That day.        
Kyoto 4.45 AM alarm. Taxi to bus ordered for 5. 0 AM. All packed ready waiting at residence. 5.00 no Taxi! Taxi rolls into street/lane. Relief, here he (always he taxi drivers in Japan) comes down the lane straight past me in my darkness. Taxi stops. Relief, he has just gone a little past the assigned place. Not quite, An attractive woman gets out. What kind of assignation had they thought I had ordered? She pays the cab and he drives off. She has some English and is concerned about my no cab situation. ‘I will stay with you’ and explains she is drunk and the fumes confirm her self description.
    ‘I will order a taxi for you’. She is a very attractive woman, an assured 
woman.The taxi arrives.’Bus station for Osaka bus to Itami air terminal, please arigato’.
Slipping through the early impersonal darkness like a silent eel in cloudy waters the driver drops me at Bay H2. 
    A sort of bus official woman in a long red puffer jacket divines I am not at the correct bay.
Her arms describe u-turns indicating that I need to be at the correct bay near the vending machine which sells tickets for Osaka. Yep! Itami air terminal (not the more usual Kansai terminal) Osaka has two terminals, and a population the size of Australia) so to the flight  to Haneda Domestic Tokyo. You might think an early 6.10 am buss would have multiple choice of seats. Not so. It was cockers.  
    The plane was also full as the bus. I was next to a couple with a gorgeous sleepy 5 month child. The flight to Tokyo took about an hour.
     As there was no reliability with the shuttle bus I took a taxi to the hotel looking eastwards  across the Tama River. They will not permit check in before 3.00 PM so; ‘Thinks: If I cannot check in for six hours why not visit one of the only two things I want to see in Tokyo?’
    Since I studied the Catholic Cathedral in the 1960s designed by Kenzo Tange (1913-2005) an international, a genius inspired by Le Corbusier. The building replaced the original bombed structure.


It took 18 months to complete with assistance from the also bombed citizens of Cologne in Germany.
    I had always wanted to experience this place. It is in the mode of the Metabolist Movement, a style of post war reconstruction. It would be a hefty
taxi fare. It was a long way from my hotel and friends suggested that learning to use public transport in Tokyo would be impossible in one day.
 But I thought that this was a once in a lifetime experience; it will be OK.
    Days before I left Sydney my Visa card was hacked. ANZ cancelled the card. When I discussed this with them they said they would post me a new plastic card in '10 to 15 days.' By which time I would be in Japan, also this was a sensless suggestion and they knew it. They would not hear of my offer to pay express postage to deliver my card. ‘No worries, Sir we can fix you up with a tap Samsung wallet virtual card.’ I had separately set up an Australia Post travel Mastercard with a plastic card. 
Taxi to cathedral.I knew there was credit. So I thought I should just get on with it. The chance of a lifetime. We drove for a long time. Finally, there it was. Awe inspiring and monumental in scale.
    Paying the fare. There was no tap facility in the taxi. The Mastercard was declined even though I had used both cards that morning. I think because I had tried a few times to put in my pin. The taxi driver was more than perplexed. I imagine his story to his grandchildren would begin at this point. The taxi man told me somehow that he was in big trouble. I acknowledged and endorsed this. ‘Did I have a friend in Tokyo who might be able to help?’ No. ‘Let’s go to an ATM and take out the money for the fare’. ‘Sure.’ He Googled a local ATM and we drove there. The machine refused the card. He: ‘I will call the police. Wait here do not move!’ The Irish would say the police were like bananas; they came in bunches. So one police car with raised red flashing lights, 2 cops, one on a bike and one from who knows where. English-Japanese a major problem largely managed on GoogleTranslate. 
    They canvassed the same areas and options as the driver’s questions: 'Do you have cash?’ ‘Yes but not enough’ ‘Other cards?’ ‘Tap ?’ ‘No use with this taxi’. ‘Friend in Tokyo?’ ‘Had I tried calling my bank?’ ‘Called Mastercard?’ ‘No my Japanese sim card would not permit international calls.’ Police are not fools and often great, pragmatic problem solvers. ‘Why did you come here to visit this part of Tokyo?’
‘To visit the Cathedral; admired by Japanese people and by the the world.’ Google Translate working overtime. ‘O.K. let’s go back to the Cathedral.’ They seemed to be thinking that such a monument to Christianity might be able to supply emergency help for a needy person to pay a needy driver.    The constabulary procession did a U turn with the help of a cop directing traffic with a glowing red baton. On arrival they searched for an official of the Cathedral. It was now late Saturday and mass being celebrated by what looked like a cardinal, was in full swing. Later the congregation went on a procession to a Marian shrine in the Cathedral grounds. If they were concerned by the alternative heavy police procession they did not show it.
    The coppers cased the joint for someone to engage with. They found a furtive stooped little man with a large bundle of cardboard trying to get into a lift. My sense was that the feds, on the presumption that as Christians were at the cathedral would help. The official they found was one of those diocesan functionaries who uncomfortably listened and the shook his head until it almost shook off his shoulders. The coppers, my assistants, took that as a ‘No!’
More Q&A on Google Translate. ‘Where was I staying?’ Kawasaki King Skyfront REI Hotel.    Brilliant idea! ‘If this taxi man drove you back to your hotel could you get money from the hotel?’ 
I said ‘Yes’ with some relief that the trip was in a taxi not a police car. I presumed I could get money transferred to the driver there. Silly me. I had made some in the moment assumptions; but it seemed a solution for all concerned. 
    The driver thoughtfully asked me if I wanted to go inside the cathedral since I had come here to see the place. I took an almost furtive glance amid signs ‘Please do to enter Cathedral during Mass.’ The entrance was policed by stern female gatekeepers whom I brushed past. I looked at the straggling congregation and what looked like a cardinal celebrating mass in the distance. All I could salvage from the situation of a decades old desire to experience St Mary’s.
I bid good bye to the cops and apologised for their trouble and set off in the taxi to the hotel.
    The long and somewhat tense non-sightseeing trip across Tokyo commenced. The driver parked at the hotel and shadowed me into the reception desk.
‘NO way’ there is no way I could pay the hotel and have them pay the taxi driver. 
Chapter the Second.
    All previous questions are canvassed. It is hard to recall all their hotel questions at this point. They were as courteous as they could manage but firm. Passport OK. Try to phone ANZ and or Mastercard Post Office Travel card. On a personal note I stood at the reception desk for hours. I wondered at my ability to stand there. I was permitted to go to the toilet and to stand without a chair. To describe my emotions as like the Wreck of the Hesperus would be like describing the former voyage as a pleasure cruise. My phone was running out of battery. Shame, horror, impotence, rage!
    A Nepali staff member came up with the idea of replacing my Japanese sim card and replace it with my original Australian sim card. A paper clip was produced; sim card replaced but no success with ANZ. I asked could go back to my Japanese sim card and could they please phone ANZ as recommended by their website. And all that was preventable had ANZ issued me a plastic card.
Crazy responses from the ANZ. ’Department closed for the week end’ etc. Then some official asked me some identifying questions; ones a Mittagong local branch ANZ person said they had never heard of. ‘Colour of first car? Mother’s maiden name? Most recent ANZ deposit amount and date? And more questions. The then  she said ‘You have to answer exactly 100%.  You have failed. We cannot help you’, and hung up.
    At this point it became clear that the police had been summoned by the hotel and taxi driver. They appeared to be superior to the last lot and I noticed the most senior had a bundle of black gloves on his belt. No guns nor batons like the Oz ones. 
    Seeking to sanitise the look around the reception desk, our group was moved to a back table near the Kimono rental desk. There was much more interrogating and note taking. Passport again, address, reason for being here, departure date and time? ‘Tomorrow’ Intending doing a runner?
    The Kimono renting women noticing my distress had delivered some
biscuits and a little, drink.  One of them, who had studied at Macquarie University, came forward and said she had discovered an Australian man who could possibly help. Was he from ANZ or Australia Office Mastercard? Or had another access to my accounts?    
    The man, fine, fit and about forty something thrust hand through the melee and shook my hand. ‘All OK, mate.’ I still shake thinking about that moment. I asked in despair if he was going when I thought he might have been able to help. ‘No mate we are off to dinner. Good luck’.
One of the Japanese Kimono women told me the Australian man has paid the taxi driver. His name? His job? Address? No information. Enormous tearful relief.
    But all was not over. The Nepali hotel official explained to me that my booking for the night was not paid for. Strictly I had no right to stay in the hotel another minute. Though a park bench would have been a refuge at this point. I had made the booking in Australia before I left with the intention of paying as I checked out. But at that point I had no access to credit. My tap Visa from ANZ and my Post Office Mastercard were frozen. Despite a call to Heritage Mastercard who said the funds were freed up; they were not.        
    So the Nepali angel came to me with a magic idea. ‘If I can email your wife in Australia with an invoice for your booking for one night, she could pay on line and you will be paid for tonight. Considering I could not access my funds myself that sounded wonderful.
It was now 10.00 pm from a day which had commenced before 5.00 am.

