Michael's Blog

Blog: Michael Hedger

Introduction:

It was suggested by my doctor some five years ago, that when I retired from work I should write a blog. He said that writing was my best skill and that it would be beneficial, for many reasons, to continue. It has taken me all these intervening years to arrive at this point. I did not plan to write art reviews or similar although some may appear from time to time if I feel that I need to express something.

I decided that I would write about life stories, unusual family stories and other topics that I feel are interesting. I have read other blogs and those that I have found to be most diverting were conversational in tone and they discussed or analyzed amazing things about the everyday. I may change my mind many times before I come to a set format, if at all. In the meantime, read on.

Thank you for reading and I look forward to your comments!

Family stories 1: Ashes to Ashes

After my mother died her ashes were duly divided among her four children. When a portion was delivered to me, a small amount was placed under a newly planted tree and the rest left in the cask for another day. I had heard somewhere that all of the ashes should not be placed onto the plant at once, because there is a risk of them “burning” the roots. I don’t know if this is correct, but it’s something that I have kept in mind.

The cask with the remaining ¾ of the ashes was placed on a table in the garden. I realized some six months later that it had disappeared and that it must have floated away with the 2020 Hawkesbury flood, along with lots of other things. (I presume you know that there have been many floods the Hawkesbury area in recent years and in fact I’m still dealing with the damage caused by the multiple 2022 deluges.) I then forgot about the cask, presuming that Mum must be bobbing about in the Tasman Sea after an epic voyage down the Hawkesbury River to the coast.

A year later, I received two phone calls informing me that there was a photo and message on Facebook asking if anyone knew anything about a cask of ashes found on the St Albans Common. They were found by Corey Ryan, the Herdsman of the Common, whom I know well but who obviously did not know my surname. The “Hedger” sticker on the top was clear to see. The message went viral, as they say, and I received calls and messages from friends and relatives all around the country and from overseas and then from many people I didn’t know. I was interviewed by several regional newspapers, by Channel 7 News and then by James Valentine of ABC Radio Sydney. He was rather entranced by the story. That interview, of course, led to many more messages and calls.

I began to feel guilty that my reaction to the event was far less emotive than those of others. So many people were intrigued by the story that my mother’s ashes had only flowed a few kilometres from my property and had lodged themselves in a tree, waiting to be “discovered” and “returned” to me, as many romantic souls assured me.

Later, a journalist came to photograph me receiving the cask back from Corey and this picture lives with the story on the Hawkesbury Advocate website and presumably in other outlets as well. My 15 minutes of fame had been attained.

The cask is now in the shed, and small extractions from it are spread under Mum’s maple tree from time to time. These ashes were well travelled, but in another extraordinary twist, they were vastly outdone by a placement of some others in my mother’s grandfather’s grave on the island of Barra, in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland. They were interred there by our family historian, my cousin Wendy McLean. Mum wasn’t a keen traveller, had never met her paternal grandfather nor journeyed to Scotland, but in her afterlife she is making up for that.

A neat spin to this story is that on what was to be our mother’s last night, my brother and I left her room at the nursing home and went to the common room for a break from sitting beside her. The rock video show Rage came on the TV and the opening song was David Bowie’s Ashes to Ashes.

Family Stories 2: Rent

A story I related at my mother’s funeral is one that always aroused great interest and reactions and some incredulity.

My mother was of the third generation of the L M Harvey & Sons family who ran a large Sydney auctioneering business in Crown Street, Darlinghurst (The building is still there.) Without going into all the details of how this business came to be and how it was run (which I may pick up at some future stage), it is sufficient to say that my great grandmother, Laura May Harvey (after whom my mother was named), was the matriarch of a large clan and a very successful businesswoman who had a great knack of acquiring and selling real estate. Over many years, she bought and sold many properties and was the first woman to become a licensed property auctioneer in NSW. (There is an old family joke that my mother could not go into any street in Sydney between about Rozelle and Maroubra without saying, “Nana had a house here”, a line that we heard multiple times. How my mother could say that confidently will be shared in a later entry.)

