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Thursday, March 31, 2022

The House of Saud

Yours truly in his apartment in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, reading "The House of Saud"

 

The last time I read "The House of Saud" was in my apartment in Jeddah in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. That was in 1983 and so, having long forgotten what I read then, I pulled the book back off the shelf today and started reading it again.

It's a brilliant, well researched, and valuable historical record about the founding of the Kingdom of Saud, [Saudi Arabia], with detailed accounts of its early dealings with the USA, Britain, what now is Turkey, and other Arab nations, and how it grew from a small desert tribe, into a powerful and obscenely wealthy Islamic state. The authors also give readers insight into the Shiite disturbances that began in the 1970s culminating in the seizure of the Grand Mosque, and the bloodshed that followed.

As it says in the book's blurb, "At Riyadh, in 1902 the Desert Raider Ibn Saud [Abdul Aziz] tossed the head of the town governor from a parapet down to his followers below ... thus was the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia founded. Two-thirds of the size of India, it holds a quarter of the world’s oil and has six times more overseas assets than the USA. A land of desert unchanged for centuries, with wealth and power to make the world tremble ... the domain of the House of Saud."

 

Read it online at www.archive.org

 

Originally born of isolated Bedouin tribes of the desert, the House of Saud attaches great importance to the purity of the bloodline. Marriages between first cousins, or equivalent relations, are preferred, or else carefully selected partners of equal status and purity in another tribe ... To quote from the book:

"As Islam permits each man to keep four wives at any one time, and as divorce is made easy for males under Koranic law, so that the magic number of four can be multiplied many times over in one man’s life, this custom begot not only large numbers of children by a single father, but also an immense ramification of family and tribal inter-relationships through several generations. Nephews married aunts, uncles were wedded to nieces and their children married each other to form a close-knit and, to the outsider, impenetrable mesh."

At the time of writing, the authors estimate that with about 500 princes descending from Abdul Aziz, together with wives, daughters and collateral branches of the family, 'the House of Saud cannot number less than 20,000 people.' The number of Abdul Aziz' wives has never been officially computed but official records show that he fathered 45 sons from 22 different women. In addition there were at least as many daughters from an even wider range of women, including no doubt some unacknowledged mothers among the various concubines and slave girls, not to forget 'wives of the night' whom it was customary [and still is] for Arabian men to enjoy whenever the opportunity arose. All they had to do was to 'marry' the woman or girl for as many hours as they desired, then divorce her by saying 'I divorce you'. Today, many women and girls are kidnapped from Yemen, and other surrounding Arab nations, for the purposes of this euphemism for a 'one night stand'.

In Islamic countries, the Koran and its inherent sharia law, or path to follow, supplies a total and explicit moral code but in Saudi Arabia it is even more than that. It remains there, the only recognised and enforceable code of law, so that the country is held in a '1300-year-old corset of town and desert morality that is deemed to be universally and eternally applicable.' This desert morality is upheld and brutally enforced by Wahhabism:

"In the middle of the eighteenth century, in what now must be regarded as the most fateful meeting of minds in Arabia since the time of Muhammad, Sheikh Muhammad bin Saud, ruler of Diriya, and great, great grandson of Mani, the first identifiable Saudi ancestor, gave shelter to an itinerant preacher of Nejd, named Sheikh Muhammad bin Abdul Wahhab. The preacher was a Muslim 'revivalist' and the world of Islam by then was much in need of rejuvenation and reform ... Abdul Wahhab was a true zealot, come to cleanse the 'stinking stables of Arabia' once more with the Word of God. But the Word of God proved insufficient for the task. Like the Prophet, Abdul Wahhab needed a sword as well – and to his eternal joy, he found one in Muhammad bin Saud and his family ... Although Muhammad bin Saud was only one of the numerous quarrelling Nejdi sheikhs at the time, little more important than the rest, he evidently grasped that a man who had a message would give him an edge over all his rivals, enabling him to unite Bedouin and townsfolk in a new jihad to extend his personal dominion ...

