What is halcyon?

 

 

Happiness was a red plastic chair when my "home" was a 9x9-ft donga tastefully decorated with PLAYBOY centrefolds of girls waxed to the point of martyrdom, when all my wordly possessions easily fitted into a 2ft-wide metal locker, and when my needs for comfort were satisfied by a red plastic chair on a shady porch (okay, a cold beer helped!)

 

Camp 6 Loloho, Bougainville Island
Click on image to go to the Bougainville Copper Project website

 

That was in the early 1970s when I lived and worked on Bougainville Island where it all began, the dreaming of a bigger and better future and the searching for wider and farther horizons. More than fifty years later, my needs for comfort are still satisfied by an old bleached-out red plastic chair on my jetty (under the OSASCOMP-rules, is "bleached-out" a colour-adjective or an opinion? Somebody put me out of my misery!)

Colour or opinion (or coloured opinion) aside, I sit on it and dream of the past, with my horizon no farther away than across the river. Right now my dreams are helped along by still reading Paul Theroux's book "The Happy Isles of Oceania" - after all, it's all of 730 pages thick, and I'm drawing it out by reading it slowly and chewing on every word.

It's an old habit of mine to have a dictionary beside me as I settle down to a quiet read. It's how I started to learn English over sixty years ago, and it's how I still learn English today. When I encounter an unfamiliar word, I don't just guess its meaning from the context: I want to know its precise meaning; its etymology, and how it can be used in a sentence.

Padma never bothers with a dictionary. She knows she has me. Just now she came out of the house where she'd been watching something on television, and called out to me from the verandah, "What is 'halcyon'?"

I spread out my arms towards the river, and replied, "This is halcyon!"

 

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Three Men in a Boat

 

 

Jerome K. Jerome's hilarious story of what is probably the worst holiday in literature has an air of delightful nostalgia and is still laugh-aloud funny more than a hundred years after it what first published with this preface:

 

 

And yet, it is full of wisdom as well, "... not merely as regards the present case, but with reference to our trip up the river of life generally. How many people, on that voyage, load up the boat till it is in danger of swamping with a store of foolish things which they think essential to the pleasure and comfort of the trip, but which are really only useless lumber.

How they pile the poor little craft mast-high with fine clothes and big houses; with useless servants, and a host of swell friends that do not care twopence for them, and that they do not care three ha'pence for; with expensive entertainments that nobody enjoys, with formalities and fashions, with pretence and ostentation, and with - oh, heaviest, maddest lumber of all! - the dread of what will my neighbour think, with luxuries that only cloy, with pleasures that bore, with empty show that, like the criminal's iron crown of yore, makes to bleed and swoon the aching head that wears it!

It is lumber, man - all lumber! Throw it overboard. It makes the boat so heavy to pull, you nearly faint at the oars. It makes it so cumbersome and dangerous to manage, you never know a moment's freedom from anxiety and care, never gain a moment's rest for dreamy laziness - no time to watch the windy shadows skimming lightly o'er the shallows, or the glittering sunbeams flitting in and out among the ripples, or the great trees by the margin looking down at their own image, or the woods all green and golden, or the lilies white and yellow, or the sombre-waving rushes, or the sedges, or the orchis, or the forget-me-nots.

Throw the lumber over, man! Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need - a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.

You will find the boat easier to pull then, and it will not be so liable to upset, and it will not matter so much if it does upset; good, plain merchandise will stand water. You will have time to think as well as to work ..."

There is so much insight packed into this little book - useful information indeed, to say nothing of the dog! - that you almost regret having come to their final toast, "Here's to Three Men well out of a Boat!"

But that's a whole 184 pages later, so sit back and enjoy! - or lean back, close your eyes, and listen to the audiobook read by Hugh Laurie:

 

 

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Reading by the light of a kerosene lamp

 

 

I've just awoken from a peaceful night in "Melbourne", reading Paul Theroux's "The Happy Isles of Oceania", gazing at the slowly burning flame of a kerosene lamp, occasionally listening to the sounds of nature outside the door, and finally answering the call of nature before tucking myself under the doona for the night.

