Thanks, ABC Radio National, for keeping us informed, so we won't walk into the disaster with our eyes wide shut

 

Other than the ABC's constant Acknowledgement of Country which keeps coming up with place names and names of "nations" I and - dare I say it? - none of my Aboriginal friends never knew existed, they do come up with some interesting and insightful programmes.

 

 

I've just spent the last afternoon of the last day of the year listening to Australia's $668 BILLION AUKUS program. And so can you by clicking on:

1 - That Fella Down Under 2 - Bang for buck? 3 - The China Question 4 - The 51st US state? 5 - Radioactive ripples 6 - Premier Peter Malinauskas

Methinks, we are being royally ripped off by both the UK and the US. Apart from that, by the time we ever get those "invisible" subs, there's probably technology around for our adversaries to scan the ocean floor. (Listen to Malcolm Turnbull on "4 - The 51st US state?" and Gareth Evans on "5 - Radioactive ripples". They both make an awful lot of sense!) I leave these slightly outdated last words to former PM Paul Keating:

 

 

Anyway, who can believe that three submarines - of which perhaps only one is ever operational - could defend Australia? We are a prize target for the Chinese who look down at us and can't believe their luck to have on their doorstep a whole continent, sparsely populated and possessing all the minerals they need, which is literally indefensible - not counting our NRL diplomacy in PNG, of course. Even if we could defend ourselves, we could never pay for all those PTSD-cases once the fighting is over.

I won't be walking into the disaster with my eyes wide shut: long before our rich Chinese friend's upmarket resort in Far North Queensland has been turned into an R&R Centre for officers of the PLA, I will have the sign on our gate changed to read   河湾  . And 谢谢 for reading this!

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P.S. Read "The Echidna Strategy - Australia's Search for Power and Peace"

 

The Gods must be crazy

 

Or at least benign because they've just send me a Christmas message from an old German friend who still lives in the world's oldest desert, the Namib Desert, where we met some fifty-five years ago, working for the same company.

He had come out from Germany to South Africa the same way and at about the same time as I had come out from Germany to Australia: as a migrant intent on turning forever his back on the old "Fatherland".

In a roundabout way he had come from working down in the mines in Johannesburg to the sleepy and windswept town of Lüderitz on the Atlantic coast. I had been working for a bank in Australia for two years before thinking that perhaps I should give the old "Fatherland" a second chance. I arrived in winter, stayed for one whole summer, and escaped a second winter by accepting a job offer in what was then South-West Africa which became a six-month stop-over on my way back to Australia.

Karl-Heinz (and you can't get a more German name than that!) and I not only shared the same company flat but also home-cooked meals, weekly visits to the local 'bioskop', and many after-work drinks at Kapps Hotel.

I spent Christmas 1968 in Lüderitz, alone, even though Karl-Heinz had invited me to tag along on a trip to the Etoscha Pan, a huge wildlife reserve in the north of the country bordering on Angola. I declined as I was saving up the fare back to Australia. Another opportunity missed!

 

Karl-Heinz, I still have my old Afrikaans-German dictionary

 

He had been a most generous friend and we stayed in touch for some time after I had arrived back in Australia and then gone to New Guinea. I never forget the day a fat envelope arrived which, like an hour-glass, leaked a slow trickle of sand from a damaged corner, a "souvenir" from the Namib Desert. "In case you're missing all that sand", he'd written.

 

Setting foot back in Australia on 7 April 1969

They must've been using up some prefilled arrival cards from a previous voyage
as I embarked in Cape Town, not Southhampton

 

I didn't stay in Australia either but kept moving, but Karl-Heinz stayed on in what would become Namibia after independence from South Africa in 1990, got married, had kids, and still lives there in retirement now.

It was so good to hear from him again, and I look forward to catching up with him and all that's been happening in his life. Watching - again! - "The Gods Must Be Crazy", filmed in the neighbouring Kalari Desert, should put me in the mood for it. Hoe gaan dit met jou, Karl-Heinz?

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May the New Year bring you the courage to break your resolutions early!

 

 

I can't believe it's been a whole year since I didn't become a better person. And so another year has come to an end to take away all the pain, all the disappointments and all the mistakes to give us a new start on old habits.

The 1st of January is a stirring testament to the human capacity for hope and optimism, not to mention the self-delusion that a totally arbitrary date could be the new start to a better future.

Even so, a whole 365 days is a long wait and in the past I would move from job to job and country to country, sometimes several times in the same year, to give myself a new start and altogether fifty-five new blank slates and fifty-five new chances to do it right next time. This self-delusory attempt at renewal seldom worked but it certainly made for an interesting life.

The German word for 'real estate' is 'Immobilien' and now that I'm 'immobile' here on my real estate at "Riverbend", I have to fall back on the 1st of January to reflect on the past and make plans for what's left of the future.

The always quotable Oscar Wilde wrote, "Good resolutions are simply cheques that men draw on a bank where they have no account", and I intend on staying the same awkward, sarcastic, foul-mouthed delight you've all come to know and love. As for the New Year, don't be a pessimist who says it can't get worse. Be an optimist and say it can.

 

 

We still have two unused tickets left over from previous New Year's Eves which we won't let go to waste. So, while we may "do a Mr Bean" and go to bed early, I wish you all the very best for the New Year and may your right hand always be stretched out in friendship, but never in want.

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P.S. Should you, against all expectations, still be awake when the clock strikes midnight, make sure you raise your left leg. That way, you will start the new year off on the right foot.

