Confessions from the Antipodes

I am grateful to all who kindly stayed away during the last ten years I have been missing while collating my life into print. Now that the print is ready, my presence will be everlasting.

I have enjoyed motivating earthly life I owe to my persistent hard work and to Australia for giving me the opportunity to carve out my own place in the sun and the freedom to have a voice far away from my childhood winters.

I affirm here that my story was entirely written, edited, formatted, with my own artwork designed and published by me alone without any assistance, aid or subsidy from anybody whatsoever.

To Ming, my friend, and partner for sharing her lives’ culture, the garden of blueberries, Goji berries tea and her time in my days with me.

And to all the children of the lost earthly paradise.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Forward to the Australian Quintet

INTRODUCTION TO CONFESSION FROM THE ANTIPODES.

PART ONE, In the Quest for Happiness 1972-1982

PART TWO, The Writing on the Wall 1982-1996

EPILOGUE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

OTHER WORKS by this Author

Author's Notes: Every man has a story to tell, not all will tell the way it was. This story told here by me is mine, it is factual. I have invented nothing and I say it honestly the way it was in my time. It has been documented by me over my lifetime of the things I saw, I felt, did, and thought. Localities and public names are real as they were in the events that happened on my journeys. The real names of some characters have been changed to protect their privacy, not to conceal the truth but to enlighten it. For this reason, their presence in my story was a cause that defined my character opening the window into theirs; therefore, this story is much theirs as it is mine.

Disclaimer: Every care has been taken to verify names, dates, and details through this book, but much was reliant on memory. Therefore, some unintentional errors may have occurred. The Publisher assume no legal liability or responsibility for inaccuracies; however, any information that will redress them is welcome.

Forward to the Australian Quintet

I have just buried my friend and partner of sixteen years. At the start of the third week in April 2006, I began to reflect on the two years of her fighting breast cancer and our struggle to save her life. That was two years after she put up the toughest fight of her life when we thought we got it beat that she was in remission. Then suddenly this. A few days after 2006 New Year Annette woke up dizzy with a vertigo headache and vomiting. I took her to doctor and next we followed the usual MRI’s tests and worries. The results were not good. Metastasises was in her brain doctor said, and sent her to Peter Macs cancer hospital for special treatment. For several weeks, we travelled from home in Gippsland to Melbourne’s Peter Mac Cancer hospital only to find that it was not working. Annette was receiving nuclear treatment on the new machine in the basement when one day the operators refused to treat her because she suffered severe pain and discomfort. She was screaming from her pain under that machine delivering the death rays to cancer in her brain but it did the opposite. It almost killed her. I was in the waiting room I could hear her screams. After they had brought her out on the trolleys, they arranged for a Helicopter ambulance to take her to Traralgon Gippsland Hospital. In the hospital, we got a private room where I could join her to be with her night and day. I slept on a portable bed next to hers so I could be there for her whenever she needed me.

The last four weeks’ day and night we were in the abyss of despair. The four weeks I shall never forget. The last night after four weeks was surreal. After I fed her with soup as I have done every day. She could only take liquid as her organs started to shut down. By ten o’clock that night, she was in pain from the urge to pass waste but she couldn’t get it out. The pressure persisted giving her shattering internal pain. I called the nurse and they were helpful but the problem required a duty doctor but the duty doctor was busy somewhere else. Annette was in tears from pain but the shit wouldn’t come out. I asked the nurse if they have something to put inside her anal canal to open it up but she said for that we needed to call on duty doctor but she was busy somewhere else. I asked the nurse, what if I put my finger in her anus? Could it help? You could try, she said. I did but the blockage was somewhere further up. The pain was getting worst. I told the nurse if I can’t get Hospital duty doctor I will call an emergency doctor from anywhere else. The nurse went away and the duty doctor arrived half an hour later at one o’clock in the morning. I complained, ‘why it took you three hours to come?’ She was a thirty-something doctor. She answered in a weary but angry voice, Other people needed me to help them stay alive was more urgent than to help the dying. I looked at Annette; she looked at the doctor, Am I dying? Annette asked.

There was no reply.

I asked the doctor, ‘can you give her something to stop the pain?’. There was no answer. Another doctor arrived who treated Annette during the day. He checked Annette then he said; Now it is up to you, we can discontinue some medicine and give you some new one to stop the pain.

I looked at Annette thinking about the meaning of what this doctor said but she understood it before I could say a word. She said, That will be alright. It's time. I know.

Her voice was drained but her eyes were fully open.

So it was. She got a shot of powerful dose of painkiller and after that everybody left the room. I closed the door.

It was just the two of us as it always was for the past sixteen years.

She stretched her hand towards me.

Come, she asked, I must say goodbye to you now just in case if I don’t wake up again.

She looked at me. Her eyes were glassy and her eyelids were slowly closing. I gave her a hug and a kiss.

