The beginning of the end

 

Where it all began: the view from the verandah of 14 Nelligen Place

 

Don't live your life by chance but by choice, they say, and yet isn't so much in life — from the circumstances we are born into to sudden, unforeseen events — left to chance? As was my ending up in this small riverside village of Nelligen.

As I wrote elsewhere - click here - it all started in 1991 - or was it 1992? An acquaintance from the HARMONIE German Club in Canberra had tax problems and, as a former tax agent, I helped him out without asking for any money — after all, we were both from the same "Vaterland".

As former German — and a "Saubayer" to boot — he naturally wanted to do me, the "Saupreußen", a favour in return and kept inviting me to his holiday home on the coast. For a long time I didn't take him up on it as I was self-employed and worked almost every day, seven days a week.

Then, one day, I drove the 150 kilometers down to the coast. I almost drove past this small village on the banks of the Clyde River before I remembered the former German and his kind offer, and so I asked the friendly lady in the small village shop: "Do you know where the German carpenter Tony Finsterer lives?" Of course, everyone knew everyone in the village and I was given directions to his house across the river.

The house was all locked up. I called Tony at home in Canberra: "I'm at your cottage! Where are you?" "The key is under the water tank. Climb over the fence, and make yourself at home," he said. And so I spent a beautiful weekend on the coast. And then another one, and that should have been the end of it, but it was only the beginning of the end.

At the time, "Riverbend" had come up for sale and, more out of curiosity than any real interest, I went along to the auction. Its reserve price of $500,000 was well outside my reach, as it must've been for everyone else, as it didn't sell. However, it had piqued my interest and I began looking around for something more affordable, which presented itself in a vacant building block high above and overlooking the Clyde River.

A chap in the house next door was sitting on his verandah enjoying the view and a can of beer. He invited me over and, over another can of beer — or was it three? — we got to know each other. He had lived and worked in Rabaul some years before I had lived and worked there; he had lived and worked on Thursday Island before I had lived and worked there — in fact, their daughter Fiona was born there, as noted on the Customs arrival card below which shows as 'Country of Birth' Thursday Island — and we shared stories about the same people and places.

 

Daughter's Airport Arrival Card in 1968: "Country of Birth: Thursday Island"

 

It all felt a bit like coming home, and before the day was out, I had bought the vacant building block. That should have been the end, but it was only the beginning of the end because the neighbour on the other side objected to my building plans and several changes I offered him. In the meantime, "Riverbend" across the river was still for sale, and in a sudden rush of blood to my head I felt bold enough to ask the real estate agent if there had been any change in the reserve price. "Make an offer!" he said, suggesting that the owner, who had bought the place four years ago but was no longer living there, was willing to negotiate. As I found out only later — and at the hands of the same neighbours — he'd had an almighty fight with the neighbours who were giving him hell, and he was more than just willing to negotiate: he was desperate to sell! And so, a few days later, I had negotiated a much lower price and signed on the dotted line, with settlement in December 1993.

Of course, I remained friends with the chap across the river and his wife, until their rather untimely deaths, first his and then hers. And, of course, the neighbours tried to give me hell as well, but I hadn't lived all over the world and rubbed shoulders with just about every creed and breed for nothing. The antics of this couple of incurable malcontents — it was the first time a woman gave me the "two-finger salute" or shout "Just because you fly the Australian flag doesn't make you an Australian" each morning as I hoisted the flag — became laughable and almost perversely lovable. I'm still here. She isn't: she died some years ago.

The new owners of the house across the river are also selling up. I almost feel like doing a "pretend-inspection" to relive one last time the many sunfilled days we sat on that verandah and the many dinners we enjoyed, feasting on his wife's savoury mince. I still miss them both.

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

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.

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

Can you see me drooling?

 

 

It was in downtown Nowra where I spotted the cause of all my juvenile wet dreams, a Karmann Ghia, and a sporty red one at that! This sports version of a Volkswagen was as rare as a Bugatti and as expensive as a Porsche. It was, of course, totally out of my reach as a young 18-year-old who badly needed wheels to follow his mobile office as paymaster of a column of some two hundred workers who were building the "Autobahn" from Hannover to Bremen.

