A Tang poet, gates and goodbyes

          Our parting in these hills is over

          The sun sets and I shut my door

          The spring will be green again next year

          Will I never see your face again?

          [Wang Wei, famous Tang poet C.7 CE]

Many traditional Chinese poems have as their subject the theme of parting of friends and relatives dear to them.

   The reason for this is that even in the best of times, these partings were very often permanent. Times were dangerous, life could be short and often was, and there were no guarantees that they would ever meet again. Very often they did not.

   I read these sorts of poems to a generation of university students when we talked about traditional Chinese literature. I thought I appreciated them, but never so much as now.

   Alice returned to Melbourne a fortnight ago, and Sylvia made her way south on the train this morning. When my daughters left this time, the true poignancy of these poems was revealed to me with crystal clarity.

          Quietly, I've waited here so long,

          Day after day; but now I must return.

          It's time to seek the fragrant grass,

          But I grieve to part from my old friend.

          Who is there who would help me on the road?

          Understanding friends are few in life....

          I should just observe my solitude,

          And close again the gate of my old home.

I am thankful that I can reach out and touch the one who is here for me, in spite of the sadness.

   That’s all I want to say today. I’ll close the gate and sleep a little now, I think.

Soxy the freaky feline

A law unto herself....

Soxy is our cat. Our? That’s a laugh. She owns us, well and truly. Everyone knows that about cats. They have slaves; putatively, owners – but ones they can twist around their little claw.

   Soxy came from the animal shelter as a half-grown stray. She had been through a number of households where she was declared too ‘unpetly’ if you get my meaning. Not affectionate enough.

   She’d had to survive on her wits as a young kitten, like the family of ferals that lived in the stormwater drain near the park close to here. That and being shunted round several households gave her an understandable mistrust of humans and defined her relationship with them. All of them, including us. The irony here is that all Tracey and Christian want to do is pour affection and attention on her, and she could have it all, but that’s not her style.

   She’s a tabby – in fact, she was the inspiration for the name of our former video filming and editing business (‘Tabbycat Productions’) before my medical condition blew that out of the water when it was just starting to flourish. Not that Tracey couldn’t have carried it on without me, but it was OUR enterprise and the joy went out of it when it wasn’t something we could share in the same way as before. In any case, looking after me made it impossible when the seizures began.

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0p9tvCAyfQ

   That in fact became the problem with Soxy. She had settled in quite well, loving the fire in the winter and tolerating being petted, though hated being picked up. Way too much trust required for that.

   But then, we had to go to Melbourne for my treatment.

   Our wonderful neighbours would feed her for us while we were away, but to Soxy, we, like all other humans she had been in contact with, had deserted her. She still had her territory, which she had to defend against bigger and stronger cats, but she was not going into a house to humans who had left her high and dry once again.

   When we returned, she was totally distrustful. Why befriend humans who just desert you when you begin to think they might be OK? We were her source of food. That would be enough. She would eat out on the front verandah, but she would not set foot in the house again. Even on the coldest nights, she would rather find some hiding place outside in subzero temperatures rather than luxuriate in front of the fire with untrustworthy humans. 
   Tracey and Christian tried all sort of approaches, but to no avail. Feed me, I’ll tolerate you till I’m finished. Then I’m off to my own domain. Supreme indifference.

   YET…. Unaccountably there was the occasional night when we would hear her jump down from the table on the verandah with a thump which was her sign that she would speak with us. If you opened the door quietly she would stroll in, the owner of the premises, and sit by the fire. She might even play with a toy. Then, too much attention, or not enough, or none at all, and she would sit by the door until let out.

   Maybe there was a bigger cat threatening out there at such times, but we could divine no pattern to this behaviour. It was rare and seemed random. It wasn’t on the coldest or rainiest night. She wasn’t even demanding food every time. She was just reminding us of our inferior status. Testing our loyalty, no doubt. This went on virtually all last year.

Green-eyed monster

   These days when I come to the study early in the morning to see who has been writing to me, I hear that familiar thump on the verandah that she uses to announce her presence. Sometimes she even mews pitifully. I open the door, usually standing behind it so as not to make it look confronting. She strolls in, brushing hard up against the front of my legs to tell me to put out ‘crunchies’ as we call them - dry cat food she is fond of.

   This can be difficult for me as I am quite unsteady on my feet when walking to the cupboard where the crunchies are kept. She is constantly in front of my feet, polishing my shins as if they were antique chair legs. One time I actually tripped over her slightly and almost stepped on her. Note I said ‘almost’. She was outraged and ran outside, and refused to come inside for some days.

