Des Ryan's Newspaper Columns in The Advocate, Burnie, Tasmania, (from August 2004) and in Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, South Australia (up to July 2004). "The Messenger", a book selection of columns from the decade to 2003, is available from Wakefield Press, Adelaide, Phone: (08) 8362 8800. Fax: (08) 8362 7592.

 
Published The Advocate, April 18, 2006


BEFORE I go let me leave you with three things that are not quite right about Tasmania. EDUCATION: Parents want the best for their children. Most people will make sacrifices to give their kids the best education they can afford. They do not want their kids to suffer unemployment and poverty. Yet Tasmanians are less well educated than other Australians, which helps to explain why Tassie wages are lower than the national average. Student scores for reading, maths and problem are the worst of the States; 44 per cent of Tasmanians do not finish Year 12 compared to the national average of 32 per cent. The kids are not dummies. They have the same innate abilities as the rest of Australian kids; indeed, at primary school, many of their performance scores are above the national average. And then it all falls in a hole. I blame the two-tier school leaver system, where some high schools finish at Year 10 and some at Year 12. It creates a dumbing-down mindset for the Year 10 mob; the expectation that Year 10 is when you finish school. There are plans afoot to use technology such as video conferencing to bring Year 11-12 college courses to all high schools. Embrace them. Believe in the power of education for the sake of your kids’ future. There is no bigger issue in Tasmania. PLANNING: The planning approval process is a joke. Councils act as the promoter of private projects, even to the extent of contributing council resources to help get the plans off the drawing board, and then change hats to sit as a supposedly independent planning authority to consider those same plans. And expect people to take the process seriously. There is no greater potential conflict of interest in local government. Mark my words, one day a thwarted developer is going to sue a council for millions in damages. The planning system needs an independent Development Assessment Committee attached to each council, comprising a mix of councillors and outside experts. JUSTICE: A jury trial is the cornerstone of the criminal justice system. Twelve fair-minded people are chosen to sit in judgment of the accused. To select a jury requires a filtering process intended to produce a final group of people who have no personal knowledge of, or bias for or against, the defendant. That’s not easy to achieve in the North-West where the community is small enough for everyone to know everyone else’s business. I am not saying the close-knit family and community networks have skewed any verdicts but Burnie jury decisions are notoriously unpredictable. There you go, another mainlander giving unwanted advice. There’s the ferry now. My editorship of The Advocate has run its course, as have these Saturday columns. Next week, this space will be occupied by former MLC Tony Fletcher, who did such a fine job covering the recent State election. It’s been a privilege. Thank you.
posted by Des at 4:48 PM

 
Published The Advocate, April 1, 2006


DAYLIGHT saving ends this weekend and not before time. We’ve been getting out of bed in darkness for weeks. The sleeping dog cannot figure it out. The dawn chorus of birds starts up as you leave for work. I have been feeling unusually lethargic. My brain thinks it should still be dead to the world when the clock is demanding I get up in the dark. Daylight Saving Time lasted an extra week this year to accommodate the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne and to keep us in sync with Victoria. Sounds like an April Fool’s Day trick. Farmers have always opposed daylight saving. Dairy farmers have to milk the cows an hour earlier to catch the milk truck an hour earlier; hired labour arrives at work too early when the crops are still dewy, and leave too early when there is still daylight left to work. I read recently where our European ancestors never expected to sleep the night through. Their night was divided into a first sleep and a second sleep; in the early hours they awoke in the fire glow: some meditated, some prayed, some talked and no doubt some made love. Then they went back to sleep. For us, we begin to fret if we don’t sleep a straight eight hours. Which is why so many people use sleeping pills to get what they consider to be a good night’s sleep when they are actually mucking up their natural sleep patterns. My first sleep never lasts more than five hours. Then I get up and do stuff, read or whatever. Sometimes I get a second sleep, though often not. Some researchers suggest we should be allowed to sleep within our internal rhythms to lead a long, healthy life. Tell it to the boss next time you are late for work. The same research says an undisturbed deep sleep at the start of the night – the adage being an hour’s sleep before midnight is worth two hours after it – is essential for learning and to make us work more efficient. The problem is my second sleep wants to kick-in at 9am and then I’m looking for a nanna nap by mid-afternoon. The southern Europeans have perfected their sleep patterns into a lifestyle. They arise late, open their shops around 10 o’clock, then close for lunch and take afternoon kips. The Spanish call it siesta; in Greece it’s called ypnos, or sleep time. Greek banks close at lunchtime and re-open at 4pm – if you are very lucky. Then the Greeks eat and drink all night, and wonder why they need to sleep all day. Studies have shown that from childhood to adolescence, the time we go to bed and get up becomes later and later, peaking at the age of 20 – when my son seemed to turn into a Greek – and then becomes earlier again. Tonight at 2am, between your first and second sleeps, put the clock back an hour and return the night to where it belongs.
posted by Des at 11:55 PM

 
Pubished The Advocate, March 24, 2006


I HAVE a mate Bill, who is 79, and he has a mate Harry, who is 80. Bill is an author and Harry is an ex-teacher. I know Bill personally and have a sense of Harry through Bill’s anecdotes about him. Boyhood friends, Bill migrated to Australia 38 years ago – he describes himself now as a 'Possie', for Pom-Aussie – while Harry remained in England. Though apart for all those years, Bill says their lives have run in parallel. In countless coincidences, starting with their mothers sharing the same birth date, the same kinds of events and mishaps have occurred to them through the years. I will not bother listing all the overlaps but the parallels include the deaths of their wives in the same year and developing similar health ailments. Both have failing eyesight. In other respects they have their differences. Bill is an old socialist and Harry is a Liberal Democrat. Bill talks at 1000km/minute in a language that is long-winded and old-fashioned. When his eyes went on him and he lost his driver’s licence, Bill spoke of 'adopting a bicycle as my primary means of locomotion'. His everyday language is peppered with such roundabouts. Harry deliberately mispronounces certain words. For ‘schedule’ he says ‘schoodle’, so Bill tells me. Harry apparently uses so many of these invented words that he speaks in an idiosyncratic language of his own. Together the old pals recently spent a month walking through France and Italy, following in the steps of Hilaire Belloc, as you do when you are elderly and have poor eyesight. Belloc walked the route in the 1890s musing on the meaning of life and produced a book of the trip, and Bill wanted to do the same. Bill being Bill, before they left, 'every possibility had to be taken into proper account to guard against untoward eventualities,' including the possibility that he and Harry might find they did not get on after spending so long apart. They reached a pact: Should one do or say anything that irritated the other, rather than leave it to fester and spoil the trip, he should make the complaint known. This possibly is also the secret of a long marriage. Or not. After a couple of days on the road, Bill noticed Harry was unusually quiet and asked if anything was wrong? Harry said he was offended by Bill’s casual use of the F-word. Bill, a former merchant navy seaman and journo, agreed not to utter the effing word for the rest of the trip. At the end of a hot and tiring day, they were struggling to reach an Italian village atop a steep cliff. Exhausted and exasperated at not finding their hotel around each new corner and the one after that – in the fading light with not a good eye between them – they began to worry if they were in the wrong village. Onwards and upwards they struggled and after climbing 452 steps – yes, of course Bill counted them – Harry turned to him. 'Bill.' 'Harry?' 'Permission granted.'
posted by Des at 2:20 PM

 
Published The Advocate, March 18, 2006


A DAY sailing from Melbourne on the Spirit ferry - I forgot to check which one - is a classic case of having nothing to do and all day to do it in. There cannot be many more relaxing journeys if you are not in a hurry. One of life's little pleasures, time suspended in the gentle swaying of the boat, and I love the taste of sea salt on the ship's railings. Ten hours on Bass Strait surrounded by grey nomads: People in physical decline, veined and blotched, wearing socks and sandals and more spectacles than a Salvation Army convention. I see in them signs of my own near future. Ah, we all were beautiful once. Rust spots also mottled the white painted railings. Within 15 minutes of leaving Station Pier, one group of pensioners hurried to the front of the ship, not wanting to miss The Rip - still two hours away. I always make for the smokers' deck at the rear, not to smoke but because it provides the best views and is a good place to observe suspicious characters, à la Hercule Poirot. Among them, a dark-bearded man clung to a moulded black security case, reinforced with metal bands and two combination locks. It had a sticker: "Bundy made me do it." I hoped Devonport Security was on extreme alert. The smokers' area is located on the deck below the oily exhaust fumes of the funnels. Here gathers a dying breed, sucking the life out of their ciggies. How are they still alive? I thought smokers of their vintage surely would all be dead by now. Four men stood side by side, smoking, each with a foot resting on the bottom railing, jeans stretched below overhanging beer guts and Swiss Army knives attached to their straining belts. Their wives were trying to figure out a digital camera to take a photograph of the ship's wake, a vein of porphyry green quartzite in a slab of bluestone. The Spirit is not a vessel for young trophy wives. But other women, wearing smug little victory smiles, I guessed to be newly widowed or divorced. Their greying hair had suddenly gone blowsy bleach blonde for the first time in their lives. One was wearing a necklace that looked like an iced doughnut on a rope. A couple of sun-fried women, their skin the colour of tanned leather, were chatting in German and writing postcards home. Ayers Rock, kangaroos, the usual stuff. What they will remember of Australia are the souvenir shops they visited. Members of the Ulysses motorcycle club were wearing T-shirts boasting they were growing old disgracefully. A woman wore a name badge: "Say hello to June from Mt Isa." Disgracefully naff. In the bar, bikers wearing moulded body armour were comparing trip meter readings. Odd. None of which explains why the Spirit should be a terrorist target. Yet last weekend, berthed at Station Pier, Spirit I was evacuated after the unexplained sighting of a scuba diver below. I cannot help thinking our "terrorist" got the target wrong.
posted by Des at 1:56 PM

 

