It seemed a good idea at the time ...

 

When Daylight Saving Time started, it seemed a good idea to simply overwrite the numbers but six months later I'm having one hell of a time to wipe them off again. I tried dishwashing liquid, soap, even a cloth drenched in turpentine, all with little or no success.

I just hope I can get it done before the second of April when Daylight Saving Time ends. Not that I'm keen on it to end as it always heralds the coming of cooler weather. I am what you might call a tropical bird and what little blood I have left has become thin after years in the tropics.

Riverbend's large living area has alongside one wall a huge mantelpiece which in summertime serves as a repository of all those small things one is afraid to lose and therefore wants to keep an eye on, and which then becomes the centre of the whole house when the huge bricked-in slow-combustion fireplace beneath it is lit at the first sign of cooler weather.

It is astonishing just how much heat it throws out and how it draws everyone in - with books, Scrabble, chessboard, knitting - to toast marshmellows or prod a smoldering log or make dream pictures in the flames or listen to the sounds the fire makes - the crackling and the hissing and the sighing and strange whimpering of a knotted log.

What a profound and sacred mystery fire is! More than warmth, more than comfort, more than illumination, more than protection from wild beasts, it reminds us of a time when our forebears still lived in caves.

Personally, I think that going to sleep in front of a fire is one of the nicest possible things to do, and I might just light it right now. That piece of cloth drenched in turpentine should do well to get it started.

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"Genau wie der Alte"

My father's photograph sometime in his early fifties

 

Which is what my youngest sister exclaimed - I'm the youngest of five; my parents kept having children until they found one they liked - when she discovered me amongst the crowd waiting at the bus terminal.

I was going to drive her down to newly-acquired "Riverbend" where she was to spend Christmas 1993, but this was no sentimental journey: she had flown all the way from Germany to Sydney and endured the bus trip to Canberra to get me sign over my share of our father's inheritance which she and the other children were fighting over with my stepmother (our parents had not been of the until-death-do-us-part persuasion).

I had left a dysfunctional home when I was fourteen, and I had left a still starving Fatherland when I was nineteen (no one ever says, "Well, I have a happy home life, I'm rich and I have many friends - so I'm off to Australia!"), and I wanted no part in this desperate fight. I signed whatever she put in front of me, after which I never heard from her again (although I did hear from her lawyers who demanded I pay them for my share of their legal fees for the share I had signed over to her).

I was forty-eight years old then, and approaching my father's age when his photograph was taken. Being almost the spitting image of him had prompted my sister to exclaim "Genau wie der Alte!", a reminder that we are a product of our genes and those first few years of our lives.

My father had been injured during the war, and after the war we eked out a miserable living on his "Kriegsverletztenrente", reluctantly doled out by a still very much struggling government of the new Germany. My resentment of all kinds of government hand-outs and a determination to look after myself have stayed with me ever since those early years.

With this total lack of money, receiving any sort of pocket-money was totally out of the question. I managed to earn a few coins from little jobs around the neighbourhood which never amounted to much, which made me resort to "crime": as the youngest in the family it was my job to daily collect a pint of milk from the dairy shop, which I did in an old battered aluminium can (no bottled milk then!) and which on this one occasion I ask to be filled up only half, pocketing the price difference.

Back at home, I made up the shortfall with water, but, not yet being a "hardened criminal", I failed to mix it enough because my step-father (that dysfunctional family again!) spotted the deception immediately. The subsequent questioning and the involuntary blushing of my face the very moment I tell a lie have stopped me from telling lies ever since.

My next brush with "crime" had to do with my passion for philately (although at that early age I was better at the German habit of compounding nouns than at Greek and French, and I simply called it "Briefmarkensammeln"). Germans are a nation of stamp-collectors which perhaps has something to do with those long winter nights, and I was no exception. Even big department stores like the then KARSTADT had a philatelic section with assorted stamps in small cellophane bags hanging from hooks on display carousels on the counter. One quick tug removed the bag containing the stamps of your desire, after which you would present it at the cash register for payment - or not, as a more worldly-wise schoolmate demonstrated to me by deftly dropping it in his pocket.

My schoolmate promptly vanished into the crowd while I finished up being taken through a door marked "Staff Only" where a senior person reduced me to tears with a very stiff dressing-down. Luckily, I was only ten years old and he took pity on me, and I haven't stolen anything since - with the only exception of quick glances at some pretty girls perhaps.

