The first house and Billabong

Billabong 1972 entree for the NSW Wynne Prize. https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/prizes/wynne/1972/24292/

It is a miracle that this painting has survived because, as indicated above, it was shown decades ago in 1972 at the NSW State Art Gallery. Each year this gallery runs a competition for the best portrait, the best Australian landscape, and the Sulman for the best genre or subject painting. It is a yearly well published artistic event followed keenly by the public almost as enthusiastically as the Melbourne Cup, which is a world famous yearly race-horse event where many women turn up wearing funny hats and many men with ties get drunk. Well, not all men, but some do, and then some of those inebriated men end up grabbing women inappropriately (who are wearing the funny hats), and end up in court charged with indecent assault or even worse.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/billabong

But the real miracle about the painting is that it is still in my possession. I am not sure when I painted it because it is not dated. The year after we moved to The Netherlands so I must have taken it with me and then some years later back again. It now rests in my garage at Bowral. Amazing. Another oddity is that not only was this painting accepted for hanging but the very walls on which the paintings were hung were also painted by me. I had won the contract for the painting of the new addition to the gallery of NSW. I am sure that this combination of painting walls and the art object hanging, from the same person, was unusual. I have now been asked to provide a photograph of Billabong in order for the Gallery to update their electronic data. The photograph was taken yesterday by my American friend who has the right very large and heavy cameras.

After the taking of the photo we decided to go around our old haunts where we lived in Balmain so many years ago. The little cottage where I painted Billabong is still standing upright . Here it is. Helvi and I lived there between 1969/73 and from 1972 with three lovely children.

We bought the house for $12.500.-in 1969. It was built in 1869 on a very small block of just 135 Sq. m. It has extensive harbour views including Sydney’s harbour bridge, the city itself with lots of water including the coming and going of boats, both large and small, luxury yachts, ferries, pleasure boats, anything that can float and move about on water. Large freighters when being pulled ashore by tug boats and reversing their engines used to make the landmass shake including our old weatherboard cottage. It was probably the nicest place to bring up children and paint pictures. It was a life of excitement. The house was stimulating to live in. In fact all of our places we lived in have been stimulating or at the minimum they were made to be inviting and stimulating.

Here an old photo from the inside;

Our daughter on the phone

Notice the modest b/w TV now-a-days  overtaken by many people showing giant screens to such an extend they have to have ‘home theatres’. Some TVs are now so large they are being sublet to small families. The house was completely open and all walls downstairs had been taken out by the previous owners, an architect, leaving a large living space that included the kitchen and bathroom. Right in the middle was a slow combustion old cast iron heater that heated the whole house. With the exposed wooden floor and a mat here and there we made it into a lovely and glorious home. Oh, the nicest memories I have of that period now.

Our little daughter in front of the cast iron solid fuel heater.

Here a photo showing the living room. Behind the pine wall is the bathroom and laundry which we partitioned off. Previous the bath was fully exposed to the living area which our friends thought as rather progressive.

Christmas party. Helvi looking at the camera.

Notice the modest sitting arrangement on paint drums and wooden planks! We felt like Lords. A real pine Christmas tree on the left.

Those were the times!

( the present value of that timber house is estimated at 2.7 to 3.5 million dollars)

Sipping out of Napoleon Brandy Balloons for Seniors.

Old Turku, Finland

With the world’s volatility at fever pitch, one could be forgiven in taking out of the lockable glass door cabinet, the special festive balloons. I don’t mean the blow up types. In the past, people used the brandy snifter as an art form, especially those who read Somerset Maugham’s novels, with being on polite coughing terms with members of the House of Lords or those who went through Cambridge and became professors. I am not aware if that art ever became common in the US’s Harvard. I have heard in American movies the expression, ‘he is an old Harvard boy, you know.’ It (the art) might have gone trans Atlantic seeing John Harvard was an alumnus from Cambridge. Sniffing out of balloons might well have travelled with him.

The Oostermans never managed to reach that elevated level. I wonder why? It just seems so nice to read about it. Napoleon Brandy conjures up a world of its own. Plush, deeply buttoned leather chairs. The Lords revelled the absence of women. The smoking room and clubs for the privileged! Remember a few weeks ago, a bowling club was disqualified and their license taken away for refusing women as members. Was it in Queensland again? Pauline Hanson with her anti-Islam and Halal certification got 4% of the National vote. Now likely to have three seats in the Senate.

How on earth did clubs came about refusing women? I know that in the past women and children were not allowed in public bars. There was the ‘Lady lounge.’ A room of sherry and shandy sipping, blue tinted hair and rouged cheeks. Back in 1956, my dad, who was an astute observer, noticed this separation of the sexes. It was another one of those features in our new country. It would now be called ‘a challenge’ or finding ‘a solution.’ Today, of course, we all mellow together. Now we would not know what sex people belong to anymore. There is a bewildering variety of choices and sexes out there. You would not know what to find after a romantic evening out, and the question, ‘your place or mine?’ It might be wise to keep the light on very diffused and both hands around the brandy balloon.

The balloon glasses were used so that it would allow hands around it to warm up the brandy. It then released, ever so subtly its mouth-watering aged burnished aromas. Some brandy sniffing enthusiasts used to draw up the brandy through their nostrils, hence the name taking ‘a snifter.'(sniffing) This resulted sometimes in coughing. That’s why in those excusive men’s clubs in England and India, even still today, the polite form of men acknowledging each other was through a well practised cough behind the left hand while holding the balloon behind the back in the right hand. It would be considered bad manners to cough over the balloon. Eye brows would be raised ever so perceptively.

All this apropos to the world being in such turmoil. Countries are exiting long held alliances. Here they are still counting votes. No one is sure anymore and small groups are talking in hushed tones on street corners. In the US, assault weapons are selling like lamingtons here. The Bahamas have issued travel warnings for the US. Some say, if people had more weapons the likelihood of getting shot would be less. One would shoot first. But the last two killings were done by police who thought they were reaching for a gun. Which one is it?

The world would be a better place if more people went for a good bout of polite coughing, and taking a snifter of Napoleon Brandy instead. Of course, in our case it might well be a couple of herrings and a drink of buttermilk.