Keep calm! It's still a bargain!

 

The latest prospective buyer certainly kept calm as he made me his cash offer of two million, knowing full well that, had I accepted, he would've got himself an absolute bargain. As one of my neighbours commented, "If I owned your property, I wouldn't sell it for less than three million."

My neighbour has bought and sold many properties in his time, and as we talked, it became apparent that I need a new approach, not now but later, after town water and sewerage has come to Nelligen which will send real estate prices to a new high. And the new approach will also mean professional photography and a professional marketing campaign.

In the meantime, I'm taking my advertisement off the internet but "storing" it here for all of you to see and for old times' sake:

 

Keep calm! It's still a bargain at $2,275,000! Are you ready for a tree- and seachange to a place where a stranger says good morning to you, where you have real grass to walk on, and where you kiss your kids goodnight without dead-bolting their windows before you leave the room? At "Riverbend" the greatest danger your kids face are the almost tame king parrots swooping down on them, and you can keep chooks, have a vegie garden, a hammock and your sanity back as well! Most people call it Paradise. We have been calling it home for twenty-seven years but we're getting too old to develop this property to its full potential and are willing to negotiate which creates this rare buying opportunity. We've done all the hard work and will sell as a "going concern" with all furnishings, equipment, tractor, tools, boats, etc. together with lucrative "Riverbend" holiday cottage letting business. Make an offer for the lot! This is absolute and total privacy with no neighbours (our only neighbour is the peaceful river!), never to be built out, and yet with all the amenities of suburban living: bitumen road (and just 10 minutes to Batemans Bay!), mail delivery, garbage collection, high-speed NBN, and, from next year, town water and sewerage (get set before land values go through the roof!) As for the price [$2,275,000], most residential properties sell at a price ratio of 70% for the house and 30% for the land; "Riverbend" has an inverse ratio of 30% for the house and 70% for the land because, as you know what they say about land, "They don't make any more!", and "Riverbend" sits on a unique seven-acre parcel of residential absolute waterfront land, totally private, totally secluded, and yet only 8 km from Batemans Bay. So there you have it: about $700,000 for an older-style but very solid double-storey brick residence (plus numerous other improvements) and the rest for the land which seems an absolute bargain when you consider that the last vacant waterfront block in the lane of a mere 1500 square metres (5% of Riverbend's land area) sold for $750,000 (and the neighbouring house on the same size of land sold for $1.7 million) - 7 acres (approx.) with over 300 metres of absolute waterfront to highwater mark - Main Residence double-storey brick 220 square metres (approx.) - Self-contained guest cottage 50 square metres (approx.) rented out as holiday accommodation - Freestanding brick entertainment centre/library/retreat 37 square metres (approx.) - Colorbond workshop 28 square metres (approx.) - Storage shed 54 square metres (approx.) - Pond House 36 square metres (approx.) - Jetty and permanent boat mooring - Last year's (2019) valuation by Valuer-General: $1,554,000 (LAND ONLY!) - Independent valuation in 2011 was $1.84 million - Zoning mostly RU1 which permits Dual Occupancy, Home-based Child Care, Intensive Livestock and Plant Agriculture, Animal Boarding Facility, Eco-Tourist Facility, Camping Ground, Tourist and Visitor Accommodation, Helipad, etc. (STCA)

 

However, don't expect the new marketing campaign to start anytime soon because that's the other thing: I first have to decide where I now want to go, and then find something suitable in that new location!

Years ago, when I had first put "Riverbend" up for sale, I knew exactly where I wanted to go and what I wanted to buy. Not surprisingly, those options have long since then disappeared and I need to search again.

Googlemap Riverbend

 

P.S. In presenting his offer, my prospective buyer wrote, "So if 2 million is not enough to buy the property, then I will have to keep looking . I will stay in touch with you both and let you know my progress." Well, he hasn't stayed in touch! Is he still smarting from missing out on a bargain?

P.P.S. So I am happily settled at "Riverbend" at last! And as I don't want my lovely neighbours to suddenly sell up either, I've put up this sign 😂:

 

ANZAC Day

 

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old. Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them."

