From a small single fronted house in an inner Melbourne suburb, considered in those days to be a slum (today being remodelled as trendy town houses selling for big bucks), we moved a bit further out to a Californian bungalow house in a wilderness area where the Darebin Creek met the Yarra River, known as Fairy Hills.
Incredibly this was also suburbia and still only a short distance from the heart of the CBD.
At the same time every year, I was told, a certain rare bird flew from Japan to the Darebin Creek wilderness, the only location outside Japan that this bird has ever been seen.
For 15 years my favourite pastime was to sit by the creek in the peace of Nature gazing into the clear water rippling over rocky beds and walking alone along the rough bush tracks.
They were my first lessons in life learned 80 years ago, the lessons of life lived close to Nature and the ancient unspoiled wilderness land of the aborigine. For tens of thousands of years it was used as a food and tool source sustainably by the Wurundjeri people.
And then leaving that natural environment in my mid teens to live in a government housing estate of rows of little boxes was a bit of a shock.
I had imagined the rest of the world was like this and I slowly came to be aware that it wasn’t.
Big lesson.
For the rest of my life I guess I was always searching for an understanding of Nature and for the lost wilderness of my youth.
Now, 80 years later, I’m still a young man with an active mind, with so much to share with you about life, of living with the physical limitations of a spinal stenosis that is not going to stop me blogging and sharing what I’ve learned (and still learning).
I’ve walked the walk, now I’m talkin’ the talk.
My curiosity about life’s deeper meaning began one day back some 10 years later, in my mid 20s, when I attended a lecture on UFOs. Then another on Buddhism. And another … well, they had me at the mention of UFOs reported in a book by a New Zealand ex-pilot.
I was keen to know more.
So I found the Melbourne Theosophical Society and headed for the library.
An hour later, after chatting with the librarian there, I came away with a couple of books that set me off in the direction of searching for life secrets and Truth for the rest of my life.
If you’re interested in finding the kind of books you are unlikely to find in other libraries look for them in your local city.
THE NOT SO MAD MEN OF ADLAND
All this was happening while I was trying to make my way as a copywriter in the glamorous world of advertising.
I worked for a while at the second largest ad agency in the world, McCann Erikson, and another, considered the hottest agency in town, working on the Volkswagen account.
It was here that I learned philosophy as well as how to write in a casual, laid back, friendly style which, it seemed, had never been done before in advertising.
I learned first hand the secrets of, for example, using white space for emphasis while everyone else was using up every bit of while space to shout ‘Buy me’.
And I learned to admit apparent faults and focus on a minor benefit to increase believability.
At that time we were saying for VW ‘Think Small’ when everyone else was shouting ‘Think Big’ and, for Avis Rent-a-car, saying ‘We’re Only Number 2 So We Try Harder’ when everyone else was saying they were number 1.
In 1972, at one ad agency, I won an award for the best television campaign for a brand of oval meat pies at the Australian National Television Society Awards, in which I explained the ridiculous benefits of eating an oval pie rather than a round or square pie.
A few years later I was involved in the launch of Animal Liberation in Australia to address cruelty to animals. The slogan I wrote ‘A voice for the animals’ was used for many years and was the title of a book on animal rights. I still have a framed print of a chicken with a thank you message from patron Peter Singer, today a professor of Bioethics at Princeton University.
I was the first official member of the Permaculture Association. Today a worldwide phenomenon, Permaculture was launched by Tasmanian academics Bill Mollison and David Holmgren in the mid 1970’s with an “integrated, evolving system of perennial or self-perpetuating plant and animal species useful to mankind.”
These special people had a lasting influence on my thinking throughout the rest of my life.
DISASTER STRIKES
On the path to ‘success’ I started my own one-man freelance copywriting business from home, a classic solid brick Victorian terrace house in a trendy inner suburb with my family, cats and dog. At weekends we escaped to our country cottage on an acre in the Central Highlands complete with white picket fence and a spring well.
I tried to put into practice the brilliant ad-changing philosophy I’d learned from my earlier teachers but found, to my great disappointment, that nobody else got it. They wanted to fill every corner of space, every moment of time, with Think Big and We’re Number 1 messages that shouted Buy Me.
After 10 years of moderate success the business (and I) crashed and burned in bankruptcy. Alone I retreated to the hills 100 kilometres north of Melbourne with nothing. A kind soul offered her old caravan parked on the roadside outside her home in a small country town.
It’s where I lived for 5 years, homeless, penniless, jobless and unemployable.
I became active in the town and, following a series of articles I wrote on the gold rush history of the area published in the local press, an annual Hepburn Springs Swiss-Italian Festa was organised by the owner of the general store. As far as I know it’s still held mid-year today as a popular tourist attraction in Hepburn Springs.
THE HOMELESS YEARS
While living in the caravan I met a woman who had become allergic to all chemicals, to the point of having to live away from exposure to pretty much everything, and said she was cured by a stranger using meditation and reflexology.
With the District Nurse and a local doctor we decided to start ‘The Springs Whole Health Group’. Our monthly meetings were never short of interesting speakers – her on chemical allergies, meditation, reflexology, hypnotherapy, ley lines, water divining. Before each meeting I would interview each speaker and hand articles to the local newspaper – which usually appeared on page 3.
For most of my adult life I’ve been drawn to the origins of all the religions and spiritual philosophies of the world. I studied Religious Experience at Deakin University.
A MEANINGFUL LIFE
Like in all fairy tales a small miracle happened and, as if kissed by a beautiful princess (I wish) I woke from a long sleep and set about creating the life I’d dreamed of all along – as a genuine writer of meaningful material, instead of ads.
Within this tale of extremes of fortunes lie many life lessons not normally experienced by those who miss out on the fairy tale and avoid the life disasters.
“Either write something worth reading,” wrote Benjamin Franklin, “or do something worth writing.”
Well in 80 years, I have lived, and I’m writing what I’ve done and what I’ve learned in the way of mostly unconventional wisdom.
Today I’m living the life of my dreams, the Simple Single Life in a quiet seaside fishing village famous for its mussels in a rural setting close to my 2 grown daughters and my 2 adorable granddaughters.
It’s the home of the Annual Mussel Festival and the National Celtic Festival. Why don’t you come some time?
I spend my time writing and blogging online, writing non-fiction books about what I’ve learned from an eventful life and hangin’ out with my beautiful family.
A year ago I was diagnosed with lumbar canal stenosis which has left me with limited use of my legs. I was offered spinal surgery which I declined, at which point I was told I would never walk again and would live the rest of my life in a wheelchair.
With the help of a strenuous exercise program, meditation, diet, visualization and the amazing guidance of the care facility where I’m now living I am already proving them wrong.
A few years earlier I was diagnosed with an enlarged prostate which I was warned was irreversible. Yet I reversed it. Within 6 months I had removed all of the symptoms with natural therapies and diet. Examinations since have all been negative.
THE SECRETS OF LIFE
I believe it was Ernest Hemingway who wrote that you can’t be a writer until you’ve lived.
Well, I’ve lived and I’m free at last to write the kind of material that can change lives. At last I am free to tell my story in the hope that you can learn from my adventures.
For the past 80 years.
And therein lies a secret.
There’s more to life than meets the eye.
Best wishes
aussieblogger
“80 years of secrets”
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