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Modest expectations 278 – The year 2058

Anthony Albanese was born in 1963. At that time, Australia had to deal with a “faith-based” political force, which had its birth in the Labor Party. Let me say, I had to deal with operatives of the Democratic Labor Party (DLP), basically a Falangist right wing Roman Catholic party which tried to take over the Labor Party. It was labelled the Movement, and was the brainchild of an Italian immigrant’s son, Bob Santamaria, who made common cause with the violently anti-British Archbishop of Melbourne, Daniel Mannix.

While its activities were concentrated in Victoria, there was also plenty of activity in Queensland. It never gained much traction in NSW, because of the opposition of the Sydney Archbishop Gilroy. He disliked Santamaria intensely and was a much more open character than the saturnine Mannix. Eventually the DLP was destroyed, effectively in the 1974 election, but for 20 years it was godsend to Menzies and his successors; and a huge headache for the Labor Party.

I do not buy the argument that the DLP was not “faith-based” because it did not incorporate any religious name into its title. I knew I was navigating certain Roman Catholic doctrines, when having to implement policies while working for a Government riddled with DLP supporters, with whom which I disagreed. Mostly I was able to ignore them.

That was then, but it demonstrates that the sweeping statement that Australia has not indulged in “faith-based” party shenanigans is wrong.

Albanese is a gang leader. His actions show that. He seems not to particularly like woman, especially a young Muslim woman, who fled Afghanistan as a small child and came to Australia.

Infuriatingly for Albanese, Fatima Payman looks like an ordinary, smartly-dressed woman – and moreover she looks like a white woman – an “Australian”. In fact, in looks and demeanour, she reminds me of my favourite cousin, who went to a Presbyterian school in Ballarat.

The activity in Gaza has created a situation where Muslims are reduced to a feeling of powerlessness as the Australian government temporises. Despite the weasel words, the Australian Government actually supports Israel. Jews have what I would describe as a “philanthropy lock” on Australia, especially in the area loosely labelled “The Arts”, fertile ground for supporters of the Labor Party. The appointment of an extreme Jewish woman as Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism in Australia, with additional form in the banking scandals of a decade before, does nothing to assuage the damage being done by the Israeli retribution sheltering behind cries of “anti-semitism”.

Fatima Payman was given a slot on the Western Australian Labor Senate ticket, which was thought to be an unelectable position. However, the swing to the Labor Party was so strong in that State that she was elected. Given she was not expected to be elected, what does she owe the Labor Party?

Don’t do what Albanese does – directly or through his henchwomen, who operate under the rubric of “reaching out”, alternatively patronising and vilifying her. In the end, Fatima Payman will be paid out. Her chances of re-election in Western Australia are minimal, given that Labor has probably passed its highwater electoral mark. However, she will be around for a long enough time. I would suggest the Labor Party stops bullying her forcing her out of the Party – and that applies to some of the media with their insulting unsavoury questions.

She is a strong woman. Let’s not waste that talent.

My Experience

Now Senator Payman, let me relate my experience in rural Victoria in the early 2000’s when there was an influx of Muslims, both male and female. There was also a group of Iraqi Marsh Arabs, who were settled in Cobram. It was drawn to my attention that one of the doctors was worried by his Muslim colleagues not eating nor drinking. He enquired whether his colleague was unwell. The Muslim colleague replied that it was Ramadan.

This display of unintentional ignorance prompted me to ask one of the Muslim doctors whether she could prepare a presentation on the significance of Ramadan and in so doing, provide a sketch of what it meant to be a Muslim. Her presentation proved very popular with the staff of the various health services. She repeated it around Ramadan each year, at least while I was there. It demonstrated to me how little we non-Muslims know about Islam, but the number of hospital staff in various health services who wanted to learn more about Islam surprised me – in a positive manner.

One issue which confronted me clearly illustrated an area of religious sensitivity. This is male circumcision. Paediatricians in Melbourne were recommending severe restrictions be placed on the procedure which, when I was a baby, was de rigeur. Most male infants then were circumcised. However, without consultation, the restrictions were introduced. When I heard one Iraqi Muslim had taken his child back to Iraq to be circumcised, I recognised something had to be done.

One Syrian-qualified paediatrician also raised the problem with me; and I convened a meeting in Yarrawonga to seek a solution. I included members of the paediatric establishment and local doctors who were willing to undertake infant circumcision. The compromise agreed was that khitan should not be proscribed but must be undertaken by medical practitioners. The Department did not offer any objection, once it was realised how important circumcision was to Muslims. After all, Jews were not banned from undertaking male circumcision, which is undertaken in a highly regulated manner with the Mohel undertaking circumcision on the eight day old child.

My aim was to engender further understanding in a community where, historically, there had already been a Muslim presence from before WWII. This was the Albanian community, based in the Goulburn Valley. This community had been well-integrated socially and the migrants were allowed in during the operation of the White Australia policy. They were seen as European and, importantly for the Government of the time, looked “white” enough. The strength of Payman, which people are afraid to say, is she looks “white”. She has clipped accentless English; and apart from the hijab, in the street she would be indistinguishable from the traditional white face that dominates the female Labor parliamentary ranks – the operative word is “dominates”.

I found male Muslim doctors often very difficult in working in a team. Most of them were competent, however their relationships with female patients often left much to be desired. I remember one doctor who was the subject of a complaint by an elderly woman when he was undertaking a home visit. To me it was a question of misunderstanding not helped by the clumsy way the doctor handled the visit. However, there was no evidence of sexual assault, but when a doctor with poor English and a soft voice asked an elderly rather deaf woman about her symptoms, then there may be fertile grounds for such misunderstanding. I counselled him and tried to assist him in modifying his clinical mien, while also ensuring he could pray at the required times while at work. He undoubtedly was devout and kept asking me for advice. I found dealing with the complaint difficult, but he did heed my advice, the problem arose from a misunderstanding, and the matter died down.

The fact is that Muslim communities seem very self-contained, but the prospect of further division exists, aggravated by inflammatory remarks from Dutton and his ilk, with talk of Islamophobia, as though the Muslim community is the “enemy within”.

The mantra about our being a multi-cultural community may be theoretically correct, but our ostensibly secular country is a country divided around a collection of religious totems.

Of course, there was talk about Payman joining a Muslim party at the time she left the Labor Party, however the last thing we need is a Muslim Party organised along the lines of the late Democratic Labor Party. The Party would act as a spoiler, but the governing parties are liable to yield to its demands which inevitably encourages a Muslim Party to consolidate any such division.

The place where division would be most obvious is in the school system. I went to a private school founded in 1858. I was regaled by tales of my great uncle taking on the St Pat’s boys on the banks of the Yarra River “with one arm tied behind his back”. The Irish religious divisions were transported to the Australian colonies. After all, in one of our early crews, we had both a Sweeney and a Todd – yet we of the Church of Ireland had such boys with such names.

The funding of religious schools is the best way to ensure continuing division in the community.

