"Living on a remote island is hard, but returning to society is harder."

 

 

So said Lucy Irvine after her return from little Tuin Island in the Torres Strait, where she and her "husband" Gerald Kingsland spent a year in 1982, some five years after I had lived and worked on nearby Thursday Island. The result was the book "Castaway" and a movie by the same name.

 

Read the book online at www.archive.org

 

"An infinity of sea and sky bluer and more brilliant than in any dream. Our wake made a white streak across the blue so struck with glittering points of light it smarted the eye. We passed islands to our left and to our right; bottle green bosomy mounds frilled about with white sand rising out of that electric world of blue."

 

"Castaway" is a 1983 autobiographical book by Lucy Irvine about her year on the Australian tropical Torres Strait island of Tuin, having answered a want ad from writer Gerald Kingsland seeking a "wife" for a year in 1982. Her book was the basis of the 1986 film "Castaway", starring Oliver Reed as Gerald Kingsland and Amanda Donohoe as Irvine.

 

Lucy Irvine was born on 1 February 1956 in Whitton, Middlesex. She ran away from school and had no full-time education after the age of thirteen. She was employed as a charlady, monkey-keeper, waitress, stonemason's mate, life model, pastry-cook, and concierge, and also worked with disabled people and as a clerk at the Inland Revenue.

She has written "One is One"; an account of her early years, aptly named "Runaway"; "Castaway"; and - which is where our paths crosssed again - "Faraway" about her year spent on remote Pigeon Island in the then British Solomon Islands where I almost took a job myself in late 1969.

 

 

She now lives somewhere in Bulgaria where she runs an "orphanage" for stray animals. In the above aeon-video, she tells her story from the cluttered yurt in the Bulgarian countryside that she now calls home.

She explains why, throughout her life, she has chosen unconventional paths as a means of protecting herself from feeling overwhelmed by a modern world she saw as imbued with too many prescriptions and, indeed, too many choices. Far from a tale of romantic ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ self-actualisation through travel, Lucy instead offers her idiosyncratic outlook with unvarnished honesty, detailing preferences that some might find lonely or perhaps self-centred, but nonetheless tug at more universal tensions between drives for security, belonging and freedom.

"Living on a remote island is hard, but returning to society is harder."

 

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P.S. If you, too, wish to make a small donation to the The Lucy Irvine Foundation Europe, LIFE, which is a non-profit organisation actively reducing the suffering of dogs, cats and horses in Bulgaria, click here.

 

French Revolutionary Time

 

 

Living in retirement, I live without a watch, but when I do go into town where I have to watch my time, I always wear my pensioner's wristwatch which gets me plenty of pitiful looks and plenty of pensioner's discounts everywhere I go.

It never failed to wake me up for work, from Apia to Athens, Canberra to Cape Town, Georgetown to Jeddah, Hamburg to Honiara, Lüderitz to Loloho, Mt. Isa to Moresby, Rabaul to Rangoon, and Tehran to Townsville.

Which neatly brings me to the subject of this blog: everybody knows that there are 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in an hour, and 60 seconds in a minute. But in 1793, the French smashed the old clock system in favour of French Revolutionary Time, which was a 10-hour day, with 100 minutes per hour, and 100 seconds per minute. This thoroughly modern system had a few practical benefits, chief among them being a simplified way to do time-related math. If we want to know when a day is 80% complete, decimal time simply says "at the end of the eighth hour," whereas standard time requires us to say "at 19 hours, 12 minutes." French Revolutionary Time was a more elegant solution to that math problem. The problem was that every living person already had a well-established way of telling the time, and old habits die hard!

In fact, it has been a well-established way of telling the time for about 5,000 years because we inherited it from the Sumerians who based their numbering system on the number 60. This is because the ancient Sumerians didn't know how to write fractions, yet they often needed to know what a "half" or a "third" of something was. To solve the problem, a Sumerian mathematician decided to base their numbering system on the number 60, which can easily be divided by both halves and thirds. Our number 10 can only be divided by 2 or 5 if a whole number answer is desired, whereas 60 can be divided by 10 different numbers that provided answers without fractions (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20 and 30).

I thought you would like to know. Perhaps you would also like to know that I do have a "real" wristwatch which I bought in my "salad days" in Singapore in 1984 for S$4,900, which was then worth some AUS$2,550.

 

 

I've just checked online and the very same watch is worth around AUS$12,000 today, which is why I don't wear it to town as I don't want to lose all those lovely pensioner's discounts. Just don't tell them, okay?

