Do fish feel pain?

 

 

Many people firmly believe fish are dim-witted creatures incapable of feeling pain. Accepting that an animal has the ability to suffer from pain changes the way we choose to interact, handle, and care for it. After all, pain is a negative, unpleasant sensation that we try to avoid. It makes most of us feel uncomfortable to know that someone else is hurting.

Most people consider fish to be different; they're ... well, they're fish. While they have a face with eyes, nostrils, and a mouth, these features appear to be rigid and fixed, which contrasts sharply with the more expressive, mobile faces of most terrestrial vertebrates, and yet, ever since I read Victoria Braithwaite's book "do fish feel pain?", I know that they absolute do. I haven't held a fishing rod in my hand since that day.

Which is why when an old mate from my days on Thursday Island sent me links to this series of fishing videos, I did at first not want to watch them, but as soon as the Tip of Cape York with Seisia came into sight, and the SWIFT cargo ship and Thursday Island, I was ... well, "hooked".

 

 

I lived and worked in many places, often for as short a time as three months but usually a year, and never more than two, and it is impossible to say which of those places left the most lasting impression on me.

Bougainvile did, as did Burma and Saudi Arabia, and I loved the Greek islands, but Thursday Island will always have a place in my heart for its quaintness, its remoteness, and the people I briefly befriended there.

 

Hubert Hofer diving on his favourite shipwreck, the SS QUETTA, sometime in the 1990s.

I pointed out to him that he was drawing on the portside while talking about the starboard side of the ship (Part 1 at 12:40). "Very observant of you!" he drily admitted. 😄

 

It didn't take me long to catch on why my friend had sent these videos: he stars in Part 1 at 11:00 diving on his favourite shipwreck. He even wrote a book about it: "The Wreck of the SS QUETTA, Cape York 1890".

 

 

Thanks for sending me the links to these videos, Hubert! I should be outside mowing the lawn but the weather has turned hot again and I'm about to watch the videos for the third time! You may want to read my travelogue of the time when I went back there in April 2005 - click here.

 

 

To top it all off, you may enjoy to watch the above video clip which I found on the website of Roko Island Pearl Farm. I've just heard Padma's car pull up and must help her unload the Christmas shopping she's done.

I'd earlier gone to the online banking website to see how much she's put on the VISA-card. It doesn't quite break the bank but it's getting close. Luckily, the BHP shares are up fifty cents today which evens things out.

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

Just follow the red arrow!

 

Follow the red arrow to the jetty and the "Red House"

 

BLACKSHAW have just listed a house for sale across the river. Lo and behold, from there they can look straight at our jetty and the "Red House". I had better not pick my nose or leave my fly undone as I sit on the jetty early in the morning to enjoy my first cup of tea of the day.

 

The "Red House"

 

If I want to show my friends where I live, I don't need a drone; I simply go to the real estate adverts and pick whatever aerial photos I want:

 

↑ A view of the village of Nelligen from the east

↓ A view of the village of Nelligen from the north-west

 

Just ignore the MY AGENT sign to look at "Riverbend" in the far-right top-corner. It's a small price to pay for not having to pay for a drone.

 

Click here for GOOGLE Map

 

As you can see, I haven't far to travel on that last trip: past "Sunlit on the Clyde" onto the highway and across the bridge, then a left-turn into Reid Street, then right into Runnyford Road for just a few more metres.

If you want to visit me before then, just follow the red arrow!

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

All Quiet On The Western Front

 

 

This story is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war." [click here]

So begins Erich Maria Remarque's book "All Quiet On The Western Front", the most famous anti-war novel ever written. Remarque wrote his novel hoping it would be the last word on war; for anyone who has never seen a war movie, maybe this should be their first. It is more grisly, more disturbing, and more sadistic than any Hollywood horror movie in 2023.

It ought to put you in the right frame eleven minutes past the eleventh hours on this eleventh day of the eleventh month when the fighting on the Western Front officially ceased 108 years ago. Lest we forget!

 

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"It's your turn to shout!"

 

Nino Culotta tasting his first Australian beer

 

There was never an excuse not to return a shout other than saying that you had run out of money, but even that didn't work in Papua New Guinea where every bartender kept an ample supply of blank cheque forms behind the bar.

You just told him which bank you were with and he would give you one of their cheque forms which you filled out and signed with a drunken florish. By month-end you would receive your bank statement which showed a succession of five and ten dollar debits (remember that in those days a WHOLE CARTON of beer was around seven dollars!) which left you with just enough money for the groceries, if you were lucky.