As Ernest Hemingway once said, the seeds of our life are there from the very beginning - if we bother to look. And which my greedy sister had so clearly recognised all those thirty years ago with "Genau wie der Alte!"

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I have a confession to make

One day in the hectic life of level-crossing guard Laumann in deepest Lower-Saxony

 

I confess that there are days when I feel like Schrankenwärter Laumann and I need to remind myself of what one of my ex-colleagues from my New Guinea days keeps telling me, "Peter, you've done enough for at least two lifetimes."

Schrankenwärter Laumann's weekly highlight is Tuesdays when he checks the readiness of his signalling horn (2:32); mine is on Thursdays when I wheel out the garbage bin for next morning's collection, which takes care of two days of the weeks as I also wheel it back in again on Fridays.

As for the rest of the week, I read books on Sundays, and also on Wednesdays and Saturdays and Tuesdays and Mondays. Ocassionally, I break my schedule and ponder what the hell made me retire so early instead of working on challenging overseas contracts for another ten, fifteen, even twenty years - enough years for at least a third lifetime!

No more navel-gazing! It's time to wheel out the garbage bin!

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The internet is for people who can't sleep

Back Row (left-to-right) Volker Kluge / Wolfgang Ihlemann / Joachim Schumacher / Helmut Ullrich / Ulrich Schäfer / Andreas Morgenroth / Helmut Bolle / Volker Wisse / Hendrik Heinemann / Jürgen Kreul Middle Row (left-to-right) Klaus Kratzenstein / Herbert Becker / Dagmar Kroll / Jutta Veste / Heidi Werner / Christa Funke / Wenzel Tappe / moi / Joachim Stut Front Row (left-to-right) Gudrun Otto / Heidi Nabert / Petra Küster / Sigrid Röseling / Herr Sapper, teacher / Barbara Ziegert / Margret Brandenburg / Ingrid Behrens / Waltraud Häupler / Karin Käsehage
(No prize guessing where I am in the photo!!!)

 

And I was still wide awake when this email came in late one night: "Ich hoffe Du bist etwas überrascht eine E-Mail zu bekommen, aber wir sind in die selbe Klasse in der Heinrichschule gegangen, auf dem Klassenfoto bin ich unter dem Namen DAGMAR KROLL. Würde mich freuen etwas von Dir zu hören! "

Let me translate before you rush out and enrol in a Berlitz German Language Course: "I hope you're surprised to receive this email because we attended the same class at primary school. My name is Dagmar Kroll and I'm the third from the left in the middle row in this photo taken on the last day at school. Would love to hear from you!"

What a surprise indeed! Dagmar found the photos another schoolfriend had sent to me previously and which I had put up on my German blog - here and here - and she's busy scanning some more to send to me. This seems to be a case of "good things come to those who wait" - for over fifty years! - because we were refugees from East Germany and had little money, and none at all for such frivolities as school photos.

Of course, she also asked the obvious question, "Why did you leave Germany?" Well, no one ever emigrates because of the success they've enjoyed at home. No one ever says, "Well, I have a happy home life, I'm rich and I have many friends - so I'm off." The only reason anyone has for going to live in another country is because they've cocked everything up in their own.

Being just nineteen years old, my opportunities for cocking things up had been rather limited by the time I left; in fact, my only - and certainly biggest - cock-up until then had been that I allowed myself to be born to parents who were so dirt-poor that they packed me off to work as soon as I had reached the minimum school-leaving age of 14.

Being the youngest solo-migrant on board the migrant ship FLAVIA, a television crew had asked me the same question before it left Bremer-haven. I had no answer in front of the whirring newsreel camera and still have no answer today. I mean, how do I explain the sense of dissatisfaction and frustration that affected me at the time?

We can't choose our parents and are born into the prison of our race, religion and nationality. I had no problem with my race which, being blond and blue-eyed, helped me to slip into Australia under its "White Australia" policy, but I'd already renounced my Lutheran upbringing and joined the German Freethinkers, and many years later also changed my nationality by becoming an Australian. Two out of three isn't bad, is it?

True to her word, Dagmar sent me three photos of a class reunion in 1983 which, come to think of it, I could've attended as I was at the time working in Jeddah and Athens. Another missed opportunity? Perhaps not, as my life had moved in a completely different direction from those stay-at-homes with whom I had little in common during my school days and would have had even less in common twenty-three years later.