Published The Advocate, March 18, 2006


IN POLITICS you can be better than your opponent and still be thrown out simply because people are sick of you or your party. In the Tasmanian state election many candidates will be defeated at the hands of a fickle, unkind electorate. Almost certainly, some sitting members will be beaten too. They’re not supposed to take it personally. But they do. It’s hard to keep a stiff upper lip when your bottom lip is trembling and tears are welling in your eyes. Nothing personal? Yeah right. Like having a stake driven through your heart. For some in politics, the pain of defeat is so shattering, they suffer mental breakdowns. I have a fairly high regard for myself but even so I would never go into politics. I already have enough aggravation, thanks. To enter politics you need a strong stomach and a thick hide. Voters are not interested in what’s inside you but in what they can get out of you. And trying to keep your footing on the treacherous political slopes can be as difficult as a one-armed man climbing a rope. I have known some really decent people who went into politics. Some of them have remained friends even after they became captives of their party factions. But there are too many lawyers in Australian parliaments for my liking. It is in the nature of the legal profession to spend most of your time in the company of criminals and then to go into parliament. I have also known many mediocre people to be elected to Parliament. Don’t knock it. They provide a necessary voice for lots of other mediocre people. The question to be resolved at the polls next Saturday is whether Paul Lennon has done enough to get his government unelected. Unelected, because oppositions rarely win elections, governments lose them. It was the former Federal Opposition Leader Billy Snedden who said something like "we didn’t lose, we just didn’t win" after being defeated in a poll. He was correct in the sense that oppositions have nothing to lose. Election outcomes are all or nothing; you win or lose – unless Tasmania’s unusual electoral system pops up a minority government this time. Do Rene Hidding or Peg Putt look likely to form an alternative government? Not together, they don’t, although local politics can produce strange bedfellows. Politics seems much more important in Hobart than it does on the Coast. Hobart is like Canberra. Everyone there seems to be obsessed by politics. Spend too much time there and you begin to think it really is important. But hop in the car and drive back to North-West Tasmania, and the further you are from Hobart, the less important politics seems. The air is cleaner here, too. Anyway, look, I’m not having a crack at politicians. No cheap shots. No finger-pointing. Truth is, none of the candidates has the qualifications for wielding power over the rest of us but that’s what makes democracy such a winner: By the People; For the People.
posted by Des at 6:43 PM

 
Published The Advocate March 11, 2006


I HAVE a mate Bill, who is 79, and he has a mate Harry, who is 80. Bill is an author and Harry is an ex-teacher. I know Bill personally and have a sense of Harry through Bill’s anecdotes about him. Boyhood friends, Bill migrated to Australia 38 years ago – he describes himself now as a 'Possie' (Pom-Aussie) – while Harry remained in England. Though apart for all those years, Bill says their lives have run in parallel. In countless coincidences, starting with their mothers sharing the same birth date, the same kinds of events and mishaps have occurred to them through the years. I will not bother listing all the overlaps but the parallels include the deaths of their wives in the same year and developing similar health ailments. Both have failing eyesight, for example. In other respects they have their differences. Bill is an old socialist and Harry is a Liberal Democrat. Bill talks at 1000km/minute in a language that is long-winded and old-fashioned. When his eyes went on him and he lost his driver’s licence, Bill spoke of 'adopting a bicycle as my primary means of locomotion'. His everyday language is peppered with such roundabouts. Harry deliberately mispronounces certain words. For ‘schedule’ he says ‘schoodle’, so Bill tells me. Harry apparently uses so many of these invented words that he speaks in an idiosyncratic language of his own. Together the old pals recently spent a month walking through France and Italy, following in the steps of Hilaire Belloc, as you do when you are elderly and have poor eyesight. Belloc walked the route in the 1890s musing on the meaning of life and produced a book of the trip; and Bill wanted to do the same. Bill being Bill, before they left, 'every possibility had to be taken into proper account to guard against untoward eventualities,' including the possibility that he and Harry might not get on after spending so long apart. They reached a pact: Should one do or say anything that irritated the other, rather than leave it to fester and spoil the trip, he should make the complaint known. This possibly is also the secret of a long marriage. Or not. After a couple of days on the road, Bill noticed Harry was unusually quiet and he asked if anything was wrong. Harry said he was offended by Bill’s casual use of the F-word. Bill, a former merchant navy seaman and journo, agreed not to utter the effing word for the rest of the trip. At the end of a hot and tiring day, they were struggling to reach an Italian village atop a steep cliff. Exhausted and exasperated at not finding their hotel around each new corner and the one after that – in the fading light with not a good eye between them – they began to worry if they were in the wrong village. Onwards and upwards they struggled and after climbing 452 steps – yes, Bill counted them – Harry turned to him. 'Bill.' 'Harry?' 'Permission granted.'
posted by Des at 7:23 PM

 
Published The Advocate, March 4, 2006


AT BURNIE Airport, I was watching two mature women, wearing hiking boots and parkas, reading The Advocate, bless them, while their husbands put their baggage through the check-in. Out of the blue, one of the hubbies called out: 'Sick of walking; sick of ferns!' There you go – the whole Tasmanian trekking experience summarised in one throwaway line. What did he expect? There is no pleasing some people. At my mother’s place in Geelong later the same day, I was reading a story in her local paper about the owner of a photo shop who was put in a 12 month good behaviour bond for assaulting an elderly customer. The customer had complained that his photos had been printed out of focus. Since film processing now is automatic, we can safely assume if the photos were out of focus, the fault was in the hands of the photographer, not the processor. The owner said as much. The grumpy old man said he wasn’t paying. The owner cracked. He flicked the photos across the floor and when the customer bent over to pick them up, the owner whacked him over the head. And then whacked him again for good measure. The owner, in his early 50s, had no prior convictions. His lawyer said he realised now he could not cope with difficult customers and had sold the photo shop. There really is no excuse for whacking anyone but, boy, you can easily sympathise with the owner’s frustration. Basil Fawlty would understand anyway. I read out the story to my mother while she was cooking tea, expecting her to agree the shop owner had a reasonable defence on the grounds of provocation. She thought no such thing. She said service standards nowadays were appalling everywhere and, not for the first time that evening, harped on about her little Peugeot. The car had a rattle. She took it to the garage where she always took it, expecting immediate service and the usual cup of tea. The garage had since changed hands. There was no cup of tea and mum was told to make a service booking, like everyone else. Also, the computer had crashed and her service record had disappeared. She was ropeable. The previous owner had sold the business because he was dying of cancer but she still intended to ring his home and give him a piece of her mind. Sigh. Yet, on the same day as the car tizz, a computer glitch at her doctor’s surgery meant she could not obtain a prescription for blood pressure tablets, which she needs. That was different, she said. Before I left Geelong, I was walking past a café and on a chalkboard out front was the message: 'Do not let yesterday use up too much of today.' I liked that and had a coffee there instead of in the café next door. I have returned to work with an idea that my job is a rare treat, which attracts only goodwill and understanding. Try not to spoil it.
posted by Des at 7:44 PM

 
Published The Advocate, February 25, 2006


PART of the experience of shopping with my mother was the dressing up as if you were going to church – genuflecting at the holy altar of retail hallelujah. It was never pleasant. Part of it was the ‘Sunday best’ effort but mostly it was the tension of going out in public with your mum, and vice versa. She would smear her spittle on my unruly hair as if my appearance was a conspiracy against her sense of style and decorum, and would issue warnings not to shame the family name or she would disown me. My mother is nearly 80 now and I thought the trauma had passed. Recently I went with her while she bought a pair of shoes. After an hour of trying on different pairs, she departed without buying any. And it all came flooding back. Aaaargh. For my dad, a hardware store was seventh heaven. He would spend hours wandering the aisles to see what’s what, and often came away with a new dooverwacky or a light globe. Our pantry had a special shelf for light globes. The only memory I have of him buying clothes was the day he came home with two white Viscostatic shirts, which he said were wash’n’wear to save mum the ironing. The shirts quickly yellowed with sun and underarm sweat although we lived in Geelong, not noted for its sub-tropical heat. Dad was never again allowed to buy shirts by himself. Tipster Donkey Dan – 'the pensioner’s friend' – loves shopping. He knows the comparative prices of Bismark potatoes across the Coast; he actually reads the can labels to find the country of origin; and he promises to find the best price on any item, guaranteed, even if it costs him $5 in petrol to get there. But even DD draws the line at buying clothes for his wife. He once bought her tennis shoes, which had to be returned because they were the wrong size, wrong colour, wrong pattern – tick the box – and he learned from it. For their recent wedding anniversary, he bought her a lingerie voucher and was smothered in love and kisses. Hmm, tennis shoes and lingerie – does that sound like a fetish to you? Anyway, no man in his right mind would dare buy clothes for a woman. Why put yourself at physical risk in knowing she is now a size 16, no longer a 10, which apparently was declared a state secret some years ago; or exposing the lie that size 16 is not the same in all brands; or choosing a colour that does not match her mood at a given moment? Yet women insist on buying clothes for their menfolk. Shirts the colour of toilet disinfectant, with sleeves too long, and pink ties – pink! – that you are expected to wear in public. Why do they do it? It must be a gender thing. I have a photo of an elderly Aboriginal woman in the Outback, wearing a T-shirt printed with: I Shop Therefore I Am.
posted by Des at 7:15 PM

 
Published The Advocate, February 18, 2006


SO MANY farmers’ markets pop up each weekend it makes me wonder if anyone is left behind to look after the farm. Some markets offer not much beyond a couple of trestle tables loaded with potted shrubs and tubs of honey, along with the obligatory tea urn. It doesn’t matter; the social outing is what counts. At the other extreme is Hobart’s Salamanca Market. You’d be hard-put to find a dinky-di farmer at Salamanca. More likely, you will be knocked down by the crush of people driving 4WDs with National Parks passes stuck on the windscreens. First up, I fell into step behind a couple of muffin-top teenagers heading roly-poly in the direction of the food van. Forget the macrobiotic salad, they bought hotdogs and I had a bag of chips. It soon started to rain but was too crowded to raise an umbrella – except for the mum holding one over her tiny-tot daughter while she busked with a violin. Cute as a button and, of course, I had forgotten the camera. Any tourist suffering a bout of affluenza headed straight for the Huon pine stalls. So many bread boards and chopping blocks, is there any Huon pine left in the wilderness? A CD was playing music evoking a forest breathing or the tinkling of glacial ice. Further along came the sound of a didgeridoo and bongo combo. I kept my distance. I also avoided the stalls selling magical crystals, bottles of life essences and smelly soap. Get too close and you run the risk of being entranced by the aura and later discover you have bought something completely useless. Also, those stalls tend to attract a certain ‘type’ wearing tangled love beads and matted hair: so earnest, so indignant, so suffragette. So scary. Flowing between the two rows of stalls there was an endless daisy chain of mums with baby strollers the size of RAV4 vehicles. Just one had to stop to checkout a stall and the whole market went into gridlock. Imagine this happening a hundred times an hour, shuffling along and going almost nowhere, and you can understand why I made a break for it and slipped sideways behind the stalls. And bumped into a trio of Goths wearing Dracula capes, in their horror makeup and lank black hair. Their boyfriends had so much metalwork in their faces they looked like hood ornaments. They had taken a great deal of care to appear ‘alternative’, to declare their individuality. Yet they all looked the same. Like bats, Goths could not survive alone. Off to one side a mime in frosted bronze paint was pretending to be a statue. Whenever someone threw money into his plastic bucket, he moved in a slow, mechanical sort of way. The best part of the day was the boy, gawping and not watching where he was going, who tripped over the mime’s bucket and coins spilled everywhere. I have never seen a frozen mime move so fast. You wouldn’t be dead for quids.
posted by Des at 7:18 PM

