Chapter Eight: RUSHWORTH

Angie and Rushworth

I met Angie through her eccentric ex-boyfriend in Warrnambool. At the time she had a pottery studio on her parent’s Biodynamic dairy farm at Harston, in the Goulburn Valley near Shepparton. Her father was dying, he had a tumour on his face that was slowly eating it away. Her mother was ‘very good friends with another Biodynamic farmer and needed help to deal with her husband dying at home, from an intensely bad-smelling cancer.

Along I come, blindly, into a family in turmoil, and I could do no more than read the bible to her father, who was born in Italy and watch him die. I was the only one who saw what was under a huge gauze bandage covering the side of his face: veins, jaw bone, sinew and teeth. Cancer had eaten away half of his face and he refused any medical help, preferring to use natural medicine and prayer.

A year or two before he had a small mole cut off his face, which gradually returned. This time he refused to have it cut out again and tried natural cures. I had no idea when I met him, he had decided to die, rather than go back to the hospital. I also remember some of his friends coming to see him one evening, they were not allowed to come into the house. They grumbled empathetically about him needing to go to the hospital then left.

When I first met the family, he was still walking around and had enough strength to do a little bit of work in the garden, and watch some TV at night.  Everyone, hanging on to a thread of hope he may get better, until I saw what looked like a shotgun blast at close range, on his left cheek one night he asked me to help change his bandage.  Then I knew he wouldn’t be getting better, but had no way of telling the others, patiently waiting for some good news.

When I married Angie at the local lake, he was either too sick or unhappy to come. We had also moved into the Glasgow Buildings together and would visit him at home when we could. The vibes became more toxic as the smell from his cancer grew more unbearable by the day. Angie’s mother seemed to have a new boyfriend and Angie decided to move out and let nature run its course.

His death haunts me. It is in the ‘I am not sure, but I probably didn’t do enough basket,’ along with the others that inhabit my shadow. The night he died we were by his side, his wife Sandra and her boyfriend were not to be seen (for weeks), nor her brother Peter. Cancer had eaten through a large artery and he bled to death in front of us. An untimely death because the doctors could have cut off the mole a couple more times?

After he died, his estate was mainly given to his sinful son Peter, which left the family squabbling for years: as people often do over money.

Married at the lake and buying the building

There was a sign on the Glasgow Building advertising it for sale. We found this quite stressful because Angie and I both needed a stable home. The Glasgow Building is four beautiful shops, with tuck-pointed red brick on the outside, and hard plaster on the inside. The floors were wood and the ceilings which were over 10 feet high looked like cedar. It was listed as a heritage building, in need of preservation. We set up home in one of the shops because there was no attached residence. I made a temporary shower outside by wrapping black builders’ plastic around some wooden poles. I fixed an old gas hot water service to the wall, ran some copper pipe to the shower rose and for about $10 we had a shower. Going outside at night for a shower in winter was a lot of cold and shivering fun. Without a ceiling, you could see the stars through the hot steam coming off your body and the hot water. They were crystal stars. You could look at them in wonder for 30 minutes and revel in the hot steamy water, while everything else around was covered in thick frost and beginning to sleep. This was more profound (a deep connection with the universe) than those glances upwards when you exit your car at night and run from the bogey man to the house.

An experience similar to bathing in the hip bath in front of a roaring wood fire at Castlemaine. Looking back and back again, I remember the ocean, the fires, frost, stars, moon and sun. I loved being with nature much more than civilization because nature felt good and civilization felt bad.

There were three large open fireplaces. We used them to keep warm in winter for two decades. The warm, yellow, atmosphere the fires threw into the room contrasted with the fluorescent lights that batter your brain at work.

Sometimes, when a car parked in the street outside the shops, we would feel stressed thinking they had come to buy it. I eventually asked my father about buying the property and he said he could raise 30,000 dollars. The asking price was 80,000 dollars, we made an offer of 30,000 and they accepted it: they were desperate for money the exact time we made our offer. Wow, now I could renovate to my heart’s content. My father was a very kind man. He helped many people during his life as a ‘refrigeration man. Without his help, I would have been nothing. I learned from him the joy of giving, the benefit of herbs (better than doctors) how delicious organic food is, how to produce a life with your hands, teaching yourself what you need to know and how to cook—this is why I could never find answers in the bible because my father, who never went to church, found his way, using the power of his mind.

We had our starry night shower, the next job important job, a kitchen. The shops had a large veranda out the back. It ran from one side of the building to the other, zig-zagging around rooms, not the same size. I poured concrete for the floor, then using the veranda posts as supports clad the wall with weather-boards on the outside and pine lining boards on the inside. I fitted it out with an electric oven, sink and fridge using the same pine lining boards for the bench and oven. Angie didn’t like cooking much. Most nights after teaching at GOTAFE I would come home and cook dinner. Sadly, I didn’t believe in recipe books at the time, because every time I tried to use one, I didn’t have the ingredients I needed and Rushworth had a small grocery shop.

I cooked the same things every week: spinach pie, spaghetti, lasagna, sweet corn soup with egg, lentil stew and a conflagration curry. Turn back the clock, nothing much would have changed. I was teaching five days a week and photographing weddings on Saturday and Sunday. There was no ‘presence of mind’ to expand my culinary skills as it was always elsewhere. At least once a month a conflagration ended up in the bin. Sometimes my mind was not there to oversee the myriad of condiments needed, the alchemy of food needed by the alchemist to conjure. When this happened, the kids would walk down to the fish and chip shop and buy super greasy fish and chips. The first few mouthfuls were always yummy and equally so, the last ones always yukky. Now in my ancient days, I am still cooking spaghetti and pizzas and still cannot find, make, create time to learn how to cook.

When the kitchen was finished, I built in another part of the veranda similar to the kitchen. This would become the children’s bedroom. Their fighting place. A pit like room, where jealous children would unlove each other. When Cecelia was born four years after Reuben, he became uncontrollably jealous, mean, attention-seeking, bordering on mental. Any overt displays of love for Cecelia had to be done in the shadows and crevices of the house lest Reuben saw and attacked. I am sure he didn’t know his problem, if he did, he would have corrected it by the time they were teenagers: but no, it was worse. This brings in Buddha’s teachings about controlling your negative thoughts in case they take you to trouble. Stop them before they grow into monsters out of your control.

After their bedroom was finished, I started on Angie’s two-story Pottery studio—I was already working seven days a week. First, I poured the concrete floor. After that, I laid the bricks. The walls were double brick with pillars here and there to strengthen them. Willpower was necessary for all these jobs. Sometimes it was over 35 degrees when I donned my hat and trowel and laid another few rows of bricks. The rest of the family would stay inside, talk about how hot it is and drink heaps of sarsaparilla.

Going to war, over the trenches into a blistering wall of bullets, that’s how it felt. I think this is life-changing; when a man becomes a man and fights for a better life for himself and his family. Now, most people I know need an air conditioner to play computer games.

After the walls were finished, I needed help to put up the roof rafters and the corrugated iron on them. I can’t say why: maybe Angie needed her pottery studio finished sooner than later. Yes, within the bricklaying war there were causalities. Often visitors would come, or I would need to shoot a bride and groom and when it hit 40 degrees I would melt back inside.

The skills I learnt at Castlemaine, have been handy. Not only have I saved a lot of money, but I have also been able to go where non-builders cannot: off the grid. I put another brick in the wall instead of being one. The ability to step back, before entering a bank, and walking away, without borrowing money is freedom. When I needed a home, I built it using my gym philosophy, ‘why pay money to get fit when you can build a house. And it’s a good feeling knowing how much you can do with only an Estwing hammer, nail belt, Stanley chisel and a Disston saw.

Before I did though, we got married at the lake, on the edge of town. Everyone we knew came: my parents and ‘old friends and her family and ‘old friends’ too. Her father did not come, he was too sick. We had a friend read the ‘Owl and the Pussycat’ that at the time, ‘quaintly’ represented us. It was an original wedding ceremony. Everyone was standing under the most beautiful full moon, a few feet from the lapping stars in mercurial black.

Because Angie was a Libran, ruled by Venus and I am a Cancerian, ruled by the Moon, our good friend and Silversmith, Jan Donaldson made our rings with the Moon and Venus combined: I loved my ring.

After the kiss, we went into town to the Criterion hotel and feasted. Our wedding list was quite eccentric— it was an emotional experience seeing people I hadn’t seen for years. Friends left behind, every time I moved somewhere new. Warrnambool, Perth, Adelaide, Sydney, Melbourne, Castlemaine, Rushworth and Thailand.

George was there from the ‘Bricki’ in Castlemaine. He had an open house; everyone living in the hills of Castlemaine would visit him often for a smoke and a jam.

My first wife was there with our son. Jack Wilkins, a great and decorated photographer from Warrnambool was there.

Seeing all my friends was amazing and emotionally draining. Angie felt the same too. She had invited Winton an ex-friend, would-be lover. He was the one who introduced me to Angie, only a few months before. Winton was a good signwriter and loved the unusual things in life. The last time I saw him before the wedding was at his home. He had a big bound book on the Kabbalah and wanted to show us. It was full of pictures, symbols and Jewish religion. I was not interested, neither was Angie. We didn’t stay long and as I drove home, I wondered if he understood what was in the book and where he found it.

We left the reception early. Home was next door. I left the door open to the biggest shop that had carpet on the floors for them to sleep. I heard the next morning the party was a lot of fun. Some stayed the night in the hotel and most bunked in the shop until mid-morning. With mixed feelings, they all went home one by one. I was happy they came and devastated at the same time. My life has always taken me somewhere, leaving behind places, people and things. I loved my friends, but still betrayed them all with my absence. This same horror applies to my family as well.

If I had a career, my life would have been more stable. I never had a job long enough to keep me in one place for more than a couple of years. But now I have changed. Through endless, needless suffering: poverty, isolation, people dying, dogs dying and spirit borning my heart is working like, never before.

Children born at home

Our first child died before she was born. She was born dead at the Rushworth hospital. Our doctor told us we had to wait four weeks for her to be delivered naturally. One morning Angie woke up and knew she had died. The night before she had a stressful conversation with her brother’s wife. The baby was not moving. We went to the doctor and he sadly told us what we already knew, she was not alive anymore. Our firstborn had changed her mind. Our lives are mostly about children: love, to make them, food to feed them and shelter to keep them safe. Women are the womb keepers, life weavers and homemakers. When a child dies the clockwork of the universe seems broken and deranged. More so, before they have left the safety of their home, inside mum.

We lived each day before she was delivered like we were with her in her tomb. Normally the Earth would be singing, playing, shining and dancing, but not this week: it was all black.

Time does not heal. Seeing her beautiful face. Feeling what could have been, the day she came out. And a few days later, the image of her in a lace dress and lacey bonnet, tiny, lovely, in a small box, going into a small, infinite black hole, is stamped. Her name was Cecil. A few lousy years later, we think she came back, ready for life.

Life seemed kinder and more loving when two years later Reuben was born, at home.

Angie did not like the hospital and said she wanted her children to be born at home. We found the wonderful, lovely and special Dr Erhardt in Bendigo who did home births. The morning Angie was ready to have him, Dr Erhardt had gone snow skiing in the Victorian alps, four hours away, with his family. When we called him, he had already arrived and was parking his car. With grace, he turned around and drove back, much the same way he had come, after dropping his family off at the resort. We had a nurse. She arrived before the Doctor and had us all under her birth control. Angie was on all fours on the lounge-room floor, and I somehow got entangled, like you would in a wrestling match, to support her back—when he arrived around lunchtime. Reuben was ejected around two pm, alive, safe and handsome. No complications and relatively easy birth. Without all the hospital noises, smells, and interference I was able to be suspended in rapture when he came to earth.

The Doctor stayed for an hour after he was born then shot back up the mountains in time for dinner with his wife.

Angie had a nice hot shower while the nurse nursed Reuben. I was in the kitchen cooking vegetarian, lentil lasagna with a side salad of tomatoes, carrots and lettuce, drenched in olive oil, lemon juice, mustard and salt.