 

Class Reunion 1983 - for names see last photo

Class reunion 1983 Get-together at Teacher's house after the reunion
from left to right: Joachim Stut - Dagmar Kroll - Franz Sapper (retired teacher) -
Barbara Zieger - Gudrun Otto - Volker Kluge

Class Reunion 1983
from left to right; back row: Volker Kluge - Herbert Becker - Wolfgang Ihlemann - Wenzel Tappe - Helmut Ullrich - Ulrich Schäfer; middle row: Heidi Werner - Ingrid Behrens - Jutta Veste - Dagmar Kroll - Christa Funke; front row: Gudrun Otto - Petra Küster - Sigrid Röseling - Franz Sapper (retired teacher) - Barbara Zieger - Waltraud Häuptler

 

However, I would've liked to have met "Herr Sapper" again before he passed away sometime in 1987. He was a great teacher who helped me overcome my lack of a tertiary education by giving me this personal letter which helped me into my first job after completing my articles.

My favourite author, Somerset W. Maugham, wrote a story entitled "The Verger" about a man without formal education who ended up more successful than he might've been with the right kind of schooling.

I count my blessings every time I watch the movie as I count my blessings to have had such a wonderful teacher, a real "Mr. Chips".
Rest in Peace, "Herr Sapper"!

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Selective no more!

 

Frank Spencer is a lucky man! He has a whole video clip to show of his interview with the Australian immigration officer. I have no record at all of my interview nor any recollection of it.

It took a whole half-century before I was able to retrieve from the National Archives a copy of my original "Auswanderungsantrag nach Australien mit Fahrtunterstützung", dated by me 26.9.1964 ...

 

Under "Other comments" I wrote: "At first I would like to work on a farm, if possible,
with a German farmer, to learn English. Later I would like to return to an office job."

 

... and a copy of the three-page "Processing Sheet", dated and signed by the processing officer (Sergeant?) Schulze on 27.10.1964.

 

Note the "Suggested/proposed employment: factory worker" I proved them wrong!

"Appears good type. Understands employment prospects. Should settle without difficulties. Questions to the point. Neatly dressed. --- By sea not before June 65."

 

Until I retrieved those documents several years ago, I had absolutely no memory of what I had written on my application, nor any memory of the interview or the subsequent medical examination. For fifty-seven years, all I remembered was that small advert by the "Australische Auskunfts- und Auswanderungs-Büro" in the German   Bild Zeitung   which started it all. I cut it out, completed it, and mailed it in - and the rest is history!

 

Click on image to view full newspaper page

"Do you know Australia?
Information about Australia, a young and aspiring nation, and the opportunities awaiting you there, are available from the Australian Information and Immigration Agency
2 Hamburg 1, Mönckebergstrasse 11, Phone 33 49 82.
For more information complete this coupon (in block letters) and mail it to us."

 

More recently, I asked the good people at the German   Bild Zeitung   to find me a copy of this old advertisement - and within two days they did!

Now my memory is selective no more but complete!

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Der Mensch ist ein Gewohnheitstier

Helmut and I raise our glasses in June 2011 at the Lake Eacham Hotel,
the one and only Husbands' Daycare Centre in Yungaburra

 

Most people, the vast majority in fact, lead the lives that circumstances have thrust upon them, and though some repine, looking upon themselves as round pegs in square holes, and think that if things had been different they might have made a much better showing, the greater part accept their lot, if not with serenity, at all events with resignation. They are like train-cars travelling forever on the selfsame rails. They go backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, inevitably, till they can go no longer and then are sold as scrap-iron. It is not often that you find a man who has boldly taken the course of his life into his own hands. When you do, it is worth while having a good look at him."

This is a quote from the first paragraph of W. Somerset Maugham's short story "The Lotus Eater" which I was reminded of when I met a fellow-migrant, Helmut Brix, during my travels in North Queensland in 2011.

Helmut had come to Australia in 1961 - four years before me - and also stayed at the Bonegilla Migrant Centre - a whole month longer than me - after which he found work in Melbourne and eventually opened his own camera shop in Acland Street in St Kilda. He married, had two sons, and for fifty years "like a train car travelled forever on the selfsame rails".

