Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned

 

 

Apocryphal (that means being of doubtful authenticity, Des) or not, it is said that one day an excited young man came to Alexander Dumas ('The Three Musketeers', remember?) with the most superb idea for a novel.

"You have a good plot?" Dumas asked. "A plot that is full of excitement; characters that breathe; settings that bedazzle the eye; and a suspense that is truly unbearable", the young man said. Dumas grabbed him by the shoulders and cried, "Good! Now all you need to make it a novel is 200,000 words."

Well, I've put the following story through an online word counter and it comes to barely six hundred, so you may want to embroider it a bit in your own mind to turn it into anything 'novel'. Anyway, here it goes:

My old mate Noel Butler was a bit of an Errol Flynn-type, helped along by the fact that he'd spent most of his adult life in New Guinea. In 1967, when I first met him aboard the PATRIS as I returned to Europe after a ho-hum first two years in Australia, I'd just turned 22 while he was al-ready of an age that made him popular with a certain type of dowager who was on her way to Europe to spend her late husband's fortune.

Lack of social, but primarily dancing, skills, and an even greater lack of money prevented me from partaking in the nightly shipboard delights, but Noel and I spent almost every daylight hour of every day hunched over a chessboard, and our mutual love of chess and my fascination with his adopted home, the mythical island of New Guinea, spawned a friendship that was to last almost thirty years until his death in 1995.

Born in 1920 in Bundaberg, Noel enlisted in the Army and was sent to New Guinea (where he took part in the Bougainville Campaign) and after his discharge in late 1945 went back there. He never chose the orthodox road, behaved like a good little squirrel, and turned domestic, but instead freewheeled through life with his hands off the handlebars.

If New Guinea was a backwater, then Wewak in the far-flung Sepik District was a backwater of a backwater, and it was there that Noel had found his niche, venturing out every couple of years to go on an African safari or take a bumboat ride through the Indonesian archipelago.

I visited him on his little 'hacienda' just outside Wewak several times, and he visited me on Bougainville and in Lae and elsewhere, but mostly we stayed in contact through correspondence which sometime in the early 70s took a colourful turn when he began using writing-paper em-bellished with pretty butterflies in the corners and along the edges.

I picked him up on this, and he told me that a lady-friend in Brisbane had sent him several pads of this writing-paper. By the time I visited him again, I had become quite a lepidopterist (that's someone who collects and studies butterflies, Des) but thought no more of it until one night at the Sepik Club he introduced me to a matronly barmaid. Sitting down at our table, he said, pointing back at her, "She's the one who sent me those writing-pads", and over a few beers the story began to unravel.

Apparently, she'd taken a shine to Noel and come up to Wewak to stay with him. There's little entertainment in the islands and visitors are always welcome but Noel also liked his privacy, so after a few weeks he asked her when she was going back to Brisbane. "Oh, I'm not!" she cried, "I've packed up everything in Brisbane and I'm staying here with you."

I don't know when Noel had decided that domestic life was not for him, but it was long before this particular lady-friend tried to get her man. As he confided in me, "If I'd wanted to get hitched, I would've done so while I could still have commanded a premium", or words to that effect.

Anyway, in the most tactful way possible in such a delicate situation, he showed her the flyscreened door. "So how come she's still here?" I asked. She'd found herself a new lover - the local plumber; shit happens! - and, to cover her tracks, had spread the rumour that Noel was a homosexual.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned (which, by the way, sounds very Shakespearean but you can thank William Congreve for this paraphrase).

 

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The Little House in the Prairie Country

 

 

This old black-and-white picture - taken in the late 50s - of the "Landheim" (country cottage) belonging to the "Fahrenden Gesellen", a "Wandervogel" group I belonged to as a youngster in Germany, brings back many memories.

It was just 28 kilometres outside my hometown Braunschweig and I walked, hitchhiked, and cycled to it a hundred times (and a couple of times by train to a small "Dorfbahnhof" - Rietze? - from where I hiked along the "Alte Heerstraße" to reach the "Celler Landstraße" and "Kilometerstein 28,6" where I left the road to walk across "Spargelfelder" to arrive at the "Landheim"), alone or with "Kameraden", and the weeks and weekends spent there are forever part of my memories.

 

 

They, the "Fahrenden Gesellen", recently celebrated their 100th anniversary in 2009 which they commemorated with the publication of a "Festschrift" of old photos, stories, and documents which I promptly ordered.

"Es lebe der Bund!"

 

Das Landheim

 

From the book "100 Jahre Fahrende Gesellen - 1909-2009", page 49:

"In den 1950er Jahren entdeckte Heinz Radtke 30 km nördlich von Braunschweig eine alte Spargelbude, umgeben von kleinen Wäldchen, Heidefeldern und Äckern, die nun leer stand und verfiel. Für 40 DM im Jahr wurde sie gepachtet und von den Jungen über zwei Jahre lang an jedem Wochenende ausgebaut, denn aus den Wänden des Fachwerkbaus war viel herausgefallen, ebenso schaute durch das Dach der Mond. Es wurde gesägt, gemauert, gehämmert, gebastelt, neu verputzt und das Dach gedeckt."

