Why I write

 

"A room without books is like a body without a soul" Cicero.
Günther, I almost recognise some of the German books on your shelves

 

Lange Zeit seitdem wir miteinander Kontakt hatten. Was gibt es Neues am anderen Ende der Welt? In Europa überschlagen sich die Ereignisse und in Deutschland herrscht Chaos und viele sind bang. Dein Blog ist so interessant. Eine sagenhafte Lebenserinnerung. Du müsstest einen Verlag finden der das druckt." [Translation]

So wrote an old acquaintance from the (c)old country in a recent email. Thanks for the bouquet, Günther, but I only write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say. And writing helps me to keep up my grammar which is the difference between knowing your shit and knowing you're shit. Unlike the stomach, the brain doesn't alert me when it is empty, so I want to keep feeding it just in case. We all know that social media is the most whitewashed form of communication where people describe the outside of their lives without ever revealing anything from their inside, so for all that ugly "inside", for all "the truth and nothing but the truth", you may have to wait for my memoirs.

For all those "inside" thoughts, I do keep a personal diary, erratically and irregularly, in cursive longhand which, more than typing, stimulates ideas, links them, and puts them in relation. Not by chance does the word cursive come from the Latin "currere", which runs, which flows, because thought is winged, it runs, it flies. Cursive writing gives breath to our thoughts again. Without breath, as the ancient Greeks said, there is no thought. And without thoughts there is no life. More is the pity that elegant cursive writing has no place in today's world, a world that does everything possible to slow down the development of thought.

And before writing comes reading, but that is a story for another day.

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Look what I found on the internet!

 

 

These are photos of the "Mofarrij-D" (built 1960, LOA 172.9m, GT 17,826, DW 25,867) and the "Mofarrij-G" (built 1963, GT 15,985, DW 26,432), two of six ageing bulk carriers which my Saudi boss Sheikh Abdulghani Abdulrahiem Mofarrij, in a sudden rush of blood to his head, had bought in mid-1983.

I will never forget the day he asked me to accompany him to the offices of the Greek shipping company INTERTRANS in Piraeus. There a Greek lawyer presented him with a whole ream of legal papers, entirely drawn up in the Greek language, which documented his purchase of six rustbuckets that would become the company fleet of "Mofarrij-A", "Mofarrij-B", "Mofarrij-C" "Mofarrij-D", "Mofarrij-F", and "Mofarrij-G".

Despite my whispered urgings not to sign anything he could not read, let alone buy ships which, judged by their appearance, where in worse shape than Lord Jim's "Patna", he initialled every page and signed on the dotted line.

Not surprisingly, all six vessels went to the knackers in Chittagong in Bangladesh and Huangpu in China less than two years later but by that time I had already resigned from my position as Group Financial Controller as I simply couldn't bear to see the business go down the toilet through sheer stupidity.

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He came for three months and stayed for life

 

 

In September 2006, I visited the Kingdom of Tonga in the South Pacific where on the remote island of Lifuka in the Ha'apai Group I met Horst Berger from Austria (that little country in Central Europe where they speak German with a funny accent), who had come to Tonga in 1995 at the ripe old age of 39 after a workplace accident in Vienna which gave him a small pension just big enough to live on in the islands.

I had written a blog about my encounter with Horst Berger which is how another German, a Manfred Richter from Brisbane, had found it and written to me, saying that he knew Horst and could he have his contact details, please. A few emails and phone calls later and we had become friends which I followed up with a personal visit in 2011 - click here - while on my way to the tropical Far North but, as is so often the case, the minutiae of daily life interferred and the connection went dead again - as did my connection with Horst Berger in the Kingdom of Tonga.

 

Yours truly (left) and Horst Berger at the Mariner's Café in Pangai on Lifuka Island

 

Recent emails have gone unanswered, and Manfred's facebook page has been inactive since October 2023, but I did find a link to a book, "Tales of a Tramp" - click here - self-published by the same Manfred Richter!

 

 

About the Author My name is Manfred Richter, and I was an only child, born in Berlin, Germany, during the 2nd World War. After school, I undertook an apprenticeship as an accountant and studied accounting and Business English in night schools. Life with the Berlin Wall and political upheavals during the Cold War made me long for greener pastures. Holidays in Denmark and England, during that time, increased that lomging. In 1964, my friend, Peter Dumlich, suggested that we travel to Cape Town, South Africa, and start a new life there. I immediately agreed. Our friend, Axel Neisch, had an old Volkswagen that we thought we could use to commence our travels. We paid for a new motor and, for some time, saved as much money as possible. Finally, at the beginning of October in 1964, we took off. However, Peter went broke in Tunisia and returned to Berlin. He now lives on a farm in outback Canada. Axel explored Egypt and worked on a Kibbutz in Israel to save money for the trip home. Once he returned to Germany, he ran a shop in Berlin; passed away in June 2019. From Tunisia, I decided to carry on by myself. I tramped to Cairo, worked with a German company in Egypt for two and a half years, and in 1967, flew to Ethopia. In Addis Ababa, I met Max Gallmann, another 'tramp' from Switzerland. We got on well together, and from Christmas 1967, we hitch-hiked to South Africa. After a couple of years, we kept going and ended up in Australia in November 1970. In January 1972, I found my wife, Tisna, in Tonga. She already had five children of her own. Despite all odds, we got married and lived happily in Brisbane until she passed away in 2012.   Footnote: you can find almost anything on the internet, and I think I found Peter Dumlich in a YouTube clip from 1985, in which he states he's 43 years old, works as a full-time trapper, and lives at Fort St John (and you couldn't get more "outback Canada" than that!) - and he's got a very German accent!!! - click here. The "shop" Axel Neisch ran in Berlin was a "Leihhaus" or pawn shop - click here.

