Mermaid Singing

Read the book online at www.archive.org
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It is also available as an audiobook - for a sample click here

 

One of the lesser known Greek islands is Kalymnos, on the Turkish side of the Aegean. Last weekend the island had a significant event – the launch of a Greek language edition of a book that was first published in English in 1955.

The local population has only recently learnt of the existence of 'Mermaid singing', an account of life on Kalymnos. It was written by Australian author Charmian Clift, who spent time there with her husband George Johnston and their two children, before they relocated to the island of Hydra. To preview, click here; to order, click here.

Ένα ταξιδιωτικό memoir από μια Αυστραλή συγγραφέα που αγάπησε την Ελλάδα και έγινε μέρος της. Κάθε σελίδα σκορπάει χρώματα και αρώματα και τον ενθουσιασμό της συγγραφέα που παρασέρνει τον αναγνώστη.

 

Hear about the launch of the Greek translation on ABC's Late Night Live:

or click here

 

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"Riverbend" from a different perspective

"Riverbend" at low tide; guest cottage on the right

 

I haven't been on the river for such a long time that when Padma announced she would take the daily tourist boat upriver with a couple of ladyfriends from the Bay, I told her to take a photo of Riverbend's jetty house which she did and which you see above.

I had no time for such frivolous diversions as I was far too busy with sitting on the tractor and slashing all that long grass that's been left untouched since the big fire, cutting down the myriads of black wattle trees that have sprung up all over the place, splitting and stacking firewood, and building and planting a possum-proof vegie garden.

And for all of you who've been wondering where I spend most of my time when I'm NOT sitting on the tractor or cutting down black wattle with my chainsaw or stacking firewood or building possum-proof vegie gardens, here's a photo - taken by the same photographer - of my cosy reading room which is the bright-red building to the right of center.

Click on image to enlarge

 

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Fair Value $1.13

 

I've been in and out of Hawsons Iron Ltd when they were still Carpentaria Resources, always taking small profits and never making a loss. When things started to look more promising, I took a bigger chunk around 49 cents and sold out again at 57 cents.

"No one ever went broke taking profits" is good advice except when it's not - and it wasn't in the case of Hawsons Iron which then went to an intraday high of $1.08 within days. That extra 51 cents multiplied by ... well, I won't bore you with the details but it would've been a whopper!

Morningstar's research has now put a fair value of $1.13 on the Hawsons Iron Project which is located approximately 60km south-west of Broken Hill and is the world's biggest undeveloped high-quality iron ore project.

I am holding a big chunk and this time I'm hanging on for the ride!

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How the Lucky Country became the Lucky Laundry

 

In today's ruthless world of organised crime, the best criminals aren't foolish enough to steal money out of banks. They wear tailored suits, carry briefcases, and discreetly slip money into banks.

Bigwigs, oligarchs and crime syndicates running drugs, trafficking guns and people, arming terrorists and subverting government controls are desperate to put a legitimate face on their wealth. Washing dirty money, moving it around the globe, making it look legitimate is where the action is for both criminals and the authorities chasing them.

Australia is awash with dirty money. It flows through our economy, keeps banks running, powers big business, puts coffee on restaurant tables, seeps into clubs, pubs, sport, the art world and anywhere that value is moved. It infiltrates real estate, costs billions in policing, and takes a terrible toll on Australian lives. What law enforcement agencies might lack in legislation and political will, they make up for with sheer resourcefulness. When they can't get at the masterminds and bigwigs, they have honed tactics that intercept the flow of illicit cash and aim to drive a wedge between crooks and their ill-gotten wealth.

 

Read a preview here
It is also available as a 12-hour-long audiobook - for a sample click here

 

In "The Lucky Laundry", financial crime expert Nathan Lynch delves deep inside this hidden world to explain how dark money has infected the lives of ordinary people - and tainted Australian democracy. He opens the curtain on the hidden world of financial intelligence, where crooks and spooks play a cat-and-mouse game inside the world's black money markets.

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The School of Life

 

There is no more ridiculed literary genre than the self-help book. These titles may sometimes sell well, but they are never taken seriously usually, for very good reasons. Admit that you regularly turn to such books to help you cope with existence and you are liable to attract the scorn and suspicion of all who aspire to look well educated and well read."

