A Grave issue (first published August 2013)

A grave issue.

Some time ago I decided, together with grandchildren, to have a closer look at the local cemetery here at Brayton, NSW. My grandkids at that time were dealing with death and dying and the prospect of Opa carking it as well, sooner or later. Thomas, who was 6 at the time and a bit of a thinker, pondered about Oma’s statement that, at some stage you arrive at a ‘spot’ in life when one would die. He thought deeply about this; when I get at that spot, I will jump over it, he said brilliantly. Oma answered by laughing; and what a clever boy you are. He slept like an angel that night.

The graveyard at Brayton is one of those lovely forgotten and forlorn bush places where in the past, swags could easily have been rolled out with bushies camped in between the contented and silent stones. It is surrounded by an old fence that leans higgledy piggledy now, but even so, were then hand hewn with posts and rails that survived fires and hungry ants, rammed in hand dug holes decades ago by men now buried there. It keeps out the curious cows but not the incorrigible wombats. Argyle eucalypts with leaves so silvery and fragrant keep guard and give shade to all those dearly departed country souls. The view from this burial place is so beautiful and to die for. The surrounding paddocks carry the black stumps of bushfires which wiped out the settlement many times over, including Post Office, Church and local single class school. The graveyard is all that Brayton now is. Someone carried the brick steps of the burned out church to this burial place as well. A small and modest reminder of big rural lives then.

Of course, the grandkids were overawed by this chance of seeing places where bodies of dead people were kept. One stone of simple concrete had moved ajar through erosion, unhurried time and drought, allowing the boys to squat down and peek inside. They looked, but darkness inside prevented any remnant of Joh.D with d o b 1912, passed 1986, to be shown.

Things became serious when I asked if they would prefer Opa to be burned (cremated) or buried and if buried what spot would be suitable? I mentioned this because a few weeks earlier their dad’s mum passed away. The funeral included the grand kids who viewed their daddy’s mum’s body in its resting casket for all to view before a big funeral with lots of kissing, singing and crying. After, the body was flown back to Croatia for another large burial. Some of the kids went for that funeral as well. A few years earlier when another old relative had passed away, little four year old Jack asked; who shot him? They grow so much faster now a days, don’t they?

Someone said; a country’s culture is defined by how they look after their dead. If true, then Argentina with Buenos Aires’ La Recoleta cemetery would have to be at the top, perhaps closely followed by Russia. The Argentine cemetery is amazing with vaults many stories high and a favourite for week-end visits by relatives and tourists alike. Thousands are crowding complete streets of Mausoleums and graves not unlike Mc Mansions here except much better build with marble surely outlasting brick veneer and hollow columns. Flowers on graves are real too with regular replacements and so are the urns and vases. No fading or windswept plastic petunias there. Some burial palaces are so large it would almost take a whole day just to take it all in. Of course, it depends on personal fondness of visiting grave yards in the first place.

Russians are also big on burials and cemeteries, with many making it a week-end family picnic.  Again, some of the graves are magnificent and often surrounded by ornate cast iron fences. My better half used to insist that in Finland the graves are the best and the dead also most revered.

My query is how do we deal with our temporary stay here? How are our young prepared for death? Or do we pretend it all goes on forever?  Rookwood cemetery in Sydney is vast but the abundance of all those dreadful plastic pretend flowers seems insulting to the dead. Then again, most people happily have those while alive, so……. C’est la vie or c’est la mort.

The concert.

The area where I am living is named The Southern Highlands and for historical reason always attracted a fair proportion of artists and art lovers. Perhaps of its height above sea level and its resulting climate, people were attracted to it. The summers dry with little humidity while winters bracing and perhaps reminiscent of Great Britain which many Anglo Australians still refer to sometimes as the ‘Home country’. Although I will try and avoid the Scottish or Irish to include as Anglos. They are also well represented and there is Brigadoon, a yearly Scottish musical event where people go around visiting fellow Brigadoners and have sing along, all dressed in kilts, tassels, and lustily throwing cabers.

The Southern Highlands attracted also wealthy people buying a holiday house as it was still within reasonable distance from Sydney and easily reached by car or even trains. Now the area is a great mixture of all arts imaginable and even arts unimaginable. I went again at yesterday’s concert and was surprised by its high standard, world class. The soprano in the concerts which I have seen is the daughter of a family friend and was one reason I also wanted to hear her heavenly voice again. The background of all the musicians are of world class with having performed throughout Europe. I felt privileged to have heard this superb music of Violins, Viola, Cello and of course the soprano Voice.

