Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be Will Be)

 

 

Uncertainty is a universal human predicament: 'the future’s not ours to see', as this song, popular in the 1950s, put it. In Germany, a whole generation grew up with the refrain in their ears - in German, of course: ""Was kann schöner sein / Viel schöner als Ruhm und Geld? / Für mich gibt's auf dieser Welt / Doch nur dich allein! / Was kann schöner sein?"

 

 

And what could've been more uncertain than growing up in post-war Germany? Perhaps that's why this song was so popular: it reflected resignation, acceptance, sometimes even optimism about the future; in any case, its fatalism made light of the dark situation we all were in.

Even after the more existential worries have been taking care of - food, a roof over our head, a job, etc. - we still worry. I certainly did as no period of my life was ever totally free of dread-filled apprehensions.

What we seldom ever get around to doing – once the dreaded event is past – is to pause and compare the scale of the worry with what actually happened in the end. We are too taken up with the next topic of alarm ever to return for a "worry audit". If we did, a strange realisation would dawn on us: that our worries are nearly always completely – and deeply – out of line with reality. Extended out across a year, such a "worry audit" would, I am sure, yield similar conclusions. Perhaps the world is not – for all its dangers – as awful as we presume. Perhaps most of the drama is ultimately unfolding only in our own minds.

Looking back over a lifetime of worrying about the future, it helps to remember Mark Twain’s famous dictum: ‘I have lived through many disasters; only a few of which actually happened’. "Que Sera, Sera."

 

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How many times can one watch 'Casablanca'?

 

 

Retirement would be a lot harder, were it not for ABC Radio National, my large collection of books, and my equally large collection of movies, but how many times can one watch even as good a film as 'Casablanca'?

Radio National gets me through the night when sleep won't come, and my growing number of unread books give me something to look forward to, while those timeless movies of yesteryears are a welcome relief from TV's tedious cooking shows and home renovation programs (not to mention 'Midsomer Murders' with its endless supply of dead bodies).

It's the beginning of another beautiful day in retirement and I might watch 'Casablanca" for just one more time.

 

 

Brian Herde, you've been one of a kind!

 

 

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 at my friend's place in Wewak on my return.

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 at company expense, put him up in a hotel in Piraeus, and paid him US$3,000 a month, and he set to work for me for three months.

That was Brian Herde: always good company, in exchange for which he demanded nothing more than full free board and lodging. After his last uninvited visit to my home in Canberra in 1992 - or was it 1993? - we lost contact and our twenty-five-year-long friendship had seemingly come to an end. During all this time we had never discussed financial matters other than those pertaining to our work, but you can't be a good friend with someone for all that time without having at least some inkling of his financial position, and my inkling of his financial position was what in the vernacular is best described as being "filthy rich!"

 

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

 

Which made it all the sadder when around this time last year I found on the internet this death notice. He had died just two years past his retirement age without ever enjoying all that accumulated wealth!

Still, wanting to know how he had met his untimely death, I wrote to Townsville Hospital. They asked me to pay a non-refundable $57.65 search fee — there was a time when fees were charged in round figures; now it's $49.95 or $57.65 as though someone had calculated with the help of some highly complicated formula the exact cost of the service — even though they couldn't guarantee that they would find anything.

 

 

All his free board-and-lodgings over twenty-five years had cost me plenty, so perhaps another fifty-seven dollars wouldn't have mattered, but then I thought, "Let dead friends lie", and just had a toast to his memory. As I will again today. Brian Herde, you've been one of a kind!

 

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A Speck in the ocean

 

 

During one of my usual visits to Vinnies, the little old lady behind the counter complained about the miserable weather. Listening to her accent, I said, "Well, not as miserable as the weather in England." "English?" she remonstrated. "I'm Irish!"

And so began our conversation during which she wanted to know what my accent was. Hearing that I had been a German in the past, she piped up, "Did you know about that chap who paddled all the way from Germany to Australia?" She was a passionate ABC Radio National listener and had heard about Oskar Speck on "Conversations with Richard Fidler".

