"Welcome to your sanctuary"

 

Or should the heading have read "Third time lucky?" because the auction in early 2022 flopped; the subsequent sales campaign did likewise; and then the owner tragically died in a motorcycle accident in Laos in May 2023 - click here.

Probate must have been granted because the property is again going to auction on 27 January - "IF NOT SOLD PRIOR" warns the ad - click here.

Previously, there had been some uncertainty about whether all buildings on the property were fully approved. Later, the agents at the time produced a "Building Information Certificate" which confirmed that "Council is satisfied as to the matters specified in section 6.25(1) of the Act" - whatever that means! - and now the agents' advertisement specifically spells out " All structures approved", so go for it, Jason!

 

 

To quote from the beautifully written advertisement, "Here, time seems to slow down, and the stresses of everyday life dissolve into the gentle current of the river. It's not just a home; it's a retreat, a place where the beauty of nature converges with the comfort of home, creating an emotive tapestry that whispers, 'Welcome to your sanctuary'."

Unlike "Riverbend", this one should still be within your price range, Jason, so if you buy it, I hope you will welcome us to your sanctuary!

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P.S. The agents weren't very helpful in indicating a possible reserve price (and neither should they; it's going to auction, so let the market decide!); however, they referred to the recently sold property next door at 5 Sproxtons Lane and suggested that "in regards to price, the home immediately next door sold just last month for $1,688,000 and was just the one dwelling so we are imagining it will be in excess of that".

P.P.S. Update two days before Christmas: it sold for exactly $2,000,000! Maté would've been happy! And here's what I also heard: it sold to the people who already own a property on the opposite side of the lane.

 

Freedom from clutter!

Even though I have yet to read it doesn't mean you shouldn't - at www.archive.org

 

My best friend Noel who'd been batching all his life and did all his own own washing, cooking, and mending, kept nothing more than what he called his "housewife" which consisted of his own mattress, sheets, pillows, blankets, cutlery, crockery, kitchen utensils and an old teapot.

A small shack he had bought on the edge of Caboolture came with a kitchen table and three upright wooden chairs. On my visits there I found those chairs a little uncomfortable and so I picked up two old armchairs from a second-hand shop at nearby Beachmere. Did he take them along when he moved to Mount Perry a few years later? No, he didn't! While Noel's belongings didn't all fit into one suitcase (although they once did when he had come back to Australia after a lifetime in New Guinea), they easily fitted on the backseat of his battered old car.

With such an excellent role model and after two decades of living out of a suitcase myself, what possessed me to become such a compulsive hoarder of "stuff", but mainly books and DVDs? Why, I even have a copy of the book "Freedom from Clutter" --- although I have yet to read it!

Instead, I've just read - again! - one of my other hoarded books, Robert Dean Frisbie's "Island of Desire". It is a spell-binding island adventure-cum -romance novel based on his own real life adventures. The second half of the book describes the frightening experience of living through a hurricane on Suwarrov Atoll during which he lost all his belongings. Instead of bemoaning his loss, he comforts himself with these words:

"I have been wondering if the loss of my personal property is not a blessing. I am beginning to feel a kind of angry pleasure because these household gods are gone. The hurricane has been Nature's way of cleaning the old deadwood from Suvarrow, and incidentally I have profited by losing my own deadwood. I had chests full of instruments, tools, manuscripts, keepsakes, rags and tags, books that would never be read again but were kept as sentimental reminders of the past — deadwood that had burdened me for years but that I had never had the fortitude to throw away. I carried on my back a burden of possessions, never realizing that the effort to carry them was out of proportion to the pleasure they could give me. Now I am grateful that they are gone. Let these reminders of the past be forgotten; let them molder with the wreckage of Suvarrow. Let the past be forgotten lest it fasten its cumbrous fingers on the future."   [click here]

I, too, have chests full of keepsakes, rags and tags, reminders of the past, and shelves full of books that I will never read again. I, too, carry on my back a burden of possessions, never realising that the effort to carry them is out of proportion to the pleasure they could give me.

When will I find the fortitude to throw off the burden of my possessions?

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Are we all insane?

