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Now that all the radicals and no-hopers and freeloaders are in Germany, Syria looks like a perfect place for a holiday. Lovely beaches, warm Mediterranean waters, and not a burka and mosque in sight. 'Marhaba' to Latakia!
Perhaps the Germans should relocate to Syria. And we should encourage our own Syrian refugees to holiday in their own homeland more often.
If you want to read the United Nations' Refugee Convention, click here. Note their definition of a refugee on page 14, and the 'General Obligations' of a refugee at the bottom of page 16, namely, "Every refugee has duties to the country in which he finds himself, which require in particular that he conform to its laws and regulations as well as to measures taken for the maintenance of public order".
I haven’t read anything new on your blog and wondered if everything is OK", emailed a regular reader, and continued, "All kinds of scenarios flashed before my eyes: the kayak overturned and you've been eaten by bull sharks; a snake bit you; you fell out of a tree; you were run down by your ride-on ... Or have you just run out of good stories?"
None of the above. My trusty old laptop packed it in and I've been busy trying to repair it. This morning I gave up and drove to Harvey Norman to spend three hundred dollars on a low-budget laptop and got upsold to an all-whistling, all-dancing Hewlett-Packard for $800.
Spent the afternoon setting it up and everything is working fine, except that every time I hit the quotation-mark key I get the @-sign, and every time I hit the @-key I get a quotation mark. And somewhere else is still lurking the £-sign because, during installation, I nominated a UK instead of a US-keyboard. Last time I looked, this country was still very much part of the old British Empire but at least in computing terms we seem to be part of the United States.
It's too much bother to go back to factor settings and restart the whole installation process, so @ for " and " for @ it is from now on, which, come to think of it, works better than any password to keep people away from my new computer (unless they know about ASCII and work straight off the numeric keypad which few would know). (@I don't agree@, I hear you say. Email me at riverbendnelligen"mail.com)
As for good stories, this one is as good as any but more will follow.
Over the past few months I have posted some inappropriate jokes and pictures because I thought my friends shared the same sense of humour. Unfortunately, this wasn't the case and I seem to have upset a number of people who have accused me of being sexist and shallow. If you were one of these people, please accept my apologies. From now on, I will only do posts with a cultural or educational content, such as old monuments, nature, or other interesting topics. Below is a picture of the Pont Neuf Bridge in Paris which took 26 years to built and was completed in 1604.
The local Liberal member must've paid our pool a visit because someone papered over the politically incorrect "back flips". Not that it affects me as I just flop into the water to be away from the bad language and rough play in the change room.
I just hope the pool has good filtration as some visitors look like they haven't seen the inside of a bathroom since their last visit - and then step right back into the pool without taking a shower first! Holding my breath does more than just stop me from drowning!
Back in the carpark and before I had even started my car, a fat woman whose family tree was clearly deeply rooted in Tasmania, drove into the back of my car. She remained seated in her car while I inspected the damage on my bumper which was superficial but still.
"Want to make something of it?" she challenged me. What's the world coming to? She's clearly in the wrong but is accusing me! For a second I experienced a flashback to Saudi Arabia where, if a Saudi runs into your car, it's your fault because you're a foreigner and shouldn't be there.
Perhaps I shouldn't be here either because this country is definitely going to the dogs but where else to go? Burkina Faso? Upper Volta? For the time being "Riverbend" is still a safe enough place. I just close the gate, put on the chain and padlock, and that's it for another week.
The iconic car maker Holden, whose history dates back to 1856, when James Alexander Holden started as a saddlery business in Adelaide, announced that it will stop making vehicles by the end of this year.
When I arrived here, Holden employed over twenty thousand people in Queensland, NSW, Victoria and South Australia, and their six- and eight-cylinder cars were top sellers. Twenty-six years later, in 1991, Toyota outsold Holden for the first time, and by 2006 Holden's market share had fallen to 15.2 percent. Make that zero percent for next year!
So what about the rest? Football is still a national sport but has fallen into third place after welfare fraud and tax evasion, meat pies are probably already outsold by dumplings, and at some point in the future we may have to visit Taronga Zoo to see a live kangaroo, judging by all the dead ones you see along our highways.
For a bit of nostalgia, grab a Four'N'Twenty (if you can still find one!), fasten your seatbelts and watch the Holden Story Part 1 and Part 2.
Concrete and constant grey, cars, crowds, parking signs, traffic lights, and exhausts ... the idea of escaping from the ratrace, of leaving the hustle and bustle of the urban jungle behind for the 'quiet life', is very attractive to many people.
