How on Earth Did I End up Here?: Meanderings Through Space, Time and Mind

By Ken Brandon

From the author of 'Continental Drifting' comes another journey around the globe, this time with diversions, digressions and, sometimes meanderings. Strap yourself in for expeditions to the Poles, Poland and PNG; an exploration of family history, Haiti and 'hell on earth' and journeys through space and time with pigeons, toucans and a dog that was shot into space in a rocket of course).

'How on earth did I get here?' is a question (sometimes expletive-laden) we've all asked ourselves at some point in our lives. In this book, 'How on earth did I get here?' Ken has probably provided the answer for you, or an experience/perspective you can relate to.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781922788764

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Leaving home in a sense involves a kind of second birth in which we give birth to ourselves.

-Robert Neelly Bellah

Many live in the ivory tower called reality; they never venture on the open sea of thought.

-Francois Gautier

I tire so of hearing people say, / Let things take their course. / Tomorrow is another day. / I do not need my freedom when I’m dead. / I cannot live on tomorrow’s bread.

-Langston Hughes

Just over four decades ago, I returned from my fifth trip to Africa. I’d already spent some time on every continent except Antarctica and had taken considerable joy in regaling my friends about the adventures and scrapes in which I found myself during those times. I even took further delight in putting some of these encounters into written form, along with my musings, where they remained, like my vacuum cleaner, gathering dust for years and years.

And that’s where they resided until reading an autobiography of a friend, whose kids I had taught, stirred in me the desire to revisit my scribblings. This friend, Stephen Bargwanna, had, in his An Apprenticeship in Australiana: My Education in Six Summers, written an autobiographical recount of six precious years when, as a young man, he had explored Australia and, importantly, himself, in which he questioned his personal journey both within and without.

This got me to thinking. Sure, I’d had many fun and interesting times on the road but there was another dimension that I hadn’t explored, at least in written form. As we all know, when we pack our bags or rucksacks and head off into the unknown, we also take with us our internal baggage which, as we travel and observe and experience the world, is modified and never comes back quite the same.

I remember reading an aphorism in a Readers Digest as I was sitting in a waiting room many years ago. It said You can’t see the picture when you’re inside the frame. As pithy as it was, it stuck with me for, as I travelled the world, I always examined my life back in Sydney with increased clarity and gained new insights. It wasn’t always good, some of it was even painful, but it nearly always proved invaluable.

So, having read Stephen’s book, I decided that I, too, had more to write about other than just amusing accounts of the times I spent on the road. I revisited my earlier recounts and, consequently, augmented them with the inner journeys I undertook all those years ago. So, alongside the humour, I explored some of the less pleasant experiences I’d undergone, no longer concerned with the vulnerability that these revelations might expose me to. Adding this new perspective to my ramblings was, indeed, a rich experience for me. The result was Continental Drifting, my first book, completed at the age of 71.

I could probably best characterise that volume by suggesting it was 80% recount with the rest being some personal revelations and epiphanies, along with some philosophical/historical musings and humour thrown in for good measure. No one could read Continental Drifting and come away with any real or enduring knowledge of the places I’d passed through. It was pretty much a picaresque account of a personal rite of passage through a decade of my existence. At best, the reader might glean or evoke a feel for the times and places, but it would have little value as a traveller’s companion.

Having accomplished that, I had little intention of writing more. Then COVID arrived and I bolted the door finding myself with more time on my hands. I was still teaching part time, but with the extra time at my disposal, I found myself on the computer wanting to know more about, well, everything. I’d always had an insatiable curiosity about the world, hence my travels, and likewise, I had a voracious appetite for the written word. I’d also garnered, over the years, a bit of a reputation for being well-versed in trivia – a lot of bits and pieces about a lot of bits and pieces. But just recently I had a bit of an epiphany (I have them quite regularly), which gave me a new perspective on being in possession of all this disparate information. I began seeing these disparate pieces as parts of a giant jigsaw which helped formed my worldview. And the more pieces I collected and had at my disposal, the better was the overall picture that began to emerge. In fact, I realised I had several jigsaws coming together at the same time.

