I'm a dawn watcher

 

 

There was a time when I stayed up to watch the sun rise; these days I get up for it: often as early as four, or five, but never later than six o'clock. I am addicted to sunrise, that mysterious still time before reality is revealed, before shapes emerge, when everything floats nebulously in that queer light that makes you think of the beginning of time.

Long before the huge garbage truck comes hissing down the lane on a Friday morning, long before the efficiency of the plumbing in the house is put noisily to the test, I sit on the verandah with a big thick mug of tea and watch the world reveal itself to be pretty much what it was yesterday.

I am lucky to have watched the sun rise from atop the Shwedagon Pagoda, from tropical islands in the South Seas and bobbing fishing boats in the Aegean Sea, and I shall never forget watching the sun rise from the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion.

I don't know whether it is true that dawn is the time when the majority of people choose to enter the world or to leave it, but it does seem to be a suitable hour. I should count myself lucky to push the   Publish   button on my last blog as I watch the sun turn the Clyde into a river of gold.

Until that happens, I shall continue to be a dawn watcher. It's why I'm so hopeless in the afternoon.

 

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The Jennings Germans

 

Klaus Scharrer, at 98 years of age, the last of the Jennings Germans in Canberra

 

The fingerprints of the ‘Jennings Germans’ are all over Canberra. They were some one hundred and fifty German carpenters who came to Canberra in the early 1950s to build 1850 homes for construction company AV Jennings.

After travelling halfway around the world, these young men began to build not only houses, but also a life for themselves. Brick by brick and friendship by friendship, they altered the physical and cultural landscape of Australia's then still quite small capital city and left a legacy that has lasted generations.

During my short time as secretary of the Harmonie German Club in the early 1990s, I still met several of these Jennings Germans, including Hugo Klug whose business I computerised - see here - and Tony Finsterer whom I can blame for now living out my life at "Riverbend". But that's a story for another day after I have translated this blog post into German.

 

Rosa (94) and Klaus Scharrer (98)

 

Today's story is not about Hugo Klug or Tony Finsterer but Klaus Scharrer who, at 98, is the last of the Jennings German carpenters in Canberra.

He will turn 99 in December and until only a few years ago he still made things from timber. One of the last things he made was a display cabinet for the German Club’s 70th anniversary five years ago.

It is a fitting end to a working life that began on the other side of the world and brought him to Canberra at the age of 25, with the skills of a German carpenter and little idea of what would happen next. That was in 1951. Canberra needed houses. Klaus was one of 150 young German tradesmen AV Jennings recruited to help build them.

He can still tell you exactly when he arrived: 10 December. He remembers the five-week voyage, the room at Ainslie Hostel and houses arriving in pieces, their walls ready to be stood up. He didn’t have any grand plan to make Australia home. “I had no plans”, he says.

Almost 75 years later, Klaus is still in Canberra — the last surviving Jennings German living in Canberra. Beside him is Rosa, aged 94, the woman who followed him from Munich in 1957 and began married life with him in a timber garage in Queanbeyan. Between them, they remember a Canberra that sounds almost unimaginable now.

 

Canberra advertising poster, c.1940s

 

"There was nothing here", Rosa said. There was Government House and Old Parliament House. Civic was tiny, with a cinema and little else. On Sundays, almost everything closed. In summer, they could head to the Cotter River for a swim and barely see another person.

Rosa could hardly speak English. Klaus owned a block of land but couldn’t afford to build a house on it. Yet neither talks about those years as particularly hard. Rosa remembers open spaces, warm weather and strangers who said hello. Their story is, in many ways, about how a place becomes home without anyone deciding that it will.

For Klaus, it began with a £125 block of dirt. By 1953, he had left Jennings for a better-paying job at a Queanbeyan joinery when a Russian colleague who spoke German pointed to the vacant land next to his own. The block cost £125. Klaus didn’t have the money, but he could pay it off gradually — whatever he could manage each month. So he bought it. It was a small decision that changed the course of his life. He had arrived in Australia unsure whether he would stay. Now he owned a piece of it.

