A farm in Australia?

A continuing memoir.

Son Nicholas and a painting.

The first few weeks from our latest return from French farm-house mania, our friends’ patience would be severely tested and without letting up. Talk about an obsession. I just kept saying; ‘the stone walls in France were that thick’. And I would then demonstrate by spreading my arms as wide as I could. This would be followed by some remark denigrating the flimsy Australian domestic architecture. You know, paper thin walls made of gypsum plasterboard and fibros sheeting. ‘They are mere wind breaks’ I would continue, adding insult to injury or reverse. Helvi, would poke me in the side.

After a few more weeks of insults and self absorption, things would calm down. The photos of French farm houses would be stored away, not to be seen again till recently when the majority of photos that were stultifying and boring got thrown out. We are not photo lookers, and I can’t think Helvi ever took more than a handful of photos, even though she did have a camera. She would leave that to me.  I enjoy taking photos, especially now that you can see the result immediately.

I remember the excitement waiting for photos to get developed by the photo and camera shop. It would take a week to get hem back, and as for coloured ones; they were send off to Melbourne. The black and white photos were small and had serrated edges. How time and science has now all changed that. Instant gratification in photography is normal, and now the world keeps taking selfies, nauseating really, but I am guilty as well. Go to any public event and one sees a forest of sticks in the air with excitable tourists busy taking selfies. In the next second the picture is forwarded and looked at in Taipei or Amsterdam, immediately. Tourism is really people paying to go somewhere taking selfies and looking at their own  images with the country they are visiting of least importance or at best an extra. Amsterdam and Venice are now desperate to try and get tourism to scale back with the locals feeling they are being trampled upon.

The Australia farm

I am not sure when I suggested to Helvi we perhaps ought to think of making a move and buy a farm or country place locally, in Australia. It was during the latter half of the 1990’s. There was a kind of feverish ‘break away from the large cities’ movement when the term, city dwellers or townies were starting to be coined for those seeking an alternative life-style. A week-end farmer was another one. Of course the more serious of large scale farmers were called Pitt Street farmers, suggestive of landlords leasing out huge tracts of land for the cattle industries, often managed by real farmers running hundreds of thousands of acreages. The owners themselves were well heeled lawyers doing their utmost to lower their tax obligation while whooping it up in Sydney’s Pitt Street cavorting with crooks, souteneurs (сутенер) with their shady ladies of pleasure…

Walking and vitamin supplementary quakery.

 

Our two grandsons and Mother with Grandmother ahead walking. 2016

We are forever being urged to keep walking. In times gone past we moved about using our legs which took us between different spaces. Inside our homes we still practice moving our legs till this day. Outside it is a different matter. I suppose, when the riding on top of a horse became fashionable, we managed to move a bit faster. In regions with snow and ice, skis and sledges were discovered, but, by and large we used our legs if we wanted to get somewhere…Some countries, the bicycle became a mode of transport which not only served to move people faster but it also kept  legs and body very fit.

This is now all gone. Since the invention of wheels and engines, the car replaced our legs. Not only that, putting wings and engines together gave us flight, and we can now use airplanes to get from A to B. I am not sure at this stage what I am going to arrive at, or indeed what I am aiming for, except that the reason why streets in Australia always seem to be so empty of people might be because we have developed a way of living whereby the use of legs slowly became less important. And the car took over. Today, when we want to go from one place to another, the car clearly dominates over our legs. People think nothing of living somewhere whereby even to get a loaf of bread or the newspaper, they have to jump on wheel carriages and drive the metal box on wheels to get a loaf of bread or a bottle of milk.

I watched a good program on SBS last night how in the US and Australia, the market for vitamins and all sorts of untested medical supplementary paraphernalia is sold over the counter without having to proof their worth of the product nor the veracity of the printed label on the product. . Here it is:

https://www.sbs.com.au/programs/vitamania

Is this why there are so many chemists around? They are a major money making enterprise and one questions to what extend is their concern for our health? Some of the larger chemical shop consortiums are listed on the stock exchange. The huge number of chemist shops are in direct proportion of how far we live away from shops and each other. Even here in Bowral with a population of 12 000, it is spread out over an area the size of Amsterdam which has a population of about a million. In Amsterdam people can walk to get bread, here in Bowral most have to plan a major journey by car or bus to do the same. We are almost next to major hospitals and that has come in very handy. We were so lucky!