I decided to see what one of the jigsaws would reveal as I began recounting my time at the North and South Poles over the last decade - just for the sheer fun of it. My backpacking years were well behind me, but I still had an unquenchable thirst for adventure and the desire to fill in the gaps on my map and visit exotic destinations. I figured three or four pages would suffice to cover my journeys to the far north and far south and that would assuage me of my desire to keep writing. How wrong I was. By the time I had completed this exercise about the poles, I ended up with more than thirty pages, the recount component comprising probably less than 10% of the entire effort. It was certainly an exercise in self-indulgence where I explored such diverse topics as history, cosmology, philosophy, the World Wars, the Spanish flu, religion, and so much more. The more I wrote, the more I found myself wandering through the myriad and labyrinthine corridors of human existence.

I was having the time of my life simply by not having to leave my computer, or home for that matter. Anyone reading these pages might readily discern the excitement I was experiencing sitting at my computer, relating and further exploring the sedentary part of a new journey I was now undertaking.

Hamlet says: There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

All well and good, young prince, but there just might be a few more things if we dare to dream more widely, and explore these dreams as well as our philosophy.

Anyway, I was on a roll. In the six months or so in which I undertook this exercise, I found myself with a series of unlikely essays centred around the little known, but fascinating accounts of my destinations such as Poland, Papua New Guinea, Haiti, India, North America and many more. I even managed almost twenty pages where I explored my personal provenance delving, not only into my lineage, but the times and the zeitgeist, historical and philosophical, that my forebears were forced to navigate. And, of course, there was the recount component which led me to these fascinating places in the first place, and the desire to explore them.

I commenced this work with the intention of following a linear path through my peregrinations, but within a short space of time, gave in to caprice, surprising myself and never quite knowing where this path might take me – a labour of love. When I reminisce, I realise my life’s path has been anything but linear. Whimsy had long been my muse. So, whilst this collection is permeated with recounts, brief or expansive as they may be, these recounts are simply the vehicles, or springboards, that have taken me, and hopefully the reader, on this wonderful journey through my own peculiar take on the subject matter, leading me to my weird and rich meanderings through time, space and mind and the unexpected.

PART I

I – POLES APART

Where it is a duty to worship the sun, it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat.

-John Morley

It was probably around 2012 when I was sitting at my desk and, finding myself easily distracted, staring absentmindedly at the map that I’d pinned to the wall directly in eyesight. It’s the same map that constituted the cover of Continental Drifting. I’d managed, over the years, to draw red lines all over it to depict the journeys I’d made to close on 150 countries at that time. But, of course, there were gaps.

At that time, I’d traversed every continent by land with the exception of Antarctica so, on gazing at the map, the North and South Poles needed some addressing and I was just the one to do it. I needed to visit the ends of the Earth, metaphorically, of course. For where, on a sphere would one find the ends? Or the four corners of the world for that matter? Early cosmological and mythological systems portrayed four corners of the world or four quarters of the world corresponding approximately to the four points of the compass. But even back in antiquity, as far back 300BCE in Hellenistic times, it was posited, heaven forfend, that the world may indeed not be flat. And posited with impunity, one might add. Punity came later.

We’ll get back to this soon enough but first let’s look at first my foray to the polar regions. My friend, Fiona, who worked for a major adventure holiday/expedition group was my go-to consultant. I’d travelled with her company to Tibet, Mongolia and Cambodia many years earlier. She’d been to Antarctica with her company and I was aware that they conducted adventure trips to the Arctic. As luck would have it, she was within months of undertaking one of these trips and I was more than interested. At that time, however, my younger daughter, Amy, was about to sit for her HSC and I thought it prudent that I remain at home as a support in the belief that my presence might make a difference. How does one put a score to inspiration?

So Fiona jetted off and did the Arctic thing and I remained behind, looking wistfully at the horizon. And it was probably a good thing that I didn’t go because, on returning, she informed me that it was an average trip and paled into sad comparison to her Antarctic adventure. No polar bears, no killer whales, no penguins (well, duh! Everyone knows that there are no penguins in the Arctic – just testing). Basically, a trip that needed to be undertaken but that was about all. Sometimes we simply need to do things.

Amy duly undertook her HSC and commenced university. I still hadn’t dispensed with the idea of heading north. Obviously, it didn’t hold the allure it had a year ago, but it still needed to be done. I prevailed upon three friends, Chris and Alison - with whom I’d done a number of trips -and Carlie who I’d met in the Stans a few years previously. They were more than happy to take a chance and do the trip.