So, Fatima Payman is in a privileged position of harnessing the creative elements of Islam. After all, she fled from the Taliban. Islam in the eyes of the young generation is rooted in the horrors of ISIS, the extremist fringe of Islam. She can be a cohesive force, encouraging the elements of Islam which introduced the world to its positivity, for instance the concept of zero, who had given us an understanding of a world of precision – and yet produced a world of beauty such as the Persian garden.

As someone who has wandered through the architecture of Islam I have seen the soaring legacy of a force which has brought such creativity. Yet this is also a religion reviled because of a time when Islam is constantly at war, with so many of its young people socialised in a world where death is ever present. Where a child cries and is drowned out by gunfire, lying across the body of a dead parent, is it any wonder that Muslims in the Australian community do not greet us effusively, particularly when the messages from Government are mixed.

I always look to that time in mediaeval Granada when Christians, Jews and Muslims lived in harmony under Moorish rule. To me, the Alhambra Palace in Granada is the apogee of Islamic architecture – the way the gardens are designed to use water as a coolant in the harsh Andalusian summers in a remarkably airy structure. I loved the gardens, interspersed – in particular, the rectilinear water features with fountains and their parabolic streams, these pools lined with orange trees in designs that acknowledge the four sacred elements of water, wind, fire and soil. We relax. The stresses of the outside world evaporate – at least for this moment.

Tolerance is relative, but at that time Muslim, Jewish and Christians intermingled, some years being better than others. It was a time when the Islamic world was revising the Ptolemaic conception of the Universe, advancing mathematical theory (the concept of zero and algebra), promulgating advances in medical knowledge, practice and medicines themselves – introducing the pharmacy (gauze from Gaza), bringing forth advances in weaving and dyeing (muslin from Mosul, damask from Damascus). Then there was the legacy of poetry intertwined by philosophical discussion among intellectuals drawn from the three religions.

But Granada, or for that matter the whole of Andalusia, was not necessarily an attar of roses and the Reconquista in 1492 by the Christian King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile unleashed the intolerance of a Church still bound by dogma and violent evangelism – an environment which produced the Inquisition. Something which is not far from the attitudes of those who would rend the fabric of Australian society apart, because all they know is retribution, paranoia, suppression and violence.

Thus, coming back to Senator Payman, you should think carefully, and not be seduced by the sirens that blare “Go, get ‘em”. Conciliation is a difficult path, but if you believe in religious and racial harmony and not be seduced by the hellish forces of violent extremism, then this nation may have a chance – with role models like you.

A Letter of Complaint Goes a Long Way

On August 4, 1996, the SoHo Grand Hotel was opened in Lower Manhattan, where once there were grand houses, which then were left to decay as the area was transformed into an industrial centre initially for small enterprises and then large-scale textile manufacturers. The area (SoHo means South of Houston Street) at one stage was a red-light district and then when the textile industries left, it became a wasteland – hell’s hundred acres.

But it retained the largest number of cast iron buildings in any American metropolis, a legacy of its “grand old days” in the mid nineteenth century. It was only after the bohemian set recognised the potential of these old buildings with their high ceilings and faded ornateness, that the area began to be revived from the early 60’s of the last century.

The Soho Grand Hotel epitomised this gentrification. It was a slick minimalist hotel, where the rooms were not large but had a tasteful spareness in the fittings, exuding that quiet luxury which can be felt whenever one steps into an upmarket Danish display centre in Copenhagen. No frills, just elegance. No waste space.

We knew we were in good company when we saw k.d. lang and her partner, she in a sharp black suit with black and white patent leather shoes, and her companion more conventionally dressed, stepping out of a limo. They were going to the same address as we were on West Broadway.

Anyway, I must have sent a letter complaining about something or another. I don’t have a copy of letter, but the reply turned up today in papers we are throwing out.

Let me say the reply was a little unexpected. I’ve added it below verbatim.

Dear Dr. Best

Thank you for your patronage in 1998!

As a Grand Guest you enjoyed the benefits of membership in New York City’s only corporate rate program designed exclusively for Loyal Guests. In 1999 we are pleased, once again, to extend the benefits of the Grand Guest program to you, including a Guaranteed Rate of $284 and Last Room Availability.

We are also pleased to tell you that, because of your comments, we have made many positive changes to our Services, Guest Rooms and Public Areas. We have added additional Concierge, Front Office, Reservations and Telephone staff to better serve you. We have upgraded our Guest Rooms with CD players and VCR’s, additional bathroom shelving, polar fleece throws and residential sized Kiehl’s toiletries and Caswell Massey soaps. The hotel’s interior designer, William Sofield, has reinterpreted the design in the Grand Bar, Salon, Canal House and other public areas, introducing new furnishing, fabrics and details.

Again, we thank you for your loyalty and look forward to your return in 1999. Enclosed are the details of the 1999 Grand Guest program.

Sincerely

Tony Fant

Executive Vice President
General Manager

But it was not such a big complaint that the management had to renovate the hotel. We did stay there the next year, and I dared not make another complaint lest they’d demolish the whole hotel and rebuild it.

As a footnote, Tony Fant is now the president of GrandLife Hotels and a pioneer of the hospitality landscape in lower Manhattan. According to his blurb, he is also a longtime patron of downtown culture, drawing from the days of the rock poets to the emergence of East Coast hip hop and beyond. Judging by what I saw nearly 30 years ago, he has style, a quality so typical of New York.

Rear Window

Rear Window is one of my favourite Hitchcock movies. Recently, I have tried to fathom out why the film is called Rear Window. My wife has a simple explanation – James Stewart, as the voyeuristic bored photographer laid up with his leg in plaster, can watch all the other residents in the apartments facing him. This is his rear window looking across the courtyard to the rear windows of the apartments opposite. To me it raises the question of front windows in such a Greenwich apartment complex. After all, in so much writing, authors describe their characters pondering the world through front windows.

As is well-known about this film is the setting: The (Greenwich Village) apartment complex that Hitchcock chose to reference was ultimately completely reconstructed on the Paramount Studios lot, reportedly costing an “unprecedented” $9,000 to design and $72,000 to build. (c. $920,000 today) The structure included seven apartment buildings and three other buildings on the other side of the street. It boasted a total of 31 apartments, although only a handful were fully furnished.

Much is made of the symbolism, with the extremely dysfunctional character played by Jimmy Stewart with all the massive sexual undertones in his relationship with his girlfriend, played by Grace Kelly. She is the typical Hitchcock heroine, where passion is a frozen commodity in a fair-haired beautiful body, enclosed in generally perfectly groomed outfits.

As with nearly all Hitchcock films, there is crime, murder being a favourite, and this Hitchcock ability to engender an atmosphere of suspense, without having to resort to props is one of the reasons he is considered such a great film director.

I still puzzle over the film name. The film was made in 1953 near the end of the McCarthy era when his crusade against Communism was leading to a high level of distrust with many people unfairly treated and American society torn apart by Senator McCarthy, President Eisenhower either unwilling or unable to rein him in.