As I was reading by the slowly burning flame of a kerosene lamp, it gave me the strange feeling that this was the way people had read for almost all of the time that people have been reading: in darkness, slowly, and with full concentration. They didn't end each paragraph thinking it would be a good time to check their emails. Their phones didn't ring. The ambient hum of fridge and television was gone.

 

 

There was no distraction whatsoever except for the occasional pause to angle the book to catch the shifting shine of the light from the flame. The words themselves seemed less fixed and self-evident, as if I could read the same sentence countless different ways just by tipping the book forwards and back. It all had a curious and lovely intensity.

Reading by the light of a kerosene lamp is an experience of strange reverence. It is how I would like to read all my book all my nights.

 

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The fork in the road

 

 

In old age, Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken" has become a bit of a regretful dirge for me, and it takes very little to make me go and recite "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference."

 

 

After countless detours in my life, there are no more forks ahead of me, except this one which I found on the way to the front gate. Padma must have dropped it on her way to the recycle bin, which is where she goes every so often with a box full of what she deems to be surplus stuff.

 

 

On closer inspection, I recognised is as the small fork I had kept when I flew Egypt Air. At the time I thought it small recompense for the ordeal of sitting aboard an ageing Boing 707 which, judging by the broken food tray and broken arm rest, should never have got off the ground in the first place, let alone with so many homeward-bound Egyptians nursing television sets and sewing machines on their laps as "cabin baggage".

I took the airline less travelled by and, luckily, survived it.

 

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The Happy Isles of Oceania

 

 

Reading a book one has read many years ago is a bit like meeting an old friend one last saw many years ago. "The Happy Isles of Oceania" is such an old friend. Having found a second copy, a 'cheap' paperback, I retired to my peaceful hide-away "Melbourne", my very own 'Oceania' but after someone has pulled the plug.

When marriages fall apart, men will often turn to drink, sex, therapy or their work in order to blunt the pain of separation and their sense of failure and guilt. When Paul Theroux and his wife separated, he decided to paddle around the South Sea islands in a folding kayak. And he wrote a book about it, which is more than I have watched others do who washed up on the shores of some of the islands I lived and worked on.

 

 

I went there when I was twenty-four, with my heart still unbroken, but I can attest to the healing powers of the islands, even if it's not in the Paul Theroux way, whose solution "was to keep paddling" - after all, "if you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there".

 

Below is a sample of the 24-hour audiobook which ends on page 4
with another 730 pages to go.

 

It's a wonderful book to read on a tropically hot day, with the quietly flowing Clyde River on one side and a cold beer on the other. Even the resident mob of kangaroos seemed to have got caught up in the moment, as they peacefully reclined under a shade tree just metres from "Melbourne", ignoring my occasional glances out of the window.

 

Read it online here

 

I am back in the house, refreshed from a lazy afternoon in "Melbourne". The gods seem to want me very much to pay that new Division 296 tax because my BHP shares keep going up. Each time they reach a new top, I expect them to flatten out, and I sell down some more, and yet they keep going up. It's one way of 'losing out' while still making money.

Unfortunately, I didn't sell down during today's wild gyrations when BHP gave back all the gains it had made yesterday: it went from yesterday's $51.51 close to this morning's high of $52.09 and then, at around lunchtime, came the sudden dive back to $50.12, before closing the day (and week) at $50.57, for a weekly gain of 82 cents. Whiplash!

It's all about copper which jumped from US$6.00/lb to an amazing US$6.60/lb yesterday afternoon and today fell back to US$5.93/lb.

 

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Here's one DVD I won't be buying!

