The Coral Route

 

I was lucky enough to have lived in the islands of the South Pacific just before the end of their colonial era when the place was still full of tanned men with bloodshot eyes and murky pasts sitting in dingy waterfront bars, tormented by memories of those they left behind, or of money-making schemes which had come to nothing.

Somerset Maugham and James A. Michener saw only half of what I saw, although they had a better way of writing about it. What they still saw but I never did were those fabulous flying-boats which dipped so close to the waters of the Pacific Ocean that passengers could pick out coral formations, whales, and even the occasional shark from their windows.

On the famous Coral Route, passengers would hop from flying boat to island, and from island to flying boat, on a journey that took two and a half days and was nearly 5,000 miles long. The trip began in Auckland, New Zealand, travelling through to Suva in Fiji, the Cook Islands, and Tahiti. Stops to Samoa and then Tonga were introduced in 1952.

By the end of 1960, it was all over and the islands, touched for a brief period by seaplane magic, were brought abruptly back to normal.

www.tiny.cc/riverbendmap

 

Islands Magazine

 

We are sorry to inform you that Islands Magazine is ceasing publication of its print and digital replica editions after the November/December 2016 issue being delivered in October 2016." Click here.

Another interesting magazine has gone out of print but not before I could 'rescue' this article about Tom Neale, the 'hermit' of Suwarrow.

 

 

Yes, he lived his life as his own man. How many of us can say that? More here.

www.tiny.cc/riverbendmap

 

Naked among cannibals

 

It's been almost 20 years since the publication of "Naked Among Cannibals" on bank culture, and as the Royal Commission shows, nothing seems to have changed. It should be required reading for every bank customer and everyone on the Royal Commission.

So much has changed since my days as a 'Bank Johnny' in the 60s. Back then a bank manager was held in high esteem, and a bank loan was granted only after exhaustive scrutiny and following a number of years with the same bank during which you had demonstrated a habit of thrift and diligent saving. These days thrift and saving are frowned on by banks who describe customers who pay off their credit cards each month in full as parasites.

I'm a parasite. I pay off my credit card in full as soon as the monthly statement hits the mailbox. How could any rational, logical-thinking person make just the minimum monthly payment? At that rate the card would not get paid off until 12 years and 11 months later, while incur-ring interest at 19.74% when the bank's cash rate is under two percent.

If you want to read "Naked Among Cannibals", click here for the first thirty-one pages. To read the other 290-plus, click here and put the $23.95 on the card. You have the next twelve years to pay it off.

www.tiny.cc/riverbendmap

 

This is straight from the patient's mouth

 

All the dentists I have known wear face masks for the same reason that bank robbers do, except for Grant Brodie. He doesn't have to. His charges are very modest and in inverse proportion to his dental skills.

We've just been for one tooth extraction (which required two needles), one complete tooth rebuild ("This won't take long", he said, and it did not), and two gum-and-teeth clean-ups, including a tube of GC Tooth Mousse worth $29.45, and at $300 it barely registered on my VISA card.

If after those Easter eggs, you need to see a dentist, see the "Brodie Bunch" in Ulladulla. We can't wait for our next appointment in October.

www.tiny.cc/riverbendmap

 

Behind every successful man is a woman; behind her is his wife

 

While it could be argued that I was only mildly successful because I lacked either, I like to think that having been even mildly successful was only because, for most of my life, I lacked either and thus sought - and found - my validation in work.

Quite apart from the fact that being married, with a mortgage and 2.3 kids, would've precluded me from some of my more offbeat assign-ments, I also noticed that my married counterparts already found so much self-validation in taking out the garbage or fixing a dripping tap that they considered their working hours just an inconvenient, albeit necessary, interlude between busy weekends with family and friends.

As for me, I regarded weekends as an unwelcome interruption to an exciting week in the office and already lived an obsessive "work-work balance" long before the alternative had been invented. In fact, by the time the expression "work–life balance" became fashionable in the late 1970s, I had already embarked on a life in which work had become not only the most important - and the most fulfilling - part of my life, but indeed life itself. As my favourite and still living philosopher Alain de Botton wrote much later, "There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life."