Afterwards I felt so elated and uplifted I stopped my car by Woolworth where I had previously been eyeing not only the hot cooked chickens ( and sometimes bought the odd chook) but also the roast pork WITH  crackling. I never had the courage to buy that pork dish as guilt crept in. Is it a childhood fear of sinning? I do have the occasional ham sandwich, so it is not the type of meat but perhaps more the expense. After all, the hot chicken is $10 while the pork with crackling was $ 20. Who knows?

Anyway, I was feeling euphoric after this wonderful music so I decided to ride the wave of happiness a bit longer and I bought the crackling with roast pork. After coming home to a very enthusiastic Mr. Bentley, the Tibetan Spaniel, I sat down with a glass of Shiraz  and partook of my Pork and crackling. It was so good and what a day it was!

By the way. Just had an email from WordPress congratulating me.

I have 1550 followers.

No end of Covid.

Has there ever been anything like the present Covid news that has so saturated our lives? There is now nowhere to turn. The QR code has made double sure any escape impossible. At every turn one is asked to take the iPhone out and take a picture of the QR code which is a scrambled square that doesn’t seem to make any sense. Apparently it can be used to trace our movements but I am sure the world of quick money is using it to spout their products.

I have managed to get my double vaccination and even received a digital certificate proving my vaccination status. It is the Astra Zeneca of which there has been some concern that it produced thrombosis in a small number of recipients of that particular vaccine. Most of those, mainly younger women that suffered the blood clotting recuperated but an extremely small number have died. This information was badly handled by our Government and some became scared and uncertain and are now going without vaccinations waiting for the alternative vaccination the Pfizer which is in short supply.

Almost daily we are given ‘updates’  about  changes to the lockdown rules and which areas of our country/cities have to be avoided. There are exemptions but the police is now employed to enforce by punishment that we obey lockdown rules. From next Monday for example the building industry is added to lockdown. Any hammering or drilling is strictly forbidden. We are given this weekend to secure any building or renovation site.  No one in the greater Sydney area is allowed to leave  and police on highways can check your number plate and know instantly that you have transgressed the lockdown rule. Those that don’t fall in line with the restrictions and lockdown can expect the dreaded midnight knock on the door and get a hefty fine to boot.

There are supposed to be exemptions on compassionate ground to visit each other such as couples in intimate relationships that are not living together. That would include me, but the consequences have to be taken in consideration. Do you really want to risk giving Covid infection? And what happens when you get back home again. Does one then have to self isolate?

These are hard and terribly boring times. I give myself some relief with wine and walking, patting Milo, knitting and some solitary cooking.

What can one do?

Here is something very exuberantly cheerful from 1725 by Jean Phillipe Rameau

LES INDES GALANTES – YouTube

Table service for two

People’s fascination with cafes and restaurants still does not seemed to have peaked. Our post Covid economic recovery now is heavily reliant on the reopening of eating places. Ordinary people are now burdened by this Government to increase their patronage, and not to stop using those venues, no matter how this last year has exhausted, not just their will to keep going, but also their finances. And that is apart from those establishment themselves trying to keep heads above water. Often severely financially tired chefs would feature being interviewed on the TV while listlessly stirring a wooden spoon in a pot of gruel while facing a single diner, if not a totally empty café. There were so many lockdowns, lockouts and group limitations of no more than five or seven, that cafes were either knocked out or buckled under.

This Covid now has peaked and in Australia at least there hasn’t been any new cases and if there are, they are confined to just two or three people locked in hotel quarantine that are using aerosol nebulizers whose covid loaded vapors seep underneath doors or through air conditioners. TV is also showing  politicians baring a single arm, smiling a bit sheepishly getting the first of the vaccination jabs. A problem now popped up is getting people actually interested in getting the vaccination. There have been almost as many shark attacks than people getting the Covid of late. 

In this spirit of helping the country recover financially, my new found love Annette and I now have visited a number of well established eating venues that managed to withstand Covid and the shifting tectonic economic plates. One of them was a Japanese sushi bar. I have often stood still watching people eating and picking little plates that go around and around on some kind of rail system. I loved watching it and was mesmerized yet did not have the courage to ever try it out. It seemed such an advanced way of eating and I was conscious of my ineptitude of what would be  a form of eating of which my ignorance would show as soon as I walked into such a bar. I have great difficulty in showing airs of confidence or ‘nous’ especially in public. Fortunately, Annette has no qualms about this and I followed her bravely and with some nonchalance. It works by the platters that the food comes around and around with in being of different colours and each colour has a price that differs from the other platters. When one has eaten enough you simply take the empty different coloured platters to the cashier and you get the bill.

It was a unique way of dining and we loved it. I know a sushi train bar here in Bowral and we shall try that out next time.

I will keep you informed.

The lure of the past and a bed pan.

There might be nothing more exciting or upsetting when visiting the past. Over the last three days it happened almost by accident of an emergency. You know that when all has been so settled, quiet and serene for a long while, a suspicion seems to well up that this peace can’t last.

