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Ever since they hit $54.06 on the 4th of August and I failed to sell up - or at least sell down - some of my many BHP shares, I've been beating myself up. Since then the shares have been as low as $35.56 as recently as 2nd of November.
What with the escalating trade war with China, Vale in Brazil coming back into production, and EVERGRANDE bringing on an implosion of the Chinese real estate bubble, I doubt we'll ever see $54.06 again, but it was good to read in yesterday's CommSec Daily Trading Alerts that ...
"... Trading Central has detected a 'Megaphone Bottom' chart pattern formed on BHP Group Ltd. This bullish signal indicates that the stock price may rise from today's close of 39.37 to the range of 42.60 - 43.40. The pattern formed over 47 days which is roughly the period of time in which the target price range may be achieved, according to standard principles of technical analysis.
Tells Me: The recent broadening action tells us that trading has been out of control, but a breakout on the upside suggests we're starting a more decisive uptrend.
With its broadening price swings, the Megaphone represents a market that's unstable and out of control. It typically consists of two successively higher highs between three lower lows, and the reversal signal occurs when the price breaks up above the second peak (the highest high) as a sign of a more decisive bullish move."
Paul Collins and his family abandoned the hills of San Francisco to move to the Welsh countryside - to move, in fact, to the village of Hay-on-Wye, the "Town of Books" that boasts fifteen hundred inhabitants and forty bookstores. Inviting readers into a sanctuary for book lovers, "Sixpence House"is a heartfelt and often hilarious meditation on what books mean to us."
I'm quoting this from this little gem's backcover. I love reading books about books, and this lovely little book is all about books and a little town that's all about books. I found myself jotting down notes for many of the books he mentions, hoping I might one day have the chance to read some of them myself.
The author takes the reader on a wonderful adventure in this tiny town of book lovers called Hay-On-Wye, or "Town of Books". The town is full of character and characters, both of which are wonderfully appealing. It's too late for me to track all the way back to Europe to visit it; anyway, the book has take me there in comfort of my armchair.
If you are a lover of books, this is definitely one for you. I can't recall another book about books that I have enjoyed as much as this one. It is definitely going on my Favourites shelf to be read again and again.
Click on image to enlarge
The humour in this book is wonderful as well. The author adores the British and many aspects of their way of life, even though he pokes gentle fun at them ... or maybe I should say, with them. "No situation is so dire that it cannot be interrupted for tea. It is particularly important to the British when it is cold and damp outdoors, which is often, or when it is cold and damp indoors, which is always."
And he gives useful advice on how to choose books:
"There is an implicit code that customers rely on. If a book cover has raised lettering, metallic lettering, or raised metallic lettering, then it is telling the reader: Hello, I am an easy-to-read work on espionage, romance, a celebrity, and/or murder. To readers who do not care for such things, this lettering tells them: Hello, I am garbage. Such books can use only glossy paper for the jacket; Serious Books can use glossy finish as well, but it is only Serious Books that are allowed to use matte finish.'
"Diminutively sized paperbacks, like serial romances or westerns or dieting and astrology guides, are aimed at the uneducated. But diminutively sized hardcover books are aimed at the educated -- excepting those that are very diminutive, which are relgious books aimed at the uneducated -- and unless they are in a highly rectangular format, in which they are point-of-purchase books aimed at the somewhat-but-not-entirely educated. However, vertically rectangular diminutive softcover books, which tend to be pocket travel guides, are aimed at the educated. But horizontally rectangular diminutive softcover books -- a genre pioneered by Garfield Gains Weight -- are not.'
"Then there are the colors. Bright colors, and shiny colors, are necessary for the aforementioned books with raised lettering. Black will work too, but only if used to set off the bright and shiny colors. Because, remember, with the customary base in mind, the book will need to be a bright and shiny object. Conversely, a work of Serious Literature will have muted, tea-stained colors. Black is okay here too, but only if used to accentuate cool blues and grays and greens.'
"Woe and alas to any who transgress these laws. A number of reviewers railed against The Bridges of Madison Country, because it used the diminutive hardcover size and muted color scheme of, say, an Annie Dillard book -- thus cruelly tricking readers of Serious Literature into buying junk. Not to be outdone, the Harvard University Press issued Walter Benjamin's opus The Arcades Project with gigantic raised metallic lettering. One can only imagine the disgust of blowhard fifthysomethings in bomber jackets as they slowly realized that the Project they were reading about was a cultural analysis of the 19th century Parisian life -- and not, say a tale involving renegade Russian scientists and a mad general aboard a nuclear submarine.'