 

The early bird catches the tree-trimmers

 

Getting up early has its advantages! As I walked, cup of tea in hand, up the driveway, I spotted two tree-trimmers in the lane clearing overhanging vegetation from the powerlines.

With my drinking days far behind me, I handed them two bottles of red with my best wishes for the new year, and hinted that the liquid amber in our front garden was getting a bit too close to our own powerline.

 

 

I don't know whether it was my unwashed and dishevelled state or those two bottles of red, but our powerline is all clear again, and I'm enjoying my cup of tea while sitting on the jetty and looking across to our new neighbour who's been anchored on the far side of the river for two days.

 

 

It's good to see other people enjoying "Riverbend" as much as we do.

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I refuse to go gentle into that good night

 

Which is why I subscribe to "The Spectator", a weekly political and cultural news magazine, first published in July 1828, making it the oldest surviving magazine in the world. At the risk of breaking copyright, but also in the hope that you may subscribe to it yourself, here is their "Real Stolen Generation":

 

The people who wail about Australian government agents maliciously stealing kids from their parents as part of a program of ‘cultural genocide’ are half right. They are just wrong about which kids were actually stolen, and by whom.

Let’s start with the so-called ‘Stolen Generations’, which were the subject of a comprehensive report by the Australian Human Rights Commission, published in 1997.

The report, deliberately or not, misinterpreted a historically rare dilemma: what to do with kids trapped between the hunter-gatherer culture of their often drunk parents and the liberal democracy into which they’d been born as citizens. It claimed ‘many thousands’ were forcibly removed from their parents and placed in institutions or, if they were lucky, a loving foster home.

In truth, few were forcibly removed, and the number of kids totalled, according to historian Keith Windschuttle, about 8,250 – all of them in desperate need of rescuing.

Most people with part-Aboriginal ancestry are now happily part of modern Australia. It is those who, for whatever reason, never escaped their remote ‘communities’ who continue to suffer misery and deprivation.

 

Nevertheless, leftists have been able to twist the Stolen Generations report into proof of the genocidal intent of ‘colonialism’. Politicians across the nation have ever since been cowed into avoiding policies that could in any way be construed as a repeat of last century’s ideas.

Which is ironic because, despite widespread fervent opposition to the idea of stealing kids from their parents, the practice has only since increased on an industrial scale. Only now the victims are mostly white, and they number in their millions.

Ask any parent or grandparent aged over, say, 50 and you will hear the same story – they have all lost at least one child to the state. I’m only mildly exaggerating here; almost every parent I know in this cohort has been affected by this.

The story never varies: a beloved child of devoted parents diverted from a happy, conventional life towards a future defined by victimhood, intersectionality, gender fluidity, nihilism, contempt for tradition, state dependency and (spoiler alert) depression.

 

The story is invariably delivered with the same mix of profound sadness and bewilderment that a child could turn his or her back on loving parents and a bright future.

But, as anybody who has passed even a cursory glance over our education system, this shouldn’t be bewildering at all. While we parents were at work earning money to pay for the state-designed education of our kids, that education system was busily stealing our kids away from us.

For most of us older parents, this happened when the child was sent off to university. What should have been a rite of passage into a world of intellectual wonder and opportunity turned out to be an indoctrination into useless knowledge about environmental catastrophism and colonial guilt. But now it’s worse. Not only are secondary and primary teachers stealing kids (by encouraging kids to change gender without telling their parents, for example), pre-school teachers are also getting in on the act.

 

‘Meaningful engagement with philosophies and pedagogies for social justice… opens up space to explore issues of profound importance, such as gender equity, LGBTQI+ rights, trauma and its impacts, and the climate crisis,’ says a report about education of 0 to 5-year-olds by the New South Wales government from last year.

‘While these are key examples, there are many other issues and ideas to explore, and a multitude of perspectives that children can bring to these important conversations as we continue working to honour children’s rights and social justice in early childhood education.’

And you thought pre-school was about playing in the sandpit followed by an afternoon nap. Every time you hear a politician boast about increasing subsidies for childcare, remember this: they aren’t doing it to ‘help working families’, they are doing it to enable their apparatchiks in the education industry to convert children into brain-dead, pliable cogs to be fed into the government’s increasingly ubiquitous ideology-machine.

 

There is now no part of the entire education system where it is safe to send children. How the parents of toddlers today will cope is beyond me.

My generation of parents (late boomer/Gen X) are partly to blame.

I remember hearing the term ‘Participation Award’ for the first time, twenty years ago. My kids were playing Auskick at the time, where end-of-season participation awards were obligatory for even the least physically gifted child.

Some newspaper commentators said this was wrong because it shielded kids from a harsh reality, that not everyone gets a trophy in life, and that merely turning up and performing badly is not a cause for celebration.

Perhaps, I thought. But can you really dismiss the joy these kids felt from being part of something?

I now realise I was wrong. Those ridiculous participation awards encouraged kids to celebrate failure in a field to which they were never suited. I imagine that if some of them had been harshly but fairly discouraged from playing football, they might instead be playing violin in a symphony orchestra by now.

My generation was also mostly preoccupied with raising kids with love, and not much else.

In hindsight, a bit of discipline, not to mention religious spirituality, might not have gone astray. It was a bit presumptuous of us to think we could dispense with these ancient parental traits without consequences.

Our shortcomings as parents have made our kids sitting ducks for the faceless generals who are now recruiting them as woke foot soldiers in the culture wars.