Our street and house in Balmain where we lived 1976-1996

Sure enough, I received a message that told me in a few crisp lines, that text messages always seem to excel in, but none the less almost always are disconcerting, that my daughter had deposited herself in an Hospital emergency room. ‘Chest pain’, was part of this short text! Of course, the reaction was a trip to Sydney the day after. I had organised the house in such a way to leave our dog Milo an exit in case of toilet visits by placing a stick behind the sliding door, leaving an opening big enough for Milo but not for a robber, no matter how agile or elastic he or she might be.

My daughter after arrival was in the emergency ward and suitable wired up to all sorts of equipment, occasionally a beep would be expelled from one of those machines. I noticed with pride that some of that equipment had Philips as the manufacturer. It is still a Dutch company that originally started out by making light bulbs. It is now a multinational conglomerate employing 80 000 people world-wide

A closer look at the house.

After visiting my daughter and consuming a delicious toasted cheese and ham sandwich for my breakfast and getting the daughter to keep asking the doctor for more information, I left when her son visited her as well.  She had chest pain but a quick scan and blood pressure test, proved that her heart was alright. A great relief. The bed allows only limited number of people to sit on and the chair was nowhere to be seen or perhaps used in the bed next to my daughter, which was screened off. I saw a bedpan being carried away covered by a cloth. Always a sign one is in good hands. I remember them well from my occasional forays in hospital.

I decided to visit our old house and street where we live so happily for twenty years.  After all, I was back in Sydney. They were really the years that our three children grew up from toddlers to adults. The street has lost none of its charms. The suburb of Balmain is now a millionaires’ nest, hounded by big time foreign currency option dealers,  lawyers and well heeled liberal provocateurs.

The entrance to our old house.

Amazingly one of my friends that I met here recently in Bowral lived in the same street at the same time when we lived there. Another friend in the same group grew up just around the corner as well. Such coincidences that are so baffling.

Our veranda with me and the red heeler cattle dog, around 1990 or so.

This picture is of the street taken yesterday, still charming.

I visited my Daughter again today, and all is well. She might be coming home tomorrow.She was worried about her cats more than about me. But then, I am just a dad.

What an amazing life this has been so far, and still ongoing!

 

 

 

Of isolating and the Smart TV

Etching by G. Oosterman

The longer our self isolating is going on the more the question arises; what about the victims of this isolating? In my case, I find it reasonably alright as I have rarely been much of a social roustabout, never really learned the skills on attracting much of an audience at social gatherings. I suppose also, that much depends on an audience as well.

At my indoor bowling adventure the social intercourse that I was hoping for did not come to much fruition. A peculiar and firmly ingrained habit of that sport seems to be that even though women and men bowled together, in between the bowling while having a cup of tea, the men and women strictly did their sipping at separate tables.

On the other side of the scales, the latest attempt at meeting people I was invited and met an extraordinary group of people who one feels totally at ease with. Both men and women embrace the sipping in total unison. We sip different beverages to the bowlers and enjoy coffees instead of tea, but I don’t think it is just the difference in the liquid. On second thoughts, perhaps there is a tie that links the differences.

Going back to 1956 when my family arrived in Australia we noticed that coffee drinking was mainly the domain of the reffos. Reffo was the name given to European refugees known for the same obnoxious xenophobic stupidity as now falling on the Iranians and other Middle Eastern refugees’ ears. Funny enough they too seem to prefer coffee. But, I am drifting off subject. In those early days my mum had to travel to Sydney by train to get ‘real’ coffee in the form of beans. The brave Australian born and bred thought coffee always came in powder form and each cup had 43 beans. So, what is your problem they used to tell my mum who kept insisting that coffee has to be freshly brewed from ground coffee beans.

Tea drinking is a British institution. The Queen would not dream of ever be seen drinking a latte. Can you imagine the horror of the British if it became known? A filthy European habit will never do in between the Beefeaters.  Now, is the link between the bowling club people the reason for the separation of the sexes caused by their ingrained tea habit? Is my new found group of the most friendly egalitarian people and their open ended welcome caused by the Euro linked latte? The link might be a trifle tenuous, some might even thing tedious!

Who knows?

As for my opening line of ‘Isolating and the Smart TV. It is difficult, and yesterday I did not talk to a human being. However, the good news is that I managed to get my Smart TV working and…more than that. On the SBS ‘on demand’ classic movie channel I discovered Wim Wenders’ ‘Wings of Desire’, a black and white masterpiece of a movie Helvi and I watched years ago.

 

What a find and there are a lot more good movies to watch. Of course, meeting up with friends and share the latte will also happen again and there is a lot to look forward to.

Gerard

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…

A memoir in progress( Farm house)

Helvi on a  French terrace.

