Pondering the problems of the world

 

 

Sitting on the jetty and pondering the problems of the world, I suddenly realise that, at my age, I don't really give a rat's ass anymore. I mean, if walking is good for your health, the postman would be immortal. A whale swims all day, only eats fish, and drinks water, but is still fat. A rabbit runs, and hops, and only lives fifteen years; a tortoise doesn't run, and does mostly nothing, yet it lives for 150 years. And they tell us to exercise? I don't think so.

Now that I'm older, here's what I've discovered:

• I started out with nothing, and I still have most of it.
• My wild oats are mostly enjoyed with prunes and all-bran.
• Funny, I don't remember being absent-minded.
• Funny, I don't remember being absent-minded.
• If all is not lost, then where the heck is it?
• It was a whole lot easier to get older than it was to get wiser.
• Some days, you're the top dog, some days you're the hydrant.
• I wish the buck really did stop here; I sure could use a few of them.
• Kids in the back seat cause accidents.
• Accidents in the back seat cause kids.
• It is hard to make a comeback when you haven't been anywhere.
• The world only beats a path to your door when you're in the bathroom.
• If God wanted me to touch my toes, he'd have put them on my knees.
• When I'm finally holding all the right cards, everyone wants to play chess.
• It is not hard to meet expenses ... they're everywhere.
• The only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth..
• Funny, I don't remember being absent-minded.

Have I sent this message to you before? Or did I get it from you?

 

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We used to call him "The Colonel"

 

 

And what variety of people I met, and what interesting friends I made! Some of the names I still remember are ... the retired dotty surveyor, known as "The Colonel", who spoke to no-one and always walked about with his own cutlery in his pockets. In the mornings he would stand outside the communal shower cubicles and rap his walking-stick on the door if anyone dared to stand under the shower beyond what he considered was a reasonable time." [Extract from "Welcome to BARTON HOUSE!"]

 

 

There, I mentioned him one more and perhaps not for the last time: "The Colonel". His real name was Ernest John Dowling, and his final rank had been Private. He worked as an assistant surveyor in Canberra from at least 1910 and lived at Acton, until he enlisted with the 3rd Division Pioneers on 7 October 1916 in Melbourne. He arrived in France in March 1918 and was admitted to hospital in December with tuberculosis. He returned to Australia in June 1919 and was discharged on 27 July 1919.

 

Back row on right

 

He again worked in Canberra after the war, and when I encountered him in 1965 - it was always an encounter, never a meeting - he was seventy-four years old and living in retirement at Barton House in Canberra. If putting up with a couple of hundred young Bank Johnnies and public servants who were at least half a century younger than him could be called 'retirement'. I had just turned twenty myself and was as callous and uncaring as the rest of them, and it is only in my own retirement, after I have grown as old as he was then, that I feel slightly ashamed of how I and the rest of us used to make a figure of fun of an old man who had served in both wars, had always done his duty and, by choice or through circumstance, lived out the rest of his life in a boarding-house.

 

 

Born in Geelong on 20 March 1891, he died, alone and without a next of kin, on 13 August 1971. He is buried in Woden Cemetery in Canberra.

 

Mount Dowling. Photo courtesy of John Evans

 

Still, "The Colonel", old and dotty as he may have been, seems to have the last laugh because today there is in the Australian Capital Territory a mountain that bears his name and a trig station is also named after him.

 

Trig station on top of Mount Dowling. Photo courtesy of John Evans

 

Im sure that's more immortality than most of us could ever hope for.

 

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I wrote this story on this day 23 years ago

 

 

We were spending Padma's birthday at Moruya where we had an enjoyable midday lunch in the beergarden of the "Adelaide Hotel" overlooking the Moruya River when a man on a pushbike pulled up for a rest. He had a tiny Maltese puppy in his backpack which made us talk to him. He turned out to be an Austrian by the name of Robert Krenn who was pedalling from Melbourne to Sydney (a distance close to 1000 km) and who had ridden his bike all over the world with many stories to tell.

