People die only when we forget them

 

One of the last few postcards I received from my friend Hans Moehrke

 

On this day in 2015, my friend Hans Moehrke passed away at his home in Cape Town. He and I had met when he stayed at the SAVOY HOTEL in Piraeus where I was a permanent resident during my "Greek days". We breasted the bar on many nights and, over many drinks, bemoaned the state of the world and our place in it, in three languages: Afrikaans, English and German. We were both in commodity trading: I mainly in grains, in lots of 20,000, 30,000, even 50,000 tonnes at a time, whereas Hans was more into pork bellies for which there wasn't much demand from my Saudi masters.

We stayed in touch after my return to Australia in 1985, sometimes through an occasional phone call but more often through letters and postcards. "I was delighted to speak to you on the phone today. Although some ten years or more must have passed since we last spoke with one another, hearing your voice was just as if we had been together only yesterday", he wrote, and repeatedly invited me to visit him and his family in Cape Town. (His daughter Astrid and her husband and their son later emigrated to Adelaide, and I like to think that my supporting letter to the Department of Immigration was of some help.)

Knowing I was again single by choice - just not my choice - he tried to matchmake me by sending me several of these enticing postcards:

 

 

On the back he wrote, "I will gladly assist you in trying to source the right partner for you. However my hands are tied until I receive detailed specifications from you. South Africa has many fair maidens to offer, although they may not always be fair in colour as revealed on these postcards. To acquire any one of the wholesome women for the purpose of marriage, you have to negotiate with the parents of the bride to agree on the level of the 'Labola' payment. The price is determined by the status of the family - chief, headman or commoner - whether the bride is a vergin [sic] or not, whether she has illegitimate children, etc. In practice this means you will have to pay plus/minus 200 cows or 40,000 rand for a daughter of a chief, if she is still a vergin [sic]. If on the other hand, if she has had premarital experience, one should be able to negotiate a 25% discount. Should the above proposition arouse your interest and since I am reasonably familiar with local customs, I could of course assist you with negotiations and any physical examination that may be required (here, too, I am qualified) to make sure that you receive value for money."

 

 

After he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and his hand-writing had become almost illegible, we phoned each other instead. Then, after I had heard nothing from him for a while, I don't know what made me do it but I googled "Hans Moehrke Cape Town" and found this:

 

www.remembered.co.za Hans Horst Moehrke was born on 30 July 1934 and passed away on 27 May 2015 in Cape Town. Posted by Remembered Admin, 10 Jun 2015

 

That was ten years ago, and I still miss his postcards and letters and occasional phone calls, his great sense of humour, and even more our long talks breasting the bar of the SAVOY HOTEL. Rest in Peace, Hans!

People die only when we forget them. I shan't forget you, Hans!

 

Is there something he's not telling me?

 

 

For the time being at least, I'm through all those medical proddings my German-born-and-trained GP, Dr Ziergiebel, M.D.,FRACGP, FRCS A+E Ed., MRCP U.K., MRCGP U.K., DFFP, JCCA Accredited GP Anaesthetist, Senior Lecturer ANU Medical School Canberra, had meted out, and I have a ten-page Health Assessment Summary to prove it. Deutsche Gründlichkeit!

Remember Lieutenant Columbo and his "Just one more thing ..."? Just as I was leaving his surgery, Dr Ziergiebel, Columbo-like, asked me, "Just one more things? Have you considered completing an Advance Health Care Directive?" Seeing my blank face, he handed me a two-page form and suggested I read it, sign it, and have it witnessed by two other people.

As I retreated down the hallway clutching the document, I thought I heard him humming "This Old Man ..." Is there something he's not telling me?

 

 

After Hillside, it's been all downhill

 

A sketch of the Hillside Hostel by Walter Dubrow, c.1957

 

When I first came to Canberra, I moved into a place called Hillside Hostel because it sat on a hill, but not just any hill – it was on Capital Hill, which is where the New Parliament House now stands. The wide expanse of Capital Hill had been significant for Hillside because local residents had complained about the proposed construction of a men's hostel in their suburb. Capital Hill was a compromise; it kept the men away from the general populace, from the housewives across the city. It kept them safe.

Aside from its conspicuous location, Hillside was so notorious because it had the worst living conditions. The rooms were spartan apart from the dust and cobwebs. They smelt of linseed oil from the bulky brown linoleum tiles curling up on the floor. Dirty yellow newspaper sheets were laid out under the lino covering the pine floorboards. The mattresses were horse hair and riddled with fleas. The walls were one hundred percent pure unadulterated asbestos. Roofs were galvanised, with pools of water that collected in the corridors.

There was never any hot water, which meant that showers were taken cold. In the middle of a Canberra winter, this was especially bracing. The men were given one towel per week – holey, stained, malodorous – along with slivers of soap. The shower blocks had no tiles, doors, curtains or dividers.

In the mess, a bottle of black sauce half full of sediment sat in the middle of each table alongside two empty sauce bottles filled with salt and sugar. On Saturday mornings, the scrambled eggs – made from dried egg powder – tasted of fish fried in the same aluminium pan the night before. The porridge was sugary sweet and attracted swarms of blowflies.

The occupants were a chaos of cultures: Poles, Maltese, Yugoslavs, Balts, Greeks. When it came to the Italians and Germans, the memories of the war were still fresh in people's minds. I heard of a few Germans who were told to leave their worksites in the middle of the day simply because the foreman didn't approve of them.

