I have a confession to make

 

 

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 week as I 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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How Noel would've loved to see these photos!

Noel's place while still under construction in 1984. He sent me this photo when I was still working in Piraeus in Greece, with the words "It's as isolated as it looks, but plenty of crows and wallabies for company" written on the back. The roof was on by the time I visited him there in early 1985 but everything else still looked just as desolate as in this photo.

 

I have written elsewhere about my old friend's "Little House on the Prairie" at Mt Perry near Bundaberg - see here. Wondering what it may look like today, I posted on the Mount Perry & Surround Forum:

"Does anyone recognise this little house which my old mate from New Guinea, Noel Butler, had built there in 1983 or 1984. It was just across from the then just starting new golf course, and he sold it in 1986 to a man (from Victoria?) whose wife died only a couple of years later. It was close to what was known as the Little Gnome House which then belonged to a pharmacist from Bundaberg. Could someone point out the location of the house on a map, or put me in contact with the current owners?"

Quite soon, a very nice lady from Brisbane, who also owns a weekender at Mt Perry, replied, "That's 172 Venables Street, Mount Perry", and followed it up by telling me that my old friend Noel had been her grandfather Arnold Butler's first cousin. What an amazing coincidence!

(It's also known as 172 Smokers Gully Road and, according to realestate.com.au, was sold in 1989 for $38,000 - see here. Is this Noel's sale which he told me about when he visited me in Canberra in 1986, or did his buyer resell it three years later, and this is the resale?)

And she continued, "At the time that Noel was in Mount Perry, my grandparents were living in Gin Gin - so only thirty minutes away. Who knows if they knew Noel??? I asked Mum and she can recall the family talking of Theo Butler, Noel's father. There were certainly Butlers around at the time, but not in Mount Perry, I don't think."

 

Noel's place is highlighted in yellow.

It is close to the town's dumping ground. The irony wouldn't have been lost on Noel.  

She sent me these maps with Noel's house marked on it, and as she was heading up to Mt Perry for the weekend, also promised to take some photographs. Here are just three out of the dozen or more she took:

 

 

And the revelations continued: "My grandfather Arnold Butler, Noel's first cousion, was born in 1923 in nearby Gin Gin. Noel was one of four children. His three sisters were Constance [who rang me on that fateful day in 1995], Kathleen who passed away in 1926 when she was just three years old, and Audrey who passed away in 1938 when she was ten. I did recall seeing that it was pneumonia that caused Audrey's death." How tragic! Add to this that Noel's father Theo died in 1944 at the age of 56 when Noel was only 24 years old and serving in the Army in New Guinea, and is it any wonder he never mentioned his family?

In 1986 Noel sold his "Little House on the Prairie", which is now hidden behind large gumtrees, to a man from Melbourne. While Noel was still alive and living in Childers, I visited Mt Perry again in 1990 and met the new owner who at the time told me that his second wife had just died and that he had scattered her ashes on top of Mount Perry. He lived there until quite recently when, at age 95, he passed away. As the nice lady from Brisbane told me, "He had had failing health and went into a nursing home in Gin Gin for a couple of months, hated it, then returned home for a couple of days before having to leave once again for hospital, then passed away. They were calling him Vera but his real name was Everard John Handley. His third wife now lives there alone. She is an Indian lady and is about 60 years old. They were calling her 'Rug' - no idea how you spell it, but that’s exactly how it sounds. Mum says Rug's real name is Lucy." She also informed me that Noel's neighbour, whom he had mentioned in his letters several times as being ex-military and running a leather-working business in Mt Perry and whose home-made wine he had sampled on several occasions, was a Peter Baker, and that a Lewis Smith, who still lives at Mt Perry, had helped Noel built the house. Should I try and contact Lewis Smith?

 

From this ...

                                                                               ... to this:

 

How Noel would have loved to see these photos! They now take pride of place on our mantelpiece in memory of the life of a wonderful friend!

