textfiles/magazines/CYBERSENIOR/cybersenior.1.1

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REVIEW

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VOL.1 NO.1                         MARCH 1994
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The CyberSenior Review is a project of the Internet Elders 
List, a world-wide Mailing List of seniors.  The Review is 
written, edited and published by members of the Elders. 
The contents are copyrighted 1994 by the Elders List and 
by the authors. All rights reserved by the authors.  
Copying is permitted with attribution.

The current editorial board of The CyberSenior Review is:

Elaine Dabbs   edabbs@ucc.su.oz.au
Pat Davidson   xuegxaa@csv.warwicxk.ac.uk
James Hursey jwhursey@cd.columbus.oh.us
=========================================================================

CONTENTS, Volume 1, Number 1

EDITORIAL

TENERIFE--THE ISLAND OF SUN, by Pat Davidson
   Pat and family take a respite from England's winter
   rain and cold to holiday in the sunny Canary Islands

THE SAD BUT TRUE STORY OF TIM CHICK,
THE CHICK WHO WANTED TO SEE THE WORLD, by Jim Hursey
   Jim recalls a true story of when his children
   were small, including an uplifting moral.
 
AUSTRALIAN GOLD FIELDS, by Elaine Dabbs
   An ancient Aussie reminisces of the early days Down Under.

=========================================================================

Our Elders group takes another step forward with the this 
publication of our first "Cybersenior Review". Belonging to 
the Elders List engenders a feeling of a worldwide 
community, giving us the possibility of connecting with 
people by regular links.  We acquire new and interesting 
friends, become passionate about our new activity, further 
our education and find that borders in even the most remote 
corners of the globe have disappeared.
 
Our Review takes us on a different path from our day to day 
topics.  It will inform and educate about subjects such as 
travel, history, nature in its many forms, humour, 
reminiscences etc.  Those elders interested in contributing, 
please let me know, together with your suggested topic and 
approximate length of your article. We would like everyone 
to participate.

--Pat Davidson 
=========================================================== 
 
TENERIFE-THE ISLAND OF SUN.
By Pat Davidson
 
Winter in Britain had been a long-drawn-out affair of rain 
and more rain, good for the water reservoirs and for 
conversations in shops, but it did nothing for our 
wellbeing, as we stared out at our waterlogged garden. 
"Think I'll make plans for our holiday in Tenerife, "my 
husband suggested and in no time at all, or so it seemed, we 
were leaving the bitter cold of  Britain for the sunshine of 
Tenerife. 
 
The Canary Isles, of which Tenerife is one of the main 
islands, lie just off the west coast of Africa, so the 
climate is temperate for most of the year, making it a 
winter paradise for all Europeans starved of the winter sun.
As soon as we'd discarded our winter clothes, now 
unnecessary in the warmth of the sun, we were stretching out 
on sunbeds beside the pool of the appartment complex. It was 
hard to imagine that we were only four hours away from the 
cold of Britain. As this was our first visit to the island, 
we had decided to explore as much as we could, booking a car
before we'd left home. It was waiting for us at Reina Sofia 
airport, in the south of the island, not far from where we 
were staying on the Costa del Silencio. 
 
The Silent Coast it was not, for regularly overhead huge 
airliners laden with sunseekers flew towards the airport. 
However, we did not find them too intrusive, for we were out 
sight-seeing most of the time. The duel highway from the 
airport and beyond, towards the holiday resorts of Los 
Christianos and Playa de Las Americas had been built through 
areas of sparse scrubland and volcanic rocks, where banana 
groves stretched broad leaves above the walls of concrete 
blocks or of fine matting protecting them from the wind, 
which seems to blow for most of the time. Upturned branches 
of green bananas clustered along the branches of the plants, 
occasionally protected by plastic bags. Elsewhere, only tall 
cacti, their spiked leaves covered with a fine layer of 
dust, grew on the arid land. Yet the landscape was 
spectacular, with the background of mountains to the north, 
Mount Teide still streaked with snow, and the ground 
gradually sloping down to the sea and the fishing villages 
dotted along the coast. 
 
