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SELLING BELOW PURCHASE PRICE! My vendor purchased this dream property in 2023 for $1,688,000 but life has changed for him, he wants it moved - so his loss could be your gain."
Not only has the vendor's life changed but also his bank balance which is now almost $300,000 lower than it was in 2023, after taking into account the stamp duty on purchasing, the agent's commission on selling, and the legal fees both times, because the property sold for a mere $1,475,000 four days ago. And there will be many more riches to rags stories after Labor put the boot into the real estate market and the rising interest rates also begin to bite. The only ones who "cleaned up" were Pam and Jack who bought the place in 1998 for $240,000 and resold it fourteen years later for $1,200,000. Those were the days!
Only time will tell if $1,475,000 was a bargain. Not that it worries me. I've resigned myself to the idea that I will end my days at "Riverbend" which you can see in the photo below in the bottom left-hand corner.
Click on photo for a close-up of "Riverbend"
"Dolce Domum". Life could be a lot worse than living at "Riverbend" while dreaming of being someplace else!
Camp 1 on a rainy Sunday afternoon. Hans Eric Helgesson sitting on the right - click here.
Did you spend some time on the Bougainville Copper Project in the sixties and seventies? If you did, we want to hear from you! There are not many of us left and it would be good to hear from those who lived with us in the camps or in Arawa or Kieta and shared with us the experience."
Which is how I began my Bougainville Copper Project website in 2003, after which I received hundrds of replies from people who had settled back in Australia or stayed on in New Guinea or were still on the move.
Roy Goldsworthy's Sunday afternoon 'tea party' in Camp 1
One email was from Roy Goldsworthy, who had lived across the hallway from me in Camp 1 in Panguna in 1972, and was still on the move. As he wrote, "Hi Pete, a bit of a surprise to see the Bougainville Copper site and even myself pictured.
I have moved on from BCL – and have always liked to work elsewhere – have just come back to Oz after three years in China, then two before that in Korea. Other than a year in Oz in 1999, I have spent from 1985 totally overseas – Singapore – Qatar – Abu Dhabi – Dubai. Due to head off again this weekend to Kuala Lumpur for a job for Qatar. Other than a couple of years engineering after leaving BCL I have specialized in the design, construction, installation, and commissioning of offshore living quarters on oil platforms. My permanent email is rsgolds[AT]xxxxx.xxx
Drop a line, Regards, Roy"
He has since then settled in Malaysia, and we have had plenty of time to exchange emails. One of the 'inmates' that shared with us the same end of the hallway and our regular Sunday afternoon 'tea parties' was a Swedish radio technician, and Roy thought he had recently seen his name listed on a radio club's website near Lismore on the Central Coast.
Having learned the precise spelling of the Swede's unusual name, I searched www.archive.gov.au for more information, and there it was:
Hans Helgesson's registration card at the Bonegilla Migrant Camp
He had come through the same migrant camp six months after me, but had stayed for over a month instead of my short two nights, after which he had moved to Brisbane and stayed at the Wacol Migrant Centre. Had we known, we could've talked about it during those rained-out Sunday afternoon 'tea parties', but then again, we weren't reminiscing about our past back then but instead looked ahead to what our future might hold.
This immigration arrival card confirmed that this was the Hans Helgesson we both knew from our time on Bougainville, and so I continued my search, only to be pulled up short by this website ...
... and this probate notice suggesting that he had died in the tiny town of Coraki, half an hour's drive south of Lismore. The probate had been applied for by Tor Richard Helgesson, who presumably was his son:
His wife had already died three years before him:
What a sudden shock. He was only one year older than me and just one year younger than Roy who exclaimed, "Life is a lottery!" And so it is.
I had never heard of Coraki, so this was as good a time as any to learn a little more about this small town on the confluence of the Richmond and Wilsons Rivers in northeastern New South Wales. With a population of fewer than 1,200 people, it's barely three times the size of our village of Nelligen. A good choice, Hans, in retirement and to rest in peace.
Coraki Cemetery
"We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever."
An old friend of mine used to tell me, "Peter, you've done enough for three lifetimes!", whenever I voiced my regret about having missed out on something. He had gone down the well-trodden 9-to-5 path, and didn't seem to mind.
I do mind not having done more when there was still time, and so today I lost myself in another travel book which I had read before but in too much of a hurry to do it full justice. Simon Winchester's "Outposts - Journeys to the surviving relics of the British Empire" makes you want to pack a bag and follow his footsteps. I chewed on every word on every page, stopping just long enough to write down the titles of two books, "Shelter from the Spray" and "Rocking the Boat", for further reading.
I had never heard of "Shelter from the Spray", the story of two German brothers, Frederick and Gustav Stoltenhoff, who had fantastical Robinson Crusoe ideas (or delusions) to settle on the aptly-named Inaccessible Island, which lies 40 km southwest of Tristan da Cunha in the South Atlantic, in 1871. It's a rare book and I hope I can find a copy.
