In memory of a good friend who died on this day eight years ago

 

Helmut and I raise our glasses in June 2011 at the Lake Eacham Hotel,
the one and only Husbands' Daycare Centre in Yungaburra

 

Most people, the vast majority in fact, lead the lives that circumstances have thrust upon them, and though some repine, looking upon themselves as round pegs in square holes, and think that if things had been different they might have made a much better showing, the greater part accept their lot, if not with serenity, at all events with resignation. They are like train-cars travelling forever on the selfsame rails. They go backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, inevitably, till they can go no longer and then are sold as scrap-iron. It is not often that you find a man who has boldly taken the course of his life into his own hands. When you do, it is worth while having a good look at him."

This is a quote from the first paragraph of W. Somerset Maugham's short story "The Lotus Eater" which I was reminded of when I met a fellow-migrant, Helmut Brix, during my travels in North Queensland in 2011.

Helmut had come to Australia in 1961 - four years before me - and also stayed at the Bonegilla Migrant Centre - a whole month longer than me - after which he found work in Melbourne and eventually opened his own camera shop in Acland Street in St Kilda. He married, had two sons, and for fifty years "like a train car travelled forever on the selfsame rails".

He had arrived at Yungaburra only weeks - but no more than a couple of months - before our accidental meeting. When I questioned him about the Victorian number plates on his car, he explained to me that he'd told his wife that now that he was into his seventies and both their sons had grown up and he was no longer needed, he wanted time to himself. With this he handed her the keys to the house, and travelled north.

In Yungaburra he found friends and a free flat in exchange for looking after several more, and I admired (and envied) him for the ease with which he had escaped from half a century of domesticity. As Maugham wrote, "It is not often that you find a man who has boldly taken the course of his life into his own hands". What next? Seven years in Tibet? Kon-Tiki-ing across the South Pacific? Lotus-eating in exotic Bali? Walking the road to Samarkand? Living in a grass-hut on a tropical coral island?

Alas, the end was far more pedestrian: he (once again) succumbed to domesticity by buying a house in Yungaburra and joining the local bridge club as well as the Happy Snappers Photography Group of the local U3A and staying put in the one place so as not miss his appointment in Samarra because a few years later I suddenly found this on the internet:

 

born 9 December 1938 - died 18 March 2018

Twelve months earlier he had still been looking for old friends on his facebook page

 

What happened to Bali and Bora Bora, Helmut? Did you die with all that music still inside you? I hope someone arranged to have your gravestone inscribed with the German saying "Der Mensch ist ein Gewohnheitstier".

I've just gone back to reading W. Somerset Maugham's short story "The Lotus Eater" again. On reflection, I think Wilson had the better idea!

 

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Germany clearly isn’t very German anymore

 

"Germany Abolishes Itself: How We're Putting Our Country in Jeopardy"

 

Padma keeps telling me, "You should visit Germany again", but I keep resisting, and after what I've read on the internet under the heading "Europe is falling apart", I also stopped listening:

 

"I’ve just left for a visit to Germany. Only a family medical emergency could make me willing to come. I’m visiting my hometown to see my sick mum. I was born here. But that only seems to make it worse.

First, the airport was in chaos because of a Lufthansa strike. It was like being in a third-world country. Not five seconds out of the airport’s baggage hall, I was accosted by a foreign beggar.

Now I feel like the only German native in the city. I can’t understand anyone because spoken German has become a hybrid language full of foreign influences and pronunciation. When I last visited, it was still German. The German restaurants serving local dishes are also gone.

Each time I throw something in a rubbish bin, someone rushes up to pull it back out again. They get paid a few cents for bringing it to the recycling centre.

It feels like I’m in a foreign country. Only the architecture still stands. Even the cars are foreign-made, including the German ones.

The hospital that’s taking care of my mother just gave me a 30,000 euro bill. That’s about AUD$50,000. A third of which hasn’t even been incurred yet. It’s a precautionary pre-payment. Apparently, I’ll get some back if the bill doesn’t run up that far. Illegal immigrants and refugees get free healthcare, of course. Germans don't.

Only one person working at the hospital is a native German. And the rest don’t exactly hit the stereotype of a German medical professional. One of the doctors forgot to remove the remnants of his blue eye shadow and red rouge. He must’ve had an interesting weekend.

Of course, some of the culture shock isn't exactly new. The shops don't just close on a Sunday, but for lunch between 12 and 2. The Germans still use fax machines. It's impossible to get anything done without appointments. And the people were always rude. But, minor inefficiencies aside, Germany clearly isn't very German anymore."