 
Published The Advocate, February 11, 2006


IN A week when it was confirmed the food on our plates was becoming expensive also came news of a retired English civil servant Arthur Boyt, who was compiling a book of roadkill recipes. Starting with a pheasant when he was 13, Mr Boyt had since scraped all manner of creatures from the bitumen and eaten them: otter, porcupine, weasel, rat, cat and bat, which he said tasted like grey squirrel, and a Labrador that reminded him of lamb. His all-time favourite, though, was a badger sandwich. By now the warm and fuzzy animal lovers among us will be passing out, as will the Hygiene Nazis, and I admit to feeling a little queasy myself. But Mr Boyt insists any roadkill, even an animal that has been dead for a while and gone green, can be eaten if properly cooked – free, tasty and nutritious. Yum. He should pay Tasmania a visit. Spoiled for choice, we are, when it comes to roadkill. He would find enough dead possum per kilometre to open a BYO restaurant; he could also feast nightly on Tassie devil; and have a few mates around at the weekend for barbecued plover. The squeamish need to ask themselves what’s their problem: the thought of eating roadkill or the type of creature? Both, in all likelihood, but it depends what you grew up eating. Many people would baulk at eating a Labrador, but not in Asia; the French eat horse meat; and cute guinea pigs are roasted in South America. On the Coast, we like our tucker to be as fresh as possible and we’re not too picky about its origins. If it runs, flies or swims, it’s all fair game – legal or not. Old-timers can remember the days when large garfish used to be trapped in certain rock pools off West Park when the tide went out. All you needed was a stick to flick them out of the water, so I am told, although I don’t believe it. The fishing holes disappeared under landfill and tears well in my eyes. I have eaten plenty of native fauna such as kangaroo, emu and pie floater – none of them as roadkill although the floater’s green pea soup and lashings of vinegar, tomato sauce and black pepper looked like a fatality. Last week, getting among the Coastal fauna, I ate my first mutton bird after screwing up my nose for a long time at the thought of eating what people had told me was an oily rag that tasted like fish. It had been barbecued by a mate so there was hardly any oil left and, yes, it did taste of anchovies, only milder. It went down a treat with a beer, especially after an entrée of whitebait patties. I had reservations about the whitebait having possibly been poached outside the legal netting season until my supplier guaranteed it was roadkill he had chanced on, so that was alright then. Roadkill whitebait and barbecued mutton bird – what could be more Coastal than that?
posted by Des at 7:15 PM

 
Published The Advocate, February 4, 2006


A FRIEND rang specially to say it was bucketing rain in Adelaide; I might have told her rain was not uncommon in Tasmania but it would have spoiled her day. Adelaide had just endured three consecutive 40-plus degree days, so the rain was welcome. The city is like a furnace when the hot wind blasts in from the desert, and between the Melbourne Cup and Anzac Day you can count on one hand the number of rainy days there. Coasters can only imagine what it’s like. It reached 27 degrees on the Coast a couple of Sundays ago and people were carrying on as if it were the End Time. Everyone assured me 27 here was like 37 in Adelaide. Actually it’s not, it’s just like 27 – here or in Adelaide. They quickly changed tack and waffled on about the effect of humidity here but I was no longer listening. I have grown used to the Coastal weather after moving from Adelaide. The wind drove me crazy for months and then one day I realised there was no wind, and it began to rain. But summer here is special – real Goldilocks weather. An aside: 170 years ago tomorrow, February 5, 1836, the English naturalist Charles Darwin sailed into Hobart Town aboard the Beagle on his five year voyage around the world. He made several inland trips to study the geology and departed 12 days later to eventually write The Origin of Species, which divided 19th century society for and against the theory of evolution. And on it goes. There is a Mt Darwin south of Queenstown. Such were the evolutionary passions of Darwin’s time that the mountains around Macquarie Harbour were named after his contemporaries, both pro and con. Those against evolution were given the taller mountain names while the smaller ones were named after Darwin’s supporters. Very Tasmanian, that. But Darwin loved the Tasmanian summer and said were he to live anywhere other than in England, it would be Tasmania. Had he visited Hobart in mid-August when it’s cold enough at night to crystallise the wax in your ears, he might have thought differently. Tourism Tasmania could do a lot worse than to quote Darwin to promote Tassie as a summer escape for hot mainlanders. It is currently doing a lot worse: the ridiculous 'Rejuvenation through Inspiration' advertising campaign aimed at luring tourists from Melbourne and Sydney. For mainlanders who spend a large part of summer locked inside with the blinds drawn and the air conditioner on full-blast, it’s not rejuvenation they desire, it’s a cool change. When it’s 35 degrees in Melbourne, the Coast’s 25 degrees is mighty appealing. I know this by the phone calls from mainland friends and family who watch the Tasmanian weather map with envy. Why not adopt 'Tassie – a Cool Change' as a summer marketing slogan? Or 'Come for a Change'; or 'Breath of Fresh Air'; or 'Refresh your senses'; or simply 'Chill Out'. Anything but the insipid 'Rejuvenation through Inspiration'.
posted by Des at 4:38 PM

 
Published The Advocate, January 28, 2006


Gerry Humphreys died late last year and the memories of my youth came tumbling back. It hardly mattered that no-one else on the Coast had heard of Humphreys or knew he was the lead singer of the 1960s’ Melbourne band, the Loved Ones. It’s my nostalgia. Music has a remarkable power, possibly matched by the sense of smell, to bring rushing back in time and place the age when a particular song filled our lives. The soundtrack of my youth - the Loved Ones and The Kinks - were the first albums I bought on vinyl. As if yesterday, I can remember Humphreys’ screaming Everlovin’ Man on the Top 40. His death prompted me to buy the Loved Ones’ Magic Box album on CD to replace the badly scratched original. And then Santa brought me an iPod. For those over 60, an iPod is a brand of MP3 device for storing and playing your favourite music. I emailed 55 people to ask if anyone knew what the characters M-P-3 meant and five responded: all bar one was under 25 including one female. The older exception was a man in his 30s whose kids keep him abreast of digital technology. They told me MP3 was shorthand for the Moving Picture Experts Group Audio Layer-3. You didn’t need to know that. Instead, think of how Gillette keeps adding layers of blades to its razors without increasing the size. MP3 technology manages to squeeze 120 songs onto my iPod, which fits snugly inside a clenched fist. It is unlike me to be so up to date with technology. I would have been buying shares in piano rolls just as gramophones were invented, or hoarding bottles of Tipp-Ex correction fluid when computers appeared on the market. I uploaded the best songs from Magic Box onto the iPod and have since accumulated about 40 other tracks from my CD collection, or about two and a half hours’ worth so far. As I grow older I am increasingly affected by songs in a minor key, not to the sobbing stage, but for example the sad and beautiful Irish music sung by Enya always brings me down. So there is no Enya on my iPod but there are lots of bouncy marching songs such as Pleasure and Pain by the Divinyls and, with a copy deadline looming, I am sitting here listening to Friday on my Mind, by The Easybeats, and tapping my foot. Some MP3s can store 20,000 songs and replay them in any order although the pint is beyond me since you cannot possibly live long enough to hear them all. I intend to take the iPod to the grave playing in my ears. It has already come in handy for compiling the music I would like at my funeral rather than risk people who think they know me choosing My Way. There are three songs and the finale is a Van Morrison song that contains the cheery refrain: My momma told me there’d be days like this.
posted by Des at 4:39 PM

 
Published The Advocate, January 21, 2006


ONE of my tasks as an editor, I like to think, is to make journos feel angry about injustice; to shake them out of their professional indifference and comfy middle class existence. Leisha Petrys and I connected when she was a cadet journalist at the start of her career. A shy girl of good parents, she first appeared in a black cocktail dress as someone who liked the idea of journalism rather than being a journalist, with the hard, confronting knocks. Her turning point came with a story about a property developer who had told lies to prospective homebuyers, including a whopper about the nearby prison being relocated as part of a beautification plan. Leisha had to go back repeatedly to seek comment from the developer. Each time, his level of personal abuse and legal threats escalated. She shook with nerves and felt sick but she stuck at it. Such courage, which requires forethought and consideration of the risks involved, is to be admired above physical bravery. If anything, the lies seemed to energize her. It made her more determined and thanks to Leisha the developer was exposed and Consumer Affairs intervened. She blossomed as a journalist from there - ``rocket fuel’’, as they say, to become one of the young anointed. A quick aside: Petrys is a contraction of a much, much longer Russian family name. Her Russian bloodlines blessed her with certain physical advantages such as high cheekbones, flawless skin and a beguiling bosom. Leisha claims she has used her cleavage only once in her job by wearing a plunging neckline to interview Eddie Maguire, of TV and Collingwood fame, in the hope of catching his eye. For what purpose, she remains coy. Not that it did her any good, she said. There must be something wrong with Eddie. Anyway, Leisha fell in love with Greg, an architect, who had a better eye for necklines. She was talking to Greg on the mobile phone, on her way back from covering the Eyre Peninsula bushfires a year ago, when she and another reporter driving the car were hit head-on by a car. Leisha was critically injured. Trapped in the wreck, slipping in an out of consciousness, she lost so much blood she ought to be dead. Afterwards, she recalled how her colleague, who miraculously was uninjured, kept yelling at her: "Don’t you die on me, Petrys!" What is he going on about? she wondered. She had a shattered leg, deep gashes, and chest and abdominal trauma. Her flawless face was left unscathed. After the first emergency operation to save her life, when she regained consciousness the first items she demanded were a pen and notebook to record what was happening. Leisha Petrys. Journalist. She has since endured many operations and had to learn to walk again. She set herself a goal to walk unaided down the aisle on her wedding day to Greg. I went to the wedding last month and Leisha walked straight and true, as I knew she would.
posted by Des at 2:40 PM

