yes, but also at a breathtakingly high price: $6,950,000! It makes "Riverbend" with its seven acres along the Clyde River look like a bargain, plus you get town water and sewerage (which is said to be connected by Christmas) and you're a ten-minute drive away from bustling Batemans Bay, and an-hour-and-a-bit from Canberra - and you won't have to wipe the saltspray off the windows every five minutes.
"Offered to the market for the first time in 25 years, this is one of the most coveted and tightly held positions in Gerroa", the advertisement says but zango.com.au seems to suggest that it last sold in October 2021 for $5,200,000 which must've been one corker of a year because several other properties in the same street also sold for over five million, with 138 Headland Drive selling for a dizzying $7,100,000 after having been bought just ten years earlier for $1,100,000. Speaking of a mad property market!
Of course, what drives real estate prices are the land valuations on which council rates are based. 158 Headland Drive has a land valuation of $3,740,000 which gives it a "low" land value rating and "probably not a great investment in terms of land value", according to landvalue.au.
Contrast this with "Riverbend" whose land alone was valued by the Valuer-General two years ago at $2,637,000 which means that at an asking price of around $3,000,000, the lucky buyer would get the two-storey house, the guest cottage, the workshop, the garage (converted to a library) and a score of other improvements for just $363,000. What an absolute bargain! It's about time landvalue.au knew about it, and so I sent them this email:
Perhaps I should've added, "Please form an orderly queue!"
Sunday afternoon at "Riverbend". A little overcast and a little cool. I don't think a translation of this video is needed but if you insist, ask Padma.
Meantime, I just quietly sit here and read my book.
It's a special edition with an introduction by Anne Boleyn, unfortunately left unfinished due to circumstances beyond her control.
"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 medical all-clear and a shiny new "Wehrpass" with the instructions not to leave town (or worse still, the "Vaterland") which I did anyway, 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 German "Bundeswehr".
It's an almost frosty morning - whatever happened to Global Warming? - and we are off for an hour's swim (well, float!) in the warm-water pool, after which we'll drive to the Moruya Markets followed by a roast beef lunch at the Moruya Bowling Club.
However, I don't want to leave you wondering what to do, so I suggest you entertain yourselves with Melvyn Bragg's "The Adventure of English" - and what an adventure it has been! English is what happens when Vikings learn Latin and use it to shout at Germans.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
I almost did what these days every waitress does as she brings your meal and, with a sweet smile, says, "Enjoy!", but I won't because I know that "enjoy" is a transitive not an intransitive verb, and I should say, "Enjoy it!"
(And how often will you need to know the difference? Hardly ever, or not at all, but the odd thing is that those who do know fiddly bits about grammar take great satisfaction from that knowledge. Pedants of the world, unite!)
I"t was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen ..." Actually, it was a bright cool morning in October when I felt like Winston Smith because facebook had just told me "Your post goes against our Community Standards" and took down this real photograph taken on a real Singapore Airlines flight.
I wanted to share it with others in the PNG Expatriates facebook group but Mr "Sugar Mountain" Zuckerberg's Thought Police thought otherwise, and not only took it down but also banned me from posting anything else. What a relief! I've finally got my previous facebook-free life back!
With a name like Zuckerberg, this may be a regrettable throwback to Mr Zuckerberg's humourless Teutonic past, but it still doesn't explain why members of the facebook groups NGI Historical Society and TAIM BIPO, PHOTO HISTORY, PNG, PAPUA & NEW GUINEA with a decidedly learned anthropological leaning are not allowed to publish authentic photos of barebreasted native women or, indeed, native men with penic gourds.
I've just returned from my early-morning walk and found an enormous face gazing down at me from the wall of my house. It's one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it runs.
Everybody claims to be a patsy these days, but not a Patsy Cline: "I played the poker machines until I was broke. I didn't want to do it; they should've stopped me do it." "I maxed out all my credit cards. I didn't want to do it; they should've stopped me do it." "I made some shithouse investments. I didn't want to do it; they should've stopped me do it." "I'm a useless drug addict. I didn't want to become one; they should've stopped me from becoming one."