Work has never been a four-letter word for me. It's been a bucketload of fun that's given me a bucketload of memories to last me for the rest of my life. To paraphrase Kenneth Grahame, " 'And you really live for your work? What a jolly life!' 'For it and with it and on it and in it' said moi."

However, now it's time to take out the garbage and fix a dripping tap.

www.tiny.cc/riverbendmap

 

My first home in Australia - for just three days!

 

Even though I had spent the first two (or was it three?) nights on Australian soil inside the Bonegilla Migrant Hostel, I don't remember much of it. The year was 1965 and the date was the 6th of August.

We had disembarked in some sort of organised chaos at Port Melbourne and soon afterwards boarded a train for the inland town of Albury from where we were taken to Bonegilla. Remember the movie "The Great Escape"? Well, Bonegilla was a camp along the lines of what you saw in that movie - except that Bonegilla was a darn sight worse. We were put into corrugated-iron huts in what had been an old Army Camp - and I believe the old Spartans enjoyed more comforts than did the inmates of the "Bonegilla Migrant Centre". Although we were in the depth of the Australian winter (which can be pretty cold in the Australian inland), there was no heating, and only a threadbare ex-Army blanket to ward off the cold at night. For somebody who had just avoided conscription into the German "Bundeswehr" (Army), it seemed a poor exchange.

 

 

Deep blue skies and brilliant sunshine during the day made up for the freezing nights. It was two days after I had arrived in camp and while I was "thawing" out in the midday sun when another German who had come off the ship with me, told me about a "German Lady", a Mrs Haermeyer, at the camp's reception centre who was offering to take three or four recently arrived German migrants back to Melbourne to board at her house. I had been "processed" by the camp's administration on the first day and knew that in all likelihood I was destined to be sent to Sydney to work as labourer for the Sydney Water Board. So what did I have to lose? In record time I had myself signed out by the "Camp Commandant", my few things packed, and was sitting, with three other former ship-mates, in a VW Beetle enroute back to Melbourne. continue

 

 

I've just discovered on the Bonegilla Migrant Hostel's facebook page this new publication which brings back some memories:

 

Click on above image to open new window; then click on full screen

My Bonegilla Registration card. If you're looking for yours, click here

 

You won't find me in any of the photos. I was in too much of a hurry to move on to other camps and boarding-houses: Capital Hill Hostel and Barton House in Canberra, the Public Works Department mess hall in Rabaul, Camp 6 and Camp 1 and Camp 10 on Bougainville Island, and more boarding-houses and rented houses and company flats houses and hotels than you could poke a stick at - more than fifty, in fact - before "Riverbend" got hold of me.

Travelling the world! I wouldn't have missed it for the world!

www.tiny.cc/riverbendmap

 

Happy Easter

Cadbury - the chocolate that John West rejects

 

Easter is the annual ritual when Canberra's public servants arise from the dead and in their thousands head down to the coast to turn wine into water. And it's about to start now, so let's shut the gate and sit it out for the next four days.

The forecast is for "Goldilocks weather", not too hot and not too cold, and there'll be an invasion of boat people that even the Australian Border Force couldn't handle. There'll be children overboard, and on jetskis, and in canoes and kayaks, and the hills will be alive with the sound of ghettoblasters.

I'll be happy when all those paschal pastimes are behind us, when the last Easter egg wrapping has been fished out of the river, and all those public servants are back to what they do best - nothing!

"Happy Easter!" from me and the Archbishop of Cadbury.

www.tiny.cc/riverbendmap

 

Le Fils de l'epicier

 

The Grocer's Son is a whimsical French movie dans le mode de 'Les enfants du marais' which I rescued from an old op-shop yesterday after having been to the dentist in Ulladulla. I've watched it only twice so far, so there's hope for me yet.