"Finally, on Serious Books and junk alike there will be a head-shot photo of The Author sitting still while looking pensive or smiling faintly into the indeterminate distance -- the one pose that has no existence in the author's actual daily life. The size of this photo will be in inverse proportion to the quality of the book. If this photo is rendered in color, it is not a Serious Book. If there is no author photo at all, then it is a Serious Book indeed -- perhaps even a textbook. If a color photo of the author occupies the entire front cover, the book is unequivocable junk."
If this has piqued your interest, click here for an online read.
Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity."
I recently discovered this quotation by Christopher Morley, and I thought to myself, "That's pretty deep and meaningful, coming from someone with an ungainly bulk, bushy eyebrows, thick lips and a double chin."
Then I realised that I had been thinking of the British actor Robert Morley, famous for his roles in so many movies as a pompous English gentleman representing the Establishment, whereas this Morley was Christopher Morley, an American author of countless novels and essays.
I rushed to www.archive.org where I found enough books by Christopher Morley to "read, every day, something no one else is reading" (it seems, after his death in 1957, two New York newspapers published as last message to his friends this very quotation: "Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity.")
Thanks to www.archive.org, I'm now able to read his books online and, if I really enjoy them, I may even order some of them on ebay because to me at least, books aren't just for reading but also to have and to hold.
And here's my message to you, although not my last as I'm not dead yet: support the good work of www.archive.org with a small donation as I regularly do. Do it as "something no else would be silly enough to do."
It's that time of year again which makes me wonder where the year has gone. And I also wonder when we started with all this 'son et lumière' stuff, dressing up our homes like some sort of gingerbread houses come Christmas time?
If history books are not to your taste, you may prefer Annie Proulx's (which rhymes with 'new') That Old Ace in the Hole for $45 which was on the same sales docket.
Ever since the local op-shop ran a "two-for-the-price-of-one" sale and Padma bought two copies of "A Tale of Two Cities", I've done my own op-shopping - and look what I've found: "Matthew Flinders - The Life of Matthew Flinders" in mint condition, so mint in fact the sales docket was still inside.
Before Flinders arrived at Port Jackson, two names had been given to the vast empty spaces on the globe's southern hemisphere - New Holland and New South Wales. Travellers wondered whether a continent, two islands or perhaps even an archipelago occupied these unchartered waters. All this changed with Matthew Flinder's epic voyage of circumnavigation of the Great South Land.
It took Flinders almost a year - from 22 July 1802 to 9 June 1803 - to circumnavigate Australia. I hope to complete reading this 500-page tome in less time than that, even though I'm double-booked with yet another, equally thick book ("1421 - The Year China Discovered the World", if you must know) and also take time out for eating and drinking and sleeping and to occasionally reflect on the demise of "The Bay Bookshop", Batemans Bay's then only and now defunct bookshop.
The then "Bay Bookshop" sold this book for $59.95 on 23 December 2002, making it something of a rushed Christmas present which wasn't all that much appreciated since it finished up in the local op-shop for sale at $2.
Back in 1981 during my first attempt at domesticity in Townsville, I had a retired neighbour who confided in me that, after a lifetime of earning lots of money in mining, he had buried it all in kerosene tins in his garden - I kid you not! - so that he would qualify for the age pension.
I pointed out to him that he missed out on more interest than he got in welfare but he was not persuaded because, as he said, pounding the table, "I paid my taxes for it!" He was still pounding the table when I said good-bye to him in early 1982 to once again take up work overseas.
I returned to Townsville a little over three years later, and noticed that his house had been sold - click here - for a mere $72,500. I was tempted to tell the new owners to "Dig here!" but perhaps they didn't need to as they made enough money on the resale at $230,000 eight years later.
The next owners weren't quite so lucky when they resold another eight years later for a mere $285,000 (which seems to confirm two things: that, statistically, Australians sell their houses every seven years, and that real estate booms are followed by long periods of stagnation).
I don't know if my old neighbour dug up those money-filled kerosene tins before he moved away (or passed away), or if they've since been dug up by the owners during 1985 to 1993, or the ones from 1993 to 2001.