... Accordingly, in 1744 Muhammad bin Saud married off his son, Abdul Aziz, to a daughter of the preacher and thus sealed a compact between the two families that has been continued unbroken by their descendants ever since ... Contemporary Saudi Arabia, for all its money and the new corruption and idolatry that wealth has encouraged, remains in theory and to a surprising extent in practice, a Wahhabist state, officially dedicated to the preservation of pure Islam as propounded by Muhammad bin Abdul Wahhab."

The book takes the story of the House of Saud and of Saudi Arabia only up to 1979 and Juhaiman bin Muhammed Utaibi's crazed attempt to seize the shrine at Mecca but it remains relevant.

The authors - one of whom, David Holden, was murdered execution-style in Cairo, Egypt, in 1977, click here - seemed to think that the 'regime' had little chance of long-term survival, yet here we are, forty-five years later, with the House of Saud still an arbiter, if not the arbiter, of much of Middle Eastern politics.

And here I am, forty years later, still amazed at how I survived those lonely years in the world's largest sandbox, and still reading about it.


Googlemap Riverbend

 

How much for the other 25,000+ square metres?

Click on image to enlarge

 

I'm waiting for a couple of sales to set the price for "Riverbend". At one end of the scale is nearby 3 Sproxton Lane, advertised at $2,100,000 to $2,300,000; at the other end is 116 Snapper Point Road which seeks "Expressions of Interest" at around $5 million, with 183 Annetts Parade, Mossy Point somewhere in the middle.

We will keep guessing what "Riverbend" is worth until a buyer comes along who pulls out a cheque and completes the line "the sum of ..."

In the meantime, there is www.realestateview.com.au which, given a specific location, will crunch some numbers to come up with its best guesstimate. In the case of "Riverbend", it got the photograph right but came up with only $2,400,000 to $2,600,000 for the 3,617 square metres on which the house is standing. Please, how much more for the other 25,000-plus square metres, dear www.realestateview.com.au?

Now go and try it out on your own place: click here! (Des, for you I have this special link, because no-one cares about Adley Road in Fairfield CT)


Googlemap Riverbend

 

P.S. Early May, and it seems that 3 Sproxton Lane has been taken off the market.

 

Wednesday, March 30, 2022

Three Men in a Boat

 

Hands up who hasn't read "Three Men in a Boat"? (not you, Des; we all know you only read what's on the back of a COKE bottle!) But what about "2-1/2 Men in a Boat" which Nigel Williams wrote to earn £28,000 to pay a tax bill?

He took his larky trip up the Thames a whole hundred after Jerome K Jerome's famous journey in 1889, with no more serious purpose than to show his admiration for Jerome K Jerome - and to earn £28,000 to settle his tax which he did, but, of course, he had to pay tax on that as well.

His crew consists of JP, an efficient globe-trotting reporter; Alan, BBC supremo, the half man of the title, who drops in occassionally by limo; and Badger, an aristocrat among lurchers, who seems to be the only one in emotional control. Throw the mobile phone overboard and let your life's video include its quota of messing about in a boat on a river.

Read it online at www.archive.org

 

I was so taken by the introduction to the book that I tried to buy it on ebay but the only one I could find was in the USA. The price of US$8.95 was all right but the kicker was the US$33.90 in postage - click here.

Instead of buying it, I shall persevere reading it online at archive.org.


Googlemap Riverbend

 

Their only job is to grow up


As eighteen-year-old paymaster in 1963 or 1964 somewhere between Walsrode and Verden where we built the autobahn from Hannover to Bremen. In the background is my double-bunk and an oil heater on which I cooked meals and heated up water for my morning ablution.

 

I don't know if it's an age thing but these days as I walk around town I keep noticing those adolescents - young adults really - whose only job seems to be to grow up as they ride their skate-boards and do silly stuff our generation had either never done or already stopped doing by the time we entered high school.

Not that I ever entered high school. High school was for the kids of rich parents; it certainly wasn't for our family of five kids who tried to exist on the meagre pension my father got for getting shot up in the war.

Don't get me wrong: I am not feeling sorry for myself. My education was never ruined by any school system and I successfully completed my professional articled years before other articled clerks had even begun theirs.

