(part of my Sydney trip 1st - 3rd December 2013;
stay tuned for more)

Padma, I swear, I was looking at the ocean;
the girls just happened to be standing there!

No visit to Sydney is complete without a visit to Manly. So, with the help of my Seniors Card, I bought myself a 24-hour pass for all trains, buses, and ferries (at $2.50 still the best bargain in town!) and jumped on a train to Town Hall. From there I went down to Platform 6 and boarded another train for Circular Quay, from where it was just a short walk to Wharf 3 to board the Manly Ferry.

Past the "Diamond Princess" tied up at Circular Quay, ...

... and the Opera House ...

... before I could walk down that famous pedestrian mall which connects the harbourside of Manly with the big blue ocean beyond.

Manly's famous seaside pub, the Hotel Steyne, had just opened its doors which saved me pushing them open. I just flopped down, looked out the open windows towards New Zealand, and had a beer (or was it three?)

The weather was perfect but it was also my last day in Sydney and I had a bus to catch. Pity as I was tempted to avail myself of another bargain offered by the good people of Manly.

(part of my Sydney trip 1st - 3rd December 2013;
stay tuned for more)

My visit to Sydney had a dual purpose: to attend the ANZ Bank Retired Officers' Christmas Party in the ANZ Centre at 242 Pitt Street, and to take a look-through-the-door into my tiny rental unit at McMahons Point.

The first was not tax-deductible and predictable; the second was and also a lovely surprise as the new tenant, a friendly lady-musicologist who teaches at a nearby school and plays the pipe organ at the local church, not only looks after the place very well but also loves where she is.

She even has her own upright piano in the sitting-room. I wanted to know what the neighbours thought of her playing it. She said, "They ask for it if I haven't played for a while." Three cheers to living in a small body corporate with just seven friendly neighbours!

So why shouldn't she love it there? Blues Point Road is like a little piece of Paris with is numerous outdoor cafés, bars, and pubs and yet within easy walking-distance to the 'Big Bad City' at North Sydney and the trains and ferries across the Bridge.

Not that I could ever live there again - or, for that matter, anywhere else in Sydney - but, as they say, "One man's hole-in-the-wall is another woman's home".

(part of my Sydney trip 1st - 3rd December 2013;
stay tuned for more)

Early morning at the Blues point Hotel; too early for Frank Joslin!!!

I hadn't seen Frank of "doing a Joslin" fame - read here - since 1985 so we both thought it a good idea to meet up in Sydney. Either for the same reason that I no longer buy green bananas or because he's too busy in his retirement, he thought he would somehow catch up with me without agreeing on a definite date and time even though he knew that I would be travelling without a mobile phone or any other tracking device.

Well, I never saw him in Sydney on the Sunday nor on the Monday nor on the Tuesday morning when I got up at the crack of dawn - as country people do - and vacated my room at the Blues Point pub to see the sights of Sydney.

When I got home to "Riverbend" late that night, I found this email waiting for me:

Well, Frank, I did escape without paying my bill by climbing through the toilet window.

Unfortunately, I had given my personal details upon arrival so that the cops were already waiting for me when I got back.

I am writing this from the local watchhouse. Luckily, I am sharing my cell with a couple of illegal migrants who have free access to the internet (not to mention a host of other things denied to taxpayers of this country), so I can at least send you this short message ☺

Let's meet again in 2031 ! That'll give us another 28 years to make all the arrangements!

I first met Wolfgang in 1985 after I had arrived in Sydney in an ill-fated attempt to make it my home - click here. He'd already by then become an institution in the Blues Point Hotel with other patrons simply walking around him as though he was just a piece of furniture. On the few occasions when I dropped in, I tried to get there early so as have a word or two in German with him before the alcohol completely clouded his brain.

I returned to the hotel more than twenty years later in 2006. The hotel had a new owner by then and also a new interior but Wolfgang was still sitting there, like a relic from another age, quaffing his drinks although by this time he had strategically moved next to the Men's Room so as not to waste too much time between drinks. He was living testimony to what the human liver can endure!

