The Age from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia • Page 26

Views in hub 6 China Gilbert jf my week tarn 41 THURSDAY: Very hot weather. Had several surfs; these days I mainly body surf. The club is preparing for Christmas holidays. I wrap presents. I don't expect any myself there are no chimneys in the surf club, where I live on the top floor.

The water temperature is 19 degrees, no surf, ideal for youngies frolicking in the water. No jellyfish. For more than 20 years, I went out on patrols as a surf life saver, helping in rescues. John Pettigrove, who's in his 70s too, is the other veteran life saver at Torquay. These days we don't go out on boats.

We get out of breath under the shower. FRIDAY, Christmas Day: Once again it's hot, with some thunder. We closed the beach after lightning struck water not far from boogie boarders. After the recent tragedy on Phillip Island, surfers are becoming more aware of the problem of lightning on water. I go to Chrissie lunch at Torquay pub with club members.

Into the vino. SATURDAY: It's raining like mad. Patrols begin their duties. We make sure that surfers and boogie boarders stay close to the flags. At least these days the use of leg ropes has made board riding safer.

I go to Queenscliff Fort to see the start of the Melbourne to Hobart yacht race, but it's cancelled due to huge seas. The organisers show good sense. I see container ships hove to outside the Heads, taking waves well over the containers. They're waiting for the seas to abate before they can even enter the Bay. It's a sight and a half.

I always say there's only one boss when you're on the water, and that's the sea. You can't control it and the only way you can evade it is in a submarine. Our club had a fatality earlier this year. A senior lifesaver, Graham Long, was paddling back from Anglesea, escorting two young ski paddlers. He was travelling from Point Addis to the point on the south side of Bell's Beach.

The boys were closer in shore and were protected from the wind change by the cliffs. In a matter of minutes, the wind shifted from 30 to gusting at 70 knots. Graham was either tipped over and blown away or he had a heart attack or exhaustion got him. That night, the wind shifted to a 70 knot westerly and his ski was found at Phillip Island more than 100 kilometres away. His paddle was found at Cape Schank.

Graham was a big loss. He was a former lifesaver of the year and a senior executive in the State Centre of the Surf Life- saving Association, He had a great rapport with young people, which is so important in surf clubs. Thirty five surf boats joined the search for him. They said they'd look until they dropped but his body was never found. It was a tragedy but, as I say, at sea there's only one boss.

SUNDAY: Beach conditions are very poor. Patrols begin beach duties, including checking where the rips are running. Our surf lifesavers train in preparation for the surf carnival, in particular the Honda Day at the Torquay beach on 30 January. I hope we don't get these conditions. The seas are so bad we close the beach in the afternoon.

It's obvious from the weather map that the Sydney-Hobart fleet is encountering atrocious conditions. People constantly underestimate the sea and take it for granted. 1 worked on a fishing boat in Bass Strait for four years. The first sign of trouble we'd turn for port. Conditions in Bass Strait can go from one extreme to the other in two tides.

Seven years ago, a pilot boat sank off the heads to Port Phillip Bay and they're meant to be unsinkable. MONDAY: We have an open day at the club to show the community the working of our voluntary services. We provide education on water safety, particularly first aid and rescue and resuscitation. The nippers train in the morning, doing water running in the shallows. The oldies have a few light refreshments on the balcony.

Everyone is talking about the missing yachts; no one is surprised by what has happened. TUESDAY: Life savers have to re-qualify each year and 100 from our district did so this morning. The Bushrangers the Victorian cricket team visit and have a game of beach cricket. Tremendous for the nippers. In the afternoon, I caddy for Barry Joiner, one of our sponsors, in a pro-am golf tournament at Torquay.

Eddie McGuire plays and tees off with a football. The crowd has plenty to say about that. They give Sam Newman heaps too, so he drops his trousers and still hits the ball 200 metres. Back at the club, I hear reports of rescues in the Sydney-Hobart. People are talking about the number of lives that have been lost; no one seems to understand the number of lives that have been saved.

The rescue operation has been amazing, particularly when you consider the size of the area they've In memory of a man who helped save the Franklin Ik they had won something success seems usually only the deferment of failure, and one day you find you have to do it all over again." I couldn't help comparing the flat -tone of his letter with the energy of A Just Equinox and thinking that writers who sink their imaginative beings into great public causes such as Henry Lawson did when he identified so strongly with the poor and homeless during the depression of the 1890s risk great personal defeats. My final communication with McQueen was last year when he sent me a wad of correspondence he had entered into to protect a species of possum, seeking publicity for the cause. He once told me he sent copies of Hook's Mountain to a host of federal and state politicians; the only one to reply had been Barry Jones. "Maybe Napoleon's right," McQueen had remarked in his dry way. "Perhaps it's time to strangle one or two to encourage the others." But they may still get the message.