SVALBARD – NOT ALL BAD

We flew into Oslo where we spent a few days doing the tourist thing before getting a local flight to Longyearbyen which is the main settlement in Svalbard, a mere 2000kms north and well inside the Arctic Circle. Longyearbyen has a number of unique distinctions. With a population of less than 3,000, it’s the world’s most northerly settlement. In fact, the settlement hasn’t been in existence for much more than a century.

American industrialist, John Munro Longyear, established Svalbard as a coal mining interest in the early 1900s which still operates on a very minor and miner scale today. He possessed financial wisdom but seemed to lack imagination mixed with an equal dose of narcissism when he named the settlement Longyear City. They, the locals, Norwegianicised (that just might be the Nordic equivalent of Anglicised – just guessing) the name to Longyearbyen. That should clear up that mystery.

There’s not really a lot to do there. Probably leave is the best thing. Now that’s being a little unkind. The infrastructure is quite adequate. There’s a school and a small university – one can imagine with so few inhabitants, it would be difficult, on campus, not to know everyone and garner a bad reputation. Fortunately, they’re nice people.

For a few months of the year the sun never rises and for a few months it never sets. Plays havoc with the circadian rhythm. I took the mandatory selfie with my watch showing midnight with the sun over my shoulder. One needs not to worry too much about the weather; it’s pretty predictable. Most precipitation is in the form of snow and the daytime summer temperature doesn’t often hit double figures Celsius. Longyearbyen has the lowest known ultraviolet rate for an inhabited place on Earth which is quite impressive.

SVALBARD – AN OLD CURIOSITY SHOP

Cats are banned in Svalbard. The folks there really like their wildlife. In Australia, for instance, it has been revealed that each of these adorable little moggies, when feral, manages to kill 740 animals per year while their domestic cousins, gotta love ‘em, manages to dispatch only around 75 per year. Another reason to like Svalbard.

Another quirk about this place is the requirement that people venturing outdoors must carry a rifle for protection against polar bears which are being seen more often closer to settlements due to their natural environment being under pressure from climate change/global warming and the ice disappearing.

And still another quirk. When will they stop? Since 1950, burials have been disallowed in Longyearbyen. People still manage to die, of course, but the terminally ill are encouraged to leave; I’m guessing return tickets aren’t in high demand. Anyway, it was discovered around 1950, that bodies buried during the 1918 influenza pandemic, aka, the Spanish Flu, had not properly decomposed due to the fact that they had been preserved by the permafrost in which they were interred. Scientists feared that bodies may contain live strains of the virus that knocked over 5% of the world’s population during the pandemic.

A shame, really, that the pandemic has been referred to as the Spanish Flu since that’s not where it originated. In fact, the consensus these days leads us in the direction that it originated in Kansas at the military camp of Fort Riley where poultry and swine were bred for food. When the soldiers were deployed to Europe, they took with them an unwanted and unheralded companion. The US entered the war barely a year prior to the flu’s outbreak. By that time, WWI had been firing on all fronts and, in an effort to maintain morale, in the face of another assailant, censors in France, the UK and Germany, minimised reports of the flu whereas in Spain, which was neutral, newspapers were under no obligation not to report it and consequently the unhappy sobriquet Spanish Flu stuck. That should clear that up.

A SALUTARY LESSON

There’s a saying that the more you know, the more you realise you don’t know. At least, it should be a saying. As I was looking over this chapter and talking particularly about the Spanish Flu, my friend, Trevor, sent me some information about the pandemic of which I was unaware. I’d talked about how the flu had originated in America and spread through Europe, but I neglected to address how it festered in America, the reason being I didn’t know, and this is a point, both of frustration and fascination for me.

We know that upwards of 100 million people died worldwide from the flu, but how, and by how much, was America afflicted? Well, they’d just lost just over 110,000 during the war, 50,000 in armed conflict and the rest to disease, over in Europe, but what effect did the flu exact upon Americans at home? I was in for a shock. As I write this, in the midst of the current pandemic, America, as mentioned above, has fared by far, worse than any other country on the planet with, at the time of writing, was approaching 1,000,000 deaths and rising daily. So how many did they lose in the earlier pandemic? The country’s population in 1920 had just reached 100 million as opposed to the 330 million inhabitants of today. So the reader might be astounded when I reveal that the death total of Americans on home soil due to the Spanish Flu was over 675,000 making it the second biggest claimer of American lives ever (keep in mind the 620,000 fatalities of the Civil War). As a percentage, three times more died in the first pandemic compared to the current one, yet we hear nothing, or very little about it. Not remembering history, as we know, is the surest way to repeat the mistakes which should have been learned.