So wrote Alain de Botton in his introduction to Volume 1 of his "School of Life", a redesigned and rehabilitated self-help book which, as first in a series of reborn self-help books, explores life's big questions such as How can we fulfil our potential? Can work be inspiring? Why does community matter? Can relationships last a lifetime?

Alain de Botton has written many books, and I have a copy of each one of them in my library, some half-read, others I've read several times. Then there are his DVDs which I've watched several times. You may find some of his books on archive.org and some of his DVDs on YouTube.

I haven't yet bought any of Alain's School of Life books, not because I think I'm too old to learn but because I'm running out of life. Anyway, two are on the internet: "Volume 1", with such chapters as "How to think more about sex" (what, more?) and "How to worry less about money" (I don't!), while "How to change the World" I've already tried and failed.

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Tell 'em they're dreaming

 

Actually, I was going to write about the Barilaro Principle, that you create your own job, then leave politics and suddenly fill the role which you created, with a 500,000 salary package and $100,000 expense account, and it's off to lunch as Trade Commissioner, but then I read this:

The utility companies have thus far had little to say about the alarming cost projections to operate electric vehicles (EV) or the increased rates that they will be required to charge their customers. It is not just the total amount of electricity required, but the transmission lines and fast charging capacity that must be built at existing filling stations. Neither wind nor solar can support any of it. Electric vehicles will never become the mainstream of transportation!

In order to match the 2,000 cars that a typical filling station can service in a busy 12 hours, an EV charging station would require 600, 50-watt chargers at an estimated cost of $24 million and a supply of 30 megawatts of power from the grid. That is enough to power 20,000 homes. No one thinks about the fact that it can take 30 minutes to 8 hours to recharge a vehicle between empty or just topping off. What are the drivers doing during that time?

New Zealand-based consulting engineer Bryan Leyland describes why installing electric car charging stations in a city is impractical: "If you’ve got cars coming into a petrol station, they would stay for an average of five minutes. If you’ve got cars coming into an electric charging station, they would be at least 30 minutes, possibly an hour, but let’s say it's 30 minutes. So that's six times the surface area to park the cars while they're being charged. So, multiply every petrol station in a city by six. Where are you going to find the place to put them?"

A home-charging system for a Tesla requires a 75-amp service. The average house is equipped with 100-amp service. On most suburban streets the electrical infrastructure would be unable to carry more than three houses with a single Tesla. For half the homes on your block to have electric vehicles, the system would be wildly overloaded.

The government of the United Kingdom is already starting to plan for power shortages caused by the charging of thousands of electric vehicles. Starting in June 2022, the government will restrict the time of day you can charge your EV battery. To do this, they will employ smart meters that are programmed to automatically switch off EV-charging in peak times to avoid potential blackouts.

In particular, the latest UK chargers will be pre-set to not function during 9-hours of peak loads, from 8 am to 11 am (3-hours), and 4 pm to 10 pm (6-hours). Unbelievably, the UK technology decides when and if an EV can be charged, and even allows EV batteries to be drained into the UK grid if required. Imagine charging your car all night only to discover in the morning that your battery is flat since the state took the power back. Better keep your gas-powered car as a reliable and immediately available backup!

The average used electric car will need a new battery before an owner can sell it, pricing them well above used internal combustion cars. The average age of a car on the road is 12 years. A 12-year-old EV will be on its third battery. A Tesla battery typically costs $10,000, so there will not be many 12-year-old EVs on the road. Good luck trying to sell your used green fairy tale electric car!

Although the modern lithium-ion battery is four times better than the old lead-acid battery, gasoline holds 80 times the energy density. The great lithium battery in your cell phone weighs less than an ounce while the Tesla battery weighs 1,000 pounds. And what do we get for this huge cost and weight? We get a car that is far less convenient and less useful than cars powered by internal combustion engines. Bryan Leyland explained why: "When the Model T came out, it was a dramatic improvement on the horse and cart. The electric car is a step backward into the equivalence of an ordinary car with a tiny petrol tank that takes half an hour to fill. It offers nothing in the way of convenience or extra facilities."