Woe betide you if you had written a cheque for an amount in excess of whatever was left in your account. In the absence of prior arrangements with the bank, such as an overdraft facility, that cheque was "bounced".

Before going to New Guinea, it was my job as ledger examiner with the ANZ Bank to spot such "dishonoured cheques" and decide what to do with them. It was the bank's duty not to embarrass its customers and so a cheque was first examined for 'technical irregularities' for which it could be "dishonoured" before a lack of funds was finally admitted.

If there was a difference between the amounts written in words and figures, it was returned with the answer "Amounts Differ". If it had not been endorsed by the stated payee, it was likely to be sent back with "Endorsement Required". If the cheque was signed, perhaps in an alcoholic stupor, in an illegible hand, the bank would refuse to accept it with the words "Signature unlike specimen held". A cheque dated twelve months ahead of time was always marked as a "Post-Dated Cheque"; likewise, a cheque dated more than twelve months past was refused as "Stale Cheque". Those who knew that they had insufficient funds left in their account, often abused this by 'accidentally' in- or decreasing the cheque's date by one year, from (say) 2026 to 2027 or 2026 to 2025.

Only when all those irregularities had been exhausted, would the bank concede that a cheque had been issued with insufficient funds in the account. The answer could be a mild "Present Again" if the bank was expecting to receive a deposit soon and was happy to allow the unauthorised overdraft for the time it took for the cheque to be represented, or it was "bounced" with a loud thud by immediately returning it with the words "Refer to Drawer" or "Insufficient Funds".

Then there were those rare occasions when a customer would 'fly a kite' between two bank accounts, each at a different branch or even a different bank from the other. He would then draw a cheque on the first bank account which he would deposit into the second account, while at the same time drawing a cheque on the second account which he would deposit into the first account. In this manner, he constantly maintained an artificially increased balance of "uncleared funds" as cheques still had to be physically presented at each bank, which could take days.

Such 'kite-flying' resulted in certain patterns which had to be spotted before any cheques could be dishonoured because of "Uncleared Funds", after which the customer was called in and given a stiff reprimand. If he continued the practice, he would be ask to take his business elsewhere.

(Never mind that to this day when all transactions are electronically and instantly processed, it still takes three working days from the time you deposit a cheque until the proceeds are available as cleared funds in your account, while the account of the person who drew the cheque is immediately debited. This "float" earns the banks millions of dollars.)

And all this, balancing the books - still done manually in those day - and returning dishonoured cheques to the presenting bank, had to be done before the close of business each day. It was a race against time five days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, on a paltry salary of $200 a month.

 

 

Luckily, I left the ANZ Bank fifty-six years ago or I would be out of job now because from 30 June 2028 no cheques of any kind will be issued, and any cheques after that date will no longer be accepted, and no payment will be made. Finally, I have an excuse not to return a shout!

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

P.S. When I worked in the bank in the mid-60s, it was still considered something of a profession and the bank manager, the local doctor, and the solicitor were considered the "holy trinity" of social status and authority in town. In those days, every bank officer sat for examinations with the Bankers' Institute of Australasia and was reimbursed for every subject passed. Today's bank staff are mainly female and mainly casual; the chap who served me the last time I visited my local branch had been pulling beer in the pub across the street six months earlier. They have little or no knowledge of such matters as the Bills of Exchange Act which allows anyone to cash a cheque made out to "Cash" without any identification; instead, short of taking a sample of your DNA, they give you the third degree. And, if you are unlucky to be served by some indiscreet youngster as my wife once was, your withdrawal is greeted with a cheery "I wish I had so much money in my bank accoount!", spoken in such a loud voice that everyone in the queue could hear it. Their outsourcing to India or the Philippines can't come soon enough!

My own career in the bank was short and sweet: a little over two years in Australia with the ANZ Bank - click here - all thanks to a certain Mr Reid - click here - and for altogether nine months with three banks in Germany - click here. Even more so than my articled years in Germany, the years with the banks were my stepping stones into accountancy and a wider commercial world in over a dozen countries all over the world.

 

An irrelephant elephant

 

 

We've just come back from a walk across the bridge to the village to see how the other half lives. First they welcome you in a lingo that even the Abos no longer speak - walawaani njindiwan - and now they display an elephant and a tiger. What next? A polar bear?

 

'Habitat loss' I understand, but what do they mean by 'fragmentation'?

 

And who's that elephant in the room park? It's totally irrelephant!

 

Googlemap Riverbend