What a novel idea!

 

 

Apocryphal (that means being of doubtful authenticity, Des) or not, it is said that one day an excited young man came to Alexander Dumas (author of 'The Three Musketeers', remember?) with the most superb idea for a novel.

"You have a good plot?" Dumas asked. "A plot that is full of excitement; characters that breathe; settings that bedazzle the eye; and a suspense that is truly unbearable", the young man said. Dumas grabbed him by the shoulders and cried, "Good! Now all you need to turn it into a novel is 200,000 words".

I was again reminded of this apocryphal story (of doubtful authenticity, Des, remember?) when a reader emailed me "I feel a novel coming on" after having read through the 'My family tree is more like a bonsai' post.

I already came up with a great title - "Grave Expectations" - but I doubt I can cobble together the necessary 200,000 word. I put the following story through an online word counter and it comes to barely fourteen hundred words, so you may want to embroider it a bit in your own mind:

As I wrote elsewhere, no-one ever emigrates because of the success they've enjoyed at home. No one ever says, "Well, I have a happy home life, I'm rich and I have many friends - so I'm off." The only reason anyone has for going to live in another country is because they've cocked everything up in their own. Being just nineteen years old, my opportunities for cocking things up in my own country had been rather limited; in fact, my only cock-up until then had been that I allowed myself to be born to parents who were so dirt-poor that they packed me off to work as soon as I had reached the minimum school-leaving age of fourteen.

That this cock-up happened at all is entirely due to my older brother who was born in December 1932, just two months after our parents had got married. It must've been the most overdue shotgun wedding of the day! Those were the days before birth control, and my oldest sister followed eighteen months later. That should have been it but Hitler's war machine demanded that German women produce more cannon fodder, and so a second and third sister - presumably destined to nurse the returning wounded soldiers - were born in 1940 and 1942.

That should definitely have been it but then Hitler started giving out the Mother's Cross. Had the war lasted another five months, my mother would have been awarded a bronze Mother's Cross for me and been on her way to a silver one, but was awarded with scorched earth instead.

The immediate post-war years were one big blur - you don't remember much when all you can think about is food, or rather, the lack of it - but I do remember when my oldest sister died the same year I started my schooling. It was never much talked about and only later, when I was almost an adult, did I hear the downcast-eyes-and-one-hand-in-front-of-the-mouth whisper that she had died following a botched-up abortion.

By that time my old but then still young nineteen-year-old brother had already left what we euphemistically called 'home' but was little more than a daily unfolding disaster which he had escaped by living with his girlfriend's parents which is the last time I saw him until thirty-two years later - and of which I write later - but I heard of him ten years later.

That was when I lived with my by then already divorced mother and my newly acquired stepfather, and my brother's girlfriend - by that time engaged to be married to my brother - stood on our doorstep, bunch of flowers for my mother in her hand, and promptly dissolved into tears. My brother had been transferred by his employers to another town where he had met another woman and had promptly married her after having sponged off his fiancée's parents for more than ten years. I didn't start to learn English until I had decided to emigrate to Australia several years later, but had I known some English words, the word "bastard" would have been the mildest one to describe my brother's action.

As I wrote, I never saw him again until thirty-two years later when I flew back to Germany to attend my father's funeral in January 1984. Luckily, I was at the time working in nearby Greece and had already flown back the year before to sit with him for a week even though he no longer recognised me. And neither did my brother who not even shook my hand at the funeral which, given the importance of the German handshake, tells you more than I want to tell you here. I did, however, shake hands with my two remaining sisters with whom I stayed in contact through the obligatory Christmas card. Those were the days before the internet which came even later than the German Reunification which, if it hadn't happened already, destroyed what little was left of our family.

As part of the reunification, the government of the united Germany undertook to pay reparations to those who had left their properties behind when they fled Russian-occupied East Germany for the West. My father didn't live long enough to see it happen but my stepmother, whom he had married after his divorce from my mother, was suddenly a wealthy woman as were her two children who would be her inheritors.

By this time I was safely back home in Australia where I had just bought "Riverbend" when my youngest sister contacted me and urged me to join their fight over my father's inheritance. Apparently, there was such a thing as "Pflichtanteil" which gave all surviving children a legally guaranteed portion of the inheritance even though my stepmother was the sole beneficiary in our father's will. The knives came out and my younger sister also came out to Australia for me to sign over to her my share, as I wanted nothing and wanted nothing to do with their ugly fight. She was gone as soon as she had my signature. That was the last I heard from that sister except for a later bill from her solicitor for 'my' share of his fee.

The last time I heard from my other, the oldest, surviving sister was in December 2005 through her palliative nurse Marco Dörner who had been by her side as she slowly died of brain cancer, just sixty-five years old. In a letter which she dictated to Marco, she wrote, "Rückblickend hatte ich kein gutes Leben, im Grunde genommen war es eigentlich Scheiße!"

Then, through the internet, in an idle moment I typed my brother's name into the search engine and was immediately confronted with a 'Letter to the Editor' written - in German, of course - by some malcontent over my brother's signature and - most helpful! - his email address. Letting bygones be bygones, I fired off an email, "Are you my brother?" I didn't have long to wait for an affirmative reply, after which we continued our brotherly love-ins on a more or less regular basis, including some face-to-face conversations through WhatsApp.

I remember when at one time he wrote that he was going through a bad patch domestically and wanted to divorce his wife. He was scared, including of losing half his superannuation, and could he come out to Australia and stay with me? I knew no more of my brother than of my neighbour next door - probably less! - but what little I knew of him told me that he was such a typical Ur-German that he would have made Hermann Göring look cosmopolitan, and no amount of brotherly love, even if I could have drawn on any, could ever make me live with him.

