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Covid causing travel hesitancy

covid-travel-hesitancy — Overseas travellers 2012 to 2022 Source ABS

Some of my friends and family have decided to head off overseas (Covid be damned), and I’m just a tad jealous. Despite making plans to visit family in New Zealand in February next year, our last international adventures are now more than a decade ago. Anecdotes and photos have faded, alas.

It’s probably ‘normal’ for avid travellers to do less of it as they age, for financial and health reasons. In addition, as illustrated in this graph from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) website, the advent of Covid-19 and its aftermath certainly put paid to our collective travel ambitions.

A late 2021 study found that Australians were ‘lukewarm’ about travelling, ahead of international borders opening in February 2022.

The University of Queensland study found that only 51% of those surveyed were planning international travel, with New Zealand and Europe as key destinations. The research showed that 33% of respondents preferred to holiday in Australia, and 16% were going to stay home. Nevertheless, it has been five years since our last trip to New Zealand to visit whanua. There are new grandchildren – great-grandchildren, even. And my siblings are ageing, as am I.

As you will note from today’s chart, there has been a surge in overseas traveller numbers (inbound and outbound), but it’s a long way off the 2019 highs.

One outcome of the Covid pandemic and the lifting of travel bans is a dramatic shift in the way people plan overseas travel. A recent ABC segment found that hesitancy has changed the way Australians travel, with shorter lead times between bookings and departures. Pre-Covid, a large proportion of travellers made their own travel and accommodation bookings. But COVID-19 restrictions have led to a renewed interest in travel agencies.

Many people are nervous about what could happen should they catch Covid while travelling abroad. There are a couple of key flaws in Covid-tracking, and one is that sometimes people have Covid but don’t know it (asymptomatic). Then there are people (there would have to be some), that suspect they have Covid but keep on travelling regardless.

They might give it to a thousand other people, but as they might say in their own defence, our own chief health officer has said, it is “inevitable” most of us will catch Covid.

A friend who once swore she’d never visit Europe for all those reasons and more has just left for a six-week tour of the UK. In part, it is an organised tour and the rest independent travel. Our local friend, who we shall refer to as Zee, related a typical 2022 travel anecdote from the transit lounge in Vancouver.

“I never saw the person involved, but I gather he was a young man who had travelled via Alaska Airlines to Portland and then Air Canada to Vancouver. He had checked two bags with all his worldly possessions through to Korea. However, apparently, they never made it on to the Air Canada flight and nobody has any idea where they are. I know all this because he explained it in exhaustive detail several times to different people on a very long phone call. He was obviously distressed, and I felt very sorry for him. And I will never know if he ever got them back.”

Zee has since landed at Heathrow and boarded a tour bus bound for Oxford (Ed: The Perfect Comma Tour?). After seeing stories in the media about airline passengers losing luggage, Zee opted for carry-on only. I suspect UK charity shops will be the beneficiaries of that decision.

We have all heard about or seen media coverage of people trying in vain to find lost luggage, waiting for hours in queues or being repeatedly bumped off flights. During its 18-month hiatus, the airline industry, despite attempts to revisit glory days running decades-old commercials, appears to have serious organisational issues. It comes down to a shortage of staff and trying to make old bookings systems work in a post-Covid world. Not that we are anywhere near a post-Covid world.

It may surprise you to know there are 28 countries which are not open to international visitors. They include a few countries most of us would never have on our destination bucket list. A few have onerous travel restrictions which would probably deter most visitors. Hong Kong, for example, requires you to return a negative Covid test and then go into quarantine.

A useful website (Kayak) tells us there are 163 countries that are open to visitors, and which do not require Covid-testing or quarantining. Another 33 countries require Covid testing before they will let you in and three that also require you to go into quarantine. The 28 countries that are open only to returning citizens or those under ‘special circumstances’ include China, Taiwan and Russia.

Kayak, an on-line travel agency, maintains a web page which keeps track of where you can go and what restrictions there are (if any). Despite Australia requiring all people travelling to and from the country to be double vaccinated, some countries (like Ireland) have an open-door policy. I would caution anyone with travel plans to check and double-check the entry (and exit) requirements as they change all the time.

The Kayak web page is also a one-stop place to check out how other countries are going with their vaccination rates. They range from Samoa (100%), Singapore (92%) and Germany (75%) to scarily low numbers in countries like Somalia (16%) and PNG (3.4%).

