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Green Barrow Publishing

Australian publisher of historical biographies for young readers, including the acclaimed Aussie Not

Green Barrow Publishing: an independent educational publisher, specialising in historical biographies of famous people for young readers, along with teacher support materials linked to the Australian Curriculum. Our series include the acclaimed Aussie Notables series featuring the people on our banknotes - and historical biographies of Australian and world figures with big ideas, big dreams and bi

g impact. Green Barrow Publishing titles are distributed to booksellers by Dennis Jones & Associates.

01/08/2024

At 8:00 am my car was covered with ice. By 11:00, I was able to get 15 mins of vitamin D into me in a balmy 8 degrees. Melbourne: best climate in the world.

30/07/2024

I have another short story for you. I have kept the real name of only one person. I think you will understand why. Please read on.

Magi

I read T.S.Eliot’s The Journey of the Magi, for the first time when I was in my last year of school? It was part of the general English course. Do they still let students read stuff like that? I’ve been hooked on the poem ever since, absorbed with the idea of life as a journey to who knows where. I read it every Advent. Seems appropriate.
“All this was a long time ago, I remember”
is a line towards the end of the poem, and it means a lot more to me now, than it did in 1959: so much that happened a long time ago, but seeming as if it were yesterday. The thing about great literature, and other forms of art, is that you keep finding something new in them. You gaze, re-read, think about them and discover something old which seems to be new, but which is something that you finally understand a bit better.
A little better, but you feel that there’s still more to be revealed.
I decided to put on a Christmas play in Yambio, with the majority of students still in house over the holidays because neither we, nor they, could afford the return homeward journey. And it is an age-old principle of human management that you keep the troops busy, whether bashing the parade ground or, preferably, gainfully employed to keep them out of mischief. What better subject then, in the days leading to Christmas, than to adapt the Eliot poem to the setting of Yambio in South Sudan, and to create a play from it?
Were there three wise men in the college. I had little doubt about that, for many of the students had studied at the University of Hard Experience and had come up smiling, compassionate and ready, willing and able to experience and learn from the next adventure that life presented to them. Sorting through the students, I was sure that Gaspar, Melchior and Balthazar could do the job.
Next, I had to decide where to put the play on, how it would be lit, where the entries and exits would be, how many players could we use while still having an audience, what costumes were available and what is the attention span of a population not experienced in being part of an audience for drama? If the weather was suitable, could we perform outdoors? Or would it be safer to stay indoors?
I settled on the extra large classroom, with rows of seating around three sides which was enough space to sit the ninety or so who were not acting. We found some battery powered lanterns and a few lamps that could be used as spotlights. There were enough sheets and pieces of material about to create minimalist costumes that would be sufficient to suggest who a character was. I was happy to trust the audience to fill in the details using their own imaginations.
There were not the resources to build a traditional set, but nor was there any desire to do so. I thought about having an easel somewhere which would have a series of story boards, telling the audience where each of the scenes was to take place. But that seemed to be rather static, and key information might have been missed. The best solution came from the boxing ring where, when the contestants retired to their corners at the end of a round, an attractive young lady paraded around the ring holding a big number over head to tell everyone what was the next round. I had just the young lady for the role.
P***a Namunu (pictured here scrubbing the dining area tables on a Saturday morning) was in the first semester group, but already stood out as an intelligent, attractive, hard-working and popular student. She was destined to become a fine teacher. Her cheek bones were high and wide, as was the smile which revealed a more regular set of teeth than most her classmates, who often showed a space between their two front teeth. There was a coy, but playful air about P***a too, so that it was hard to tell if she was teasing us, or teasing herself, when she wore a bright green T-shirt with the words “I'm so happy when I get what I want.”
She readily accepted the role I described to her, and I left her to create her storyboards, knowing they would be done exactly how I wanted them. In this instance, as in the classroom, she was quite happy to do what I wanted and, in the end, hers was one of the most memorable performances in the play. Her first storyboard, greeted rather quietly, announced that the action would take place:
"Somewhere in the East".
It was there that Gaspar, Melchior and Balthazar decided to respond to the call to travel westward, convinced that a royal child was about to be born, that they needed to be there to pay homage to the infant, and that they would be led to the place by a star.
As it happened, we didn’t have any camels on the campus, so our wise men walked and carried their own luggage. The star, which the luggage carriers dutifully followed, was another female student, carrying a twinkling battery-powered light as she glided sedately around the room from Somewhere in The East, to An Oasis, to An Inn Nearing Jerusalem, as one scene ended and P***a led us into another.
There was some trouble at the inns and the caravansaries, where the innkeepers were “charging high prices” as T. S. Eliot would have us imagine. T. S. also has us envisioning camel men “cursing and grumbling and running away, and wanting their liquor and women.” Of course, we didn’t have camel men to be doing all these things but Balthazar, while less certain of his lines than the other two wise men, had an innate sense of drama and timing. To him fell the task of paying charges and reporting indignantly on the grasping nature of our ubiquitous, unbending inn-keeper. Balthazar also had a bit of an eye for the ladies, and commented on those he had seen. As part of his continuing refrain, he commented on the attractiveness of P***a, and even the twinkling Star, to the extent that Gaspar and Melchior had to reprimand him and remind him that he was, after all, supposed to be a Wise Man!
The journey around the classroom was not an easy one, and the audience, I was delighted to see, were totally involved, paying careful attention to every word that was spoken, but roaring with laughter when the wise men with their suitcases had trouble keeping up with the star which broke into a run, and again when two dastardly audience members crept from their seats one ‘night’ and stole the Magi’s luggage.
When P***a’s storyboard finally announced that the next scene was:
"A Stable in Bethlehem"
I held my breath. The stable scene could not have been simpler: a large square of golden brown cloth with a lantern at the top end. The lantern was now the only lighting in the room. There were no words. The Magi simply knelt before the lantern and presented their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. I was relying on the imagination and sense of theatre of an audience that had had little or no experience of Western drama, and the audience rose to the occasion.
I was more than a little moved by the result. There was dead silence. Even after the Magi had moved away, I had the feeling that the audience could have gazed on that lamp and the gifts for some minutes, just letting the scene wash over them. But, in due time, P***a led us out of Jerusalem and back to Somewhere in the East, where the Magi found themselves to be:
“no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.”
At the end, I gave every student a copy of Eliot’s poem and read it to them, while some of the images were hot in their minds. My hope was that one or two of them would take to the poem, as I have, and that it will give them something to reflect on as they take on their own Journeys to God knows where.
Before many months were past, the Covid epidemic descended upon the Earth. By government decree, the college was closed down and the students were dispersed to points all over South Sudan and beyond. They were sad days. There was the expectation that Covid would run through South Sudan like wildfire, and that the basic health services in the country would never be able to cope. Being of that elderly age which was said to be at risk, I was duly moved back to Somewhere in the East, namely Australia. I had not been long gone when I heard the saddest of news.
P***a Namunu is dead.
To this day, I do not know the cause of her death, except that it was through illness. There was no storyboard to tell us, warn us, that it was going to happen. I was too far away to be able to share my grief or to try to console those who needed to be consoled. P***a’s life is as a candle snuffed out, or a lantern extinguished.
I am left as confused as T. S. Eliot:
“were we led all that way for Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.”
Rest in Peace beautiful P***a.

