The last post…….For a while , anyway.

I won’t be posting anything more for the time being, as I am going back to my Ancestry research, trying to fill the holes in my history.   Having done quite a lot of work on this project, I need to try to put it all together. Thank you for joining me on this blog. Best wishes and kindest regards,

Margaret 

The small, mundane tasks of life are like stitches in the tapestry of time , stop doing them and you will start to unravel.

Which is where I am at the moment.  In my usual quest for something interesting to do to fill

the 3 hour time slot of 9 until 12,  I have been playing around with the Xero accounting programme.  I have been tinkering on and off with this for a few years now, helping my daughter with her accounting, but have gotten no smarter or better or more understanding of it.  So, in an effort to stop brain fade overtaking me, I have decided to make myself a new project, studying Xero.  Not just operating on the surface blindly, knowing just enough to haphazardly use it.  So, every day, I peer through the portal into the programme.   

And you know what, I am starting to get it.  However, once I get immersed in something like this,  I tend to just overlook and leave the myriad small tasks of life, including eating.  My computer takes over my brain.

So, the message for today is, do not neglect the small issues of your life. Do them as they pop up but put a time limit on them. Even go so far as to set your timer.  

As I am always saying to other people, “Keep your eyes on the prize”.  I should take my own good advice. 

Cheung Chao Island

My Chinese Good Luck…..

And I don’t mean a Fortune Cookie

Seeing as how I am now time travelling backwards, I have started thinking about how I got started on my trail to the East.  I just decided one day to go to Hong Kong.  To my family, this looked like a crazy idea.  This was era 1988 or thereabouts, and we were now trading at Victoria Park Market in Auckland.  Just a little stall, seven days a week, but it became our lifestyle.

I was interested in sourcing products from overseas that we could sell in Auckland, and so Hong Kong seemed a good starting point. In the face of fierce opposition from my husband , I casually packed my only luggage, a small cabin bag, and told everyone I was going to Sydney for a few days. Which was true, that’s where the plane put down, and I didn’t bother to elaborate on my plans to venture further afield. I had actually no plans, went to a travel agent a couple of days later, who sold me a ticket to Bali and onwards to Hong Kong, travelling the next day.  The major problem I struck, silly me, was that my passport only had six months left on it, and that would have me stopped from entering Bali.

So, with the prospect of the plane leaving in the morning bound for Bali, and me not on it, I phoned the Indonesian Consulate, based in Sydney, great people, who kindly stayed in their office a bit later  to give me an entry visa to Indonesia. Then began my epic travels to Bali. But that’s another whole story. This one is about Hong Kong.

A friend had given me her ex-pat son’s phone number and I contacted him. He took me around Hong Kong, showed me the sights, helped me with my business research, and then, joy of joys, he took me on a day trip by ferry to one of the outer islands of Hong Kong.  Cheung Chao.   The big ferry was very clean and comfortable, we went right out in the South China Sea. As we approached the island, there were a number of large wooden fishing junks strung out along the outer perimeter of the harbour, what a sight!!  To me, something out of Marco Polo.

My friend’s son was taking me to meet another expat who was living with his Chinese girlfriend on the island. What a charming village Cheung Chao was in those days. No cars, everyone was on foot, and from a distance out to sea it looked a lot like the Greek fishing villages, very colourfully painted.

After lunch, we went for a walk around the island, visiting small temples all along the way. We finally came to quite a large temple, and, as I looked in the door, I saw a group of people throwing sticks onto the floor.  When I asked our Chinese girl companion what they were doing, she said they were throwing joss sticks to predict their future.

“Okay, she said to me, “you’re next”. The others had had their fortunes told, it was always the same, good luck, lots of money, lots of children etc, tourist stuff I suspect. I went reluctantly forward to the man conducting the ceremony, took the joss sticks and threw them.  As I looked at him, his face suddenly changed dramatically, as though he was in shock.  When I asked our companion what had happened, she said “You have thrown one of the highest numbers anyone can achieve”. She also said that he didn’t believe that a Westerner could come into his holy temple and do that. It was unheard of.

The meaning to me of that joss stick throw was that I am an exceptionally lucky person, and while I have no religious views, I have clung to my Chinese Good Luck for the rest of my life, and when the chips were down, it was there for me. 

Aquascene Fish Feeding 

Episode 10

 I thought  Darwin was a great little city, perched in isolation on the edge of the continent, and one of the nicest places I have been to.  The temperature at this time of year, April, May,  is around 34 degrees, which sounds  pretty hot, but it didn’t affect me at all.  The use of ceiling fans is widespread, running at full speed all the time.  The cost of living seemed to be on a par with Auckland  and the city itself was clean with no slums apparent,  as the loss of buildings in the cyclone was around nine thousand, and I guess anything that wasn’t in good shape would have been blown away.

On the tourist trail, I saw such things as huge saltwater crocodiles,  jumping out of the water,  to snatch meat from the rangers ( this was during  a boat trip on the Adelaide River).  The crocodiles have been protected for a long while now, and the population has increased so much, that the authorities are going to re-introduce culling.  I was told that the ocean  around Darwin is totally unsafe and unswimmable and I didn’t see any small boats , sail boats or water skiers in the  harbour, even though the weather was great and the water clean and warm.

Apparently, the crocodiles can see you coming and are able to  completely submerge under the water for more than an hour .  Then, they just come up and grab you and take you away.  There are a few people taken by crocodiles, but this kind of event doesn’t get much publicity. They probably don’t want to scare off the tourists. The Darwin Council even employs a “crocodile catching team” much in the same way as they employ a “dog catching team” The crocodile rangers, so I heard, take hundreds of crocodiles out of the Darwin Harbour each year .The crocodiles can apparently roam for twenty kilometres or so from the inland waterways, and are found in all sorts of places ---billabongs, creeks and rivers – even backyard swimming pools. I was warned that no waterway is safe in the Northern Territory or Far North Queensland.

