Taim Bilong Masta

 

This book is freely accessible from the ANU Open Research Library - click here

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In 1979, the idea of an oral history based project on the administration of Papua New Guinea germinated at the ABC, driven by Tim Bowden and Daniel Connell. This massive undertaking involved the recording of 350 hours of tape recorded interviews with Australians and Papua New Guineans who had been involved with Australia's colonial administration which ended with self government and independence in 1975. The result is a superb 24 program social history, so evocative of a time and place, revealed through a tapestry of voices from those who lived through it. These are first-hand accounts of the pre-war history in the early 1900s, the masta-boi relationships, the gold rush and the exploration of the highlands. In Taim Bilong Masta, Australian men and women who spent so many years living and working in Papua New Guinea before independence in 1975 can be heard again, telling their own stories.

 

Long after I had left New Guinea and on one of my frequent business trips from Saudi Arabia back to Australia, I was killing a bit of time in the ABC Shop in Adelaide's Rundle Mall when I found a set of twenty-four audio cassettes labelled "TAIM BILONG MASTA - Australia's Involvement with Papua New Guinea".

Of course, I bought them right away and for years I listened to them over and over again as, in the absence of any proper television or radio reception in the world's biggest sandbox, they had become my daily nightcap to drown out the howling desert winds.

Like the creator of those tapes, ABC presenter Tim Bowden, those twenty-four precious cassettes are no longer around, as they became warped and worn. In later years, I did buy the book by the same name but there's nothing quite like listening to those old familiar voices and I had been searching high and low for those recordings but without success - until a few years ago!

A kindly soul, Kieran Nelson, who grew up in New Guinea, worked for the Papua New Guinea Banking Corporation (PNGBC) and now lives in Brisbane, undertook the enormous labour of love of converting all 24 cassettes into mp3 files. Thank you, Kieran, and here they are:

 

Episode 1 Never a Colony

Episode 2 The Good Time Before

Episode 3 God's Shadow on Earth

Episode 4 The Loneliness and the Glory

Episode 5 On Patrol

Episode 6 Sailo

Episode 7 The Boat Came Every Six Weeks

Episode 8 Masta Me Like Work

Episode 9 The Violent Land

Episode 10 Moneymakers and Misfits

Episode 11 Wife and Missus

Episode 12 Growing Up

Episode 13 Into The Highlands

Episode 14 The Promised Land

Episode 15 First Contact

Episode 16 Gold

Episode 17 The Good News

Episode 18 The Mission Rush

Episode 19 You Had To Be Firm

Episode 20 Across the Barriers

Episode 21 Courts and Calaboose

Episode 22 War

Episode 23 A Reason For Being There

Episode 24 Going Finish

 

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How religion poisons everything

 

 

I'm just reading Christopher Hitchens' God is Not Great - How religion poisons everything, a lucid and condensed evaluation of Islam. You can join me by listening to chapter 9 in the above clip.

As Hitchens wrote, "One must state it plainly. Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody — not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms — had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as for comfort, reassurance and other infantile needs). Today the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion, and one would like to think — though the connection is not a fully demonstrable one — that this is why they seem so uninterested in sending fellow humans to hell."
To give you a taste of what awaits you, here's an excerpt.

And this quote from Heinrich Heine, someone closer to my heart, in his "Gedanken und Einfälle": "In dark ages people are best guided by religion, as in a pitch-black night a blind man is the best guide; he knows the roads and paths better than a man who can see. When daylight comes, however, it is foolish to use blind old men as guides."

Philosophy begins where religion ends, just as by analogy chemistry begins where alchemy runs out, and astronomy takes the place of astrology. Religion has run out of justifications. Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, it no longer offers an explanation of anything important.

 

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Every boy's dream come true

 

 

During my trip back to Thursday Island - see [here] - I heard of the story of a Swedish filmcrew who had visited Ron Brandt on Packe Island where he had lived as a recluse for many years. This is the filmcrew's narrative:

I was sceptical until the last moment.

It was Eino who had heard about him and had contacted the man's brother in Sweden who confirmed that the story was true.

He had read the story in a book by a Danish travel writer. It was about a modern-day Swedish Robinson Crusoe who was said to live alone on a tropical island to the north of Australia. A real Jack London figure who had left Sweden more than 50 years ago and had lived a life of adventure as a sailor, pearl fisherman, crocodile hunter and hermit.

"It sounds like a piece of fiction" I said. "That sort of things doesn't happen anymore. It's as dead as the brontosaurus. It's just the boy inside all of us that still dreams of such adventures."