 

Einweihungsfeier

 

"Endlich konnte die Einweihung gefeiert werden. Neben Gaugrafen und Bundesleiter hatte sogar die Stadt ein Ratsmitglied geschickt. Es wurde ein schönes Fest, ohne Alkohol! Man trank Kaffee, lachte, sang Lieder und kratzte sich, denn die Mücken eines nahen Sumpfes waren uneingeladen auch gekommen. Den Gästen konnte ein Raum mit drei Fenstern gezeigt werden, 5 x 3 m groß, mit Tisch, Stühlen, Schrank, alles umgebaut nach unserem Geschmack. Ein Kochherd und sogar eine Pumpe waren da. Über dem Tagesraum war der Dachboden mit Matratzen zum Schlafen eingerichtet."

 

The last "Fahrende Geselle" I am still in contact with in Braunschweig, Armin Stiller, marked the probable location at the top of the map with "Lan"

 

"Viele Jahre diente dieses Landheim den Jungen und auch manchem Altgesellen zur Erholung vom Großstadtlärm. Hier wurden auch Gau-, Mannschaftstreffen und Osterlager veranstaltet. Nach zehn Jahren lief der Pachtvertrag ab, und ab Anfang der 1970er Jahre gab es auch keine Jungengruppe mehr in Braunschweig."

 

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P.S. More links here and here and here.

 

There are moments in life when the ball hits the top of the net and for a split second it can either go forward or fall back.

 

 

With a little luck, it goes forward and you win ... or maybe it doesn't, and you lose. It's those moments of good luck that often determined how the rest of my life would pan out.

Such as that moment in 1964 when the friendly interviewing officer in the Australian consulate wrote "Appears good type. Understands employment prospects. Should settle without difficulties. Questions to the point. Neatly dressed" across my "Auswanderungsantrag nach Australien mit Fahrtunterstützung" (Application for assisted passage to Australia) and stamped it with a florish and in red ink "APPROVED".

Or that anxious moment when, just weeks after my arrival in Australia, Mr Reid of the ANZ Bank generously ignored my stumbling English and gave me a start with the Bank and into a better career than I had ever dared to hope for when I signed that application for assisted passage.

 

 

Or that moment three years later, when the partner in the Canberra firm of chartered accountants, Hancock Woodward & Neill, sent me off to their branch office in New Guinea with the words, "No need to tell me anything about yourself. I heard nothing but good things about you from my golf partner who works with the ANZ Bank. I just wanted to shake hands with you and wish you all the best in your new career."

 

 

And then the brief encounter in late 1970 with the manager of Bechtel Corporation who were building the Bougainville Copper Project. He had sent me the airfare to fly across from Rabaul for the interview, took one look at me, and sent me straight back with the words, "Pack your things and be back here on the first day of next month" (on three times my current salary plus free board and lodgings and a company vehicle).

 

 

Two years later, with the Bougainville Copper Project completed, I was walking the streets of Sydney, looking for a job! I had applied in writing for another job on the island with a company who had just won a new contract there, giving as my address the only permanent contact I had, a friend in Canberra, to whom they sent a telegram asking me to come in for an interview. All my friend knew was that I stayed in some sleezy boarding-house on the North Shore but which one? He must've tried half the numbers in the Yellow Pages before he got to the one that I was staying at in Neutral Bay.

If you know anything about boarding-houses you know that their only telephone is the one hanging on the wall in the empty hallway and anyone passing it may answer it - or not. The chances of that 'anyone' being someone who happened to know that I, only recently arrived, was the one my friend was looking for, and that I also just then happened to be sitting in my windowless walled-off-end-of-the-corridor "room" and was able to come to the phone, are so infinitesimally small as to almost non-existent but that is exactly what happened.

The next day I attended the interview and the day after I was flying back to the islands to take up my new position as accountant and office manager in what was until then the biggest job in my career. Six months later I had successfully pulled off a challenging start-up job, handed it over to a friend, and, with a glowing reference in my pocket, headed back to Sydney on a promotion. For a split second the ball had stopped and hesitated on top of the net, and then gone forward, and so had I.

 

 

And the ball kept bouncing across the net, often without even touching it, such as when I received a telegram from France's biggest oil company to take up the position of chief accountant in Rangoon in Burma, sight unseen!!! That was after I had grabbed the very last copy of Friday's FINANCIAL REVIEW in which they had advertised it. Had someone else snatched that last copy, I would never have seen the advertisement!

 

 

Sometimes the ball volleyed across the net, such as when a bunch of executive headhunters phoned me just when I had got my first taste of domestic bliss and had settled down in a small house on the beach in Far North Queensland with a wife and a neighbour's dog and an easy job that paid the bills. Would I be interested in kicking off a multi-million-dollar joint venture on the Ok Tedi Project in New Guinea, they wanted to know. The call of the wild again!