   She tends to come in a little more often, though invariably food is the primary motive. She affects fearfulness though she is not the least afraid of any of us. She’s just reminding us to keep our distance and let her do the approaching when she feels inclined. We are only humans after all and will go away again for sure. Maybe never come back. She doesn’t want to feel any attachment; it’s too disappointing.

   We will probably go away again, for one last time together for a few days. She’ll feel fully justified in not letting us get under her skin and will probably take ages to get back to this point again.

   But so be it. Deep down, I THINK she knows we’re OK. We’ll do. But.... she’ll just keep one jump ahead of us.

     

   

'Homework' for the Doctor

When I visit the oncologist, I usually prepare a 'report' for him that saves him asking a lot of questions and provides concise answers. That report is below, if you're interested, as it explains what I am going to say now.

   As we have known for some time, the end of the line has been reached in terms of new medications. It is clear that there is nothing more on offer in the realm of pharmacopeia as the Avastin loses its effectiveness, as the latest MRI shows that it is. 

   There will be no more MRIs scheduled, as we will know from the symptoms, as the tumour and inflammation progress, as much as could be extracted from brain scans. No point wasting financial resources and precious days travelling only to confirm the obvious.

   Nor were any further appointments made with the oncologist, as he knows that our observations will be as useful as any he can now make. Effectively, management of the treatment now lies in the hands of our GP and ourselves.

   Avastin may give us an amount of time that will be satisfactory from the point of view of quality of life. No-one can say how long that time will last and there's no point in guessing. We will of course be doing all in our power to extend that time and we will spend it exactly as we decide we want to. That may not be how others would expect us to, nor would spend the time if they were in similar circumstances, but good friends will understand that this is a time of very personal choice.

Denis Wright’s ‘homework’ for oncologist

Monday, 17 January 2011

[NOTE: Composed entirely by Denis Wright. Tracey may dispute some of the observations! Hers are likely to be more accurate, but this is how I see it since last consultation.]

Brain function

·       Short-term memory and ability to make simple decisions quickly have deteriorated.

·       Persistent general ‘fuzziness’ or feeling of tightness in cranial area.

·       Increase in headaches, occasionally enough to use Nurofen.

·       One low level headache persisted for 36 hours. Usually non-specific in area affected though occasional sharp twinges around tumour site. No severe headaches.

Physical

·       Improved condition by walking and upper body exercise.

·       Swelling remains in right foot and ankle, aggravated by hot weather.

·       Increased use of right arm through physiotherapy, though tremors (not seizures) seem to have increased with muscle strengthening and increased coordination. This effect varies.

·       Sensory perception seems increasingly different between right and left hands – e.g., right fingers perceive left arm to be rough but objectively there is no difference. Right palm feels smoother, hotter and more irritated than left.

·       Increased body weight [4 kg] especially as a result of Christmas indulgence. (Under the circumstances, I forgive myself!) Diet is now more restricted and weight loss has started [2 kg].

·       Medications

Apart from Nurofen on 3 occasions in 2 months, no non-prescription medications have been used.

Prescription medications have not changed. Dexamethozone remains at 2 mg. [see below].

Seizures

Three minor and two more severe seizure occurred since last consultation, immediately following dropping steroid to 1.5 mg/day. Returning to 2 mg seems to have corrected this, though other possible causes are not discounted. Recovery from all seizure activity seems good.

Sometimes I feel on the edge of an arm seizure or have a feeling of more generalised likelihood of a seizures’s occurring, but this has not happened.

The return of seizures remains my greatest fear or concern.

General

I accept that tumour activity has increased and that Avastin effectiveness is declining, and will continue to do so over coming weeks or months.

Good diet, exercise, reputedly natural anti-angiogenic dietary items to supplement anti-angiogenesis by Avastin seems the only additional course of action for the future. The cessation of chemotherapy has improved my feeling of well-being, both psychologically and physically.

Sport, Hearts and Minds and the Art of War

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It’s interesting how much sports are a mirror to life, including warfare, politics and diplomacy, whether it’s tennis or chess or cricket or anything else. My professional life was spent studying politics and history so I feel I have something to say about this, using rather scary sporting analogies.

   Take chess, for example. Sylvia was telling me how her Grade 6 class kids were flogging her in chess games just about every time. While she was trying to marshal her troops protectively, her students were making daring and lightning attacking moves; not always clever ones, but upsetting any strategy she had in mind. They were winning because of these tactics. Fortune often favours the bold in circumstances where the strategist doesn't quite know what she's doing.

  I showed her how to counter this by getting her pieces out quickly and taking the initiative as early as possible in the opening moves of the game, and how the middle game worked – when to take advantage of a change in the balance of power, and how different the end game was from the earlier strategies in the game. I think she’ll give the kids a better run for their money next time.