 

 

It usually takes me close to an hour to type each blog post to keep the old grey matter ticking over, and my 100 minutes are just about up.

 

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Surely, this must be a misprint!

 

 

The much talked-about NDIS - which stands for the National Disability Insurance Scheme - which puts a new definition on the word 'insurance' which is 'an arrangement by which a company or the state undertakes to provide compensation for specified loss, damage, illness, or death in return for payment of a specified premium' - "is now more expensive than Medicare and is set to overtake spending on defence next year" - click here for the ABC News article.

What really blew my socks off what the sentence "the scheme's 740,000 overall participants make up about 14 percent of the 5.5 million estimated people with disability in Australia", and whatever else I was wearing was blown off by the pie chart below which shows that of the 740,000 participants, 294,960 were on the scheme because of autism.

 

There must be something wrong with these statistics: only 96016 with an intellectual disability? Didn't more than half the country vote for Labor in the last election?

 

We already had autism before we gave it a name. There were a couple of boys in my class in the "Volksschule" who were kind of awkward. Now they would be called autistic and given "treatment" and "medicine" even though the condition is incurable - which is music to the ears of the medical profession and the pharmaceutical industry who love "treating" untreatable things, even though autistic research bodies themselves accept autistic traits as a healthy variation of the human condition.

I mean, look at Greta Thunberg who is a nutter but officially diagnosed as being autistic, and even entrepreneur and co-founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates, has written, "If I were growing up today, I probably would be diagnosed on the autism spectrum". And when it comes to alexithymia - to use a fancy name - my emotional blindness is so bad, I reach for my white cane before I have an argument with my wife. Just ask her!

 

 

To summarise, 40% of all NDIS participants have autism; 56% are under 18; and to pay for them all will cost us more than our defence budget for the army, air force and navy. May I suggest we don't tell the Chinese?

As an interesting aside, of the 260,000 "providers" to the NDIS, only 16,000 are officially registered. For the rest, it's massive overcharging and fraud as far as the eye can see. It's pink batts on a massive scale! Will the public service ever get to the bottom of it? Of course not! They want to be home by four o'clock to mow their lawns, don't they? (I hope you're not autistic or else you may struggle to detect my sarcasm.)

And I haven't even dealt with that bit about the NDIS participants being just "14 percent of the 5.5 million estimated people with disability in Australia". What, 5.5 million out of a total population of 27 million are disabled? Surely, this must be a misprint! On second thought, do tell the Chinese! I mean, who would want us? This may stop them from coming!

 

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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 many other people.

 

 

Sad, really. Quite sad!

 

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About not being able to sleep at night

 

 

Not being able to sleep at night has its upsides: I was idly listening to the ABC Radio National's BIG IDEAS program sometime between two and three o'clock in the morning, when I heard "How a picnic started the fall of the Iron Curtain" and moved closer so as not to miss a word.

 

 

What an amazing story! In August 1989, a group of Hungarian activists organised a picnic on the border of Hungary and Austria. But this was not an ordinary picnic ― it was located on the dangerous militarised frontier known as the Iron Curtain. Tacit permission from the highest state authorities could be revoked at any moment. On wisps of rumor, thousands of East German “vacationers” packed Hungarian campgrounds, awaiting an opportunity, fearing prison, surveilled by lurking Stasi agents. The Pan-European Picnic set the stage for the greatest border breach in Cold War history. Hundreds crossed from the Communist East to the longed-for freedom of the West.

 

 

This was a moment in history where the power of ordinary people changed the world. Three months later the Berlin Wall came down.

 

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A message home about AT HOME

 

 

I thought it might be interesting, for the length of a book, to consider the ordinary things in life, to notice them for once and treat as if they were important, too. Looking around my house, I was startled and a little appalled to realize how little I knew about the domestic world around me. Sitting at the kitchen table one afternoon, playing idly with the salt and pepper shakers, it occurred to me that I had absolutely no idea why, out of all the spices in the world, we have such an abiding attachment to those two. Why not pepper and cardamom, say, or salt and cinnamon? And why do forks have four tines and not three or five? There must be reasons for these things?" [From a part of the Introduction to Bill Bryson's book "AT HOME"]

And there must be a reason why Padma sent me the above photo after having had lunch in the Bay with another Indonesian friend? Afterwards, she introduce her friend to the joys of op-shopping at Vinnies where she also found Bill Bryson's book "At Home", which she photographed and WhatsApp-ed to me with the message "???", to which I replied, "YES!!!".