Before you say, Paradise, here I come!", keep in mind the two important reasons why you want to leave your suburban block - space and privacy. You need the former to have the latter because, like in any group of individuals unlucky enough to be joined together by circumstance, getting too familiar with your neighbours is the last thing you want.
Remember Kevin and Trevor sitting on the beach and having a 'father-and-son' conversation at the end of Episode 2 in "Seachange"? Kevin says to Trevor, "... that's the wonderful thing about living in the country. We keep no secrets." But that's good-natured Kevin: naïve and innocent.
Here's my secret of how to keep a secret in the country: acreage-living! Five acres are okay, seven acres are better, "Riverbend" is best because it's seven acres on the edge of, but not part of, suburbia. Click here.
Norman Lindsay has a lot to answer for. Successive generations of Australian children have grown into adults believing that government welfare is a magic pudding that's always there and available to all. "Eat away, chew away, munch and bolt and guzzle, Never leave the table till you're full up to the muzzle."
Successive generations of politicians have bribed them with more and more of it and armies of accountants and financial planners have shown them how to still partake of it even though they live in million-dollar houses and own half of BHP. "We've Puddin' here a treat, We've Puddin' here galore; Do not decline to stay and dine, Our Puddin' you'll adore."
And they're the legitimate ones. Add the millions who keep their money under the mattress or in trusts, who work in the black economy (or deliberately not at all), who fake illness or identity, and you arrive at today's staggering welfare bill of $300,000 a minute! A MINUTE!!!
Still, I'm standing my ground. I expect to be made 'Australian of the Year' very soon for being the only one left who's not yet a pudding thief.
Pudding thief? Wait on a minute, a $300,000-minute! Their own sons and daughters ought to call them welfare thieves because by the time it's their turn, the pudding will have lost its magic and there's nothing left. "I hope you get it hot, You puddin'-eatin' lot !"
Freude, schöner Götterfunken,
Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken,
Himmlische, dein Heiligtum!
Deine Zauber binden wieder
Was die Mode streng geteilt;
Alle Menschen werden Brüder
Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.
A patriot is the person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about. Which is what might be the problem with the European Union whose anthem -
"Ode to Joy" - is purely instrumental and nothing to holler about.
Just imagine if everyone mimed their way through "Our home is girt by sea" when the band plays "Advance Australia Fair". Come to think of it, doesn't everyone?
Anyway, to promote greater patriotism, the EU is playing with the idea of introducing new lyrics to Friedrich Schiller's old "Ode to Joy".
The distinguished British baritone Robert Bennington is setting a cracking pace but 'ze door is schtill open' for other suggestions.
He is in "The Sea Chase", a 1955 World War II drama film starring John Wayne and Lana Turner. John Wayne, as Captain Karl Ehrlich, is determined to get his German freighter home during the first few months of the war while being chased by the British and Australian navy.
The brief opening shots of Sydney Harbour (not shown in the above trailer), before they had built the Opera House and even before the much maligned Blues Point Tower dominated the skyline of the North Shore, make this movie worth watching, even if it weren't for the fact that the story is based on the real 1929-built German Norddeutscher Lloyd steamer "Erlangen" which, under Captain Alfred Grams' command, slipped out of New Zealand's Lyttelton Harbour on the very eve of war.
The pursuing British and Australians had the navies that ruled the waves but the Germans had the Duke! Pity it was just in the movies ☺
Went for a quiet paddle when a big launch pulled up along-side me. MARITIME NSW was written all over the boat, and officialdom all over the bearded face on board.
"Are you aware of the new rules?", asked the bearded face in an official voice.
It's difficult to stand to attention in a wobbly canoe, so I meekly replied, "No."
"When boating alone, you're required to wear a Level-50S-or-greater lifejacket at all times. The fine for non-compliance is $500."
That's more than my canoe is worth!
I'd been sitting on my old lifejacket to keep my bum safe from blisters. I tried to put it on but it must've shrunk since I'd last worn it or my waist-line must've done the opposite. Anyway, there's no law against obesity - not yet!
I've been a fan of Ted Egan's videos ever since 1996 when I did a six-month stint with his brother Bob, a retired policeman, in the Fraud Investigation Unit of ATSIC, a bloated Government body - aren't they all? - that's thankfully no more.
His videos are now on YouTube, so go ahead and pig out on Australiana:
Remember "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel"? It's one of my favourite movies, so when I saw a DVD in my favourite shop labelled "The Indian Dream Hotel", I immediately thought it was a cheap imitation of the Marigold Hotel but it wasn't.