Chapter the Third.
    One of the women from the Kimono rental service had been watching my plight with the others for a long time and they had already dropped snacks to me. She spoke English and had been born in England. She had been a compassionate translator with the hotel and police.
She said she was concerned that I get something to eat the following day before I got on the plane at 10.00 that night. She noted my credit was frozen. She gave me a bundle of 5000 yen. I refused. She insisted and said she would be offended if I did not accept the money. She said she had a. Job. She insisted I go to the onsen (hot bath) upstairs and try to relax. 

Concluding remarks.
This has been traumatic. I will need therapy. I have been anxious and have not driven a car since. A building I had studied and followed since Kenzo Tange built it in the 1960s, which I have always wanted to experience, had to be abandoned because ANZ could not deliver me my money. Likewise a visit to the Japanese National Museum of Folk Art which I had studied and wanted to see. 
    
        I had always wanted to experience the place. The product of the Metabolist Movement, a style of post war reconstruction. There was a question I did not answer was about the taxi fare. But I thought that this was a once in a lifetime, it will be OK. It was a long way from my hotel and friends suggested that learning to use public transport in Tokyo would be impossible in one day.
And though I had been having troubles with my ‘virtual’ Visa debit Tap card (no actual plastic card only a virtual card and my Australia Post travel Mastercard) 0n  a Samsung Wallet I knew there was credit. So I thought I should just get on with it. Insufficient care? In hindsight 
you bet. In the moment go for it! The chance of a lifetime. We drove for a long time. Finally, there it was. Awe inspiring and monumental in scale.
    Paying the fare. There was no tap facility in thee taxi. The Mastercard was declined even though I had used both cards that morning. The taxi driver was more than perplexed. I imagine his story to his grandchildren began at this point. The taxi man told me somehow that he was in big trouble. I acknowledged and endorsed this. ‘Did I have a friend in Tokyo who might be able to help?’ No. Let’s go to an ATM and take out the money for the fare. Sure. He Googled a local ATM and we drove there. The machine refused the card. He: ‘I will call the police. Wait here do not move!’ A better option than calling a mate with a baseball bat. I realised that as the Irish would the police were like bananas; they come in bunches. So one police car with raised red flashing lights, 2 cops, one on a bike and one from who knows where. English-Japanese a major problem largely managed on GoogleTranslate. 
    They canvassed the sam e questions as the driver’s questions: do you have cash? Other cards? Tap? Friend in Tokyo? Had I tried calling my bank? Called Mastercard? For their much vaunted services. No my Japanese sim card would not permit international calls. Police are not fools and often pragmatic problem solvers. ‘Why did you come here to visit this part of Tokyo?’
‘To visit the Cathedral; admired by Japanese people and the world.’ Google Translate working overtime. ‘O.K. let’s go back to the Cathedral.’ They seemed to be thinking that such a monument to Christianity might be able to supply emergency for a needy person to pay a needy driver. How I would have got back the forty minute drive to my hotel was not considered. 
    The constabulary procession did a turn with the help of a traffic cop with a baton. They searched for an official of the Cathedral. Mind you it was now late Saturday and mass celebrated by what looked like a cardinal, was in full swing. Later the congregation went on a procession to a Marian shrine in the Cathedral grounds. If they were concerned by the heavy police procession they did not show it.
    The coppers cased the joint for someone to engage with. They found a little Manyel kind of man with a large bundle of cardboard trying to get into a lift. My sense was that the feds, on the presumption that as Christians would help the two distraught police accompanied pilgrims. The official was one of those diocesan functionaries who uncomfortably listened and the shook his head until it almost shook off his shoulders. The coppers, my assistants, took that as a ‘No!’
More Q&A on Google Translate. ‘Where was I staying?’ Kawasaki King Skyfront REI Hotel Coordinates N 035° 32.450° 32.450° E 129° 45.188°
    Brilliant idea! ‘If this man drove you back to your hotel could you get money from the hotel?’ I said ‘Yes’ with some relief that the trip was in a taxi not a police car. I said yes. I presumed I could get money transferred to the driver there. Silly me. I had made some in the moment assumptions; but it seemed a solution for all concerned. 
    The driver thoughtfully asked me if I wanted to go inside since I had come here to see the place. I took an almost furtive glance amid signs ‘Please do to enter Cathedral during Mass.’ The entrance was policed by stern female gatekeepers whom I brushed past. I looked at the straggling congregation and what looked like a cardinal celebrating mass in the distance.
I bid good bye to the cops and apologised for their trouble and set off in the taxi to the hotel.
    The long and somewhat tense non-sightseeing trip across Tokyo commenced. The driver parked at the hotel and shadows me into the reception desk.
‘NO way’ there is no way I could pay the hotel and have them pay the taxi driver. 
Chapter the Second.
    All previous questions are canvassed. It is hard to recall all their hotel questions at this point. They were as courteous as they could manage but firm. Passport OK. Try to phone ANZ and or Mastercard Post Office Travel card. On a personal note I stood at the desk for hours. I wondered at my ability to stand there. I was permitted to go to the toilet and to stand without a chair. To describe my emotions as like the Wreck of the Hesperus would be like describing the former voyage as a pleasure cruise. My phone was running out of battery. 
    A Nepali staff member came up. With the idea of replacing my Japanese sim card and replace it with my original Australian sim card. A paper clip was produced; sim card replaced but no success with ANZ. I asked could go back to my Japanese sim card and could they please phone ZNZ as recommended by their website. Crazy responses to the ANZ questions. ‘Department closed for the week end’ etc. Then some official asked me some identifying questions; ones a local branch ANZ person they had never heard of. ‘Colour of first car? Mother’s maiden name? Most recent ANZ deposit amount and date? And more. The then said ‘You have to answer exactly 100% you have failed. We cannot help you’, and hung up.
    At this point it became clear that the police had been summoned by the hotel and taxi driver. They appeared to be superior to the last lot and I noticed the most senior had a bundle of black gloves on his belt. No guns nor batons like the Oz ones. Seeking to sanitise the look around the reception desk, our group was moved to a back table near the Kimono rental desk. There was much more interrogating and note taking. Passport again, address, reason for being here, departure date and time? ‘Tomorrow’ Doing a runner? 