This has happened before. Mao taught his young Red Guards to dob in their parents if they showed signs of being counter-revolutionary. Some did, sending their parents to the firing squad.

In his history of the Third Reich, Michael Burleigh says the Hitler Youth of the 1930s ‘became strangers’ to their parents, ‘perpetually barking and shouting like pint-sized Prussian sergeant-majors’.

In both these cases, things did not end well.

Australian parents who feel victims of a similarly malign and overwhelming force are loath to imagine things panning out quite so badly. They just want their kids back.

Perhaps the Human Rights Commission could hold a similar inquiry to the one it held in 1997. After all, this Stolen Generation is infinitely bigger, and the people doing the stealing are far more sinister. Worse, this time cultural genocide is a distinct possibility. I’m not holding my breath for it, though.

 

Agree with it? Then click here.

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Yesterday's Meals on Wheels

The nos have it!

 

It has taken me a few days to report on this delicate subject, but our never-failing septic tank has been pumped out, as we are now on town sewerage and even though we rarely leave "Riverbend" these days, our poo from now on travels all the way to the Bay.

 

 

It's all part of a deal in which Council also hooked us up to their town water in exchange for our shit. Methinks, for the first time in dealing with government, we seem to have got the better part of the deal.

Speaking of other things - and before you ask - yes, my shingles are still raging but only on the back, whereas on the front I have been left with a constant appendicitis-like pain which a scan revealed as "subtle changes of inflammatory change in proximal transverse colon on a background of diverticular disease" which requires a colonoscopy in the new year. Never having had one, I don't look forward to the experience.

This whole thing has now been going on for the better part of two months, and I feel and look decidedly aged. I've already mentioned to Padma that next time we go into the Bay, people will suspect that she is my NDIS-appointed personal carer. Either that or she married me for my money. Since the NDIS didn't exist when we got married twenty-four years ago, it must have been for the money, of which there won't be too much left after I've paid for all these medical appointments, scans, medications, and colonoscopies, as I'm not a pensioner and keep paying full price. Perhaps I ought to have stayed on the Bougainville Project where I could've got a free colonoscopy any night of the week! 😄

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Steve Gates is still doing what we all like to do: wandering the world yet sleeping in our own bed

 

"A beautiful and comfortable singlehanded passage under more than ideal conditions, after waiting through two months of crazy unstable El Niño weather... 97 hours from exiting the west pass, Palau, to an anchorage at Loreto, Dinagat, Philippines. 580 nm covered, average boat speed of 6 knots. I tried to edit a video conveying the feelings and experience I had for 4 days of ocean solitude... no distractions other than incredible displays of nature, and being mesmerized by watching Manu-O-Ku's three bows cutting through the water at 8 knots. Enjoy, and Aloha. Steve"

 

Judgiing by this beautiful YouTube clip which was uploaded in June 2024, Steve Gates is still wandering the world yet sleeping in his own bed. I first heard about Steve Gates and Telekivava'u Island during my visit to Tonga in 2006. Steve arrived on Telekivava'u in November 2003 aboard his own Searunner 37 trimaran "Manu-O-Ku".

 

Read more about Telekivava'u here and here and here

 

Steve became the island's longest-serving caretaker, staying there for three years. As he wrote on his website: "I sailed to Tonga in 2003 for a unique job to be caretaker of a very remote 40 acre private island in the already remote central group of Tonga, Ha’apai. It was rather idyllic, pristine island, Manu-O-Ku anchored in the lagoon, spending weeks at a time totally alone on the island. I did that for 3 years ..."

 

GOOGLE Map

 

Afterwards he ran a charter business for some 4-1/2 years in Vava'u and finally left Tonga in June 2011 (after category-4 cyclone Rene in February 2010) for Fiji (July 2011), Vanuatu (September 2011), Solomons (November 2011), and Palau (February 2012). He arrived at Port Barton in the Philippines on New Year's Eve 2012 where he then lived to continue his charter business "Manu-O-Ku Sailing Adventures". His website has since gone "off air" and so I quote from it here:

"Originally, I created this website in 2008 for the business I began in Vava’u Tonga, taking couples on 3-7 day sailing trips. I singlehandedly operated the business until June of 2011, when I sailed out of Tonga, returning to a nomadic lifestyle, and headed west: Fiji, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Palau, Philippines. During this period of cruising I had the pleasure of sharing it with a few different old and new guests.

Manu-O-Ku is a Searunner 37' trimaran designed by Jim Brown. I have owned her 30 years, have sailed her over 35,000 nautical miles, and is my only home. This lifestyle works for me ... a nomadic self-reliant lifestyle, on the oceans, among islands ... sailing your home, wandering the world yet sleeping in your own bed."

 

Steve's 'Manu-O-Ku' somewhere in the Philippines

 

On another page of his now defunct website, he wrote: "I have always tried to live one day at a time.  I lived in Tonga for nearly eight years, but it took me only the first six months for me to 'upgrade' that life philosophy to 'one moment at a time'.  The Tongans truly live this way, and the western world could learn a lot from them. Plans? Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."

I've left a message on your YouTube page, Steve. If you read this, let me know how you're getting on. Twenty years on, you're still doing what we all like to do: wandering the world yet sleeping in our own bed.

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Travelling North

 

I gave up a long time ago on this self-delusional idea that a totally arbitrary date could be the new start to a better future, and it's become even more self-delusional now that there isn't much of a future left, better or otherwise. However, old habits die hard and I still tend to become introspective as yet another year ends.

