If you’re old enough (like me) you’ll remember Gerry & the Pacemakers, an English invasion band that had a 1965 hit called “Ferry Across the Mersey.” Today we took an early morning ferry across the Murray.

Americans may have a little trouble believing this but the narrow stream shown in this photo is the largest river in Australia. They called it the Mighty Murray. That’s pretty much everything you need to know about Australian aridity.

It’s difficult to drive away from Angaston because we’ve made so many friends and feel so at home here. It’s an emotional moment. On top of that, it’s a rainy morning which prompted the headline on this story.

But spellcheck didn’t like the headline.

It keeps changing The gods wept to The god swept.

The former feels more emotional, which Jamie would prefer, but the latter sounds tidier, which wins my obsessive-compulsive vote. If there’s some Roman god of cleanliness named Broomius who’s going to tidy up in our wake, well, who am I to argue with “The god swept?”

We’ll be back. Sooner rather than later.

We’ve been talking about how lucky we are that we got to Angaston before this whole Wuhan Flu thing broke out. It’s beautiful, prosperous, and full of happy, friendly people. There’s nowhere we’d rather be quarantined.

But what about the opposite end of the spectrum? There are a few places we wouldn’t want to be quarantined — places we’ve visited that we laughingly call “once in a lifetime” destinations because we never want to go back. Places that were bad when times were good.

It’s a short list because we’ve loved most of the places we’ve visited. But there are always a few exceptions.

Let’s review:

The Trans-Siberian Express. Seven days and nights with no contact with the outside world. No shower facilities. A toilet shared with everyone in our train car. A shared faucet that sputtered a weak stream of water into a filthy sink. Insufficient, overpriced food. Rude railway workers. Just imagine if you had left Moscow just before this thing hit and then ended up stranded when you arrived in China.

Sri Lanka. We actually loved Sri Lanka, but never felt really safe in the capital city. We arrived on a warm, balmy night and asked our hotel desk clerk if it was safe to go for a walk in downtown Colombo. She said, “Oh, yes. It’s very safe. Just don’t go beyond the security guards in the parking lot.” We took a pass. It’s just impossible to imagine being quarantined where it’s not safe to take a walk.

Madagascar. Gut-wrenching poverty and zero sanitation. Our hotel was surrounded by a wall and an armed guard roamed the courtyard. The airport featured a mob scene reminiscent of The Year of Living Dangerously. And who cares about the Wuhan Flu when there’s bubonic plague to worry about.

The Russian cruise ship. Heaven help anyone quarantined aboard this rusty old scow.

China. It goes without saying that you wouldn’t want to be quarantined for the Wuhan Flu when you’re anywhere near Wuhan.

If you have to be stranded somewhere, let it be the Barossa.

If you thought TV game shows had taken JimandJamie.com off the beaten track, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

You know that phenomenon where you learn something new, let’s say it’s a word you’ve just seen for the first time ever, and then it suddenly starts popping up everywhere?

It has a name. For reasons I won’t bother getting into here, it is called the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.

ScienceAlert.com explains the psychology behind it:

…because the information is new, you suddenly force yourself to believe that it’s new to everyone and has suddenly popped up, when in reality, you’ve just stopped ignoring it.

I bring this up because I just had a Baader-Meinhof experience thanks to our Aussie psychologist friend Mark. You’re about to have one, too.

I had never heard of Armenian mystic George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff until earlier this week when I attempted to plow through Mark’s doctoral thesis. And then I stumbled across his name again today in this online article:

Pacific Bell Was Accused of Brainwashing Employees With The Teachings of A Mystical Guru

In 1984, executives at Pacific Bell decided that the company needed a little shakeup. Naturally, they turned to the ideas of early 20th century Armenian mystic George Gurdjieff, who returned from travels in the East claiming to have synthesized the teachings of the “monk, yogi, and fakir” into a “fourth way” of transcending our mental limits. The company decided to spend $140 million training its employees in Gurdjieff’s mystical techniques for attaining a higher level of consciousness. 

This was not some optional little side course. The company’s employees could literally be fired for not fully embracing the pathway to a higher state of being, via such concepts as “the Law of Three” and “end-state visions.” Baffled engineers suddenly found themselves sitting through seminars on Gurdjieff’s impenetrable writings, informing them that “only he will deserve the name of man who has acquired data for being able to preserve intact both the sheep and the wolf entrusted to his care.” Can you imagine calling your phone company and hearing “Thanks for calling Pacific Bell, how many I preserve your inner wolf today?”