Leaving Los Christianos and Playa do Las Americas behind, we 
climbed further and further into the mountains along the 
western side of the island.  Water pipes lay on top of the 
hard volcanic rock; no need to bury them on an island free 
from frost. We stopped for coffee in Tamaimo, admiring the 
panoramic view along the coast, exchanging "Buenas dias" 
with an old man who passed by, stooped under a bundle of 
herbs he'd been gathering in the mountains. Then we were 
climbing again, along a road which seemed to comprise of 
hairpin bends where cars squeezed past one another, and I 
clung onto the side pocket of the door, averting my head so 
that I did not see the drop down to the villages below. 
Occasionally,I noticed small shrines adorned with flowers, 
at the side of the road, bearing witness that others had 
felt as scared as I. Rocks which had tumbled from the 
mountain lay at the side, an additional hazard. The road 
downwards to Icod de los Vinos was a welcome relief; even 
the bends seemed less sharp, and the land more fertile, with 
small terraces of cultivated land lining the mountainsides. 
 
The lower we descended, the more lush was the vegetation, in 
contrast to the bleak landscape on the other side of the 
mountains. Huge clumps of golden broom grew interspersed 
with shrubs which looked like our tree heather at home. 
Clouds scudded across the intense blue sky and far below, 
their shadows darkened the brilliant blue of the ocean. 
Geraniums grew at the feet of tall hedges of poinsettias, 
and curtains of purple bougainvillea draped the walls of 
white-painted houses perched on the mountainside, while 
nasturtiums rioted everywhere. A dull February in Britain 
seemed a lifetime away. We took the road towards Garachico, 
and stopped for some time watching people fish from the edge 
of the square quay. Brightly painted boats were beached 
there, ready for the next day's catch. Atlantic breakers 
sent spray high into the air as they crashed against the 
rocky island lying just off the coast, and a young lad 
fishing amid the huge volcanic rocks trod a fine dance in 
avoiding the waves which rushed in through the clefts in the 
rocks. 
 
Then we were off again, climbing along the road which
clung to the side of the cliffs, through tunnels with 
circular windows on the seaward side to allow in some light, 
until we had reached the end of the road at the lighthouse 
of Punta de Teno. Beyond us stretched unsurmountable cliffs, 
their basalt faces frowning as the waves of the Atlantic 
lashed at them. As we walked along the narrow causeway 
separating the lighthouse from the mainland, the cinderlike 
ground crunched beneath our feet. There was no way forward; 
we would have to return along the narrow road which edged 
the cliffs far above the ocean and through the dim tunnels. 
 
By this time I had become quite blase, and willingly agreed 
to shorten  our journey by taking the mountain road. A bus 
was already lumbering up the  steep incline in front of us, 
and like chickens in the wake of the mother hen, several 
other cars and ourselves followed it. If the bus could go up 
the  mountain road, so could we. Once committed to the road, 
there was no way back,  so I decided that if these were to 
be my last moments alive, I might as well enjoy the 
spectacular view of the coastline, rather than worry about 
the long  drop down the mountainside to the rocks below. Our 
trip along the eastern side of the island past the airport 
north towards Santa Cruz, and then on to Puerto de la Cruz, 
was quite different. Here we could travel all the way by 
motorway. 
 
The area round the docks at Santa Cruz, the capital and 
commercial centre of Tenerife, was thronging with traffic. 
The city, in contrast, with its tall buildings, a mixture of 
modern and Spanish colonial architecture, provided shelter 
from the sun in its narrow canyon-like streets, while the 
avenues of palms in the parkd and the water fountains 
offered oases of peace for the office workers on their 
lunchtime break. We cashed some travellers' cheques at a 
bank which appeared to have been some hidalgo's residence in 
the past; a small garden of plants grew in tubs in the 
centre courtyard, which lay open to the sky, surrounded on 
four sides by bank counters underneath polished wooden 
Canarian balconies. 
 
In Puerto de la Cruz, magnificent hotels and cafes edged the 
promenade. There was no beach; instead artificial lagoons 
fringed by tall palms provided shade for the bathers. At the 
side of the promenade, artists offered to paint our 
portraits. Tired with the heat, we settled ourselves at a 
table underneath the pink awning of the Cafe de Paris. As we 
waited for our drinks and listened to the different 
languages around us, we could easily imagine ourselves back 
on the Riviera. Los Christianos and Playa de las Americas, 
built comparatively recently on the southern coast of the 
island, also cater for tourists. Restaurants and cafes 
flourish everywhere, to suit all tastes and appetites. We 
strolled along the promenade, past beaches of black volcanic 
sand crowded with people stretched out on sunbeds trying to 
secure a tan to take back to Europe. 
 
