In memory of Tom Neale

 

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 47 years ago in Rarotonga where he lies buried at the RSL Cemetery. A life well lived!

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“Houston, we have a liftoff.”

 

The bobcat has been to fill back the trenches and we can now use townwater - or not, depending on how we set the switches at the back of the house: the switch in the middle, if positioned upright, gives us our good ol' water from heaven; the switch on the right, positioned upright, gives us townwater and also free fluoride treatment.

 

 

For good measure, we also had a standpipe installed to give our garden the same fluoride treatment ...

 

 

... which may be needed because it may take quite a while before the driveway recovers from all that digging.

 

 

We have a liftoff. Thank you, Elite Plumbing, for a job well done!

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Work-Life-Balance

 

1963

I hadn't even started shaving yet but I was already in charge of the mobile office that followed the crew that built the Autobahn from Hannover to Bremen. 'Work-life-balance' meant that I worked at the desk in the front and slept in the bunk at the back.

 

You hear it all the time now; politician talk about it, it's on the telly and in the newspapers, and they even run workshops about it: the dreaded 'work-life-balance'. It sounds as though it's something we must have. If we don't have it, we're doomed.

A few decades ago, we wouldn't have known what they're talking about. Yes, we might have said that we preferred to spend a bit more time on the beach or at the pub, or even with our families, but as for life, our work was so much part of it that it made no sense to talk of it as something separate.

 

1982 Yours truly in his Port Moresby office

 

Work didn't cut against the grain of life; it was naturally integrated with it. We were lucky enough to feel that our work was part of our lives.

 

1982/83

My office on the top floor of the Al Bank Al Saudi Al Fransi building in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

 

I was one of those lucky ones. On reflection, my work-life-balance was appalling, but that was my choice. I might've been called a workaholic, but the truth was that work was as much a part of my life as leisure.

 

1984/85

In my office in Piraeus in Greece, tracking my Saudi boss's commodity shipments

 

I lived to work, and I worked to live, and I had a great time doing both.

 

From 1986

Self-employed as "Canberra Computer Accounting Systems" in my home office in Canberra.
I had come full circle: I slept in the room next door.

 

Thanks for the memories!

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"What are you doing down there?"

 

These days, people buy a $500,000-block of land and stick a million-dollar house on it. "Riverbend" is the opposite: despite its land valuation of $2,637,000 - which is already several years old - the house, as old and old-fashioned as it is, probably wouldn't be worth more than (say) $800,000 - anyway, that's what I have it insured for.

Today the digger is in to dig the eighty metres of trenches for the new townwater supply. The noise, in this always peaceful part of the world, reverberates up the lane and across the river, and I half-expect for the phone to ring and a neighbour wanting to know, "What are you doing down there?", because again and again I've been told by neighbours to pull the old house down and replace it with something "contemporary".

 

Click here

 

I love the old house because I'm old, too, and far from "contemporary", and I leave it to the next owners to pull it down if they insist on going "contemporary". I have no idea what it would cost to rebuild this house in its old-fashioned robustness and solid building materials but getting $800,000 for it should it ever burn down will do me. It may never be enough to rebuilt it but in any partial claim I would always get whatever the repairs would cost, UP TO THE MAXIMUM INSURED OF $800,000.

That's because Australian insurance companies do not use the "averaging clause" which I still remember from my actuarial training during my articled years with a large German fire insurance company. This is how it works: your house has a replacement value of (say) $1,000,000 but through neglect or ignorance you insure it for only $750,000. If there is a total loss, the insurer pays you the full sum insured, but if it's only a partial loss which is assessed at (say) $200,000, the "averaging clause" kicks in, with the insurer claiming that you were 25% under-insured and therefore are entitled to receive only a 75%-pay-out, or $150,000.

I grappled with this many years ago when, trying to do the right thing by the insurance company and not wanting to fall foul of the "averaging clause", I had a long phone discussion with the insurance agent. When I mentioned the "averaging clause", he said, "Mate, you're way ahead of me. I used to be a chef and have no idea what you're talking about."

 

 

Well, I had it confirmed to me later on official letterhead paper that insurers in Australia do not use the "averaging clause", and ever since I have had the house insured for $800,000 because getting that much money should it ever burn down will do me. In the meantime, the answer to any phone call is, "No, I'm not demolishing my old house."

 

 

Keep your earmuffs on. The non-demolition will continue on Monday.

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Money makes the world go round

 

Riverbend" is at the end of Sproxton Lane, and it is also at the end of the sewerage line, and so they installed a sewerage flushing kit right outside our gate but too far onto the road to be avoided by the turning of the weekly garbage truck.

It would've been only a question of time before it was smashed in, and so they decided to surround it with a concrete base, no more than ten centimetres deep and twenty centimetres wide on all four sides, the sort of handyman's job one chap could've done with a shovel and three or four bags of Quickset Concrete for $9.95 a bag, but not this one!