Standard corporate press releases were suddenly replaced with impenetrable tracts declaring the company’s intent to pursue “the continuous ability to engage with the connectedness and relatedness that exists and potentially exists, which is essential for the creations necessary to maintain and enhance viability of ourselves and the organization of which we are a part.” It’s probably not a great sign when your PR department appears to be communing with the Architect from The Matrix.

Employees quickly started to complain about brainwashing and several went to the press with concerns over “thought restructuring” and “mind control.” The ensuing scandal forced Pacific Bell to shut the program down after spending a mere $40 million. As a bonus, the creator of Dilbert was actually working at Pacific Bell when all this happened. And not having the wacky office from the comic strip slowly devolve into the Heaven’s Gate cult is probably that guy’s worst decision yet.

It’s the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon in action. I swear I’d never heard of Gurdjieff until four days ago and suddenly this obscure Armenian mystic popped up again this morning.

The only thing that could possibly make it stranger is that it lead directly to the Dilbert comic strip.

How weird is that?

San Francisco has its de Young Museum, but we may just need to begin our own deYong Museum here in Angaston. Maybe the deYong Museum of Pilfered Teaspoons.

Despite the celebrations a week ago, today is Jamie’s real birthday. We had dinner with the Mustards and then went back to their home for dessert.

“I know you said no gifts,” Lisa said, “but we couldn’t resist buying you this one.”

Jamie opened the box and started laughing. So did I when she turned it around to show me the gift inside — fourteen beautiful little souvenir teaspoons to add to Jamie’s pile of booty stolen from restaurants and hotels around the world.

The deYong Museum needs a sign that says “On permanent loan from the Jamie Collection” next to the teaspoons.

What a great, thoughtful, hilarious gift. Many thanks from Jamie to the Mustard clan.

We saw this odd tree in a pasture alongside the road in Eden Valley. It was so odd that I turned the car around so we could take a photo of it.

Then we saw an even bigger tree with the same odd look. And another. And another. And a hundred others along the same highway.

Coincidentally, one of the friends we were meeting for lunch used to run Forestry South Australia, so we asked him what causes this strange, hollow, burned-out look.

Two possible causes, he said. The first is bush fires. And if the trees are old enough aborigines may have used fire to hollow them out intentionally for use as permanent homes or as temporary protection from the elements.

Interesting, huh?

As I’ve mentioned many times, my father was a dairy farmer who loved nothing more than getting dirty and being dirty as a direct result of hard manual labor.

After I had left home and moved to Los Angeles, he phoned me one day. “I need some help this weekend,” he said. “Can you come out?” He had purchased some cows and needed to transport them from their current home to the family farm.

This particular Sunday afternoon in August turned out to be the hottest day of the year. Well into the low 100s. And he decided that we should hook his trailer to his pick-up and get his new cows at the hottest hour of the day.

The cows were in an open, grassless field and they clearly had no interest in taking a road trip. The recalcitrant ruminants ran from one end of the field to the other and back again with me literally in hot pursuit. Every time I’d get them near the trailer one of them would panic and lead the others in a mad dash in the other direction. A great cloud of dust rose over the pasture. I was drenched in sweat. And I was hating every single moment of the experience.

We eventually got the last cow halfway into the trailer before she dug in her hooves and refused to move forward and put her head into the stanchion. My dad and I joined forces and tried to push her into place, but a Holstein dairy cow can weigh 1,300 pounds or more and our best efforts were inadequate for the task.

What happened next is probably illegal today. It would probably be considered animal abuse. My dad said, “Tail ’er.” I had heard him say those words hundreds of times in my life and always dreaded them.

Let’s define the term. It consists of grabbing the tail and pushing it straight up in the air so that it sits at a ninety degree angle to the cow’s spine. Cows don’t like it. No, they hate it. Their tails were not meant to bend in that direction. Bend it all the way up and the cow is immediately but temporarily immobilized. It must hurt like hell, because if you bend it, let’s say, halfway up, the cow immediately moves forward to lower the angle of the tail and alleviate the pain.

I did as instructed. I grabbed the cow’s tail and bent it upward. She immediately lurched forward into the trailer.

“Hold ’er while I close the gate,” he said.

Again I did as instructed. Picture, if you can, bovine anatomy and my adjacent position. There I was leaning in and holding the cow’s tail straight up in the air, leaving me staring directly into the abyss, into the south end of a northbound cow, into what can accurately be called the tail end. If you know what I mean. It’s not the kind of view you’d pay extra for.

My dad stopped lifting the gate of the trailer to enjoy a hearty laugh at my expense. Apparently he was amused by the look of disgust on my face.