When America exported the flu to Europe before WWI had run its course, it didn’t send over the whole complement. The deadly outbreak had continued to rage through U.S. military camps back home. To bolster morale and support for the war effort, Philadelphia decided to put on a parade to celebrate the American servicemen and to help sell bonds. Good idea? Probably not. 200,000 people jammed the streets of the city, cheering wildly, as the cavalcade passed by. Lurking among the multitudes on that summer’s day was an invisible peril. A lovely day was had by all.

Two days later, however, the city’s public health director, Wilmer Krusen, issued his grim pronouncement: The epidemic is now present in the civilian population and is assuming the type found in naval stations and cantonments [army camps]. Within three days, every bed in Philadelphia’s hospitals was filled and within another week, 2,600 citizens were dead. City leaders closed down most public areas including schools, churches and theatres.

Krusen, a political appointee, tried to assuage the population by telling them there was nothing to be concerned about, it was just the common old garden variety flu and promised to institute a public campaign against coughing, spitting and sneezing, well aware that certain events had to be cancelled interstate because of the deadly outbreak of the sickness.

Consequently, due to political pressure in the face of contrary medical advice, he decided to press forward with the parade. Big mistake. And so it spread across the country, from sea to shining sea.

Even after the war, when ecstatic Americans flocked to the streets of Philly and other cities, health officials warned that close contact might set off another wave of the disease and constitute a super-spreader. And guess what, they were right.

Kenneth C. Davis, author of More Deadly Than War: The Hidden History of the Spanish Flu and the First World War, comments, just two years ago, As the nation and the world prepare to mark the centennial of the end of The War to End All Wars on November 11, there will be parades and public ceremonies highlighting the enormous losses and long-lasting impact of that global conflict. But it will also be a good moment to remember the damaging costs of short-sighted medical decisions shaped by politics during a pandemic that was more deadly than war.

Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing...Where have all the soldiers gone, gone to graveyards everyone, when will they ever learn, when will they ever learn?

And I just wish people would stop referring to it as a global pandemic. What’s a pandemic if it’s not global? It’s like so many advertisements these days trying to entice the potential customer with a free gift. Well, dah. Tautologies, get thee away!

When will they ever learn, indeed? God bless America. Someone had better.

AMERICA – HOME OF THE BRAVE

So, if the good ole U.S. hadn’t entered the War to End All Wars (that’s a good one), all those who died during that period would have been halved if the flu virus hadn’t found its way to Europe. Of course, that’s also assuming the war didn’t continue beyond 1918, which, no doubt it would have without American intervention. Sometimes, America has helped to bring major conflicts to an early conclusion. But not always.

By early 1917 America still hadn’t entered the war. The Spanish Flu was still to be exported. The country was divided along many grounds. Three factors, more than likely, swung the balance. Tensions had been simmering since May of 1915 when the Lusitania, a British liner carrying over 1,000 passengers, of which nearly 200 were Americans, was torpedoed and sunk off the southern coast of Ireland.

The Germans justified treating the Lusitania as a naval vessel on the imputation she was carrying hundreds of tons of war munitions. That would make her a legitimate military target. They didn’t really know that but, it wouldn’t have been the first time that military engagements would have resulted from flimsy or no evidence. Was the Lusitania carrying weapons or instruments of mass destruction? Well, yes, although it wasn’t until 1982 that the US foreign office finally admitted that salvage teams would want to be just a little more than careful because of the large amount of ordnance still on the wreck. So, both the Germans and Americans were just a little mendacious with the facts. Apparently, they had their right hands behind their backs with their fingers crossed which, according to international law, makes it okay to be a little less than honest.

The second contributor to the US entering the war was more economic. The Americans had been benefiting from the trans-Atlantic trade which supplied Britain and other parts of Europe with much needed resources. The German submarines began wreaking havoc with this shipping in order to break the chain from America to Britain.

TELEGRAM FOR YOU

Now here comes the third factor which gave the US the final impetus to go to war. Not many, even today, are too aware of the infamous Zimmermann Telegram. Talk about strange goings on. Germany had hoped to distract America by fomenting trouble between the US and Mexico. Even though the Mexican-American War had been resolved by 1848 with the victorious Americans annexing Texas, Mexico was still smarting after all these years. Remember and don’t forget the Alamo? Certainly, both Davey Crockett and Jim Bowie would have preferred a rain cheque.