Very few people in Germany have ever heard of Oskar Speck, and here's this little old lady in an op-shop in Batemans Bay who seems to know all about him, on top of which she's like me a dedicated ABC Radio National listener. A friend for life -or at least whenever we'll meet at Vinnies!

 

Illustration from "mare" magazine; they got the idea for the article from me;
I get this illustration from their article; it seems like a fair exchange

 

I had first heard about Oskar Speck when I lived and worked on Thursday Island in the Torres Strait where he had made landfall after having spent seven years paddling his tiny kayak from Germany to Australia. There was no internet in those days and it was impossible to find out more.

Only in recent years could I put together enough information to do a write-up in April 2005 - click here. Kayakers from Germany contacted me and I was happy to share with them the material for their own publication. I also suggested to the German magazine "mare" that they publicise Oskar Speck's amazing feat. I had no reply but was pleased to see this article appear in their December 2021/January 2022 issue.

 

"Odyssee im Kajak - Von Ulm nach Australien"

 

Since those early days when I could find hardly anything about Oskar Speck on the internet, I've been pleased to note that the number of entries has steadily increased as this man deserves a whole lot more publicity. Wikipedia now mentions him, and the NSW Sea Kayak Club has turned it into a three-part story.

 

 

The Australian Maritime Museum, which still keeps some Oskar Speck memoribilia, devotes a whole webpage to him, and I could even locate the ABC Radio National recording that the little old lady in Vinnies had listened to just four days ago - click here.

 

 

Oskar Speck never left Australia again, and was perhaps too busy getting rich from dealing in precious stones to ever write the hoped-for book.

 

Sydney Airport Arrival Card after Oskar Speck returned from a three-month-trip to Germany on 17 August 1970. There are several papers documenting Oskar Speck's arrival on Saibai Island in the Torres Strait and his subsequent internment at the Tatura Camp in Victoria on naa.gov.au. Click on "Explore the Collection", then on "RecordSearch", type in keyword "Speck", and click on "Digital copy" of any of the four entries marked Oskar Speck.

 

Another German adventurer of his time, Heinz Helfgen, had from 1951 to 1953 cycled round the world and written a hugely popular book, "Ich radle um die Welt" (I cycle around the world), which Oskar Speck could easily have bettered with his very own "I paddle round the world".

Luckily, a Tobias Friedrich has stepped into the breach, and wrote a fictionalised version of Oskar Speck's record-making paddle under the name "Der Flussregenpfeifer" which has just now appeared in German bookshops. For a "Leseprobe" (if your German is up to it), click here.

 

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Oskar Speck died on 28 Mar 1993, aged 86, in Gosford on the Central Coast, and is buried at the Point Clare Cemetery, Sect. Lwn 7 Row 38 Plot 30. His gravestone was erected by his partner Nancy Jean Steele who occupies the plot next to him. A beautiful story right to the end.

 

 

Where are 'Buddy' and his master now?

 

 

On our way back from Moruya where we had a beautiful lunch of chicken and chips at the Moruya Bowling Club, we briefly pulled up at Casey's Beach. As we sat there, watching the waves, I remembered that several years ago in the same spot we had met a chap in an old four-wheel drive with a trailer hitched up to it.

 

 

He and his dog 'Buddy' had just spent a comfortable night in that spot with a million-dollar view and no sound other than the surf - and not a cent to pay for it! The trailer was all that was left of the occupant's Jim's Mowing franchise, which he had bought and then tried to sell again to another sucker but couldn't because, as he told me, most of the money made from all the work always went straight to the franchisors.

 

 

So, he had chucked a comfy mattress onto it, covered the lot with a tarpaulin, and set off to travel round Australia, next stop Byron Bay. We had parted company when his fishing reel started screaming and he had to rush to the beach to take in his breakfast, a freshly-caught bream. Years later, I'm left wondering, "Where are 'Buddy' and his master now?"

 

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