 
Published The Advocate, January 14, 2006


HERE I was, anticipating another year of friends’ funerals, and my daughter Melissa announces she is giving me a first grandchild. I immediately demanded to know why, why, why, and if she really thought I was old enough to be a grandfather? "You’re old enough but probably lacking in maturity," she said. Daughters can be such a challenge. The thought of grandfatherhood will take some getting used to. Eliza of Lindisfarne wrote me an email: "Congratulations on becoming a grandfather – you will have to invest in some Grosby slippers!!!" Barleys. It’s not like I work in IT. I attended Melissa’s birth, which occurred as Princess Anne and Captain Mark Phillips were being married in London in 1973. In between contractions the nurses kept ducking out to check the progress of the royal wedding on TV. A great occasion – the birth, not the wedding – and I was still yelling "Encore! Encore!" while being escorted from the delivery suite. Jo and Cath – the wives of colleagues – recently gave birth to daughters. Jo has the good sense to avoid my radar but I met Cath the other day in the street struggling under the weight of disposable nappies. The last time I saw Cath she was heavily pregnant and had a healthy, happy glow. Now she looked frazzled. Pregnancy really suits some women. Jenny, an old friend who also happens to be a midwife, is best kept barefoot and pregnant. Late in one of her many pregnancies, I went around to her house one morning and she was in the backyard weeding the veggie patch. I popped around again after lunch and there was the newborn in her husband’s arms. And Jenny was back weeding the garden, as if nothing unusual had occurred in the meantime. Which brings me to Aaron and Janice. I have known Aaron for 18 months and in that time he has produced an assembly line of kids. The fourth was born late last year. And now Janice is expecting the fifth. It seems every time Aaron hangs his trousers over the end of the bed Janice falls pregnant. She is obviously fecund – prolifically fertile – although Aaron obviously must shoulder some of the blame. He told me they had not planned to have a large family but what could you do? I waved a Stanley knife in his direction and offered to do a cut-rate vasectomy on the spot. He looked sheepish. As a matter of fact, Aaron said, he had been waiting in line for an appointment at the family planning clinic when the news of Janice’s latest pregnancy came through. It’s all a matter of time and place. At dinner recently I sat next to a woman who said she was the youngest of 16 children, the eldest of whom was 73. Family gatherings must be quite a memory test, I said. Not really, she said. She remembered her brothers and sisters by where they were born: Fred in Smithton, Alice in Stanley, and so on. Their father was a railway fettler.
posted by Des at 2:49 PM

 
Published The Advocate, January 7, 2006


THE super-maxi Wild Oats XI completed the latest Sydney-Hobart race in less than two days – a tad under 43 hours – and yachtsmen are talking of a 35-hour win before long. The Wild Oats crew said it was like clinging to a rocket, going faster and faster, the only limit being imminent destruction. Another maxi AAPT saw its carbon fibre boom crack under the pressure. Wild Oats has a canting keel that swings from side to side to make the boat move more efficiently through the water. The keel is driven by onboard hydraulics. The maxi yachts have to keep their engines constantly running to power all the hydraulics, electronics and computers. It’s a far cry from my days as a teenage sailor on Corio Bay. Our dinghy’s keel was moved up and down by hand. The only power source was the wind. Dinghy sailing meant you either were wet and miserable or dry and bored, and there were always cleaning and maintenance chores to be done. I had better things to do with my life and did them. Even so, I also did a coastal navigation course with no intention of ever owning a boat. Coastal navigation is done using marine charts, a compass and a ruler. It is fairly straightforward provided the coastline is kept in sight. Which brings me alongside Quetzalcoatl, a Tassie entrant in the recent Melbourne-Hobart race, which mysteriously lost its electronic navigation system on the way across Bass Strait to the start line. The crew had to go "back to basics". I took this to mean they had to use a sextant or navigated by the stars. But, no, they completed the crossing using a hand-held Global Positioning System unit. Matthew Flinders, who explored Bass Strait in a leaky sloop without GPS, must be rolling in his grave. Australia’s most famous keel, the winged one, helped to give Australia II victory in the 1983 America’s Cup. Toyota even named a car after the designer, Ben Lexcen. There was no canting. Wild Oats is not a graceful thing at rest. The bow resembles a brutal log splitter. This year’s race toll included several giant sunfish and a large shark that was sliced in half. I went for a look at Wild Oats in Hobart last weekend and frankly it looked boring tied to the dock. Instead of laying waste to ocean creatures, it had become a floating billboard for its sponsors. The crew was fashionably dressed in crisp Henri Lloyd shirts and caps, wore flash HDX sunnies and each received a Rolex winner’s watch from the race sponsor. Cruising the world and being paid to race in rich men’s yachts is obviously not a bad gig. But it’s sailing in name only. The slowest Sydney-Hobart finisher this year was Gillawa, which took over seven days. I doubt Gillawa killed any fish or moved its keel but I bet the crew toasted their last placing by raising a glass to the true romance of sail.
posted by Des at 2:46 PM

 
Published The Advocate, December 31, 2005


HERE we are at the cusp of another year but you have to remain optimistic. There is always something to live for. Check a desk calendar. Every day somewhere in the world, a public holiday is being celebrated. I saw a man with no arms standing by the side of the Bass Hwy at Somerset the other day. He was wearing a shoulder bag around his neck and had the half-expectant, half-pleading look of a hitchhiker. What makes a man with no arms think he can thumb a ride? Optimism. I take inspiration from his attitude. I wish to be the bald man who weekly pops his head into the barbershop and laughs to remind the barber of a lost sale. It’s a matter of seeing things differently. I love the cartoon of a fish telling the doubting wrasses: "I swear, I was seized by an alien who kissed me on the lips and threw me back." Sometimes I feel detached from life, like being in an aircraft where everyone else but me is wearing a headset and laughing at the in-flight movie and I have no idea why they are laughing. Here’s a thought: If something is funny enough to make you laugh, why can’t you keep on laughing at it? Why does the laughing stop? The joke is still funny and yet somehow its funniness runs out. Weird. Not laughing, more friends will die in 2006, as if 2005 was not bad enough. For years, my regular New Year’s resolution has been to make new friends. A good resolution, but not this time. I have reached the stage where I am reluctant to make new friends now because it will mean having to attend even more funerals later. I am also a contrarian. I like to do the unexpected. Everyone tells me death is inevitable, therefore I intend to hang around forever just to make a nuisance of myself. We shall see. Some days are too difficult to make considered, intelligent judgements, like stepping into a lift and being unable to decide whether to go up or down. There have also been days when I arrived at work covered in cobwebs, for which I have no explanation. But if your life is going around in bewildering circles, never mind, there are lots of people with chips on their shoulders who will tell you exactly where you are going wrong. They will pick faults in others but see none in themselves. Avoid them. So what does next year have in store? The weather will make the news again, of that I am certain. Tassie loves its weather stories. And for those parents who are worried their kids are too obsessed with winning in sport, there’s always Collingwood. My New Year resolution last year was to procrastinate more, to put off until tomorrow what I could not bothered doing yesterday. That’s ticked off the list when I get around to it. Next year I intend to continue the hunt for anatomically correct jelly babies.
posted by Des at 11:22 PM

 
Published The Advocate, December 24, 2005


IN THE United States, where the silly season grows sillier every year, some large evangelical churches have cancelled Christmas church services this year. They speak of "decentralising Christmas", of encouraging people to spend the day with their families around the Christmas tree, rather than coming together to worship as a congregation. Am I alone in finding this odd? Christmas is the one time of the year – not counting weddings and funerals – when even the lapsed are likely to be found in a church. It’s a sacred time. Most retailers, having commercialised Christmas to the last dollar, close their doors on Christmas Day itself. Churches, on the other hand, are expected to keep their doors open. To close the doors may be a consequence of running religion like a business, as many evangelical churches do, and it rather misses the point of being a church. It is hard to imagine the mainstream churches – Catholic, Protestant and so on – taking a breather on Christmas Day. Even if an alarmingly small number of people bother to turn up, the birth of Christ still seems a good reason to turn on the lights and arrange the flowers. Even non-believers respect the fact that Christmas is more than just another public holiday. I had a crusty old editor – a non-believer if ever there was one – who banned the word Xmas in copy even though it made a better fit than Christmas in a headline. He saw the X as offensive to many readers for taking the Christ out of Christmas. Only later did I learn X was the Greek character for Christ. Meantime, the secularisation of Christmas continues apace. Education minister Paula Wriedt said state schools, if they wished, could ban Christmas activities such as nativity plays, carols and decorations "given the diversity of the school population". Her critics took this as implicit approval for schools to ban Christmas altogether, and they labelled Ms Wriedt a grinch. However, the critics saw nothing wrong in their insisting that everyone must celebrate Christmas, or else. There is no getting away from the fact that Christmas is a Christian feast day, for Christ’s sake. The festive season can also be rough on a lot of people. It can be a sad reminder for those who have lost loved ones. It is also the suicide season and there is an upsurge in domestic violence and road fatalities. Sigh. Christmas, to me, is the time of the year when I sit in the lounge with the lights out listening to Handel’s version of Gloria rather than to Van Morrison’s G-L-O-R-I-AYY. My perfect day is to make the family calls early and then withdraw: the phone does not ring, no one comes knocking at my door and I can write another passage of my never ending book knowing I will not be interrupted. Bliss. My son’s partner is Jewish. Being Jewish, she says, means she is not required to give Christmas presents although nothing prevents her from receiving them. Ho-ho-ho. Anyway, from her perspective, all Christians are lapsed Jews.
posted by Des at 11:19 PM

 
Published The Advocate, December 17, 2005


STANDING in an airport queue provides plenty of time for self-assessment, to become more aware of who you are … except many things are not worth knowing and it’s best not to ask. My way of coping with an airport queue is to let my mind wander and see where it leads. Like, always buy your coffee in the same airport café where the hosties get theirs. Or will the pocketful of coins I put through the x-ray scanner hit the jackpot when they come out the other end? See, not everything is worth knowing. I was in Sydney airport waiting to board a plane for Melbourne, which had been named as a possible terrorist target. Alert and alarmed, people in airport queues do not talk about terrorism. Even a joke mention of the word "bomb" will get you detained. People talk about the weather instead. On the airport shuttle bus, the driver had offered reassurances about the dark clouds, guaranteeing it would not rain because Sydney was in a prolonged drought. A woman with a heavy accent told the driver the whole world’s weather was going creezy. She said it was zeero degrees and raining in La Paz at this very moment. At which point it began to rain in Sydney. "Yes," the driver said, "the weather’s very unpredictable everywhere now." So much for the Sydney drought. Inside the terminal I overheard a radio discussion on the difference between "Yeah but" and "Yeah and" people. The "Yeah buts" saw only problems and always raised objections to why a thing could not be done; the "Yeah ands" offered solutions to how a problem might be overcome. My general approach is: "Yeah but, and another thing..." This stuff plays on the minds of people once their identity has been reduced to a baggage barcode and left queuing for hours. They are also the sucker targets of airport newsagencies, which stack their shelves with self-improvement books like "Big ideas for small minded people" or "Word for the illiterate". The security screening means you spend more time waiting than you do flying. I know a woman who always carries an empty water bottle in her bag because, as she says, you never know when you might be stuck in a lift and need to relieve yourself. Or stuck with a full bladder in an airport queue but unwilling to lose your place. Occasionally things run smoothly in airports. On this occasion we boarded the plane without delay and no-one sat next to me. Even better, among the suits up in business class, a baby was screaing its lungs out. Bless it. Then, too good to be true, we went nowhere. Eventually the pilot came on the intercom and blamed the slack baggage handlers for delaying our departure. Have you noticed how the poor old baggage handlers have been copping the blame for whatever goes wrong in airports since the Schapelle Corby drug case? One smuggled bag of marijuana and they’re guilty of everything.
posted by Des at 10:54 PM