Our research into travel to New Zealand in six months’ time has thus far revealed it will be costly for comprehensive insurance. This is more to do with being 70+ than any other factor. Even though it is six months’ away, hire car companies seem to be short of vehicles. Of more pressing concern is planning ahead to avoid catching Covid and giving it to other people, namely elderly family members. We are fortunate to have an extended family in NZ who would find ways of accommodating us should we need to go into isolation (a bach at the beach, Cuz?). But it is best to make sure you factor another $1000 or so into your travel budget to cover contingencies.

As readers may have gathered over the eight years we have been communing on Fridays, I’ve done a fair bit of travelling in my youth. We also had some adventures later in life – in 2004 exchanging houses for six months with an English couple who lived in Godalming (Surrey). That was a great way to see Greece, France, Belgium, Italy, Scotland, Wales and other places, three weeks at a time then back to base to live the suburban life for a while. We visited relatives in Canada on the way over and re-visited Canada in 2010 for a family reunion. This seems to be the year for the Canadians to visit us. Brother Jon was here in May, making the most of the wet winter. Cousin Glen and his wife will be here in our Spring. They intended to travel in 2020 but we all know how that went down. There’s talk of a cousins’ reunion (probably in Seattle) in 2023. .

As readers may recall from recent essays about our trip to Tasmania, we found there’s a fair difference between taking on a 10km bush walk at 64 and 10 years on. .

Let’s see how we pull up after a month in New Zealand.

FOMM flashback

Climate Crisis on Election Back-burner

climate-crisis-election — Coal-fired power station in Germany – Catazul www.pixabay.com

My reading of election coverage (such as it is), is that both major parties have shuffled the climate crisis to the back burner. It must be crowded back there, with homeless people and refugees trying to stay warm.

What has been widely ridiculed as the ‘shouty’ debate (on Channel Nine) said nothing meaningful about the most important issue of all – the climate crisis. Such has been the pre-occupation with the election here, we haven’t seen much coverage of Canada’s wet, cold spring, India and Pakistan’s lethal heatwaves, or debate about whether our wet autumn is driven by climate change or something else.

People who deny climate change theory often dismiss it with ‘there’s always been climate change’. Well, yes, but it’s been accelerating since 1950 and in 2022 we have the technology to make material changes.

Andrew Wallace, Federal member for Fisher and Speaker of the House, recently told a public meeting in Montville he was not convinced that climate change was caused by emissions from human industry.

Sunshine Coast resident Gillian Pechey, who was at the meeting, wrote to the Glasshouse News after hearing this statement.

“I asked him (Wallace) whether he had worries about the predicted ocean level rise, loss of the sandy beaches which tourists flock to holiday on. He smiled! His position is predicted to lead to global temperature rise of 3-4 degrees. Parts of Queensland will become unliveable unless you’re wealthy enough to live and work in a solid air-conditioned building.

“It is frustrating to see the lead political party turning its back on climate science which predicts that over this century we will continue to have destructive bushfires, floods, eroded beaches and gradual loss of the Great Barrier Reef.”

FOMM’s observation is that Andrew Wallace, elected in 2019 with a 62.7% two-party preferred vote, is obviously going to stick to the LNP’s position on subsidising fossil fuel at the expense of investment in renewable energy. He persists with this line even when campaigning in the Green-friendly towns of the Sunshine Coast hinterland.

Whatever politicians are saying (or not saying) about the climate crisis, there is evidence that the general population has been trying to self-educate. The ABC found a researcher who uncovered a 5,000% increase in the volume of climate questions on Google since 2019.

The data has been ‘normalised’, meaning interest has increased relative to that of other topics. The use of ‘big data’ to reach conclusions is called ‘culturomics’.

For the past 18 months, social researcher Rebecca Huntley has been conducting focus groups to understand climate change concerns among Australians.

Dr Huntley said the Google search data broadly aligns with the focus group results. Various other polls concur – the climate crisis is a hot-button issue. The ABC’s Vote Compass shows an overwhelming number of Australians want more action to reduce carbon emissions.

“The basic theory as to why this is happening now rather than, say, three years ago, is stuff builds up,” Dr Huntley said.

She told the ABC the 2019/20 Black Summer fires were not enough on their own to “shift the dial” on climate concern. But they were followed by two other major climate crisis events.

Australia was criticised for inaction on climate change at the November 2021 COP26 climate conference in Glasgow. Australia did present a net zero emissions plan, but it lacked detail and critics pointed this out.