28/07/2024

I buy a box of wine now and then from a company called Naked Wines. I have several photos of me doing what the advertising slogan exhorts me to do. I am happy to send them to you at $3 each or three for $10.

26/07/2024

Adam is back at Carnoustie this week, caddying for Peter O'Malley in the Senior Open. here's a shot of a fill-in caddy in the same tournament in 2015. Anyone recognise him? After first round PoM is even par and nineteenth.

25/07/2024

On The Beach was a 1959 movie about the end of the human race, due to nuclear conflict. Ava Gardner, the American female lead, was reported to have said that Melbourne was an appropriate place to make a film about the end of the world.
Well!
The film was in black and white, and some people describe the 1950s as something like that. Nonsense! The 50s were the equal best decade of my life. On the other hand, Melbourne was rather miserable this morning. I was up fairly early to do a taxi run to the airport, looked at the grey sky and wondered if the sun would ever shine here again. Was this the end of the world?
Not a bit of it. Out came the sun at midday. It would have been pleasant down at Canadian Bay with Gregory Peck and Ava, and the scene at the Public Library would have been much more lively. Silver linings all around.
It was fun to watch a movie which starred features of my home town. Flinders St station got a gig, as did Frankston and the old blue trains (in B and W), trams, the State Library and Port Phillip Bay.
The environment has replaced nuclear holocaust as the Big Threat. But lets not be too pessimistic. Life is too great a gift to be pessimistic.