Strangely, in later years his selective memory denied any of this ever having happened, but I continued to assure him that he hadn't outlived me yet by sending him regular links to my blog posts, to which he eventually objected - not to the 'outliving' bit but to the blog posts since, as he had pointed out to me again and again, he could read no English and was not about to learn it - and our contact went dead.

While my brother's memory seems to be selective, his son's is absolutely hyperthymestic. I don't know what prompted him to write to his 'Uncle Peter' in Australia some fifty years ago, but it was such an imbecilic letter that I refused to reply. While none of my kin have much going for them, we all seem to have above-average intelligence and I could not believe that my brother's son could have written something so stupid.

In more recent months, having lost contact with my brother and wanting to renew it, I searched for his son's email. Having found it, I wrote, "Good to find your email address. How are you?" His reply was almost immediate, "Danke, good. Ich nehme an, das war Deine Antwort auf meinen Brief, den ich Dir vor 50 Jahren als kleiner Junge geschrieben habe. Dann sprechen wir uns also etwa 2075 wieder. Bis dann." Touché!

That's all the contact I have had bar a letter from the German embassy some years after the fight over my father's will. It seems my sister's solicitor had sent them his bill for 'my' share of his legal fee with instructions to collect from me. I told them that not only was I now an Australian citizen and no longer answerable to them but also thought that their remit was to represent the German government in Australia and not act as debt-collector for some suburban solicitor in Germany.

 

 

With my limited schooling, I never read Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" until I was well into my retirement. Its opening line really speaks to me now: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way". I think I put it on the flyleaf of my novel "Grave Expectations".

 

 

"... es ist immer nur eine Zahl!!!"

 

"Zu Deinem ganz besonderen Geburtstag gratuliere ich Dir von Herzen und wünsche Dir für die noch vor Dir liegenden Jahre beste Gesundheit, Zufriedenheit und Wohlergehen.  Hab eine schöne Party mit lieben Freunden und denk daran, es ist immer nur eine Zahl!!!  Du hast in Deinem Leben so viel erreicht und kannst auf eine gute Zeit zurückblicken.  Gerne würde ich Dir persönlich gratulieren, aber die Entfernung läßt das leider nicht zu!!  Ich werde ein Gläschen auf Dein Wohl trinken!  Ganz liebe Grüsse sendet Dir Bärbel" - click here for a translation.

 

 

Es ist immer nur eine Zahl!!!", she wrote on the card she sent me on my 75th birthday. If it's nothing more than a simple number, Bärbel, why then did you call it quits before your own 75th?

We were articled clerks in the same insurance company in the early 60s. I left for Australia in 1965, and we kept writing to each other until my brief return in 1967 when, for old times' sake, I went to her parents' house.

Her mother introduced me to the man beside her. "Meet Bärbel's fiancé", she said. Decency demanded that I should stop writing to her, and I did.

It was seventeen years later, in January 1984, when I flew back for my father's funeral, that I phoned her again. "Come over for a champagne breakfast", she suggested. Her husband was at work; her two teenage sons were at school; and we talked all morning about all those years ago.

"I'll asked my husband if we two can go out together this evening", she said, and rung later to meet her by the Staatstheater for a night out.

We had a meal at a Greek restaurant (where I impressed her with my knowledge of Greek food and the Greek language); we had drinks at several bars; and then we had a long walk through the by then quiet town which had been my home for most of my childhood and teenage years.

Two days later I was back at the desk in my office in Piraeus with the memories of my father's funeral and of what used to be home safely behind me, and of what might have been my girlfriend had I not been such a shy teenager more than twenty years ago. Then her first letter arrived and we wrote to each other until her untimely death thirty-eight years later.

I've had many "might-have-beens" in my life. Bärbel was one of them.

Rest in Peace, Bärbel.

 

 

 

Smooth and satisfying

 

 

I knew this header would get your attention. Smooth and satisfying "International Roast", offered up in industrial catering-size cans, was an institution in every boarding-house in Australia in the 1960s.

And so, on the odd occasion when I do take down that small 100g-sized tin and have another look at its 'Best before end July 2016' use-by date before scraping another blop of solidified instant coffee powder into a cup, I think of Barton House in Canberra; the grand old mansion at the bottom of Blues Point with its views of the Sydney Harbour Bridge; the Oriental Private Hotel at Cremorne; and the Majestic Hotel in St Kilda.

And I remember the best cup of coffee I've ever tasted when I was sailing way offshore from Port Moresby back in 1974. I was the internal auditor for AIR NIUGINI, and when I wasn't flying to one of the country's remote airstrips, I would take my sixteen-foot Corsair out for a spin on Fairfax Harbour (it's a three-handed racer but since my days in Honiara where I owned my first Corsair, I'd always been sailing it single-handedly).

On this particular day, I had sailed well past Gemo Island and was halfway to Daugo Island. Totally knackered and very, very thirsty, I blindly groped for a drink in the stowage compartment, only to realise that I had left my esky full of drinks in the car at the Royal Papua Yacht Club (which looks a lot different now!), and it would be several hours before I got back there!

So where does "International Roast" come into all this, I hear you ask? Well, not only was I thirsty but also knackered and I needed a rest when I saw a tiny island some distance away. I immediately changed tack and on reaching it and having beached my boat, I encountered a group of locals who were sitting around an open fire and brewing what smelled like coffee. I asked for a cup of it and, although it wasn't "International Roast", it was the smoothest and most satisfying cup of coffee I've ever tasted. Amazing what memories a simple cup of coffee can bring back.