When the food was ready so was Angie. Sitting up in bed, holding Reuben. I gave her a tray of food and said I would take care of him while she eats. Wow, I have never seen her eat so quick and much. Welcome, Reuben.

Vaccines were on the agenda pretty quick. There was no way they were going to get vaccinated. My father suggested his homoeopath in Geelong, Dr Goldman, who had developed homoeopathic vaccines which were revolutionary back in 1988. It was our only choice, an easy one though because they were either getting nothing or his homoeopathic pills: nothing to lose, everything to gain. Reuben got his vaccines at home, a little round pill off and on over a few weeks.

Four years later Cecelia had another go at life here on Earth. Everything was the same as with Reuben. The doctor racing here, the midwife here already, the wrestling matches and breathing exercises, the seemingly easy delivery, the Lasagna and salad, except because this was her second attempt, we felt paid back, from the misery—to the joy. She was tiny compared to Reuben. After eating her food Angie cuddled up with Cecelia and I joined them. I was terrified I might crush her, so I lay down on the floor to rest instead. Angie decided to join me on the floor and there on a king-sized bed, wrapped and bundled in the middle of it, was Cecelia, on her own-some but safe.

The Forest and horses

The forest on the south of Rushworth is manly regrowth after it was decimated from gold mining in the 1850s. The black gnarly ironbark trees are especially beautiful. Other trees include red gum, red ironbark, red stringybark, yellow gum and grey box eucalypts.

It is hard to find big trees because as soon as the trees in the forest grow big, the Risstrom family come along and cut them down. The only undergrowth is coffee bushes: a green bush about a meter high. Any soil before gold mining has been washed away leaving a rocky clay surface, making it difficult for plants to grow.

It is really good for riding horses, there are dirt roads and tracks, crisscrossing the miles of forest. There are also many hills to race up and down for a better view. It was not a problem riding off the tracks because of the lack of undergrowth.

One memorable day we packed food and water into our saddlebags, donned our wide-brimmed hats, riding boots and rode into the forest, without a plan. We headed south without any idea most of the time where we were. An adventure for sure: feeling like a cross between cowboys and Australian Stockmen.

Because we went off the tracks and rode in the forest, between the trees and coffee bush, we came across old stone ruins, dams and gold mining remains that people haven’t seen in decades. After four hours we got to the southern part of the forest near Nagambie. There are two large hills, if you climb them, you can see for miles over the green farmland we had reached. We had ridden for four hours, more than 10 KS from home. We had driven to this spot before but never ridden to it.

Around 3 pm we decided to head home, using the sun as a guide. Sometimes we rode on the dirt tracks and others we cut through the forest. We were still at least two hours from home when the sun went down and we couldn’t see our hands in front of our faces. Luckily the horses knew, remembered? the way home. All we had to do was give the reins to the horse, and do our best not to be knocked off our horses by low lying tree branches or go through the spider webs, that had giant spiders, maybe not poisonous but big enough to eat small birds. The horses were keen to get home. This made them want to run, in the starless, moonless forest, making me pull on the reins and say whoa, whoa, which is a cowboy for, stop I don’t want to die. This stop and start between me and the horse went on and on until the horse didn’t like me anymore. Her name was ‘Little Brenda’.

The lights of town finally came into view and the horses started a non-stoppable, slow trot, wanting to get home desperately now they were so close. They were hungry and tired and so were we. This memory is one of my best. It is equal to the best surfing days and my immigration days in Shepparton with Maulidi and Jamila.

Waranga Basin

On the night we were married the Moon reflected herself on water, a wobbling black jewel. The Waranga Basin had more moods than anyone I knew. Passing between warm, yellow muddy water to an ocean-like blueness when the sun and moon struck its plastic skin. My friends visiting from the coast only saw the yellow mud which was a stark contrast to what I normally saw.

We (Reuben, Cecelia, Angie and I) would often go to the Basin for a swim, and crawl around in the mud; a far cry from the cold, aggressive Southern Ocean in Warrnambool that could toss you into a frothy bubble mix of fun. Never mind this reduction of wonder, the lake was still wet, a warm and muddy wet that still managed on a 40-degree day to be fun. Other spots on the other side of the lake were more blue, cold and deep, which refreshed you more. And, special moments when we went out to the middle in a boat and jumped into a cloud.

Reuben and Cecelia loved swimming in the basin; there were no sharks, the water was warm, especially near the edge and there were hundreds of different kinds of beaches you could drive to for a change of scenery. Some days the water stretched into the horizon giving the impression it was an ocean: but it was a large, man-made lake, an essential part of the Goulburn Valley irrigation system. There was a swimming pool in town, I think? But like Warrnambool, I preferred nature and peeless water.

Sometimes we rode the horses to the basin for a swim. They would love and hate it, like looking at cats and dogs swimming. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it swim. With patience and more patience and a little frustration, they would eventually go deep enough to enjoy a swim. I loved seeing them in the water, cooling down, having a bath and being free.

When Peter and Sue Lucas visited us not long after visiting the Dali lama in Daram Masala, India, we went to the basin for a swim. They had become Buddhists, their minds, now always inside the Dharma, creating beautiful thoughts, while ours were gleefully paying homage to the raw forest and lake surrounding Rushworth: not beautiful for any of us, but our minds created it so.

Angie’s brother, Peter, inherited the family farm. It was his father’s dream, for him to continue on all the good work he had done. It took Carmine 30 years of hard yakka to pay the bank back for the farm and only days for Peter to swap it all for toys. A speedboat was one of them a hang glider another. I had a chance to learn to ski on some of the beautiful blue-sky afternoons, skimming across the clouds and heaven. I felt like a surfer again, flying on fast water, tumbling into it when errors abound, like a dolphin loving to play water. This was all before Mario Kart and ROV, when boys and girls were girls and boys, seeking real adventure before parents closed the curtain to the world of potential strangers.

Now, all aquatic adventures have stopped. Apart from the odd splash in a small bath, in a confined bathroom. Lying, legs not straight enough, topping up water because the overflow is too low, and inviting my love to share this wonderful watery dream, is sustainable too, as long as my age knows the past is another’s, already. To dream of past joys is to kill the Buddhist, now, moment that has the potential to infuse any simple action into an enormous, universal state of being: our actions on earth are not comparable to a black hole unless we go there.

Rushworth

Rushworth was a boring old gold mining town when I moved there—Barney Barnbrook and I changed all that. Without the forest and the basin, life in redneck Rushworth would have been total hell. It is a historical town; many buildings are protected by the Victorian National Trust, like the Glasgow Building that we just bought.

The main street is wider than London, with enough grass running down the middle to play cricket. Every building on either side of the street had been classified as historic, red brick masterpieces of architecture, back when time didn’t cost much. The Glasgow building, the museum the post office, bakery, butcher shop, Criterion Hotel, the gay ballet dancers next door, Community House and April’s awesome jazz café, to name a few. Up the hill, the large community hall, police station and picture theatre and courthouse.

Most of the town hated us. We were tarnished with some hippy, some artist, a bit of musician and a lot of we were not born here. Interlopers that hadn’t seen a footy match in 20 years.

I kept to myself most of the time, an easy thing to do because I didn’t belong to the local football team. All social events in town seemed related to a pigskin, lots of mud and ‘real men’. Like Religion I flirted with the idea of joining until logic got in the way.

Coming home from Shepparton after a day of teaching photography was a contemplative journey: flying from coal mine to family, like a lion bringing home meat to hungry mouths oblivious of the how? Luckily the years rolled on one pack of Doritos after the other. The children would grow like any well-fed bulb, while their parents, made pots, played jazz and taught.

The crescendo of growth and maturation took my hearts away. Reuben and Cecelia would leave to go to university and work. He would study piano in Melbourne and Cecelia would toss well dressed Tequila in a trendy bar in Shepparton.

The most memorable family event after their release took place on a Christmas Day, around 7:30 am when an Italian farmer called to say your daughter just crashed her car. Then, Cecelia got on the phone to say she was ok and could we come and get her. We took off our Christmas cheer and drove around 20 k’s to the house where she sought help.  When we got there, we could see her car, all smashed up and broken beyond repair, sitting in a nest of rubbish, clothes and torn Christmas parents.

She was driving home from the bar at 7 am and fell asleep at the wheel. It had gone off the road and was heading for a tree, just before she hit it, she woke up, and swerved; the car rolled, and flew and landed on the other side of the road. Somehow, she survived. We looked in the car and on the road for any rubbish that survived then went to the house nearby. A very lovely Italian woman, a farmer, was taking care of Cecelia and greeted us with the painful joy of survival, at cost. Cecelia was shaken greeting us with hugs and loves and sorries. The woman, quite an angel, gave us a glass of whiskey and we saluted the day of all days this happened.

Her husband appeared I think he woke up and was equally lovely and comforting: another glass of whiskey? We stayed for an hour then went home to celebrate Cecelia’s life on Christmas Day. The farmer offered to get his tractor and tow the car off the road into his farm. Later in the week we would go back and look at the car and its salvage. There was no way Cec would ever drive it again. So, in between the photo studio, galloping horses, duck diving in a swamp and playing with Miles Davis all the years uselessly spent in this place would not matter because Cecelia was spared.

The Barnbrooks

Barnbrook was a music teacher, Angie played classical saxophone and I used to play Irish music on an old Gibson mandolin—so we started a jazz band. This band would be populated with music teachers within months: I was the only one who couldn’t play. Even though I taught Angie how to improvise jazz using the pentatonic scale, I couldn’t teach myself jazz theory for guitar. The only chance I had of surviving within this professional band was to find a shortcut to jazz, and I did. Barney copied 30 jazz tunes he wanted to play, some of them had chord changes every second beat like Bm7b5dim3, chords that Chet Atkins would trip over and die. For a week I studied the books and found the 10 most common chords in every song and started to learn them first: c6, dm7, am7, e7, f6, bm7, a9, em7 and d9. Then I would pour through chord books looking for the easiest chord position to play them and voila: a mediocre jazz guitarist was born.

The band became very popular; we were booked most weekends. Barney and Angie were both flamboyant musicians; they loved chortling like sparrows on heat (piano, saxophones and clarinet) while I polished my nails with dm7 over and over again.

Around a year later, we started the Possum Walk. We invited actors, singers and chefs from around the Goulburn Valley to create a cacophony of art and culture every weekend in the little old town of Rushworth. We also had a ghost walk. A guide would take a group up and down the street visiting houses and pubs that have had ghosts in the past. And a real Possum Walk, looking for Possums. The local café usually filled up by 6 pm. The food was delicious and Andrew found a great range of local red wine. Our jazz band (can’t remember the name) often played with only four of us: Barney, Angie, Me and Roger the drummer. More than enough to create a cut able, touchable atmosphere of fun and excitement.

Recently my son sent me a video of him playing jazz on his new guitar. He is an amazing guitarist. Even though he studied piano at university, I prefer his guitar playing. In his video he set down a piano part, then a bass part. Then improvised jazz on top. His level of skill is 90% which makes mine 20%. One thing I have never been able to do is to learn a technique: writing, photography, jazz and cooking. I have bought a lot of books on these subjects and never read one of them. I don’t know why I am like this. The upside is that I can think of creative and intuitive ways to do things without learning how to do them. I never learned one tune all the way through, the opposite to Reuben. I still can’t play happy birthday. When we played jazz, I spent the night glued to my photocopies in an A4 plastic pocket folder. On the copies, I had chord diagrams and messy marks to tell me when to repeat a section. I could not read music, especially the notation for repeats and stops. My brain works on the right side. You can do a test by tearing a penny-sized hole in an A4 piece of paper, holding it out at arm’s length and looking at something like a door handle or a book on the bookshelf.   Close your right eye, can you still see it? If you can, then that means you are right-brained because your left eye is connected to your right brain. Being right-brained means I have had difficulty remembering things, doing anything logical, following scripts and commands.  This is good and bad, I guess. The left brain is logical, analytical and the right brain intuitive and creative.