   Or think about cricket. If you don’t understand or like the idea of a test match played over five days, then you can’t appreciate the subtleties of the game. How, say my American friends in particular, can you watch five days of a match and be perfectly happy with a draw at the end of it? Isn’t the object to win?

   Well, yes, but sometimes a draw reflects excellent tactics as well and is an appropriate outcome to a match, and may affect the outcome of a whole series and not just one game. No use trying to explain all this if you don’t already get it. We both know why.

   Sports also reflect national characteristics. Take the iconic American sport, their form of football; gridiron. Even the name tells the story. Tough, highly aggressive and involving carrying out to its logical conclusion something meticulously planned in every detail. Every soldier at his post. Heavy personal protection. Each man following orders to the letter. Personal sacrifice. Split second timing. The delight for the devotees is having faith in the plan and in seeing it unfold on the field. It’s limited warfare under rigid rules.

  Yet this assumes that each side plays to the same fundamental rules, clearly understood and adhered to by both. In general, no-one else in the world likes this game much, though they may admire elements of it and understand how it works. 

   I often suspect the mentality behind this game is partly why American governments have been so poor at understanding or accepting their failures in foreign policy over the past sixty years or so. To draw a long bow, they tend to assume, even in international diplomacy or warfare, that everyone else plays by the same tactical rules they understand and apply. Or if they don’t, they should, or should be made to. Like the Japanese with baseball, they'll get to appreciate it!

   No-one else is playing to their rules. Gridiron can only be really popular in its native land, played by the American perception of how it is done, or should be. Try to impose these local gridiron rules to other nationalities or mindsets, and failure in the longer term is guaranteed. It was OK in the Second World War, when the Germans and the Japanese essentially played gridiron rules just like everyone else except the partisans, but has never worked since nor is likely to work ever again.

   There is a far bigger game than ever gets played on the field, and since the Second World War, US administrations have played that game notoriously badly, mistaking the battle for the war. George Bush in Iraq epitomised that infamously when he declared victory in a war that is even today very far from over – the longest running military debacle in a hundred years. Propaganda and disinformation. ‘Embedding’ of reporters. Suppression of truth. Yes yes, the first casualty of war and all that, I know. Scores of people in Iraq die daily in that war, not worth reporting in the western press because people don’t want to know. 

   The outcome will be decided only when the outsiders have gone. Get out of Afghanistan, stay out of Pakistan. They’ll only have a chance at stability when we’ve gone or stop meddling, like bulls in china shops. And don’t even mention the Taliban until you understand what a motley and diverse collection of groups they are. Treat them as all the same, and you've lost before you started. The only honest brokers are the private security personnel. They know why they are there. Practically no-one else does.

   Wars in China, Korea and Vietnam should have taught us otherwise. Wars in the Middle East should have made US military tacticians more receptive to change. They read Tsun Tzu’s The Art of War at the US military academies and admire it, but have little idea how to apply it or counter its strategies. The way terrorists function should have helped them understand that the pilotless bombers operated from the US itself over foreign territories only win tiny battles yet increase their enemies tenfold, but don’t win where the winning matters. 

   There are no battlefields; only hotspots. If it were chess, the tactics reflect only of the opening gambits, a poor sense of the middle game and no sense at all of the period of end game. Generally speaking, American governments and their advisors still don’t understand Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Pakistan, and they don’t have even the faintest clue about India and how it works. They have almost infinite intelligence information, but they have next to no idea how to use it – or use it the wrong way. The generals bamboozle and cow the politicians dreadfully.

   To switch to the gridiron analogy, they seem to imagine all that’s required is to make the rest of the world play that particular game and learn its rules. It’s not going to happen. If the rest of the world is playing any global football, it’s soccer, at which the US is a notable failure.

   The irony is that the American Revolution was won against an occupying force which played the same losing game as American tacticians now play in their overseas forays in world control. Double irony in that independence was won for American partisans by 1776 using the tactics that are now being used against them as occupiers of foreign lands in the midst of hostile nationalists. 

   When you don’t learn even from your own historical experience, then you’re really in trouble. To stretch the sporting analogy, they’re now using a gridiron mentality on the biggest soccer fields in the world, and just about any country in the world can lick them at that, especially when the fans in the stadium take part as well.

   You don't believe me? Then you've fallen for the propaganda and the rhetoric. I don't blame you. It's slick and its everywhere, like the glorious Golden Arches of MacDonalds or KFC. And just as finger-lickin' good for you.

  I guess, when it's all said and done, it’s just not cricket, is it?!

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Clouds, mud and toothpaste

It’s an overcast morning once again; overcast as it has been for so many mornings over past months. Melbourne is having its turn at flooding at the moment – even northern Tassie. And up there in the tropical seas to the north of Australia, the rain clouds are brewing again.