It is not always so easy to live near infrastructures such as shops, schools or trains, because most cities and towns have zonings that are either commercial or residentials, and when shops are zoned commercial they generally exclude  residential dwellings. This means that people have to live away from shops or around the shops, and hence we revert to the car instead of our legs. We have cities and towns where very few actually live in those towns or cities. In the evenings they become empty ghost towns because people have gone home in their cars miles away.

Our way of building houses is very dependent on driving. So, by and large, people drive and give up walking, and that is why we are losing the use of legs and for many the only way to get legs moving and supple again is through joining a gym or get a rowing machine/weightlifing equipment stowed in the bedroom. Again to get to the gym, a car drive and not walking is the main mode of transport. It is no wonder so many now have to get knee and hip repairs done. They say; use it or lose it, don’t they? This might also be that  there is a link between our lack of physical movements (walking) and our love of supplementary medicines and vitamins as promoted in chemist consortiums/emporiums. We prop up of what we feel we lack.  Why have we developed a way of housing whereby we live so far from what we often need? And these needs are shops, entertainments, and streets full of people to talk with, and exchange some latest news.

I miss European cities.

 

Family and Migrating.

My Paternal Grandfather.

I remember my grandfather more than my grandmother. He was a joker often playing pranks on me but without malice. I remember their house. It was large and had a garden in a very beautiful part of Holland not far from Amsterdam. My grandfather and grandmother with so many other relatives we never saw again. It was a goodbye forever. We did see my mother’s sister and one of my father’s sister on a few occasions when we visited them. My father never saw his parents again.  I wonder how it must have felt for my parents saying goodbye all those many years ago?(1956)

Paternal Grandmother.

The above painting of my grandmother is the only image I have of her. It would have been painted by her husband, my grandfather. He was a painter of church murals as well as designer in glass in lead works. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Jan_Oosterman

I remember less of her than granddad. I don’t know why. I recently discovered a letter my granddad wrote to my parents in Australia. A rather formal letter which made me think that in those earlier times relationships were perhaps more formal between parents and children than today. Looking at old photographs people often look more serious. Perhaps getting a photograph taken took time and one can only keep a smile for that long.

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Granddad painting while smoking a pipe.

The above photo portrays an idyllic afternoon. At the bottom it show my grandmother carrying a cup of something. Perhaps there were guests?

Pensive grandparents wearing slippers.

This photo might well have been one of the last taken. Granddad died in an ‘old age’ home in Amsterdam at the respectable age of 87.

And that’s how it goes.

 

The need to get drunk in Australia.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-30/amsterdam’s-‘night-mayor’-criticises-sydney’s-lockout-laws/8074570

Why does it seem so necessary to get pissed so often in Australia? Is life so boring?
And why do politicians feel that closing down venues or restricting alcohol venues will cure a societal problem?

Why do we keep thinking that punishment is the answer? Is Australia not all that it’s cracked up to be? Do we really think that treating young people, as in the above photo is an answer?

So many questions, but at least this night-mayor of Amsterdam seems to give one reasonable answer.

The Plight of the Sunday Mirror Girls and Real Estate Agents.

Me and mother 1995?

Estate agents are not far behind car-salesmen in the popularity range of professions. Even joining the army or becoming a police man are judged far above them. In the fifties, teaching was also a somewhat dodgy profession to pursue. It makes me wonder whether that might be the reason that our school kids don’t seem to be doing all that well. Apparently 45% of adults in Australia do not possess proficient spelling and math skills. But, if someone studied law, (even for those within the 45% semi-literate range)the prestige barometer would run red-hot. I noticed that amongst our elderly neighbours’ granddaughters, some are doing a university degree in ‘design.’