24/07/2024

Spent a lovely evening with Will yesternight, starting at the Union Hotel and repairing to his place for dinner. I can't go into the pub without paying my respects to the tug-o-war team from McCracken's city brewery c. 1900. The brewery was absorbed into the United part of CUB later on, and McCracken built himself a magnificent mansion in Woodland St, Strathmore. Scottish McC didn't like Catholics but in the 1930s the Columban Missionary Society bought the place, against his will, and moved there from what is now St Bede's College.
Will and I knocked over the cryptic crossword in the time it takes to drink two schooners.
Back to Will's rental house where the blackboard informs that all are currently well-behaved and where we enjoyed a tasty bottle of Dalwhinnie 2012 Shiraz. Then we found a movie to take me back a bit - On The Beach - about more tomorrow.

23/07/2024

Blood doze! On my good jumper. Annoying!

22/07/2024

My dad, as you know, was a Scot and I continue to get a funny, warm feeling when I see a Scottish team run onto the ground for a sporting event. Are the causes of that genetic or environmental. Not that the Scots win much these days unfortunately.
I'm getting a similar feeling these days whenever I see a South Sudanese individual or team do well. The cause of that fuzzy, warm feeling is entirely environmental, and is a syndrome I picked up during my three years living among the lovely people of South Sudan. Buku Khamis, playing for the Western Bulldogs, made the news this week: all 1.9 metres of him.There's a mini explosion of South Sudanese players in the AFL, and I suspect we will see more and more SS refugees playing at the highest level. That can only be good for the morale of the SS community in Australia and is a powerful influence for good race relations amongst the rest of us. What really delighted me was the pic of Buku training and inspiring a group of primary school aged juniors. Just wonderful!
In the same week, the South Sudanese basketball team went down by just one point to superstar-laden USA team in an Olympic Games warm up. To watch TV, most SS people pay their money to enter a rough timber, earthen-floor hall where the chosen event (mostly English soccer) will be seen on a largish screen. Unlucky ones will listen to the roar of the crowd from outside and hope that news of scores will be passed to them. The owners of these screens are in for a bonanza windfall during the basketball competition at the Olympic games.

21/07/2024

The Palace Cinema in Pentridge is becoming my go to picture theatre. To those of us old enough to remember its past, H.M. Prison still looks grim from the outside. But so do I! And so does the hero of Mr Blake at Your Service: a French film with English subtitles. Mr Blake is grieving the loss of his wife (I've been there!) and returns to an estate where he first met her. It's an old chateau where the mistress if also grieving and the three staff are also in various stages of distress.
What I liked about Mr Blake, probably in his seventies, is that he is too old for prevarication and, in spite of his own woes, brings some balance and happiness to everyone, just by being honest.
A delightful movie and I saw it in delightful company.

20/07/2024

Here's a pic of Sekhmet at the Egyptian exhibition. (Which prompts me to ask why there's an 'h' in each of those two words, but back to the theme.) Sekmet was the daughter of Ra and a bit of a split personality. She could make you sick, but she could cure you: contradictions like that. Like Donald Trump a bit: he who makes at least of America sick while the rest are ecstatic. I like the bit where Ra sends Sekmet down to earth to punish unbelievers. DT wouldn't punish unbelievers would he? Anyway, she likes the taste of blood and the human population is about to be wiped out by her excesses. Rather cunningly, Ra fills a lake with beer, mixed with red ochre to make it look like blood. Sekmet gorges herself on it and is calmed down. I don't think we can use that remedy with Donald though, when a remedy is needed.
He doesn't drink!
I do like Sekhmet's toes and toenails though.
Quite envious.
Mine look horrible and I can't reach them.

