How one tiny $3-classified advert changed my life

 

After my 'compulsory' two years in Australia from 1965 to 1967 as an 'assisted migrant', I was free to leave again - and leave I did as it seemed impossible to live on what was initially a youth wage and later became the salary of a junior bank officer with the ANZ Bank.

I had booked a passage back to Europe aboard the Greek ship 'PATRIS' operated by Chandris Line which had been scheduled to leave Sydney and call at Port Moresby on its way through the Suez Canal. But history and the Eqypt-Israeli war of 1967 [the "6-Day War" which began on June 5, 1967] intervened and the Suez Canal was closed to all shipping.

So the 'PATRIS' never got to Port Moresby but sailed through the Great Australian Bight and around the Cape of Good Hope (Cape Town) instead. However, a good number of 'Territorians' from the then Territory of Papua & New Guinea had already booked a passage and the shipping line at great expense flew them down to Sydney to join the ship. And so it came that I spent some four weeks aboard the 'PATRIS' in the company of a whole bunch of hard-drinking and boisterous 'Territorians'.

Having barely scraped together the fare, I had no money to spend on drinks but I did mix with the 'Territorians' night after night in the ship's Midnight Club to listen to Graham Bell and his Allstars. I was spellbound by the tall stories those 'larger-than-life' 'Territorians' told about the Territory which seemed to provide them with everything they wanted from life. My mind was made up that one day I would go there myself.

I spent the next few miserable winter months in Hamburg and then in Frankfurt before finding a way out again: I got a job in southern Africa which, as I saw it, was almost halfway to New Guinea. That is not to say that my career was a planned one. Lemmings have better plans than I've had for most of my life, but that's perhaps true of many people's lives.

After six months' work in South-West Africa (now called Namibia) I had saved enough money for the fare back, and in April 1969 I boarded the 'Ellinis' in Cape Town and sailed for Sydney, from where I took the train back to Canberra to resume my earlier work with the ANZ Bank.

But the die was cast and I knew I'd find a way to get to the Territory. I had heard about PIM, the Pacific Island Monthly which was read by one and all in the Territory. I bought a copy and decided to place in next month's issue a tiny classified ad which from memory ran something like this: "Young Accountant (24), still studying, seeks position in the Islands." It cost me $3 and got me two offers, one of which I accepted and which was the start of my life in the islands and all that followed.

Ever since then I have been trying to find a copy of that life-changing advertisement again. Some ten years ago, I even took a trip up to Canberra where I spent a couple of hours in the cavernous reading room of the National Library paging through all the twelve issues of the 1969 Pacific Islands Magazine, from January to December 1969, but no luck!

 

Each monthly issue carried one page full of classified ads. This one is the June 1969 issue. My classified advert would've been published sometime between June and December 1969

 

Since then, the National Library has digitised the entire run of the Pacific Islands Monthly magazine, from the first issue in 1930 to the last in 2000 - click here, and I've been able to search the same issues on the computer from the comfort of home. NOTHING! And yet it could've only been in PIM! Where is that tiny $3-classified that so changed my life?

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What's on the telly and what's for dinner?

M.C. Escher's 'Klimmen en dalen' (‘Ascending and Descending’)

 

Call me a nerd but work has been my life and the principal source of my life's meaning! I loved my work which was always challenging and inspiring. On those occasion when it wasn't, I didn't stay long.

I mean, if you're going to work all your life, it had better be something you like. If not, remember that they write tragedies about people like you.

If most people seem to view their work as some sort of Escher-like drudge, it may be because they are still working at jobs chosen for them by their sixteen-year-old selves. I chose my first job when I was 14. And the next one when I was 17. And again when I was 19. All up, I made well over fifty choices to keep me challenged and inspired.

Mind you, I may not have the last laugh because I have now been in my last "job" - retirement - for well over twenty years and my interests seem to be reduced to what's on the telly and what's for dinner.