As part of my tourist exploits, I visited the Museum and the War Museum, and saw evidence of how much Australia was kept in ignorance of the Japanese bombing raids, during World War Two. I also went to Acuascene and saw the marvellous sight of huge fish coming inshore into ankle deep water,  and taking bread  from the hands of the tourists.  I didn’t get to go to the Mindil Night Market,  as it is held from  dusk onwards  and I didn’t have any transport,  I was a bit reluctant to find myself on  a dark beach with no way to get back  to the YWCA, excepting on foot.

All in all, I had a great trip everywhere I went.  The weather was very good with little rain to spoil it. The best time of year to go to the Far North, is in the dry season.

“These Boots Are Made For Walking”, sang Nancy Sinatra, and I only wish I could.

 . 

.

Kakadu

Episode 9

On to Darwin.

The plane was, once again, a 70-seater, and it was a very smooth and enjoyable flight.  We put down on a small island in the Gulf of Carpentaria , a place called Groote Island, where there is a mining settlement.  I could have left the plane for a while, but I couldn’t see any point, as the stop was like a bus-stop pickup.  Most of the scenery on this flight path was very drab and repetitive until we flew over what must have been the Kakadu region.  There were huge, craggy, outcrops of land dotted with split mountains and chasms  cut deep into the earth.  Darwin Airport was pretty upswept for the Far North, but I guess it was rebuilt after the cyclone a few years earlier.  I took the shuttle into the city and went to the YWCA, where I was going to stay –at the huge cost of $30 a night.

The “Y” was, as usual, a good central place to stay, only minutes into town by taxi and it was also on the main bus route.  Joy of joys, I could wash my clothes. By now, I was desperate, as I was travelling with so little tropical gear. However, my burdens had been added to by the huge box that Andrew’s offsider had packed my artefacts in.

  And so I started on my half-day tours.  These were great value for money.  I was going to go to Melville Island, but when I found out just what was involved in getting there – a flight on a very small plane, four wheel drive vehicle, a trip in a very small boat, and then doing it all again to get back to Darwin, I chickened out.  I felt pretty exhausted from my earlier exploits at Gove. I looked at the Kakadu option, but once again, it seemed physically too hard for me. The trip was by four wheel drive vehicle  and it was stipulated that you must be reasonably fit, which I must admit, I wasn’t at that stage.  I decided to leave this hard adventure stuff  alone until I could do another trip, where I would fly straight to Darwin, via Alice Springs  with a stop at Cooperpedy (the opal mining town in Central Australia, 

Episode 8

We ran into a considerable storm on the way back , and the water had risen in quite a lot of the streams we had crossed on  the way into the bush.  At the final one, the water was over the bonnet of the Toyota, which gave me a bit of a fright . We made it with no trouble.

Not long after that, we stopped to gather some bark for the aboriginal painters, and I was amazed to see Andrew, standing on the roof of the Toyota,  stripping this from the Stringy Bark trees with an axe – he does all the preparation for the artists, which is quite a job in itself.  No wonder this type of work is so expensive, and as the painters also only use natural ochre, manganese and white chalk for their work,  it is all very authentic.

There was certainly a big storm in progress, so I was lucky that I had flown into Gove  the day before.  No planes were able to  land or take off  and, one quite big passenger plane had flown so far around to avoid the wild weather that it was running out of fuel.  It had to put down at a big station airfield to take on more.  That would have been a treat for nervous fliers.

Gove beach on Arafura Sea 

Episode 7

The trip was full of eventful little episodes like this , but we saw lots of wonderful pockets of rainforest , complete with parrots and all sorts of bird life.  After fording other small rivers and creeks, we arrived at the first aboriginal outstation.  Here I met the very old aboriginal painter, who was waiting for his supplies of bark.  However, a problem had struck him.

His tractor had run out of diesel on the beach at the next aboriginal outstation, and he asked if  we would take him there and give him some diesel.  Of course, this was no problem, so he climbed into the front seat with us, and I hoped he would tell me something about himself.  He spoke very little  English,  but his vibes were of a very gentle person.  As we drove along the track, suddenly two emus were flushed out of the bush --- and they were big ones!!  “Look at that!!” the old man cried, “ I’ll come back later and get those”.  The emus were running wildly along in the bush, almost parallel to the Toyota,  so I got a really good look at them. They were fast, but they were destined for dinner.

We eventually arrived at the next aboriginal outstation to find no-one at home.  But ,in the distance, along a beautiful, wild, sandy, hot, beach, we could see a group of people, and Andrew told me that these were the aboriginals from the out-station we had just called at, and they were gathering their native foods, which were seafood and yams etc.  We dropped the old man at his tractor and started back to the first out-station. Here we picked up a few aboriginals for the ride back to town.  When I asked them how they were going to get back, they told me they were going to take a small plane (these 4 or 6 seaters are used almost like taxis), and the aboriginal outstations have their own small airstrips

A Gove beach 

Episode 6

The next day I went over to the Art centre and bought some bark paintings, which were quite expensive. I also bought some other artefacts, but as everything was expensive, I couldn’t buy as much as I would have liked.  Then Andrew suggested that we take a trip out to one of the aboriginal outstations, as he had to deliver some bark to one of the painters.  This was for a commission he was having done for an American gallery.  This sounded like a great idea to me , but as he gathered up his aboriginal offsider, he was checking off a list……..have we got the winch ----have we got the ropes ----have  we got 20 litres of water----have we got spare diesel ?  At this point I started to get a bit nervous, after all, this was only going to be a day trip into the bush, wasn’t it?

Once again, I climbed hand-over-hand into the Toyota and off we went.  As I said, the roads are all Bauxite ( the stuff they are  mining to make aluminium and the reason Gove exists at all ) and drove for some considerable distance …the land is all flat and the trees look all the same , with a few little palms and bushes. Andrew asked his offsider “Now, where do we turn off?”   The man replied that we had to look out for Pandanus palms and the tall ant-hill.  “There it is!” shouted Andrew.  Great excitement allround , and I kept looking for a road off this landmark, but all I could see were a couple of wheel ruts and a lot of bush.  However, that didn’t deter the Toyota,  so off we drove into the practically unmarked wilderness.  The first creek we came to was a decided challenge. “Isn’t this the creek that Wills got stuck in last week?” asked Andrew.  We took to the bank at high speed, as the other side was so steep and slippery, that if you weren’t travelling fast, you could forget it. The Toyota just surfed through the creek, with the water lapping at the top of the bonnet.  Luckily for us, we came through with flying colours on the other side. Whew!!