You can say that Americans are always looking at the rear window, seeing what has gone by but unwilling to project themselves into the future consequences of their actions. Rear windows can distort one’s views, and assessing other people through the rear windows is based on a distillation of assumptions about a certain person, if you believe there are no absolute facts. Hitchcock concentrates our mind on the man who has murdered his wife in the apartment being recognised by the Stewart character through his camera lens.

Rear Window is a symbol of the past- what has happened. That is the problem with those supporting Biden. Their gaze is fixed on the rear vision window of past accomplishments. Just as the hero in the Hitchcock film, he is focussed on the past; and has not the ability to take his gaze away from the rear window. But he still had his girl friend loyal to him, no matter what. Grace Kelly’s character is that person in the film.

But unlike the film, Biden will have a disastrous fall, because if one’s gaze is fixed on the past, one will inevitably stumble badly because the path one assumes to be the same as in the past is no longer there or vastly changed. Or was it you who have changed? After all, at the end of the film, Jimmy Stewart’s character has two legs encased in plaster. This was the result of fighting off the murderer who has come across to exact retribution. A future he did not anticipate?

QED!

This comes from the Boston Globe. In the wake of the Trump near-miss, a minor case but illustrates something about American society, in this case in Rhode Island. The back story is that Joseph Francis had long term mental health issues, which he showed in bizarre, anti-social behaviour. And as shown in the piece below, his lawyer was a bit of a pistachio also. You know, a nutter!

After looking at the scope of Joseph Francis’ past contacts with other law enforcement agencies, Hopkinton Police Chief Mark Carrier told the Globe, “We saw a pattern with his character flaws, temper, and mental health issues.”

The police denied Francis’ applications to buy guns in 2020 and 2021, Carrier said. But Francis fought back, and hired a lawyer: Frank Saccoccio, the president and lobbyist of the Rhode Island Second Amendment Coalition.

Saccoccio got the cyber-harassment charge expunged, clearing the way for Francis to buy firearms. Without that charge, there was no legal standing for denying his applications as long as the questions on it were answered truthfully. His mental health could not prevent him from owning a gun unless he had been involuntarily committed or a court had determined that he was a danger to himself or others.

“Town Solicitor Kevin McAllister advised that nothing on his record would prohibit it, so we had to proceed with approval,” Carrier said.

Francis started buying firearms. And last weekend, he used one of them to kill his estranged wife, Stephanie Francis, and then himself.

Mouse Whisper

Mouse in French is souris; in Italian topo; in Spanish ratón; in Portuguese rato; in Romanian soarace; in Romansch mieur.

There you are – fluent in all the Romantic languages.

Modest Expectations – Gay Crusader

I have always given an association with the number of the blog, which this week is the 137^th in a row. Apart from my first one, each blog has a label associated. The words “Gay Crusader” would evoke a great number of associations in the modern day.

I thought I was being suitably obscure. Not true, if you Google “Gay Crusader”, there is the answer at the top of the pile. Gay Crusader was a horse, and a very good one at galloping one mile, four furlongs and six yards. Unfortunately, there are no rods, no poles nor perches; no links nor chains, not to mention the lack of leagues and fathoms – nor, for that matter, inches in this meticulous description of aristocratic length.

O Hail Caesar

I have been accused of being too easy on the Premier of Victoria, but this latest manoeuvre to usurp the power of the Chief Health Officer is fraught with all the dangers of a politician assuming control over an area in which he does not have the expertise.

The Australian public, particularly in Victoria, has become sick of lockdown. It is difficult when one cannot see the enemy. Just as Victoria thought it was free of COVID-19 it was imported from NSW, due to the attitude of the then Premier, disregarding her Chief Medical Officer’s advice.

The Chief Health Officer is appointed for his skill in providing the Government of the day with public health advice. Up to the time of COVID it has been a very dozy job in Victoria – a recent Chief Health Officer was virtually invisible during his tenure. However, the Chief Health Officer has delegated powers for a reason, and in the event of a serious public health matter such as a pandemic, it is important to designate single point responsibility for the execution of legislative orders, but with a clear outcome for such execution.

Clearly Chief Health Officers are no Delphic oracles, but they portray their expertise in both their attitude and behaviour – running the gamut between the laissez-faire and the interventionist. Some are more risk averse than others. Yet their powers are circumscribed and, unlike the Premier, they don’t have powers outside health to proscribe under the guise of a health emergency.

Premier Andrews’ current intention to usurp these Chief Health Officer powers is a vast overreach, and in this instance was prompted by his disagreement with the Chief Health Officer’s eliminationist strategy, or should I say demand for an unconditional surrender by the Virus, rather than an uneasy armistice.

The past two years have catapulted previously obscure Chief Health Officers into media stardom, with the unfortunate consequence of having to compete with the associated epi-babble. Yet if last year there had not been Chief Health Officers with that power, would it have taken the politicians a longer time to declare an emergency?

Memories are short. Remember, Premier Andrews at the start of the pandemic without experience or indeed knowledge was very hesitant in cancelling the Grand Prix in 2020 – and also the Prime Minister was inclined to go to the football rather than take the incipient crisis seriously.

Politicians hesitate. This legislation in Victoria throws the normal sop of having an advisory committee. In most of my experience these committees attract people with the gift of the gab – and the ability to obfuscate and confuse the politician who has, prima facie, not that much knowledge, apart from knowing their constituency and not liking unpopularity.

There is a flagrant example in NSW of this political interference, brushing aside public health guidelines designed to protect the community because they interfere with those popular pirouette steps – harks back to March 2020. The impulsive decision to retain popularity – forget about the Government’s public health rule. You know the one which reads:

Until you receive a negative result from your day 7 test you must not go to any:

high-risk settings, such as childcare, aged care, disability care, healthcare, schools, education and correctional facilities
large gatherings (e.g. concerts, football matches)
hospitality venues, except to pick up take-away food or beverages.

This does not include accessing medical care, or aged or disability care services.

How inconvenient for the impatient unthinking incoming Australian. You drop your guard, how inconvenient that the West Hoxton, sorry West Epping party, just can’t be missed.

Premier Andrews, as an example for your Brother Premier, I implore you to leave well alone – but you won’t because although you generally have reasonable judgement, you have been a control freak, with the thinness of your dermis still being a matter of conjecture. The solution is definitely not to set up a tangle of bureaucracy as proposed because that will just introduce more uncertainty, especially when there are other variants in the offing.

Maine Stream

The Supreme Court has rejected an emergency appeal from health care workers in Maine to block a vaccine mandate that went into effect Friday.

Three conservative justices noted their dissents. The state is not offering a religious exemption to hospital and nursing home workers who risk losing their jobs if they are not vaccinated.

Only New York and Rhode Island also have vaccine mandates for health care workers that lack religious exemptions. Both are the subject of court fights. On Friday, a federal appeals court panel upheld New York state’s vaccine mandate for health care workers, rejecting arguments by lawyers for doctors, nurses and other professionals that it did not adequately protect those with religious objections.