Instead, it's a documentary - made by the BBC and unashamedly called "The Real Marigold Hotel" - of a group of celebrity pensioners, actor Miriam Margolyes, dancer Wayne Sleep, chef Rosemary Shrager, darts champion Bobby George, singer Patti Boulaye OBE, actor Sylvester McCoy, comedian Roy Walker, and ex-news reader Jan Leeming, who head to India to see if they can set up a better, more rewarding retirement there than in the UK.
Even though I don't know any of those celebrities, I can relate to them because back in 2004 I tried to drum up interest in creating a similar group to invest in a similar lifestyle place in the still unspoilt north of Bali - click here. Perhaps I wasn't famous enough because I could never get a sufficient number of famous or infamous people interested in it.
Years later I visited an even better place, a tiny boutique hotel of just four exquisitely built bungalows in the cool hills of northern Bali. I revisited it time and time again, often being the only guest, which may have been the reason why the owners put it up for sale some years later. I again tried to drum up some interest in a buy-out - click here - but again without success.
Perhaps people don't want to have their lives managed by a retired German accountant - see below:
Pity! I already had a name for it and had hired the man to run it for me: "Stalag 13" and Colonel Klink.
Remember when I couldn't see the point in those 'study notes' on the Australian soapie 'SeaChange' which I wrote about on Tuesday? - see here. Well, I've done a bit more 'studying' and concluded that, if nothing else, 'SeaChange' teaches us to be careful when dealing with 'Bob Jelly Realty' or any other real estate agent.
Bob Jelly epitomises every real estate agent you've ever met, just as Pearl Bay epitomises every retirement place you've ever dreamt of. Its real life location is Barwon Heads, a coastal town near Geelong in Victoria, but Pearl Bay sounds so much better, don't you think?
'SeaChange' has become part of Australian 'kultcha' and I include the first episode here - there are dozens more - for the edification of an old boy from Sunshine who's stuck in the wilds of Connecticut. Enjoy, Des!
I always write 'Wake Up' on my To-Do-List so I can accomplish at least one thing every day. Then I have another cup of tea while I consider what else to do for the rest of my retired and funemployed life.
Yesterday I wished someone 'Have a good weekend' on the phone. If it weren't for the fireworks, I wouldn't even know what year we're in.
There's no snooze button on the wilds ducks and parrots who want to be fed, so I'd better get out there and feed them. As for all the other jobs I said I'd do, I'll do them. There's no need to remind me every six months.
Having latched onto William Horwood - see here - I carried on in my usual way, acquired over many years of forensic auditing, and came across "Skallagrigg" - and I'm not even going to tell you what "Skallagrigg" is other than to say that it is both a book and a movie.
In our society which promotes packaging over content, where the human eye and brain are programmed to seek harmony, to favour the lovely or noble visage, the gently undulating body, the graceful carriage, physically and mentally disabled people, while no longer locked away in institutions, are still outsiders.
Remember the Beauty and the Beast? And The Elephant Man? Well, "Skallagrigg" is about a special being with a keen empathy for people with disabilities – okay, so now I told you but it's up to you to read the book or watch the movie here.
It's a life-changing experience. After all, which of us hasn't, at some time, needed to believe in something greater than ourselves - call it "Skallagrigg", if you will.
Not many know that there are several sequels to 'The Wind in the Willows', published in the 1990s. "But that's impossible!" I hear you cry, "Kenneth Grahame died in 1932."
Quite so, but these sequels weren't written by the man himself but by William Horwood who, in an act of homage and celebration to Kenneth Grahame, wrote 'The Willows in Winter', 'Toad Triumphant', 'The Willows and Beyond', and 'The Willows at Christmas'.
They're as allegorical and anthropomorphical and - suppressing the sesquipedalian in me - as plain insightful into the human condition as their original. Here is an excerpt from 'The Willows in Winter':
"The Mole sat toasting his toes in front of the fire. The winter wind howled safely outside, sending occasional flurries of soot down the chimney. He was thinking that things were nearly perfect, but not quite.
'I must not be uncharitable,' he said to himself, though a slight and uncharacteristic frown showed he was finding it diffcult not to be. 'I have my health, I have my home and I - I must not be unfriendly.'
He darted a glance across the hearth towards the smaller and less comfortable chair that was ranged there, looked briefly at the cause of his ill-temper, and looked away again.
'No, I must be patient. My heart must be compassionate. I must put up with it. I must - O bother!'
The wind blew suddenly more violently all round the outside of his house, and doors rattled, and an ember of the beech log that was burning brightly on his fire cracked and shot onto his rug and smouldered there.
'Don't worry!' said the unwelcome guest who sat in the chair opposite. 'I'll move it!'
'I can do it myself, thank you very much,' retorted the Mole in a grumbly way, quite unlike his normal good-natured self. 'O - O drat!'