 

Thank you for the memories!

 

 

Perhaps it is the result of having read Robert Louis Stevenson, Louis Becke and Joseph Conrad at an impressionable age, but the South Pacific islands have always evoked a powerfully romantic image with me. Mention the South Seas and I conjure up a vision of waving coconut palms and a dusky maiden strumming her ukelele. Silhouetted against the setting sun, Trader Pete (that's me!) sits in a deck-chair in front of his hut sipping a long gin and tonic while a steamboat chugs into the lagoon, bringing mail from home.

 

Rabaul circa 1970

 

In truth, I came to the then Territory of Papua & New Guinea as an audit clerk with a firm of Chartered Accountants in Rabaul (and thereby hangs another tale).

 

And here's the same Robert Joseph Gauci returning to Australia from his four-day recruitment trip to Port Moresby and Rabaul

 

When the local newspaper, the POST-COURIER, began carrying ads for audit personnel on the Bougainville Copper Project, I applied and was invited to fly across for an interview in October 1970. In those early days, all incoming traffic stopped at the transit camp at Kobuan where one had to wait for transport to Panguna where Bechtel's "top brass" had their offices.

 

Transit Camp at Kobuan

 

The road to Panguna was still something of an adventure and it was some time before I could present myself to Sid Lhotka, Bechtel's Manager of Administrative Services. He hired me on the spot and I returned to Rabaul to give notice and get my things and within a few weeks I was back "up top" only to be told that I would be working at Loloho, senior auditor in charge of several large contracts such as the construction of the harbour facilities (built by Hornibrook), the Power House construction (built by World Services), the Arawa Township (built by Morobe-ANG), and the haulage services (provided by Brambles-Kennellys.) Des Hudson and a string of time-keepers, amongst them Neil Jackson ("Jacko"), Bob Green, and "Beau" Players, joined the team later.

 

Camp 6 at Loloho

 

We all lived in Camp Six which was idyllically situated on Loloho Beach. Every day (and often even before going to work), we would go for a swim in the beautifully warm and clear waters of Loloho Bay. Except for one, Bill Avery, our telephone operator who was ex-Navy. He claimed he had a pact with the sharks: they wouldn't come onto his land, and he wouldn't go into their water. I'll never forget the day when we had a prolonged power failure and no running water in camp, and the whole camp population washed and shaved in the surf! Ever since I've been keeping a cake of soap which lathers in seawater. The camp had a certain hierarchy with "oldtimers" occupying the front row of dongas facing the beach, also known as "Millionaires' Row." Twice a week was film night to which viewers brought their own plastic chairs and victuals and liquid supplies and watched whatever was being offered (the Natives were crazy about Cowboy movies), against a backdrop of stars twinkling through swaying palm fronds and with the surf as background music. Payday was the big night in Camp Six with gambling tables such as Snakes & Ladders doing a roaring trade. Flick shows (with little to be seen across the tops of a dozen boisterous guys, all drinking and smoking, crammed into a 6-by-10ft donga) were also highly sought-after.

The "boozer" (or Wet Canteen in the official language), set right on the beach of Loloho, was a great place for an evening out! Offshore, across the dark waters, several small islets marked the outer limits of the reef. We named them "Number One Island", "Number Two Island", and so on. On some night, after a sufficiently large intake of SP (also known as 'Swamp Piss'), heated debates would develop as to whether they were ships coming into port!

Sometime in 1971 I transferred to Panguna where I was put in charge of the General Accounts Department with Brian Herde doing the Accounts Payable and John Gaskill keeping the General Ledger. Neil Jackson somehow found his way "up top" as well and became offsider to Brian Herde, imitating one of the Three Musketeers by attacking all passers-by with a long wooden ruler until the day the booze got the better of him and he didn't turn up for work at all. Sid Lhotka visited him in his donga at Camp 3 and rumour has it that "Jacko" told him to f%@# off! He was on the next plane out!

 

Panguna mine site shrouded in clouds

 

Another auditor wasn't quite so outspoken to get off the island but did so even more quickly: Frank Joslin was given the monthly "perk" of hand-carrying a batch of punch cards to Bechtel's Melbourne office where he presented himself, never to be seen again thereafter. His neat little trick became known as "doing a Joslin" and was much talked about but never imitated. Some of the new recruits to the audit team were less than delighted with their posting to muddy and rain-soaked Panguna and started counting the days to the end of their twelve-month contract - literally! They ran up an adding-machine strip list from 365 days down to zero and pasted it to the office wall, ticking off one day at a time. Needless to say, not many survived that kind of mental torture. There were some others who never left Aropa airstrip: they had seen the mountain range shrouded in clouds from the aircraft and, refusing to leave the small airline building and spending a fretful night on a hard wooden bench, reboarded the same aircraft for its morning flight back to Port Moresby.

Others took to the wild camp life with gusto, spending what little time was left after a 10-hour working day, in the "boozer" and even investing in their own 'fridges outside their dongas. The nights were punctuated by the squeaking of 'fridge door hinges and the squishing sound of rings pulled off beer cans. A common "status symbol" amongst serious drinkers were door-frame curtains constructed from the hundreds of pull-top rings collected from empty beer cans. Les Feeney was put in charge of the audit group but more often than not was in charge of the carousing going on in the "boozer" and endlessly stuffing his pipe but never succeeding in lighting it. He and Peter the "Eskimo", a lumbering polar bear of a man hailing from Iceland, ran a constant "throat-to-throat" race as to who was the biggest drinker. "Bulldog", a likeable Pom, tried hard to catch up with them! On one occasion he also tried to learn how to play the electric organ. He never did but the speakers and amplifier which came with it, were put to good (and all-too-frequent) use when he played his favourite Neil Diamond record, "Hot August Night." The whole camp rocked when "Bulldog" plugged in that organ! I shall always associate "Hot August Night" with nights at Camp One!