I spent the last couple of days ringing a few mobile numbers of long-ago acquaintances whom I hadn't been in contact with since last Christmas. On several occasions I drew the "Sorry this line is no longer connected"-message which is always a bad sign, especially with people who no longer have a landline. I mean, why would they drop their only means of communications? Unless they'd been harrassed by some debt-collectors for child-support or whatever, the only other likely cause is that they, like Leo McKern in one of my favourite movies, have "travelled north".

Perhaps it's time to watch this movie again. It reminds me of the time when I was still harbouring hopes that one day I would return to the tropical north. Two of my friends did - take a bow, Peter in Cairns and Hubert in Cooktown - and I shall raise a glass of retsina to their health as I watch Leo McKern in "Travelling North" again, a deeply moving comedy with insightful ruminations on youth, vigour, ageing and death.

 

What a way to go out on while listening to the G Minor Quintet by Mozart!

 

It's the perfect antidote against my shingles which are still troubling me, and all the other things starting with shi... that are troubling the world.

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Always look on the bright side of life

This one is for my mate Ian Paterson ☺

 

There are times when you feel you've grown a little tired and sleepy and are full of all those days already past. When you watch the news and are convinced the world has gone stark raving mad.

When all that's in your mailbox are bills and more bills; when the share market is tanking and the weather has turned cold and windy; and when you may be excused for wondering if there is a point to it all.

For all I know, there is no point to it all.

For all I know, life is a piece of shit.

Speaking of which, one friend of mine carries a permanent colostomy bag around with him, while another can only empty his bladder with the help of a catheter and a lot of K-Y Jelly. So who's complaining, eh?

Join in the madness, get into Monty Python mode, have a chuckle to stay sane, and look on the bright side of life!

Come on, I dare you! Turn up the volume! ☺

As always, your always-trying-to-look-on-the-bright-side-of-life

P.S. If none of this helps, buy yourself something nice - click here ☺

 

Of Christmases past

 

In Camp 6 at Loloho on the Bougainville Copper Project
left-to-right: Neil "Jacko" Jackson, yours truly, Bob Green

 

It's that time of year again when thoughts turn to Christmases past. We didn't use the word 'Christmas' then. Christmas came with too much emotional baggage. It reminded us of families and homes which we were far away from or didn't even have.

Of course, I'm talking of those many years - decades, in fact - spent in boarding houses, construction camps, hotels, and company housing. Come Christmastime, those who had families and homes had gone; those who didn't hadn't.

 

Yours truly in the chequered shirt in the middle

 

There was Barton House in Canberra, usually throbbing with life from its 300-odd - and some very odd - inmates, which turned into a morgue by Christmastime. The dining room was roped off except for one table next to the kitchen. That one table was large enough for those left behind.

It's hard not to be reminded of something when you're surrounded by half a dozen gloomy faces. So for my last Christmas in Canberra in 1969, just before I flew to my next job in New Guinea, I hitched and hiked to Angle Crossing where I spent a solitary weekend writing letters which is the only device that combines solitude with good company.

 

Canberra's then Youth Hostel at Angle Crossing, over the hill from the Murrumbidgee River

 

Years later, and just one day before Christmas, I booked myself into hospital on Bougainville Island with acute appendicitis . "You'd better get on the next plane out and into a hospital at home", the doctor told me. He was already deep into his medicinal alcohol and had trouble remembering which side my appendix was on. "This is my home", I said. He made one long incision just to make sure he wouldn't miss it.

What I had missed was that my best friend Noel Butler was coming over from Wewak to spend - ahem! - Christmas with me. He must have got there while I was still under the anaesthetic, because there he was standing at the foot of my bed. He'd gone to my donga and waited and finally asked the hous boi where I was. "Masta bagarap long haus sik".

 

Yours truly and Noel hunched over a chess board in New Guinea

 

We tried again the following year by which time I had moved to Lae on the north coast of the New Guinea mainland. By the time Christmas and Noel had come, there was just enough time left for a drink at the club and a game of chess before I flew out to my next job in Burma.

And so it went on, year after year, either coming or going or laid up with something, deftly avoiding Christmas. It's not so easy anymore!

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Santa never made it into Darwin

 

Christmases past were Christmases ignored because they came with too much emotional baggage. They reminded us of families and homes which we were far away from or didn't even have. By the time my best friend Noel had come to stay with me over Christmas 1974, there was just enough time left for a drink at the club and a game of chess on the beach before I flew out to my next job in Burma.

 

My best friend Noel and I hunched over a chessboard on the beach
near Vovo Point in Lae in New Guinea on Christmas Day 1974

 

That was fifty years ago when I lived in Lae on the north coast of New Guinea, and Noel had flown across from Wewak in the Sepik District, a backwater of a backwater which meant that neither of us heard about Cyclone Tracy wiping out Darwin at about the same time that Noel was wiping me out on the chessboard. Within days, Noel returned up the mighty Sepik River where communication was only by jungle drums, and I was on my way to Burma which was under a curfew by its military dictatorship and a total news blackout behind their "Teak Curtain".