This one is paid by the taxpayers, and required one chap to come out some days ago to "construct the formwork" and surround it with red safety netting, and then this morning for two chaps in two trucks to come out, to be joined by a concrete agitator truck with the tiniest load of concrete ever carried. It was all done after half-a-dozen shovelful. (Well, not quite because one chap had forgotten his "woodie" to smooth the top of the concrete, and so they both left and came back an hour later which is longer than it would've taken the Chinese to do the job.)

 

Rest in Peace, Sewerage Flushing Point

 

"I guess you don't mind how small the job is?" I asked the concrete truck driver. "Nah, mate," he grinned, "money makes the world go round."

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Wer ist das?

 

Seit mehreren Monaten habe ich auf diesem Blog einen fast täglichen Besucher aus Österreich. Die Österreicher die ich kenne kann ich an einer Hand abzählen: den Louis aus Südtirol den ich erst vor kurzem auf YouTube entdeckte; den Peter Alexander und Freddy Quinn aus meiner Jugendzeit in Deutschland; und natürlich den Heinrich Harrer der sieben Jahre in Tibet verbrachte.

Und da ist da noch dieser andere Österreicher der sich in 1945 in seinem Bunker in Berlin vergiftete, aber von dem wollen wir erst gar nicht reden. Also, wer ist dieser Österreicher der sich so regelmässig fast jeden Tag auf meinem Blog meldet? Vielleicht sollte er mir schreiben und sagen wer er ist. Meine E-Mail ist riverbendnelligen@mail.com.

Ich hoffe von Dir zu hören. Machan's guat!

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One last postcard to all my friends

 

As I lay there in the pitchdark bedroom with my shingles sending all those painful signals to my brain - I couldn't even toss and turn which made things worse, although I did try levitating but failed - remembering that it is always darkest before the dawn didn't calm me much either, and so I got up to take another paracetamol and write this last postcard to all my friend.

In parenthesis (or should that be 'parentheses'?): I won't tell you a lie if I say that 'lie' is my least favourite irregular verb (I wanted to write 'irregular English verb' but wasn't sure if it shouldn't be 'English irregular verb'; damn all that prescriptive OSASCOMP stuff); I mean, even 'go' has the straightforward past tense of 'went' but 'lie'? lied? laid? layed???

I took my paracetamol, wrote one last postcard to all my friends (which didn't take very long as there weren't many - friends, that is), and now I can't go back to sleep and might as well make a cup of tea and a start on Yuval Noah Harari's latest tome, the 500-plus-page book "Nexus - A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI".

 

Read a preview here

 

If you don't want to invest the thirty-five dollars in the book nor the roughly same amount of hours in reading it, here's the video clip:

 

 

As for that last postcard to all my friends, if you don't get yours in the next few days, it means you're not one of them! (them, not 'them')

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The improvements continue ...

 

 

Just because or maybe because "Riverbend" is now listed for sale, the improvements haven't stopped, such as this very convenient beer holder, and the water and sewerage connections, one of which, the water, will be completed this Friday - with photos to come - while the sewerage is yet to follow at a safe distance.

Now that I have added a sales price to my property advertisement - see here - inquiries have dropped off, certainly from people who thought they could swap their HR Holden for this once-in-a-lifetime property.

 

 

I may contact Ernie Dingo for ideas on how to spruik up the advert to attract more inquiries. In the meantime, the improvements continue ...

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Four opinions on four topics

 

What Trump’s Win Says About American Society

 

The End of China’s Rise & the Future of Global Order

 

Understanding the Mind of a Hamas Jihadist

 

We Are on the Verge of Destroying Ourselves

 

 

I - My Life - Until Now

 

Once upon a time, there was a book lady in Berlin from whom I ordered a few German books and then some more and then we became friends. Do you remember Helene Hanff's "84 Charing Cross Road"? Not the same but similar.

That was many, many years ago and I haven't ordered any books for a very long time, and not just because the book lady closed her shop and stopped selling books. Instead, she now wrote her own. Her last magnum opus is her autobiography "I - My Life - Until Now".

She sent me a copy and I devoured it in one sitting; after all, I got a mention in it as well: "When the shop sales began to drop off, I started to sell books on the Internet which went well and world-wide. I even received an order from Australia for a copy of Fritz Delfgen's [sic - it was Heinz Helfgen's] 'Ich radle um die Welt'. Through this buyer I also met his brother who lives in Kiel and we are in touch to this day."

Her last words are: "My years are numbered [she turned 85 last month] and I look back over my childhood and over 41 years of marriage. In what little time remains I I shall continue to disappoint my fellow human beings."