Part 2 * Part 3 * Part 4 * Part 5 * Part 6 * Part 7 * Part 8 * Part 9 * Part 10
Part 11 * Part 12 * Part 13 * Part 14 * Part 15 * Part 16 * Part 17 * Part 18

 

Remember "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"? Well, the powerful documentary The Marketing of Madness is far more frightening!

It weighs in at nearly three hours, but if you have ever taken or are likely to take psychiatric drugs, you should watch it all the way to the end. I've never taken a pep pills or anything of that kind in my life and I certainly never will after having watched this documentary!

Life's problems are NOT medical disorders; they're just that: life's problems which we were told to "cure" with bleeding, then by having certain organs cut out, later by having our brain functions altered, but now we are told by Big Pharma to simply pop a pill.

Are you feeling shy? You are suffering from a social anxiety disorder. Pop a pill!

Feeling a bit slack and listless? You've got it bad, you know, because you have a motivational deficiency disorder. Pop a pill!

Homesick? Sorry but you have a separation anxiety disorder. Pop a pill!

Feeling suspicious? You have paranoid personality disorder. Pop a pill!

And feeling just a bit up and down about life's ups and downs? Sorry, old bean, but you're bipolar. Pop a pill!

This film includes massive documentation that cannot be refuted, and covers everything from road rage (a crime dressed up as a mental disorder) to nonsense like compulsive shopping disorder (invented by a drug company shill) to Internet addiction disorder (originally a joke), fraudulent clinical trials, placebo washout, and the Rosenhan experiment.

It tackles the dangerous lunacy of medicating the young, branding them as suffering from all manner of imaginary disorders, explains how often mental disorders, so-called, are linked to real problems in our lives, and finally gives a short overview of treating disturbed people without frying their brains with dangerous drugs that can shorten their lives, drive them to despair, suicide, or even to mass murder.

To go by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM, aka 'Diagnostic Source of Money' by your friendly psychiatrist), every single person in the world could be said to have some sort of mental disorder. After all, homosexuality was listed as a “sociopathic personality disorder” when the DSM was first published in 1952, and remained so until 1973.

Hoarding has been added to its latest edition, the DSM-5, which makes me as mad as the next person because I love my books and I have hoarded thousands of them! ☺

Big Pharma now has a pill for every ill. Is there one for hoarding?

 

 

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My trip to Samoa

 

Few men who come to the islands leave them; they grow grey where they alighted; the palm shades and the trade-wind fans them till they die, perhaps cherishing to the last the fancy of a visit home, which is rarely made, more rarely enjoyed, and yet more rarely repeated. No part of the world exerts the same attractive power upon the visitor ..."

So begins Chapter I of Robert Louis Stevenson's "In the South Seas" and his name has been forever linked with Samoa where he spent the last few years of his life and where he died and was buried on the 3rd of December 1894 on Mt Vaea.

 

 

I did leave the islands several times and I returned several times. One of the island nations I had lived and worked in was Samoa where in 1978 I had assisted with the formation of the Pacific Forum Line.

 

The Errol-Flynn look-alike on the far right is moi ☺

 

In more recent years I flew back there to assist a local business in the setting up of their accounting system and to train them in the use of the MYOB computerised accounting package.

 

Traders from Samoa noticed profits getting lower they sent out a cry for a sharp-minded guy Now their problems are just about over Courtesy of Ian Grindrod, Nelligen's Poet Laureate

 

It was very much a trip down memory lane. The house I had lived in was still there ...

... but, of course, the old neighbours ...

... and old friends had departed long ago ...

... as had so much else.

Sad, really. Quite sad!

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A voice from beyond the grave

 

A trailer from the movie "Ein Mann und sein Boot" which shows Rollo Gebhard's third circumnaviagtion in 1983 when he was accompanied by his wife Angelika Gebhard.

 

When Joshua Slocum left Boston in 1895 in his 11.20m-long gaff-rigged sloop oyster boat named "Spray" to become the first person to single-handedly circumnavigate the world, he was 51 years old.

The Panama Canal hadn't even been built yet, and Slocum had to take the dangerous route around Cape Horn. You can read about his more-than-three-year-year-long voyage in "Sailing Alone Around the World".