Anyway, my great grandmother owned or leased many properties throughout The Rocks and Millers Point and my mother’s Saturday morning job for several years, from the age of around 12, was to collect the weekly rent from the tenants of the houses and flats. She was often accompanied by her best friend Mary, who was actually her aunt although she was the same age. Mum enjoyed this job, as she got to know all of the tenants who also enjoyed seeing her and it gave her a great sense of importance.

Needless to say, contemporary audiences are astounded to hear that a 12 year old girl collected rent, in cash, issued receipts and carried the money home each week! I didn’t ever hear of any concerns for her safety and there were certainly no incidents arising from it. I have always loved the Dickensian feeling to this tale: a child at ease among inner city back alleys and boarding houses collecting large sums of cash. It’s also a great reminder of how society has changed.

I was reminded recently that as well as collecting rent, Mum’s other cash collection job was going regularly to the shipping company’s offices to collect her father’s wages when he as at sea, which was often for months at a time.

Life Stories 1: Hallelujah!

I went to a high school reunion at Port Stephens NSW in November 2016. As well as swapping memories and learning what other old school friends had been doing for the last few decades, I met Alteouise DeVaughn, the wife of a former classmate. She was quite captivating and it was fascinating to learn that she had attended The Juilliard School of Music in New York and trained as an opera singer. After a late breakfast on the Sunday morning Alteouise and her husband Idris invited those who were still there to their apartment for coffee. I wasn't able to stay as I was due to fly to Osaka two days later and had much to prepare. I heard later that the remaining group also walked to the nearby Zenith Beach.

At the apartment, someone suggested that Alteouise sing, and she asked for a request. Because of the pervasive bushfires, someone suggested Smoke on the Water, but it was agreed that she should make the choice and she chose Hallelujah! by Leonard Cohen. Her singing astounded everyone in the group and other people craned to listen. I heard about this wonderful event some weeks later when I returned from Japan.

Two days later while standing on a steep hillside on Naoshima Island, after visiting its superb museums, and watching Japanese farmers till their stepped rice paddies and looking out onto the Inland Sea (yes, it was one of those moments), I had a phone call telling me that Leonard Cohen had died. This was a major moment for me as I have been a big fan of his since school days. I knew at the time that I would always remember that moment, as I have when I heard about the deaths of David Bowie, John Lennon, Elvis and others.

When I returned to Sydney and heard about the Sunday ‘concert’, it occurred to me that Alteouise would have been singing Hallelujah! while Cohen was on his deathbed. The symmetry of these events was very touching. I think that Leonard would have been pleased and flattered by the whole event: being serenaded by his own music, as he headed for his zenith! (Sorry, but I could not resist that pun.)

I don't need to conjure up any cliched romanticized conclusions here, as readers will draw their own, but the symmetry of the episodes of Hallelujah! being sung and appreciated by a group of admirers as its composer was dying on the other side of the world and of me hearing of his death while experiencing the multi-layered beauty of the Inland Sea of Japan cannot be denied.

In the intervening years I have told many people about these extraordinary moments and can say that all who learned about them were touched and / or captivated by their symmetry. However, the person to whom I had not related the stories was Alteouise herself, as she lives in North Queensland, but at our school reunion in November 2023, I was finally able to do so. (We took seven years to hold the next reunion because of Covid restrictions.) Her reaction was surprisingly low key and when she said, "There's more to that story," I couldn't wait to hear what she was going to say.

Alteouise is a music teacher in Cairns and Port Douglas and runs a community choir that performs at various functions. While they were preparing for a Christmas concert a short time before our earlier school reunion, one of the key members of the choir died. His family asked Alteouise to sing at his funeral and they requested that she sing Hallelujah! Alteouise had not sung it before and put in much preparation. At the funeral she sang, no doubt superbly, but was curious as to the mood of the family after the service. When questioned, they expressed their disappointment that she had not sung Hallelujah!, as agreed. After a confusing discussion, Alteouise realized that they had meant Handel's Hallelujah Chorus which the choir had been rehearsing for the Christmas concert and which they thought was titled Hallelujah!

I am sure that Cohen would love this tale of misunderstanding.