We invited Rob to stay with us at Riverbend and he turned up late that same afternoon to overnight in our guest cottage. We talked and talked and became very good friends. And his little Maltese puppy and our dog Malty became very good friends as well! So much so that when it was time for him to leave next day late in the afternoon, we suggested to him that if he ever needed a good home for his little puppy, we would be very happy to take care of him!

Late that same evening, Rob called us from Burrill Lake, some fifty kilometres north of Batemans Bay, to ask if we had been serious about wanting to take care of his little puppy as he felt we would give him a much better home than he ever could. Of course, we had been serious with our offer! So we got into our car and drove north to meet Rob at his campsite where we drank hot tea, walked along the beach and gazed at the stars, and talked some more. We returned home well after midnight with the new member of our family whom we have called "Rover" as he has already travelled so much!

Malty and Rover are now very good friends and the house is a very lively place with Rover exploring his new home. At night he sleeps on our bed between the two pillows, usually on his back with his four legs spread out in all directions. He is a dear little fellow and is a great addition to the family!"

And that's how the Riverbend Trio became a Quartet! Both Malty and Rover have since gone to Dog Heaven but their memory still lives on!

 

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Just saying ...

 

 

A lot of work is going on across the backfence on our neighbours' acreage where they are planting trees, moving earth, sinking septic tanks, installing toilets, building sheds, and erecting a huge marquee for their commercial venture, "Orange Grove Farm Weddings".

I wish them well but in view of our local demographics, wouldn't funerals be a better business? They could've even pencilled me in.

Just saying ...

 

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The floor has opened up

 

 

Life is first boredom, then fear", the poet Philip Larkin wrote.  The American satirist Edward Gorey put it even more graphically, "Life is intrinsically, well, boring and dangerous at the same time. At any given moment the floor may open up. Of course, it almost never does, that's what makes it so boring."

Life certainly hasn't been boring ever since the world's greatest negotiator became the leader of the free world. Alas, even he has realised that starting a war with a hostile nation of 90 million people is more complicated than buying an apartment block in Manhattan.

After having spent billions of dollars firing off million-dollar missiles to shoot down thousand-dollar drones and having fucked up the oil market and ruined relationships with the Middle East and tanked the world's economy and set inflation rising and disrupted global trade and made the whole world less safe and tied the US military up for who knows how long, all he has achieved is to totally and comprehensively change the first name of Iran’s leader from Ali Khamenei to Mojtaba Khamenei.

Lesser things have set off a chain reaction: on June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were assassinated in Sarajevo. It started the war that was going to end all wars. The world's greatest negotiator has just started the war that may start many more wars.

"They'll think of something", I hear you say, "there's always a solution!" because that's what the world's politicians and power brokers want you to believe while privately they put their heads in their hands and weep.

The floor has opened up.

 

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"A philosopher I ain't!"

 

 

I don't know when they started, those questions about the whys and wherefores and the whole meaning of life, but they seem to have started a lot earlier with me than with my contemporaries who lived for the moment and whose drugs were sex and sports and drinking — and, in some cases, even drugs themselves.

My drug was work and I kept overdosing on it until I had to get off it, only to start again on the same drug somewhere else, hence my shifting from job to job and country to country. If there was any meaning to my life, then this was it: seeing the world while getting high on my work.

I have now lived long enough to realise that this "Lebensangst" was not unique to me but a universal human experience, although we hide it from each other, even from ourselves. We all need a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Without that, we might not. We need a "why". Without it, the world becomes a hamster wheel, a road to nowhere, an existential cul-de-sac, a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing at all.

"Don't worry, be happy!" is a popular answer to the meaning of life. It's what we all want. Even for people who enjoy being miserable (count me in on that one), misery is a form of happiness. But here's the paradox: happiness comes indirectly, not through seeking it directly, so how the heck do you search for it indirectly, if you know that’s what you want?