Gove Painting 

Episode 5

 Andrew was there to meet me. What a relief it was to see him, but a bit of a shock too.  He was very tall, about 35 years old or so, with bare feet and this huge old Toyota land cruiser. He was the curator of an Aboriginal Art Centre, and a very well educated person, but it seemed unusual to see such a person wearing no shoes. However, he greeted me enthusiastically and put my gear into the Toyota , and boy, was I glad I had on my “Crocodile Dundee” clothes – cotton shirt and pants—as the climb into the Toyota was quite a hand-over-hand experience. I’ve never driven in anything so big, complete with bull bars to run down any roving wildlife.

Anyway, we went onto the aboriginal reserve area,  where I was going to stay with Andrew at his house.  On the way, we met one of the leading aboriginal figures of the region, a man whose name escapes me, but who was in a famous Australian band. Andrew introduced him to me as the person who had given me permission to be on the aboriginal land.  The people living in this area are all aboriginals as the only Europeans at this time were Andrew, his wife and children. The houses were made of galvanised iron  I think, with louvres running up and down the whole length of the walls of the houses, so they can be opened up to let the air in.  They all looked tidy from the outside, with mesh on the windows to keep out the mosquitos and flies.

The  Art Centre was pretty swept up for a facility of its kind in a remote area, complete with air-conditioning for the works of art. I think a lot of Government money, plus money from other sources, has gone into making this a unique development.

Andrew’s house was originally the Mission House, probably built in the 1920’s and  louvred from wall to ceiling. It had power and a proper toilet and there were ceiling fans.  I spent the evening, after a meal, watching videos of aboriginal corroborees, and that was very informative

“Don’t worry if you have no position: worry about making yourself worthy of one. Don’t worry if you aren’t known and admired: devote yourself to a life that deserves admiration.”
― Confucius, The Analects

This is where Gove is

Episode 4

Off  to Gove Peninsula.  I was a bit worried about this sector. I had been trying to reach the man I was going to stay with, but couldn’t get him by phone,  and the one time I did get through , I left a message with a woman who didn’t speak much  English.  Anyway, nothing ventured, nothing gained.  I took the flight from Cairns, in the afternoon, on a smallish plane,  and had a lovely scenic flight over the Great Barrier Reef – the plane flew relatively low and I could see the reef very clearly, the sea was emerald green and smooth, and the reef was a darker blue. I was so lucky with the weather, as it had rained off and on in Cairns. Then we flew over Cape York Peninsula, which is pretty drab and barren and largely uninhabited. However, one interesting thing I saw was a large circle, with smaller circles inside it.  I don’t know what it was, but it looked like some sort of target for out-of-space reconnaissance.  The crew couldn’t enlighten me, either. Then we flew over the Gulf of Carpentaria, which I seem to remember is the Arafura Sea…what a lovely smooth, pale blue,  silken colour, the sky and sea merged to become one. It was very difficult, looking at it, to recognise where we were flying…in the sky or in the sea.  Then we flew over Gove Peninsula and the terrain was all drab green with great streaks of red earth.

The airport at Gove at least had a sealed all-weather landing strip, but the airport itself, at that time  was just like you would imagine ,very basic , and the luggage was tossed out  of the plane into a wire enclosure, with no roof.  So, if it rained , you can imagine the joy of your bags getting drenched by a tropical downpour.  By now, some 20 years later, the airport has been been upgraded.  None of the roads were sealed, but were very good, as the bauxite, which the aluminium is extracted from, is very smooth, and as the weather was  still unsettled, the dust hasn’t gotten bad yet……

Kuranda North Queensland 

Episode 3

The next day was Sunday and I had booked to go on Ye Olde Train trip up to Kuranda, a small city set in the mountains inland from Cairns.  In fact, Ye Olde Train was, in fact, far  less delightful than the trains from Shorncliffe, Brisbane, which were my daily ride to school and work.   These elegant, somewhat shabby, antique, carriages were right out of a Western movie, but we didn’t even like them, admire them or appreciate them.  Who needs fancy woodwork and real leather seats  and real mirrors when you are being pulled along by a coal fuelled train, manned with real train drivers  and genuine men, who shovelled coal into them to keep them movin’ along…..

 I came back from Kuranda via the Sky Rail , in gondolas , over the top of the rainforest.  This Skyrail journey was seven and a half kilometres long, across the tops of  the mountains (the Atherton Tablelands, I think). I loved every minute of the ride – we went right over the tops of the trees, over huge mountains and gorges, waterfalls and lakes, then a spectacular ride to the getting-off point , which must have been a couple of kilometres.

The following day, Monday, I was due to fly to Gove in the afternoon, so I had to fill in Monday morning.  I took a boat ride around Cairns Harbour, what a load of junk that was.  Really, all the commentator had to describe were the naval patrol boats moored at the wharves and you can imagine how interesting that was.  And four or five different types of mangrove trees growing along the muddy reaches of “the harbour”.  At least we saw a couple of lonely crocodiles sunning themselves on the banks, and I overheard a nice little story being recounted by the boat driver to one of his friends—he was telling him that, in the week before, a tour operator had taken a load of tourists over to Green Island (a tourist resort) and had dropped them off.  The tourists came running back, saying there were crocodiles on the beach. The tour operator said “rubbish” and went and checked anyway, and, sure enough, some crocodiles had escaped from a nearby crocodile farm and were marching up the tourist beach….

All in all, I got the impression that Cairns is a nice little northern city .   I think they must have a great public relations team working for them, as the ads we see here in New Zealand are about a vibrant, exciting city, with lots to see and do. I didn’t get to any of the resorts, which judging by their photos, are truly great holiday places, in fact , tropical paradise.  

Cairns Lagoon

Episode 2

The first bus tour I took was to Port Douglas, some ninety minutes by coach from Cairns. The countryside on the trip was flat and boring, and when we hit the coast road it improved a bit, but none of it was in any way spectacular. I suspect that I am spoiled with the great scenery we have around every corner in New Zealand.  There are no surfing beaches right along the coast of the north, as the Great Barrier Reef shelters it.