“What’s the matter with you,” he asked as he gasped for air between belly laughs.

“I didn’t go to college,” I told him, “to sweat and get dirty.”

He dropped the gate of the trailer and laughed even harder. It was, he thought, the funniest thing he had ever heard. He really couldn’t comprehend how his son had turned out to be so unlike him.

And that brings us to today’s misadventure.

I feel a responsibility to warn anyone who considers visiting the Barossa Valley that Dr John Rutter cannot be trusted. If you were to visit and you were to meet the wily old physician, do not fall victim to his charms. He is unworthy of your trust.

“What are you doing on Tuesday,” he asked me a few days ago. “Want to go with me to get some firewood?”

In my mind, getting some firewood meant driving over to a yard where a massive supply of firewood has been pre-cut and stacked in a convenient pile. I assumed a burly lad clad in a red plaid shirt would amble out of a ramshackle office and carry that pre-cut wood from the pile to John’s trailer. My job, in my mind, was to be nothing more demanding than observing and pithily commenting. No sweat would be broken. No soft, delicate hands would be blistered. No pain would be endured. No lightheadedness would be experienced.

But no, that is not what the words “Want to go with me to get some firewood” mean in RutterWorld.

I got my first clue that John may have misrepresented the morning’s endeavors when I arrived at his house and we were joined by Paul, the neighborhood jack-of-all-trades and the toughest, strongest son of a bitch you’re ever likely to meet. Hmmmmm, I wondered, why is Paul coming along to pick up this load of firewood? We drove several miles out of town and instead of turning into a lot piled high with neatly-stacked firewood, we turned off the highway onto the merest suggestion of a trail and didn’t stop bouncing over rocks and ruts until we were well in the woods.

The Doctor parked his 4-wheel drive. Paul jumped out and began loosening up his lithe muscles. Next thing I knew the doctor had eyeballed a once stately but now dead eucalyptus tree and pointed it out to Paul who then grabbed his chainsaw and began felling the monster. As soon as its trunk crashed noisily to the ground he began cutting it into smaller chunks that were still too heavy and too cumbersome to easily tote to the trailer.

Yet without saying a word, The Doctor made it clear that that was exactly what I was expected to do. Since Paul was either completely inconsiderate or completely incompetent, the trunk fell to the low-side of the path, requiring me to carry the firewood uphill to get to the trailer.

The doctor stood to one side, barking out instructions as if he were the czar and Paul and I were the lowliest of serfs.

Paul kept cutting. I kept loading. John kept supervising. It took two full trees and two full hours before the trailer was filled to the doctor’s satisfaction.

The entire experience reminded me of the cow herding experience of my youth. There were no bovine buttholes involved, but there was definitely one horse’s ass.

And all I could think was I didn’t go to college to sweat and get dirty.

ONE ADDED NOTE: I usually say that 98% of what I write here at JimandJamie.com is 99% true. But in interest of full disclosure, I must admit that this one is only about 75% true. Everything is accurate except the part about John barking orders and doing nothing. The man is 87-years old and had open heart surgery 30 years ago and his cardiologist just warned him not to engage in any strenuous activities — not even gardening. Despite all that, John was hefting logs like a man half his age. I had to continually bark at him to stop working so hard.

ANOTHER ADDED NOTE: There may be one other thing that isn’t true. Paul is neither inconsiderate nor incompetent. Nicest guy in the world and there is nothing he can’t do.

Our friend Vanessa volunteers at the Lyndoch Wildlife Sanctuary. They take in injured or orphaned native Aussie species, nurse them back to health or to adulthood, and then release them back into the wild. Of course, some of them can never be released back into the wild because they’ve become too dependent on humans and too unafraid of predators (like dogs and cats).

Vanessa invited Jamie to spend the afternoon visiting the animals.

The brushtail possum. As you can see in the photos below, it’s a friendly little devil.

 

A baby possum that was found sitting alongside the road after its mother was killed by a car.

This is a bettong, a word spellcheck has apparently never seen before. It’s like a mini-kangaroo that hops around being cute and making humans say, “Awwwwwwwww.” This one loves playing with (and tormenting) the sanctuary’s resident cat.

A black ring possum. Very similar to the brushtail possum our neighbor caught and transported to a lovely new home in the country.

Two echidnas curled up for an afternoon nap.

Jamie and a lizard. Couldn’t tell you what kind of lizard. A shingleback, I think.

A very inquisitive kangaroo.

And here’s the same kanga after he got tired of checking out the cell phone.

Thanks, Vanessa. Jamie can’t wait to come back to the Barossa Valley so she can visit you and the animals again.