Perhaps my best friend for almost thirty years until his untimely death in 1995 had the answer. We seemed to live our lives vicariously through each other: he through my endless postcards and letters from far-away corners of the world while he was seemingly stuck in the remote Sepik District of New Guinea, and I through his contented domesticity for which I admired him, despite or perhaps because of my restless life.

There had been an Errol-Flynn-type agelessness about him, and it only became clear towards his end that he was much older than me, and only after his death did I find out that he had been twenty-five years older than me. In some Freudian way, that may have made him the father-figure that had been missing in my life, and made me the son he had never had, but we won't go there as it's merely conjecture on my part.

I had always hoped to exploit that age difference by bouncing off him some of the searching questions of life but always drew a blank. Maybe he knew the answer but thought it too banal or too difficult to answer, because his stock standard reply always was, "A philosopher I ain't!"

Having reached his age, maybe that's the answer I should give in the unlikely event that someone should question me about the whys and wherefores and the whole meaning of life, "A philosopher I ain't!"

 

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In memory of a good friend who died on this day eight years ago

 

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

Twelve months earlier he had still been looking for old friends on his facebook page

 

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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Germany clearly isn’t very German anymore

 

"Germany Abolishes Itself: How We're Putting Our Country in Jeopardy"

 

Padma keeps telling me, "You should visit Germany again", but I keep resisting, and after what I've read on the internet under the heading "Europe is falling apart", I also stopped listening:

 

"I’ve just left for a visit to Germany. Only a family medical emergency could make me willing to come. I’m visiting my hometown to see my sick mum. I was born here. But that only seems to make it worse.

First, the airport was in chaos because of a Lufthansa strike. It was like being in a third-world country. Not five seconds out of the airport’s baggage hall, I was accosted by a foreign beggar.

Now I feel like the only German native in the city. I can’t understand anyone because spoken German has become a hybrid language full of foreign influences and pronunciation. When I last visited, it was still German. The German restaurants serving local dishes are also gone.

Each time I throw something in a rubbish bin, someone rushes up to pull it back out again. They get paid a few cents for bringing it to the recycling centre.

It feels like I’m in a foreign country. Only the architecture still stands. Even the cars are foreign-made, including the German ones.

The hospital that’s taking care of my mother just gave me a 30,000 euro bill. That’s about AUD$50,000. A third of which hasn’t even been incurred yet. It’s a precautionary pre-payment. Apparently, I’ll get some back if the bill doesn’t run up that far. Illegal immigrants and refugees get free healthcare, of course. Germans don't.

Only one person working at the hospital is a native German. And the rest don’t exactly hit the stereotype of a German medical professional. One of the doctors forgot to remove the remnants of his blue eye shadow and red rouge. He must’ve had an interesting weekend.

Of course, some of the culture shock isn't exactly new. The shops don't just close on a Sunday, but for lunch between 12 and 2. The Germans still use fax machines. It's impossible to get anything done without appointments. And the people were always rude. But, minor inefficiencies aside, Germany clearly isn't very German anymore."

 

Of course, Australia is experiencing its own political instability over immigration. I don’t need to tell you. You are living it. And you can see the One Nation polling. But Germany, and the rest of Europe, show us how the change manifests itself. It's a warning of what's to come: dire economic and financial consequences as in Europe, economic stagnation, political standoffs, frequent changes in government, and a complete refusal to cut immigration. We are just a few years behind.

 

 

During another even more benighted time, Germans were given free copies of "Mein Kampf". Today every German should be given a free copy and made to read Thilo Sarrazin's book "Deutschland schafft sich ab".

 

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So you don't come from "the land of poets and thinkers" and can't read German? Here's another book by Thilo Sarrazin, translated into English:

Read it online here

 

"The lagging behind of the Islamic World, the lack of integration of Muslims in Germany and Europe, the oppression of women and the high birth rate of Muslims are a consequence of the cultural influence of Islam. Thilo Sarrazin shows in his book that Islam is the origin of the trouble.