I only saw half a dozen swimmers, along the miles and miles of coastline, and I suspect they were tourists.  These coastal waters are infested with the box jelly fish stingers, which can kill you, and salt water crocodiles, which have the delightful ability to stand just beneath the surface of the water, on their tippy toes, balefully watching you for up to an hour. There is no mention of this in any of the tourist guide books for the area, and I saw in the local Port Douglas newspaper that a couple of tourists had been hospitalised just that week with stinger injuries.  There are large bottles of vinegar on all the beaches, as “first aid”, as the vinegar can help neutralise the stings.

However, back to Port Douglas. It looks just like all of the other small tourist towns you see dotted along the coast of Eastern Australia. As I was on what was really a “whistlestop tour”

I didn’t get to see any of the lovely resort areas, which I am sure, would rival Bali.  I spent an hour or so looking around the shops, eating an icecream and waiting for the bus ride back to Cairns. However, I did enjoy the ride, until the bus driver, who was running late, dumped all of the tourists in the centre of Cairns instead of running them back to their  hotels, as he was supposed to..   He didn’t count on me!! All of the tourists got shoved off to find their own way back to their hotels, but I just sat there and demanded that he take me back to the apartments. He didn’t like it at all, but tough!!

To be continued…..

Cairns, North Queensland 

                                                                                               

Episode 1

Exciting times…

Travelling.  I have been a really lucky person, in that a lot of the countries I visited had places you wouldn’t find on a tourist map, and Episode one  is about North Queensland and the Northern Territory of Australia.  This was the very last trip of my life, as I had major heart surgery a few months later, and that was it for me. No more travel!!!  But instead of sitting down like a chicken with its wings clipped, I revisit my favourite places through my mind’s eye, time and time again. So here goes……

This is an account of my last journey made in May 1996, just five months before my heart valve replacement.  My itinerary was Auckland, Sydney, Cairns, Gove and Darwin. And I had my sights set on Kakadu and the islands of Bathhurst and Melville, not too far away from Darwin, if you are a bird.

I set off for Cairns after having spent a week in Sydney, visiting with my daughter and my old friends.   I flew north with Ansett, now defunct. And what a good company they were to fly with!!  The flight took three hours and I arrived in Cairns around midday.  I had booked into a place I had found in one of the tourist guide books.

Cairns is a small modern city, with lots of flash hotels, apartments and rooming houses of all kinds.  The place I stayed in was called Costa Bianca and I had a very nice upstairs apartment, with a lovely view over the water –when the tide was in!! I was amazed  to see huge expanses of mud when the tide went out, but later learned that the government had dredged out what they laughingly called a “river”, really a mangrove creek,  to accommodate naval patrol boats. They had just dumped all the mud and rubbish offshore from the esplanade waterfront. I couldn’t believe it.  I got up early every day and saw the sun rise over the coconut palms. The apartment garden also had a lovely big old swimming pool, which I put to good use every day.

To be continued…….

Life's tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late.

Benjamin Franklin

The Computer Blues

“When my computer is good, it is very, very good, but, when it is bad, it is horrid”...

And that’s me for today, anyway. You never know when you are going to open the screen, only to find parts of it have died, or it refuses point blank to let you access your emails.  Good start to the day, wouldn’t you agree?  Oh well, I have to stop to taking it personally. 

 The trouble is that the wretched thing has become almost my best friend, and I feel upset by its rejection of me.  What has happened?  What could I have done to offend it?  Or have we, me and my buddy computer, become victims of foul play? Are we in the grip of the Techno-Mafia?  Terrible thought.

 

At least, with a few years of trial and error, mostly error, I am a bit more techno-savvy than I used to be.   My frenzies don’t last as long.  I have become more philosophical.  Now, I know it will be fixed, so I shouldn’t drive myself mad with trying this and that.  Although, by trying this and that, I sometimes manage to fix the problem.  I have a couple of alternate strategies, which I bring into play, but if nothing works, what the hell, that’s it for today.  I’m off!!!

“The noble-minded have nine states of mind: for eyes, bright; for ears, penetrating; for countenance; cordial; for demeanor, humble; for words, trustworthy; for service, reverent; for doubt, questioning; for anger circumspect; and for facing a chance to profit, moral.”
― Confucius, The Analects

On Being an Otaran….

I’ll bet you don’t know what an Otaran is, do you?

Well, fast forward from Shorncliffe 1940’s to New Zealand some 30 years later.  I came to Auckland in the early 1970s, and I found a good job.  However, I was finally coming to grips with my latent talent of being in business for myself. I always had the urge to do so, and made several disastrous attempts here and there, in Australia.  However, never having had any instructions on how to make money, and being so damned poor, it just never clicked, and I was always a worker, no money, no hope of other than a hand-to-mouth existence and a penniless old age. Not that there is anything wrong in being a worker. Hey, that is how I survived until my early 50’s.    As I work on the ancestry part of my family research, I have found that the families of my maternal grandfather  and also my paternal grandmother, had been quite well off, so the genetic code was imbedded, but the DNA hadn’t kicked in.

After a year or so, I gave up my good job, crazy me, and started off on my new adventure of becoming self employed.  There are some very interesting  parts of this adventure, it isn’t just a one shot wonder. But more on that later.

Getting back to becoming an Otaran.  Otara, in South Auckland, was, in those days, mostly Maori and Polynesian families.  Somewhere along the line, a good idea was hatched to start a proper market in the shopping centre carpark on Saturday mornings, 5am until 12.  And I thought that this would be a good opportunity for me to start a small business.  Little money, no knowledge, but how did I know that. Boots and all, that’s me. As Saturday and Sunday trading were mostly banned in those days, this market, being the only one of its kind in Auckland, filled a really pressing need in the community. Farmers would truck in their produce, wheeler dealers would bring in whatever they could find, little clothing manufacturers turned out cheap clothes and the crowds were astonishing. I made a deal with a pottery manufacturer and sold his factory seconds. My husband sold trinkets and jewellery. We lived like a band of gypsies, except we had our nice Ponsonby house, not a horse drawn caravan.  Other people in the family thought we must be extremely poor, being market people and all.   How wrong they were!

