Slips, Trips and Stumbles: In the Adventurous Life of a Serial Careerist

By Mark Otter

In this deliberately incomplete and selective memoir, the author relates experiences from his extraordinary life of travel around the world. Some stories are interesting, some exciting, some of life-affirming importance, some humorous, some heart-warming, some hair-raising, some crazy, some quite silly and probably ill-advised, but all of them are exotic and fun. And they are all completely true. Some of the stories in this book are of extraordinary experiences of nature, humanity or even geo-politics that the author has been amazingly privileged to experience.

Read about his experiences of surviving a plane crash; having a first contact visit with primitive people; swimming in filthy waters where he should not have; doing some nocturnal wanderings in an unfamiliar city; making a fool of himself in Ireland; getting frustrated by officialdom in Russia; enjoying the delights of Scandinavia; exploring fascinating European history; swimming in a number of European countries but, most of all, enjoying the thrill of it all. There are stories here from about 50 countries; and there are still many more (stories and countries) to come.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: May 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9798369490945

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Copyright © 2023 by Mark Otter.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Rev. date: 05/05/2023

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CONTENTS

Dedication

Prefacei

1 Introduction: about this book and me

Something to make a difference

The Navy

DFAT/AusAID/NZ

Academia/WWF

Almost losing one life and getting a new one

2 The navy

Vietnam

UK

Patrol Boats

Back to the big navy

HMAS Balikpapan – my first (and only) command

More ‘media tart’ experiences

Working for the boss

What next?

3 Solomon Islands

The Bugarup

‘Don’t go up there, Mark’

Temotu Province

A plane crash

4 Papua New Guinea (PNG)

Diversity

Throwim Way Leg Bilong Mi in Papua Niugini

Security

Mount Bosavi

Birds of Paradise

5 Other Pacific Island Countries

Fiji

Samoa

Tonga

Vanuatu

Kiribati and Tuvalu

Niue

Cook Islands

Nauru

Federated States of Micronesia (FSM)

6 Indonesia

Navy days

Honeymoon and a later ‘adventurous’ trip

2002: PhD field research

Bom Bali

7 Other Asian Countries

Hong Kong and Macau

Korea

The Philippines

Bangladesh

China

8 South America

Brazil

Argentina

9 Ireland

Ballykissangel

10 Germany

My introduction to European trains

Früstück Zimmers I have known

Berlin

Hanover

Usedom

Rügen

Borkum

The nasty stuff: Germany’s legacies of Nazism and communism

Konzentrationslager (concentration camps)

Nürnberg (Nuremberg)

Dresden

Communism, the GDR, the Stasi, the fall of the Wall and re-unification

Leipzig

11 Scandinavia (or is it the Nordics?)

Norway (Norge/Noreg)

Denmark (Danmark)

Finland (Suomi)

The train trip from the Fourth Dimension

Sweden (Sverige)

12 Other European Countries

Estonia (Eesti)

Russia: Reflections on St Petersburg

A cycling trip in Austria, Slovakia and Hungary

Switzerland: Geneva

Austria (again), Czechia and Slovakia

13 Swimming Trips

Turkey: Istanbul and the Hellespont

The Hellespont. Why do it?

Croatia

Italy’s Lake Orta (Lago d’Orta) #1

Lake Constance/Bodensee #1

Lake Orta (Lago d’Orta) #2

Lake Constance/Bodensee #2 and Zürich

Dubrovnik and Montenegro

Slovenia

Venice

Sydney

Wildlife Rescue

14 And finally ... what does all this mean?

DEDICATION

T his book is dedicated to my children and grandchildren. Be curious and questioning … always and about everything. Seize and make the best of life’s opportunities, and to accept the odd inevitable disappointments with good grace when they come your way.

PREFACE

* * *

Does one travel to experience beauty alone or to understand a society with all its blemishes?

* * *

T his book is really just a collection of interesting stories as they relate to my exciting life of travel in both professional and private capacities. They are all true, totally without any stretching of the truth and they all happened to me personally. Lots of other memoirs mix up fiction and non-fiction. Were I to do that, the whole effect and purpose of the book would be compromised because it wouldn’t be genuine. I relate the events and experiences I do here because I find them funny, interesting, adventurous, quirky, sad, embarrassing, life-changing – or, in some cases, all of those. I am completely happy to plead guilty to the inevitable reviewer’s crack that they form a disjointed chronicle and that they may be completely irrelevant to anything of importance in the world. It is also deliberately incomplete; there are many more stories but I have chosen the ones I think may be of greater interest. In a few cases, they relate extraordinary experiences of nature, humanity or even geo-politics that I have been amazingly privileged to experience. It is certainly not an autobiography. It is, in essence, an incomplete and selective memoir.