 

Immediately after the tragic events in Darwin in the early hours of Christmas Day 1974, where 65 people were killed, hundreds injured and thousands made homeless by Cyclone Tracy, film crews from Film Australia were sent by the government to document the aftermath and, later, to record the rebuilding of Darwin. Film Australia made four films covering this event: Cyclone Tracy, When Will The Birds Return?, Home Sweet Home and Tracy's Birthday. These films document not only the incredible level of destruction wrought by the cyclone but also the enormous humanitarian effort by the authorities and the courageous spirit of the residents in the face of such a large scale natural disaster and their determination to rebuild the city and their futures in it.

 

Thanks to technology which didn't exist then, we can still relive those tumultous events fifty years ago when Santa never made it into Darwin.

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Unvergessene Weihnachten?

 

Glücklicherweise bin ich nicht zu vorbelastet mit Erinnerungen und Träumen an die Weihnachtszeit. Ich habe wenig Sehnsucht nach dem Duft der Plätzchen die frisch gebacken aus dem Ofen kommen, nach den Lichtern beim Bummel über den Weihnachtsmarkt, nach den alten Geschichten der Kinderzeit, denn viel davon gab es bei uns nicht.

Wir hatten zuhause sehr bescheidene Weihnachten und ich vermisste nichts davon als ich in 1963 mit 18 Jahren meine erste Weihnacht allein verbrachte. Und für die nächsten zwanzig-und-mehr Jahren hatte ich nie einen festen Wohnsitz und somit auch keine richtige Weihnacht denn ich verbrachte jedes Jahr an einem neuen Wohnort (und manchmal drei oder vier) und meistens auch in einem neuen Land (und manchmal zwei oder drei).

Weihnachten 1963 Baufirma Sager & Woerner, Lagerplatz Walsrode
Auf Montage als Baubuchhalter beim Bau der Autobahn nach Bremen.

Weihnachten 1964 Baufirma Sager & Woerner, Lagerplatz Verden an der Aller
Ich folgte dem Autobahnbau und wohnte auf Untermiete in den Kleinstädten in der Umgebung.

Weihnachten 1965 Canberra, Australien
Meine erste Weihnacht in einem neuen Land. Viel zu feiern gab es da nicht denn aller Anfang ist schwer zumal wenn man noch nicht einmal die Sprache spricht.

Weihnachten 1966 Canberra, Australien
Meine neue Bankkarriere hatte gut angefangen und ich war sogar ein bisschen seßhaft geworden und fühlte mich in der Regierungshauptstadt Canberra fast zuhause.

Weihnachten 1967 Braunschweig
Irgendwie spukte da immer noch der Gedanke an die "deutsche Heimat" in mir herum und nach den zwei Pflichtjahren in Australien war ich wieder im eiskalten Deutschland. Der Empfang war nicht nur wetterlich eiskalt und schon bald dachte ich wieder ans Ausreisen.

Weihnachten 1968 Lüderitz, Südwest-Afrika
Südafrika war nur eine Zwischenstation auf meiner Rückreise nach Australien.

Weihnachten 1969 Canberra, Australien
Die gute alte Bank stellte mich gleich wieder ein als ich in meinem alten "Zuhause" Canberra wieder ankam. Ich hatte jedoch auf der Schiffsreise nach Europa mehrere Australier befreundet die im australischen Treuhandgebiet Neu Guinea wohnten. Die hatten mich neugierig gemacht und das Ende des Jahres war auch das Ende meines Aufenthalts in Australien und ich flog nach Neu Guinea.

Weihnachten 1970 Loloho, Neu Guinea
Das neue Land war alles was ich mir erhofft hatte und die Berufschancen waren auch einmalig. Am Ende des Jahres war ich schon Buchprüfer auf der damals größten Baustelle der Welt, der neuen Kupfermine "Bougainville Copper".

Weihnachten 1971 Panguna, Neu Guinea
Meine zweite Weihnacht auf der Insel und zwei Wochen vor Weihnachten wurde ich australischer Staatsbürger im Dschungel von Neu Guinea!

Weihnachten 1972 Sydney, Australien
Zurück in die Zivilisation aber die Großstadt Sydney gefiel mir gar nicht.

Weihnachten 1973 Arawa, Neu Guinea
Also zurück in die Tropen! Mein Freund Noel kam Weihnachten zu Besuch aber das wurde ein Besuch im Krankenhaus denn gerade einen Tag vor Weihnachten hatte ich eine Blinddarmentzündung und wurde Weihnachten operiert. Der weisse Chirurge war schon zu betrunken und überlies mich seinem schwarzen Kollegen der einen schönen großen Schnitt machte um sicher zu gehen daß er das Ding fand.

Weihnachten 1974 Lae, Neu Guinea
Alles war schon gepackt und ich wartete nur noch auf meinen Abflug nach Birma als ich dieses Weihnachten am Strand von Lae verbrachte. Mein Freund Noel aus Wewak war mit dabei als wir auf dem Radio von der Orkanzerstörung von Darwin hörten.

Weihnachten 1975 Wewak, Neu Guinea
Ich hatte meinen Jahresvertrag in Birma absolviert und war wieder in meinem zweiten "Zuhause" Neu Guinea wo wir zu dritt, meine Freunde Brian und Noel, unsere "flüssige" Art von Weihnachten am Sepik-Fluss verbrachten.

Weihnachten 1976 Port Moresby, Papua-Neu Guinea
Mein kurzer Abstecher nach Iran war nichts gewesen und ich war bald wieder in Neu Guinea und danach auf der Donnerstag-Insel in der Torres Strait.

