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Presently she could see the submarine no longer; it had vanished in the most. She looked at her little wrist watch; it showed one minute past ten. Her childhood religion came back to her in those last minutes; one ought to do something about that, she thought. A little alcoholically she murmured a Lord's Prayer.
Then she took out the red carton from her bag, and opened the vial, and held the tablets in her hand. Another spasm shook her, and she smiled faintly. "Foxed you this time," she said.
She took the cork out of the bottle. It was ten past ten. She said earnestly, "Dwight, if you're on your way already, wait for me."
The she put the tablets in her mouth and swallowed them down with a mouthful of brandy, sitting behind the wheel of her big car." [Final paragraphs in the book "On the Beach"]
Vladimir Putin's threat of nuclear war brings back the final scene in the 1959 movie based on Nevil Shute's famous - and now all-but-forgotten - book "On the Beach", a post-apocalyptic novel published in 1957. It details the experiences of a mixed group of people in Melbourne as they await the arrival of deadly radiation spreading towards them from the Northern Hemisphere, following a nuclear war. As the radiation approaches, each person deals with impending death differently.
The movie was remade in 2000 as an Australian television film:
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
P.S. Let's hope there's still time to watch the movie based on one of Nevil Shute's other great stories: "A Town Like Alice". Or, perhaps more fittingly, try to find a copy of "The Man Who Saved the World", a 2013 feature-length Danish documentary film by filmmaker Peter Anthony about Stanislav Petrov, a former lieutenant-colonel of the Soviet Air Defence Forces, and his role in preventing the 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident from leading to nuclear holocaust - click here.
Read John Mearsheimer’s 2014 essay "Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault" here
According to the prevailing wisdom in the West, the Ukraine crisis can be blamed almost entirely on Russian aggression. Russian President Vladimir Putin, the argument goes, annexed Crimea out of a long-standing desire to resuscitate the Soviet empire, and he may eventually go after the rest of Ukraine, as well as other countries in eastern Europe. In this view, the ouster of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 merely provided a pretext for Putin’s decision to order Russian forces to seize part of Ukraine. John Mearsheimer maintains that the United States and its European allies share most of the blame for the current state of affairs.
If you have an hour-and-a-bit to spare, listening to his lecture at the University of Chicago in 2015 may disabuse you of your prejudices. At the very least, it may help you to look past the current headlines.
Bear in mind that this speech was given almost seven years ago. I wonder if John J. Mearsheimer would give the same speech in light of what is happening in Ukraine right now.
You can also watch it (without English subtitles) here (you can also read the book here)
Almayer's Folly" was Joseph Conrad's first novel, published in 1895. It centres on the life of the Dutch trader Kaspar Almayer in the Borneo jungle who dreams of finding a hidden gold mine and becoming very wealthy.
The rest of the story is in the telling, and there is no better storyteller than Joseph Conrad. While everyone knows "Lord Jim" and the famous movie starring Peter O'Toole, there's been no attempt to turn any of Conrad's many other stories into a movie until the French produced, albeit in a far too contemporary setting, "La Folie Almayer". And then came the lavish Malaysian production "Hanyut", released in Indonesia under the title "Gunung Emas Almayer" (Almayer's Golden Mountain).
I've been looking for this movie for years, and then, suddenly, I found it not only here but also, under the title "Mountain of Gold", on YouTube.
It's time I put on my Joseph Conrad t-shirt, pour myself a gin & tonic, and watch this great movie on this rained-out-tropical-weather day!
"I sit in a pitch-pine panelled kitchen-living-room, with an otter asleep upon its back among the cushions on the sofa, forepaws in the air, and with the expression of tightly shut concentration that very small babies wear in sleep. On the stone slab beneath the chimney-piece are inscribed the words 'Non fatuum huc persecutus ignem' 'It is no will-o'-the-wisp that I have followed here'.
I've forgotten now when and where I found Gavin Maxwell's book "Ring of Bright Water"; all I know is that it was after I had moved to "Riverbend" which, in many ways, is my own Ring of Bright Water.
It is a beautifully written, thoroughly delightful account of Gavin Maxwell's life in a lonely cottage on the northwest coast of Scotland, about the animals who shared it with him, and about the others who are his only immediate neighbours in a brilliant landscape of rock and sea.
Of course, the book was too good not to make into a movie which, together with the underlying script - click here - is also a masterpiece. I have it on DVD but, luckily for you, it is also full-length on YouTube:
Something to watch to drown out the drums of war in Europe. Enjoy!