But Eino could produce evidence that this modern-day Swedish Robinson Crusoe existed. He had contacted the man's brother, a Viktor Brand, a farmer who had lived all his life on a farm in Simlångsdalen in Sweden. Viktor confirmed that he had a brother named Gösta who had left Sweden fifty-one years ago.

He had received the occasional short letter and card from his adventurous brother. The last one had been postmarked "Thursday Island", but that was more than a year ago. He thought he had been sick. Maybe he wasn't even alive any more.

Just in case we ever got as far as Thursday Island and found our modern-day Swedish Robinson Crusoe, we recorded a greeting from Viktor on Eino's tape recorder.

Thursday Island was almost as far away from Sweden as one could get. Our first stop after a long international flight was Sydney in Australia, then a domestic flight to Horn Island in the Torres Strait between Australia and New Guinea. Then a short ferry ride across to Thursday Island. (There was also a Friday Island nearby which made me think of Robinson Crusoe again) We had brought with us the cassette recording of Viktor's greetings and a bunch of family photos.

The community on Thursday Island was as large as a Swedish fishing village. It reminded me somewhat of Byxelkrok on the island of Öland. The population consisted mainly of coloured people, not Australian aborigines but South Sea islanders from Melanesia. There were no racial barriers as there seemed to be on the Australian mainland.

On our very first evening on the island we freely mixed with snooker-playing and beer-drinking blacks and whites alike in the hotel bar and were able to ask questions about Gösta. Nobody knew a Gösta Brand but they had heard of an old Swede called Ron Brand who lived on Packe Island, an hour away from Thursday Island by fast boat. But he was supposed to be seriously ill, and nobody knew if he was still alive.

Next day the postmaster confirmed that Ron was identical with Gösta - Gösta had simply been too difficult to pronounce for the local people. Two hours later we were on our way to Packe Island in a small boat owned by a South Sea Islander. About twenty minutes into our bumpy ride he yelled, "There is his boat! I am sure he is on it!"

At the risk of capsizing our little dinghy and turning us into shark-food, Eino took out his camera and started filming. The boat, an average-sized sailing boat with an auxiliary motor and a dinghy tied to her stern, lay at anchor a few hundred metres off Horn Island. We spotted the bare torso of a man inside the cockpit who disappeared into the cabin as we approached.

"I think he is sick," mumbled our boatman. However, as we got closer, he re-appeared from the cabin and we saw an emaciated, wiry, brownish man wearing a slouch-hat as protection against the sun.

I called out in Swedish, "Are you Gösta Brand? We have come from Sweden to bring you greetings from your brother Viktor."

He answered in a mixture of Swedish and "Sailor's English." Yes, he was Gösta Brand. He lived on Packe Island but had anchored his boat here because he was ill and had wanted to come a bit closer to civilisation. He thought it was his lungs, but he wasn't interested to go to a hospital. And he definitely didn't want our help to return to Sweden!

" I would die on the spot," he laughed. "I have lived far too long in the tropics. If I should die, it has to be on my island or on the boat here."

He was friendly and happy and not at all unsociable as we had anticipated. We suggested that he should follow us out to his island, so that we could film him there. He didn't seem unwilling but was probably too sick to be in front of a camera and also afraid of leaving his boat. With the help of a bottle of whisky he finally agreed to wait for us until the next day when we would come back in a larger boat to tow him back to his island.



Next day we managed to hire a twin-engined speedboat that bounced along at more than 30 knots. I helped Ron lift the anchor and sat next to him in his boat while we were towed out to sea, with Eino filming from the speedboat. It turned out to be a more dramatic film than we had anticipated as the waves became bigger and wilder until they completely drenched us and filled the dinghy with water. Close to capsizing, we desperately waved our arms to tell the speedboat to turn back.

We were wet, depressed and angry as we dropped Ron and his boat back in the same spot where we had found him. So much for our efforts to film this modern-day Robinson Crusoe's existence on his tiny island!

I don't know whether it was the influence of the whisky or the prospect of appearing on Swedish television but suddenly Ron did agree to leave his boat and come with us to his island in our speadboat. "As long as you bring me back here afterwards," he said.

An hour later, after having passed other deserted islands, we stepped ashore on a South Sea island straight out of a "Boy's Own" setting. The calm waters of the bay in front of Packe Island were absolutely clear and blue, and the sand was soft all the way up to the palm trees. Palm trees that Ron had planted himself while he had built his hut and the bamboo fence surrounding it. The hut was painted white and had a roof of corrugated metal. For almost twenty years he had lived here totally alone after having cleared a piece of land and the beach in front of it. For all this he paid a peppercorn rent of ten dollars a year to the Australian government.

