What a day it has been!

 

It kicked off with two electricians from ORIGIN ENERGY ripping out my analog electricity meters and replacing them with - well, smart meters, which operate like a smartphone and can be read by remote control from their office in Sydney or wherever it is.

Then it was off to the Bay for a spot of lunch at our favourite Thai Restaurant, followed by a visit to our favourite op-shops, both Vinnies and Salvos, where I picked up a couple of books and a DVD or two.

Then, totally on impulse, "Let's go to the Zoo!" and so we did. We found the animals behind the fence and the human zoo in front so totally entertaining that we immediately splurged on an annual visitors pass, and expect to be on a first-name basis with all the giraffes very soon.

Padma spent another hour at the shopping centre - to stock up on toilet paper, among other things. I stayed in the car with my latest book acquisitions, and observed an old man in a hi-vis vest, with grey hair and stooped shoulders, who collected shopping trolleys while a whole bunch of young, energetic working-age males skylarked all around him. Presumably, he'd been working all his life to know any different, while they had gone straight from school onto the dole without knowing any different either. There's something very, very wrong in this country!

After all that, I couldn't wait to get back onto the Kings Highway, and to see those magic mountains rise up ahead of us. Back to "Riverbend", to shut the gate, kick off my shoes, and sit on the verandah with a coldie.

Googlemap Riverbend

 

Sieh nach den Sternen - gib acht auf die Gassen!

 

So stand es auf der Vorderseite meines Abschlusszeugnisses vom 18. März 1960 welches ich für über sechzig Jahre mit mir durch die ganze Welt schleppte (aber wer in Australien oder Südafrika oder Neu-Guinea oder Birma oder Saudi Arabien wollte denn schon wissen daß ich in allen Fächern "sehr gut" hatte, ausser Religion und Naturlehre - "gut" - weil ich immer wieder die Spanische Inquisition erwähnte und mehr wissen wollte als wie es die Kaulquappen machten, Musik - "befriedigend", Zeichnen - "ausreichend", Werken - "befriedigend", und Sport - "mangelhaft"?)

 

 

Also wurde aus mir kein Mozart und auch kein Dürer und schon gar nicht ein Fritz Walter, sondern nur ein ganz langweiliger Buchhalter und dann Wirtschaftsprüfer und Wirtschaftsberater und Komputerprogrammierer.

Es dauerte mehr als sechzig Jahre bis mir plötzlich klar wurde daß das Wichtigste an diesem Abschlusszeugnis nicht die Zensuren in den Innenseiten waren sondern das Wilhelm Raabe Zitat auf der Vorderseite.

Für mehr als sechzig Jahre war ich ein Träumer gewesen. Jetzt, nachdem ich in meinem Leben in vielen Sackgassen gelandet bin, ist mir endlich klar geworden daß ich dem Wilhelm Raabe früher hätte zuhören sollen:

Sieh nach den Sternen - gib acht auf die Gassen!

 

 

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

Tempus fugit

 

It's been seventeen years since I travelled to Thursday Island trying to retrieve that irretrievable time when I was young and all my life still lay ahead of me in endless abundance. Now, seventeen years later, I am again looking back, trying to retrieve that irretrievable time when I was still trying to retrieve time.

"Why did you go back to Thursday Island?" people asked me then. "Because it's there," I replied. "But so are your comfortable slippers and the TV remote", they said. Q.E.D., I thought.

I may have been struck down with what psychoanalysts refer to as G.T.D.S.B.S. syndrome (* Going to do something a bit silly syndrome - source: Freud, Dreams and the Unconscious, published 1896), or it may simply have been a wish to revisit one of the many odd and fascinating places I used to live and work in - and they don't come any odder than T.I.!

There are two words I don't want to find myself uttering as an old man, and they are "If only ...". If only. We all have our own "if onlys". If only we had studied harder; if only we had stuck with that job ..."

My trip to T.I. was to eliminate one "if only" and to confirm in my own mind that I couldn't have stayed much longer on the island even if my then boss, Cec Burgess, had been less of a crotchety old bastard.

Socrates said that the unexamined life isn't worth living. What he actually said looked something like this:

(to which Plato is said to have replied, "Keep it in the jar with the lid on or it will all dry up!")

This then is the journal of my journey to Thursday Island and another examination of my unexamined past: click here. Tempus fugit indeed!