If not, the current owners are sitting on double a windfall: still all that buried loot and a property now valued at more than $600,000.
You can read this book here by signing up for a free account and "borrowing" it.
In 1975 I worked in Burma and lived, for the first six months at least, in Rangoon's Inya Lake Hotel which, together with the Strand Hotel, was one of Rangoon's two luxury hotels. However, Burma, being then the most isolated country in South-East Asia, allowed us no access to Western goods, Western food or Western books, and so my employers, TOTAL-Compagnie Française des Pétroles, sent me on a shopping trip to Singapore.
Knowing nothing about Singapore, I had booked myself into a hotel also called the Strand which I assumed to be of a similar standard to Rangoon's. Today's website certainly suggests that it has received a major make-over but back then it was a real dive in what was a very unsanitary Bencoolen Street.
I spent my evenings along Singapore's famous (or infamous) Bugis Street which was just around the corner, and my days inside the MPH Bookshop where I became acquainted with W. Somerset Maugham's Short Stories, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and the large collection of James A. Michener's novels.
James Michener's novel The Drifters became my much-loved and much-read 'Bible' during those footloose and fancy-free years and it has stayed with me to this day. It is a fairly epic tale, following the lives of eight principal characters thrown together in a great journey from Torremolinos, Spain, through Algarve, Portugal; Pamplona, Spain; and Mozambique; to Marrakech, Morocco in turbulent 1969. Joe is escaping the draft; Britta the dark winters of Norway; Monica the shadow of her father, a failed English diplomat to Vwarda (a fictional African nation); Cato a seemingly losing battle for racial equality in Philadelphia; Yigal the tug-of-war in the choice between American or Israeli citizenship; and Gretchen the psychological scars of sexual abuse at the hands of police officers following the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Britta is the daughter of a radio operator whose mission it was to alert the Allies to the arrival of German ships in Norway, and who dreams of going to Ceylon (modern-day Sri Lanka) once the war is over. As Britta grows up she watches her father endlessly listening to Georges Bizet's The Pearl Fishers during the endless arctic nights while his dream slowly fades into a distant vision never to be realised.
All flee to the resort town Torremolinos where they meet each other and, by chance, sixty-one-year-old George Fairbanks, the story's narrator and one- or many-time acquaintance of most of the six drifters. Through what can only be described as fanciful fiction, these seventeen- to twenty-one-year-olds allow George to join them on their ensuing adventure and even let him be their guide around the world.
In the ninth chapter, a new character is introduced by the name of Harvey Holt. He works as a technical representative on radars in remote locations. He is an old friend of Mr. Fairbanks, and has been everywhere from Afghanistan to Sumatra to Thailand. He is very old-fashioned and a fan of old music and movies.
I strongly identified with the book and its characters, such as when Britta says, "... I believe that men ought to inspect their dreams. And know them for what they are." I was already too old then to be Joe and not quite old enough to be Harvey Holt and I dread to think that today I should identify with Britta's father. I don't even like Georges Bizet's The Pearl Fishers! Carmen yes; The Pearl Fishers no!
The permanent temptation of life is to confuse dreams with reality. The permanent defeat of life comes when dreams are surrendered to reality. What dreams do we have today for ourselves and for the world in which we live? Let us search them out and discover where the journey takes us while we're still young at heart. Because once we have ceased to dream, Michener seems to say, it is simply time for us to die.
You can read Tom Neale's book here by signing up for a free account and "borrowing" it.
Islands have long held a deep, abiding fascination. Everyone who has grappled with getting along with their fellow human being understands the phrase ‘can’t live with them, can’t live without them’. Everyone has at some time mused on what life would be like on a remote deserted island, alone with only the sound of the gentle wash against the sunbleached sands.
Suvarov today
Perhaps it’s because so few have dared make this daydream a reality that such men as Tom Neale and his book An Island to Oneself take on an almost mythical role in our collective consciousness, as though they carry upon their shoulders all our yearnings for a simple, solitary life in tune with the tides of nature.
This is how he starts his story:
"I was fifty when I went to live alone on Suvarov, after thirty years of roaming the Pacific, and in this story I will try to describe my feelings, try to put into words what was, for me, the most remarkable and worthwhile experience of my whole life."
Despite his long stretches of solitary living, Tom claimed he never felt lonely. The
few times he wished someone was with him, he wrote in his memoirs, were "not
because I wanted company but just because all this beauty seemed too perfect to
keep to myself."
