When dream meets reality

Someone - not me! - sitting on Pallarenda Beach looking towards Magnetic Island

 

Perhaps it was a mental image such as this that made me buy a block of land in Picnic Bay on Magnetic Island in 1979 and a couple of years later an old beachshack on Pallarenda Beach.

We all need a dream, and the dream of one day living there gave me a sense of hope and home as I continued my peripatetic, some might say pathetic lifestyle, moving from place to place and country to country.

I once met an Englishman in Honiara in the then British Solomon Islands Protectorate who spent his evenings drinking gin & tonics in front of a fake fireplace with a huge painting of London's Tower Bridge above it.

In Maugham's "On a Chinese Screen" collection of 1922, there's a short story called "Mirage", which tells of a character from England called Grosely who has spent most of his working life in China. We're given in the first pages much background detail concerning his early days as a medical student, and what brought him to the Orient in the first place.

But the story really only picks up when, after years of very difficult saving and hard work, Grosely is able to travel back to the England he has adored, with the money he has accumulated. What happens when he eventually arrives, however, is perhaps not all that surprising.

"It was different from how he remembered it, there was much more traffic and he felt confused and a little at sea. He went to the Criterion and found there was no longer a bar where he had been used to lounge and drink. There was a restaurant in Leicester Square where he had been in the habit of dining when he was in funds, but he could not find it; he supposed it had been torn down."

What he does next is really quite interesting. He leaves England, his memories and perhaps part of his Self, for China. En route, he visits places like Singapore and Colombo. But at the last stopping place before China proper - Haiphong - he remains. He’s only supposed to go ashore for forty-eight hours, but he stays, because for this character at least a sense of self - partial and fluid though it may be - is so immediately tied to place: "I’ve never been so happy in my life. I often think I'll go on to Shanghai some day, but I don't suppose I ever shall. And God knows, I never want to see England again", he remarks to the narrator.

Looking at life through the wreaths of opium smoke that he exhales several times a day, Grosely represents the partially disorientated traveller who has settled for flux rather than fixity. Positioned between east and west, undecided where home actually is, Grosely seems to find the in-between existence not only agreeable, but a sort of solution.

"I knew that on the threshold of China his courage had failed him. England had been such a terrible disappointment that now he was afraid to put China to the test too. If that failed him he had nothing. For years England had been like a mirage in the desert. But when he had yielded to the attraction, those shining pools and the palm trees and the green grass were nothing but the rolling sandy dunes. He had China, and so long as he never saw it again he kept it."

When dream meets reality it sometimes becomes a nightmare, and so it was with my premature homecoming in 1985. I felt like one of those expat characters in a W. Somerset Maugham story who, when finally washed up on their home shores, can often be found peering into an empty glass while wishing to be somewhere else. Maybe I, too, should have stayed forever abroad and dreamt of home from a safe distance.

I sold the block of land on the island and that beachshack in the late '90s for little more than what I had paid for them which didn't matter as by then they'd served their purpose as my London Tower Bridge painting.

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One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

 

Alexander Solzhenit͡syn's novel describes a single prisoner's day in a remote Siberian labour camp in the Stalin era of 1951, of which he had first-hand experience, having been imprisoned from 1945 to 1953 for writing a derogatory comment in a letter to a fellow officer about the conduct of the war.

The book's publication in 1962 was an extraordinary event in Soviet literary history, since never before had an account of Stalinist repressions been openly distributed. Filming the unfilmable, the movie about tedium and hopelessness becomes tedious itself, however, it seemed a fitting movie to watch on a cold and crisp winter morning.

 

Read the book online at www.archive.org
or listen to the BBC drama here

 

"The day had gone by without a single cloud - almost a happy day. There were three thousand and fifty-three days in his sentence, from reveille to lights-out. The three extra days were because of the leap years ..."