He regretted that a group of cultured-pearl farmers had moved in at the other end of the bay. We thought he would have welcomed having some other people nearby but he regarded them as trespassers on his island.



He told us about the many adventures he had had and showed us some nasty scars on his legs from crocodile bites. He had become an Australian citizen and for the last few years had been getting a government pension which took care of all his material needs. But he still went crocodile-hunting on occasions or fished for barramundi, always accompanied by a native from one of the other islands. "They are my best mates," he said.

On the beach sat his canoe, named "Minnehaha"", meaning "Laughing Water" in some Red Indian language. Yes, he had lived amongst Red Indians, too. That was in Canada, before he came to Australia.

"Why did you choose this life?" we asked.



"Because I love my liberty!" he answered quickly and without hesitation. He had obviously considered this question many times.

"Didn't you ever miss a woman?"

"Yes, of course, but then I also have to get hold of a woman. I have never lived with a woman. I love my liberty!"

It sounded self-assured but by the time we had finished our filming and were to leave, we thought we knew the price he had paid for his freedom - what he called his "liberty" - and his carefree existence. He had seemed strangely touched by our visit as we recorded his message to his brother in Sweden.



"You are both welcome to come back and stay on my island," he said as we were about to depart. "Bring your wife and kids with you."

We could tell that he meant what he said although he knew quite well how unlikely another visit would be. Not many people ever come this far.

I had one last look into the cabin of his boat before I climbed down the rail. There were three guns, two with telescopic sight, a cracked mirror, an old radio, some cans and a pair of old-fashioned spectacles. The sum total of his life, plus loneliness, hardship, and the occasional sickness.

As we left, the outline of where he sat in the boat waving goodbye was getting smaller and smaller. Very soon it would be hard to believe he existed at all.

But both Eino and I had the tooth of a crocodile he had given us to prove that he was real!


Shades of German Harry and French Joe and many others who had succumbed to the siren song of the Torres Strait. I had lived and worked on Thursday Island in 1977 and got out before I had gone "troppo".

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Reflections of Life

 

 

Justine du Toit and Michael Raimondo live somewhere around Cape Town in South Africa. Their passion for filmmaking and love of storytelling drove them to produce more than 250 short films which explore many universal and timeless themes.

Their cinematographic vignettes - to get all Frenchie - remind us of the simple truth that we are all human, all face similar challenges, and all experience joy and sorrow, love and loss. To view more, click here.

(Of course, I was also intrigued by their slight Afrikaaner accents which took me back to my own time in South-West Africa, or what they now call Namibia. I still remember when, a year later, aftr I had rejoined the ANZ Bank in Canberra, my old colleagues remarked on my English having gone all guttural again, but that time it wasn't my German but the guttural "r", the hard "g" and the trilled "r" in the Afrikaaner language.)

 

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Journey's End! We've settled in Mackay.

 

Postmarked 8 April 1980

 

I don't know whether my friend Des Hudson kept this card all these years, only to mock me later since, despite what I had written on that card, I continued to roam the world for another five years, three of which in the very same spot he was living in at the time.

I had just completed an assignment with Mount Isa Mines, and accepted this job as accountant/office manager in Mackay's largest car dealership which was so run down and disorganised that I knew it would keep me challenged for several months to come, and after the first few months had passed, I had taken a liking to this little coastal town and all its beautiful scenic surroundings, hence my exclamation "Journey's End!"

In fact, we had been looking at buying our own piece of real estate. The agent, when hearing that I was German - as in past tense 'used to be' - introduced us to a German couple who lived out in the countryside at 48 Yakapari-Habana Road, next to which a block of land was for sale.

 

 

Klaus and Gaby Brenner lived a self-sufficient life that impressed me. Almost everything they ate they grew themselves; their chooks gave them meat and eggs, and from his occasional job as painter on building sites Klaus would bring back old timber from which he made furniture.

Some years before we met, they had bought this thirteen-something-acre block of land which had nothing more on it than a garage and a concrete watertank. By the time we met, Klaus had already turned the garage into a comfortable home and the concrete watertank into a bathroom and laundry - in fact, it was this unique bathroom-and-laundry-inside-a-concrete-watertank which allowed me to immediately identify the property when searching for it on realestate.com.au.

 

 

Their only major expense was their monthly electricity bill since, because of their then isolated location, they had to commit to a small minimum monthly payment regardless of their consumption before they could be connected to the grid. That was long before solar and wind, or else Klaus would have been self-sufficient with that as well, I'm sure.