   I guess for most of the flood victims, the prospects are for cleaning up and coming to terms with loss. Grievous loss in many cases. For most of us who sympathise but are bystanders, it is still unimaginable.

   I look at that richly coloured muddy water flowing through the Brisbane Valley and out to sea and try to imagine the loss of the scarce, irreplaceable topsoil miles out now in the ocean, with all sorts of the flotsam and jetsam of people’s lives on top of it.

   The last time I saw water as richly coloured as this was in China, when the Yangtze was in flood. There, the gigantic loess plateaux in western China are almost annually stripped of billions of tonnes of yellow soil, in floods that turn the giant river into a torrent that looks like creamy caramel. To change the metaphor, you could almost spread it on to canvas with a palette knife, or so it appears. It fills the dams with mud but makes the flood plains fertile enough to support a billion people.

   Australia has only pockets of rich soil compared with say, the USA. Traverse the US, and you see the whole Midwest is rich farmland; Australia is mostly desert – which is why the population of the USA is 308 million and we are 22 million. Yet somehow we still can’t tend this vital resource properly, and see countless tons of it washed into the ocean. Think of the rich blacksoil of the Darling Downs, and the bright red rich volcanic soils of Toowoomba.

   So much of it now in Morton Bay. Irreplaceable. Hey and let's not blame the farmers. Most of them know what they are doing and many are the most balanced ecologists in the country these days. A lot of that topsoil is from urban gardens.

   We all face our battles, personal, family, state, national – even, for the longer term thinkers, global. There are precious places to protect and, vitally, there are people to feed. Sometimes that second one is forgotten, though in the next few months it might come to the fore given the destruction of crops and stock losses. These two are not incompatible, but it takes genuine action and not the political posturing we see that is supposed to look like someone is doing something. They’re not. They are just shunting figures around. Nothing is happening.

   
But I wasn’t going to talk about these matters, even though they are way more vital to your future life than anything happening in mine. What happens to me is irrelevant, except to the little group of people who might prefer to have me around. When I’m gone, the tiny tiny ripple will disappear nearly as quickly as that made by a raindrop in the Brisbane River last week.

   Sylvia has gone for a little run (as the sun bursts through, destroying my gloomy image for the moment at least.) She will be with us a few more days yet. My brother (in-law-ish! - in the sense that he is more a brother than a relation by marriage) John is staying in Armidale till Sunday, and it is a delight to have him here, with his bright good humour and thoughtfulness. (I had written more about him here, but it was starting to look like a reference, and I don’t want him to get a swollen head **smile** so I deleted it….) As I said before, all my sisters chose well.

   I slept less well last night. I suspect the realisation that the latest MRI indicates that we are now fighting the tumour with the last of our weapons tends to hit hardest in the darkness of the night. But I did get some sleep and woke with stronger resolve. I forced myself to do exercises aimed at getting more flexible, and strengthening my back a bit more, as I get the feeling sometimes that, if I bend over for too long to tie my shoelaces, I am simply going to stay in that position – jack-knifed.

   I always feel better for taking positive action and remind myself that the tumour and the oedema that surrounds it may not be substantially increased, and that I can still do things to slow down its progress however relentless that has proven to be over the past 14 months.

   I remind myself that the prognosis, if the tumour were left untreated, was three months. If so, I would have been dead fairly close to a year now, like the Haiti earthquake victims. Well, we have used all the weapons available, and they did their job at the times we used them – the surgery, the oral chemo, the radiotherapy, the intravenous chemotherapy and Avastin.

   I think of them all having a kind of half-life, like something that’s radioactive. They each delivered a hit; the tumour recoiled, and then struck back each time. The first hit of Avastin was quite a knockdown, but the half-life factor cuts in. I have now had five doses; the next one due next Wednesday.
   Each time it is almost certain to be a bit less effective.

   I was a little self-indulgent with foods at Christmas time, with family and friends around. Why would I not be, under the circumstances? Looking candidly at timelines and the way 2010 progressed, I would be kidding myself if I didn’t see that there was a bottom line. I don’t insult my own intelligence and I won’t insult yours.

   There are many ‘last times’ I think about, even with a tube of toothpaste. Will I need another one, ever? Few of you, I am sure, have that thought cross your mind when you put the paste on your brush, and nor should you. Or clothes and shoes - will I need more? But I don’t let such thoughts dominate my existence. 
   Yesterday I walked with Sylvia further than I have done since returning from Melbourne last March. My shaky old right arm, though seriously out of alignment, is stronger than it has been since we controlled the seizures. Though the holes in my memory seem to be increasing and though recent events can confuse me, I am retaining some degree of lucidity or I wouldn’t be writing this.

   So there you go. We are not down to pure bravado – not yet at least!