 

Of course, Australia is experiencing its own political instability over immigration. I don’t need to tell you. You are living it. And you can see the One Nation polling. But Germany, and the rest of Europe, show us how the change manifests itself. It's a warning of what's to come: dire economic and financial consequences as in Europe, economic stagnation, political standoffs, frequent changes in government, and a complete refusal to cut immigration. We are just a few years behind.

 

 

During another even more benighted time, Germans were given free copies of "Mein Kampf". Today every German should be given a free copy and made to read Thilo Sarrazin's book "Deutschland schafft sich ab".

 

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So you don't come from "the land of poets and thinkers" and can't read German? Here's another book by Thilo Sarrazin, translated into English:

Read it online here

 

"The lagging behind of the Islamic World, the lack of integration of Muslims in Germany and Europe, the oppression of women and the high birth rate of Muslims are a consequence of the cultural influence of Islam. Thilo Sarrazin shows in his book that Islam is the origin of the trouble.

All tendencies to reform Islam and interpret it historically and critically have failed so far. Thilo Sarrazin is obviously the only German decision-maker who has ever read the Koran from cover to cover and therefore he is able to show that the obstacles to reform are inherent in the Koran itself. He understands that the Koran is a Book of Law. No country where Muslims are in the majority has religious freedom or a functioning democracy.

The Islamic world as a whole is suffering from explosive population growth and its fanaticism is constantly increasing. The proportion of Muslims in Germany and Europe is also continuing to grow due to immigration and persistently high birth rates. If this trend continues, Muslims in Germany and Europe are on the way to becoming a majority. This is a dangerous threat to our Western Culture and Society that we must protect ourselves from."

 

 

If only he WERE more like Harold Holt

 

Do I have to spell out what happened to our 17th Prime Minister? He left Australia by sea the same time I did, in December 1967; however, I left by ship and returned — he didn't!

 

At first sight I was going to dismiss this, but then I saw the hidden message in it: if even those who cannot tell the subjunctive from the indicative mood and who usually vote Labor, wish that this clown had done a Harold Holt, then perhaps this country is on the road to recovery.

Not that (m)any of the political class, either here or overseas, have got much going for them. Why, if we want to get some electrical work done in our house, we have to pay a licensed electrician who knows what he's doing, but when it comes to the energy security of our entire country, these moronic individuals with their low IQs are allowed to handle it?

Not that increasing fuel prices are affecting me. I only ever put $50 in.

 

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What a great trip back in time for fifty cents!

 

6th Edition, February 1998
Read it online at www.archive.org

 

Most people buy their Lonely Planet Guide to plan a trip; I bought this old 1998 edition for a mere fifty cents at the local op-shop to take a trip back in time. 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 place in which I first lived and worked: "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.

 

 

Then there is the Port Moresby City map on page 112 which also shows Cuthbertson Street leading down to the harbour, 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 to grab one of the few copies of the weekend edition of the Australian Financial Review which always advertised the best job vacancies, and to check my mailbox at the post office on the opposite side of the street for letters from "down south", but especially for any job offer in response to some application I had sent off in previous weeks.

 

 

During my first time in Port Moresby — I clocked up three employments there — I lived at AIR NIUGINI's pilots' mess at Six Mile but spent most of my nights at my first-ever Australian girlfriend's house in Tara Place in Boroko. That was until she started asking me when I would make an honest woman out of her. I had never heard that phrase before but, suspecting the worst, relocated to Lae on the other side of the country.

 

 

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 — who is worth a whole story in himself — and his local Papuan 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. Sailing my CORSAIR dinghy from the Royal Papuan Yacht Club all the way out of Fairfax Harbour to Gemo Island and Lolorua Island and capsizing it far out at sea. I would have never made it back home had I not been with my mate Brian Herde who dived under the boat and pushed the centreboard back up through the slot so that I, sitting astride the upturned hull, could grap it and pull the boat upright again. 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 Christmas with me. He helped me pack up my gear and stencil my shipping box in big black letters
M.P. GOERMAN, MYANMA OIL CORPORATION, RANGOON, BURMA.

I still remember discussing with him another job I had been offered only 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 the job 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 could've been far more complicated in the remote wilds of the Sepik District. And, of course, there would've been no access to the Australian Financial Review with all those job ads! We are so often the product 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 back to Australia. He considered himself lucky to have been able to sell his out-of-town property to some religious mission. They were the only bidder and offered him a "fire-sale" price, which was his final recompense for a lifetime spent in New Guinea.

 

 

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

 

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Finally, they've made a movie about you and me!

 

 

The story of Harvey Krumpet follows Harvie from a troubled childhood in Poland with a "schizophrenic" mother to his migration to Australia. Despite suffering from Tourette's, being struck by lightning, having his testicle removed, and contracting Alzheimer's, he remains optimistic, kind, and collects "fakts" about life.

It's a movie about you and me — but mainly about me!

 

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