Neither did they have a telephone but that, as he told me, was to keep the then CES (or Commonwealth Employment Service) at bay, as he wanted to stay on the dole rather than be stuck in regular work which would've been almost guaranteed as he was a qualified painter. Instead of a phone call to get him into town for a job interview, the CES had to send him a letter which took so long to write and send that by the time he received and deemed it "safe" to reply, the job was already gone.

I had not yet been hit with the huge tax bills that I would receive in later years and was therefore still inclined to tolerate, if not fully accept, the way other people were gaming the system, and so we remained good friends, during which time we talked about lots and lots of things but never about the way they had arrived in Australia. This only revealed itself during my recent search on naa.gov.au where I found these two arrival cards from January 1965. They had come on the same ship FLAVIA I had travelled on, albeit seven months before me!

 

 

But the surprises didn't end there, because I also found this registration card from the Bougainville Migrant Centre - the same centre I had been processed through; he in five days, I in two - which indicates that Klaus had come to Australia a whole five years earlier as a single man aboard the ship AURELIA, stayed for some years, and then returned home to Germany to marry Gaby and return as a married man in January 1965.

 

Bonegilla registration card

 

All this is now a long time ago and, of course, I have lost contact. For one thing, "Journey's End" turned out to be famous last words again because, like the day between morning and evening, my life has always been torn between my urge to travel and my wish to settle down, and it was only in 1985 that I finally shook off the urge to keep on travelling.

As for Klaus and Gaby, according to realestate.com.au, they sold their slice of paradise in 2001 for $179,500. The new owners sold it three years later for $300,000. Now its estimated value is well over $800,000.

Even good ol' self-sufficiency is now well beyond most people's dreams.

 

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Herberge zur Heimat

 

Ecke Broitzemer Straße/Juliusstraße

 

A nice person in my hometown Braunschweig, to whom I described my walk to work during the three years I was articled to an insurance company - the longest, incidentally, I have ever worked for one employer in one place - sent me the above photo of the location of a refuge for old men which I used to pass every day.

The building, a "Herberge zur Heimat" or hostel for journeymen, which when I walked past had already degenerated into a doss house for the destitute, was demolished in 1971. All that's left is a fence around what is now a small park wedged in between two busy roads where at one time lived men who perhaps through no fault of their own had fallen on hard times and who had to live out their lives depending on charity.

 

 

Those were lean years with so many to be pitied all around us, that those of us who at least had a roof over our heads and just enough to eat, could barely spare the "Mitleid" or feeling of pity for those less fortunate. And yet, as I would walk past there each morning and see some lodger leaning out of a window on the ground floor of that doss house, I felt I had to acknowledge his humanity with a short wave.

I was far too young then to know what it must be like to be old and forgotten and dependent on charity - perhaps I may even have felt arrogant enough to think that this could never happen to me and, thankfully, it never did but I am no longer arrogant to think that hard work alone saved me - and I certainly was in no position to help them.

That building is now a park and the men I once waved to are long dead, but misery and misfortune are still around us, however invisible it may seem at times. Whenever I see any of it, I allow myself to be moved by it and give them a wave and, if asked, a crisp banknote because none of us will ever know if not one day, "There, but for the grace of God, go I."

 

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As promised: Northside Singles

 

 

Apart from the two obvious ones, the "Lawrence of Arabia" soundtrack and "Zorba the Greek", my memory of music is compartmentilised by the places I lived in when I first heard it. Marianne Faithfull and "As Tears Go By" take me back to South-West Africa; "Hot August Night" to me will be forever Bougainville; Lobo's "Don't Expect Me To Be Your Friend" will always remind me of Burma; "I Love a Rainy Night" by Eddie Rabbit is my time in Singapore; and "The Power of Love" takes me back to North Sydney and those miserable few months I lived there in mid- to late-1985.

Against my better judgement - which was turned off at the time - I had chucked in my last overseas job, the sort of job that other peeople might have killed for, and suddenly faced the reality of a mediocre Australian salary, and having to pay for everything that had been part of my employment package overseas: house, car, travel, entertainment.

Of course, I hated myself for it, and hating myself deprived me of the one companion I had always relied on, and so I cast around for someone else to regain my balance. Those were the days long before the internet when classified advertisements in the Sydney Morning Herald would still put you in touch with whoever was out there who wanted to spiv you.

I've forgotten the exact wording but in one of those classified adverts something called the "Northside Singles" invited you, after giving them your cheque for twenty dollars, to their next meeting in some hotel up the Pacific Highway, and so I found myself after work one late afternoon face to face and shoulder to shoulder in a no-longer-quite-so-young crowd of people who were all single by choice, just not their own.

