Don't live your life by chance but by choice, they say, and yet isn't so much in life — from the circumstances we are born into to sudden, unforeseen events — left to chance? As was my ending up in this small riverside village of Nelligen.
As I wrote elsewhere - click here - it all started in 1991 - or was it 1992? An acquaintance from the HARMONIE German Club in Canberra had tax problems and, as a former tax agent, I helped him out without asking for any money — after all, we were both from the same "Vaterland".
As former German — and a "Saubayer" to boot — he naturally wanted to do me, the "Saupreußen", a favour in return and kept inviting me to his holiday home on the coast. For a long time I didn't take him up on it as I was self-employed and worked almost every day, seven days a week.
Then, one day, I drove the 150 kilometers down to the coast. I almost drove past this small village on the banks of the Clyde River before I remembered the former German and his kind offer, and so I asked the friendly lady in the small village shop: "Do you know where the German carpenter Tony Finsterer lives?" Of course, everyone knew everyone in the village and I was given directions to his house across the river.
The house was all locked up. I called Tony at home in Canberra: "I'm at your cottage! Where are you?" "The key is under the water tank. Climb over the fence, and make yourself at home," he said. And so I spent a beautiful weekend on the coast. And then another one, and that should have been the end of it, but it was only the beginning of the end.
At the time, "Riverbend" had come up for sale and, more out of curiosity than any real interest, I went along to the auction. Its reserve price of $500,000 was well outside my reach, as it must've been for everyone else, as it didn't sell. However, it had piqued my interest and I began looking around for something more affordable, which presented itself in a vacant building block high above and overlooking the Clyde River.
A chap in the house next door was sitting on his verandah enjoying the view and a can of beer. He invited me over and, over another can of beer — or was it three? — we got to know each other. He had lived and worked in Rabaul some years before I had lived and worked there; he had lived and worked on Thursday Island before I had lived and worked there — in fact, their daughter Fiona was born there, as noted on the Customs arrival card below which shows as 'Country of Birth' Thursday Island — and we shared stories about the same people and places.
It all felt a bit like coming home, and before the day was out, I had bought the vacant building block. That should have been the end, but it was only the beginning of the end because the neighbour on the other side objected to my building plans and several changes I offered him. In the meantime, "Riverbend" across the river was still for sale, and in a sudden rush of blood to my head I felt bold enough to ask the real estate agent if there had been any change in the reserve price. "Make an offer!" he said, suggesting that the owner, who had bought the place four years ago but was no longer living there, was willing to negotiate. As I found out only later — and at the hands of the same neighbours — he'd had an almighty fight with the neighbours who were giving him hell, and he was more than just willing to negotiate: he was desperate to sell! And so, a few days later, I had negotiated a much lower price and signed on the dotted line, with settlement in December 1993.
Of course, I remained friends with the chap across the river and his wife, until their rather untimely deaths, first his and then hers. And, of course, the neighbours tried to give me hell as well, but I hadn't lived all over the world and rubbed shoulders with just about every creed and breed for nothing. The antics of this couple of incurable malcontents — it was the first time a woman gave me the "two-finger salute" or shout "Just because you fly the Australian flag doesn't make you an Australian" each morning as I hoisted the flag — became laughable and almost perversely lovable. I'm still here. She isn't: she died some years ago.
The new owners of the house across the river are also selling up. I almost feel like doing a "pretend-inspection" to relive one last time the many sunfilled days we sat on that verandah and the many dinners we enjoyed, feasting on his wife's savoury mince. I still miss them both.
