I seem to have come full circle!

 

The four Yorkshiremen did it tougher but not by much. As a kid in post-war Germany I didn't even have my own bed. Mine was one of those folding beds which I unfolded in the living room after the last one had gone to bed, and which I had to fold up as soon as the first one was up again.

I had my own room of sorts after I left those crammed quarters in my mid-teens. They were cheap rented rooms, often the least desirable in other people's houses, as I followed my work, first around Germany and then around the world. There was the six-berth cabin on my six-week voyage to Australia; the migrant hostel at Bonegilla; then a boarding-house in Canberra where I occupied a share-room because a share-room was cheaper; then company housing of various standards in New Guinea, including construction dongas on the huge Bougainville Copper Project; then the AIR NIUGINI mess hall in Moresby and a company house in Lae.

I thought I had reached the top in Honiara where I lived a gracious life in a big house on Lengakiki Ridge overlooking Honiara and the ocean beyond, all the way to Savo Island and Tulagi, but things got even better in Rangoon in Burma where I was the sole occupant of a rambling old colonial house with five domestic servants anticipating my every wish.

Then another company house in Moresby and another one on Thursday Island, followed by living in the TUSITALA Hotel in Apia before moving into the historical Eastern & Oriental Hotel on Penang's waterfront.

In Saudi Arabia it was back to just one room but a very big one in a five-star hotel with its own ensuite, followed by the same in the SAVOY Hotel in Piraeus in Greece, before I grew tired of hotel food and room service and demanded my own apartment overlooking the blue Aegean Sea.

Finally, back in Australia I moved into my own four-bedroom-with-ensuite house in Canberra, and then, in retirement, into this rambling big two-storey mansion at "Riverbend" which is far too big for just the two of us, and far too difficult to heat during the recent cold snaps.

The solution? Move into the smallest bedroom, kept as warm as toast by an electric oil heater, with a light to read my books by, a radio to listen to ABC Radio National, and the internet to keep in touch with the world.

I seem to have come full circle!

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If in doubt leave it out!

 

Bomaderry Railway Station may be the end of the line but it was the start of a conversation I had with a retired school-teacher whose subject had been English - not literature, just English.

"So you'd know all about the pervasive misuse of the apostrophe and lack of use of the Oxford comma", I suggested. She did indeed, and her advice, given to countless pupils before, was "If in doubt leave it out!" which may have contributed to much of the problem we face today.

That may have worked with Peter Carey who produced an entire novel, "True History of the Kelly Gang", without using a single comma, but I suggested that the Oxford comma would have clarified the inscription "This book is dedicated to my parents, Ayn Rand and God" and the sentence "Highlights of Peter Ustinov's global tour included encounters with Nelson Mandela, an 800-year-old demigod and a dildo collector".

There was no time to discuss the pervasive misuse of the apostrophe or to have some drink's [sic] before the bus pulled in to take us farther down the coast. And I forgot to ask if she had seen WAKE IN FRIGHT.

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What an astonishing thing a book is

 

What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic." [from Carl Sagan's Cosmos, Part 11: The Persistence of Memory (1980)]

The amazing American astronomer, planetary scientist, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, science communicator, author, and professor Carl Sagan passed away in 1996, long before the publication of Ronald Wright's "A Short History of Progress" which is an absolute must-read, provocative, illuminating and disturbing as it is, for anyone who cares about the future. His prophetic book ends with these words:

 

 

"We are now at the stage when the Easter Islanders could still have halted the senseless cutting and carving, could have gathered the last trees' seeds to plant out of reach of the rats. We have the tools and the means to share resources, clean up pollution, dispense basic health care and birth control, set economic limits in line with natural ones. If we don't do these things now, while we prosper, we will never be able to do them when times get hard. Our fate will twist out of our hands. And this new century will not grow very old before we enter an age of chaos and collapse that will dwarf all the dark ages in our past. Now is our last chance to get the future right."

I don't care if you have never read and will never read any kind of book at all, but you must read this one. If you can't read it, pay someone to read it to you - or listen to the audio recording at the top of this post.

I guarantee you it'll be better than watching tonight's FOUR CORNERS and Q&A on ABC television (to say nothing of the commercial channels).

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The VOICE explained!

