We then flew to Marseille where we were hoping that the Citroen car we had pre-booked would be waiting for us. Unbelievably, it was waiting for us, brand spanking new, just rolled out of the factory and ours now for three weeks. It was a tiny car, more like a jacket that you put on but frugal to drive and had everything. We had heard rumours of the airports in France being surrounded by angry farmers, fighting the world of EU protection and tariffs and unfair trade advantages, but we thought that the Marseille airport would escape the fury. The farmers were organized though and Marseille farmers with trucks and tractors had surrounded us. The airport was in lock down mode, nothing would leave or enter. Who would be brave enough to face the wrath and break a French farmer’s strike? We sat in our car, no food and the prospect of having to stay in one of the hotels at the airport till the French farmers decided to quit, go home and eat. Surely for them to sit on the tractor or in the truck would become just as trying as passengers hanging around the arrival terminals. At least the passengers had the advantage of the food canteens, cafes and convenience of hotels and shops. While I was contemplating all the above pro’s and con’s I noticed a small table-top truck driving off in front of us and crossing a part of the tarmac. I, for hitherto unknown reason, decided to just follow this truck. We went up some kerbs and crossed airport entrances when we ended on a narrow dirt track. Still this truck was in front of us. All of a sudden we came onto the highway with a sign which said Montpellier.  The truck veered off and a hairy arm came out of the window and with a wave sped off in the opposite direction. This French farmer must have known we were foreigners; it was such a nice gesture. Vive La France!

The drive to Belarga and the stone cottage would have to be amongst the very best and fortuitous trips ever undertaken in my entire life. The idea of arriving at an airport under siege by angry French farmers is formidable enough to contemplate, but to escape this and then to drive (on the different side of the road) in a strange car and with a nervous disposition, all the way to the stone cottage without even once getting lost or going berserk, would have to rate as a triumph over any adversity experienced so far. Indeed, I had climbed the Mount Everest of foreign travel. The key to the house was exactly as I was promised by the Australian owner and the cottage was far better and bigger than expected. It was entirely built of stone with walls a metre thick. It had two stories above the lower ground floor which contained a huge storage and garage for the car. At the front of the first floor was a large stone flagged veranda with a kind of wood fire barbeque and generous wooden slatted seats. The top floor had a large bedroom with a high ceiling supported by hand hewn exposed timber rafters. It was all white washed except for the stone walls that had been raked and pointed in an adobe mixture of lime and clay. The exposed timber floor was bare but for a huge bed and a small wardrobe, the room was stark but very beautiful. The middle floor had two small bedrooms and bathroom. The ground floor had a small lounge room, the kitchen and large dining area and another bathroom.

Next morning, after consulting our map we were off to explore the immediate surroundings and the multitude of villages. For charm and getting a sense of history the French country side provides a never ending smorgasbord. It immediately transported me into a mode of; sell everything in Australia, forsake all the kids and friends, we are going to live here. The rapture of those three weeks is something that sustained me for years. Our friends in Australia must have got so tired of my descriptions of metre thick stone walls, sixteenth century houses like confetti, the Languedoc wineries and the boulangeries of Clermont L’Herault.  The one story that my kids are almost in despair about each time I relate it to new victims is, that after visiting so many small towns and villages, we happened to come upon Pezenas. This little town is an absolute example of French middle age architecture, so charming and so unrelentingly unnerving in its historical beauty one cannot find the words to do justice. We walked the cobblestone streets of the old part of Pezenas and came upon a square in which there was a sign pointing to an upper storey of an old historical building in which the famous playwright; Jean-Baptiste-Poquelin with the stage name’ Moliere ‘(1622-1673) was supposed to have lived. On the ground-floor was a barber shop whose owner proudly claimed that this was the very same barber shop where Moliere used to have his long tresses of hair and moustache trimmed. I had nothing to lose and had my hair cut there as well!

On our street and at the very end of it, facing the harbour was a small company called Harry West. They had been there for decades and specialised in sail making and other activities connected to boating and sailing. There was also a slipway where medium sized boats and yachts would be ‘slipped’ and de-fouled of barnacles and recoated with anti-fouling paints. They employed about thirty or forty people in its hay-day with perhaps 20 still employed when we were living there, just a bit higher up from them. Every morning and every afternoon we would watch those workers walking past our house to and from work. Our kids got to know some of them and were often allowed to enter the factory and see the workings of sail making in progress. There were many of those enterprises around Sydney’s harbour foreshores but their numbers were shrinking.

