thegoodwills.com - Page 25 of 56 - Witty, thought-provoking songs + reflective essays

Canned muzak takes away listener choice

Today I’m keen to vent my displeasure at the seemingly inescapable intrusion of canned music – known as muzak. Background music in public places was once described by violinist Yehudi Menuhin as ‘pollution of the mind’. Menuhin, the consummate classical soloist, led a campaign in the late 1960s to have muzak banned from shopping malls and other public spaces. Muzak is a company set up in the 1950s which produced pre-recorded background music and sold it to shopping malls, restaurants and other public spaces. Muzak was sold to Westinghouse in 1981, then to the publishers of the Chicago Sun-Times and sold again to Mood Music in 2011. Although often known as ‘elevator music’ for its pernicious blandness, Muzak (the company) never actually sold it to lift companies. Muzak was so pervasive in the 1960s and 1970s it became a lower case term for light music of generic sameness).

For my part, I endured it all day every day when employed by supermarkets. There’s a lot of difference, let me tell you, between sub-consciously listening to what Alistair Cooke called ‘audible wallpaper’ while doing a 20-minute shop and being forced to listen from 8.30am to 5pm, five or six days a week. In 1975 I wrote an offensive song about muzak. I didn’t play guitar then, so a friend helped orchestrate my first foray into songwriting and performed it at the Brisbane Folk Centre. There were references to Herb Alpert and the Tijuana brass (This guy’s in love with you), Andy Williams (More), Acker Bilk (Stranger on the shore) and Henry Mancini (Moon River).

From my memory of working in retail, Muzak’s selection of the month was delivered as a reel of tape and was then wound into a reel-to-reel recorder securely locked in a box on the wall of the office.

Fast forward to 2019 and our ears are constantly assaulted by bland music, wirelessly emanating from tiny speakers tucked into the roofs of establishments ranging from coffee shops to football stadiums. I’m not privy to how the music at sports venues is broadcast, but let me give the NRL and even the Intrust Super Cup organisers a bit of feedback – and I mean that literally too.

Various codes of sport feel compelled to fill in any break in play with partial renditions of songs, at peak volume. At the Intrust Super Cup final at Redcliffe, the volume was so deafening, the choice of music (hip-hop, pop, rock, reggae) so ad hoc, that just about anyone within earshot of us began berating the invisible DJ.

The music starts when play has broken down (for an injury or a penalty), and is abruptly cut off when play resumes (just as you were getting in the groove). A snippet of Van Halen or ACDC, bless them, adds nothing to the game, especially when the music is reverberating around metal and concrete grandstands.

Mood music seems to have gone up in standard since my days of listening to Up Up and Away for the seventh time in a working day. Muzak’s 2019 owner, Mood Media, offers a wide range of genres to its clients and I have no doubt about the quality.

My main argument with unsolicited music streamed in public places is just that – it is unsolicited and, rather than put me in a good mood, it does the reverse.

We were having dinner at a city restaurant recently which streamed its own brand of muzak, distributed around a relatively small space. It was not my imagination – the volume increased as the night wore on. I was going to ask someone to turn it down (have been known to do this). But on a trip to the loo I realised the same music was being streamed through all the neighbouring restaurants.

A barista once showed me where his canned music came from – it was one of a set of CDs called Café Music. I asked him did it not get irritating for those who work there.

“After a while you don’t notice it,” he replied. And that is just the point. Mood music is in the background – able to be heard but not intended to be listened to.

George Winter, writing for the Irish Times, described his experience of ‘aural Polyfilla’ while having coffee in a shopping mall.

“Muzak pollutes the air, befouling the connections between one rational thought and another until I begin to think that it probably would be a good idea to buy a tie-rack for the cat.”

Winter recalled October 1969, when Yehudi Menuhin addressed Unesco’s International Music Council.

“Our world has become a sounding board for man-made sounds, amplified to suffuse and suffocate us,” Menuhin said, in part.

The Council had muzak in mind when it denounced “the intolerable infringement of individual freedom” and asserted “the right of everyone to silence, because of the abusive use, in private and public places, of recorded or broadcast music.”

Winter concluded with the observation that as Ireland had banned smoking in pubs, why not ban muzak too?

He cited Professor Stuart Sim’s Manifesto for Silence, where Sims comments on background music not only in malls and restaurants but in pubs.

“It is a deliberate policy on the management’s part. The noise helps to create a frenzied, over-stimulated atmosphere which promotes evermore frenzied consumption.”

Prof Sims’s 2007 manifesto, subtitled Confronting the Politics and Culture of Noise, makes an urgent demand for silence. In the introduction to his book, he sees it as a tussle between those who want more noise (as in the oft-repeated anonymous command of ‘make some noise’ when attending footie games) and those who want none.

“Lifting the ban on mobile phones on planes has opened up a new front in this conflict,” he wrote.

If you have ever been to sacred spaces like Uluru, Notre Dame, the Vatican or the ancient cathedral at Assisi, unwanted background music becomes apparent by its absence.I have oft times wondered if the people you see on trains and buses with listening buds in their ears are (a) listening to something they want to listen to or (b) shutting out the madding crowd with meditative music.It could all be completely wrong, because those on the outside cannot know what is being heard on the inside. That’s the beauty of choosing what to listen to and when.

Academic studies have been done on whether or not students write better essays when listening to music. This survey, trialled with 54 psychology students, concluded that it disrupted writing fluency, although those with music training and/or high working memory wrote better essays with longer sentences.

Likewise, studies have been done to examine the effect of background music in open plan offices (used to mask ambient sound and background conversations). Hmm, is that accountant over there listening to Céline Dion or is he wearing noise cancelling headphones?

As a songwriter, the biggest problem I have with unsolicited background music is that they never introduce or back-announce the track. So on the slight chance a song might sound familiar; you are never going to know. The upside for songwriters is that if your music is used as ‘aural Polyfilla’, the royalty cheques will keep on dribbling in. As I added up my royalty income for the October 31 tax deadline, it became crystal clear I am not and never will be one of those.

The Sound of Silence https://youtu.be/NAEppFUWLfc

PS: As this essay argues, listening to music should be a matter of personal choice. So click or don’t click on this splendid rendition by She Who Sings (aka Laurel Wilson), of Un Bel Di Vedremo from Puccini’s Madame Butterfly. https://youtu.be/WCQEhgpb-qM

When a church is not a church

Anglican-church-Yangan — Sold – St Peter’s Anglican Church in Yangan. Photo Bob Wilson

The motel manager in Cambridge, New Zealand, told me I could get something to eat ‘at the old church across the road’. It was 8pm on a cool November evening and I was tired and hungry after driving direct from Auckland airport.

The old church across the road was hosting a lively Monday night crowd, eating and drinking indoors and outdoors in a trendy bar and restaurant. A waitress, who knew a tired, hungry tourist when she saw one, seated me in the old church nave, which also contained a brewery, its cylinders and tanks reaching up into the vaulted roof space of what was once a place of worship.

Previously known locally as The Pink Church, the Cambridge property was tastefully renovated in 2016 by Hawkins Construction and transformed into the Good Union Bar and Good George Brewery. The $1.8 million project is just one example of how very old churches (this one was built in 1878), can be repurposed. The Cambridge church had also been a cafe and gift shop since being deconsecrated in 1981.

You’ll see a lot of that in this secular 21^st century; old wooden churches converted into residences, galleries, restaurants, bars, hotels, commercial offices, bookshops, libraries, carpet warehouses and bingo halls. Some have been taken over by religious groups and continue to be places of worship.