I left Hillside Hostel after a few months when I joined the ANZ Bank who moved me into Barton House in nearby Brisbane Avenue, where most of their single men were billetted. Hillside Hostel finally closed in 1968.

It took another twelve years before work began on building the new Parliament House where the hostel once stood. While Hillside Hostel had seen the odd scuffle or bare-knuckle fistfight, it was nothing compared to the bloodsport that now takes place inside the new Parliament House.

All this came back to me when I diescovered this Court Notice hidden away in the backpages of the Canberra Times of Wednesday, 11 June 1952:

 

 

Rudolf "Rudi" Klug had arrived in Melbourne as a "Jennings German" aboard the NAPOLI in 1951, and had like me lived in Hillside Hostel.

 

From October 1961 to February 1952, 150 "Jennings Germans" came to Australia; 12 on the SKAUBRYN, 36 on the NAPOLI, 42 on the CASTEL BIANCO, 53 on the NELLY, and 7 on the ANNA SALEN. For the full German Jennings story, click here

 

He had married, had become an Australian, and had divorced again ...

 

Sydney Airport Arrival Card from October 1969
returning on LUFTHANSA flight LH692 from Frankfurt via Bangkok

 

... and, despite his "criminal record", had become the owner of the multi-million-dollar businesses Canberra Roof Trusses (CRT), CFM Kitchens, and Canberra Fascia Boards by the time I met him sometime in the late 1980s after he had called me to computerise the accounting functions of all his businesses which saved him lots of money and made me quite a bit, too.

His business lives on as CRT Building Products but, judging by his date of birth, I doubt he's still "riding after dark a motor cycle that did not have a rear light showing". Having had you as a client, it's been good knowing you, Rudi, and I trust you enjoy the rest after a long and successful life.

 

 

Ein Loblied der ersten Liebe

 

 

Der Film "Ich denke oft an Piroschka" hatte das Interesse von János Berta an Hódmezövásárhelykutasipuszta erweckt: Hugo Hartung, der Autor des Piroschka-Buches, hatte so gefühlvoll über die Schönheit des Tieflandes und die Gastfreundschaft der ungarischen Menschen geschrieben, dass Berta neugierig wurde. Wie viel war wohl von Hartung übertrieben worden?

Berta beschloss, dorthin zu fahren, um sich persönlich zu überzeugen. Diese abenteuerliche Reise wurde durch viele herzliche, humorvolle Momente unvergesslich. In Hódmezövásárhelykutasipuszta, dem heutigen Székkutas, hat sich ein wahrer "Piroschkatourismus" entwickelt, aber die sachlichen und geistigen Kulturandenken haben ihren ursprünglichen Zustand bewahrt. Vor allem in Erinnerung blieb János Berta die gesprächige Lautlosigkeit der stillen Nacht in der Puszta. Hugo Hartung hatte ihn gelehrt, was das Geheimnis dieses Zaubers ist: im Einfachen das Schöne zu sehen und die wertvollen, volkstümlichen, persönlichen, familiären Bräuche der Ungarn zu respektieren. Daraus wurde dann sein Buch "Auf den Spuren von Piroschka und Hugo Hartung", welches ich noch nie gelesen habe obwohl ich mehrere Male "Ich denke oft an Piroschka" las und auch den Film mehr als mehrere Male gesehen habe.

"Ich denke oft an Piroschka. Oft höre ich ihre Stimme, nachts: "Kérem, Andi! mach Sígnal!" und meine, ihre drollige Stirnlocke an menem Gesicht zu spüren. Aber dann werde ich wach ... Wie es dazu kam - das freilich kann ich nicht in jedem Traum widerholen. Es ist eine zu lange Geschichte. Doch einmal muß sie erzählt werden. Inzwischen hat sich ja so viel geändert da unten in Ungarn. Vielleicht hat Pirsochka selbst wieder eine Piroschka, die heute so alt ist, wie sie damals gewesen ist. Ich darf es jetzt erzählen - alles! Ganz von Anfang an ... So hat es begonnen:"

So begann Hugo Hartung seinen Roman "Ich denke oft an Piroschka", der auch als Hörspiel und Film ein großer internationaler Erfolg wurde. Es ist liebenswürdige, erfreuliche, erheiternde Kunst. Dergleichen ist heute nicht mehr zu erwarten. Aus Anlass seines 65. Geburtstages am 17.9.1967 hat der Autor die Geschichte dieser Begegnung des Studenten mit der jungen Ungarin im Mindener Tageblatt erzählt.

 

 

In 1965 lies auch ich meine "Piroschka" in Deutschland zurücklies als ich nach Australien auswanderte. Von dort schrieb ich ihr ständig während der zwei Pflichtjahre die ich dort als unterstützter Auswanderer verbringen mußte, bis ich Weihnachten 1967 wieder in der alten Heimatstadt stand.

Da wartete kein großes Willkommen auf mich, weder im Elternhaus noch bei meiner "Piroschka", die auf dem Sofa saß neben einem Mann der mir als ihr Verlobter vorgestellt wurde. Ich zog kurz und bündig wieder von Deutschland weg, und nach einem sechsmonatigen Zwischenaufenthalt in Südafrika war ich auch schon wieder in meiner alten "neuen" Heimat Australien. Und natürlich war der Schriftwechsel auch völlig abgebrochen.