19/07/2024

Will and I settled in to watch the British Open. It seemed to be set up well for us with Adam and Ryo Hisatsune hitting off in the fifth group at about 4:00 pm our time, blue costello cheese, biscuits and salami, baked potatoes to go in the oven with all the trimmings, and uninterrupted coverage on Kayo Sport.
There's Ryo in the white shirt hitting off the first tee at Royal Troon and there's Adam with the bag, in front of the group on the left in the second pic. Ryo got into a bunker in front of the first green, bogeyed the hole, and we never saw him again.

18/07/2024

I've written another short story for you, and I order you to read it!!!
Names are changed to protect the innocent.

By the Rivers of Babylon

Brother Methibosheth (call me Methi!) was about to go back to Nairobi for a short break and I was given the task of preparing his Religious Education students for their exam. The focus was on Daniel, who had got on the wrong side of Darius, which led to a famous episode in a lion’s den.
Methi was a fundamentalist.
I’m not.
I might well have been if I had been brought up in an African country, just as he might have had more liberal ideas if he had been brought up in Australia. Fundamentalists give Old Testament stories too much emphasis for my liking, as did the texts which were being developed for use in schools.
In my own Religious Education Class, same college, different level, I had determined to listen to my students before I attempted to teach them anything. The colour of the students’ skin may have made them look like a homogenous group, but my twenty-five students were really a small, multicultural society. They came from a variety of the sixty something tribes of South Sudan, some of which were traditional foes. They listened with interest to one another as they told some of their spirit stories, the excitement and the fear of their initiation ceremonies, and the family negotiations leading to a marriage. And I discovered that even the Christian students were touched by the traditional religions. In some cases, their parents still held positions of traditional religious authority, and in more cases, their grandparents had done the same.
So I sat with mixed feelings through Methi’s briefing where he stressed that they must know the story of Daniel in detail, answering questions in the form that he had taught them:
What was Darius’s decree?
- That no one should pray to anyone but Darius for the next thirty days.
Why were Daniel’s enemies happy with this decree?
- They knew Daniel would disobey it, and must therefore be executed.
There was one mark for a correct answer, but each spelling mistake would mean half a mark off.
Oh dear! I thought to myself. Some of these students, who speak three languages well enough, but have little experience of written English, will end up in negative territory. Will I be giving students a thirst for knowledge by doing this?
There were just ten students in the class, each of them having been tested and found wanting in their command of English for their early schooling had been in Arabic. They were from a mix of tribes and there were four girls in the group. I call them girls advisedly, for they shared a cheerful disposition common to young females, with much cheerful chatting, laughter, and appreciation for one another’s appearance with earrings, costume jewellery, and even items of clothing swapped from day to day. They were certainly girls in spirit, though they were assuredly smart, attractive, young women in reality. Further proof of their womanhood was that one of them had two children already, while another had three.
Two of the male students carried scars on their foreheads which indicated that they had experienced the ritual of initiation, and were therefore adult members of their tribes. One young man already had two wives, arranged for him by his father and his uncle, and left in the care of his extended family for the two years of his teacher training course … extended by six more months by the need to master the English language before moving on to the regular subjects.
It did not take me long to discover that Methi’s rote-learning method had done what he required of it, at least as far as the so-called facts of the case were concerned. There were problems with the spelling though, especially for Nyagoa and Zarah, but that was a problem which could be easily fixed by the exam marker, namely me, having something of a judicious, blind eye to a few spelling mistakes.
So I asked the class:
“Where is Jerusalem?”
With the aid of a blackboard sketch we settled on the position of Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, the Jordan River and the Dead Sea.
“Where then is Babylon, and why was Daniel there?”
I had drawn a blank. The students were not strong on geography, let alone ancient geography. But I’m of the old school which dictates that the teacher is the major resource in the classroom and is quite entitled to actually teach the students. So with the aid of a little more blackboard sketching, we ‘discovered’ the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, modern Baghdad and the location of ancient Babylon.
“So what do you think Daniel was doing in Babylon, about a thousand kilometres from home?”
Working?
Refugee?
Holiday?
Visiting family?
“Good suggestions. And we can make use of the first two, which I’ll write on the board.”
The concept of refugees was well known to the class. Several of them had had to cart as many of their personal possessions as possible and flee to a refugee camp outside the country, or to a protection of civilians camp within the country. They were well aware, too, of conquering soldiers carrying off boys to become boy soldiers, or girls to be used as the conquerors saw fit.
So we established that Daniel, and several thousand Israelites had been forced to travel eastwards, away from Jerusalem where the city and the temple were destroyed. They were to be used as labour or, if they were scholars and learned men like Daniel, they would be found work in the administration of the country.
Where would we go from here? I knew where I wanted to go and I knew that, in Australia, the next step would be easy. But in South Sudan, I might need divine intervention.
I began the next lesson with a quick acknowledgement of my revision task before asking the students to copy the following words into their books:
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down.
Ye-eah we wept, when we remembered Zion.
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down.
Ye-eah we wept, when we remembered Zion.
When the wicked carried us away in captivity
Required from us a song
Now how shall we sing the Lord’s song
In a strange land?

