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I had to add this little preamble because something has gone wrong with the software. For some reason the side panel does not display unless I add this fixed "Welcome" post to the top. The mysteries of computers and computer software. Perhaps I should stick to playing my accordion. Last night a neighbour hammered on the door. It was already past midnight! Luckily, I was still awake and playing my accordion — I'm only joking; we live on seven acres and our only neighbour is the river.
A foggy morning which always presages a hot day - and it was a real scorcher!
For as long as I can remember, there's been this accountant's office by the bridge just as we enter Moruya after we have crossed the river, and for as long as I can remember, every time we come to Moruya and I look at that peeling signage I always think to myself, "There but for the grace of God ..."
Thanks to the circuitous route on which my work took me, I never got stuck in a small country town, even though owning my own accounting practice in whatever town of whatever size would at one time have seemed like the pinnacle of my totally unplanned professional career.
And so it was again yesterday as we drove to Moruya for tea and scones at the CWA Tea Rooms and Padma's medical appointment. Moruya is a small country town of just half-a-dozen blocks on level ground and easy to walk around in, which I did while Padma saw her doctor. One block had five - and I counted them: FIVE! - coffee shops where people were queuing up for their morning fix. Whatever happened to the morning tea - or if it had to be coffee, the morning coffee - we used to have at home for a fraction of the five or six dollars they now charge for a barista-made latte? Indeed, whatever happened to International Roast?
While the local Chinese restaurant had to apologise for increasing the price of its meals by a mere dollar "due to rising costs", all those small-town shop assistants and tradesmen - and perhaps even that accountant by the bridge - seem to think nothing of spending five or six dollars on something that would give them at best an early heart attack.
And then I had my second "There but for the grace of God ..." moment as I was about to pass the local department store, nothing like Harrods but Harris Scarfe, which is more like an upmarket haberdashery with a few frying pans and electric kettles thrown in. They've been part of the town for almost as long as that accountant by the bridge, as evidenced by this plaque at the entrance which commemorates a Serge Dobson who gave them thirty-five years of his sixty-one year-short life.
I try to fashion my posts like a woman's skirt: long enough to cover the subject but short enough to hold your interest. I hope I've done both.
Oh, and before I forget to mention it: at the local Vinnies shop I also found the complete audiobook on CD of "Red Dog". I've already read the book and also watched the movie, but this beautifully-read audiobook helps me to keep my mind off the rapidly disintegrating sharemarket.
Three: Brian Herde in the yellow top, yours truly wheeling the big tyre and doing all the hard work, and Des Hudson who, as always, avoided work altogether by being behind the camera.
Noticed something? In those pre-T-shirt days a polo shirt was the height of casualness
This was the Bougainville Copper Project in 1971, where several thousand expats and indiginous laboured on the then world's largest construction job to build the world's largest open-cut copper mine.
Our own small band of intrepid accountants and cost engineers were exposed daily to the risk of impaling ourselves on lethally sharpened pencils while overeating on strawberry shortbread biscuits as we tried to keep the project's $300-million budget under control.
On this occasion we had left our gruelling schedules and airconditioned offices behind and driven down from Panguna to Aropa airstrip, where we chartered a light plane to fly us to Buin for a look at some old Japanese war relics.
Yours truly on Buin beach ...
... and on a Japanese tank
Yamamoto's bomber
Des Hudson training for "Blitzkrieg"
Brian Herde (far left) and Roy Goldsworthy (yellow top) lost in the jungle
After spending a night on Buin's black sand beach and being eaten alive by mosquitoes, we hired an old jeep to drive us all the way back to Panguna - well, almost all the way back to Panguna as the last river was in flood and couldn't be crossed by vehicle.
Rather than running the risk of heat exposure, we took our chances with the crocodiles as we cooled down in the river before those of us who survived hiked all the way back to Panguna.
All good memories! Thanks for those photos, Des; it's only taken you fifty-five years to send them to me!
Don't we all? Which must be the reason why Padma picked up this book when she was in town this morning.
Australia’s most trusted doctor, Dr Norman Swan, has been researching the secrets of living younger longer and detailed it all in his new book - or perhaps not so new book, as Padma bought it for two dollars at Vinnies. All I have to do now is put down my dumbbells and read it.
While I still think about it, you may want to listen to his talk at the Hawke Centre at the University of Adelaide. I am still dealing with the fall-out on the stock exchange of Trump's new war. As any married man could've told him, starting a fight is easy; ending it is the hard part. I can't see an early end to this one when one party is fighting for its survival while the other wants a distraction from the Epstein Files.
My BHP shares ended the day down by $2.02 or 3.5%. The other big miner, RIO, dropped 1.6%. The difference must be due to BHP going ex-dividend tomorrow — or at least I like to think so. After the big run-up over the last two weeks, I'm back to were I was in mid-February.