You do not need to have an advanced degree in mathematics to understand the term "Overload"! The average person, no matter where you live, can quickly identify the political feel-good sensation that is being attempted by those short-sighted individuals who are promoting the EV revolution. Vehicle manufacturers, charging station builders, transmission line contractors, battery producers, etc. It’s magic! And you are saving the planet by creating less pollution as you get rid of your gas-burning vehicle and take out a five year loan to pay for the shiny new $60,000 electric car. No more fill-ups at the service station and the global warming is solved. You can now sit back and imagine the new polar ice formations that are providing a safe environment for the polar bears, seals, penguins that we all adore. We have done our part saving humanity, and you can see the smile on little Greta Thunberg’s face! BUT WAIT ... why are we losing power at our house?

Well, the short answer is: we failed to understand that our electrical grid reached maximum capacity and was overloaded when all of the EV’s were plugged in tonight at the same time. The next short answer is: where do you think the energy came from to supply the grid in the first place? It sure was not from wind or solar, nor from any other alternate energy source we use which, when all combined, only provides 7% of today's use demand. It was from the traditional combustible resource called Hydrocarbons! Until we discover a non-hydrocarbon energy source that is efficient and safe, GET OVER IT - we are committed to oil & gas!

Wipe that smile off your face, Greta!

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STOP PRESS: Barilaro must've seen my blog because I just read that he's withdrawn his candidacy from the $500,000 New York job - click here.

 

Here’s a puzzle: why do we neglect and disdain the one vulnerable group we all eventually will join?

My favourite theme music from ON GOLDEN POND.
Sorry but the full movie is not available on YouTube

 

Of all realities, old age is perhaps that of which we retain a purely abstract notion longest in our lives", said Proust with great accuracy. All men are mortal: they reflect upon this fact. A great many of them become old: almost none ever foresees this state before it is upon him. And yet nothing should be more expected than old age!

Old age is not exactly a time of life that most of us welcome, although it is a privilege to reach it. In Western societies, the shocked realisation that we are growing old often fills us with alarm and even terror. Many attempt to push it as far away as possible, denying that it will ever happen, even though we know it already dwells within us.

You could read more about it in Simone de Beauvoir's definitive study of the universal problem of growing old, "La vieillesse" (1970), in the US as "The Coming of Age" (1972), but for my money - $26.99 plus $12.70 for postage - I prefer the absorbing and sumptuously illustrated "The Long History of Old Age" which I bought on ebay before Alzheimer's got me.

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The saddest hole I've ever dug

 

In the course of my pretzel-shaped journey through life I have dug myself some pretty deep holes, often made worse because I never knew when to stop digging. On this day six years ago I dug a hole just deep enough to take Malty's little doggie basket.

I dug it below the tree I had planted many years ago in memory of my best friend Noel Butler. The tree never put down roots deep enough to grow into a big tree just as Noel never put down roots deep enough anywhere after he had come down to Australia from New Guinea.

Little Malty was fifteen years old which in human years puts him into the mid-eighties and he had been on heart tablets for a long time. When we had him x-rayed it showed that his much enlarged heart (which he gave to us in unconditional love) was pushing against his windpipe. He'd been no more than skin and bones, no longer ate, could barely stand upright, and had trouble breathing. On this day six years ago, we finally found the courage to take him to the vet for the injection that gave him a dignified and gentle death. Dying closes the circle of life, and euthanasia is the last act of kindness we can give a sick and dying pets.

 

 

We placed him inside his soft sleeping box, covered him in his favourite blanket, and I put him to rest under Noel's tree so that whenever I look at it, I'm reminded of my best canine friend as well as my best human friend. There'll never be another Noel and never be another Malty.

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In Memory of little Malty

Little Malty's first day at "Riverbend" in 2001

 

The Rainbow Bridge ℬy the edge of the woods, at the foot of the hill, Is a lush green meadow where time stands still. Where the friends of man and woman do run, When their time on earth is over and done. For here, between this world and the next, Is a place where each beloved creature finds rest. On this golden land, they wait and they play, Till the Rainbow Bridge they cross over one day. No more do they suffer in pain or in sadness, For here they are whole, their lives filled with gladness. Their limbs are restored, their health renewed, Their bodies have healed with strength imbued. They romp through the grass, and sniff at the air, All ears prick forward, eyes dart front and back, Then all of a sudden, one breaks from the pack, For just at that instant, their eyes have met: Together again, both person and pet. So they run to each other, these friends from long past, The time of their parting is over at last. The sadness they felt while they were apart, Has turned into joy once more in each heart. They embrace with a love that will last forever, And then side by side, they cross over ... together.