Chapter the third.
    One of the women from the Kimono rental service had been watching my plight with the others for a long time and had already dropped snacks.  She spoke English as she had been born in England some time ago. She and her companion had been compassionate translators. 
She said I had been watching me and said I should go to the onsen (hot bath bath) and relax. She said also that she was concerned that I get something to eat the following day before I got on the plane at 10.00 pm for Sydney. She gave me a bundle of 5000 yen. I refused. She insisted and said  she would be offended if I did not take the money. She said she had a job. I got her email address. I collapsed into the onsen.



Concluding notes.
    This has been traumatic. I will need therapy. I have been anxious and not driven a car since.
A building I had studies and followed since Kenzo Tange built it in the 60s which I have always wanted to experience had to be abandoned because I could not get my money out of ANZ. 
Michael D. Breen
Tuesday, 16 December 2025

 Christmas Shadow

    Christmas sucks! Yes, I know you are not supposed to say that, but I wish to make a case that for some of us it does. It does so, personally, socially, culturally, ethnically, psychologically, and every way except for the market that force, stronger than gravity which runs the whole show.
    My own reactions to 'The Festive Season' are so anti social that I cannot express them to many friends and relatives because they are part of the problem.
    Should I say I dislike or am quite uncomfortable with Christmas several reprisals follow. An early response can be to question my mental health.
    There is an imperative to conform. 'Of course, you are not serious?' 'How could you not like Christmas?' 'But you must admit...' And there follows an explanation you know is defensive and one where I am the problem. If you dislike what the majority likes you must be deficient, suspect even, because you see things so differently. You are treated as was the first person to dare to say that the earth circles the sun.
    Even though the vectors driving belief in the Season are illogical or bogus or outdated and such that many of the proponents only half believe what they are advocating, they seem to feel duty bound to persuade you to change your heretical ideas.
    I own this stance is deeply personal, offensive even, and in the opposite direction from the popular procession. Personal scars of trauma contribute to my position. Yes. When I was ten on Christmas Eve, I had been trying to catch a cicada as a tangible present for myself for Christmas. I fell out of a tree and landed upside down on a sharp stump. I was terrified when I saw the muscle or tissue or fat poking out of the wound as I limped home.
    I knew my parents felt obliged to do the Santa thing and that they did not have a lot of money to spend and worse, that they would choose age inappropriate presents for me. They would miss the mark but would have fulfilled the Christmas gift injunction.
    The pain in my thigh kept me awake that night. I heard my parents arguing about the quality and quantity of the Santa drop.
Mum was accusing Dad of being niggardly and because I held a similar view it was squirmingly painful to hear.
    Next morning the bundle of disposables at the end of the bed included an orange coloured ten shilling note. It concretised Mum's judgment of Dad; her victory and their scale of values and Dad's having to pay for his humiliation.
    That event was underpinned by the epistemological
 or identity problems of who Santa was and why the ruse should exist at all.
    Most parents seem to enact without question the validity of the culturally supported ruse. Santa is written to, visits an impossible number of houses, enters via a chimney, parks a sled with reindeer team in all insolence-eats and drinks festal offerings and moves on to the next house. No wonder we have an obesity problem in Santa countries. He does all this after arriving from some Nordic location via shopping mall photo ops.
    Folklorists dispute the emoluments of the season; the tree, the music, the snow, the revealed theology of the day and the national variations-which are of course Eurocentric.
    There is no common sense nor veracity in nostalgia. And nostalgia operates at much deeper levels than what is visible or logical. It is excellent preparation for believing 'false truths'.
    Familiarly Christmas is like putting on an old boot. The younger the wearer the better the fit. Then there is a divide between those who find reassurance in an aged pair of archaic slippers and the ache of misshapen feet bunions and all shoehorned into what once worked comfortably.
    Forget, for a moment, about those who echo the regressions to childhood or the joy of giving an appreciated present. Think instead of the others who quake at the annual reenactment , those who have neither the money, the desire or friends and relatives with whom to meet. Or those non neo-europeans who have their own feasts and rituals. For the bereaved there is the reminder of painful ongoing losses. For the lonely the pain of isolation and being radically different as well as resenting those who mindlessly glide through.
    