 

This is a very clever little piece written by Sam Clough. I found it on cartoonist Paul Zanetti's facebook page. It gives a fair description of the VOICE and is fully self-explanatory:

A while ago Linda Burney, Labor's Minister for Indigenous Australians, was spotted by chance at a Chinese restaurant. It gave rise to a hypothetical conversation: what if a waiter explained the menu to Burney in the manner she responds to questions about the VOICE model?

Waiter: Good evening and welcome. I’ll be taking your order.

Burney: Thank you. Could I please have the prawn dumplings to begin with, followed by the Mongolian lamb and ...

Waiter: Sorry to interrupt, but we have revised our ordering process. This is our new menu. (Hands her a leatherbound folder)

Burney: (Opens folder, revealing only a single page) There must be a mistake. Where are the dishes?

Waiter: Look under the heading.

Burney: The heading says 'Food'. There's nothing listed underneath.

Waiter: It's what we call a principle-based menu. I'll put you down for food for one, shall I?

Burney: I'm sorry, but is this a joke?

Waiter: I can assure you this new menu will be to your liking. The food will be delicious. It will nourish. It will enrich. It will bring diners together.

Burney: Look, this doesn't have to be a complex question. What dishes are you offering?

Waiter: You don't like the new menu?

Burney: How can I like it when I know nothing about it?

Waiter: Of course you will like it. The food is delicious. It nourishes. It enriches. It will bring diners together.

Burney: So you keep saying. But how do I know what I'd be getting?

Waiter: There is a wealth of information available on Chinese cuisine, which you can read for yourself. I suggest you start with 'Classic Chinese Dishes' by T. Calma & M. Langton.

Burney: This restaurant endorses that book?

Waiter: No.

Burney: But nonetheless this restaurant serves the dishes contained in that book?

Waiter: I didn't say that.

Burney: Then what is the point of reading it?

Waiter: It will help you understand that the food we serve is delicious. It will nourish. It will enrich. It will bring ...

Burney: Will you stop saying that! If you can't answer simple questions, then forget it. You’re not getting my business.

Waiter: I urge you not to be divisive. After all, the Asian owners of this restaurant have generously extended their hand and asked you to walk with them on this journey. You don't want to be associated with the xenophobes, do you?

Burney: That's preposterous! And by the way, you don't even list prices on the menu. What's this going to cost me?

Waiter: It’s not our policy to reveal our prices upfront. But don't worry, you’ll find out — eventually!

 

 

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Indian Summers

 

The week before we left for Sydney, we met in the pool in the Bay a lady who, the child of a British civil servant in India, had been born in Simla, once the summer capital of British India.

I was reminded of this when I found the 4-disc DVD "Indian Summers" at VINNIES in Newtown. Set in the "little England" of Simla against the grandeur of the Himalayas, it tells the rich and explosive story behind the decline of the Britith Empire in India. Not even the label "MA 15+ Strong sexual scenes" was necessary for me to pick it up immediately.

That was not the only thing "Indian" about our visit to Sydney, as the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was also in town. At the LIFEHOUSE we also met up again with the Malay-Indian Raj, a volunteer whom we had met five years earlier when he turned out to be the friend of a colleague in Penang with whom I had worked at Price Waterhouse as consultant for the Penang Port Commission. Then, at Redfern Station while trying to find the platform for our train to Bomaderry, we ran into Ramess, an Indian from Durban in South Africa. He had left there in 2004, and we talked, half in English and half in Afrikaans, about the many changes that had occurred there since the end of Apartheid.

Of course, we was too young to have experienced the worst excesses of Apartheid, nor had he ever heard of Alan Paton's "Cry, The Beloved Country" which had been banned during my time there. We exchanged email addresses and promised to keep in touch. The people one meets!

And the unexpected encounters continued: at Kiama we met a couple, he in a wheelchair and she pushing it, who had come down from Lithgow in the Blue Mountains. "How far are you going?" I asked. "Just out on a day trip to Bomaderry and back to celebrate our wedding anniversary." All in one day which, both being pensioners, cost them $2.50 for him and $2.50 for her. Something to keep in mind when my time comes!

(I absolutely love travelling by train which got me thinking how nice it would be to live near the railhead at Bomaderry, and to jump onto a train for a day-trip up the coast or into Sydney or even beyond, all for $2.50. Perhaps I ought to include Bomaderry in my downsizing-plans!)

