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.

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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Ich denke oft an Piroschka

 

 

The tendency to look back contemplatively on one's life as one gets nearer to the end of it is a natural human instinct which I indulged in last night as I sat up late to watch the old German movie "Ich denke oft an Piroschka" (I often think of Piroschka). I had last seen it as a boy of 10 or 12 accompanied by my sisters, in a Sunday afternoon movie matinée.

 

 

And how the memories came back! Of my boyhood and youth and of the Piroschkas in my own life and the Hódmezővásárhelykutasipusztas I've been to! (Can I speak Hungarian? No, but I can be silent in several other languages!)

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

I don't think Hugo Hartung's book has ever been translated, so unless you speak German (if not, why not?), you may safely ignore the following:

 

Ich denke oft an Piroschka. Oft höre ich ihre Stimme, nachts: "Kérem, Andi! mach Signal!" und meine, ihre drollige Stirnlocke an meinem Gesicht zu spüren. Aber dann werde ich wach ... Wie es dazu kam --- das freilich kann ich nicht in jedem Traum wiederholen. Es ist eine zu lange Geschichte. Doch einmal muß sie erzählt werden. Inzwischen hat sich ja so viel geändert da unten in Ungarn. Vielleicht hat Piroschka selbst wieder eine Piroschka, die heute so alt ist, wie sie damals gewesen ist. Ich darf es jetzt erzählen - alles! Ganz von Anfang an ... So hat es begonnen: [Lese weiter!]