I had already bought a paperback edition of the book just after it had rolled of the presses, and even lashed out on its audiobook to help me combat my incessant insomnia, but I'm not one to refuse a hardcover (albeit without dustjacket), if it is offered to me for as little as $2.

Those two dollars are a better investment than the $22,000 I just paid for 10,000 shares in Pilbara Minerals, an up-and-coming lithium miner which I had recommended to a grass-cutting friend up the lane many weeks ago. He prompted made several thousand dollars in profit and has since abandoned his grass-cutting business. I mean, why sit on a noisy ride-on mower for hours and hours when you can earn multiples of the same income by simply clicking the Commsec website's SELL-button?

I have never been a trader, and even less one of those so-called day traders. Instead, I steadily invested in shares that pay fully-franked dividends, and today's foray into speculative shares proved the point because almost as soon as I had paid $2.15 for each of my Pilbara Minerals shares, they dropped to $2.07. Mind you, they come with 12 STRONG BUY recommendations, so I may hold on to them for a while.

On the bright side, my favourite shares, BHP, made a reasonable come-back in recent weeks, and yesterday, despite the announcement of a 26% drop in profits, rallied 65 cents, before closing at $42.12 for the day. That must've been a little too optimistic, because this morning they opened 73 cents down, and then skidded another 49 cents. They've since settled around $41.66, or 46 cents down on yesterday's closing.

Following the sharemarket is not so much about economics and the state of the world as about your own emotional responses as you see your portfolio nosedive by ten or twenty or more percent, and then recover just as quickly. It's fear and greed, and fear and greed again.

Which is why reading is a much better investment, as knowledge never loses its value, and while you are accumulating it, you enjoy yourself.

 

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BHP closed the day at $41.75 which is better than I'd expected, as it is "only" 37 cents down - see above chart. This is the sort of chart those "cowboys" use in their daytrading seminars: "Buy at $40.80", they say, pointing to the left of the chart, "and sell at $42.05", pointing to the centre-left of the chart, conveniently forgetting that their "advice" is based on hindsight. There is no crystal ball for the sharemarket, but if those "cowboys" really knew that much about the market, why do they sell their "knowledge" in exchange for a few hundred dollars' admission to their seminars, instead of acting on it themselves? They're the best example of the old adage "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach."

 

Those days will never CAMAY again!

 

 

I've just had one very long and very hot shower in an attempt to throw off that flu that's been bugging me for weeks. The soap I lathered myself with was the same rich pink which will always remind me of CAMAY soap and my time on Bougainville Island.

During the construction phase of Bougainville Copper in the early 70s when I lived in Camp 6 at Loloho, we received with our weekly towel change a new piece of CAMAY soap, whether we had used up the old one or not. Usually we hadn't and there was CAMAY soap all over the camp.

A certain surveyor working for BECHTEL would collect all the CAMAY soap he could get his hands on and also regularly empty the crib rooms of all their LIPTON tea-bags and ARNOTT'S Scotch Finger biscuits, all of which he would parcel up and regularly send back to his family in Perth.

If you have ever been to Perth and seen a family with a lovely CAMAY complexion and a strong aversion to LIPTON tea and ARNOTT'S Scotch Finger biscuits, you will immediately know whom I am talking about.

Ah, beautiful Bougainville Island! Those days will never CAMAY again!

 

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P.S. I have just spent the first half of the morning removing the 'm' from 'whom I am talking about', and the second half putting it back in again.

 

A Fortunate Life

 

Various scenes from movie

 

Every so often, some reader of this blog asks me, "Why don't you write a book about your life?", to which I always reply, "I know my limitations". I might be able to write, like Charmian Clift once did, a column for a weekend paper but never a complete book. Anyway, Albert Facey already used the title which would best describe my life, for his own book.

 

Read the book online at www.archive.org

 

Should I ever feel the urge to put pen to paper, it would be because I wanted to pay homage - and please, don't pronounce it like 'fromage'; that would be on the nose, as it is now an English word - to the many people who have helped me on the way: to my primary school teacher, Herr Sapper, who gave me that special personal reference which helped me overcome my lack of higher education; to the "Bezirksdirektor", Herr Weber, who signed me up for my articles in a profession which was usually reserved for those who had achieved "Abitur"-level after twelve or thirteen years of schooling; to the German-Australian I befriended on board the ship bound for Australia, who suggested I should come to Canberra which ultimately led to my joining the ANZ Bank, thanks to its bank manager, Mr Reid, who took a huge gamble in hiring me fresh off the boat; to the partner in a firm of chartered accountants, Mr Barry Weir, who gave me my big chance in entering a new profession long before I knew what a real balance sheet looked like. And the list goes on and on and on and on ... perhaps I ought to call my book "With a Lot of Help from My Friends", so as not to run foul of the Beatles' legacy.