There's not much hope left for Trump who's now getting unstuck with his own Monica Lewinsky, except her name is Stormy Daniels, and it's not so much that he couldn't control a certain part of his anatomy - which, as we know by now, is also the seat of his brain - but that his lawyer paid her off to stay quiet just before the election. Something about illegal use of campaign funds and all that.

Not that everything Trump does or says makes no sense. His refusal not sign up to the latest Free Trade Agreement, the TPP, should tell the rest of us that these agreements lead to anything but free trade - see here.

I heard on the news that Uber's self-driving car tests have been halted after a fatal Arizona crash, which reminds me of the "Locomotive Acts" passed in 1865 by the British Parliament which required a person to walk in front of a motor vehicle waving a red flag ... at all times. These days it's only required when my wife is driving.

I also heard that a certain inmate on remand at Silverwater dropped his soap in the shower. There's still some justice left in this world. As for the ball-tampering fuss in Cape Town, it must be obvious to all who've watched the video replay that Bancroft only tried to get De Kok out.

www.tiny.cc/riverbendmap

 

"Don't sell Riverbend; that would be the ultimate sin."

 

Thus wrote my old mate Noel Butler back in April 1995. Eight-een months earlier, in a sudden rush of blood to the head, I had bought Riverbend even though I barely knew the business end of a hammer, let alone what to do with it on an acreage.

Of course, we all have such dreams. Many years before, I had already bought DIY-books on how to build a cabin in the woods, on how to milk a cow, and how to build a chicken coop. They never made it to the top of my bookshelf which was occupied by 'The Practice of Modern Internal Auditing', 'Petroleum Accounting: Principles, Procedures & Issues', 'Ship Operations and Management', and 'Pick Basic: A Programmer's Guide', and other esoteric works on accountancy standards, IATA rules, laytime calculations, charter parties, and case studies in forensic auditing.

Noel, too, on coming back to Australia after a lifetime spent in New Guinea, had tried to follow his dream of a bucolic life in the country, first at Caboolture, then at Mt Perry, and finally in Childers. He knew as much - or rather, as little - about it as I did, since he'd conveniently forgotten that in New Guinea he'd never held more than a cold beer in his hand as he oversaw a small army of haus bois doing the hard work.

I, too, had conveniently forgotten that life in the country does not mix easily with computer code, spreadsheets, internal rates of return, and public rulings by the tax office, and had toyed with the idea of selling up again almost as soon as the ink had dried on the settlement cheque.

Noel had known of this, and as his life slipped slowly from autumn into winter and, just a few months later, into permanent hibernation, his last message reminded me not to give up on the dream because, as he so clearly foresaw, "... that would be the ultimate sin."

To this day his message sits on my mantelpiece to remind me of a won-derful friend, a wonderful friendship, and a wonderful piece of advice.

www.tiny.cc/riverbendmap

 

Did Labor read my blog?

 

Within days BS (short for Bill Shorten) has done a backflip. Today's news is, Labor will exempt pensioners and grandfather self-managed super funds with at least one pensioner or benefit recipient from its proposal to end cash rebates for excess imputation credits.

After internal deliberation on Monday, Labor resolved to shield all government pensioners and allowance recipients from the abolition of cash refunds and grandfather 13,000 self-managed super funds – a measure that will be badged a pensioner “guarantee”.

Grandfathering means investment decisions taken before a certain date remain subject to the old rules. Self-managed superannuation funds with at least one pensioner or allowance recipient before 28 March 2018 will be exempt from the changes Labor plans to implement if it wins the next federal election.

IF it wins the next Federal election! Mind you, there are times when choosing between Labor and Liberals is like voting for cancer or a heart attack. Why would you vote for either?

www.tiny.cc/riverbendmap

P.S. To read the Grattan Institute's position on Labor's policy, click here.

 

South Seas Paradise

"White Shadows in the South Seas"

 

Australia 1930. "White Shadows in the South Seas", an old silent, was showing in the picture houses and I had seen it three times. And each time the idea grew. The world I had known was obscured by an economic smog which seemed to cover everything, including myself. There were over a hundred thou-sand unemployed in Sydney alone and I was one of them. In less than six months I had spiralled from a good income and a Regent-model Buick down to a place in the government bread lines. The descent left me a little dizzy. I totalled up my assets and they came to £10. 'I'm going to the South Seas,' I announced."