 

And on it goes for another 240 pages. I had met Tisna when she was already in hospital but he had never told me that she had had five children before they met. Perhaps he should have called his book "The Man Who Loved Children". Anyway, I consulted the National Archives of Australia and it all checks out: here is Max Gallmann's Sydney Airport Arrival Card, stamped 9 November 1970 ...

 

 

... and here is Manfred's ...

 

 

He ticked "Holiday" as the purpose of his visit and wrote "three months" as "Intended Length of Stay in Australia". It's been a long three months, Manfred, and I hope you're still alive and still enjoying your holiday!

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P.S. As for Max Gallmann, I don't know how long he stayed in Australia but probably longer than the "3 months" he entered on his Arrival Card, because there is a later entry from 1971 in the archival files under his name but without details. Oh, and by the way, Manfred also wrote an interesting blog - click here - which he started after I had visited him. After all, blogging is contagious!

 

The original "Lebensraum" game

 

 

There's something wonderfully direct about the German language. I mean, what other language has a word like "Schadenfreude"? And why call a board game "LUDO" when your aim is to piss off your opponent and create some "Lebensraum" for yourself? Who, in fact, knows that "LUDO" is Latin for "I play"? Who cares? How much better to call it "Mensch ärgere Dich nicht" (Man, don't get mad) and practise all that "Schadenfreude"?

In Germany, everybody knows the game that started it all at the beginning of the last century, to be more exact in 1914. Developed by Josef Friedrich Schmidt as early as in the winter of 1907/08 and going into production in 1914, it turned into “the nation’s most popular board game” (Der Spiegel, 1987). As early as 1920 more that one million copies of the game could be found in German households. Up till today more than 70 million copies have been sold.

 

 

"A wise game, an educational game where you learn to lose", said Heinz Rühmann (who, incidentally, was my Godfather but that was at a time in Germany when we were all still starving together) in the film classic "Wonderful Times" (1950) (Herrliche Zeiten) and he is definitely right. As kids in Germany, we always played "Mensch ärgere Dich nicht" and must've worn out several boards without ever getting bored. And having learned how to lose, I know how to enjoy my occasional victories!

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Erstens kommt es anders, zweitens als man denkt!

 

 

Der Herbst ist hier! Und der Winter folgt bald! Beide sind nur kurz und nie zu kalt. Die Tagestemperaturen sind um die 20 Grad und die Nächte etwa 10 Grad. Aber dennoch ist das eine melancholische Zeit für mich. Ein alter Freund aus meinen Neu-Guinea Tagen, der auch nach Australien zurückkam, sagte immer: "Mein seelisches Zuhause ist immer noch in den Tropen."

Auch ich sehne mich immer noch auf mein Inselleben zurück. Mein "Riverbend" Wohnsitz war ebenso ungeplant wie der Rest meines Lebens. Ich kam in 1985 von Griechenland nach Australien zurück. Zuerst versuchte ich im tropischen Townsville wieder Fuß zu fassen. Das scheiterte - wohl weil ich zu ungeduldig war und es nicht genug Zeit gab - und ich zog in die Großstadt Sydney um passende Arbeit zu finden. Dort fand ich den großen "Karriereposten" aber die Großstadt gefiel mir gar nicht. Kurzentschlossen ging es nach Canberra weiter. Dort hatte ich zwanzig Jahre früher mein neues Leben in Australien angefangen.

Als freiberuflicher Wirtschaftsprüfer, Steuerberater und Komputer-Programmierer (was für eine Kombination!) baute ich mir dort meine eigene Praxis auf. Ich war frei mir mein eigenes Leben zu gestalten und war dennoch ein Gefangener meines eigenen Erfolges. Im Jahre 2000 stand ich dann vor der Wahl dieses freiberufliche Leben ohne Urlaub und ohne regelmäßige Stunden weiterzumachen oder in den Ruhestand zu gehen. Wieder als Angestellter anzufangen war völlig aus der Frage.

Ich hatte mir schon in 1993 "Riverbend" als Wochenendhäuschen gekauft und so zog ich dann im Jahre 2000 die hundert Kilometer zur Küste. Nicht weil ich es so geplant hatte sondern einfach weil es schon da war. Und heute, fünfundzwanzig Jahre später, ist es wohl zu spät an einen weiteren Umzug in die fernen Tropen zu denken. Obwohl ich mich noch an den Spruch erinnere: "Erstens kommt es anders, zweitens als man denkt."

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