And I hadn't even started to shave yet when I left home to become perhaps the youngest-ever paymaster for a construction firm that built the autobahn from Hannover to Bremen. My "office" (which was also my "home") was a kind of gypsy caravan which relocated every few months to catch up with the 200-strong construction crew who demanded their pays every weekend on time and accurate to the last 'Pfennig'.

 


As a young bank clerk in front of the ANZ Bank's Kingston A.C.T. branch

 

Those beginnings equipped me well for my first few years in Australia where I built myself a new career faster than those adolescents learn how to ride their skateboards.

Do I envy them their freedom? Hell no! On the contrary, I feel kind of sorry for them because they, too, one day need to grow up as I've yet to see a fifty-year-old skateboarder!


Googlemap Riverbend

 

Tuesday, March 29, 2022

We'll know on Saturday!

 

Padma has just returned from town with a bootful of groceries and a copy of the "Independent", a free rag which offers a few pages of local news wrapped in real estate advertisements.

It features a stunning property at 183 Annetts Parade, Mossy Point with a price guide ABOVE $4 million. If you don't believe me, here's the ad:

 

INDEPENDENT, Thursday March 24, 2022

 

The house was built in 1965; it sold in 1995 for $180,000, and again in October 2020 - that's just eighteen months ago! - for $1,200,000.

The auction is set for Saturday at 2 p.m., so we should know soon after whether they made a three-million-dollar profit in just eighteen month!


Googlemap Riverbend

 

P.S. Well, the auction was a flop with the property being passed in on a vendor's bid of $3.8 million. It is now re-advertised with a price guide of $4.1 to $4.4 million! Hope springs eternal in the human breast.

P.P.S. If you want to know what a property is worth, realestateview.com.au is a good starting point.

 

Happy days are here again!

 

Buying shares isn't like getting married: you don't do it for life, although I've been holding BHP shares now for a quarter of a century. In all that time they've only been testing the $50-mark since last year when they first topped it in May.

Their daily closing price topped $50 for six days in May, thirteen days in July, and another twelve days in August when they reached $54.06. After that, it was all downhill to a low of $35.56 on 2nd November.

Apart from monitoring the economy and the state of the world, buying shares is knowing how much pain you can endure, and I've kept enduring plenty of pain while collecting some juicy dividends along the way.

The pain has finally paid off, with BHP briefly topping $50.06 on 3rd March, then again topping $50.38 on 7th March, and making a more convincing run-up to $50.92 (briefly tipping $51.12) only yesterday.

Trading Central comments, "We have detected a 'Commodity Channel Index' chart pattern formed on BHP Group Ltd (BHP:ASX). This bullish signal indicates that the stock price may rise from the close of 50.92."

Happy days are here again!


Googlemap Riverbend

 

Monday, March 28, 2022

The genius of Charles Darwin explained by the genius of Richard Dawkins

 

The German philosopher Immanuel Kant (I'm a native German-speaker and refuse to mispronounce his name just because it sounds offensive) coined the term 'genius' in the 1700s, defining it as the rare capacity to independently understand concepts that would normally have to be taught by another person.

 

 

"The Genius of Charles Darwin" is a three-part television documentary, written and presented by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. It was first shown in August 2008 on Channel 4, and won Best TV Documentary Series 2008 at the British Broadcast Awards in January 2009.

Watching it is a great way to spend a rained-out afternoon. I just did!


Googlemap Riverbend

 

Non-essential energy

 

Our "electricity distribution network operator", ESSENTIAL ENERGY, last year decided that one of their power poles on our property would henceforth be ours. Beware of a "electricity distribution network operator" bearing gifts!

So I wrote, "Under normal circumstances, I ought to be grateful if someone suddenly stuck a new label onto something and in doing so conferred ownership of it onto me, even though I had never bought and paid for it. However, in the case of your sudden transfer of the power pole now marked with the label 'PP40217', I am a little reluctant to accept this 'gift' since it is not so much a transfer of ownership but a transfer of responsibility and, with it, all costs associated with it.