Tom Neale's book still fires the imaginations of all those who have dreamt of a simple life of solitude on a remote deserted island. It may be true that no man is an island, but it is also true that many a man has desperately wished it were so.
Anchorage Island
Tom left his beloved island in December 1963. As he writes in the postscript to his book:
"I realised I was getting on, and the prospect of a lonely death did not particularly appeal to me. I wasn't being sentimental about it, but the time had come to wake up from an exquisite dream before it turned into a nightmare. I might have lingered on the island for a few more years, but soon after the Vesseys left, a party of eleven pearl divers descended on Suvarov - and, frankly, turned my heaven into hell. They were happy-go-lucky Manihiki natives, and I didn't dislike them, but their untidiness, noise, and close proximity were enough to dispel any wavering doubts I might have had. Then, when I heard that more natives might be coming to dive for a couple of months each year in the lagoon, I resolved to leave with the divers. I did so - and I have not regretted the decision. I am back in Raro now, and you know, having proved my point - that I could make a go of it on a desert island and be happy alone - store-keeping doesn't after all seem such a monotonous job as it did in the years before 1952. I have a wealth of memories that no man can take away from me and which I have enjoyed recalling in these pages. I hope you have enjoyed them too".
It is one of those books that leave a mark on you for life. It
certainly has with me.
That's where the book ends but not Tom's fascination with his island to which he returned a third time, in June 1967, to remain there for ten more years until a visiting yacht, the "Feisty Lady", informed Rarotonga that Tom is seriously ill. The schooner "Manuvai" evacuated him from the island in March 1977.
He died on this day 44 years ago in Rarotonga where he lies buried at the RSL Cemetery. I leave the last words to Tom: "I chose to live in the Pacific Islands because life there moves at the sort of pace
which you feel God must have had in mind originally, when He made the sun to
keep us warm and provided the fruits of the earth for the taking ..."
Go to Noah Isenberg's website here to order this book. I did!
This week "Casablanca" turned 79. Starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, this movie has everything! It's cinematic perfection in every way conceivable. The dialogue, the plot, the acting, and the music are just a few reasons why "Casablanca" is a masterpiece.
Imagine if "Titanic" was filmed and released while the ship was still sinking. Or if "The Big Short" came out right before the crash of the financial crisis in 2008. That’s what "Casablanca" was for World War II.
To celebrate the anniversary of this great movie, here are twelve fascinating facts:
The story was purchased for $20,000
Playwright Murray Burnett co-created expat café owner Rick Blaine, piano player Sam, Czech resistance fighter Victor Lazlo and fresh-faced Ilsa Lund when he and his writing partner Joan Alison penned a play called "Everybody Comes to Rick's" in 1940. Having watched the political change that was sweeping across Europe, the pair intended it as a cautionary tale about the perils of fascism.
The play was meant for Broadway, but never made it — reportedly in part because of the implication that Ilsa had slept with Rick in order to get letters of transit. But Warner Brothers certainly saw its potential: they purchased the script and all rights for a record $20,000. (By comparison, the studio paid $8,000 for The Maltese Falcon.)
The studio thought it was a done deal, but in the 1980s, Warner Brothers created a short-lived TV show based on the movie, and Burnett filed a lawsuit claiming he owned the characters even though he had sold the play. "These characters are part of me, and I have a great regard for them — even Ugarte," he said in a 1985 New York Times interview. "I want them back."
Over the years, Burnett was reportedly approached by many people who wanted to buy the rights to a sequel, among them director John Cassavetes, but the writer turned them all down because he thought Warner Brothers might sue him.
Originally the story was set in Lisbon
The movie title definitely wouldn't have had the same ring if the creators had stuck with the original setting — Lisbon. But they later moved it to Casablanca, a place that Burnett had never seen, and never did in his lifetime, despite the sweeping success of the story he created.
"I never had any desire to go there," he said. "I've been told they have a place there named Rick's, and it's a dump. Maybe I don't want to destroy the image of Casablanca which I created."
There was a height issue
Like most film stars, Bogart seemed larger than life, but in person he stood 5' 8" tall. Bergman, however, was almost two inches taller. As a result, director Michael Curtiz had Bogie stand on blocks or sit on cushions to make him seem taller than Bergman.