As we were waiting for the bus at Bomaderry, we met the Pertells from Camden. They knew Noni and Stewart whose "Escape from the City" had been shown in Episode 38 in September 2019 - click here - of the ABC series by the same name. As the caption reads, "Having downsized to a small Sydney unit, retirees Noni and Stuart are feeling restless. They're keen to find a coastal home which caters to their passions and has ample space for the family to come and visit" - and they did when they bought this lovely "Hampton-style" house on Nelligen's Clyde Boulevard.

Now it's time to kick back the recliner in front of the blazing fire and watch the first episode in the 576-minute long series "Indian Summers".

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The Dream Team

 

While Padma is this morning helping her friend Deidree to collect donations in the Bay's shopping centre for the Motor Neurone Disease Association, our own 'motor' is laid up in the carport awaiting a new spare part.

As we drove into the Bay last Friday, the ENGINE warning light lit up on the dashboard. The hastily called NRMA breakdown mechanic plugged in his computer and diagnosed an "EGR VALVE" problem. With our trusty old mechanic Ian "Baldy" now in retirement, we had to look for a new one.

His verdict, "Needs a new EGR valve. Can't get one in until next Tuesday. And that'll be $660, thanks!" And that's it until next Tuesday: no motor!

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The VOICE always was, always will be about power!

 

Don't take my word for it; read what Dr (Professor) David Barton has to say about it. Dr Barton specialises in general adult and geriatric psychiatry with a particular interest in neuropsychiatry acquired brain injury, and the link between depression and cardiovascular disease.

To quote from his article in QUADRANT, "The contemporary definition of ‘Aboriginal self-determination’ is not about fitting in with the mainstream, of integrating or assimilating, but of splitting from mainstream Australia. Meanwhile, the rest of us get to pay for it whilst the rent seekers contribute very little to the community and Aboriginal lives, including those of children, continue to be ruined."

And he continues, "The Aboriginal Industry is chock full of ill-informed urban myth-makers and illusionists, this caste of urgers and deluded pretenders giving rise to the patronising insistence on the uniqueness of 'Aboriginal knowledge' about everything from agriculture and fish farms (a lá Bruce Pascoe), water and fire management (a lá ‘cultural burning’) to Aboriginal 'art', 'fashion' and even 'astronomy', and not to mention Ernie Dingo and Richard Walley’s thoroughly overdone 'Welcome to Country'. This is mostly snake oil fakery, an effort to convince contemporary Australians that the Aborigines of old were something they clearly were not. Worse, histories and observational accounts of early Aboriginal life and culture are vanishing from library shelves, replaced by the anti-white post-modern dogma of ‘invasion, colonisation and inter-generational trauma’. It is unusual today to find any history book about Aborigines in a secondary or tertiary institution that is more than fifteen years old. This is cultural censure and erasure happening right under our noses. We are all the poorer for it, black and white alike ...

... Labor and their confident, conceited acolytes would have us believe that support for the Yes vote is a lay down misère. It is beholden upon the rest of us — those who care about Australia as a whole rather than advancing the narrow interests of one group only — to contest the creation of a separate and sovereign Aboriginal nation on the Australian continent, for that is where the ‘Voice’ will take us. Once embedded in the Constitution, such an internal ‘sovereign nation’ will be impossible to dismantle. Despite Albanese & Co's efforts to promote one side of the debate and suppress the other, this is the threat and the message all Australians must hear." [Read the full article here]

I left South Africa in 1969 because I hated its policy of Apartheid. I equally hate Albanese's planned policy of a reverse-Apartheid. If it is indeed a lay down misère, it may be time to think of emigrating again!

Any advance on $3 million for the "Riverbend" property, plus furnishings, machinery and tools, and including an ageing FORD FOCUS which, as has just now been diagnosed by the NRMA, needs a new EGR valve?

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May I voice something important about the VOICE?

 

In fact, I let the SPECTATOR AUSTRALIA in this article explain what's on my very tiny little mind because they can do it so much better:

" The real point of this article is to present just one argument that, in theory, should ensure the rejection of this referendum question. Strangely, as far as I am aware, I am the only person making this case. This question is fundamentally flawed in a way that everyone should be able to understand. A provision in the constitution that references, or rather preferences, a certain group of people, must make it beyond doubt who those people are. If the current criterion – self-identification – is applied, that would open up a can of worms. We need to know who exactly qualifies as an Aborigine and how those persons establish their bona fides. For example, would any degree of Aboriginality in one’s ancestry suffice? If so, then the Aboriginal population can only continue to expand indefinitely, to the point where this will become less and less about disadvantage and more and more about entitlement. If not, then where is the cut-off? 50 per cent Aboriginality? 25 per cent? 12.5 per cent? Wherever it is set, someone is going to be aggrieved. To further complicate the issue, prominent Aboriginal academic, Dr Suzanne Ingram, suggests that as many as 300,000 of the currently reported Aboriginal population of 800,000 may not be genuine.