I pondered long about a suitable title and sub-title for this book. The ones I chose are fine - the sub-title is accurate, the main title is also appropriate as it relates to the fun, excitement and near-misses in my life of travel. There certainly have been risky experiences and a few of them could well have done with a bit of prior sensible thought and planning but, had I done so, I probably would not have done them; and to have done them has made my life interesting and I look back on them with nostalgia … well, mostly. Most of the risks I took were mild enough; indeed many of them are just funny or silly and accompanied by some degree of mirth from friends, colleagues and family. Perhaps others were thoroughly deserving of the tut-tutting or even more serious criticism by superiors and the same colleagues, friends and family. There have been some experiences, such as swimming in filthy waters in a port in Indonesia or walking alone through risky neighbourhoods in the middle of the night in a certain Asian city while probably not very sober, would perhaps have been better not attempted. But I didn’t break anything or hurt anyone. I wouldn’t have chosen to go to war or to have had my heart attack, but then I had little choice about either. So how would I advise others contemplating some of my adventures? A fulfilling life is all about getting out of one’s comfort zone and doing different things, preferably things that will make a positive difference to others. Do what seems like a good idea at the time with some thought about consequences, but not too much; that’s about all I can say.

I also pondered over many months (years?) how to structure this little story. After trying several ideas out, I had decided on a thematic approach divided into such topics as ‘scary incidents’, ‘life-changing moments’, ‘moments of sheer pleasure’ or ‘adventure’. But then I changed my mind. Don’t worry, all of the same stories to do with exciting and adventurous experiences are still there, just in a more-or-less country order with just a slight nod to chronology. While it is not intended to be an autobiography, no doubt some of my life’s progress and some of my personal philosophy will come through. That is why the term ‘memoir’ is an apt description of the book. The older I get, the more certain I am of many of my moral or political ideas and some aspects of this will inevitably come through. I can’t apologise for any of it – indeed I am quite proud of that; if you are offended, as a great comedian once said, ‘you may leave the room’.

I refer to a number of people in the book, but none of them by name. I don’t want to offend anybody or embarrass them in front of others. So, you may identify with some of the protagonists if you feel so inclined – you may be correct, but maybe not. As Francis Urquhart would say, ‘I couldn’t possibly comment’.

I suppose it is just human nature to see all new personal experiences as unique. So, the stories you are about to read have been unique, at least they seemed to be so for me at the time or, as someone once said ‘You are unique; so am I. That’s something we all have in common’. Perhaps I’m not one to take the hint that a subject has been adequately covered already, so forgive me if that is how it seems to the reader. But I am curious and I am inclined to be relentless in finding out stuff, whether it is in a book, on the internet, or, as often as not, from getting out there and taking a good look for myself. There is always another country to visit, another language to be confused by, another experience to have or another headland to swim around – just to see what is there and to see how people do things differently.

I hope you enjoy the read. If you are just a little inspired to buy that plane, ship, bus or train ticket, then I will have achieved my aim. Perhaps I will see you ‘out there somewhere’. I hope so.

* * *

Books, like lighthouses, illuminate the dark seas of life. The searching beam at a light station won’t identify every object in the ocean, nor can a memoir capture a life in its true entirety. (John Cook. The Last Lighthouse Keeper: a Memoir)

* * *

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION: ABOUT THIS BOOK AND ME

* * *

The distance is nothing; it is only the first step that is difficult. (Marie de Vichy-Chamrond, Marquise du Deffand, letter to Jean Le Rond d’Alembert, 7 July 1763)