It was shot almost entirely in Burbank, California
As exotic as it looks, the entire film was shot at Warner Brothers Studios in Burbank, California. There was one exception: the opening scene, which sees Nazi villain Heinrich Strasser flying past an airplane hangar, was shot at Van Nuys Airport in Van Nuys, Los Angeles. The final farewell tarmac scene, however, was filmed at Warner studios in Burbank.
Incidentally, that famous airplane hangar, which also appeared in the Laurel and Hardy comedy The Flying Deuces, was removed from Van Nuys during renovations in 2007 and moved to a Los Angeles parking lot. Earlier this year it was saved from the wrecking ball and will be moved to the Valley Relics Museum. The goal is to restore it and use it as part of a Moroccan-themed restaurant at Van Nuys Airport.
The release of the film was rushed
The release of Casablanca was rushed because of real-life world events. Originally the film was slated for release in early 1943, but the film premiered at the Hollywood Theater in New York City on November 26, 1942. Why? The publicity people moved it forward to coincide with the Allied invasion of North Africa and the capture of Casablanca.
The film then went into wide release on January 23, 1943, to coincide with the Casablanca Conference, a high-level meeting between Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt in Casablanca.
Many of the actors were themselves victims of the war
Many of the actors had first-hand experiences of the war and of Nazi brutality. S. Z. Sakall, who played the waiter Carl, was a Jewish-Hungarian who fled Germany in 1939 and lost his three sisters to a concentration camp. Helmut Dantine, who played the Bulgarian roulette player, spent time in a concentration camp and left Europe after being freed. Curt Bois, who played the pickpocket, was a German-Jewish actor and refugee. Conrad Veidt, who played Major Heinrich Strasser, was a German film star and refugee, and even though he fled the Nazis, he was often cast as a Nazi in American films.
Director Michael Curtiz was a Hungarian-Jewish immigrant who had arrived in the U.S. in 1926, but some members of his family were refugees from Nazi Europe.
The screenplay was heavily censored
At the time Casablanca was made, censors used a heavy hand when it came to Hollywood films — and in a later interview, Julius Epstein remembered just how stringent they were. "The main thing that affected our work in those days was that we were so handcuffed by censorship — remember, the nation shook when Clark Gable said 'damn' in Gone With the Wind," remembered Epstein, who said at the time you couldn't even show a woman getting divorced. Still, when they wrote Casablanca, they tried to sneak stronger language past the censors.
"I remember after a long time we could finally say 'hell.' But it had to be a sparse use of 'hell,'" Epstein recalled. "So what we would do was write fifty 'hells' and then bargain with them. We'd say, 'How about twenty-five?' We'd wind up with two or three."
Nobody expected it to be a hit
Even though it featured a stellar cast and top writers, nobody working on the film expected it to be anything special — just one of dozens of films to come out of Hollywood each year.
But favourable reviews and Academy Awards for outstanding motion picture, best director and best screenplay propelled the film into the limelight.
"Don't worry; we won't tell you how it all comes out. That would be rankest sabotage," read the 1942 review in the New York Times. "But we will tell you that the urbane detail and the crackling dialogue which has been packed into this film by the scriptwriters, the Epstein brothers and Howard Koch, is of the best. We will tell you that Michael Curtiz has directed for slow suspense and that his camera is always conveying grim tension and uncertainty. Some of the significant incidents, too, are affecting—such as that in which the passionate Czech patriot rouses the customers in Rick's cafe to drown out a chorus of Nazis by singing 'the Marseillaise,' or any moment in which Dooley Wilson is remembering past popular songs in a hushed room.
"We will tell you also that the performances of the actors are all of the first order, but especially those of Mr. Bogart and Miss Bergman in the leading roles. Mr. Bogart is, as usual, the cool, cynical, efficient and super-wise guy who operates his business strictly for profit but has a core of sentiment and idealism inside. Conflict becomes his inner character, and he handles it credibly. Miss Bergman is surpassingly lovely, crisp and natural as the girl and lights the romantic passages with a warm and genuine glow."
"Play it again, Sam" is not a line in the movie
The line "Play it again, Sam" is one of the most widely quoted lines from Casablanca — but it never appears in the film. In the famous piano scene, Ilsa leans on the piano and says, "Play it once, Sam" and "Play it, Sam." Rick also says, "Play it" — but nobody says, "Play it again, Sam." Most attribute the phrase, and the misunderstanding, to Woody Allen's stage play of the same name, which became a major motion picture in 1972.