When Rollo Gebhard left Genoa in Italy in August 1967 in his 7.25m-long yacht "Solveig III" on his first of two single-handed circumnavigations, he was 46 years old. It took him just under three years, and he chose the Panama Canal instead because it was there. His second single-handed circumnavigation in the same boat at the age of 53 took him over four years, from March 1975 to November 1979, and he, too, wrote a book about it (in German), "Ein Mann und sein Boot - 4 Jahre allein um die Welt" ("A Man and his Boat - 4 years alone around the world").

 

You can read the book - in German - online at www.archive.org
The following extracts are of Rollo's meeting with Tom Neale: click here and here

 

What made this book particularly interesting to me was Rollo's meeting with Tom Neale on Suwarrow Atoll. Not only did he visit him on his "Island to Oneself" on both his first and second circumnavigation, but he also wrote that he had taped an interview with Tom in November 1976.

He wrote about it in "Ein Mann und sein Boot" in German but how much better would it be to hear it in English from the man himself! I emailed Rollo's wife Angelika Gebhard in Bad Wiessee in Germany who promptly replied, "In dem Film über die zweite Allein-Weltumsegelung (1975-79) meines Mannes ist ein Interview mit Tom Neale enthalten. Der Film wurde damals im ZDF ausgestrahlt." ("The interview is included in the movie my husband made during his second circumnavigation which back then had gone to air on the commercial television station ZDF.")

How to get hold of that movie? It was not on YouTube - except for the short trailer shown above - and not available on ebay or anywhere else. Frau Gebhard had the solution, "Das ZDF besitzt die Urheberrechte an dem Film, und ich vermute, dass es sehr schwierig bis unmöglich sein wird, ihn über das ZDF zu erwerben. Aber ich habe den Film, den wir für die Vorträge geschnitten haben. Ich könnte Ihnen den Teil mit dem Interview zukommen lassen, wenn Sie den Film nur privat einsetzen." ("The television station owns the copyrights to the movie, and it would be difficult if not impossible to get a copy. However, I could send you a copy of the part containing the interview for your own personal use.")

Tom Neale being interviewed by Rollo Gebhard on Suwarrow in November 1976 (29:10)
Unfortunatey, for copyright reasons I'm not at liberty to publish the full clip on YouTube

 

And so it came to pass that for the first time ever I was able to listen to the voice of my long-time hero Tom Neale and watch him as he was interviewed by my new hero, Rollo Gebhard. Obviously, I cannot show you the footage for copyright reasons but I can give you a transcript:

(Rollo) "You have done something many people dream about. You are living on a small island far away from civilisation. Are you happy?" (Tom) "Yes, yes, I'm happy here." (Rollo) "And would you recommend this lifestyle to other people?" (Tom) "No, not exactly. I would have to know a person very, very well first before I could recommend a life like this. You must remember, before I came here I had many years of experience of life in these Pacific islands and I knew what to expect. How could I tell if someone else could cope with things here or whether he could stand being alone. We are not all the same, you know. I'm a person who doesn't mind being alone. I've always been that way, more or less."

One, no, two voices from beyond the grave because Tom Neale died the following year in Rarotonga, aged 75, and Rollo Gebhard passed away at his home in Bad Wiessee in 2013, aged 92. Two lives well lived!

Rollo and Angelika Gebhard promoting their "Society to Save the Dolphins"

 

Thank you, Frau Gebhard, for allowing me to view this rare and historic movie clip, and I wish you continuing success with the "Gesellschaft zur Rettung der Delphine (GRD)" ("Society to Save the Dolphins"), started in 1991 by your husband and of which you are still the chairperson.

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P.S. To read Tom Neale's book "An Island To Oneself", click here.

 

 

Tom Neale's excursions to Motu Tuo

Hand-drawn map of Suwarrov Atoll in Tom Neale's book "An Island to Oneself"

 

I was fifty when I went to live alone on Suvarov, after thirty years of roaming the Pacific, and in this story I will try to describe my feelings, try to put into words what was, for me, the most remarkable and worthwhile experience of my whole life. I chose to live in the Pacific islands because life there moves at the sort of pace which you feel God must have had in mind originally when He made the sun to keep us warm and provided the fruits of the earth for the taking."