Journalese clichés that I hate 1: Say it again

I read many newspapers and watch lots of television news and documentaries. I have enormous respect for journalists and like many others, fear that their craft is disappearing or diminishing as audiences turn to other information sources that of course can be written by anyone. Hearing from teaching colleagues about where students now gain their information is quite terrifying, especially as I’ve been told that many students believe that only ‘old people’ read newspapers and seek out influencers who discuss more than fashion trends. Overcoming this prejudice is not a task I would enjoy.

I have been called pedantic many times (and I’m sure this will escalate), because of the frustration I feel at poor or incorrect expression in writing and speech. I was an English teacher for ten years so it was a part of the job to highlight poor expression. I don’t criticize the misuse of words or a lack of knowledge but the laziness of some journalists, especially in resorting to cliches, has always irritated me. Having done some journalism myself, I fully appreciate the tension of deadlines and the presumed need for audiences’ instant recognition but I believe that I should point out poor word usage. While issues like errors are the stuff of Letters to the Editor and the like, especially as people love to point them out, they are not my concern. I’m more interested in the way that someone invents a catchy phrase or changes the traditional meaning of adjectives or verbs (more on that later) and then others copy it as it sounds trendy. After this, it seems that almost every journalist, especially of television, describes the same thing repeatedly, and then the term finds its way into common usage.

ABCTV programs like The Weekly and Media Watch have great fun showing how commentators from different channels all use the same phrases to describe particular incidents. However, in a twist to this practice, some more alert journalists now question the clichéd or overused expressions due to perceived changes in audience’s interests. The recent fuss over the usage of “the race that stops the nation” to describe The Melbourne Cup was widely discussed in response to the relatively new criticism of this particular animal cruelty.

That said, here are some clichéd terms that we can eliminate.

1. Why is every preview a “sneak peek”, even if it’s shown on television?

2. Why is every cruise or holiday described as “the journey of a lifetime’’? Do the organizers believe that it will be the only trip their customers will ever take?

3. Why is the word “countless” used to mean multiple? If it can be counted, it’s not countless.

4. Why do “tributes flow” at the announcement of a death? Who determined that term?

5. Why are people’s reactions to anything controversial described as “furious” in journal headlines? Accompanying photographs undercut this howler. The never ending culture of complaint will be addressed in a later blog.

6. Why is it that if anyone makes a suggestion or describes a more desirable alternate action to a journalist, they are “calling for” a change?

7. Why is everything “revealed” and not just stated or announced? (I’ll never stomach something being described as a “reveal” as is common on tabloid television. Verbs becoming nouns is a travesty of the language, as is the case where words like “fail” are used as nouns.)

8. When a journalist has no further information to disclose or an interview ends on a soft note, the summation is given as “there are many questions left unanswered”. Of course, if there were any questions, they would be asked, so come up with something more convincing.

9. Ditto: Why do we persist with the statement “nothing has been ruled in or out”? I’ve always found this expression to be curious. Something like “all possibilities are being examined” is open and softer.

10. Why do journalists persist with trying to evoke a more emotive response from audiences to a story of a victim or perpetrator of a crime, by labelling them as “ä grandmother” or “a mother of 5” etc., as if this status is relevant to the case.

11. Can we ditch “across the ditch” to describe the Tasman Sea? I imagine that this cliché started in New Zealand, but it has really had its day.

12. Who first came up with the horror that is “impactful”?

13. You could fill a book on “jargon” or the laughable language of real estate advertisements, and maybe I’ll spend more time on that in the future, but I wonder why every ad describes a property as in “the heart” of the city / suburb etc. The heart can be official, as in terms of the Town Hall or similar, or be more subjective, but no area can really have more than one heart, can it?

14. Also in real estate terns, why is a property that has not changed hands for many years labelled ”tightly held”, as my former house was advertised? Is the implication that the owners were desperate to stay there and have only agreed to sell after some pressure?

15. How does a house “hit” the market? I’ve never understood that term.

16. When I said to a former colleague that I don’t read articles that have “our” in the headlines, she said, “Oh! You’re just like my husband!” I was glad to hear this as it meant that I wasn’t the only one who loathed the use of “our” to describe anyone or anything Australian that has become internationally famous. That fake inclusive ownership is cringe worthy.

Addresses 1: You know my name, look up the number

This is an overly long series of articles on Addresses, a topic that many people will consider to be bizarre, but I hope that you will see the point of it as I take you along.