Not until I had read an article headed "A Mournful Legacy", had I ever heard of David Halberstam and his massive (over 800 pages) and massively influential account of America’s ill-fated war in Vietnam, "The Best and the Brightest".
Since Vietnam we've had Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and many other military posturings, right down to the current crisis over Ukraine, and, as the article "A Mournful Legacy" suggests, President Joe Biden would do well to check out "The Best and the Brightest" at his local library.
The title of the book refers to some of the best and brightest men of that time — John F. Kennedy, Walt Whitman Rostow, the Bundy brothers, Robert McNamara, Dean Rusk, numerous other political illuminati of the '60s —and they were all chewed up by an army dressed up in pyjamas and sandals. As Halberstam concludes, "There was, Americans were finding, no light at the end of the tunnel, only greater darkness."
I've started reading "The Best and the Brightest" which, despite it feeling almost like watching an Alfred Hitchcock thriller, is slow going. You may get a quicker grip on the subject by listening to the above clip or, better still, by watching this documentary of the Vietnam War:
The article "A Mournful Legacy" ends with, "Moral realism suggests the possibility of a similar outcome for Ukraine: neutralization to transform it into a buffer between Russia and NATO while providing for the essential security and well-being of the Ukrainian people. A perfect solution? No, and hawkish critics will scream appeasement. But such an outcome will be infinitely preferable to a major (and potentially nuclear) armed conflict or to Ukraine remaining a perpetual flashpoint. And let’s face it: given the precarious state of their own democracy, Americans today have more pressing concerns to deal with than Eastern European border security. "
P.S. I've just realised that it's not so much my never having heard of David Halberstam as my having forgotten about him, because many years ago I read his book "The Reckoning" which is still in my library.
No walking this morning! It's been pouring down with rain and the river looks like a Chinese ink wash painting. Padma has gone to the weekly "Bitch and Stitch" meeting, and I'm listening to Ennio Morricone. It's that kind of morning.
You know the tune! Goes right through your bones, doesn't it? Remember it? Western! Spaghetti Western! "Once Upon a Time in the West"! YES!!!
Why, I might even put on the DVD and watch it all over again! Pity you can't watch it, but there's a short trailer on YouTube - click here.
Dave standing outside my favourite watering hole, the Blues Point Hotel
In the 1980s, businessman David Glasheen was riding high, with his publicly-listed company valued at $10 million. When the stock market crashed in 1987 he lost everything - prompting him to move to an isolated island off Cape York, Restoration Island.
He returned to Sydney for a short visit to help launch his book, "The Millionaire Castaway". Of course, I had bought it because I know (of) David Glasheen and because I had expected a little more from a chap who has spent over twenty years all by himself on a desert island. You know, insights into why we are here and what life it all about. Instead, as Somerset W. Maugham put it in his story, "German Harry", "If what they tell us in books were true his long communion with nature and the sea should have taught him many subtle secrets. It hadn't." In fairness to good ol' Dave, he may have done a better job and bared it all, had he written the book himself. Which he didn't; someone called Neil Bramwell wrote it for him, and in the retelling all that got lost.
As he himself says in the following video clip, "Once you have lived on an island, you do not want to live on the mainland. It's a whole different world. The isolation, peace, privacy, everything I need is around me in the water. I thought Sydney had disappeared at the airport - there was nobody there. Then the people came, then the waves come, the planes land and then the waves come. It's basically the same - just more conveyors, more roads, more concrete. It is still chaos but then again it's a big city, that's what you expect. I can't sleep without the sound of the ocean or natural noises. The stillness of the city is really weird. There is no noise other than cars and things, you know. Part of my life was here and I know this area so well and it is great to come back to see it as it was. Nothing's changed very much other than a few more buildings, a few more cranes in different places. I was the chairman of a public company. We had just floated. Started from a very tiny private syndicate to a public company, which is my first time ever. We were on a roll. The markets were hot. Everybody was positive. The value at one point was over $10 million. I had three properties. It was pretty exciting and then bang, the crash come. It was devastating really; then your life starts falling apart. You know, your marriage fails. All the things that go with the trappings of success, if you like. The family can't handle the pressure of it all. I survived physically but mentally it was hard, you know, and when all the fallout happens, you have to make decisions about what you're doing and the idea came out of nowhere. Not running away per se but living in an environment that hasn't got all the pressures of where I've come from and that's where I live. I've got enough water. It is like Jurassic Park. There as an incredible amount of wildlife and natural foods but I'm in control of my time which is a luxury. Most people don't have that. You don't need clothes. The temperature is amazing. I just run around in like a lap-lap sort of thing, basically and something on your head for the sun. My life is around the weather. The weather is really good, we want to play. The weather's not so good, we work. There's always work to do and it's all around beer. So if I don't do any work, no beer. If I do a dawn to dusk really hard, up to three beers. It was just so unreal when I think back on it, wearing suits, wearing clothes I didn't like, performing like a performing seal to get the money like a circus act essentially is what I did, and most people are doing it still. I just look around, I just see no colour, no laughter, no fun anymore. The people who live here, they seem to be like they are on a treadmill somehow. They're not happy. I don't see myself as crazy, other people do but I don't see myself as crazy. I'm just doing what I think is naturally right. I miss company, people or human company and that can be hard at times. We don't have issues, we don't have problems. It's character-building. So you just can't afford to look at the negative side because, the minute you do that, you are on the slide down, you are finished. You feel like you're in heaven. It is the nicest place I've ever been on and that's why I live there. I plan on being there for the rest of my life."