As is typical in emergency appeals, the Supreme Court did not explain its action. But Justice Neil Gorsuch joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito said in a dissent for himself and two fellow conservatives, that he would have agreed to the health care workers’ request.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett noted in a short statement agreeing with the court’s decision not to intervene that the justices were being asked to “grant extraordinary relief” in a case that is the first of its kind. She was joined by a fellow conservative, Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Democratic Gov. Janet Mills said she was gratified that the mandate was upheld, saying it’s imperative for hospitals to “take every precaution to protect their workers and patients against this deadly virus.”

“This rule protects health care workers, their patients, and the stability of our health care system in the face of this dangerous virus,” she said in a statement. “Just as vaccination defeated smallpox and vaccination defeated polio, vaccination is the way to defeat COVID-19.”

Maine’s requirement was put in place by the governor. A federal judge in Maine declined to stop the mandate, concluding that the lawsuit was unlikely to succeed. The Oct. 13 decision prompted a flurry of appeals that landed, for a second time, in the Supreme Court.

Dozens of health care workers have opted to quit, and a hospital in Maine’s second-largest city already curtailed some admissions because of an “acute shortage” of nurses.

But most health workers have complied, and Maine residents in general have been supportive of the vaccine. The Maine Hospital Association and other health care groups support the requirement.

We have holidayed in Maine, the Pine Tree State, on more than one occasion. We nearly bought a house in Maine in that brief window when the Australian dollar approximated the US dollar in value.

Bordering Canada, it’s only US State border is with Massachusetts, of which it was once part. It has been a traditionally conservative Yankee State, where slavery was outlawed in 1783. Yet this State has a serious ambivalence.

In 1820, the year Maine became a State of the Union on the anti-slavery slate, the U.S. passed an act that made participation in the slave trade an act of piracy. Yet, dozens of Maine vessels engaged in the slave trade illegally during this period. Thousands of enslaved people were transported and traded, leading to huge profits for slave traders – some of whom were Maine sea captains who are remembered as leading citizens of the day. Much of the millions of dollars from the slave trade funded the growth of New England’s economy.

Thus, Maine has tucked away this heritage; and now in the forefront of COVID-19 vaccination campaigns, it is increasingly leaning towards becoming a permanent “blue” State. Yet it still has a very prominent Republican Senator, Susan Collins, who has been one of the incumbents since 1996. The other Senator is a Democratic-leaning Independent. In line with the population, the State is only entitled to two representatives in the US Congress – both Democratic.

For a population of just over one million people the Capital, Augusta, is home to 154 members of its house of representatives and 31 state senators, both houses dominated by the Democrats and with a Democratic Governor. That is the profile of a State that has mandated all health workers, without exception, be vaccinated against COVID-19 – and the Supreme Court of the USA, not known for its liberalism, has upheld the decision.

So, what are you waiting for Australia? Mandate!

By the way the Maine politicians get bugger all remuneration, probably all up less annually than a Darryl Maguire consultancy demand.

Be quiet. Eyjafjallajökull is capturing carbon.

I was browsing through an old New Scientist and I came upon a mention of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano, which erupted in 2010 in Iceland. It is a forgotten fact that the emission then from the volcano of between 150,000 and 300,000 tonnes a day was less than the grounded airlines would have emitted if they had been able to fly. That was 2010.

I went to Iceland three years later. Driving around this volcano, it was very quiet and the sky was cloudless and very blue. The planes were back flying.

Iceland is a geothermal hotspot, with many volcanoes. A boundary between two tectonic plate runs through the country, and it is strange knowing that the shifting of the plates beneath your feet is the fault line ready to quake.

The gap between Iceland’s tectonic plates …

Iceland is thus unusual. It belies its name. None of the country is within the Arctic Circle. From the airport to Reykjavik, there is a plain of basalt – it is a bare landscape. Yet in this plain is the famous tourist attraction, the geothermal pool known as the Blue Lagoon, a heated oasis full of tourists. I stand on a bare spot on the South Coast and look out to the North Sea; I had been told there was not a skerrick of land between where I was standing and the Antarctic Continent. There are many of these instances – “nowhere else”…

The Hotel Ranga is about an hour’s drive from Reykjavik and, as proved, it was an ideal place to see the Aurora Borealis, although it would have been preferable to have a room on the north side of the hotel to view the phenomenon, as I found out. In many ways, Iceland is very important as viewing the Aurora here is very convenient. One does not have to struggle through the snow to see it. Here at this isolated Hotel, it is just a matter of stepping outside.

Then one afternoon going down the road to the nearby village of Hella, drifting on whim around 2.00 pm into an empty café about to close, the owner hospitably cooked me a magnificent cod pie while I waited. That seemed to be the Icelander way. The land was full of more friendly surprises.

What has happened in relation to climate change in Iceland has been reflected by the unique geology of this country where the uptake of carbon capture and storage has been adapted to its predominant basalt rock structure.

As a result, Iceland has several high-temperature geologic zones, where the underground temperature reaches 250c within 1km depth, and in its so-called “low-temperature” zones, the temperature reaches up to 150c at the same depth. Permeability, the porous nature of such rock, also plays a role in how fast mineralisation of CO₂ can happen here. Basalt is such porous rock and assists this faster reaction; elsewhere in this favourable rock formation the mineralisation of CO₂ may take thousands of years.

In Iceland, the dissolved gas is injected into the rock formations at a depth of about 500m, where the CO₂ can rapidly turn into minerals. In Iceland it takes about two years for 95% of the CO₂ to be mineralised. The process can take more or less time at other sites, depending on a few factors. One is the depth at which the carbon is injected, and another is the temperature of the rock formation – the rate of the mineralisation process is generally faster at higher temperatures. Bedrock still must contain sufficient amounts of calcium, magnesium and iron. These metals are necessary because they react with CO₂ to form carbonate minerals needed to permanently store the CO₂.

This year, the Orca plant, 40 kilometres south-east of Rejkavik, designed to capture carbon, is now online and is said to extract annually 4,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, equal to the emissions of 790 cars. Not much. Thus, it is still essentially an experimental facility.

Despite all the potential advantages of Iceland, this is a salutary piece of advice as our Australian government still waves this technology around as a solution to climate change.

As I have pointed out previously, carbon capture overall is a dud. The extent of its usage in Iceland only says that it has the geology can make minor difference, which may at most offset the carbon dioxide emitted by Iceland’s heavy industry, in particular its aluminium smelting.

The lesson here is very clear. When the annual amount of carbon dioxide to be removed needs to be 33 billion tonnes for an effective technology, this facility in one of the most advantageous positions on the planet removes in a year about 3,600 metric tonnes, probably the same amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as emitted by all the limousines of those attending the Glasgow conference. After all, the US President is reported to have had a cavalcade of 85 cars because of COVID-19 restrictions. It seems a matter of what you lose on the…oh, I forget the rest of that aphorism. It must be the nitrous oxide fumes affecting me.

