A Country Town ( Goulburn)

Most local people would know Goulburn as the town that holds a high security prison. The notorious mass killer Ivan Milat is serving his sentence there together with other high profile miscreants.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backpacker_murders

Please try and read the above link. It is almost as good as a Wallander Mankell thriller.

In its heyday Goulburn was the hub of Australia’s wool industry. Australia from the early eighteen nineties till the nineteen seventies was ‘riding on the sheep’s back.’ One of its main export income was wool. With cheaper cotton and synthetics entering the market, wool became much less competitive and growing wool now is a minor part of agriculture. A reminder of this wool Empire of Goulburn is a very large concrete sheep near the Sydney-Melbourne highway turnoff to Goulburn. Inside this large sheep one can buy Chinese made wool trinkets, whistles, scarfs, and Australian made socks as well as aboriginal artefacts.

Goulburn as a result of the collapse of wool became a town looking for its former but lost glory. We bought a farm in 1996 not far from this town, about 20 kms away. At that time one could have bought a 4 bedroom freestanding house for about $350,000.- and today the same house is still selling for $350,000.- It’s a beautiful but a stagnant rural town. I am sure it would provide an amazing opportunity for Sydney siders to cash up on their $2 million house and whoop it up in Goulburn. It houses an excellent library and an even better Art Gallery. In winter it can be a bit cold and bracing, but with central heating and a roof full of solar panelling it would be a most pleasant town to live in. It also has a very nice ‘Workers Club and RSL.’ ( Returned Soldiers Club)

A few days ago we went to re-visit our former country town. We usually like to go back to past lives. Reminiscing about places and lives of the past is the prerogative of growing old, especially while it is still possible. One never knows when the time will arrive the mobility scooter or ‘Eventide Care-Home’ beckons!

After arrival, and being hungry we popped into the Workers Club. I ordered curried sausages with peas and mashed potatoes. Helvi ordered roast chicken with vegetables. Both were terrible. I never thought that mash and sausages could be so failing. Helvi’s chicken was some kind of muscled thigh that belonged to a very scrawny old chook looking for a long gone rooster. My curried sausages were chopped up bits of something drowning in what I assumed was a curried flavoured sludge sobbing to be rescued. The peas were absent or fled somewhere else. The mash was lumpy.

In Australia we are the world champions in gambling. All clubs provide subsidised cheap meals paid for by the poker machine addicts. You can see them on the way to the toilets. Elderly or not so elderly people, transfixed by the ghoulish lights of the poker machines. Sometimes plastic shopping bags next to the players on the floor. A sad sight, if ever there was. After a couple of beers drowning the half-eaten lunches, we left for a solid walk around Goulburn.

On the walk back to the car we came across a man sprawled out on the pavement. We had walked past him previously and noticed his dishevelled appearance, but he was seated on one of those updated modern square public seating arrangements surrounded by pretty greenery between the pavement and the road. He must have slumped off his seat. People walked past this man. We stopped and thought of finding out what might be the matter. He looked to be in his mid thirties and appeared motionless. I asked if he was alright but no response. I then decided to phone triple zero for emergency. By that time a few passers-by had stopped too.

As I was giving information to the emergency number, the man moved his hand and showed therefore to be alive. He picked himself up and mumbled a few words. The emergency phone lady decided to cancel the ambulance. The man went back to his previous seat and grabbed his tobacco that had spilled on the pavement. He mumbled something that he was alright and no help was needed. We felt sorry. How does it get to that state? He would have been a healthy young man once. Did he take some tablets or did he have a health problem?

We hope to have a better visit next time. Perhaps we will give clubs a miss seeing that gambling gives us cheap meals. A bit like being hypocritical of an industry that causes so much harm.

Relief for Seniors with Sun and Shadow.

With the world reeling from disasters, one could be forgiven for keeping the TV’s switched off. After the recent flooding, he was seen to hurry to Bunnings to buy wooden beams, some tubes of strong adhesives and bitumen paint. Bunnings of course, is a large hardware chain which sell dreams for the handy-man and home DIY…(Do-It-Yourself). They are huge. In a clever move to involve both men, and women, Bunnings introduced classes in general homecare, such as minor carpentry, basic plumbing, clearing drains, and tool handling for women. Last year the classes were combined with line dancing. It included face painting for the kids, and on Saturday they have Lions Club volunteers raising funds by selling Barbequed sausages, and onions on sliced white bread, with a variety of sauces. The kids and husbands love it. Bunnings is to hardware what Aldi is to food.

He had felt it his duty to try and prevent future water inundation, even without wearing pyjamas. After measuring the distance of the required levy he lowered the back-seat down in the car. He only recently discovered this possibility. It doubled the capacity to carry wooden beams to almost twice the lengths. He finally also read in the car manual that the reason his car did not carry a spare wheel in the back, was that one could drive with flat tyres. He had given up reading the car manual. He kept falling asleep. Instead read yet another Mankell thriller. Apart from some Ruth Rendell books, he never was much into crime books…

His recent book marketing and selling of his own book had come to a bit of a hiatus, and the recent threat of minor flooding was just the ticket to lift him out of his beloved tendency to nurture gloomy feelings. Something that he tended to do anyway without any outside encouragement. He had often told himself that his efforts to publish his memoirs was for the family to deal with in case he went missing in action, or had carked it. Not an unreasonable assumption, seeing he was nudging seventy six years in total so far. He was previously given to pondering he would like to leave something a bit more substantial than just his faded Municipal Rate notices or his record of Dutch and Australian pension entitlements.

He found himself humming ‘when the Saints come marching in’ while driving home with the necessary wooden beams poking against the back of the front seat. A box of liquid nails adhesive was secure on the passengers seat. He was going to glue the beams outside near his garage door to form a barrier, and prevent future flooding. He had written a stern note to the Strata Body Corporate but the courtesy of an acknowledgement was yet to be given. He did not really want to rely on the blocked stormwater drain to be fixed. Even so, he did notice a remote camera for sale at Aldi’s with the necessary cables and manual. The camera would come in handy to send it into hard to reach areas to investigate any problems. It is amazing how technology outpaces the elderly now. No doubt the camera could be sent into the drain and transmit in detail any blockage. Something to ponder about for the future.

After arriving home and unpacking the beams he got stuck into the job at hand.

His wife noticed he was very cheerful.