On our last evening, we visited a fish restaurant for 
supper, choosing our meal from that morning's catch. As we 
pointed to the fish, a woman scooped them up in a plate and 
handed them to the chef to cook. I've never tasted fish as 
delicious as those, and vowed to go back next year. Yes, 
we're certainly going back, but for a longer stay-there's so 
much we've still to see, and besides, there's the added 
bonus of the sun in February!
 
 
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 
 
THE SAD BUT TRUE STORY OF TIM CHICK,
THE CHICK WHO WANTED TO SEE THE WORLD
 
by Jim Hursey
 
Looking back on it, those years on the farm raising my three 
girls were undoubtedly the best years of my life. The girls 
are long since grown up, of course, and pursuing their 
careers, the farm long-since sold.  Now, strange as it seems 
to me sometimes, I live in a high-rise condo in the middle 
of the city.
 
Not that I mind. At this time in my life living in a condo 
where all one has to do to get something fixed is pick up 
the phone, suits me fine.  But those years on our poor 
little hill farm, even though I worked all day at my job in 
town and all my spare time around the farm, are what I 
remember most fondly. Of course we always had lots of animals 
around: cattle, horses, chickens, geese, ducks and always 
various dogs, cats and occasional strays of indeterminant 
species.  
 
And each has a story: "The Ducks That Were Afraid of Water",
"The Dog That Met His Match," "The Goose That Ate the 
Tabasco," "The Filly from Nowhere" and "The Chick that 
Wanted to See the World." This latter story is the one I want 
to tell now. Tim was our first rooster. When the girls 
(twins and a younger girl) were probably around five and 
four, we bought a batch of baby chicks to raise.  We were 
basically city folks who had been on the farm only a year or 
so and we thought it was time to try to raise some chickens 
for our own eggs. We had a beat-up old chicken house, but it 
was much too cold, even with a heat lamp, for newly hatched 
chicks, so we put them in a galvanized tub in the corner of 
the kitchen, and, with a heat lamp on them, they thrived, 
and the children loved them.  One chick particularly seemed to 
be more adventurous then the  others and he (they had not 
been sexed and we didn't find out until later that he was a 
he) got to the point where he could hop up onto the edge of 
the tub.  "He just wants to see the world, just like Tim", 
the children would say. 
 
Tim was a chick in a book we had been reading to them. In 
the book Tim went out to see the world and had various 
adventures, so naturally our little adventurous chick, 
whether girl or boy, got named "Tim Chick". Eventually the 
chicks grew into bigger chicks and we moved them to the 
chicken house, still keeping them enclosed under a heat 
lamp, and they continued to grow.  The girls just loved to 
feed them and watch them as they learned to scratch and 
peck. Soon the weather was warmer and the chicks were little 
pullets and roosters and we could tell that Tim was a he. 
Still adventurous, we would have to chase him back into the 
enclosure he was constantly escaping from. Like Tim in the 
book, he wanted to see the world.Now understand we almost 
always had dogs around, but occasionally there would be a 
gap between dogs. 
 
Dogs stray, or get killed or simply disappear when you are 
on a remote farm as ours was.  Most difficult of all, 
sometimes they get into neighbors' live stock and must be 
destroyed.  This had just happened to old "Beau," a mixed 
hound who started running with some wild dogs and killed 
some neighbors' pigs. It is impossible and pointless to keep 
a dog tied up on a farm so we made the difficult decision to 
have him put away.  While I was at work, the children's 
mother, with them along of course, took him to the vet.  
Halfway there, she just couldn't take it and decided to turn 
around and go back home, but one of the kids popped up and 
said "But Mommy, he killed pigs", and so she went on with 
the terrible chore. The children understood better than we 
did.  Anyway, we had yet to get another dog and the young 
chickens were without protection. 
 
Unless you have a very secure chicken house, a dog is 
essential to keep raccoons, foxes and other predators away 
from chickens.One day we found one less chicken in the flock 
and periodically others would disappear. We did what we 
could, but it wasn't enough and eventually they were all 
gone except Tim whom we found lying on the floor of the coop 
one morning, a huge chunk bitten from his side, but still 
alive.Taking him to the house, and not knowing any better, 
we sprayed the wound with first air spray kept handy for the
childrens' many cuts and scratches, and, surprisingly, he 
recovered. So we nursed him back to health and allowed him 
to roost on the back porch. And while eventually we got 
other dogs and raised other flocks of chickens, poor old 
Tim, for as long as we had him, and he lived to a ripe 
chicken old age, never went back to the chicken house. He 
would never even venture more than a few steps from the back 
porch.  He no longer wanted to see the world.