During my time on the island I became a Justice of the Peace and also obtained my registration as a tax agent (Registration No. TTA322, dated 26th April 1971) and assisted many in the camps with their tax returns. I even made successful representation to the New Zealand Inland Revenue to have the then 18-months "world income rule" set aside for the Kiwis working on Bougainville. Had I not obtained this particular ruling, they would have been liable to pay New Zealand income tax on their Bougainville earnings. I became something of a scribe for many in the camp who wanted to apply for a passport or needed documents authenticated or who - surprisingly - couldn't read or write and asked me to handle their correspondence - including some pretty red-hot love letters!!! I always toned down their replies which must have kept quite a few guys out of troubles!

After Bougainville came stints in the Solomons, back to PNG (setting up the Internal Audit Department for AIR NIUGINI in Port Moresby where I run into Brian Herde again who'd taken a job with Tutt Bryants), Rangoon in Burma, Samoa, Malaysia, Indonesia, Iran, PNG once again (setting up the tug-and-barge operations for Ok Tedi; Bechtel was back in town to manage this project and with it came Sid Lhotka with whom I had dinner at the Papuan Hotel in Port Moresby to talk about "old times"), Saudi Arabia (where I met up with Des Hudson again), Greece - but none of those assignments came ever close to the comraderie and esprit de corps of the years on Bougainville!

Over the years I repeatedly ran into "ex-Bougainvilleans" and "ex-Territorians" in Australia and elsewhere. We would swap yarns which always ended in a great deal of nostalgia and a hankering for a way of life that would never come again. Like myself, many had found it difficult to settle back into an "ordinary" life and, like myself, had moved from place to place in an attempt to recapture some of the old life style.

 

 

Thank you for the memories!

 

Kaffeeklatsch

 

 

That's how young my German friend looked when he came to Australia more than seventy years ago, at the same age when I was just starting my commercial career as articled clerk in a German insurance company.

I arrived ten years later, and was "processed" through the same migrant centre as he and his parents and brother and sister had been, but it was only a few years ago that we met in the Bay and decided to make this a regular meeting before the lights go dim and finally go out altogether.

We both have done a lot of living and a lot of ageing since our arrival in Australia, and while our paths had widely diverged - he became a plumber and I became - what? - a bit of everything, we both ended up in the same place and with the same conclusion, namely, that coming to Australia was the best thing that we'd ever done. Once a week, we both drink to it, he with a frothy cappuccino and I with a straight coffee, black, no sugar.

 

 

No one wanders under palm trees unpunished

 

 

I seem to remember that the word 'nostalgia' was invented in the seventeenth century by an Alsatian student in a medical thesis to describe the malady that afflicted Swiss soldiers when far from their native mountains.

For me nostalgia is the opposite: it's the pain of missing places that I have never seen before and that, now that I'm over bloody eighty and no longer of an age to go exploring, I will never get the chance to see.

While others were already choosing a sofa for their living room and spending money on a Wedgwood tea pot, I, perhaps fired up by Novalis's 'Blaue Blume' which was so much talked and sung about around campfires while I was still a youngster with the "Fahrenden Gesellen", continued to move from one exotic location to another, hoping to be changed by what I found. And change me it did because I still quite often feel unsuited to the conventional, predictable life I now live.

Goethe understood this, allowing his character, Ottilie, to explain: "Palm trees will not allow a man to wander among them with impunity; and doubtless his tone of thinking becomes very different in a land where elephants and tigers are at home", or, as another translator put it more succinctly, "No one wanders under palm trees unpunished."

 

"Don't sell Riverbend; that would be the ultimate sin."

 

Noel's framed message, a postcard, is standing on the far left in front of the Burmese harp

 

Thus wrote my old mate Noel Butler back in April 1995. Eighteen months earlier, in a sudden rush of blood to the head, I had bought Riverbend even though I barely knew the business end of a spade, let alone what to do with it on an acreage.

Of course, we all have such dreams. Many years before, I had already bought DIY-books on how to build a cabin in the woods, on how to milk a cow, and how to build a chicken coop. They never made it to the top of my bookshelf which was occupied by 'The Practice of Modern Internal Auditing', 'Petroleum Accounting: Principles, Procedures & Issues', 'Ship Operations and Management', and 'Pick Basic: A Programmer's Guide', and other esoteric works on accountancy standards, IATA rules, laytime calculations, charter parties, and case studies in forensic auditing.

Noel, too, on coming back to Australia after a lifetime spent in New Guinea, had tried to follow his dream of a bucolic life in the country, first at Caboolture, then at Mt Perry, and finally in Childers. He knew as much - or rather, as little - about it as I did, since he'd conveniently forgotten that in New Guinea he'd never held more than a cold beer in his hand as he oversaw a small army of haus bois doing the hard work.

I, too, had conveniently forgotten that life in the country does not mix easily with computer code, spreadsheets, internal rates of return, and public rulings by the tax office, and had toyed with the idea of selling up again almost as soon as the ink had dried on the settlement cheque.