The third event which may have tipped some Australians over the climate fence was the 2022 floods in Queensland and New South Wales. There’s no evidence yet to blame that individual weather event on climate change. But it was consistent with predictions of the type of epic natural disaster we can expect under global warming scenarios.

The ABC delved into the Google research to find that the top ‘searchers’ came from very small towns, which suggests the data may not be that reliable. A reporter asked Lawrence Springborg, Mayor of Goondiwindi Shire and president of the Queensland Liberal National Party, what he thought.

He suggested people were searching “because they don’t believe” climate change and wanted ammunition to disprove the science when the topic came up in conversation.

“I have absolutely no idea why they’re searching,” he added.

One of the common searches on Google is ‘when did climate change start’.

The latest research now suggests that atmospheric warming began in the early to mid-1800s, rather than the mid-20^th century. Until 1950, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels had never been above 300 parts per million. Now the readings are over 400 ppm and rapidly increasing.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report says the current warming trend is unequivocally the result of human activity since the mid-20^th century.

“It is undeniable that human activities have warmed the atmosphere, ocean, and land and that widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere, and biosphere have occurred.”

The Sydney Morning Herald said the Resolve Political Monitor found young voters (18-34) ranked climate change as the second-most important issue in this year’s election. Not surprisingly, the number one issue for young voters was keeping the cost of living low.

Meanwhile, the LNP is sticking to its target of reducing emissions by at least 26% by 2030. Labor’s target is 43% although climate experts warn Australia must cut emissions 75% by 2030. Both major parties want to keep on exporting coal, despite the US Environmental Protection Agency stating that the burning of coal, natural gas, and oil for electricity and heat is the largest single source of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Professor Stephen Bartos was recently commissioned by Farmers for Climate Action to prepare a report on the impact of climate change on food supply. Farmers for Climate action is part of the National Farmers Federation (which has 7,000 members).

Writing in The Conversation, Prof Bartos, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, explained his methodology. He reviewed research in this area, interviewed more than a dozen farmers, farmer representative bodies, and other participants in the food supply chain. Among the issues identified were the impact of drought, diseases and stress on livestock, the loss of food due to hotter weather, and shorter shelf lives.

“An unexpected finding was the degree to which everyone involved in the supply chain is affected by uncertainty caused by climate change. It is making future weather highly unpredictable, making planning harder for both farms and in transport networks.”

Climate change has made a further impact on lending and insurance, where unpredictability means higher costs for financial products. Some farmers reported that they were unable to insure due to climate risks. All these costs are passed on to consumers in the form of higher food prices.

This concurs with the Climate Council’s findings that one in 25 Australian properties would be ‘uninsurable’ by 2030. The Climate Council says this is directly due to the rising risk of extreme weather and the impact of climate change.

The Climate Council created at interactive map so households, businesses and farmers can assess the likely risk. Queensland is looking vulnerable.

Finally, though this report is five months old and I’ve mentioned it before, it should be remembered that Australia ranked last in a survey of 60 countries on climate change policy. The Climate Change Performance Index, published annually since 2005, gave Australia a zero for its policy response to the climate crisis, citing ‘a lack of ambition and action’.

As we post this, the Condamine River has risen so much overnight authorities are about to close the bridge into town. The Cunningham Highway to Brisbane is closed and the road to Toowoomba must surely be compromised.

Climate crisis? What climate crisis.

When Rome Counted its Citizens

Census-Romans — Census taker visits a family of Indigenous Dutch Travellers living in a caravan in 1925. Wikipedia CC

You may not immediately deduce from the headline that we are about to embark upon a discourse about the Census, which will happen in Australia on or about August 10, 2021.

I say on or about because the online version of the head count can be filled in electronically on or a few days after August 10. You just have to declare where you actually were on Census night.

As you will recall, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) held its first online census in 2016. There was a major glitch on Census night (August 9) when the ABS website crashed, leaving millions of citizens perplexed. In October 2019, a Census test was held across 100,000 households to assess ‘end-to-end operational readiness’ for the 2021 Census.

In 2016, about 37% of people opted to fill in the paperwork and wait for an official collector to come calling. This time the ABS says it expects a better than 63% online response, given research that shows Australians prefer to complete the census online.

Taking a once in five years snapshot of the country’s population is an expensive exercise, budgeted at $565 million. The ABS is in the process of recruiting 22,456 field staff and managers.