Medical Report Wednesday, 12 Jan 2011

The MRI in Tamworth today went smoothly and we brought home the images to ponder. The report is still being prepared for the oncologist appointment on Monday, so we don't know just what it will contain.

   This is definitely one time when we can’t venture a strong opinion on things without the guidance of the report, and even that may turn out to be rather vague. As far as we can see, there is nothing in the images significantly encouraging or discouraging. It is obvious that there has been change and tumour activity, with indications of what appear to be slightly more inflammation and some expansion of the tumour, but nothing dramatic. 

   It would be pointless to speculate too much at this stage. Really it seems to be pretty much what we expected in a general sense, as I have had several reminders in the past weeks that there is no ‘steady’ state for this condition.

   It’s of course the nature of this thing not to remain static. We’ll see what the report says when it comes and consider the oncologist’s advice on Monday. I’ll certainly do all in my power to continue eating natural anti-angiogenic foods to assist the Avastin, and increase exercise as long as the seizures are kept at bay.

  There is no need either for great joy or undue pessimism, or so it seems. We’ll see what the more expert advice indicates on Monday.

The book swap - a very short Long story

Firstly, why a short Long story? Because it's short, and it's about the Long family. That's all. I just wanted to reassure you at the start you are not embarking on War and Peace....
   You may remember when I described the foot race between the ranga racer Carolyn Young and my father, I mentioned the Calliope school annual breaking up picnic – definitely one of the year’s highlights for all Calliope kids. Oh, the watermelons that Ian Waddell brought in on his truck from the blacksoil flats at Riverston for us!

   Nothing like the pale imitation seedless ones you buy in the supermarket these days – these were dark green, almost perfect spheres much larger than a bowling ball, and when they were halved with a machete, they were so full of juice and sugar that they were also split inside, crystals of sugar like glitter in the sun and the deepest pink flesh, and black seeds that you spat at other kids and they spat theirs back at you.….

   Magic. But – that’s not what this is about, however worthy the melons are of mention. There was one other special treat that we got at the breaking-up picnic. At the end of the day, full of ice-cream, sandwiches and soft drinks, we all gathered under the school on long benches, and each child was given a book, with their name and the grade they were in that year written in it by Mr Curtis.

   We all loved getting those books. In some homes, they might have been the only books in the house, but I do believe they were all appreciated. The teachers were careful in their selection and matched children to books as much as possible. A voracious reader and punching a fair bit above my weight in that department, I always got a good one, with lots of pages and illustrations.

   I think our parents put some money in to subsidise the buying of these books, though some households were too poor to put anything in, and those kids usually got the smallest and cheapest books – but seemed to love them just the same.

   If you read the earlier stories, you might vaguely recall the name Phil Long, because he was the horseman who plaited stockwhips and broke Topsy in for me. He had a short dark-haired wife and a tribe of kids ranging in age from 14 or so down to about 4. Offhand I can think of five for sure, though there might have been six. Lessee now.... Dorothy, Barbara, Alan, Pauline, Snivelling Peter, and a toddler, I think.*

   On this particular breaking up day I must have been in about Grade 3. The books had been distributed, and to my enormous disappointment, I was given one called Farmyard Animals, featuring guess what? farmyard animals…. a big fat book with descriptions and lovely big colour drawings.

   Now it wasn’t that I didn’t want a book about this subject, though it held no surprises for me. Nor was I uninterested. That wasn’t the problem. My disappointment was based solely on the fact that it was exactly the same book I already had in my ample bookcase at home. If Mum would have seen me with the book when my name came up, she would have called it in straight away to get it exchanged for one of similar quality and size about something else, but she didn’t get to me in time. And I would have gone home empty-handed.

   I looked around at other kids’ books, feeling utterly deflated. Then I noticed that Alan Long, who was in my class and no scholar, had been given a slim Little Golden Book of about 25 pages, entitled The Wreck of the Desperus – a little story about a car with things always going wrong with it, and Disney type illustrations. It looked OK to me. Better than a duplicate already sitting on my bookshelf, that was for sure.

   ‘Longie,’ I said, ‘I’ve got this book. Do you want to swap?’

   Alan, who was a bit cross-eyed, squinted at my large, beautifully illustrated book and his own rather miserable little tome, and instantly agreed. There were too many words in his and not enough pictures as far as he was concerned, so he gladly handed his over.
   Words were fine by me. I was after all the only kid who had been given special dispensation to take home six books instead of the normal limit of three from the Gladstone Town Library, and usually had at least one of them read before we got back in the car to Calliope. Supply always was well behind demand in my case.

   But Mum was aghast when I happily brought my new book to show her, and she made me go with her looking for Alan Long to undo the swap.