The woman is a sexy talker. She knows exactly what words to whisper into my ear.

When we did the first of these six-month journeys neither of us knew what to take nor how to pack. So we ended up taking far too many clothes. Way too many pairs of shoes. Plus all sorts of unnecessary odds-and-ends that seemed important at the time, but ended up unused and sometimes even untouched during our travels.

We found ourselves loaded down with two suitcases each plus one backpack each. We could have used a couple of sherpas. All that gear turned each leg of the trip into a trek. And it got worse with each stop as we stuffed new souvenirs into those already overpacked suitcases.

But you live, you learn. In this case, we learned to get by with less, to pack more economically, and to do laundry a lot more often.

We took less on our second trip, still less on the third trip, and even less on this trip. We’ve stripped it down to the bare necessities.

And now that sweet-talkin’ wife of mine is just plain turnin’ me on. She just said the words I’ve always longed to hear.

“I might be able to get away with carry-ons next time.”

We were sitting in The Doctors’ living room warming ourselves before a crackling fire when someone in the Rutter family mentioned that a local artist had once painted a portrait of John.

There was some debate about when the painting had been done, even greater debate about whether it still existed, and still greater debate about whether it should be brought out for public viewing if it does still exist.

The back story is hilarious: John was the Angaston town doctor for fifty years. That, of course, made him a bit of an icon in the Barossa Valley. A local painter visited John’s and Margaret’s home and announced he wanted to do a portrait of John. He had his subject do some simple poses and took a few photos and then went away. Some weeks later he invited John and Margaret to his studio where he unveiled the finished piece.

John was horrified by it.

He was even more horrified when the artist invited him to place a bid on it.

”Place a bid on it,” John recalled with disgust. “I didn’t even want the bloody thing.”

In the end, John and Margaret shelled out $400 for a portrait they didn’t want just to avoid any further embarrassment. Then they took it home and John shoved it under the bed in a spare bedroom. Which is where his daughter Mandy finally found it last night.

We all agreed — all except John, that is — that the artist had done an excellent job of capturing him in one of his most idiosyncratic poses. John still insists that the painting is horrible and looks nothing like him and should be tossed into the roaring fire.

The painting provoked two primary questions. One, did the painter do a good job of capturing John’s lips? And two, when was it painted?

I am relieved to say that I am not qualified to delve into the quality of John’s lips. I will leave that discussion to those whose relationships with him are far closer than mine. On the other hand, I am quite willing to speculate on the date of the painting.

It isn’t dated and none of the Rutters could pinpoint precisely when it had been painted. Was it done in the late ‘80s? Somewhere in the ‘90s? Maybe even later?

I got down on my hands and knees to take a closer look. John is holding a newspaper in the portrait and I noticed that there is a black and white photo of a man and a woman in the lower corner of the newspaper.

”It says chocolate under the photo,” I noted. I assumed it was an ad for some sort of candy.

Then Jamie took a closer look and said, “It doesn’t say chocolate, it says Chocolat and that’s the poster that was used to advertise the movie. The one with Johnny Depp and Juliette Binoche.”

Here’s that poster. Does my wife know her artsy fartsy European films or what?

Of course, knowing that the ad was for the film Chocolat helped us narrow down when the portrait might have been painted. With a little Googling we found out that Chocolat was released in Australia on February 14, 2001. So that is the earliest it could have been painted.

I doubt that Chocolat made it beyond a few art theaters in Sydney and Melbourne until after it was nominated for five Oscars. The 2001 Academy Awards ceremonies were held on March 25 and the film undoubtedly went into wider release after that. So let’s be generous and say it finally made it to cinemas in Adelaide by April 1, 2001. Let’s give the artist a couple more months to complete the portrait.

Therefore, JimandJamie.com hereby concludes that this lovely portrait of Dr John Rutter was unveiled on or around July 1, 2001.

And it’s been on permanent display under that dusty bed for the last nineteen years.

ONE ADDED NOTE: Here we are nineteen years after the completion of the portrait and John appears to be sitting in the same chair and wearing the same shirt and sweater. The man is nothing if not consistent.

AND ONE MORE ADDITIONAL NOTE (not added until April 10, 2021): Don’t know why none of us noted this earlier, but the fact that John is wearing a sweater is significant. The weather stays warm until late Autumn here in the Barossa, and the seasons are backward from the Northern Hemisphere, so late Autumn would get us to probably late-April or maybe even May as a guide to when the artist took the original photos. That seems to reinforce the July 1, 2001 timeline guessed at above for the grand unveiling.