Friends, acquaintances and others in the same boat,
In 2005 my then eighty-six year old mother passed away. Dad had met her 70 years earlier and survived her by three years.
My dad had taught himself piano. He played in a pleasant free form style and miraculously avoided using several dead keys on his piano. Dad hadn’t always been very nice to mum (verbally I hasten to add) but his sense of humour and piano playing more than made up for this shortfall.
I was in Melbourne after mum died and heard dad plonking away on the piano in de groene kamer (the green room). Snippets of classical music, Argentinian songs, German songs, Dutch songs came wafting into the kitchen. Dad was playing with tears in his eyes. He’d lost his audience.
Late in life dad switched his allegiance from Bing Crosby to John Lennon, his favourite song: ‘Imagine’…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOgFZfRVaww
With uncharacteristic efficiency Centrelink had sent dad a letter of condolence. They were sorry for his loss but “your dear departed wife owes us $2,000” and could he phone them to discuss the instalments they would deduct from his pension to repay it.
The debt had arisen because of Centrelink’s incompetence when over a long period of time they overpaid mum’s old age pension by not properly accounting for her modest Dutch superannuation income.
I overheard dad on the phone to Centrelink. Dad told the lady at the other end of the phone that if she saw an old man playing the harmonica on the footpath outside her office with a hat in front of him, that would be him. If he’d been fitter and more independent I don’t doubt he’d gone to Box Hill to play the harmonica, which he wasn’t half bad at!
Spoiler alert! If my Yuendumu Story gets published and you buy a copy, you will find the following :
Centrelink are responsible for implementing Income Management.
Centerlink’s slogan is: ‘Centrelink Giving You Options’. Centrelink, one of the most inflexible and incompetent Government organisations, does nothing of the sort.
Centrelink’s Income Management administration is based overseas, in Hobart Tasmania.
In Don Watson’s very funny book ‘Bendable Learnings’(2009) I find the following:
“The Centrelink contact point for statistics, previously known as the Knowledge Desk is now known as the Business Intelligence Front Door. ”
Quite a feat, using ‘Intelligence’ and ‘Centrelink’ in the same sentence, n’est ce pas?
Don Watson also quotes from a Centrelink brochure on multi-cultural services:
“If you cannot read, this brochure tells you where to get lessons ”
My heart goes out to that multitude who stand in line outside Centrelink offices and who get stuck on Centerlink’s Internet merry go round……
The Kinston Trio- The Man Who Never Returned…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dh994JcEfkI
And it gives me no pleasure to point out that Remote Aboriginal Australia has suffered long telephone delays and often unfriendly confrontations at Centrelink offices and falling through the holes in the safety net for decades.
Chau, hasta la proxima
Franklin
And just for fun (music from Paraguay sung in Guarani):