   We didn't take much time to find Longie, but he was not alone. His mother had my book open across her six-births-worth-of belly, sitting on one of the benches where we’d had our picnic goodies. She was totally surrounded by her kids, the big ones standing behind her and the little ones on her knees. All over her, hanging off her from ... well, whatever they could hang off, it seemed to me.
   She was reading loudly and pointing to various animals, and the kids, big and small, were entranced by the pictures. Even Snivelling Peter wasn't actually snivelling right then. His eyes were glued to the book as he did unspeakable things with his index finger up his right nostril; stemming normal flow by fifty per cent. His nose was a veritable spring of eternal translucent snot.

   Mum watched it all for a little while and saw the collective fascination on the Long children’s faces as their mother read to them. She then gave me a strange little smile and said, ‘Are you happy with your book?’

   I was happy. To me it was better than nothing and I didn’t want to wait days for an exchange to be made, and oddly enough I read that funny little story over and over again in the weeks to come.

   ‘Let’s go then,’ she whispered to me, putting her hand in mine, and we stole quietly away.
* One of the great things about these stories is to have sisters whose memory is better or more precise than my own, and can correct errors I have made. One of these concerns the tribe of Long kids, and it seems that it was somewhat larger than I first recalled. Lyn wrote: 
There were Reg, Thelma, Betty, Sylvia, Alan, Dorothy, Pauline, Peter and maybe a younger one....
Thus Mrs Long's fertile womb extended to producing at least eight kids, not six.
Thanks for the correction, Lyn!
[return to Index of stories]

   

Time and tide…. and a grassy knoll

My sisters were all wise enough to marry good men. Fine men, in fact, and they are brothers in every sense of the word. Forget the ‘–in-law’ bit. ‘Brothers’ is what I mean.

   Ken Stockwell was the first brother I acquired, thanks to Jan’s good judgment. (And his, I might add!) I can’t recall exactly the first time we met. If I thought about it enough I might pin down the year, but Jan will put me right on that one for sure. He brought new things into the life of our whole family, being savvy about many of the things we country bumpkins were not used to doing or having, such as specialised electrical equipment – tools, record players – stuff like that. He could make top quality beautifully balanced cane fishing rods, one of which he gave me and I used for many years – and he taught me how to make them. He bought a car – a grey Vanguard, if I remember correctly, so when he came out (a-courtin’!) we had increased mobility.

   There was one special gift he gave to my father. Ken was, and still is, a great fisherman, whether beach, estuary or river, or even ‘outside’, as we were on the end of the Barrier Reef at Gladstone. My father could also fish, on the rare occasions we went to Tannum Sands – beach fishing that was – but what Ken did was to take him and me to the Calliope River, to a spot about ten km upstream of the estuary, and teach us how to fish that spot. 
   This was a specialised art though it came naturally to Ken, who’d fished round Gladstone all his life. We graduated from handline fishing on coke bottles to sidecast reels and rods built or chosen by Ken when synthetic (fibreglass in this case) materials replaced cane.

   My father had few opportunities to relax but, in learning to fish that part of the river with Ken, he had access to one simple pleasure not more than 15 minutes away from the farm that he probably never would have discovered for himself. 

   Ken taught us these things about fishing a tidal river. To succeed, what you had to do was optimise the conditions as far as possible – the variables. These were

• Time of day
• Time of tide
• Height of tide
• Fishing tackle
• Bait
• Weather

What was required was to optimise these – they didn’t all have to be perfect, but the better they were, the more fish you caught.

   So, we’d always have a tide chart and an eye on the phases of the moon – which told us when to head down to the river, and that was magic time for Dad and me. Often we would make a point of getting the milking over as quickly as we could, to catch a combination of a good high tide with dusk, and fish there above the old Calliope Bridge for an hour or two.

Where we'd fish after milking - above the bridge

Dad, ready for fishing expedition, round 1959
(Those shorts were never in danger of falling down, Dad!)

   Sometimes we got nothing, but we were much more likely than not to come home with dinner of fresh bream and flathead. Thanks to Ken’s guidance, both of us became very good at reading the river and catching fish, and that certainly helped when years later I fished the Nambucca River estuary, just two hours from here.

   But the best times of all fishing the River were when we would all go in bright sunshine after a morning milking when there was a king tide, and sit on the grassy green knoll below the bridge and throw in a line there. 

Below the bridge. The tide here is just on the turn. The grassy knoll is out of sight to the right of this view, this side of the river

A king tide meant that ocean water would flood up the river, sometimes two metres higher than its normal level, foaming through the channels in the bridge. You could sense the excitement of the fish themselves, as it meant they could venture into territory not usually under water, where there was new and different food for them to winkle out – sometimes amongst the green grass now covered by a metre or so of water, until the tide turned, and the water level in the river fell to its normal height. About twelve hours later, it would all happen again, depending on the phase of the moon as to the height of the tide.