There has never been a remake
There have been short-lived TV series, radio plays and Broadway musicals that never hit the stage, but there has never been a major remake of Casablanca. There have been plenty of spoofs and references in pop culture, however. Among the famous parodies are the Marx Brothers' A Night in Casablanca (1946) and Neil Simon's The Cheap Detective (1978).
The film is also heavily referenced in The Usual Suspects (1995) and in Woody Allen's Play It Again, Sam (1972), where Rick appears to give Allen's character life advice.
There is still confusion about who wrote what
Brothers Julius and Philip Epstein and Howard Koch are credited with writing the screenplay for the film — and they were behind many of the most famous lines, including "Round up the usual suspects," "This could be the start of a beautiful friendship" and "Here's looking at you, kid." But the script passed through many hands, and wasn't even complete when the film began shooting, so the screenplay's true authorship remains blurry. Producer Hal B. Wallis reportedly wrote the final line, "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship" after shooting was complete, and Bogart had to be brought back to dub it in.
The song "As Time Goes By" almost didn't make the cut
The music for the film was written by Max Steiner, an Austrian-born, Hungarian-Jewish composer and arranger who gained fame for his score of Gone With the Wind and King Kong.
The classic song "As Time Goes By" was included in the original play, but Steiner didn't like it and wanted it excluded from the film adaptation. But Bergman had already shot the scenes with the song and cut her hair for her next role, so they couldn't be re-shot, and the song stayed.
After the movie was released, "As Time Goes By" spent 21 weeks on the hit parade.
Steiner later admitted that the song "must have had something to attract so much attention."
Sometime in the sixties, a mythic event occurred in Harvard Square. At the Brattle Theatre, during a showing of "Casablanca", the sound failed in the last scene, and the assembled worshipers, speaking as one, intoned the famous final line: "Louis, this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship." It’s just possible that the story is true.
"Casablanca" is one of my all-time favourites and I must've watched it a dozen times. It's been raining for the last three days and it's still raining this morning, so, instead of our usual morning walk, I might watch it again. Already, to mark this momentous occasion, I've listened to Noah Isenberg, author of "We'll Always Have Casablanca: The Life, Legend and Afterlife of Hollywood's Most Beloved Movie", giving an oral history of Casablanca, from Bogart's initial fear of playing a romantic lead to the confusing director's note that led to Bergman's standout performance.
Unfortunately, the only full-length version of this wonderful movie on Youtube is with a Russian voice-over - click here - so you either buy the English-language version of this movie on DVD or you learn Russian.
"Тут присматривают за тобой, дитя." ("Here's looking at you, kid.")
The opening scenes of "Departures" (2009) give no hint of what direction the film will take. It begins as a narrative about a couple in financial crisis. We have no way of knowing, and indeed neither do they, that this is the beginning of a journey of profound growth and discovery, brought about through the instrument of death.
The universal reason people attend movies is in the hopes of being told an absorbing story that will move them. They would rather be touched emotionally, I believe, than thrilled, frightened, or made to laugh.
"Departures" is a movie about death that's suffused with the joy of living. It's deeply emotional and I loved it.
One of the main reasons we have the custom of giving and receiving presents at Christmas, is to remind us of the presents given to Jesus by the three Wise Men: Frankincense, Gold and Myrrh.
I think frankincense and myrrh are slightly out of fashion, and my budget doesn't run to gold, so what to give as a Christmas present to those from whom I expect yet more useless gifts this Christmas?
How many times have you encountered the "Batteries not included" message on the packaging of a battery-powered appliance which you received but couldn't use until you had bought some batteries?
It's pretty annoying, isn't it? So this year I have decided to turn this message on its head and just give them the batteries.
When it comes to climate change, never let the facts get in the way of the money or the need for constant adulation from fellow cult followers. Here is an extract from a report written by a highly regarded scientist:
'... a considerable change of climate, inexplicable at present to us, must have taken place in the circumpolar regions by which the severity of the cold, that has for centuries past enclosed the seas in the high northern latitudes in an impenetrable barrier of ice, has been, during the last two years, greatly abated. Mr. Scoresby, a very intelligent young man, who commands a whaling-vessel from Whitby, observed last year that 2000 square leagues of ice, with which the Greenland seas between the latitudes of 74 degrees and 80 degrees N[orth] have been hitherto covered, has in the last two years entirely disappeared.'