All tendencies to reform Islam and interpret it historically and critically have failed so far. Thilo Sarrazin is obviously the only German decision-maker who has ever read the Koran from cover to cover and therefore he is able to show that the obstacles to reform are inherent in the Koran itself. He understands that the Koran is a Book of Law. No country where Muslims are in the majority has religious freedom or a functioning democracy.

The Islamic world as a whole is suffering from explosive population growth and its fanaticism is constantly increasing. The proportion of Muslims in Germany and Europe is also continuing to grow due to immigration and persistently high birth rates. If this trend continues, Muslims in Germany and Europe are on the way to becoming a majority. This is a dangerous threat to our Western Culture and Society that we must protect ourselves from."

 

 

If only he WERE more like Harold Holt

 

Do I have to spell out what happened to our 17th Prime Minister? He left Australia by sea the same time I did, in December 1967; however, I left by ship and returned — he didn't!

 

At first sight I was going to dismiss this, but then I saw the hidden message in it: if even those who cannot tell the subjunctive from the indicative mood and who usually vote Labor, wish that this clown had done a Harold Holt, then perhaps this country is on the road to recovery.

Not that (m)any of the political class, either here or overseas, have got much going for them. Why, if we want to get some electrical work done in our house, we have to pay a licensed electrician who knows what he's doing, but when it comes to the energy security of our entire country, these moronic individuals with their low IQs are allowed to handle it?

Not that increasing fuel prices are affecting me. I only ever put $50 in.

 

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What a great trip back in time for fifty cents!

 

6th Edition, February 1998
Read it online at www.archive.org

 

Most people buy their Lonely Planet Guide to plan a trip; I bought this old 1998 edition for a mere fifty cents at the local op-shop to take a trip back in time. And I discovered so much!

 

 

Only the very back of the guidebook, the last three pages 359-361, is dedicated to the place where I had spent most of my time in New Guinea. It begins with the explanation, "The following information is included in case the situation in Bougainville dramatically improves and travel onto the island is once again allowed. But this information is likely to be out of date since Bougainville has been off-limits for eight years and there's been considerable damage to the towns in the south."

And equally so about the place in which I first lived and worked: "Rabaul is a weird wasteland, buried in deep black volcanic ash. The broken frames of its buildings poke out of the mud like the wings of a dead bird. Almost the entire old town is buried and barren and looks like a movie set for an apocalyse film. Streets and streets of rubble and ruined buildings recede in every direction. The scale of what happened to Rabaul cannot be appreciated until you see it. If you were fortunate enough to walk its busy, noisy and colourful streets before September 1994, be prepared for a shock."

 

 

With the help of the old town map on page 315 I was able to walk, in my mind, from my office in Park Street to Casuarina Avenue, across Court Street, Namanula Road and Tavur Street, before turning left into Vulcan Street to arrive at the company-supplied accommodation, a converted Chinese trade store which I shared with two other accountants.

 

 

Then there is the Port Moresby City map on page 112 which also shows Cuthbertson Street leading down to the harbour, where I used to sit in my parked car in the sweltering heat on a Sunday morning, waiting for the newspapers from "down south" to arrive at the news agency to grab one of the few copies of the weekend edition of the Australian Financial Review which always advertised the best job vacancies, and to check my mailbox at the post office on the opposite side of the street for letters from "down south", but especially for any job offer in response to some application I had sent off in previous weeks.

 

 

During my first time in Port Moresby — I clocked up three employments there — I lived at AIR NIUGINI's pilots' mess at Six Mile but spent most of my nights at my first-ever Australian girlfriend's house in Tara Place in Boroko. That was until she started asking me when I would make an honest woman out of her. I had never heard that phrase before but, suspecting the worst, relocated to Lae on the other side of the country.

 

 

Page 131 reminded me of trips to Yule Island where "the missionaries who arrived at Yule Island in 1885 were some of the first European visitors to the Papuan coast of New Guinea." On the way there I would stop over at a small trade store at Hisiu, then run by an Australian — who is worth a whole story in himself — and his local Papuan wife.