If this issue is not adequately addressed in the referendum question itself, that alone should be a deal-breaker. I cannot stress this enough. It cannot be left up to parliament, or worse the High Court, to define, expand or contract this demographic at whim. If the Voice goes into the constitution, then it must be the constitution (by means of a referendum) that defines and redefines – over time and as necessary – who is an Aborigine.

To underscore this point, let me refer to Section 15 of the constitution. This covers casual Senate vacancies. The gamesmanship that followed Gough Whitlam’s political opportunism in appointing Senator Lionel Murphy to the High Court caused this section to be rewritten in 1977. That reworked Section 15 is now the most voluminous and prescriptive section of the Constitution, occupying some two pages. My point is this: if a simple matter such as the filling of a casual Senate vacancy requires such a detailed treatment in the constitution, how can we possibly leave the definition of who is an Aborigine so open-ended? It will further entrench tribalism within the Aboriginal community and will become a lawyer’s picnic."

The last time a politician, Senator Alex Antic, raised this question, he was shot down in flames and his questioning called 'borderline racist':

 

This video clip was uploaded by Senator Alex Antic on 20 February 2023 since when it has been viewed a mere 68,000 times. It should have been viewed some 25 MILLION times, at least once by EVERY Australian, but, of course, there's always the footy and the pokies.

---

Look at them squirming and hedging their bets, and come out with their answers:
"Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah"
Isn't it downright embarrassing to think that we're governed by people like that?
Mr "Borderline Racist" must be really worried about hanging on to his over-paid job.
That’s right, in this brave new world, to even question why someone with only the tiniest fraction of Aboriginal DNA can set aside the majority of their heritage to claim Aboriginality means you're a borderline racist. I am prepared to very proudly wear that badge!

---

 

By the way, I tried to email a link to the article to some friends, headed up 'Who is an Aborigine? The single most important question about the Voice', and had all my emails blacklisted as 'Abusive'. Give us a break!

We are well past "Nineteen Eighty-Four" in every sense of its meaning! Don't buy into this and later suffer from 'buyer's regret'! Vote a big NO!

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P.S. If I haven't bored you to death yet, listen to this VOICE OF REASON.

 

People die only when we forget them

One of the last few postcards I received from my friend Hans Moehrke

 

On this day in 2015, my friend Hans Moehrke passed away at his home in Cape Town. He and I had met when he stayed at the SAVOY HOTEL in Piraeus where I was a permanent resident during my "Greek days". We breasted the bar on many nights and, over many drinks, bemoaned the state of the world and our place in it, in three languages: Afrikaans, English and German. We were both in commodity trading: I mainly in grains, in lots of 20,000, 30,000, even 50,000 tonnes at a time, whereas Hans was more into pork bellies for which there wasn't much demand from my Saudi masters.

We stayed in touch after my return to Australia in 1985, sometimes through an occasional phone call but more often through letters and postcards. "I was delighted to speak to you on the phone today. Although some ten years or more must have passed since we last spoke with one another, hearing your voice was just as if we had been together only yesterday", he wrote, and repeatedly invited me to visit him and his family in Cape Town. (His daughter Astrid and her husband and their son later emigrated to Adelaide, and I like to think that my supporting letter to the Department of Immigration was of some help.)

Knowing I was again single by choice - just not my choice - he tried to matchmake me by sending me several of these enticing postcards:

 

 

On the back he wrote, "I will gladly assist you in trying to source the right partner for you. However my hands are tied until I receive detailed specifications from you. South Africa has many fair maidens to offer, although they may not always be fair in colour as revealed on these postcards. To acquire any one of the wholesome women for the purpose of marriage, you have to negotiate with the parents of the bride to agree on the level of the 'Labola' payment. The price is determined by the status of the family - chief, headman or commoner - whether the bride is a vergin [sic] or not, whether she has illegitimate children, etc. In practice this means you will have to pay plus/minus 200 cows or 40,000 rand for a daughter of a chief, if she is still a vergin [sic]. If on the other hand, if she has had premarital experience, one should be able to negotiate a 25% discount. Should the above proposition arouse your interest and since I am reasonably familiar with local customs, I could of course assist you with negotiations and any physical examination that may be required (here, too, I am qualified) to make sure that you receive value for money."