She whispered, Steve... please ...look after yourself.

‘I promise I will. I got your wedding ring on my finger until we meet again.’ I said that questioning in my mind, ‘until we meet again’? I could only see darkness beyond that.

Next, she was gone, asleep or in a coma. I wasn't sure which. I couldn’t believe life could end just like that. But she was still breathing so I drew a chair next to her bed and held her still-warm hand. She was asleep and soon was I tiring out. Then suddenly something woke me up. It was three o’clock in the morning. The hospital was quiet as I began to remember what happened last night. I thought it was a dream. Annett’s head moved and she looked at me.

Darling, please give me some water, She asked in a clear voice like if she was fully awake in control of her faculty and the knowledge that I was there.

I quickly poured water into a glass and brought it to her mouth.

Carefully I let the water sip in between her swollen lips as she swallowed a full glass of water. I asked, ‘do you want more.’

She moved her head as in, no. She was off back to sleep. All of a sudden, I saw hope. Maybe she will be okay. And there I sat next to her not taking my eyes off her face with my hand in hers waiting for the miracle.

I think my mind was slowly waning when I felt my hand was sliding out of hers. I got up touched her head and looked at her face her eyes were closed. I moved her eyelid up but it came down again. I called Annette.

There was no sign of life.

I don’t think I could put my feelings of that moment into words. I was just dead tired. I put my head in my hands and leaned onto her body thinking. Was that all. What should I do now?

I got up and walked out of the room and called the Duty-Nurse from her office. There were two nurses there. One Irish Nurse, who was supportive throughout my ordeal. I said, ‘Annette has passed away.’

She said nothing. Quietly she came with me in the room. Checked her eyes and held her hand then called a doctor who came soon after and did the same and pronounced Annette dead.

The Nurse then proceeded to uncover and undress Annette with my help. We both washed her body and placed her in a body bag. A man arrived with a trolley. We put her on the trolley and together we wheeled her to the Hospital Morgue. At the Morgue’s door, the man said, You can’t come in.

‘That’s okay. I just want to make sure that she is indeed gone as I promised her; I will make sure of that before you put her in the freezer."

We were standing there for about five minutes when the Mortuary attendant said, Don’t worry she is gone.

I said goodbye to Annette as the Mortuary door opened and she disappeared behind the closed door.

I went home and kept on thinking about those last moments with Annette. I was tired but I couldn’t sleep. I began planning for her funeral. I have already purchased a beautiful plot at the local cemetery and had a vault placed in the ground with a marble monument above. It was almost ready.

For the funeral, Robert came all the way from Perth. At Melbourne airport, he hired a car, drove to my farm in Gippsland, and got lost. Eventually, he made it and in spite of all he was in good spirits.

I remain forever indebted to him for his presence and his kindness.

After the funeral I was there alone in a big farm house, I rebuilt adding Studio and outbuildings. I was sitting on forty acres of undulating land where we invested seven years of our life establishing a small cottage vineyard, orchid and a lifestyle that was supposed to sustain us to the end. But that was not to be. The end came too soon for Annette and for me. I was sixty-six years old having to decide what to do with the rest of my life. So I had a plan after everything I did I saw the rest of my life to go on living would be futile. I thought about as I sat in my studio at my PC, I wrote my last will and testament in my obituary. As the final touches were performed on our grave monument, I requested that both of our photos be placed with names on the marble headstone. When it was finished, it looked like this.

From there on, I was suffering deep melancholy listening mostly to classical music, Andrea Bocelli and occasionally my own guitar. Yet I was not entirely on my own. I had Beba next to me full of warmth and affection.

This is Beba in 2006

Yes, she knew that something was not right that somebody was missing. She would have laid next to me and just stare at me. If I got up, she would get up and follow me everywhere. Beba was a reminder of those few wonderful years we had together, the three of us Annette, me with Beba under our forty acres of sky. Annette gave me Beba for my birthday in 2002. When Annette was in Hospital one week before she passed away, I asked Hospital to let me bring Beba in to be with Annette for a couple of hours. The permission was given. As I brought Beba inside the hospital room, I let her off her lead. Her head went up and when she saw Annette laying there on the hospital bed, she charged to one side of the bed. Gently she put her paws up on the bed and propped herself up and put her head on Annette with her tail wagging giving out a continuous sound like crying howl. It was the last couple of hours they had together and the last time I saw Annette happy and smiling. I look at Beba and I saw that she must remember when life had real meaning when we were three, but we are the two of us now with one missing. It felt strange.