Once you know which hemisphere of your brain is the most prominent you can adapt your life accordingly. If you are right-brained then you need to do two things. The first is to mainly focus on careers and studies that complement your particular hemisphere. The second is to understand your particular bent, so when you have to do things that are the opposite of your hemisphere then you will have to try harder to achieve a good result. This works both ways. Right-brained artists will benefit from some structure and attention to detail. Left-brained scientists will benefit from trusting their intuition more.

My solution for the jazz band as explained above turned a complete novice jazz guitarist into a competent player in two weeks. But it had a lot of pitfalls too. The other musically trained members of the band would be furious at me, for not even knowing what 4/4 time is. On the upside, I could play jazz rhythm all night, like a brush cutter, while they fulfilled their improvisational fantasies. Me, being the hack, gave them more time to show off their ponies.  No one else played rhythm, I had to do it. Because of this I never learned how to play melody jazz. Because I had no rhythm behind me to blend the sounds and to improvise with—pretty much the same drama back when I was playing in the bush band. Without someone playing rhythm, I could not play all those Irish jigs like the Irish Washer Woman. To this day, I don’t know if I had rhythm backup if I could have pulled off the melody parts or not, I never got the chance to find out. If you want to play music, check your brain first, make a plan, then go for it. Even though I was the brush cutter of jazz, playing music with a few friends every week is a lot of fun. We usually played in small clubs and bars, who supplied free wine and food—better than staying at home watching TV.  All the time I played jazz, during the day I taught photography in college. I loved coming home and having a rehearsal once a week, even though Barney would turn up with a few copies of two new songs he had already rehearsed and Angie I had no idea how to play them. He often got impatient and frustrated because we couldn’t play them straight off the sheets. For me, it was always what the f…. is this chord (Ebm8dim2) and my fingers couldn’t reach the notes.  We didn’t have a bass end so I learned jazz bass too. I bought a beautiful fender precision bass and took out the frets, filled the holes with wood putty and preceded to play fretless bass even worse than my guitar. The theory behind playing jazz bass: walking through the notes of each chord, I could understand but the implementation was horrific. So, I played a jazz pentatonic scale and my right brain made it all up. Not good, not bad. 

Then one day the town went quiet again. Barney moved to Narooma with his family. His daughter Amy was born with no arms and no legs, only a small foot. He had an ultrasound which detected this problem early on in the pregnancy. The technician failed to see it and so Barney sued them for a million dollars. With that money, he bought a new car, saxophones galore, mountains of pizza and built on to his house.  Eventually moving house to Narooma. I think Amy liked swimming and paddling so they took her to a paradise of water and opened a resort. I have heard Amy has since got her degree in music and is an Olympic sailing champion. Look her up Amy Barnbrook, Narooma. Angie is pottering away in her studio making Guinea Fowl pots, look her up too. Angie Russi, Rushworth. Now Reuben is the king of jazz guitar, in a week, maybe he and his mother will join forces and jazz will chortle from Rushworth’s rafters once again. I hope so.

Tammy Muir

I met Tammy Muir and Sue Logie through the Goulburn Valley Environment Group. They live on the edge of the Barmah Forest and the Murray River. At the time they were quite famous because of the Superb Parrot Project. Tammy was a … generation cow farmer and because of that, he was a natural bush poet. Tammy is a man. A group of farmers get together and help each other plant a particular kind of wattle along their boundary fences to encourage the endangered Superb Parrot to feast and breed. Amazingly this worked well.  For more than 20 years these ecological farmers have been doing something worthwhile. They have won awards, rightly so, even from humans. Tammy and I decided to do a documentary on the Superb Parrot project and distribute it to schools to inspire all the generations coming to get off their arse and do something good. I bought an old Sony M7 which needed two people to carry: then we were into it. We would drive around the Barmah Forest looking for the parrots, with me and the M7 standing in the back of his Ute hoping to capture a very rare moment: seeing Superb Parrots.

We eventually captured enough footage which I had to edit on my Windows computer: was there Windows before XP? My computer had a 500 MB hard drive and 1 MB of memory. I would hook up a cable from the M7 cassette player/recorder, the size of an inkjet printer and capture the footage to my hard drive using an obscure Russian program. It was a day-mare. I could only capture a few minutes then I would have to copy it to a CD, delete and start again. Somehow, I managed to copy it all back again to burn CDs. After we finished the ‘doco’ Tammy built a straw bale house with solar power.

Steiner

The Goulburn Valley was a major centre for Rudolf Steiner farming and education in Australia. Farry Greenwood used to be the inspiring leader of this movement.  Supported by Alex Podolinski from Powelltown, Victoria. When Farry needed more cool storage for his apples and pears he built a cool room the size of a swimming pool using mud bricks. Every year the Biodynamic Society would have a field day at the Greenwoods Orchards at Merrigum. Existing farmers would come and bring interested neighbours, which is how Angies’s father Carmine got involved and transformed a traditional dairy farm into a Biodynamic one.

Biodynamic farming is a higher octave of organic farming. Rudolf Steiner from Germany ‘discovered’ the value of mixing certain organic ingredients (cow poo…?), stuffing them into old cow’s horns and burying them on a full moon. This would create a homoeopathic like a dose of nutrients, once mixed with water and sprayed on the soil, on another full moon, that would support, nourish and encourage all the microorganisms in the soil to thrive, making the soil incredibly fertile, natural, healthy and would produce the most delicious pears and apples unknown to humankind. Biodynamic produce was popular in Melbourne and commanded a premium price. I don’t know if that’s why they became Biodynamic farmers or they were more ethical about sustainable agriculture than Monsanto: I think the latter.

Carmine’s wife Sandra became a Steiner kindergarten teacher. Her first kindergarten was in Mooroopna and was extremely popular. Steiner’s philosophy of education (there are Steiner schools all over the planet) is based on his spiritual understanding of life which included supporting the whole child—not another brick in the wall—with healthy diets, forays into nature, creativity and a more modern view of Christianity: one that makes sense without being a Christian.

After Carmine died Sandra bought land in Rushworth near us and built a stone house. She started a Steiner kindergarten in Rushworth: or took over the existing one? Reuben and Cecelia went to her kindergarten in Rushworth which was lovely, but they both collided with the local state primary school, which was full of bullies when they left. Cecelia hated it. I became a monster every morning we walked to school together, always 30 minutes late; so much like going to your execution and having a priest singing the praises of heaven—I was much the same as Cecelia at school. I felt surrounded by bully shadows and loud actions which would permeate my soul with holes. The Graham Street Primary School I attended that skipped and jumped me in the first two years would later on (three years) would tie a red ribbon in my hair for eating too loudly in the canteen. I would have to educate myself.

Sandra’s husband, John, unwanted and raw, loved Steiner too. His thing, being a Scorpio, was compost. Over two or three years he built a mountain of vegetable—mainly tomatoes—waste that came from the surrounding canneries. I never knew why, apart from the fact he was a Scorpio and Scorpions loved waste, death, and transformation. It was probably a grand idea; funded by his loving wife, with no chance of being financially supportive of himself. He could have had a peaceful life; his demands to expand his business and spend more money on infrastructure, eventually fell on deaf, nonexistent ears. They separated and he went to live somewhere else. It was a sad and happy time: he had his good points which were lost with his bad ones.

A year later she met a retired farmer, Terry. He was a member of a freedom group, The Australian League of Rights, and just like John would preach his cause (John wanted me to be a Steinarian) he had the same quizzical, superior bend on his eyebrows as John, every time I seemed ignorant of his words: stupid. He and Sandra moved to Tatura, into a large brick house with a lot of lawns. They enjoyed a peaceful retirement life. Sandra would tend the garden with her green thumb and Terry would be on his computer creating leaflets to hand out on quiet disinterested streets. His term titty-tainment stuck with me for 20 years; his quite perfect way to describe how most people in the world enjoy enslavement as long as they have a TV or computer. After just a few short years Terry died from prostate cancer, going, quietly, bravely and gone.

15 years later Sandra is still living alone. Tending her garden, reading Steiner books and having cups of tea with Angie.

Aboriginals

The Goulburn Valley belongs to the Aboriginal groups: Yorta Yorta, Bangerang, Kalitheban, Wollithiga, Moira, Ulupna, Kwat Kwat, Yalaba Yalaba and Nguaria-iiliam-wurrung clans, all of which spoke the Yorta Yorta language that were living happily on the Goulburn River before the Christians came. Their lives, snuffed out by the British Empire, who culturally snuffed my life from birth.

If I am snuffed, I will belong to the majority of the world’s population that have died at the hands of the snuffers: big monkeys on horses with banging powder and hollow sticks. Yes, I am tired; of old age and the stupidity following me. I know the world is good and people are not. Everyone I know is better than me: their car, their house, their clothes, their brains, their bank. With one big breath, I would Noah the world with equality, wisdom and love: maximize, make human potential burst forth, like a rose can do and we cannot. My desperation grows: my son is also better than me. I genuinely cannot agree with what the Europeans have done to the world. Their civilization of nuclear war wilts my life, home, family and everything that I love.

The global merchants that live off our labours are cruel, evil and misrepresent any good found in the bible. Like the Tibetans and Ugyers being beaten to work in Chinese factories—so are we in ours. It will take centuries for stupid ‘white people’ to understand just how much better… Aboriginals, American Indians and Maoris are than them: born before the bible. The Rothschild family own and control the world along with other banking families and corporations.   

Angie Russi and Jan Donaldson

Two women, living on dairy farms only a few kilometres away from each other, decided to study art at RMIT at the same time. Angie studied ceramics and Jan studied gold and silversmithing. When they graduated, they came back home, built studios, and honed their craft. After a few years, Angie moved to Rushworth and set up shop and Jan moved to Burnside, built a wooden cottage and studio on the Goulburn Valley Highway. They were both lucky to accomplish these goals; art is not a lucrative business in Australia. To supplement their meagre incomes they became teachers, art projectors, and community artists.

Art had a history once, which has now gone to the same place as wisdom and talent: the past. Angie and Jan had a foot in two worlds, always struggling to be relevant. I witnessed the pain of this first hand: the hours creating masterpieces that virtually no one would see. The empty bank accounts too, that needed filling by people working in the ‘real’ world. Souls, light receding, wonder and beauty decreasing, like a sunset, then conforming, bankable, rising then falling into a personal orb of influence.

Their demise into this state of being was duly noted. Since I left them, my creativity has blossomed because I now know that it (creativity)needs to be free of worldly affairs. Reuben and Cecelia fight the same fight, losing every battle, but not over yet.

GOTAFE Photography Teacher

My first job in Rushworth had to be portrait photographer, extraordinaire because I couldn’t do anything else. We had plenty of empty shops to build a darkroom in and open a studio.  I couldn’t print colour photographs so all my portraits had to be in black and white. To supplement the studio portraits, I expanded to wedding photographer extraordinaire. They were mainly black and white, but I shot a roll or two of colour to get a nice balance of old and modern. My cameras were Mamiya’s. An RB67 and an RZ. The extra detail of a 6×7 cm negative was awesome: not as much as Ansell Adam’s view cameras which were 5″x7″ though. The equipment was expensive, for such a small enterprise as mine. Photographers spend 1000, s of dollars on just one camera. My budget was less than a field mouse’s diet. A conundrum: I had to have the gear to make money, yet, I had to have money, to buy the gear, to make money.

Like many photographers, I expressed my artistic inadequacies and shortcomings by buying and thinking about gear. It is only in my 60’s I have finally discovered my inner voice, my intuition, and now I can start again from a place I should have been when I was 18. This is both joyful: better late than never, and sad knowing how, for years I missed my heart, never to know it well, and used it in a very negative and childish way. Sure, I can say that this life of mine has been about finding my heart. Where was it hiding? Without the help of my current wife, I would die without any improvement, my heart would have died incognito, the same condition at birth.

My wife has been patient enough to show her heart to me every day until mine started flickering. Now I can see hers, beating, and mine more each day. Time, it is taking time to change my life forever. I knew something was missing in my life. I dipped my toe into religion: Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism, and realized that I couldn’t find an answer in religion; it had to be in daily life where simple daily relationships: people, animals and nature, where my actions could be tested, refined and transformed. Now my motto in life is: “simple love, simple art and simple me.”