 

Postcard from 2005. The signs of Parkinson's disease are already visible in the handwriting

 

After he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and his hand-writing had become almost illegible, we phoned each other instead. Then, after I had heard nothing from him for a while, I don't know what made me do it but I googled "Hans Moehrke Cape Town" and found this:

 

www.remembered.co.za Hans Horst Moehrke was born on 30 July 1934 and passed away on 27 May 2015 in Cape Town. Posted by Remembered Admin, 10 Jun 2015

 

That was eight years ago, and I still miss his postcards and letters and occasional phone calls, his great sense of humour, and even more our long talks breasting the bar of the SAVOY HOTEL. Rest in Peace, Hans!

People die only when we forget them. I shan't forget you, Hans!

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Good neighbours add to the value of your property

 

The reverse is also true. The previous owner of "Riverbend" had been given so much stick by the neighbours that he'd all but given up on the property and accepted my offer which was more than a HR Holden but still well below market value.

Ernie Dingo couldn't have done a better job for me, as I've been a happy "Riverbender" for almost thirty years - twenty-seven years more than the previous owner lasted - and I may add many more years while the value keeps going up even without my (still nasty) neighbours' help.

As G.K. Chesterton wrote, "The Bible tells us to love our neighbours, and also to love our enemies; probably because usually they are the same."

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Every idler is a thief

 

The man who eats in idleness what he has not himself earned, is a thief, and in my eyes, the man who lives on an income paid him by the state for doing nothing, differs litte from a highwayman who lives on those who travel his way. Outside the pale of society, the solitary, owing nothing to any man, may live as he pleases, but in society either he lives at the cost of others, or he owes them in labour the cost of his keep; there is no exception to this rule. Man in society is bound to work; rich or poor, weak or strong, every idler is a thief." [From Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "Émile"]

 

Page 158

 

How I wished that Centrelink kept Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "Émile" as their user manual. It was written twenty-seven years before the French Revolution. Do we need another revolution before my wish comes true?

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Just in case ...

 

Just in case you've been missing my daily posts, let me assure you I'm not dead (yet!) In fact, I've been in Sydney to be assured by the good doctors at the LIFEHOUSE that all that nasty surgery and lengthy radiation therapy has paid off, and I may yet see the end of our stupid Labor government before they give away this nation to a mob of 'self-determined' Aborigines. I simply can't wait to see the end of this!

 

 

The trip itself was a very welcome change from our peaceful life at "Riverbend" as we travelled, first by PREMIER bus from Batemans Bay to Bomaderry, and then by train from Bomaderry to Sydney Central, to our centrally located bed & breakfast place at GOLDEN GROVE in Newtown.

 

A Mexican's introduction to Newtown. When will he sing 'South of the Border'?
This Mexican bloke knows more about Newtown than I know about Tlachihualtepetl

 

Newtown had lost none of its amazing vibes, good eating-places, many shops, and interesting nightlife since I "lived" there during my six-week-long radiation therapy five years ago. It almost felt like coming home!

 

Another slow walk down King Street without the Mexican's commercial hype.
"My" Vinnies is at 10:04; the old GOULD's BOOK ARCADE, now closed, at 22:02;
TRE VIET at 26:43; our Turkish friend, who at one time also had a shop in the Bay, at 28:07; our favourite chicken place owned by an Indonesian, CLEM'S CHICKEN SHOP, at 29:30;
should I have popped in at 30:25 and left a copy of William Golding's book behind?

 

Of course, it wasn't all beer and skittles; in fact, I was only allowed to drink water before they injected me with a radioactive tracer called F-FDG, which is essentially ordinary glucose with a radioactive tag, before they stuck me into a PET-CT scanner which is a large machine that looks a little like a giant doughnut standing upright. HINT: if you suffer from claustrophobia, don't enter! The whole procedure took about three hours, after which I continued to glow in the dark for another twelve.