Then there were those many trips out to Idler's Bay to the west, Bootless Inlet to the east, and north to Brown River. Sailing my CORSAIR dinghy from the Royal Papuan Yacht Club all the way out of Fairfax Harbour to Gemo Island and Lolorua Island and capsizing it far out at sea. I would have never made it back home had I not been with my mate Brian Herde who dived under the boat and pushed the centreboard back up through the slot so that I, sitting astride the upturned hull, could grap it and pull the boat upright again. I lost my precious wristwatch and we lost all our beer but only very nearly our lives.

 

 

The map of Lae on page 176 shows the corner of 7th Street and Huon Road where I lived and spent my last Christmas in the country in 1974 before flying out to my next assignment in Burma. My old friend Noel had flown across from Wewak to spend Christmas with me. He helped me pack up my gear and stencil my shipping box in big black letters
M.P. GOERMAN, MYANMA OIL CORPORATION, RANGOON, BURMA.

I still remember discussing with him another job I had been offered only eighteen months earlier as manager of a thriving co-operative at Angoram on the banks of the mighty Sepik River. Angoram was no more than a couple of hours' drive away from Wewak and I had been tempted to accept the job to be near my friend but how different things may have turned out because only a few months later, again at Christmas time, I developed accute appendicitis which was quickly and successfully dealt with through a hurried operation at the newly-built hospital at Arawa but which could've been far more complicated in the remote wilds of the Sepik District. And, of course, there would've been no access to the Australian Financial Review with all those job ads! We are so often the product of the circumstances we find ourselves in.

 

 

And then there is Wewak itself, described on the guidebook's page 254 as "an attractive town where you can happily spend a day or two in transit to the Sepik or Irian Jaya." Well, that was then: today Weak is a very unsafe and run-down place and the border to Irian Jaya is also closed. The town map on page 256 still mentions the Windjammer Hotel which burnt down many years ago. The larger district map on the facing pages 250 and 251 shows the road to Cape Wom and the Hawain River where my friend Noel used to live before Independence and the unruly natives forced him back to Australia. He considered himself lucky to have been able to sell his out-of-town property to some religious mission. They were the only bidder and offered him a "fire-sale" price, which was his final recompense for a lifetime spent in New Guinea.

 

 

What a great trip back in time for a mere fifty cents!

 

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Finally, they've made a movie about you and me!

 

 

The story of Harvey Krumpet follows Harvie from a troubled childhood in Poland with a "schizophrenic" mother to his migration to Australia. Despite suffering from Tourette's, being struck by lightning, having his testicle removed, and contracting Alzheimer's, he remains optimistic, kind, and collects "fakts" about life.

It's a movie about you and me — but mainly about me!

 

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INSIDE JOB

 

 

Charles Ferguson's documentary, INSIDE JOB, explores the reasons and the effects of the 2008 world-wide financial downturn, starting with an examination of the problem in microcosm - in the small country of Iceland, which was a model community until the banks were de-regulated.

 

Read a preview of the book here

 

Like others before him, Ferguson claims the beginning of the problem was in the 80s when President Ronald Reagan deregulated the American banking industry, but he goes on to demonstrate that executive greed and dishonesty have been rampant in recent years.

Ferguson's really well made documentary makes at least some of the puzzle clearer. There are graphs and charts and graphics and numbers galore, but the bottom line is that the poor old punter has been taken for a ride by greedy corporate business tycoons who have been hand-in-glove with government departments.

It's a horror movie, in a way, one designed to make you angry and want to do something about it.

The frightening thing is that the same people who were advising Bush and Clinton are now advising Biden and the bonuses keep on getting bigger and millions and millions of lives have been decimated, destroyed by these people and they are just making as many billions of dollars for themselves as they used to.

This is a film for our time. Everybody ought to see it and get angry.

 

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