Noel had known of this, and as his life slipped slowly from autumn into winter and, just a few months later, into permanent hibernation, his last message admonished me not to give up on the dream because, as he so clearly foresaw, "... that would be the ultimate sin."

To this day his message sits on my mantelpiece to remind me of a wonderful friend, a wonderful friendship, and a wonderful piece of advice.

 

It's a Camus kind of day

 

 

Even though we are now on town water, I'm still in the habit of saving water and not taking long showers or not taking showers at all, but today is a cool and windy day, and to cheer myself up, I decided to take a long hot shower. As I stood there, with the hot water cascading down my back, I had what's called "shower thoughts", those sudden, insightful ideas or realisations that occur during mundane, relaxing activities like showering, walking, or doing dishes, rather than during focused deliberate thinking.

My "shower thought" was: why didn't I learn to treat everything like it was the last time? My greatest regret is how much I believed in the future.

I have had those personal epiphanies before, even though they vastly differed depending on how old I was. For most of my life I was carried along by time, unaware of its passage, its texture, its weight. I didn't think my time would ever come to an end because I had never concerned myself with its passage. I was like the fish unaware it's swimming in water. Then the moment came, when I realised that it is me who carries time. I don't know when but I was already much older than Sisyphus when he started pushing that bolder up the hill. It's still cool and windy outside, a Camus kind of day, so perhaps I ought to spend it reading or listening to Camus.

 

Read a preview here

 

 

P.S. I can't find my old copy of "The Myth of Sisyphus". Hello, Roman, if you happen to see a copy at next weekend's Lifeline Canberra Bookfair, could you please buy it for me? Of course, I shall reimburse you and also buy you a cup of coffee at the Catalina Country Club next time we meet.

 

 

Red Rain

 

 

The biggest source of US power is not its military, but it’s money. As long as the dollar remains the cornerstone of international commerce, the US remains the world’s great Caesar, but when the history of the Trump presidency is finally written, it will probably identify the biggest mistake of the Trump Team as encouraging foreigners to forsake the US dollar.

Under the threat of sanctions, tariffs, and bombs, the world is learning to do business without the US dollar. This is so obvious and inevitable that the decline of ‘the West ... the rise of the East’ is almost a cliché now.

To add to the re-alignment of history, a new movie has appeared in which the US is the bad guy. "Mua Do" ("Red Rain") depicts a bloody battle between Communist forces and the American-backed South Vietnamese army during the Vietnam War. The battle, fought in the country’s central province of Quang Tri, earned the grim nickname "the meat grinder" because of the many people who died there. According to reports in the Vietnamese media, more than 10,000 soldiers were killed on both sides.

The film is a box office blockbuster and has already grossed more than twice Hollywood hits during a period of 'peak patriotism' in Vietnam.

 

 

A hopeful history

 

Read a 40-page preview here

 

If there is one belief that has united the left and the right, psychologists and philosophers, ancient thinkers and modern ones, it is the tacit assumption that humans are bad. It's a notion that drives newspaper headlines and guides the laws that shape our lives. From Machiavelli to Hobbes, Freud to Pinker, the roots of this belief have sunk deep into Western thought. Human beings, we're taught, are by nature selfish and governed primarily by self-interest.

From my more than eighty years of experience, I certainly subscribe to this view, but if now is the time for a new view of human nature, then I'm happy to be persuaded. To this end, I've started to read Rutger Bregman's "Human kind - A Hopeful History", which I had picked up from the Uniting Church op-shop during our recent drive to Ulladulla (in fact, I seem to remember having bought a copy some years ago but somehow it got lost in the as yet unsorted part of my ever-expanding library, so instead of trying to find it there, I simply bought another copy for two dollars).

 

An excellent chapter-by-chapter summary of the book

 

If you see me wandering about with a beatific smile on my face, it means the book has done its job or the sharemarket has gone up, or both.

 

Catching the early-morning sun by the kitchen door.

"The year's at the spring; And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hill-side's dew-pearled; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn; God's in His heaven— All's right with the world!"

 

‍

The Echidna Strategy

 

'An echidna is no threat to anything other than ants and termites, so cannot induce fear among larger creatures. But by its sharp quills, it does warn them to keep their distance. It does signal to them that, should they decide to attack, the costs are likely to exceed the benefits. The echidna is the oldest surviving mammal on the planet, which speaks to its endurance and resilience. But the echidna has a friendly image. Echidnas are undeniably endearing, even if you wouldn't want to pat one.'

 

 

The "Tyranny of Distance", so eloquently described by Geoffrey Blainey in his book of the same name, may finally be paying off because, as Sam Roggeveen wrote in his book "The Echidna Strategy", "Put simply, distance is Australia's single biggest defence asset. Beijing is closer to London than to Sydney. That ought to provide some comfort ..." except that "China would attack Australia if the US were using Australia as a base to attack" which is exactly what the Australian government has done by allowing American bombers to be based at RAAF Tindal and US and UK nuclear-powered submarines operating from HMAS Stirling. Read a preview here.

 

 

ABC Radio National broadcast this podcast more than a year ago. How could I have missed it? However, I found Sam Roggeveen's book at the Uniting Church's op-shop in Ulladulla right on my 80th birthday, which means that I shouldn't really be worried about what may happen long after I have gone, but to ignore it just because it won't happen in my lifetime would be like acting our politicians who are only interested in collecting their exorbitant pay cheques and drawing on their huge expense accounts.