 

Paula from Samoa on the right

 

Al Grassby, the father of Australia's multiculturalism, would have been smiling had he been able to watch the throng of multi-coloured patients waiting in the PET-CT Reception. The staff itself was equally multi-coloured: there was Paula from Samoa, who had five years earlier explained to us the difference between a cute puppy and a PET-scan; then came a Filipino who gave me the safety instruction, similar to those on board an aircraft but without the life jacket and whistle, on how the radioactive substance would be administered - his name was, incredulously, Joseph Conrad; "Oh, my favourite author", I quipped but was met with a literary Heart of Darkness; the doctor who followed him had a physiognomy familiar to me: "Are you Iranian?" I ask, "How did you know?" he replied, and I had to explain to him that I had lived and worked in Tehran in 1976, long before he was born; the nurse who came in after him to insert a canulla into my arm looked Indian even without a sari, and so I asked,"What part of India are you from?" She replied in a broad Australian accent: "I was born here; I'm Australian!" Touché! Trying to get past this awkward Lady Susan Hussey moment, I explained to her that, after more than fifty years in this country, even my own German background caught up with me every time I sat down in a restaurant and the waitress, pen poised over the menu, would ask me, "What'll it be, Hun?" When the next nurse arrived to administer the radiotracers into my vein, I wisely kept my mouth shut as well as my eyes as I could never stand the sight of blood and hypodermic needles but, as I said, good ol' Al Grassby would have been drooling all over his colourful tie.

 

 

All this happened in the morning after I'd been fasting since my last meal the night before, and so we settled down to a very satisfying Thai meal of chili and lemongrass barramundi at our old favourite, "Tre Viet".

 

 

There was just enough time to pop in at Vinnies on the other side of King Street where I had spent countless hours back in 2018 when they still had a comfortable sofa and chairs in their book section which was sorted by colours. "I don't remember the title, but the cover was red."

 

VINNIES on King Street's colour-code book section in 2018

VINNIES on King Street's colour-code book section this year

Why, there's even a book with that title; unfortnately, it's not in Vinnies' blue section

 

The sofa and chairs were gone now but the colour-system was still in place, despite which I did find "The New NEW Thing" by Michael Lewis (the author of "The Big Short") in the black section, Tim Flannery's "The Future" hidden away amongst the blue-coloured spines, and, best of all, "A Short History of Progress" by Ronald Wright, an author I had never heard of before and who out-Jared-Diamonds even Jared Diamond. What a find! I also picked up a DVD, "Indian Summers", from the media section which, thankfully, was neither in colour nor any other order.

 

 

Then it was back to the LIFEHOUSE where they first sprayed some numbing medicine into my nose before they shoved a small flexible telescope up it and down my throat for a fiberoptic laryngoscopy.

 

On the left Surgical Assistant Cate Froggatt who back in 2017 kept a watchful eye on the knife when the surgeon, Professor Clark, shown on the right, cut deep into my throat

 

While all this was happening to me, Padma was amusing herself with the arty people in the LIFEHOUSE foyer, where she produced this amazing Blue Poles painting, soon to be on display at the National Art Gallery:

 

 

The result of the PET-scan and the laryngoscopy seemed to satisfy the doctors because I was allowed to join the crowds on King Street for a final night out and a very satisfying Chinese meal at the no-frills but very authentic Chinese restaurant "Happy Belly". Happy bellies indeed!

 

Padma with her favourite, salt-and-pepper tofu

 

Then back to Golden Grove and a very early start by train from Sydney. The trains were already full of workers with grey Winston-Smith-like faces buried deep into their smartphones. To quote W. Somerset Maugham: "Most people, the vast majority in fact, lead the lives that circumstances have thrust upon them ... They are like train-cars travelling forever on the selfsame rails. They go backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, inevitably, till they can go no longer and then are sold as scrap-iron." Luckily, I got off this hamster wheel when I took the road less travelled by. It has made all the difference.

 

At the WELCOME Restaurant at Bomaderry Railway Station
Did you notice the book in the bottom left-hand corner? It's "A Theatre for Dreamers" about Charmian Clift and George Johnston living on the Greek island of Hydra; it's a real gem which I picked up at the Animal Welfare League op-shop just down the road

 

Getting off at the railhead at Bomaderry, we met up once again with our Chinese friends at the "Welcome" Restaurant. From there we took the bus back to Batemans Bay. There we quickly dropped in at the Aquatic Centre for a short plunge into the warm-water pool to rid ourselves of "the foetid air and gritty of the dusty, dirty city". Home again! PHEW!

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