I think there is a particularly Australian problem with addresses. What I mean by that will become clearer, I hope, as I relate various examples of government laziness or ineptitude and again, sometimes the laziness of journalists. (Don’t try to work it out yet, just hang in there. I won’t refer to the issue again, at least not at length, but I need to get it out of my system.)

I will start with a rather obvious example.

In the Australian colonies’ early days, it was decided to adopt a peculiar European practice of giving streets multiple names. (I recently visited Lisbon where “streets” seem to change their names every 100 metres.) This practice usually happened when two streets were joined or sometimes when local governments chose to adopt another name at an intersection, a monument or a landform. I first noticed this many years ago while searching for an address in Erskineville NSW. I had great trouble locating the house as the street has three names: Copeland Street, Swanson Street and Erskineville Road. Why did the local council agree to this anomaly?

The best example that I know of a major street having several names, according to its “purpose”, is George Street in Sydney. What begins at The Rocks as George Street, becomes Broadway at Central Station, Parramatta Road from Sydney University to Parramatta and then The Great Western Highway from there. This example would seem to be “reasonable” in terms of the changes in status or breadth, but what really is irritating is that every time Parramatta Road comes to a new suburb, the street numbers begin again! For example, you can be visiting a property many kilometres from Sydney city and find that the number is only two digits long. (This intrigued me many years ago when I went to a car yard somewhere near Lidcombe and was astonished that it was number 16, or something.) There were many hundreds of buildings before this one, but it had this ridiculously low number, meaning that drivers had to watch the buildings and sites closely to locate the one they wanted.

Am I the only person who thinks this is crazy?

When I have discussed this with some people they have said that they think of the US system of numbering blocks in the hundreds leads to impossibly long numbers. I know that I have found this characteristic to be useful when finding an address in a US city. I’m not suggesting that Australia should have adopted the same system, but some consistency in numbering as determined by local governments, would be advantageous.

As a child I remember being fascinated by the addresses of houses in TV shows (1164 Morning Glory Circle for Bewitched and 1313 Mockingbird Lane in The Addams Family and I can’t believe that I still remember those numbers.) I imagined that American streets were enormously long and it was only when I first travelled there that I learned of their 100 block numbering system.

Here is an example of a nonsensical numbering system on a major road that thousands of people pass along every day. Oxford Street in Sydney begins at Whitlam Square and travels through Darlinghurst, Paddington and Woollahra to Bondi Junction. If you haven’t noticed, the numbers begin, of course, at Whitlam Square but start again at South Dowling Street in Paddington, at Jersey Road in Woollahra and again on the southern side at York Road in Bondi Junction, after dying at Centennial Park. This means that in BJ, on the northern side, the numbers are from 210 – 500 while on the opposite side they revert back to 1 meaning that numbers 210 and 1 are opposite each other. Why is this anomaly considered appropriate and which long gone whacko Council planner recommended it?

Again in Bondi Junction and Waverley, Council Street not only changes its name to Carrington Road, but going south on the western side of the street, the numbers go from 1 – 133 and then disappear at Centennial Park. When Carrington Road crosses Macpherson Street, its house numbers emerge as even (!) On the eastern side going south they go from 2 – 170 until Pine Street, and then revert to odd numbers. Therefore, between Macpherson and Pine Streets, there are even numbers on both sides of the street: 2-18 and 158 – 170.

Are other municipalities as bad as this? I can think of Victoria Road which changes numbers at Rydalmere, as numbers move east at Parramatta and west from Ryde, so when they meet they are nonsensical. (I’m sure residents there must be tired of explaining to visitors where they actually are.)

The Hills (see a following article about that bizarre name) and Hornsby Councils border Old Northern Road from Pennant Hills to Wiseman’s Ferry, NSW, a route I travel regularly. On the Hills side the numbers are sequential regardless of the block sizes, and start from 1. On the Hornsby side, numbers are determined according to the distance from the starting point of the road meaning that numbers 600 are opposite 2370 !! (I’m sure many of you will think I’m crazy to be writing about this or even thinking about it, but it’s these anomalies that make life more and more curious and interesting by imagining the decisions that were behind them.)