I have never been one for small talk, and so I wasn't much of a success despite contributing to the bar takings, of which, I suspect, whoever was behind "Northside Singles" would get their fair cut. I even accepted their flyer and signed up for a subsequent function at a suburban church hall where I encountered for the first time Jennifer Rush's "Power of Love" blaring from a huge set of speakers at the front of the church.

After Jennifer Rush had worked her magic, the organiser, "Mr Northside Singles", as it turned out, then instructed us to face our neighbour and confide in them our innermost thoughts and what we would like to do most. "Getting out of here!" didn't seem like the appropriate response, and so I confided to my neighbour who happened to be female - we had all been seated male-female-male-female for obvious reasons - that what I would most like to do was to return to Townsville which I had left just a few weeks earlier in my desperate search for work. Each one of us was then asked to stand up and report on what our neighbour had only minutes earlier told us in presumably strictest confidence. My preference for living in Townsville barely raised an eyebrow compared to some of the other revelations. Then we were asked to join hands and Jennifer Rush sprang into action again while a large collection plate was passed and the power of money briefly trumped the power of love.

I think I made a mistake by also having completed a registration card because a few days later at work I received a phone call from a man who identified himself as the "Mr Northside Singles" and asked if I would like to join him for lunch at a nearby restaurant. It probably is a fair indication of my loneliness at the time that I actually accepted his "invitation", and so we met for lunch - which, incidentally, I paid for: "Oh no, you shouldn't!" "But I insist!" "Oh well, if you insist, and thank you ever so much!" - towards the end of which he proferred me his ballpoint pen as he pushed a folded piece of paper across the table.

The folded piece of paper turned out to be a standing bank order, and all I had to do was enter my bank account details, circle one of three suggested amounts, and sign on the bottom line. Somehow, my better judgement which had been turned off ever since I had chucked in that wonderful job in Greece, came back to life and I told him I would think about it. Needless to say, the lunch went all downhill from there.

There was, however, a sequel because, despite my lack of social skills during that initial get-together, I had met up with one particular dame whose attraction to me had been the fact that at one time and many years before she had been an air hostess with AIR NIUGINI, a fact which had given us plenty of stuff to talk about during subsequent meetings.

I happened to have some tradesmen inside my apartment to carry out some work in the kitchen while I was at work. An interstate telephone call still cost you the equivalent of dinner for two at a posh restaurant, and so I had disconnected the telephone to keep the tradies honest.

It must've been during those long hours while my phone was "off the hook" so to speak, that this particular dame tried to phone me, not once, not twice, but many times, because as soon as I plugged the phone back in again, almost immediately the very first call was from her, accusing me in a sobbing and quivering voice of avoiding her.

I hadn't but I did then, and I never returned that signed standing bank order either nor gave "Northside Singles" another thought - until now!

 

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"I Nietzsche more than ever!"

 

 

Remember that time with your first girlfriend when you whispered into her ear "I Nietzsche more than ever!" just before she stood you up? Having given you this useful mnemonic to help you pronounce his name, you may be more inclined to listen to the full eighteen minutes it takes to listen to the above video clip.

I found it while I was searching for the audiobook of "The Lonely City - Adventures in the Art of Being Alone", which always suits my mood just after I've taken Padma a cup of tea in bed and I am then left with that precious half an hour or an hour of absolute solitude. I couldn't find the audiobook; instead I found Renuka Gavrani's "The Art of Being Alone - Solitude is my Home; Loneliness was my Cage". Her voice grated on me; so I settled for this shorter introduction read in a more soothing voice.

 

 

We don’t often say it out loud, but many of us are lonely, which embarrasses us and which we want to conceal despite the fact that it can also be a gift. We may not feel lonely in the dramatic, desperate sense - although I have been through times like that as well - but in the quiet, persistent way that comes from not feeling properly understood.

 

Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks". He was known for his striking depictions of solitude.
For more iconic Hopper paintings, click here.

 

As older adults, we seem to find it even harder to make the kind of friends who make us feel truly seen. Not that this is necessarily our fault; we simply live in a world where sincerity has fewer places to go.

I have found my solitude in books - and I often wished I had done so sooner - and embrace it with open arms, but the clock is ticking and at any moment I may hear Padma calling for a top-up of her cup of tea.

Solitude, I Nietzsche more than ever!