Weihnachten 1977 Honiara, Solomonen Inseln
Die nächste tropische Weihnacht verbrachte ich auf den Solomonen Inseln ehe ich zu meinem nächsten Arbeitsvertrag in Samoa flog und von dort nach Malaysien.

Weihnachten 1978 Penang, Malaysien
Mein Jahresvertrag in Malaysien war auch bald wieder vorbei und für die nächsten zwei Jahre ging es mit dem Wohnwagen an der australischen Küste rauf und wieder runter.

Weihnachten 1979 Mt. Isa, Australien
Eine Anstellung bei der großen Kupfermine in Mt. Isa war auch dabei. und danach wieder in die Tropen!

Weihnachten 1980 Arawa, Neu Guinea
Neu Guinea war schon mein zweites Zuhause geworden und Weihnachten 1980 war ich wieder da!

Weihnachten 1981 Townsville, Australien
Endlich machte ich mich seßhaft im tropischen Norden von Australien - oder so dachte ich aber die Versuchung kam nach weniger als acht Monaten als man mir wieder eine Arbeit in Neu Guinea anbot und dann einen langjährigen Vertrag in Saudi-Arabien.

Weihnachten 1982 und 1983 Singapur
Während meiner Zeit in Saudi-Arabien verbrachte ich meine Weihnacht und Sylvester immer im Raffles Hotel in Singapur. Natürlich auf Firmenkosten denn zwei Wochen im Raffles Hotel kann man sich persönlich kaum erlauben.

Weihnachten 1984 Athen, Griechenland
Nach fast zwei Jahren in der "Sandkiste" von Saudi-Arabien konnte die Versetzung nach Griechenland gar nicht früh genug kommen.

Weihnachten 1985 Canberra, Australien
Und dann kam ich wieder nachhause nach Australien! Die nächsten fünfzehn Weihnachten feierte ich unter meinem eigenen Dach in Canberra und seit dem Jahre 2000 im Ruhestand auf dem Grundstück "Riverbend" an der Küste.

Die Jahre von 1963 bis 1985 gaben mir viele unvergessene Weihnachten und viele andere die ich lieber vergessen möchte.

Und die Weihnachten seit 1985 sind so 'ordinaire' und gutbürgerlich gewesen daß ich sie schon alle wieder vergessen habe.

 

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Auggie Wren's Christmas Story

 

Paul Auster's Christmas story has no Santa Claus, no Christmas tree, and no brightly wrapped packages. And yet there's plenty of giving. Here it is: listen to it or read along if you wish.

 

 

I heard this story from Auggie Wren. Since Auggie doesn't come off too well in it, at least not as well as he'd like to, he's asked me not to use his real name. Other than that, the whole business about the lost wallet and the blind woman and the Christmas dinner is just as he told it to me.

Auggie and I have known each other for close to eleven years now. He works behind the counter of a cigar store on Court Street in downtown Brooklyn, and since it's the only store that carries the little Dutch cigars I like to smoke, I go in there fairly often. For a long time, I didn't give much thought to Auggie Wren. He was the strange little man who wore a hooded blue sweatshirt and sold me cigars and magazines, the impish, wisecracking character who always had something funny to say about the weather, the Mets or the politicians in Washington, and that was the extent of it.

But then one day several years ago he happened to be looking through a magazine in the store, and he stumbled across a review of one of my books. He knew it was me because a photograph accompanied the review, and after that things changed between us. I was no longer just another customer to Auggie, I had become a distinguished person. Most people couldn't care less about books and writers, but it turned out that Auggie considered himself an artist. Now that he had cracked the secret of who I was, he embraced me as an ally, a confidant, a brother-in-arms. To tell the truth, I found it rather embarrassing. Then, almost inevitably, a moment came when he asked if I would be willing to look at his photographs. Given his enthusiasm and goodwill, there didn't seem any way I could turn him down.

God knows what I was expecting. At the very least, it wasn't what Auggie showed me the next day. In a small, windowless room at the back of the store, he opened a cardboard box and pulled out twelve identical photo albums. This was his life's work, he said, and it didn't take him more than five minutes a day to do it. Every morning for the past twelve years, he had stood on the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Clinton Street at precisely seven o'clock and had taken a single color photograph of precisely the same view. The project now ran to more than four thousand photographs. Each album represented a different year, and all the pictures were laid out in sequence, from January 1 to December 31, with the dates carefully recorded under each one.

As I flipped through the albums and began to study Auggie's work, I didn't know what to think. My first impression was that it was the oddest, most bewildering thing I had ever seen. All the pictures were the same. The whole project was a numbing onslaught of repetition, the same street and the same buildings over and over again, an unrelenting delirium of redundant images. I couldn't think of anything to say to Auggie, so I continued turning pages, nodding my head in feigned appreciation. Auggie himself seemed unperturbed, watching me with a broad smile on his face, but after he'd seen that I'd been at it for several minutes, he suddenly interrupted and said, "You're going too fast. You'll never get it if you don't slow down."

He was right, of course. If you don't take the time to look, you'll never manage to see anything. I picked up another album and forced myself to go more deliberately. I paid closer attention to the details, took note of the shifts in weather, watched for the changing angles of light as the seasons advanced. Eventually I was able to detect subtle differences in the traffic flow, to anticipate the rhythm of the different days (the commotion of workday mornings, the relative stillness of weekends, the contrast between Saturdays and Sundays). And then, little by little, I began to recognize the faces of the people in the background, the passers-by on their way to work, the same people in the same spot every morning, living an instant of their lives in the field of Auggie's camera.