As I understand it, the film rights to Hook's Mountain are held by an Australian actress with an international reputation. John Howard's Australia is a land of comfortable illusions. The environment is one of the issues that has been displaced, but if data such as world population projections are to be believed, at some point in the next century it will return roaring to the fore. Perhaps then we will look back differently on our history, not least on a writer who made a persistent and lonely stand. Martin Flanagan is a staff journalist.

E-mail: mflanagantheage.fairfax.com.au places, unnervingly so and in his second novel, Hook's Mountain, he advocated taking up arms to protect the environment. From memory, I first met him when he trudged into The Examiner to do publicity for that book. I already knew he had battled alcoholism and, in an unselfconscious way, he told me that he had just spent six weeks in hospital for depression. By then, I had also read his essay on the Franklin River, published in Australian Playboy, which deeply influenced many who read it, including me. It was about the need for public courage and, after it appeared, McQueen and his son Stuart were arrested for attempting to halt construction of the dam that would have needlessly flooded one of our last wild rivers.

Our interactions thereafter were intermittent, but mutually respectful. He gave my first book, a collection of poetry, the only review it received of more than one sentence and I watched his slow fall from public grace with a sense of sadness. Whether or not he was a great writer, he was certainly a great talent. He lived by his pen and was reduced to entering competitions of the sort that attract unpublished writers. Once, I was prevailed upon not only to judge such a competition, but also, against my wishes, to make comments on each of the anonymous entries.

I was mortified to later learn that his had been one of them (I had awarded him a minor place). I wrote him a letter, apologising for the gratuitous advice. He replied, saying he hadn't thought much of the story either, and went on: "The Playboy piece on the Franklin well, that does go back a bit. It all makes me feel a bit sad. All those young people who actually thought WRITER lames McQueen was a largely forgotten figure when he died last month at the age of 65, but I remember a time in the early 'HOs when he was on the cover of Tlie National Times and being hailed as our next Lawson.

He lived at Nabowla in north-' eastern Tasmania and, in 1980, I reviewed his first novel, A Just Equinox, for the local newspaper. I'm not sure what I expected something technical and experimen- tal, I suspect but what I got was an unforgettable portrait of an artist. The book begins with painter Paul 1 Fegan in the DTs, consumed by alcoholic cravings, gripping and grasping for reason, but still observ-: ing the pictures in his head. Fegan's paintings take their force from what he discovers at the outer extremity of his binges, and ultimately he is faced i with a choice sober up and live, or drink, paint and die. He chooses the latter.

I didn't have the confidence at the time to say I thought the book was brilliant, but I did. Almost literally. It was as bright as Fegan's paintings, i and as hard, As a character, Fegan was excellently drawn arrogant, remote, truthful, not so much denying love as saying: "Well, where is it?" When he finally finds the possibility of a relationship, he is betrayed by his other side, the great emptiness he has lived with all his life, which he summons in all its reckless ferocity to defend the damaged woman he is learning to love. Of course, it scares her away. A Just Equinox is a tragedy, a fully realised one, and among the best Australian novels I have read.

My own view is that his later work 1 with the exception of the short story about two 19th-century pros- 1 pectors on the west coast of The '90s name ul say there's only one boss when you're on the water, and that's the sea. had to work in and the conditions. WEDNESDAY: There's a meeting at the club to arrange New Year's Day celebrations. We have to make the arrangements for the nippers to do their water safety stuff and for the Jim Wall surfathon. Jim was a founding member of the Torquay Surf Lifesaving Club and today's Ironman races have their, origins in the surfathon he Provided the weather's agreeable, New Year's Day will be a day of drink, food and jazz.

They're calling it China's Day. Today there's only a slight swell, but at Jan Juc the life, savers have to make 34 rescues' because the sandbar's shifted. The sea is never one It's always changing. Most people can't read the sea at all. They don't know what a rip is or what to do if; they get caught in one, but there is; one fact they really ought to surf lifesavers have never lost a single person who was swimming between the flags.

Rex "China" Gilbert is a vice-president and life member of the Torquay Surf Life Saving Club. Aged 74, he is the oldest working surf life saver in the state. He lias been coming to Torquay since 1942. This article was written with the assistance of Age journalist Martin Flanagan. game inspect the Mirage, the Charade and the Starlet.