In Australia, I would have expected a dissenting question or two:
“Why do we have to copy that stuff?”
“Couldn’t you just duplicate it for us?”
But here in South Sudan, the teacher is held in high regard, and is presumed to do things for good reason. So the words were duly copied while the teacher, awash with a sense of irony, walked from student to student to check the spelling.
“Are these the words of a song Grandfather?” asked Nyagoa.
Having replied in the affirmative, I was asked to teach them the song. They love to sing. And I was thinking of what one lady said to me in a Protection of Civilians camp in Juba where she had been living for eleven years.
“The only time we are happy is when we are singing in church on Sundays.”
The students agreed that this was a fine song and they related to the sentiment expressed in the words. They seemed to be relating to the predicament of Daniel and the other exiles in Babylon, though they would like to know if there were more words.
It was at this point that I prayed for divine intervention.
Internet access was intermittent at best in our part of the country, so I really was praying for a miracle when I unpacked my laptop, entered the address below, and had the ten students gather about the small screen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3QxT-w3WMo
Almost immediately, their faces beamed with delight.
“Who are these people?”
“They are beautiful!”
“That is our people singing this song.”
Remarkably, I was able to play the clip three or four times, with the students expressing themselves more and more each time, singing, waving their arms above their heads, and dancing.
I walked out of that classroom with a strong sense of satisfaction. It seemed that I had made a difference, at least for the moment but, like anything else that we teach, we wonder how much it will stick. For the next week or two, these ten students greeted me in the morning with one or two bars of the song, and I joined in with them. The episode powerfully reinforced for me an empathy with people displaced from their homes and their country. And I was able to report to Methi that all ten students passed their Religious Education exam with flying colours.

17/07/2024

"When you're a bit bigger Lachie, you can come in here to change into your Superperson outfit before fighting for truth, justice and the Maguire way."
"Why can't I do it now?"
"Mummy hasn't made your costume yet."
"I've never seen you with a sewing machine."
"That's a point! I'll have to get someone else to make it."

15/07/2024

Here's a pic of my mob getting a view of the back side of a seated Egyptian. I took the side view of the same statue because it demonstrated the modern reality of the Nilotic physique, i.e. long legs and short body. An oft told story from South Sudan was when a very tall SS student took pleasure in being slightly taller than Brother Denis. Denis challenged him to the sit down test, whereupon Denis became taller than the SS student by several inches. The statue tells me that that isn't a new phenomenon.
Then there's the female figure sitting on her haunches with her knees pulled into her T-shirt. I'm trying to think who her face reminds me of. I get the same feeling about the sphinx like figure.
In the meantime, I'm wrestling with the proposition that all of this is 'Stuff the British Stole'. (The exhibition is of items from the British museum, transported here with God knows how many rolls of bubble wrap.) Should it be given back?

14/07/2024

For my eighty tooth birthday I was taken to the Egyptian exhibition at the NGV where there were a couple of coffins on display ... among other things. I'm wondering if that was a hint to remind me to get things organised. Horaawesheb was an incense carrier in about 900 BC. He may have decorated his own coffin in his spare time, or he may have got someone else to spend hours and hours working on it. No old pictures of him on his wedding day and his footy scarf placed on top of the coffin by his kids and grandkids. I found the second coffin even more intriguing. Have a look at all the INTERIOR decoration! Not that the occupant would have actually viewed much of it over the centuries of his incarceration, But it screamed out to me that they had a quality embalming process that prevented rotting mortal remains from ruining the artwork.
Maybe a paisley coloured wheelie bin with a few of my favourite history books thrown in.