At times, my feelings were on the edge of doom and my brain was telling me, end it now. I bent down and gave Beba a hug and I kept on asking myself, ‘how could I leave you now.’ So for the next three months on the farm alone, I was left to myself planning one day ahead, one day to the end. A special friend visited me but my three sons were absent except occasional phone call. There was always a lot of work and in spite of the state of my mind, I was always reminding myself to leave the house, the vineyard and the fruit trees in good order before I was going to leave any day from now. I must leave things right in good order for others whoever they would be. It got too much for me alone and I couldn’t find anyone willing to do work for fair wages. Then I went through my writings amounting to hundreds of pages of notes and essays on subjects of life’s topics and my flips in my hand scripts. I realised these were drafts for six books on Microsoft Word I was working on in parallel on my busy painting, writing, living, and farming time. It was hard work. What was I going to do with all of that? Give it to my sons? They would not be interested in what I had to say, as they never were in the past. Poor kids, they must have taken me for a complete fool.

I remembered I offered my older son to buy him Nursery that was for sale not far from my farm. I thought one day after I would be gone he could connect the farm with the nursery. But he didn’t want it. He preferred to live in Daylesford rather than displace himself and come to live in Gippsland. Before that, Annette and I had offered my middle son to buy him a house provided he would share it with his older brother. But he didn’t want to share it with his brother. Nor would he wish to live in the suburbs on the east side of Yarra River in Malvern where we already found a house in our price range.

As for my younger son, I have never done much for him so I offered to buy him a house. I decided to make him an offer in these last dark days of my life. I did so to see where we stand.

It was three months after Annette passed away that I said to him, ’I will buy you a house close to the city. But you should keep one room in the house for me to stay when I come to Melbourne.’

He replied, Dad I will think about, and give you an answer in a few days. A few days had passed and he still had not called me.

I called him, ‘Did you decide if you want me to buy you a house?’ I asked.

No dad you don’t need to buy me a house. I want to do it all by myself, was his final answer.

Well, I was here in peace and quiet, just Beba and me and no one to talk with but the trees and my resident magpies. I came to a serious point of time to make my life break or wake. Considering my three sons were so much changed by their mother’s love and my absence in their lives that they didn’t count me in as their family. I had no choice but review my plans.

Why should I depart this life without finishing my work? With all my writing in bits and chapters for six Book in draft needing attention, rewrite, and editing. I could be very busy for the next ten years if not longer considering that I want to do it all by myself. I kept on tormenting myself about those life and death issues. I can’t throw it all away now.

****

My final decision was to LIVE and finish what I set out to accomplish from the start. I will begin right here. I will sell the farm, and have another working fling at life. At that time, Edward called me and suggested that with money I got I could choose a country where I could get a lifestyle worth my money. He suggested India. That would be new ground for me not exactly like the French Riviera. I would have to re-learn new ways to suit Indian way. No problem, said Edward, I could come with you. And I said, ‘let’s work on it.’ I must have given him some hope for an adventure together. But after I did research and checked my own ability to acclimatise to Indian way I realised I could never do it. So India with Edward was a fail, which must have disappointed him after he learned that I booked my trip to Hong Kong. I decided to instead of India to connect with the city where the song Love is a Many splendour things was born and thus I compromised with all my previous plans and promises. After that, I have sent everyone who knew me into my worst nemesis camp.

Soberly I have undergone complete metamorphosis’s that became effective immediately. C’est la vie.

I was back to my writing my final chapter.

****

But recalling and mending my past was like swimming against the undercurrent towards the beach drowning in the sea of memories where my hard-hitting choices of the past could never be repaired. If history were written from the memory, it would never have happened. My history didn’t need to be from memory, as it was all there from the notes I had written down for future reference first in ink and later stitched it in Microsoft Word. One life’s odyssey split into five stories became Australian Quintet. In search of a homeland the story trails my youth journey in transit as a refugee drifting through the landscapes of Europe; embracing others cultures and languages.

In1960 Australia became my home and hope. I was twenty-years-old trying to build a life; finding freedom, acceptance, and respect. It was my odyssey, my mission, looking for the absolute meaning of what makes a human, worthy of recognition and respect. I strived to find out to understand the world where I was and who I was to become. So this story is all about a lifetime passage through my chosen Homeland, my struggles through hard choosing in the life's mission to achieve the absolute. At the end what I have learnt I could never put to good use. In spite of that, my life was not my wasteland, it belongs to time.

The first part of my life drifted into the furtive, but the adversity inspired me to believe in self-reliance and personal accountability. When unexpectedly I was persuaded to enlist into FFL (French Foreign Legion) I landed in a place where I never wanted to be; North Africa’s Algerian war of independence. My lucky escape from capture by FLN (Front de libération national du Algérie), earned my discharge from FFL and set me free to return to France. From France, I travelled to Italy to meet with Australian Government officials who were scouting for new skilled migrants for Australia. At the interview, they offered me a place on the next shipment to settle in Australia with a promise of excellent opportunities to study and work. That was the beginning of my Antipodean journey.