If you do a search of www.realestate.com in your part of Australia, you will probably find up to a dozen churches for sale. Most are offered when congregation numbers dwindle or merge with nearby parishes. There can be other reasons for disposing of church property; in Tasmanian the Anglican Church is set to sell 70 properties to fund redress for survivors of sexual abuse.

Former churches being offered for sale are usually deconsecrated, which is a Christian ritual to secularise the property. It may still contain physical relics of its holy past (pews, fonts, and pulpits but the spiritual link to its past is, in theory, dispelled.

Real estate agents are fond of using the term ‘blank canvas’ when describing an old church, which typically will have a vaulted timber roof, timber floors and stained-glass windows.

Most churches being sold are more than 100 years old. They will most likely be sold ‘as-is’, which is OK if you are paying between $60,000 and $160,000, which are typical prices for these original properties. There are exceptions. At the moment in Warwick, the Abbey of the Roses, a 14-bedroom, 19^th century sandstone mansion operated as a hotel/wedding venue, is on the market for offers over $2.2 million.

I had put this topic on hold until now, when it was re-activated by divine serendipity. I was walking down to the Yangan pub on Saturday, hoping to put a bet on the Caulfield Cup. The pub doesn’t have a TAB so as I told the barmaid, ‘you saved me from myself’. On the walk home I passed three people, one of whom turned back and said ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ A sound engineer/musician friend from Brisbane, he introduced me to his friends – who had just bought the old Anglican Church in Yangan’s main street.

St Peter’s Anglican Church occupies an elevated position in Yangan’s King Street, with views across town and out to the mountains.

The new owner told me his intention is to renovate for preservation and use it initially for commercial activities, with long-term view to residence.

In case you thought moving to the outback plains had limited my outlook, this is a world-wide trend.

As church attendances drop away, religious organisations look to consolidate their property portfolio by selling off that which is deemed ‘surplus to requirements’.

Marcos Martinez wrote a well-researched blog for Spanish multinational infrastructure giant Ferrovial. He explored what happens when, as he put it, ‘the infrastructure ceases to be related to the faith from which it emerged’.

He cited examples including a 13^th century gothic church in Maastricht, Holland. The building was abandoned and in an advanced state of deterioration before architects Merkx and Girod came up with a plan in 2006. They converted it into a bookshop, adding asymmetric catwalks. Visitors ascending the catwalks can enjoy the temple’s frescoes and architecture.

Churches have been converted to unusual uses: a circus school (Quebec), a skateboard arena (Asturias, SpaIn), a music venue (Leeds, UK) and a supercomputer (in a chapel on the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Spain).

Martinez estimated that in England alone, there are 55,000 deconsecrated churches which have been converted to other uses. There’s no shortage of opportunity for commercial refurbishment, with some 200 churches abandoned in Denmark and 550 churches closed in Germany between 2005 and 2015.

Europe’s Martin’s Hotel Group set the bar impossibly high with its 2006 transformation of the 600-year-old Franciscan church and friary in Mechelen, Belgium.

Martin’s converted it into a four-star hotel. You can find a room in Martin’s Patershof Hotel from 129 euros a night, but if you want to lash out, the grand suite, positioned in the Gods, if you will, costs 449 euros.

Back here in Australia, the most common re-use of an old wooden church is to convert it into an open-plan residence. The church house became quite popular in the artistic communities of regional Australia. Songwriter Joe Dolce, who had a No 1 hit with Shaddap You Face, recently listed for sale the old Methodist church he and writer/artist Lin Van Hek acquired and enjoyed for the last 25 years at Natte Yallock, 200 kms from Melbourne. According to realestate.com, the property is under offer.

I suppose after all this you are wondering had we considered buying an old wooden church and converting it into a residence (and a venue for house concerts).

As we sometimes say, having owned four houses in the time we have spent together, everybody has one renovation in them. We learned that the hard way, restoring a 1930s colonial cottage in Annerley; it had bay windows, leadlight windows and domed ceilings. We discovered, after spending what seemed like three months without a kitchen, that preparing and painting horsehair plaster is a job for experts. We did the initial hard work – peeling off layers of wallpaper, lifting three layers of lino to reveal pages of the Brisbane Courier from 1930 relating Phar Lap’s Melbourne Cup win. I donated the pages to then Courier-Mail racing editor Bart Sinclair.

We wanted to polish the wooden floor in the kitchen but someone had replaced damaged boards with metal plate, so we laid cork tiles instead.

Meanwhile, the twin tubs under the house and a laundry bench doubled as a crude kitchen until the new kitchen was finished. We ripped up the carpets in the lounge and dining room and had the hardwood floors polished. Afterwards, we looked at the two main living rooms with the gorgeous domed ceilings, badly in need of restoration…and hired a painter.

Nostalgia aside, my ambition regarding old churches is now limited to a night at Martin’s Patershof Hotel, next time we’re in Europe. Not sure if I can justify $731 Australian dollars, but it’s free to dream, eh.

Who the Hell Approved That?

“I used to like the city better, thirty forty years ago’ South Brisbane circa 1973, before the Cultural Centre, Expo 88 and proliferating apartments.

The Cheeseparer family from Victoria, fed up with the overpopulated rat race, spent the school holidays cruising the south east Queensland coast, looking for a more ambient place to live than the far-flung commuter suburbs of greater Melbourne.

Margolia and Basil Jnr are sick of Melbourne’s unpredictable weather, the traffic, the pollution, the high cost of living and the four-hour daily commutes (including dropping the kids off at school and picking them up from daycare). They also want to be closer to the Cheeseparer oldies, Basil and Sybil (previously cited in this forum), who have retired to a 77^th floor apartment on the Gold Coast (which has a spacious guest room with four bunks and a sofa bed in the lounge).

So they set off on a road trip, boring the four Cheeseparer kids witless with their obsessive pursuit of a green change.

Somewhere between the Sunshine Coast and Brisbane, Dylan, 11, and a bit of a smartarse, looked out the window at a new estate. He provided the family with a pithy description: “a sea of roofs with nary a tree to be seen, tucked not so discreetly behind an acoustic fence running along the motorway”.

“Who the hell approved that?” he added.

“You can’t say hell – it’s a bad word,” said April, 6.

Margolia said: “Lots of religious people believe there is a place called Hell, so it is a place name, not a curse.

“But I was using it as a curse,” said Dylan.

“I know, let’s play a game”, Dylan continued. “First one to say something clever and cynical about any new housing estates we see gets a point. Winner gets more Face Time”.

“This is dumb,” came the voice of Max Cheeseparer, 15, banished to the Prado’s luggage compartment with Edie the Golden Retriever for saying negative things like “this is dumb”.

“Good tsunami will see that lot out,” muttered Eric, 13, not only bored but observant, as the Cheeseparer’s Prado cruised past a new coastal estate separated from the highway by a levy.

“Paper bag”, Dylan retorted.

“Yep, looks like someone drained a Teatree swamp,” said Basil Jnr.

“Not fair,” said April. “Adults cannot play.”

Well actually, adults should be playing this game when house hunting in the sprawling conurbation between Noosa and Coolangatta which makes up the greater metropolis of Bris Vegas. In the proliferating new estates, so often set next to freeways, generic housing design prevails, each home dominated by a two car garage and sited on allotments as small as 400sqm , depending which local government is setting the rules. The theory behind smaller lots is that it makes housing more affordable.

Who the Hell Approved That allocates points for the inventiveness of commentary, e.g. “Nice green buffer, mate” when clearly the trees have gone to Japan to make paper. A bonus point is awarded to the first to invoke The Castle’s famous quote: “Tell them they’re dreaming”. The latter usually applies upon seeing billboards announcing “house and land packages from $659,000”.

