A trip back in time for fifty cents

 

6th Edition, February 1998

 

Most people buy their Lonely Planet Guide to plan a trip; I bought this old 1998 edition for a mere fifty cents at the local op-shop to take a trip back in time. And I discovered so much!

Only the very back of the guidebook, the last three pages 359-361, is dedicated to the place where I had spent most of my time in New Guinea. It begins with the explanation, "The following information is included in case the situation in Bougainville dramatically improves and travel onto the island is once again allowed. But this information is likely to be out of date since Bougainville has been off-limits for eight years and there's been considerable damage to the towns in the south."

And equally so about the place in which I first lived and worked: "Rabaul is a weird wasteland, buried in deep black volcanic ash. The broken frames of its buildings poke out of the mud like the wings of a dead bird. Almost the entire old town is buried and barren and looks like a movie set for an apocalyse film. Streets and streets of rubble and ruined buildings recede in every direction. The scale of what happened to Rabaul cannot be appreciated until you see it. If you were fortunate enough to walk its busy, noisy and colourful streets before September 1994, be prepared for a shock."

With the help of the old town map on page 315 I was able to walk, in my mind, from my office in Park Street to Casuarina Avenue, across Court Street, Namanula Road and Tavur Street, before turning left into Vulcan Street to arrive at the company-supplied accommodation, a converted Chinese trade store which I shared with two other accountants.

Then there is the Port Moresby City map on page 112 which also shows Cuthbertson Street where I used to sit in my parked car in the sweltering heat on a Sunday morning, waiting for the newspapers from "down south" to arrive at the news agency to grab one of the few copies of the weekend edition of the Australian Financial Review which always advertised the best job vacancies, and to check my mailbox at the post office on the opposite side of the street for letters from "down south" but especially for any job offer in response to some application I had sent off in previous weeks.

Page 131 reminded me of trips to Yule Island where "the missionaries who arrived at Yule Island in 1885 were some of the first European visitors to the Papuan coast of New Guinea." On the way there I would stop over at a small trade store at Hisiu, then run by an Australian and his local wife.

Then there were those many trips out to Idler's Bay to the west, Bootless Inlet to the east, and north to Brown River. Sailing my CORSAIR dinghy from the Royal Papuan Yacht Club all the way out of Fairfax Harbour to Gemo Island and Lolorua Island and capsizing it far out at sea. I would have never made it back home had I not been with my mate Brian Herde who dived under the boat and pushed the centreboard back through the slot so that I could grap it and pull the boat upright again. I lost my precious wristwatch and we lost all our beer but only nearly our lives.

The map of Lae on page 176 shows the corner of 7th Street and Huon Road where I lived and spent my last Christmas in the country in 1974 before flying out to my next assignment in Burma. My old friend Noel had flown across from Wewak to spend that Christmas with me, and I still remember talking about another job I had been offered eighteen months earlier as manager of a thriving co-operative at Angoram on the banks of the mighty Sepik River. Angoram was no more than a couple of hours' drive away from Wewak and I had been tempted to accept to be near my friend but how different things may have turned out because only a few months later, again at Christmas time, I developed accute appendicitis which was quickly and successfully dealt with through a hurried operation at the newly-built hospital at Arawa but which could've been far more complicated in the remote wilds of the Sepik District. And, of course, no access to the Australian Financial Review with all its interesting job ads! We are so often the result of the circumstances we find ourselves in.

And then there is Wewak itself, described on the guidebook's page 254 as "an attractive town where you can happily spend a day or two in transit to the Sepik or Irian Jaya." Well, that was then: today Weak is a very unsafe and run-down place and the border to Irian Jaya is also closed. The town map on page 256 still mentions the Windjammer Hotel which burnt down many years ago. The larger district map on the facing pages 250 and 251 shows the road to Cape Wom and the Hawain River where my friend Noel used to live before Independence and the unruly natives forced him out.

A great trip back in time for a mere fifty cents!

 

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Finally, they've made a movie about you and me!

 

 

The story of Harvey Krumpet follows Harvie from a troubled childhood in Poland with a "schizophrenic" mother to his migration to Australia. Despite suffering from Tourette's, being struck by lightning, having his testicle removed, and contracting Alzheimer's, he remains optimistic, kind, and collects "fakts" about life.

It's a movie about you and me — but mainly about me!