On the way to Melbourne on 18 November 1960 while ship Roma docked at Western Australian Port of Fremantle a mining company recruiting officer scouting for mining workers made me an offer in the best-paid work in the country. That enticing offer changed my life’s direction. Instead continuing to Melbourne-four days later, I was at work in the infamous Wittenoom Blue Asbestos Mine. Never suspecting the consequences from the blue asbestos dust I was happy to have a job to help me pay my own way. After a year, I left Wittenoom and settled in Melbourne, which became my home city of choice. Here I could converse in five different languages without ever crossing the street.

Yes, Melbourne became the most human metropolis if you live on earth. I worked here all my life supporting and raising my family so I know. It was a life that seemed so complete yet floating on uncertainties from personal failings. Then one day I woke up to realise that all I worked for came to naught. In spite of my losses, I persisted through my middle life tempests to the end to tell it as it was. At seventy, I finally found time to collate my life’s past from my writings, artwork, and lifetime observation in handwritten notes. A collection of those stories was first titled The Book of Life. Later I chose to enfold those stories in five parts written in the first person I titled Australian Quintet. These became five books in narrative depicting events in my time with true to life characters, their culture, work, and politics. It turns out to be a memoir about the whole shebang the times and the other things in life, most men don’t like to talk about. The story tells about a lifetime consumed by obsession and anxiety about longevity and dying as a consequence of once having worked in the Wittenoom asbestos mine.

Other Works by this Author

"ON The AUSTRALIAN QUINTET."

PART I-OMINOUS BEGINNINGS. (1939-1957)

PART II-FROM THE RAZORS EDGE (1957-1972)

PART III- CONFESSIONS from the Antipodes.

In The Quest for Happiness (1972-1982)

The writing on the Wall (1982-1996)

PART IV-ON BEING THE ABSOLUTE ONE (1996-2006)

PART V- ECHOES FROM THE PAST (2006-2015)

INTRODUCTION TO CONFESSION FROM THE ANTIPODES.

After I had finished writing From the Razors Edge part two of Australia Quintet series, I began working on part three Confessions from Antipodes. Confessions from The Antipodes cranks out from the middle life of a migrant becoming Australian Citizen. In real life, it reveals his personal predicament finding acceptance to work, live, and survive in an ever-changing environment often marred by personal choices. As I navigate through my time, ’I speak of how I responded to each situation from relationships in the workplace and outside at home. I admit the inadmissible I clawed out from what I had learnt from each experience.’

The choice of the title is to guide the reader to the home theme of the book. It peels down layers from what we think of ourselves but often do the opposite and it finds us who we really were from where we came. Here you may rediscover Australia you never knew before.

In an OP shop (opportunity shop), I found the latest edition of Kings in Grass Castles-Sons in the Saddle. I first read this seminal work about early Australian settlers in 1989, written by Mary Durack, the granddaughter of the celebrated Australian pioneering family. I was captivated by her story. In 1996, I circumnavigated the backroads of this vast continent and visited the remnants of the Durack’s former greatness through their relocated Homestead and their burial grounds. Mary Durack passed away in 1994; was soon forgotten with her outstanding book already consigned to OP shops and most of my friends forgot about pioneering families’ and the name of the book’s author, and who she was. Yet her story dwelt in my mind reminding me of our impermanence of no matter how mighty famous or brilliant luminaries are all mere mortals.

I hear Mongol song In 500 years who is going to remember you. Will there be anyone there to remember us? As I travelled through the expense of Australian continent, I thought of the pioneers who came first to this continent. They found no buildings, could see no graves, and no monuments to the dead, only natives living in their humpies. What could have explorers first thought of what they saw? Terra nullius could have been their first look. How else could have those first explorers judge a continent that might have been inhabited for forty thousand years by people who had a voice but no written word? Humans who have never constructed anything higher than humpies using twigs and bush undergrowth? Did invaders, explorers, become pioneer’s settlers lack empathy? Were they so insensitive to saw locals only as fauna and flora? Yet we learn that the many voices in different tribal languages indigenous people carried ancestral memory from ancients over through generations for over thousands of years. Was that folklore or elements of intergenerational memory transfers?

After a brief history of two hundred years the so-called invaders, the colonisers, become the pioneers have built this continent into becoming a nation that has become the envy of the world. In the process, they have added meaning to the first people they found here giving them a new chest of tools by which they could reinvent themselves.

We, the latecomers, including myself travelling the highways built by pioneers, we are grateful for the privilege to be here. It was the pioneering spirit that replaced humpies with modern architecture and sanitised social habitat that followed in recognition of indigenous first Australians.

But times have changed the pioneering spirit of Durack’s’ is no longer there. Some may say that we are no longer pioneers who create human habitat but humdrum citizens; usurpers of next generations breathe of fresh air. And when we realise that; we began to see the real Australia today. And with each new generation, they have to relearn the old rules by making the same mistakes as past generations did over eons ago.