    Then there are those like me who try to conform, pull on the old boot without too many audible aches and groans. Those who try to do their best while knowing how thin is the veneer of conformity so as
to please someone else.
    There is an old story of two adolescent youngsters of noble Italian families who declared they wanted, beyond all else, to be married and live happily ever after. The story goes that the adults consulted a wise old bishop (Yes it was a long time ago). His grace advised handcuffing the ardent pair to each other and to a comfortable large bed for a few days. The elders followed the advice and the deflated youngsters saw more than the light.
    And the connection with Christmas? Psychologists, sociometrists and historians, with a capital H and anyone with a memory know a Christmas gathering is fraught. Just look at it:a group of sibling rivals, a squark of generations, an array of injured, hurt and damaged relationships, a mob of people who never see or visit one another throughout the year, with a stack of unfinished business the size of colonisation are supposed to sit, eat, drink together in some magic social balm swallowing any hypocrisy. Until on the way home when they can take the strips off the attendees confidentially.
    Our Irish mob was would never let a family relationship get in the way of a cutting remark.
    Many times I have heard from a combatant about physical fisticuff boil overs which followed the pudding or the game of backyard cricket liberally fuelled by the lubrications of the liquid spirit of the season. Which outbursts, though alarming carry an authenticity greater than the enforced saccharine social endearments and blistering kisses.
    Yeah, Nah it's really only the merchants who profit from Christmas. Even if they have to forego a bit of repriced hard to shift produce for the Boxing Day sales. They don't give a rat's whether it is a gift to a beloved or a tick the box token. A sort of have to because it is expected part of a transaction. Which this kind of stuff, come to think of it, is not a gift anymore than are taxes, or rates gifts we love to give.
    Usually days of national celebration accrue from a major proud victory or death or national achievement. Sometimes these events have a religious origin. Which is fine if you are religious, preferably of the same theological flavour as the event or are willing to adopt the dress, customs, tucker of that group.
    If you are not you can use the event like the Italian second hand car dealers in the Boston St Patrick's day parade who sit in open top convertibles decked in green and sporting oversized green rosettes.
    What is bothersome for the purists is when the annual recall celebration has lost almost any connection with the foundation it recalls. Celebrating by gift swapping of non essential items, spending energy on lights at Christmas seems to have lost a foundation in reality if it is based on a poor couple, unable to get accommodation other than an animal shelter where she brings forth her first son.
    The closest group to this family are starving refugees who would be mightily helped if even a proportion of the Western World Christmas expenditure were allotted to these deserving helpless people. 

    Cultural appropriation of snow and decorated trees are now endorsed as seasonal necessities. It can be tricky. In a Japanese attempt to join in; Santa, in red and white, has been depicted nailed hands and feet to a cross. A sort of covering all bases messianic icon.

    
    Are there seasonal survival mechanisms for refugees of this seasonal behaviour? There are at least two. One, banish reason, common sense, social conscience, past hurt and offence and go along for the ride.
    Two, get out of town, to another culture if you can, or go walking in the bush,Yes, sing to yourself if you like and write.

Michael D. Breen

 Geometer Dreams   by Peter Byrne.


    In Geometer Dreams Peter Byrne showcases landmarks and trig points of a distinguished forty year career as a geometer. He eschews the title ‘surveyor’.
        ‘Surveyors, having so much difficulty in defining themselves,                 should not be surprised that their profession, its wide scope, its             importance, is not commonly understood’
    The author recognises that readers may be misled by their preconceptions of ‘surveyors’. Men with tripods on the pavement looking at other men with long white calibrated sticks. So Byrne uses the term Geometer whom he observes in the third person.    
    At the conclusion of the hundred vignettes the reader is so much the wiser even if a constraining definition remains elusive.
    Peter Byrne is ‘old school’ in spirit and appreciation. Though he is happy to embrace and master new technology as it arrives. Nonetheless he is happy to value rather than spurn the old such as a wheelbarrow or World War 1 heliograph, four cylinder Land Rover, The Curta Calculator or
Tellurometers
    Like the cabinetmakers who mastered hand tools and moved to electric tops or the artist who mastered sketching before oil painting the author’s career saw small and large changes which reduced the arduous field labours and improved accuracy. Devices in the right hands of course.
    The dreams move from cadet journeyman to master practitioner and businessman to standard bearer for the profession and for professionalism with the Institution of Surveyors, federally and The International Federation of Surveyors.
    Then a turn into mediation and dispute resolution where he surveyed and unearthed vectors and connections of people stuck in conflict and inaction.
    So what is the spirit the elan vital the underlying driving force linking the adventures, jobs, trips, challenges, appointments and leaps of this geometer?
    Leonardo, or was it Einstein, said that genius is mostly in observation. And our greatest preventer of observing or learning is what we know; what we believe to be the truth about the way things are.
    The Geometer is an ongoing lifelong learner. And you can feel his delight when he achieves a new learning.
    This requires courage, civil courage and ego management. Changing bearings and direction requires the bereavement of banning the familiar and embracing, often uncertainly at first, what was anathema. It is challenging. It is uncomfortable  and then liberating.
    The Geometer’s learning and explorations often were presented by peers, clients, and opponents. So from a swamp of confusion, progress in geometer dreaming moves to as absolute a precautionary accuracy as humans can produce. That is a map.
    The Swedes have a Museum of Failures, established as a source of learning. The Geometer often slows things down to learn rather than hurry up to avoid shame and keep ‘looking forward.’
    Without escaping the discomfort and anxiety the Geometer accepts a second opinion with a wry smile and a good grace. Not easy when dealing with anxious, bullying or greedy clients and organisations.
    The Geometer is smart and witty. His humour is like a Zen Koan which breaks through situations to reveal a new, an enlivening viewpoint. He only just evades the label ‘smart arse’ by being able to give grin and take.
    In Australian and international professional bodies the Geometer led conservative forces to change with the times meshing with other bodies in the landscape
    Meeting the characters in the stories and in the bibliographical notes the Geographer presents those with whom he shares his path. You see whom he valued, respected and befriended. They edified (built) one another.Their dates of birth and death show that not many are still going. This is an historical document.
    So what function might this almost quirky compendium perform? War stories register? Nostalgia? Celebrating less visible professionals of one man and his mates? Were I as an educator asked to prescribe essential reading for students of surveying and kindred vocations such as engineering, town planning, architecture etc I would set Geometer Dreams as a readable potent and humane handbook on professional practice of an essential service.

Michael D. Breen organisational psychologist consultant to AAM, the Institution of Surveyors and The Association of Consulting Surveyors and a State Surveyor General.
    
Geometer Dreams
First published in 2022 by
PETER BYRNE
Maylands 6051
Western Australia
byrne.peter@optusnet.com.au

Copyright  © Peter Byrne.
ISBN:978 064547 860 0

 Following World Health Organization webinar on Creating AgeFriendly Co0mmunities.Toolkit for assessing an AgeFriencly community

The Tuft of Flowers > ROBERT FROST

>
> I went to turn the grass once after one

> Who mowed it in the dew before the sun.