I'm holding my breath for the launch of next year's range: the Hoax, the Charlatan and the Bimbo. Cosmetics companies have been in the weird name (and claim) business for some time. Face-cream is never simply moisturiser, it's "skin-juvenating fluid" or "ageing-defence Until recently, they stuck to the language of science and war. But all of a sudden they've discovered metaphysics. First Calvin Klein releases ja fragrance called Be.

Then someone comes out with a cream which "illuminates" your face. Now there's an entire American range of makeup called Philosophy. The Wittgenstein line of hair-care. products can't be far behind. Names are pretty weird things.

Almost everyone knows that moment of dissociation when you hear the moniker you answer to as foreign, or worse, as a silly joke. With a graceless name like Lumby thdt moment came all too soon for me. But then the John Smiths of this world probably long for something more distinctive. One of the great benefits of multicultural unions is that they often produce names which are, at once, exotic, but rooted in tradition. Friends of mine, with Japanese and German Jewish roots, called their son Shintaro.

His last name is Messer. It's an unusual and elegant name, one which makes you think about its origins. As a child, I begged my parents to name my then-imminent sister, Verandah. It was the nicest sounding word I knew, and I'd just learnt to spell it. They refused and called her Caroline instead.

In 1999, there's got to be at least one kid out there with that name. I'm betting the next millennium will turn up children called Sony, Microwave and Playstation. In the meantime, I'm working on a product-naming scheme which would have been acceptable in the 1960s. There's already a flavored milk called Eric. I'm thinking of a running shoe called Susan, a vodka called John and a well-appointed country called Catharine.

Catharine Lumlry lectures in Media Studies at Macquarie University. Her forthcoming book is titled Gotcha: Life In A Tabloid World. E-mail clumby9elm.mq.tdu.au Shopping in an age of despair MARTIN FLANAGAN Tasmania that forms the kernel of his third novel, The Floor of Heaven was never as good. My suspicion has always been that in killing Fegan, McQueen killed something of his creative self. His subjects shifted from being heroes to anti-heroes and there was a line of emotional inquiry he no longer pursued or, at least, no longer pursued very far.

His work was identified as being excessively male and, by the end of the '80s, he was about as far from literary fashion as it is possible to be, a development that neither surprised nor, as far as I could tell, much concerned him. Fegan describes one of his self-portraits as electric, violent and fierce. A Just Equinox is all these things violent in the sense that it is charged with an uninhibited energy that leaps about in pursuit of its desire for brightness, for life. It's like a fauve painting, but I never saw him achieve that vividness again. The later work is far darker in HUGHMACKAY approach to spending, what has unleashed this sudden flurry? Are we so relaxed about the return of the Howard Government that we've decided to stop worrying and start spending? Have we concluded that the Asian economic crisis wont touch us, after all? Are we confident that, in the inexorable grind of globalisation, Australia will manage to stick with the nations who exploit, rather than those who are exploited? I doubt whether It's as specific as any of that.

My reading Is that Australians have looked at the big filcture, found it unbearably daunt-ng, and retreated into a mood of disengagement and self-absorption. Globalisation, Asian meltdown, immigration, foreign investment, A COUPLE I met once on holiday sent me a card recently announcing the birth of their first child, Indiana. I was halfway through a congratulations note when I realised I didn't have the faintest clue if the baby was a boy or a girl. Loathe to refer to their bundle of joy as I checked a naming dictionary. Indiana wasn't listed under either sex.

I asked around. Indiana, I discovered, was the name of a US state, a cheap lounge suite, a friend's dog, a university press and a character played by Harrison Ford. Emboldened by the last clue, I scattered the male pronoun throughout my letter. The baby, of course, turned out to be a girl. In the olden days (before the Internet) gender confusion was never a problem.

Girls were called Catherine, Susan, Alison or Jane. All boys were John. When my mother collected me from the labor ward nursery she discovered eight other Catherine Ann's. (Throwing caution to the wind, she decided to spell Catharine with two In 1961, variations from the rule were for people from Funny Countries with Funny Religions. I started kindergarten with them.

By primary school, their parents had been worn down. Juan became Jack. Guilietta was Jane. The 'opolous's and 'katzis's vanished from, the roll, replaced by Anglicised endings. A decade later, the hippy movement spread its marijuana-scented velveteen cloak across the land and children with names like River, Moonbeam and Groovy Trip were soon queuing at the tuckshop.