Be assured this is a game you can play anywhere in Australia and not just in the big cities of Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. One of the things you notice when following the grey nomad trail is just how few country towns have been left untouched by the cookie cutter form of new housing development built on the outskirts Many of these houses are sold off the plan with rental guarantees; bought by out-of-town investors. In the mania of the moment, no-one looks ahead 24 months and wonders “now what?”

There is a vast difference in vision between those steeped in the concept of sustainability and protecting the environment and the State government’s mantra ‘Jobs and Growth’.

The 2017 SEQ Plan forecasts an additional two million people by 2025 (bringing the region’s population to 5.5 million). Queensland’s target annual population growth (fertility+interstate migration), hoped for 3% per annum.

The State still boasts an average 2.2% over 10 years, although in recent years the population growth numbers have fallen below 2%. Perhaps the interstate migrants, in their desire to flee the rate race, have realised it is just as ratty across the border.

Residential real estate analyst Michael Matusik commented on figures released by the government which estimate that the Gold Coast, Ipswich and Logan are expected to accommodate 73% of the new housing development across south east Queensland. The Sunshine Coast and Brisbane City Council areas are forecast to hold an additional 10% each. The three municipalities are expected to generate an additional 298,000 dwellings.

Matusik noted that 82% of the new housing on the Gold Coast and 57% in Ipswich will be higher density (apartments), which is ‘‘much higher than current market demand’’.

The growth mantra has spoiled the character and amenity of countless suburbs in Brisbane. I lived there for 17 years, leaving for a smaller town in 2005 with no desire to return. I certainly have no capacity to buy there again, with a median price of $680,000.

The rot started with local governments deciding to relax planning rules so people with a house on a quarter acre allotment (once common), could sub-divide the block and put a second house on it (with an easement for access). This approach has degenerated into what is generically called ‘infill’, which in some inner city Brisbane suburbs mean allotments as small as 300sqm. These tiny house allotments are sought after, given that they represent a foothold in an otherwise unaffordable location (anywhere you have ‘city glimpses’).

In the 2017 report, Shaping SEQ, Deputy Premier Jackie Trad enshrines the vision that requires a population growth target.

“It is not difficult to see why the population of South East Queensland is expected to grow by almost 2 million people over the next 25 years. We have an enviable lifestyle, great schools and universities, and a strong, diverse economy expected to create almost one million jobs over the next 25 years. Our future is bright”.

This is not the only reason we moved to a country town two hours’ drive from Brisbane, but it was one of the motivators.

A reader who had been following our downsizing exercise with great interest wrote to relate her own experience in growth-mad Brisbane. Her aim was to sell the big family home in an outlying suburb and move closer to the city. But now she is spooked by falling sales volumes.

My friend also observes that prices are ‘predatory’ for inner Brisbane, with buyers made to feel ashamed if they are not up for the $750k starting point. So this empty nester, realising how little housing is designed for the over-50s downsizer market, has withdrawn from what she suspects is a static market, waiting for something to happen.

Meanwhile, the tree-changers are continuing the elusive search for a small town that has the infrastructure, ambience, affordability and the potential to commute to jobs in the city as needed. In theory, the brave new world of tele-commuting should make this lifestyle viable for people whose work revolves around consulting, writing, giving people advice and preparing documents.

A housing policy designed to facilitate and enhance this increasing desire to escape the rat race could in turn re-populate and rejuvenate small towns which might otherwise die. How about it, Anna?

Where there’s (bush) fire there’s smoke

Oops- the tail light is out- better get that fixed! Fast forward to King St. Mechanical in Warwick. John came out and promptly fixed it- ‘No worries, mate. No charge’! It would have been the perfect introductory day in a new town, had it not been for the pall of bushfire smoke hanging over Warwick and communities to the east. At Yangan, 18 kms East, smoke from two fires burning in inaccessible country around Swanfels infiltrated the town. Residents closed windows and doors and tried to stay indoors as much as possible.

A tired looking bush fire brigade chap having a cold ale at the local pub told me he’d never seen it as bad in this district, Yangan and Swanfels were not alone. As today’s photo attests, the fires are still burning. It is probably overkill, but we have packed an emergency evacuation bag.

Bushfires, grass fires and controlled burns that got out of control have been burning all over South- East Queensland and Northern New South Wales for weeks. When we drove from Maleny to Warwick via the Lockyer Valley, the mercury peaked at 40 degrees Celsius, which even a Kiwi could tell you is unseasonably hot for Queensland in early October. The Lockyer Valley, ostensibly the region’s premier vegetable producing centre, looked brown and dead, bar a few irrigated fields. Up in the hills, fires were burning. A friend rang us while we driving through Ma Ma Creek.

“Why are you in the Lockyer Valley? Don’t you know there are fires burning and you need to leave there at once!”

We saw the smoke plume to which she referred and had heard on the radio news that a house was destroyed in Laidley.

So we kept on driving and emerged on the Toowoomba-Warwick road, just as a blood red sun was setting behind a shroud of smoke.

People who know about such things were predicting a long hot summer and an early start to the ‘bushfire season’ back in August.

As Yangan residents fretted and waited for a possible call to evacuate, I mentally prepared an emergency kit: phone, charger, keys, wallet, essential medications, scrips, passports, journal and pen, change of clothes, water bottle, dog food (and bowl). Strange feeling it is to compress one’s life into one essential package.

This is second nature for residents of Australia’s more bushfire-prone areas such as the Blue Mountains and the uplands of northern New South Wales.

The Guardian’s Lisa Martin wrote that fire authorities were bracing for a challenging bushfire season across the continent. The Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre’s seasonal outlook warned six States they faced ‘above-normal’ potential fire threat because of very warm and dry conditions and below average rainfall.

Queensland and New South Wales bore the brunt of it in September, when gusty winds and high temperatures fanned relatively small grassfires into uncontrollable bush fires. In Southern Queensland and Northern NSW, fire authorities dealt with 1,200 fires in the first two weeks of September, with 130 fires erupting in just one day. Fifty-five homes were lost and the iconic Gold Coast hinterland tourism attraction, Binna Burra Lodge, was destroyed.

Travel journalist Lee Mylne wrote about the determination of Binna Burra’s owners to rebuild. Amidst the rubble, the bell which hung in the lodge dining room since1934 has been found intact – a symbol of hope, Lee wrote.

The adjacent campground and café was spared and the Binna Burra board says it plans to open for Christmas holidays. It is also hoped the Sky Lodges can be repaired in time for the summer holidays.

Coincidentally, I am reading The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells, a blunt instrument of a book which beats you about the head with unassailable facts and frightening scenarios about what will happen to our bodies as the planet warms. So I was more sharply concerned to read an ABC story yesterday which asserts that Australia is not prepared for what lies ahead. Key points of the story are:

The national aerial firefighting centre (NAFC) still awaits a Federal Government decision about its urgent request two years ago for $11 million in funding;
The Government has not guaranteed funding for the only national body researching the future of bushfires;
Emergency services experts who asked the Government to consider the threat of climate change in fire planning have not received a response.

Australia’s former chief scientist, Ian Chubb, said it was clear the climate was changing.

“It’s not just some passing phase that it didn’t rain this decade,” he said. “The implications of that for fire are pretty obvious.”

Recent fires in NSW ushered in a new phenomenon in firefighting dubbed Black Swan events. This describes what happens when a bush fire has reached such a point of ferocity that it interacts with extreme weather events.

The Sir Ivan fire near Dunedoo burned through 55,000 hectares, creating its own thunderstorm about seven kilometres high, according to a report by the NSW Coroner’s Court. Clouds of smoke shot lightning bolts up to 80 kilometres away, starting more fires.

Emergency experts and senior scientists have told a joint ABC investigation that a comprehensive national plan is needed to tackle the fires of the future. They are concerned about the lack of financial commitment from the Federal Government for resources and research.

