It's that time of year again

 

 

Death and taxes are two unavoidable certainties in life. I'm glad I learned as much as there is to know about taxes instead of, let's say, parallelograms which only comes in handy during parallelogram season, whereas the tax season starts on the 30th of June every year.

I must've signed off on literally hundreds of tax returns after the Registrar of Tax Agents for Papua New Guinea assigned me Tax Licence TTA222, but all that came to an end when I left Papua New Guinea at the end of 1974, and I lived and worked in countries with more benign tax regimes, or none at all (e.g. Burma and Kingdom of Saudi Arabia).

When I came back to Australia in 1985, I felt at first quite flattered when the nice people in the Australian Taxation Office sent me a letter, telling me that my tax return was 'outstanding', particular since I could not even remember sending them one.

Since then, for the past forty years, I've been sending a return every year, and for the last twenty-five years I've been sending three: one for my superfund, one for Padma, and one for myself. It's called 'income-spreading' to avoid the punitively high marginal tax rate of 45%, to say nothing of the Medicare Levy of 2%, or the Medicare Levy Surcharge of 1%, 1.25% or 1.5% in the absence of private patient hospital cover.

It's that time of year again, and I may start crunching the numbers this weekend - unless I can find an interesting book on Euclidean geometry.

 

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Das Wunder von Bern

 

Click on "CC" or "Settings" for English subtitles

 

The 1954 FIFA World Cup Final is often listed as one of the greatest matches in World Cup history, and also one of its most unexpected upsets. In Germany, it has become known as "Das Wunder von Bern" (The Miracle of Bern).

The game was played at the Wankdorf Stadium in Bern, Switzerland, on 4 July 1954, and saw West Germany beat the heavily favoured Golden Team of Hungary - also known as the "Mighty Magyars" - 3–2.

The unexpected win evoked a wave of euphoria throughout Germany, which suffered from a lack of international recognition in the aftermath of World War II. It was the first time since the Second World War that the German national anthem was played at a global sporting event.

 

To watch cuts from the real television broadcast, click here

 

I was there, an eight-year-old boy in a huge crowd, watching it on a small black-and-white television set left running for the occasion - but without sound - behind the window of a radio and television shop (it was a Sunday and all the shops were supposed to be closed). When the final whistle blew, we all hugged each other with tears in our eyes.

Some publicists described the 1954 victory as a turning point in post-war German history, notably Arthur Heinrich and Joachim Fest. In Fest's words: "It was a kind of liberation for the Germans from all the things that weighed down upon them after the Second World War ... July 4, 1954 is in certain aspects the founding day of the German Republic."

Something to remember on this day a whole seventy-one years later.

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P.S. ... and for those of you who can read German, here's the book "Sepp Herberger und das Wunder von Bern". Also Peter Kasza's "1954 - Fußball spielt Geschichte - das Wunder von Bern".

 

 

I'm back at "Riverbend"

 

 

While Padma was waiting at Samarinda airport for her flight to Yogyakarta (she's been gone for more than a week and I have almost forgotten what she looks like, but I think she's the third one seated from the right) I made a quick dash into the Bay while the sun was still shining.

 

At Yogyakarta International Airport
From there it is two hours by bus to Mendut, which is four kilometres from Borobudur

 

At the GOLDEN LAKE Chinese Restaurant, I ordered my usual chicken in garlic and chicken in oyster sauce at $15 each. The young girl wrote it all down and then began to fumble. "What's the matter?" I asked her. "I can't find my calculator," she replied. Being retired, I was in no hurry; in fact, it gave me enough time to wonder what would happen to her. Would she keep working in this take-away until some young bloke got her pregnant and she would then raise a child who, like her, couldn't add 15 + 15 without the help of a calculator? Chinese food for thought!

Inside Woolies, I noticed that everyone was looking at me, and then I realised that I was the only one without a tattoo! Anyway, a loaf of HELGA wholemeal bread, a bottle of milk, and some mandarines and bananas later, and I'm back at "Riverbend". The red-and-white yacht is still anchored in the river, and I'm again in the only room in the house which is small enough to be able to be heated by an electric heater.

 

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A whiff of Passionfruit & Pepperberry

 

The label reads, "Passionfruit & Pepperberry". Am I supposed to drink that stuff?

 

These days, my ability to remember song lyrics from the 60's far exceeds my ability to remember why I walked into the kitchen, but since I was already there, I thought I warm up my hands by doing the washing-up. Better not tell Padma that I enjoyed it, or it will become my permanent job.

All one needs is ONE spoon, ONE fork, ONE knife, ONE plate, ONE cup, and the washing-up was all done in a few minutes, which confirms that people with a high IQ tend to be lazy. I read this somewhere although I'm not sure where since I was too lazy to read the whole article.

 

 

Looking out the window, I see a red-and-white motor yacht anchored on the other side of the river. It had come to the relative calm of the river to seek refuge from the bad weather in the Bay, and it's been anchored here for the past three days. With the bad weather behind us, it must be time to up-anchor and return to the Bay. After a quick shower and shave, I may also drive to the Bay before I run out of bread and milk or start talking to myself. There's nothing wrong with talking to myself, except if I don't pay enough attention, I have to start all over again.

Breakfast is a piece of burnt toast and a cup of lemongrass and ginger tea. Strange, I seem to detect a whiff of Passionfruit & Pepperberry.

 

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P.S. Great minds seem to think alike, as Padma has just now emailed me a couple of photos prior to her departure from Borneo where she visited family and friends and attended a Buddhist retreat. Today she's off to Borobudur, and to visit her brother in Jakarta and her sister in Surabaya.

 

Read it while you can still be sure it's only fiction

 

Sam Neill reads an abridged version of the book. For the unabridged version, click here

 

Putting things on lay-by was very popular when I arrived in Australia in the 1960s. I guess they are not so popular these days, but that hasn't stopped today's Australian government to give the USA a cheque for US$500 million (some AUS$790 million) on 8 February 2025 as a first instalment for three nuclear submarines it may never see.

 

Read the book online at www.archive.org

 

I paid far less for Nevil Shute Norway's 1957 book "On the Beach" - he used "Nevil Shute" as his pen name to separate his writing from his career as an aeronautical engineer - and its 1959 film adaptation, which stays pretty close to the book for the most part, but then changes the ending. In the book, Dwight follows military norms to the end, scuttling the submarine so it can't fall into the hands of a now non-existent enemy. In the film, he and his crew set out for home, wishing to die in America. This also ruins the book's sad end for Moira, choosing to die looking out over the bay where Dwight's body lies in his sunken vessel.

 

"On the Beach" is a story about the end of the world,
and Melbourne sure is the right place to film it - click here.

 

This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.

 

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