My brother-in-law was particularly miffed when I told his wealthy, upright, uptight friends at the club he had joined, that I was an Otaran.  And so I had to explain in detail what that was!! So there, you toffy nosed lot , who only think of becoming share traders, or horse traders, or house traders. I will bet I made more money, had more time and fun, and was happier than you

Each day of our lives we make deposits in the memory banks of our children.     -- Charles R. Swindoll

March, March, March Along the Highway.

Tiny soldier crabs, in smart blue and white uniforms…..

Funny how the memories of Shorncliffe are bringing back  glimpses  of such small things. When the tide went out, and the sandbanks stretched out for miles, there would suddenly be a stirring in the sand and these tiny crabs would emerge. To me, as a child, it seemed there were like millions and billions, covering every inch of the sand, wearing their tiny blue crab shells like a badge of honour and  waving their weapons,  white claws, threateningly.  They broke formation, when I approached them, closing around my feet when I wasn’t  looking .I seem to remember that they had a sharp little bite, too, but they weren’t after my blood, they were just doing their drilling and I was Gulliver standing in their midst,  disrupting their Army manoeuvres. 

 A funny moment has surfaced in this memory bubble.  Soldier crabs were not a lot of use as fishing bait. They were too crunchy. Also they were too small to cook and eat, but the seagulls seemed to enjoy them. One day, as I was idly scouting around in the pools, I spied an American sailor with his girl on his arm, meandering romantically along the cliff path.

Always one to spot an opportunity, I quickly grabbed an old small tin, and filled it with complaining and struggling soldier crabs.  I casually sauntered up to the young sailor, and suggested he might like to try his hand at fishing.  Kind young man, he pulled a shilling (about 10 cents) from his pocket. I don’t really think fishing was on his mind that day

 He and his girl went on their way, and I went back to beach combing, feeling a whole lot richer. 

Child of the Tides…….

I have often wondered how I have become a solitary person in my old age, happy in my own company. But, as I think about my early life, say between the ages of 9 and 12, I recall that my family lived in a little backwater suburb of Brisbane, called Shorncliffe. It really was the end of the line.

However, its main charm was Moreton Bay, with Moreton Island strung out in the background of the bay.  When I first stood at the top of the cliff, over the road from the shabby, wooden house my parents had just rented, I couldn’t believe my eyes. My only view of water in my entire young life had ever been the muddy Brisbane River. I had never seen the sea.

Just across the road from our house and down the face of the cliff  was a little track leading down to the ocean.  Not the hurling, curling surf of the Gold Coast, but sandbanks, which stretched for miles when the tide was out. A sea of shimmering blue satin when the tide was in.

My life was, for ever after, ruled by the tides. Who cared about school.  Just a little break of 4 or 5 hours to learn your  ABC’s and then I rushed home to the Bay, and went crabbing, fishing, beach combing , and swimming. These were the happiest days of my life. It didn’t matter if the tide was in or out, rough or calm, there I was, alone

.  

So now, when the going gets rough, my mind takes me back to stand in the warm salt waters of the sand pools and look into the eyes of the sea anemones, clinging onto rocks, or catch a glare from an annoyed prawn, waving its whiskers, at my presumptuous invasion of its territory.

Those were the days, my friends…..

Thought for today....

We all grow up with the weight of history on us. Our ancestors dwell in the attics of our brains as they do in the spiraling chains of knowledge hidden in every cell of our bodies.     -- Shirley Abbott

I used to be afraid of spiders and sharks......

As a Queenslander, these were quite legitimate fears. Now my worries are of my

bank account or credit card being ripped off. But no worries. Insecticide and swimming pool solve the spider and shark issues.

With all this bank hacking stuff going on every day, I have given some deep and meaningful thought to how I can best protect myself from the robber barons.   So, a while back , I approached my bank for a pre-paid credit card . This is one where you put your money into your bank account  first and then shop on line. I found it wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be to get one.  I don’t think the banks are very anxious to give you this kind of card, much preferring, no doubt, for you to have a card you pay interest on and the retailers get slammed  too.  Double whammy, great for the banks!!! This, of courses, pushes up the prices on everything you purchase.   For me, a pre-paid credit card has calmed the anxiety of buying from unknown sites.

However, there are another couple of issues I have with credit cards. The first one is that shiny icon now on your credit cards. Just flash it into the face of the card reader, and, hey presto, the transaction is completed. No pin number or ID required. Just go for it. Lots of fun could be had with your lost or stolen card.  My bank allows no other option, I just have to take what I am generously given, in an effort to push myself into debt. Kind to a fault, these banks!!

And, then, there are the delights of the Debit Card. What a masterful stroke of evil genius.  You blithely give out your debit card number and details and, if the person is dishonest, you have just given them access to all the money you have  in the bank account tied to the debit card. And guess what? Goodbye money.

So, my thought for the day is, don’t trust anybody where your money is concerned.

Diamonds are a girl’s best friend…..sings cheeky Marilyn Monroe

No, not so.  Her  teeth were her best friend.

 Having your teeth intact and healthy will stand you in good stead all of your life.   I have just visited my dentist again, yesterday, and painful and expensive as it was, and an hour’s worth of sitting on the chair, I never begrudge either the time or the money it costs me.  I am grateful that, by having taken quite good care of my teeth all my life, and been lucky, I am not among  the ranks of us oldies, who have false teeth.  I saw first hand the discomfort  with false teeth that many members of my family endured.

As witness, one day, to the strange view some people have of looking  after their teeth properly , here is what happened to me in the lift at the dentist.  A young woman came out of the surgery, got into the lift and spoke to me, complaining about how much the dentist had charged her. As I looked at her, young and well groomed , wearing lovely shoes,  I wondered how much having her expensive hairstyle had cost. Probably half the amount she had just paid her dentist.

So people, get your priorities right. Teeth first, hair and shoes second!!!!

Daylight saving…who needs it?