 

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The Sheltering Desert

 

 

It was the first year of the Second World War. The German armies had occupied Holland and were already breaking through the first defences of the Maginot Line. Windhoek was in a swirl of war propaganda, and enthusiasm, fear and anxiety coloured every discussion. Even a scientist could hardly hope to keep his head in that hysterical atmosphere. But my friend Hermann Korn and I had already decided that this was not our war. We had seen it coming for a long time, and in fact that was the reason why we had left Europe in the first place. We wanted no hand or part in the mass suicide of civilized peoples.

But now it looked as though the war was about to catch up with us; more and more Germans were disappearing behind the barbed wire of internment camps. Any day the same fate could overtake us. It was a dread thought for two men used, in their scientific work, to the desert expanses and the freedom of the endless rolling plains, and we were determined to maintain our personal neutrality and to defend our independence to the best of our ability. One evening, sitting on the stone steps of our house, we reviewed the situation and wondered if there was anything we could do about it. And then suddenly we remembered what we had once said half in joke: 'If war comes we'll spend it in the desert!'" Extract from "The Sheltering Desert" by Henno Martin

 

Read it online at www.archive.org
or read the German original here

 

"The Sheltering Desert" (original German title "Wenn es Krieg gibt, gehen wir in die Wüste") is the story of two German geologists in South-West Africa (today's Namibia) at the start of World War Two: Henno Martin, Hermann Korn, and their dog Otto. They didn't want to be part of the madness that engulfed Europe and fled into the Namib Desert instead.

The book tells the tale of how they survived out there for two and a half years. How they learned to hunt and find water, to build shelter and make tools. It's also filled with astute observations about the human psyche, and what it means to be "primitive." In one passage, Martin writes, "It was about this time that we noticed a change in the subject of our dreams. Animals began to play an increasing part in them and the distinction between human beings and animals became blurred."

It's a calming read that has stuck with me ever since I lived and worked in the then still South-West Africa in 1968/69. Henno Martin and Hermann Korn were two men who chose their own path and whilst the world tore itself to pieces, they conquered life both physically, mentally and, most importantly, peacefully. Their book, "The Sheltering Desert", is a fitting legacy to them from which we can all learn a thing or two.

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P.S. The movie is available on ebay. Search for "The Sheltering Desert" under catergory "Movies & TV" and you'll find DVDs under the Greek title "Kαταφύγιο της ερήμου" but which are in English with Greek subtitles.

 

 

Another top story

 

It's probably too much of a stretch to suggest that they waited with the Bougainville Copper Project until the ring-tab beer can had been introduced in 1965, but by the time I had moved into my small construction donga in Camp 6 on beautiful Loloho Beach, the length of stay - not to mention the depth of drinking problem - of a donga inhabitant could be judged by the length of his "door curtain", composed entirely of hundreds of clipped-together beer can ring-tabs.

These "mine-is-longer-than-yours" door curtains were so common that I unfortunately never took a photograph of this "status symbol" in a camp otherwise devoid of any differences, as we all dressed in the same T-shirt and stubbie, all wore the same thongs, all ate in the same mess hall, all crapped and showered in the same ablution block, and drove the same clapped-out and dirt-covered four-wheel-drive company ute.

Is it coincidence that the end of the ring-tab beer can came at about the same time as the end of the Bougainville Copper Project?

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P.S. Also read "Happiness is a red plastic chair".

 

Now you know!

Audiobook Part 1  Part 2  Part 3  Part 4

 

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate." [Page 234]

Or, as I keep telling my wife, "If I want your opinion, I'll give it to you."

 

 

Chomsky’s ideas become, if anything, more relevant as time goes by. For example, twenty years ago he pointed out that in 1970, about 90% of international capital was used for trade and long-term investment - more or less productive things - and 10% for speculation. By 1990, those figures had reversed. Speculation continues to increase exponentially and we're paying the price now for not heeding him them.

Après moi, le déluge!

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The Naked Maja

"The Naked Maja" by Francisco Goya

 

During the fifteen years I lived and worked in Canberra - click here - I would occasionally escape its Albert Speer-like pomposity by driving across the border into New South Wales and to the little-known backwater of Captains Flat.

