If you find the text too small to read on this website, press the CTRL button and,
without taking your finger off, press the + button, which will enlarge the text.
Keep doing it until you have a comfortable reading size.
(Use the - button to reduce the size)
We didn't hire www.open2view.com.au to take happy snaps of the property as did our ex-neighbours across the lane who've put their place up for sale again after little more than a year.
The photographer's use of special filters and a frog-eye lens to make a small and dark lounge look like a glittering ballroom is absolutely amazing! Do the same with "Riverbend" and it would look like Central Station!
Here are some more shots. Lovely, isn't it? If I didn't know any better, I'd be tempted to rush out and buy the place myself.
I thought I had ordered enough weatherboard cladding to cover all four corners but found myself forty metres short which won't be delivered until next Wednesday.
This, together with some design changes to the peaked roof, means that the grand opening of the clubhouse for the Nelligen Yacht Club will be delayed by a week or two.
As a boy I was fascinated by the Kon-Tiki Expedition. Kon-Tiki was the name of a tiny balsa-wood raft, constructed by Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl. It was Heyerdahl's contention that pre-Columbian Polynesian natives had regularly made trips across the ocean in similar rafts. To prove his theory, Heyerdahl set sail in the Kon-Tiki in 1947, successfully completing a 4300-mile journey from Peru to Tahiti.
I've just heard that they've made it into a movie dramatisation which won't reach Australia for quite a while and a DVD isn't available either. However, I've bought a copy of the original documentary filmed en route with 16-millimeter camera equipment.
I've also been able to source the extremely rare book Man on His Island in which the author James S. Rockefeller Jnr. describes how he rescued a sick Tom Neale from Suwarrow Island.
Our German visitors who endured torrential rains all the way up the coast, phoned us from Tweed Heads and are now winging their way back to Germany. Their short stay at "Riverbend" was the highlight of their trip and they want to come back next year for a whole month. I told them that at our age we shouldn't even buy green bananas let alone make travel plans twelve months ahead. Still, it would be great to meet again.
Yesterday I sat on the tractor for half a day turning seven acres of grass into lawn. I'll have to do a few more hours today before everything looks like a golf course again. We have visitors from Victoria arriving on Monday for two weeks. Then we have one more couple for ten days early next month and a week's booking at the end of April. That should be it for this season. We're already one week into autumn and the nights are getting cooler although the days are still in the high 20s.
First a few laps in the pool in Ulladulla, then a meal at the local Chinese with our local German friends Siegfried and Heike, a long walk with the dogs, afternoon coffee and cake, and the drive home to "Riverbend".
Ich wanderte im Jahre 1965 vom (k)alten Deutschland nach Australien aus. In Erinnerung an das alte Sprichwort "Gott hüte mich vor Sturm und Wind und Deutschen die im Ausland sind" wurde ich in 1971 im Dschungel von Neu-Guinea australischer Staatsbürger. Das kostete mich nur einen Umlaut und das zweite n im Nachnamen - von -mann auf -man.
Australien gab mir eine zweite Sprache und eine zweite Chance und es war auch der Anfang und das Ende: nach fünfzig Arbeiten in fünfzehn Ländern - "Die ganze Welt mein Arbeitsfeld" - lebe ich jetzt im Ruhestand in Australien an der schönen Südküste von Neusüdwales.
Ich verbringe meine Tage mit dem Lesen von Büchern, segle mein Boot den Fluss hinunter, beschäftige mich mit Holzarbeit, oder mache Pläne für eine neue Reise. Falls Du mir schreiben willst, sende mir eine Email an riverbendnelligen [AT] mail.com, und ich schreibe zurück.
Falls Du anrufen möchtest, meine Nummer ist XLIV LXXVIII X LXXXI.
This blog is written in the version of English that is standard here. So recognise is spelled recognise and not recognize etc. I recognise that some North American readers may find this upsetting, and while I sympathise with them, I sympathise even more with my countrymen who taught me how to spell. However, as an apology, here are a bunch of Zs for you to put where needed.
Zzzzzz
Disclaimer
This blog has no particular axe to grind, apart from that of having no particular axe to grind. It is written by a bloke who was born in Germany at the end of the war (that is, for younger readers, the Second World War, the one the Americans think they won single-handedly). He left for Australia when most Germans had not yet visited any foreign countries, except to invade them. He lived and worked all over the world, and even managed a couple of visits back to the (c)old country whose inhabitants he found very efficient, especially when it came to totting up what he had consumed from the hotels' minibars. In retirement, he lives (again) in Australia, but is yet to grow up anywhere.
He reserves the right to revise his views at any time. He might even indulge in the freedom of contradicting himself. He has done so in the past and will most certainly do so in the future. He is not persuading you or anyone else to believe anything that is reported on or linked to from this site, but encourages you to use all available resources to form your own opinions about important things that affect all our lives and to express them in accordance with Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Everything on this website, including any material that third parties may consider to be their copyright, has been used on the basis of “fair dealing” for the purposes of research and study, and criticism and review. Any party who feels that their copyright has been infringed should contact me with details of the copyright material and proof of their ownership and I will remove it.
And finally, don't bother trying to read between the lines. There are no lines - only snapshots, most out of focus.
If you are looking for a particular blog, search here!
Come and read my other blogs (click on triangle for details)