> 
> The dew was gone that made his blade so keen
> Before I came to view the levelled scene.
> 
> I looked for him behind an isle of trees;
> I listened for his whetstone on the breeze.
> 
> But he had gone his way, the grass all mown,
> And I must be, as he had been,—alone,
> 
> ‘As all must be,’ I said within my heart,
> ‘Whether they work together or apart.’
> 
> But as I said it, swift there passed me by
> On noiseless wing a ‘wildered butterfly,
> 
> Seeking with memories grown dim o’er night
> Some resting flower of yesterday’s delight.
> 
> And once I marked his flight go round and round,
> As where some flower lay withering on the ground.
> 
> And then he flew as far as eye could see,
> And then on tremulous wing came back to me.
> 
> I thought of questions that have no reply,
> And would have turned to toss the grass to dry;
> 
> But he turned first, and led my eye to look
> At a tall tuft of flowers beside a brook,
> 
> A leaping tongue of bloom the scythe had spared
> Beside a reedy brook the scythe had bared.
> 
> I left my place to know them by their name,
> Finding them butterfly weed when I came.
> 
> The mower in the dew had loved them thus,
> By leaving them to flourish, not for us,
> 
> Nor yet to draw one thought of ours to him.
> But from sheer morning gladness at the brim.
> 
> The butterfly and I had lit upon,
> Nevertheless, a message from the dawn,
> 
> That made me hear the wakening birds around,
> And hear his long scythe whispering to the ground,
> 
> And feel a spirit kindred to my own;
>
> So that henceforth I worked no more alone;
> 
> But glad with him, I worked as with his aid,
> And weary, sought at noon with him the shade;
> 
> And dreaming, as it were, held brotherly speech
> With one whose thought I had not hoped to reach.
> 
> ‘Men work together,’ I told him from the heart,
> ‘Whether they work together or apart.’

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Booklaunch: Shaking the Family Tree & When the Bough Breaks.

  “When the Bough Breaks” and “Shaking the family Tree”

Margaret McMahon.

Book launch.

       Good evening all and thank you Margaret for asking me to do this important job launching not one but two results of your hard work and courage.

       First a permission. In a town just west of Burrowa an unprepossessing local was to address the citizens in the School of Arts about his overseas travel. The mayor gave an overheated introduction and your man commenced. “G’day everyone.” Mumbled unenthusiastic “G’day.” “Can youse all hear me?” “Emm” mumbled. “Can you down there hear me?” Pointing. “Yes I can but I am willing to swap places with someone who can’t”. So feel free to do such a swap.

       “When the Bough Breaks” and “Shaking the Family Tree” cover similar areas. The genres of autobiography and family history are vulnerable territory. It is also an impregnable area as no one can deny or contradict a writer’s reaction to incidents.

       Margaret’s territory is also pegged by her father Barry’s writing, and that of her sister and her brother. So unsurprisingly there is a tinge of having to justify the writer’s unique version.  

              “When the Bough Breaks”

       Takes two little children from the care of their mother, to their maternal grandparents, to their paternal grandparents and then to a blended stepfamily. That is a lot.

       But it is further contaminated by the grandparent asking a child to promise not to love her new stepmother. That seems to block the possible nurturing warmth from a new maternal person.

       Barry, Margaret’s father, must have been shattered by the death of his wife while he was a new enlistee in the army posted to Western Australia. Adding to his pain was the charge that he was just trying to get out of an army for which he had volunteered. One doubts if Barry ever really grieved for his wife or instead used denial, workaholism and whisky. Perhaps too he was terrified of losing a second wife’s affection and so gave priority to his new family over Margaret and her sister. Work is such a respectable defence against living a fully human life. Philosopher Joseph Pieper, in “Leisure the Basis of Culture” talks of work; negotium in Latin as the negation of otium meaning rest which is our default state.

       “Strong women” or tough women surrounded Barry. He physically sparred with his daughters. Margaret laments his underdeveloped feminine side. Whence though would he have had the models to be more feminine? Margaret’s ambivalence toward her semi absent father, who was scant protection against his second wife, is evident. But he was the only parent she had to love and she did.

       Her mother Bunty dying young achieves canonization along with priest Uncle Robert.

“Shaking the Family Tree”.

       The second launch is “Shanking the Family Tree”.  Margaret is still a bit behind Kim Jong-un but this is her fourth launch in two years.

       Convict ancestor James Barry emerges from the family mist like the convict in the opening scenes of the film of “Great Expectations”. He looks scary but becomes more human as we get to know him. Margaret provides details of Irish history and nineteenth century occupied Cork. This is the landscape from which James Barry moves to primitive Australia.  (And there are still Barry families in Cork).

              Governor Sir Thomas Makdougall Brisbane said of people like James, “…every murder or diabolical crime, which has been committed in the Colony since my arrival has been perpetrated by Roman Catholics. And this I ascribe entirely to their barbarous ignorance. And total want of education, the invariable companion of bigotry and cruelty as well as the parent of crime”. A bit rich coming from a Scot who left his country to join the British Army and who collected his wife’s name to enhance his status. Governor Brisbane calls the Irish Roman Catholics ignorant. It was the British government who forbade them their schools from about 1695 though they conducted illegal “hedge schools” a risk they took because they valued education. The British also made it a punishable offence to speak their own language. As in our days with Aboriginal people? Asylum seekers? Punishment for the effects of what we have done to people?

       James had two children with his wife Margaret Barry who died aged 24 from tuberculosis in 1853. Margaret McMahon’ sympathy for the two bereaved children Margaret Mary and William patently parallels her own loss of a mother at as a little child with a younger sister.

       Outside the family and intermingled with family perceptions is the cultural context. That context is as fickle as fashion. Cultural norms are like good glasses they change focus and are imperceptible to the wearer. Just think how society’s views on gender have shifted in the past thirty or so years.

       There are also the pervasive social barbed wires of family/religious judgments based on societal norms. Often the connections one has with a respectable person can be redemptive. But should not always be relied on.     

My grandfather, who was asked to change his German name during two world wars, had a story of a well-known Sydney identity that was chairman of the water board. The said identity got into an argument with a tram conductor. At full charge he demanded, “Do you know who I am? I’m so and so. I’m connected with the water board.” The unphased conductor replied, “So’s my dunny”.

       These days you can cut corners for social renovation. You can be a criminal banker and use your gains to enrol children at private schools thereby elevating  your and their status.

