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…

The dreaded mid-night knock on the door.

https://www.sbs.com.au/yourlanguage/turkish/en/audiotrack/sbs-turkish-news-25

Australia and its secrecy laws are now acted upon without regards for the freedom of its citizens.  The raids by the Australian Federal Police on the private home of a Journalist, Annika Smethurst, and a day later in the offices of our National Broadcaster, the ABC, ought to set off the alarms for those that believe in the freedom of the press to report truthfully, responsibly and without fear or favour. … its responsibility to those who elect and have faith in the government.

The raids by the AFP on the newsmedia in Australia have been reported worldwide. Australia is now looked upon with aghast and consternation, a country where anything goes to install fear by intimidation. Australia is the only country in the Western world without a Bill of Rights. This was pointed out as a possible reason why Australia has so willingly accepted and is still going through some very dark places. The Governments have seen fit over a number of years to pass laws that enable them to virtually do anything to shut down any criticisms of its actions. They do this by including almost anything the Government wishes to obtain or achieve as  being ‘secret’, and make them by law, excluded from thorough scrutiny. This might be why the exclusion of A Bill of Rights might well serve Governments very well and under that exclusion, gets a handy protection from nosy scrutiny. It’s strange how we ended up being the only country without a Bill of Rights!

Michael Kirby, a prominent judge, has questioned why Australia is so reluctant to have a Bill of Rights. Have a look at this.https://www.sbs.com.au/news/a-lot-of-wrongs-to-repair-justice-michael-kirby-calls-for-national-bill-of-rights_2

Look at our reluctance to accept equal marriage laws, the jailing of refugees who have done no wrong. Then, at earlier times, the horrible ‘White Australia Policy’ banning coloureds from migrating to Australia, the treatment of our indigenous Australians. The ‘Children over-board’ lies. The naming of all crimes in Melbourne invariably blamed on ‘Sudanese gangs’,and the calling of refugees on Nauru and Manus, rapists, killers and wife murderers.

Allegedly, Australia has been getting away with murderous behaviour by its soldiers in Afghanistan. This is being touted as the possible reason for the raids on the ABC offices by the AFP. The Government doesn’t want a light shone on any unwanted or unsavoury consequences of their chosen actions during that stupid war. This Government wants to get at the ‘whistle blowers’ who most often are the ones to dig around for truth. All journalists work with whistle blowers whose job it is to get to the bottom of dirty deeds and deals. As it stands now, they could end up being charged with breeching secrecy laws and jailed. This is scary stuff.

We have to be vigilant.

Australia, right now is in a dark place. We need the lights on, not off.

The ‘Meeting’ , Final Body corporate.

 

The good readers might remember the issue of the painting of our housing compound. There are eight housing units which are called somewhat grandiosely ‘villas’. I have been pulled up a couple of times when referring to our homes as units. They don’t take kindly to calling a spade a spade. A villa in Holland is usually an imposing residence of grand proportions, perhaps with a sign at the gate for tradesmen to go to the back entrance. Delivery boys of groceries and the weekly gardener have to overcome their fear of a huge growling dog at the back entrance. The owners of villas are hardly ever seen. They glide about in sleek black cars and are rumoured to own bordellos in Porto Rico and even Spain.

I have been somewhat neglectful in attending Body Corporate meetings, and like Milo, have low boredom tolerance, having reached a stage where I too could easily take up barking at the ducks hidden between the reeds. The Body Corporate in Australia is a  defined entity that regulates shared ownership of the common areas around the housing units that people share. About six months ago I noticed some activity around the place and was told that the whole estate was going to get painted. I was surprised that nothing appeared about this from the minutes of the last meeting. The meeting date had been changed. We could not attend because we were in Bali.

I queried why there was no mentioning of all this beforehand and was somewhat alarmed about a single painting contractor from Melbourne being awarded the job. The reason given was that he would carry the shortfall in our saving/sinking fund for over five years. I then wondered why not more quotes had been obtained and why a contract was given to a painting contractor a thousand kilometres away. I also queried that it might be prudent to wait till enough was in the kitty to pay for the paint job. The odd thing was that the residents rallied behind the Melbourne quote, mainly because of the debt being paid into the future. Now going into debt has never been my forte. Indeed, the opposite. I don’t ever buy anything without paying upfront. The exception being the occasional mortgage taken out to buy our home. Our credit cards never earned the banks any money. Never!