 

 

At a stretch, I could call my book "In the Right Place at the Right Time", because that's how things always seemed to pan out, but I still prefer "A Fortunate Life". If I could use that title, I would also end it with the same sentence, "I have lived a very good life, it has been very rich and full. I have been very fortunate and I am thrilled by it when I look back". All I would do is replace the comma after 'life' with a semicolon.

Go and read Facey's book; it's better than anything I could ever write.

 

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Volunteering with Marine Rescue

 

 

I've always had a strong aversion to uniforms which is why I left Germany. Me being conscripted into the newly-formed German Bundeswehr and wearing a uniform? Not even if my life depended on it! I'd rather wrestle a kangaroo! So I emigrated to Australia!

With all that free time in retirement and a liking for everything that floats but especially boats, I became a volunteer with Marine Rescue. I went out to sea in every weather in one of their three rescue boats and learned about first aid and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Everything went swimmingly until they promoted me to be their radio operator.

 

 

Things were going really well. I even managed to piss off a few of my newly-made friends by explaining to them that "Mayday" has nothing to do with communism but derived from the French m'aidez - 'help me'.

Then the day that call came in: "Mayday! Mayday! WE ARE SINKING!" Apparently, "What are you thinking about?" was not the right response.

 

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Farewell to Arabia

 

 

As I mentioned elsewhere, I am still looking for a copy of David Holden's Book "Farewell to Arabia". The only copy I have so far been able to track down is for sale on ebay for well over a hundred dollars. Even the usually obliging www.archive.org on this occasion offers no online copy.

 

 

Then, during my search, I came across a YouTube clip named "Farewell Arabia" without the preposition. Of course, I watched it, and it was only after I had seen the credits roll that I realised it was based on David Holden's book, albeit sans the preposition. What an interesting find!

 

 

Still, the search for a cheaper copy of "Farewell to Arabia" goes on!

 

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Two down!

 

 

The real estate market is still ticking along, with two nearby properties, 19 Braidwood Street and 1398 Kings Highway, having received offers. Out of a sense of duty to my prospective widow, I am still trying to sell "Riverbend", even though it's been a long time since the last inquiry.

The property has become too large to maintain for the two of us, and it would be even more impossible to maintain for Padma alone, should it turn out that I am in compliance with current life expectancy tables.

Not that I have any idea at all of where we would move, should a buyer suddenly turn up. I sold my lovely beachside property just north of Townsville decades ago, and whatever I had my eyes on in or around Kuranda or Yungaburra or Herberton has since been sold anyway.

 

 

In any event, the next property would have to comply in its lay-out with very strict guidelines if I want to bring along all the books I accumulated during the more than thirty years that I have lived here at "Riverbend".

 

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"Riverbend" is very much an outdoor place which looks at its best in summertime. With summer still more than three months away, I can't expect any inquiries other than the last one which read, "We have seen your beautiful property. We are animal lovers, love the water and peace and quite [sic]", and signed topdognsw@xxx.com. I emailed "topdogsnsw" our top-price of $3.5million and heard nothing more.

"Riverbend" will be Still for Sale by Home Owner come summertime.

 

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Three Wild Dogs

 

 

We are dog lovers without a dog! We have been talking about getting another dog after our two Maltese died after a long life with us. Losing them was a tragedy, and losing another one - as we would, since dogs don't live as long as we do - would be a worse tragedy than the two before.

 

 

So whenever we meet dog owners, we talk to them and to their dogs, and we pat them and talk to them, and far too often we wished we could take them home with us --- not the dog owners but their dogs!

When we saw Markus Zusak's new book "Three Wild Dogs" at our library, we immediately borrowed it, and also booked tickets to his "Author Talk" next month. Listening to his speech on YouTube may steal some his thunder, but I couldn't wait. I am also already halfway through his book.

 

 

It's a love letter to the animals who bring hilarity and beauty - but also the visceral truth of the natural world - straight to our doors and into our lives, and change us forever. And I will never stop missing them!

 

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