Named after the Latin word ‘censere‘, meaning estimate, the Roman census was the most developed of any in the ancient world. The Romans (Ed: what did they ever do for us?), conducted their census every five years. The Roman Empire used this information to extract duties from its citizens.

An ABS history page says the first known census was taken by the Babylonians in 3,800 BC, nearly 6,000 years ago.

“Records suggest that it was taken every six or seven years and counted the number of people, livestock, quantities of butter, honey, milk, wool and vegetables.”

So yes, there is an historical precedent for the (compulsory) collection of personal data from every household in the country.

You may remember Tony Abbott, who was Prime Minister for two and a half footie seasons (2013-2015), tried to axe the census to save money. It didn’t happen (such change requiring a new Act of Parliament). To be fair to Abbott, both the Fraser and Keating governments sought to abolish the census for the same reason.

Sydney Morning Herald journalist Peter Martin unearthed this little-known fact in 2013 while writing about other countries which had tinkered with changes.

As Martin noted, Britain had for a long time been trying to abolish its census (held once a decade since 1801). The government held an inquiry in 2013 to find ways to update the way the UK collects data. This year’s census will be the last. Thereafter, the UK will ‘harvest the data people generate in their everyday lives’.

Apolitical, a social network for civil servants, observed that other countries are moving in this direction or have already done so, including the US, Norway and Finland.

“Rather than survey citizens, statisticians would collect the data traces left behind by people’s everyday interactions with government. Data is collected from welfare and tax departments, housing and vehicle registrations or our health records.”

Apolitical says statisticians can glean more from the aggregating of all this information (and anonymising it to protect citizens’ privacy).

In 2010, Canada’s Harper government tried to replace its census with a voluntary survey, prompting the shock resignation of Canada’s chief statistician, Munir Sheikh.

Following his resignation, Dr Sheikh, once described by a colleague as ‘the best economist in Canada’, expressed his disapproval of the government’s decision, saying that a voluntary survey could not replace a census.

Following the reinstatement of the mandatory census in 2015, Canada is preparing to hire 32,000 census enumerators and crew leaders to survey its vast country in 2021. Canada, like Australia, uses data from the census to share resources fairly and accurately among its widely-scattered provinces..

New Zealand also considered replacing its census, using data from government departments to determine its population. The country’s last census was in 2018 but it is already gearing up for 2023.

Some governments have encountered deep social opposition to certain questions. Former President Trump wanted a Citizenship question in the 2020 Census. He backed off after a wave of hostilities that included a threatened boycott.

In July 2019, he realised there was no time left to have the question included in the 2020 Census papers. So he issued an executive order calling on agencies to turn over citizenship data to the Commerce Department.

In the first few days of his administration, President Biden rescinded this directive. Litigation about this issue argued that citizenship data could have politically benefited Republicans when voting districts are redrawn.

The other controversial question on census forms is the one about religion. In 2001, the UK re-introduced the question (not asked since 1851), largely as an attempt to calculate the size of the Muslim population. Accordingly, some 390,000 people in England listed their ‘religion’ as Jedi, a response which occurred in Australia too, with 70,000 recorded in 2001. In 2016, 48,000 people entered Jedi as their religion. New Zealand had the highest per capita Jedi response (53,000) in 2001). Statistics New Zealand’s response was: ‘Answer understood but not recorded’.

The US does not ask the question (nor does Scotland), though the US asks about race and ethnicity. In Australia, the religion question has been ‘optional’ since the first Census in 1911. The box ‘no religion’ is a recent addition.

Curiously (well, we think it is curious), the ABS confirmed that 90% of people have answered the question in recent censuses. If your religion is not listed, the form provides space to enter the data. Because of this response, the ABS holds data on 150 religions in Australia.

The idea of trying to run a country without a census horrifies Peter McDonald, Emeritus Professor of Demography at The Australian National University. He thinks scrapping the census would be ‘a nightmare for planners and governments’.

“The problem in Australia is that we have no reasonable alternative to the census,” he told FOMM this week. “From an accuracy (and privacy) perspective, the census is better by a long way than trying to combine various administrative data bases. Without the census, the States would continually claim that their population was larger than it actually was. And every other group that received funding on a population basis would do likewise.”

Statistics is a dry subject, but one we encounter every day of our lives, so let’s leave you with this. Mathematician Joey Scaminaci’s clever rap ‘Statistics’ attempts to teach the basics in three and a half minutes. It impressed one fan who commented:

“From Australia I thank you, this is very helpful! Gonna ace my big exam”.