I tried to get answers but was stone-walled. After not getting responses from either the Body Corporate or other owners I went and asked for some guidance on rules from the overseeing governmental body ;the NSW Fair Trading Commission. By then the hostility was getting thicker. People ducked behind closed doors, the venetians were stirring and whispers were being overheard behind the Magnolias, roads in avoidance were skilfully being crossed. One owner started skipping. A strange and hostile neighbourhood was showing its slip.

The law was on my side and I had it in black and white. H and I turned up at the Extraordinary Meeting of the body corporate. I came prepared. I took my portable laptop. At the meeting I unfolded in a significant manner my light blue laptop.  I took the chair and as I had practiced a few phrases, such as “responsible governance, due diligence, contravention of corporate laws, accurate recording of meetings” together with a calm demeanour (but not without a few authoritative coughs in between), let fly.

There was a silence. You could cut the air. The other owners and the hostile manager all looked around. There was nowhere to hide. They all turned into mice.  See how they run, … see how they run!   They all ran to…..

A feeble attempt was made to still go with the Melbourne mob. Previously I had posted an e-mail with details of an $80.000,- underpayment made to its painters by the Melbourne mob, that was dealt with through an industrial Court, hardly a recommendation.

This is were I held my trump card. I had in black and white that no maintenance could be done without having the money up front. The meeting decided to go with the cheaper quote that I had obtained. An extra levy of $1000.- per owner had to be raised. They all filed out in silence. The cheaper quote was for a local painter for $ 29.990.- compared with the $43.995.- from Melbourne. Not a single ‘thank you’. I smell a bit of a ‘hand-0ut’ to the Body Corporate  from the Melbourne mob.  Milo smelled something too and it wasn’t a pig’s ear.

 

Travel Trauma and Tribulations.

“Let me show you Sir.” “Just punch in your flight number and the machine will print your boarding passes, Sir.”  A friendly traffic cone breasted Virgin-Air attendant was showing me the ropes on IT travel etiquette. I had felt elated being internet savvy enough to book the three returns Sydney –Melbourne a few days earlier. The booking form appeared reasonably simple and just wanted the basics, name address etc. It’s funny but when something involves payment to others it is surprising how creamy smooth things can work out on the internet. In no time the envelope with ‘payment by credit card’ appeared with ‘this will take just 45 seconds’. Forty five seconds later I had coughed up a hearty $ 830. – including $ 27. – Credit card surcharge and another $ 76. – GST. No mention of any of that when filling out the booking form. Why the Credit card surcharge? Creamy-delights for the airlines alright.

The velocity membership imbroglio I’ll save for another article. Apparently you get points which you can use for shopping. Shopping and plane travel are so interwoven, I wonder if they are not the same. At each step travelers are tempted to connect wallet to an electronic remote suction device. They are all into it and shopkeepers are specially picked for their gleaming white teeth and hypnotically affirmative nodding heads nudging those that obstinately remain hesitant towards parting with the mulla. I can somewhat understand shopping at the tax free international travel section, but Sydney-Melbourne? What is at work here?

The first thing to notice is the nervous tension and excitement amongst those that frequent airports. No form of travel can compare. The wait for the local 401 bus to Balmain that might take an hour to get to your destination is conducive to a quick nap or endless yawning, the opposite of excitement.

Nothing like that at an airport. There is a crackling of nervous expectations. People are on edge and running. That is exactly the entrapment enticement to be exploited. The way out is to quickly stop and shop. It gives relief and content to what we feel life is about, especially life on the move, in transit and at that moment. Shopping is life lived at its fullest at any airport, even if it only involves a $ 2.80 bottle of water.

Once the plane refs up its engines to the max, just before take-off, it only confirms that having shopped works as the perfect placebo calming frayed nerves with the tensioning of the solar plexus being eased when contemplating the plastic bagged goodies stowed just overhead…

On our return flight one upward-pointed nosed woman was so loaded up even her fellow passengers overhead travel storage had to be taken up. Bag after bag was pushed overhead. The lid could hardly close. Each time it was pushed down some other item would bulge out. The owner of those bags was chortling with delight and her bovine boyfriend just kind of smiled giving knowing looks at the Virgin flight attendant. She understood.

The plane cruised around aimlessly with the cheery captain telling us there were many behind ours queuing up to land at Sydney. They had priority and we would be about twenty minutes flying around a bit here and there. I could not help but hope all those queuing planes would not bump into each other during mid-flight.

Perhaps I should have done a solid shop myself, ease the nerves.