After numerous inspections and having driven both the French and the English Estate agents around the bend with our ceaseless requests to see even more farms, we ran out of steam and decided to return to Australia. We drove the ;leased Citroen back to Marseille airport and, after the obligatory custom check-outs with many s’il vous plaits to see our passports, we ‘hopped’ on the plane, totally Frenched out. Why do we not walk onto the plane, why is it hopping? We have never hopped at all, let alone onto a plane. Perhaps it is a deliberate ploy by the large multinational airline companies to make light of the sheer torture of long flights. You can just see the advertising moguls at board meetings trying to get a handle on making flying  joyful again. Someone uttered; ‘ the hopping kangaroo.’ worked well, didn’t it? And so it was that the ‘hopping on board’ was coined. A eureka moment for the flight industry. The whole world now uses the term and one can imagine the hopping of tens of thousands of cheerful air travellers hopping about at international airports all over the world, and at any given time.

Searching for a French farm.

Of course, coming back and land at Mascot, Sydney, and then the dreary ride to the city along the notoriously ugly Botany Road with its peppering of large advertising hoardings, doesn’t make for much of a hopping back home. I clearly remember an enormous sign, all in a gaudy yellow, advertising a medication to cure sexual dysfunction. How anyone can get enthusiastic about their levels of tumescence after twenty one hours on a plane escaped us entirely. We badly needed our own very soft and kind mattress giving us a twenty-four hour uninterrupted deep sleep. But, before any thoughts of a good sleep we had the melancholic task of emptying our luggage, chuck our underwear and socks in the washing machine.

At a previous trip to Holland and France we decided to follow the advice of a seasoned traveller who had written books about travel. He had travelled the world just carrying overhead luggage, stored on board above the seat. He suggested it could easily be done by simply buying a shirt or singlet if such a need came about. I had no trouble with that. My wife was a bit reluctant at first but nevertheless followed suit.

Carcassonne.

( to be continued.)

 

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)

New Year’s ( but happy?)

We are again at the doorstep of another year rolling over. I thought to-night was the fireworks at Sydney’s harbour bridge, but I was mistaken. It is tomorrow night. Fire now seems to be associated with the breaking of the new year, but the traditional fireworks are on the cusp of being cancelled. There are so many fires burning now, it is difficult to find something that is not burning at the moment. To celebrate the New Year with fire-works seems insulting, especially to those that have given their time fighting fires all over the joint. I noticed that one fire out of control is now approaching our area. People are a bit tense, huddling in groups and talking in hushed tones to each other, no doubt advising on possible escape routes. The quickest way to a lake or pond with a view to immerse oneself in case the firestorm approaches. There are also designated safe areas for people to evacuate to, including the Returned Soldier’s Clubs where I play my bowls.

https://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/about-us/our-districts/southern-highlands

“Alpine, Aylmerton, Willow Vale, Braemar, Balaclava, Mittagong and Mt Gibraltar areas

• Monitor the changing conditions. Strong north westerly winds may push embers into the area.
• Stay alert for embers and spot fires.
• Embers can be blown well ahead of the main fire front, and start spot fires that can threaten homes”.

The above is copied from the latest warning on a fire approaching the Southern Highlands. It is out of control and covers over 227 000 ha. It is large enough to create its own climate and cause dry lightning to strike for fires to spread even more. Tomorrow is going to be very critical with predicted temperatures in the 40’s C. The nation is on high alert.

I was given a couple of nice bottles of wine at Christmas time. It included a ten year old tawny Port. I am actually considering to cut down on my alcohol consumption. I noticed that my appetite is languishing and lessening. I have a banana and pear for breakfast and that seems to carry me over lunch as well. And then in the evening I force myself to eat a salad with a salmon cutlet. Of course, I had the lamb curry on Christmas Eve, but on the whole I seem to eat a lot less. But…I still had my few glasses of alcohol, I suppose to carry me through the evening when my new sole-ness makes itself felt so keenly. It helps to make me go to sleep. But I noticed that in the morning on wakening I feel parched and often suffering a grey mood.

I decided two nights ago to cut down and just have at most two glasses of wine over about a five hour period. I started last evening and it helped, I woke up feeling better and put on my socks with quickened pace.

I am also considering giving up some of my bowling in exchange for doing the U3A  https://sohiu3a.org.au/course. The bowling is a nice exercise but in between, while having a cup of tea, the players segregate into one table for the women and at a separate table the men. It seems so anachronistic. On top of that, at the men’s table they have a ‘swearing tin’. This is a tin in which the men are supposed to put in money if they swear. It seems that swearing is the domain of men.  And then the remarks about ‘Muslims are bad, Lebanese, Chinese are bad, etc. Before I could cope but now I am too fragile to just put up with it.

What do you all think about that?,