I console myself with the fact that he market giveth and the market taketh away, but perhaps I should tune out altogether and read the other book Padma brought back, "Southern Cross Safari - Across Australia by bus and train". It was signed by the author ten years ago, "To Rob, Enjoy the journey. Bruce Gall, 1/9/16", and originally priced at $34.95, but Padma picked it up for just $2 in perfectly pristine condition. Evidently, poor Rob never bothered to read it. His loss is my gain!
Click here for a commentary on the movie by novelist Pico Iyer.
When I lived and worked in Burma in 1975, the Burmese people still wore their traditional longyi even as their neighbours had abandoned their saris and sarongs for Levis and miniskirts. Burma's holy men were still more revered than its rich or its famous, and in the countryside, where rice paddies were still farmed using water buffalos, it might have been the 16th century as easily as the 20th. No country left a more indelible impression on me than Burma with its 'Bama hsan-jin', the quiet, modest and cultural quality of 'Burmese-ness' which I will always remember.
I've been trying to find a copy of John Boorman's movie "Beyond Rangoon", which dramatised the 1988 pro-democracy uprising and its brutal suppression, but I couldn't find a copy on ebay in Australia. The only DVDs I could find were from the United States of America, priced at a hefty forty US dollars or more, plus a similar amount in postage.
"Beyond Rangoon" has become something of a cult classic among the Burmese democracy movement, but treat it as entertainment, not a history lesson. Click here for a trailer.
What I did find on archive.org was a full-length copy of "The Burmese Harp", a 1956 film by Japanese director Kon Ichikawa, based on a novel by Michio Takeyama. It follows the story of a Japanese soldier after his unit surrenders at the end of the Second World War. Traversing Burma, he comes in contact with the toll of war as he has a spiritual revelation about Buddhism. A staunchly anti-war movie, it is also an important work about the power of the Buddhist faith and pacifism.
And then there is the "Burma Storybook", a 2017 documentary which takes a cinematic trip across Burma to see the country through its people's eyes and poetry. Poetry has always been a source of hope and resiliency for the Burmese people, helping them to survive the military dictatorship’s total control over the country. The documentary centres around the 70-year-old activist and writer Maung Aung Pwint, as he navigates life after his imprisonment and the long-awaited return of his son returning home after two decades of political exile.
I left Burma at the end of 1975 but in my heart I never did.
How I regret not having stayed longer in this wonderful and enchanting country. You never know the value of a moment until it has become a memory.
Ich wanderte im Jahre 1965 vom (k)alten Deutschland nach Australien aus. In Erinnerung an das alte Sprichwort "Gott hüte mich vor Sturm und Wind und Deutschen die im Ausland sind" wurde ich in 1971 im Dschungel von Neu-Guinea australischer Staatsbürger. Das kostete mich nur einen Umlaut und das zweite n im Nachnamen - von -mann auf -man.
Australien gab mir eine zweite Sprache und eine zweite Chance und es war auch der Anfang und das Ende: nach fünfzig Arbeiten in fünfzehn Ländern - "Die ganze Welt mein Arbeitsfeld" - lebe ich jetzt im Ruhestand in Australien an der schönen Südküste von Neusüdwales.
Ich verbringe meine Tage mit dem Lesen von Büchern, segle mein Boot den Fluss hinunter, beschäftige mich mit Holzarbeit, oder mache Pläne für eine neue Reise. Falls Du mir schreiben willst, sende mir eine Email an riverbendnelligen [AT] mail.com, und ich schreibe zurück.
Falls Du anrufen möchtest, meine Nummer ist XLIV LXXVIII X LXXXI.
This blog is written in the version of English that is standard here. So recognise is spelled recognise and not recognize etc. I recognise that some North American readers may find this upsetting, and while I sympathise with them, I sympathise even more with my countrymen who taught me how to spell. However, as an apology, here are a bunch of Zs for you to put where needed.
Zzzzzz
Disclaimer
This blog has no particular axe to grind, apart from that of having no particular axe to grind. It is written by a bloke who was born in Germany at the end of the war (that is, for younger readers, the Second World War, the one the Americans think they won single-handedly). He left for Australia when most Germans had not yet visited any foreign countries, except to invade them. He lived and worked all over the world, and even managed a couple of visits back to the (c)old country whose inhabitants he found very efficient, especially when it came to totting up what he had consumed from the hotels' minibars. In retirement, he lives (again) in Australia, but is yet to grow up anywhere.
He reserves the right to revise his views at any time. He might even indulge in the freedom of contradicting himself. He has done so in the past and will most certainly do so in the future. He is not persuading you or anyone else to believe anything that is reported on or linked to from this site, but encourages you to use all available resources to form your own opinions about important things that affect all our lives and to express them in accordance with Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Everything on this website, including any material that third parties may consider to be their copyright, has been used on the basis of “fair dealing” for the purposes of research and study, and criticism and review. Any party who feels that their copyright has been infringed should contact me with details of the copyright material and proof of their ownership and I will remove it.
And finally, don't bother trying to read between the lines. There are no lines - only snapshots, most out of focus.
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