Confusion has struck once again in my life. The clocks went forward this morning. Summer is almost here!!!   I don’t know, as I am getting older, I am finding it harder and harder to adjust my circadian rhythms to and fro. 

So, new scheme.  I am going to set all my clocks, except one, forward one hour but live in yesterday’s time for the next 3 days. Each morning, I am going to move my “special” clock forward by 20 minutes, until I have incorporated this double shuffle and unwarranted messing around with time and see if that can realign my stars, so to speak. 

The Inland Revenue  is giving you a bonus……….

Here’s a scam you might not have experienced yet.

A couple of days ago, my phone rang. When the person asked for me, I replied, as I always do,  with  “who is calling?” The reply was the Inland Revenue Department!!!  Enough to give anyone a bad case of shock and horror.

But, wait, there’s more. The good news was that he told me I had been granted a bonus of $6,300.00 along with 500 other lucky Kiwis, because I had been such a good citizen for some years. He informed me that every so often the New Zealand government gives away these bonuses to deserving, upright citizens like me, who had paid all their bills on time, and had no criminal convictions!!!!  Yeah, right.

Now, I am the Queen of Funny Phone Calls. I deal with them in a variety of ways for a bit of a laugh on a dull day. .  Did I miss a beat? Hell no.  I just thanked him profusely and asked him what I had to do to get the money. So he said he just needed me to take down a few notes…..but I said I would do that a bit later, and enquired his phone number, name, department etc, which he gave me and I said I would call him back. And as I was still on the original call with him, I asked him what information he would need to pay me, like bank account details, and he said he didn’t need any, as they already had everything on my file!  I politely said “goodbye” then hung up.

And so, I decided to give Inland Revenue a call and let them in on this new scam, and  they were already getting calls about this.

So this is a new one, but tricky. Watch out for it. 

 Is 80 the new 14?……..

Are the years from 60 to 90 just  this?  We now live so long that we need re-educating on just what's happening to us.  Instead of finding a life partner, we lose one. Instead of our bodies maturing, they are deteriorating, instead of looking for our career paths, we are looking desperately for something to occupy ourselves.  At least if we recognise this, we can take some action, formulate some plan.

When you are young you think you are going to live forever, but as you descend into old age, you get into the "Waiting for God "mode, you face your mortality and may become frightened by it. 

However, on a cheerier note is all of the life experiences you have had, good, bad or ugly. Never mind, at least you were here for the fun.

So the message for today is…..Enjoy the moment!!!!

 

Be like a Boy Scout, and be prepared…..

A few days ago, I mentioned in a post the TVNZ story of an elderly gentleman, who had the unfortunate experience of being discharged from Wellington Hospital, after an emergency admission, wearing only his shortie pyjamas, had no money with him, and was told to take a bus home.  Even on a good day, I would find it a bit daunting trying to persuade a bus driver to give me a free trip home.  

Now, Wellington, while a very pleasant city in Summer, a  tropical paradise it ain’t.
Right now, it is Spring, and when the winds are not howling up from the Antarctic, the rain is pouring down, with the odd small earthquake thrown in to add a little spice to life.  

So, here is a word of advice on being prepared for unexpected trips like this.  My hospital visits became almost a shuttle service by ambulance a couple of years ago.   I am now a seasoned traveller and I always have a small bag packed, just in case.  In it, I put things like toiletries, comb and small mirror, etc and a set of clothes to wear home, as well as night attire and slippers or shoes.  I have a small radio and earphones, cellphone  and a few dollars  Then, when the unexpected need arises, the ambulance crew just picks up the bag and it goes with me in the ambulance.  I also have a file with a list of my doctors, current medications, medical notes, family contacts etc, which makes admission to the hospital go a lot faster. The reason I take a change of clothes is that I usually arrive in hospital in my pyjamas and need clothes to go home in.


Do this, and on that unexpected day, you’ve got it covered.  

Mind your own business---
it's not your problem and it's not your fault. Don't let feelings of guilt ruin your day….

If  you are lucky enough to live with your family and still have friends and associates,  it’s likely that, at some point of time, you will get to learn of a variety of  problems in their lives.

It is very easy to take these problems on board into your own sheltered existence, after all, what do you have to worry about?  Declining mobility?  Health fade?  No sleep?

All small stitches indeed in the broad tapestry of life’s carpet .

So, when I find myself being invited into other people’s lives to share their troubles, I have three rules that I follow:

Mind Your Own Business

It’s not your problem

It’s not your fault.

But, if you are asked for advice, then take your chances and give it.  Do whatever you can do to help, but do not, and I repeat, do not,  take other people’s problems onto your shoulders.  If you, like me, have lived through a lifetime of trials and tribulations of your own, it is time to find peace of mind, and hold onto it. 

Regard other people’s problems as a cannon ball they are trying to pass to you, and step aside. 

Thought for the day....

“I am not an originator but a transmitter.”
― Confucius

The Golden Casket….

Last night I was watching an item on TVNZ News, about an elderly man being unceremoniously discharged from the Wellington Hospital. The nurse told him to take public transport back to  Palmerston North where he lived, quite a distance from Wellington,  and the fact that the man had arrived in the Emergency Room of the Wellington hospital wearing only his pyjamas, and had no money with him to pay for  a bus, evoked little sympathy from hospital staff.   Eventually, the problem came to a head and was resolved,  and the man was flown by Air Ambulance back to his home.  During the flight, he suffered another attack of his heart problem and was re-hospitalised in Palmerston North for four days.

The reason I am writing this post is that I would like to make a suggestion to Mr. John Key, Prime Minister of New Zealand. This outlines one of the most successful hospital fund raising events in the last two centuries……

The Golden Casket, ever heard of this?

You would have, if you were from Queensland back in the day.  This was the lottery run by the Queensland Government, since 1916. It has made a hugely positive  effect on  the Queensland economy, public health system and  community.

The very first Golden Casket Lottery was run in 1916, and was called that because the jackpot prize of Five Thousand Pounds was actually in a small jewellery box called a casket. And, as cash prizes were prohibited by law, would you believe, there was  five thousand pounds worth  of solid gold. Yes, you read right, solid gold, not cash,  actually in the box presented to the winner.

