It will be a shame when that fence comes down

This sign has mysteriously appeared on the fence surrounding the demolished Esplanade Hotel site, Albany WA..
Gone are the socks, the undies, the towels, the bras, but the Christmas tinsel remains and now this.
Just goes to show, you can't stifle comment in a democracy.

The Doust Files - Albany Advertiser 4/1/2011

Given it is that time of the year again, the one when our town is packed to the skirting boards with visitors, I thought it might be timely to offer a few tips.

The first set of pointers will be for those who have chosen to join us and before I go any further allow me, on behalf of the entire town, to welcome you and say that if you have any problems while here, please, don’t hesitate to call.

 The second set is for us, the real locals, the wannabe locals and people who live here.

Visitors:

-          No, you are not wrong, this town does not have one single traffic-light. Before entering a roundabout, park your car nearby, sit, relax and watch how the locals enter, move through and depart.

-          Even better, park your car on the outskirts of town, call a taxi and ask the driver to take you through the system 10 times. Make sure you ask to see his or her Roundabout Tour Guide Certification.

-          If one of your party passes on while you are in town don’t take them to the large mortuary on North Road. It is not a mortuary. It is, in fact, the Albany City Council.

-          More than likely you have brought socks, fully intending to hang them on Albany’s famous Esplanade Sock Fence. Be warned, the Sock Fence has been declared a Public Menace, all socks removed and the culprits have been hoisted by their own petards.

-          No doubt you have brought rubbish with you and will collect more while in town. Please dispose of it in the proper way. If you are seen littering, a large sea monster will rise out of the harbour and eat your parents.

-          No, I’m sorry, we do not have a Big W. It’s been lovely seeing you, thank you for visiting, goodbye.

Locals:

-          If you see a tourist entering a roundabout, the same one you are in, there is no need to show them a finger, or even fire a hand-gun at their wheels. Give them time, after one week they will probably use Aberdeen or Collie Street s. Or drive to Bunbury.

-          The wonderful thing about tourists is that they have come to town fully intending to hand over most of their money. Let’s make it easy for them, be welcoming, try a smile and if they complain about the coffee, bring them another one and try not to spill it on their lap.

-          If you meet a tourist who seems bored, tired of the magnificent scenery, the world’s finest beaches, the excellent local produce and superb cooking, the historic landscape, the brilliance of local musicians, visual artists and fine literary talents, take them out to Misery Beach and leave them there.

-          If one of them approaches you in the street and asks where the Big W is, don’t use the phrase “Go forth and multiply.” 

Finally, to both parties, please, do your best to get along, we don’t want a repeat of last year’s incident, the one involving the dead fish, the Volvo, the man with the wooden leg and the tree that used to be on Middleton Beach.

Oh, by the way, word is out that 2011 is going to be the best ever. Make sure you stay in it.

The Doust Files - Albany Advertiser 21/12/2010

It’s almost Christmas and, before you know it, it’ll be the next one. And they told us technology would give us more time. What a lot of poppycock. What a con. We have less time. Australians are working longer and harder than ever. We have to. We must. It’s imperative. Is it?

I remember it well, that day, about this time of the year, when mum asked me to ride into town to buy a fresh loaf of bread and a bottle of lemonade. I rode to the baker, bought the warm bread, all wrapped up in tissue paper, and was half way home before I remembered the lemonade so I turned back and it was only then I noticed my hand had been hard at it, ripping soft bread from the middle of the loaf and stuffing it into my open gob.

For a brief second I panicked, but then my clever little brain realised I had just enough for the lemonade and another loaf. I bought both while my hand continued to rip and stuff, rip and stuff.

Half way home again, belly bloated, I decided to lie down on the side of the road. I day dreamt, dozed and two hours later got up and continued on home. When I got there, mum was so busy in the kitchen she barely noticed me sneak in.

I often hanker for those days when time was timeless, meaningless and only one in five wore or could afford a watch.

Just in case you have forgotten, or never knew, time is a human contrivance. Nature doesn’t recognise it. We made it up. Skinks don’t know the time. Kangaroos couldn’t care less. As for magpies, well, they have a rough idea because they keep a close watch on all our comings and goings.

For those of you who feel a hanker coming on, here’s a tip for this Christmas: ignore the clocks and watches, don’t organise too much and try and find a soft grassy patch to lie on and let your mind wander.

Yes, life is short, but you don’t have to rush it.

My favourite festive periods were those spent at the family’s beach house in Safety Bay. Back then we might take a day to catch a feed, most of the night to eat it and around a week to clean up the mess.