Erst zur Beerdigung meines Vaters in 1984 stand ich wieder mal in der alten Heimatstadt. Mehr aus Langeweile als aus Neugier rief ich das Elternhaus meiner alten "Piroschka" an. Nein, sie wohnte nicht mehr dort denn sie war jetzt verheiratet, sagte ihre Mutter die mich gar nicht mehr kannte, und gab mir ihre neue Telefonnummer. Ein einziges Treffen genügte und nach meiner Abreise fing der alte Schriftwechsel wieder an.

Die richtige Piroschka hatte alle Briefe vom Andi aus Wut zerrissen, aber meine "Piroschka" hatte sie alle fein und fleißig aufgehoben, vom ersten Schriftwechsel von 1965 bis 1967 bis zum zweiten von 1984 bis später als sie anbot mir die erste Hälfte und dann auch noch die zweite Hälfte zu schicken, aber dazu kam es dann nicht mehr denn Ende 2022 starb sie.

Wenn die erste Liebe gestorben ist, weiß man daß man alt geworden ist. Ich glaube es ist Zeit mir den Film noch einmal anzuschauen - drücke hier.

 

 

Why Childers? Why not?

 

5 Ginns Road, Childers, Queensland 4660

 

Ever since people asked me why I settled in Nelligen - if "settled" is the right word! - I have been asking people who came after me the same question. Their answers have been as varied as the people themselves but often there was a personal twist to it, just as there was to mine, as I explained in "Why Nelligen? Why not?".

Two people I asked were a couple from Victoria who bought a house here for no better reason than that their best friends had also bought a house here. When their friendship broke up, first their friends and then they moved away again. Which made my own plan in 2003 to relocate to the little town of Childers a safer proposition since the person who had attracted me to it in the first place, Noel Butler, my best friend for the best part of thirty years, had already been dead for eight years by then and was not likely to leave as he already lived in my memory forever.

After a lifetime spent in New Guinea, Noel had struggled - a struggle we shared - to make himself at home again in Australia, first at Caboolture, then at Mt Perry, and finally at Childers. He never quite succeeded since, as he put it, after a lifetime spent in PNG, "my spiritual home will always be New Guinea". He had either succeeded in finding his home in Childers, or his sudden death in 1995 had prevented him from trying his luck somewhere else again. I like to think that, for the last eight years of his life, he had found his home in Childers, so that when potential buyers knocked on the door of "Riverbend" just after I had begun to advertise it more than twenty years ago, I thought I check it out. What I am suggesting here is that, unless it is for work reasons, we usually have a personal reason for choosing the place we want to live in, and that the memory of Noel had been mine for driving to Childers.

And I wasn't disappointed. As I wrote in my travel diary then, "Childers, some fifty kilometres from Bundaberg, is a National Trust town and has a real community spirit. People know each other without living in each other's pockets as they can satisfy their curiosity from the constant stream of visitors who stop over for a day or two or, in the case of a whole bunch of overseas backpackers, work in the area as fruit pickers. The town is surrounded by rolling hills which are covered in sugarcane and avocado plantations. Everything seems to grow in the deep red soil! Most of the town's population live in highset 'Queenslanders' which are ideal for the subtropical climate. The footpaths are shaded by huge Brazilian leopard trees where locals and visitors sit at small tables taking their refreshments. This continues well into the night when the four pubs open their doors to the warm breeze. Before we had finished our first drink at the Childers Hotel, we had met people from as far away as Perth and Tasmania and struck up a long conversation with the licensee who happened to have lived just about everywhere, including my own 'stamping grounds' New Guinea, Burma and Saudi Arabia! It's a small world and it all comes together in Childers!"

Next day was much of the same. My diary again, "Beautiful morning at Childers! My old mate Noel Butler used to live here and at Mt Perry after he had come down from New Guinea in the late 70's. We had met aboard the PATRIS on the way to Europe in 1967 and kept in touch all those years until he passed away in 1995. We drove out to Mt Perry, which experienced renewed mining activities, to look at Noel's old house. Stopped at the not-so-grand Mt Perry Grand Hotel for a beer and a chat with the locals and some of the newly-arrived mine workers who were a colourful bunch. It left me to ponder what I might be doing today had I taken up Noel's invitation in 1985 to join him at Mt Perry which, as he put it, would have given him a new lease of life. His last place on the outskirts of Childers was now shaded by well-established trees and groves of banana and paw-paw trees, thanks to his hard work. What a difference from Christmas 1990 when I last visited him here!"

At the back of my mind had been to look at some houses. If I could find something suitable, I would sign on the dotted line. One that attracted my attention was the little split-level shown above, which was located at the edge of town at 5 Ginns Road. For me it "ticked all the boxes", but it was priced at $290,000 at a time when most houses in Childers sold for under $200,000. Had the price been lower, I might have signed on the dotted line. Someone else did shortly afterwards at $275,000. In the end, all I finished up buying on that trip was a new pair of shoes.

Over twenty years later, we are still at "Riverbend" and the same house is again for sale - this time for $785,000 - after it had been resold in 2007 for $371,000 and again in 2013 for $410,000, which should tell you something about the real estate market over the past twenty years as well as about the difficulties of selling at the high end of the market (it does also debunk the myth that house prices double every seven years).

I also still have those shoes I bought in Childers in 2003, although I have not worn them for quite a while. Perhaps it's time I tried them on again.

 

 

Just saying ...