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

What's in a name?

 

This morning I was so engrossed in a book that I burnt my porridge and had a chocolate-coated marshmellow for breakfast instead. The book I was reading was "Beijing Confidential" by Jan Wong, which gave me more insight into modern China than anything else I had read before.

Coming to the end of this 300-page book, I tried to find out if Jan Wong had written anything else about China. I searched archive.org and found "A Comrade Lost and Found" and "Chinese Whispers - Searching for Forgiveness in Beijing". Great, I thought, before I realised that both were rebadged "Beijing Confidentials". What's in a name? That which they call "Chinese Whispers" would read just like "Beijing Confidential".

After some more googling, I did find one new book by Jan Wong, "Red China Blues - My long March from Mao to now", which I shall "test-read" on archive.org before ordering it as a hardcopy to have and to hold.

Googlemap Riverbend

 

The Ian Grindrod Memorial Library

 

Some people have lots of friends, mainly because they can't spell the word 'acquaintances'. My best friend ever, Noel, was almost a lifelong friend as we first met aboard the good ship PATRIS that took me back to Europe after my compulsory first two years in Australia in 1967, and we remained friends until his untimely death in 1995.

Ours was not a mushy friendship: we only occasionally met which was usually around Christmas because that was the only time we both got time off from work and not because we were celebrating Christmas; neither did we celebrate each other's birthday simply because we didn't know each other's birthday, and if we had known it, we wouldn't have celebrated it anyway; which also meant that we never knew each other's age which seemed similar since I've always felt older than I really am, and Noel seemed younger than he really was. As I found out only after his death, he had been a whole twenty-five years older which seemed to explain the inexplicable when he suddenly passed away.

Noel's passing left a big hole in my life, and I didn't find another like-minded friend until by chance I met Ian Grindrod down here in little Nelligen. It was an almost instant meeting of the minds, and we had endless discussions about books, politics, philosophy, world affairs; in fact, just about anything because Ian knew something about everything.

He was the most knowledgeable and the most widely-read man I had ever met, and the kindest and most helpful as he helped me repaint my unit in Sydney, convert my garage into a library, and scores of lesser things. It almost became a catch phrase: "If you need help, call Ian!"

In more recent years he had become more withdrawn. Some personal tragedies and worsening health issues made him shun other people's company, although I tried to stay in touch with the occasional phone call. The last one was in May 2020, after which I emailed him:

"It was certainly good to talk to you. Raise any of the subjects that we discussed and you'd get nothing but a blank stare from the rest of the unwashed majority, so what's stopping us to have more such conversation? I almost dread phoning you - even though I want to keep the connection alive - because I can sense I am intruding and you are not telling me to piss off only because of your misunderstood "British" politeness. You came from Coventry, so send me there, if that is what is on your mind.😎 Cheers Peter"

His reply was immediate:

"No, Peter, I won't be sending you to Coventry as I do savour the flavour of these conversations. Why can't there be more? There can, but I'll leave it to you to pick up the phone as I feel I'm slipping into geriatric agoraphobia probably stemming from a retiring personality, health issues and this terrible run of external events. But tell me, do you ever feel contented with your lifestyle? I rarely have that luxury as I feel there is always something driving me on. Maybe I need a Freud-like interlocutor. Anyway, as one of those historical British characters remarked 'if at first you don't succeed ...' I need intelligent intrusions to get me off the self-imposed treadmill of chores that I fill my life with. Thanks for the call and the message and call again. Cheers Ian P.S. The last book I got from Booktopia was "DARK EMU" authored by Bruce Pascoe. Don't think it would sit comfortably with you but gives a little-known perspective on our First Nation people."

And then came yesterday's text message! Ian, remember the garage we converted into a library? After you'd done such a wonderful job with all that woodpanelling under the domed roof, I half-jokingly suggested we call it the Ian Grindrod Memorial Library. Well, I am no longer joking: the Ian Grindrod Memorial Library it is! Every time I sit in it, I shall remember you - and every other time as well! Rest in Peace, my friend!

Googlemap Riverbend

 

 

P.S. Looking back to happier times - click here and here.

P.P.S. Ian arrived here as a migrant in 1949 just as I did 16 years later. He arrived at the age of 14, with his parents and seven other siblings.