You want a Sharkies jumper, Manny?

Australia has a major embarrassment. You let a dolt in a baseball cap run the country, and then watch aghast at what happens next.

In Rome, the Prime Minister, with his private photographer in tow, interrupts a private discussion President Macron is having with someone else. Macron is civil; he does not take off his mask, but his eyes say it all. An uncivil person appealing to a redneck constituency – unapologetically. Boy, were we impressed?

Then there was Morrison’s speech – the normal meaningless aggressive diatribe in an empty auditorium. Donald Trump would have applauded. Nobody in Glasgow was listening.

The image of him sitting at the G20 table in Rome, sniggering with the Brazilian President Bolsonaro, has not yet made it to our local media. Macron is in the distance. Trying to muscle in on the photo-opportunity next to Boris Johnson, Morrison actually ends up next to Angela Merkel, who turns away from him as soon as the photoshoot is over. On this occasion, he did not move forward as Macron walked past, neither acknowledging one another. So much for meeting and greeting each other.

Macron has then made the last devastating remark, namely that Morrison lied. If he lied to the French President, who else?

In any event, the stoush continued along the kerbsides of the Gorbals, with the Baseball Cap saying he would not have his country sledged. I was bewildered, as President Macron had very carefully separated the country from The Baseball Cap – very pointed in his accusation. No sledging of Australia by Mannie, only a pointed reference to you, mate. Julie Bishop, on your selective leak of private government correspondence, has commented: “I’m concerned that the rest of the world will look at Australia and say: Nah. Can Australia be trusted on contracts not to leak private messages?”

What can we expect next? I think he is coming home, concentrating on his political loom trying to spin a jacket of credibility to replace the shreds and tatters of his current international reputation. Meanwhile Glasgow proceeds. Photo-opportunities with the remnant military force still overseas.

Meanwhile, Biden and Macron are getting together, Biden incidentally throwing Morrison under the 2CV while promising Macron that Kamala Harris will visit Paris soon. Back here in Oz, it is increasingly apparent that the nuclear submarine program is just the heading of a media release and will it ever happen?

Advances in technology, as you still glibly spout, Prime Minister, will ensure that it will never happen. Any US body of significance visiting Australia in the wake of this dustup? I’d doubt it; maybe the odd silver-haired chap in braid sent to keep Dutton and Abetz and the other sabre-rattlers happy.

But back to the Road to Glasgow; Macron seems more interested in Africa where its Francophone countries are increasingly under threat from al-Quaeda type insurgencies – the fundamentalist Islamist force. Biden wants to assist. This seems to be the immediate battleground, not the South Pacific as we were led to believe when AUKUS was at its most raucous. The French will bide their time until after the Australian election.

China and America are now in conversation, and the likelihood of an imminent invasion of Taiwan is increasingly unlikely. The Chinese have done their sums on the cost of invading Taiwan. Nevertheless, keep the cauldron boiling, it keeps the normal suspects here in Australia suitably frothing.

The Taiwanese are adept in providing all expenses paid trips to foreigners who they think may be able to push the Taiwanese barrow at the least cost, and who can still rattle a cage in Australia. I have experienced such extravagant hospitality when the Taiwanese mistakenly thought me able to rattle a cage or two – in my case a birdcage.

As for Biden discussing anything substantial with Morrison, fat chance. Biden seems more concerned with Recep Erdogan and him threatening to buy Russian, rather than American fighters for Turkey.

Mentioning Turkey reminds one of the Boris, the one of Turkish heritage. He still seems willing to talk to Morrison, but if Morrison clumsily helps wreck the Glasgow meeting, another “dear friend” bites the dust. Did you see the Prince of Wales turn to glass as Morrison talked.

So, there we are with Morrison in Glasgow, the pipe band leader for India, Saudi Arabia, Russia and our old ally China – all coal fellows well met.

The problem is that inevitably, at some stage, the gaseous products of coal will overwhelm the planet, using the Morrison approach. What does it matter if we return to an age where the world was indeed warmer than it has ever been?

Maybe in 2022, it may change … but unfortunately Albanese is such a weak reed – the stuff of Arthur Calwell Revisited. His vision is that of a student politician; it’s all about factional deals. No, it is not, Mr Albanese, given the perilous position of this planet, a factional deal is a puff of dust.

But by 2025, the election after this when I have well gone, let us have a leader by then to navigate Australia out of this climate mess.

Perhaps an insight provided by Rebecca Sykes in her recent book Kindred -Neanderthal – Life, Love and Death will increase the sense of urgency:

What’s happening is unprecedented. Over the next millennium – roughly 30 generations – we are heading into a world hotter and more dangerous than any previous hominin survived. The Eemian 120,000 years ago was on average just a degree or two warmer than today, yet along with hippos in the Thames, sea levels were 5 to 7m (15 to 22ft) higher. Coasts where picturesque cottages and teeming cities now stand were swamped. And that’s with far lower CO₂ levels than we’ve already reached.

In the absence of immediate, drastic action, the most up-to-date climate models put us on track for a terrifying future. Polar ice caps are at genuine risk of disappearing, and if so, oceans would rise by 20m (65ft) or more. In the past year the Great Barrier Reef has withered, the Arctic, Amazon and Australia have all been ablaze, and heat records have been breaking like waves, one after the other.

I could not have said it better.

Roaming in the Romantics

I enjoyed Latin at school and obtained second class honours in my Matriculation year. For a few years I attended the University of Sydney’s Latin Summer School, and one year my eldest granddaughter joined me for this one week of concentrated experience.

It kindled my interest in the living languages which owed their syntax to Latin. I learnt French at school, at the time when foreign languages were either French or German. Then I went to France in 1980, travelling around and realising how little French was left in my cranial library. So, on my return I started French at the Alliance Française. The facilities were superb but undertaking learning French at the end of a working day was too much for me to persist beyond a couple of years. The one word which sticks in my memory driving through the South of France was “vignoble”. It had such an obvious meaning, but I did not immediately get it and was teased unmercifully.

In the past decade we discovered Ravenna and thought how it would be a good idea to learn some Italian. We embarked on learning Italian, and gradually moved through the grades. I’m glad there are no examinations; and in addition, my accent is foul. Nevertheless, the comprehension has improved and with learning languages on a long-term basis, then you can absorb some of the culture. Funnily, I once lived for many years in Italian cultural Melbourne, but it didn’t encourage me to learn Italian.

However, before going to Romania a few years ago, I tried to acquaint myself with Romanian and while I did acquire a smattering of the language, it vanished very quickly after I returned to Australia. It is reputed to have much in common with Italian. You mean “grazie mille” and “mulțumesc foarte mult”. Thank you very much! Such a similar language!

Then we determined, or rather she wanted to go up the Amazon, and so we joined a class of Portuguese for the Traveller which, like so many of those crammed courses, is totally useless, especially if you don’t have an ear for languages. Yet I have persisted through a Portuguese teacher and now a Brazilian, and my love of the language and the diverse culture not only between the two countries, but within, has soared.