 

 

A lot of work is going on across the backfence on our neighbours' acreage where they are planting trees and moving earth and building a huge marquee for their new commercial venture, "Orange Grove Farm Weddings".

I wish them well but, given our local demographics, wouldn't funerals be a better business? They could've pencilled me in as customer. Just saying ...

 

 

The only death we experience is other people's

 

 

It's exactly thirty years to the day when my best friend from my New Guinea days, Noel Butler, sent me this funny "Childers by Night" card and wrote, "Dear Pete, Hope your outlook on the future is not as black as this. Mine is but that's inevitable."

 

 

I had no idea how prescient and indeed deadly serious his message was until a couple of months later I received a phone call from a woman. She introduced herself as Noel's sister and told me that Noel had just passed away!

It may seem that Noel had never achieved much in his life except get through it. And after his life had come to an end, he left no more trace of his sojourn on earth than a stone thrown into a river leaves on the surface of the water. But the way of life that he had chosen for himself and the peculiar strength and self-reliance of his character left a great influence on me so that, long after his death, I still remember him as a very remarkable man.

Noel and I first met aboard the liner PATRIS in 1967 when he was going on a European holiday and I was returning to Germany. The PATRIS had been scheduled to call at Port Moresby in New Guinea but, following the Six-Day War between Egypt and Israel, the Suez Canal closed and the ship was re-routed around the Cape of Good Hope.

However, the many New Guinea expats who had already booked, Noel amongst them, still joined the ship in Sydney. As did Graeme Bell's All Stars Band. And so for the next four weeks I would sit in the ship's Midnight Club and listen to the many yarns of high adventure told by those larger-than-life New Guinea expats while Graeme Bell's All Stars played their ragtime music.

During the day, Noel and I would sit on deck for hours, hunched over a chessboard. Our mutual love of chess and my interest in New Guinea started a friendship which lasted until his death almost thirty years later!

We kept up a regular correspondence during all those years which Noel spent in Wewak in the Sepik District, before PNG's Independence in 1975 and old age forced him to return to his homestate Queensland.

I had come up to PNG in late 1969 and worked there for several years. During this time I visited Noel on his small country estate outside Wewak and Noel came to spent Christmas 1973 and Christmas 1974 with me. Or at least he tried because by the time he arrived on Bougainville in 1973, I was in Arawa Hospital being prepared for an urgent appendectomy; and when he came to see me in Lae in 1974 I was already packed up and ready to fly out to my next assignment in Burma.

Our paths crossed more frequently after I had temporarily come back to Australia in 1979. I visited him several times and observed with some concern his struggle to make himself at home again in Australia, first at Caboolture, then at Mt Perry, and finally at Childers. He never quite succeeded since, as he put it, after a lifetime spent in PNG, "my spiritual home will always be New Guinea".

Perhaps this struggle is something else that we shared. I, too, still think almost every day about those many faraway places in which I lived and worked. The years spent there have left me unsuited in many respects for life in the deep south. I feel suspended between my past life in the islands and my present life in mainstream Australia, and I still seek a place where I can feel truly content.

"Über den Himmel Wolken ziehen, über die Felder geht der Wind, ... irgendwo über den Bergen muss meine ferne Heimat sein."   
                                                                         Hermann Hesse

 

Why Nelligen? Why not?

 

 

Some people ask me why I retired at Nelligen, to which I reply, "Why not?" (I sometimes ask myself why I retired, full-stop, but that's a different story altogether.)

It all started in Canberra while I was still running my small computer consultancy Canberra Computer Accounting Systems and dabbling in tax and accounting work on the side. After I had solved a tax problem for a German friend, Tony Finsterer, for which I refused payment, he insisted that I stay at his weekend cottage at Nelligen.

For several months, I didn't find the time to drive to the coast. When I eventually did I had almost forgotten Tony's offer. Luckily, I didn't blink as I drove across the Nelligen bridge on the way to Batemans Bay and so spotted this tiny village nestled alongside the Clyde River.

I asked for directions to Tony's cottage at the General Store and was shown to # 21 Sproxton Lane across the river. (Tony has since died and his cottage has changed hands twice and is again for sale.)

The cottage was locked and Tony in Canberra. I phoned him and was told to look for the keys under the watertank and to make myself at home. Which I did and which set me on my own quest to find a little place in Nelligen.

At the time, Nelligen was a place forgotten even by real estate agents and nothing was for sale except a few empty building blocks. One such block overlooked the Clyde River from its location in Nelligen Place. I could imagine sitting there on the verandah and taking in the views. Which is exactly what a chap was doing just two blocks away. I walked up and asked if I could join him.

Soon we were not only sharing the same views but also memories of people and places we both had known as "Sandy" Sandilands and his wife Betty had also lived and worked on Thursday Island in the Torres Strait and in Rabaul in New Guinea. I felt at home at once! A few weeks later I was the proud owner of a block of land in Nelligen Place!

I wanted to build a beautiful little Classic Country Cottage. However, a retired public servant who occupied a small log cabin next to me did what public servants do: be a pain in the coccyx ! He objected to my building plans - TWICE! - on some obscure grounds. This delayed me long enough to find a much better place across the river. And that's how I came to buy "Riverbend"!

"Riverbend" had been auctioned in August 1992. I went to the auction as a spectator knowing that the reserve price was outside my range. It must have been outside everybody else's as well because it didn't sell. More than a year later, in November 1993, the owners accepted my much-reduced offer. The rest, as they say, is history!