Once I got to know them, I began to stud their postures, the way they carried themselves from one morning to the next, trying to discover their moods from these surface indications, as if I could imagine stories for them, as if I could penetrate the invisible dramas locked inside their bodies. I picked up another album. I was no longer bored, no longer puzzled as I had been at first. Auggie was photographing time, I realized, both natural time and human time, and he was doing it by planting himself in one tiny corner of the world and willing it to be his own, by standing guard in the space he had chosen for himself. As he watched me pore over his work, Auggie continued to smile with pleasure. Then, almost as if he'd been reading my thoughts, he began to recite a line from Shakespeare. "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow," he muttered under his breath, "time creeps on its petty pace." I understood then that he knew exactly what he was doing.

That was more than two thousand pictures ago. Since that day, Auggie and I have discussed his work many times, but it was only last week that I learned how he acquired his camera and started taking pictures in the first place. That was the subject of the story he told me, and I'm still struggling to make sense of it.

Earlier that same week, a man from the New York Times called me and asked if I would be willing to write a short story that would appear in the paper on Christmas morning. My first impulse was to say no, but the man was very charming and persistent, and by the end of the conversation I told him I would give it a try. The moment I hung up the phone, however, I fell into a deep panic. What did I know about Christmas? I asked myself. What did I know about writing short stories on commission?

I spent the next several days in despair, warring with the ghosts of Dickens, O.Henry and other masters of the Yuletide spirit. The very phrase "Christmas story" had unpleasant associations for me, evoking dreadful outpourings of hypocritical mush and treacle. Even at their best, Christmas stories were no more than wish-fulfillment dreams, fairy tales for adults, and I'd be damned if I'd ever allowed myself to write something like that. And yet, how could anyone propose to write an unsentimental Christmas story? It was a contradiction in terms, an impossibility, an out-and-out conundrum. One might just as well imagine a racehorse without legs, or a sparrow without wings.

I got nowhere. On Thursday I went out for a long walk, hoping the air would clear my head. Just past noon, I stopped in at the cigar store to replenish my supply, and there was Auggie, standing behind the counter as always. He asked me how I was. Without really meaning to, I found myself unburdening my troubles to him. "A Christmas story?" he said after I had finished. "Is that all? If you buy me lunch, my friend, I'll tell you the best Christmas story you ever heard. And I guarantee that every word of it is true."

We walked down the block to Jack's, a cramped d and boisterous delicatessen with good pastrami sandwiches and photographs of old Dodgers teams hanging on the walls. We found a table in the back, ordered our food, and then Auggie launched into his story.

"It was the summer of seventy-two," he said. "A kid came in one morning and started stealing things from the store. He must have been about nineteen or twenty, and I don't think I've ever seen a more pathetic shoplifter in my life. He's standing by the rack of paperbacks along the far wall and stuffing books into the pockets of his raincoat. It was crowded around the counter just then, so I didn't see him at first. But once I noticed what he was up to, I started to shout. He took off like a jackrabbit, and by the time I managed to get out from behind the counter, he was already tearing down Atlantic Avenue. I chased after him for about half a block, and then I gave up. He'd dropped something along the way, and since I didn't feel like running any more, I bent down to see what it was.

"It turned out to be his wallet. There wasn't any money inside, but his driver's license was there along with three or four snapshots. I suppose I could have called the cops and had him arrested. I had his name and address from the license, but I felt kind of sorry for him. He was just a measly little punk, and once I looked at those pictures in his wallet, I couldn't bring myself to feel very angry at him. Robert Goodwin. That was his name. In one of the pictures, I remember, he was standing with his arm around his mother or grandmother. In another one he was sitting there at age nine or ten dressed in a baseball uniform with a big smile on his face. I just didn't have the heart. He was probably on dope now, I figured. A poor kid from Brooklyn without much going for him, and who cared about a couple of trashy paperbacks anyway?

"So I held on to the wallet. Every once in a while I'd get a little urge to send it back to him, but I kept delaying and never did anything about it. Then Christmas rolls around and I'm stuck with nothing to do. The boss usually invites me over to his house to spend the day, but that year he and his family were down in Florida visiting relatives. So I'm sitting in my apartment that morning feeling a little sorry for myself, and then I see Robert Goodwin's wallet lying on a shelf in the kitchen. I figure what the hell, why not do something nice for once, and I put on my coat and go out to return the wallet in person.

"The address was over in Boerum Hill, somewhere in the projects. It was freezing out that day, and I remember getting lost a few times trying to find the right building. Everything looks the same in that place, and you keep going over the same ground thinking you're somewhere else. Anyway, I finally get to the apartment I'm looking for and ring the bell. Nothing happens. I assume no one's there, but I try again just to make sure. I wait a little longer, and just when I'm about to give up, I hear someone shuffling to the door. An old woman's voice asks who's there, and I say I'm looking for Robert Goodwin. 'Is that you, Robert?' the old woman says, and then she undoes about fifteen locks and opens the door.

"She has to be at least eighty, maybe ninety years old, and the first thing I notice about her is that she's blind. 'I knew you'd come, Robert,' she says. 'I knew you wouldn't forget your Granny Ethel on Christmas.' And then she opens her arms as if she's about to hug me.