In many ways, Portuguese resembles French more than Spanish; but that is a contentious proposition. French monks were indeed the first people to write down the Portuguese language and linguists argue that the common tortuous grammar, especially the irregular verbs, have French “tendencies”. Secondly, extensive French immigration during the first decades of XII century most of the western coastal region around nowadays Torres Vedras, Caldas da Rainha and Alcobaça were colonised by French from Burgundy. And as an afterthought, the two languages share the cedilla (ç).

Needless to say, Brazilian Portuguese is different.

May I say, even though I have driven through the Swiss canton of Grisons on the way to Liechtenstein, I never heard the least known member of the Romantic language, Romansch, spoken. Although it is one of the national languages of Switzerland (which is a story in itself) and a remnant of the time the Romans occupied the territory, I suspect it has survived due to the isolation of the community in the Alps. For someone who lives in Sydney, the repeated references to Engadine in the Romansch exchanges was disconcerting. Engadine is a suburb of Sydney, but also Engadine is a long high Alpine valley region in the eastern Swiss Alps. Romansh is vaguely akin to Italian and French but its speakers sound German. Guttural and Romantic are strange bedfellows. As one said, it sounds like Italian with a German accent.

There you are – rambling through a field of mild obsession which unfortunately my Topo has picked up in his whispering below.

Laura

Sometimes you read something trivial; prosaic, but it strikes a chord.

However, let’s begin by writing that some years ago, I bought a book second-hand. It had come from the collection of David Raksin. It was a name I was not familiar with, but anybody who shared my taste in books at least was worth investigating.

He wrote the tune “Laura”, his most memorable work, which was the theme woven into the film of the same name, a film noir in the traditions then of Hollywood. It starred Gene Tierney as Laura. She was an extraordinarily beautiful woman at least on the celluloid. The film still is worth watching, and the theme has endured, recorded by a large number of artists. It always reminds me of waiting for someone to come – but who never did. Some might characterise it as “haunting”. During his life, it was the second most recorded work after “Stardust”.

Charlie “Bird” Parker, one of the great saxophonists, recorded “Laura” and this comment below was attached to his “Bird” version of the tune. As they say in the cliches of our time, the comment has resonated with me.

I met a Laura once, way back in 1964. I met her at a party, we were teenagers but grown up in the way kids were back in Philly of the 1960’s. She was so perfect. Beautiful, smart, engaging, and she liked me. I fell madly in love with her, right there and then. We danced and she fit into my entire spirit. And then the party was over and we all had to connect with our various rides. She chose to ride with me and my friends and we drove her home. She sat next to me, both of us breathless. And standing on the porch was her father, who looked like he would kill me – or any other boy!!! I wasn’t able to get her telephone number and I never saw her again. All these years later, I can still feel her…

I know how he felt. Our universe then was full of fumbling uncertainty. In my case, her father was a civil educated man. Her name was not Laura, but I persisted.

Mouse Whisper

It’s pretty much clearly Romantic – here it’s in black and white

NIGER

Noir nero negro preto negru nair

ALBUS

Blanc bianco blanco branco alb alv

Modest Expectations – Organesson

After not being given sufficient time to explain my remarks re Brett Sutton last night on Q&A what I wanted to explain is that he is not an Epidemiologist and it is on his medical advice to Govt that we continue to have shut downs. If I have offended Prof Sutton my apologies.

Q&A is a pulpit. A woman called Susan Alberti AM, AO, AC, a stepping stone queen of Order, developer extraordinaire, professional philanthropist and general Liberal party lady about town cast a nasty aspersion against the Chief Medical Officer of Victoria, Brett Sutton, on that ABC program this past week. She said he was not a doctor – a sotte voce interruption when Tom Elliot was in full flight. Now I have never watched Tom Elliot, because he is a Melbourne phenomenon, or perhaps I have had enough exposure to his father to last a lifetime.

However, I was directed toward this excerpt of the program, which I rarely watch. It brought back memories. Here Mr Speers was conducting this meeting of the Coalition with a guest from the Opposition. He seemed to be acting as President of this newly-formed Q&A Branch of the Liberal Party, where Tom Elliot had been invited as the main speaker. I had heard of this chap as he was at university at the same time as my offspring.

I had known his father from his days at the University of Melbourne, where he was several years behind me but had a refreshing Baptist School old boy attitude to beer, billiards and of course fags, however defined.

It was refreshing to hear all the nostrums with which his father used to amuse us. Listening to Young Tom I had never realised his father, Old John, was such a fine ventriloquist. Moreover, Old John did not appear to be in the room – what a feat.

What I objected to however was the lack of immediate correction about Brett Sutton. Speers should have stopped the meeting and corrected Alberti immediately. Even in her apology, she says he is not an epidemiologist. Well, Alberti, not all epidemiologists are doctors—and to be Chief Health Officer, he does have to have a medical degree and has had extensive overseas medical experience, just not restricted to counting the dollars in the fields of Dandenong and Hallam.

Her sidekick, The Moroccan Soup Bar kid, Hana Assafiri OAM, had chimed in at the same time with the same comments, but also scrawled some sort of an apology: “unequivocal apology on getting your title wrong! The intention was to convey that you are not simply a doctor, that you heave (sic) a wealth of expertise guiding this state through the pandemic. Obviously didn’t translate the way it was intended.” I do hope, Hana Assafiri, that your pigeon pastilla does use icing sugar not iodine – sweet not bitter taste on the pie.

Stop the frolic! David Speers as a balanced chair of an ABC program, I’m afraid you are a disgrace. Full stop.

And as for Susan Alberti, my total contempt, made worse by your awkward misstatement, which is in no way an apology.

Brett Sutton is the hard man; he is one who is identified with the lock up strategy, whether fairly or unfairly. The above comments are not the only ones floating around about him. In crisis situations, you need hard men and women who can differentiate self-interest from legitimate criticism; who have a clear view of the end point. Often a lonely job.

Toilers from Homes?

A cognitive scientist by training and a working mother, has been warning about the unintended consequences of workplace flexibility, including the mental toll on mothers who still do the brunt of the housework.

The scientist stresses that managers can’t just leave it up to workers to figure out the right balance. Companies, for example, could decide there are certain times when everyone is in the office as a way to head off problems arising on work-from-home days when employees are out-of-sight, out-of-mind.

Employers could also decide not to schedule meetings at certain times of the day — such as before 9 a.m., between 3 and 4 p.m., or after 5 p.m., allowing parents (note change from above) to make school drop-offs and pick-ups, and to prepare dinner.

This expresses concisely the sentiment for developing a hybrid model of working both at home and in the office that has become the preferred option for services where front of house or on-site physical activity are not required. This describes much of the so-called gig economy.

The quote above concentrates on women to the exclusion of men.

The hybrid model is constructed with women in mind, given they inevitably are primarily responsible for children and the domestic arrangements, which all need to be sustained when she is at work. It also recognises the increasing number of women at all levels of bureaucracy – they are not just the stenographers of yore. Nevertheless, for many women the nature of their work does not give them the option of a hybrid model of remote work.

