Tag Archives: Bowral

The Art of making up in the Kitchen of give and take

08 Sunday Jan 2012

Posted by in Gerard Oosterman

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Pleased that some of you would like me to return to the Pig’s Arms. ( I hope with open arms) My heartfelt thanks.  Quarrels or disagreements are easy to fall into but less easy to get out of. Both parties to the fight often think they are right and the more the disagreement continues the worse it often gets. Firmly entrenched and utterly convinced of their just stance, both parties keep stoking the fire with the kindle of indignation of “how can the other ones be so stupid and remain so belligerently opposed to my stance which is the right stance.”  ” I am right, the other is wrong. How come they can’t see that?”

The answer to getting out of this dilemma is a good deal of trying to imagine seeing it from the opposite point of view. Put yourself in their shoes and try and get a handle on them. What makes them think they are right and could there be some way to move forward or away from the fight? A great deal of compromise is needed. I might just have to swallow my false pride and improve my negotiating skills or avoid hostile territory all together. Hone one’s diplomacy and above all use humor and imagination, and always try to get as many perspectives on issues as possible.

I certainly stoke the fires in some of my writing. I love Australia but see many areas that seem ridiculously out of kilter or askew or just plain funny. I then write about it, leaving others to agree, disagree or put it better. (Not difficult) The years in Revesby’s suburbia have been a rich vein in which to fossick, delve into and write about. The lawns, fibro houses, the rockery gardens and above all, the deafening silence of those lonely streets I used to walk through, in the heat of summer’s cricket score filtering through the venetians, cracker night, the local pub with mums in pyjamas and wearing hair curlers waiting for hubby to hand over his wages, the workman’s weekly train ticket; a never ending smorgasbord of experiences.

Here in Bowral, another different experience. Camellias and Hebe, the retired men wearing red jumpers and immaculately coiffured blond matrons driving their Mercedes. This is a rock solid area of staunchly held with well concreted conservative views. So many fences to peer over, so many shopping trolleys to survey, and much, much more. I’ll hardly have the time.

Perhaps this and much more at times create discord and I cause umbrage to some. Sorry for this, I’ll pack it better; leave out Norway or stats on teen-pregnancies, try and reduce areas clad with zinc-alume or pebble crete. So….I am sorry for any perceived or real injury I might have caused, but and must also say, was secretly pleased by Vivian’s brave plea and others to keep coming to the Pig’s Arms. I will, it’s just too much fun. So, here I go again. Back…

PS. If there are any others that feel the need to say sorry……. form the queue here.*

Train Trip

08 Thursday Dec 2011

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The train trip.

We recently discovered an even better train service to the city of Sydney. It’s the 8.17am leaving Bowral but only has the 3 stops to Central. Not that it is much faster. Arrival is still at about 10am at Central, but at least it bypasses many stations, this gives an impression of speed without really achieving it. It gives one some Schadenfreude when the train races past many station’s platform showing a blurred image of anxious looking train travelers.

We undertook this trip yesterday. I got up early, made the coffee and some noises in order to rally into action my ever patient partner of many years. She knows my ways. Train trips I always look forward to as opportunities for new discoveries and are anticipated with great excitement. They certainly were in my youth when I, on numerous occasions, took boat Trips to Europe on Italian Liners belonging to the Flotta Laura fleet. After landing at Italy’s Genoa, I would continue by train, which at the time was the Continental Express. Mr. Diacomo from Cooks & Sons in Pitt Street always booked the journeys including the European Continental Express. The boat trip including the train from Genoa to Amsterdam or Stockholm cost 120 pounds! (240 dollars)

After we bought our tickets at Bowral yesterday, the train promptly arrived. It was a long train and surprisingly the windows were unscratched and carriages spotless. We noticed a few elderly couple who, no doubt like us, were scheduled to travel to Central Station.  While the Bowral-Central run is hardly in the same league as the Trans Continental (or The Orient Express) it is still a train trip and for the inquisitive can still yield surprises…

One of the surprises was the number of elderly couples. Where were they going, and why, seemed a question that I kept asking myself?  As usual with elderly couples, the woman partner seemed to lead with the male one happy to follow. Why is it that the ageing male gets behind the eight-ball in their final run up to the finish-line? Is it hormonal? Women tend to outlive males. Go to any old age retirement village such as ‘even-tide’ or ‘autumn leaves’ and it is rich pickings for any widower. The magazine for seniors is full of ads from fascinating women seeking living males, NS, ND, and NG but still kicking!