(Oh, and I did go back to thank the public servant for objecting to my plans so that I could buy this much better and bigger and waterfront property. Last time I looked his mouth was still open!)

 

 

"Riverbend" has been my home now for over 17 years. As they say, there's no place like home and, as evidenced by the tee-shirt, Nelligen is right up there with every other great metropolis.

 

 

"Here goes another one!"

 

Source
Click on image to enlarge

Brian Herde died an untimely early death in March 1999, aged only 68.
His brother Bob, who was one grade below at Jamestown Primary School,
and thus presumably one year younger, also died early in 1998, aged only 66.
Their father died after a long illness in 1950, aged 48. Bad luck or bad genes?
Their mother died in 1987, aged 80.
Their stepfather, Murray Gladstone Coleman, died in 1993, aged 85.

 

We worked together on the Bougainville Copper Project. Then we met again in mid-1974 in Port Moresby where I worked as internal auditor with AIR NIUGINI and he as accountant for Tutt Bryants. Then he visited me in Lae just before I flew out to Burma, and we spent Christmas 1975 together at my friend's place in Wewak. Coming back from Iran and taking another job in Moresby in 1976, I spent many weekends with him, and when I left for another job on Thursday Island, he visited me there in 1977. Later that year I relocated to Honiara and he came to visit me there for Christmas. The following year, 1978, I took a posting in Penang in Malaysia and he invited himself there, too, for what was from memory a four-week-long holiday. Then I took a break from being his constant host, during which time I briefly met up with him again in Adelaide on one of my frequent business trips from Saudi Arabia, until my transfer to Piraeus in Greece in 1983, when he wrote to asked if I had a job for him there. I flew him out and put him up in a hotel in Piraeus and he worked for me for three months. That was it, I hoped, as I'd grown tired of all the drop-ins.

 

Brian at Marina Zea in Piraeus during one of our regular weekend meets. And here comes the kicker: about a week-and-a-half before the three months for which I had flown him out all the way from Australia at company expense and paid him $3,000-a-month had finished, he stuck his head into my office to inform me that he had booked his return flight for the following day. As he put it, "I'm leaving early to compensate for the extra time I worked with you on weekends". A few months later I received a phone call from a prospective employer to whom he had applied for a new job with a glowing reference he had written himself on a letterhead purloined from my office. Friends and employees I have known.

 

Until 1991 (or was it 1992?), when he wrote from New Guinea where he had taken a job as accountant on a coffee plantation in the Highlands, inquiring if he was still welcome in Canberra where I had started my own practice in early 1986. I relented and he moved into my granny flat for a week or two by which time he had sorely tested my hospitality. After a long "Vienna Night" at the Austrian Club, again entirely funded out of my own pocket, he had so embarrassed me in front of my then girlfriend with his almost pathological stinginess that, encouraged by the alcohol, I gave him a piece of my mind before wishing him a good night outside the granny flat. Next day was a Sunday and I let him sleep it off but when by mid-morning there was still no sign of life, I knocked on the door. No response! I drew open the sliding door, and there was his empty bed all straightened out and the key to the granny flat but no message left on the coffee table. He had done a runner!

Despite having been an incorrigible bludger, he had been a good friend from 1970 until 1991 (or was it 1992?), and I had sometimes wondered what had become of this likeable couldn't-care-less-what-other-people-think-of-me happy-go-lucky unconventional accountant. An old airport arrival card from July 1972 told me that he was born in 1931 and now 94 years old and, at least statistically speaking, unlikely to be still around.

 

Brian returning to Australia in July 1972 after one year in New Guinea, with a detour via Hong Kong. His base was with his stepfather in South Australia, so this address in the Northern Territory must've been another one of his many "drop-ins"

 

Then I found this webpage on wikitree.com mentioning a "HERDE Brian John, born abt 1932, died 26-Mar-1999, age 67, in Townsville Hospital". It also mentioned a brother, Robert Henry, an opal cutter, which neatly tied in with Brian selling cut opals as a sideline on Bougainville Island and in Port Moresby. His name wasn't too common either, right down to the two given names - although the "born abt 1932" was out by a year - and "Townsville Hospital" made sense because during his time in Greece he had told me that he had bought a property at Airlie Beach which was just three hours south of Townsville whose hospital would have been the nearest he would've been taken to in case of a medical emergency. I emailed Towsnville Hospital and asked them for more information but I don't expect any reply, not with privacy laws being the way they are.

 

Searching the Ryerson Index shows that the official death notice was published
in the Advertiser newspaper in Adelaide, which is where Brian grew up.

 

I in turn hope not to have broken any privacy laws after having pieced together this puzzle which, if correct, tells me "Here goes another one!" and puts me on notice that I, too, have been living on borrowed time.

And to think that I should've made this "lightning-bolt" discovery almost twenty-six years to the day on which he had passed away. Coincidence? Rest in Peace, Brian! I hope they made you welcome where you are now!

 

A trip back in time for fifty cents

 

6th Edition, February 1998

 

Most people buy their Lonely Planet Guide at full retail price to plan their next trip; I bought this old 1998 edition for a mere fifty cents at the local op-shop to take a trip down memory lane. And I discovered so much!

Only the very back of the guidebook, the last three pages 359-361, is dedicated to the place where I had spent most of my time in New Guinea. It begins with the explanation, "The following information is included in case the situation in Bougainville dramatically improves and travel onto the island is once again allowed. But this information is likely to be out of date since Bougainville has been off-limits for eight years and there's been considerable damage to the towns in the south."