   At that time, you could see so many varieties of fish in the clear water with the grass at the bottom, shoals of mullet of all sizes, sometimes a giant barramundi chopping through them. Barra were the prize catches of the time, and I saw ones caught up to 70 pounds – about 30 kg. I never caught one of those, and our rigs for fish of about 2 kg wouldn’t have troubled a large barra in the least. Ken had caught monster jewfish (mulloway) of that size with the right tackle, but not there. I did see him catch a quite large shark there on the grassy knoll though. With king tides, anything could happen.

Mangrove Jack

   Right at the turn of the tide, it was magic. The river became almost completely still for some minutes before the water started to flow back downstream. That was the time when you had to be there. In those few minutes, large red mangrove jacks would flash out from their hidey holes to see what was on offer, and if you were ever going to catch one, that would be the time. We often did. Bream, whiting and trevally would go crazy and large trumpeter would snap at anything moving.

   How often I have returned to that place in my dreams, standing on the grassy bank, looking down into the clear water, fish everywhere. Not actually catching fish, just being there, at that time, seeing the River come to life again before my eyes.

   I haven’t fished for years. It has lost some of its attractions for me even before it became impossible for me to hold a fishing rod, but the Calliope River will always be there as a uniquely special memory. Thanks, Ken. That wouldn’t have happened without you.

  

   

Being clinical

Feeling a bit strange this morning. Let me try to describe it as objectively as I can.

   I feel like something is … on the move. It’s the only way I can put it.

   My head feels fuzzy and tight. Maybe I haven’t slept long enough or well enough? Possibly. But I don’t think it’s that. This isn’t sudden. Each morning it has felt a bit more this way. I’m just accepting that it’s part of a continuum, not a one-off event.

   I look at other symptoms.

   My right arm has increased tremors. I suspect that, as I do what I can to strengthen it, the very fact that the muscles themselves are a bit stronger and more coordinated produces this effect. When the muscles were totally wasted, they didn’t even have the strength to produce much of a tremor, except in the fingers. Perhaps I should view this positively.

   I was encouraged last night when Sylvia and I were playing Crib [cribbage]. I decided to try holding the cards and even to shuffle the pack – that’s Australian style, not US. After some time and concentration I could do both, not very well, though the left hand was doing most of the work. But it’s positive.

    My right leg …. I don’t know. It seems different somehow. The foot remains swollen even though the Clexane injections daily continue. I really expected the ankle and foot to go back more or less to normal, but after these many weeks of injections, that hasn’t happened. I can’t tell whether it needs raising and resting or exercise, or both, or when. It’s uncharted territory and I know for a fact that no-one else knows either, even though their educated guess might be better than mine.

   Sometimes I can feel an all-too-familiar pulsing in my neck that suggests a serious seizure is on the way. But it doesn’t happen and that sensation goes away. Perhaps I am misreading this signal. Perhaps the Avastin is just doing its job and suppressing as much as it can the expansion of the tumour and the resulting inflammation.

   There’s really no point in speculating too much on such matters, as the MRI in Tamworth next week should tell us something. In fact, it is the only thing, apart from reading symptoms, that provides any sort of gauge at all.

   I would dearly love to dispense with the steroid altogether, but the last time we tried that, it reached a level too low to suppress seizures, and we had to raise it again to stabilise my system. At least, that’s how the sequence seems to work. Is it time to try again, very gradually weaning myself off it? We are flying pretty blind. Every day we walk on terra incognita, and some of it is far from terra firma!

   It’s halfway through the cycle of Avastin infusion. Things may go, or appear to go, a bit downhill from here until I get my next hit. We’ll see how the energy levels feel as the next one approaches.

   I’m going back to rest now.

   

Devahuti and Damodar – final part

'Honours? What's that? I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’ll have a go at it!'

   The butterfly in Beijing sent me on an entirely unintended path in my life from that point on. And at last, we come back to where this particular story starts – with Damodar and Devahuti.

Deciding to do Honours was going to add an extra year’s work to my BA, but I would have a higher qualification. The Education Department to its great credit was happy to finance this for me on my $19 per week, which as you can see didn’t increase over the whole three years. I was poverty-stricken but happy, though it took me seven months to make new friends.

   In those times Honours courses were genuinely tough. There was a Second Year Hons component that was the equivalent of an extra subject on top of your regular units of study. That was followed the next year by Third Year Hons, which was not only an additional unit, but had a 20,000 word thesis as well. Final Hons year had two special Hons units plus a 40,000 word thesis.