Now, in 2013, sitting at the bar, the place seemed strangely empty to me. So I asked the awkward question (although I could already guess the answer), "Where's Wolfgang?" The heads of those at the bar turned towards me in unison, as if following the flight of a tennis ball at Wimbledon, "Wolfgang? Wolfgang is dead! Died of lung cancer couple of years ago." Of course, I remembered that he smoked as much as he drank. Still, I believe cirrhosis of the liver must've been his Plan B.

"Any man's death diminishes me", wrote John Donne. I wonder how diminished the publican's takings were following Wolfgang's demise. Mind you, I could already spot several promising replacements breasting his bar.

(part of my Sydney trip 1st - 3rd December 2013;
stay tuned for more)

Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than a moving plane, ship, train or bus. There is an almost quaint correlation between what is in front of your eye and the thoughts you are able to have in your head: large thoughts require large views, new thoughts new places.

Introspective reflections which are liable to stall are helped along by the flow of the landscape. The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do. The task can be as paralysing as having to tell a joke on demand. Thinking improves when parts of the mind are given other tasks, are charged with listening to music or following a line of trees. The music or the view distracts for a time that nervous, censorious, practical part of the mind which is inclined to shut down when it notices something difficult emerging in consciousness and which runs scared of memories, longings, introspective or original ideas and prefers instead the administrative and the impersonal.

And so, for six hours from Batemans Bay to Sydney and for another six hours from Sydney back to Batemans Bay, I sat thinking and every time the mind went blank, having hit on a difficult idea, the flow of my consciousness was assisted by the possibility of looking out of the window, locking on to an object and following it for a few seconds, until a new coil of thought was ready to form and unravel without pressure.

At the end of my hours of bus-dreaming, I felt I had been returned to myself - that is, brought back into contact with emotions and ideas of importance to me.

Barely had I returned from the big city when domesti-City reclaimed me: washing the dogs, walking the dogs, mowing the lawn, collecting the mail, and putting out the garbage bin.

Then the car's rego fell due which meant four new tyres and, for good measure, a new battery. Disconnecting the old battery set off the anti-theft device on the CD-player. Now it asks me for a security code which I haven't got. The dealer can give it to me by dismantling the whole player for which he wants $55. Bloody thief!

The KUBOTA tractor needed a new oil- and fuel-filter and four litres of oil, and the ride-on mower new blades and a new drive pulley.

And when I thought I had dealt with just about everything, the blinds man arrived for a measure-and-quote. I had completely forgotten about those vertical blinds upstairs and downstairs!

Thanks for handing me back the keys to domesti-City!

(part of my Sydney trip 1st - 3rd December 2013;
stay tuned for more)

Travelling without a mobile phone or any other electronic tracking device, the only calls I had to answer were those by Mother Nature. She called me just as I was walking through one of Sydney's most prestigious shopping malls, the Queen Victoria Building.

Having answered, I stood in the washroom scratching my head with my unwashed hand:   no bowls, no taps!   Just then the dark-skinned janitor walked in and with great professional pride worked his "black magic": move the hand under the faucet and the water flows; move the hand away and the water stops.

I told him I was from the country where we had no such fancy plumbing; he told me he was from Bangladesh where they had no plumbing at all. I offered him my by this time washed hand and praised him for the work he was doing.

Perhaps I should have taken a photo of his big from-ear-to-ear smile as I left. Instead, I took one of this 'Puppy Cake' on display in a cake shop at Town Hall Station. It reminded me of Rover and of home.

I would have bought it but the outside temperature was in the 30s and home still more than 24 hours away during which time the 'Puppy Cake' would have grown into a 'Hot Dog'.