And equally so about the first place I had lived and worked in: "Rabaul is a weird wasteland, buried in deep black volcanic ash. The broken frames of its buildings poke out of the mud like the wings of a dead bird. Almost the entire old town is buried and barren and looks like a movie set for an apocalyse film. Streets and streets of rubble and ruined buildings recede in every direction. The scale of what happened to Rabaul cannot be appreciated until you see it. If you were fortunate enough to walk its busy, noisy and colourful streets before September 1994, be prepared for a shock."

With the help of the old town map on page 315 I was able to walk, in my mind, from my office in Park Street to Casuarina Avenue, across Court Street, Namanula Road and Tavur Street, before turning left into Vulcan Street to arrive at the company-supplied accommodation, a converted Chinese trade store which I shared with two other accountants, one of whom stayed for another twenty-four years until the aforesaid volcanic eruption wiped out his business. There but for the grace of God go I.

Then there is the Port Moresby City map on page 112 which also shows Cuthbertson Street where I used to sit in my parked car in the sweltering heat on a Sunday morning, waiting for the newspapers from "down south" to arrive at the news agency. You had to be quick to grab one of the few copies of the weekend edition of the Australian Financial Review which always advertised the best job vacancies. Then a quick check of my mailbox at the post office on the opposite side of the street for letters from "down south" (they used to sort incoming mail on a Sunday back then), but especially for any job offer in response to any of my applications.

Page 131 reminded me of trips to Yule Island where "the missionaries who arrived at Yule Island in 1885 were some of the first European visitors to the Papuan coast of New Guinea." On the way there I would stop over at a small trade store at Hisiu, then run by an Australian and his local wife.

Then there were those many trips out to Idler's Bay to the west, Bootless Inlet to the east, and north to Brown River, or up to Rouna Falls. One time, sailing my CORSAIR dinghy from the Royal Papuan Yacht Club all the way out of Fairfax Harbour far out to sea to Gemo Island and Lolorua Island, I had to tack. My inexperienced crew, Brian Herde, failed to respond to my command of "Lee ho!" to shift his body to the other side of the dinghy, and we promptly capsized. He redeemed himself by diving under the boat and pushing the centreboard back through the slot so that I could grap it as I sat astride the upturned hull to pull the waterlogged boat and mast and sail upright again. I would never have been able to do this on my own and may well have ended up as shark food - but then again, I probably also would have never capsized on my own. Did we have life jackets or emergency flares? Are you kidding me? We were in our twenties and indestructible. Besides, sharks are not deterred by life jackets and we were too far out to sea for anyone to have seen our flares. I lost my precious wristwatch and we lost all our beer but only very nearly our lives.

The map of Lae on page 176 shows the corner of 7th Street and Huon Road where I lived and spent my last Christmas in the country in 1974 before flying out to my next assignment in Burma. My old friend Noel had flown across from Wewak to spend that Christmas with me, only to help me stencil my shipping box with "M.P. GOERMAN / RANGOON / BURMA".

I still remember talking with him about another job I had been offered eighteen months earlier as manager of a thriving co-operative at Angoram on the banks of the mighty Sepik River. Angoram was no more than a couple of hours' drive away from Wewak and I had been tempted to accept to be near my friend but how different things may have turned out because only a few months later, again at Christmas time, I developed accute appendicitis which was quickly and successfully dealt with through a hurried operation at the newly-built hospital at Arawa but which would've been impossible to handle in the remote wilds of the Sepik District. And, of course, no access to the Australian Financial Review, one of whose advertisements had just then secured me my next assignment in Burma. We are so often the result of the circumstances we find ourselves in.

And then there is Wewak itself, described on the guidebook's page 254 as "an attractive town where you can happily spend a day or two in transit to the Sepik or Irian Jaya." Well, that was then: today Weak is a very unsafe and run-down place and the border to Irian Jaya is also closed. The town map on page 256 still mentions the Windjammer Hotel which burnt down many years ago. The larger district map on the facing pages 250 and 251 shows the road to Cape Wom and the Hawain River where my friend Noel used to live before Independence and the unruly natives forced him out.

A great trip back in time for a mere fifty cents!

 

Keep this book by your bedside forever

 

Read this essential and beautiful book at archive.org

 

Abook must be the axe for the frozen sea within us", wrote Kafka. This book by David Whyte, an Anglo-Irish poet, which I discovered totally by accident in an op-shop, is such a book.

And, being a book, no matter how complex or difficult to understand it may seem to be, when you have finished it, you can, if you wish, go back to the beginning, read it again, and thus understand that which is difficult and, with it, understand life that little bit better.

I understand life just that little bit better after having read David Whyte's exploration of the underlying meaning of such words as "Friendship" ...

"A friend knows our difficulties and shadows and remains in sight, a companion to our vulnerabilities more than our triumphs, when we are under the strange illusion we do not need them ... Friendship transcends disappearance: an enduring friendship goes on after death, the exchange only transmuted by absence, the relationship advancing and maturing in a silent internal conversational way ..."

... and "Regret" ...

"To regret fully is to appreciate how high the stakes are in even the average human life. Fully experienced, regret turns our eyes, attentive and alert to a future possibly lived better than our past."

... and "Run Away" ...