* * *

Something to make a difference

S o, how did I embark on this travelling life? I suppose it started with a teenage dream of doing something out of the ordinary and, if it doesn’t sound too self-indulgent, something that would ‘make a difference’, perhaps even noble. I don’t remember any specific incident but, by about the age of fifteen, I wanted to break out of suburbia and the monotony of nine to five living. And I wanted to travel. My father had been a good provider and, as far as I could tell, content with his life, but he worked for the same company for his entire working life except for a wartime stint in the navy. I didn’t want that. I wanted something different and I wanted to see the world. My parents wanted me to be a public servant or a teacher – job security and all that stuff, but neither rang my bells (strange, but I did both of them later). I didn’t shake any academic rafters at school but I did well enough to gain entrance to university which I did not take up then but I did that later too, three times. Instead I joined the navy as an officer cadet. To be honest, I suppose I wanted a career that provided some prestige. I probably wanted family and friends to say ‘Hey, that Mark’s done well. I never thought he would amount to much’. And I suppose I wanted my parents to be proud by my following in my father’s footsteps in the navy. Or maybe that is just my lifelong need to be respected, perhaps especially to myself.

There was some family background in things nautical. My paternal grandfather was a master mariner and my maternal grandfather was a shipwright and boat builder. There was also a strong navy tradition going back a couple of generations in the family – one grandfather in the navy during the First World War, the other grandfather spending most of his boatbuilding life working at the navy’s main dockyard at Garden Island in Sydney. My father was in the navy from before the Second World War until a while afterwards and my brother was a naval reservist. And it wasn’t just the males. My aunt was in the WRANS during the war and my mother worked for the navy. So I suppose I couldn’t really escape a naval career.

The Navy

We officer cadets (our rank was formally ‘Cadet Midshipmen’) at the Royal Australian Naval College at Jervis Bay were constantly reminded of the elite nature of our chosen career. I remember being told on our first day ‘You are the cream of Australian youth’, and then having it repeated at regular intervals for the next few years. What a load of nonsense! The best that can be said is that it was true for all those who thought that they wanted such a life, managed to fill in the application form correctly and to give the interviewing committee the answers that they seemed to be looking for. Altogether somewhat less than ‘elite’, but that is what we were told.

Nevertheless the navy did provide me with a quite special foundation for my life that followed. It gave me a strong work ethic and an attention to detail which I might not otherwise have had. It certainly provided me with travel. Yes, it does, or at least it did then, live up to its claim of ‘join the navy, see the world’, and I spent a decade or more travelling through Southeast Asia, the Pacific, the US and the UK and I saw a good bit of Australia in the process. I also experienced various strata of Australian life, some of which I was not too impressed with. It certainly had its exciting and adventurous moments and I relate some of these in this book.

By far the best job I had in the navy was having the command of what it calls a ‘minor war vessel’. Taking my little ship and its crew to Indonesia was challenging but fun and it was also a career-changing point in my life. I had what could be deemed to be a quite successful early career as a junior naval officer but, at the age of about 30, I pulled the plug on the navy as I was keen to move on from what I had determined was a constrained and restricted life. It has been said that ‘a man only succeeds in a military organisation if he subordinates himself to it unconditionally’ and I suppose my subordination was found wanting. I wanted to do other things in my life and the sooner I started off on that path the better. I had to find an alternative career.

At various times in my naval career I had been exposed to the work of diplomats and others working overseas and I had developed an interest in things Indonesian, including that country’s history and language. I knew what I wanted to do next. I found that that extraordinary and complex country fascinated me so, after resigning my commission, I enrolled at the Australian National University in a Bachelor of Arts degree majoring in the Indonesian language and political science.

Despite being initially concerned whether I was bright enough to handle university study and terrified that my fellow students might call me ‘granddad’ as I was more than a decade older than most of them, I thoroughly enjoyed the student experience. I guess I still had the navy work ethic so, in contrast to most undergraduates, I worked a nine to five day every day which eventually paid off by my finishing my four year honours degree in three years. ANU was – and still is – absolutely the best university in Australia (and probably in the world) to study Asia and I revelled in the opportunity to sit in on seminars conducted by leading scholars in the economics, politics and languages of Asia. And, no, I shouldn’t have been worried about what the other students thought of me; they treated me as just one of them.

So for the next thirty years or so I worked on international relations and international development issues, either formally in government or doing similar work for non-government organisations and in academia, both at home in Australia and in many parts of the world.

DFAT/AusAID/NZ

As I was finishing my degree, I went to work for the Department of Foreign Affairs, at least its foreign aid arm which was then called the Australian Development Assistance Bureau (ADAB). ADAB was to change its name a few times over the next few years eventually settling on the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID) as a separate agency of government, only to finally being re-absorbed back into the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT).