       Religious intolerance, which threads through both books, has declined along with religion itself. However, racial intolerance in our multicultural society is alive and well. It is a highly inflammable seam of gas ready for politicians to ignite for their own benefit. 

       Reading, “When the Bough Breaks” and “Shaking the Family Tree” I enjoyed what I learned about nineteenth century life, rural life in Ireland, in Australia, about the Hunter Valley and its prominence in the Colony. About Mudgee, and the goldfields their miners and suppliers as well as learning about moves to the city and back to the bush again. At times I could smell fresh cow’s milk or leather dressing on harness or saddles or the smell of a horse. Or I could imagine the view to the side of a bush track curtained with thick flora now gone.

       Margaret’s work is impressive. It is the grinding, lonely unsure work of writing. Her children and their grandchildren can be grateful they have so much to go on.

       Margaret deserves our attentive reading and appreciation for sharing her paths, and that is why we are here

Michael D. Breen,

Newcastle,

May11th 2018

      

Graduation Address UTS May 1st Kate Kamkong Breen

Graduation Occasional Address UTS   Tuesday May 1^st 2018.

Catherine Breen Kamkong

Deputy Representative

United Nations Population Fund

I would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land upon which the UTS campus stands, the Gadigal people of the Eora nation. My respects also to Deputy Chancellor, Provost, Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Vice-President, University Secretary, Associate Dean of the Faculty, Chair of the Academic Board, staff, family, friends and graduates.”

What an honour it is for me to be with you all here today to celebrate the end of your foundational education as nurses and the beginning of the careers that lie ahead of you.

I wanted to share a little bit with you about the lessons I have learned on my journey since graduating with my Bachelor in Applied Science, Nursing back in 1993, not because I feel that what I have done is anything outstanding  or significant but more because I want each of you to believe that the world is at your feet and there are infinite possibilities which lie ahead for each of you , huge contributions that each of you have the potential to make …….and need to make.

 Mother Teresa once said that Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.

Nursing is much more than a job. It offers the opportunity to be a vocation and one where you support people at critical moments in their lives. What each of us might consider small can make a big difference to a person’s experience of pain, fear, loss and life itself. I remember once at St Vincents here in Sydney when I was working in the oncology ward. There was a women from the Solomon islands who had been brought to St Vincents with uterine cancer that had metastasised. Her prognosis was poor. She was away from family in a new environment and culture. I remember one night doing rounds of the wards, and was startled to find her on the floor. I assumed she had fallen out of bed. She cried and told me she was lying on the floor as she wanted to feel the healing warmth of the sun from the earth. There was no sun heating up the 10^th floor of that old building at St Vincents.

 I sat with her on the floor, crying also as I saw the pain she was in, her loneliness, her prognosis, and the lack of what she needed to bring her comfort..  That moment has stayed with me ever since – as I learned many things – I learned that there are often moments when we want to help and make everything better but the best we can do is just to be with that person and show them that you care. No clinical procedure at that moment could help. It also taught me to understand how important Respectful care is, and the importance of understanding difference..

During my experience working in a public hospital in Sydney, a Tibetan refugee camp, with refugees from Myanmar, with street children in Vietnam, young adolescent mothers in Nepal or rural women in Cambodia. The lesson for me has been the same  –  try to do Small things with great love.

The second lesson I have learned and wanted to share with you is of the importance of gratitude and finding a way to express that gratitude. Sometimes one has to experience something else to really know and understand the privileges one has.

 In around the year 2000, when I was working in a Burmese refugee camp on the Thai Burmese border training community health workers, I was struck by the desperate situation faced by these people and why it is that some in life must suffer so much. That health worker said to me that it was the “lottery of birth” and that though we are all given the same chance in life – a lot depends on where we are born, when we are born and to whom we are born. The race of life starts at the same place but all of those things have a very strong influence on the path after that.

I was so lucky in the lottery of birth to be born as an Australian, in a good family and to have many opportunities including the chance of a wonderful education. The foundational base that studying nursing here at UTS gave me has really created so many opportunities for me and it is that opportunity that also has motivated me so much to give back whatever I can and to contribute to making the lives of those not so fortunate a little more dignified and for their right to health to be somewhat realized.

And this leads me to the final lesson that I wanted to share with you.

The importance of finding your purpose. 

I had a good job in critical care at St Vincents Hospital back in the mid 1990s and the prospects of saving enough to put a deposit on a small place in Balmain. Yet I remember feeling that there was something more that was calling me. I handed in my resignation, bought a ticket to Ho Chi Minh , Vietnam and went volunteering as a nurse to a clinic in an orphanage where babies and small children were being brought in after being found abandoned on the streets and found dumped in garbage bins. I used to come home and cry, feeling helpless, homesick and upset at the plight of these children and also the way the other health professionals treated these babies . It sparked something deep within me though that I wanted to do be able to do more. This searching took me to India where I continued to volunteer and had to draw upon everything I had learned at UTS and in life!  Just being from Australia, and trained as a nurse led me to be called upon to assist in all sorts of situations I felt unprepared for –  women giving birth in a small hut in fields in the mountains of Himachel Pradesh,  Tibetan refugees children coming to me with totally burned hands from lighting the fire to cook in their house, resuscitating a newborn of a refugee women in a health centre at night with no light and no other equipment than my mouth and 2 hands . I became passionate about refugee health and global health and have continued on this journey of trying to harness all my brainpower and capacity to make a small difference.  I studied further and  worked even more in humanitarian settings after cyclones and also ethnic conflicts in Myanmar, post conflict in Nepal and then to Cambodia.  I became passionate about trying to make sure that no woman dies in pregnancy and childbirth and that every baby that is born has a chance of more than survival. That is why my work has taken me to the United Nations . None of this is important in itself but what I am trying to impart on you is that I found my purpose and I encourage you to find yours also. I love the words of Eddie Woo, the amazing mathematics teacher from Cherry Brook high school who gave an address on Australia day. He explained -  

“If you’re a young person trying to find your way in the world, I don’t think you need to follow your passion. I think you have to become passionate about following need”

So if you will allow me, I would like to ask each one of you to think about these words and the lessons I shared.

Do small things with great love. Look outwards at the world around and find what matters to each of you. Consider all that you have and try and give back to others some of what you have learned and taken away from your studies here at UTS. Make a contribution in whatever way you can to some of the needs of our people here in Australia and in our shared world. Put your heart, soul and all your skills and capacity into that and you will have found your purpose!

I wish you the best of luck in all your endeavors and congratulations.

Zen Practice.