 

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Before the VOICE vote, let’s get the facts in order

Senator Lidia Thorpe has become the Poster Girl the No vote needed. That Prime Minister Alabanese proposes that we vote Yes in principle and then let the likes of Senator Thorpe decide the details of the powers she would like to give to herself is preposterous.

 

Can the Uluru Statement from the Heart be described as militant? Australian historian Geoffrey Blainey says it can, adding that it's a "vulnerable document".

Professor Blainey says the statement is sometimes silent when Aboriginal failures are visible, but vocal in condemning the Australian people for misdeeds that he says "never happened".

I've just listened to Professor Blainey - remember his now famous book, "The Tyranny of Distance"? - being interviewed by Tom Switzer on ABC Radio National's BETWEEN THE LINES, in which he gives a thoughful and balanced response to the claims by the YES and NO proponents.

To listen to the podcast, click here and pick it up from 3:00.

 

 

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VOICEs in my head

And now the prime minister's biggest argument is, "If you don't marry my child, you're a bad person" and, in reply to the football codes barracking for the YES vote, "If I'm going to take political insights from people who can chase a ball around a paddock, then I start listening to my dog." Barnaby Joyce in full flight. Love it!

"If you don't know how the VOICE is going to work, vote NO."
"We are one together, not two divided."

 

 

If you don't know
what you're voting for,
vote NO.

 

 

As time goes by

 

Sometimes I walk into Vinnies only for the music which often is straight from the sixties. This morning, still with water in my ears from the two hours in the pool, I listened to Marianne Faithfull's plaintive, quavering "As Tears Go By" which took me right back to 1968 when I lived in Lüderitz, wedged in between the cold Atlantic Ocean and the hot and dry Namib Desert of South-West Africa.

There I shared a company flat with another young German, Karl-Heinz Herzberg, who in the room right next to mine played night after night "As Tears Go By" while outside the desert wind never stopped howling.

 

 

Karl-Heinz had come to that quaint little German town in Africa some time before me and seemed to have found his niche there, whereas to me it was little more than a stepping stone on my way back to Australia after a disasteriously disappointing nine months in the (c)old country.

Robert Frost wrote "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in", but neither my father and stepmother nor my mother and stepfather rolled out the welcome mat when I totally unannounced reappeared after my first two years in Australia.

They must've thought it would be better to be cruel to be kind, and so I kept moving instead of slipping under the old eiderdown and enjoying the old homecooking again. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

Decades later, and thanks to the internet, I was in contact with Karl-Heinz Herzberg again. He had stayed on in South-West Africa, had married and raised children, and watched as the erstwhile German colony which during my time there had been a South African dependency, had become the independent nation of Namibia.

 

 

These memories flooded through my mind as I listened to Marianne Faithfull singing "As Tears Go By" while riffling through Vinnies' book-shelves. By the time their retrospective Muzak had launched into "I Am Australian", "Georgy Girl" and "Waltzing Matilda", I was at the cash register and paying them a couple of gold coins for Natasha Solomons' feel-good novel "Mr Rosenblum's List" and the inspirational "First You Have to Row a Little Boat - Reflections on Life and Living" by R. Bode.

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It's NOT the end of the world!

 

Please listen to Michael Shellenberger in the above video clip. It explains much of what's going on in this crazy, mixed-up world today. I now want to read his books "San Fransicko - Why Progressives Ruin Cities" and "Apocalypse Never - Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All".

 

 

Read "Apocalypse Never" online at www.archive.org and relax. It's NOT the end of the world!

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Armchair-travelling on a cold day

 

For twenty years, my motto used to be "Have pen, will travel". Paul Theroux travelled to write books; I travelled to keep books - I used to be an accountant which comes from the French aconter and is just a fancy word for "book-keeper".

I kept books in Germany, Australia, South-West Africa, New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Burma, Singapore, Indonesia, Iran, Samoa, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, and Greece. I am retired now and I still keep books but travel books, of which Paul Theroux's travel books are my favourites.