 

Published The Advocate, December 10, 2005


I KNEW a shonky plumber who owned a greyhound. He had a bushy black beard and a touch of the night about him. The plumber, not the dog. I went with him to a greyhound meeting one night on the promise of a scoop story about rigged races. He claimed to have "inside knowledge". None of his tips won, which only confirmed in his mind that the industry, from the stewards down, was corrupt. He should talk. He and his mate did dodgy bathroom renovations. Somehow a hammer always fell repeatedly against the old hand basin or bath, which then had to be replaced on insurance. The plumber just happened to have a handy supply of replacement baths and basins in a backyard shed. He also had a sideline selling homemade salami in hotel bars. Given his high turnover of greyhounds, I now worry what meat he used in the salami. When it came to success on the track, his secret weapon was to smear hot English mustard on his dog’s nether regions as he pushed it into the starting box. The dog performed well and was very hard to catch afterwards. The stewards eventually twigged. Within the space of a month the plumber was banned from the track; the police charged him with handling stolen bathware and insurance fraud; the ATO was onto him for undeclared income; and he was being pursued by the health authorities over a salmonella outbreak. Speaking of going to the dogs, I was having a drink with Donkey Dan, The Advocate’s hapless tipster and self-styled "pensioner’s friend", who had another less than splendid Spring Carnival. We were in a windowless bar where Meaty Bites could be served as nibbles and no one would notice. One beer led to another and we decided to buy a greyhound. Donkey was thinking in the vicinity of $300 and a training deal with no upfront fees and a percentage share of the winnings. I had seen an omen in The Advocate: Australian greyhounds were reportedly being sent to Asia to be served as gourmet meals, and efforts were being made to ban their export. This could only be good news. The reason why our crayfish are so expensive is because the market demand in Japan and Hong Kong drives up the price. An export ban on a la carte greyhounds should keep down the price here. We rang our mate Sam, who has contacts in the greyhound world, to see if he could find an entry-level dog that would be immediately successful. Sam was enthusiastic. He said his lifelong ambition was to own a dish licker. Some people’s ambitions are very low. He set off like a mechanical rabbit and was soon back on the line saying we could pick up a good pup for about $1500, plus $40 a week in training fees, although it could be up to $3000 for a top breed. Jeez Louise! Hmm, now that’s not a bad name for a dog.
posted by Des at 10:06 PM

 
Published The Advocate, November 19, 2005


TASMANIA was chosen as a convict settlement because of its isolation and the citizens are still defined daily by that isolation. Their separation from the rest of Australia affects the way they think; the way they see themselves. Tasmanians are people of their own creation. The separation also colours how the Mainland sees them, for good or ill. One of Tasmania’s many Elizas, a chatty young woman, recently told me she had a "problem" with Mainlanders. Now I try to get on with people, to see their points of view and to give them the benefit of the doubt. But what’s wrong with Mainlanders? Eliza said her attitude changed at a music festival at Byron Bay while she was standing in line at the toilets chatting with the other girls. She had mentioned she was from Tasmania. The others had rolled their eyes, Eliza said, and had made her feel as if she somehow counted for less. I told her she obviously was standing in the wrong toilet queue; the boys would never have cold-shouldered her like that. We all want to be liked for who we are, Eliza, and you cannot help where you were born. Mind, being born in one place and not in another, makes a big difference in Tasmania. Eliza comes from Lindisfarne, on the eastern shore of the Derwent, and no doubt there are those in Hobart who put down Lindisfarners for being overly sensitive little petals. In this way, stereotypes are created. Despite apparent state unity, regional differences and identities are strong in Tasmania. Each region contains small separatist movements, known as suburbs and towns, which give rise to deep-seated rivalries: Devonport versus Burnie; Smithton versus Stanley; Penguin versus Ulverstone; etcetera. In Devonport, a Lions Club comes up with a headline-grabbing Spirit of the Sea sculpture – complete with a male dangly bit - for no reason other than to counter the perceived progressiveness of Burnie’s foreshore development. Our Cradle Coast is a regional community spread in small parts. With no regional capital, it reminds me of suburbia. Each town thinks it is entitled to a local hospital, school, airport and Olympic-sized swimming pool. Never mind if the entire regional population is the same as one small Sydney council, and there is not enough money to go around for nine of everything. One day, maybe, the regional differences will be a cause of celebration instead of dispute. I should live so long. Meantime, I keep being asked what I think of Tasmania, which I find surprising after all this time here. It’s hard to know how to answer. I always have a nervy sense of being closely watched for a throwaway line that snags me unwittingly as un-Tasmanian. Heaven forbid. Or, even worse, of seeming to favour one town over another. So what do I think? Look around – what’s not to like? It’s all good, mate.
posted by Des at 2:48 PM

 
Published The Advocate, December 3, 2005

FRIDAY night I was in the ground floor bar of the Mercure Hotel, Hobart, watching the girls in their glad rags and their beaus dressed to the nines gathering for their school leaver’s dinner. How many of them would end the night in such good order remained to be seen. The girls, dressed mostly in black with pushup bras and alluring necklines, clung together in giggling clusters of shimmering silk. They had those over-large eyes of Japanese cartoon characters, an eyeliner beauty trick. Girls never looked so good when I was that age, let me tell you. The young men in their rental tuxes, black suits and yellow ties, had their hair frosted and moussed stiff. Hair care is not high on my priority list. The last time I went to the barber, I returned to work with an electric hedge trimmer that was on special in a shop window. People chortled. At the next table in the Mercure, an elderly man was accompanied by a blonde woman of a certain age and a pretty girl, possibly his granddaughter, who was dressed for her leavers’ dinner. The man was wheezing and talking non-stop as if frightened his time would run out before he finished: "As I said to the surgeon … arrrghhh … inhalation in my lungs … also had a respiratory … arrrghhh." The blonde kept saying "Aw, my goodness," and the girl looked uncomfortable. I was rather touched by the family gathering. I cannot invite any of my family out to dinner because they all have dietary or psychological problems. In the early hours next morning, kept awake by the sonar ping of the pedestrian lights outside, I was alone with my thoughts in the hotel room. I have many shortcomings as a human being and I wish now, looking back, I had led a blameless life. My mother prays for me in church. I am much misunderstood. The party animals began returning: The thud of hallway doors and security latches being clicked into place, of muffled voices and giggles, and the turbo-surge of toilets being flushed. As I write this, the leavers’ dinner season is over. So much work and effort went into the party package, the hair and the makeup; and now it’s over and the kids have to get on with the rest of their lives. Most of them will make worthwhile contributions to the community and be fine citizens; some will do remarkable things and achieve greatness; and some won’t. You cannot alter the way luck flows. A few, with nothing better to do, will come straggling into town in their thongs and Ugg boots, the girls chewing their hair ends and walking pigeon-toed, skewed by their child-bearing hips. I hope they find something fulfilling to do with their lives. Like find a cure for baldness. My barber was telling me about her sister’s leavers’ dinner and how she was hoping to get a job working with animals. Such as a vet, perhaps, or farming? "Apprentice butcher," she said.
posted by Des at 2:33 PM

 
Published The Advocate, November 26, 2005


BY THIS time next week, a young Australian man will be hanged by the neck until dead in Singapore. Pause. Let it sink in. Nguyen Tuong Van, a 25-year-old Melbourne man, is due to be executed on Friday, December 2, in Changi Prison. Knowing the precise date of your death at the hands of others is beyond my comprehension. Imagine, too, being his mum paying her son a visit in his final hours. No mother should have that inflicted on her. For the record, I oppose the death penalty. Always have. Capital punishment is judicial murder, made worse by the cold, detached manner of its execution. Only Abu Bakar Bashir gives me pause for second thoughts. The "spiritual" head of the Bali bombers received just 30 months in prison for giving the terrorists his blessing to do their evil. Bashir will be free soon enough. Van Nguyen will be dead. Bashir will burn in hell, Allah willing. On no account can the deliberate taking of a human life be justified as a punishment. To think otherwise is to become like Bashir, perverted by the sense that God is on your side and is divinely guiding the executioner's hand. Not my God. No one who truly believes in God can support capital punishment. The Vatican and I do not see eye to eye on much. But in opposing capital punishment, the Catholic Church is robust and right. The church has core issues about the sanctity of life: Mankind does not have a God-given right to take a man's life. Unlike Singapore and the US, Australia has no capital punishment and no death row. We are better than that as a people. The Australian Army has never executed one of its troops for "cowardice". The ones who lost their minds under fire needed support to help them out of their trauma, not another bullet from a firing squad. The last person to be executed in Australia was Ronald Ryan, who was hanged in Pentridge Prison in 1967. The citizenry was so revolted it is hard to see capital punishment ever returning although we must remain vigilant. I worked with BM, a journalist who was a public witness to Ryan's hanging. BM was one of the funniest people I met. After Ryan, he was frequently to be seen in tears. Van Nguyen made the fatal mistake of trying to smuggle heroin through Changi Airport. It's not as if the Singapore Government makes any secret of its execution policy. It also takes a dim view of spitting and chewing gum. His 400g heroin load contained within it the cause of misery for many heroin addicts, so he was no innocent abroad. Let him rot in jail for many years for all I care. But Van Nguyen's young life, hardly under way, will be over within the week. What purpose is served? What is achieved? Will the world be a better place for having him dangling at the end of a hangman's noose? No, we all will be diminished.
posted by Des at 4:28 PM

