Which is why I drove to visit the Eurobodalla Medical Specialists in Moruya today, whose surgeon Doctor Paul Liebenberg seems to have done more colonoscopies than I have had hot dinners. After he had questioned me about the "Manfred" in my name and realised I also spoke a bit of Afrikaans, we got on like a house on fire because he was born and graduated in South Africa and came to Australia in the early 2000s.
He graduated from Stellenbosch University in Cape Town. As an aside - and to add an extraneous bit of knowledge to your golf-addled brain, Des - in nearby Groote Schuur Hospital Dr Christiaan Barnard performed the world's first human-to-human heart transplant in 1967. I remember it very well because I watched it just a few weeks later in a newsreel in all its gory colours in Lüderitz's only 'bioskop' --- and promptly fainted.
All those memories! Yours truly while living in Cape Town in 1969.
After having filled out a long questionnaire to qualify me for hospital admission sometime in the next four weeks, I thought my intestines deserved to be filled first from the other end by having lunch at the Moruya Bowling Club. And, of course, we met several friends there, including the New Zealand lady who used to serve us coffees at the Aquatic Centre. She is from Bluff on New Zealand's South Island, which is so far south that, according to her, if you're a girl, you either get pregnant or you get out. She got out and now works as an NDIS carer.
Before leaving Moruya, while I was checking out Vinnies for any book bargains, Padma checked out the fruit and veg shop for all the Asian groceries it is famous for. I did warn her not to buy the whole shop!
I didn't buy all of Vinnies but just the one book by a Melanie Phillips, "Londonistan - How Britain is creating a terror state within". It was first published in 2006, but I fear things have got a whole lot worse since. Let us all hope the same thing will never happen here in Australia!
"In the multicultural classroom, every culture appears to be taught except Britain’s indigenous one. Concern not to offend minority sensibilities has reached the risible point where piggy banks have been banished from British banks in case Muslims might be offended."
"Climate models bear about as much relation to reality as astrology."
"Britain has become a decadent society, weakened by alarming tendencies towards social and cultural suicide. Turning upon itself, it has progressively attacked or undermined the values, laws and traditions that make it a nation, creating a space that in turn has been exploited by radical Islamism."
This may be uncomfortable but well worth reading and listening to!