 

Read the book online at www.archive.org

 

One of my favourite favourites is his "The Tao of Travel", in which Paul Theroux celebrates fifty years of wandering the globe. Part philosophical guide, part miscellany, part reminiscence, it enumerates "The Contents of Some Travelers' Bags" and exposes "Writers Who Wrote about Places They Never Visited"; tracks extreme journeys in "Travel as an Ordeal" and highlights some of "Travelers’ Favourite Places".

 

 

I left home; I went alone; I travelled light; I brought lots of maps; I went by land whenever I could; I walked across national frontiers; I kept numerous journals; I read novels that had no relation to the place I was in; and I made lots of friends. I am now catching up with point 9 as I'm clutching my cell phone to avoid having to get out of my armchair while I travel the world with one of Paul Theroux's travel books in my hand.

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German by birth, Australian by choice

 

There's a story of a conversation Bill Clinton had with Edward de Bono when they were both in Hong Kong. Bill asked Ed his opinion of what in an ideal world the perfect nation would look like.

De Bono replied, "It would have an ethnically diverse population of twenty to twenty-five million people. English would be the national language. It would be religiously and economically liberated, have a democratic form of government and a vigorous free press. I'd locate it somewhere along the Pacific Rim. It would have a young history and an optimistic outlook. And a generous climate that lent itself to encouraging all its people - rich or poor - to enjoy the wonderful free gifts nature has to offer".

"Sounds wonderful", Clinton wistfully remarked. "What would you call it?" he asked.

"Oh, I wouldn't change its name", De Bono replied, "'Australia' will do fine".

Apocryphal or not, De Bono is right and I, like him, love Australia. I'm not saying it is perfect. We, too, have to put up with lying politicians, nasty neighbours, occasionally stifling bureaucracies, sometimes even bad weather, but nothing could ever persuade me to return to the northern hemisphere.

 

 

I am German by birth, Australian by choice - and happy with both.

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The nos have it!

 

Your letter-box will soon fill up with "Yes" and "No" campaign pamphlets. Feel free to use the "Yes" one as a firelighter - Hubert in tropical Cooktown may use it as a mosquito swatter - as I've included it in this blog for reference:

 

The "Yes" case pamphlet

The "No" case pamphlet

 

Unlike the 13-page-long "Yes" case pamphlet, the "No" pamphlet spells it all out in seven pages. In numerology, the number seven is considered a lucky number. People affiliated with the number seven are believed to be insightful, intuitive, truthful, introspective, intellectual, and wise.

 

 

Thankfully, the No voice seems to grow but that's no reason to become complacent. "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Keep up the pressure and spread the word.

 

 

If you don't know, vote NO.

 

 

To become law, the proposed alteration to the Constitution must be approved by a ‘double majority’ of electors voting for the changes. That is, for the referendum to pass, more than half of the national total must vote yes and more than half of electors in at least four states must also vote yes. The referendum will not pass if more than half of the national total vote no or more than half of electors in at least three states vote no.

 

 

If you don't know
what you're voting for,
vote NO.

 

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P.S.
Go to riskyvoice.com and oneandfree.au and australiansforunity.com.au.

 

The thin wedge of the pizza

 

A friend just emailed me this receipt for a Hawaiian pizza at the Basic Goodness Pizzeria in Tofino in British Columbia in Canada.

Twenty dollars for two pale ales seems expensive but what would make me choke is the extra one percent on top of it to support Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation's vision to conserve and revitalise Tribal parks and culture.

 

 

Am I hearing VOICEs in my head or is this what's going to happen here?

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"If you don't live in Sydney, you're camping out"

 

My first landfall in Australia and for some 229 other "Auswanderer" aboard the ship FLAVIA was Sydney. Together with another young German I ventured just far enough from the ship to explore the Rocks and to sit on the steps leading up to the Harbour Bridge.

We still had some distance to go before we would finally disembark in Melbourne and be processed through the Bonegilla Migrant Centre, but we had already decided there and then to come back to Sydney and to that very spot to wait there every Sunday for the other one to turn up.