Back in Bridgetown we lived on part of the original Doust farm which had been split among three brothers and some years all of us would gather at my grandfather’s and rip into what seemed a massive pig, laid out on a huge table with a granny smith in its mouth.

One of my uncles liked too many Sherries and the other one too many beers and a cousin had a hanker for whiskey. By the end of the day, and the pig, the grassy knoll was full of tired and emotional bodies flung out to dry.

Looking back on it all I have to admit my favourite festive days of all were spent on my brother’s farm, because by then we were all grown men with wives, sometimes new ones, and children, not always our own, but none of us had lost our love of action.

My brother would make a water slide down his back yard into the river and everyone armed themselves with water cannon, water bombs, buckets, anything to ensure no-one left un-drenched. The party ended one year when the brother brought out his fire fighting equipment and blasted an older family member into the river and we had to drive to Augusta to recover him.

Whatever you do this Christmas and Boxing Day, do it slow, do it with warmth in your heart and have a bloody good time.

The Doust Files - Albany Advertiser 7/12/2010

In an ideal world Paul Terry would still be with us and one of his gifts, the Esplanade Hotel, would still be standing. But he isn’t and it isn’t.

Ok, so let’s imagine another world.

In this world the hotel has been demolished following its purchase by a group keen not to offend the locals. The group builds a magnificent hotel that not only utilises the scenic setting but also takes full advantage of the potential for green energy. It features north facing windows, solar panels, wind turbines and aspiring young hospitality students from the Great Southern Institute of Technology (GSIT) are employed part-time earning credits for their diplomas.

The new building attracts visitors from all over the world, who take advantage of the abundance of activities programmed by students from the Adventure Seekers training course, also offered by GSIT. And let’s not forget the succulent menus presented by Australia’s up and coming GSIT trained chiefs, who train here because of our excellent wines and fine food. Right, too late for that.

Ok, so the site is bought by greedy property developers who have no respect for local customs and company executives decide to build a ten story block of holiday apartments. The City, desperate for something on the site, approves the plan, the building is built, despite widespread local offence, and when complete no locals are employed and the apartments are serviced by illegal immigrants.

Well, clearly, that’s an impossibility. It would never happen. No way. Not here, not anywhere in this beautiful state of ours. Let’s have another go.

The site is bought by a property developer who has every intention of doing the right thing, culturally, environmental, socially, economically, but, unfortunately, due to the Global Financial Crisis, the developer runs out of money. The site lies vacant for six months and the developer acknowledges publicly that it is not in a financial position to build its promised hotel and holiday resort.

In a move revealing the cultural and emotional intelligence of the company’s executives, they call for community consultation in an effort to determine what to do with the site while it lies vacant and dormant.

The community is enlivened, engaged, many meetings are held and most parties agree that the best solution would include a small bar and cafe, with the rest of the land to be landscaped and opened for public use.

Everyone is happy. The mayor is re-elected. The developer wins the National Community Project of the Year Award for 2012. All right, stop your sniggering. It could have happened.

One last crack and then I’m out of here.

You know the story up to now: the developer buys the site, knocks over an impressive building, cancelling a legacy, offending many locals, promises to build a space-age replacement, exciting many locals, nothing happens, many locals hang socks, developer tolerates the sock protest and, finally, the socks are removed by order of the city’s mayor, citing a very strong desire to sell the site and cultural offence caused to an unnamed culture.

Well, excuse me, but neither the City, nor the mayor, is in the real estate business and many people I know are offended by the removal of a cultural icon, have felt insulted by inaction on a site once full of celebration, and by the dismissal of their desire to make their views known in a creative, fun and non-violent form of protest.

The Doust Files - Albany Advertiser 23/11/2010

There were about 40 of us there, but only one of us rode a bike. There was a reason. It was raining prawns and parrots. And the single man who rode his bike boldly admitted he didn’t own a car and his knees didn’t like walking.

We gathered to talk about bikes and the city. Without exception, each and every one of us wanted more of them and more of the things that go with them, cycle-ways and bike racks. All this takes money, of course, but the possible benefits might surprise you.

Here are some Australian facts:

-          More bikes were sold in 2009 than cars for the 10th consecutive year (1,154,077)

-          70% of bikes sold are mountain bikes

-          In 2009 there was a 29% increase in the number of Australians who cycle to work

And you know what, no Australian town has yet pronounced itself Bike City. There is an opening, for a town to embrace the bike like no other, to become the Holland of the South. Maybe this is the move that puts Albany on the map, the bike map. And don’t sneeze, there is a bike map. 