 

 

Poor Mr. Trump. His Trump Coin has lost 98% of its value. And even his wife’s hagiographic documentary, "Melania", is said to be disappointing. Market researcher 'Boxoffice' has projected it will gross between $1 and $2 million in opening weekend ticket sales. Both figures are well below the $40 million Amazon paid for the title.

 

 

He went to all the trouble of taking out Maduro in Venezuela, warning Vice President ‘Delcy’ in front of the whole world. ‘Delcy’ gave him the middle finger by saying she’s had ‘enough’ of orders from Washington.

And he went all the way to Switzerland to deliver a rambling, almost incomprehensible discourse, bringing his cannon onto the stage — he was going to invade Greenland! — but then he turned around and took his cannon home with him without firing a shot. Ditto Tehran. Even if they never admire him, at least they will learn to fear him. Right?

And 'USA Today' reports that "President Donald Trump said he hopes the father of Renee Nicole Good, the woman who was shot and killed by an immigration officer in Minneapolis, is still a 'Trump fan' after his daughter’s death." Yeah, right!

 

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P.S. According to reliable sources - click here - Trump has threatened the Ayatollah that it will release this feature-length biopic of the First Lady in Iran, if Tehran continues to ignore American demands.

 

In the empty hours when I miss them so

 

There are more 'professional' recordings - see here - but this one does it for me

 

I really need those empty hours of those early morning when I brew myself my first cup of tea before the house wakes up and breaks up my melancholic thoughts, which at my age are mostly about the people I have known and who have already gone before me.

It's a sad reverie but the sadness is tinged with gratitude. Gratitude for having known those people; gratitude for having had such friends. I never knew when their last hour would come, so I never had a chance to say goodbye, leaving many words unsaid and many things undone.

 

The hand is cold that once held mine I can't believe you've really left this world behind I can wait and I can hope I'll get over this in time It takes time to learn when someone's gone for good They're not comin' back like you wish they would In the empty hours when you miss them so Then it's time to learn to let them go Your last hours we never knew We never had a chance to say goodbye to you Words unsaid and things undone We'd just begun and now we'll never see them through It takes time to learn when someone's gone for good They're not comin' back like you wish they would In the empty hours when you miss them so It takes time to learn to let them go It takes time to learn that you're gone for good You're not comin' back like I wish you would In the empty hours when I miss you so Then it's time to learn to let you go The hand is cold that once held mine

 

It's taken time to learn that they're gone. Now it's time to let them go.

 

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Time waits for no man

 

 

They say that time and tide wait for no man, and so I made an appointment with my solicitor in the Bay to update my will, sign an Enduring Power of Attorney, appoint an executor, and even lodge an Advanced Health Directive, i.e. "Switch it off!"

I also talked with Padma about a eulogy and scribbled something on a piece of paper. Something about the many forks in the road, the many roads I had taken, and the many more I had not and now no longer will — in phonetics, so she won't have any doubt about the pronunciation.

 

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Lost in a good book

 

 

I didn't know what to make of this book, but anything that describes my almost constant state is worth reading, and so I picked it up, together with "The Writing On the Wall - China and the West in the 21st Century" by Will Hutton and another copy of Paul Theroux's "The Happy Isles of Oceania". I already have a hardcover copy but this one I'll take to "Melbourne" to randomly open up and lose myself in between afternoon naps.

Which is just about now after we came back from a full day in town, starting with a swim in the warm-water pool and a lunch of barramundi and chips and salad at the Batemans Bay Soldiers Club. Of course, we also went to my favourite op-shop whose window display had been a beautifully framed painting of "The Lady of Shalott". From High Street to high brow definitely deserved a photo but that was last week, as today the painting had already gone and was replaced by something tacky.

 

 

While in town, I kept an eye on the price of BHP shares. They opened a few cents up, then nosedived by sixty cents which almost stopped me from ordering that second glass of Chardonnay. I had left instructions to sell some at $50.95, only half-expecting that they would go that high after yesterday's close at $50.60. I have just checked and not only did they sell at $50.95, but the rest of my holdings have gone to $51.51 — that's an increase of a whole six dollars since the start of this year!