So goes the Ode of Remembrance, which Australians observe every Anzac Day in remembrance of the Gallipoli landing on 25 April 1915. But are we remembering it correctly? As Eamon Evans writes in his book "Great Australian Urban Legends", by and large, the answer is no. With plagiarism said to be the highest form of flattery, I hope he won't mind if I quote him:

"For a start, our heroic troops didn't land in the wrong place, as urban legend would have it, thanks to some bumbling Brit. 'It's a common misconception,' says the head of military history at the Australian War Memorial. 'In fact, the Anzacs landed pretty well right in the centre of the originally selected landing zone.' This was a strip of coastline about two kilometres long - and, relatively speaking, it wasn't a bad place to be. What's now called 'Anzac Cove' was well-protected from shellfire and manned by just a handful of Turks.

Myth two is that it was due to further British bumbling that we stayed in Anzac Cove for eight long months, until we finally gave up and sailed off to Europe. While there was no shortage of British incompetence throughout World War I- and the whole Dardanelles Campaign was certainly a bad idea - the Anzacs were actually under orders to march the moment they landed, but instead chose to dig a big trench. 'The first landing was opposed by only about eighty Turks, and the defenders were soon massively outnumbered, but the invaders failed to advance inland as they had been ordered,' says historian Peter Stanley. 'The Australians wanted to blame somebody else for a failure that was basically a failure of Australian command.'

Okay, so what about that scene in 'Gallipoli' when some Pommy bastard sends our boys to a certain death so as to create a 'diversion' for British troops? Troops who then spend their time drinking cups of tea, while the Anzacs get mowed down like grass.

Well, for a start, that Pommy bastard was really an Australian bastard. The Battle of the Nek, which the movie depicts, was an entirely Australian operation. And it was designed to create a diversion for Kiwi - not British - troops. For history writer Les Carlyon, the scale of the tragedy of The Nek was 'mostly the work of two Australian incompetents, [General Frederic] Hughes and [Colonel John] Antil', while for historian Gary Sheffield, 'Anzac forces were poorly trained and badly disciplined ... Australian troops in time became highly effective, but this was largely the product of experience.'

Without in any way wanting to diminish their sacrifice, it's worth noting that our boys weren't the only ones to die. While more than 8000 Australians lost their lives at Gallipoli, so too did around 34,000 Brits and at least 9000 Frenchmen. Together with soldiers from India and Pakistan and Bangladesh and Nepal. And Newfoundland and Senegal and Russia and Algeria. And let's not forget the roughly 56,000 dead soldiers from Turkey - soldiers who were, after all, defending their country. Urben legend tends to forget that Gallipoli was a human tragedy, not just an Australian one.

Also, not all the soldiers looked like Mel Gibson, that tall, tanned and musclebound bushman who could ride hard, shoot true, shear sheep and make a mean billy tea. Instead, most came from the suburbs, and they mostly wore standard British pith helmets, not those romantic slouch hats."

Lest we forget!

Googlemap Riverbend

 

A Confederacy of Dunces

Dinosaurs did not read and look what happened to them, so go ahead and read this book online

 

I won't buy any more books until I've read all the ones I've got", I said to myself. Then I laughed and laughed and laughed ... and I was still laughing when I left Vinnies with another armful of books.

I'd almost succeeded in not buying any more until I saw a Penguin edition of "A Confederacy of Dunces" almost jumping out at me from the shelves. Books being like potato chips to me, I couldn't just take one, and so finished up with half a dozen more (plus a couple of DVDs).

However, I shall start reading John Kennedy Toole's book before any of the others. I had started reading it online but there's really nothing like holding the book in your hands, smelling the paper, turning the pages ...

"A Confederacy of Dunces" is one of the great American cult novels. It was published in 1980, a decade after the suicide of its author, John Kennedy Toole. The hero of the book is the unsavoury figure of Ignatius J. Reilly, a pompous, overweight, flatulent malcontent in a green hunting cap who, at the age of thirty, is still living at home in New Orleans with his drunkard mother. He scorns popular culture; his preferred reading is Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy". Ignatius is a slob who has never been in paid employment. He is devious, arrogant and self-obsessed. Essentially, he suffers from a terrible superiority complex. If Ignatius Jacques Reilly is a self-portrait of John Kenndy Toole, it is a vicious and eviscerating one.