The mountain bike stats in particular interested me because I know a bloke who reckons the Great Southern is the perfect setting for a mountain-bike heaven. He told me there’s a world-wide circuit and Albany could become a Mecca for mountain bikers.

A quick check on Google revealed a number of mountain bike festivals around the world, with one in NSW, SA and Victoria but none in WA. There’s the opening. We could be it, Mountain Bike Capital of the West.

But let’s not just take the bike to the mountain, let’s take it everywhere. Don’t panic, you don’t have to love lycra to ride a bike. There are no lycra police stopping riders dressed as I am in old jeans and torn t-shirts.

Wait, there’s more.

Some of us make a lot of fuss about the cruise ships. Sure, they look lovely as they make their way into the harbour and the passengers provide some amusement as they stare in wonder at the town hall, but there’s even more money in bike tourism.

Murray Gomm works for the Munda Biddi Foundation and at this gathering of pedal bike enthusiasts he revealed that in New Zealand cycle tourism is worth more than cruise ship tourism. I thought that would make you sit up.

What we need is leadership on this matter. We need the Mayor, Councillors, local members of parliament, CEOs, private business owners, managers, farmers and home owners to get on their bikes, ride to work, to the beach, up Mt Clarence, down Mt Clarence and to both Saturday and Sunday markets.

Let’s fill the town with bikes and make Albany Australia’s first Bike City, full of cycle-ways, bike racks and cycle friendly shops, accommodation and transport providers.

Many of us at the meeting agreed that the City’s councillors should lead the way by riding to council meetings, hail rain or snow. That would show real leadership and they could hand back their petrol money.

There is no way, of course, that such a saving would pay back the city’s debt, but it would show the rest of us they are willing to make an effort.

THE SOCKS ARE OFF

TO READ MORE GO HERE SOCKS

The Doust Files - Albany Advertiser 9/11/2010

You probably have the flu, getting over it, or know someone with it. It’s nasty. I know that now. I‘ve just had it, for the first time ever.

Luck’s been with me, unlike the 30-odd million who died in the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918/1919. Then there was the Asian flu in 1957, the Hong Kong flu in 1968, followed by the flues we know well, the bird and the swine.

The negatives are obvious, but, for me, there were at least two positives. The first was that I realised I had never been sick before. Oh, sure, I’d had a sore foot, a busted shoulder, an infected finger, a cold, a headache, a 24-hour wog, but they were nothing compared to the swine called flu.

My particular version included violent headaches, chest pains, dry throat, no breath to speak with, move with, or argue over a hotel bill with.

At first, like many folk, I assumed it was just another cold and, because I was busy, I got on with things, none of that namby-pamby man-flu attitude with me. I got on a plane, then another, then another, and another still.

By the time I got to Victoria I was delirious. That was the tip that something really was wrong, because Victoria and delirious don’t normally go together. By then it was too late to cancel my engagements.

I arrived in Melbourne at 11.30pm. got in the hire-car, drove like an Albanian  in Moscow, arrived at the hotel at 2am, climbed into bed, got up at 6.30am, got ready, arrived at my appointment, spoke to 150 testosterone riddled boys, got back in the car and drove east towards Sale. 

And so it went: into a car, out of a car, into a hotel, no sleep, off to an engagement, back to a hotel room. What a life!

All this lead, naturally enough, to a worsening of my condition. I left Albany an idiot and arrived home a signed, sealed and certified idiot. Thank heavens for our doctors, because my local man said, plainly and clearly: “Yes, Jon, you have had the flu, but now you have pleurisy.”

Pleurisy? Brings back memories doesn’t it, of the Amity, scurvy, men and women huddling together in a hold, fighting over crusts of mouldy, rock-hard bread and tiny pockets of fresh air? 

The second good thing about having the flu, or pleurisy, is that it requires a lot of lying down, sitting, staring into space, watching crappy TV, old comedy videos, or, as in my case, reading. So far I have read everything within reach, including a couple of Inspector Maltabano novels, a history of 1968 and all sides of a packet of rice flakes I found decaying in the back of a cupboard.

As I write this I am finishing the marvellous Love in the time of Cholera, by Gabriel García Márquez. This book I saved for last because Márquez writes with such rich colour and madness that reading it in the fullness and insanity of the flu may well have tipped me over the edge.

The Doust Files - Albany Advertiser 26/10/2010

Now we are well and truly settled in Albany, a number of things have become clear – we should have done it years ago, the weather is even better than we knew it was, and we never want to shift again.