 
Published The Advocate, November 12, 2005


AT THIS time of the year I stand on the balcony and love it when the wind blows and the white caps fleck Bass Strait. This morning a howling westerly was flaying the sea and the broken water crashing over the harbour reef looked like threshing sharks. Then, after the last rain squall, the sea was spotlit by a glassy, yellow rod of sun. I was moved. Moving right along, some of Tasmania’s best seascapes are currently being used in the state government’s $250,000 feel-good advertising campaign, "The possibilities are endless". The campaign pushes the Tassie Pride button for all it’s worth. Far be it from me to say the ads are taxpayer-funded propaganda to benefit the government’s re-election chances but at the very least they are a case of preaching to the converted. My opinion matters no more than anyone else’s – less possibly because I am an immigrant – but it would be interesting to hear how the campaign can be justified on public interest grounds. Do we really need clap-happy advertisements to tell us how great we are, especially when we are footing the bill? The sexual assault helpline advertisements serve a useful public service; government boosterism does not. Something else makes me wince: People boasting that Tasmania "punches above its weight". Used whenever a Tasmanian person, place or product gains recognition beyond our shores, the term is favoured by politicians who hope some of the lustre will rub off on them. The underlying message is Tasmania is a small island with a small population – often the underdog – and yet we can achieve greatness against the odds. We then take shared pleasure in one of our own being successful and recognised. Fair enough. Of course we should celebrate the wins and awards – The Advocate reports many such stories – but I have a problem with this punching above our weight business. In boxing parlance it sounds as though we have entered a division where we have no right to be. That we cannot match it unless someone does something exceptionally beyond the norm expected of a Tasmanian. Does that sound like an inferiority complex? Just a question. Or a desire not to be taken for granted? It doesn’t take much to be noticed for our special achievements. But we should take pride in who we are and what we have achieved without the need for slick advertising and cheer leading. Boag’s brewery advertising uses the one word, Pride, to express pride in its product and the workforce. A good campaign for beer. But in the wrong hands, Pride is also one of the seven deadly sins, as in being full of oneself and, as the proverb says, pride goeth before a fall. While I was staring out to sea, the wind changed to a vicious nor’easter and the backyard leatherwood tree, heavily sprung under its weight of gumnuts, snapped a branch and crashed onto the bed of purple irises. Which only shows what can happen from punching above your weight.
posted by Des at 2:51 PM

 
Published The Advocate, November 5, 2005


IN MOVIES, cigarette smokers are the anti-establishment figures, the rebels – precisely defined by the tobacco industry and targeted at the youth market. The new anti-smoking ads now appearing on TV are aimed at the same market. In one, a young woman on a park bench gives the eye to a passing bloke. He spots her packet of fags, however, and keeps walking. Disgusted with herself, the woman crushes the pack and, abracadabra, she is last seen walking off with the guy to make babies. In another, a young man half-jokes about not being able to operate without a cigarette, and a surgeon looks at some x-rays and says: "I don’t think I can operate." The overlay reads: Quitting is hard. Not quitting is harder. The question is, do these ads make people give up smoking? Is a campaign to make smokers feel like idiots or feel guilty the best way to make them quit? Or does it just make them resentful and defiant? Teenagers will continue to smoke in defiance of medical wisdom. Teenagers think they are going to live forever no matter what. It’s not as if you light up your first cigarette and drop dead, just like that. There is no need to update your last will and testament beforehand, or to gather your loved ones around as you take that first puff. No, death from smoking is far more prolonged and painful than that. I watched my father die from smoking in his early 60s, as he had watched his father die in his early 60s, and I was keen to break the cycle. I had my last cigarette on August 24, 1998, after 20 something years of smoking. I stopped cold turkey. I drank lots of water and did deep breathing exercises. It worked. A mate tried using Nicorette chewing gum. It cost him a couple of thousand dollars in dental work to replace his fillings. I made no big song and dance about quitting in case I failed although I steered well clear of the pub until the automatic association of a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other had subsided. I was still struggling some weeks later when I told a drinking buddy I had given up. He said he hadn’t noticed. He said he had always noticed me smoking but had not noticed me not smoking. His theory was that some people looked as if they were born to smoke and I was not one of them. To him, I was a natural non-smoker. That cheered me up considerably. I am not in the least interested in smoking again. But you never know. The English journalist John Diamond – the late husband of celebrity TV cook Nigella Lawson – was diagnosed with terminal cancer of the tongue and throat. A life-long non-smoker, here he was with a smoker’s cancer. He immediately took up smoking, as I probably would in the same circumstances. My only regret in giving up is I never mastered the art of blowing smoke rings.
posted by Des at 11:47 PM

 
Published The Advocate, October 29, 2005


A DISTANT cousin and his wife recently had a new daughter, a sister for Jake. The choice of Jake as a name caused such a family kerfuffle the naming of the new baby is on hold while guidance is sought in the arrangement of the stars and the entrails of chickens. I don’t mind Jake as a name. Not as good as Jack, in my opinion, but better than, well, Des. I was named after a mate of my father’s. I never met the mate. He never visited home that I remembered. He never appeared at any birthdays. Good old Des. It makes me wonder what kind of friend Des really was. More like a pub mate, I suspect, a passing ship in the night. I count myself lucky not to be named after whatever tipple my father was drinking at the time. A Swedish couple recently won a court battle to name their daughter Edradour. The authorities first refused to register Edradour because it was the name of a Scotch whisky brand, and to be named after an alcoholic drink was thought inappropriate. Goodness knows what the Swedish authorities would make of someone named Benedict, as in Dom Benedictine, or James, as in Boag. The parents eventually won the court battle after pointing out that Edradour, as well as being a whisky, was also a charming little town in Scotland. I looked up Des in a book of names’ origins. I was hoping for something like "dragon slayer" or "brave and merciful". It said Desmond was Irish, "from the surname". Tremendous. Early on I would have preferred Dan although, having since met a few Dans, they are not necessarily the people you’d like to be named after either. I have three names, Desmond John Gerard, after my father and an uncle. My mother has just one, Patricia. She says her parents were so poor they couldn’t afford a second name. Names can make a big difference to your self-image. What would you rather be, Marmaduke Preen or Steele Champion? One way or another, your life would follow a different pattern. Our parents had names like Bert and Frank or Norma and Mary. Solid, reliable names that went naturally with Uncle or Aunty, unlike the current crop of Icelenes and Beyonces. But you cannot razz people about their names. They take it as a personal insult against themselves and their hippy parents’ drug taking. Never have I met as many Aarons and Seans as I have in Tasmania, or Libbies and Elizas. It’s as if Tasmanian parents choose names from a set government list. Not as bad, however, as Our Mary, Crown Princess of Denmark, who must call her first-born, Christian. The heir to the Danish Crown is always Frederik or Christian in alternate generations, and it’s Christian’s turn. As for my cousin’s new baby, after two weeks the girl remains nameless while the family continues to squabble over what to call her. Dad has called her Homebrand.
posted by Des at 6:17 PM

 
Published The Advocate, October 22, 2005


LOOK at those people passing on the street. See their furrowed brows? Put all the brows end to end and they’ll lead to the local hardware store. I have never been inclined to follow brows. I have reached the stage in life where every physical exertion requires a full risk assessment and nothing in DIY fulfils my safety requirements. You need to understand that my life is a chain reaction of slapstick disasters. Wash sheets. Peg on clothesline. Step back into possum poo. Spend rest of day shampooing carpets. That was last Sunday. I should have been painting instead. Yes, painting. Against my better judgement I have been painting my bedroom. Three months now and it’s nowhere near finished. It started by picking at a loose piece of wallpaper. I tore off as much paper as I could by hand, then went to the hardware store to hire a wallpaper stripper. The stripper, resembling a weapon out of Dr Who, daunted me. "Have you used one before?" I asked Mitchell, the hardware lad with whom I have since developed a trusting relationship. "Nah," he said, "but lots of people hire it so it can’t be that hard." Ominous last words, Mitchell, old pal. Amazingly, the stripper worked fine although it churned out so much steam the smoke alarm kept going off. Why do paint lids, like buttered toast, always fall paint side down on the carpet? When I had finished running around in circles yelling, "What’ll I do? What’ll I do?" the paint had dried in a neat ring. I feel like Sisyphus, the evildoer of Greek mythology, who for his sins was made the futile labourer of the underworld. He was doomed for eternity to push a boulder up a steep hill until near the top it rolled back down. Then the whole process started again, and again, forever. Bummer. The mystery is why Sisyphus persisted. Why didn’t he grab a beer and hire someone else to do the job? Someone with a forklift. At the end of each day’s painting, at beer o’clock, I have been resting on the bed with a Boag’s in hand watching the paint dry. I seem to have developed x-ray vision. The paint I am using is off-white but no matter how many coats are applied, I can still see through to the original grey plasterboard. I have drawn the line at three coats, no matter what. Or four. In market research, an "immersion study" is where the consumer is accompanied all day by a researcher who compiles a first-hand report of their shopping habits. Every weekend I return to see Mitchell. Crack filler, sponges, brushes, rollers, extension handles, ground sheets, turpentine, scrapers, sandpaper, not to mention paint. I would have thought my shopping habits were obvious. The man ahead of me in the hardware queue last weekend bought $650 of electrical tools, his brow very deeply furrowed. You don’t need immersion research: The first rule of DIY is you never have the right tool at home to do the job.
posted by Des at 3:41 PM

 
Published The Advocate, October 15, 2005


EACH year the English-speaking world showcases three football codes: the American Superbowl, the English FA Cup final and the AFL Grand Final. Only one dares to feature a 71-year-old man dressed in drag throwing gladioli to the crowd – Barry Humphries as Dame Edna Everage, at the Eagles v Swans grand final at the MCG. Back at the 1998 grand final I sat eight rows from the fence as Muhammad Ali was driven past in an open car, so near The Greatest that the hair stood up on the back of my neck, which is saying something. Nothing like that happened to me with Dame Edna. Melbourne was awash in "Go Bloods" banners in memory of the time when Sydney was South Melbourne and not The Swans. It’s as close as the Victorians get to having a local side in the grand final nowadays. I went for West Coast to be contrary because everyone else in my group was going for Sydney. In the stressful last quarter, with the Eagles holding a slender lead, the woman in the Sydney beanie on my left kept saying she was going to vomit and the one on my right said she had wet her pants. I thought, hell, this is going to turn ugly for me if Sydney loses, so I swapped sides with five minutes to go and was air punching with the best of them when Leo Barry took his match-saving screamer on the siren. Unfortunately both my companions had their eyes squeezed shut and missed the mark. Afterwards, with the mobile phone networks jammed by 92,000 people trying to ring at once to share the special moment … if I heard one more person say, "The real winner is football". In the MCG car park I bumped into George, who did his cadetship under me and is now press secretary for the Leader of the Opposition, Kym ``Bomber’’ Beazley. George, normally a mad Adelaide barracker, went for Sydney. Bomber, with his Perth origins, supported West Coast. In Tasmania, at least state cabinet members have the good sense to support whoever the Premier supports. Jim Bacon was Essendon; Paul Lennon is Geelong. Nice knowing you, George. We discussed the fallout from Mark Latham’s diaries. George said Bomber was keeping his head down waiting for the storm to pass. Fair enough, I said, but it was immense fun in the meantime. Here was a former Labor leader having the biggest dummy spit of all time and he was doing it without spin, just getting it off his liver in bucketloads. Also, what he had to say about Labor’s structural problems seemed about right to me. George shuffled off, head bowed. There must be easier jobs. I boarded a tram jam-packed with victorious Sydney fans and we sang "Cheers, cheers, the red and the white…" 23 times on the way into the city. Anyone in Eagles colours waiting at the tram stops was duly abused, and wisely decided to walk into town trailing their scarves behind them. Glad I swapped sides.
posted by Des at 7:37 PM