If job security is important I reckon, estate agents and car salesmen will probably be better placed than lawyers or designers. Australia has one of the highest rates per capita of lawyers in the world, and as for design, the Ikea flat pack with Allan key has taken care of that. Many are out of work and even barristers are scrimping around trying to make a quid. It’s in science and engineering that the future beckons and holds the best prospects.

Selling cars or houses does depend on smoothness and swiftness in seizing up the customer. If the pitch is overly keen, it might make the buyer a bit reluctant. There is the tendency of many people to go against a proposal if put too strongly. Lately Helvi and I are back ‘in the market’ as the parlance go, looking at houses. Even if just to spend time away from our own house. I like looking through other peoples houses. I quickly scan the bookshelves. Of course, bookshelves are not guaranteed.

Back in the fifties, my poor dad used to try and see through neighbours windows, hungry for sighting books. They were very rare. The best, in those years was a horse-betting guide or a real estate section resting seductively on top of little tables. In our house, my mother used to put The Catholic Weekly on top of any reading material. She held hope that we all would go through out teens wholly beholden by men of the cloth. We soon saw through their voodoo tricks. How can anyone take to walking on water and virgin births?

One of my friends remarked; ‘why do your newspapers have all those holes in them? I admitted, ‘because my mum cuts out all the provocative pictures of girls.’ Those photos used to be displayed in Australian Newspapers, especially the afternoon papers. The same papers also used to have screaming headlines with ‘SHOCK SEX’, or a whole page with just one three letter word ‘WAR.’ My mum thought she could save her family, possibly including her husband, from filth and decadence perving on grainy images of swim suit wearing girls.

As soon as we hit the car driving range we would pretend to go to church on Sunday. We all sat inside my old V8 Ford single spinner outside the church. We would take turns in getting snippets of the main sermon before getting back in the V8 and continue the perve on the Sunday Mirror paper girls, before we presented them home for mother to get her scissors out for. It is an endearing image I still treasure.

My mum was brought up together with her sister in an orphanage. She lost both her parents when very young. The orphanage was run by nuns in Amsterdam. As a child she took me to this orphanage and introduced me to some very old nuns who were still alive from the time she was a little girl. The orphanage was stone-cold with marble stairs. Her sister was there too, but strictness by the nuns separated them. She was forbidden to have contact with her. Her sister was my dear Aunt Agnes.

I surmised she must have got her staunch religious beliefs from that period. Her cutting images from newspapers that might invite her sons into carnal pleasures might well have been her intention to save us, and for that I have respect and my love. Of course, she failed, but that is a different matter. Apart from the cutting pictures she was also the eternally undefeatable worker and optimist.

A really great mother.

The Dutch Aunt married in Kings Cross.( Seniors only)

Faithful readers might remember a period when I was working for De Rotterdamse Bank, Bij-Kantoor Middenweg, Amsterdam South, as the book-keeper. It all happened during my first trip back to Holland around 1961/62 or so. A few years after my parents migrated to Australia. I wanted to work in an office wearing a suit and carrying an attaché briefcase to and fro work on the tram. It was also thought that my school friendships of the past could be resurrected. There was also the hope it might be possible to find a ‘good woman/girl.’ (I had already met ‘good woman’, but little did I know, but of that later.)

Prior to my first return to Holland and still in Australia, the search for first romantic liaisons had resulted in a piquant but dangerous episode with a large Maltese woman who was married to a nice butcher who kept a loaded shotgun in their marital wardrobe. While this episode solved some of my curiosities about the opposite sex, it wasn’t really all that edifying. The seduction came from her side, giving me a rather weak excuse. It happened while watching the epic ‘Bonanza’ with Ben Cartwright’s three sons chasing bad cowboys on galloping horses going around and around the same set of rocks. It was breathtaking in its audacity. The husband was sitting opposite! I was sure it wasn’t a reflection of Maltese cultural standards. I am so lucky to have survived. ( Dutch migrant shot dead while watching Bonanza!)