There I would while away the hours at the Captains Flat Hotel, drinking beer with the locals under a huge replica painting of "The Naked Maja" which hung over the bar. In 1815 the painter of the original, Francisco Goya, had been subpoenaed by the Spanish Inquisition "that he might acknowledge and declare the works to be his, why he created them, at whose request and to what end." A similar fate must've befallen the replica because on my last visit to the hotel it had been removed. Someone must've been easily offended or, worse, easily aroused.

All this came back to me as I visited the local Vinnies last week and saw an albeit smaller replica hanging on the wall. Its price tag was a mere $15. "I really want that!" I said to Padma, pointing to no particular part in the painting. "Over my dead body" or something similarly appropriate was her reply. Discouraged but not dissuaded, I drove back into town the next day - alone! - but the painting was no longer there. Apparently, another customer had overheard our exchange and bought it after we had left. "Just to piss off my wife", he explained to the staff.

 

"The Clothed Maja", also by Francisco Goya

 

Perhaps I would've had better luck if I had tried to buy a replica of "The Clothed Maja". Perhaps it's time to watch the movie which is a kitschy mishmash of the painter's life but Ava Gardner makes it worth watching.

 

 

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P.S. Bozenna from Athens emailed: "As for the film 'The Naked Maja', it is, in my opinion, only for hardcore fans of Ava, one of the most beautiful women in the world. Milos Forman's 'Goya's Ghosts' is a far better film and much closer to historical fact."

Thanks, Bozenna! I shall look for it.

 

In praise of the quiet life at "Riverbend"

 

 

A quiet life sounds like an option that only the defeated would ever be inclined to praise. Our age is overwhelmingly alive to the benefits of active, dynamic, ‘noisy’ ways of living.

If someone offered us a bigger salary for a job elsewhere, we’d move. If someone showed us a route to fame, we’d take it. If someone invited us to a party, we’d go. These seem like pure, unambiguous gains. Lauding a quiet life has some of the eccentricity of praising rain.

It’s hard for most of us to contemplate any potential in the idea because the defenders of quiet lives have tended to come from the most implausible sections of the community: slackers, hippies, the work-shy, the fired…; people who seem like they have never had a choice about how to arrange their affairs. A quiet life seems like something imposed upon them by their own ineptitude. It is a pitiable consolation prize." More at The Book of Life.

At "Riverbend", the quiet life is no pitiable consolation prize. It is the very raison d'être why we live here. So, by all means, visit us - but be quiet about it!

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Gerardus Mercator has a lot to answer for

 

New Guinea is the world's second-largest island (after Greenland) and, with an area of 785,753 km², the largest island in the Southern Hemisphere. The U.K. is a mere 242,495 km². And yet, on most maps of the world, thanks to the socalled Mercator Projection, the two seem almost the same size.

If you want to know why this is so, read Simon Garfield's rivetting book "On the Map - Why the World Looks the Way it Does".

You can read it online at www.archive.org. Simply SIGN UP (its' free!), LOG IN and BORROW, and go straight to page 125 to read all about Mercator Projection. Here's a simple illustration what a map of the world would look line without the inflated Mercator Projection:

 

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Princes of Darkness

Read the book online at www.archive.org

 

Neither a nation nor a state, the Arabia now called "Saudi" is an empire only recently forged in rivers of blood. Between 1902 and 1932, the Al-Saud clan annexed to its family estates the formerly independent territories of Asir, Hijaz, and Shammar. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia - "Arabia of the Sauds" in Arabic - is thus younger than either the Soviet Empire or the Yugoslav Federation (both born of World War I) before their collapse.

Today's Arabia is the joint offspring of the internal combustion engine; the shifting positions of British imperial policy; the efforts of a clumsy amateur - an American philanthropist with a passion for diplomatic intrigue; a pro-Nazi Englishman converted to Islam; an American geological engineer with a penchant for archeology; an eighteenth-century visionary preacher with a good head for business; and a succession of buccaneers with a taste for power and a gift for strategy.