The power pole marked 'PP40217' is far too large to be a private pole, and thus far too large to be maintained by a conventional contractor. Unfortunately, it has to be so large because you chose to run the overhead service from a very long distance across the whole breadth of my property.

If, instead, you had run your distribution main all the way to my front gate (as you have done with all my neighbours), an aerial consumer's mains of less than half that distance could have been run to a connection point on a much smaller 'private' pole (in which case I would have placed it underground a long time ago as I did with my existing connection to the house).

Could you please call me at your convenience or, better still, call on me on my property in person, so that we can discuss this matter with all the facts before us?"

Of course, I shouldn't have even bothered because their reply, within days, was - blah, blah, blah, blah and blah - totally predictable:

"Thank you for taking the time to write to us outlining your concerns around private pole ownership and the configuration of the electrical assets on your property. We are unable to attend your property and have tried to contact you by phone and haven’t been able to reach you, so please allow me to address your concerns via email and to expand on our prior communication.

As an electricity distribution network operator, Essential Energy is responsible for maintaining and repairing the electricity network to the customer connection point located on private land. Landholders are responsible for network maintenance beyond this point (as, similarly, all owners of home and business premises are responsible for internal wiring maintenance).

Our determination of the connection point is based on the definition in the Service and Installation Rules of NSW – the industry standard for customer connection to the electricity distribution system (which reflects provisions under the Electricity Supply Act 1995 (NSW), the Electricity Supply (Safety and Network Management) Regulation 2014 (NSW) and AS/NZ 3000 Wiring Rules).

I have described the connection in the image below from the Service and Installation Rules which best describes the connection at your property.

The distribution system does not include any conduit, pole or other structure supporting protecting or enclosing electricity lines where those assets are part of an Electrical Installation.

If you would like to review the NSW Legislation and the NSW Service & Installation Rules, you can search for this information online as they are publicly available.

Beyond the customer connection point, landholders are legally responsible for the electricity assets including power poles that connect their premises to the network – these are referred to as private electricity network assets or private assets.

Generally, private power poles and other network assets located beyond the connection point to the switchboard or meter were installed at the instigation of a landholder and have always been owned by them or by subsequent landholders. Unfortunately, confusion about ownership may have arisen when properties changed hands or were subdivided. In some cases, this has been compounded by Essential Energy undertaking maintenance or defect rectification work at its own expense to manage potential safety risks. To resolve any past confusion and clearly indicate ownership going forward, Essential Energy Asset Inspectors are progressively ensuring that all power poles on a customer’s property are appropriately labelled and recorded in Essential Energy’s Asset Management System.

Under the Australian Energy Regulator’s (AER’s) Ring Fencing Guidelines applicable from January 2018, Essential Energy can no longer undertake this type of rectification work at no cost to the private network asset owner. Landholders are required to engage an appropriately qualified Accredited Service Provider and are responsible for associated costs.

A thorough review of Essential Energy’s asset management records confirms that under the definition of Private Electrical Assets, power pole PP40217 is and always has been, privately owned. This decision was not made at the time of the last inspection as it has always been the case.

I can confirm that the configuration and installation of pole PP40217 was done to the relevant standards of the time and that PP40217 also meets today’s current standards and can be maintained by an Accredited Service Provider.

To help private asset owners better understand their responsibilities, Essential Energy provides a range of information on our website (www.essentialenergy.com.au/privateassets), including FAQs, examples of privately-owned network asset configurations, common overhead power pole and powerline defects "

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and blah.

I had one shot left in the locker, the ombudsman! No, not the one in Sweden from where they borrowed the name, but the one in Sydney who is paid by the same paymaster as the state-owned Essential Energy.

Their reply was another blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and blah; and with already one more branch having broken off, which could just as easily have fallen across the powerline (again!), I sent off one last email:

A similarly heavy and healthy gum tree that just dropped, luckily NOT above the powerline

 

"This matter had been bounced back to you by the Ombudsman, after which someone called Jason phoned, pretending to do a 'search' of documents with the foregone conclusion that it was always going to end up as 'my' Private Pole. However, he did confirm that you are responsible for keeping the powerline clear of vegetation. When I suggested that this wasn't being done properly, the same person defended it by saying that you would not cut back 'healthy' trees despite the fact that gum trees don't wait to become 'unhealthy' before dropping their branches.