The ABC’s Background Briefing cited documents that show the proportion of federal funding for NAFC has more than halved since 2003. Minister for Natural Disaster and Emergency Management David Littleproud said he would raise the business case at the next Ministerial Council meeting.

“We haven’t made a decision around the aerial assets,” he told Background Briefing. “We’ll continue to work with the states in a mature way.”

Mr Littleproud told Background Briefing the Government did acknowledge the role climate change had played in escalating fire risks.

“I haven’t seen this in my life before and I don’t know where it’s going to end,” he said. “I think it would be remiss of anybody not to suggest that it is not climate change that has caused a lot of this.”

As I write, a storm has brought decent rainfall to the Yangan district, which should help firefighters no end. Nevertheless, given my asthmatic tendencies, I’m staying indoors today, curled up with a good book. The choices are (a) persevere with The Uninhabitable Earth or (b) Carl Hiaasen’s Stormy Weather, a satirical yarn about a couple of con artists trying to capitalise on the aftermath of a hurricane sweeping through Florida.

In Chapter two of Wallace-Wells’s book he reminds us about a deadly European heatwave in 2003 which killed as many as 2,000 people per day. On page 47 he cites research that by 2050, 255,000 people are expected to die from direct heat events. Already a third of the world’s population is subject to deadly heat waves on at least 20 days of the year. Blimey, so let’s hope the old folk’s home has air conditioning for 101-year-old me.

Meanwhile in chapter five of Stormy Weather, a Rhesus monkey has stolen Max’s video camera, on which he had filmed the aftermath of the hurricane (with the aim of selling footage to a TV station).

His new bride, Bonnie, who is beginning to go off her exploitative husband (who has mysteriously vanished), is befriended by a strange fellow scouring the Everglades for (escaped) monkeys.

It’s no contest, really.

FOMM back pages, August 2017:

https://bobwords.com.au/bushfires-burning-hot-early/

Insomnia and the four poster bed

insomnia-four-poster-bed — Image: Elizabethan ornate oak four poster bed. Wikipedia, Public Domain

It may come as no surprise, given our circumstances, to read that I/we have suffered bouts of insomnia these past few weeks. Selling up and moving from our home of the past 17 years was one major stressor that contributed to fitful sleep. Then there is the (ongoing) uncertainty about where we will end up living, which in our case requires two people to agree on the location, condition, ambience and price of another home. Thirty-seven house inspections later, we are just about there.

But as you would all know (Australian home owners move on average every seven years), the transitional period is quite stressful. We have moved our luggage from one place to another four times since vacating the premises on September 11. Naturally enough, you leave things behind. For example, I’m supposed to wear black leather shoes for our choir performances this weekend. So far, all I have found is a dowdy pair of brown loafers and a pair of old man slippers (the kind with a flap held in place by Velcro). She Who Had No Clue Where My Black Shoes Were said, “Why don’t you go to the Plaza tomorrow and buy a new pair?” Now there’s a thought.

These past few weeks we have been ‘couch surfing’, courtesy of benevolent friends and relatives, who in truth provide much more than a couch (and a spot for the dog). Still, strange beds, different locations and fluctuating bed times clash with the heightened stress of the displaced person. Not to mention this weird spring weather where you kick the doona off at 11pm and wake up cold at 4am.

For years I thought it was normal to wake at 2.10am with no expectation of falling asleep again. If I did, it was inconveniently about 35 minutes before the alarm told me it was time for work. This was not always the pattern. Sometimes, I could not get to sleep at all, other times I’d fall asleep the minute my head hit the pillow then wake again in 20 to 30 minutes, hyper-vigilant and twitching.

Over the years I discovered there are many different forms of insomnia and the ones outlined above are only some of them.

Medical research agrees that the first line of treatment for insomnia should be behavioural modification. Eat your evening meal at a sensible hour, don’t read, log on to the Internet or watch TV two hours before going to bed. Don’t drink tea or coffee after 2pm. Go to bed at the same time every night, roll on to your side and switch out the light.

The second line of treatment is medication, usually of the type prescribed for anxiety or depression. An article in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine informs us that 40% of adults with insomnia have a co-existing psychiatric disorder.

“Among these psychiatric disorders, depression is the most common, and insomnia is a diagnostic symptom for depressive and anxiety disorders,” writes Dr Thomas Roth, PhD.

As Dr Roth’s paper asserts, 30% of the general population suffer from chronic insomnia; women and older adults are most at risk. Primary sleep disorders including restless legs syndrome, snoring and sleep apnoea can also lead to insomnia.

The artistic side of the brain quite likes insomnia. Some of my best work, and maybe some of yours, has been created in the wee small hours.

But when you have to front up for work and use your brain and make decisions all day, three or four hours sleep just doesn’t cut it. The phrase ‘burning the candle at both ends’ comes to mind. It means excessive work with no time for rest.

The phrase comes from a time when candles were expensive and burning them at both ends implied a wasteful way to achieve an obsession. As the American poet, Edna St Vincent Millay wrote: “My candle burns at both ends. It will not last the night, but ah, my foes, and oh, my friends, it gives a lovely light.”

In the 1990s, when I was working long hours by day and staying up late writing songs, I sometimes had a dozen candles burning at once. On Saturdays I would take my son to New Farm Park and later to my favourite writers’ retreat, a coffee shop in a massive old woolstore at Teneriffe, an inner Brisbane riverside suburb. The Australian Estate Woolstore had been converted to a furniture warehouse with three huge floors full of classy furniture. It was fun to roam around and check out the stock, bounce on a few beds, try a leather recliner or two and vow that one day, we’d own one of those. Son was 9 or 10 and happy to go off and explore while I’d sit in the coffee shop overlooking the river, blowing froth off my cappuccino and trying to capture the images of the day in a battered old journal.

One time son came back to tell me I had to check out this huge bed.

“It’s got a roof and curtains, Dad.”

The four-poster bed was a beauty for sure, and it had a price tag to match.

“We’d never get it through the front door,” I lied. “Besides, Mum and I are quite happy with the bed we have.”

He went back to building a fort with a pile of sofa cushions while I went back to my journal and jotted down the first lines of a new song “I went down to the wool store, to buy myself a bed; it might help with my insomnia, it was something that I read”.

The Australian Estates Woolstore was later converted to apartments, swept up in the gentrification process that changed Teneriffe from an age-worn industrial suburb to a residential precinct favoured by young urban professionals.

There are lots of coffee shops now in Teneriffe, but none had that sleepy tranquillity, imbued with the ambience of the wool store’s expansive wooden floors and big casement windows that let in the natural light.

Now known as Saratoga Apartments, the Australian Estates Woolstore in Macquarie Street was built in 1926.

Not that Teneriffe’s apartment dwellers would want to be reminded, but I recall the spectacular McTaggart’s Woolstore fire in January 1990. The fire in Skyring Street took hold quickly as the brick and timber building, its floors soaked with lanolin from years of storing bales of wool, exploded. The building was completely destroyed within an hour and the rubble was still smoking next day. That fire took old timers back to 1984 when the Dalgety’s Woolstore at Teneriffe met a similar fate. Those with an interest might like to track down a video called Back to the Brass Helmet which details many of the huge fires the Queensland Fire Service have been called upon to extinguish.

That’s the interesting thing about history – those who like to write down what happened, when, how and where, leave fascinating trails for those of us who care to follow. I went on to finish the song, prosaically called Four Poster Bed. It’s a tongue-in-cheek story about a fellow who spirits a girl away from another chap in a bed shop. It’s fictional, but I like to think it has somehow preserved the edgy, consumerist mood of the early 1990s.