My suggestion to Mr Key is that we could have a special Hospital Lottery run once a week, with all proceeds going the hospital and health systems. There could still be a “Wheel of Fortune”, with some hospital taking off a large prize each week, as well as benefiting from the rest of the profits. No dilution of these funds should be allowed. Let all the other good works funded from the lotteries continue from the main source.  I am willing to bet that most Kiwis would gladly buy a five dollar lotto ticket each week for something that could have a profound influence on our health system.

So, how about it, Mr Key.  Worth a thought?

 “We don’t need no education” sings the group, Pink Floyd, Another Brick in the Wall

Okay, and that is pretty well what you are getting under today’s education system.

A few years ago, I discovered that my eight year old, bright, intelligent and willing young granddaughter couldn’t count or do arithmetic.  She had had around three years of “primary education” and couldn’t add, subtract, or divide. And as for the Times Table, forget it. 

Now, I have had no formal training in teaching, so I went back to the basics of my own education.  In the olden days, we  were taught reading, handwriting, and arithmetic, a touch of geography thrown in if you were lucky, and a bit of history, which was totally incomprehensible to me. I attended a very small State school in Queensland, and as my education came to an abrupt end at around fourteen, that was it. However, I can still recite the Times Table, I can outwit my grandchildren at “mental arithmetic” and I have read widely all my life. As for the handwriting, well, I am sure a chicken could do better!!!  

At this tiny school, beginners were issued with a “slate” and a “slate pencil”. The slate was just that, a square piece of thin stone, around the same size as your iPad, and the pencil could have passed for a stylus today. Talk about pre-Babylonian!!!! This was what you learned to write with and do “sums” on for the first couple of years. And of course, your eraser was a wet “slate cloth”. Later on, we were promoted to pencil and paper.  However. I might add, that the Queensland education system was widely recognised as the best in Australia.

So, back to basics. Where did I start with my granddaughter’s problem.  I bought myself a series of teaching books readily available at the bookstore, and went right back into the first stages of the learning of mathematics. And I do mean the beginning. After that, we spent one hour a day for a year on this project. She learned the Times Tables by rote, and today can certainly hold her own in the other math fields, and gets top marks in Maths and Science.

Message for today. Don’t trust the education system to “educate” your children. If you aren’t satisfied with their results, get yourself a few books on the subject, and have a crack at helping your children yourself.  And keep it simple, remember …..reading writing, and arithmetic. 

My world through the looking glass……

 I have noticed lately that, the more I use my i-Pad,  the more I feel as though  I am looking through the screen into an entirely different world.   In fact, I now think that this little machine is my virtual best friend, but like Alice in Wonderland, I had better be careful that I don’t fall down the
rabbit hole !!!

 You might well ask just what is it I do that makes me open the curtains and take a good look at what is going on around me.  Well, the BBC World Service  is my favourite radio channel, and from there I get all sorts of information about what’s going in the world.  Its very easy to sit here, in little old New Zealand, clean, green and in the most part, quiet, but out there I can see it’s a rough and ready existence in the world for many of us oldies.

 Being old can be tiresome.  How can you make your aging body do what it’s told?  Find your mind slipping too?  It's time to take control and make decisions on brain training.  I wish I could say that I have a physical exercise programme too, but I just count walking around the house as my daily workout.  I also chase the dogs, have an occasional game of ball with my grandchildren, and water the plants.  Sounds strenuous, doesn’t it? 

 And talking about kids, my grandson asked me an interesting question. He asked me if my body had shrunk so much that my skin didn’t fit it any more!!!  Now, that’s a thought for us wrinklies.

 One of the most useful sections of my i-Pad is the Notes.  I use this as a thought catcher. As my mind runs a bit like a roadhouse rat, thoughts come charging through one ear and out the other, so I quickly tap them into Notes, where I allocate the important stuff with a triple AAA rating.  These are the things I try to do first, once they are identified as being important.  Many people just trundle through their day, and never take a moment to recognise the most important thing that needs to be done.

 If you just do that one task, then you are 95% ahead of the game.

What about a credit system, like Barter Card, for instance, for people who do voluntary work?

There is a ton of untapped talent out there. People of all ages can find themselves under-utilised, from young school leavers, unemployed people, “baby boomers”, and the elderly.     Why not harness this treasury of untapped talent and get all hands back on deck, doing something, and giving back to the community. A system like this should not be allowed to affect the Government benefit they are paid.  There are tens of thousands of hours of study and practical working experience just being thrown onto the rubbish dump of “old age”. Wake up!!!

There was a recent story on TVNZ, about a shortage of long haul truck drivers here in New Zealand. One truck fleet owner was reported as scouring the retirement homes to look for people who could drive these big trucks. Okay, this wasn’t voluntary work, and the people who took him up on his offers would no doubt have their pensions reduced by the government.  Why can’t people over the age, say, of 70, who keep on working, keep their pensions and their wages?  They will pay taxes on both and so contribute to the overall benefit of the community.   I am sure there are many professional people out there thrown into the limbo of wasted time and lost talent. I knew an accountant who was so desperate at the retirement blight on his life, that he re-opened his practice, just to get some relief and human contact going.

And how about the retired health professionals, like doctors, nurses, other trained and qualified health professionals, not to mention teachers., who all cost millions to educate. There are a myriad of people out there who could do a few hours a week.

So how about it, Prime Minister John Keys. Election issue next 2016? 

Pandora and all that jazz………

 There is a saying that music is good for the soul. But I have never been a person involved much with music. 

However, now I am starting to see the benefits of listening to a variety of music genres (as they say on iTunes). I am finding that listening to meditation music as soon as I get up is as good as a tranquilliser. It gives my mind a calm platform to launch itself from  into the day. If I don't take this action first thing, my thoughts and memories start to take a dark turn. I wish I knew why unpleasant memories are so ready to appear and why the good ones have to be knowingly excavated. 

 And, so to my favourite app on the internet, Pandora.  No, this isn't an advertisement for Pandora, but a small gesture of appreciation for all the pleasure I get from listening to this site.