Conquered by the sword, the Empire displays the weapon on its banners: on the Saudi flag is not only the shahada, the profession of faith - "There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet" - and the palm tree, but above all the sword. "In the Middle East", an Egyptian politician used to say, "there are no nations but only tribes with flags." Monopolized by the Al-Saud clan, this Arabia is not a state, but a family business, the only one in the world with a seat in the United Nations."

And that's just page one of "Princes of Darkness": it's gets better - and darker - as you read on. The book depicts Saudi Arabia as a violent, benighted place whose ruling family is pursuing a decades-long plan to subvert American power. This is not a serious work of history; the author's portrayal of Saudi Arabia as the "kernel of evil" in the Muslim world is simply ridiculous, and his account of the long history of close U.S.-Saudi relations is equally slanted.

I'm glad I didn't read this book before I went to live in Saudi Arabia or I may never have gone; still, it adds to the sum total of my knowledge about Saudi Arabia. To listen to the author discuss his book, click here.

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The Third Man

 

Could you imagine "Casablanca" in colour? Me neither! In the preface to his book "The Third Man" Graham Greene wrote, "'The Third Man was never written to be read but only to be seen", to which he might've added "... in black-and-white".

Imagine my surprise when I discovered this colourised version. YUCK! So here is the original version in glorious black-and-white "colours" with its haunting "Harry Lime Theme" written and performed by Anton Karas:

 

 

And who could ever forget Harry Lime saying, "In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

Graham Greene, who co-wrote the script with director Carol Reed, said that it was "the best line of the film" and that Welles wrote it. Welles recalled, "When the picture came out, the Swiss very nicely pointed out to me that they’ve never made any cuckoo clocks — they all come from the Schwarzwald in Bavaria!"

If you listen to the audiobook, you may notice many differences between the story and the film. Don't imagine these changes were forced on an unwilling author: as likely as not they were suggested by him. The film in fact is better than the story because it is in this case the finished state of the story, not least because of its soundtrack.

 

Audiobook - click here to read along

 

Of course, if you're like me, you'll never get tired of the movie's original soundtrack which reminds me of my childhood in Germany when, with the city in ruins and an accute housing shortage, we were forced to share our small two-bedroom apartment with two Bavarian musicians who earned their living by playing their zithers in a nearby beerhall. "The Third Man Theme", also known as "The Harry Lime Theme", was part of their repertoire which they often practised when at our home.

 

 

Some memories stay with you forever!

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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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The man who defied death

 

Ronald Reagan quipped in 1982, "The Soviet Union would remain a one-party nation even if an opposition party were permitted - because everyone would join that party."

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny last reported in November that he had been placed in permanent solitary confinement in the Russian arctic penal colony where he is serving an 11-year sentence. This was just the latest attempt to silence the longtime anti-corruption activist and foe of Vladimir Putin.

Navalny was famously hospitalised in 2020 after being poisoned by a Russian-developed nerve agent. The gripping 2022 documentary "Navalny" chronicles his efforts to investigate his own poisoning ... with shocking results. One of Navalny’s allies has called the film "life insurance" for the jailed opposition leader, since it is keeping him and his cause in the public consciousness.

Following his recent assassination, it is even more important to keep alive the memory of this courageous and death-defying man, and I encourage you to locate and watch this film in its entirety - click here.

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Rover, the muster dog, is working from home

 

For a long time already, dole recipients no longer have to queue up at Centrelink for their sleep-in-money. Instead, it is sent directly to their bank account with greater certainty and more regularity than many workers receive their pay cheques.

Now that we're ruled by Labor again, it was only a question of time when the Fair Work Commission would review whether employees should be legally entitled to work from home after studies had shown that working from home makes no difference to productivity (although it increases the ratings of daytime television and sales at Dan Murphy's). Those studies, of course, were done by people working from home.

Watching Rover the muster dog at work, I do believe them!

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