Watch Dave at 1:50, standing outside my favourite watering hole, the Blues point Hotel
On my trip up north to Thursday Island aboard the MV TRINITY BAY in April 2005 I passed Restoration Island, not close enough to wave to Dave but we exchanged email and phone calls for some time after. At the time I remembered that less than two months earlier, cyclone Ingrid had threatened to strike. Several communities along the coast and on nearby islands had been evacuated, but remaining behind was a bare-chested old hermit with a long grey beard, David Glasheen (although his name could be Robinson Crusoe for all we know), of Restoration Island, looking as if he had been marooned since Captain William Bligh beached his boat here after the 1789 HMS Bounty mutiny. (Captain Bligh named it Restoration Island, because the day he and his men rested there was the anniversary of the restoration of Charles II to the throne and perhaps because the stay on the island did restore them but the locals call it "Resto"). It is said that this nouveau beachcomber from Sydney has plans to develop Restoration Island as an eco-resort. He's been living alone on Bligh's island for years ever since his long-suffering Woman Friday had escaped on a passing boat. But David is looking for another Girl Friday. His quest took him as far as the "TODAY SHOW" on Channel 9 and even the Sunday Telegraph published this article:
"He may look like Robinson Crusoe but, after 12 years of living alone on a tropical island, David Glasheen now wants to play Romeo. The former Sydney high-flyer who left the rat race and bought himself a tropical island near Australia's Top End is looking for a 'Girl Friday'. He is now advertising online for love, offering the ultimate sea change for the right woman who doesn't like shopping or neighbours. Mr Glasheen and his dog Quasi are the only residents on tiny Restoration Island, off Cape York. While he has the occasional visit from tourists or passing yacht, he admits it gets a little lonely in paradise. 'There has to be someone out there for me,' Mr Glasheen told The Sunday Telegraph. 'I've got an eye for the ladies, so I guess I would do anything to meet the right partner.' The divorced father of three is hoping he will meet the 'mermaid' of his dreams using the Internet dating site RSVP. His advertisement reads like the perfect scenario for a Mills and Boon novel, but so far he has received only a few responses. 'The beautiful coral island I live on is a castaway's dream,' he writes. 'A tiny green oasis floating in the desert of the sea, surrounded by the corals of the Great Barrier Reef.' Mr Glasheen, 65, a former businessman, traded in his suit for a lap-lap almost two decades ago after losing $10 million in the stock market crash of 1987. His first marriage, from which he has two daughters, ended around the same time. The one-time company executive says losing almost his entire fortune was one of the best things that ever happened in his life. 'I just realised it all didn't mean anything,' he said. He paid seven figures for a 50-year lease on one-third of Restoration Island - the remaining land is a national park. Mr Glasheen moved there in 1993 with his girlfriend, but with no hot water or even a bath, she found it tough and left with their young son. He has added a few mod cons to his island hideaway but says it is still pretty basic. Its simplicity and remoteness has attracted the likes of Russell Crowe and Danielle Spencer, who stopped off there on their honeymoon. 'But we have style in the wild here. We don't live like yahoos or hillbillies - we have plenty of champagne when we need it,' Mr Glasheen said. Restoration Island, 2000km north of Brisbane, was named by Captain William Bligh. It was there his supporters 'restored' their spirits following the infamous mutiny on the Bounty. Mr Glasheen said he was looking for a warm-hearted woman who could put up with the peculiarities of life on a remote island and would be willing to travel to the mainland for a dinner date or two."