 

 

Mind you, they are only doing what the voters want them to do: bread and circuses! More than half of all Australians are now dependent on the government for their income, be it the dole, the age pension, and a myriad of other welfare supports which have morphed from a necessary safety net into a lazy man's hammock, or as public servants, the police force and the armed services. More than half!!! And at the end of a hard day's leisure, there's always the footy! I can already see the day when the Chinese lob their first intercontinental ballistic missile into Australia, and our only response will be to turn up the volume on the latest footy broadcast.

 

 

Bangers and mash

 

 

The big 80 is all done and dusted: we drove to Ulladulla for a meal of bangers and mash, all washed down with a few glasses of the old chardy. I've yet to make up my mind whether I drank that many in an attempt to forget or in order to celebrate or simply to make something happen.

I also bought myself a few birthday presents from the LIONS Preloved Bookshop. I may still get a belated birthday present in a few days' time because, as I drove into Ulladulla at something like 70km/hr in a 60km/hr zone, I saw too late on the other side of the road a parked police car with a speed camera mounted on its dashboard.

We are home now where we found a birthday cake left on the doormat by a friendly neighbour. I may need a few more chardies to wash it all down.

 

 

 

"Ich schaff' die 80, so Gott will."

 

Für eine noch bessere Rezitation, drücke hier

 

Ja, ich habe die 80 geschafft, ob mit oder ohne Gottes Hilfe, und da ich jetzt die biblischen 80 geschafft habe, sollte man zielsicher auf die 90 streben, obwohl ich zweifle die 100 zu schaffen. Selbst die heutigen 80 genügen mir ohnehin schon.

 

Das große Glück, noch klein zu sein, sieht mancher Mensch als Kind nicht ein und möchte, dass er ungefähr so 16 oder 17 wär'. Doch schon mit 18 denkt er: "Halt! Wer über 20 ist, ist alt." Warum? Die 20 sind vergnüglich - auch sind die 30 noch vorzüglich. Zwar in den 40 - welche Wende - da gilt die 50 fast zu Ende. Doch in den 50, peu á peu, schraubt man das Ende in die Höh'! Die 60 scheinen noch passabel und erst die 70 miserabel. Mit 70 aber hofft man still: "Ich schaff' die 80, so Gott will." Wer dann die 80 biblisch überlebt, zielsicher auf die 90 strebt. Dort angelangt, sucht er geschwind nach Freunden, die noch älter sind. Doch hat die Mitte 90 man erreicht - die Jahre, wo einen nichts mehr wundert -, denkt man mitunter: "Na - vielleicht schaffst du mit Gottes Hilfe auch die 100!" Wilhelm Busch

 

PNG's Independence Day 16 September

 

 

It was in the dying days of 1974 when I received an urgent telegram from TOTAL - Compagnie Française des Pétroles to fly to what was then called Burma to take up a new position as chief accountant in their exploration office in Rangoon.

I was at the time working in the Territory of Papua & New Guinea, putting the finishing touches on Air Niugini's internal audit department, as the country was hurdling towards independence the following year.

When the then Chief Minister Michael Somare - soon to be Sir Michael and Prime Minister of the independent country of Papua New Guinea - heard of my impending departure, he expressed his regrets that I wouldn't be there for this momentous occasion. "However," he said, "the least we can do is make our Independence Day the same as your birthday."

And so it came to pass that my birthday and Papua New Guinea's Independence Day are celebrated on the same day each year.

 

 

It looks better from the back: my 8th birthday!

 

"Going to another country doesn't make any difference. I've tried all that. You can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another."

 

 

I've tried that too, and I agree, you can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another, except that I didn't know it then because I hadn't read Ernest Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises" yet.

 

At 14:32 in the audiobook recording above,
or on page 11 in the book "The Sun Also Rises"

 

Isn't it strange how some of the best lines, the most penetrating lines, in some books are never repeated in the movies? I could quote you countless lines - but I won't - from "Heart of Darkness" to "Lord Jim" and from "Out of Africa" to "The Painted Veil", which lodged themselves forever in my memory but which are never spoken in the movies. "Going to another country doesn't make any difference. I've tried all that. You can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another" is one of them.

 

 

"Your coming here would give me a new lease on life"

 

The main street of Mount Perry, circa 1956, when it was still in its heydays

 

It is possible, I suppose, to construct hypothetical circumstances in which you would be pleased to find yourself, at the end of a long day, in Mount Perry, Queensland - perhaps something to do with rising sea levels that left it as the only place on earth not under water, or maybe some disfiguring universal contagion from which it alone remained unscathed. In the normal course of events, however, it is unlikely that you would find yourself standing on its lonely main street at six thirty on a warm summer's evening gazing about you in an appreciative manner and thinking: 'Well, thank goodness I'm here!'"

So wrote Bill Bryson in his book "Bill Bryson Down Under" in chapter 12 about Macksville, New South Wales. I took the liberty of quoting from it, only substituting Mount Perry for Macksville, both of which I know, Macksville because an old accountant-friend from my days in New Guinea had opened an office there, doing little more than helping cow cockies fill out unemployment claim forms, and Mount Perry because my best friend, also from my New Guinea days, had settled there sometime in the early 1980s when I was still working in Athens in Greece and started receiving letters from him postmarked "Mount Perry Qld 4671".

That was years before the internet, and I had no way of knowing where Mount Perry was or what it looked like. That eye-opening revelation was left until mid-1985 after I had returned to Australia and, unable to find work in Townsville in Far North Queensland, I moved down to Sydney and visited Mount Perry on my way south. By that time the last traces of some former mining boom had disappeared, the picture show had been closed for years, the local mechanic had just moved to Gin Gin, the only shop in town hardly ever saw a customer, and the post office which had postmarked all those letters seemed on the verge of closing. In fact, my friend who waited for me in town to guide me to his lonely plot of land, had parked in front of it, and his was the only car in the main street.