 

 

Whatever gets you through the night

"My" corner in my room at the Al-Harithy Hotel

 

The story of my life reads like a fairy tale - GRIMM! And there was no grimmer time than my years in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia! Being paid extremely well and living in a five-star hotel was small compensation for living in the world's largest sandbox.

The Four Pillars of Prohibition in Saudi Arabia are No Piss, No Pork, No Pornography and No Prostitution but it was the sheer loneliness of the place that reduced even the most hardened men to tears. Some of us resident expats would meet at lunchtime around the swimming pool of the Al-Harithy Hotel on Medina Road in Jeddah for a swim and a game of chess.

Then came the long night and the lack of entertainment and the lack of companionship until perhaps some time after midnight, just when I thought I had conquered my insomnia, there was a hesitant tap on the door. Outside stood one of the expats I had met at the swimming pool at lunchtime, with a chess-board under his arm, asking in a timid voice, "Feel like a game of chess?"

FEEL LIKE A GAME OF CHESS??? AT 1 O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING???

But, of course, I didn't say that. Instead, I switched on the kettle, set up the chess-board, and made the appropriate moves. Literally! Because it wasn't about chess at all but about the choking isolation, or about a "Dear John" letter he'd received from home, or, worse, no letter at all.

And so I played the game because it might be my turn next to stand outside someone's door with a chess-board under my arm, asking in a timid voice, "Feel like a game of chess?"

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The Sheltering Desert

 

 

My list of boyhood heroes - Doctor Albert Schweitzer, Thor Heyerdahl ("The Kon-Tiki Expedition"), Heinrich Harrer ("Seven Years in Tibet"), and Heinz Helfgen ("Ich radle um die Welt") - has kept growing well into adult life.

When I lived and worked on Thursday Island, I added Oskar Speck who paddled in a tiny "Faltboot" all the way from Germany to the Torres Strait, and even in my retirement I found new inspirations when in an op-shop I picked up a copy of Tom Neale's book "An Island To Oneself".

Long before then though, I added to my list the amazing story of Henno Martin and Hermann Korn who for two years hid out in the waterless Namib desert to avoid being interned during the Second World War.

I first came across the Afrikaans translation of their book "The Sheltering Desert" under its Afrikaans title "Vlug in die Namib" in 1968 when I lived and worked in South-West Africa, or what is now called Namibia.

 

END OF THE ROAD
The heavy iron gates of Windhoek Prison fell to behind us with a clang. I turned round for a moment. Above the inner arch of the gates was an inscription, a little faded but still legible: "Alles zur Besserung!" Those reassuring words had obviously been left over from the days of German rule. So we were to be improved, reformed, rehabilitated as its inmates! In the ordinary way I should have laughed, but we didn't feel much like laughing.
The formalities were soon settled. Our names: Hermann Korn and Henno Martin. Profession: geologists. Then our belts and bootlaces were taken away. After that the cell doors closed behind us.
We were separated now and my sick comrade lay in the next cell. I didn't feel too good myself; we had been on the move all day in order to reach our destination before nightfall. The feeble light of a lamp in the prison yard fell through the bars of my cell window. I could not sleep.
I lay on my back and stared into the semi-darkness. How narrow and confined this small space was after the wide horizons and the high heavens of the desert in which we had lived for so long!

 

Its German original, "Wenn es Krieg gibt, gehen wir in die Wüste" ("We hide in the desert when war comes"), seemed to be little-known beyond the borders of South-West Africa then, and is lost in total obscurity now.

 

 

However, its English translation is now long out of copyright and freely available on the internet - click here. And, best of all, this classic tale of African adventure and man's survival in brutal circumstances was made into a movie in 1992 which is also freely available on YouTube.

Enjoy!

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A voice from beyond the grave

 

A trailer from the movie "Ein Mann und sein Boot" which shows Rollo Gebhard's third circumnaviagtion in 1983 when he was accompanied by his wife Angelika Gebhard.

 

When Joshua Slocum left Boston in 1895 in his 11.20m-long gaff-rigged sloop oyster boat named "Spray" to become the first person to single-handedly circumnavigate the world, he was 51 years old.