A doggy tale in the time of covid-19

By Guest FOMMer Laurel Wilson

dogs-covid-19 — Rex and assorted Canadian children

As anyone who knows me would realise, I love dogs and have had various four-legged companions ever since I can remember. ‘Foxie’ was the first one − a small, non-descript, furry golden mutt, who apparently decided our place was an improvement on her previous abode.

Then came ‘Rex the wonder dog’ (or at least, that’s what I called him), also a mutt, but who looked quite a bit like a Border Collie. As is the case with most dogs surrounded by small children, he was the soul of patience and accepted with good grace my various attempts to dress him up or get him to do tricks. He had an endless capacity for ‘shake a paw’.

Then came a hiatus of quite a few years, involving moving to Australia, going to high school and later university, when I was either not living at home or too broke to contemplate acquiring a dog of my own. (There was a brief interlude with a cat called Pith, but it just wasn’t the same…)

dogs-covid-18 — Tilbi and pups, including “Ankle-biter”

When I was more settled and could afford it, the sweetest dog I’ve ever known came into my life. This was ‘Tilbi’ (which I believe means ‘duck’ in one of the Aboriginal languages). This was an appropriate name for a Golden Retriever, although, apart from one embarrassing incident with a couple of tame ducks, she never got to follow that particular life path.

The closest she came to it was when the occasional ‘chook show’ was held at the Showgrounds over the road from our old place. Tilbi and her daughter Finis were in ecstasy whenever that event occurred, whining and scratching at the gate in a desperate effort to ‘retrieve’ those feathered objects of doggy lust. Apart from that, she was a most obedient and loving dog, who was fond of all humans, from toddlers to the rather ancient fellow who lived over the back fence. (Ed: One day Tilbi came home with a pot roast in her mouth (a neighbour left it on the window sill to cool).

A few years later, the most independent-minded dog I’ve ever experienced became part of the household. This was ‘Kia’, the German Shepherd (named before the vehicle of that make became popular, I might add – it was more a nod to our Kiwi rellies, as in Kia Ora, or ‘Hello’). She was obedient to a point, especially if she was in reach, but coming back when called was an optional extra, as far as she was concerned. But she was a very intelligent dog. For instance, in her later, more arthritic years, she struggled to get into the back of the station wagon, so we put a box down in front of the open tail-gate. She got the idea almost immediately. And she had a sense of humour. One of her favourite games was to play ‘chasey’ around the car when we were trying to catch her before going out. She’d eventually take pity on us and let herself get caught.

The latest four-legged addition is Nib, the mostly Staffie brindle ‘brick on legs’, who spends much of the evening acting as my own personal knee blanket. It’s wonderful in winter, not so good in summer. He is without a doubt the most obedient dog I’ve ever come across – for which we take no credit. He is most reliable about coming back when called, walks nicely on the lead, doesn’t respond if other dogs bark at him, goes outside when asked, gets out of the kitchen when I’m cooking, and seems to have quite a good grasp of various other commands, or as I like to put it, polite requests. His only fault is that, like most other Staffies, he ‘sings’, especially when he is in the car. And his ‘song’ is not pleasant to the ear…

See, I managed to get all this way without mentioning ‘Iso’ or ‘Covid’, but dogs have apparently come into their own during this period. Those with dogs are thankful for their company and the impetus to go for a walk. Many of those without dogs are apparently taking the opportunity to acquire one while they have the time to welcome one into their lives. Hopefully, they head to a nearby Animal Shelter to pick out their new friend, and hopefully, these new pets won’t find their way back there post-Covid.

I make no claim to the following observations being original, but I too have noticed that people have turned into dogs – roaming around the house all day, looking for something to eat; rushing to the front door when anyone knocks; peering through the window at the unusual sight of a passer-by; and getting terribly excited at the prospect of going for a drive in the car…

Here’s to all the dogs I have met in my life, including Bindi, Logan, Tosca, Patch, Stella, Moet, Dante, Winnie (the poodle – which scores the prize for cleverest name), Motek, Joey, Fleur, Spud, Darcy, Wally and all those friendly pooches who accept a pat from a passing stranger.

Postscript by Bob (taking a break this week while dreaming up new topics).

Our first dog was a cocker spaniel named Lady who was left with a family friend in Scotland when we all caught the migrant boat in 1955. Dad was heartbroken but the alternative was quarantining an old dog for six weeks at sea and then a month on land.