 And, to make it even more enjoyable, it's free, not too many ads, and they only put in the odd breaks asking if you are still listening.  Of course, they would like you to upgrade for a fee, but I will just take it like it comes.

It is such a simple site, and you can go to iTunes and get a free app.  The selection of music is up to you.  I go for gentle meditation in the mornings while I carry out my mindless and endless, it seems, self maintenance tasks.

 Later in the day, after I claw myself back into consciousness from my afternoon Nanna Nap, I put on a selection of rock and roll, with the Rolling Stones, and others, of course.  I just love Mick Jagger, he’s nearly as old as me! I can’t imagine him having a Nanna Nap.   And Boogie Woogie, can you remember that, too?   I am so old that I can recall doing the Jitter Bug, ever heard of that?
It’s dance craze from the olden days, circa mid 20^th century.  


So that's my pick of the day. Good on you, Pandora.  Go!!!

If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.

Benjamin Franklin

I never knew I was poor……

Funny, that.  As a small child, and far into my teenage years, I never understood poverty nor ever felt poor. I am beginning to wonder if I ever heard the word spoken.  In fact, I always felt rich. We certainly were really poor, years of The Great Depression (no, not the one recently)  sank Australia into the mire of workless and moneyless desperation  and life was lived from hand to mouth.  We only had a house by managing to avoid the landlord when he came for his rent.  I seem to remember moving quite often. Our clothes were basic and we only had some because our late mother, Connie, could sew.  Shoes came and went, most often we went barefoot. After all, this was Queensland wasn’t it? The credo then, as it probably is today, was to “toughen up”.

On looking back, I know my feeling of being a person of high breeding and wealth, even though I was penniless, came from my grandmother, Mabel Carlton Craven.  Although reduced to  extreme poverty herself, through no fault of her own, she was thoroughly indoctrinated by her family,  with the knowledge that she was the niece of the Earl of Craven, the owner of estates and money, in the far away fairytale land of England.  All of the things she told me were true, although I didn’t understand that she was brainwashing me, but now as I look back, I certainly appreciate her efforts in the face of what could have been a total destruction of my psyche.  Unfortunately, because we had very little money all through my young life, I never had anyone to guide me on the road to wealth. I always had the instincts but, without solid knowledge and direction, I came very close to never lifting out.

So my message today.... Take a little time to explain to your children how money operates. Teach them about profit and loss. How the banks handle their money and how they can get swindled.  Encourage them to become entrepreneurs. Give them Napoleon Hill’s book “Think and Grow Rich” to read, and also “the Richest Man in Babylon”.  Might do you some good too.

“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”
― Confucius

You can never be too thin, too rich, or have too many computers…..

 I don’t think Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor, would have approved of this version of her favourite saying.  But, as I am never going to become too thin or too rich, I will have to make do with the last one, and I’ll say it again –you can never have too many computers.

 I don’t know when I came into this state of mind regarding techno-tat, but as newer and newer gadgets come pouring out into the market place, “must have” has become firmly installed in our language.

Not just kids, either.  I hoped that, after many years spent in the School of Hard Knocks, I would have some immunity to this all-out advertising drive to hook our brains up to our computers.  But, lo and behold, who is that standing in the store gazing enviously at the latest cell phone, the thinnest tablet and counting her money?  Yup, its me.    Well, at least I have the good manners to do the number crunching at home.

 From being a “no computer oldie”. I now find that I have surrounded myself with a desktop,
an iPad ,an iPod and an iPhone.  I already have a perfectly good old cell phone, an earlier Nokia , which in fact is smaller than the new phones and works perfectly well.  However, you never know.  My fame as a blogger might spread and I will start to get text messages, maybe from aliens from outer space!!

 And while I am talking about texting, did you know that, what you think of as this
new-fangled, newly discovered, pursuit, is in fact a swept-up version of  the cables being transmitted more than a century ago!!  I think this was an Edison invention. Clever man.   In the olden days, telegrams (have you even heard of these?) and news stories etc were transmitted by teleprinter, a machine which used a paper tape fed through the transmitter and broadcast  to the receiving machines around the world.  Have you seen the “ticker tape” parades in America, well, this is the kind of tape being used long ago. It punched holes through the paper tape, looking much like Braille, and of course, some smart alecks among us could even sight read these messages. Not me, however. The tapes could then be fed back through another machine, which decoded the messages into print.  In order to save time and money, the abbreviations of words were widely used.

When I worked in the newsroom at the ABC Sydney, I can remember working with wax cylinders on which I recorded  the BBC News, which was then transcribed to an antique Underwood manual typewriter,(the kind you see in museums these days), and read over the national radio station. Talk about high quality, high tech, news gathering.

So there!!!! 

Is that my treasure they are throwing out?….



 I awoke to the sound of the shed door clanging.  "What is going on,?" I asked myself. When I had plucked up enough energy to actually look out of my door, I saw my daughter and

son-in-law pulling out an endless array of “treasure”, stuff that nobody really wanted but was too good to throw away.  Then the kids joined in, with cries of delight over long forgotten books and toys.  There is something very therapeutic about having a shed cleaning day, even if you don’t actually throw anything away.



 After a while I couldn't resist joining in the fun and games, and, lo and behold, found some of my things I had thoughtfully mothballed for a rainy day.  An old chair, a dehumidifier that I was never going to use again, kitchen gadgets that had outlived their usefulness.



A long memory allows me to recall the hard times, when you never threw anything away.   Refrigerators lasted thirty years at least, your stove likewise.  I even still have my original National microwave, now nearly 40 years old, and it works far better than the revamped models, which last around five years, if you are lucky.



Having moved three times since I turned seventy, I had thrown away quite a lot of stuff so my treasure hoard wasn’t much. In fact, I couldn’t find anything that warranted being allocated to the “keep heap.  None the less, the “keep heap” was continuing to turn from a hill into a mountain, as the family foraged.



As I write, a few things have been given away, some dumped, and a little saved thriftily.  In the end, the shed was cleared out enough so another pile of stuff could be laid to rest there.



The moral of this post is that when you are oldish, you need less, not more. Unclutter your living space, leaving only the things that you like or use, and if you do buy something new, make sure you throw something out.   Even if it's only your husband!