In 1986 I joined the Zen Group of Western Australia. This meant meditating with the group as close to weekly as possible, making a Zen retreat or Sesshin almost yearly and the daily practice of Zazen (meditation).
This has been my spiritual practice my Way or Tau since then. My first teacher was the respected and remarkable Robert Aitken Roshi who came from the Diamond Sangha in Honolulu to assist Zen students and incipient teachers in Australia.
John Tarrant Roshi from California also returned to his native Australia to lead Sesshins here on several occasions which I attended. 
Ross Bolleter, musician, composer and music teacher was authorized to teach in 1992 by John Tarrant, and received transmission from Robert Aitken and John Tarrant in 1997. He has taught extensively in Australia and New Zealand and has successors in both places.
When I moved to NSW in 2001 Ross was still my teacher and I had telephone Docksan (Interview with the teacher) fairly regularly.
This year I visited my teacher Ross in Perth and he recommended I contact the Sydney Zen Group and teacher Gillian Coote. 

I visited and meditated with the Sydney group at their place in Annandale.
Then I enrolled for the spring Sesshin this month at their retreat center Gorrick's Run on the McDonald River out from  Wiseman's Ferry. The Sydney people led by architect Tony Coote built the meditation hall, teacher's residence, kitchen, dormitory toilets and shower block over thirty years.

On the opening evening I said that I was both excited by the opening world of Sesshin while also apprehensive of the pain and frustration which accompanies intensive growth work. And thus it panned out, though I felt held and supported by the members of the Sangha (group[) and the practices which structure the Sesshin day such as chanting, meal rituals, walking meditation and visiting the teacher. It is strange how so much which happens in silence has such effect.
I am grateful to the group of fellow students and  to Gillian Coote and Maggie Gluek for the strength and authenticity of their teaching and their cutting away of non essentials so that there was just one focus point.

Sydneh Harbour stone Buddha in Paddock.

Zendo Meditation Hall

Spring Sesshin 2017

John Warhurst on Church reform

John is an intelligent and credible Political Scientist. Here I wish to further the discussion he invites about reforming the Catholic Church in Australia. The approach needs to be radical and systemic.

An organization like a good building needs to have a form which supports and enhances its function. From follows function. So what is the function of the Catholic Church? What kind of form does it need and need to fund to progress the message of Christ? What do the members of the organization need to advance their spiritual lives? What form do reformist Catholics need to embrace to do what? And if there is something wrong it is a good idea not to make changes without adequate diagnosis.
A couple of observations or questions from one who has worked with organizational structures and cultures for several decades.
Anyone ever thought of asking a bishop if he says his prayers? What has been the effect in a secular world of the vacuum where genuinely spiritual matters ought have had primacy? And no I do not mean dogmatic, or scripture study, or moral reflections. Certainly not prayers of petition. I mean sharing and learning from the great tried and true spiritual traditions many of which surround Australia in our Asian setting.
What would happen if the structure gave first place to The New Testament and those best able to support it and leave the bureaucratic structure to managers? Does ordination confer any special administrative skills? So the bishop could be the dogmatic/spiritual/prayerful leaders of an area and with a lay management system.
 




Why do Australian Catholics imagine in their widest dreams that the the Hierarchic cadre which have mismanaged can have some remarkable change of hearts, skills and investments in their egos to now turn around and exercise leadership reform? They have had the blueprint from Vatican ii for years and been tardy or reactive.
Why, especially when the Pope has invited Catholics to experiment with change not try a few things? E.g. invite divorced people to come to communion, if a priest wants to get married let him announce his intentions and see if the community still want him as their pastor and on and on. The Pope knows enough about organizations and the Vatican not expect change from the center. He knows as organizational experts know that much change comes from the periphery.
And finally, I find it remarkable that Catholics, now that the Royal Commission has put the hierarchy and provincials in the stocks in the village square and shamed them that the laity throw stuff of their own. Some form of distancing? The laity  have been slavishly obedient, colluded with bad decisions,(administrative, managerial, financial, political, cultural and educational) seen their leaders punished by quisling informers to Rome. They have winged to one another but supine in their confrontation of the offending cleric who was the more appropriate target of their complaint, since the formation of the colony. Few have ever walked out of an offensive sermon. It was not just the clergy, but teachers, coppers, parents, lawyers and judges who managed the cover ups of abuses. No, if the laity wish to operate with integrity they must acknowledge their complicity, their collusion in corrupting the body which needs reform. That would put them on a more humble footing with the clerics they now want to change and leadership in the acknowledgment of the sinfulness of us all.

Still missing some points? Catholic reform?

http://johnmenadue.com/?p=9759#comment-51714
This is a fairly long speech. It is from an expert, however there are two problems which I address in my response.
OK Francis Sullivan knows more than most about this matter and has had to be a front man conduit for so much criminal dysfunction. Corruptio optimi;pessimum. He makes sense in this speech and his blueprint for the future looks good. However the question is are there now any or enough people of initiative, who have not already left the in the church, to do anything about the mess. Most it seems have given away so much power for so long in childlike dependency on the clergy and hierarchy that they will be unable manage or work around the authorities appointed in the last few years by reactionary Vatican officials.
One serious omission in this and other ecclesiastical matters is spirituality. Most of what was said or taught bout prayer followed the same dependency dynamic as you would expect from a bovine; sheep and shepherd leadership. The spiritual development of the person was about faith, morals and dogma. None of this is necessarily spiritual. Australia sits in Asia which has several rich spiritual traditions of meditation and spiritual development. Learning from these might be a way to reform from the inside out.

Vale George Madaus.

