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This booklet from 1948 predates my arrival in Australia by seventeen year but things hadn't changed all that much - or maybe they had because I never even received any booklet during my two-day stay at the reception centre in Bonegilla.
Click on images to enlarge
Some say the kangaroo and emu were chosen to symbolise a nation moving forward. This is based on the common belief that neither animal can move backwards easily.
The booklet ends by suggesting, "There are many things we could tell you but you will have no difficulty in finding them out for yourself."
Yes, there were many more things they could have told us and, no, it wasn't easy finding them out for ourselves but we got there in the end!
P.S. "-- when you're old" on page 15 makes interesting reading:
How things have changed in the meantime! - see the ABC News article "Chifley's time bomb 70 years in the making" of May 2014 - click here.
To summarise: "The National Welfare Fund has long passed into historical obscurity. But the mythology of welfare contributions it engendered remains - one that imagines the welfare state as a giant piggy bank."
No idea who he is but I, too, will have my name on that wall, albeit under the year 1965
My Bonegilla Reception Centre registration card
With no one putting up a plaque for me, I might as well do it myself on the Arc Memorial Sculpture at the former Bonegilla Migrant Centre where I had spent the first two nights in my new home Australia - see here.
Two hundred and fifteen dollars seem a small enough price to achieve 'immortality', and perhaps with a bit of luck someone will see the plaque, remember me and send me an email before I go where no email will reach me.
And here are some more old photos of the immigration centre as I saw it in August 1965:
Click here and here for more information on the Bonegilla Migrant Hostel.
Today's memorial site: (click on image to enlarge)
P.S. Hadn't hard from the good people at "Bonegilla Migrant Experience" for some weeks, so I 'phoned to see how my application was progressing (which it wasn't!) and also to ensure they won't forget the diaeresis above the umlaut - as in "Görmann". For a moment they thought I was talking about having had too much of last night's curry :-)
Steve arriving at Gizo in the Solomons in November 2011. Note the "PT 109 Gizo Yacht Club", named after the torpedo boat commandeered by JF Kennedy and sank off Gizo during WWII
I
first heard of Steve Gates, owner and captain of the Searunner 37 trimaran Manu-O-Ku, when I became involved with Villa Mamana on the tiny island of Telekivava'u in Tonga through its previous owners Joe Altenhein and Matt Muirhead - see here.
Steve had lived in Hawaii for 31 years, raised two children, and been building one-off epoxy composite boats in his own Tradewind Island Boatworks (a long name for a small company), before sailing to Tonga in late 2003 to become the paid caretaker of the very remote 40-acre private island of Telekivava'u in the remote island group of Ha’apai.
Steve's trimaran Manu-O-Ku anchored off Telekivava'u
Think of spending whole weeks at a time totally alone on an idyllic, pristine island with your yacht anchored in the lagoon ... no wonder, Steve sat it out for a whole three years. It was a wonderful lifestyle but, as he said, "security is overrated, and the nomadic lifestyle was calling ...", and so he sailed north to the Vava’u Group where he ran a charter business for the next 4½ years.
Steve Gates on Telekivava'u in Tonga
For nearly eight years Tonga gave him an incredibly comfortable life which he lived "one moment at a time" and which he found very hard to leave. However, he did so finally in June 2011, first sailing back to the Ha’apai Group for a week to revisit the remote island he had lived on for three years, and then singlehandedly to Savusavu, Fiji, where he arrived on July 1, 2011. On to Vanuatu in September, then the Solomon Islands in November. In February 2012 he made the 2000 nm passage to Palau in western Micronesia before finally arriving in the Philippines on New Year’s Eve 2012.
His trimaran is his only home. As he writes, "This lifestyle works for me, a nomadic self-reliant lifestyle, on the oceans, among islands, sailing your home, wandering the world yet sleeping in your own bed."
He's been in the Philippines ever since, running his charter business Manu-O-Ku Sailing Adventures out of Port Barton, one of the last few untouched gems of the Philippines. It's a 45-minute flight from Manila to Puerto Princesa, and from there an easy ride to Port Barton, a sleepy fishing village, unspoiled and authentic, where life goes at its own pace and which Steve is in no hurry to leave.
Joe Altenhein, the creator of Villa Mamana on Telekivava'u, described Steve as "a nice man, doing what I wish I could do" --- and so think all of us. The nearest I ever got to Palawan was Boracay and, oh boy, am I itching to go again!
Ich wanderte im Jahre 1965 vom (k)alten Deutschland nach Australien aus. In Erinnerung an das alte Sprichwort "Gott hüte mich vor Sturm und Wind und Deutschen die im Ausland sind" wurde ich in 1971 im Dschungel von Neu-Guinea australischer Staatsbürger. Das kostete mich nur einen Umlaut und das zweite n im Nachnamen - von -mann auf -man.
Australien gab mir eine zweite Sprache und eine zweite Chance und es war auch der Anfang und das Ende: nach fünfzig Arbeiten in fünfzehn Ländern - "Die ganze Welt mein Arbeitsfeld" - lebe ich jetzt im Ruhestand in Australien an der schönen Südküste von Neusüdwales.
Ich verbringe meine Tage mit dem Lesen von Büchern, segle mein Boot den Fluss hinunter, beschäftige mich mit Holzarbeit, oder mache Pläne für eine neue Reise. Falls Du mir schreiben willst, sende mir eine Email an riverbendnelligen [AT] mail.com, und ich schreibe zurück.
Falls Du anrufen möchtest, meine Nummer ist XLIV LXXVIII X LXXXI.
Notice to North American readers:
This blog is written in the version of English that is standard here. So recognise is spelled recognise and not recognize etc. I recognise that some North American readers may find this upsetting, and while I sympathise with them, I sympathise even more with my countrymen who taught me how to spell. However, as an apology, here are a bunch of Zs for you to put where needed.
Zzzzzz
Disclaimer
This blog has no particular axe to grind, apart from that of having no particular axe to grind. It is written by a bloke who was born in Germany at the end of the war (that is, for younger readers, the Second World War, the one the Americans think they won single-handedly). He left for Australia when most Germans had not yet visited any foreign countries, except to invade them. He lived and worked all over the world, and even managed a couple of visits back to the (c)old country whose inhabitants he found very efficient, especially when it came to totting up what he had consumed from the hotels' minibars. In retirement, he lives (again) in Australia, but is yet to grow up anywhere.
He reserves the right to revise his views at any time. He might even indulge in the freedom of contradicting himself. He has done so in the past and will most certainly do so in the future. He is not persuading you or anyone else to believe anything that is reported on or linked to from this site, but encourages you to use all available resources to form your own opinions about important things that affect all our lives and to express them in accordance with Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Everything on this website, including any material that third parties may consider to be their copyright, has been used on the basis of “fair dealing” for the purposes of research and study, and criticism and review. Any party who feels that their copyright has been infringed should contact me with details of the copyright material and proof of their ownership and I will remove it.
And finally, don't bother trying to read between the lines. There are no lines - only snapshots, most out of focus.
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