If you had credit, and a degree of lust, you could buy anything.

Last week: Elanora Park is managed by Brisbane City Council, not Redland City Council

Dog My Cats! – Australia’s Fur Baby Obsession

dogs-cats-fur-babies — Nibbler and friend checking the p-mail at Elanora Park, Wynnum

Down at Brisbane’s biggest dog park, Elanora, a chap is loading two dogs into the back of a wagon – a black Labrador, and a white fluff dog. The big one had earlier snaffled my dog’s hard rubber ball and didn’t give it back. Fair enough, I reckoned, musing about the numbers of times our adopted Staffie has stolen other dog’s tennis balls and reduced them to slimy fragments.

I once knew a woman who named her dogs Kierkegaard and Kant, after famous philosophers. Imagine the neighbourhood mutterings when she called the latter-named from afar.

Kantian moral theory assumes the rightness or wrongness of actions does not depend on their consequences but on whether they fulfil our duty. So if Kant (the dog) poops on someone’s lawn, he is fulfilling his duty (to empty his bowels). The rightness of the owner’s action depends on whether he or she brought a poo bag with them.

Brisbane City Council did a smart thing when fencing the 26,000sqm Elanora Park, which sits between hillside houses and the mangrove-lined foreshore at Wynnum. The park is split into two fenced enclosures; a large one for big dogs and their owners and a smaller enclosure for small dogs.

The park provides shade trees, obstacle courses for the bouncy mutts and benches for the owners to sit and talk about their dogs and how the Broncos are going.

There are water points and poo bag dispensers. The only downside is, if you happen to be there after 4pm, the mosquitoes and midges will find you.

I implied earlier our dog was a hand-me down from an adult child. We belong to a demographic where one’s adult children for one complicated reason or another, cannot look after their dog. As you probably know, the cry ‘I want a puppy’ often starts between the ages of 8 and 15. By the time your kids are old enough to smoke and drink and start dating, no-longer-a-puppy gradually becomes the parent’s responsibility.

We have owned dogs together and individually for most of our lives although there was a 10-year gap between Kia the wonder Shepherd and the brindle Staffie. The latter is a well-trained dog, but a bit of a sook; a 20-kilo lapdog with a propensity to ‘sing’ when being taken somewhere in the car.

I realise this is not a great pitch to anyone who’d like to mind the dog on the occasions when we are away, but here’s the catch: Staffies are bouncy dogs full of nervous energy with a tendency to whine and whimper for reasons not always apparent. The upside is Staffies are cuddly, affectionate and easy to train.

The broader question is, why do otherwise independent people in our demographic (70+), complicate their lives with a needy animal – in effect a toilet-trained toddler? Sometimes when dog-walking, I meet people who introduce an aged Labrador or a crossbreed that shies away when you go to pat it, as ‘rescue dogs’.

It surprised me to find that only 1.92% of Australia’s 4.8 million domestic dogs are rescue animals (abandoned and picked up by pounds and dog shelters or surrendered when the owner is no longer able to care for the animal). RSPCA data shows that 40,286 dogs were reclaimed, rehomed or euthanased in 2017-2018, a 10% drop on the previous year’s figures. The better news is that 34,709 dogs were rehomed, with a relatively small number (5,577) euthanased.

Let’s debunk the myth spread by current affairs TV and tabloid newspapers. Only 257 dogs were put down for ‘legal’ reasons. So despite lurid stories about killer (American) Staffies or Pit Bulls, the majority of dogs consigned to the celestial kennel had ‘behavioural’ problems.

Now that we are officially of no fixed abode, the subject of dog sitters/minders comes up frequently. A quick Google search revealed services that will hook you up with dog-loving people who will happily look after your pooch at your place or theirs. The average price is about $50 a day, so if you have a private arrangement that is less than $25 a day you are doing very well.

The free option is to engage a house/dog sitter and there are many online services which will match you and your dog with (ahem) pre-vetted sitters. People who don’t like the sound of that and want to go away for a lengthy period have no option then but to book their fur babies into boarding kennels. A friend who chose this option booked her two cats and two dogs into establishments while on a five-week UK tour. The bill would have paid for her airfares, but she was happy to do it for the peace of mind.

So, if you really want a dog, be aware it will cost between $3,000 and $6,000 for the first year alone. The BankWest Family Pooch Index estimated it can cost $25,000 to keep a dog over its lifespan.

The above does not factor in chronic health conditions. As vet bills mount up, more people are taking out pet insurance which can cover expensive items like a tick bite (involves an over-night stay).

Nor does the Pooch Index take into account occasions like when Fido wander s off through the gate left open by the meter man. After shelling out $250 at the pound, you chastise Fido and put up a sign: “Shut the Woofen Gate”.

None of this apparently dissuades the millions of Australians who own one or more dogs. If you want one, there’s a plethora of choice with 339 different breeds (a conservative estimate).

The term ‘fur babies’, much as I dislike it, rings true for people for whom a dog (or cat) is a substitute child. According to She Who Can Name Most Dog Breeds, the telling statistic is that 53% of owners let their pet sleep on the (marital) bed.

Some (like me), freely attribute human traits, emotions or intentions to an animal that cannot speak and lacks opposable thumbs. This trait develops as said dog increasingly learns to recognise words like walkies, drivies, dinner/breakfast, come/away, outside/inside, good/bad dog, off the bed and wait (exceptionally useful command when descending stairs or steps).

This anthropomorphic behaviour was in full bloom when the movers were emptying our house. I’d left the dog bed in a corner of the living room. He either lay upon it or stood staunchly in front.

“Does the dog bed go?” asked Mover No 1.

“Touch my bed and I’ll rip your lungs out, Jim,” the dog snarled,* or at least that’s what I read into his body language.

“No, the bed stays,” I told him, assuring the dog: “It’s OK, mate. You’re staying with us… I didn’t know you liked that Warren Zevon song – aah wooh!”

“Yeh,” Dog said, warming to the topic. “I thought Night Time in the Switching Yard was his best. I quite like Harry Manx too. Did you know his album title, Dog My Cat, is a riff from a 1910 short story by O Henry where the character says ‘well dog my cats’, by way of an exclamation of incredulity?

“No, I did not know that,” I replied, marvelling at his musical and literary acumen and ability to sustain a 50-word sentence.

“I’d like to try my paw at the Mohan Veena one day,” he added.

“Stick with singing,” I advised.

Beyond words, Harry Manx: https://youtu.be/JFY8bW3xsHg

(I demur – I’ve never heard Nibbler snarl in all his life. Ed)

Climate debate burning fiercely

bushfires-burning-climate — Peregian bushfire image by Rob Maccoll

As we prepared to move from the Sunshine Coast hinterland after 17 years, the air was full of bushfire smoke, dust and haze from an early, hot start to spring. It blew a gale up there for the best part of a week; strong south-westerlies, the last thing you need in an early bushfire season.

Multiple properties were lost around Stanthorpe and in the Gold Coast hinterland between Sarabah and Canungra as hot gusty winds sent bushfires out of control.

We all know how dry it has been around the Southern Downs and across the border in towns like Tenterfield and Armidale. The aforementioned towns join Stanthorpe and Warwick and at least six other regional New South Wales towns at risk of running out of water.

I recall being sent on assignment to Warwick in 1992 with a Courier-Mail photographer. We walked along the dry bed of the Condamine River with then mayor Bruce Green, commenting on the sparse pools of water here and there. The town’s main water supply, Leslie Dam, was at 3% capacity at the time.

In January 2011, I was marooned in Warwick. So much rain fell authorities had no choice but to open all seven floodgates on the Leslie Dam. Creeks rose and the main roads to Brisbane and Toowoomba were closed.