 
Published The Advocate, October 8, 2005


ONE of the side pleasures in going to a family wedding is to see how the nieces and nephews are coming along, now they are leaving their teens and making their way into adulthood. One generation after another, the kids their parents' masterworks, they all gathered in Sydney for my daughter Melissa's wedding. The nephews, gangly arms and legs, wore new shirts with necks four sizes too large and ties knotted skewiff under the collar flaps. The nieces wore next to nothing. You could almost see what they had for breakfast. One would have thought they might turn out better looking given their admirable bloodlines. I told them the Ryan good looks seemed to have skipped a generation. The kids are never quite sure how to take my razzing. They think their Uncle Des is strange. The bride looked convincingly virginal in white. Absolutely gorgeous, darling. Melissa had hired a professional makeup artist, who made her look like Nicole Kidman, only shorter. She should keep the artist close at hand at all times. There were no speeches allowed, which I took as a personal slight. Melissa said she had not forgiven me for the embarrassing speech I gave at her 21st, and I was not getting another crack on her wedding day. For years I had been under the impression that my 21st blunder was in saying I had hoped Melissa would grow up tall, willowy and blonde and one out of three - blonde - was not too bad. Wrong. Melissa said I had called her a fishwife in front of her friends. Oh. Since many of the friends from her 21st were there at the wedding, I offered to say a few words of public withdrawal and apology. Melissa told me to sit and behave. The band even had specific instructions not to permit me, in particular, anywhere near the microphone. The seating arrangements had been a headache, Melissa said. I was placed between her and her mother, and my mother sat opposite. There was no escape. My mum, on the sunny side of 80, has been worrying for years about getting Alzheimer's. She uses deodorant without aluminium after reading it may cause memory loss. Here are three good tips to help avoid the onset of Alzheimer's: Do something new every day; read frequently; and I cannot remember the third. Remembering names is occasionally a problem for my mum. She does not always admit to knowing her own son. She claims to be suffering a prolonged bout of post-natal depression brought on by my birth. Life's rituals start with a Christening and end at a funeral. Christenings are more fun than funerals, generally speaking, and less expensive than weddings. At Melissa's wedding, my son Paul's girlfriend revealed in a private aside that they, too, had wedding plans. I pretended not to recognise her. I denied having any son. I threatened to give a speech. I looked accusingly at Paul. He looked bewildered. Spare me, not another wedding.
posted by Des at 8:57 PM

 
Published The Advocate, September 1, 2005


TWO women close to me are being married this month: One is my dear friend Margaret; the other is my daughter Melissa. Melissa’s wedding is being held in an aircraft hangar at Bankstown airport, in Sydney, which gives you an idea of the size of the guest list. There are also DC3 joyrides over Sydney Harbour. The aviation theme comes with the groom David – known to all as Foxx, after his surname – who is building a kit plane in his garage and carries with him the faint whiff of fibreglass. He also has a technical video library on every plane imaginable. I watched one about the Sunderland flying boat and fell asleep halfway through counting the rivets. I like Foxx. He even rang me to ask permission to marry my daughter. I became emotional. 'Elope, man, elope!' I yelled down the phone. Only 30 people attended the civil wedding of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles to keep the event low-key. Not even the Queen and Prince Phillip were invited. If it was good enough for the Royals… Melissa has asked me not to give a speech. She says the memory of the speech I gave at her 21st still haunts her.
All I said on that occasion was I had hoped any daughter of mine would be tall, willowy and blonde … and one out of three was not bad (she’s blonde). Melissa’s will be the first wedding in the family in, oh, 20 years or more although plenty of her cousins are shacked up and at least one has a kid. The female side of the family has been in a state of high excitement for months planning what to wear. Melissa went to a Vietnamese dressmaker in Sydney for the wedding dress. The woman said her body was the same shape as a Vietnamese girl’s. I am sure that could be worked into a speech. The male side sees the wedding as a good excuse for a party. Which brings me to Margaret, an independently minded career woman, journalist, noted author and single mother of two, who is being married in a garden knees-up in Melbourne at the end of the month. Margaret never struck me as the marrying kind. Then she met John, an IT 'systems architect', who also has two kids. Not quite the Brady Bunch in numerical terms but not far from it. Whatever possessed her? Public perception, she said. A statement of 'This man is family'. Also, her kids were now at an age – the youngest is seven – when not having a 'real' dad was beginning to make a difference to them at school and socially. Anything, everything, for the kids. Trapped in this bewildering maze called Life, I guess having a fully-fledged, committed twosome, someone to share the bewilderment, remains important. What is surprising is how the need to conform, to have your union formalised in the eyes of the law, still counts for something. I will be back in a month. With all these weddings, I need a break.
posted by Des at 9:56 PM

 
Published The Advocate, August 27, 2005


ORDINARILY I do not go around telling people I had bowel cancer in 1989 because if you tell one person the next thing everyone will want one. The local GP’s first guess was I had alcoholic enteritis – not a bad diagnosis at the time – and he made me not have a drink for a week to see what happened. Nothing changed. A waste of a week’s drinking. Next came a barium enema, after which I really needed a drink. The scan showed a tumour the size of an apple. One thing led rapidly to another and soon I was in hospital being given a pre-op pubic shave. Let’s leave it there, shall we? The point is, when it comes to bowel cancer if nothing else, I can speak with some authority. So I was astonished to read recently in The Advocate of the Coastal family who was lining up to have their bowels removed on the basis of a DNA tag showing they carried the bowel cancer gene. It begs the question: If the tag is found, at what age do you have your bowel removed? In olden days, people used to have all their teeth extracted and replaced with dentures as a 21st birthday present. I somehow doubt a coming-of-age colorectomy is going to catch on in the same way. When I had cancer, not everyone thought I’d pull through. People sent me get-well cards containing messages of sympathy. A female visitor, startled by the tubes coming out of every orifice, actually blurted: "Are you going to live?" Yes, I am pleased to report, and thanks for the nudging reminder of my own mortality. Because I survived, a friend asked me to offer reassuring words to his mother who also had bowel cancer and was scared. She was dead within a month. I am still here. The luck of a very dodgy draw. Having cancer has made no difference to my life apart from the rather fetching zipper mark now on my torso and having to undergo a colonoscopy every two years. My kids, too, are being screened thanks to me. My daughter had her first colonoscopy a few months ago and my son will be lining up for his first next year. They are not grateful. Which brings me back to the DNA test. I have no idea if I carry the bowel cancer gene, or whether my kids have it. It makes no difference to me now but had the tag been found 20 years ago, I would not have rushed in for an early disembowelling in anticipation of getting cancer later. Instead, I would have demanded frequent colonoscopies, every month if needs be, to detect the rogue polyp that eventually mutated into cancer inside me. A polyp can be nipped in the bud. I am having my next colonoscopy next month. Can hardly wait.
posted by Des at 4:34 PM

 
Published The Advocate, August 20, 2005


NOT that anyone particularly noticed me missing but I’ve spent a few days ``conferencing’’ in tropical Queensland and can recommend the bar in the Cairns Yacht Club. Clad in corrugated iron and latticework, the CYC is a relic of old Cairns, a watering hole with no airs or graces beyond the ``no hats’’ rule in the bar. Unlike other local spots, the CYC menu is not translated into six languages for the tourists. The closest it comes to multiculturalism are the barramundi spring rolls and the beef rendang special. Cairns has an uneasy relationship with tourists, if not with their dollars. The underlying social stratum is rural conservative and resistant to outsiders, especially to ``Southerners’’ which means everyone from below the Townsville Line. That day’s newspaper carried a special feature on the 60th anniversary of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour: ``The audacious Japanese attack that sowed the seeds of their defeat and changed Australia’s region forever.’’ All around Cairns there are plenty of war memorials as reminders of the futility of war. There are also plenty of Japanese. Moving around town at a half-trot with their Ken Done carry bags, the Japanese have so taken over the main shopping precinct that it makes me wonder why Japan bothered to start a war. Cairns long ago succumbed. The newspaper said Australia had introduced war rationing of flour, sugar, tea ``and other essential foods’’. Is tea still considered a daily essential? Or even sugar? Flour, almost certainly. But what else? Diet Coke? I struggle to think. Up here, though, 30+ sunblock would be essential. Ah, I love the smell of sunblock in the morning. At an Esplanade café, a middle-aged Japanese couple sat burning in the hot sun and studying their guide books. The Japanese have an irresistible liking for musk pink. She was in matching pink slacks and knitted top and he was wearing a New York baseball cap and grey T-shirt covered in pink cartoon writing: ``Impossible is nothing.’’ I seem to remember Master Yoda expressing something similar in Star Wars. The couple said nothing to each other, looking impossibly bored and pink, until they asked the waitress to take a photograph of them grinning as a memento of what an hilariously good time they had in Cairns. At another table, a Japanese family was ordering breakfast using an electronic translator. A teenage daughter was wearing a shoulder bag stating, ``Babe With Brains’’, just in case you were wondering. The morning TV weather said it was snowing down to sea level in Tasmania. Gazing across the sparkling Coral Sea, I almost felt guilty about the 28 degrees. That evening, as a light breeze wafted across the harbour and the temperature slumped to 22 degrees, I rolled down my shirt sleeves and had a beer on the deck of the CYC. Wedged as it is between the Hilton and the Sofitel hotels, the CYC, built in the 1920s, is under constant threat of demolition to make way for apartments. It should be heritage listed. But what would I know, a Southerner?
posted by Des at 7:42 PM