 

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P.S. I don't quite know what prompted me to write this post, but it may have something to do with my thinking just before falling asleep last night of that terrible time I went through in early 1985 after I had come back to Australia and tried to find my feet in Sydney. I remember how I had joined a singles' group called "Northside Singles" (another story in itself which I may put into words, if you insist). I lived at McMahons Point at the time, and "Northside Singles" had been one person's money-making idea masquerading under some pseudo-religious facade, and I suddenly found myself in the midst of all those desperately lonely people, none of whom would've admitted to feeling lonely. To only mention the word would've been as indiscreet as telling someone they had "Schuppen" on the back of their jacket. As I thought this last night, I couldn't for the life of me think of the English word for "Schuppen"; then, this morning, as I went over last night's thoughts again, I could no longer think of the German word for "dandruff". What's going on? Is it early dementia? If so, which linguistic side of me is having dementia?

 

There's a corner of a foreign field that is forever ...

 

 

When in a moment of badly misdiagnosed "homesickness" I decided in 1985 to turn my back on the expatriate life and return to Australia, I forgot that not only had I changed but also Australia. Like other returning expats before me, I found it difficult to settle back into an "ordinary" life and moved from place to place in an attempt to recapture some of the old lifestyle.

And yet, at no time did I ever consider not to return home at all. Other expats did. Even after their work was done, they remained overseas, hiding out in some exotic backwater in small and ever-shifting communities of the planet's "homeless", languidly killing time like characters in a Graham Greene novel. Some had been so ill-treated and badly wounded by life that they stopped the whole struggle and decided to stay away from home indefinitely, live in a gorgeous house for $200 a month, perhaps take a young local woman as a companion, and drink before noon without getting any static about it.

All they were doing was seeing to it that nothing serious would ever be asked of them again. They were not bums, mind you. They were a very high grade of people, multinational, talented and clever. They used to be something once (generally "married" or "employed"); now they were all united by the absence of the one thing they seemed to have surrendered completely and forever: ambition. To quote my favourite writer Joseph Conrad: "... in all they said - in their actions, in their looks, in their persons - could be detected the soft spot, the place of decay, the determination to lounge safely through existence." Needless to say, there was a lot of drinking.

Many had made a mess of their lives back home, and so they decided they'd had it with Western women and married some tiny, sweet, obedient local girl. They thought this pretty little girl would make them happy, make their lives easy, but it was still two human beings trying to get along with each other. Some had their hearts broken, others just their bank balance.

Of course, those exotic backwaters aren't the worst places to putter away your life, ignoring the passing of the days. Most expats, when you asked them how long they'd lived there, weren't really sure. For one thing, they weren't really sure how much time had passed since they moved there. But for another thing, it was like they weren't really sure if they did live there. They belonged to nowhere, unanchored. Some of them liked to imagine that they'd just be hanging out for a while, just running the engine on idle at the traffic light, waiting for the signal to change. But after several years of that they started to wonder ... will they ever leave? Conrad again: "Their death was the only event of their fantastic existence that seemed to have a reasonable certitude of achievement."

Long Sunday afternoons spent in their lazy company, drinking beer and talking about nothing, could convince you that theirs was not a bad life. Just as long as you didn't fall asleep like Dorothy in the poppy fields of Oz and dozed away the rest of your life with them!

 

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Faraway

 

Episode 32 Sailing to "Faraway" uploaded in January 2020: "We set sail from the island of Santa Cruz after completing the entry formalities of clearing into The Solomon Islands. We had heard about a fascinating group of islands about 30 miles away. The Reef Islands also known as Swallow Islands and Matema Islands are a group of 16 islands with a population of just over 5000 people. We were particularly interested in one of the small islands, where an English couple settled in the 1950's, obtained a lease, traded and raised a family."

 

I first heard about Pigeon Island and the Hepworth family when I tried to find work in the islands back in 1969. Tom Hepworth had written a very enticing letter in response to my classified advertisement in the backpage of the PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY, offering me a job as 'book-keeper' in his growing enterprise, Pigeon Island Traders.

He described to me in vivid colours the sort of life I would lead if I were to join him and his family on Pigeon Island. He wouldn't be able to pay me much but, as he put it, neither would I need much money and I would have plenty of time to pursue my own interests and continue my accountancy studies.

I was sorely tempted but I was also concerned about my professional career and what "career" would there be with something called "Pigeon Island Traders" located on one of the remotest islands in the South Pacific? Instead, I accepted another offer from a firm of chartered accountants in the then Territory of Papua & New Guinea - and I have never looked back!

It was only in retirement that I began to recall my many wanderings throughout the South Pacific and around the world which led me to ponder what might have happened had I opted for one and not another of the many choices that had come my way. And so I also thought again about Pigeon Island and on the spur of the moment wrote a letter to "Tom Hepworth, care of Pigeon Island Traders, Pigeon Island, Reef Islands, Solomon Islands."