George Madaus died on December 18 2016 aged 82. His career and works are better described than I could manage in an article to which I linked on Facebook. 
https://www.bc.edu/bc-web/bcnews/campus-community/faculty/in-memoriam-george-madaus.html
George, though internationally famous as a researcher and publisher in the area of testing and evaluation was a wonderfully approachable and helpful mentor. 
Would that I had met him at a time in my life when I was less troubled, leaving the Jesuits after 20 years therein and suffering major culture shock. I was far from the well balanced grad student
When I arrived in Boston in August 1972, just as Nixon was declaring he knew nothing about Watergate, I knew no one and was at a loss to make sense of my chosen university and its structures. Somehow George got a message to me that I should contact him. He invited me to his home in Needham. He had a remarkable knowledge of Irish and Australian folk music, but wanted to know more. 
The family dog "Broccoli" was an endless source of merriment for George as Broccoli seemed to defy all known learning theory. George enjoyed collecting and passing on jokes. He always had one at the ready. 
He introduced me to the Centre for Field Research and Services to Schools. He was responsible for my getting a job there teaching a course in Foundations of Education for 400 students more than I could have imagined.
Though only a year older than me he seemed older as an elder at Boston College and was a major figure on the campus. He knew almost everyone and was respected by them. 
During a summer vacation I had a job driving a school buss for a children's summer camp. George lent me his car for the summer enabling me to get to and from work and other places.
George engaged a luthier to help him make a hurdy gurdy and invited me to tag along  as I worked building a dulcimer in his basement.
When I told him I was leaving the Jesuits he urged me to enroll immediately in the doctoral programme. He knew I had to eat, get clothed and get a roof over my head and what better meal ticket than a doctorate. He used say, "A few dollars and a PhD will get you a cup of coffee." As part of the entry into the doctoral programme I had to sit an exam in the Millers Analogy test. I was not happy with my mark. When I told George he told me he too had received that mark.
Knowing my gra for Irish music and lifestyle he helped me get a fellowship in Dublin in the Education Research Centre at St Pat's Drumcondra. This was several good things rolled into one. A job in Ireland which after America was bliss. It was an opportunity to work on a landmark international education research study into standardized testing where, as tests were introduced into the Irish system it was possible to pre-test, test and then test the effects on the nation. And I could travel around the country chasing the music and drinking Guiness. George put me up at his own apartment in Howth until I got some accommodation; my own first living space.
By this time George was working  in Ireland full time. 
George and Tom Kellegan the director of the Research Centre were busy setting up the study we were working on. It was complex with six funding bodies in Ireland and the USA. Schools had to be chosen across the country. Some existed in name only some had moved address. It was like looking for several needles in several haystacks using medieval maps. Staff had to be hired for field work. As well a large repository had to be found for the monumental stacks of tests to be stored after completion, return and correction. This turned out to be All Hallows College, a disused diocesan seminary where several  priests who went to the Bathurst Diocese were trained. I had worked with them in Australia. It was strange seeing pictures of these chaps as young men along the cloister walls as we lugged bundles of tests in and out of the ghostly building. 
I was learning to be an employee. I was a slow learner and a bolshie one as well.
George and I clashed as did others in these days getting the research structured and running. Despite my brashness and probably a feeling that the hand he had offered to feed me was being bitten George hung in there and we still shared jokes and Irish music. He took up the concertina.
He loved working songs like "School days over come on then John" Luke Kelly's version. Or "Fiddler's Green" a fisherman's end of days song. These were worlds away from his professorial seat, but he loved their humanness.  
Dear George is probably the most internationally renowned person I have known, though not greatly known outside his field or America or Ireland. 
Just one final George story. Danny Burke (not his real name) was born in Bandon Co Cork he had studied with the Holy Ghost Fathers to go to the African Mission. He left the order and came to America to find a job in construction work.  Somehow he was working on George's house doing some renovations. George convinced him that a degree was a better meal ticket than labouring. When I met Danny he had completed a bachelor's degree, a masters and was finishing his doctorate. George inspired him, got him going and kept an eye on him and his career in education internationally. George saw what that young lad could not see at the time and showed him the way.
There are several ironies about learning. One is that when the student is ready the teacher arises. Another is that you have to begin where the learner is in themselves. On reflection I experienced and leaned both with George.
George was a significant person in my life. Would that I had been a more gracious student and protegee. None the less I am in part what he made me.

Robertson a bright future vision.

Robertson a bright future vision.

What kind of Robertson? What kind do you want to live in? To die in? For your grandchildren?

         “This could be the start of something great” as the song says. It could be the start of a discussion or dialogue about our future, the future of the place we live in. But really is just part of a discussion many people in Robertson have a lot of the time.

So I’d like to put forward a piece of the future picture. Firstly, I know I’m just part of an ongoing discussion between locals more experienced than I am about the town. ( See last paragraph) So with some trepidation here goes.

I would like Robertson to be a community, a place where we include others and support one another. No not in some sickly sweet do gooder way, just an Aussie way of looking out for one another. I would like to end my days here, at home, not in a nursing home where I would not live longer; just die longer.

So often I have heard of “children”, adults who have to pack their parents away because they cannot be looked after here. But they could stay here with greater quality of life connected with relatives and friends if there were services to cater for them (us).

We would need smaller places to live. Preferably, this could be within walking, hobbling distance to the shops. Shops where we could get a coffee or a beer and shops where we could meet others, young and old.

What would need to happen to make Robbo such a place? Good medical services-we have these and the service here could specialize in the care of older souls and bodies. Students could come here to specialize in the care of the elderly. The elderly are a growing group, a larger proportion of the Australian population than ever before. So even commercially there is a growing market for services to the elderly.

The Robertson Doctor, currently gives us an enviable and affordable series of services and not just for our bodies, our minds, emotions and souls.

Carers will need care themselves and support and respite as part of the team looking after older people.

There would, probably, be a series of teams of differing mixes of skills for different people. That work needs coordination to provide the best mix of resources of the family and friends.

There would need be catering, cleaning, gardening, transport and purchasing services slightly different from those available now.

All this would mean jobs and meaningful work for younger people and older retired professionally trained careers. Those starting their work lives could start while living here, rather than in the isolation of a city.

I would need somewhere to walk, to swim, to exercise. And what a place we have for this.  How many people even in Australia have such wonderful places to stroll, walk and be nurtured by the scenery? For me the bush is a place to restore my spirit, my soul, to link with ever changing, growing nature. The Council is working on more and varied walks around and between villages. See Facebook: Tracks and Trails of Wingecarribee.

Probably in a smaller house I would not have my own workshop/shed. But I would still have a need to make things, to fix things for us and others. So a community shed would be great. Likewise a community garden where we cold grow some stuff and learn about gardening with others would be a treasure. I have often thought that Robertson could grow its own vegetables and fruit on our rich soil verges. After all we do not eat grass and you don’t have to mow potatoes.

An exciting challenge for all this is to think differently about the whole community and to be flexible so as to learn from successful examples, newer ways and to admit that we do not have all the answers.

These are sketchy ideas, part dream, part imagined wants and needs. However, I know I am not the only one to develop these dreams to grow, plant and nurture them and link them with others. Then there is the matter of sharing them with the Council to ensure future appropriate building regulations, block sizes and services.

So I throw out these ideas, these bits in the hope that others will pick up bits to form a mosaic, a common dream for our future.

As I write this over a coffee at Moonrakers three men are discussing ideas to improve our town, so the discussion goes on in all kinds of ways.

It’s Robertson; Smile and Wave.

Michael D. Breen       Thursday, 13 October 2016