The photo business was pretty good and because of it, I got a full-time job teaching photography to Goulburn Valley Aboriginals at a college in Shepparton. I would then go on to teach photography in the art department.

Teaching was a new experience. I liked it a lot. It would take a long time for me to realize students needed to use their time in my class taking photos and processing them, not listen to me talking about technical things life f-stops and shutter speeds. They were also studying painting, drawing, art history and pottery. Trying to find a balance between theory and practice was a miserable thing: their attention span was around five minutes. It was different with the older students, the thieves and murderers, at Dhurringile Prison that I taught every Wednesday morning.

They loved (eight students) sitting in a cosy informal way, smoking prison tobacco and talking about Ansel Adams, the Zone System and any photographic theory that would help them master their art. One of them was already an accomplished painter. There was also a French journalist (Mr Bogais) and a cat burglar. It was wonderful and still is, teaching people who want to learn. Because of their interest and existing skills, they went on to have a wonderful art exhibition at the Shepparton Art gallery, which was opened by the Victorian Minister for Prisons and the Director of GOTAFE where I taught: brilliant.

Their work was incredibly good. They took photos of each other in the prison, still lives and scenery. Using the Zone System, for a sunny day, overexpose 1 stop and under-develop 1 stop; their pictures were as smooth as silk. This reduces contrast: overexposure lightens the dark shadows and underdevelopment keeps detail in the highlights. You can reverse this process to increase contrast on very flat overcast days: underexpose to make the blacks darker and overdevelop to make the whites whiter. You can do it in increments of 1,2 or 3 stops depending on how contrasty or how flat the original scene is. This is before computers and photoshop. I must say photoshop will never be as good as Ansel Adams.

Unfortunately, the constant daily barrage of commands for each department to reduce costs meant that Jan Donaldson, Gold and Silversmith, and I were made redundant. This was a shock for me because under the pressure of teaching full time I let my studio and wedding work go. Like an English coal miner, I was left in a row of hungry people not knowing what the future holds,

Cecelia

Four years after Reuben, Cecelia popped out on the same floor as him, with the same doctor and midwife. She slept on our bed the first night by herself because we didn’t want to squash her. Our first baby, before Reuben, died a week before she was due. Now Cecelia had arrived safely the second time around. Yea, the same soul a second landing—we both thought this. I never asked Angie if she had an abortion before she met me. I knew the abortion I pressured on Pamela would have to be paid for in blood and tears. But, why would Angie, the one carrying the deceased baby for a week have to go through this hell? Unless there were things I didn’t know. When Cecelia came into our lives, my life, I felt God had forgiven me, thank you, God. I had walked through fire and out the other side into blue skies and birds. And so, Cecelia blessed our lives with happiness as did Reuben. She had an innocence that made life as a family worthwhile and relatively peaceful. When I think back to her as a bumpkin, I always see her with the sun behind her, wearing a pink T-shirt and diapers. In her outstretched hand a green hose emitted a fine spray onto the flowers in the garden. The sun behind the water and her hair made the scene sparkle with shimmering light fairies. I saw her captured inside the light, like an angel.

She liked going to her Grandmother’s Steiner Kindergarten two minutes’ walk away. She didn’t like going to St Mary’s Catholic School up the hill behind our house. I never knew exactly why, maybe she didn’t know how to verbalize it as a kid. It is something I need to ask her again, now she is 30 years old.  Sister Geraldine, the Catholic principle of the school loved being the singing nun, mainly opera. I liked sister Geraldine a lot, but, Reuben and Cecelia hated the school that their parents malevolently sentenced them to. We were not Christians. Any morning I didn’t go teaching, I woke up Cecelia, cooked her breakfast, and at around 10 am walked her to her doom. The school hassled me nearly every day about Cecelia being late and I said there was nothing I could do.  Angie’s mother Sandra had something to do with this. She thought a Christian school would be good for them—I had no idea. Some people say that nuns make great teachers and others say priests make great lovers. The priest in Rushworth loved sister Geraldine too. He would have to be the most eccentric priest I have ever met. For that, I loved him more. So, the Catholic thing in Rushworth got nearly 10 out of 10 as far as I was concerned. And 0 out of 10 from the kids.

After primary school, they went to Rushworth High School, on a different hill across town. Reuben led the charge four years before Cecelia. He liked it after Catholic school and made friends quickly.  

I took them to different valleys, every Saturday and Sunday, to learn ballet and piano. Reuben and Cecelia studied piano at Cate Furphy’s school of music. This usually meant a fifteen-minute drive to Colbinabbin to the beautiful Furphy ranch on Sunday morning. Her husband Clem loved to sing and he could sing extremely well. Clem and Cate started the Gobarup Players in the middle of nowhere. They were an acting and singing troupe that performed around the Goulburn Valley. One night I took my cousin John and his son Angus who called in to see us on their way back to Sydney after seeing a football match in Melbourne, to see one of their plays, Dimboola. A play by the Australian author Jack Hibberd, which premiered in 1969 at La Mama Theater under the direction of Graeme Blundell. The whole action of the play supposedly takes place at a real wedding at which the actors represent the families of the bride and groom and the audience are ” guests”. The audience sat at tables like at a real wedding and the play went on around us. John and Angus loved it. At half time we went to get some strawberry Pavlova, ice cream and jelly. John and Angus woofed down this forbidden food (back in Sydney anyway) and remarked with a giant smile, this is a quaint touch to the play.  I laughed inside because Pavlovas and jelly were common in this neck of the woods, not forbidden, but worshipped and adored. People still worked hard around here; a big piece of Pavlova would burn up in minutes.

Every year the Gobarup Players put on a great show. Clem with his long white hair and beard, looked like a Russian woodcutter and sang like a star. Cate played the piano for all the scenes and songs. 

Every year Cate had a piano concert for her students. Reuben and Cecelia did very well. Reuben went on to study piano at university and is now making his own one-man-band jazz recordings with him playing the piano, jazz bass and jazz guitar.

On Saturday mornings Cecelia studied ballet. She did very well with her dancing until she suddenly stopped. Friday nights Reuben went to Air Cadets. He loved dressing up and marching around and around… He eventually had some flying lessons which he also loved.

Cecelia finally escaped from Sister Geraldine and went to Rushworth High School. She didn’t like it so after a couple of years she travelled with me to Shepparton and studied at a much bigger school. She enjoyed art subjects a lot. Sadly, her experience with the school could have been identical to mine. She didn’t connect with it all.

I often visited Shepparton Camera House to try out new cameras and pickup photographs. One awesome day Cecelia came with me. While I talked to the staff about camera shit, she played with an Apple computer and edited a movie. She would have been 15 years old.  Strangely a few weeks later a man from the shop called and asked if Cecelia could come to the shop and show them how to use the film editing suite on their Apple. Cecelia happily obliged and went on a training mission.

After she finished high school, she got a job making cocktails in a downstairs Shepparton bar. This is where she met her husband, Rodney. She did this job for three or four years. Then she moved to Melbourne to study filmmaking. This is something she is brilliant at and a few years ago one of her short films got into the Cannes Film Festival.  She flew to Europe for the premiere.

She hasn’t made another one since. Pressures of paying bills get to you, so does not find your niche. Well, she found her niche, but the niche artistically needed to find a niche commercially. I think that is where she is up to now. I love her, always have, and could not be prouder.  If you have ever had an artist child or are one, then it is the hard but good road you travel. Recently she said she may have a baby next year. I asked if she had any concerns, she said the world is fucked, I said it has always been fucked, so I am hoping to be a grandfather in 2022. Cec, I love you so much and bless you with a wonderful future. And I meant what I said about you being a film poet. You don’t have to make blockbuster movies. Make small meaningful ones that people can understand and grow from.  I told her I loved her movies, especially the one where the woman talks to a fish in a fish tank while her partner is sleeping with one eye open. I told her how much that made me think about relationships and how critical it is, to be honest and open right from the start so everyone knows where they stand. And how many couples become distant and eventually split because they cannot merge their romantic feelings, with the family thing and friendship: but they should and can. These days I can speak well with my wife and it is getting better all the time.  I make the effort to tell her how I feel about most things. Now, for the very first time, I feel a strong connection with the person I love. And all the woeful years, hideously spent, are now worth something because they are the steps on the way. And my way has been too long. But it is also joyful to still make progress when your hair is falling out.

Reuben

Reuben is the firstborn at home with Dr Erhardt. He came out of one world into ours, pretty strong and ready to go. I loved seeing him come into the world naturally, at home and in peace. I helped his mother with her breathing and cooked her a big lasagna after he landed on Earth. Dr Erhardt did a magnificent job.

I didn’t see him much in the first three years though, I had to work seven days a week. Five days teaching photography and two days in my photography studio. In the studio, I did old-time dress ups, family portraits and handed over my finished wedding albums to happy customers.  Out of the studio, I did black and white weddings using my trusty Mamiya RB67. At night we had time to play after I cooked dinner for everyone.  Usually, spinach pie or spaghetti.

Reuben loved playing with his matchbox cars in the sandpit out the back. He also loved our attention. Four years went fast for me, work, work, work. Somebody had to pay the bills.  And pretty slow for Angie who was hankering to get back to her studio full time and make more spotty fowl.

When Cecelia arrived four years later, we had to divide our time between both of them. For a busy teacher and a ceramic artist, this would be difficult. One fateful day Angie said she wanted to go back to work in her studio. Could I stop one of my well-paid jobs so she can make art? I stopped my photographic business not long after she asked me and stuck with teaching. At least she could work at weekends while I looked after the kids. This worked OK for six months until the Art Department told Jan and I they couldn’t afford to employ us anymore.  I came home without a job. My business is no more. Angie’s understandable, but impractical request sent us straight to the poor house. I didn’t work for at least a year. We had to survive on the Dole. I eventually found entirely different work as a work for dole coordinator.  During this time, we were poor. Angie didn’t make any money selling her art but had to do it anyway, her passion.   I had all the time in the world to play Mario Cart with Reuben and his friends, watch cricket and Stargate. Reuben and Cecelia went from normal kids to poor kids for a few years.  I hated it so much. Before this happened, I could bring in more than enough money, now I had to search for a dollar to buy chips for dinner. We survived somehow.

One day Reuben decided to learn guitar and formed a band with a couple of schoolmates called NTRDVRTX. The band went ballistic-ally successful.  Reuben and his friend Alex Greenwood wrote some very good songs and Reuben could perform (biting the guitar strings) to his heart’s content. We spent years and dollars supporting his musical and artistic pursuits.  First driving him to piano lessons then going to his live concerts and photographing them. Eventually, the band split up when Reuben went to university in Melbourne to study piano and never came back. During his studies, he joined a band, El Moth, with an ex Shepparton musician and singer, Tim Smith. “Spawned from the remnants of an empty long neck of Melbourne Bitter, El Moth dusted its wings and flapped its way around the underground party scene in 2008. The boys quickly became known as one of the hottest party bands in town, providing the soundtrack to many a memorable night. After playing in alleyways, parks, warehouses, lounge rooms and backyards with jam sets of anywhere up to 5 hours, the boys decided to see what would happen if they tried to write some actual songs. Their efforts have not gone unrecognized, and in the last 2 years they have played a bunch of festivals around Victoria (Folk Rhythm and Life, Apollo Bay, The Hills Are Alive, Cool Summer…) and have just completed a 2-month residency at The Evelyn with a sold-out final show. Come and see why El Moth has been hailed as one of the city’s finest party bands, and have a boogie to their funked up rockin’ reggae extravaganza”.

Band members. Tim Smith – VOX/Guitar, Zane Stradling – Guitar, Reuben Russi – Keys, Nick Ohlson – Bass, Leon Tussie – Drums 

I loved going to the pub to see them play and buying all the musos some beer. After a gig, we would pig out on Turkish Kebabs and sleep.

By the time Reuben left El Moth he knew he needed a real job to pay real bills and buy real food. He got one selling Star Wars dolls and after ten years recently left. He notably, at the same time, got his teaching degree.