"A Confederacy of Dunces" was made into a movie, as was "The Neon Bible", the author's only other book, written when he was only sixteen years old. So far I've had no luck tracking down either of these movies.

Googlemap Riverbend

 

How we got to now

 

In the old days the only thing you absolutely needed to know about a new place you moved to was the location of its library. Thanks to the internet and www.archive.org, this is no longer necessary! You can find all sorts of interesting books on the web, including Steven Johnson's "How Do We Got To Now"

Did you drink a glass of water today? Did you turn on a light? Did you think about how miraculous either one of those things is when you did it? Of course not - but you should, and New York Times bestselling author Steven Johnson has.

The book was also made into a six-part documentary series that reveals the story behind the remarkable ideas that made modern life possible; the unsung heroes that brought them into the world, and the unexpected and bizarre consequences each of these innovations has triggered. Unfortunately, this documentary is NOT available on YouTube, so you may just have to read the book.

And when you're done, try out his books "Where Good Ideas Come From" and "Everything Bad is Good for You". You'll be fascinated by them!

Remember what Mark Twain wrote, "The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read."

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And the beat goes on ... and on ... and on ...

 

 

 

The WikiLeaks of Antarctica

 

In the late '90s when the charismatic, young American, Nicholas Johnson took up a position in waste management at McMurdo Station in Antarctica he imagined incredible adventures within a pristine landscape. Instead he discovered boredom and bureaucracy, all within the confines of a station resembling a dirty old mining town.

Soon after arriving Johnson started documenting life at McMurdo Station in an anonymously written satirical newsletter, "Big Dead Place" which he would secretly leave around the station. Described as the M*A*S*H or Wikileaks of Antarctica, "Big Dead Place" contradicted most literature written about life on the ice. Imagine H.L. Mencken on an ice floe ... caustic and brilliant.

So what is it really like to work at America's largest Antarctic base? Listen to ABC Radio National's podcast here.

Read the book online at www.archive.org

Googlemap Riverbend

 

When you share something, you don’t take care of it.

 

Perhaps I lead a sheltered life, but I found "The Tragedy of the Euro" to read like a great adventure novel. Here we have heroes (mostly post-war German bankers, resisting inflation) and villains (mostly post-war Frenchmen, allied with post-war German politicians, determined to keep the common German citizen paying and paying).

The villains believe, falsely, that they can secure for all time their special privileges over the German citizenry—which is not the same as the German elite, who often collude with the French elite for their own privileges. But this is their great error, which Professor Bagus explains so clearly. They want to ignore the laws of economics by building coercive pan-European bureaucracies to enforce their will. But this will not work. How long it will last is the question. The European financial crisis proceeds from day to day.

This wonderful book will help everyone understand what is really happening and explains the inherent flaws in the euro system using an established economic theory called 'the tragedy of the commons'. It’s quite simple really. When you share something, you don’t take care of it. And the common currency of the euro is an example of this.

Join me in my sheltered life! Read "The Tragedy of the Euro" here!

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"Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door"

 

You've got a mouse in your house, and it's got to go. You've looked at all the mousetraps on the market, and you're sure you can build a better one. So you make a trip to the Patent Office to get advice from a patent officer.

She tells you the Patent Office has already awarded over 4,400 patents for mousetraps since 1838, and your mousetrap has to be substantially different from the other 4,400 to win a patent. The Patent Office, she adds, doesn't care whether an invention is practical or efficient, as long as it works and is unlike any already patented invention. As you prepare to leave, the patent officer whispers two words to you - Rube Goldberg.

 

Click on image to enlarge

 

The above illustration is a Rube Goldberg mousetrap which I passed up in favour of the more elegant and hygienic solution depicted at the very top, and which is available on ebay at $14.99 for two. I bought two because the onset of cooler weather means that certain little critters will seek out the warmth of our home in days and weeks to come.

Oh, and by the way, Ralph Waldo Emerson never said, "Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door". According to my sources, the current phrasing of the quotation didn't appear until seven years after he had died.

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