 

 

Some months went by and I thought no more of it until one day I received an envelope covered in a lot of colourful Solomon Islands stamps. In it was a letter from Ben Hepworth, the now grown-up son of Tom Hepworth, who told me that his father had passed away some years ago but that he and his twin brother Ross and his mother Diana were still living on the island. He had enclosed some photographs and told me a good deal about the island and invited me to visit them.

Ben, who was some five years old when I had been offered a job on the island by his father, was now in his late 30s and, apart from his secondary schooling in New Zeland and a short-lived attempt at a career with the Mendana Hotel in Honiara, had never lived away from the island. I was amazed at how this family had clung to their dream of living on a small South Pacific island for so long! From the time they set sail from England in November 1947, times had not been easy: their daughter Tasha, born 1958, was mentally retarded and is living today in an institution in New Zealand; they have had several fall-outs with their two sons, Ross and Ben; there has been continued trouble with traditional land-owners over their 2-pound-a-year lease of the island (signed Christmas 1958) which officially runs out in 2052; then there was the destruction caused by Cyclone Nina 1993 and again by Cyclon Danny in 1999 ... the list goes on and the words 'CAN'T GO ON MUCH LONGER' and 'SEEM TO HAVE RUN OUT OF STEAM' appear in Tom's diary more than once.

They tried to attract caretakers to the island but failed repeatedly (the Austrian Wien family in 1964 was a particularly dismal failure; the Pearce family family ran off at the beginning of 1980 leaving the message 'JUST COULDN'T GO ON' hung in a bag on the cargo-shed door); they tried to sell the island in the mid-80s for five hundred thousand US dollars but 'the chains of Pigeon' kept Tom until his death in 1994 at the age of 84. 'Blue skies, fair winds, hot sun and beaches by the miles,' Tom once wrote about Pigeon, but 36 years was a long time for a man with cultural leanings to spend on an isolated island. We all have our fantasies but for most of us reality intervenes - but not so for the Hepworths!

 

Imagine living on a South Sea Island, far from civilisation's worries, and MAKING MONEY from it! Ngarando-Faraway is For Sale! This small resort on beautiful Pigeon Island only needs capital to become a money spinner. Uniquely, Pigeon is leased until 2052; Tourism will take off when an airfield only 3 miles away is completed in 1988, and NOW is the time to invest. US$500,000 will purchase everything on the island, including a profitable store, bar one acre to be used in their retirement by Tom and Diana Hepworth.

Tom's advertisement in the mid-1980s
Click here for a GOOGLE-view of Pigeon Island

 

Thankfully, they were now in contact with the world through the Internet and we began to send each other emails. Ben's mother, Diana, emailed me to suggest that I should come and 'house-sit' the island while she and Ben would go on what she felt may be her last chance of a 'round-the-world trip, planned for the year 2003. Again, reality intervened for me but I did offer to put up a webpage for them to try to attract some other suitable 'house-sitters'. She mentioned that in early 1998 a Lucy Irvine had come to Pigeon Island and during her year-long stay on Pigeon Island written the book "FARAWAY".

 

In 1999, Lucy Irvine took her three children to the farthest corner of the Solomons to live for a year on remote Pigeon Island. The invitation came from an intrepid 80-year-old, Diana Hepworth, who set sail from England in search of a faraway paradise. This work tells of both their experiences. Read the book online at www.archive.org

 

Had I heard of Lucy Irvine? I had indeed! I myself had spent ten months on tiny Thursday Island in the Torres Strait to the north of Australia in 1977. Lucy had 'marooned' herself and her 'husband' on even tinier Tuin Island just north of Thursday Island, for over a year from May 1981 to June 1982 and written a book about it. I had read that book, "CASTAWAY", and also seen the movie. Now I rushed out to get her book "FARAWAY" to read about Pigeon Island. After having read the book, I was somewhat relieved that I hadn't gone to Pigeon all those many years ago because far from living in a 'tropical paradise', the Hepworth family seems to have had more than their fair share of troubles. I have since had an email from one of the Pearces mentioned in Lucy's book: Another Pigeon Island tale.

Since I heard from Ben in late 2001, I have been in regular contact with Pigeon Island. Diana was able to find some suitable 'house-sitters' and in June 2003, she and Ben and his daughter went on their overseas trip during which they contacted me from the U.K. and the US.