Then his travels overseas to Europe and Los Angeles to visit friends became a regular habit. His last trip took him to Spain before Covid-19 spun out of control where he finished the last six months of his Masters of Business that he started in Melbourne 18 months earlier. Maybe with a week to go, he had to get out of Spain before it became a prison. He flew to waiting pots of beer in London before just making it back into Australia before they locked that up too.

He then spent an introspective two weeks in quarantine with his mother in Rushworth. This had to be a good time to get into some art and he did. Now every month he pops out a nice painting that he often gives to grateful friends.  He gave up his music for a few years while he studied and travelled, maybe wondering if he would ever play again. Luckily, he is. In the past six months, he has bought a couple of guitars and organs and he is writing music again. He is a natural composer. Cecelia is in Melbourne too. She works at professional movie equipment hire place during the week and walks the dog at weekends. I hope she makes another movie soon. Both Reuben and Cecelia are very talented.  And it is often talented people who stick to their true course, the soul way, of their art, often oblivious to material concerns but one day will be rewarded for their honesty and grit. Look him up, Reuben Russi.

Work for the Dole Coordinator

I didn’t know what to do for a few months: shocking and depressing. But, one day, I saw an advertisement for a Work for the Dole Coordinator. Because I had been teaching at GOTAFE they were happy to give me a job which was working with mainly 20-year old’s who had been unemployed for a long time, doing projects like publishing books and fixing computers.

The first book was about people immigrating to the Goulburn Valley from Italy, Greece, Holland and Albania. The participants interviewed different people, recorded what they said and then edited it. It is called, ‘A suitcase full of Dreams.” We had 30 printed, which we gave to the local library and the immigrants who told their stories. The second book was about the Orchardists, most of them were immigrants, who bought 100 acres of land, planted apple and pear trees and hung in there until an irrigation scheme was developed. Some of the early orchardists planted grapes but they were wiped out by disease, never to be replanted.

Water was channelled from the Goulburn Weir, 30 miles away into the Waranga Basin and then onwards to Shepparton, Mooroopna and Echuca. This book was published the same as A Suitcase Full of Dreams. The Shepparton Library was ecstatic to get these books.

The last project, before I moved onto Mission Australia, was fixing old computers. Old windows machines were donated from businesses and schools. We would harvest all the good parts and make one good computer out of three old ones. This was not a good project: everyone took part in creating the books, but only one person had the technical knowledge to repair the computers. I was glad to move onto Mission Australia, at the time.

Mission Australia

Mission Australia helped people in the community in various ways. They were funded by Government contracts for specific things, like finding work for African refugees. The Goulburn Valley was quickly becoming the number one destination for refugees from the Congo, Sudan, Afghanistan and Iraq. An incredibly diverse community for a city of 20,000 people: decades before it became home for thousands of Italians, Albanians, Turks and Dutch.

I was immediately helping them get their driving licenses, finding them work, and organizing them to study in the trades. It was wonderful meeting people from all over the planet; this was before I became cynical about refugees: they lacked the same dogged persistence and determination to make a life that the earlier immigrants had.

Deo Musafari, a Congolese leader blessed me with his charming presence on my first day. He wanted an international license so he could drive his new BMW the government had recently bought for him. We went to the Roads Department together. We were told he could get one, then told wait a minute, no he can’t. Many refugees took this kind of crap as a yes and drove their cars everywhere. If the police stopped them, they would say they were waiting on their international license. And the police didn’t have a clue either.  No one knew for sure if they could drive or not.  My first experience with Mission Australia filled my heart with contentment. I loved helping people, and the refugees pouring in from Afghanistan and Africa loved getting it.   My work came in cases. I specialized with refugees as I would later when I worked at GOTAFE. I had normal Aussies too—I didn’t like them much. They didn’t have the zingidy zing zang the refugees had. Many of them smoked weed every day and expected the tax payer to take care of them. The refugees loved God and lived by the ten commandments. They dressed beautifully, spoke politely and wanted to better themselves as fast as they could.  The Aussies had to come to Mission Australia by order of Centerlink: The Government’s Social Welfare Department. No zingidy zing zang here. Weak wet blankets, pathetic drug addicts, TV addicts, pizza addicts and sleep addicts. Any time I didn’t have a job I would be doing something productive. I had no patience for most of the Aussies and felt like the boot up the bum therapy would help. On the other hand, the refugees, because of their desire for a better life, would take all the boring, crappy jobs and within a few years buy a house. No social welfare system where they came from to make them lazy.  

My life as a photography teacher had passed. Now I happily work with refugees from around the world and get well paid for it.

Mission Australia is a Christian organisation that gets government contracts to take care of disadvantaged people. Sometimes their pastor would visit from Melbourne, Digby Hannah. We hit it off and kept in touch for years. When he had time off at the weekends, he led the St Kilda Church Choir. I heard it rocked much the same as a gospel church in the US. I loved Digby a lot and he would do counselling with us; to make sure we were not taking on too many of other people’s problems.    

The year or so I worked at Mission Australia changed how I thought about welfare completely.  During my life, I had received welfare from the Australian Government off and on and thought Australia had 10% unemployment. If I could survive on the dole and be constructive or productive at the same time then why not. There were plenty of people who needed a job to survive, and I didn’t want to take their opportunity. When I worked at Mission Australia, taking care of people who had problems, I thought that we should all work if we can. And, if we didn’t like the work available then we could study at GOTAFE for free. Learn a trade like a chef, plumber, carpenter, bricklayer or mechanic. This applies to everyone around the world griping about jobs and money who would rather sell drugs than learn a useful skill. For all black Africans in the USA, I say look at your brothers in Australia from the Congo, Sudan and Kenya. God-fearing, child-raising, hardworking and seeking training and education.  Maybe it is God that makes all the difference. God gives all of us hope, rules to live by and lots of much-needed love. God is a term I use for spiritual teachings and our need to know more about our desperate journey through life. Though, not a crutch, not invisible, not belonging to anyone. Essence of human spirit that when activated burns as bright as the Sun.              

Refugee Manager

After Mission Australia I was headhunted for a job back at GOTAFE where I used to teach photography. GOTAFE managed the refugees that came to settle in the Goulburn Valley. In this new job I had to prepare a newly furnished home (rented), school, food and work for the hundreds of Congolese and Afghanis. I would drive a bus for two hours and meet them, families, at the airport, drive them back to Shepparton and be with them when they saw their new home for the first time.

The Humanitarian Settlement Services (HSS) program supports refugees from the moment they arrive at the airport, where SSI’s culturally and linguistically diverse workforce ensures the first words new arrivals hear are ‘welcome to Australia’ in their preferred language.  The saddest thing about the job for me: when I saw their disappointed faces, seeing their old but comfortable rental for the first time because they all thought they would be getting a new house and you name it. Sad, because they expected so much from the Australians and this “greed” never abated from what I could see. Like the BMW guy, within a year most refugees had a better life than the average Aussie.

My job as Refugee Manager for the Goulburn Valley became quite crazy. It was during the ‘Boat People’ days when thousands of Afghanis were fleeing the Taliban by flying to Indonesia and paying Indonesians to take them to Australia by boat, usually a small fishing boat crowded enough to be unstable and sinkable. After some time, the Australian Customs started intercepting them and shipped them off to Christmas Island where they stayed in detention until their Visa applications were processed. I think most of them got approved. After being approved they flew to nearby Perth, then Melbourne to meet me on my bus.

I took over from Vicki Mitsos, a legend for good and bad. She had been attacked by a refugee and had to take a year off. I had a job already as a refugee coordinator and I worked with a lot of Sudanese men and women in this role. I organised their training in woodwork, welding, cleaning and cooking. At the same time, we would drive around together in my car looking for jobs. Four or five-six feet, tall, Africans munching on food and popping into factories, pig farms, anywhere I could find them a job. Some of them spoke English which made it easier and they wanted a job so they could take good care of their families, a lot of fun. When Vicki Mitsos went on leave, Jeanie the boss asked me to do her job as well: Refugee Manager for the Goulburn Valley. At that time life was normal. Around 10 refugees would come a month from Afghanistan via Pakistan, Sudan and the Congo. I had to find each family a house to rent, schools for their children, enrol them in English at the College, order and deliver a house full of furniture, and white goods and fill their fridge with halal food. Logistically hell, especially finding them a suitable house for rent. I got about two weeks’ notice. After all this, I had to drive a small bus to Melbourne Airport and pick them up. A three-hour round trip. Someone would come with me who could speak the same language and explain what would happen next on the way home. Quite often when we got back to Shepparton they cried because the house wasn’t a mansion.

Then all hell broke loose. The boat people that tried coming to Australia on rickety fishing boats and then intercepted by the Australian Navy and transferred to Christmas Island had gone from a few to hundreds.  Immigration asked me to find a large house that could take 20 people a week. Process them and then another twenty the next week. I did find an old doctor’s house with eight bedrooms. I filled it with furniture, beds TV and food. They poured in every week and the normal refugees from Africa and Pakistan kept coming.

I had a team of three to help me and a few interpreters. One interpreter, an Afghani, Gholum became a good friend. He would often visit my unit for a chat. He told me a couple of good stories about life in Afghanistan. One time he flew back to Afghanistan thinking he would stay there for a while. He wanted to visit a relative in a village in the desert, surrounded by the Taliban. It took a day on a motorbike from Kabul to the main turn off to the village. He parked his motorbike and stripped off his clothes. He said he did it to hide from all the wild dogs in the desert.  Then walked naked a few kilometres hiding from the Taliban and the dogs. I can’t remember why being naked helped him. Something about the smell or the noise. He made it to the village safely and caught up with his friends. At one point he went outside for a smoke and bumped into a girl squatting down for a pee. She said excuse me, he said OK. Later that night they met, secretly in her bedroom, and made Afghani love until the sun came up. Gholum fell in love with her, after he came back to Australia, he wanted her to follow him. Then one horrible day the Taliban attacked the village and killed her.  

The paperwork with each refugee could easily have been a tree once. The only help I had, came from local churches and mosques. They embraced their brethren from overseas. Often helping them settle in and find jobs. When delivery of furniture came it took hours to knock all the cupboards and beds together. Multiply that with 20 a week and you can imagine the madness. Sometimes four Afghanis decided to stay together. When they ordered their house package, they all came at the same time. Four people in a two-bedroom unit with four TVs, four refrigerators, four washing machines, four lounge suites and… They wanted this stuff quickly so I had to deliver. After two or three months they said they were moving to Melbourne and I said OK, bye. Then they would ask, how do I move my stuff, and I said, ask your friends, we are not removalists. Chaos on chaos, but it always worked out ok.  More and more came into my existing blur. One thing I didn’t like: young Afghanis, without fail, demanded a laptop. Some of them had them in Pakistan and wanted one here. I said we don’t give laptops, over and over again. They would see me walking down the street and chase me, begging and abusing me, to no avail. The white goods shop where I bought everything did well from this crowd for years. Sometimes I drove past the shop, Retravision, and saw refugees standing on the footpath with a fridge or washing machine wanting to swap it for a laptop. A happy scene because they weren’t hassling me.

I met hundreds of Afghanis and Africans in this job and loved most of them. I would do anything I could for them. The Afghani Muslims invited me for dinner every night. You couldn’t find a more friendly lot. For the young men, the menu looked the same every night. Chicken Biryani, beer and playing cards. Yep, the young men I visited every night loved beer. I have heard that some of the Sudanese left Shepparton to live in Melbourne and quickly became members of gangs. That is a shame because the Australian Government supported them a lot; regressing to tribal and cultural stuff instead of integrating happily makes me feel sad. Most Australians had an open mind to refugees and accepted them into their lives pretty well. Shepparton has to be the most amazing multicultural city in the world. Thousands of Italians, Turks, Congolese, Iraqis and Sudanese. If you want to see how people can live in harmony then I suggest you visit Shepparton, Victoria, Australia. Look them up on the Internet too. In the work for the dole program, I projected a book called A Suitcase Full of Dreams. Many people wrote their own stories of immigration which are truly inspiring. This is before the African and Afghani invasion.

