Of Christmasses past

In Camp 6 at Loloho on the Bougainville Copper Project
left-to-right: Neil "Jacko" Jackson, yours truly, Bob Green

 

We didn't use the word 'Christmas' then. Christmas came with too much emotional baggage. It reminded us of families and homes which we were far away from or didn't even have.

Of course, I'm talking of those many years - decades, in fact - spent in boarding houses, construction camps, hotels, and company housing. Come Christmastime, those who had families and homes had gone; those who didn't hadn't.

There was Barton House in Canberra, usually throbbing with life from its 300-odd - and some very odd - inmates, which turned into a morgue by Christmastime. The dining room was roped off except for one table next to the kitchen door. That table was large enough for those left behind.

It's hard not to be reminded of something when you're surrounded by half a dozen gloomy faces. So for my last Christmas in Canberra in 1969, just before I flew to my next job in New Guinea, I hitched and hiked to Angle Crossing where I spent a solitary weekend writing letters which is the only known device that combines solitude with good company.

Canberra's then Youth Hostel at Angle Crossing, over the hill from the Murrumbidgee River

Years later, and just one day before Christmas, I booked myself into hospital on Bougainville Island with acute appendicitis . "You'd better get on the next plane out and into a hospital at home", the doctor told me. He was already deep into his medicinal alcohol and had trouble remembering which side my appendix was on. "This is my home", I said. He made one long incision just to make sure he wouldn't miss it.

What I had missed was that my best friend Noel Butler was coming over from Wewak to spend - ahem! - Christmas with me. He must have got there while I was still under the anaesthetic, because there he was standing at the foot of my bed. He'd gone to my donga and waited and finally asked the hous boi where I was. "Masta bagarap long haus sik".

Yours truly and Noel hunched over a chess board in New Guinea

We tried again the following year by which time I had moved to Lae on the north coast of the New Guinea mainland. By the time Christmas and Noel had come, there was just time for a drink at the Voco Point yacht club and a game of chess before I flew out to my next job in Burma.

And so it went on, year after year, either coming or going or laid up with something, deftly avoiding Christmas. It's not so easy anymore!

 

 

Global empire or Soviet collapse?

 

Silent Contest is a Chinese communist military propaganda film produced by the People's Liberation Army's National Defense University Information Management Center, which sat online inside China for at least four days (and probably longer) before it was deleted on October 31, 2013.

It purports to expose and explain the secret battle, or conspiracy, the United States is waging against the People's Republic of China. The documentary runs for 92 minutes. Some analysts have called it a "masterpiece" of political propaganda, while others called it "eerie," "paranoid," "bizarre," or "alarming."

It has no English subtitles but watching it with the translation provided by Chinascope.org in another window works - click for Part I or Part II.

 

This is a subtitled commentary on the 92-minute clip "Silent Contest"

 

The conflict between China and the West is hotting up. "Thoroughly expelling 'color revolution’ from China will be a long war," the video warns. At the end it declares, "If there is war, we will answer the call."

Read a preview here.

What to make of it? Perhaps China's economic woes will solve the China problem. I ordered a copy of "The China Nightmare". Know thy enemy!

Googlemap Riverbend

 

The remarkable home of Erich Maria Remarque

The book shown at the beginning of this clip, "Opposite Attraction", can be read here

 

Erich Maria Remarque has been my favourite writer almost since I started reading serious books. His landmark novel "Im Westen nichts Neues" (All Quiet on the Western Front) (1928), about the German military experience of World War I, was an international best-seller which was adapted to film in 1930 and again in 1979 - click here.

On 10 May 1933, at the initiative of the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, Remarque's writing was publicly declared as "unpatriotic" and was banned in Germany. Remarque left Germany to live at his villa in Switzerland. In 1938, Remarque's German citizenship was revoked. Just before the outbreak of World War II in Europe, he left Porto Ronco in Switzerland for the United States. In 1948, Remarque returned to Switzerland, where he spent the remainder of his life.

For my friends at the Erich Maria Remarque Readers facebook page, I've pulled together all the books by Erich Maria Remarque which can be read online. Here is the list which I hope to be able to add to in time:

 

To read these books, simply SIGN UP (it's free!), LOG IN, and BORROW.

Books by Erich Maria Remarque in their English translation

All Quiet on the Western Front 1929

The Road Back 1931

Three Comrades 1937

Flotsam 1941

Arch Of Triumph 1945

Spark of Life 1952

A Time to Love and a Time to Die 1954

The Black Obelisk 1957

Heaven Has No Favorites 1961

The Night in Lisbon 1964

Shadows in Paradise 1972

Books by Erich Maria Remarque in their original German

Im Westen Nichts Neues 1929

Drei Kameraden 1937

Liebe deinen Nächsten 1941

Der schwarze Obelisk 1957

Der Himmel Kennt Keine Günstlinge 1961

Schatten im Paradies 1972

Books about Erich Maria Remarque

Understanding Erich Maria Remarque

Erich Maria Remarque

Erich Maria Remarque : The Last Romantic

Opposite Attraction

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

Australian property prices are going through the roof, but you can always go underground

For another look at the "White Man's Hole", click here and here and here.

 

The hammer has fallen on more than 33 properties that the District Council of Coober Pedy auctioned off to recoup unpaid rates in hotly contested bids attended by 70 people - with 40 more joining online - at the Desert Cave Hotel.

The council's CEO, Dean Miller, said the highest-selling dugout fetched $36,000. For anyone who has missed out on their dream of desert living, Mr Miller said there would likely be another twenty properties that would go on sale before the end of the year.

You'd probably want a bigger television screen, Des, but other than that I can already see you sitting in that reclining chair with a can of COKE in your hand! I'll visit you as soon as you've dug out an extra bedroom!

For more bargains at below-ground prices, go to realestate.com.au.

Googlemap Riverbend

 

The Road Back

 

Erich Maria Remarque ranks with Hemingway, Mann and Faulkner as one of the great novelists of the twentieth century. His anti-war novel "All Quiet on the Western Front" is now part of our permanent heritage.

The Road Back is not just a sequel to "All Quiet on the Western Front" but its necessary completion. Even more than the earlier book it shows how much more was lost in the war than men killed in action. Rough-edged, bowdy, coarse, lyrical and tragic, it has been acclaimed as the most gripping story told yet of soldiers in the post-war years.

Like the 1930 movie adaption of "All Quiet on the Western Front", it was also made into a movie. Perhaps because it is not as powerful as its predecessor, it was never released on DVD and is now almost forgotten.

Googlemap Riverbend