Bozenna and her husband Ted, seen here at my old "home", the Savoy Hotel, lived in Athens when I worked there in the early 'eighties. Bozenna had answered an ad in the English language newspaper "ATHENS NEWS" in which I was looking for a "shipping person" who could do my many complex Laytime Calculations (for all you landlubbers, laytime is the period of time agreed between the parties - ship owners, charterers, cargo shippers and consignees - during which a chartered ship is available for loading/discharging without payment of additional freight).

Bozenna did a wonderful job which saved my employer large sums of money and, on a personal side, she and Ted introduced me, a newcomer to Greece (I had just spent a miserable and very "dry" eighteen months in Saudi Arabia), to the many delights of Greek wining and dining. My many fond memories of Greece are entirely due to their wonderful friendship.

Sadly, Ted passed away in October 2003, aged 80, after a very full and active life during which he made every day count. I hadn't heard from Bozenna for many months and was beginning to fear for the worst when this email arrived:

Thanks, Bozenna, I feel so much better now! My wonderful memories of you and Ted and of Greece will stay with me forever! The world was so much younger then and so were we. I shall open a bottle of Retzina and drink to your very good health (such as it is ☺ )!

(part of my Sydney trip 1st - 3rd December 2013;
stay tuned for more)

It was good to catch up with "Burkie"; as for the rest I didn't know a single one (anyway, you've seen one retired banker, you've seen them all ☺ )

That I only knew one of the hundred-or-so retired bankers may have something to do with the fact that I worked for the Bank for a mere two-years-and-a-bit as I didn't want to spend my whole working life swimming in the cerebral shallows. At least 25 (or is it 30 ?) years of service are usually required before one is admitted to the Retired Officers' Club.

So will I go again next year? Perhaps not - this retired banker just wants to be a loan!

There is a saying amongst bankers that 'once you withdraw, you lose all your interest'; however, I shall continue to look after their blog at anzroc.blogspot.com.au.

Click on image to enlarge

On the 9th of December 1971 I appeared before Reserve Magistrate David Bruce Moorhouse at Arawa on the island of Bougainville in the then Territory of Papua New Guinea, to swear allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, her heirs and successors, and to observe faithfully the laws of Australia and fulfil my duties as an Australian citizen.

And today, forty-two years later, after having paid many hundreds of thousands of dollars in income tax to the Australian Government, having incurred no more than a few speeding fines and parking infringement notices against my name, and never having asked for a single cent in Government assistance and even now in retirement living off my own investments and savings, I like to think that I have kept my end of the bargain and that the Australian Government got themselves a good deal in 1965 when they paid my fare out to this wonderful country.

I am proud to call myself an Australian and to call Australia my home, and to do so not through some accident of birth but because of my own deliberate decision and years of hard work!

P.S. An old friend, who came out as a Ten-Pound-Pom, tells me that all he received from the Australian Department of Immigration to say that he had become an Australian in 1974 was an 'Evidentary Certificate' on a cheap letterhead, sans seal and Queen's picture. You get what you pay for, Frank! Or not, as when my red-neck neighbours yell "Flying the Australian flag doesn't make you an Australian!" as I hoist the flag while they hoist their own petard.

Click on image to enlarge

Crossing the bridge to the village early this morning, we saw this strange-looking figure sitting on the bench by the river. Walking up to Benny's Store, we saw an even stranger-looking figure sitting on the steps of the store.

The first one turned out to be a couple of weeks early; the second was Tom "Tugboat" who was late for his breakfast as he'd run out of milk for his cereals.

Unlike the first one who looks like he'll hang around Nelligen for the next couple of weeks, "Tugboat" will spend Christmas aboard a BHP bulk carriers which shuffles up and down the east coast, carrying bauxite from Weipa to Gladstone.

Yours truly, who's just a shadow of his former self, took the photos, typed this blog, and, on account of it being a very hot day, is now taking a nap. SOFA, so good!

Betty Heycox is Nelligen's self-appointed local historian who has collected an amazing amount of memorabilia ever since she first arrived here as a newly-wed in 1948.

