Do you really want to pay another tax - an Islamic religious tax?

 

I am frustrated and concerned by the practice of halal certification in Australia. I do not wish to support any brand that pays an Islamic religious tax to have their product halal certified.

As yet, less than 2% of our population is Muslim and I do not want to fund special religious rituals or political campaigns to increase the presence of Sharia Law in Australia.

I am also concerned about possible animal cruelty in the halal slaughter process. The Koran does not stipulate anywhere that a product must undergo certification for it to be halal.

Even Dairy Farmers have descended to a new low in their quest not to upset the Muslims and to hoodwink Australians:

No more Coon cheese for this kid! Read more here.

 

It all began with Richard Schirrmann

 

 

The founder of the youth hostel movement was Richard Schirrmann, a teacher from Germany. He was a believer in learning by direct observation and often took his classes on excursions and hiking trips. The hiking trips could last several days, and Schirrmann and his pupils would find accommodation in farm buildings.

On one of these excursions, on 26 August 1909, the group was caught in a thunderstorm. They finally found shelter in a school building in the Bröl Valley. The headmaster let them use a classroom and a farmer gave them some straw to sleep on and some milk for their evening meal. The storm raged the whole night. While the boys slept, Schirrmann lay awake. That was when he had an idea... "The schools in Germany could very well be used to provide accommodation during the holidays. Villages could have a friendly youth hostel, situated a day's walk from each other, to welcome young hikers."

 

Richard Schirrmann (May 15, 1874 – December 14, 1961) born in Grunenfeld, Prussia

 

That stormy night was when the worldwide youth hostel movement was founded. In 1910 Schirrmann wrote an essay setting out his ideas for "Volksschülerherbergen" (hostels for pupils of ordinary state schools). "Two classrooms will suffice, one for boys and one for girls. Some desks can be stacked away thus freeing space to put down 15 beds. Each bed will consist of a tightly stuffed straw sack and pillow, two sheets and a blanket... Each child will be required to keep his own sleeping place clean and tidy."

In 1912 the first real youth hostel opened in the old castle of Altena. The castle was restored and equipped according to Schirrmann's design, with two dormitories with massive triple-tier wooden bunks beds, a kitchen, washrooms and a shower bath.

 

Altena Castle, the world's first youth hostel

 

The youth hostel movement grew rapidly. By 1913, already 83 youth hostels and 21 000 overnights were recorded. By 1921 the number of overnights stays had already reached 500 000. By the summer of 1931 there were 12 youth hostel associations in existence in Europe, operating a total of 2,600 hostels, but there was very little contact between the associations.

This all changed on 20 October 1932 when the first international conference was held at a hotel in Amsterdam. It was attended by representatives from 11 hostel associations: Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, England and Wales, France, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway, Poland and Switzerland.

Youth hostels then were very different from what they are now. The idea of doing chores around the hostel during your stay was much the norm, so that hostellers helped out with reception duties, cleaning, cooking and general maintenance within the hostel for the welfare of everyone. That way, the hostel was maintained perfectly with a great community spirit.

 

Yours truly during his hostelling years in Australia in the mid '60s

My then address in Canberra: BARTON HOUSE

That Athol Guy-looking guy was yours truly in 1966. I had just acquired a new speed-signature after having to sign hundreds of cheques in the Bank every day.

Collecting hostel stamps was part of the fun of hostelling. My first holiday in Australia: Tullebudgera 27/8/1966; National Fitness Camp Magnetic Island 31/8 - 5/9/1966; Tullebudgera (on the way back) 11/9/1966.

 

I was a constant and keen 'Youth Hosteller' throughout my teens in Germany and joined up with the local Youth Hostel Association in Canberra almost as soon as I had arrived in Australia in 1965 which at the time had very few hostels. Canberra's first hostel was a modest farm worker's cottage along Naas Road just outside Tharwa which was followed by an old farm building near Angle Crossing. Then we raised money for the first purpose-built hostel at Black Mountain through a 'buy-a-brick' campaign.