People who have at least one foot in the climate change denial camp will tell you it was always thus in Australia: floods, droughts, bushfires, insect swarms, dust storms and sometimes all five inside a few months.

The key differences between the long-lasting droughts of the late 1800s and what is happening now is a notable rise in average temperatures.

The CSIRO, the nation’s pre-eminent science organisation, states that Australia’s climate has warmed by just over 1C since 1910. Eight of Australia’s top ten warmest years on record have occurred since 2005.

University of Melbourne PhD researcher Mandy Freund and colleague Benjamin Henley studied climatic changes in Australia by studying seasonal rainfall patterns over an 800-year period.

“Our new records show that parts of Northern Australia are wetter than ever before, and that major droughts of the late 20th and early 21st centuries in southern Australia are likely without precedent over the past 400 years.

“This new knowledge gives us a clearer understanding of how droughts and flooding rains may be changing in the context of a rapidly warming world”.

The debate between those who accept what 97% of the world’s scientists are telling us and the contrarians who think it is a left wing plot is increasingly polarising people.

The Australian, our only national newspaper, has kept up a steady flow of news stories and opinion articles which by and large support the views of those in denial about climate change. Similar views are consistently espoused by Sky News and populist radio shock jocks. Some would say that it is a good thing someone is putting the other side of the story.

What the Guardian Weekly now terms the “climate crisis” is well and truly on the agenda today with Strike4Climate, a globally coordinated series of rallies to emphasise the gravity of the situation.

The main idea is to support teenagers who have taken the day off school to protest. They, after all, will be the generation left to clean up problems left by their parents’ and grand-parents’ generations. The international protest movement was started by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg. She called on school students who have concerns about inaction over climate change to go on strike and support climate rallies.

Given the increasingly strident coverage of climate change news and opinion from the both sides, it isn’t hard to mount an argument for having both points of view up for public debate, although you need a subscription to The Australian to read its coverage.

So let me summarise an opinion piece, forwarded to me by a reader.

On July 8, New Zealand geologist David Shelley refuted climate activist assertions that temperatures are at record highs, glaciers and sea ice are melting at unprecedented rates, and sea levels rising dangerously.

“A cursory examination of the geological literature shows that the first two assertions are simply not true, and that rising sea levels are par for the course.

“To assert that today’s temperatures are record highs is mischief-making of the highest order. Earth has been much hotter (up to 10C hotter) for the vast majority of geological time”.

Shelley goes on to say that sea levels were also significantly higher in the last interglacial 125,000 years ago.

“Florida Keys, for example, is the remains of a coral reef that grew then”.

David Shelley’s views are moderate compared to those of the Top 10 climate deniers.

Brendan Demelle, executive director of DeSmog, lists names including Fred Singer, Christopher Monkton and Bjorn Lomborg. Demelle says many climate change deniers start their pronouncements with: “I’m not a scientist, but…”

(Lord) Monkton, a former UK politician with a degree in the classics once said: “global warming will not affect us for the next 2,000 years, and if it does, it won’t have been caused by us.”

Did I suggest the debate between believe and don’t believe is getting more strident? Environmentalist Tim Flannery went so far this week as to suggest that ‘predatory’ climate change deniers are “a threat to our children”.

A despairing Flannery now admits that his 20 years of climate activism has been ‘a colossal failure’.

“Each year the situation becomes more critical. In 2018, global emissions of greenhouse gases rose by 1.7% while the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere jumped by 3.5 parts per million – the largest ever observed increase.

“No climate report or warning, no political agreement nor technological innovation has altered the ever-upward trajectory of the pollution”.

On Tuesday, The Conversation’s Misha Ketchell announced a surprise ban on those promoting climate denial views through the portal.

“The editorial team in Australia is implementing a zero-tolerance approach to moderating climate change deniers, and sceptics,” he wrote. “Not only will we be removing their comments, we’ll be locking their accounts”.

“We believe conversations are integral to sharing knowledge, but those who are fixated on dodgy ideas in the face of decades of peer-reviewed science are nothing but dangerous”.

The Australian’s Chris Kenny said The Conversation’s decision was a fundamental assault on freedom of speech and intellectual integrity.

“This action flies in the face of scientific endeavour, where the scientific method is founded on the presumption of rigorous scepticism”, he wrote.

Kenny added: “The Conversation was founded with taxpayers’ support and still relies heavily on the involvement of publicly-funded universities. This is taxpayers’ money used for the silencing of dissent and the deliberate shrinking and censoring of scientific, academic, environmental, economic and political debate”.

“Who will decide what level of scepticism is acceptable?”

The user-friendly website Skeptical Science (getting skeptical about global warming skepticism) should help clarify that question. The website lists 100+ common climate change myths, matching each one with the scientific facts.

I encourage you all to do your own research into this most urgent of issues. As the Joan of Arc of climate change Greta Thunberg said last year: “I want you to act as if our house is on fire, Because it is’.

Due to unforeseen circumstance I am unable to attend the Brisbane rally. I guess they’ll start without me!

Misheard lyrics and a sentimental playlist

Last Sunday, as we performed my only country song, Crossroads of Love, I allowed myself a sly inward chuckle at the misheard lyric (well, I mishear it): “So I look for directions in the stars high above’’.

It’s the kind of misheard line you’d expect of a 70-year-old bloke, but I’m not about to elaborate. This is a family show.

My songwriter friend Kelly Cork likes the song; he thinks it is a sin of omission that is has not caught the attention of a Kasey Chambers or a Garth Brooks. I always thought it was a bit corny, but it seems you can get away with corny in the country genre.

You will have to permit me a sentimental wallow this week, as I sit here at a bare desk with the laptop (and the dog) – literally the last things to be packed away. I dismantled all of my music-playing technology weeks ago, so now all I have is a tiny IPod with 1700 songs plugged into the car.

Music was uppermost on our minds last Sunday when, against common sense, we held a full-house farewell house concert with just two days remaining to finish packing.

We invited hinterland musician friends to perform: Jevan Cole, Karen and Murray Law, Tommy Leonard, Noel Gardner and Alex Bridge and Kelly Cork. A sumptuous afternoon tea was provided by the audience (Laurel had packed away her baking trays).

The Goodwills Trio ended the day with a set culminating in a medley of well-known travel songs. Not a dry eye in the house! Thanks to Helen Rowe for going the extra mile to get to rehearsals. Thanks also to Woodfordia Inc for sponsoring our concerts over the years.

In the fullness of time, we’ll be producing a history of our house concert series – the first one in Brisbane in 1996, when Margret RoadKnight agreed to be our guest. We held 40 or 50 concerts at Fairfield when we lived there and another 90 or so from the first one in Maleny in 2003 (Margret RoadKnight featured once again).

If you missed out leaving a comment in the guest book that was passed around, you could join the many people who have emailed us with comments about our house concerts. The plan is to print them out and paste them into the book.

This week, I decided to answer the question I get asked a lot about my (songwriting) influences. They are too many to count, although most will be appalled by the omission of Dylan, Springsteen and other mainstream songwriters from this top 20 Spotify list.

Bob’s Spotify Playlist (courtesy of Frankie’s Dad) There are Spotify instructions below, but if you’d rather, FD has also compiled a YouTube playlist

1/ White Winos – LWIII (Last Man on Earth)

Loudon Wainwright’s ever-so slightly wrong tribute to his mother with the last line of every verse left hanging;

2/ Disembodied Voices – Neil and Tim Finn (Everybody’s Here)

New Zealand’s best songwriters reminisce about their childhood growing up in a musical household.

3/ Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner – Warren Zevon (Genius), the title of the song says it all, the ultimate ballad about mercenaries.