With help from fellow German carpenters, he built a timber garage on the block. In the next few years he saved enough to travel back to Europe. But Australia was no longer a place he could simply leave behind. “I had a block of land here,” he said. “I had a garage.”

Upon returning to Germany, Klaus stopped in Munich to visit an old friend from Jennings. His friend’s sister, Rosa, was also there. It was carnival time, and Klaus and Rosa went to a dance. About three months later, they were married. Rosa had long been curious about the country that had taken her brother halfway around the world.

“I just wanted to go and see the world,” she said. “That was my dream when my brother left.” When she arrived in Australia in 1957, her husband didn’t have a conventional home waiting for her. He had the garage. There was a bed-sitting area, kitchen bench, table and stove. There was no sewer connection and the toilet was outside. But they had land, and they knew how to build. Their house came together gradually.

“Every so often we bought a bag of cement,” Klaus said. He did the brickwork and stonework himself and, naturally, the carpentry. That was how many young German tradesmen established themselves. After spending their working days building for others, they helped each other put up homes, doing everything from window frames and interiors to painting and brickwork.

Rosa had arrived with almost no English, and one of her first teachers was the greengrocer across the road. She pointed at what she wanted, and he gave her the word. “One lettuce.” The next time, she knew how to ask for lettuce. Then came cucumber, apples and the everyday vocabulary of her new country. She read newspapers, listened to people and learnt from neighbours and their children. Today, the shift is complete: Rosa and Klaus speak mostly in English, even at home and with their family.

Soon Rosa was travelling from Queanbeyan to Manuka to work as a tailor. She made men’s suits, and Canberra’s diplomatic community became part of her clientele. “I made suits for all the embassies,” she said. She remembers one diplomat ordering suit after suit – about ten during his posting.

Australia also felt less formal than the Germany she knew. There, Rosa remembers, people generally waited to be introduced before greeting one another. Here, strangers said hello. “Everybody talks to you. Wherever you go, you say hello, I say hello.” The space struck her too.

In Munich, she remembers a life largely lived in flats. Here, a young carpenter without much money could buy a block and build a house bit by bit. Soon they built the house that welcomed their daughter in 1961.

Their son followed in 1963. For Klaus, work rarely ended at knock-off time. Rosa remembers him and his mates coming home about 5 pm, eating, then heading out again around 6 for contract jobs that could keep them working until 10.

In 1978, after securing a major ABC contract, he established K&R Scharrer Joinery. The business began in a workshop of about 100 sqm and eventually grew into a 600 sqm factory employing five people. He retired in 1994.

Canberra, meanwhile, refused to stand still. The open spaces filled with suburbs. Civic grew. Roads became busier. Rosa sometimes misses the old one. “You could go out to the Cotter River, and you didn’t see a soul,” she said. “I liked it better then than what I do now when I go to Canberra. There’s traffic everywhere.”

 

Mother and daughter returning from a three-month visit to Germany in 1969

 

Germany remained as part of their lives. They went back many times to see family, and the Scharrer family crest still has a place in their home. But they never moved back. Rosa didn’t miss six-month-long German winters. She liked Canberra’s weather, its space and the easy friendliness she had noticed from the beginning.

For Klaus, the answer was similarly uncomplicated. “Life is easier here,” he said. Over the years, Klaus kept track of families of his friends and fellow carpenters who had made the same unlikely journey. But time gradually thinned their numbers. Klaus is now the last surviving Jennings German still living in Canberra. He believes another survivor may be living elsewhere in Australia.

 

The two years passed quickly and before the men knew it their contract was completed. Most had originally planned to return to Germany, but only 25 did so. The rest stayed.

 

On 10 December 2026, 75 years to the day since his group arrived, he plans to gather with descendants of the men who made that journey with him. And Klaus, almost 99, will be the living link to the young carpenters who arrived with their tools and two-year contracts, not knowing how much of their lives would ultimately be built here.

 

 

I checked the website of the National Archives of Australia and found that Klaus hasn't 'claimed' his immigration papers from 1951 yet. For a small handling fee, the archives will digitise and make them available for downloading from their website. Perhaps I should arrange it and give him a big surprise on his 99th birthday on the 24th of December.