This is exactly what happened about a week ago, when a branch came down onto the powerline and hung there, and I had to call your emergency line to get two cars out to clear it from the powerline. When I pointed out the other branches dangerously overhanging the powerline, I was again told that this would have to wait until the next time your crew came through Sproxton Lane. Why wait until an accident happens? However, if this is your modus operandi, at least conform to me now that if a falling branch pulls down the powerline again due to your inaction and with it 'my' private pole, you will be responsible for both reconnecting the powerline AND straightening 'my' private pole."

I promptly received a computer-generated response telling me that "Your request has been registered and we will be in further contact with you in the near future."

Two heavy branches poised above the powerline which are likely to break off at any time

 

That "near future" is becoming a distant future as I've been waiting for almost two months now for a reply. In a last-ditch effort I sent them the "Yes, Minister" clip and inquired if "the matter is under consideration" or if "the matter is under active consideration". I'm not holding my breath!


Googlemap Riverbend

 

Sunday, March 27, 2022

The Faraway Tree House

 

I arrived at Cairns airport after a three-hour direct flight, jumped into my hire car, a cute little Hyandai Getz, and drove the short 25 kilometres into the mountain ranges behind Cairns to Kuranda, the Village in the Rain Forest. Checked into the Kuranda Hotel and enjoyed my first cold beer of the day. Later I went for a stroll up the main street of Kuranda and passed the Faraway Tree Building which I remembered from the real estate website as being the location of the two strata-titled flats for sale in town. As I looked around the building, a voice from above bailed me up. No, it wasn't God but Marshall, one of the tenants, who works at "The Ark" and who wasted no time in familiarising me with all the local gossip and introducing me to the only owner-occupiers in the building, the retired couple Pat & George Mcfarlane."   [continue reading here]

I wrote this over eighteen years ago, and since then have kept up my interest in the little Village in the Rain Forest in the hills behind Cairns.

 


Can't get enough? Join Michael Portillo in his TV series Great Australian Railway Journeys

 

After twenty-nine years at "Riverbend" - it may be a full thirty years by the time it's sold - I'll be definitely down-down-down-downsizing. No more carpentry or testing my plumbing skills, no more power tools or sitting for hours on a ride-on, and no more woodsplitting so as not to shiver through another cold winter. All I want is a room with a view (and room for my books) in a place that's either warm or hot but never cold.

 

Click here for a close-up map
For more information on Kuranda, go to www.kuranda.org

 

I had looked at 14 Barang Street which last month sold for $420,000, and then at a two-bedroom unit at 9/40 Coondoo Street which also sold last month for $207,000, which left a one-bedroom in the same Faraway Tree House, Unit 12, for sale at $187,000, but now also 'Under Offer'.

During my visit in 2003 I befriended the retired couple Pat & George Mcfarlane who lived in Unit 10 which they bought in 1992 for $96,000. The unit for sale at the time was the two-bedroom Unit 11 which then sold in 2004 for $93,000 (after having been bought twelve years earlier for $96,000; the real estate market in the tropical north is fickle; one big cyclone or one big Wet and everyone goes back to the Deep South!)

Plan of the Faraway Tree House, Level A = Shops; Level B = Home units
For past sale prices, click here

  • Unit 1 sold Sep'09 $286,000; Dec'04 $115,000; Sep'02 $500,000
  • Unit 2 sold Oct'15 $100,000; Aug'05 $89,750
  • Unit 3 sold Jun'06 $71,000
  • Unit 4 sold Jun'06 $71,000
  • Unit 5 sold Jul'97 $200,000
  • Unit 6 sold Jul'97 $200,000
  • Unit 7 sold Jul'97 $200,000
  • Unit 8 sold Jan'05 $90,000