4/ A Case of You– (k.d. lang’s version of Joni’s classic song), from Hymns of the 49th Parallel, a magnificently produced album of contemporary Canadian songs;

5/ Clare to Here (Ralph McTell) – poignant tale from Ralph’s early days as a builder’s labourer, as told here in this 2007 live performance;

6/ It’s Raining – Stephen Cummings – from the album Spiritual Bum, a beautiful album of songs from the former lead singer of The Sports (and hopefully an omen);

7/ They Thought I Was Asleep – Paul Kelly – classic story song from Australia’s best – and we’ll never know what happened!

8/ Our Sunshine – Paul Kelly – included here for its brilliant first line ‘So there came a man on a stolen horse and he rode right onto the page.’

(Ed: And as what I think is an interesting aside, Ned Kelly’s horse was named ‘Mirth’.)

9/ Who Know Where the Time Goes – Sandy Denny.

The story is that a young Sandy Denny had the words to this beautiful ballad in her guitar case and it had to be prised from her by Fairport Convention band members who immediately saw its potential;

10 Cold Kisses – Richard Thompson.

This sly story about an insecure man in a new relationship is only bettered by a guitar hook no-one I know has ever been able to reproduce;

11 Took the Children Away – Archie Roach

Seriously, this should be taught at schools;

12 Cry you a Waterfall – Kristina Olsen

Kristina Olsen typically tells a hilarious story before she sings this tribute to a friend taken in an automobile accident. It’s a fine performance technique when you catch people at their most vulnerable;

13/ Say a Prayer – Fred Smith

A tragic love story woven into a snippet of Australian history of war in the Pacific;

14/ Cat’s in the Cradle – Harry Chapin

My song Watching as You Sleep has a similar theme to Harry’s lament about not having enough time for your kids when they are growing up and then the worm turns (‘he turned out a lot like me’)

15/ Lives in the Balance – Jackson Brown

It was always a wonder to me how this stinging critique of American interference in other countries’ politics is not better-known.

16/ The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down – The Band

Robbie Robertson’s well-researched story about the American Civil War, told from a Southern family’s point of view. It has a peculiar but effective rhythmic structure, as explained in the link below.

17/ Hello in There – John Prine

The master of brevity and nuance tells a Cat’s in the Cradle type story about a lonely old couple: ‘We had an apartment in the city – me and Loretta liked living there.’

18/ Sailing to Philadelphia – Mark Knopfler and James Taylor

The story behind the Mason Dixon line, splendidly rendered by two of the world’s best songwriters;

19/ Soldiers’ Things – Tom Waits – the growling poet of life on skid row at his best here: ‘Everything’s a dollar, in this box.’

20/ Paradise – John Prine

Prine’s anti-fossil fuel anthem from a childhood in western Kentucky.

Here’s an extra song, but it’s not on Spotify. It fits well with Paradise – “If you’ve got money in your pocket and a switch on the wall, we’ll keep your dirty lights on.”. Watch and listen here:

Keep your dirty lights on – Tim O’Brien and Darrell Scott.

The refrains of both songs deserve to be sung out loud at next Friday’s Strike 4 Climate rallies.

So, while the homeless Goodwills wander off to the south-western plains, let it be known that you will never find our music on Spotify. Not until they lift the streaming royalties by a respectable margin. Despite its reputation as a music distributer that short-changes musicians, Spotify is an incredibly user-friendly, massive musical database. No wonder at last count they had 217 million subscribers (including the free accounts).

Next week: Expect FOMM late next Friday as I will be attending the Strike 4 Climate rally in Brisbane – an eyewitness report!

Simpson Desert or bust

Although I find the Australian outback fascinating and a little scary, I am unlikely to join the increasing numbers of people whose bucket list item is crossing the Simpson Desert.

It’s not just that we don’t own a 4WD. I/we lack the essential Australian pioneering ability to fix things that break down. Regardless, thousands of people trek across the Simpson Desert each year, from Birdsville in Queensland to Dalhousie Springs in South Australia.

The actual distance travelled between Birdsville and Dalhousie Springs (about 480 kms), seems like a jaunt compared to the 18-hour journey from Brisbane to Birdsville. The conventional first leg, however, is a comparative dawdle, with its largely bitumen and dirt road stretches between Queensland’s capital and the famous outpost which each year draws tourists and adventurers to the annual Birdsville Races and Big Red Bash.

Crossing the Simpson Desert requires thorough preparation and all the skills to navigate a 4WD vehicle across 1,100+ sand dunes. Most guides to the trek recommend an average speed of between 15 and 20 kmh (on tyres deflated to about 20psi), so the crossing can take four or five days.

There are no services between Birdsville and Dalhousie so you need to carry your own food, water and fuel. The key thing to remember is that traversing sand dunes consumes double the amount of fuel you would use on a conventional road. It is recommended to travel in convoy with friends as back-up, in case something goes wrong.

The convoy strategy paid off for Sunshine coast residents Graham Waters and Evelyn Harris, whose planned Simpson Desert crossing went awry on the notoriously corrugated Strzelecki Track.

The party of seven in three vehicles travelled south to Bourke, Cameron Corner and Innamincka, planning to cross the Simpson from west to east.

About 100 kms south of Innamincka, Graham heard an ominous rattle in the rear of the vehicle. Thinking he had a flat tyre, he got out to find that five of the six wheel nuts holding the wheel to the rear axle of his Ford 4WD had sheared off.

“If the sixth nut had broken off, anything could have happened, so in that way we were lucky,” Graham said.

Graham set about ‘borrowing’ wheel nuts from other tyres in the hope they could keep going as far as Moomba. A seasoned four-wheel drive explorer (expeditions include a three-month trip to Cape York), Graham realised he had to find expert help.

“We were there for two nights, off the side of the road. It’s a relatively busy road, so truckies kept stopping to ask if we needed help.

“We tried going back to Innamincka but the wheel started rattling again, “We also tried to drive to Moomba but the replacement nuts wouldn’t hold.”

In the end, a low-loader came out to take the vehicle to the Santos gas plant at Moomba. After a temporary fix at the Moomba workshops, they drove to Port Augusta.

“It ended up being a $5,000 exercise, including the towing, two new axles and the labour.

“But if you did this as an organised tour, it would probably cost that much at least for each person,” Graham added.

Once the vehicle was repaired in Port Augusta, they travelled north via the Flinders Ranges and Lake Eyre before starting the Simpson Desert crossing at Dalhousie Springs.

“We did talk about packing it in and just going home, but after a night in a B&B in Port Augusta, we got our second wind and decided to keep going.

“We’re really glad we did, because if you slow down and stop frequently, you realise the desert, while it’s stark and windy, is a beautiful place full of wild flowers and birdlife.”

“When you are camped out there at night under the stars all you can hear is the occasional howl from a dingo or a grunt from a feral camel. It’s a magic experience.”

Evelyn knew with one look at the damaged wheel it was a case of “how much is it going to cost to get us out of this situation”.

“Usually Graham can bodgie things up, but this time he couldn’t. It’s all part of the adventure, though. You hope it won’t happen, but if it does you can make the best of it”.

Travelling in convoy also proved crucial for Brisbane couple David Caddie and Margaret Pope while on a Simpson Desert crossing. David was driving his Toyota Prado, customised to include a slide-out camp kitchen, fridge and pantry built in to the back of the vehicle. Unfortunately, at the convoy’s first overnight stop, David found he could not get the rear doors open. They had become jammed with the fine powdery substance known as bull dust.

“Luckily the people we were traveling with love their food so they had plenty”, he said. “At least enough till we got to Alice Springs and a smash repairer used a Spit Water Pressure Cleaner to wash out the dust”.