So begin's Tom Neale's book "An Island to Oneself", in which he tells of his years spent on Suwarrov Island, so utterly remote you have to be really lost to find it. But even there he occasionally needed to escape from the humdrum of everyday existence by taking a trip to Motu Tuo:

"I felt no guilt when I took a day off. Now that I had a really sturdy boat, this temptation was much greater. I began to make periodic excursions to all the tiny islets in the lagoon, and on one good day, with the wind in the right quarter, I actually covered the six miles to Motu Tuo, in two hours. Once there, the weather seemed so perfect that on an impulse I decided to remain on the islet for the night.

Though I am quite used to sleeping outside, a sudden thought now struck me. Robinson Crusoe had built himself a secondary residence some miles away from his stockade. Why shouldn't I do the same? What was to stop me having a "summer house" on Motu Tuo, so that, if I ever felt bored, I could sail or row over for a change of scenery?

I was seized with enthusiasm and spent all day building a rough lean-to out of coconut fronds. Then I speared some ku, picked some wild paw-paw and cooked supper of grilled fish and baked fruit on the beach in front of my new house, washing it down with coconut water in place of my usual cup of tea.

 

 

Only one minor incident ruined this idyllic expedition. I woke with a yell in the middle of the night as a sudden pain transfixed my leg so violently that it felt as though my calf had been slashed open with a knife. There was no moon, and I was without a lamp, but as instinctively I bent down to touch my leg I felt the sicky wetness of blood in the darkness and became aware of something moving and shuffling close beside my hand.

I had forgotten those damned coconut crabs! The cruel nip didn't appear to have done any serious damage, but I got no more sleep that night after washing my wound in salt water. And on my next trip to Motu Tuo, in self preservation, I took a saw, hammer and nails and made myself a bunk, from odd bits of driftwood.

 

 

Over the months (though I worked only when I felt so inclined) my shack on Motu Tuo became quite comfortable. It never had the permanence of my home on Anchorage, but I rigged up some shelves for crockery and pots and pans which I kept there, together with a spare hurricane lamp, some kerosene and two boxes of matches, each sealed in separate water-tight tins - a precaution I took in case I got doused when sailing over. On one occasion I stayed there a week, taking with me some more tools, and built a more permanent bed, and then re-thatched the roof and walls with pandanus which, if well done, will outlast coconut thatching by many years. I laid in a big stock of firewood and built a rough but serviceable cook-house just behind the shack. The only drawback was the complete lack of water which I needed for my evening cup of tea on the beach. The trouble was, I had nothing to serve as a receptacle in which I could store the rain, and though I toyed with the idea of scouring out an old oil drum and taking it over, I discarded the plan because I didn't relish the thought of drinking water which might have been uncovered for a month between my visits. In the end I compromised and carried bottles of water over each time I made the trip.

 

Motu Tuo on bottom right

 

I loved my little excursions to Motu Tuo, for though it was not as beautiful as "my" island, it was surprising how pleasant a change of scenery could be.

Moto Tuo, where Frisbie had once jokingly suggested I should live, was almost as large as Anchorage, but the other islet like One Tree (where my back had seized up) and Brushwood were so small that I seldom visited them except for my brief trips in search of valuable flotsam.

And so time seemed almost to float on from week to week so effortlessly that had I not faithfully entered up my journal every evening, I could hardly have believed six months had already passed.

They were months which had seen great changes. The garden was now flourishing, I had pollinated the blossoms, re-thatched the veranda roof and repainted the inside of the shack. The fowl population had multiplied, the coconut crabs had been killed off. But during all that time I had never once seen a sail on the horizon, nor an aircraft overhead. I had been utterly alone, and utterly content."

We should all be so lucky that we love our place in the world so much.

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Grumpy old men at Christmas

 

So you're looking forward to all that ho-ho-ho merry Christmassing? Me neither! And we are in good company because when it comes to Christmas refuseniks the XY chromosomes are traditionally well represented.

A male misanthrope railing against a seasonal tsunami of comfort and joy in his "festive" jumper and paper hat is arguably as much a part of Christmas as the Queen’s Speech (or from this year onwards, the presumably even more boring King's Speech). Even if he’s the archetypal equable pragmatist for the other 364 days of the year, December 25 is when everybloke’s inner Grumpy Old Man comes home to roost.

The above video clip should give you some more ideas. There are still a few more weeks left in which to watch it closely and, if you get your timings right, you can not only have your Christmas cake but eat it, too.