 

 

Ah, but you didn't disappoint me at all, Renate, as your book makes for exciting reading. Thank you for sending me a copy; also for your previous master piece, "Geschichten aus Püttelkow und Anderswo".

 

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To say nothing of my shingles

Keep on reading here

 

In my old age, there are days when I am like the three invalids in "Three Men in a Boat" who feel afflicted with every known malady in the pharmacology - well, except perhaps for housemaid's knee.

Late last Sunday, things took a turn for the worse when my body began to itch and I discovered large red wheals down the right side (I removed the photos so as not to throw you off your lunch). We rushed to the emergency department of the Batemans Bay Hospital where I was triaged and then told to wait and wait and wait ... three hours later, after being told that they couldn't tell me when a doctor would attend to me, we left and arrived home again just before the witching hour.

We made an early start next morning to be the first in line at their outpatients department where a very efficient Dr Leerdam took one look and said, "Yep, shingles", and prescribed a 7-day shingles treatment pack of Zelitrex. The first and last time I had had shingles was six months after I had taken on a huge new job in New Guinea in 1972 - click here - which had left me totally stressed out and overworked.

The friendly lady at the pharmacy explained that if I had had chicken pox at a child, I was also likely to have recurring shingles. Had I had chicken pox as a child? I knew that just after I had started my first day at school I had had some sort of infectious disease, and while I was in isolation with dozens of other kids in the local hospital, I caught some more infectious diseases, all with German names, which meant I missed a whole six months of my first year at school. I would have had to redo my first year had it not been for my father who, from his miserable wartime pension, stumped up the money to pay a retired lady-teacher to teach me everything I had missed out on to get me into Year 2.

(My memory of that time involves a cute teddy bear which my parents bought me to while away the weeks in isolation. To avoid spreading any infectious diseases it might harbour, it was incinerated upon my leaving the hospital which became the first tragedy in my hitherto short life.)

 

 

I'm halfway through my forty-two tablets of Zelitrex and still feel a bit like the cover of this book - too fragile for any future repair - but Padma is handling me with great care and I ought to be around long enough to collect my OBE (Over Bloody Eighty) next year. In the meantime - and to forget the constant itching - I shall watch "Three Men in a Boat" again.

 

 

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P.S. Some kindly disposed people, on reading these pointless bits and pieces, keep insisting that I ought to write my autobiography. I am getting my head around it and may call it "My Ought To Biography".

 

Bert, this is your life

 

Bert Newton just dropped a notice into all our mailboxes informing us that "works associated with the installation of the new pressure sewerage system is nearing completion."

Thanks, Bert, but we would've preferred hearing it from you in person and in your mellifluous Irish voice. Yes, despite everything you may still remember from watching the idiot box in the sixties, Bert is actually an Irishman and has been installing the sewerage system in Nelligen.

 

 

Thanks, Bert - or Ross - for a job well done - and "This is Your Life".

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P.S. For more on the sewerage and water works, click here and here.

 

An early Christmas present for an astute buyer

 

Click here

 

Already more than two years ago, the Valuer-General's Land Valuation of the LAND ALONE was $2,637,000 (and is probably already outdated by now) which means that for just another 15% extra you get yourself a massive two-storey brick residence and all the many other improvements added to it over the past thirty years.

This one-of-a-kind absolute waterfront freehold property set in parkland totalling some seven acres stretches for over 400 metres along the Clyde River offers serenity and tranquility by the bucketload. Located on the edge of the historic town of Nelligen, "Riverbend" is a private paradise only ten minutes away from the bustling resort town of Batemans Bay.

After owning this incredible property for over thirty years, the present owners are ready to say their final goodbyes in the hope that it will attract a buyer who will also treasure this slice of paradise. "It's a place of true beauty and discovery, and for making new magical memories, and we will absolutely miss it for many reasons", they say, but old age is forcing them to downsize. "We now wish to pass this little slice of paradise onto someone else to enjoy this incredible lifestyle."

As for the price, at just a touch over three million dollars, you'd be buying this wonderful lifestyle property at just about land value - and you know what they say about land, don't you? "They don't make any more!" With town water and sewerage connected by the end of this year, land values can go only one way: UP!

Land valuation and price aside, what the property is all about is location, location, location! The tranquillity, the absolute privacy and beauty of the river draw you to it. If you are looking for an idyllic lifestyle where the only alarm clock in the morning is a bunch of kookaburras, where you can sit on a huge verandah overlooking the river and watch amazing sunsets, and where you are serenaded to sleep at night by the sound of frogs, you will love it here. If you thought that it was no longer possible to find paradise on earth, think again!"

 

 

 

2,308 clicks and 29 email inquiries in seven months isn't exactly record-breaking, so I thought I spruik up my advertisement a bit. I think "An early Christmas present for an astute buyer" should do the trick.

 

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