In two years, which included a short stint in Indonesia, I was off on my first long-term posting – to the Solomon Islands. As a short aside, it is interesting to consider why I was sent to the Solomons when my academic background and language study centred on Indonesia, but the weird processes at play among the posting folk in Foreign Affairs were just that. In fact, I was advised to apply for posting to Samoa, which I did only to find that I got my posting orders to the Solomons instead. But I’m so glad that’s how it turned out. Samoa would have been much more comfortable but the Solomon Islands proved to be so much more rewarding ... and adventurous. My two and a bit years posting there were so eventful, and full of so many extraordinarily adventurous things, that it completely changed my perspective on so many aspects of my life. I described my adventures in the Solomons in a book, Once Were The Happy Isles, so go out and buy it but I will repeat a couple of those adventures in this book (see Chapter 3).

Returning to Australia, I went to work for two years for the then Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs, another fascinating time with a sometimes personally difficult but an amazingly intelligent, talented and driven man. Then I went on an exchange posting to New Zealand, which was interesting from a number of perspectives. I held down a position in the New Zealand foreign ministry, which was then called the Ministry of External Relations and Trade and, once my colleagues got used to my accent – and I theirs – and we had exhausted all our Aussie/Kiwi jokes, I was accepted as an honorary Kiwi.

I travelled the Pacific extensively in that role representing the New Zealand government and, even though Australia and New Zealand are as close as any two sovereign countries can be, I saw international relations and diplomacy from a marginally different perspective. Australia likes to consider itself a ‘middle power’ with at best a ‘special relationship’ with the island states of the Pacific, whereas New Zealand has no such pretentions and considers itself just another Pacific island country, albeit the largest and most developed.

I managed to develop quite an interest and understanding in things Pacific from my time with both governments, so it should be no surprise that many of my tales I relate in this book occurred in that part of the world. While in Wellington, my New Zealand bosses thought that this ignorant Aussie would benefit from undertaking a ‘Maori culture and customs’ course. I got so much enjoyment and inter-cultural understanding out of the course that I would sing waiata (songs sung at gatherings in the Marae, the Maori meeting place) to my children – and then my grandchildren – but perhaps not with the soporific effect that I had planned. In fact, I think that my daughter even forbade me from singing them at one stage, perhaps as a comment on my singing ability.

Academia/WWF

Back home, I took time off to undertake a Masters degree and then I took extended leave to work for a non-government organisation active in international development research which, of course, delivered further adventurous material, especially in the Philippines and Bangladesh as well as more in the Pacific. Then it came time to cut ties completely with government service, at least as a full-time employee, and I tried my hand at academic life. My first step was to take a temporary job as the Director of the Development Studies Program at the University of New England in Armidale, New South Wales, while the incumbent was on sabbatical. Then I moved to the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland as a lecturer.

Being one of the ‘Group of Eight’ top research universities in Australia, UQ requires its academic staff members to hold a PhD, or at least to commit to undertake one. I doubt if I had even heard of a PhD until I studied as an undergrad at ANU some years before but, once I had brushed with the work of those with PhDs, or those studying towards that lofty goal, I toyed with the idea of eventually doing one myself. So the demand of UQ was not at all unwelcome although, at the age of 50, I wondered if I had the stamina to see it through. But see it through I did, albeit spread over six years of part-time study and with a number of doubts as to whether I could complete it, an experience that all PhD candidates go through at some stage of their ordeal I guess. Eventually I got an enormous thrill to have my children in the audience at my graduation ceremony hearing their Dad’s name called out with the prefix ‘Doctor’.

Eventually, after another few years, another opportunity came my way, this time from WWF which is formally known as the World Wide Fund for Nature and, formerly, the World Wildlife Fund, which is how most people still know it. My job with WWF was basically government liaison or lobbying, but they like to call it advocacy. Diplomacy is fundamentally the art of convincing a foreign government to act in a way that it wouldn’t otherwise do so, in that sense, my work with WWF was much the same as I had been doing in government. From an adventurous life perspective, not only did my employment with WWF take me back to Asia and the Pacific often, it also took me to Europe, just visiting at first and then living in Germany for a while. After some decades of concentrating on the part of the world close to home, apart from almost 12 months in the UK training with the British navy, I knew very little of Europe. But all that was to change; and it was so different, exotic (for me at least) ... and exciting and adventurous.