 

On this day six years ago we said good-bye to our wonderful friend Malty.

Rest in Peace, our loyal friend. You will forever be in our hearts.

 

 

Is 1637 repeating itself?

 

That was the year that tulip mania finally ran out of puff, the year when one of the most insane investment bubbles of all time burst spectacularly. And yes, we're talking about tulips.

Originally from Turkey, they became highly fashionable in the early part of the 1600s, sought after by the well-to-do and, ultimately, a symbol of wealth and power deemed an absolute necessity for anyone with social pretensions or ambitions.

By 1634, demand for tulip bulbs – which not only were rare but fragile – was such that the trade crowded out most other Dutch industries. At its peak, a single tulip bulb cost six times the average income, with some going for as much as $1 million in today's money. They were traded on stock exchanges in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and other Dutch cities.

Three years later, it all came to a crashing halt. A large swathe of the population had borrowed to buy bulbs, certain that prices would only ever go higher, and when the market turned, it did so with a vengeance as investors were forced to dump their, um, flowers.

If this sounds too ridiculous to be true, you're right. But it really did happen. And it all looks a bit Bitcoin-ish, doesn't it? So, what do tulips have to do with Bitcoin? A lot, as it turns out.

Economics is really a study of human behaviour at both an individual and a group level and there are a couple of fundamental laws, or assumptions, used as the bedrock. One is that individuals always act rationally. The other is that everyone always acts in their own best interest.

That explains why economists have such a dismal track record in forecasting anything. Not sure about you, but my behaviour occasionally has veered towards the irrational and certainly not in anyone's best interest. Multiply that several billion times and you have a recipe for unconstrained lunacy.

It's why we have booms and busts, prosperity and poverty, wars and famine, why we lurch from one extreme to the other. You can't just assume it all away and pretend it's not there.

Which brings us to Bitcoin and the mysterious world of cryptocurrencies. Millions of investors, most of them unsophisticated, have been lured into pouring trillions of dollars into what primarily appears a hoax, overseen often by anonymous entities, some criminal, in a completely unregulated environment. It has been a breathtaking sight to behold.

This hype and hysteria around cryptocurrencies have been allowed to build into the most overblown bubble since the Dutch went crazy for tulips back in the 17th century.

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Picnic at Hanging Rock

 

It was a cloudless summer day in the year nineteen hundred. Everyone at Appleyard College for Young Ladies agreed it was just right for a picnic at Hanging Rock. After lunch, a group of three girls climbed into the blaze of the afternoon sun, pressing on through the scrub into the shadows of Hanging Rock. Further, higher, until at last they disappeared. They never returned ...

As Joan Lindsay, author of "Picnic at Hanging Rock", writes at the front of the book, "Whether 'Picnic at Hanging Rock' is fact or fiction, my readers must decide for themselves. As the fateful picnic took place in the year nineteen hundred, and all the characters who appear in this book are long since dead, it hardly seems important."

Peter Weir, director of such movies as "The Last Wave", "Gallipoli", "The Year of Living Dangerously", "The Mosquito Coast", and "Dead Poets Society", turned the book into a brilliant movie in 1975 which was voted the best Australian film of all time by the Australian Film Institute.

Whether you have read the book or seen the movie, the book review "Picnic at Hanging Rock fifty years on" by Marguerite Johnson, Professor of Classics at The University of Newcastle, should give you a better understanding of this mystery which to this day remains a mystery.

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A case of very much mistaken identity

Backcover of "His Own Man" about Cecil Burgess, written by his son Julian Burgess

 

There I was, having traced the movements of my adversary from my days on Thursday Island all those many years ago, Cecil Burgess; getting all excited and putting it together in my post here; when I read about "His Own Man", written by his son Julian Burgess, and suddenly everything went poof.