Once settled in New Zealand we acquired a fox terrier with the imaginative name of Spot. He could be a crabby critter and Mum didn’t like him much for his habit of lying on the front step and then snarling when she tried to step over him.

He was a wee bit epileptic, Spot, and also had a habit of eating grapefruit then spitting shredded citrus out all over the lawn.

As an older adult I took up with She Who Tried For Best In Show who owned Tilbi. Later we acquired a litter of eight Golden Retriever puppies, keeping one (Finis).

Now we find ourselves in 2020, as SWTFBIS points out, responsible for a rising nine-year-old Staffie who is quite needy but also quite endearing. He is slowly adjusting to life in the suburbs where people walk past the house (don’t bark, good dog, treat).

I usually cannot resist clicking on the many dog videos, gifs and memes which have proliferated as Iso forces dog owners to spend more time with their furry pals. I like the mindlessly cute ones where cats (or dogs) jump over increasingly higher stacks of toilet rolls.

If you have not seen the videos of Scottish sports commentator Andrew Cotter turning the daily antics of his two dogs into a sports call, there are quite a few. He may be bored but he definitely loves these Labradors – and, as with all dogs, it is mutual.

*Correction: In last week’s blog about the coronaconomy, I mentioned Jobseeker in the third paragraph and again near the end. It should have read Jobkeeper.

Overdue letter to Ma

MumDad25th 01

Hey Ma, I’ve been meaning to write this letter for such a long time – like, 50 years or more. Excuse the casual introduction but that’s the way people address their elders in the 21^st century. You’d be amazed at the technology today. We email, skype (video phone calls) and tweet (too hard to explain), using hand-held telephones which can take photos, home movies and, oh, make phone calls. You can be constantly in touch with family and friend on social media, firing off messages and photos through the ether.

You’d marvel (and I suspect not totally approve) of my putting your photo on the Internet where millions of people can check you out, if they have a mind. Life now is so different for teenagers. In your courting days, Dad had to ask permission of your father to take you out and have you back at the front gate by 10pm. You communicated with hand-written notes and secret glances across the high street or at the dance hall. Today, girls as young as 12 and 13 are allowed to have boyfriends and ‘sleep overs’ with their girlfriends and who knows what goes on when their hand-held computers are passed around.

You may already know this if there’s some kind of Wikipedia (online encyclopaedia) in Heaven. You believed in the Hereafter, which was probably a good thing, given that you had only 48 years on the planet, including 11 years in your adopted homeland, New Zealand. Women with breast cancer in the 1960s were often diagnosed late and treatment was limited to a mastectomy and radiation therapy. Then your doctor signed you up for new, experimental drug treatment.

“It may not help me, but if it helps some other puir soul in the future that’ll be a fine thing,” you said, faith grounded in the Scottish Methodist church.

It is true that the risk of being diagnosed with breast cancer in the 1960s was one in 20, and is now one in eight. However, this is mainly due to more people living longer – into the age bracket where they are more likely to get breast cancer. In the 1960s, the life expectancy of a female was 73. Since then, life expectancy has improved to 84 and a great many women live into their 90s and beyond, mainly due to the vast improvement in diagnostic techniques for cancer and all manner of illnesses, great advances in heart surgery, vaccines and treatment for the sort of chronic ailments that put people in a pine box in the 1960s.

The ability to detect cancer early has greatly improved. These days, most women in the target age range have routine two-yearly breast scans (mammograms) which can find otherwise undetectable tiny tumours. And treatment with less invasive surgery, more effective drugs (chemotherapy) and/or radiation can then ensue.

As a result, of early detection and improved treatment, the survival rate has greatly improved since you were afflicted. The five-year survival in 1965-1969 was just 64%, according to the Cancer Journal for Clinicians. So if you’d been diagnosed late, your chances were slim. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare says the five-year survival rate now is 89.4%.

Ma, at 67, I have a suspicion of blokes my age who talk too much about their mothers, living or dead. But I have sort of kept you alive in a sense, writing a couple of songs based on your observations and impressions and my memories of the new country. Lucky I kept a few of your old letters and notes of the six-week journey on the Rangitiki in 1955.