Back to the Bowral-Sydney express we discovered after arrival at the Country Trains Terminal in Sydney there were hundreds if not thousands of elderly couples, all carrying similar red coloured bags with ‘senior’s printed on it. My curiosity knew no bounds, especially when a live band was playing in that big arrival-hall, right next to the female toilets. There was a triple queue for the female toilet yet no queue at the males. This seems fair; if the female outlives the male there is at least some balance in knowing that outliving the male causes the female more frequent toilet stop-over’s in their dotage.

Anyway, the mystery of so many elderly couples arriving from all over Sydney and environs with those red bags did not get solved. On the way back to Bowral, there were the same elderly couples. The same dithering husbands, stooped with age, looking even more bewildered, skinny vacant trousers bums but resolute stout wives, indefatigable leading all the way. “Sit here”, they would tell hubby. After coming home I googled ‘seniors with red bags’,’ senior’s festivals’, ‘senior’s outing dates. All to no-avail.

We enquired about the phenomenon to our Norwegian neighbor. Oh, she said,” it’s the annual Sydney’s Town Hall music for the elderly. They give a live concert each year. We should make a date to go next year.

There you go.

Cricket, the art of a miraculous Mystery

04 Sunday Dec 2011

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I have shown my colours by the title already. I confess my bias. It’s not in my gene. Having had sixty years of watching, especially on the ABC, for hours, days, years of cricket news and footage, I am as far away now as I was at my youth in understanding cricket. The ABC news seems to always have had a special fondness for cricket reportage. When I arrived in Australia there was no TV as yet, no worries; the radio, especially towards the Christmas period would belt out cricket day and night.

On my walk home from Revesby rail station after work, I wondered what that steady radio drone was coming from behind those venetian blinded shuttered windows. Also at work, the radio would sometimes be on and the workers, if the boss was not near, would be standing around the radio, fixated by that same drone. When I had mustered enough courage and English, I finally asked. What are you all listening to? It is cricket, don’t you know, I was told.

Now some sixty years later and retired, not in my wildest most fantastical dream or nightmare could I ever have foreseen ending up living at the very epicenter, the Mecca and Nirvana of cricket; Bowral. It is where cricket has soared to heights where even the South American Anaconda or the wedge tail eagle in Australia would ever dare to venture.  Fancy ending up being confronted almost daily with something that has steadfastly refused to become intelligible to me even after all those years?

Don’t you know, Bowral is not just home to the world’s most famous cricketer ‘Donald Bradman’, but also now houses The International Cricket Hall of Fame. I doubt that without Bradman there would have been this famous hall ( don’t dare you call it a ‘museum’, it is all very much interactive IT and so on) Click on a date and you’ll  instantly get the cricket game of that date all the details, who was out and over, all the runs, ducks and no-balls.

A ‘cricket tragic’ I am definitely not. There are tragic ex cricketers though. There are seats that surround this famous cricket ‘pitch’; (I know a few terms) they are rather nice wooden seats bolted to small concrete slabs. Those seats surround the cricket field and are behind the white painted picket fence that seems to surround cricked fields everywhere.

Screwed on to the back-rest slat are modest brass signs displaying the names of people who have donated the seats with names of famous dead cricketers. One of those appeared to have died very young. In my quest for detailed trivia I asked an informed and true ‘cricket tragic,’  about this person  and the reason for his early demise. “Quite shocked the cricket world was”, he replied to my question, “inexplicable it was, he was as happy as Larry at the time”, no one could have foreseen or predicted his death, he apparently had enough and opted out! I had heard the term ‘all out’ and left it at that, but not before I took some rest on that same seat to reflect on this sad bit of cricket history.

I am now on a steep learning curve. I have managed so far to kind of ward off any questions about the ins and outs of cricket. No one but no one living in Bowral would knowingly have bought into these hallowed cricket surrounds  without some knowledge of this revered game. I know a pitch and have even muttered ‘Bradman was great, wasn’t he’? People nod sagely but look at me askance, just a hint of suspicion raising its head. I’ll buy a book or get lessons, but after so many years, have I left it too late? I understand the basics with knocking off that piece of wood. The trouble is all those numbers. If cricket scores were 2-1 or 5-0, I’d have no trouble. What to make of 20-131 to 13  with 380 runs.

I was always hopeless with math.

Toilet Talk and Walking days.

28 Friday Oct 2011

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With ageing comes the inevitable increase in both frequency and urgency to seek the friendly embrace and comfort of a toilet. We all know that, except of course to the foolish young, cavorting under strobe lights and indulgencies of frequencies of a different kind, but still involving bodily functions.