So begin's Julian Hillas' book "South Seas Paradise". I had previously written about the movie "White Shadows in the South Seas" here and about Julian Hillas here, and today I also found a copy of his quite rare book "South Seas Paradise" in almost mint condition in an op-shop which was totally unaware of what literary gem they were harbouring.

 

Julian Hillas wrote the book while living for a year on the tiny motu of Okakara in the Rakahanga atoll. As he wrote, "Looking back over nearly thirty years, I still give Rakahanga top rating. If there are places left where a man can grow old contentedly, it is on some such quiet, drowsy atoll, where today is forever and tomorrow never comes; where men live and die, feast and sorrow, while the wind and the waves play over wet sands and gleaming reefs. I shall always be grateful to (Alf) Ulfsby (a Norwegian employed by a trading company and appointed manager in Rakahanga), who made it possible for me to spend that one enchanted year." More on Rakahanga here.

 

In his book he even describes his meeting with island-legend Tom Neale:

The nearest character to an authentic beachcomber I ever ran across was Tom Neale, hermit and sole occupant of Suwarrow atoll. Tom had spent most of his life at sea. It would be unfair to describe him as a sad sack. He was simply not fond of people and refused to become a cog in any system. "What's your philosophy?" I once asked him. "Dunno as I've thought about it much," he said. "But way I figure things out is, a man needs something to live for but nothing to do, if you get the idea." I got it, and it seemed a reasonably good one provided it was possible to maintain a balance. Suwarrow is an atoll five hundred miles north-west of Rarotonga. The place had been inhabited for short periods over the past hundred years, but nothing had come of these attempts and it had reverted to a sanctuary for sea birds. You came on the atoll suddenly: one moment there was only the clear ocean ahead; the next, a green palisade of palms and a wall of leaping surf. The loneliness came back and hit you. With the exception of a single visit to Rarotonga, he has lived there ever since. Days, linked together by the perfect rythm of monotony, have grown into years with few events to mark their passage. Has Tom achieved total escape? Probably as nearly as humanly possible. Escape from people who would certainly have bored him: escape from the rat race and financial worries; escape from practically everything except himself, and I seriously doubt if he ever met anyone whom he liked better than Tom Neale. And so he will take the years easily, contentedly, as they pass, until that moment which must come to all, in London, California, or the South Seas. And I don't suppose it matters much whether the final tidying up is done in a crematorium or by the little white land crabs under the high rocking palms of Suwarrow. Both processes add up to the same score.

Robert Julian Dashwood (pen name Julian Hillas) lived in the Cook Islands from the 1930s until his death in 1970, and this book is the candid and un-gilded account of his thirty-year holiday. As he writes at the end, "An autobiography is only an advance copy of an obituary."

 

www.tiny.cc/riverbendmap

 

Not the seven-year itch

 

It's been seven years since the "almost-sale" of Riverbend. I'd been watching a couple standing by the gate, and so I walked onto the verandah as they cautiously made their way down the driveway. "Sorry so much to disturb you, but is this property still for sale?" "Sure is", I replied which set off this strange sequence of events.

"We don't want to intrude too much but could we just walk around the grounds?" they asked. "I can do even better than that. Come inside the house", I replied and took them on a tour. They oohed and aahed and even got excited over the still unrenovated retro-1960s-look bathroom.

Next day I received their email, "Thank you so much for the time you took to show us around your lovely property yesterday. We will discuss our options with our accountant and contact you early next week", which was swiftly followed by another, "We’ve made some preliminary arrangements with our bank with a view to the purchase. We’d like to arrange for their valuer to come by and appraise the property."

Within days the 'valuer', a pimply-faced youngster, sat across from me in the living-room drinking tea and taking notes, including my mention of a previous offer of $1.64 million which we refused. Which is also what he did when I invited him to fully inspect the house and walk the grounds.