It went poof after I had sent Julian Burgess this email, "This is a long shot but are you the son of Cecil Burgess who for a long time lived in New Guinea and on Thursday Island?" and received his almost immediate reply, "Hi Peter, my father certainly was Cec Burgess and he was on TI for a decade or more but he didn’t ever live in New Guinea."

So, that Cecil Burgess on those Passenger Arrival Cards was another and fifteen years younger Cecil Burgess than the one who was my boss for those short six months on Thursday Island in 1977, despite having the same and not altogether common first and last name and despite having worked on some religious mission outpost in the north of Australia.

I emailed back, "I worked with your father on Thursday Island - not for long and not very successfully, as he was a difficult man to get along with - and belatedly heard from others on T.I. that he had passed away at 95. So I was trying to find out a bit more and found the two attached Passenger Arrival Cards at the National Archives, and knowing that he was a bit of a Biblebasher, played the church organ on Sundays, belonged to the Lodge, and had worked on some islands in the Gulf for some Christian mission, it all seemed to fit, except for one thing: the year of birth of 1929. When I knew your father in 1977 he looked a lot older than 48 (1977 minus 1929) but I thought if he had spent all those years in some rough and remote outpost of New Guinea, he might have aged prematurely. I've looked at your book about him and I'm still wondering if it's worth the US$17.67 to perhaps see my name in print or that of several others I know he rubbed the wrong way (no offence but the best way to describe him was 'a crotchety old bastard'). I don't hold it against him as he did me a favour by making my short six months on the island miserable because the island would have been a dead end for me and probably stopped my career, which had already included South Africa, New Guinea, Solomons, Burma, and Iran, before I continued after T.I. to work in Samoa, Malaysia, New Guinea (again), Saudi Arabia, and Greece. In 1977 Cecil had brought up his girlfriend from Perth and given her a job as secretary in our office. She lived in the company-duplex next to his and a carpenter was called in to put a door into the dividing wall between the two duplexes. It was commonly known as the 'Tunnel of Love'. I wonder how long she stayed; I don't even know how long your father remained as manager of IIB as, from what I only know now, he was only two years away from retirement in 1977. As I said, T.I. would have been a dead end as that soporific little island sucks you in, so, quite unintentionally I am sure, he did me a favour. May he rest in peace!", and enclosed some old photos of Thursday Island from that time, including two showing his father.

His next email was just as prompt, "Thanks for the photos and information on TI. You’ve got the wrong Cecil Burgess with the Passenger Arrival Cards. Dad was born in Launceston, Tasmania, in 1914 and moved to Queensland in 1971. He worked on a mission station somewhere for the Presbyterian Church before joining the IIB in 1972. Dad was never a bible basher or even very religious but he did like to play the organ/piano and the churches on TI were the only places where he could play. After he retired as manager in 1981 he was on the IIB board for a few more years. I’ve never heard of him being described as crotchety but he could be a bit prickly and liked things done properly. I visited him a few times on TI and knew Doreen. He told me about the fuss made about the adjoining door. Dad made a lot of good friends in TI and I met quite a few. I think the high turnover of public service staff frustrated him. My book on him is a family history and there’s no mention of his fellow workers at the IIB."

That last bit about being just a family history saved me US$17.67; however, if you want to read the book, you can order it here.

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Around the world with just one book

 

Remember those papers from elementary school where you connect the dots. Some kids could never see the picture in the connect-the-dot drawing until they had virtually connected all the dots. Me, I could look at a page full of dots and almost immediately say, "Oh, that's an elephant" or "That's a locomotive."

Some people handle two-dimensional visualisation better than others, but largely it's a matter of practice: the more connect-the-dot drawings you do, the more likely you are to recognise the design quite early on.

And as with those pictures among the dots, it's also a matter of learning to look when it comes to auditing. And not just to look but where to look, and how to look. From my first brief encounter with auditing in the firm of chartered accountans of Hancock, Woodward & Neill in Rabaul in Papua New Guinea, I have always been hooked on auditing.

I was always an auditor first, and an accountant or systems analyst or computer programmer second, because asking "Now where have I seen this before?" has always made my looking more focused and less vague.

And so it was that Lawrence B. Sawyer's book "The Practice of Modern Internal Auditing" (which at the time was to auditing what "Gray's Anatomy" has been to medicine) became the one book I carried with me from job to job across fifteen countries, but not before I had joined The Institute of Internal Auditors, Inc. in early 1971 while working as senior auditor on the giant Bougainville Copper Project in Papua New Guinea.