He shook his paw in momentary pain at the heat as he sought to pick up the ember and put it back where it belonged.
'Would you like a - ?'
'No I wouldn't!' declared the Mole vehemently. 'I would like - I would like - I - '
But he could not bring himself to say what he would like, which was to be left alone and snug in his cosy home, free to potter through the winter evening, free to make himself a warming drink - or not, as the case might be - but certainly free not to have to think about someone else."
Which is exactly how I feel about "Riverbend" even though I could not bring myself to say it. Summer or winter, I just want to be left alone, free to potter, free to make myself a cup of tea - or not - and certainly free not to have to think about someone else. Welcome to "Riverbend"!
Note the blue bottle. Padma always brings her own water in case they ever drain the pool
Just returned from our weekly visit to the heated indoor pool at 'Ooolladoola' where they've given me my own talking lane. After a few laps of discussing the woes of the world, I lapsed into a coma in the bubbly spa before driving down to the club for lunch.
Then, while Padma shopped for yet more wool for her 'Wrap with Love' blankets (which by now must cover half of Africa), I dropped in at the Mullala Nursery where I've been a regular customer for many years.
Dave, the manager, always cut me a special deal but he retired last year and good luck to him. So when I walked in this time, I casually asked, "And how's Dave enjoying retirement?" "He's passed away", I was told. It sounded so matter-of-fact that I thought I'd heard "He's moved away" and was about to ask where he'd moved to, when the gravity of what I'd really been told started to sink in. I bought eight callistemon 'Western Glory' - also known as bottlebrushes - and five tibouchinas which, I guess, I won't see to grow to their full height - but then neither did Dave. There are days when I feel like the last man standing!
Bad as well as sad news always brings out the shopper in me, and so I went looking for some books. I discovered a slim volume of students' study notes on the Australian soapie 'SeaChange'. Study notes on a soapie? I mean, study notes on 'Macbeth' or even 'The Grapes of Wrath' are useful, but study notes on 'SeaChange' which in the notes are described as 'a celebration of the joy of under-achievement'? Quite!
Instead, I bought a volume of D'Arcy Niland's short stories to celebrate a writer who gave us 'The Shiralee', 'Call Me When the Cross Turns Over', and 'Dead Men Running'. This, his final novel, was for a time banned because of a certain four-letter word used by a cockatoo in the context of "There was a widow woman who lived on the common with three dogs, a cat and a white cockatoo that said &#@% regularly as if he were still alive, her husband Tom Lowry". How times have changed!
Finally, I picked up a cheerfully incomplete book(let) entitled 'The First Men's Guide to Cleaning House', subtitled 'How to do a job that's bigger than you are on the strength of your admittedly puny endowments'. I asked them to put it in a plain paper bag and I hope to furtively read it under the blanket by torchlight tonight. How times have changed! ☺
Never before and never since has the world been that close to a nuclear war. Peter Jennings' excellent documentary "What the World didn't know" explains what went on behind the scenes.
That was fifty-five years ago. The question is: what would today's Donald do in a similar situation?
The weekend is behind us and once again there've been a few dreamers and leaners on the gate who wanted to know about the property. Sometimes I humour them by walking up to the gate and our conversation then goes something like this:
`I beg your pardon', they say. 'You must think me very rude; but all this is so new to me. So -- this -- is -- a -- River!'
`The River,' says I.
`And you really live by the river? What a jolly life!'
`By it and with it and on it and in it,' says I. `It's brother and sister to me, and aunts, and company, and food and drink, and (naturally) wash-ing. It's my world, and I don't want any other. What it hasn't got is not worth having, and what it doesn't know is not worth knowing. Lord! the times we've had together! Whether in winter or summer, spring or au-tumn, it's always got its fun and its excitements.'
`But isn't it a bit dull at times?' they ask. `Just you and the river, and no one else to pass a word with?'
`No one else to -- well, I mustn't be hard on you,' says I with forbearance. `You're new to it, and of course you don't know. The bank is so crowded nowadays that many people are moving away altogether!'
Of course, any Kenneth Grahame devotee will know that this is Rat and Mole talking but, depending on my mood at the time, I've also been known to anthropomorphise Badger and even the exasperating Toad.
So do as I did and "... take the adventure, heed the call, now ere the irrevocable moment passes! ‘Tis but a banging of the door behind you, a blithesome step forward, and you are out of the old life and into the new! Then some day, some day long hence, jog home here if you will, when the cup has been drained and the play has been played, and sit down by your quiet river with a store of goodly memories for company."
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 war der Anfang und auch 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.
Notice to North American readers:
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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