He had arrived at Yungaburra only weeks - but no more than a couple of months - before our accidental meeting. When I questioned him about the Victorian number plates on his car, he explained to me that he'd told his wife that now that he was into his seventies and both their sons had grown up and he was no longer needed, he wanted time to himself. With this he handed her the keys to the house, and travelled north.

In Yungaburra he found friends and a free flat in exchange for looking after several more, and I admired (and envied) him for the ease with which he had escaped from half a century of domesticity. As Maugham wrote, "It is not often that you find a man who has boldly taken the course of his life into his own hands". What next? Seven years in Tibet? Kon-Tiki-ing across the South Pacific? Lotus-eating in exotic Bali? Walking the road to Samarkand? Living in a grass-hut on a tropical coral island?

Alas, the end was far more pedestrian: he (once again) succumbed to domesticity by buying a house in Yungaburra and joining the local bridge club as well as the Happy Snappers Photography Group of the local U3A and staying put in the one place so as not miss his appointment in Samarra because a few years later I suddenly found this on the internet:

 

born 9 December 1938 - died 18 March 2018

 

What happened to Bali and Bora Bora, Helmut? Did you die with all that music still inside you? I hope someone arranged to have your gravestone inscribed with the German saying "Der Mensch ist ein Gewohnheitstier".

I've just gone back to reading W. Somerset Maugham's short story "The Lotus Eater" again. On reflection, I think Wilson had the better idea!

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In memory of Noel Butler

Noel (left) and I at Wewak in New Guinea at Christmas 1975. I had just come back from Burma and was off to Tehran in Iran the following week. Brian Herde took the photograph.

 

Basically your friends are not your friends for any particular reason. They are your friends for no particular reason. The job you do, the family you have, the way you vote, the major achievements and blunders of your life, your religious convictions or lack of them, are all somehow set off to one side when the two of you get together.

If you are old friends, you know all those things about each other and a lot more besides, but they are beside the point. Even if you talk about them, they are beside the point. Stripped, humanly speaking, to the bare essentials, you are yourselves the point. The usual distinctions of older-younger, richer-poorer, smarter-dumber, male-female even, cease to matter. You meet with a clean slate every time, and you meet on equal terms. Anything may come of it or nothing may. That doesn't matter either. Only the meeting matters.

Noel Butler was such a friend. Some friends are more or less replaceable with other friends. Noel was not. I last heard from him on this day exactly twenty-eight years ago. He'd sent me one of those funny "Greetings from Childers by Night" postcard which was all black except for those words. On the back he had written, "Hope your outlook on the future is not as black as this; mine is but that's inevitable." I was then far too young and far too busy and far too full of myself to think that this was more than just a funny card. Five months later, Noel was dead.

 

 

Rest in Peace, Noel! Your memory lives on at "Riverbend" and so does your card which, beautifully framed, sits on top of the mantelpiece.

 

As long as we live, they too will live,
for they are now a part of us,
as long as we remember them.

 

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Another early morning at "Riverbend"

 

People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day. Today, so far, has been a great day: I woke up in the morning, got out of bed, and went to the bathroom, in that order!

While cooking my porridge, I listened to the news: more demonstrations about trans-gender women competing in women's sports. Remember that 'Not the Nine O’Clock News' sketch where Pamela Stephenson shocks everyone by agreeing with Mel Smith's plans for yob control – that the only solution was to 'cut off their goolies'? What a great idea!

There is so much else to demonstrate about (or against): communism, socialism, capitalism, Nazism, Fascism. Why, I'd even join them if they were demonstrating against rheumatism. We've tried democracy and clearly it hasn't worked. So let's give dictatorship a go. After all, Mussolini made those Italian trains run on time, Stalin really put Siberia on the map and Hitler did wonders for the documentary film channel.

Today are the State Elections and we can vote for either Dominic Tweedledee or Chris Tweedledum. Listening to their campaign speeches, I've concluded that LOL stands for 'Lots of lies'. It is claimed that a country gets the politicians it deserves. I'm struggling to identify just what it is we have done to be so undeserving. I did my postal voting weeks ago because what I thought of them couldn't be said out aloud.

(Of course, you have to be eighteen years old to be allowed to vote which is surprising since even a four-year-old can now already decide in kindergarten what sex he or she (or it) wants to be. Now that all of them have achieved marriage rights, they face the same moral quandary we did: should they have sex before marriage?)