I learned some Swahili and a little Arabic. I also left Rushworth and my wife to take care of these needy people from around the world.  You have to be very careful how you manage your career and loved ones. Because any changes in direction can upset the banana cart, or send it over a cliff as mine did. Once I experienced the joy of working and being with people from ‘all’ around the world I couldn’t go back to Ireland, Scotland or even Italy. 

Maulidi came from the Congo with three beautiful children. He had already arrived when I became manager for refugees. His wife had died back in the Congo and now he wanted to bring in a new wife. This can take years. In the meantime, he took care of his kids and did some work here and there. I visited him every other day, felt like part of the family. He did shake the friendship one day though when he said he needed a new house and why couldn’t the Australian government buy him one because they had too much money from selling iron ore to China. I knew the Australian government didn’t have too much money so that is how I approached every refugee—get a job.

The government, secretly, liked my attitude. On the surface, they wanted to look good and loving and under the surface they wanted assholes like me to say no, enough is enough. Deo Musafari comes to mind when I think about government assistance. Once he realised they paid $150 a month for every child born he hooked his wife into a baby-making machine and within three years he was driving a BMW wearing a golfing hat, without working. Another guy I can’t remember his name had five children and rented, pretty much for free, a new six-bedroom house. I would often visit these people who never worked after exiting my small one-bedroom unit, with a like I am visiting the king of the Congo tonight and how many hours will it take me to walk to the toilet. Ten out of ten for ingenuity and zero out of ten for greed. Most poor Australians only wanted a bed, some smokes and a six-pack of beer. Damn, these Africans could run rings around us super dumb and lazy Aussies, so full marks to them. Even though I didn’t like how they used the system I liked that they knew how. Maybe they had help from other members of their race who came before them: of course, they did. The Aussies had no one they knew that came before them, they were born here.

When the hundreds of boat people started pouring into town, I didn’t have time to look after ‘normal refugees’ I spent most of my time in the local Arabic Halal food shop buying halal food to stock their refrigerators before their plane landed. I learned a year later that they never bought Halal food with their own money, they didn’t want to waste their own money on expensive food.  Same as all the Afghanis drinking beer every night, which in their country could be considered hell hell.

I loved immigration, and the company in Melbourne, AMES that had the main contract to take care of the refugees from IHSS. Mirta took care of me with grace and professionalism.

After a few years of doing this job, I came to a conclusion that is very relevant to what is happening to America’s southern border with Mexico in 2021 and most of Europe.  It is generally better for all countries to hang onto their religions and culture and not be put under pressure to change too much for other people. That the money spent on refugees would be better spent supporting the ones, even the ones whose lives are in danger, back in their own country, which has the food, customs and religions they want.  Australia is a Christian Country and so is most of the West. It makes sense that their Christian values are number one, and don’t need to be told they are racist and infidels.  A good example is: Muslims believe that the man is the head of the house and he can treat the women in the house like shit. This does not sit well with Western women or me. If a woman in France dresses pretty sexy, it is abhorrent that a Muslim African see them as fair infidel game. If a Muslim has been welcomed into a new country for a better life, rape, with disdain, a local woman they should be shot.

Well, it is for these reasons I don’t like religion and am writing another book called Spiritgano – Health and Spiritual Freedom to address the obvious problem: all religions have been started by men, for men and have destroyed the yin and yang balance on Earth. Until this balance is restored, we will all live in man’s hell creation, with perpetual dumb wars, power-grabbing and greed and pestilence—mainly thanks to the Rothchild’s family. Without any doubt on my behalf, women are the stronger sex. They have been murdered as witches and downtrodden by Christ, Mohammed and God. What a joke. My definition of racism is that there is an overwhelming flood of evil against women when you consider women’s place in the world: every single person and animal is born equal under the Sun. And it is MAN, that cannot compete with a woman’s superior intelligence, and uses violence to control them, like the Taliban in Afghanistan. 

Good on Shepparton, good on all the new refugees that have studied hard and taken on wonderful responsibilities like Thon at the Shepparton Ethnic Council. I am proud of you all and I will never forget how you survived long enough to come to Australia and build a new life. Thon, I remember you fleeing the enemy for days at a time in the desert, covering yourself   with sand during the day and running at night.

Jamila and Fatima

Fatima jumped off the plane from Pakistan in Melbourne, more chirpy and cheeky than any refugee I had ever seen – she was my first real one: this family needed a lot of care. Her older sister Jamila could not be more different. She had a friendly soft face radiating her joy of escaping from her deceased husbands’ brothers’ arms.  Jamila had two lovely children, Hardi a boy and Fero a girl. This was my first pickup from the airport in my new role as Acting Manager of IHSS which is a contract from DIAC that GOTAFE and AMES shared for many years to settle refugees in Victoria.

During my 18 months in this position, huge numbers of Christmas Islanders arrived (Afghanis mainly) creating enormous logistical problems: finding suitable houses for them to rent, places in schools, furniture, clothing and visa application services for their families or spouse they wanted to bring to Australia as soon as possible. AMES was the senior partner, a large group of storks in Melbourne taking care of newborn arrivals and settling them into their nest. Mother Stork, Mirta kept the whole show on the road even when the storks were tired and running out of flap.

Fatima learned English from her neighbour in Pakistan while waiting for her visa application to be processed and approved. On the way up the Hume Highway to their new home, she was telling me about their lives and how Jamila’s husband had been killed by the Taliban which forced them to live with her dead husband’s parents, where her brother-in-law assumed (or wanted) the role of Jamila’s husband as custom dictated.

Jamila loved her husband and did not want to be his brother’s wife. She often described her husband as kind but not handsome. Luckily her neighbour was sympathetic to her plight and one night Jamila, Fatima and the two children snuck out of the house and their neighbour drove them through Taliban territory and up the mountain into Pakistan and freedom.

After a year or two in Pakistan, they got their visa to live in Australia.  Now, they were in a bus full of joy, hope and expectation of the American dream – yes there was this lie implanted in the minds of all new refugees (self-administered) that they would come to very rich ‘Australia’ and be given a palace to live in, computers and cars. It was to become a regular emotional drain as I drove to Shepparton knowing the refugees on board wanted a big new house, not an old weatherboard one with lumpy carpets and old paint, like the one I had no option to get for Jamila.  We arrived late at night and they settled into sleep by 2 am. The next day would be busy arranging schools for the two children and English classes for Jamila and Fatima.

We became good friends and they offered me chicken biryani every other day I visited them. To cook it you put a pint of cooking oil into a saucepan add some garlic, chilli and a tin of tomato paste. Once the tomato paste had endured the garlic for five minutes you added a chicken. To eat it Afghani style you take big slabs of yummy Afghani bread and dip into the tasty oil spill until you stop squeaking. They settled in pretty well mainly because they had me to help―pretty much on call.

Fatima said in the bus when she arrived, she wanted to make her dead mother proud and become a lawyer but within six months she had fallen in love with an Afghani from Dandenong, Hamid, and just swooned day and night. Every time they had a fight she would scream for hours until an ambulance came and took her to hospital for serious sedation and counselling. They were pretty happy living and studying in Shepparton, Fatima’s love for Hamid changed everything from peace to neurotic war. The day he said he needed to go home to Dandenong, Fatima cried nonstop until Jamila agreed to go there too.

Dandenong has become one of the largest Afghan cities in the world and it’s only a matter of time before most refugees resettle there looking for work and community life.

After they moved to Dandenong, I didn’t see them for at least a year but when I did it was a joyous reunion. Fatima, still swooning and Jamila still cooking a mean Chicken Biryani. I could see their lives housebound without a car. For the next six months, I would drive to Melbourne every weekend to see them and take them out for the day. I had some great Indian music and as we drove here and there, we sang as loud as we could and arm danced. It was a crazy scene with me the grey-haired Aussie and the Afghan family wearing their scarves bopping and singing to Indian music– every traffic light we stopped at brought smiles and amusement from people in neighbouring cars.

One weekend I realised the children hadn’t been anywhere special in a year, so I took them all to Luna Park at St Kilda Beach. I bought everyone $50 passes and it was roller coaster time. We all had fun until the tickets ran out, then we walked to the beach where Jamila drew my name in the sand then ran off into the setting sun. Another time we went up into the Dandenong Hills and drank tea and eat scones and another swimming in the bay on a beautiful summer day. We were a crazy family and everyone wished we would stay like this forever.

After some time Jamila decided to marry someone from across the ocean, Dubai I think? and Fatima married Hamid. They moved on with their lives and I missed my Afghani family. Time for me to move on too, and I did a few months later.

I loved this job until the number of refugees went from 10 a month to 30 a week (Afghani boat people). I was asked to find more accommodation. All I could find was an old ex-doctor’s house with 10 bedrooms and two living rooms. I set it up to have at least four people per room. This was a halfway house until they were interviewed about where they wanted to settle.

A chaotic time because the government gave every refugee the same house lot of furniture and electrical goods. Many of the refugees decided to stay together, sometimes six in a house, in Shepparton. They would find a house to rent and ask for their package. This would often mean six fridges, six TVs, six sofas, six washing machines; six of everything filling the house until there was nowhere to walk. And then to make it worse, so very worse, after a few months they decided to leave Shepparton and go to Melbourne. There was no money in the budget to transport all their new stuff around the countryside so they were quite desperate and angry, having to eventually get friends to help them. The Afghani boat people, who were coming in droves were all men (99%).

The Congolese and Sudanese were different. They normally flew in from the Congo as a family group. There was much more time to prepare for them and because they were Christians, they had extra support from the local churches they joined.

Their packages were family orientated: one fridge, one TV, one washing machine beds etc. Their houses were bigger too. An average Congolese family on arriving was around five members; which grew to 10 in the coming short years. There was a mosque in Shepparton which, unfortunately, I never got to visit. I did get to visit a lot of churches because I needed to coordinate activities with their pastors.

The numbers arriving were huge. I still had the same staff of three, that I had months before when we only got 10 a month. It was not unusual to work day and night taking care of all their needs. I remember tossing a bag of rice over the fence at 10 pm one night and every night buying Afghani bread by the baker’s dozen so the Afghanis staying in the halfway house could have Chicken Biryani for dinner. Chicken Biryani recipe that I remember. Put a pint of oil into a large stainless-steel pot, heat it and pour in a large jar of tomato paste with salt to taste. Chop up some halal chicken—I learnt much later when they had to buy their own food, they didn’t buy halal because it was too expensive—boil the tomato paste, oil and chicken for 10 minutes, scoop it into bowls and dip large hunks of Afghani bread into it: yummy.

My negative memories were few but quite upsetting. The young Afghan men wanted to trade their washing machines back to the shop they came from for laptops. This was not acceptable but understandable because they wanted to be in touch with their families back home. At this time the Australian government was giving money to people to have babies. The population was dropping so that was their solution: plasma babies they called them because they all bought big TVs with the money.

The Congolese were quick to understand that the Government gave money, around $1500 for a new baby and around $50 a month for an old one. One man I knew had his wife making babies for years. At last count, he had 10 children which netted him around $1200 a month, without working. The last time I saw him he was driving a BMW.

Some of the earlier Afghan immigrants had labour-hire companies and hired a lot of the new refugees. They all seemed very nice and were living good lives in Shepparton. My personal experience from this job was that the incredible eclectic mix of people from around the world made Australia great, even though there was quite a lot of refugees who were happy to live off government money indefinitely, thinking they were rich and could do anything they wanted.

One owner of a labour-hire company, Gholam, became friends with me. I would see him every week. I will never forget one of his stories when he went back to Afghanistan to see family. He said he had to be very careful, where he was going because there was a lot of Taliban in the area. After riding his motorbike for hours in the desert he stopped and started walking to a village far off in the distance. He had to take his clothes off so all the wild dogs wouldn’t smell him, see him? I can’t remember. He got to the village safely, met a woman, had beautiful sex, fell in love, left and came home.

Gotafe

To be honest I struggle with TABOOS because while working for immigration I had the pleasure of visiting many Afghani homes and eating Chicken Byriani and drinking heaps, they drank heaps, of beer with them (this is a perfect combination of foods) I know in some liberal Moslem countries like Turkey many women wear their headscarf on the street then go into a night club and take off their coat and scarf and reveal a sexy, anywhere suburban girl. So, what is that? How many of us have done undesirable things to obey our parents (not hurt their feelings) obey the law (not go to jail) obey our husband (not go to hospital).

