No need for you to get jealous

 

Unfortunately, not all imagines are from Bonegilla

 

No one ever emigrates because of the success they've enjoyed at home. No one ever says, "Well, I have a happy home life, I'm rich and I have many friends - so I'm off." The only reason anyone has for going to live in another country is because they've cocked everything up in their own.

Being just nineteen years old, my opportunities for cocking things up had been rather limited by the time I left; in fact, my only - and certainly biggest - cock-up until then had been that I allowed myself to be born to parents who were so poor that they packed me off to work as soon as I had reached the minimum school-leaving age of fourteen.

But even those tough beginnings weren't enough preparation for what awaited me at the Bonegilla Migrant Centre, which might explain why I endured it for only two nights. In on 8 August 1965; out on 10 August.

 

My Bonegilla registration card
Find your own registration card at idcards.bonegilla.org.au

 

Between 1947 and 1971, more than 300,000 migrants — Greeks, Italians, Germans, Dutch, Ukrainians, Yugoslavs — stepped off ships from a ruined Europe and into an old army camp of tin huts near Albury-Wodonga. They learned English there, ate food they didn't recognise, waited for jobs that sometimes never came — and in 1952 and 1961, when the waiting broke them, they rioted. The country that invited them barely knew what to do with them. Then Australia moved on. The camp closed in 1971, the huts were bulldozed, and the place where a multicultural nation was born became a paddock again — except one block, saved at the last minute, which has become a memorial site.

 

The Memorial Arc at the old Bonegilla Migrant Centre

 

Bonegilla has remained a powerful connection for me even though I may never see it again. Instead, several years ago I lashed out two hundred and fifteen dollars to have my name added to their Memorial Arc. A small price to pay for my own twenty square inches of immortality.

 

 

No need for you to get jealous though: you already drew the winning ticket in the lottery of life when you were born in this lucky country.

 

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P.S. For more, go to My once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage is still going ahead or If only those walls could talk ... or Wo ist Gerhard David?

 

Life in the subjunctive

 

 

The subjunctive is a verb mood that expresses hypothetical (but unfulfilled) conditions/situations : “If I WERE (fill in the blank), I would/could ... ”

Is it old age or boredom that makes me start many of my thoughts in the subjunctive? "If I were back in Burma, I would stick it out for at least another year instead of chucking in a job that others would have killed for" or "If I were still in Greece, I would spend more time in the Greek islands rather than giving my all, seven days a week, to a job that eventually got the better of me".

My problem has always been that I thrived on stress and stressed out without it. As long as the job was challenging and exciting, I was at it seven days a week. Once the routine set in, I would go crazy from time to time and become obsessed with something, and my obsession would sent me on a trip to a place from which the journey's origin could no longer be seen. As a result I made a lot of stupid decisions without an obvious motive.

I now wish I hadn't ...

 

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Das Milliardengeschäft mit den Flüchtlingen

 

 

Reich werden mit Armut. Das ist das Motto einer Branche, die sich nach außen sozial gibt und im Hintergrund oft skrupellos abkassiert. Die deutsche Flüchtlingsindustrie macht jetzt Geschäfte, von denen viele Konzerne nur träumen können.

Pro Monat kostet ein Asylbewerber den Steuerzahler etwa 3500 Euro. Bei einer Million neuer Asylbewerber allein 2015 sind das monatlich 3,5 Milliarden Euro - also pro Jahr 42 Milliarden Euro. Das ist die Summe, die in einem Jahr an alle Arbeitslosen ausgezahlt wird. Es sind nicht nur Betreuer, Dolmetscher und Sozialpädagogen oder Schlepper und Miet-Haie, die davon profitieren. Die ganz großen Geschäfte machen die Sozialverbände, Pharmakonzerne, Politiker und sogar einige Journalisten. Für sie ist die Flüchtlingsindustrie ein profitables Milliardengeschäft mit Zukunft.

Weisst Du,

• wie gewinnorientierte Aktiengesellschaften an Flüchtlingen verdienen?
• dass die Pharmaindustrie wegen der vielen Flüchtlinge mit einem Umsatz-plus in Milliardenhöhe rechnet?
• dass Polizisten und Journalisten einen Maulkorb beim Thema Kriminalität von Asylbewerbern verpasst bekommen haben?
• dass viele SPD-Politiker nebenberuflich Posten in Organisationen haben, welche Unterkünfte von Asylbewerbern betreiben?
• wie Parteien über die Betreuung von Flüchtlingen eine illegale Parteien-finanzierung betreiben?
• wie Journalisten für tränenreiche Geschichten über Asylbewerber geschmiert werden?
• wo die Bundeswehr insgeheim schon jetzt künftige Kampfeinsätze probt, um die innere Sicherheit gewährleisten zu können?
• wie stark die Immobilienpreise in der Umgebung von Asylunterkünften fallen?
• dass die Bremer Flüchtlings-Großfamilie Miri pro Jahr 5,1 Millionen Euro an Sozialhilfe erhält und zugleich noch mindestens 50 Millionen Euro im Rauschgifthandel erwirtschaftet?
• dass die 3000 Moscheen in Deutschland beim Flüchtlingsstrom aus Nahost und Nordafrika wegschauen und das Helfen lieber christlichen Organisationen überlassen?

Dieses Buch ist erhältlich hier.

 

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The Odd Couple

 

 

Lat month, a neighbour and I visited the Killer Whale Museum. On the way, we called in at the Robyn's Nest Lakeside Resort at Merimbula, which a friend bought several years ago at great expense and keeps going at even greater expense.

 

The above video clip is from the sales pitch when the place was for sale in 2023. For a more recent video, click here.

 

It has everything: a waterfront as far as the eye can see, a fancy restaurant, a swimming pool, a tennis court, and a beautiful guest lounge with a huge fireplace. "But where are the books?" I cried out, visualising myself sitting by the blazing fire with a book in my hand.

My friend thought it an excellent idea to add a small reading library to the guest lounge, and sort of commissioned me to be on the look-out for some suitable books. What a great excuse to go book-hunting again without incurring Padma's displeasure, who's been telling me for years that we are running out of shelf space, which I already did several times, and which I always solved by adding another library room.

I have already accumulated quite a stack of suitable books for my friend's guest lounge, although I admit that the ratio of books I pick up for myself and of books I source for my friend's library is about 3-to-1.

 

 

Of the recently bought books I picked up for myself is Allan Behm's "The Odd Couple", which I read in one afternoon on the sunlit verandah. It's full of provocative ideas which everyone of our politicians should read.

 

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The Conquest of Happiness

 

 

This slender volume is an invigorating ice-cream sundae with a cherry on top. An uplifting and thoughful examination of what it means to be happy and how such a state can be obtained in the modern world. As its author, Bertrand Russell, sets out in the preface to the book:

 

Read the whole book here

 

His admission that he was not born happy, and indeed contemplated suicide many times, sets the stage for a truly unique examination of the subject as seen through the lens of his life journey. When you put down this wonderful book, you will be a new and better person.

The audiobook recording hasn't got the best reading voice - I suspect it was AI-generated - but I selected it for the happy picture it presents.

 

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