When children are left motherless, nothing fills the void and a step-mother, if there is one, is just a (hopefully nice) woman who loves your father. In the 1960s, teenage boys were not encouraged to grieve – we didn’t know how. We became blokes, drinking beer and listening to rock music, getting obsessed with the All Blacks and (trying) to chase girls. As life went on, it should have been obvious that crude sublimation was never going to help a sensitive lad who lost his mother at 17. That major life trauma shaped chapters of my 20s and 30s and got buried beneath the rest of the baggage until it came time to unpack and let go.

Yes, I should have persevered with the piano, as you insisted, because as you said, it could have earned me a living of sorts. Instead, I managed to harness this other gift for words. I came to music later in life − a self-taught musical dunce by the Conservatorium standards. Nevertheless, I’m told the words and music fit together fairly well.

And you missed my weddings, Mum. I married young, spent 12 or 15 years working, travelling, being a drunk, and getting sober. I met a great woman, well, actually I met two. The first one when we were both much younger. If you’d been around you might have persuaded us that 18 and 21 was a bit young. We sort of outgrew each other, but we both got re-married and went on with our lives. Now, this other great woman, she’s been in my life for 34 years. You’d be pleased with my choice, although she’d tell you the choice was all hers! (Who chased who? Ed.)

And then there’s this great extended family, in Australia where we live and back home in Aotearoa. In your last year there were just the seven of us and three wee bairns. Today in Australia, New Zealand and Canada the whanau, as the Maoris call it, number 42, all loyal, loving people, including your 6ft 5in grandson.

We keep in touch with your sister’s daughter in Scotland and another cousin in England. I went to visit your surviving sister in England a few years ago – she’s in her mid-90s and still living in her own flat.

When I saw this tiny white haired-woman come to the door it gave me a pang. When we lose mothers young, we forget what they looked like, but to me, she looked as if you might have done had you been alive today.

I gave her one of our CDs (the modern version of an LP), one of four albums, most of them songs I wrote. Your sister said: “You got that from Winnie, you know. She could play anything on the piano, your Mum. She didn’t need the music – if she knew it, she could play it.”

Well that does sound familiar. I have fond memories of listening to you practice the organ at the wee wooden Methodist church. I’d call in after school and try out the latest Beatles song, picking out the melody with one hand.

I knew there was a reason I loved all those great Hammond organ songs of 1967 – Whiter Shade of Pale, I’m a Man, Light My Fire. It was hardly Trust and Obey, but the music helped me through a difficult year.

So this is me, belatedly toasting my absent mother, and the countless other mothers whose leaving left their children bewildered and lost.

Yours aye,

Bob Jnr

Travel without regrets

la traffic — LA freeway photo by Jeff Turner flickr

Dedicated readers will know by now my penchant for tinkering with numbers, so you won’t be surprised that I have done an inflation-adjusted calculation on my/our travel adventures over 45 years. O.M.G. We could have bought a second home, or a third; a luxury yacht, a Maserati or achieved the mythical $1 million retirement target.

New Zealand is Australia’s most popular outbound travel destination – 1.06 million went there in the year to March 2015; 483,000 for a holiday, another 603,000 on business or visiting family and friends. The next most popular outbound destination, according to Austrade’s Tourism Research Australia, was the USA (590,000 holiday makers and 286,000 people doing business or visiting family and friends). In third place was Indonesia (830,000), then Thailand (596,000). The UK is up there, with 510,000 Australian visitors. In all, 8.81 million Australians travelled overseas, for holidays, for business or to visit family and friends.
The other 15 million or so stayed home.

Ignoring travel alerts

Surprisingly (well, I was surprised) 77,000 Australians went on holiday in the Middle East and North Africa in the year to March 2015. There’s a risk/reward equation that probably adds a frisson of excitement to travel in unstable regions.
Egypt (population 91 million) attracts tourists who have the Pyramids on their bucket lists. Wikipedia says Egypt attracted a record 14.7 million visitors in 2010, but numbers have dropped significantly since 2013, due to civil unrest and travel warnings.
Reader M took her teenage sons to Egypt in 2008, “for an education”. It was also a rite of passage, as she had travelled there in 1985. She has no plans to return to Egypt, however, disillusioned by the lack of progress in that country since visiting 23 years earlier.
“Back then Egypt was pretty much culturally secular and was atmospherically a wonderful cross of east meets west. Many women wore the head scarf but an equal number did not. Cairo was cosmopolitan, with French, English and Italian influences. People were open, educated and friendly and the country looked affluent.