While I was compiling notes for my time here in 2015, I spoke to one migrant from India who arrived here two years ago. In that time, he had a job, bought a house and a car. Then I met a house painter who could not speak, read or write English when he arrived from Afghanistan sixteen years ago. Today he works for himself, employs a dozen of workers and in his time, he managed to acquire four properties and he still can’t speak English. When I compared their time with my arrival in 1960, it took me eight years working two jobs to buy one house that became our family home and one car. Yet thirty years later Y generation born here insist that they are worse off than we ever were.

Why can new emigrants who can’t speak English find work in 2000’s economy and do better than equivalent and young Australian-born who have a good command of English language, and family support?

If life is work to love and happiness and everything in between why don’t Native-born residents who are savvy of local conditions and language, why they don’t want to work or can’t work. Is it what happens in between that can screw up theirs and our lives.

I confessed all that happened in between about my choices that marred my life and some that had given me a chance to go on to new opportunities. My workplace changed to a Public office filled with hidden agendas, not only mine but those of dodgy entities running it.

I speak of meanings of love and happiness and my journey in conflict at home and at work fought out with the same symptoms of times we live in.

In the midst of my life’s journey down under I learned about the past events at another place I came from. With all that I have learned, thought, and what I have initiated, I still could not remake my destiny from first being a refugee.

Yet there was another shtick in this story. The Wittenoom dust ruminates and lingers on and the conflicts between cultures unsettled our peace. Under the Southern Cross, I watched a distant Armageddon from my antipodean safety. We hear Europe’s whimpers and Balkans nationalist who have added new meaning to words in The English language ethnic cleansing in a war Serbs conducted for greater Serbia.

The Yugoslav Brotherhood was suddenly over because it never was. In the same time, here in Australia, we are still struggling with our destiny and the concept of Multiculturalism where people from 190 nationalities are still a 45% minority without a single seat in the national parliament to represent them, we call Democracy.

Why is that so?

Maybe because the majority of us immigrants, we integrate and become Australians. It must be because of the open concept, of fair-minded people who value to be Australian Citizens.

After half a century living and working in Australia, it is only natural to feel at home here. Yet on my travels through Australia, sometimes I encountered disappointing attitudes when I was asked, And where do you come from. I would always reply, ‘I am from Melbourne.’

Yes, but you speak with an accent. Where were you born? The interrogator self-appointed true blue Aussie would insist.

‘I was born in Croatia, but I am Australian,’ would usually be my reply.

Croatian yes, but Australian you will never be, comes the usual disappointing response. My Serbian, Italian and Greek friends spoke of the similar experiences. I questioned it, ‘Why is it so? And if it is, does it really matter?’

It was this kind of rejections of us new arrivals to this country that I found wanting. We came here, changed or anglicised our names so that locals can pronounce them and that our children could have an easier passage through Australian schools. We worked and grow old together yet some small minority of flag waving true blue Aussies can’t get it that we are here to stay together work, live, and die.

In spite of such minority views, I never considered that such rejection of migrants constitutes inbred Australian racism.

It is not racism. Although sometimes there is no other word to describe prejudice we use word racism when it could be the ethnocentric or apprehensive view of other people’s behaviour or culture. Therefore, it is not racism it is most often ignorance and at worst individual belligerence which ought to be made criminal offence.

Unfortunately, all it had to do with who we are, the reason is Australian immigration policy?

To maintain social cohesion, Australia must manage better the influx of new arrival into our diverse community. Australians often feel left out from the loop of decision makers as for whom we should invite and let in and under what terms to share our space, the air, water, and amenities which are at this point in Australian history limited. According to some studies and reports, we could sustain less than twenty million citizens to live comfortably to be serviced by existing amenities; energy, water and public transport. This will soon escalate to fifty million we could sustain with reduced standard of living by the end of this century.

If we consider that the new arrivals to Australia come in following categories: tourist, visitors issued with temporary visas, foreign students, sponsored migrants, and refugees. There are primarily two groups of refugees first those we take in under the auspices of UN on humanitarian grounds and those who rock in by boats or by air and apply for refugee status or permanent residency on arriving.

After having been through refugee thread mill over Europe and as Australian citizen for over fifty years, I have come to fear that Australians will one day turn on itself unless we change our Humanitarian Code of practice; how we treat refugees and migrants. By that, I came to the conclusion that there could be only three methods by which to treat refugees and migrants to Australia or for that matter to any other country.

1. There should be only one fair humanitarian act towards refugees and that is that we should facilitate their return back to the country of their birth when it becomes safe to do so.

2. For refugees to remain in Australia, they should be permitted to do so if it was not safe for them to return back to their place of birth. To become Australian Citizens, they should be invited, sponsored, or approved for some meritorious reason to remain here. The only human and fair way would be for all human earthlings to be assisted and given the right to live free in peace wherever they were born or if not possible then where ever they are accepted to become citizens.