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Armchair-travelling on a dull and rainy day

Listen to the audiobook here

 

The transition from the life I lived out of a suitcase to the life of an armchair traveller is not easy; in a way all that endless reminiscing about my past travels is like a talcum powder to help soothe those itchy feet that never quite stopped itching.

I am not complaining. I have a caring wife - well, some of the time! - and a comfortable home, a house and seven acres by a river in the country, and a life behind me that most men would envy. I have no wistful longings to living life out of a suitcase again, but occasionally, on a dull and rainy day, I long to be back in Rabaul, or on Bougainville Island, or in Honiara, or Rangoon, or Apia, or Penang, or Piraeus, or, on a really dull and rainy day, even in Jeddah (well, perhaps not Jeddah!)

Speaking of rain, I had the good fortune to live and work in Samoa when it still hadn't changed much from the way Somerset Maugham described it in "Rain". That was set in neighbouring Pago Pago (pronounced Pango Pango) but the rain was just as incessant in Apia. Not that it bothered the local Samoans who strode through it as though it just wasn't there.

Here then is the story of "Rain" by W. Somerset Maugham:

It was nearly bed-time and when they awoke next morning land would be in sight. Dr. Macphail lit his pipe and, leaning over the rail, searched the heavens for the Southern Cross. After two years at the front and a wound that had taken longer to heal than it should, he was glad to settle down quietly at Apia for twelve months at least, and he felt already better for the journey. Since some of the passengers were leaving the ship next day at Pago-Pago they had had a little dance that evening and in his ears hammered still the harsh notes of the mechanical piano. But the deck was quiet at last. A little way off he saw his wife in a long chair talking with the Davidsons, and he strolled over to her. When he sat down under the light and took off his hat you saw that he had very red hair, with a bald patch on the crown, and the red, freckled skin which accompanies red hair; he was a man of forty, thin, with a pinched face, precise and rather pedantic; and he spoke with a Scots accent in a very low, quiet voice.

Between the Macphails and the Davidsons, who were missionaries, there had arisen the intimacy of shipboard, which is due to propinquity rather than to any community of taste. Their chief tie was the disapproval they shared of the men who spent their days and nights in the smoking-room playing poker or bridge and drinking. Mrs. Macphail was not a little flattered to think that she and her husband were the only people on board with whom the Davidsons were willing to associate, and even the doctor, shy but no fool, half unconsciously acknowledged the compliment. It was only because he was of an argumentative mind that in their cabin at night he permitted himself to carp.

“Mrs. Davidson was saying she didn’t know how they’d have got through the journey if it hadn’t been for us,” said Mrs. Macphail, as she neatly brushed out her transformation.”She said we were really the only people on the ship they cared to know.”

“I shouldn’t have thought a missionary was such a big bug that he could afford to put on frills.”

“It’s not frills. I quite understand what she means. It wouldn’t have been very nice for the Davidsons to have to mix with all that rough lot in the smoking-room.”

“The founder of their religion wasn’t so exclusive,” said Dr. Macphail with a chuckle.

“I’ve asked you over and over again not to joke about religion,” answered his wife.”I shouldn’t like to have a nature like yours, Alec. You never look for the best in people.”

He gave her a sidelong glance with his pale, blue eyes, but did not reply. After many years of married life he had learned that it was more conducive to peace to leave his wife with the last word. He was undressed before she was, and climbing into the upper bunk he settled down to read himself to sleep.

When he came on deck next morning they were close to land. He looked at it with greedy eyes. There was a thin strip of silver beach rising quickly to hills covered to the top with luxuriant vegetation. The coconut trees, thick and green, came nearly to the water’s edge, and among them you saw the grass houses of the Samoaris; and here and there, gleaming white, a little church. Mrs. Davidson came and stood beside him. She was dressed in black, and wore round her neck a gold chain, from which dangled a small cross. She was a little woman, with brown, dull hair very elaborately arranged, and she had prominent blue eyes behind invisible pince-nez. Her face was long, like a sheep’s, but she gave no impression of foolishness, rather of extreme alertness; she had the quick movements of a bird. The most remarkable thing about her was her voice, high, metallic, and without inflection; it fell on the ear with a hard monotony, irritating to the nerves like the pitiless clamour of the pneumatic drill.   [To continue reading, click here]

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The Other Side of Paradise

Episode 2    Episode 3    Episode 4

Read the book online at archive.org

 

Tom Neale, in his book "An Island To Oneself", writes in chapter "Visitors by Helicopter", "The landing of the helicopters was to have an interesting sequel. Though I knew nothing of it at the time, the U.S. Navy released a brief news item about their visit to Suvarov, and this was how Noel Barber, the author and journalist, first heard about me whilst recovering in hospital from a car crash.