I know the world has gone mad, but these rapid price swings, all in one day, are quite mad. Not that I mind them as long as the swings are UP!

I think I take a nap now. I've earned it.

 

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Down and out in Paris

 

 

In 1928, George Orwell went to Paris because he wanted to see what it was like to be poor. He rented a cheap room, ran out of money faster than expected, and ended up washing dishes in hotel kitchens for twelve to fourteen hours a day.

The work was brutal in a boring way. Hot steam, greasy plates, shouting chefs, no breaks. You stood until your legs stopped working. When the shift ended, there was just enough time to eat badly and sleep before doing it again. You missed a shift, you lost the job.

 

Read the book online at here

 

Later, in England, he lived among tramps and slept in shelters because he had nowhere else to go. He kept notes the whole time which he turned into the book "Down and Out in Paris and London", a searing firsthand account of poverty that permanently established his unflinching moral vision and documentary style. Long after he became famous, he never forgot how fragile comfort is or how fast a person can slide from being someone to being invisible.

 

 

I was very comfortable and highly visible during my last visit to Paris, but that's a story for another day.

 

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This incredible country breeds incredible characters

 

When did Benjamin Witkowski interview him?
If "Talc Alf" is still alive, he'd be 99 years old (or 80 ?)

And how did "Talc Alf" finsih up at Lyndhurst? Fast-forward to 7:25.

 

The farther north you go, and the farther out west you go, the more incredible characters you meet. Here is the incredible story of a man who has chosen to live in the middle of the Australian outback. Another Tom Neale, but his "island" is surrounded by sand instead of water.

 

GOOGLE Map

 

What piqued my interest was this comment on Robert Cullen's facebook page: "He is [at] currently at Thursday Island visiting family and celebrating his 80th birthday." Who are his relatives on Thursday Island?

(It just clicked when I read Jenny Schram's post on the facebook page: he was a friend of Helmut Schramm who died in 2025 - click here - and Alf's daughter Diat, who grew up at Lyndhurst, now lives on Thursday Island - click here and here and here.)  

 

That would've been in 2006 when he celebrated his 80th birthday on 12 February, according to this airport arrival card I found on naa.gov.au.

 

Ald returning from a trip to the Netherlands in 1972

 

Earlier arrival cards show that "Talc Alf" arrived in Australia in 1957 as a migrant from the Netherlands, and had headed straight for Cooma, presumably to work on the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme which was built between 1949 and 1974.

 

Alf when he first arrived in Australia in 1951, just 25 years old

His wife returning from a trip to the Netherlands in 1970

 

And back in the 1970s he lived with his wife Hermine - who was also Dutch - at 7 Legge Street in Downer in the A.C.T. I must've driven past his place several times on my way to the Old Canberra Inn. The world is such a small place, even in as big a place as this incredible country.

As we approach another heatwave with temperatures in the mid-40s, let's remember Alf's advice; "When it's hot sit in the shade and put your feet in a bucket of water." Thank you, Alf! I might do that right now!

 

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P.S. There are more articles on "Talc Alf" here and here, but here's the catch: both articles mention that he was born in 1945 whereas my airport arrival cards say "1926". Have I picked the wrong Cornelius Alferink? How many Cornelius Alferinks are there in Australia?

 

 

The above Record Search on the National Archives website raises more questions than it provides answers: the first entry shows a "Cornelis A born 22 November 1954" who arrived with his parents; the second entry shows a "Cornelis Johan born 29 May 1945" (which confirms the year given in the articles) who arrived with his parents and three sisters and a brother, aboard the "Johan van Oldenbarnevelt" in 1953; and the third entry shows a "Cornelis Adrianus" who arrived alone on 15 August 1951.