That’s alarming ... until you find out when the report was written:
20 November 1817.
The author of and reason for the report? The world-renowned botanist, Sir Joseph Banks was informing his Lordship Robert Saunders Dundas, the 1st Lord of the Admiralty, of his findings from a recent expedition.
If only Sir Joseph had known about the dire consequences that awaited the world from 'a considerable change of climate', he could have been the Al Gore of his time. But in all likelihood, no one would have cared. Why?
Because the climate was, is, and will continue to change ... so what’s the big deal?
I may be scraping the bottom of the politically incorrect barrel but I'm sticking with Stuart Ballantyne. I especially like his advice to Greta.
I only drink to make other people appear more interesting to me but during my many years in remote corners of the globe I met lots people who drank for lots of reasons, most of which had to do with trying to forget. To them, alcohol was a perfect solvent: it dissolved their marriages, their families and their careers.
Malcolm Lowry's "Under the Volcano" has become a classic of the twentieth century, but unfortunately its themes of alcoholism and failure were all too genuine a part of his own life. While he continued to write and to travel, the remainder of his life was plagued by the severe emotional problems brought about by his excessive drinking. He died in June 1957, in a rented cottage in the village of Ripe, Sussex, where he was living with his wife Margerie after having returned to England in 1955, ill and impoverished. The coroner's verdict was death by misadventure, and the causes of death given as inhalation of stomach contents, barbiturate poisoning, and excessive consumption of alcohol. It has been suggested that his death was a suicide. Inconsistencies in the accounts given by his wife at various times about what happened on the night of his death have also given rise to suspicions of murder.
Many readers find it hard to break into "Under the Volcano". Their difficulty is a shadow of the trouble Lowry himself had in writing it. Like other major novels of its kind - Melville's "Moby Dick", for instance, and Conrad's "Nostromo" - it can take several attempts before one really gets going even though the plot is simple enough: its the indelibly haunting tale of Geoffrey Firmin, a former British consul living in Mexico in 1938, who assiduously drowns himself in alcohol.
Unfortunately, Des, there hasn't been an adaptation about the addiction to COKE - yet! - so for the moment you have to stick with the real thing.
Sometimes, when I think about the Australia of just a few decades ago, I find myself doubting my own memories and those of my friends. Could it be true that coffee was a rarity - hardly available in any form other than a spoonful of instant? Did teachers really inspect the underpants of female students, making the young girls lift their dresses in order to check the colour and style? Could it be that women were sacked from the public service the moment they were married - the rebellious ones hiding their wedding rings and even their pregnant bellies in order to survive in employment for a few more months? Did Catholics really find it hard to get a job once they admitted their religion? And what of my memory of the typical motor vehicle - parked by the roadside, bonnet raised, its radiator boiling over at the mere mention of a hill? Could it be true, more to the point, that we lacked avocado - the fruit, smashed or otherwise, that has become a symbol of modern millennial Australia and its myriad pleasures?"
This book takes me back to the decade between 1965 and 1975. I am even older than Richard Glover - it’s a sobering thought that many of you weren't even born then - and I had just come out to Australia which was getting ready for the introduction of decimal currency on the 14th of February 1966. Life was more private then and slower paced - though they drove fast and often drunk and there were no penalties for either. Where would we be without memories? In the land of Dementia, I guess!
Today avocado is readily available everywhere. It has become so popular and hipster that "smashed avo on toast" seems to appear on every café brunch menu. I never order it. I mean, it’s nearly as unforgivable as paying $15 for someone else to spread vegemite on your toast or pouring milk on your muesli – these are things you can eat at home, for free! So maybe the land before avocado wasn’t so bad after all?
Sunday morning after the night before: chilling out on the front steps; "yours truly" in dead centre, wearing sunnies and checkered shirt. Notice the chap on the far right having a "hair of the dog" from a McWilliams flagon left over from the night before. If that didn't do it, there was always BEX powder and a good lie down! Or take Vincent's with confidence for quick three-way relief. All things of the past now!
As is Barton House itself which was demolished in 1981.
Some seventeen years ago I wrote about my time at Barton House here, closing with the words, "If you were at one time or another an 'inmate' of Barton House and have pictures and memories to share, please email me this very moment at riverbendnelligen@mail.com! I shall collect all comments and snaps on this website which, hopefully, will grow as time goes on."