More recently, even a German film crew came to visit and report on him - in German, of course!
Well, David, I hope you won't get killed in the crush! If you do find your Miss Right, make sure her first name isn't 'Always'! Wouldn't it have been better to whittle down the candidature to deaf-and-dumb lobotomised nymphomaniac cooks with poor vision and a Florence-Nightingale complex? Anyway, in this his hour of greatest personal need(s), I feel compelled to comfort him with a favourite short story of mine which goes something like this:
I hope David benefits from it, although, like Maugham writes about German Harry, he may end similarly: "I foresaw the end. One day a pearl fisher would land on the island and German Harry would not be waiting for him, silent and suspicious, at the water's edge. He would go up to the hut and there, lying on the bed, unrecognisable, he would see all that remained of what had once been a man."
An old friend whom I met in my first few months in Australia through my membership with the Youth Hostels Association of Australia, sent me the above clipping. Ours has been a very intermittent friendship since 1965 because, while he stayed with the one employer, the Commonwealth Public Service, in the one town, Canberra, for all of the intervening fifty years, I seem to have clocked up a record number of over fifty jobs in just as many locations.
I remember him as always having acted his age, and the fact that we're now both facing single-digit life expectancy (or at best a life expectancy with a "1" in front; although he may outlive me since he suffered far less wear and tear) has led us to discussing the good ol' days and, recently, the madness of the current real estate market, hence that clipping.
I think acting my age is about as sensible as acting my street number, and I don't envy other people their more staid existence, but I do envy my friend his last name: FRY. You see, in recent times I've given some thought to what should happen to what's left of me. As I don't fancy looking up at a wooden lid for the rest of my eternal life, I've left instructions to cremate me. And I think it would be great if on the day invitations could be sent out that read, "COME AND SEE PETER FRY!"
There isn't the same play on words with a name like GOERMAN, umlaut or no umlaut, is there? Perhaps I ought to leave instructions that, as the coffin moves away and the curtain slowly closes, a little man suddenly jumps out from behind the curtain and asks, "Has anyone got a match?"
But back to real estate and the recent spate of emails in which parties, who had previously shown an interest in "Riverbend" when it was still for sale at under two million dollars, are now inquiring if it is still for sale, with the implied but not spelt-out suffix "at the old price". Nice try!
Are they naïve to think it would still be for sale for two million, or do they think I am so naïve that I would still sell it for two million after the market has gone up like a rocket in the last two years? It puts me into a dilemma as I can't even give them the benefit of the doubt because either way makes one of us look like an idiot, and so I don't reply at all.
P.S. The real estate market hasn't only gone mad in Canberra; there's a house in the Bay that sold in October 2020, LESS THAN 18 MONTHS AGO, for $675,000 and resold on 22 February 2022 for $1,150,000 - click here.
It sounds like a title for my autobiography, "Awaiting collection", but it's actually two books, "Land" and "Missing", I had ordered from booktopia.com.au and which are awaiting collection at the Batemans Bay post office. Padma has already left in the car.
The Australian movie "Oyster Farmer" is one of my favourites. It's nothing deep and meaningful but the stunning scenery of the Hawkesbury River coupled with the parochial lingo and mores of its richly textured characters and their vague feelings about the bitter-sweet quality of life – its longings, broken dreams, hopes, past baggage, forgiveness, and coming to terms and just getting on with it - make it a movie that stays with you for a long time. The full-length movie appeared on YouTube several times, and several times it was taken off again because of obvious copyright infringements.
We have been debating if and when to put "Riverbend" back on sale again. Several previously interested parties have recently emailed me, asking if "Riverbend" is still for sale, without adding the implied "at the old price?" Perhaps I should put them out of their misery by relisting it on realestate.com.au with my new price of three million - or should I make it $2,999,999.99 and throw in a free copy of "Oyster Farmer"?
Anyway, I wait a little longer, perhaps until the full-length movie "Oyster Farmer" is back on YouTube to save me having to give away a free copy.
Though Australia appears on the map of "Gulliver's Travels", nobody has determined whether it is Brobdingnag, Lilliput, or the land of the Yahoos. Reading these pages in Pico Iyer's "Falling off the Map" may help in making that determination:
Click on page to enlarge
To read the book, click here, SIGN UP (it's FREE!), LOG IN, and BORROW.
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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