3. Economic migrants who arrive in Australia by air or boat should be sent back to where they come from unless they are sponsored by family or business and are given temporary or exemplary permanent residency while abiding by the local rule of law.

What is irking most Australians is that successive government had allowed an influx of new migrants without the due consideration of social and cultural impact resulting in discrimination of cultural and ethnic intolerance. If Australians become collaborative partners in such decisions making, by formulating criteria by which new migrants and refugees are selected, I believe the response to refugees and migrants would be without prejudice or less of it.

To become Naturalised Australian that privilege must be respected not only by the Naturalised Australians but also recognized and respected by all Australian Born Citizens.

In the finality, everything begins in the family. If a child or a student under fifteen years of age is bigoted or violent against another student or person, the punishment financial or otherwise should be levied against the parents. That could open a learning dialog and invoke all kinds of emotions by both parties that could improve relationships. The ultimate aim of human development should be that a growing individual becomes fully accountable for their actions by the age of fifteen. The primary responsibility rests on nurture from parents and family and not on the state. The state should only be a bridge between the education system and family home. The final say should be left to the parents. Since some thirty years ago the state has begun eroding family influence over their children’s we have produced a generation of misfits’ who take no responsibility for their actions and have no empathy for the other.

While looking for motives where did we go wrong we should take notice of what slips from our politicians’ lips and from the lips of those who professes to uphold our democracy. If we are not vigilant, we will never be free from home-grown despotism.

"State is the name of the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies; and this lie slips from its mouth: 'I, the state, am the people."

Friedrich Nietzsche: Thus Spoke Zarathustra

PART ONE

In the Quest for Happiness (1972-1982)

1972 IT WAS TIME.

It was a new beginning for me. I had a family, a home, and heaps of work. I spent more time working from home. I had more time with Ingrid and boys. I thought I matured by becoming myself. I was no longer searching for whom I was. I was free from the follies of Paris and St Kilda romances. One thing I could not get out from, my thoughts was the dramatic leap from self-theory, connecting the past with the future. I had become alert to my mind wiring between my intellectual content and my heart. It seemed that the validation for those two connected nodes, which were the essence of who I am, came from an unknown source. I had no control over it. Again, I felt froze in Siberia of Aussie politics, culture, and their thinking. Given the time, I will work it all out.

As I, was going through my old notebooks, I sighted my old diary and the title amused me as I read it, Diary of an immigrant in the land of Waltzing Mathilda’s. What mad me to write that, I asked myself. There was no date. Must have been long ago I thought.

When I wandered over some of my entries in my diary, I reminisced about time past so long ago when in despair I was trudging the streets of Zagreb, and Paris. Then, I could not foretell the future and the road that would bring me all the way down to Melbourne. I could not foresee to be one-day living on the new Gum-Tree estate with the view of Mt. Dandenong s through the window of my new home I built filled with voices of my children. Such seen was not even in my dreams growing up in Zagreb. That idea was born here in Melbourne, and I made it into reality.

In my notes, I read these lines, Multiculturalism, ethnicity, indigenous people, and who is an Australian.

I wrote, According to what I learned from locals, True Blue Aussies, what they say and they write about what it means to be an Australian? I certainly would not meet their criteria. These local patriots say that to be Australian first you have to be born here, grew up here, watch the same television shows, cricket, football and eat the same Ice cream after the school. You also must wear the same outfit, a T-shirt out over shorts and walk in thongs. You must adopt good Aussie eating habits tomato sauce sandwiches, with snags and sweet gherkins, not forgetting Vegemite. As fair dinkum Aussie, you will have a tendency to change names to; arvo, smoko, rego, spag bol. Give newcomers nicknames such as, New Australian, Wogs, dygos, refos, slant eyes, or pommy bastards and call creative individuals smart arseholes or poofters. But the first prerequisite to becoming Australian, you must assimilate to bark for an Aussie Rules football team, to be able to talk cricket and drink beer. All these were far away from Banjo Paterson’s time and his Waltzing Matildas.

I thought it was a joke but at work in the office, Aussies were saying the same thing insisting that these were redeeming features of what distinguishes locals from the newcomers but not necessary unites them.

After all, that they will tell you; to be an Australian you have to be first born here.

Some time ago, work colleagues invited me to the end of the year party. We were all office blokes, drafters, engineers, and managers. The party was in someone's house. As the party got going, and the men become drunk, I felt left out so much an outsider that I had to do something about to change my understanding of Australian culture. Most of the men were talking about Aussie rules football and cricket all evening. They were drinking beer happy with their company without a single woman. After some of the men had drunk so much that they could drink no more, they would go to the toilet. In there with a finger in the throat, they would induce vomiting to get out all the bile to make room for extra beer. These bizarre acts surprised me; I have never seen it before. I brought with me a bottle of vine and put it on the table, but no one would touch it. They were all beer and whiskey drinkers while I was drinking Tasmanian Apple Cider and watching what was going on. I could not understand what they were talking about. A concerned colleague half pissed but amusing character became my evening’s cultural impresario suggested that all Wogs should go to football and cricket games to learn more about Aussie culture.