I remember well, the night my father was nagging me yet again to work for him as an electrician and doing it in front of big brother Bill. I was so sick of it I told him to get f….. d. He immediately jumped up from his chair and chased me; I ran through the lounge-room where Graham was watching TV and luckily out another door and up the passage. This could have been an indefinite circular journey but I let him catch me in the lounge-room and as I lay on the floor laughing, he pummeled me a bit – Graham kept watching F Troop. From then on I was free of the parental ‘obedience game’, and anyway I always thought parents and teachers should earn your respect.

Religion is like a nasty parent that says very clearly, I will love you if you only love me and no other. God said Mr Moses thou shalt not kill and as I have harped on before in the first few pages of the bible God had killed so many already. What was he trying to tell Moses, “Leave what’s left for me”?

Do I like religion? Christianity, Music, Football, Islam etc. No, I don’t like it much because of one fundamental issue. Research has been done that indicates if a boy is brought up as a girl, he behaves like one and the same for a girl. And so, it goes with the children of any religion it is always of the father and lacks all personal seeking and finding, which is obviously what any God wants because they are so elusive you cannot see them, touch them or hear them.

Balvinder was the catalyst for complete change as her spirituality was strong and compelling, I had never met a single individual before, that radiated this much light, compassion and knowing. Hmmm… A new wind with a new scent started washing away the old and refreshing the new, giving energy to a waning spirit and confidence to a depleted soul. She quickly taught me everything I needed to know; how to take a giant evolutionary step after 20 years of being slowly roasted at the stake in Rushworth, as the only non-member of the local football team. I owe her an immeasurable debt of gratitude, and I wish as time goes by, I can pass on her legacy of unleashing the spirit within; to others.

Talking about spirituality I believe one of the greatest spiritual teachers of our times is Professor Keith Scott-Mumby. He disseminates the most valuable and insightful information about the miracle of life and all spiritual journeys. You can subscribe to his newsletter here scottmumbywellness@gmail.com

John and Emmy

Once upon a time, I had a brother John, and a sister Emmy, to brighten and lighten my life. Sometimes just out of nowhere you meet someone who you love straight away and throw the word Brother around like a footy at the MCG. A mutual friend, Maulidi, arranged for me to meet John at his house for lunch. Maulidi was a bit of a lost soul like me as he waited for years and years for his new wife to join him in Shepparton. Unfortunately, I left Shepparton just before she came. I would have given anything to see Maulidi happy in the arms of his new wife after four years.

Brother John is one of the only people I have met that has 100% emotional intelligence – partly because of his love for God and partly because of his God Mother’s wonderful influence (and Emmys). After our first lunch together, I felt incredibly happy to have some new friends.  I loved his 60’s golf hat. It reminded me of the 70s writers and poets. 

After we became friends, I would return every other night to his ‘church’ on the back veranda and drink another bottle of wine and talk about work at TAFE, God, Leakey Tono becoming a minister in the Kenyan Parliament and how we could help get him there.

The happy hours would go by quickly as we talked of love, love lost and love retrieved. His 100% emotional stamina would be tested again and again with my pressing painful sense of self. Another wine and then another, oiled our vocal cords as we watched the full moon rising over the Maori house goings-on next door. No words could ever express the comfort and comradeship expressed in this “veranda church” way better than a real one. Years before in Bendigo, when the revivalist minister bathed me, I felt reborn and completely happy. In the company of John and Emmy, I felt the same grace and peaceful joy. I accepted them completely, even though I had been transformed by an Indian guru into a Sramanas. A couple of times he took me to church hoping I would find there what I needed. As much as I love Jesus, I don’t like any religion or any religious display.  I felt the same when I went to the Sikh Temple with Balvinder. Nice enough but no idea of what they were doing or saying.

Father Peter, a Congolese Minister, from Melbourne came to Shepparton to start an African church and hoped Brother John could gather a few hundred Congolese, Sudanese and Kenyans to celebrate and worship God, with African enthusiasm, joy and colour. He came up from Melbourne every Wednesday for a few months, but for some reason, it died after a pretty good start. I can only guess that everyone was already going to a church in Shepparton and were happy with God’s representative on earth they had already chosen.

I filmed two or three of Father Peter’s sermons for youtube and the first one was amazing. He said, learn Christ’s teachings well, and live your life as he would gracefully suggest. The second and third digressed somewhere, to an even more esoteric bible land, and as always, I was flummoxed. When one religion, Judaism, is so unbelievably and uncomfortably mixed with another – Christianity – it is confusing. About what the hell God was saying and which God was saying it.

After a few months, the church folded, and everyone went back to their Anglican style churches, where the local minister already had an incredible track record of compassion and hard work helping refugees settle into Shepparton. There are many organisations helping refugees from Africa settle into Shepparton, including GOTAFE and AMES and the local schools; they don’t come within a bull’s roar of the local ministers and I wish I had spent much more time with them, if I had, it would have been an honour.

Brother John worked at an Islamic school when he and Emmy moved to Shepparton and like many fringe, schools had a small budget and they really couldn’t afford to pay teachers properly.

I met John at a time when his work was finished and he was looking for a job, just before Christmas. Luckily the flood of Christmas Island Refugees coming to Shepparton needed and wanted to learn English over the summer holidays and there was some money available in my budget to hire him to teach them. I remember the first lesson in the kitchen of the refugee house with eight or nine eager new arrivals, and a passionate man, with a beautiful smile and his love for everyone. Through the door, I could see him standing opposite them with a stick pointing at words on a board; a beautiful snap of time in my mind’s camera. I will never forget, because it was perfect, it was pregnant with goodness and fellowship, hope and comfort, a new arrival to this country (John immigrated from Kenya) who had already had most of his new world struggles behind him and was humbled by this, stood before them with love and dignity for all men and women. He opened his heart and taught them with compassion and passion. I saw all this in a fleeting second as I walked past the door and peered into the dim light of his makeshift classroom; probably going to get them some Afghani bread from the Afghani bakery for their dinner.

One day, I decided to have a holiday in Thailand for two weeks. I flew by myself. I hated flying. Somehow, I overcame the fear of getting on a plane, took a seat, took off, at night, my fear of flying for good took off too because I sat beside an Indian engineer going home to his son’s wedding. He explained to me the workings of a plane and how it would stay in the air because of its sophisticated engineering.  I stayed with a friend in the North. It was amazing. I had never been overseas before. I couldn’t speak any Thai. Little things, like seeing all the meat piled up at a supermarket on a bench, totally shocked me: there were many little things like that. After two weeks I went home to pack my things, got divorced, said goodbye to John and Emmy and went back to Thailand.

The night I got home and I walked into John’s new flat, Emmy said, “welcome home”. John wasn’t there, which just made it harder for me to tell him, (when he did come home) I was going back for good. I waited around 30 minutes, then he walked in all smiling teeth. After a lot of hugs and good to see you man, I told him, Man, he was shocked…. it was the worst news he ever had. John had followed my story for 18 months before I went to Thailand, and he fervently wanted me to be happy and live in love and nearby so the four of us could sit on the veranda and drink wine and talk about beautiful things. The fact that I was going back in a few weeks made him feel sad at the loss of a very good friend, and his 60’s style philosophizing drinking buddy. This hurt me too because John had been the best friend anyone could dream of – THE BEST.

Now he is doing his doctorate in refugee settlement. I haven’t seen him in years and I would love to see him more than anything. 

Separation

Marriage can be awesome with children, and nothing like it without them. Especially if you loved being a mother like I did. Meaning is different for everyone: some get it from religion, some from work; I got mine from understanding. Found, when searching for it, bit by bit; not unlike Jesus and Buddha. The kind of meaning I did find makes money, sex, things and life itself irrelevant: even though they still exist. When you are born into a religion the psychological symbols are overpowering and funnily so even when you are not. This explains why Christians use a symbol for death and depravity for Jesus: it is a psychological control winner and explains why I am always going to hell. I do love God, without her, I would have no one to talk to. So, the ring came into the power of love—no more powerful symbol exists. When you mix the symbol for eternal procreation with God’s Sun, you are: checkmate.  Then the internal mechanism for baby-making slows down after they are made. Which in turn changes how you see your partner. Maybe after the kids, you see a bank, a parent, a nurse or even a companion. I saw everything through empty eyes. More than bleak, the landscape became vague and saw me as irrelevant.

Time would churn around and spit me out on the other side of the universe. I would become a karma destroyer, reluctant but not completely without heart. The war going on in the universe between good and evil recruited me to do mainly good. My brief, find a woman whose life was self-mutilated and begin a repair mission. Often a dangerous and thankless task. If only for a moment light shines into a dark place the light will have beckoning power. I missed the kids when they left, couldn’t look forward to a life in Rushworth, so I left. When we marry someone, they get what they want and we give it to them. No conscious moment can explain the beauty and madness of a loving marriage and neither should it; like art, life can be full of discovery and invention.

The kids don’t see it like that of course, because they run out of bread quickly, and it is difficult to find when you are young.  To leave a threshold for another takes a lot of inner strength; there is no telling where you will end up. All of Angie’s friends at art school said they would eat a field of hats if she ever got married. Angie said, he got me in a moment of weakness when my father had cancer, turning my life upside down. I loved working with the refugees and found a way through them to disappear from home in preparation to leave the country behind. Not a plan, more an incredibly painful decision living day by day.  Is there karma after divorce? We were married under the stars, who would surely understand my decision was no more than the weather.  The chances of getting smarter as you get older are slim. Art exists momentarily in a revelatory moment, inspiration from the god within. We are no more than receivers and transmitters of knowledge that seeks us broadcasts through us and then gone. You are a fool if think it will keep coming in accordance with your own will.  Maybe love and relationships are a form of art that operates in the same way. Relationships are formed like a painting, a moment of inspiration and guidance, not of our own doing, but thinking it is. The same creative thoughts which bring us into existence can take us and others out: back to the creator.

Separation from the ones we love, create new ones. Strolling through soul mates, because life is short and our hearts belong to an intent.

Roditch March 2022

Roditch

Biography

I am a retired Photography Teacher, Refugee Settlement Manager, and Builder. For the past 10 years, I have been teaching part-time, writing books, taking photos and doing lots of research.

All the books I write come from experience and research. Yes, in my life so far I have worked with refugees, taught art, built houses, studied herbs, and health. I have also studied astrology spirituality including meditation, animal welfare, and poetry.

I sincerely hope that you can gain valuable information from my books (usually short and sweet introductions) to different facets of life I have visited.

Where to find Roditch online

Website: http://roditch.com

Blog: http://roditch.com

Books

A Candle to Myself by Roditch

Price: $5.00 USD. Words: 103,380. Language: English. Published: January 6, 2022. Categories: Nonfiction » Biography » Autobiographies & Memoirs

A story about my life in Warrnambool, Castlemaine and Rushworth

Dropout 2020 by Roditch

Price: $5.00 USD. Words: 249,020. Language: English. Published: December 19, 2021. Categories: Nonfiction » Children’s Books » Lifestyles / Country Life

Time to dropout and start a new, secure and sustainable life.

Portraits by Roditch

Price: $2.00 USD. Language: English. Published: October 26, 2021. Categories: Nonfiction » Art, Architecture, Photography » Photography – Photo books

Portraits by Roditch. These photos are a collection of Roditch’s portraits over the past 5 years. They are a reflection of the person.

Thailand by Roditch

Price: $2.00 USD. Language: English. Published: October 26, 2021. Categories: Nonfiction » Art, Architecture, Photography » Photography – Photo books

This is a collection of photographs of rural Thailand. Including farmers, Monks, temples and farms

Buddha by Roditch

Price: $2.00 USD. Language: English. Published: October 24, 2021. Categories: Nonfiction » Art, Architecture, Photography » Photography – Photo books

Original Photos of Buddha sculptures Thailand taken by famous photographer Roditch

Sentient Series 1 by Roditch

Price: $5.00 USD. Words: 170. Language: English. Published: December 6, 2020. Categories: Nonfiction » Inspiration » Spiritual inspiration

One reason I love Buddha is because he knew that animals had sentience, consciousness, and that consciousness was as valuable, respectable, sacred as any Homosapien.