 

The hostel at Angle Crossing in July 1969, five months before I left for Papua New Guinea

I returned to Angle Crossing one more time in January 1999, but what had once been our treasured youth hostel and weekend escape was all locked up and neglected

 

Today's youth hostels are as good as, and often better than, many hotels and while they still offer cheap dormitory-style accommodation; single, double and family rooms with private bathrooms are also available.

 

 

Well, you can take the boy out of the youth hostels, but you can't take the youth hostels out of the boy, and while I no longer stay at them as often as I did fifty years ago, I have remained a member ever since.

And so can you! Check it out here.

 

 

Give them an extra seven acres and they'll want an extra seven building permits as well

 

All the waterfront properties in Sproxton Lane are around 1,600 square metres in size which isn't even half an acre. One such property, with a modern house on it, is currently on sale at $1.825 million.

Another one, with a smaller and older house, sold in recent years for $1.2 million. Yet another buyer thought nothing of spending $950,000 on a small wooden cottage and then buying the adjoining vacant block for an extra $750,000, giving him some 3,000 square metres of dirt with a tiny house on it, all for the princely sum of $1.7 million.

For just a little more money, he could have bought "Riverbend" which has a solid double-storey brickhouse and numerous improvements, and is set on a whole seven acres of absolute waterfront land! I mean, the land area of "Riverbend", divided into seven separate blocks on seven separate titles, plus a separate title over the 20-metre-wide road access along its whole eastern flank, is larger than all the other waterfront blocks in the lane combined. Just to get from the gate to the frontdoor, you walk across the width of three of the other blocks.

And yet, people don't seem to recognise just what a bargain it is. Why?

 

 

Methinks it is greed! Rather than viewing all this absolute waterfront land as a private park and a protective buffer against noisy (and nosey) neighbours, they immediately feel challenged to want to subdivide it, to build more on it, to make money out of it.

Well, I can give them the extra seven acres but I can't give them the extra building permits! So, next time they ask, "Can I subdivide?; can I build?", I won't say, "Read my lips"; I'll say, "Read my blog" ☺

 

Slaughterhouse-Five

 

Kurt Vonnegut's book Slaughterhouse-Five contains this little gem of a dialogue: "Is it an anti-war book?" --- "Yes," I said. "I guess." --- "You know what I say to people when I hear they're writing anti-war books?" --- "No. What do you say?" --- "I say, 'Why don't you write an anti-glacier book instead?"

Which means, of course, that there will always be wars, and that they are as easy to stop as glaciers. And even if wars didn't keep coming like glaciers, there would still be plain old death.

I struggled to finish this book which is full of black humour, satiric voices, and incomparable imagination. I thought it would be completely 'unfilmable' until I saw the trailer of director George Roy Hill's movie by the same name. Full marks for trying and I've ordered the DVD.

Of course, the relentless fire-bombing of Dresden at a time when it was choked with hundreds of thousands of refugees escaping the advancing Red Army was one of those totally pointless and insane war crimes. As was the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff. As were the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, dropped for no other reason than to show the Ruskies that the Yanks could do it. But, of course, history is written by the victors.

 

Paradise Found

 

On a scale of one to ten, the "Croc Woman" Linda Rowe's booklet probably doesn't warrant more than a minus-five if judged solely on its literary merit but it is interesting to read about other people's unconventional lives.

Things should have become more interesting after Linda's partner had headed back to Cairns - or as Linda described it, "as Ken approached forty, he seemed to change, and suddenly a friend's 21-year-old daughter looked attractive. She was followed by someone else, and someone else" - and left Linda and her Croc Shop in splendid isolation.

Unfortunately, at that point the booklet has just another four pages to run before Linda, two years on, relocates to her permanent "Croc Shop" in Cooktown where I met her in January 2007 when she was already in her late 50s and, like the rest of us, complained about the cost of electricity and contributed towards her superannuation.

The unconventional life seems to have an inbuilt use-by date. Mine had!