In January 1917, British intelligence intercepted and decoded a telegram sent by Arthur Zimmerman of the German Foreign Office, to the German ambassador in Mexico to the effect that, if America looked likely to enter WWI, then then Germans would fund and form an alliance with Mexico in order to help them reconquer the lost territories of Texas, Arizona and New Mexico which had been lost almost seventy years prior. This would keep the Americans busy enough to stay away from the European conflict. The Mexican president and generals quickly concluded that this was a no-goer. Mexico was already mired in its own civil war and even if, by some weird chance, the country managed its own cease-fire, they would be mightily outgunned by their northern neighbour.

Ultimately the US congress was made aware and convinced of the authenticity of the communiqué and this induced even more anti-German sentiment and, to a degree, was furthermore instrumental in the Americans entering the big one. Congress voted, on April 6 to declare war on Germany. The dogs of war had well and truly been let loose. Anyway, Zimmerman didn’t send many telegrams after that and was confined to his room.

There were still many isolationists in America who wanted to stay out of the war. American participation led many of them to condemn President Wilson’s decision and referred to the war as Wilson’s War.

Even though America entered the war so late (early April, 1917), nearly five million men and women served in the regular armed forces with almost three million serving overseas. America lost over 50,000 killed in action and another 63,000 from diseases and other causes, bringing the total to just over 110,000. Compare this to the fatalities for WWII of over 400,000. Vietnam only accounted for around 60,000. But the greatest loss of American lives occurred during the Civil War where close to 620,000 citizens perished. But wait, there’s more. As I’m writing this, more Americans have died in the last 18 months from COVID 19 than any other period in American history. By the May 2022, the total is now over 1,000,000.

But we’re not through with Herr Zimmerman yet. He was quite an unsavoury character, hence having his fingers in many pies. How else, he ruminated, could he help the German war effort? He already had form – not good form, but as a meddler, he was pretty much nonpareil. A few years earlier, the Irish revolutionary, Roger Casement, had visited Arthur and together, they hatched a plan to ship 25,000 soldiers along with 75,000 rifles to the west coast of Ireland but nothing came of it. The German general staff had bigger fish to fry. Early in 1916, Roger Casement returned to Ireland in a u-boat, and was captured and executed. A German ship, the Libau, sporting Norwegian colours, actually did, with 20,000 rifles, try to link up with Irish rebels on the south Irish coast, but failed to do so resulting in the ship being scuttled. A shame for the Irish republicans who, counting on support to help end British rule in Ireland, launched the Easter Rising (known to the Irish as Éirí Amach na Cásca – better we stick to the Rising) in April and were subsequently crushed by the British. Still, despite the defeat, the ground was laid for the declaration in 1921 of an independent Irish Republic although it was restricted to only 21 of the 32 counties. The Rising lasted less than two weeks and proved to be only a temporary distraction for the British.

Perhaps we should return to Zimmerman before consigning him to history. He cast his beady eyes around and they alighted on Switzerland. There was someone there who just might help the German was effort. And by help I mean by Russia being absent. Russia and the vagaries of its climate had proved too much for Napoleon way back in 1812 and would again do so to repel the German juggernaut in WWII. It would be good for Germany if Russia could withdraw from WWI at let Germany do its thing. There were a lot of unhappy people in Russia at the time and if Germany could help distract Russia from its war effort, that would be one less worry for them. In March, 1917, with the Russian front in a parlous state, Zimmerman took steps to promote Peace in the East with Russia. He set forth many proposals not the least of which was to facilitate the key ingredient that would promote and entrench the nascent revolution. That ingredient came in the form of one Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known to the world as Lenin. Lenin, who had spent many years in exile, had settled in Switzerland where he had become a major player in the dissemination of publications promoting Marxist ideology. Thanks, in large part, to Zimmerman, Lenin was allowed to pass through Germany in a sealed train on his circuitous route back to Russia and the October Revolution took on a new momentum.

America entered the war in April of 1917 and Zimmerman resigned in ignominy in August of that same year. He lived until 1940 when he died of pneumonia in, of all places, Berlin.

THE NO DOUGH BOYS

We’ll get back to the North