Then, while Padma and I were holidaying in Bundaberg in 2003, Ben called us from a motel in Brisbane before leaving on the next day's flight to Honiara. It came therefore as a complete shock to us when a few days later we received the following email:

 

Dear All, My mother passed away at about 2.30pm on the 27th of August 2003. We were in a canoe, having left Lata about 15 minutes earlier, heading back to Pigeon Island after a 3 month around-the-world trip. We were still within the sheltered waters of Graciosa Bay when her spirit was taken. Mum and I had been talking 5 minutes earlier, but she left in a manner she had always wished for, suddenly. To me she appeared asleep, so it took a minute or so to realise what had happened. I felt her presence close by me as the others in the boat and myself tried to find her pulse. She was buried next to Dad on Pigeon Island, according to her wish, in a funeral which reflected her long standing in the Reef Island community, with an overflowing of grief. Ross took quite a lot of video tape of the event. Many of us have known the death of a loved one, like a hole that cannot quite be filled, a loss that cannot quite be redeemed, a reminder of man's mortality and God's omnipotence. Those of us who have a hope in eternal life can nonetheless put our trust in that some day, these tears will be wiped away forever. It has been several days since Mum passed away, but I have not been able to inform anyone but our closest relatives until now. To end on a bright note, Mum was able to see many of her friends, and her sisters, on the three month trip before departing this earth. It is a pity she did not get back to Pigeon Island before leaving this world, but our choice to leave is rarely left up to us. God bless, Ben Hepworth

 

With Tom and Diana gone, that should have been the end of Pigeon Island, but according to the above YouTube clip which was uploaded in January 2020, one of the Hepworth twins, Ross, still lives on Pigeon Island. Perhaps I should write another letter, this time addressed to "Ross Hepworth, care of Pigeon Island Traders, Pigeon Island, Reef Islands, Solomon Islands."

 

Drumming up business for Ben? Why not! He could use it! Click here
(if h4e241a@sailmail.com is hard to reach; try tavakie@gmail.com)
(for a brochure, click here)

 

 

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Good on Ya Mum, Tip Tops the One!

 

Right van, wrong person!
(Funny how I could find only ONE matching GOOGLE image when
searching for what was then such a ubiquitous image in the 1960s)

 

Remember when bread was delivered to your door in a bright-red TIP TOP delivery van? Those cute-looking vans were as much part of the Canberra streetscape in the 1960s as were the milk floats and the posties on their red bikes, blowing a whistle as they delivered their mail.

I even sat in one of those bright-red TIP TOP vans by invitation of its driver who was at the time living at Barton House, the same boarding house that has had such a huge influence on me during my formative first two years in Australia and about which I have written more here.

How we ran into each other and what his name was is lost in the mist of time, but I must've looked as forlorn to him then as he now in retrospect looks to me, because he was then already something of a middle-aged bloke with a weather-beaten face who would have looked far less out of place driving a bulldozer than a little van delivering bread door to door.

While I was just starting to claw my way up in life, he may have already been on the way down, and holding on to what he had left by driving that little van. I worked only five days a week with the ANZ Bank, but his deliveries included Saturdays, and so, rather than sitting idly on the front steps of Barton House, I'd hop into the passenger seat and keep him company, as he made his rounds through the suburbs of Canberra.

I remember one particular Saturday morning when he didn't show up. I roughly knew the whereabouts of his room and, after knocking on a couple of doors, opened his and saw him sprawled rather listlessly on his bed. He didn't seem to be in the mood to do his rounds after what might've been a heavy night out before, but I soon disabused him of the notion that staying in bed was the right decision - in rather more basic English than I am using now - and it wasn't long before we were on the way to pick up his deliveries and do the rounds of the suburbs again.

Maybe my intervention in still broken English on that Saturday morning stopped him from getting the sack from a job that held the last vestiges of his former life, and that his future life took a turn for the better. None of us ever know what worse luck our bad luck did save us from.

People in boarding houses are like ships passing in the night: they are all on their way through to somewhere better, and so it was with me not long afterwards. I don't even think I said my good-byes, not to him and not to the many others I ever so briefly befriended in that sad place.

I still think of him sometimes - nameless as he forever shall remain - whenever I hear that old TV jingle "Good on Ya Mum, Tip Tops the One!"

 

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The Haunted Bookshop

 

 

When you sell a man a book", says Roger Mifflin, protagonist of these classic bookselling novels by Christopher Morley, "you don't sell him just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue you sell him a whole new life."

With "The Haunted Bookshop", Christopher Morley continues the story of the bookseller from "Parnassus on Wheels", Roger Mifflin, whose character underlines the wisdom and knowledge to be gained from literature and makes allusions and references to many famous works.

With a deep respect for the art of bookselling, and as much flair for drama as romance, he crafted another lively, humorous tale for book lovers everywhere. If you are a booklover, both "Parnassus on Wheels" and "The Haunted Bookshop" are a must to read.

 

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