"It is the flight part of the fight or flight deeply in our bodies and our past ... To want to run away is an essence of being human ... To think about fleeing from circumstances, from a marriage, a relationship or from a work is part of the conversation itself and helps us understand the true distilled nature of our own reluctance ... Rarely is it good to run, but we are wiser, more present, more mature, more understanding when we realise we can never flee from the need to run away."

... and there are forty-nine more! Sometimes a book you had never heard of resonates so profoundly that it leaves you wondering how you hadn't come across it before. This is such an essential and beautiful book.

 

 

Was I one of the boys or one of the young men?

 

Retrieved from CANBERRA TIMES November 1965 via trove.nla.gov.au

 

Both advertisements appeared in the Canberra Times in the last few months of 1965 which is when I applied to one of them - but which one? - and was accepted by the ANZ Bank to start a new career as Bank Officer in a new country in December 1965.

Four months earlier I had stepped ashore from a migrant ship which had landed me and several hundred other migrants at Melbourne, from where we had been taken up to the Bonegilla Migrant Centre. On the very next day, before they had even had time to "process" me, 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. In minutes I had my few things packed, and was sitting, with three other former ship-mates, in a VW Beetle enroute back to Melbourne.

The day after, 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.

Sometime during the voyage out from Germany 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 had been 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. Before long he was on the 'phone to me suggesting that I should come to Canberra where he worked as storeman for a plumbing supplier who needed a truck driver. I didn't need much persuading!

 

 

I had absolutely no knowledge of the Canberra/Queanbeyan area nor did I possess a C-class driver's licence or had ever driven a truck before, but Hans, my German friend, simply took me down to the local Police Station where everybody seemed very impressed with my elaborate German "Führerschein", and I was promptly issued with a C-class truck licence.

I kept at this job for a few weeks but after I had almost burnt out the truck's diff while bogged down in the mud with a full load on the back, and after a slight but still embarrassing collision with the rear-end of another vehicle, I thought it best to cash in my chips while I was still ahead.

I had earlier answered to one of the advertisements shown above and, to my own surprise, was accepted. And the rest, as they say, is history.

To me writing of these past experiences is a way of finding the meaning in all those happenings in life whose significance I couldn't even fully grasp at the time. As it turned out, those two serendipitous events, having been invited by my shipboard friend to come up to Canberra and then being accepted by the ANZ Bank, laid the foundation for all my later successes.

 

 

Erich Kästner fand die richtigen Worte dafür

 

 

Dreimal kam ich nach Braunschweig zurück: Ende 1967 als ich noch Deutscher war und die Möglichkeit hatte mich vielleicht noch einmal einzubürgern; und als Australier in kurzer Folge Mitte 1983 und Januar 1984 von meinen Arbeitsplätzen in Saudi-Arabien und Griechenland um Abschied zu sagen vom Vater, erst am Krankenbett und dann am Sarg. Mir fehlten damals die Worte. Heute fand ich sie beim Erich Kästner:

 

Kleine Führung durch die Jugend Und plötzlich steht man wieder in der Stadt, in der die Eltern wohnen und die Lehrer und andre, die man ganz vergessen hat. Mit jedem Schritte fällt das Gehen schwerer. Man sieht die Kirche, wo man sonntags sang. (Man hat seitdem fast gar nicht mehr gesungen.) Dort sind die Stufen, über die man sprang. Man blickt hinüber. Es sind andre Jungen. Der Fleischer Kurzhals lehnt an seinem Haus. Nun ist er alt. Man winkt ihm wie vor Jahren. Er blickt zurück. Und sieht verwundert aus. Man kennt ihn noch. Er ist sich nicht im klaren. Dann fährt man Straßenbahn und hat viel Zeit. Der Schaffner ruft die kommenden Stationen. Es sind Stationen der Vergangenheit! Man dachte, sie sei tot. Sie blieb hier wohnen. Dann steigt man aus. Und zögert. Und erschrickt. Der Wind steht still, und alle Wolken warten. Man biegt um eine Ecke. Und erblickt ein schwarzes Haus in einem kahlen Garten. Das ist die Schule. Hier hat man gewohnt. Im Schlafsaal brennen immer noch die Lichter. Im Amselpark schwimmt immer noch der Mond. Und an die Fenster pressen sich Gesichter. Das Gitter blieb. Und nun steht man davor. Und sieht dahinter neue Kinderherden. Man fürchtet sich. Und legt den Kopf ans Tor. (Es ist, als ob die Hosen kürzer werden.) Hier floh man einst. Und wird jetzt wieder fliehn. Was nützt der Mut? Hier wagt man nicht zu retten. Man geht, denkt an die kleinen Eisenbetten und fährt am besten wieder nach Berlin.

 

 

 

Bastards I've met

 

 

Many years ago, one night when I couldn't sleep (which is most nights), I idly listened to RADIO NATIONAL and a segment called VERBATIM, in which the interviewer talked with a then 92-year-old chap called Bill who has had an obsession with wheels all his long life. Listen to the interview here.

The power of the engine didn't matter; whether it was trucks, bicycles or battered old 2CV Citroens, Bill had travelled Australia from end to end on all of them. Most of his travelling had been done in pursuit of work or girlfriends, and his was the story of a labouring man with a taste for adventure and no desire to settle down.

