There's one in every town and village

 

 

I've just come back from a late-afternoon walk up the lane to inspect the messiness the bringers of the sewerage and water reticulation have left behind after their first day on the job.

A fairly recent newcomer to the neighbourhood called out to me and we started talking. "Oh, you're that German from down the lane?" he asked. Whoops! It seems that my reputation has once again preceded me.

Yes, I'm that German from down the lane, and I image the reputation that preceded me was courtesy of a neighbour's wife who, whenever she could spy the Australian flag hoisted up my flagpole, screamed from the mercifully far away gate, "Just because you fly the Australian flag doesn't make you an Australian." There's one in every town and village.

(There's another character across the river who refuses to shop at ALDI. He's quite a jolly fellow and I admire his misguided conviction which costs him money as he's limited to shopping at Woolies and Coles.)

Like Socrates, I'd rather drink my hemlock than deny my German-ness which has stood me in good stead in all those years: industriousness, thoroughness, punctuality, honesty, and perhaps a bit of arrogance thrown in as well; after all, arrogance is still better than ignorance. I am German by birth and Australian by choice - and happy with both.

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Islands of Australia

 

 

Tonight at 8.30 ABC TV shows the first episode of "Doc Martin" Clunes' "Islands of Australia" with a very cameo appearance of David Glasheen, the Millionaire Castaway on Restoration Island. Are you reading this, Hubert Hofer in Cooktown?

 

"Doc Martin" with David Glasheen and his woman, Miranda the mannequin
Last time I spoke with Dave, he was missing female company.
Be careful what you're wishing for, Dave - click here

David Glasheen's house on Restoration Island

 

And, yes, "Doc Martin" then visits my old "home", Thursday Island, where I used to work and live in 1977 and for which I still have a soft spot. (Why do we miss people and places only when they are no longer around?) He meets Diver Dan outside Mona's souvenir shop of which I wrote about in my travelogue when I visited the island again in 2005:

 

"Doc Martin" with Diver Dan, born 1929, outside Mona's Bazaar

 

"I called in at a souvenir shop in the main street where I was met by a young Ethiopian, who had somehow got himself married to a T.I. girl. His wife's mother owned the shop which he now managed. They had three lovely children but after five years on T.I., he seemed to be getting restless. He was enrolled in some business studies and wanted to become an accountant but felt that the longer he stayed on T.I. the more his self-confidence eroded. He didn't know that he was suffering from - nor had he heard of the term - "rock fever" which originated among servicemen stationed in Hawaii during World War II. It meant a sudden and desperate need to escape to the mainland."

 

Mr Kazu welcomes Martin to Friday Island. Beyond Friday Island lies the weekend.

 

And he went across to Friday Island where Leo the Hun lived (and died) - click here - but where "Doc Martin" visited the Kazu Pearl Farm. More memories for me because during my time on Thursday Island in 1977 I befriended a Burmese marine biologist, Victor Aung, who had worked there. The sheer isolation and loneliness finally drove him away from there and the last I heard from him was decades ago when he had taken a job as a mail-sorter at the Sydney GPO. Where are you now, Victor?

 

Victor Aung on his visit to Thursday Island in 1977

 

If you're too busy tonight to watch "Islands of Australia", you can tune in again on Sunday at 3.55 in the afternoon or, if you have access to iview, go to iview and click on Episode 1. Say hello to mad-as-a-cut-snake David Glasheen and his sidekick, the lovely Miranda. Tell him I sent you.

 

Martin's last night on Restoration Island, dining on freshly-caught trevally

 

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P.S. Read more about David Glasheen in the TheHustle.

 

I'm buying BHP!

 

We live in troubled times and the world’s largest economy is failing miserably in its role as 'global peacekeeper'. America once ruled as a moral leader, liberating Europe from Hitler’s Nazi regime and defeating the Japanese Empire which inflicted atrocities all across Asia.

While publicly preaching restraint, behind the curtains the US continues to hand out a colossal $95 billion in military aid to Israel alone which will no doubt fatten the purse strings of the likes of Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and Raytheon, among others.