I was trying to make the best of my stay in Amsterdam, and lived with an uncle I never heard of. The poor man was permanently red in the face with anger about his former wife whom his was divorced from for many years. He also had cancer in his shoulder. He loved my chili meat patties which was nothing more than minced meat mixed with bread and lots of sambal. He felt it would burn his cancer away and cure him. It did not and he died a few months after I had left to live in Italy.

There were lonely times too, which my ‘good’ Aunt Agnes relieved somewhat by inviting me over to her place on Surinamer Plein, Amsterdam not far from the angry uncle. It was on one of those visits that she introduced me to one of her best friends who lived at the same address. It was a multi story building housing single women only. It is proof of the well developed social conscience of the Dutch that good housing is provided for all groups including single women. I never thought much of it and accepted that good social housing was the norm.

Aunt Agnes’s friend’s name was Rieta van de Meer. Also a retired teacher and never married. But, and here comes Rieta’s amazing story. On a holiday in Norway in the bus doing the rounds of Fjords and snow-capped mountains around Bergen, the Cupid angel of romance had shot it’s arrow inside this bus. She met a retired Australian farmer. He turned out to be the epitome of the jovial, easy going Australian. A barrel of laughter and lightness. Easy come easy go. The original larrikin of the ‘no worries’ man from the bush.

He was divorced too but not an ounce of rancour or bitter heart. He was also well retired, not short of a quid. Helvi and I met this jovial man a few years after Rieta and the ex-farmer married and living in Australia. She played the piano and both lived in an apartment in King’s Cross-Sydney, for many years. The hub of life and Continental excitement. It was obvious they both shone in each other’s company. He was a lot older and sadly going blind. She worked hard at making the best of it. I remember my parents visiting all of us and grandchildren in Australia meeting up with the happy couple. She was on the floor trying to hack open a can of something with a hammer and chisel. My Mum couldn’t understand the trouble she was going through. Rieta just laughed and said it amused her husband watching her trying to open the can. A kind of challenge.

It is never too late for joy and happiness.

The Serif is coming and take your margins.

Aspidistra

If you hear the dreaded mid-night knock on the door, it could well be the serif. This time of the year they look for errant margins or fonts that allow too many characters on a single line. The serif escaped from Holland some centuries ago when it was jailed for dominating the written word above all the accepted norms. The  twirls and florid decorations of letters were being pushed aside by change. Changes always are disturbing. But the serif (schreef) protested. When the Treaty of Utrecht was signed it spelled the beginning of the end of the serif. It was jailed after the signing and did not rear its head again till another war broke out between England and France. The French wanted to revive the poor old serif but was defeated by someone named Charles who remained without progeny to take on the Throne.

Ever since, there are those that hold strong ‘serif and sans serif’ opinions. There are pockets of warring factions who congregate within the gated communities of suburbs of many cities, including Rome, Warsaw and Amsterdam.  It is not as simple as just serif or sans serif. The serif fans are divided between those of the Time Roman, Courier, Palatino and New Century persuasions.  Please consider amongst the sans serifs the strong presentation of the Helvetica mobs, Avant Garde (wearing red berets), Arial and Geneva fonts ( especially in Amsterdam).

So, what to do? Absolutely nothing. Let them knock. Don’t let them in. If they force their way in it is best to show compassion.

Personally I never heard of serif or sans serif and thought at first it was an exotic potato. It was after I started inquiring about how to get a book together that I learned  it. I pretended knowledge and nodded sagely when the word was mentioned. How do people know those things? Next time I am around people who still talk and read words printed on paper I’ll swing the conversation towards serif and even throw in a few fonts. I might even ask; how are your margins going? Because, next to serif margins can easily crowd in the written word. It was astonishing to learn that the different sized margins are evenly split between uneven and even numbered pages.

And then the ongoing war between those that give two spaces after the end of a sentence and those that give it just a single space. It seems, that not only do words and their meanings sometimes change, but also the way they are put in print. One of our friends heard some schools are now not teaching running-writing anymore. Is that true? Some experts predict writing by hand is close to disappearing. What about shopping lists? I still see shoppers ticking off the hand written shopping list. There is hope!