Four months later I was back in town with a new reference in one hand and a new problem on the other: the river that Heraclitus had predicted two-and-a-half-thousand years earlier I would not be able to step back in again had totally dried up, with the small house on the beach still occupied by tenants and no job available to pay the bills. With wife and neighbour's dog also gone, I very much regretted that easy volley across the net four months earlier.

 

 

And so those unexpected discoveries continued with my serendipitous - which means 'occurring by chance in a happy or beneficial way', Des! - discovery in yet another issue of the FINANCIAL REVIEW of an half-page display advertisement - by this time I was only replying to display ads; by my reasoning, anyone who advertised a job in the cheap classifieds couldn't afford me! - for a Group Financial Controller in Saudi Arabia.

With the theme music of Peter O'Toole's "Lawrence of Arabia" in my ears, I applied and was sent the airfare to attend an interview. It must've been my mention of the Alhambra and that they'd had street-lighting in Córdoba while the rest of Europe was still dressed in bear skins that got the ball over the net, because a week later I was sitting in the pointy end of a QANTAS jet on my way to the world's largest sandbox.

In between these notable ones, there were countless other matches in a dozen other countries which I've always played to win. Given that I've never been much of a tennis player, I've certainly had more than my fair share of good luck.

"Game, set, and match", I'd say! - and that's all I'm going to say, as I've stretched those tennis metaphors far enough. (Note to self: Never again embark upon an extended metaphor involving tennis.)

 

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My misspent youth?

 

 

I've just watched "Made In Britain", a British film from the 1980s about skinheads and unemployment, glue sniffing, stealing, and racism. An online review calls the issues depicted as "timeless".

If those issues are so timeless, why did we in Germany in the 1950s and 1960s found no time for glue sniffing and stealing? There certainly was plenty of unemployment after the war, but we were too busy rebuilding the country and building a new life for ourselves, and what spare time we had from school or work we spent in character-building activities.

 

 

I had joined the "Fahrenden Gesellen" when I was perhaps ten or eleven years old. The "Fahrenden Gesellen" were part of the "Wandervogel" movement of German youth who protested against industrialisation by going for hikes in the country and communing with nature in the woods.

 

 

I spent most weekends and all my school holidays "auf Fahrt" or under canvas or at the group's "Landheim", learning how to be self-reliant and how to live off the land. Of course, alcohol and tobacco were banned.

 

 

Misspent youth? Call me a nerd, but I would do it again in a heartbeat!

 

 

 

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As promised --- Chloe

 

 

She has graced magazine covers, had wine named after her and poems written to her. She has experienced fame and adoration and has won high acclaim from critics. Her career began, like the many models after her, in Paris. She was created and moulded by a Master. She is a Melbourne icon, mascot for the HMAS Melbourne, an extremely fine work of art; she is an ingénue, a nymph, a celebrity. She is Chloe, the famous nude portrait which has graced the walls of the Young and Jackson Hotel since 1909. Throughout her life, Chloe has kept company with artists, poets, wharfies, Prime Ministers and drunks, soldiers, sailors, celebrities, bushies, labourers and art connoisseurs. Her history involves transformation, death, intrigue, love, war, depression and passion. Chloe now hangs in Chloe's Bar, so you can enjoy a drink or a meal while you admire this true Australian icon." - From the Young & Jackson Hotel website - click here.

But, as they say in the commercial, there's more! Chloe may now be an Australian icon, but she was painted in Paris in 1875 by the then noted artist Jules Lefebvre. His model was Marie, a 19-year-old who posed for several artists but whose beauty was no consolation for a failed love affair. She held a farewell party, spent her last francs on poisonous matches, boiled them and drained the glass. Marie could not have imagined she'd live to become, like Rider Haggard's She, an eternal young queen worshipped in the Young & Jackson Hotel in faraway Melbourne, generation after generation after generation.

Chloe made her debut at the Paris Salon where she and Lefebvre won the supreme award, the Gold Medal of Honour; the first of three the painting was to win. In 1879 Chloe was the central figure in the French Gallery at the Sydney International Exhibition and at the great Melbourne International Exhibition of 1880 she scooped the pool, winning the highest awards.

Dr Thomas Fitzgerald, a noted Melbourne surgeon bought her for 850 guineas and, when he left for Ireland for three years, asked the National Gallery of Victoria to give her a home. Until then, Chloe had been highly respected, but her arrival at the gallery coincided with its new policy of opening on Sunday and the first letter, calling for Chloe to be removed, appeared in the Argus newspaper on 7 May 1883.

'... the indecent picture of a naked woman called by a classic name which hangs in the north-east corner of the gallery should at once be removed. Would any of the gentlemen trustees permit a nude picture of their daughter, or sister, to be hung there; and if not, why anyone else's daughter?'

The correspondence in the letters pages of the newspapers bubbled along nicely for a month until Dr Fitzgerald asked for the painting to be returned. When he died, the Young & Jackson Hotel bought Chloe for £800 (slightly less than the doctor had paid for her) and she has been adored there, downstairs at first, and now upstairs, ever since.

 

 

And none is in greater adoration of Chloe than my friend in Cairns.

 

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