The first thing to do when changing address is to reconnoitre thoroughly the availability of public toilets. I did, and now can safely go for walks without the hand-held GPS for finding, just in case mind you, a nice toilet.  The first one is within coohey of our place at the hallowed grounds of The Bradman Oval, The International Hall of Cricket Fame. The toilets are utterly original, sparkling clean and with normal taps (thank God). I often relish the idea, that on the very seat I am squatting, Bradman might well have s(h)at as well. It always gives my day a pleasant tinge. A kind of good and wholesome, optimistic start, how can any day go wrong now, I ponder?

Between our house and the other side of Bowral runs a small river with a concrete footpath parallel with it. Even though it is just a few hundred metres from the main street, it could be miles away. It is a beautiful walk, the river alive with ducks and their ducklings.  I take this walk along the creek every day with of course the manic Milo, straining at the leash almost pulling me along to the other side of the creek, totally disregarding my endless urgings of ‘nice walking Milo’, ‘good boy Milo’ and above all ‘no pulling Milo’.

Yesterday, about half way and just after some rain I noticed an elderly man lying in the grass near the water, trying to get up. He also had a small dog, a poodle and a walking stick. He was struggling so I helped him up. He told me he had no feelings in the bottom halves of his legs but also told me ‘I walk for miles every day’. He spoke well and I inquired if he needed some help to get back to his house. ‘I’ll be alright, thank you kindly’, he said, so I left it at that. I thought he might have been in his eighties, perhaps a retired pilot. There seems to be a plethora of retired pilots living here. Perhaps they like to retire higher up. We are about 750 metres above sea level.

Anyway, on my return I noticed him still walking along slowly and on his mobile phone. With the previous feeling of optimism and the pleasant reflection on Bradman and the possibility of having shared the same toilet seat, the mood became somewhat more melancholic. Were the walking days of this elderly gentleman coming to an end? I still have an almost Emil Zátopek zeal in thinking my walking days will go on indefinitely but no doubt so did the elderly gent (without feelings in his lower legs). Was it seeping away from him now?

Sadly, I could not come up with a better solution than the idea that the ‘seeping away towards the end’  will come to all of us, even to those that are now hopping and shimmering around underneath strobe lights to wild tempestuous music.

 Enjoy the day. It might never end.

The Fellatrice and Milo

05 Wednesday Jan 2011

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The Fellatrice and Milo.

In Bowral there is a nice cul-de-sac which is closed to traffic and open to pedestrians. It features a number of cafes, decorator’s shops and a travel agent. One of those shops even sells the very fashionable Marimekko dresses together with a kind of what years ago could be called ‘haute couture’ items, keenly sought after by those on the cusp of advancing years and with comfortable wallets…

Its main feature because of the banning of cars is that it is one of those rare flukes of a successful bit of public space that works extremely well. The council had the foresight of having planted some deciduous plane trees ensuring shady retreats in summer and lovely sun in winter. It also has comfortable seating and even has a sculpture donated by our own artist Bert Flugelman, who lives in Bowral. He is the one who gave us the sculpture in Martin Place Sydney. Apropos, This sculpture, ’The Silver Shish Kebab,’ was heavily criticized by Frank Sartor and has since been moved to Spring Street.

The cafes have been given approval to have seating arrangements at the open space as well as in the actual cafes. Waiters are routinely seen to walk across to serve the many locals and tourists with their chosen fare.  There are those fold up umbrellas to supplement shade and in winter gas heaters ensure outside al fresco dining all year round.

The place just works perfectly and with a bit of imagination one could be in a square at Bolzano or even Paris.  Musicians and a flower stall on most Saturdays give it quite a buzz and finish the picture perfect.

We had just arrived with Milo on a lead when I needed to go to the CBA’s ATM also located there, handily enabling tourists to withdraw cash and hand it over to the shops or cafes. I am always surprised at the magic when the money comes out, unbelievable really, so modern and electronic with receipts and balances print out. I handed Milo to Helvi while pinning in details. She decided to just walk on, possibly to see if Marimekko dresses were visible in the shop. You just never know!