The Panama Canal hadn't even been built yet, and Slocum had to take the dangerous route around Cape Horn. You can read about his more-than-three-year-year-long voyage in "Sailing Alone Around the World".

When Rollo Gebhard left Genoa in Italy in August 1967 in his 7.25m-long yacht "Solveig III" on his first of two single-handed circumnavigations, he was 46 years old. It took him just under three years, and he chose the Panama Canal instead because it was there. His second single-handed circumnavigation in the same boat at the age of 53 took him over four years, from March 1975 to November 1979, and he, too, wrote a book about it (in German), "Ein Mann und sein Boot - 4 Jahre allein um die Welt" ("A Man and his Boat - 4 years alone around the world").

 

You can read the book - in German - online at www.archive.org
The following extracts are of Rollo's meeting with Tom Neale: click here and here

 

What made this book particularly interesting to me was Rollo's meeting with Tom Neale on Suwarrow Atoll. Not only did he visit him on his "Island to Oneself" on both his first and second circumnavigation, but he also wrote that he had taped an interview with Tom in November 1976.

He wrote about it in "Ein Mann und sein Boot" in German but how much better would it be to hear it in English from the man himself! I emailed Rollo's wife Angelika Gebhard in Bad Wiessee in Germany who promptly replied, "In dem Film über die zweite Allein-Weltumsegelung (1975-79) meines Mannes ist ein Interview mit Tom Neale enthalten. Der Film wurde damals im ZDF ausgestrahlt." ("The interview is included in the movie my husband made during his second circumnavigation which back then had gone to air on the commercial television station ZDF.")

How to get hold of that movie? It was not on YouTube - except for the short trailer shown above - and not available on ebay or anywhere else. Frau Gebhard had the solution, "Das ZDF besitzt die Urheberrechte an dem Film, und ich vermute, dass es sehr schwierig bis unmöglich sein wird, ihn über das ZDF zu erwerben. Aber ich habe den Film, den wir für die Vorträge geschnitten haben. Ich könnte Ihnen den Teil mit dem Interview zukommen lassen, wenn Sie den Film nur privat einsetzen." ("The television station owns the copyrights to the movie, and it would be difficult if not impossible to get a copy. However, I could send you a copy of the part containing the interview for your own personal use.")

Tom Neale being interviewed by Rollo Gebhard on Suwarrow in November 1976 (29:10)
Unfortunatey, for copyright reasons I'm not at liberty to publish the full clip on YouTube

 

And so it came to pass that for the first time ever I was able to listen to the voice of my long-time hero Tom Neale and watch him as he was interviewed by my new hero, Rollo Gebhard. Obviously, I cannot show you the footage for copyright reasons but I can give you a transcript:

(Rollo) "You have done something many people dream about. You are living on a small island far away from civilisation. Are you happy?" (Tom) "Yes, yes, I'm happy here." (Rollo) "And would you recommend this lifestyle to other people?" (Tom) "No, not exactly. I would have to know a person very, very well first before I could recommend a life like this. You must remember, before I came here I had many years of experience of life in these Pacific islands and I knew what to expect. How could I tell if someone else could cope with things here or whether he could stand being alone. We are not all the same, you know. I'm a person who doesn't mind being alone. I've always been that way, more or less."

 

 

One, no, two voices from beyond the grave because Tom Neale died the following year, in 1977, in Rarotonga, aged 75, and Rollo Gebhard died at home in Bad Wiessee in 2013, aged 92. Two lives well lived!

 

Rollo and Angelika Gebhard promoting their "Society to Save the Dolphins"

 

Thank you, Frau Gebhard, for allowing me to view this rare and historic movie clip, and I wish you continuing success with the "Gesellschaft zur Rettung der Delphine (GRD)" ("Society to Save the Dolphins"), started in 1991 by your husband and of which you are still the chairperson.

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P.S. To read Tom Neale's book "An Island To Oneself", click here.