Ships were still berthing at Nelligen wharf to take on timber cargoes at that time but that trade, too, had stopped by 1952. She still remembers buying kerosene tins full of fresh bream and flathead for two shillings (20 cents) from Clyde River fisherman Arthur Tieman, who fished the river until well into his eighties.

At the end of each morning's walk through the village, we pop in at Betty's for a cuppa and a piece of toast. This morning there was no toast, no cuppa, and no Betty! After some nail-biting moments we discovered that she was having hers done at a neighbour's house.

I saw her first from the 24th floor of the ANZ Tower on Monday as she came through Sydney Heads. Next day, when I was at Circular Quay to catch the ferry to Manly, she towered sixty metres above me while her length of 290 metres blotted out everything around her: the Diamond Princess.

She has a crew of over a thousand and accommodates close on three thousand passengers, four of whom I met later while I waited for the bus at Central Station where they had just arrived by train from out of town. They had been cruising in her several times before and were joining her again on this 8-day Tasmanian cruise which, at $1,800 per person for an outside room with balcony (half that price for an inside cabin) and all the food you can eat, was the best deal in town.

You can find her current position here.

I've just returned from a spot of shopping in Batemans Bay which turns into bedlam every time we celebrate the birth of a certain child born in Bethlehem.

However, I was happy to see that the Village Shopping Centre had reserved a special parking space for me.

Irish actor Peter O'Toole, the star of the 1962 Oscar-winning epic Lawrence of Arabia, has died aged 81.

I must've watched this movie more than a dozen times since my own time in Saudi Arabia. And, for old times' sake, I might watch it again tonight.

By the way, the only female in the film was Gladys the camel - but, of course, you already knew that!

A letter has arrived from Horst Berger in which he reports that the only post office in the entire island group of Ha'apai in the Kingdom of Tonga at Pangai on the main island of Lifuka has closed its dilapidated door, just before it completely fell off its rusty old hinges.

What little mail there is, mainly to and from the handful of expats who live there, is handled - or perhaps more correctly, mishandled - by the tired staff at the adjoining retirement fund, with the result that Horst's last letter to Germany took five months.

Not to be outdone, the Westpac Bank of Tonga has also closed the doors of its only branch in Ha'apai, meaning that there is nowhere in the entire island chain where one can withdraw money. Not such a terrible thing for the locals who have none to begin with, but Horst now has to rely on Western Union for his monthly remittances from home.

The rush hour at Pangai will never be the same again!

Meanwhile, farther up north in the Vava'u group of islands, the police has cut back on its vehicle maintenance program:

Horst tells me that the tomato seeds I sent him are doing well and that he's picking one or two tomatoes every day. He still needs more seeds, especially for a money tree, so if you can spare some, mail them to this address:

Our very short-lived 'tourist season' is about to start with the arrival of one Sydney couple today. They will be followed by another couple in a week's time who have been spending their New Year's Eve at "Riverbend" Cottage regularly for the past six years. They are our friends now and the best friends at that, namely paying friends.

After I had bought "Riverbend" in 1993, I suddenly found that I had lots of 'friends' who were only interested in free accommodation on the coast. At first, I took them all in and there were times when I had to sleep on the floor because all the beds were taken. When I began to refuse some, I suddenly had very few friends left!

Now some of our paying guests become our friends which makes for a far more genuine and lasting friendship and we always look forward to welcoming them back to "Riverbend" Cottage.

Hidden away amongst the hundreds of tropical islands that make up the Kingdom of Tonga is this piece of paradise which is now for sale.

Where is it? - click here.

How much is it? - click here.

Who do I contact? - click here.

Betty Heycox, Nelligen's self-appointed local historian, has opened up the 'Mechanics Institute' to sell her nick-nacks and bric-a-bracto to passing tourists. Most things sell for 20 cents - it used to be 10 cents; there's inflation for you! - and the proceeds go towards the upkeep of the historic hall.

I stand outside as spruiker while the ladies - Betty at the left, Alison in the background, Padma on the right - put the finishing touches to the display.