 MORAL: 
Sometimes even the bravest adventurer may turn chicken and 
prefer to see the world from the security of the back porch. 
Especially when the fox is in the henhouse.
 
================================================================= 
 
AUSTRALIAN GOLD FIELDS
By Elaine Dabbs
 
My name is Martin Power.  I'm in my 94th year and everyone 
will tell you not to miss talking to me if you want to know 
about our town and the gold days.
 
On Sundays, you can see me walking by the side of the road, 
as erect as any man of forty they tell me, and in winter 
wearing an overcoat against the cold of the morning.  Since 
the age of three I have only missed five masses at the 
church, and those through sickness.  This morning I arose at 
five o'clock in order to feed the poultry and to cut gass 
for the sheep.  Used a scythe to cut the grass of course.  
What else!
 
Our mining town of Clunes (Scots Gaelic meaning 'a pleasant 
place') in Victoria might still be part of the 19th century 
if it was not for a few cars parked in the main street. In 
my shed at the back of the garden is a collection of the 
weird and wonderful instruments for gold prospecting and 
fossicking, which I still do every weekend. Let's sit at the 
long table in the kitchen when I've rekindled the wood 
stove, and I'll tell you about my boyhood days in Clunes.
 
After I left the Catholic School, my twin brother and I went 
to a school teacher by the name of John Francis McCarthy, a 
big Irishman - he never had a schoolhouse of his own, he was 
always renting a place.  The last place he went to was only 
a four-roomed house and the front room was 12 by 12 with a 
chimney coming out in one end of it: that was the 
schoolroom..  He used to have night school as well and his 
fee was two shillings a week for general education. If you 
wanted to take anything else, that was sixpence a week 
extra.  He could teach Latin, French and Greek, and he was 
very particular about your English.
 
Just because our father was a miner, my twin brother and I 
wanted to be miners too.  The first start off to that was to 
go down to the creek and seek gold.  There were others at 
it, and you learnt how to do it by watching them.  But I 
tell you if you got a book on the subject you'd be in the 
wilderness; you'd know nothing.  Anyhow I got enough 
knowledge then to gather the gold.
 
My brother and I carried on looking for gold all our lives; 
of course we wouldn't stick to the creek all the time. When 
winter came we had to get out and go digging shallow holes 
to get a bit of gold that way.  Sometimes you struck a 
track, other times it was for nothing. As we grew up we took 
to harvesting or carting, a bit of spud-digging, 
road-making, stone-breaking, or quarrying stone, and believe 
me, that was well-earned money.  You had to quarry those big 
boulders out first, drill holes into them with a hammer and 
tap, then blast them with gelignite. Then you had to get the 
big "spoiler", the 18 pound hammer, and split them into 
smaller pieces that couldn't be any bigger than 4 inches.
 
For all that work, all we got was 1/3d a yard and find your 
own gelignite, or 1/6d and they'd provide it; and you had to 
slave to get six bob a day at it too.  There was no 
half-holiday, no paid holidays, and no sick pay.  If you 
were sick and you didn't send a note, there was a man there 
just waiting for your job.
 
See this framed photo of the Clunes Combined Churches Choir?  
I can reel off the names of the entire group with an 
anecdote or two about some of them.   I like to beat time on 
the table with an upturned spoon as I sing the song which, 
as part of a selection, won first prize at Ballarat years 
earlier.  Of course I remember those lyrics and melodies, 
what's so remarkable about that?
 
Although there was plenty of mining going on at the turn of 
the century, work was hard to come by.  People then were 
prepared to work at anything rather than accept handouts. 
You couldn't get a constant job.  You had to battle for a 
shift in the mines, and you might be lucky and take the 
place of someone who was sick.
 
I used to do carting for old prospectors like Pegleg White 
and his mate.  Pegleg was a funny old bloke.  He had his leg 
shot off in the war.  In the early days the men would come 
up and if they brought women, they'd bring goats in to give 
milk for the children. When they all left after the old mine 
pegged out, the goats multiplied because they'd go through 
thousands of acres of mulga where there was always good 
pickings for them, and they were always in good condition.
 
Pegleg knew the whereabouts of all the goats and if he 
wanted meat he'd just go out and shoot one.  He reckoned 
that was the best mutton in the world; and I can tell you 
there's been many a goat sold in these back country towns as 
mutton.
  
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