 

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The world's most expensive tap washer

 

 

The new tenant moved in and returned the ingoing report just now. She also reported that the kitchen water tap is leaking. I have attached the video for your review", my friendly rental manager emailed me. "Our plumber is working in this area today; we have just requested him to attend ASAP. Trust you are okay with this."

And just to make sure that I fully understood the urgency of the matter, she had also enclosed the above video clip. Of course, I immediately told her to go ahead; after all, how much would it cost to replace the valve in a leaking tap? BUNNINGS sell them at $6.43 for a four-pack.

 

 

Well, I did find out today just much it cost. $246 ! How much I wished I had pursued a lifelong career in plumbing instead of in accounting!

 

 

Of course, I should have remembered the world's most expensive light switch, but I'm getting old and gradually my memory begins to fade.

But not my sarcasm. As I emailed her: "Amanda, I was gobsmacked by the $246 charged for fixing that dripping tap. Could you please at least supply me with a copy of the invoice so that I can frame and hang it on the wall with the inscription 'The world's most expensive tap washer'?"

 

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Eleven square metres per person

 

German Real Estate Advertisement by W&W (RESERVIERT is the equivalent of UNDER OFFER)   3-room unit, 77 square metres, in a much sought-after location in Braunschweig, Cyriaksring 47, for sale at €147,000 This beautiful home unit in the "Luisenhof" complex has been fully renovated and is now much sought-after ... (for the full advertisement - in German - click here)

 

These days you can find anything on the internet. I have just found an advertisement for the sale of the exact same rental unit at # 47 Cyriaksring in my hometown Braunschweig where my parents lived and where I grew up in in the 1950s.

This three-roomed unit (not just bedrooms; in Germany they count all rooms) was home to my father, my stepmother, my stepsister Karin, my stepbrother Borkhardt, myself, and two sub-tenants who were billetted with us by the authorities because of the acute housing shortage in those bombed-out post-war years. Seventy-seven square metres for seven people, eleven square metres per person.

Acute housing shortage, unemployment, no money, and little to eat sum up those dreadful post-war years. We were lucky to have a roof over our heads, even though we had to share that luck with two total strangers.

The advertisement includes a number of photos showing how beautiful everything looks today. The view across the yard is still as it was then, although the metal bars which were used to give carpets a good hiding (vacuum cleaners were unknown) have been replace by kids swings.

 

 

The front door opened onto a small entry hall, next was the kitchen ...

 

The small door on the left opened up to the "Besenkammer" or broom closet

 

... and straight across the one bedroom in which slept my father, my stepmother, Karin, Borkhardt, and I. My oldest brother and sister had already left but where were my two other sisters, Bärbel and Monika?

 

One bedroom for five. How did we all fit in???

 

The bathroom housed the only loo which, with seven people (or was it nine?), was always engaged. The gas-fired hotwater system has gone. It had to be lit with a match - and always ignited with a loud bang - to get any hot water, but nothing else has changed - well, except for the toilet roll on the wall. In my days we cut up the local newspaper and hung it on a hook. I learnt how to read and became a reader sitting on that loo.

 

 

The kitchen has been renovated and now also has a balcony, but the tiny coolroom is still in the left-hand corner as we didn't have fridges then. Nor washing machines; instead, we had a communal laundry in the basement with a huge wood-fired copper kettle which I had to stoke.

We all lived in the warm kitchen where we did our homework, made our own toys out of bits of cardboard and with 'im Falle eines Falles' UHU, and where we spent the long winter nights playing "Mensch ärgere Dich nicht" or chess or cards or Mikado. We were poor but we didn't know it!

 

 

 

The "large" lounge room belonged to our sub-tenants. I still remember two Bavarian zither-players who could play the Harry Lime theme but, fortunately, there was no third man or it would've been really crowded!

 

 

The smaller lounge room was our "gute Stube", the parlour, which was reserved for visitors and our parents' attempt at being bourgeoisie.