“Fast forward 23 years and nothing had been progressed in the country. In fact, a real sense of stagnation was evident. Not a road mended or a building finished….. Every woman was covered and there was pollution and filth everywhere.
“Where previously we were invited to people’s homes and the conversation was about global issues, politics, religion and family, this time the conversation was one-way rhetoric-driven, narrow, politically driven. The difference was staggering.”

Renovate or travel?

So far, we have not been that adventurous. In 1990, we’d been doing the sums on a major renovation of our 1930s colonial in Annerley. We planned to claw the $20k back from mortgage payments as we’d been keeping ahead of the game. Suddenly, in 1991, I found myself between jobs, with two months’ leave before I started the new one. We took our son (aged 9) out of school and spent the $20k on a tour of the US, Canada and New Zealand. We parlayed with the boy’s teacher – he had to keep a journal and make notes of all the amazing things he saw (Niagara Falls, the bilingual McDonald’s in Montreal, the Grand Canyon, Universal Studios, Disneyland, Giant Redwoods, Head Smashed in Buffalo Jump (more on that another day), and Fort McLeod, birthplace of Joni Mitchell (and She Who Planned the Itinerary). We hired a 20-foot recreational ‘ve-hicle’ (RV) from a depot at Anaheim and set off on the LA Freeway at 4.30pm on a Friday afternoon. What were we thinking? I later counselled son that “Mum and Dad were screaming in the car” was not the sort of diary entry his teacher would appreciate.

No regrets at all

Looking back, you never regret the money spent on travel, even when it was shitty; when the digs were below standard, when you all had head colds and the exchange rate was unfavourable. I remember nosing the RV into a parking spot at the Grand Canyon lookout. Our son got out, ran over to the rim of the canyon (it was almost sunset) and went “Wow”. We all went “wow”. He took an amazing photo with a cheap Kodak camera. We drove right around the canyon in the next week, shopping at Native American roadside stalls, talking Aussie to people, feeling light-headed from the rarefied air. A lasting family dinner-time catch phrase stems from overhearing this at an Arizona RV park all you can eat buffet:
“Hey Hank, you wants any more?
“Nope, if I eats any more I’ll be sick.”

US road trip

We rattled across four states in that big RV. The odd highlight (for me) was parking it in a 500-lot RV park in Las Vegas, getting a complimentary shuttle bus to the casino, winning $17 on the slots and queuing up for the $3.99 all you can eat buffet at Circus Circus. I tried to persuade SWPTI to get (re) married in an Elvis chapel (you can do that in Nevada), but she couldn’t get out of Vegas quick enough.
Every time we stopped for a meal at a roadhouse or diner, the wait staff would fuss over our boy and say “make him tark”. We did three days at Disneyland, drove up the coast to San Francisco, took a tour to Alcatraz, went camping in national parks, hugged a redwood, made sure we stored our food in bear-proof lockers. We drove across the desert in the RV we dubbed “Horse with No Name” and nearly died of carbon monoxide poisoning because someone left the rear window open.
We ended the adventure the way it began, stuck in a 90-mile traffic jam (between Vegas and Anaheim).

Those inspired to travel reading books by Robert Byron, Evelyn Waugh, Somerset Maugham, Bruce Chatwin and such probably see travel as M does − as a pilgrimage (religious or not), to experience the journey for itself and to walk in other people’s shoes.
Others have a list of famous places, or a list of risky things to do in said places (e.g. running with the bulls at Pamplona, climbing Uluru or bungy-jumping off the Kawarau bridge at Queenstown).

On our first visit to the Red Centre, we arrived at one of the elevated spots where one can watch the sun set over Uluru. There were a lot of people there, complete with picnic hampers, bubbles, wine glasses, cameras and mobile phones.
Anyway, the sun began to sink and the rock started changing colour; it should have been time for a bit of hush, right? Not for two old blokes from Queensland who spent the entire time talking about how the Broncos were going and who’d win the State of Origin. They’ve come to this ancient, spooky place and can’t handle the feeling they aren’t really supposed to be there. So they drown the feelings out with white fella tribal talk and a few tinnies.

Next day we walked past 30 people waiting to climb the Rock (the climb was later closed because of high winds), which doesn’t excuse the wannabe climbers from ignoring the wishes of local Aborigines.
We took the Mala Walk around Uluru and I wished I’d gone before I left because (hint for others), there are no public toilets on this 11km walk. Apart from that, it was stunningly beautiful; a bit overwhelming, really.
As travel probably should be.