I always visit bookshops, so when I toured the Atherton Tableland in Far North Queensland in mid-2011, I called in at the Spencer & Murphy Booksellers in Yungaburra which was minded for a few days by Helmut Brix, a fellow-German who'd come to Australia and also passed through Bonegilla in 1961, four years before me.
Being almost seven years older than me, Helmut immediately settled in Melbourne and finished up with a wife, children, mortgage, the lot - or, as Zorba the Greek called it so fittingly, "the full catastrophe".
Fifty years later, he said goodbye to his grown-up kids, told his wife he needed time to himself, and travelled north. In Yungaburra he found friends and a free flat in exchange for looking after several more, and I admired (and envied) him for the ease with which he had escaped from half a century of domesticity. Lotus-eating in Bali or Bora Bora next?
It is not often that you find a man who has boldly taken the course of his life into his own hands. When you do, it is worth while having a good look at him. And so, even though I only stayed at Yungaburra for a couple of days, I kept in contact with Helmut, and our emails became real meetings-of-the-minds.
As it turned out, Helmut never made it to Bali or Bora Bora. We are all creatures of habit and so, only months after our meeting, he told me he had bought a house and turned domestic again! Would he have done the same if he had known that all he had left were another seven years?
Helmut (on right) and I raise our glasses in June 2011 at the Lake Eacham Hotel
Rest in Peace, my friend, and I'm glad we had those beers together.