Thailand of Dreams Series 1 by Roditch

Price: $5.00 USD. Words: 170. Language: English. Published: December 4, 2020. Categories: Nonfiction » Inspiration » Spiritual inspiration

Thailand is a country is worth exploring to regain your imagination, love of nature, fairy tales and spirits of the land.

Portraits and Souls Series 1 by Roditch

Price: $5.00 USD. Words: 180. Language: English. Published: December 4, 2020. Categories: Nonfiction » Inspiration » Spiritual inspiration

Portraits have always been there as a window into someone’s soul if only we are to look and care.

Beautiful Buddha Series 1 by Roditch

Price: $5.00 USD. Words: 180. Language: English. Published: December 4, 2020. Categories: Nonfiction » Inspiration » Spiritual inspiration

Buddha is the peace in the world. Everyone can benefit from Buddha,s teachings.

Angels Series 1 by Roditch

Price: $5.00 USD. Words: 140. Language: English. Published: December 4, 2020. Categories: Nonfiction » Inspiration » Spiritual inspiration

Children are the magic in the world. NASA has done research that confirms that all children are born creative geniuses, but, by the time they are 7 years old their genius has been retired by cultural and family conditioning.

Musing with the Fishes Series 1 by Roditch

Price: $5.00 USD. Words: 180. Language: English. Published: December 4, 2020. Categories: Fiction » Inspirational

It is a wonderful way to relax and tune in with nature; just looking into water and musing with the fishes.

Off the Fence Posts by Roditch

Price: $3.00 USD. Words: 20. Language: English. Published: April 18, 2020. Categories: Nonfiction » Art, Architecture, Photography » Photography – Photo books

This book is a collection of posts I have made over the past 3 years.

Musing with the Fishes by Roditch

Price: $10.00 USD. Words: 530. Language: English. Published: April 16, 2020. Categories: Nonfiction » Art, Architecture, Photography » Photography – Photo books

What is real? As you look into these pictures you can see spirits and goblins and all sorts of magical things

Heartland 2 by Roditch

Price: $10.00 USD. Words: 600. Language: English. Published: April 15, 2020. Categories: Nonfiction » Art, Architecture, Photography » Photography – Photo books

Thailand people love family, culture, Buddha, music, and celebrations.

Heartland by Roditch

Price: $7.00 USD. Words: 1,090. Language: English. Published: April 15, 2020. Categories: Nonfiction » Art, Architecture, Photography » Photography – Photo books

Thailand has a unique balance of culture, spirituality, art, agriculture, and the environment.

The Future Zen by Roditch

Price: $4.00 USD. Words: 7,120. Language: English. Published: April 14, 2020. Categories: Nonfiction » Inspiration » General self-help

Right now you are creating your future if nothing else. This book is about a future that belongs to the rich and powerful.

Teaching ESL English Zen by Roditch

Price: $4.00 USD. Words: 5,990. Language: English. Published: April 14, 2020. Categories: Nonfiction » Education & Study Guides » Teaching methods & materials / language arts

10 years of experience teaching ESL English to Kindergarten, Primary, Secondary, University, and Teachers.

Animal Sentience Zen by Roditch

Price: $4.00 USD. Words: 10,700. Language: English. Published: April 13, 2020. Categories: Nonfiction » Science & Nature » Animals

Sentience is the word we use to say that we are animals like animals are human.

Poet Zen by Roditch

Price: $4.00 USD. Words: 3,550. Language: English. Published: April 13, 2020. Categories: Poetry » Contemporary Poetry

Poetry is a way to communicate more deeply and completely. It is not just about writing a poem it is being a poem for your family, friends, and society.

Photography Zen by Roditch

Price: $4.00 USD. Words: 2,900. Language: English. Published: April 13, 2020. Categories: Nonfiction » Art, Architecture, Photography » Photography – how to

Photography comes from the soul as any art does, the deeper you go the better your photos will be.

Artist to the Core by Roditch

Price: $3.00 USD. Words: 750. Language: English. Published: April 13, 2020. Categories: Nonfiction » Art, Architecture, Photography » Artists

Shepparton, Victoria, Australia has produced an amazing amount of brilliant artists over the years.

Natural People by Roditch

Price: $3.00 USD. Words: 790. Language: English. Published: April 13, 2020. Categories: Nonfiction » Science & Nature » Environment

The conservationists in the Goulburn Valley, Victoria Australia are outstanding people.

Head in the Clouds by Roditch

Price: $5.00 USD. Words: 1,560. Language: English. Published: April 12, 2020. Categories: Poetry » Contemporary Poetry

Poetry from your own pen is a baby bird flying from the nest into the stars.

The Exit 1 by Roditch

Price: $5.00 USD. Words: 190. Language: English. Published: April 12, 2020. Categories: Poetry » Ancient Poetry

This is a book of original poems and photographs by Roditch, inspired by Zen Koans.

The Exit 2 by Roditch

Price: $5.00 USD. Words: 190. Language: English. Published: April 12, 2020. Categories: Poetry » Ancient Poetry

This is a book of original poems and photographs by Roditch, inspired by Zen Koans.

The Exit 3 by Roditch

Price: $5.00 USD. Words: 220. Language: English. Published: April 12, 2020. Categories: Poetry » Ancient Poetry

This is a book of original poems and photographs by Roditch, inspired by Zen Koans

The Exit 4 by Roditch

Price: $5.00 USD. Words: 210. Language: English. Published: April 12, 2020. Categories: Poetry » Ancient Poetry

This is a book of original poems and photographs by Roditch, inspired by Zen Koans.

The Exit 5 by Roditch

Price: $5.00 USD. Words: 210. Language: English. Published: April 12, 2020. Categories: Poetry » Ancient Poetry

This is a book of original poems and photographs by Roditch, inspired by Zen Koans.

The Exit 6 by Roditch

Price: $4.00 USD. Words: 180. Language: English. Published: April 12, 2020. Categories: Poetry » Ancient Poetry

This is a book of original poems and photographs by Roditch, inspired by Zen Koans.

The Exit 7 by Roditch

Price: $4.00 USD. Words: 180. Language: English. Published: April 11, 2020. Categories: Poetry » Ancient Poetry

This is a book of original poems and photographs by Roditch, inspired by Zen Koans.

The Exit 8 by Roditch

Price: $4.00 USD. Words: 190. Language: English. Published: April 11, 2020. Categories: Poetry » Ancient Poetry

This is a book of original poems and photographs by Roditch, inspired by Zen Koans.

The Exit 10 by Roditch

Price: $5.00 USD. Words: 200. Language: English. Published: April 10, 2020. Categories: Poetry » Ancient Poetry

This book of original poems and photographs is inspired by Zen Koans

The Exit 11 by Roditch

Price: $5.00 USD. Words: 200. Language: English. Published: April 10, 2020. Categories: Poetry » Ancient Poetry

This book of original poems and photographs is inspired by Zen Koans.

The Exit 12 by Roditch

Price: $5.00 USD. Words: 190. Language: English. Published: April 10, 2020. Categories: Poetry » Contemporary Poetry

This book of original poems and photographs is inspired by Zen Koans

The Exit 13 by Roditch

Price: $5.00 USD. Words: 170. Language: English. Published: April 9, 2020. Categories: Nonfiction » Religion & Spirituality » Ancient

This book of original poems and photographs is inspired by Zen Koans. The words come in an inspirational moment and have more meaning than you first think and challenge your mind; like Zen Koans.

Meditation and Prayer Zen by Roditch

Price: $4.00 USD. Words: 9,640. Language: English. Published: April 9, 2020. Categories: Nonfiction » Health, wellbeing, & medicine » Mental health

Throughout history, meditators have been both influential and mysterious. To look at some of the great meditators, see their works and know them more deeply helps when meditating your way to a fuller and richer life.

Longevity Zen by Roditch

Price: $4.00 USD. Words: 11,920. Language: English. Published: April 8, 2020. Categories: Nonfiction » Health, wellbeing, & medicine » Aging well

The fountain of youth is real. By fasting 1 day a week, taking resveratrol, Metformin and AMPK you can live much longer, be more healthy and energetic

Wild Food Zen by Roditch

Price: $4.00 USD. Words: 8,580. Language: English. Published: April 8, 2020. Categories: Nonfiction » Health, wellbeing, & medicine » Aging well

There are many places in the world where people still get a large proportion of their food in the wild. And there are just as many who go hunting for their food in supermarkets.

Health Zen by Roditch

Price: $4.00 USD. Words: 6,580. Language: English. Published: April 7, 2020. Categories: Nonfiction » Health, wellbeing, & medicine » Aging well

People worry about dying from Covid-19 but most of us are dying early because of cancer, heart and liver disease already.

GMO and Glyphosate Zen by Roditch

Price: $4.00 USD. Words: 6,870. Language: English. Published: April 7, 2020. Categories: Nonfiction » Health, wellbeing, & medicine » Family health

If we don’t have the land or the time to grow our own food then we should buy only organic because Genetically Modified Food plastered with Glyphosate is not an option for a long and happy life

Fruits of Our Labour by Roditch

Price: $5.00 USD. Words: 21,200. Language: English. Published: April 6, 2020. Categories: Nonfiction » History » Australia & New Zealand

This book is a history of the Goulburn Valley Fruit Industry.

Teresa – Love on the Riverbank by Roditch

Price: $4.00 USD. Words: 1,810. Language: English. Published: April 4, 2020. Categories: Poetry » Epic

Our heart is silent when it wants to scream out “I am here, love me.” Poetry is kissing with words, words that can cross infinite boundaries of the mind to pierce the heart of a willing soul.

A Suitcase Full of Dreams by Roditch

Price: $5.00 USD. Words: 83,830. Language: English. Published: April 3, 2020. Categories: Nonfiction » History » Australia & New Zealand

The Goulburn Valley, Victoria, Australia is home to thousands of refugees and immigrants from around the world. Shepparton is the main city in the Goulburn Valley which is surrounded by orchards.

Francis of Warrnambool by Roditch

Price: $5.00 USD. Words: 7,870. Language: English. Published: April 3, 2020. Categories: Fiction » Fairy tales

A lot of very talented people were born in Warrnambool in the ’50s. Like Dave Dawson, Peter Lucas and Jack Wilkins.

Debt and Self Sufficiency by Roditch

Price: $4.00 USD. Words: 6,090. Language: English. Published: April 2, 2020. Categories: Nonfiction » Self-improvement » Emotional healing

We all have too much debt. It is time to pay it all back and remain debt-free forever.

Censorship Zen by Roditch

Price: $4.00 USD. Words: 4,870. Language: English. Published: April 2, 2020. Categories: Nonfiction » Politics & Current Affairs » Civil & human rights

Everyone has the right to physical,. emotional and intellectual freedom. These rights are eroding and it is time to make a stand.

Builder Zen by Roditch

Price: $4.00 USD. Words: 7,380. Language: English. Published: March 30, 2020. Categories: Nonfiction » Engineering, trades, & technology » Construction / General

Many years ago I built my own house out of second-hand materials.

Astrology Zen by Roditch

Price: $4.00 USD. Words: 7,420. Language: English. Published: March 30, 2020. Categories: Nonfiction » New Age » Astrology

This is a small Astrology book. Like all the ZEN series it is a simple introduction about a vast topic.

Buried in the Sun by Roditch

Price: $5.00 USD. Words: 1,360. Language: English. Published: March 30, 2020. Categories: Nonfiction » Music » History & Criticism

The Sunbury Pop Festival in 1972, photos and poems. Original photos and Poems by Roditch

Swat the Fly – A Covid-19 Self Help Guide by Roditch

Price: $5.00 USD. Words: 26,300. Language: English. Published: March 29, 2020. Categories: Nonfiction » Health, wellbeing, & medicine » Alternative medicine

This book is a collection of natural remedies used by Doctors that will help you prevent and overcome the covid-19 virus.

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