That was in August 1965, and I never did return to Sydney until a year later the ANZ Bank, for whom I had begun to work in Canberra, sent me on a two-week training course at their Haymarket staff training centre.

The next time I was in Sydney was in 1972 when Camp Catering Services, whom I had helped to set up their catering operations on Bougainville Island in New Guinea, transferred me to their Crows Nest head office as their Group Financial Controller, during which time I lived in a ramshackle boarding-house at Blues Point with views of the bridge at which I had promised to meet up again with the other young German.

My final - and longest - stay in Australia's famous "Harbour City" was in 1985 after I had come back from my last overseas assignment in Saudi Arabia and Greece, and thought that Sydney would be the answer to all my prayers. It wasn't! Contrary to what former prime minister Paul Keating once said, I preferred to camp out and left after six months.

 

Read a preview here

 

Reading about Sydney in Louis Nowra's book "Sydney - A Biography" was far more interesting and a lot easier than actually living there, and I learned a great deal about some of the buildings and places that I quite thoughtlessly and indeed ignorantly walk past back in 1972 and 1985.

What I still don't know is how many Sundays the other young German may have sat on those Harbour Bridge stairs waiting for me to turn up.

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Anyone for tennis?

 

Wheelbarrows are said to have been invented by the Chinese - along with gunpowder, paper, seismoscopes, paper currency, magnetic compasses, crossbows, and many other things - which may explain Padma's enthusiasm to shift the twelve tonnes of dirt I bought last week.

 

 

While I was otherwise engaged - all right, you guessed it, I was reading! - Padma single-handedly spread a good portion of those twelve tonnes along the edge of what is euphemistically known as "our tennis-court".

 

 

Anyone for tennis?

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Inside a book are arranged these twenty-six little marks in ways that can make you cry, giggle, love, hate, wonder, ponder, and understand. It's truly astonishing to see what these twenty-six little marks can do.

In Shakespeare's hands they became "Hamlet". Mark Twain wound them into "Huckleberry Finn". James Joyce twisted them into "Ulysses". Gibbon pounded them into "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire". John Milton shaped them into "Paradise Lost".

The alphabet is arguably mankind's greatest invention but because we use it ourselves on a daily basis, we somehow take it for granted. Just think how much information you have acquired and dispensed through the writing of words made up of letters. Imagine if you had been restricted to communicating only with those who were in the same place at the same time as you? That was the reality for the human race until only about 4,000 to 5,000 years ago, a tiny percentage of our time on earth. It is perhaps no coincidence that the evolution of the human race from just another band of hunter-gatherers competing with many other species for survival to the dominant one on the planet has occurred during the period in which we have developed the ability to communicate complex concepts over the limitations of space and time.

 

 

My favourite quote is from Carl Sagan's book "Cosmos": "What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic."

 

 

The one thing that bothers me is that I’m going to die with so many books still unread that I have always wanted to read.

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Early Monday morning and we're off to the pool!

Sorry but Padma isn't in the photo as someone had to press the button on the camera

 

Another week, another Monday! We'll spend our usual two hours in God's wading pool before Padma goes shopping at ALDI and I rehome some books from VINNIES and the Salvos.

It was a sunny but cold Sunday - still no rain with our tanks are running low! - and I stayed close to the fireplace and binge-watched a couple of DVDs while Padma had coffee with friends at Nelligen's River Cafe.

I watched "A Merry War" which is a movie adaptation of George Orwell's much lesser-known book "Keep the Aspidistra Flying" and Oliver Stone's film "JFK" about the assassination of John F. Kennedy which prompted me to follow it up with this excellent documentary on YouTube:

 

Click here to watch in separate window

 

My last job in town for the day will be to queue up at Centrelink with the rest of the unwashed to have my pulse taken so as to certify on the annual "Lebensbescheinigung" that I'm still alive and entitled to receive my German pension which was recently increased to €113.83 a month.

 

 

Living the life of Riley!

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