Holidays are a great but one can miss out on so much while away from the electronics

Every year, some time between June and August, we escape the Melbourne cold and head for our favourite holiday spot. In fact, Burleigh Heads on the Queensland Gold Coast has become near enough our only holiday destination. Its mild winter temperature, its beautiful beach and the rainforest on the headland make for spirit-refreshing and thought-engendering strolls. Some of my most lucid imaginings and solutions to literary and philosophical quandaries have come while strolling along the water's edge, the sun glistening off the water and the rhythmic sound of breaking waves filling my ears.

I usually miss out some important media event while away - I mean not having my electronic aids to pursue and analyse the happening - but this year during the four week break I missed a Vesuvius eruption of media events, one being a stunning historical first.

There were the Dutch elections and all the drama that I follow when the time comes around. Because of the time difference I can follow the evening events in Holland at leisure during the Australian morning, while clutching a cup of strong coffee. This year's elections promised to be exciting because the main government party of CDA (Christian Democratic Appeal) had slid badly in the polls and Geert Wilder's 'extreme right-wing' party looked like scoring well. It was vexing that we scarcely got any news of how it all went.

Eventually we learned that Wilder's PVV booked a huge increase of 15 seats, an outstanding and (for some) a harrowing result. The VVD (the 'conservative-liberal' People's Party for Freedom and Democracy) won the most seats and is the leading party in forming a government. The PVV, despite scoring third in the voting behind VVD and PvdA, has been spurned by the major parties, which only goes to demonstrate for PVV supporters that they were right about the attitude of Holland's dominant political class towards them - contempt and condescension. The contempt emanates especially from the left-wing parties and media, as it does in Australia.

The sacking of David Jones CEO Mark McInnes was a dream story for media hacks and furious bloggers. I was boundlessly cranky that I did not have access to my website. This was such a juicy story, pushing all the right PC-class buttons and evoking jeering howls from those still not lost in an ideological fantasy world.

The CEO of one of Australia's major department store was sacked for giving a female staff member a hug on one company occasion and a kiss on second similar occasion. That female member was so crushed and distraught by the hug and the kiss that she was immediately off to her lawyers who quickly delivered a stiff letter to the David Jones board. Whereupon the Chairman of David Jones came forth and publicly bemoaned McInnes's wicked behaviour in the manner of an Old Testament Prophet. Only the sackcloth and ashes were missing. His abject apology for the kiss and hug that crushed the budding marketing executive was accompanied by the wailing of media feminists who usually shoot from the lip as soon as they sniff out an instance of male power over the helpless female victim. Apparently the mere idea of male power is so awesome that it freezes the female subordinate like a deer in the glare of headlights.

Good-bye Mark McInnes, who in a few short years had turned the ailing David Jones around, ensuring some wonderful marketing opportunities for young executives. We now await news of the big payout to the frightened female employee who no doubt is being coddled by her solicitous lawyers. That will be a great incentive for other hapless female executives.

Then there were the major sporting events of cricket, rugby, Wimbledon and the Soccer World Cup watched on a television that blurred the ball almost out of sight. I don't know why I bother with the Soccer World Cup, anyhow. It is such a farce with players cheating in any way they can. How can any self-respecting sportsmen throw himself around on the ground like a squealing fifth-grade girl? It's beyond me. And let's not forget the travesty of the umpiring. The appalling sending off of Harry Kewell killed any chance that Australia had. It was an Italian umpire who sent Kewell off and it was an Italian player who found it necessary to fake a fall in the penalty area to get past Australia in the previous world cup.

In the end there were two consolations. The Italian team, the world champion soccer cheats, was bundled out unceremoniously and Australia did well considering that it beat Serbia who had defeated Germany, and Germany defeated Argentina 4-0, as it did Australia. With a little more luck Australia could have gone much further.

But far and away the major media event during this time was the brutal internecine political execution of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. Only the drawn-out feminist/media assassination of Dr Peter Hollingworth, former Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane, Australian of the Year and Governor-General, tops it - mostly on account of its naked ideological nastiness.

We were watching Bert Newton's '20 to 1' on Channel 9 while waiting to go over to SBS's entertaining 'Cup Fever' (the most enjoyable part of the World Cup season) when the program was interrupted by Breaking News. Rudd then appeared with an announcement that few people in Australia would not now know about. In short, Julia Gillard, Deputy Prime Minister, had challenged Rudd's leadership and the Prime Minister was bringing on a 'spill'. I could not believe my ears. Jumping to my feet and gesticulating wildly at the television screen, I exclaimed rhetorically to my bemused wife, 'How could the Labor Party be so stupid!' What sort of political party would get rid of their Prime Minister in his first term?

Well, we all know now that the Labor Party is that sort of political party. The following morning the execution of the most popular ever Labor Party Prime Minister was as clean as it was indescribably brutal. It still leaves one breathless. This was the party whose members continually bleat about compassion - compassion evidently being the preserve of the Labor Party, and lack of compassion that of conservatives like me. The public vision of the crushed and broken former Prime Minister exhausted by his efforts in the job will never leave my mind. In the coming days I will be making further comment about the Rudd execution and the Gillard ascendancy.

Up until the Rudd execution I had fruitfully busied myself with reading and writing. Without access to my website I had the time to catch up with some tasks. I finished reading Just William by Richmal Compton which I received for Christmas in 1953 and had never read. Reading Just William is part of my plan to read all the books I received (and still have) during the fifties. This is in preparation for my childhood memoir. For the same reason, I read The Jack Davey Story by Lew Wright, published in 1961 and which I found in a second-hand shop. Davey was arguably the most popular radio/television personality in Australian radio and television history. It was a fascinating account of this well-loved man who died from lung cancer in 1959. I also finished reading The Measure of Years by Sir Robert Menzies and half of Sir Robert Menzies 1894-1978: A New informal Memoir by Sir Percy Joske. I will have more to say about Menzies in the course of time.

As far as my writing goes, I revised the first three chapters of a novel I began two years ago. I had not intended to go back to this fiction writing at this stage, but the urge got the better of me. I get enormous pleasure from writing fiction, totally heedless of what others think of my stories. That only took a day and a half. With that urge satisfied I took up the revision of my masters thesis. I have decided for a number of reasons to bring the revision of the thesis forward ahead of the memoir. The new title will be Edmund Burke: Knowing and Reasoning in Politics, which among other things will lay bare the metaphysical and epistemological basis of all that I scribble on this website.

I first saw Burleigh Heads Beach on a family holiday in May 1955 when I was nine-years-old. It was a fantastic holiday for us five kids (a sixth came in October 1957), Mum and Dad really stretching the finances to make it happen. We had never been so far from our home in Lane Cove, a suburb on the north side of Sydney. Two years later in May 1957 we were there again. Below is me on the right with a sister and a brother. Dad was behind the camera, as he was for several thousand other snaps.

May 1957

The same beach 53 years later, June 2010.

Comment: gerard@gerardcharleswilson.com