On the other side of Harry West at the end of the dead end street where we were living were a few acres of disused harbour foreshore land which had, through blissful neglect by its owners, become a children’s paradise. They called it ‘the Cane fields’. It had patches of very tall cane type grasses growing which was ideal for cubby houses and hiding places. By dinner time, all one had to do was stroll down and call out and soon kids heads would be popping up from between the reeds of cane. Once, coming back from a week’s camping down the coast, we noticed our house had been entered by someone, not immediately, but later on when going to bed, I shouted to my wife ‘ why did you take the doonah away?’ I didn’t, she said. All the kid’s beds were without doonahs as well. Yet, the glass jars filled with coins or anything else of value had not been taken, just only the doonahs. The police were called and scratched their heads, could not make anything out of it. These doonahs had been bought in Holland and made in Norway from 100% eider down. Expensive, but very warm in winter and yet not sweaty in summer, the ideal bed covers for insomniacs like me.  We could only think of someone in need of sleeping out rough or a vagrant that would just take bedding and yet not money. The first thing we did was search all the cubbies in the Cane fields, but even though we found bits and ends of blankets and rags, no doonahs. The mystery was never solved. How did the thief know we had those Norwegian doonahs? Was it a close friend or family member, who knows?

http://books.google.com.au/books?id=_M09AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA99&lpg=PA99&dq=The+East-+Balmain+cane+fields&source=bl&ots=UF0D9_Gp4r&sig=46QqRAJ5JcJ69SK9TgC3V6hvXos&hl=en&ei=2HTZS-W2CJWekQWO1ezoDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CCcQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q&f=false

It was a few years later, when our kids had grown past ‘cubby’ house phases that new and young families with younger kids had moved into our street, that the advantage of the Cane fields was continued. But, not for long. It was noticed that dark suited men wearing sinister sun glasses had  driven down in BMW’s and been seen spreading maps out on rocks and pointing with a wave of their arms to the expansive water views, then shaking hands followed by demonic laughter. Was the end of the Cane fields in sight? It did not take long and the dreaded letter with Councils envelope arrived with plans for a sub-division of the Cane fields into numerous small blocks. Right in the middle would be a bitumen driveway with allotments on both sides. With no thoroughfare to exit elsewhere it meant extra traffic up and down a very narrow street. The land, apart from the bushes of cane and a profusion of weeds also had the remnants of a maritime past. There was a huge ship’s propeller and steel cabling, square timber logs, a heap of anchors and a mountain of metal cleats. The best part of the Cane fields was its magic smell of industrial harbour, the lovely bouquet of tarred ropes and at low tide the rusted bodies of mangled bows that  were still telling stories.

The objections by residents were many and very vocal. Some had access to media and soon the TV cameras began to roll. Of course, every possible angle was exploited and crying children were thrust in front telling how they played in the canes and mothers weeping about losing a valuable children’s park and playground. Indeed, the creative future of entire generation of youth would be risked if the subdivision would be allowed to go ahead. Then, at 7pm the commercial channels would be switched on to see whose child or mother would appear on Telly and phone calls made, ‘did you see me on TV?  Yes, ‘you were good’, ‘I am sure your protest will help stop the project.’ The protests grew louder but when the developer ceded the last ten metres along the water facing the harbour as public open space, Council approved.

Soon the bulldozers arrived and in a single hour, decades of magic and history in children’s adventures was growled and grunted away with the might of the dozer’s blade. A puff of blue diesel and that was it. The cane all ploughed and churned to death.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/04/22/2879456.htm?section=justin

There are several suspects. Needless to say, with Hung having gone overseas to catch up with some mates, casting asparagusions might inevitably lead to him or to some of his other well connected underground below sea level  acquaintances. Police are on the look-out for a Zephyr with a load of TV’s under the tarp.

Posted in Uncategorized | Edit | Leave a Comment »

A peculiar incident of Australian easy going culture that we experienced during those early years was when mother had to be hospitalised for a couple of weeks. She had those mysterious stays in hospitals occasionally. Perhaps it was woman trouble or varicose vein disturbances. I never really found out, but considering she only died a few years ago at the sound age of 94, I feel that her health overall was well taken care off.

During the first few months on own block with dwelling, we had knocked up some kind of chicken pen. John had gone to the City markets called Paddy Markets and came home with about six leghorns travelling by train. The chooks were carried in a hessian bag with their heads sticking out of holes specifically made for breathing purpose. The train was crowded and standing place only. John had no option but to stand in the area between carriages and hold onto a post with one hand and hold the bag of chooks above his head with the other. Fellow travellers were being entertained by being stared upon by the beady eyes of the somewhat nervous leghorns above them.

