Old school indeed!

 

 

After having spent more than ten thousand afternoons taking a nap and more than ten thousand mornings eating breakfast on the verandah, it's hard to believe that "Riverbend" didn't even have a verandah when I bought the place and immediately had one built.

That was thirty-three years ago, and the verandah is showing such signs of wear and tear that nothing short of a complete rebuild is needed.

I couldn't tell a good carpenter from a bad one if he hit me in the face with a claw hammer, and so I asked a friend if he had a friend who could do the job. He did, casually inspected it, and then quoted me $18,000.

 

 

I have little experience with tradesmen - of which most were bad - but I remembered the advice to always get three quotes. The first one was for $41,747.43 - I loved that 43 cents! - but didn't include an overhead beam which needed replacing, for which he quoted me $110 an hour. As I told him, "Not in my wildest dreams ..." He wasn't surprised at all.

 

 

The second one quoted me a not-quite-so-outrageous $24,499,20. It ticked all the boxes - as they say - and I thought I was on a winner!

 

 

But then came "Old School Quality Building" who had been the first one to show up for an inspection of the job but had been delayed giving me his quote, for which he apologised. $17,316.20. Old school indeed!

 

 

I immediately sent back an email, "Thank you for the time you took to look at the job and in preparing your quote. I really appreciated the thoroughness with which you did your inspection. I have never undertaken such a big job before, so please give me time over the weekend to think about it. I am keen to get started, so I'll get back to you early next week. I am also keen to establish a lasting relationship with a reliable carpenter as this old house is beginning to need more and more work done on it, which I hope you could help me with."

Think about it? Of course, I needn't think about! Three quotes and third time lucky! And so in my next email I said, "How soon can you start?"

 

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Instant recall

 

 

Last night, after yet another of my more frequently occurring "Pinkelpause" - look it up! - when I had trouble falling off to sleep again, the movie "The Beach" - not to be confused with "On the Beach" - with Leonardo DiCaprio entered my mind.

It is, of course, based on the book of the same name by Alex Garland, and one of the few instances where I watched the movie before I ever read the book (with the book usually a far more satisfying experience).

"The Beach", both the movie and the book, are thought to be a remake of that other book and movie about a group of British boys who are stranded on an uninhabited island and their disastrous attempts to govern themselves. That books, as every kid who had to read it at school knows, is called ... there I was, at four o'clock in the morning, and not being able to recall one of the classics of English literature.

I've always prided myself on a good memory and almost instant recall, and yet, despite willing my brain to come up with the title, it simply wouldn't obey me. It was only when the first light came filtering through the curtains and I heard an early fisherman passing on the river, that I gave up the fight, switched on my smartphone, tapped on the GOOGLE icon, and typed in "Golding" - yes, I had remembered the author's name but not the name of the book! - and there it was: "Lord of the Flies".

Of course! How could I have forgotten! From now on I shall always associate "Lord of the Flies" with sleepless nights which is perhaps as the author had intended it to be. Watch the movie for an instant recall.

 

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Phew, they're still there!

 

 

I've just heard on the radio, and then followed it up by reading, about a life jacket worn by a passenger on RMS Titanic as she escaped the sinking steamship on a lifeboat sold at auction on Saturday for $906,000. (Don't even ask me if that's in Australian or American dollars; it's totally crazy in whichever currency.)

 

 

I immediately rushed out to the jetty house to check the storage box. Phew, they're still there! Four old life jackets which could be worth a million dollars in years to come. I had better include them in my will.

 

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Saint Jack

 

What a brilliant movie! Now read the book at www.archive.org

 

Politically, Singapore is as primitive as Burundi, with repressive laws, paid informers, a dictatorial government, and jails full of political prisoners." Which is how Paul Theroux ranted about Singapore in his 1973 book "The Great Railway Bazaar", by which time it had been his home for three years, from 1968 to 1971, teaching English at the National University of Singapore.

It was also the setting for his first Asian novel, "Saint Jack", published later that same year. It was good he was elsewhere when it appeared, because Singapore's government didn't like the novel or its author any more than he liked the government, and banned the book.

 

 

It sold moderately elsewhere, until Peter Bogdanovich turned it into one of his best movies, shot on a low budget and on location. A phony script for a film called "Jack of Hearts" was submitted to obtain the official approval and this is what the Singaporeans on the cast and crew were told they were shooting as the cameras recorded the true grit of the waterfront, street markets, and notorious Bugis Street. The film, of course, was banned in Singapore when it was released in 1979.

"Saint Jack" tells the story of an affable American pimp who helped American GI's find companionship while on R&R in Singapore during the Vietnam War. Theroux has never said he knew any such individual, but his years of residence in Singapore give the novel a ring of truth.

Watching it decades after I had visited Singapore repeatedly while stationed in Rangoon in what was then Burma, it has more than a ring of truth about it: it is exactly how I remember Singapore from my days there in 1975 and again when my Saudi boss sent me back several times in the early 80s to supervise his transshipments through Sembawang.

 

 

Since then the world has changed, and so has Singapore, but a kindly soul, Toh Hun Ping of Singapore Film Locations Archive (whose website has disappeared since I first wrote about it), went to the extraordinary trouble of splicing together yesteryear's street scenes in "Saint Jack" with today's equivalents. Thanks for the memories, Hun Ping!

 

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P.S. I've just spent the last twenty minutes taking the second 's' out of 'transshipment' and then putting it back in again. I now let you decide!

 

Sunlit on the Clyde

 

Sunlit on the Clyde
To locate "Riverbend" in the photo, click here

 

We’d been driving through Nelligen for years — just passing through on the way to somewhere else. Then one afternoon we stopped. The river was doing that thing it does in the late light, where everything goes gold and still, and we sat there long enough to think: what if this was the destination? That’s how Sunlit on the Clyde began. Not as a business plan, but as a feeling."

Which is how the new owners of Nelligen's Sunlit Waters Motel describe "The story behind Sunlit on the Clyde", although it began more like this:

 

 

Long before the new owners allowed the place to fall into disrepute thanks to some of its 'shadier' social clientele, its previous owner, Mavis Dunbar, had already allowed it to fall into disrepair. She simply had grown old and run out of energy and patience with the never-ending demands of holiday-makers dropping in at all hours. You remember McDonald's catchcry, "You want fries with that?" Well, it is rumoured that Mavis used to ask her guests on arrival, "You want toilet paper, too?" In short, Sunlit Waters Leisure Retreat, as it was known, had seen better days long before Mavis Dunbar passed away in August 2020 - click here.

 

Sunlit Waters Leisure Retreat, as it was then
Some of the old photos can be seen here

 

With just a bit of a clean-up and a fresh coat of paint on the outside and a very substantial refurbishment of the cabins, the old place, much to the relief of all in the neighbourhood, has slowly arisen from the ashes.

By driving an extra two-hundred metres past that "Holiday Here" bubble, you really could have struck it lucky and found "Riverbend Cottage", but, like good ol' Mavis, we, too, have grown old and run out of energy and patience to cater to the demands of holiday-makers, and "Riverbend Cottage" is no more, but we've kept the old website for old times' sake.

For the past thirty-three years, "Riverbend" has been our "feeling that the South Coast doesn’t have to mean crowds, car parks, or a motel room that could be anywhere. It can mean the sound of the Clyde in the morning, a proper breakfast on your own deck, and the satisfaction of having found somewhere that most people drive straight past."

 

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