He'd sent me this photo while I was still working in Greece and after he'd just bought himself this small prefab on a five-acre plot. It was the sort of place where you went when you had little money and life hadn't been too good to you and you needed time to lick your wounds.

 

Noel's prefab on his five-acre plot. As he wrote on the back,
"It's as isolated as it looks, but plenty of crows and wallabies for company"

 

Following my return to Australia due to a misdiagnosed case of home-sickness, life hadn't been too good to me either, and I was also licking my wounds in Sydney when my best friend invited me to join him at Mt Perry. "Your coming here would give me a new lease on life" he wrote - words from a quiet, lonely man who had sought a refuge and become stranded. He had stayed away too long, and everyone had forgotten him. It was the nearest he'd ever come to admitting that his own home-coming after a lifetime in New Guinea hadn't worked out the way he'd hoped, and he was feeling lonely and in need of like-minded company.

My friend's cri de coeur - for that is what it was - never quite registered because, while I'd experienced my own bouts of loneliness which had always been cut short by the excitement of forever chasing work around the world, I still had another twenty-five years of work ahead of me.

As so often happens, the story had a happy ending for both of us: I left Sydney for Canberra where I was able to establish my own practice, and Noel could sell his isolated plot with "plenty of crows and wallabies for company" and resettle on the edge of Childers, within walking distance of shops and pubs and medical facilities, where I revisited him in 1990 to spend our last Christmas together before he passed away in 1995.

 

The state of the world and my place in it

 

 

There are mornings when, like Linus van Pelt, I just want to pull a blanket over my head and not look at the world. There's the orange Nero fiddling while the old world order is falling apart; there is China to our north flexing its muscles; and there's the European non-Union hosting another talk-fest while the new Stalin lobs drones into Poland with no response from NATO.

And here in Australia our self-serving politicians, in the absence of any population policy, bring in half a million migrants a year to compete for our dwindling resources in housing and infrastructure, to say nothing of water in the world's driest continent. And anyone questioning it is a fascist.

Speaking of which, Albo's insane first homebuyer's 5% deposit scheme has thrown fuel on the already blazing real estate market. Properties in the price range covered by this deposit scheme - up to $1.5 million in Sydney; less elsewhere - are suddenly all SOLD or UNDER OFFER. I had a bit of a look around on realestate.com.au last night in the places that I would like to relocate to if "Riverbend" ever sells, and where there used to be pages and pages of unsold listings, it's now SOLD and SOLD and UNDER OFFER from top to bottom. The fear of missing out has gripped the market, and those who only yesterday complained about prices being too high, are now hoping that property prices will keep on rising above their 5% equity.

As I wrote, 'if "Riverbend" ever sells', because those who are still young enough to maintain this beautiful acreage by the river haven't got the money, and those who have got the money are too old to maintain it. I need to sell up before the constant need to repair and maintain kills me, and I have changed my advertisement from a price of "$3,100,000 to $3,200,000" - which is still a bargain! - to "EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST" and added the byline "Selling practically at land value!" - see here.

 

The Thirsty Island

 

 

Travellers approaching a bush township are sure to find some distance from the town a lonely public-house waiting by the roadside to give them welcome. Thirsty (miscalled Thursday) Island is the outlying pub of Australia.

When the China and British-India steamers arrive from the North the first place they come to is Thirsty Island, the sentinel at the gate of Torres Straits. New chums on the steamers see a fleet of white-sailed pearling luggers, a long pier clustered with a hybrid crowd of every colour, caste and creed under Heaven, and at the back of it all a little galvanized-iron town shining in the sun.

For nine months of the year a crisp, cool south-east wind blows, the snow-white beach is splashed with spray and dotted with the picturesque figures of Japanese divers and South Sea Island boatmen. Coco-nut palms line the roads by the beach, and back of the town are the barracks and a fort nestling among the trees on the hillside. Thirsty Island is a nice place --- to look at.

 

 

When a vessel makes fast the Thirsty Islanders come down to greet the new-comers and give them welcome to Australia. The new-chums are inclined to patronise these simple, outlying people. Fresh from the iniquities of the China-coast cocktail and the unhallowed orgies of the Sourabaya Club, new-chums think they have little to learn in the way of drink; at any rate, they haven’t come all the way to Thursday Island to be taught anything. Poor new-chums! Little do they know the kind of people they are up against.

The following description of a night at Thursday Island is taken from a new-chum’s note book:

 