Now, during the hospital period we had some kind of domestic help from the government or perhaps the local church. She was in her late fifties and was one of those ‘old girls ‘that looked as if she would play bingo and frequent the ladies lounge at the local. She was bone idle but as kind as a raffle ticket.  Her main job was to cook a meal for the evening when all kids and dad would be home. The routine was simple; lamb, spuds and boiled vegetables. Later on, we were told by neighbours, that during the day she would saunter up to the Revesby pub (with the round dome) and have ‘a couple’ before coming back and prepare the meal…

Her speciality however was the dessert. This dessert was a very sweet fruit mince type of cake, a bit like a Christmas type pudding but, and this is amazing, she had taken the rounded domed water dish from the chook pen to make the cake in. It must have had the perfect shape for the cake!  Now, we knew what happened to the water dish. Each time the dish was returned to the chooks she would without as much as batting her eyelids take the dish back to make yet another cake. To make sure the chickens were not without water, she would put a normal saucepan in the pen. As it turned out, most of the young leghorns turned out to be roosters. No eggs. Was this another variant on the three legged creatures? Many times, when the kids came home from school, she would be found snoring away from an alcohol induced torpor.

Finally, the ideas of returning to Australia had been bedded down in my mind but had to be put into action so we decided to contact Thomas Cook in Rome in order to book return tickets by boat. I think it was going to be the Flotta Lauro’s sister ship, the Roma.  We wrote a few times, but true to Italian tradition at the time, our letters were not replied to or acknowledged. By that time summer had reached its peak and August had announced itself. The thunderstorms were increasing in intensity and at time there were electrical black-outs as well. In the meantime the news from Holland included that my ex chess-master uncle had died  suddenly, and that my aunt was coming over to stay in our part of Italy together with a far away distant niece or cousin. They had managed to get accommodation in a large farm house or ‘gasthof’ within walking distance of our chalet.

It seems that for poor uncle, neither the chilli sambal nor the speculaas biscuit were of any help, death stalked him mercilessly, without anyone even having the generosity of giving a dying man a chess game win. I wondered if he kept blaming his ex-wife until the very end.

One afternoon, we decided to follow Frau Johnson’s advice and look for mushrooms. The mushroom season apparently had arrived and none too soon. The pancakes cooked on lard with the occasional diversion into boiled potatoes with some mince patties was getting to me. Bernard was somewhat indifferent towards mushrooms. I loved them, especially the kind that was growing wild in that part of the mountains. They were Funghi Canterelli; you know those mushrooms, they were yellow ochre coloured and had serrated edges with a rather tall and thin stem. With garlic and Italian tomatoes they would be perfect at any time.

We climbed up the mountain behind the chalet and soon found buckets of them growing like confetti underneath the umbrella of birch and pine trees. It was a hike up that was tiring and exhilarating at the same time. We came home just before another thunder storm. The flies were in frenzy, banging head long into the glass windows and spinning wildly on the floor in their suicidal death throes. The storm was the most spectacular I had ever experienced. Wild flashings of lightning below us but above the now obscured village with the mountains rumbling in support of nature’s whims. Next day we ate some of the mushrooms in a spicy soup and I decided to dry the rest on newspapers outside in the sun.

The case for more tax!

This latest from the ABC story and interview with Swan on the 22^nd of Jan. 2010 http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2010/s2798566.htm

Quote; And rather than focusing on tax cuts, Mr Henry is warning that tax revenues will need to grow “strongly” if the Government is to cover the costs of Australia’s ageing population. Unquote.

Good on you Ken Henry. This has to be music to the ears of many of us who have been complaining about the state of our Health, Education, Public Transport and many other social infrastructures that through the years have become crippled by lack of money.  There are finally some encouraging signs that will stop the rot in Governments on both sides forever seeking popularity in massaging and nourishing our deep seated hatred for paying tax by promising reduced taxation for the workers each time there are elections.

Of course we all know that we still are one the lowest taxpaying country of all the OECD, indeed Australian Government’s own study indicates our low tax regime and well worth a look at;

http://comparativetaxation.treasury.gov.au/content/report/html/02_Executive_Summary.asp

It is no wonder that we are struggling to keep up with the rest of the world and that rumblings of the dissatisfied are finally coming to be heard. We get what we pay for! It is so true and never before are we so poignantly reminded of our shortcomings than the arguments that have been raging here on the ‘Unleashed’ especially about our shortcoming in Education. There are now all sorts of conjuring tricks being implemented.  At the last election,’ Computers for all students’ was shouted from rooftops all over the country.  Boy oh boy, have seen acres of video footage of Rudd and Gillard smiling in front of those promised school computer roll-outs. We must have School ratings and Comparisons and publish the Data, shame the lot of them, and the latest from the bag of trickery; Schools to receive public disadvantage rating.

At no stage do we ever hear that good teachers need to have higher qualifications and therefore a considerable increase in wages. You can’t teach kids by a mixture of people that have only just scraped by themselves in education.  That there are many good teachers is without question, but I bet you in those countries where education is better, teachers are also better qualified and better paid. In Finland, which continues to be on the top of the Education ladder, a minimum requirement is a Master’s degree.