Suddenly, a large and brown dog shot out from somewhere and got stuck into Milo. A terrible killing was just about to happen. I rushed over but remembering my brother’s micro surgery on his hand when stopping a fight between his bull terrier and a German Sheppard, decided not to get my hands anywhere near those ferocious looking jaws of this large brown dog. The fight might not have lasted much more than a few seconds but it seemed much longer. The two dogs were rolling against a pram with a baby. The mother screamed and onlookers were aghast. By this time the large brown dog owner had got up from her table. A young man from one of the shops came out and without further ado picked up Milo, just like that, still on lead and put it in my arms. Almost a gift at the foot of the temple of Zeus, I thought. He had curly hair.

The mother of the baby and the woman with the brown Rottweiler-Labrador were by now facing each other like something out of Quo Vadis. “How dare you have this dog not on a lead the mother shouted? “”With my baby nearly being tipped over” she added furiously. The owner of the dog with deeply rouged lips shouted back with a somewhat fish and chips voice, “My dog never does anything”, “he just wanted to play”. “Play?” “You’re as rough as guts” the mother retorted. I could see some logic to that as the dog-owner had not only those thickly shaped and deeply rouged lips as if in the past she might have practised as an experienced Fellatrice, she also spoke as one. It could well be that the ferocious dog was a remnant of those days, offering protection in case of an unsatisfied and cranky limp customer. Who knows? Perhaps she was a directrice instead, perchance in a very respectable retirement village, maybe called ‘Braeside,’ for retired pilots, of which Bowral seems to house so many.  I might just be unnecessarily cruel and prejudiced.  Even so…Poor Milo.

We then walked on to post a Christmas card to Finland but glancing back, the fight was still going on between the baby’s mother and the owner with the large brown dog and deeply rouged lips. I knew the mother had the backing of the bystanders. It is amazing that dog owners always seem to take the side of ‘their’ dog and that ‘their’ dog could never ever do anything like biting other dogs, let alone capable of killing, even babies. Shit does happen.

Milo walked on as if nothing had happened. Nose to the ground and the lead taut as always.

Dog Ethics in Bowral

26 Sunday Sep 2010

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September 26, 2010 by gerard oosterman

Bowral is really rocking. Tulip Time. Bus loads from Sydney. All rather senior looking and retirement at its best. Lives still being lived without fanfare or trumpets, like us and them and senior discounts. They file out with names such as Brian and Shirly stuck on their shirts and blouses, hunt out tulips and eat sausage rolls. Some have Dim Sims with  chili sauce  getting soaked up in the paper tissue as they walk and chew from the corners of their mouths.  The men are wearing stout corduroy with women in casual slacks and pastel coloured blouses or cardigans just in case a chill might roll down from the The Gib. It pays to be careful. The Gib is short for Mount  Gibraltar which is a hill overlooking Bowral. Mind you, the real Mount Gibraltar could  easily have people named Brians and Shirleys walking around as well. They now walk worldwide.

We, feeling quite smug must look like  locals because a group of tourists asks us for a nice place to have some nice lunch. “Somewhere ‘nice’ they all say”. Do we also now look as if knowing ’nice’ is something we have finally arrived at?

 ”What a lovely dog you have”, Milo looks up, expecting a pat. He knows the score by now. It’s not like the farm anymore, but is has its compensations. We gave the group two choices and continued on with Milo on a leash which is clicked on a kind of brace that dogs now seem to wear. As we pass a throng of people and just in front of a kitchen shop, Milo to my horror squats down and does an impromptu shit while still walking. An amazingly large one for such a little dog. Actually, one large and two little ones, all in a row with people doing an impromptu tango around them. I heard someone say ‘ohh nooo’.

I hope this isn’t what I think he has just done flashed through my mind. Where is Helvi?  Helvi briskly walked on. I had no plastic bag and not much dignity either.

We now entered the crux of this matter. With no plastic bag but with full posession of two hands; what would anyone have done? No way could I risk exposing any failure in good standing amongst the Bowral citizenry nor the good name of Milo, carefully nurtured by so many walks. Within a split second I stooped down and with one majestic scoop  collected the lot with my nude hand, while Milo looked on rather quizzically, the look that the Jack Russell is so known for.

I caught up with Helvi and explained I had a handful of still warm shit. “Put it there,” she sternly pointed at a metal bin. I shook it off into the bin but also realizing that Helvi knew what had transpired.  ‘Don’t put your arm on me’, and wash your hands at Woolies upstairs. It was a long walk zig zagging along a ramp up to Woolies. One man looked strangely at me while I washed my brown hand inside the Men’s.

Now, I know it wouldn’t have been very gallant to have a woman pick up shit, but sometimes I feel blokes are expected to do a little too much. At least she could have stayed with me and given me some encouragement. A kind of moral support or an urging on.

Milo is fine.