"Yours truly" third from right wearing sunnies and checkered shirt.
Seventeen years is a long time to wait but it has paid off handsomely with this very witty and insightful reply from another former "inmate":
Dear Peter, I was looking on line to see if there was anything on Barton House and I read with great interest and amusement of your memories of your time there back in the late sixties. [click here] I arrived there in early 1972 as a 19-year-old and departed in 1975 when the announcement was made that the place was closing. Like all new arrivals I had to share a room with another bloke for three months before I earned the right to a single room. My first three months was in room 3 sharing with a bloke who never washed his clothes. He had one pair of trousers, five Pelaco shirts, all different colours and a couple of pairs of socks which were rotated one day on, one day off. The off-day pair was methodically hung by pegs on a coat hanger in front of the open window, and if the wind was blowing in, the room stank like a dead polecat. The shirts were also rotated Monday to Friday and repeated week after week. I pitied his workmates, because I only had to put up with the smell of sweat before the shirt was hung up in the cupboard. I remember all-night euchre card games for 5c a winning hand which we would play in the meeting room across from Peter Chek's office, usually about a dozen of us. We'd start about 8pm Saturday night and adjourn for breakfast on Sunday morning. We would rock up to the Wello with a $2-note, which was enough to get a 19-year-old pissed and still have enough for a pie with chips and peas.
The "Wello" (Wellington Hotel)
If you got on the right side of Luchio and Bosco, the chefs, you could get a second piece of sponge cake. I didn't like cake, but an old lady who I shared the lunchroom with at work did. When I walked in she would say, 'Where's my sponge?' Full board was $17 per week, which included three meals per day, clean sheet weekly and electricity included. The communal toilets and showers could be a problem because people upstairs had hot-water issues and would use the bathrooms downstairs. You would have to wear thongs when showering to avoid tinea and you would have to crouch on the toilet seat to avoid being attacked by the crabs which they said could jump quite a long way. I always had problems in the TV room; if it wasn’t some sheila trying to crack onto me (it was relentless),
it was the fixation with Channel 7. Everything that I liked was on Channel 3. So I was forced to run over to Lawley House to watch 'Are you Being Served' on a Thursday night because the public servants seemed to share my type of humour. But it was a very happy three years, and I have many fond memories, which will stay with me for ever. Yours sincerely Paul
Well, Paul, today being Thursday and just in case you were too busy with the sheilas in Barton House's TV lounge and missed it, here's episode 1 of season 2 of your favourite show "Are You Being Served?"
Thank you for sharing those memories with me and my readers, Paul. They will stay with me forever as well - especially those rotating socks.
P.S. Paul, who still lives in Canberra, has since phoned me at my hide-away on the banks of the Clyde river at Nelligen where I've lived since my return to Australia. It felt as though we had known each other all our lives. We haven't! I left Barton House in 1967 - and once again, after a short stint, in 1969 - before Paul moved into Barton House in 1972 to have his life irrevocably shaped by the experience just as it has mine.
A lot has been written about 1770 and good ol' Cook but it was the Dutch navigator Abel Janszoon Tasman who on this day in 1642 skirted the southern shores of Tasmania on his voyage from Batavia (Jakarta) to find a sea passage eastward to Chile and to explore New Guinea.
The Tasmanians were a distinct people, isolated from Australia and the rest of the world for 12,000 years. They differed markedly from the Aborigines on the Australian mainland by being wholly naked, had woolly hair and did not catch or eat fish. They did not
even know how to make fire, having always to transfer a flame from one stick to another. In 1803, British colonisation began and in 1876, Truganini died. She was the last full-blooded Tasmanian Aboriginal. Within her one lifetime, a whole society and culture were removed from the face of the earth.
"The Last Tasmanian", a documentary by Dr Rhys Jones, archaeologist and anthropologist, aroused considerable controversy when it was released. Many Aboriginal people from Tasmania who are descendants of the original population objected to the film's implication that their people had been wiped out. The controversy provoked much debate, although no-one denied the enormity of the colonialists' assault upon the Aboriginal population of the island.
The DVD is accompanied by a study guide which you can read here To watch Part 1 of this dicumentary, click here
A very sad episode in Australia's story of colonisation, rather glibly remarked upon in W. Somerset Maugham's play "The Breadwinner": "You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct." A lesson to us all.
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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