 

The World Until Yesterday

 

 

If you were a frequent air traveller in the late 90s, you would have encountered Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" which festooned the shelves of every airport bookshop. I got my copy at Sydney airport and read it non-stop on a non-stop QANTAS flight to Shanghai in 1998.

 

 

In his most personal book to date, "The World Until Yesterday", Jared Diamond writes about his experiences over nearly five decades working and living in New Guinea, an island that is home to one thousand of the world's 7,000 languages and one of the most culturally diverse places.

Drawing on his fieldwork in New Guinea, as well as evidence from Inuit, Amazonian Indians and other cultures, Diamond explores how tribal peoples approach essential human problems, from child-rearing to old age to conflict resolution to health, and discovers that we have much to learn from traditional ways of life.

He unearthes remarkable findings - from the reasons why modern afflictions like diabetes, obesity and hypertension are largely non-existent in tribal societies, to the surprising cognitive benefits of multilingualism. As Diamond reminds us, the West achieved global dominance due to specific environmental and technological advantages, but Westerners do not necessarily have superior ideas about how to raise children, care for the elderly, or simply live well.

In keeping with my current more earth-bound lifestyle, I found my copy of "The World Until Yesterday" only today in Vinnies' op-shop in Moruya.

 

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Other books by Jared Diamond:
Guns, Germs, and Steel : The fates of human societies
The Third Chimpanzee : The evolution and future of the human animal
Collapse : How societies choose to fail or succeed
Why Is Sex Fun?: The Evolution of Human Sexuality

 

The hills are alive ...

 

 

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's speech was music to the ears of those assembled in Davos. As Canadian Carney took his feud with Trump to the next level and President Trump did an about-face on imposing tariffs over Greenland, the rest of Europe's leader seemed to finally have grown balls to stand up to the Donald.

Trump's speech was a familiar blend of braggadocio and bombast. He claimed China, home to the largest wind farms in the world, had none, and told the audience they would all be speaking German, "and maybe a little Japanese" had it not been for the US in the Second World War.

Commerce secretary Howard Lutkin was belligerent at every opportunity. "We have come with a clear message," he said on a panel, sat next to Chancellor Rachel Reeves: "Globalism is dead." European Central Bank boss Christine Lagarde walked out of another event following Lutkin's remarks about Europe.

Well, buffoon Trump and his fellow-clowns have it all backwards. The US depends on the world. The world provides them with the goods that thay don't produce. The world lends them the money they don't save. The world economy doesn't work because of the US – the US economy works because of the world. The US has a dysfunctional consumer-based credit economy that rests on the foundation of the U.S. dollar's reserve currency status, and the world is now pulling the rug out from under the U.S. The dollar's going to collapse. The dollar is being replaced by gold.

 

 

But before cutting off Trump's goolies - which remains on the table - next time he opens his big mouth, Canada should cut off his water!

Team Trump is aiming for an outcome of which it seems totally unaware: the destruction of the US empire. Read the headlines: "Finnish prime minister arrives in Beijing for four-day visit to China" and "UK leader Starmer set to visit China to boost trade ties" and "‘Repatriate the gold’: German economists advise withdrawal from US vaults."

As a policy, "America First" appears to have the opposite effect. Global leaders and investors are putting the US way down their priority list.

As for the people in the street, they will no longer believe Trump either. Not after he told the people of Tehran, "Rise up! Help is on its way!"

MAKE AMERICA GO AWAY!

 

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Batemans Bay Bushwalkers

 

 

One-in-five people break their New Year's resolutions within the first week of January. We're almost at the end of the month, and I've just locked in our resolution to become more active again and join the Batemans Bay Bushwalkers.

 

 

To comply with the Club's policy, we must undertake three walks prior to applying for membership, and what better way to start stretching our legs after the Christmas hiatus than with a way to Chinaman's Point.

 

For GOOGLE Map, click here

 

Wednesday, 18 February, can't come soon enough!

 

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