"I didn't have much time to think, you understand. I had to say something real fast, and before I knew what was happening, I could hear the words coming out of my mouth. 'That's right, Granny Ethel,' I said. 'I came back to see you on Christmas.' Don't ask me why I did it. I don't have any idea. Maybe I didn't want to disappoint her or something, I don't know. It just came out that way, and then this old woman was suddenly hugging me there in front of the door, and I was hugging her back.

"I didn't exactly say I was her grandson. Not in so many words, at least, but that was the implication. I wasn't trying to trick her, though. It was like a game we'd both decided to play - without having to discuss the rules. I mean, that woman knew I wasn't her grandson Robert. She was old and dotty, but she wasn't so far gone that she couldn't tell the difference between a stranger and her own flesh and blood. But it made her happy to pretend, and since I had nothing better to do anyway, I was happy to go along with her.

"So we went into the apartment and spent the day together. The place was a real dump, I might add, but what can you expect from a blind woman who does her own housekeeping? Every time she asked me a question about how I was, I would lie to her. I told her I found a good job working in a cigar store, I told her I was about to get married, I told her a hundred pretty stories, and she made like she believed every one of them. 'That's fine, Robert,' she would say, nodding her head and smiling. 'I always knew things would work out for you.'

"After a while, I started getting pretty hungry. There didn't seem to be much food in the house, so I went out to a store in the neighborhood and brought back a mess of stuff. A precooked chicken, vegetable soup, a bucket of potato salad, a chocolate cake, all kinds of things. Ethel had a couple of bottles of wine stashed in her bedroom, and so between us we managed to put together a fairly decent Christmas dinner. We both got a little tipsy from the wine, I remember, and after the meal was over we went out to sit in the living room, where the chairs were more comfortable. I had to take a pee, so I excused myself and went to the bathroom down the hall. That's where things took yet another turn. It was ditsy enough doing my little jig as Ethel's grandson, but what I did next was positively crazy, and I've never forgiven myself for it.

"I go into the bathroom, and stacked up against the wall next to the shower, I see a pile of six or seven cameras. Brand-new thirty-five-millimeter cameras, still in their boxes, top-quality merchandise. I figure this is the work of the real Robert, a storage place for one of his recent hauls. I've never taken a picture in my life, and I've certainly never stolen anything, but the moment I see those cameras sitting in the bathroom, I decide I want one of them for myself. Just like that. And without even stopping to think about it, I tuck one of those boxes under my arm and go back to the living room.

"I couldn't have been gone for more than three minutes, but in that time Granny Ethel had fallen asleep in her chair. Too much Chianti, I suppose. I went into the kitchen to wash the dishes, and she slept through the whole racket, snoring like a baby. There didn't seem any point in disturbing her, so I decided to leave. I couldn't even write a note to say goodbye, seeing that she was blind and all, so I just left. I put her grandson's wallet on the table, picked up the camera again, and walked out of the apartment. And that's the end of the story."

"Did you ever go back to see her?" I asked.

"Once," he said. "About three or four months later. I felt so bad about stealing the camera, I hadn't even used it yet. I finally made up my mind to return it, but Ethel wasn't there any more. I don't know what happened to her, but someone else had moved into the apartment, and he couldn't tell me where she was."

"She probably died."

"Yeah, probably."

"Which means that she spent her last Christmas with you."

"I guess so. I never thought of it that way."

"It was a good deed, Auggie. It was a nice thing you did for her."

"I lied to her, and then I stole from her. I don't see how you can call that a good deed."

"You made her happy. And the camera was stolen anyway. It's not as if the person you took it from really owned it."

"Anything for art, eh, Paul?"

"I wouldn't say that. But at least you put the camera to good use."

"And now you've got your Christmas story, don't you?"

"Yes," I said. "I suppose I do."

I paused for a moment, studying Auggie as a wicked grin spread across his face. I couldn't be sure, but the look in his eyes at that moment was so mysterious, so fraught with the glow of some inner delight, that it suddenly occurred to me that he had made the whole thing up. I was about to ask him if he'd been putting me on, but then I realized he'd never tell. I had been tricked into believing him, and that was the only thing that mattered. As long as there's one person to believe it, there's no story that can't be true."

"You're an ace, Auggie," I said. "Thanks for being so helpful."

"Any time," he answered, still looking at me with that maniacal light in his eyes. "After all, if you can't share your secrets with your friends, what kind of a friend are you?"

"I guess I owe you one."

"No you don't. Just put it down the way I told it to you, and you don't owe me a thing."

"Except the lunch."

"That's right. Except the lunch."

I returned Auggie's smile with a smile of my own, and then I called out to the waiter and asked for the check.

 

 

And a Merry Christmas to you all from "Riverbend".

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This YouTube movie is five days old

 

The movie "Sunstruck", starring Harry Secombe, is part of Australia's "kulcha". Harry plays the Welsh schoolteacher and choirmaster Stanley Evans who emigrates to Australia to 'teach in the sun' -- but finds reality falls somewhat short of the blissful image on the recruiting poster.

 

The poster which inspired the movie

 

Anticipating a Bondi Beach lifestyle, Stanley arrives in Kookaburra Springs to find a town with two buildings: an old pub and a ramshackle schoolhouse. Despite the fact that the kids do everything in their power to get rid of him – no schoolmaster means no school! – Stanley stays, and eventually finds a way to win them over.

 

 

This 1972 movie is as rare as hen's teeth and only ever makes it onto YouTube as a trailer but, lo' and behold, here it is as full-length movie, uploaded by Throwback TV Australia a mere five days ago.

Watch it while you can!

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