Apparently he decided he wanted to see the island - and me - and arrived about five months later in the Manua Tele, which he had chartered in Pago Pago. When he landed Noel was still only able to walk with the aid of sticks for he had been badly smashed up, but he stayed two days, and brought me a liberal supply of stores which included tea, flour, corned beef, together with whisky, rum and cigarettes. He also brought with him Chuck Smouse, an American photographer, and he and Noel took many of the photographs which appear in this book. I was so touched by the stores they had brought for me that when the Manua Tele had sailed, I sat down in the office and wrote Noel Barber a long letter of thanks. It was fourteen months before that letter left the island; for it was fourteen months before the next ship called in at Suvarov."

 

Noel Barber setting foot on Suwarrov

 

Noel Barber was the author of six novels, including ""Tanamera", a novel set in Singapore, and "The Other Side of Paradise", and twenty-six non-fiction books, among them "The War of the Running Dogs: How Malaya Defeated the Communist Guerrillas, 1948-60". His potboiler "The Other Side of Paradise" was made into a movie, as was "Tanamera".

 

To read the pages dealing with Tom Neale, click here
To read the whole book online at archive.org

 

In his memoirs "The Natives Were Friendly ... So We Stayed the Night", he recalls his first meeting with Tom Neale, and on page 200 mentions Tom's letter, "In the letter Tom told me how he had been taken ill on the island, and was preparing for a lonely death when a small American yacht anchored by chance in the lagoon, and gave him passage to Raro, where he faced months of convalescence before he could return to the island - if ever. 'What about my book?' he wrote. 'You remember you said you would help me. Have you got three months to spare?'"

Which is how it came to pass that British author Noel Barber helped Tom Neale to write his book "An Island to Oneself", which was written before he returned to Suwarrow for a third time. The book is virtually a bible for anyone who dreams of living alone on a deserted tropical island.

 

Read the book online at archive.org

 

But there was a lot of stuff about his personal life this very private man purposely omitted, including the six children he likely sired around the Pacific. It is well known he had two children, Arthur and Stella, to his wife in Rarotonga, Sarah Haua, whom he married on 15 June, 1956.

That was after his first spell on Suwarrow. But not many people know that Neale sired two more children in the Cook Islands before them, John and Jeanne, and quite possibly two more in Tahiti before that, the latter two now completely off the radar. That's a lot of alimony. No wonder he escaped to a deserted tropical island.

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In memory of Tom Neale

"I chose to live in the Pacific islands because life there moves at the sort of pace which you feel God must have had in mind originally when He made the sun to keep us warm and provided the fruits of the earth for the taking.." --- From Tom Neale's Book "An Island to Oneself"

You can read Tom Neale's book here by signing up for a free account and "borrowing" it.

 

Islands have long held a deep, abiding fascination. Everyone who has grappled with getting along with their fellow human being understands the phrase ‘can’t live with them, can’t live without them’. Everyone has at some time mused on what life would be like on a remote deserted island, alone with only the sound of the gentle wash against the sunbleached sands.

Perhaps it’s because so few have dared make this daydream a reality that such men as Tom Neale and his book An Island to Oneself take on an almost mythical role in our collective consciousness, as though they carry upon their shoulders all our yearnings for a simple, solitary life in tune with the tides of nature.

Tom Neale's book still fires the imaginations of all those who have dreamt of a simple life of solitude on a remote deserted island. It may be true that no man is an island, but it is also true that many a man has desperately wished it were so.