So the tug-o-war now applies to the bureaucracy however defined and be it public or private sector, responsible for delivery of product without need to be on site. The recent addition of teachers to that group as “remote learning” becomes easier to set up is an added complexity.

However, does the person in the street benefit when seeking advice or resolution of their particular concern if the hybrid model becomes generalised?

The problem is in the implementation of what could be construed as “new” bureaucracy. For the person who, by the nature of his or her job, requires a large amount of time to think, create or write, the wish to work without distraction is understandable. After all, Silicon Valley is always quoted as that – of having the libertarian approach to workstyle.

But even here, to quote a CNN source: The tech industry might seem well-positioned for remote work indefinitely but it has also spent years building a culture of collaboration and innovation that it will be loath to give up, spending untold billions on huge offices and perks like free food, gyms and nap pods that convince employees to spend more time there than they do at home.

But this above is not conventional bureaucracy nor is it one which is female dominant. Or is it just the vanguard of a “new” bureaucracy created by the pandemic where a larger proportion are women?

It may be reasonable to postulate that most people working at home have a need for ongoing communication – in no way different from working in the office. Thus, “rules of engagement” need to be clarified. The last paragraph of the cognitive scientist’s assessment needs better definition. There must be discipline imposed on the environment where children need to be picked up and domestic duties resumed. Does domesticity take priority over the requirements of the job; one unpredictability being illness in the children – as one of my colleagues once said, “young children are bags of virus”. It is here that the father is introduced into the hybrid model discussion.

This is the contingency which needs to be addressed if working at home is accepted as part of the hybrid model. These gaps need to be patched in the structuring of rules. In the office situation, employees take carer’s leave, or sick leave to deal with these situations, or negotiate short working days.

As soon as rules are established there will be exceptions. If the rules become the subject of an industrial award, work flexibility becomes beset with the legal rigidity of industrial contracts – with the temptation of putting in place “one size fits all”.

The problem with work flexibility is that communication becomes increasingly difficult. Over the years, unless you happen to be the person of influence, to get in touch with “the responsible bureaucrat” in the office can be bad enough, but away from the office can be a nightmare when you want urgent resolution. There are so many reasons for having a day off and thus the decision-making is even further delayed or even forgotten.

When this is added to the actions of paranoid Government departmental heads who seem to keep their staff on the move until the corporate memory becomes totally attenuated and thus is finally lost. Then “the wheel has to be re-invented” and the same mistakes are liable to be repeated.

How many times have I had to face bureaucrats with no sense of what has gone before; who are unaware of what works and what doesn’t work? That is the problem with much of bureaucracy when it loses its corporate memory – there is a tendency to start the same process all over again, especially when there is a change in government.

Now introduce into that mix working from home without rules.

How often do you try to contact a person only to be told he or she is working from home? This is said in the sense the person is incommunicado until he or she returns to the office. The person may as well thus not be at work. So, if working at home becomes accepted as the new norm, then the bureaucrat needs to be contactable at home and must be prepared to sacrifice the privacy of the home as an “inviolate castle of domesticity”.

Where flexibility of the hybrid model is maintained alongside strong productivity, I suggest it is due to the leadership – what Max Weber called “charismatic”; but such leadership is difficult to sustain, because so much of the work pattern is determined by the leader, and the quality of that leadership. The charismatic leader leads, and then does the hybrid work model revert to a bureaucracy? I am not sure that the hybrid model has longevity; because long term “charismatic” leadership is the exception in the life of any bureaucracy – longevity is not its strong suit.

A somewhat sarcastic Bartleby opus in The Economist suggested that working from home on a Monday or Friday is a joke. On the latter day, as Bartleby writes, managers may call to listen out for tell-tale signs of the beach or golf – a comment, both sexist and ageist. Bartleby’s point is made about ageing men.

Yet if the hybrid model becomes an object for gaming and maximising “slacking”, then the above article has a set of tips. If hypothetically two days at home working are allowed, then there are ten combinations – and Monday and Friday may just raise suspicions, if not hilarity. Again, gaming is not restricted to one sex.

In the end, like the cognitive scientist’s thinking, I suspect the office environment will win out against the hybrid model, because as the final paragraph of the opening quote implies, the home environment will breed conflict within the job framework – unless the office can be made totally separate and distinct from “the hearth”.

Yet there is at least one more elephant in the room, and that is the increasing resistance to people coming into the office with an upper respiratory infection. I suspect that a population which has come through lockdowns, mandatory masks and forced compliance will be less tolerant of anybody who challenges the health of the office by coming into work, even with a common cold.

More thought needs to be given to childcare services provided under the aegis of the State to mirror the new workstyle of those who need to use them. It is worth more than an addendum to an apologia or not of the work hybrid model.

Schools work on fee-for-term model, so that the fees make allowance for absences. When I was chairing a childcare co-operative, until that “term” business model was adopted, then the income of the childcare facility suffers from the vagaries of domestic problems – child illness being a big slice of that.

With the increasing discussion, albeit demand for a hybrid model, then childcare services usage may have to change to reflect that change in work practice. That is another topic to be explored in a future blog, when reminiscing over personal experience, admittedly many years ago, which nevertheless may still provide productive comment.

I knew it well, Dunmunkle

As I promised, I write my take on the three towns which once were the three Townships of the Shire of Dunmunkle in the Victorian Wimmera, north of Horsham.

I used to know this area reasonably well since I was asked to resolve an issue around the delivery of health care in the 1980s at one of these townships, Minyip and went back over the next decade or so. The other two townships are Murtoa and Rupanyup. Minyip traditionally is a Lutheran town, part of the Protestant German diaspora which is layered across Southern Australia from the Barossa Valley to the NSW Riverina around Albury. By contrast, Rupanyup has Scottish Presbyterian heritage and Murtoa, Irish Roman Catholic.

Rupanyup lies on the Dunmunkle Creek, which flows into the Wimmera River. Murtoa lies on the major Melbourne-Adelaide railway line. Minyip is surrounded by wheat cropping, and once was on a spur railway line.

Watching the “Backroads” program on the ABC, I was fascinated by one item, and wondered why I have missed it. The second was the fact that Murtoa was ignored while, the program concentrated on Rupanyup and Minyip. That puzzled me, especially as the most interesting item in the program was the huge Murtoa grain store built in four months during World War 2 at the end of 1941, which is the only one left in Australia – the so-called Stick Shed, because it has 560 mountain ash poles supporting a galvanised iron roof structure, the building spread over four acres, and held up to 92,000 tons of wheat. The sloping roof was built in the way wheat grain naturally stockpiles itself. A majestic bush building but working inside must have been a major industrial hazard.

The other puzzle was why Murtoa was otherwise ignored. After all, it was the birthplace of Mary Delahunty, one of the most well-known ABC faces and the ABC tends to identify and remember its own. Therefore, the puzzle is why the program ignored Murtoa until almost the last frames, given that it is also the biggest of the three towns.