All this will be highly inflationary and affect the supply of basic minerals over the coming years. The outbreak of WW1 witnessed one of the most prolific price surges on record for copper. The graphic above shows its 120-year price history, adjusted for inflation. Copper reached the equivalent of US$9,878 per tonne in 1914 as the demand for bullets and other war munitions rose. The same thing occurred over the Vietnam War throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Demand for copper is currently outstripping supply, driving up prices. Copper supply has been strained by operational and political instability in regions where it is mined, including Congo, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and Latin America. There are no quick fixes as copper's supply response is notoriously slow. A typical copper mine takes about 10-15 years to explore, develop and bring online.

 

Today's copper price is $9,654

 

Proof that metals will be a strong performer amid political chaos and geopolitical chest beating. While I truly wish the reasons were different, history tells us that major geopolitical tensions and the build-up to war are extremely bullish for metals. These are the real reasons commodity prices are embarking on a new era of price inflation. I'm buying BHP!

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What is a Schrebergarten?

 

 

You are travelling along in Germany, and suddenly on the side of the railway tracks there is a cluster of fenced-in tiny houses surrounded by small gardens. Are these actual homes? Are they camping grounds for seasonal workers? Or is this where the garden gnomes live when they aren't in your garden?

Actually, these little plots of land are called "Schrebergarten" but how did this idea for tiny gardens get started? Because so many Germans live in apartments without yards, the Schrebergarten, a little plot of land usually at the edge of a city, gives them a chance to get out in the fresh air and work in the garden.

This movement, which is now nationwide, was the brainchild of Dr Moritz Schreber, a Leipzig University Professor who specialised in childen's health. He worried that the children growing up in the cities would be stunted physically and emotionally if they could not go out to play in the countryside, and insisted that playgrounds be built to ensure that childen would properly socialise.

After his death in 1861, Leipzig school principal Ernst Innozenz Hauschild established the first Schrebergarten as a playground for children on the outskirts of Leipzig. To supplement the healthy air and exercise, vegetable gardens were planted. Slowly, the adults took control of the green spaces, and planted family gardens in the plots. Then fences went up to make sure that their place was theirs alone.

 

 

The Schrebergarten movement spread all over Germany and beyond, with pieces of land on the edge of cities zoned for Schrebergartens which were leased out to families. There they could spent their evenings or weekends puttering away, growing their own vegetables and watching the sun set over their little patch of land. My Opa would sit there in his shorts and socks and sandals watching the world go by while Oma tended her flowers and served us "Muckefuck" and "Kuchen".

Each little plot had its own "Gartenlaube" or tiny house. It wasn't meant for sleep-overs but many people did sleep over on warm summer nights, as did my Opa whom I sometimes accompanied on his trips out to his Schrebergarten. That was in the 1950s. Much later, Schrebergarten were thought to be antiquated "Kitsch" where garden gnomes multiplied.

 

 

However, there has been a renaissance in Schrebergarten, not only in Germany but also here at "Riverbend" where I have my own little Schrebergarten and sleep-out on my own acreage - click here - where I can wear my socks and sandals and practise my German orderliness.

 

 

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My pre-Deceased Estate Sale is up and running!

 

As I've mentioned earlier, my pre-Deceased Estate Sale is now up and running! So far the online advertisement at www.realestate.com.au had 510 hits, of which some 400 are probably my own as I keep admiring my handiwork.

As I put in parentheses at the bottom of the advertisement: (This is a pre-Deceased Estate Sale by the owner himself who wants to sell while he can still drive his own car before being driven out in a hearse. His negotiating skills are hopeless, so to save himself all the frustrations, he's set a very realistic sales price. His photography is also pretty crappy, so you will be pleasantly surprised when you see the real thing.)

The resulting inquiries were just four: a promising one from a real estate mogul in Milton who seemed to be interested in adding to his portfolio, and another three from people whose arithmetic must've been way off when reading "most residential properties sell at a price ratio of 75% for the house and 25% for the land; 'Riverbend' has an inverse ratio of 25% for the house and 75% for the land (1 July 2022 Valuer-General's Valuation of the LAND ONLY was $2,637,000)". They never replied after I had told them that the price would be over $3 million.

Perhaps my home-made advertisement lacks the misleading hyperbole employed by fast-talking real estate agents; it also lacks all that tricky photography employed by fast-talking real estate agents that makes the sky look bluer and the grass look greener and the house look bigger.

It's just an honest advertisement for a house which over thirty years has become a home which I will be reluctant to leave but leave I will while I'm still able to drive my own car instead of being driven out in a hearse.

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