 

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INSIDE JOB

 

 

Charles Ferguson's documentary, INSIDE JOB, explores the reasons and the effects of the 2008 world-wide financial downturn, starting with an examination of the problem in microcosm - in the small country of Iceland, which was a model community until the banks were de-regulated.

 

Read a preview of the book here

 

Like others before him, Ferguson claims the beginning of the problem was in the 80s when President Ronald Reagan deregulated the American banking industry, but he goes on to demonstrate that executive greed and dishonesty have been rampant in recent years.

Ferguson's really well made documentary makes at least some of the puzzle clearer. There are graphs and charts and graphics and numbers galore, but the bottom line is that the poor old punter has been taken for a ride by greedy corporate business tycoons who have been hand-in-glove with government departments.

It's a horror movie, in a way, one designed to make you angry and want to do something about it.

The frightening thing is that the same people who were advising Bush and Clinton are now advising Biden and the bonuses keep on getting bigger and millions and millions of lives have been decimated, destroyed by these people and they are just making as many billions of dollars for themselves as they used to.

This is a film for our time. Everybody ought to see it and get angry.

 

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For Sale – 5 Lt Jerry Can of Premium 98

 

 

Solid metal 5-litre Jerry Can, factory-sealed, filled with Premium 98. Clean exterior, tight cap, no dents, no leaks, comes with a detachable pouring spout. All for the low, low price of $499.95.

Order now and you’ll also receive a second 5-litre Jerry Can, completely empty, at no extra charge. We’ll even include a full instruction manual and a pair of protective gloves to complete the set.

But wait — that’s not all. Be one of the first 200 callers and we’ll throw in a six-pack of 3-ply toilet paper for free.

That’s 1 metal Jerry Can + 5 Lt of Premium 98, 1 extra empty 5 Lt Jerry Can, an easy-to-read instruction manual, and a pair of protective gloves, all for $499.95 + postage & handling.

Hurry — call 0800 4377 9226 now.

 

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The year of living stupidly

 

Neuer Jungfernstieg 16 along Hamburg's Binnenalster

 

Lemmings have a better plan than I had when, at the end of 1967 and having completed my two compulsory years as an assisted migrant to Australia, I somehow decided to return to the (c)old "Vaterland" for no better reason than that I could.

I had started a new life in Australia and secured a new career which even a native-born could've been proud of, and yet, to twist a famous phrase, where to be and what to be was still the question. Decades later, when my first-ever girlfriend in Germany — who by that time had found herself a reliable husband and had two teenage sons — sent me a big DHL-package containing all the letters I had ever written her, I found in it a letter in which I had told her, just after a few months in the new country, "I've got a better job than I could've got at home, and I seem to be settled in for the rest of my life. It's all been too easy!"

"It's all been too easy!" has been my constant complaint. Whatever was given to me, I would refuse. Whatever was spread before me, I would turn my back on, the better to hunger for what I had denied myself.

And so it was with my next employers, the German-South American Bank in Hamburg, who offered me a transfer to South America if I did my time in their head office in that brightly-lit building shown in the above photo. It was taken by a friend a few days ago when it was already springtime in Germany, and not in that arctic winter of January 1968.

After only two months I resigned and moved back to my hometown Braunschweig where I found an equally promising welcome in the "Auslandsabteilung" of the Braunschweigische Landesbank, but not with either of my divorced parents who no longer wanted to be part of my restless life. It hurt at the time but, in hindsight, they both did me a favour because it would've been just too easy to return to a comfortable life of homecooked meals and my bed made and my washing done.

And so I moved on again to Frankfurt, where I not only found work as a currency dealer with the First National City Bank but also a girlfriend who seemed more interested in me than I in her. The "It's all been too easy!" warning bells were ringing again and I escaped to South-West Africa where I worked just long enough to save up enough money for my return fares to Australia. The bank in Australia welcomed me back with open arms, for which I repaid them by resigning nine months later to move to New Guinea. It had been a year of living stupidly, but perhaps it had also served its purpose of showing me that I was not cut out for an "Uncle Vanya" life, so aptly lamented by Sonya in its closing scene:

 

 

"Uncle Vanya, we must go on. We've no choice! All we can do is go on living ... all through the endless days and evenings, we will get through them, whatever fate brings. We'll work for others until we're old, there'll be no rest for us till we die. And when the time comes, we'll go without complaining and we'll remember that we wept, and that we suffered, and that life was bitter, but God will take pity on us!"

 

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