Hippy names might have been unconventional, but they weren't merely trendy either. They had a purpose. They were homages to nature, inner beauty and all the other stuff that seems incredibly important if you've just smoked a kilogram of pot. The hippy rebellion against boring WASP names spread to the middle classes. Suddenly protestant private schools were awash with Aaron Smiths and Nastasha Jones's.

Extra-daring couples even experimented with spelling hence a generation of Symons who have to spell their first name everytlme. Somewhere around the mid-BOs, however, something far weirder happened to names. Something which may or may not have begun when CATHARINE LUMBY a I'm betting the next millennium will turn up children called Sony, Microwave and Playstation. 59 the pop star, Prince, adopted an unpronouncable symbol as his signature. People started giving their kids names that sounded like products names that could refer to a car, a couch or a perfume.

For example, spot the first-name in the following list: Elite. Bennington. Gravity. Exotica. Give up? In fact, they're all first-names bestowed on children of the '90s.

The category confusion infecting human names has its echo in the increasingly anthropomorphic names bestowed on consumer goods. IKEA makes furniture to suit my taste and budget. But somehow 1 can't get used to the i La oi putting my books in a set of shelves call'' Sven or reading by the light of a Bjorn. Car manufacturers are even further ahead. Ten years ago, the novelist Martin Amis gave a character in his novel a convertible called the Fiasco.

Today, the joke would pass unnoticed. When I bought a car recently unblinking salesmen urged me to attempts are half-hearted amounting more to a cry for help than a desire to end it all seems cruelly to miss the point: a lot of young Australians are miserable to the point of despair. No one can afford to be glib in trying to explain such a phenomenon. It seems safe to conclude that too many members of the rising generation have become discouraged, but by what? Have we, in our obsession with the material and our determined retreat from the numinous, failed to inspire them with the idea that life is an adventure too engrossing to cut short? Or that the big questions about existence are still worth exploring? Perhaps we have also limited their vision by the example of our own retreat into prejudice and apathy, and by the increasing toughness of our responses to others' adversity. The intrusion of the user-pays mentality into government services is one symptom of this toughness; so is our uncharitable attitude towards single mothers, our lack of interest in Aboriginal reconciliation, and our disinclination to address the massive problems of poverty and inequity in our midst.

The good news is that, like the proverbial blank slate, this is a New Year. And it's never too late to clean out the shed. Go for it. Hugh Mackay is an author and social researcher. E-mail: opinion9theagefairfax.com.au Aboriginal reconciliation, tax reform, privatisation, unemployment (especially youth unemployment) this is a daunting agenda of apparently intractable problems and, for many Australians, 'it all seems too hard to face.

So we spend. Conditioned by 50 years of consumerism, we've arrived at the point where the idea of retail therapy actually makes sense to us. When you're feeling blue, console yourself with a trawl through your favorite store. When you're plagued by doubts and insecurities, restore your faith in yourself with a new set of golf clubs or a nice leather couch. There's nothing wrong with a bit of good old materialism, of course.

Few of us relish the prospect of material discomfort, let alone poverty. But the inherent danger of the consumer society is that, seduced by ail the glitz, we might allow our possessions to define us. Once that starts to happen, we create a culture of consumption for our children, and that's a culture with a big black hole at Its centre. Is it simplistic to see a possible link between a society that seeks the illusory comforts of relentless consumption and the tragic rise in the rate of youth suicide? Suicides are the most visible sign of a huge problem of depression among young Australians. Researchers in the field now estimate that there are 50,000 to 60,000 suicide attempts each year In the 16-24 years age group alone.

The argument that many of these THE lure of the New Year resolution is almost irresistible. It has precisely 365 times the punch of those self-flagellating declarations some of us make almost daily: I must clean out the shed, start regular exercise, spend more time with my friends, go to bed earlier (though recent research suggests there's no health-related reason why we should attach so much virtue to an early night, so that's coming off my list of good intentions). But before we can make a convincing assault on 1999, we might need to reflect on one or two revealing things about 1998 (including the fact that, as a cultural festival, Christmas has once again failed all those Australians who report an annual descent into melancholy). An outbreak of economic sunshine and lazy summer holidays notwithstanding, we are in the grip of some puzzling contradictions. The more I think about two apparently unrelated items of news from the last week of 1998, the more connected they seem to be.

One is the record splurge on Christmas and post-Christmas shopping; the other is the shocking rise in the rate of youth suicide up by 50 per cent in Victoria In the past year. Retailers are understandably jubilant about their customers willingness to thrash the yuletide plastic and it's true that, economically speaking, nothing happens until somebody buys something. But given our recent, rather cautious EAABt.