Ignorance has never been a defence before the law, but stupidity some-how has. I am tired of hearing people blaming them, "the government" or some other Big Brother, anybody except themselves, for being stupid.
They claim to fall to pieces and have their debts written off and their contracts annulled, with some of them then becoming 'counsellors' to similarly stupid people. Government- nay, taxpayer-funded, of course!
I'm tired of people who refuse to take responsibility for their lives and actions. I'm tired of them blaming them, the government, or imagined discrimination, or big-whatever, for their self-inflicted problems.
Yes, I'm bloody tired. But I'm also glad I am in my late 70s. Because, mostly, I'm not going to have to see the world these people are making. Thank God I'm on the way out and not on the way in.
Time for a cup of tea. It's still coolish outside. I wonder who I can blame for that? Isn't there a support group for shivering tea-drinking retirees on the South Coast of New South Wales? If not, why not? I want to know! I paid my taxes!
Christmas 1970 inside my donga in Camp 6 on Loloho Beach
It's getting close to that time of year again! Even the op-shops have started playing "Jingle Bells". This photo is from 1970 when photography was still black and white but not so our lives. It's Christmas in Camp 6 on the island of Bougainville in New Guinea where we were building the world's biggest copper mine. I'm sitting on the most important piece of furniture, a beer fridge, flanked by Bob Green and Neil "Jacko" Jackson on my right.
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 disagreeable and at times downright ugly.
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 that old photo brings back lots of memories which make me feel young again and help me forget that these days when I try to leap tall buildings in a single bounds, I always hit the wall halfway up.
More often, I feel like hitting out at all that annoying stuff that these days masquerades for news, such as the ongoing fallout from Lidia Thorpe's royal protest this week. Yesterday, Senator Thorpe told us she had sworn allegiance to the queen's "hairs" not "heirs" when she entered parliament.
The ABC reports that "She's rejecting calls to resign from the opposition." I don't want to split hairs like Senator Thorpe but shouldn't that have been "She's rejecting calls from the opposition to resign"?
She's waiting for me to write my own version, and so I left the book on the shelves at Vinnies after our early-morning swim, and instead bought William Willis' "The Epic Voyage of the Seven Little Sisters" in which he describes sailing his raft farther and faster than the six-man crew of the Kon-Tiki did theirs - and he did it alone! A true bluewater classic which is worth every cent of the eight dollars!
It's a neck-and-neck race whose outcome will not be known for another two weeks. If what comes true what the rest of the world it fearing, I'd better acquaint myself with this devil-we-already-know, and so I lashed out another $2.50 for his boastful book of lies, lies, and more lies.
And I found a beautiful hardcover of "The Ascent of Money - A Financial History of the World" (of which I already have the DVDs) and Paul Theroux's "Fresh-Air Fiend - Travel Writings, 1985-2000". Happy and hungry, it was time for a lunch of barramundi at the Catalina Golf Club.
And that's it for another day in retirement. I'm back in a supine position on the sundrenched verandah by the river with my books and a can of Coke - are you reading this, Des? - and I wonder what the rich people are doing.
Most of us, after having taken out an insurance policy or chosen a provider for our internet and telephone or electricity, seem to 'set and forget'. This loyalty - or laziness - can often result in a hefty 'loyalty tax'.
There are websites which allow you to compare prices but keep in mind that they are operated by businesses who make money through promoting links which may not necessarily be the best deals. So who do you trust?
When it comes to electricity prices, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) found 79 per cent of households were paying higher power bills than they needed to be, but there is one comparison website which does not peddle any particular electricity supplier, and that's the Australian Government site "Energy Made Easy".
It involves four easy steps (and you have to look up your National Meter Identifier number on your electricity bill). I've just used it and discovered that I could save myself $140 a year by switching to a better deal. Perhaps not worth the trouble and so I shall continue to pay my 'loyalty tax', but it is good to know that I'm not being too outrageously overcharged.
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 gab mir eine zweite Sprache und eine zweite Chance und es war auch der Anfang und 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.