 

 

For Bill, there had always been another river to ford or a python to wrestle or a murderer to evade ... and suddenly I realised that I knew that chap: he was the Bill Skinner whom I had befriended back in 1977 when I lived on Thursday Island. Bill had driven an old truck up to Cape York and, daunted by the prospect of driving down that same rough road again, had come across to Thursday Island to book himself, his three dogs, and his truck onto the barge returning to Cairns in a few days' time. He had missed the boat going back to Bamaga and wandered the main street of Thursday Island aimlessly when we ran into each other. I invited him to stay at my house for the night and we talked and talked (and drank and drank!) well into the night.

We met again in 1979 when I overnighted at the Great Northern Hotel in Cairns on my way to a job interview on Mornington Island. Bill lived in Cairns at the time and I went to his house in Severin Street. His backyard was a junkyard! It was full of old things which Bill had kept or collected under some "it-may-come-in-handy-one-day" compulsion. To make room for even more junk, Bill had moved the clothes hoist onto the top of the roof! Laundry-day at Bill's must've been quite a thing to behold!

It was almost dark when I got there. He said he was about to get some soil for his garden and told me to jump into his old, unregistered jeep. I was wondering where he would get soil at such late hour when he pulled in at a nearby cemetery and ask me to keep a sharp look-out while he was shovelling soil from a freshly-dug grave into the back of his jeep. He'd forgotten to tell me that we were going to be a couple of grave-robbers just as he hadn't told me that he'd "tarred" his old, unregistered jeep in black paint only a couple of days before. Those black paint spots stayed on my trousers for a very long time!

In another twist of fate, while on assignment with FLUOR Engineering in Melbourne in 1981 and staying at the old Majestic Hotel on Fitzroy Street in St Kilda, I bumped into his daughter Roslyn, who was then living in nearby Elsternwick, and her husband, whom he'd described in the radio interview as "that useless man who just sits around the house and won't get a job". I bumped into her again in Picnic Bay on Magnetic Island where she had moved after Melbourne and where I had tried to settle after I'd come back from overseas in 1985 - but that's a story for another day.

After hearing him on the radio, I wrote a short note to his then current address in Longwarry in Victoria. He replied that his memory was no longer what it used to be but that he did remember his trip to Thursday Island and our meeting and, as he put it, "if I can find Nelligen on the map, I'll drop in some day" and "I could easily drive up there, but thieves are everywhere here now and very cunny [sic]" and "I camp in a caravan every night hoping to catch the thieves - with a 3-inch piece of pipe!!!" It sounded just like the old Bill Skinner!

He either couldn't find Nelligen on the map or was too busy hoping to catch up with those thieves because he never made it to Nelligen despite living well past his hundred-mark (which he celebrated in 2012 with his daughter Roslyn on Magnetic Island where she still lives).

 

 

He's finally settled on his own plot in the Belgian Gardens Cemetery. If I ever get back to Townsville, I pop by and look you up, you old bastard!

 

 

Some of my best friends were acquaintances

 

The only New Year's Resolution I made - other than the one resolution not to make any - was to invest in a new address book, and I have been occupied with the somewhat saddening task of copying out names and adresses from the old.

It's a very old book indeed, since it accompanied me in all my travels around and around and around the world for more than thirty years. Who were all those people crammed into the pages of this battered old book? Every page is absolutely jam-packed with names and numbers, sometimes underlined or with marginal notations 'See page so-and-so'.

There are names that belong to boat voyages, or train travels, or hotel encounters; people who seemed so charming that one promised to 'keep in touch'. I never offered them to 'look in and see me if you are passing through' as I usually was, as they say, of no fixed abode which spared me a lot of trouble as they were absolute strangers with whom I had nothing in common except a shared voyage or some talk in a bar or dining room.

Of course, there are some names and addresses that I am transcribing into my new book that belong to people who were once just passers-by or brief encounters somewhere, but who have come to justify the word 'friend' and have gone on meaning that through many years of absence.

 

 

With email and the internet, it's now much easier to keep in touch, and also to know when no longer to keep in touch, such as when one's email is returned with the mail delivery message 'mailbox for user is full'. It probably means that an old friend has gone 'off-line', metaphorically or, more likely, physically, and no amount of emailing will reach him again.

Perhaps future death certificates should include an instruction to shut down the email account so as to remove any doubt in a sender's mind.

I couldn't have said it better myself

Senator Alex Antic, the lone voice in the wilderness

 

Peter Lacey does a wonderful job in publishing "Recollections", an online magazine about the history of our local area. In his latest issue he has added the first of what I hope will be many articles on 'hot' topics.

The first 'hot' topic is about the "Welcome to Country" message which now precedes every event and even radio and television broadcasts. As he prudently adds, "These views do not necessarily reflect the views of the South Coast History Society"; however, they closely reflect mine.

 

Click on images to enlarge

 

If you wish to receive "Recollections", send an email containing the message 'Send Recollections' to southcoasthistory@yahoo.com. It’s free!

Gescheit gedacht und dumm gehandelt, so bin ich mein' Tage durchs Leben gewandelt

 

 

Der erste Morgen im neuen Jahr: gibt es da etwas besseres als Elke Heidenreich zu lesen? Leider gibt es ihre Bücher in Australien nicht und die Angebote auf ebay von Deutschland sind einfach zu teuer wenn man die Lieferkosten dazurechnet.

 

Drück drauf um es zu vergrössern oder hier

 

Da muß ich mich dann mit diesen zwei Seiten begnügen. Ja, also dann: "Alle Jahre wieder. Es wär so schön gewesen, es hat nicht sein sollen."