While teaching at high schools, I continually tried to find ways to simplify concepts and ideas to help students understand and learn them. Why do we make simple things complicated?

Addresses 2: Where the streets have no name

At the risk of boring many of you, or worse, making you stop reading further, I will add another anomaly about addresses that interests me. This may find favour with some of you. I have heard many visitors from overseas complain about the road signage of Australia. There are people like me who complain endlessly that the big green signs on highways can have one or two towns listed, but they give no indication of where others are or indeed the major final destination of the road. (There are numerous examples of these and you can find your own.)

There are other misleading signs in inner Sydney that I know well. When was the last time someone said to you that they were going to City North or City South? Hmm? Never! That’s because there are no such places. These are the names given, presumably by the Geographical Names Board, to the Circular Quay and to the Central Station areas. (The term Mid-City died out years ago so we can forget that one.) Why don’t they use names that mean somewhere specific and make the signs read Circular Quay / Opera House, Town Hall and Central Station?

My favourite inner Sydney sign indicates both City North and North Sydney. How is a visitor ever to know the difference in meanings? Again, specificity eliminating confusion would seem to be of no concern to the Names Board.

Addresses 3: The name game

Ok, now that I have you nodding somewhat, I’ll push my luck with a third example of the lack of specificity.

The ABC believes that Australia is a series of city states. (SBS seems to be meekly following this belief also.) Every location in a news story is reported as being north, south, east or west of a capital city. Regional names and suburban names, in particular, are often omitted. Presumably they believe that no-one knows where these places are and they have no interest in teaching them, or they think that a vague location is sufficient for viewers.

I have laughed at how a location can described as “south of Brisbane”, which implies that it could be in Tweed Heads or even Hobart, although they presumably mean a southern suburb. The term used repeatedly is ”in Sydney’s west” which means anywhere from about Burwood. There was an item I recall when the reporter signed off as “(name), Sydney” when behind him clearly was the lettering “Penrith Court House”. Penrith, dear ABC, is not in Sydney. It is a separate city, established in 1815, which happens to be 55 km west of Sydney, and denying it is own name is bizarre and probably offensive to some people. Related to this, I remember while working at Campbelltown, that Destination NSW, or whatever they were called then, announced that they were going to erect a “Welcome to Sydney” sign on the freeway just south of Campbelltown. When this was reported in the local newspaper it drew letters of complaint by locals saying that they were not in Sydney but 53 km south west of it, were of an independent Macquarie town established in 1820, and that they deserved to be recognized as such.

The use of generalized names stops people learning of other places. The hearing of a different name is more likely to invoke curiosity or interest in the place. Calling them all the same name is ridiculous, so how about a change in location names policy, ABC? (I cannot comment on what the commercial networks do with this issue as I don’t watch them, but I hope they are better.)

Vaguely related to this is the DMR’s insistence on numbering freeways M1 – 7 in Sydney. My research indicates that people only know the number of the road they use frequently. Why aren’t they named the Newcastle Expressway as it was once called, the Blue Mountains freeway, or Illawarra etc.? Everyone will remember these names better and know which one they need to aim for to get to their destination. Keep the numbers if you must (for your own purposes), but add names to them.

Addresses 4: A sign of the times

Like the ABC, governments love generalized names. What else could you say when looking at the names chosen when many NSW LGAs were amalgamated in 2016 and many lost their distinctive names? At the time of announcement I worked at what was to become Northern Beaches Council and I remember saying to a colleague that outsiders would wonder if we were in Taree or Byron Bay. (Northern Beaches is only recognized by certain groups in NSW and barely anyone interstate.)

Added to this we have silly generalized names such as Bayside (how could you eliminate an historic name like Botany Bay?), Mid Coast (wherever that is) and the worst of all: The Hills (formerly the Baulkham Hills Shire). Do the people who live there say that they live in The Hills when asked by others? (Of course, the capital letters can’t be seen.) Wouldn’t that name raise a bizarre look from the other? There are numerous places around the world which use “the hills” as a local abbreviation for an area, so why a major NSW LGA should be reduced to this silliness is extraordinary.

Enough! I will now stop raving now about addresses. If only my complaints could lead to improvements all round!

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