Almost losing one life and getting a new one

The next career iteration came quite unexpectedly. After seven years with WWF, I had completed a contract period and I was back in Brisbane from Germany for my son’s graduation from university and to spend Christmas with family when a life-altering event happened to me. I was bushwalking with a brother-in-law (who is a doctor) on a typically hot and humid Queensland summer’s day when I became quite short of breath and had difficulty getting up a relatively low hill. Doctor brother-in-law asked if I had chest pain, to which I replied ‘no’, then he said something like ‘Well you’re not having a heart attack, so just pull your finger out and get up the bloody hill’. The next day I was still short of breath and I phoned the family GP. ‘Don’t come to me’, he said. ‘If you are having a heart attack, you will need to be in hospital, so take yourself there straight away’. So I took him literally by his word and drove myself to hospital, an act for which I was severely criticised by the hospital staff a short time later. ‘That’s why we have an ambulance service’, they said. About two seconds after presenting myself to the receptionist in the Emergency Department of Brisbane’s principal public hospital stating that I think I may be having a heart attack, I was whisked inside and subject to a range of tests.

When the results of the tests came back, I probably rudely accused the medical staff of confusing me with someone else, but the cardiologist very kindly and patiently told me ‘No mate, these results are yours. You have between 80 and 90 percent of your coronary arteries blocked and you have to have a by-pass operation very quickly’. I had had a heart attack apparently and I was about to have another one and it was likely to be severe, more than likely fatal. I was completely shocked as I thought I was pretty physically fit and had a good diet, but I had to acknowledge that there is a long history of heart disease in my family, especially down the male line, so the reasons for my predicament were all to do with genetics.

To cut a long story short, I came out of hospital three weeks later with four new coronary arteries, or at least by-passes to the three main arteries plus one ‘tributary’. I don’t know whether I am naturally alarmist but, while I was waiting for the surgery, I had convinced myself that I wasn’t going to survive it, or at least that I would not be able to have an active lifestyle afterwards. So, after asking my son to drive my car home to avoid an exorbitant bill from the hospital car park, I gathered my children to my bedside, told them that I loved them, reminded them where my will was kept and gave them a list of the people I wanted to be informed of my demise. Of course, I needn’t have been so worried as I obviously did survive and eventually made a full recovery. Indeed the family GP said to me some time later ‘You didn’t exactly go into this with a positive attitude, did you?’

I had recently turned 60 and, while I was trying to figure out what had just happened to me and what I was going to do with the rest of my life, I came across a quotation which seemed apt in my circumstances (I would cite the author if I could remember who it was):

When one turns 60, one normally has a wake-up call. ‘Goodness me, is that the time already?’

On my discharge from hospital and a rather lengthy period of convalescence, I decided to not return to stressful career work and instead chose to pursue yet another occupation, one that was more physical than cerebral and building on my love of swimming. So, by the end of my ‘heart event’ year, I had transformed from a stressed out ‘suit’ into a swimming instructor and coach, a surf lifesaver and an instructor in lifeguarding and related things. But what about adventurous foreign travel? Well, for a few years, I took fellow swimming tragics and others interested in out-of-the-ordinary travel opportunities on holidays to Europe, predominantly related to swimming, and sometimes cycling, but with good dollops of new cultural, linguistic, historic and gastronomic experiences thrown in. I had already taken myself to Turkey to swim the Hellespont, a three to five kilometre distance (depending on the current at the time) across the Dardanelles and I reckoned I could do a better job of being a tour guide than the one I had.

At the time of writing, I have taken groups of swimmers to Italy, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Croatia, Montenegro and Slovenia, with side trips to other parts of Europe, especially the Nordic countries. I have plans to do more swimming trips to Finland, Latvia, Spain and no doubt more, assuming that my by-passed arteries allow it and that COVID-19 travel restrictions continue to relax. And, yes, there will be another book on things swimming, tentatively entitled Swimming with an Otter.

While Europe has appeared in my life mostly in more recent years, and fascinatingly so, it is Asia and the Pacific where most of my adult life has been spent; a combination of living there, visiting just about all of the countries of the region, some often, and at least for most of the time, working. For a baby-boomer Australian, I have lived through the Asia-awaking period in