The other one, "Rocking the Boat", is by Ruth Boydell, with whom Simon Winchester sailed to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. While googling for it, I found the above announcement by the Queanbeyan Library, just "up the road" from here, of her book talk this coming Tuesday, 22nd September. It's too short a notice and too far away for me to attend.
Simon Winchester talks about sailing to forbidden Diego Garcia with Ruth Boydell
Having at one time moved from one end of the world to the other at the drop of a hat - or at the end of a very short telephonic job offer - and now being unprepared to attend a book talk which is only a one-and-a-half-hour drive and still two days away tells you all you need to know of how much my life has changed. No more "Rocking the Boat" for me!
Language, they say, is an instinct instead of a learned skill. And there’s a whole book on it if you’re interested: "The Language Instinct" by Stephen Pinker. I listened to its audiobook last night and it kept me awake for several hours.
"As you are reading these words, you are taking part in one of the wonders of the natural world. For you and I belong to a species with a remarkable ability: we can shape events in each other's brains with exquisite precision. I am not referring to telepathy or mind control or the other obsessions of fringe science; even in the depictions of believers these are blunt instruments compared to an ability that is uncontroversially present in every one of us. That ability is language. Simply by making noises with our mouths, we can reliably cause precise new combinations of ideas to arise in each other’s minds. The ability comes so naturally that we are apt to forget what a miracle it is."
I replayed it again and again. Insomnia well spent! This morning I shall continue reading the book on the sunny verandah. Unfortunately, the book is not available online except for the above 95 pages, so you may have to get your own copy on ebay. Or listen to the man himself here:
I had done most of the burning-off before my fire permit was suspended because of high tenperatures and extreme fire anger, so we went for a drive to Moruya instead to visit the local market.
By the time we got there, the day had already turned into something of a scorcher, and yet the market was full with hundreds of people and scores of dogs on the lead and in the lead. With already much of the formerly grassed market covered in hot concrete and bitumen, some dog owner had fitted out their canine companions with 'shoes' of the kind that when you ask for a 'pair', they sell you four. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a photo of some of their more fashionable paw-wear.
One stall sold old cameras and I could relate to all of them, as I too had owned a Kodak Brownie that took 2+1⁄4-inch square pictures, and later also a folding bellows camera together with handheld lightmeter. And what about those vintage flashbulbs? I must've used hundreds of them.
Taking a joy flight with South Coast Seaplanes seemed tempting, too. I had done some pretty hairy flying in New Guinea and being cooped up in a tiny plane didn't worry me until I saw the very young pilot and the very high price. Anyway, it was already close to lunchtime and, since they didn't serve food on board, we drove to the Moruya Bowling Club.
I remember having heard about Sam McLennan who had built a raft entirely of marine rubbish which he hoped to sail from Tasmania to Sydney to raise awareness of ocean pollution. And here it was, tied up beside the market on the Moruya River. It takes all sorts, doesn't it?
I leave you with a YouTube recording of a DVD I picked up at the local op-shop, "Ten Pound Poms - The Story of Invisible British Migration to Australia ...", which reminds me of my own adventure more than sixty years ago, except that I paid fifty pounds because I wasn't British. And I never whinged because I never regretted having come to this wonderful country. I mean, where else could I have had such a beautiful weekend?
The new owners did not change much of its outside appearance apart from giving it a 'cool' blue-and-white paint job.
The year was 1985. I had come back from my last posting in Greece. My Saudi boss, who was reluctant to let me go, had promised to let me continue my audit work from Australia, and so I bought this property on the edge of Townsville's
CBD to be both office and home to me.
The inside has been quite stunningly renovated. The humble verandah has become an extension of the living-space.
I bought the place for something like $50,000-plus but the promised work never materialised and so I
left, first for Sydney and sometime later back to Canberra from where I had started out twenty years ago.
I hung onto the place for some years as a rental property
but the trouble with maintenance and defaulting tenants was just too much bother and so I sold it again in April 1998
for a mere $87,000 - hardly the sort of rags-to-riches story so often touted by real estate agents.
The front room, once meant to have been my office, is now a beautifully appointed lounge.
Behind the lounge is another sitting-room. Its feature is the silky-oak room divider, repainted a gleaming white.
The garden has the city skyline as its backdrop, illustrating how close this ideal 'city pad' is to Townsville's mall and CBD.
The property resold four more times since I sold it in 1998, the last time in 2021 for $495,000. It's listed as a $500-a-week rental in January 2024.
The improvements continued. For all the latest photos, click here.
Townsville's Castle Hill in the background
Another example of my mad life and the equally mad property market!
I didn't write this
but WOW does it
speak to me!!!
Barely the day started and
it's already six in the evening.
Barely Monday has arrived
and it's already Friday again
... and the month is almost over
... and the year is almost over.
... and already 40, 50, 60, 70, or indeed 80 years
of our lives have passed
.. .and we realise that we lost
our parents, our friends
... and we realise it's too late
to go back.
So, let's try, despite
everything, to enjoy
the remaining time.
Let's keep looking for
activities that we like.