  • Unit 9 sold Feb'22 $207,000; Jan'17 $159,000; Aug'02 $90,000
  • Unit 10 sold Oct'92 $96,000
  • Unit 11 sold Sep'04 $93,000; Oct'92 $96,000
  • Unit 12 sold Apr'22 $187,000; Dec'17 $185,000; Nov'17 $170,000; May'16 $159,000; Feb'07 $160,000; Sep'92 $93,000
    for sale May'22 at $269,000; reduced Jun'22 to $239,000
  • Unit 13 sold May'08 $140,000; Aug'95 $120,000
  • Unit 14 sold Sep'07 $185,000; Aug'02 $107,000

Such small pied-à-terre is ideal, and I'll keep my eyes on the Faraway Tree House. Someone might head south in the next twelve months which is how long it will take to sell "Riverbend" once I've put my mind to it.


Googlemap Riverbend

 

P.S. If you want to know what a property is worth, realestateview.com.au is a good starting point.

 

Full steam ahead!

 

The old Steampacket Hotel, a derelict old building left to rot ever since the new Steampacket Hotel opened on the Kings Highway, has just been sold for $1,601,000 - click here. It last changed hands in July 2012 for $240,000. The owners couldn't have made that much profit selling beer.


Googlemap Riverbend

 

The New Rulers of the World

 

When American Vice-President Dick Cheney said that the 'war on terrorism' could last for fifty years or more, his words evoked George Orwell's great prophetic work, 'Nineteen Eighty-Four'. We are to live with the threat and illusion of endless war, it seems, in order to justify increased social control and state repression, while great power pursues its goal of global supremacy. Washington is transformed into 'chief city of Airstrip One' and every problem is blamed on the 'enemy', the evil Goldstein, as Orwell called him. He could be Osama bin Laden, or his successors, the 'axis of evil'."

 

 

So begins the Introduction to John Pilger's book "The New Rulers of the World", a must-read for anyone interested in debunking the myth of globalisation.


Googlemap Riverbend

 

I've just discovered Daniel Kehlmann

 

Born in 1975 in Munich, Daniel Kehlmann found his way all the way to Batemans Bay where I found the eight-hour audio recording of his book "Measuring the World" in my favourite op-shop. What a find!

"Measuring the World" recreates the parallel but contrasting lives of two geniuses of the German Enlightenment - the naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt and the mathematician and physicist Carl Friedrich Gauss. Towards the end of the 18th century, these two brilliant young Germans set out to measure the world.

Humboldt, a Prussian aristocrat schooled for greatness, negotiates savannah and jungle, climbs the highest mountain then known to man, counts head lice on the heads of the natives, and explores every hole in the ground.

Gauss, a man born in poverty who will be recognised as the greatest mathematician since Newton, does not even need to leave his home in Göttingen to know that space is curved. He can run prime numbers in his head, cannot imagine a life without women and yet jumps out of bed on his wedding night to jot down a mathematical formula.

 

For the German original, click here

 

And while I'm still listening to the audio book, I've already ordered the paperback (it's also available at archive.org) and the movie in German.

 

 

What a find!


Googlemap Riverbend

 

Do You Want Fries With That?

 

My Canberra real estate spy with a religious bend - he calls himself FRIAR but that's probably part of his spycraft - made another dead letter drop, this time to tell me about what is probably the most stunning property on the Clyde River, built sometime in the 90s and owned by the couple who used to own the Batemans Bay and other McDonald's franchises.

It went online only three days ago, with the agents Ray White keeping its location secret, suggesting that "Address [is] available on request", but every local knows where it is and anyone coming up the river can see it on the starboard side. If you don't have a boat, simply click here.

 

The property's address is 116 Snapper Point Road, Batemans Bay, located at red marker

 

The advertisement gives no price and invites "Expressions of Interest", but the clipping from the Canberra Times suggests a price guide of $5 million which would smash the current sale record for Batemans Bay.


Googlemap Riverbend

 

P.S. If you want to know what a property is worth, realestateview.com.au is a good starting point.

P.P.S. Well, 116 Snapper Point Road was not snapped up; instead, it has been taken off the market again.