I did once; I went to a St Kilda Aussie rule football match. It was all right until somebody from above started to spray us with urine. A few men in their twenties, after they finished drinking beer, urinated in the bottles and then squirted the piss over the people sitting below them. People just moved away and said nothing. I asked why so many people were so indifferent; just walked away and said nothing. Somebody replied, People here are used to it. With the same indifference, they vote and they elect their politicians. The last word was by one patriotic Aussie, put up with Aussies throwing piss is safer than watching Wogs soccer games where they throw flares.

Well what can I say; I still did not fit in any of that. I was not into football, cricket, or drinking beer and especially not into Wog's games throwing flares. No matter who people are and no matter what they came from, I would not discriminate against, load them with derogatory names, or treat them with scorn.

That was the end of my notes on Multiculturalism.

When did I write these? I did not write the date down.

Reading these observations from some time ago, I was wondering about our preoccupation with who we are and our belongings. It was part of our insecurity in the new country. In spite of all that, I felt I was just another law-abiding Australian Citizen as the majority of other Australians were. Time changed my outlooks and the only insecurity that still haunts me was that about my longevity brought on by my exposure to asbestos.

About for who I am was still work in progress.

When I began supporting Australian Labour Party (ALP), my office colleague taunted me that I was, a leftie. Tony Lamb’s minder told me that, Machiavellians were trying to stop Whitlam ascent to the highest office in the land. You must be politically domesticated before you can understand Australian politics. He was right I didn’t know anything about Aussie politics, not even what he meant by what he told me. I was still a bystander taking an interest in what was happening around me. Local politics was attracting my attention. Tony Lamb was our ALP local member for Latrobe electorate. I respected what he stood for. To help him, I spent hours handing out election material and making mailbox drops throughout electorate to support his election. I even gave ALP small donation for which Tony thanked me in a letter I still have it, framed. I thought the changes at the top could add meaning to who we are (and to what we were).

Indeed, it was 1972 the beginning of a new era in our political and our personal lives. The year would change us forever. In the same time for us, it was the happiest time in our lives. First boys were growing up, and I had established Engineering Design business. I had to give up my study because additional work consumed my free time. Ingrid and I we made a contract with divided responsibilities. I was to work and be a provider to support her to studies while she should help children to learn literacy and numeracy. Ingrid began looking for accountancy courses to study by correspondence. She thought she could manage to study accountancy by correspondence and take care of three boys and housekeeping while I was virtually absent from home at work. I wanted her to spend more time with our sons to teach them to read and write English. I decided to devote more time to work to pay house mortgage off early. I was hoping that later I could have more time with boys’ when they start school. We discussed boy’s education plans and agreed on our shared expectations. I was driving ideas and planning for our children early years to be spent learning and developing elementary discipline. Ingrid was driven by her unconditional love for three boys preferring to do whatever made them happy which usually meant happy-go-lucky. In the absence of school for parenting, she relied on Doctor Benjamin Spock books. She was convinced Doctor Spock was the experts’ authority on bringing up children. According to the media in 1970-80, the majority of Australian families thought so too. I was not so sure. I thought Dr. Benjamin Spock was not always right, to tell parents, not to discipline their children when they misbehaved. Don’t punish them because their little personalities would be warped, and we might damage their self-esteem, one pedagogue commented publically. After Dr. Spock's son had committed suicide, I questioned his methods. This man influenced a generation of parents on how to bring up their children. Most of the parents, we knew followed his expert theories and the theories that’s was all what they were. I thought that the lack of discipline might lead educators and us parents one day to ask ourselves, Why our children have no conscience? Why they don’t recognize the right from wrong? Why our children lie and show disrespect? In the end, we will reap what we sow," as the old adage goes.