13/07/2024

Someone really should do something about my straggling beard!
Went to the NGV to see the marvellous Egyptian exhibition, about which more tomorrow. But my birthday was about the people, and there I was later in excellent company with Violet and Felix, Tom and Will. T and W were the only offspring in town on this occasion. Will and I moved on to The Mill in Collingwood and what an inviting environment that was. 'Was' needs elaboration for next month, The Mill becomes a 'was' as the factory housing it, and a few on either side, will be demolished for still more apartments. Old Collingwood, like me, is on the way out, but it was a joy to celebrate another milestone there in the meantime, with Gerry - Will's companion on an upcoming trip to Japan - and a lovely warm fire.
Happy 82nd birthday to me!

11/07/2024

This takes me back a bit!
I was visiting Julian Nance around midday and I'm pleased to say that we've had to cancel all funeral arrangements for the time being at least. He's in better shape than he was six weeks ago and eating everything put on his plate. He's doing two weeks in a recovery house which just happens to be around the corner from where the Our Lady of the Missions sisters live. Lorna Brown opened the door to me and responded to my query:
"Whatever happened to Mary McInerney?"
Mary was a classmate in 1954 when this photo was taken of scholarship winners from Sacred Heart Primary School in Oakleigh taking us to our various secondary schools. I'm the good looking bloke in the back row. Julian is next to me and John Mottram back left. Mary is front row right.
Having received contact details from Lorna - a sprightly young thing about to turn 97 - I dropped in on Mary to find out what she'd been up to for the past 70 years. Quite a lot really!!! Much of her life was spent in missionary work, including 15 years in Nairobi where she first met the novice Sr Josephine who was doing great work in the pre-school at Riimenze when I was in SS, and she is also well aquainted with Sr Rosa whose establishment of the teaching farm at Riimenze was a remarkable piece of work. Rosa hails from Vietnam, and I was met at Mary's door by a Vietnamese sister who is here studying. Vietnamese sisters, and there are 150 or so of them, regularly come to Australia for studies and to brush up on their English. I received a brief summary of Mary's life and gave her one of mine. I always had a sneaking suspicion that Mary was even smarter than I am, and I have learned enough about her to confirm it. More importantly, she's lived an extraordinarily fruitful life.
Well done, little Mary!

09/07/2024

I've written a short story for you:

Beggars at the Gate

We lived in a small compound, behind a high wall topped with barbed wire. Near the Equator as we were, dawn and dusk arrived within a few minutes of 6:30 am and 6:30 pm every day. Even in the capital, the streets were deserted after dark. Routinely, we brought the two cars in by 6:00 pm, closed the iron gates and fixed an iron bar across them to render a forced entry more difficult.
We were never attacked, though in the bad days, the boss and others had listened and watched with interest as gunshots rang out in the streets and tracer bullets flashed across the sky. In case of attack, we could turn on the floodlights and sound a siren as loud as the noise that came from the nearby mosque each morning. The floodlights could easily be shot down, of course, and no-one was likely to respond to our siren, but you wouldn’t want to have your life threatened and not make some sort of gesture, would you?
We were more likely to be besieged by beggars, than by soldiers.
It’s hard to toss off feelings of guilt when confronted by beggars, especially the humble ones. I tend to think that even the aggressive beggar is just doing his job. I was struck by that concept when, many years ago, I read George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London. After living as a tramp in England for a time, he wrote:
“At present I do not feel that I have seen more than the fringe of poverty. Still, I can point to one or two things I have definitely learned by being hard up. I shall never again think that all tramps are drunken scoundrels, nor expect a beggar to be grateful when I give him a penny …”
I’m a quick learner. The first time I saw two women
scratching through piles of rubbish at the market, and pulling out blackened bananas, I figured they weren’t doing it for pleasure. Likewise a man dragging himself along the gravel road by his hands, one knee strapped to a piece of wood, which slid along to prevent skin being torn to the bone. Both feet, in so far as they were feet, were tied up behind his thighs, clear of the street, and no-one looked upon him as if he were unusual. He stopped and put his hand out a couple of times, but didn’t get a result.
On the other hand, I saw a number of T-shirts about town which called for the eradication of polio. There are T-shirts supporting numerous causes in South Sudan.
One day, I had a bundle of almost worthless ten and twenty pound notes and decided that I would give them to some of the urchins who always gathered around the car near the market. I had put my supplies into the car and walked towards the driver’s door, when one little boy came towards me, as anticipated. I pulled out the roll of low denomination notes and peeled one off for him.
Miraculously, that one little boy multiplied into eight or ten little boys within seconds, and they were there on business. Here was a chance to make some money, no matter how little. All eyes were on my roll of notes and all hands were grabbing at it. Instinctively, I raised my hands above my head, trying to regain control of the situation. Young boys were now leaping all over me, trying to pull my arm down.
“I’m not in total control of this scene,” I thought to myself.
As an act of self preservation more than anything, I threw the roll of notes away, onto the road. Like seagulls diving for hot chips on the beach front at Mordialloc, the scavengers soon cleared away the various notes, as I retreated into the car. Even then, hordes of boys pushed against my window in the hope of more largesse. I thought it best to not even look at them, but started the engine and began to manoeuvre myself onto the carriageway. By the time I was driving away, the melee had dispersed.
Thereafter, I decided not to hand out money. To old women outside the market, I might give a banana. When I returned from shopping and parked the car just outside the house gate, there were invariably a few boys sitting against the wall, playing cards with a rather grubby old pack, or otherwise occupying themselves. If one came to my car with his hand out, I might reach for a long baguette from the two bags of them that we intended to put in the freezer until needed.
Not once did those boys rush off in triumph with their prize. The beggar always walked back to his mates beside the wall and broke the bread into equal pieces. They cared for one another.
Those boys were at the gate all week, but there was another group of beggars who came to us on Sunday mornings. Hard as it was to say no to them, generous handouts would only lead to larger crowds at the gate.
Some of them came armed with notes written by an amanuensis somewhere. Invariably, the notes explained how the father of the family had died, been killed, or otherwise disappeared from the face of the Earth. The reason for the request varied from the need for books or uniforms without which they would not be able to attend school, or the family might need $US15,000 to transport the whole family to Egypt for a new start in life.
Sunday mornings were normally quiet, with the relative stillness regularly broken by a loud, insistent knocking on the metal gates. Most of us can resist such knocking for only so long, though some members of the community seemed to be able to resist it forever. The most practical solution was to delegate.
There were two local women, one a Catholic and the other a Seventh Day Adventist, who were actively good Samaritans in the local community. Nobody knew better than they who the locals were who needed help, as opposed to the travellers who came on a visit to see if there was a soft touch in our area. Therefore, we gave these two women several thousand pounds each month, to dispose of as they saw fit. That simplified the process on Sunday mornings, for we could answer the door and say to the beggars:
“You should go to see Elizabeth, across the road, or Nbarago just down the street.”
Far from feeling imposed upon, these two good women were pleased for assistance in their already busy schedule of charity.
One Sunday morning, there was an insistent knocking at our gate. A beggar, or a group of beggars, would normally wait for a respectful time before knocking again, though their respectful knocking would be repeated until one of us responded. But this knocking seemed to be both insistent and urgent, so I opened the smaller gate to see what the matter was.
Elizabeth was at the door.
“Excuse me Brother. We need some more money for a baby.”
“A baby?”
“Yes. A baby was brought to me this morning. It was dumped in a hole in the road. A neighbour brought it to me. I have already taken the little girl to the clinic and it is healthy. I know a lady who can feed it and she will keep it. I need some more money for a crib, some clothes and some baby things. You will give me some money?”
The last sentence was a statement rather than a question.
“Of course. Come inside.”
As soon as Elizabeth had gone about her business of caring for an abandoned baby, the knocking on the gate began again.
There have been many abandoned babies in South Sudan in recent years. One that is etched in my memory is of a poor little thing tossed, or maybe delivered, into a cess pit in Yambio, rescued after someone heard its cries.
I was once on a history tour of Melbourne, using a self-help guide book. We were standing at the end of Lang’s Lane at the western end of the city where an abandoned baby had been discovered wrapped in newspaper in February, 1905. It was the eighth discarded infant to have been found in the city, in the first six months of that year.
The first Foundling Homes in Melbourne were established, with the best of intentions, soon after the gold rushes of the 1850s. The first apologies for housing infants in institutions began in the early twenty first century.
Is there anything new on the face of the Earth?