All this cost money: and where is it coming from?

It is very much the same story with our hospitals, and again, the paddle pop stick taped together ad hoc financially starved system staggers on. People are dying from the lack of the simplest procedures. Waiting times in Casualty wards are staggering, people bleeding to death and stories aplenty of people turned away or shunted to other hospitals. They have become charnel houses and blame for this goes backwards and forwards between States and Federal Government as regularly as a dripping tap. The Government is threatening to take over the hospitals. This is just another voodoo exercise. It is the lack of money, stupid!

As with education, so it is with health. Those that can afford it go for a private option and make those that can’t, somehow feel they have failed. How an egalitarian society ever came to believe and develop a two tiered system in such basics as Health and Education is beyond my understanding, but that is how it is at present.  It would have to add to a huge waste and duplication. Not surprising is that those that have succeeded in making the money for private health and education probably enjoyed some very handy tax breaks or even dodges, n’est ce pas?

So, where is the money coming from for first class, world beating health system?

We have done so well though. But, has this doing ‘well ‘been on the back of filling up Bulk Carriers with the  scrapings of the top 50 metres or so of our country, especially in the North and West. This has been a nice little earner for Australia, all those minerals and all that red dirt. It’s been so easy too. Huge trucks and trains to ports and then shovel it all onto boats and then wait for the money to roll in.  How lovely for the Government, what a win-win. Will this go on forever?

In any case, it has not provided us with best standard public Education, Health, Public transport and it never will. It just puts money into shareholders who in turn will go for the private goodies and live in big ugly houses.

As for pensioners, they will  have to feast on that extra $30. – added onto their fortnightly pension. Many will just have to continue living just above the poverty line and make do with the no-frills toilet paper.

Good on ye, Ken Henry,

We need to pay far more tax.

March 22, 2010 by gerard oosterman

 

The issue of remaining secretary of the Parramatta Lambretta Scooter club came to a head when I turned up with the Triumph outfit. They told me to either stay faithful with the Lambretta or even a Vespa but no one would ride a motor bike. This was set out in the rules. That is the problem with clubs and even political parties. They thrive on rules. I had enjoyed my secretarial job immensely and gave me opportunities to check out lovely sheilas. Some of those were a bit rough. They were called widgies. I was a bodgie with an accent and my hair rock solid from Brilliantine.

 The best way to woo a girl and get noticed was to shout her milk-shakes. One girl, I have forgotten her name for now, insisted on her milkshake to be given a spoon full of malt. I even then had medical concerns about girls’ and thought the malt might have been to calm their nerves. For some reason, the tabloids and monthly or weekly magazines had lots of advertisements for women’s trouble that seemed to focus on them suffering from ‘nerves’. I, with due concern, thought the malt might have also been some calmative for female ‘nerves’.

The Widgie Lambretta members hardly showed many nerves though and could be driving their Lambrettas as hard as any male. They would take the head off the cylinder block, give a regrind and adjust valves like any bodgie.  No doubt, good practise for future marital delights! 

widgies 

Another fascinating time with the club was to go on treasure hunts. Maps would be consulted, hints were given were things were hidden the day before and at the end of the day, after riding the scooters to Palm Beach and back, we would all lay about someone’s house, enjoy fish and chips and spread our leather jackets. I can’t remember that grog played any part then. Strange, isn’t it?

 A meticulously planned trip to the Mount Panorama Bathurst races was the end for me as Secretary for the Parramatta Lambretta Club. No way was I going to go back to Lambretta. I loved my Triumph and the constant warring between the Sydney Vespa club and ours was getting petty. One girl on our side was seen cavorting with a Vespa member at Bathurst.

 The week-end was one that I remember as the wettest I ever experienced. We all slept under the cover of a cricket stand roof, in between seats. Terrible. Being perched on the side of a mountain in pouring rain with flashes of water spray roaring past wasn’t my idea of a week-end out. We all rode back to Sydney somewhat dishevelled and dejected and I wrote a last report to be read out at the next Parramatta’s Ambulance Hall meeting, and resigned.

It was roughly at that time that I decided to get earnest in my pursuit of a decent girlfriend. Dancing lessons was to be the answer. I had read numerous advertisements urging young people to learn to dance. The accompanying pictures had beautiful smiling girls offering themselves up to handsome swirling men. The chests on those smiling girls looked as if they were encased in those red traffic cones that direct traffic into a different lane, poking forward at 90 degrees to the road below them.

Fox trot 

One of a major dancing academy was Phyllis Bates at an address in Pitt Street. When I say ‘major’, I think it might have been the only one then. I had moved up the social ladder somewhat with dating a girl whom I had taken out to one of Sydney’s most prestigious restaurants In Sydney at Martin Place, called Quo Vadis.

March 17, 2010 by gerard oosterman