“Passed Proudfoot shoal and arrived at Thursday Island. First sight of Australia. Lot of men came aboard, all called Captain. They are all pearl-fishers or pilots, not a bit like the bushmen I expected. When they came aboard they divided into parties. Some invaded the Captain’s cabin; others sat in the smoking room; the rest crowded into the saloon. They talked to the passengers about the Boer War, and told us about pearls worth 1000 pounds that had been found lately. “One captain pulled a handful of loose pearls out of a jar and handed them round in a casual way for us to look at. The stewards opened bottles and we all sat down for a drink and a smoke. I spoke to one captain—an oldish man—and he grinned amiably, but did not answer. Another captain leaned over to me and said, ‘Don’t take any notice of him, he’s boozed all this week.’ “Conversation and drink became general. The night was very hot and close, and some of the passengers seemed to be taking more than was good for them. A contagious thirst spread round the ship, and before long the stewards and firemen were at it. The saloon became an inferno of drink and sweat and tobacco smoke. Perfect strangers were talking to each other at the top of their voices. “Young MacTavish, who is in a crack English regiment, asked the captain of a pearling lugger whether he didn’t know Talbot de Cholmondeley in the Blues. “The pearler said very likely he had met ’em, and no doubt he’d remember their faces if he saw them, but he never could remember names. “Another passenger—a Jew—was trying to buy some pearls cheap from the captains, but the more the captains drank the less anxious they became to talk about pearls. “The night wore on, and still the drinks circulated. Young MacTavish slept profoundly. “One passenger gave his steward a sovereign as he was leaving the ship, and in half an hour the steward was carried to his berth in a fit—alcoholic in its origin. Another steward was observed openly drinking the passengers’ whisky. When accused, he didn’t even attempt to defend himself; the great Thursday Island thirst seemed to have communicated itself to everyone on board, and he simply had to drink. “About three in the morning a tour of the ship disclosed the following state of affairs: Captain’s room full of captains solemnly tight; smoking-room empty, except for the inanimate form of the captain who had been boozed all the week, and was now sleeping peacefully with his feet on the sofa and his head on the floor. The saloon was full of captains and passengers—the latter mostly in a state of collapse or laughing and singing deliriously; the rails lined with firemen who had business over the side; stewards ditto. “At last the Thursday Islanders departed, unsteadily, but still on their feet, leaving a demoralized ship behind them. And young MacTavish, who has seen a thing or two in his brief span, staggered to his berth, saying, ‘My God! Is all Australia like this place?’”

 

Thursday Island, colloquially known as TI, or in the native language, Waiben

 

When no ships arrive, the Islanders just drop into the pubs, as a matter of routine, for their usual evening soak. They drink weird compounds—horehound beer, known as “lady dog”, and things like that. About two in the morning they go home speechless, but still able to travel. It is very rarely that an Islander gets helplessly drunk, but strangers generally have to be put to bed.

The Japanese on the island are a strong faction. They have a club of their own, and once gave a dinner to mark the death of one of their members. He was shrewdly suspected of having tried to drown another member by cutting his airpipe, so, when he died, the club celebrated the event. The Japanese are not looked upon with favor by the white islanders. They send their money to Japan—thousands of pounds a year go through the little office in money-orders—and so they are not “good for trade”.

 

 

The Manilamen and Kanakas and Torres Strait islanders, on the other hand, bring all the money they do not spend on the pearling schooner to the island, and “blow it in”, like men. They knife each other sometimes, and now and again have to be run in wholesale, but they are “good for trade”. The local lock-up has a record of eighteen drunks run in in seven minutes. They weren’t taken along in carriages-and-four, either; they were mostly dragged along by the scruff of the neck.

Billy Malkeela, the South Sea diver, summed up the Japanese question—“Seems to me dis Islan’ soon b’long Japanee altogedder. One time pa-lenty rickatta (plenty regatta), all same Isle of Wight. Now no more rickatta. All money go Japan!”

 

 

An English new-chum made his appearance there lately—a most undefeated sportsman. He was put down in a diving dress in about eight feet of water, where he bubbled and struggled about in great style. Suddenly he turned, rushed for the beach, and made for the foot of a tree, which he tried to climb under the impression that he was still at the bottom of the ocean. Then he was hauled in by the life-line.

The pearlers thought to get some fun out of him by giving him an oyster to open in which they had previously planted a pearl; he never saw the pearl and threw the oyster into the scuppers with the rest, and the pearlers had to go down on all fours and grope for that pearl among the stinking oysters. It was funny—but not in the way they had intended.

The pearlers go out in schooners called floating stations (their enemies call them floating public-houses) and no man knows what hospitality is till he has been a guest on a pearling schooner. They carry it to extremes sometimes. Some pearlers were out in a lugger, and were passing by one of these schooners. They determined not to go on board, as it was late, and they were in a hurry. The captain of the schooner went below, got his rifle and put two bullets through their foresail. Then they put the helm down and went aboard; it was an invitation almost equivalent to a royal command. They felt heartily ashamed of themselves as they slunk up on deck, and the captain of the schooner eyed them reproachfully.

“I couldn’t let you disgrace yourselves by passing my schooner,” he said; “but if it ever happens again I’ll fire at the deck. A man that would pass a schooner in broad daylight is better dead.”

There is a fort and garrison at Thirsty Island, but they are not needed. If an invading fleet comes this way it should be encouraged by every possible means to land at the island; the heat, the thirst, the horehound beer, and the Islanders may be trusted to do the rest.

 

So wrote Banjo Paterson in his 1917 "Three Elephant Power and Other Stories". A hundred years later, pearling has ceased, and steamers no longer call at "Thirsty Island" - or Thursday Island, as it is more officially known - but the drinking goes on unabated. I know; I used to live there!

 

My office was on the top floor of the flat-top building; the building with the red roof is the Federal Hotel. It's the only time in my life I worked right next door to a pub ☺

 

Who was Helmut Schramm?

 

 

I've just found this obituary on the Thursday Island Noticeboard facebook page. I had lived and worked on Thursday Island in 1977 but never heard of him. All I could find on naa.gov.au were some immigration documents from 1965 when he arrived in Australia.

 

His arrival aboard the AURELIA:

His processing through the Bonegilla Migrant Camp:

 

Who was Helmut Schramm? I posed this question on their facebook page and hope to receive some replies.