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Videos

The kid's in good hands

Watching Lachlan develop is much more fun than watching paint dry, or grass grow. But it is well to remember the Drummond First Rule of Parenthood: It's the first seventy years that are the hardest.

Come on Lachlan Jude Maguire. Give us a smile.

I think I was singing something on this day 4 years ago in Yambio. Or else these delightful young people had never seen anything so strange before. What would a hair stylist in Australia charge to do a girl's hair like the examples in the picture?

God: You both look a bit stupid Me: Thanks a lot God: What are you doing? Me: Don't remember. Probably both looking for a photo of someone. God: Obviously not a selfie Me: No. Celia captured the moment. God: Nice! Me: Yeah! Goofy moments like that are important. I'll miss them. God: How do you mean? Me: I'm leaving Melbourne tomorrow morning. Heading for Port Douglas. Bill Firman is my co-pilot. God: How long will that take? Me: Eight days. God: I can do it much quicker than that. Me: How long does it take you? God: No time at all. I'm ubiquitous, you see. Me: You remind me of that old song God: Which one? Me: "I've Been everywhere Man." Geoff Mack, 1959. Johnny Cash and others pinched it. Have you been to all the places in the song? God: Like I said, I'm ... Me: ... ubiquitous. God: You're getting there. Me: I'm not a big fan of leaving. God: Leaving? Me: Yeah! There's a lot of it in life. It becomes ... more poignant as you get older. God: You pronounced it poin-yent. The French, which is where the word comes from, would say pwun-yon. Me: I'm aware of that. Have you been to France? God: I've been everywhere man. Me: I might see you along the way then. God: Safe travelling. Me: Hey! Before you go! Should I say a prayer to St Christopher before I go? Or has he been abolished? Hey! Come back!

I have very strict rules on alcohol, the key one being that it can only be served on a day of the week ending in Y. As it happened, Christmas fell on a SaturdaY this year. and someone shared some red wine with me. That was very generous of them, for there was so little to go around! Needless to say, I was soon looking around saying: "I love youse all!" and, when asked later why Nile Rivers of tears were gushing from my eyes, I exclaimed: "Because I'm so happy!" It could have developed into a very maudlin situation until a vicious brawl erupted between Tony and Will. I was onto it straight away. "There's no room for violence on Christmas Day," I informed them forcefully. "So cut it out, or I'll rip your bloody arms off!"

This clip was posted on a Solidarity website overnight and I think it's just the thing for Father's Day. Going back over the growing up of my five children, I can recall several instances of children being mortally afraid of not very much. Fathers (and mothers) exist so that little ones can cling to our legs at times like that. I can't recall ever being afraid of my own shadow, but there are two shadow stories that have stuck with me. One is the story of Alexander the Great's horse Bucephalus. No-one could tame the thing until clever little teen aged Alexander turned the horse around so that it couldn't see its own shadow. Even while I read the edition of the Victorian School Paper which told the story, I was overcome with the difficulty that Bucephalus could only be a one way horse. Maybe it was for, in real life, it's said to have died in Pakistan, having been ridden in an all-conquering, easterly direction from Macedon, morning travel only. My second shadow story was that of Peter Pan who lost his. Admittedly, PP's shadow appeared to have a will of its own, so lost isn't the most appropriate term. As I remember, he had the very devil of a job finding it again, and having to sit patiently while Wendy sewed it back on. Wendy's still my favourite fairy, and I would be delighted to let her sew my shadow back on if ever it runs away. I don't think it will though, for it moves rather slowly these days and seems to have grown somewhat around the middle. I'll take it for a bit of a walk this afternoon. To be safe, I'll head west, for I don't want to be tripping over my own shadow.

I get the impression that the bishop-elect of Rumbek is a gentle man with a strong sense of commitment

Br Chris published a recent photo of wild weather in Yambio. I love wild weather. Every 2 or 3 days in Yambio, late afternoon in the wet season sees the wind pick up, clouds scurry about deciding whether to dump rain here or there, thunder claps often thumping the roof line, and lightning forking the sky. It was great if your accommodation was built to handle it.