Our own furnishings were far more modest, although my father's pride was an ornate 'Schreibtisch', on which stood a large eagle carved out of marble. As a little boy, I had always been fascinated by it. So, decades later, after my father had passed away and I had settled in Australia, I asked my stepsister to ship it to me. I would've loved it to stand on my own 'Schreibtisch' as a reminder of my father and what used to be my modest home but, unfortunately, they already had turned it into cash.

 

 

Thank you, W&W, for this wonderful trip down memory lane - and, by the way, you just took a couple of thousands off QANTAS's bottom-line.

 

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Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

 

Watch the trailer of the movie here

 

Remember Harvey Keitel who plays Auggie in the movie "Smoke", who owns a tobacco shop in New York? One evening, as he’s closing up, Paul, a chainsmoking writer, runs up, hoping he’s not too late to still get some cigars.

Auggie lets him into the shop, and as he’s getting the cigars, Paul notices a 35mm camera sitting on the counter. He assumes another customer has left it behind, but Auggie tells him that it's his camera. He spends a little time each day taking photographs. In fact, there’s a little more to it than that; Auggie has a personal project and pursues it obsessively. Every day, at the same time each morning, he stands outside his shop and takes a photograph across the intersection.

Paul expresses interest; Auggie isn’t "just some guy who pushes coins across a counter". Soon the two of them are back at Auggie's place, having a beer, smoking (of course), and flipping through Auggie's fourteen albums. It turns out, he's been doing this for fourteen years straight and has accumulated more than 4,000 images of the same thing. He's never taken a vacation because he needs to get his shot.

Paul is amazed but also dismayed. Here’s the dialogue that follows:

 

 

PAUL "They're all the same." AUGGIE "That's right. Four thousand pictures of the same place. The corner of 3rd Street and 7th Avenue at eight o'clock in the morning. Four thousand straight days in all kind of weather. I can never take a vacation. I got to be in my spot every morning at the same time. Every morning at the same spot, at the same time." PAUL "I've never seen anything like this." AUGGIE "It's my project. What you'd call my life's work." PAUL "Amazing. I'm not sure I get it, though. I mean, what was it that gave you the idea to do this project?" AUGGIE "I don't know. I just came to me. It's my corner, after all. For me, that's just one little part of the world but things take place there too like everywhere else. It's a record of my little spot." PAUL "It’s kind of overwhelming." AUGGIE (Still smiling) "You’ll never get it if you don’t slow down, my friend." PAUL "What do you mean?" AUGGIE "I mean, you’re going too fast. You’re hardly even looking at the pictures." PAUL "But they’re all the same." AUGGIE "They’re all the same, but each one is different from every other one. You’ve got your bright mornings and your dark mornings. You’ve got your summer light and your autumn light. You’ve got your weekdays and your weekends. You’ve got your people in overcoats and galoshes, and you’ve got your people in shorts and T-shirts. Sometimes the same people, sometimes different ones. And sometimes the different ones become the same, and the same ones disappear. The earth revolves around the sun, and every day the light from the sun hits the earth at a different angle." PAUL (Looks up from the album at AUGGIE) "Slow down, huh?" AUGGIE "Yeah, that's what I'd recommend. You know how it is. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, time creeps in its petty pace."

 

The plot of this movie drifts and swirls like smoke. Characters and subplots are deftly woven into a tapestry of stories and pictures which only slowly emerges to our view. This movie tries to convince us that reality doesn’t matter so much as aesthetic satisfaction. Each day passes as Auggie tries to teach us to notice the little details of life.

 

 

I've tried to follow Auggie's routine and take a photo each morning as I sit on the jetty with my first cup of tea of the day, but I might as well have taken just the ONE photo, after all, they are all the same from one day to the next: the same peaceful river, the same blue sky ...

 

 

Ooops, I spoke too soon! Two kayakers just whizzed by, too intend on getting where they're going to take in the tranquillity of the moment. But not so for me: I shall continue to savour this precious moment, today and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow ...

 

 

Come back tomorrow for more of the same. It's my corner, after all!

 

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