Let's put some colour into
our grey.
Let's smile at the little
things in life that put
balm in our hearts.
And despite everything,
we must continue to enjoy
with serenity this time we
have left.
Let's try to eliminate the
'afters':
I'll do it after;
I'll say it after;
I'll think about it after.
Don't leave everything until 'after'.
Because what we don't
understand is that:
Afterwards, the coffee
gets cold.
Afterwards, priorities change.
Afterwards, the charm is
broken.
Afterwards, health passes.
Afterwards, the kids grow up.
Afterwards, parents get old.
Afterwards, promises are
forgotten.
Afterwards, the day becomes
the night.
Afterwards, life ends.
And then it's too late.
So, let's leave nothing until 'after'.
Because if we wait until 'after', we might lose the
best moments, the best
experiences, the best friends,
the best family.
The day is today. The
moment is now.
We are no longer at the
age where we can afford
to postpone what needs
to be done right away.
It looks like an eternity,
but it's a short trip.
Enjoy life and always
be kind.
Having been a rusted-on Liberal voter since I day I swore my allegiance to the Queen, the local branch of the Liberal Party wished me a Happy Birthday and thanked me for supporting Liberal values and good public policy in NSW.
Please don't blame me for Karl Marx. I gave away my German citizenship in 1971.
Not to be outdone, my socialist friend up the lane reminded me to get back to work, which I did by surreptitiously watching BHP's share price on my mobile phone while having lunch and a few chardies at the golf club. It must've worked because BHP broke a dizzying weeklong losing-streak, from $64.58 last Wednesday to $59.25 yesterday, by today going up 95 cents to $60.20. That's still well below BHP's all-time high of $68.77, but there's always "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow".
On the way home, we dropped in at the Botanical Gardens to inspect the two trees I had planted decades ago in memory of my late father and my best friend Noel Butler. Unfortunately, the old trees hadn't survive the 2019/2020 bushfires but have since then been replaced.
The famous memory trick 'i before e (except after c)' has so many exceptions that it shouldn't even be a spelling rule, least of all in German, but some friendly Anglo-Saxon soul changed my intended "mein" (meaning "my") to "mien" - or was he simply dyslexic? He also anglicised my father's last name by dropping the umlaut and the second 'n', even though, unlike me, 'mein Vater' never emigrated - except once, involuntarily, as POW to Russia.
And if that wasn't enough, Padma had baked me a traditional German cheese cake and there was also a birthday present waiting for me when we returned home: a beautiful PARKER pen given to me by our long-time friends across the river, Elaine and Neil. Some days are diamonds ...
Ich wanderte im Jahre 1965 vom (k)alten Deutschland nach Australien aus. In Erinnerung an das alte Sprichwort "Gott hüte mich vor Sturm und Wind und Deutschen die im Ausland sind" wurde ich in 1971 im Dschungel von Neu-Guinea australischer Staatsbürger. Das kostete mich nur einen Umlaut und das zweite n im Nachnamen - von -mann auf -man.
Australien gab mir eine zweite Sprache und eine zweite Chance und es war auch der Anfang und das Ende: nach fünfzig Arbeiten in fünfzehn Ländern - "Die ganze Welt mein Arbeitsfeld" - lebe ich jetzt im Ruhestand in Australien an der schönen Südküste von Neusüdwales.
Ich verbringe meine Tage mit dem Lesen von Büchern, segle mein Boot den Fluss hinunter, beschäftige mich mit Holzarbeit, oder mache Pläne für eine neue Reise.
This blog is written in the version of English that is standard here. So recognise is spelled recognise and not recognize etc. I recognise that some North American readers may find this upsetting, and while I sympathise with them, I sympathise even more with my countrymen who taught me how to spell. However, as an apology, here are a bunch of Zs for you to put where needed.
Zzzzzz
Disclaimer
This blog has no particular axe to grind, apart from that of having no particular axe to grind. It is written by a bloke who was born in Germany at the end of the war (that is, for younger readers, the Second World War, the one the Americans think they won single-handedly). He left for Australia when most Germans had not yet visited any foreign countries, except to invade them. He lived and worked all over the world, and even managed a couple of visits back to the (c)old country whose inhabitants he found very efficient, especially when it came to totting up what he had consumed from the hotels' minibars. In retirement, he lives (again) in Australia, but is yet to grow up anywhere.
He reserves the right to revise his views at any time. He might even indulge in the freedom of contradicting himself. He has done so in the past and will most certainly do so in the future. He is not persuading you or anyone else to believe anything that is reported on or linked to from this site, but encourages you to use all available resources to form your own opinions about important things that affect all our lives and to express them in accordance with Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Everything on this website, including any material that third parties may consider to be their copyright, has been used on the basis of “fair dealing” for the purposes of research and study, and criticism and review. Any party who feels that their copyright has been infringed should contact me with details of the copyright material and proof of their ownership and I will remove it.
And finally, don't bother trying to read between the lines. There are no lines - only snapshots, most out of focus.
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