Instead, being only barely legal to obtain a "Führerschein", I bought with borrowed money, guaranteed by my older sister, a bashed-up FIAT 500. It promptly and irreparably broke down and left me with no car but a loan which I kept paying off until I left for Australia in 1965. It also left me with a bad taste in my mouth and I didn't go near another car until I got my first company-supplied car on the island of Bougainville in 1972.

Today, I could afford any kind of car, however red and sporty, but with receding hair, few teeth, and an expanding waistline I no longer fit the picture; in fact, this one Padma took of me in Nowra will be the last.

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

To think I had once worked and lived there!

 

 

The local Ovambo people call Namibia "the land God made in anger" and as the sun mercilessly bakes deserts, plains and mountains alike, it is a close cousin to hell. Namibia, or South West Africa as it was called then, stretches north from South Africa's Orange River along 1280 kilometres of the loneliest, yet in parts most hauntingly beautiful coastlines touched by the Atlantic Ocean.

I spent six months in Lüderitz, a very German town squeezed in between the desiccating sands of the Namib and the freezing waters of the South Atlantic’s Benguela current, where German is spoken as much as Afrikaans (with a bit of English by those who are neither Germans nor Afrikaaners). There is only one road in and out, as the town is surrounded by the vast "Sperrgebiet" a 'no-go' diamond-mining area controlled by Consolidated Diamond Mines, or CDM as it was generally known, who created their own town Oranjemund at the mouth of the Orange River for the ten thousand or so Ovambos (the black people of the area) and thousand whites employed there.

 

 

The houses painted in improbable pastel shades make Lüderitz look like a toy town at times. The air is tangibly clean, even on the foggiest of mornings. Locals say that Lüderitz can have all four seasons in a day, as the weather can change in hours from bright, hot and sunny, to strong winds, to dark, cold and foggy – and then back to sunshine again. This variation, together with a cold sea and the prevailing southwest wind, rule out Lüderitz as a beach destination, though brave souls still take brief dips. I did - ONLY ONCE in the whole six months I was there!

 

 

The "kantoor" in which I had to spend my entire day was straight out of Dickens: dusty, old-fashioned, and run by an Afrikaaner woman by the name of "Mevrou Russo" who "commandeered" two other Afrikaaner women who treated the blacks abominably. To keep up with what they were saying, I bought myself an "Afrikaans-Duitse en Duits-Afrikaanse Woordeboek" which, more than fifty years later, is still in my library, together with dictionaries of Arabic, Burmese, Farsi, French, Greek, Indonesian, Malay, Samoan, and Pidgin.

 

All set to leave Lüderitz for Cape Town en route back to Australia

 

Six months in Lüderitz seemed a long enough servitude, and so I squared the account with my employers which left me with just enough money for the flight down to Cape Town and my sea passage back to Australia, but every so often I still watch the South African movie "Dirkie" to remind myself of where I had once worked and lived and to try and brush up on my almost forgotten Afrikaans.

 

The English version "Lost in the Desert"

 

The director of the movie, Jamie Uys, became best known outside South Africa for making "The Gods Must Be Crazy", and while there's something of "The Gods Must Be Crazy" in "Dirkie", the plot parallels more closely the far more successful "Walkabout" set in the Australian desert.

Lucky for you, the movie was also dubbed into English under the title "Lost in the Desert" for your enjoyment (or maybe not!) - click here.

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

Travelling North

 

 

I have always considered my return to the Deep South as temporary: when I came down to Sydney in 1985, I was always going to leave again for the tropical north; instead, I went to Canberra. Then I was going to leave Canberra again for the tropical north; instead, I retired to Nelligen.

More than forty years after my 'temporary' return to the Deep South I am still 'temporarily' down here and still hope to leave again one day for the tropical north, although I am beginning to doubt I ever will.

In the meantime, I enjoy watching my favourite movie "Travelling North", in which Frank (played by Leo McKern) retires with his ladyfriend to the distant tropical paradise of Port Douglas, where he only wants to meet the fish at the end of his hook. But Frank's road to paradise is paved with potholes in the form of new neighbours, old family ties, and a doctor's sad diagnosis.

This thoroughly enjoyable movie is based on a play by David Williamson who also wrote "Don's Party", "The Removalists", "The Club", "Emerald City", and others.

 

Googlemap Riverbend