Who would have thought?

Pardon me; your accent is still showing.

In Belgium at 5 or 6 years. ( to put on weight).After the war.

‘Tell me honestly, where is your ‘real’ home?’ I don’t really ask that question immediately whenever I meet someone who talks with a foreign accent. Generally, I wait for an opportune moment. It can’t come quick enough. My grandchildren squirm in embarrassments whenever I fire up engaging with foreigners about the original birthplace and talk about other countries. Fortunate for them both their parents are without any accents, both were born in Australia. Grandpa and grandma are a different country altogether, but I do remember when much younger, also being a bit apprehensive when my parents tried to speak English in my presence to a neighbour or an Australian.

The ultimate was for my mother calling the baker ‘bugger’. Dutch is a phonetic language and of course English is not. You could not blame my parents for calling him the ‘bugger’ even though he would just be called upon to leave 2 loaves of white bread. We kept trying to correct my mum’s pronunciation but never succeeded. The baker must have just put it all down, good naturedly, to those ‘continentals’ and their lascivious manners and ways.

Of course, the need to blend in and be invisible is often keenly sought when growing up. It is such an embarrassing business. When old, one wishes for more attention, but the young just race past the old.

One just never knows with old fogeys what kind of stupid remarks they might still make. Alzheimer can’t come quick enough, just give us our money and then piss off. Has anyone read recently about old folks getting ripped off by their own children. They end up fighting over the antique clock or box with jewellery and wedding rings that no longer fits those gnarled shrunken fingers? It happens in close knit communities. Can you believe?

Even though I was fifteen on arrival here, my foreign accent is still here and will never go. The odd thing is that my Dutch has an Australian accent. Years ago while in Amsterdam with Helvi, I asked direction to a cinema. To our surprise we were asked if I perhaps could be a Dutchman who was living or had lived for a long time in Australia. I was stunned. How could you tell, I asked the man? Oh, he said ‘I have met  a few Dutchmen who came from Australia.’ They all speak Dutch with an Australian accent. Even more intriguing is that Helvi’s English has a mixture of both Finnish and Dutch with Dutch being more dominant.

In any case, my question about trying to suss out what people’s ‘real home’ is can be put down to many still having a foot still in both continents. I am always somewhat curious what it means to have soaked up enough of the real Australia way of life to have totally blended in with the locals. Most of the locals come from somewhere, unless rooted in the ‘real Australia’, the traditional owners of this land we call Australia. In any case, my question is often met with pleasure and surprise. It makes for interesting conversation and it passes the time!

Children, tripping over and business. ( Auto-biography)

The flooded creek

After we settled in King’s Cross there was a flurry of marriages in the Oosterman clan. My friend Bernard married a Japanese girl and went to live in Japan. I continued with the painting business on my own.  One of my brothers married a girl from Russia but born in Peru, another from Polish background, my sister married a man born in Germany with just one who married an Australian. I of course married a lovely Finn. Apart from my brother who married an Aussie and has died since, we all are still married to our first love.

They were busy times all racing to get home and hearth together as well as bonnie babies. There were nappies and the smell of them. Toys on the floor. A variety of bassinettes and other bouncing contraptions that we would easily trip over.  They were the years when tripping over was normal and totally safe. Of course now a fall could easily result in an ambulance racing over to lift you on a stretcher and to a hospital, nurse putting on the gloves and a worried doctor looking you over. I haven’t as yet reached that stage yet, but it will come about!  Helvi urges me to take a firm hold of the handrail coming down from the computer upstairs. It pays to be careful! I sometimes wish that recklessness could continue. It was such a part of being young. Reckless and foolish. Now we play it safe and pretend to be wise, but really just give in to ageing, play it secure, getting old, sip our coffee and remind each other to take medicine. We have learnt our lesson.