 

 

Tom left his beloved island in December 1963. As he writes in the postscript to his book:

"I realised I was getting on, and the prospect of a lonely death did not particularly appeal to me. I wasn't being sentimental about it, but the time had come to wake up from an exquisite dream before it turned into a nightmare. I might have lingered on the island for a few more years, but soon after the Vesseys left, a party of eleven pearl divers descended on Suvarov - and, frankly, turned my heaven into hell. They were happy-go-lucky Manihiki natives, and I didn't dislike them, but their untidiness, noise, and close proximity were enough to dispel any wavering doubts I might have had. Then, when I heard that more natives might be coming to dive for a couple of months each year in the lagoon, I resolved to leave with the divers. I did so - and I have not regretted the decision. I am back in Raro now, and you know, having proved my point - that I could make a go of it on a desert island and be happy alone - store-keeping doesn't after all seem such a monotonous job as it did in the years before 1952. I have a wealth of memories that no man can take away from me and which I have enjoyed recalling in these pages. I hope you have enjoyed them too".

That's where the book ends but not Tom's fascination with his island to which he returned a third time, in June 1967, to remain there for ten more years until a visiting yacht, the "Feisty Lady", informed Rarotonga that Tom is seriously ill. The schooner "Manuvai" evacuated him from the island in March 1977.

He died on this day 46 years ago, aged 75, in Rarotonga where he lies buried at the RSL Cemetery. A life well lived!

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What's Literature?

 

Okay, so the reader is no Leonard Teale whose resonant baritone voice was known to my generation from the long-running police drama "Hpmicide", but this video clip about literature is a huge intellectual effort. [Buy the transcript]

By the end of this video, you will know all the great works of literature, literary movements, as well as some of the most literary minds from around the world. The video has 3 major parts and 11 sections.

Part 1 gives the answer the most fundamental question. Why are humans the only species who tells stories? What functions do stories have in our evolution? It also highlight some important events in history that shaped the way we tell stories, and the literary movements of the last 4,000 years.

Part 2 deals with the origin of storytelling and how it is rooted in nature. The most fundamental event in a human life is death or the awareness of it. So this part discusses storytelling in four segments each on the topic of death, wars, sex and laughter. In other words, humans woke up to the realisation of death, so the first stories are stories of mortality and immortality. Then we humans moved to wars and wrote epics that lamented the demise of an empire or celebrated their triumphs. Since the victors got the spoils and we moved to tell stories of sex and mating, romance became an important topic of storytelling. In other words, how boys meet girls. With sex came laughter, so storytelling entertained us through comedy.

Part 3 moves away from nature-inflicted tales towards human-centred stories, as in when storytelling meets rationality and humanism. So instead of gods and nature, we humans became in charge of our own destiny. The age of reason also resulted in a counter-enlightenment movement of romanticism which took us back to nature. Then came realism, in which ordinary people became the heroes of stories, not some king or general. Then we moved to naturalism in which evolutionary biology became the window through which stories are told. This was followed by modernism in which we told stories through psychology. And finally magical realism which took us back to the early humans when gods and demons interfered with our stories.

Part 4 again moves away from humanism into what's termed as post-humanism. Here the whole idea of truth telling is questioned. If humanism tried to clarify and solidify things that humans are the only gods on earth, posthumanism, and postmodernism partly fuelled by quantum physics, muddied the water so we no longer know what's going on, despite our scientific and technological advancement, or in some cases because of that.

In this course, the real hero is literature or storytelling itself. Human mortality gave birth to storytelling. Conflicts gave it its fuel and energy. Sex added flavour. Laughter made it reflective. Then came reason to dominate storytelling, through physical reality, biological truths, psychological depth, and finally quantum magical thinking. And today literature seems a bit muddled as it has questioned truth-telling. You could say literature is suffering from old-age Alzheimer. So the question is can literature and storytelling survive robots?

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God is not great

 

God Is Not Great is the ultimate case against religion. In a series of acute readings of the major religious texts, Christopher Hitchens demonstrates the ways in which religion is man-made, dangerously sexually repressive and distorts the very origins of the cosmos. Above all, Hitchens argues that the concept of an omniscient God has profoundly damaged humanity, and proposes that the world might be a great deal better off without 'him'.

 

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God is Not Great is easily the most impressive of the present crop of atheistic and anti-theistic books: clever, broad, witty and brilliantly argued. As he so cleverly writes, "From a plurality of prime movers, the monotheists have bargained it down to a single one. They are getting ever nearer to the true, round figure."

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