Even Oxfam no longer just wants to save children; they now want to save our language as well by putting out a 92-page bizarre 'inclusive' language guide to their staff which warns against 'colonial' phrases such as 'headquarters', suggests 'local' may be offensive and says 'people' could be patriarchal. All the familiar rubbish is trotted out: 'parent' is preferable to 'mother' or 'father', and 'people who become pregnant' should be used instead of 'expectant mothers'. The introduction apologises for being written in and about the English language, saying: 'We recognise that this guide has its origin in English, the language of a colonising nation. We acknowledge the Anglo-supremacy of the sector as part of its coloniality.' [Sadly ‘coloniality’ is a real word — it's in the Oxford, recorded from 1862.] This absurd introduction goes on: 'This guide aims to support people who have to work and communicate in the English language as part of this colonial legacy. However, we recognise that the dominance of English is one of the key issues that must be addressed in order to decolonise our ways of working and shift power.' What will they do? Use sign language? I have just the sign for them!

(And now that 'Baa Baa Black Sheep' has been replaced with 'Baa Baa Little Sheep', I presume I have become the little sheep of the family. Still, it is refreshing to note that in the politically correct society we have created, we can still refer to a black hole in a financial context although I'd be happy to call it anything as long as I get out of it. As for changing the name of little Titty in Arthur Ransome's "Swallows and Amazons" to a more politically correct Tatty, may I suggest that at a time when nouns and verbs are so often muddled together, it's become quite urgent to also give Roger the ship's boy a change of name.)

It's still early morning at "Riverbend". Padma has gone into the Bay to help a friend run a charity stall in the shopping centre, and I can look forward to a peaceful day. May there be many more days like this!

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The Magic of Mornings

 

I love this mysterious still time before reality kicks in, before shapes emerge on the river, when everything floats nebulously in that strange light that makes one think of the beginnings of things.

I'm addicted to sunrises. I've watched the sun rise from boats far out at sea and from mountain tops, from tropical beaches and standing among the ruins at Delphi. Watching the sun come up is an affirmation of life and warmth and continuity.

I've always been addicted to sunrises, before the world reveals itself to be, after all, pretty much what is was yesterday, only these days I get up for them instead of staying up for them. Staying up needs stamina I don't have any more.

And so I shall continue doing it: getting up early and watching the sun rise. It's why I'm so hopeless in the afternoons.

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The meaning of Mollymook

 

It is believed that Mollymook is a corruption of Mollymawk, the name given by sailors to a small albatross that lives in the Southern Ocean. Mollymook to me means McCrossin and ice guns containing liquid nitrogen and sharp scalpels for taking biopsies.

While discussing the state of the world and our small parts in it, Dr Ian McCrossin, M.B.,B.S.,F.A.C.D.,F.A.Ch.S.H.M., took a rather generous chunk out of my left arm, cauterised it, and sent it off to Pathology.

"Stay out of the water for the next two weeks to give it time to heal", he said, "and I call you when the results of the biopsy have come in."

What? Two weeks without being in the pool with all the other people? What will they talk about without me? Probably about me, no doubt!

I consoled myself with a lunch at KFC and stocking up with a few more books at Vinnies and the Uniting Church and the Lions Club Bookshop: "A History of the English Language in 100 Places"; "Reading Like A Writer - A Guide For People Who Love Books and For Those Who Want To Write Them"; "Pardon Me For Mentioning ... Unpublished Letters to The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald"; "The World of Charmian Clift" (I already have a copy but this one is in so much better condition); and another Julian Barnes, "The Only Story". I tossed in a $1-DVD, the BBC documentary "Killing Hitler", because no-one else seemed to want it.

 

 

Oh, and I did have time to check out the Batemans Bay Chess Club at the Catalina Country Club, Ernie! I beat the club president James in the first game, but then got trounced in the second game. Maybe I already had my thoughts on all those books I was going to read when I get home.

I'll see you in two weeks' time, Ernie, when I bring with me the missing apostrophe in "Ernies Kitchens". My regards to Jake the fake Lifeguard!