   By Third Year I was once again looking at the choices for Hons components of my degree. I was forced to do European History in Second Year Hons and had had enough of it. The choice was to continue with European (forget that!), or do American History (in which I had no experience and little enthusiasm) or the third and last choice – India 1935-1947 – under D P Singhal, by then rapidly promoted to Professor so no other university would steal him and Devahuti away.

   I wasn’t all that enthusiastic about it either, to be frank, but it was the best of the three on offer. I wondered what you could find in just 12 years of Indian history to fill a whole year to study. How wrong was I about that! I also discovered that if I wanted to do this course, the steely Indian professor demanded that I also do an extra year-long unit on top of everything else – India to 1947 under Dr Raj, recently added through Damodar’s insistence to the stable of lecturers in Indian history. Damodar felt, correctly, that I didn’t know enough about India to do his Hons unit without filling in the blanks, even though I had done his own unit by evening classes before starting to teach full time.

   And all this on top of units in English Literature, Political Science and English history, AND a 20,000 word thesis on the Origins of Pakistan! And this was only Third Year Hons, not Final Year.

   But studying this Hons unit with Damodar changed everything for me. Teaching an Hons unit with a small group of committed students was his forte. He sized up the potential of each student in about ten minutes, I suspect, and worked on that. He was utterly brilliant as a teacher, but only if you were up to the mark.

  I have to add at this point that when I went to university full time, I had one advantage that was a total novelty for me. All my life as a student, I had been competing intellectually with students 1-3 years older than I was. At university full-time, after being a teacher, I was slightly older than most students in my classes, and this was wonderful. It was certainly an enormous help in grappling with the complexities of a very complex society - that of India.

   Damodar saw potential in me, as with a select group of other students, and he opened our eyes to the way things really worked rather than superficial appearances. He was incredibly generous with his time and saw no difference between time on campus and when he and Devahuti entertained either at home or at a restaurant. He refused to let students pay for anything even if there were a dozen of us having a meal. And that happened very regularly.

   By the end of Final Hons, there wasn’t much he and Dev didn’t know about us; our strengths and weaknesses. By then I had done the Final Hons units competitively against the entire year’s batch in all areas of History, while writing my Fourth Year Hons thesis on the Kashmir Dispute between India and Pakistan. What a salutary experience that was! The year was 1970.

   To cut a dangerously lengthening story a bit shorter, there were two students in particular that he and Dev had their eyes on. One was Helen Illingworth, and I was the other. You can google Helen under her married name of Helen Nugent and see what an illustrious career she has had. Dev and he were going to start a first year unit in history in 1971 called History of Traditional Asia. They wanted Helen and me to be full time members of the History Department teaching staff at QU to teach this course. They knew that we were very good friends and had done a great deal of our Hons unit working together. In addition, I had teaching experience and that freaky High Distinction years before in The Modern Far East. Once again it had turned up trumps for me.

   This was quite a departure from my plan to finish a BA and resume primary school teaching. Helen and I would be tutors on yearly renewable contracts and I would have to abandon teaching in the State Education system altogether. It was a gamble but we both had absolute faith in Damodar and Dev, and they were very fond of us both, treating us, as I’ve said elsewhere, as indulgent parents would. Devahuti was a haemophiliac, which meant that she could never have children, so I think we were substitute family.

   I can remember with great clarity Helen phoning me in high excitement from Brisbane at my home in Gladstone to tell me we had both been awarded First Class Honours. Damodar had let her know. Within weeks I would be going back to Brisbane, as a member of staff of the University of Queensland.

   Little did I know that my education was really only just beginning, and that Damodar and Dev would be like guiding stars for me for another decade. Damodar had the sort of mind that could grasp immensities and draw it all together, as his two-volume work India and World Civilisation so ably demonstrated. Dev had an ability to take enormous detail and weave it into a larger pattern of history. In a sense, they started at either end of an historical problem and sorted it out between them. They were a perfect team.

   Tragically, both of them died late in the 1980s in their early 60s, from pre-existing medical conditions. I mourned their loss as I would my dearly loved parents and to think of them even now, as I reach the age they died, brings tears to my eyes. 

Devahuti, late 1975. The baby? Alice, my first-born!

   That means it’s the right place to stop, though I haven’t really told you how they influenced me apart from starting me on the best career anyone like me could have. Maybe that will come out in other stories, but this one has got too long. However, I will never forget that first night of my evening studies when I was 16, when it was Dev who pointed out how absurdly young I was. Had anyone said to me that first evening that a few years later that I would be teaching her course, with her, to new university students, in the same place, I would have declared them barking mad. And you would have too. Oh yes you would! This is why:

Sixteen!

[Continued from Part 4] | [Part 3] | [Part 2] | [Part 1]

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