The problem was when we mention discipline it might conjure images of mistreating children physically. That was not what was meant here by discipline. Discipline had to be programming of children’s daily activities with the involvement of parent’s time and teaching aids. Imparting human values, empathy, and respect for others, controlling their daily activities and their interaction with the outside world including their time with their peers. However, the question asked was, how do you achieve these and lead them to follow your program if they say, NO. What do you do if they just abscond out from your life? How do you compel them into obedience to your program or house rules when they walked out on you? The answer to that under 1980’s social norms and government rules was a perilous territory to tread. Australian Government Human Services had found a solution. If children were not happy at home living under parent’s rule, they were free to live, and the government would help them by paying for their daily support including accommodations. Government Human Services Agency sent instructors to high schools to instruct students of their rights on what to do if they were unhappy at home. If unhappy, how they could legally break away from their parents and how to fill Centrelink forms to secure government's financial assistance. At the time, these all went past me as I thought it had nothing to do with my children and me. My plan was to teach boys to develop work habits and discipline they would want to apply to themselves. To help them learn how to use their time wisely and imaginatively. I have given some thought to how to do that, considering I would be away at work most of the times. In each of their bedrooms, I installed large blackboards and provided them with chalk, sponge, and the help from loving mother. I expected her who was mostly at home to see to that they would learn to use their initiative to draw and to learn to write as I did grow up with chalk and talk. I was planning to spend every day my free time with each of them to teach them math and physics. I asked their mother to teach boys English and spelling while I was at work. English was my second language heavily accented for this reason I depended on their mom and her English skill to teach them. We discussed teaching our sons second language but agreed that because at home, we spoke only English to teach them Dutch or Croatian would be impractical. French was their school subject; I would help them with that. I had collected a large number of books, including children books sitting on the open shelves for boys to see and use at will. I was hoping they would use their own initiative with mothers help to read. We subscribed to Encyclopaedia Britannica, and there was one television set in the lounge room.

With all these going on in our lives, I still had to get up every morning at six and go to work and come back home at six in the evening. In between six in the morning and six in the evening, I never knew what was happening at home and what boys did. I knew their mother was an avid reader, and I was sometimes hoping she would read a book to kids and help them to develop the same love for language and books as she had. All I could do was provide an opportunity for my family to be happy and have all the tools to achieve the best outcome, according to their abilities with mother's and my support.

The English Company, Belling and Lee, I was working for close to home would soon end. In London, directors of Belling and Lee decided to close down Australian operation. That decision put me once again on the market to look for the next opportunity.

****

Privately I met big Bill McGee engineering project manager at ACI Fiberglas Design office in Dandenong. He asked me to come and see him. He had a job going for me if I might be interested. When I came to see him at ACI Fiberglas Plant, Bill took me to the factory floor, showing me fiberglass insulation production line. After, in his office, he introduced me to companies’ upcoming production upgrading Engineering projects. Then Bill asked me if I was willing to start as Project Design Draftsman. After three months if we are all happy, he said, you would move on Project Design Engineers salary.

I accepted his offer, and ACI Fiberglas in Dandenong turned out to be yet another fascinating work experience. My project was to design and develop new packaging and mechanical handling equipment for Fiberglas insulation and Fiberglass textiles. In the open project office, I worked with other draftsmen and engineers. They were all Anglo-Saxon and Australian born, except for myself, and one Dutch electronics Engineer. In the production area, were mainly migrant’s workers from dozens of nationalities especially, Greeks, Macedonians, Italians and a few Croats. All the bosses were Anglo-Australians. Accidents were not frequent, but all the safety signs throughout the factory were in English. I began campaigning to introduce Multilingual safety signs. Management listened, but changes were slow. The view of the middle management was that if, workers want to keep their jobs they must learn English. Eventually, I agreed that would be the best outcome if we would assist workers to learn English. There was a lot of dust throughout the factory, and the only air quality control was draft whirling the dust through large spaces above and down over operators. We were making Pink Fiberglas buts. Colouring and chemicals like formaldehyde were added past glass furnaces and liquid residue from all these was pumped into the ponds at the back of the factory. Occasionally some liquid escaped into the Dandenong Creek, which flowed all the way out into Melbourne’s Port Philip Bay at Mordialloc.

One early morning when I arrived at the office, I saw a man wearing muddy gumboots, waiting.

The middle-aged man politely introduced himself, I am a dairy farmer with the farm on the north side next to your factory, he said.

I have been milking my cows this morning and they gave me pink milk. I would like to speak to someone about that. My forty cows all got pink milk from drinking water from the Creek where you discharged your fiberglass-pink-butts waste. I can’t use or sell pink milk, he complained.

Dairyman cows were drinking water from the Dandenong Creek, which occasionally run Pink from our effluent ponds. It took us time to have the pink milk problem resolved with the introduction of new bacterial liquid waste cleaning tower. But by that time the dairy farm at the back was sold and the site was developed into an industrial estate. All the same, the Dandenong Creek run clean water again.

ACI Fiberglas head office hired a young student and sponsored his study at Melbourne University to research effects of fiberglass fibres on human health. The fears were that fiberglass dust could be as hazardous to human health as asbestos. This was the first time asbestos came to my attention as the cause of health problems and that exposure to asbestos may be causing deaths of many ex-workers from Wittenoom Blue Asbestos Mine in Western Australia. For a while, it left me feeling numb thinking about my circumstances as an ex-Wittenoom Blue Asbestos Mineworker. I knew nothing about causes from asbestos exposure on human health. I embarked on searching literature and papers from cohort studies of asbestos workers in USA and France. It was 1972, and there was not much information on asbestos available in Melbourne. I managed to source some information on cohort