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I wrote this story on this day twenty years ago

 

We were spending last Thursday Padma's birthday at Moruya where we had an enjoyable midday lunch in the beergarden of the "Adelaide Hotel" overlooking the Moruya River when a man on a pushbike pulled up for a rest. He had a tiny Maltese puppy in his backpack which made us talk to him. He turned out to be an Austrian by the name of Robert Krenn who was pedalling from Melbourne to Sydney (a distance close to 1000 km) and who had ridden his bike all over the world with many stories to tell.

We invited Rob to stay with us at Riverbend and he turned up late that same afternoon to overnight in our guest cottage. We talked and talked and became very good friends. And his little Maltese puppy and our dog Malty became very good friends as well! So much so that when it was time for him to leave next day late in the afternoon, we suggested to him that if he ever needed a good home for his little puppy, we would be very happy to take care of him!

Late that same evening, Rob called us from Burrill Lake, some fifty kilometres north of Batemans Bay, to ask if we had been serious about wanting to take care of his little puppy as he felt we would give him a much better home than he ever could. Of course, we had been serious with our offer! So we got into our car and drove north to meet Rob at his campsite where we drank hot tea, walked along the beach and gazed at the stars, and talked some more. We returned home well after midnight with the new member of our family whom we have called "Rover" as he has already travelled so much!

Malty and Rover are now very good friends and the house is a very lively place with Rover exploring his new home. At night he sleeps on our bed between the two pillows, usually on his back with his four legs spread out in all directions. He is a dear little fellow and is a great addition to the family!"

And that's how the Riverbend Trio became a Quartet! Both Malty and Rover have since gone to Dog Heaven but their still memory lives on!

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Watch your back, Frank!

Yours truly, although politically always on the far right, is here on the far left.
Frank is the one with the target on his back; in the background to his right is a Canadian whom I met again at the Blues Point Hotel in 1985 which means he never made it back to Saskatchewan; to Frank's left is infamous Neil Jackson, probably the only person who ever got fired from the project, who's right then telling everyone else what he thinks of them.

 

I promised to tell you all about "doing a Joslin" which entered the English vocabulary sometime in 1971 when I lived and worked on the then biggest construction project in the world, the huge Bougainville Copper Project, on tropical and always rain-soaked Bougainville Island in the then Territory of Papua & New Guinea.

Our small team of intrepid auditors and cost engineers were exposed daily to the risk of impaling ourselves on lethally sharpened pencils while overeating on strawberry shortbread biscuits as we tried to keep the world's largest construction project within its $300-million budget.

I was senior auditor in charge of several large contracts on the Bougainville Copper Project, such as the construction by Hornibrook of the port facilities at Loloho, World Services' power house construction, the Arawa Township built by Morobe-ANG, Brambles-Kennellys' haulage services, and the concrete production at Pioneer Concrete's batch plant.

 

Yours truly revelling in the paperwork

 

Unlike some who found this work dull and repetitive and in the process became dull and repetitive themselves, I treated it as a game of chess. The contracts spelt out the rules but the moves were never the same. Written by engineers who knew everything about building a ship loader or power house but little about how this might translate into billable dollars and cents, it left the contractors' accountants pitted against the auditors to interpret contractual clauses in often unexpected ways.

Not all members of the audit team were as forensic in their work or as delighted with working ten hours a day six days a week. Some started counting the days to the end of their twelve-month contract by running up adding-machine strip lists from 365 days down to zero which they pasted to their office walls, crossing off one number each morning.

Others simply went through the motion by 'sitting' on their contract claims just long enough to make it appear as if they had done all the checking before signing them off for payment with a boozey florish. Needless to say, not many survived that kind of mental torture.

 

No idea why he wanted to leave so soon as he certainly enjoyed all the free beer. Frank Joslin with back to camera on far left; yours truly on far right; sitting on the table behind me and smirking as usual is the Victorian 'Sunshine Kid'. We met again in Saudi Arabia.

 

Enter Frank Joslin, the latest and "star" addition to the team on account of being the only chartered accountant, but it soon became apparent that Frank was more interested in chartered planes than in chartered accounting because when he was given the monthly "perk" of hand-carrying a batch of computer punch cards to Bechtel's Melbourne office, he was gone and never seen again.

His dirty deed became known as "doing a Joslin" and was much talked about but never copied. I haven't checked the 'Gum Leaf Dictionary' aka Macquarie Dictionary but wouldn't be surprised if the phrase weren't in common usage still today. Take a bow, Frank (but watch your back!)

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