It seems odd that when we were young and had a life ahead, we were reckless, took our chances when at the same time so much was at stake. One fatal mistake could easily result in having to pay for it over the rest of your natural life. Yet, now that we (I am) are old and with our lives more behind than in front we have far more solid reasons to be reckless. Throw caution to the wind. What is there to lose? What is holding us back?  Do a bungy jump or fight a crocodile, live in Bali or Amsterdam. We might just, with luck,  squeeze in a couple of years more or so. Of course many of the old do amazing things still, but by and large we have become more cautious and play it safe. I never ever thought I would reach that stage. Yet it is has come about.  Even so, we still have no insurance of any kind except third party property car insurance which I suppose is proof of some lingering recklessness. harking back to youthful risk taking.  I mean, does one not get buried without having any money.  Does it matter? Mozart got buried in a pauper’s grave. Perhaps, that is just bundied about to encourage budding composers to keep on trying, regardless of fame or fortune.

But going back (to those years of recklessness),  and having settled down it came about that families were sprouting up all over the place. Our first was born within a couple of years after arrival in Sydney. Our second daughter two years after that, delivered by the same doctor named Holt. I renewed previous contacts and gained quickly new jobs. Some years later, I won some really substantial contracts including the painting of the extensions to the NSW Art Gallery and the International Flight kitchen at Sydney’s airport. I tried as well to keep on with painting pictures and even had, optimistically, bought a huge  fifty metres by two metres roll of raw cotton canvas together with varied sizes of stretchers on which to span and make canvasses ready to paint.

I was an optimist and Helvi the supporting wife and mother…They were very good years,

many good years were yet to come.

Goodbye Suit and Attaché case

Japanese Windflowers

In life we think we make choices that determine our future. Is that true? One could have turned left or to the right. So much is due to the unforseen. The past is never a sign towards the future but only something to mull over in old age and even then it hardly ever surrenders wisdom or insight. That seems to only come about by a presence of mind while doing the dishes or polishing ones shoes or writing a few words.

I do remember feeling euphoric walking to Centraal Station in Amsterdam. I must have taken my suitcase and just bought the train ticket, walked up the flight of stairs to the platform taking me to Italy. It was the absolute right thing to have done. My job at the bank with the daily routine of balancing the books to zero each day had run its course. There is only so much you can do with a zero. It wasn’t easy. I had to make sure there wasn’t a cent in between. This is the essence of good book-keeping. The cost of a postage stamp could throw my day into turmoil and cost me hours of having to work after hours. No one could go home till the books were zero.

Even the director on the swivel chair had to stay back. All the branches had to give the daily figures to head office which would then print the all important statements and post them to the bank’s customers. I often used to offer the bank my own money if there was a discrepancy of just a few cents in order to be able to go home. No, that is not what banking is about. The books had to balance. You can see, dear readers, can’t you, how my career at a bank had to end? To think that at the very best I too could end up a director and swivel around a special chair. Is that what I had to look forward to? Of course to become a director could only come about by appointment. The director at my branch wasn’t too impressed, especially not when I laughed after he fell backwards with a cigar in his hands. It was doomed.

All my sense of importance wearing a finely pressed suit in the tram of Amsterdam had come to not much more than working on the Czechoslovakian Capstan lathe back in Australia, (bar the strange rituals). When my friend Bernard had secured a lovely chalet in the North of Italy I decided to chuck in the job and join him. This decision was made within a split second. The spontaneity of it was breathtaking. I loved it and still tend to act rather rashly which Helvi finds sometimes a bit hard to deal with. Of course, one could question how the bank would feel not even been notified of my choice to leave. I simply vanished.

They must have enquired at my address of the dying uncle. In any case, the book-keeping must have been done by the director till a replacement was found. I never collected my wages or holiday money as I felt it a just penance for not having given notice. The train trip to Bressanone started in rain but ended in glorious sunshine, a good omen. But of that…more to come!

(We will be in Ubud- Bali till the 23 of June. I hope to be able to post but am dependent on doing it on a tablet. I am not sure how that works. We shall see) !