Peter and Linda Scharf’s 4WD motto is to pack light and don’t be in a hurry. A few years ago, he and Linda took 21 days to traverse the 1,850km Canning Stock Route in Western Australia in a Land Rover with a tent, an HF Flying Doctor radio and basic supplies.

“For us it is all about preparation. You pack light and the things you pack need to have multiple uses. Most people take way more clothes than they actually need.

Peter and Linda did carry tools and spare parts, which came in handy when a shock absorber broke.

“For a long time we travelled without long-range communications. Now we have an HF radio with a range of about 3,000 kilometres.”

But as Peter says, one ought not to rely on technology. “You can only guarantee satellite phone coverage of about 80%. So there are still places, especially in northern Australia, where they won’t work.”

Remote area 4WD traveller John Greig told FOMM the stresses and strains on vehicle chassis/bodies on desert tracks can be enormous.

“These days almost every popular desert crossing, including the Canning Stock Route, is suffering from diagonally opposed holes, opening up in the wheel tracks”.

“This is mainly caused by drivers not dropping their tyre pressures low enough”.

Potential setbacks aside, if you have a hankering to cross the Simpson Desert, the best time is between April and October.

Handy tips abound on the internet, including this one drawn from many sources:

While the Australian desert outback is a beautifully scary and remote place, technology and the capabilities of modern 4WD vehicles have made it far less daunting. Robyn Davidson found fame after her 1977 crossing of the Gibson Desert between Alice Springs and the Indian Ocean. She crossed the 1,700 kilometres on foot, with four camels and a dog.

Her book about one woman’s quest for solitude, Tracks, was subsequently made into a movie starring Mia Wasikowska as Davidson.

In a recent ABC interview, Davidson conceded that doing the same trip in the same way would be impossible today.

“Back then there were no mobile or satellite phones. (You’d) come across a two-way radio every three months – it was how you got messages out of there.”

Davidson, who grew up on a mid-western Queensland cattle station, believes one of the greatest gifts of living in a country like Australia is the physically large open spaces.

She had a fascination with the desert and wonders now if those “those early sensual signals of dry air and the smell of dry grass” of her childhood ran deep.

“Perhaps all Australians have some sense of the desert back there buried in their psyches,” she said.

“This creed of the desert seemed inexpressible in words and indeed in thought”. T. E. Lawrence

All photos (including drone footage) by Graham Waters.

Four in 10 Australians Move Every Five Years

You were warned that FOMM would be ruminating about the not-uncommon human need to periodically pack up and move on. We are not alone. Over 40% of Australians moved house at least once between one Census and the other and the ratio is higher still for younger people.

According to the 2016 Census conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 43.4% of the overall population moved house between 2011 and 2016. Young people (20-29) were the most nomadic, with a third moving every year and two thirds moving within five years. These statistics are always rising, one Census after the other. Our imminent move (two weeks) will be recorded in the data collected for the 2021 Census (How did that come around so quickly?)

In a large country with six States and two Territories, it’s a fair bet the move is associated with work. I recall jamming around an outback campfire with a banjo-playing electrician who had left Rockhampton, where a contract had come to an end, hoping to get work in Darwin, where at the time there were many large construction projects.

No doubt that young fellow would belong to the cohort who rent houses. About a third of Australians rent houses or apartments, moving on average every three years. Some move because of a change of circumstance (work, a new baby, an opportunity to move to a better place), but many are forced to move because (a) the landlord is selling (b) they have been evicted for various reasons or (c) the rent went up and they need something cheaper.

Australia’s 1,100 self-storage sites do very well out of this constant moving and so do the movers who transport goods back and forth. Those forced to move at short notice have no option but to store their goods and chattels until they can find a place big enough to reclaim their stuff. A common story (from those moving from big family homes to two or three bedroom apartments), is that there will never be enough room for the piano and Mum’s antique bedroom suite. Those on a fixed income may also struggle to find an affordable home large enough to keep the possessions they have accumulated.

The rental market is controlled by people who are accumulating wealth by investing in real estate. Even without buying investment houses, many Australians have become well-off by renovating and selling their principal place of residence, on average every seven years (the period during which houses supposedly double in value).

Homeowners, too, have reasons aplenty for moving; a new job (in a new State), moving in with elderly parents to become care-givers and of course the moves brought on when one in two marriages end in divorce. Few formerly married couples manage to co-habit under the same roof ‘for the sake of the kids’, so someone has to move. Moving adds to the stress, anxiety and sense of dislocation that comes with a marital split. It sucks, and what nobody tells you beforehand is how hard it is for a single person (the majority of divorcees are people in their 40s), to find new digs. You’re too old for a share house, a boarding house seems like the dark side of the street and there is no way you are ready to shack up with someone new, are you?

Whether your last move was five 10 or even 17 years ago, the stress and chaos of packing stays with you.

Our downstairs room is a bit like the refrain in Kelly Cork’s song: “It’s all in boxes now, ready to go.” Even when you’re not a hoarder (we both like to keep things that might come in handy), moving after 17 years is a bit of a brain scrambler.

A reader who lives in north Queensland described moving after 30 years from the cane farm where she and her husband had raised a family. They moved to a new but smaller property in a nearby town.

“I know the time, effort and energy that go into packing after such a long time being in one place. Vinnies was very happy with me when we moved!”

We also found this to be so, separating things into that which could be sold, given away or taken to the transfer station (2019 term for a rubbish dump). A young woman took our old canvas tent off our hands, saying her plan was to take the kids camping (to get their heads out of their devices). It was a bargain, but we figure there’s a lot of karma there.

Absolutely no-one wanted our very large entertainment unit with its small fixed space for a TV. We took it apart and drove to the aforementioned transfer station. Only later I thought “Gee, the Men’s Shed might have wanted the solid timber top.”

I had an asthma attack while sifting through old, dusty tax records. In case you did not know, you have to keep personal tax files for five years; business files should be kept for seven years and 10 years for self-managed superannuation fund records.

So, a lot of shredding and burning later (shredded paper makes great packing material for fragile items), I pulled a huge plastic bin from under the desk labelled ‘Bob’s journalism files’. Damn, did I not go through this exercise once already? I previously scanned, printed and filed in folders the 150 or so columns I wrote for the Toowoomba Chronicle in the 1980s. The late Bert Pottinger, who wrote a weekly column into his mid-eighties, encouraged me to try my hand. Thanks for starting me on a path, Bert. It surprised me to learn that even then I referred to the other half as variations on ‘She Who Makes Her Own Yoghurt’. It’s not meant to be disrespectful, just an expansion of a catch phrase invented by John Mortimer, whose crusty old barrister Horace Rumpole was wont to refer to his wife Hilda as: ‘She who must be obeyed’.

We have complicated our tight packing deadline by performing at this week’s Maleny Music Festival (tomorrow at 11.45am), throwing a private house concert/party, driving to Brisbane for a ballet and then to the Neurum Creek Festival on September 13-15.

The majority of our cohort (people aged 70 and over), wish to ‘age in place’, particularly the 75% of older people who own their houses outright. This gives them options when it comes to downsizing to more manageable properties. In some circumstances, older people will need to sell their house to fund a move into retirement villages or aged care facilities. Sometimes the elderly and not-so elderly struck down by dementia are moved into the aforesaid ‘facilities’ without much say in the matter.

As so many people have said to us on hearing our moving-on story, it is better to do it now (at 70, fit and healthy), than have it forced upon you.

Some locals just don’t understand why we’d want to move away from the hinterland, where after 17 years we are still relative newcomers.

But as the famous Eccles said, when Neddie Seagoon asked why he was in the coal cellar: “Everybody’s gotta be somewhere”.

FOMM backpages: https://bobwords.com.au/one-persons-rubbish-anothers-treasure/