The tactic of the “identity” is the method of packaging the half-hour program, which inevitably gives a caricature of rural life; so different from the rural program “Landline”, which is genuinely informative about rural life. In fact the segment on Rupanyup, which is the one township struggling to survive, concentrated on chick pea production and its diverse uses, and could have as easily segmented into “Landline”. This diversification into pulse legumes around Rupanyup starting in the 1980s with field peas extended to many of the other crops, in particular lentils and chick peas, the latter most visible in the supermarket in the form of hummus. But what does that have to do with Rupanyup, the few views of the township are a tableau of peeling paint and empty shops?

I got to know Minyip when they closed the local hospital in the late 1980s and replaced it with a community health centre, which for many years had the advantage of continuity in its administration. The closure of a hospital, even a small one as happened in Minyip, made me realise that when you close a small hospital, as I have written “it is like a death in the family”. The community traditionally was born and died in the hospital. When services are rationalised even when a community health centre was constructed and proved to be excellent, the community’s grief can be underestimated.

I suspect it is less so now, presumably with dilution of the Lutheran influence. After all, in 1935 the congregation decided to move the Lutheran church with dimensions of 16 x 8.5 metres including the 19m high bell tower, 50 tons in all, a distance of 10 miles to Minyip. The congregation jacked it up onto a 12-wheel jinker and by means of a steam traction engine moved it to its present site in the township. The trip took three days. Would it happen today?

The other anecdote worthy of note was in the early days of settlement when they decided to put the shire hall in Minyip, the Murtoans came across at night and took it to Murtoa. Minyip retaliated by taking it back, in a clash of the jinkers. Then it burnt down; and for years there was a residual animosity between the two communities.

Generally, the animosity or rivalry, however defined, is worked out on the football field. In 1995, with a declining pool of players, old grudges were forgotten; the Murtoa and Minyip teams amalgamated and the jumper was redesigned to absorb the colours of the two football teams. Rupanyup has been the outlier, in that its football team dropped out of the Wimmera League and down to the Horsham and District league.

The other characteristic of townships such as Minyip is that they provide cheap lodging, and therefore the problem of the traditional farming town becoming a refuge for welfare recipients and again as the community ages, the elderly members are loath to leave and they retire into towns. These towns become wellsprings of rural poverty.

At least that was my observation when I was a frequent visitor. At the time I wondered whether this continued to feed the sustainability of these tiny townships. There were pockets of rural poverty scattered across rural Victoria. The extent of the poverty could be titrated by their closeness to provincial centres. Whether that holds now in these centres, I know that for other small towns with which I have been closely involved in the intervening years, the answer is probably yes, but immigration and other social movements have changed the 1980s profile of some of these small townships, including gentrification.

Now what was Minyip to “Backroads”. The impression given was that its continued existence due to it being the set for the Flying Doctors series, and then as a convenient backdrop for other films, The Dry and the Dressmaker. Eric Bana on the first floor veranda of the local pub was not Minyip, any more than the war memorial to commemorate the Relief of Mafeking in the main street is. They are props – but they are not Minyip.

Backroads is undoubtedly entertainment, and rural Australia does have its identities, its eccentricities but it is pity that the series provides no thread, no clues to the reasons for their survival – and Australia has about 14,000 settlements with less than 1,000 people.

The diversification of cropping – is that the reason for Rupanyup? The occasional movie set – for Minyip?

Or else is there a more general reason for the persistence of settlements that you would have suspected to have outlived their reason to being, and yet not obviously changed their role?

El Obrero

I have become immersed in the Portuguese language, which is a somewhat schizophrenic pursuit. Most of the teachers – in Sydney at least – are Brazilian; my initial teacher has been a Portuguese national. There is a strong representation of both cultures through the respective communities in Sydney.

Therefore, I was intrigued for us to get together for lunch at the Portuguese Community Club, which is sequestered in the industrial area of Marrickville, an inner suburb of Sydney. The club is signified by a fading sign directing our car along a potholed pavement. The club has a grass area in front of the entrance resembling an old bowling green, but the building is squeezed between two railway lines, yet access is easy. No problem parking here, unlike most of suburban Sydney can be always very problematical

Inside the club it is very plain, and those at lunch were workers, some in their steel capped boots and hi-vis vests. Voluble in exchange in Portuguese it was just what it purported to be – a working man’s club. Our group of four were the interlopers, two were woman. Our garçom was a Nepali with a good grasp of Portuguese learnt paradoxically in Australia.

The food belied the surroundings. It was superb – my steamed clams – amêijoas also with an Italian label “vongole” in the menu, followed by grilled quail with the signature vinho verde to wash the food down.

The spare surroundings reminded me of another worker’s restaurant we were introduced to in La Boca in Buenos Aires. We had asked the driver if we could go to a place to eat which was typical of the “working La Boca”. He said nothing but just dropped us off in front of the nondescript building. After all, La Boca is a substantial port area, although it is known for tourists wandering the narrow streets with the gaudily painted buildings, street dancers performing the tango and stalls covered in cheap knick-knacks. All Porteno kitsch!

So different from the unprepossessing place with the barred windows, four-panel brown door and the old washed-out Coca Cola Sign juxtaposed against the green restaurant sign above the doorway.

Such a modest entrance, but once inside, the dining area was long and expansive. The walls were covered in photographs, including the obligatory one of Maradona. From the ceiling had been hung football shirts, from teams all over the world, like an international clothes line. We were early for lunch and were ushered to a table on the side where we could see the incoming tide of workers, who quickly filled up all the tables.

The Italian influence is strong in the menu; agnolotti, parmigiana, calamari – but the carafe was the local tinto. Nobody spoke English, but in the hubbub, it was easy to indicate what you wanted. We seemed to be the only tourists there; at least we seemed the only diners to be using sign language rather than just gesticulating.

Argentine dining is associated with the parilla – the Argentinian barbecue where it is all beef and firebox. El Obrero like the Portuguese Community Club are authentic restaurants– being able to settle down into a meal which is a cultural experience can never be topped. Yet then again I wonder whether it is possible, as a tourist, to ever be authentic, the truth of which I tried to verify as I riffled through my memories of countries where I have been. I wonder how many times you have to dine in a place to be authenticated – if that is the word.

Mouse whisper

Our surname, he said, was originally ascribed as Mac Aodhadáin around the 12^th century. This family are stated to be no ordinary people. They were bardic scholars and brehons – the interpreters of Irish Law. The extravagant statement that without this family, there should have been lost a precious part of Irish history. It was a name that percolated into eighteen Irish counties.

As the author of this family monograph opined “It has been said that a person’s own surname is the key to a doorway on the past. This is because one of the most interesting ways of gaining some insight into history is to follow the pathway of your own names through the maze of documents still preserved in various sources.”

Maybe, but as I found out, my Swedish mouse relative is known as Kyrkligaråtta not Kyrkomus as written in the last blog. A genuine erråtum, I’m afraid.