This book, together with others dealing with accounting standards or IATA rules or laytime calculation or charter parties or case studies in forensic auditing, sits now forgotten in a dark corner of my library, as I've found time to be more widely-read so as to belatedly gain more insight into the people I had met and the places I had lived in then.

When I lived in Greece in the early 80s I visited Hydra several times without ever knowing anything about George Johnston who with his wife Charmian Clift lived for some eight years on the island. George Johnston is of course best known for his book "My Brother Jack" and I have read every one of his many other books since.

Several times I holidayed at my boss's villa on Messonghi Beach on Corfu without ever having heard of the Durrells and their years on the island, let alone having read Gerald or Lawrence Durrell's many books.

When I worked in Port Moresby, one of the old accountants in my office was a Mr Chipps, and the whole office would chortle "Goodbye, Mr. Chips", every time he left the office without my ever realising that they were making a literary reference to James Hilton's famous book.

And of course the same James Hilton wrote "Lost Horizon" in which he gave us the word "Shangri-La". Indeed, the Shangri-La hotel chain bought the rights to his book and placed a copy on every bedside table in place of the usual Gideon Bible. I knew nothing of this when I stayed at various Shangri-La Hotels in Malaysia and Singapore and I had barely heard of Hermann Hesse when I stayed in the suite named after him in the Raffle Hotel in Singapore.

I visited Pago Pago when I worked in Western Samoa without ever having read Somerset Maugham's short story "Rain" and lived in Rangoon before I had ever heard of Rudyard Kipling's "On the Road to Mandalay". Even Saudi Arabia would've held a greater fascination for me if at the time I had already read T.E. Lawrence's famous "Seven Pillars of Wisdom".

How much richer my travels would've been had I been able to read all those books back then. However, I have since then in retirement found time to also dip into John Donne's "No Man is an Island" and Boethius's "The Consolation of Philosophy", so things are beginning to balance out.

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I keep looking at the real estate market

 

I keep looking at the real estate market as the time will come when these seven-plus acres will become a bit too much for me to look after, and these cold southern winters a bit too much to bear.

Yes, prices are coming down a bit, but every so often a property shows up that makes me gasp and say, "WHAT? HOW MUCH?" 11 Fairley Street, Depot Beach, for sale at $3 million, has prompted me to say just that!

This is what you would get for $2,900,000 - $3,150,000: "Set just 250 metres from the water’s edge on some of the most pristine coastline Australia has to offer, this architectural masterpiece blends seamlessly with the stunning natural wonder that is Depot Beach. Designed by the award-winning Peter Stutchbury to take full advantage of this secluded and prestigious location, 11 Fairley Street is a testament to the robust engineering, superior construction and exquisite finishing synonymous with the Stutchbury name. Built with the family in mind and with privacy at a premium [sic; did she really mean privacy was difficult to get because there is little available?], the home itself features 3 bedrooms including two overly-generous queen sized rooms as well as a bunk quarters capable of sleeping up to six people. Communal spaces are a dominant focus for this modern day homage to the classic beach house of yesteryear, with glorious open spaces on both levels adorned with simple yet stylish materials such as western red cedar, polished concrete, spotted gum and stainless steel. Ingenious design elements allow you to blur the lines between interior and exterior with centre-folding aluminium doors and moveable exterior walls. A fully operable balcony roof amplifies the sense of space, bathing the first floor in precious northerly sunshine when open. Just 4 hours south of Sydney by car and only 50kms to the Moruya Airport, Depot Beach is the jewel in the crown of one of Australia’s most highly regarded and sought after coastal regions. 11 Fairley Street is a genuine blue-chip property, masterfully brought to life in the midst of a truly stunning natural location. Properties of this nature are extraordinarily rare indeed and this is an opportunity not to be missed."

It's a stylishly modern house but on just 734 square metres of land and a whole 250 metres FROM the water's edge, to say nothing of the long drive back into town to pick up that forgotten packet of LIPTON's tea.

As I wrote, I keep looking at the market, and if this one sells for its asking price of three million dollars, there's hope for "Riverbend" yet.

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