We know a number of families moving house right and we have counselled them to take great care, because moving house not only brings out the worst in people, it can be dangerous to personal health and wellbeing.

It’s not a good start, for example, when the truck arrives to collect your stuff for the big move and the driver admits he hates shifting.  My wife, our driver said, has made us shift five times and every time we shift we almost kill each other and that’s not the worst of it because she’s a Docker’s supporter and I’m with the Eagles.

Here’s the full tale.

Before the move I was in the bush and had to drive like hell to get back in time to load the truck. When I got home I discovered I was not as well advanced with my personal packing as I thought and so stayed up well past midnight packing books I was sure I would never read again, files I couldn’t remember the contents of and computer equipment that became obsolete just after Kevin Rudd started shaving.

Anyway, up first thing in the morning for the truck, no time for breakfast and hard at it long enough to realise that not everything would fit it the available carriers: the truck, the back of my station wagon, my mate’s half truck plus two-ton trailer and my wife’s sedan.

But, as is the way, when you have to leave you have to leave and so we left.

On the way I decided to take the long route through Bridgetown and pick up a spare gas heater from my brother the beef breeder. My sister-in-law, forever sensible and well meaning, suggested I stay overnight and rest. No way, I insisted, must be there with the sparrow to help unload the truck. I am a man and must push on for fear of letting down the truck-men.

I didn’t make it, because 45ks out of Manjimup, on the Muir Highway, a kangaroo, after a shocking week on the stock market, decided it could go on no longer and threw itself in front of my car. Not only did it take its own life, it took the life of my car.

There we were, kangaroo, car and me, stuck in the middle of nowhere with nothing to show for it but a busted radiator, busted bonnet, busted body and busted ego.

Luckily a car soon arrived on the scene but as he slowed he looked and what he saw was clearly a demented man in filthy clothes, with dishevelled hair and wild eyes. He planted his foot and left me standing.

I thought, hang on, this is my country, people know me, so when the next car slowed I yelled out: Hey, Jon Doust here. I’ve hit a roo. The occupant, a decent and local man responded: Dousty, what the hell have you done now?

And that’s how I arrived in Albany, looking like a rat flying out of some kind of hell.

 

The Doust Files - Albany Advertiser 12/10/2010

 We’re not big on anniversaries in this house. We never remember the wedding. Good reason too. It was a stinking Perth day, the groom was somewhat bruised from the previous night, the witnesses turned up late and the marriage celebrant was drunk.

But this one, we know it well. We love it. It’s our second year in the Great Southern.

 It was not easy making the big move south.  First we had to sell our house in the city and then we had to buy another house by the sea.

As usual, we didn’t do it the right way around. First we bought the house by the sea and then we tried to sell our house in the city.

I know what you are thinking: “Clever, innovative, imaginative”. Not really, because we chose to buy just before the market began to scream, kick and fight its way into a dive and we chose to sell as its plummet gathered momentum.

We are not, you see, the classic Baby Boomers.  No, indeed, we sold our city house to a Y-Generation couple who didn’t have enough money to complete the transaction and they still don’t.

What’s more, we were not cashed up after years of real estate manoeuvres, or share market profits and I had not decided to retire from my advertising agency after selling it to a multi-national.

In short, we were a couple of late-starters who met on a communal farm in Israel during the hippy boom of the early-middle 1970s. Oh, don’t get me started on those stories.

Indeed, we belong to that group of Boomers who will have to keep working until the man in the suit comes to measure us for the box.

That’s ok with me because I’m one of those blokes who has difficulty sitting still and if there’s nothing to do I’ll find something and do it, or re-do something already done, or undo something so I can do it again. Or even write a column for a local newspaper about it all.

Oh yes, there are benefits.  The beach is only three steps and one jump away and on a good day I can be there for three hours, walking one length, picking up human debris as I go, body surfing, then running back to the steaming hot showers like an old man who loves to run but his body wishes he wouldn’t.

Fishing is something I promised myself I’d get back to one but I haven’t yet. I’ve had offers, plenty, but they never confirm. What is it? Have they heard? Have they spoken to members of my immediate family who remember well my lack of patience and inability to sit still for ten hours on a dead flat ocean, only to come alive when the wind picks up and the ocean tosses us about like sardines doubled up in a tin for one layer only?

All this is because I grew up in a family that only fished or played tennis and when I hit eighteen I changed them for activities more in keeping with a young man who thinks he’s in the prime of his life.

I was wrong, the prime was up ahead. I’m in it now, I’m excited, I’m two years old.