 
Published The Advocate, august 13, 2005


BEING raised as a Catholic – though rather heavily lapsed nowadays, it has to be said –security cameras hold no fears for me. Catholics, already burdened by guilt, see no special threat in CCTV cameras when their every thought, word and deed is already being monitored by the Almighty. God sees and hears everything. He is the ultimate surveillance system. The Prime Minister suggests we need to install many more CCTV cameras as an anti-terrorism measure. Makes no difference to me. And all muttering about the loss of civil liberties is drowned out by the bomb blasts. The early CCTV systems had their teething problems. Cameras were pointed aimlessly at the sky; images were too blurry to be used as evidence; and some systems had to be switched off when the monitoring staff was found to be using the cameras to perve on pretty girls. Now we are so familiar with the unblinking cameras that we barely notice them. One camera is much like another. We have become blasé about their underlying purpose. All the same, North-West Tasmania is an unlikely terrorist target unless you count hoons as terrorists. Burnie and Devonport airports are not considered high-risk gateways. Of the nearly 600,000 air arrivals in Tasmania last year, there was not a terrorist among them so far as I am aware … although I had suspicions about the chap on my flight who was wearing high pants, a fake snakeskin belt and soft suede shoes. Security cameras are the least of it, especially in pubs. Go into a hotel for a quiet drink by yourself and within 24 hours the whole town knows you were there. Reports are passed from mouth to mouth behind cupped hands. You learn to live scrupulously, or never go out. Sit in a front bar for 10 minutes and you will also overhear blokes talking about their latest failed attempt to give up smoking; what happened when they went to see the radiologist; how they took a sickie on Tuesday and went fishing; and why they have to be home by three or the missus’ll go berserk. Give me half an hour in a bar and I could give you the potted histories of half a dozen men without having exchanged a word with them. Hotels, with an endless supply of truth serum served in 10 ounce glasses, are the real Confessionals. The security cameras watching from the pub walls make absolutely no difference to the urge to brag, tell tales, joke, slander and lie. To be indiscreet is to be human. We all know our own stories, our place in the world, what we have done and why. And hereabouts, so does everyone else. It’s simply not possible to maintain a low public profile when everyone knows everyone and they all know what you’re up to. CCTV can reveal nothing more. Frankly, I am more worried by the kid with the hand-held video camera or mobile videophone waiting to capture my next idiotic, slapstick moment to be sent to Funniest Home Videos.
posted by Des at 7:40 PM

 
Published The Advocate, August 6, 2005


I HAVE been passing my days here on the Coast for 12 months now. When friends first heard I was moving from Adelaide to NW Tasmania, they blinked disbelievingly. Now they just accept I am here for the duration and leave me alone. Quite alone. I must have settled into the neighbourhood because I had my first Jehovah’s Witnesses come calling the other day, a middle-aged couple who puffed breathlessly up the balcony steps. ``Do you want to do something about world poverty?’’ the man asked from the other side of the screen door, his shoes as shiny as a funeral director’s. Sure do, I said, but Christianity has had 2000 years to do something about poverty so I think it’s a bit unfair to expect me to fix it. He hesitated, which gave me the chance to say thanks but no thanks and gently close the door. Then it struck me, what if the Jehovah’s Witnesses really do have the answer to poverty? I should have heard them out. They’ll be back, I’m sure. While here, I have met only generous, hospitable, good-hearted and supportive people, especially the politicians, so give yourselves all a pat on the back for making me feel so welcome and loved. Except the ones wearing army camouflage. I have never seen so much camouflage, favoured as a fashion statement by survivalist bombers, anti-government malcontents and a surprisingly high number of people who claim to be anti-war yet see no irony in marching around town in army dress. Australian comedian Hung Lee jokes of walking along city streets and bumping into people wearing camouflage: ``Oow, sorry, didn’t see you there!’’ Funny. Island living can also be expensive and inconvenient: The high price of petrol and air fares; the cancelled flights; and, worst of all, the damaged supermarket goods. Savoy crackers are always totalling crackered and the sheets of rice paper come as bags of confetti. I blame the double and triple handling in bringing grocery items across from the Mainland. Another good reason to buy local. While in the supermarket, one of my secret pleasures is to sit quietly on a bench near the checkout and watch who buys The Advocate - keeping a wary eye out for anyone in ``camo’’ – and try to guess who are the poachers. If it swims, flies, runs or crawls, chances are you can get it on the Coastal black market in season. Poaching is a lifestyle, not an illegal act here. When a fish farm net broke on the West Coast, soon every fridge had a slab of Atlantic salmon inside it. Mine did anyway. The sight of Bass Strait in all its moods always makes me smile with pleasure. The other morning, the fingernail clipping of a moon hung overhead while the sun burned a laser red hole clean through the sky just above the sea. Gold. Find a better paradise, if you can, but this will do me until a better Afterlife comes along, as Jehovah is my witness.
posted by Des at 7:37 PM

 
Published The Advocate, July 30, 2005


MANY leadership courses emphasise the need for teamwork, and team leadership models are sometimes drawn from nature. Look up ``leadership’’ on the Internet and you will find supposed insights based on the behaviour of buffalos, geese, ducks, turtles, snakes, penguins, peacocks, starfish and seagulls. From this menagerie, it appears many zoo creatures have leadership styles far superior to humans. There is a lot to be said for teamwork. A team often provides workable solutions. But teams are not so good at coming up with brilliant ideas. Great literature has never been written by a team, nor great music. Beethoven’s 5th Symphony was not created by a committee. Hollywood’s classic action heroes are not teams. Superman, Spiderman, Arnie Schwarzenegger and Clint Eastwood – they are The Loner versus The Many. And The Many always lose. Or take those reality TV programs such as Big Brother, My Restaurant Rules or Survivor. Some people show natural leadership skills; some do not. That is just the way it is. The eventual winners are not the humblest or the kindest; nor are they the bossiest or the cutest. The winners, more often than not, are those who exude a solid, dependable, self-aware confidence. These are the people we want as leaders. Sporting analogies are often used as leadership examples. In football, the "out and out superstars" of the game are players like Essendon’s James Hird and Nathan Buckley of Collingwood. Such is their on-field brilliance, they have been made captains of their teams in recognition of the large gap between them and the playing abilities of their team mates. However, the odds are against them becoming great coaches when their playing days are over. Very few successful football coaches were stellar players. Collingwood coach Mick Malthouse and Essendon’s Kevin Sheedy were not superstars. They were hard, tough, football journeymen who never reached the elite level where the TV commentators gave them the dubious accolade of "freak". The lesson is those feted stars who lead by example are unlikely to translate their special gifts into team performance as a coach. Indeed the superiority of a Hird or a Buckley may act as a barrier. The talents that made them so good – particularly their athletic flair and uncanny anticipation – may make them bad coaches of people with lesser talents. Watching others fail at a task is not easy when your expectations are higher than the players can deliver. The team leadership model I prefer is the Tour de France bike race. Multi-Tour winner Lance Armstrong never led all the way every day for the three weeks of the race. He didn’t have to. He let his team do all the grunt work. His team set the pace, provided support and even fed him along the way. The team members exhausted themselves for Lance. They protected him and made him look good. Lance could not win it by himself but by the end, he took all the glory. No-one remembers the names of the other team members. Now that’s leadership.
posted by Des at 6:24 PM

 
Published The Advocate, July 23, 2005


IN AN unfortunate case of bad timing, I know of one Coastal farmer who saw no future in the dairy industry and got rid of his cows a year ago to concentrate on growing spuds. Then Bonlac announced price rises for milk and the potato industry fell in a hole. You can't help bad luck. It reminds me of a package of media junk mail once sent in by a certain Josephine Poon from Hong Kong. I have never met Josephine Poon but it is a lovely sounding name. Josephine starts: "Here is an exciting press release for your highly respected paper which is going to make your readers jump up for joy." Oh, joy. "Getting rich is always great news. GREAT NEWS!" Oh, great. The exciting press release was about to be filed in the exciting wastepaper bin when my eye caught Josephine's next line: "Most people are unaware that cattle gallstones are of great value." I had been pondering this very point for years. Josephine enclosed some overseas press clippings including one with the headline, "Farmer rakes in moo-cho bucks," which told the story of Raoul, a poor Spanish farmer, who was deep in debt and about to lose his cattle farm if he missed one more payment. Then Raoul found a gallstone the size of a hen's egg in one of his slaughtered cows and the following day he picked the winning numbers in a $160,000 lottery jackpot. So he slaughtered another cow and, behold, a second gallstone turned up. The day afterwards Raoul learned he had inherited $650,000 from a long-lost uncle. Good for Raoul. The problem, of course, is you cannot go killing all your cows on the off-chance of finding a gallstone. One alive cow is still worth more than one gallstone, putting aside the lottery windfall for a moment. But wait, there's more: Josephine said cow gallstones had a legitimate role in Chinese medicine for the treatment of fever and blood pressure, and she was happy to pay cash for as many as she could get, no strings attached. I looked for the catch but couldn't see one. No-one is required to send her money; there is no other use for gallstones that I am aware of; and cows are not an endangered species, unlike many other creatures put into Chinese medicine. Even so, I hesitate now to provide her contact details in case it's a rip-off ... but what the hell, if you want to give Josphine a run for her moo-cho bucks, try writing to her at PO Box 70947, Kowloon Central Post Office, Hong Kong. She will tell you how to dry, package and send the stones to Hong Kong, stressing rather firmly that she definitely does not want the gall bladder sent to her. The address is an old one that has been sitting in my files for ages and Josephine has probably long since retired in luxury to Majorca to live with lucky Raoul. Or she has bought a dairy farm on the Coast.
posted by Des at 3:18 PM

 
Published The Advocate, July 16, 2005


LIVING alone is risky if there are jobs to be done around the house. Not that I am accident prone but I wear safety goggles to do the vacuuming. My father was a great handyman. He would be lost for days in the hardware store, admiring the fine serrations of bandsaw blades or holding wingnuts up to the light as if they were pieces of religious art. A clever man, he never read an instruction manual. I inherited none of his smarts. Mind you, I am not alone. A colleague has been living in fear of his wife for weeks since he burnt out the element of the new stovetop while cooking sausages, and then covered up the evidence with a stockpot. As to whether he used a frypan or cooked the snags direct on the stovetop, I will give him the benefit of the doubt, which is asking a lot. He recently pruned his rose bushes to such an extent that no flowers will appear for 10 years. Also, having bought chooks for the first time and being asked by a mate if he was watering them, he was later seen spraying them with a hose and they all died. I cannot mention his name but hopefully by now the penny has dropped enough for his wife to identify him and she should be checking the ruined stovetop right about … now. I decided to clean the roof gutters. Beforehand I rang a friend in Adelaide to put her on standby in case I fell off the roof. Not that she could do much from that distance but she could call 000 for an ambulance if I did not rung her back within the hour. She understood. She had seen me turn the simple replacement of a tap washer into a DIY disaster that cost $3000 after the plumber and a tiler had to be called. She said to be careful because falling from a roof was one of the most common causes of household death, next to falling from a ladder. No worries, I said, I had no ladder. The roof is close to the cliff behind my place and the gap is narrow enough to step across rather than go to the expense of buying a ladder. Did I mention I suffer from vertigo? By the time I summoned up enough courage to take that one small step, the hour was almost up and I had to ring my friend again. Except there was no answer. She was swimming laps, she said afterwards, and forgot about me. Thanks. Anyway, the gutters were cleaned without mishap apart from the usual cuts from the corrugated iron and, feeling pleased, I decided to tackle another DIY project: stripping the wallpaper from my bedroom. Off I trotted to the hardware store to hire a wallpaper steamer. I also bought a ladder and got it home before noticing the sticker: "Danger. Failure to read and follow instructions may result in injury or death." Can you book ahead with 000?
posted by Des at 1:03 AM