A short time later another email arrived, "My company has been involved in negotiations regarding a major new contract. Although the new contract is good news, I’ve also been hit with some unexpected expenses that have upset our original plans for the remainder of the year. Accordingly, I regret to tell you that we won’t be in a position to pursue the purchase, as much as we’d love to. Incidentally, you may be interested to know that the valuation came back at $1.64 mill." Some valuation! I hope it didn't cost him too much.

Shortly afterwards, when the neighbour's humble coppers-log cabin on 1887 square metres came on the market, I sent them this tongue-in-cheek email, "Riverbend may have been a little too ambitious for you! # 33 Sproxton Lane has only been listed yesterday. Having us as neigh-bours across the lane would add thousands of dollars to the property!!!"

Almost as soon as I had emailed them, the SOLD sign went up! Yes, they had bought this (nicely) converted fishing shack for $950,000! Which is where this '... and-they-lived-happily-ever-after' story should've ended.

However, they must've remembered that they had told me "We want land!" because, when within a couple of months of their arrival their neighbouring 1720 square metre vacant block - the last in the lane! - came up for sale, they bought that, too - for another $750,000! So they now had paid $1,700,000 for a humble coppers-log cabin on 3607 square metres of land! Had the same pimply-faced valuer done the valuations?

Again, this '... and-they-lived-happily-ever-after' story should've ended there but in less than twelve months they went away and the FOR SALE-signs up again. After a long marketing campaign by many different agents, the log cabin finally resold in May 2015 for $799,000 and the vacant block of land in August 2017 for $525,000. You do the math!

Maybe they would've been happier had they bought Riverbend and may-be this story should've been called "How not to buy and sell real estate"?

www.tiny.cc/riverbendmap

 

P.S. Whatever it is they were taking I want none of it because they also bought # 31 Beach Road, Batemans Bay for $1.3 million in 2008 and sold it again in 2017 for $930,000. Shouldn't that be the other way round?

 

Now I know why Chinese people eat rice

 

Padma is due for another trip to Surabaya and showed me how the rice cooker works: two scoops of rice, three cups of water, press "COOK" - tasol! Now I know why Chinese people eat rice: it's so much easier than cooking potatoes.

I watched that show on SBS about the new 17-hour-20-minute QANTAS Dreamliner non-stop flight from Perth to London. 236 eating and drink-ing passengers squeezed into a 60-metre long metal tube for almost 18 hours. At the end of it they'll all be breathing more farts than air.

One of the passengers, a lesbian, said a tearful good-bye to her partner whom she is engaged to. I noticed that no-one used the word fiancée. They probably didn't know whether to use the word fiancée or fiancé.

And that's about it for another Monday. Tomorrow is D-Day, Dentist Day. Last time we were there, he gave Padma some sort of dental gel which she must keep in her closed mouth for about fifteen to twenty minutes.

Before he does strange things to my own mouth and I lose the power of speech, I must ask him to give her another prescription because that gel works like a miracle. For a whole fifteen to twenty minutes it's absolute peace and quiet in the house.

www.tiny.cc/riverbendmap

 

Why would they want to sell?

 

A retired couple we know from across the river are selling up! It's the old Nelligen Watchhouse in the highest spot in the village, with the old Courthouse (now the Anglican Church) to the left, and the old schoolmaster's house to the right.

They bought this charming piece of Nelligen's history for $690,000 in 2011, and both are old enough to stay forever - after all, the views are something to die for, literally! - so why would they want to sell? Is it the seven-year itch? Do they want to prove the statisticians correct who say that Australians sell their homes on average every seven years?

Whatever their reason, if you're looking for a beautiful historical home in our quiet village, just ten minutes from Batemans Bay and a couple of hours from Canberra, then # 13 Braidwood Street, Nelligen may be it!

So that I can go and collect my commission, tell them I sent you! ☺

www.tiny.cc/riverbendmap

P.S. It's Wednesday, the 4th of April, and the property has just been marked 'UNDER CONTRACT'.

P.P.S. It sold on 12 April 2018 for $785,000.