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Next to my favourite Vinnies shop is Dan Murphy's which always has plenty of undercover parking. I never enter Dan Murphy's, but the other day I found a $10 note in its carpark, and I thought to myself, "What would Jesus have done?" So I went inside and turned it into wine.
Wine prices being what they are, I was left with enough change to drop into Vinnies for a quick look at their bookshelves. I know I have already enough unread books to last me another lifetime, but I couldn't pass up Geoffrey Blainey's "A Short History of the 20th Century" in perfect mint condition, and "AMO, AMAS, AMAT ... and all that - How to become a Latin Lover" which had been ink-stamped by the Dickson College Library (barcode 1731753 / classification NF 470 MOU) but, judging by its clean condition, never left the lending library before ending up at Vinnies.
As any bibliophile will tell you, "It's not hoarding if it's books".
I had barely spent two years in Australia before I went overseas again. I lived on many other islands and on the edge of at least two other deserts, and yet, if I had followed Goethe's famous 'Vierzeiler', I could have done all this right here in Australia.
.
Australia isn't just Sydney, the Opera House and the harbour, and the gay and lesbian Mardi Gras, nor is it all 'Crocodile Dundee', but something far bigger and better and far more wonderful. I haven't seen all that much of it - although I did manage to squeeze in some out-of-the way places like Mornington Island, Thursday Island, and King Island - and it's now too late to get too far from the nearest medical centre, but there's always YouTube to show me what I missed out on.
I'm going back to watching that YouTube video while you can click here to see what you missed out when you did not let us win that last war.
I first met him in Piraeus. I wanted to take the boat for Crete and had gone down to the port. It was almost daybreak and raining. A strong sirocco was blowing the spray from the waves as far as the little café, whose glass doors were shut. The café reeked of brewing sage and human beings whose breath steamed the windows because of the cold outside. Five or six seamen, who had spent the night there, muffled in their brown goat-skin reefer-jackets, were drinking coffee or sage and gazing out of the misty windows at the sea."
To listen to the full audiobook. click here and here
Many a morning, when I was still too early for my office near Agio Nicholaos, I would sit in one or the other kafenion along the quayside of Piraeus, drinking my thick Greek coffee and gazing out at the sea, just as Basil had done on that morning he met Zorba the Greek.
It always comes back to me on a grey and rainy morning like this morning. Then I wonder why I ever left Greece, and I dip into my much-read copy of "Zorba the Greek" which is full of Zorba’s practical wisdom and zest for life. Zorba manages to see everything and everybody as a miracle worth celebrating, while at the same time recognising that we're all just sacks of bones and flesh and flaws, and that everything we do is probably meaningless in the end.
I was happy then but I didn't know it. As Basil explains at the beginning of chapter VI: "I was happy, I knew that. While experiencing happiness, we have difficulty in being conscious of it. Only when the happiness is past and we look back on it do we suddenly realize - sometimes with astonishment - how happy we had been." [click here]
My list of boyhood heroes - Doctor Albert Schweitzer, Thor Heyerdahl ("The Kon-Tiki Expedition"), Heinrich Harrer ("Seven Years in Tibet"), and Heinz Helfgen ("Ich radle um die Welt") - has kept growing well into adult life.
When I lived and worked on Thursday Island, I added Oskar Speck who paddled in a tiny "Faltboot" all the way from Germany to the Torres Strait, and even in my retirement I found new inspirations when in an op-shop I picked up a copy of Tom Neale's book "An Island To Oneself".
Long before then though, I added to my list the amazing story of Henno Martin and Hermann Korn who for two years hid out in the waterless Namib desert to avoid being interned during the Second World War.
I first came across the Afrikaans translation of their book "The Sheltering Desert" under its Afrikaans title "Vlug in die Namib" in 1968 when I lived and worked in South-West Africa, or what is now called Namibia.
END OF THE ROAD
The heavy iron gates of Windhoek Prison fell to behind us with a clang. I turned round for a moment. Above the inner arch of the gates was an inscription, a little faded but still legible: "Alles zur Besserung!" Those reassuring words had obviously been left over from the days of German rule. So we were to be improved, reformed, rehabilitated as its inmates! In the ordinary way I should have laughed, but we didn't feel much like laughing. The formalities were soon settled. Our names: Hermann Korn and Henno Martin. Profession: geologists. Then our belts and bootlaces were taken away. After that the cell doors closed behind us. We were separated now and my sick comrade lay in the next cell. I didn't feel too good myself; we had been on the move all day in order to reach our destination before nightfall. The feeble light of a lamp in the prison yard fell through the bars of my cell window. I could not sleep. I lay on my back and stared into the semi-darkness. How narrow and confined this small space was after the wide horizons and the high heavens of the desert in which we had lived for so long!
Its German original, "Wenn es Krieg gibt, gehen wir in die Wüste" ("We hide in the desert when war comes"), seemed to be little-known beyond the borders of South-West Africa then, and is lost in total obscurity now.
However, its English translation is now long out of copyright and freely available on the internet - click here. And, best of all, this classic tale of African adventure and man's survival in brutal circumstances was made into a movie in 1992 which is also freely available on YouTube.
Padma is taking a friend to the cinema in the Bay to watch "Rental Family". Would I mind being left alone at "Riverbend"? Are you kidding me? Being left alone at "Riverbend" is as close as it gets to bliss! I even told her to charge it to VISA-card!
It seems that the concept of companies that will rent out platonic companions to lonely locals has bubbled along in Japanese popular culture for more than thirty years. And the industry is likely to continue growing, with no end in sight to Japan’s demographic and social needs.
What a pity the trend hadn't already started when I left Germany, as I would have gladly let them hire my family. They were one of several reasons why I emigrated to Australia. People usually start life by being born. Not me though. I started life when I arrived here in Australia.
Something to reflect on, as I enjoy this quiet Wednesday all by myself.
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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