Strange Events Down Under

Strange events Down Under

1. Auflage, erschienen 7-2021

Umschlaggestaltung: Romeon Verlag Text: Larry B. Ritter

Layout: Romeon Verlag

ISBN (E-Book): 978-3-96229-796-1

www.romeon-verlag.de

Copyright © Romeon Verlag, Jüchen

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Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek: Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.dnb.de abrufbar.

Larry B. Ritter

STRANGE EVENTS DOWN UNDER

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

Act 1: Unpredictable things

Scene 1: Vacations at the Uluru

Scene 2: Lena‘s Uluru Art

Scene 3: Searching for Lena

Scene 4: Just a Piece of Rock

Scene 5: A Strategic Exchange

Act 2: Reverberation of the Uluru

Scene 1: Escaping the Dream Time

Scene 2: In Between Times

Scene 3: The Now Time is back

Scene 4: Overtime on the Uluru

Scene 5: Dream-Time and Now-Time meet

Scene 6: The Uluru-Effect

Third Act: Mixed messages

Scene 1: The ‚Hidden Agenda‘

Scene 2: A first-class scolding

Scene 3: Little progress

Scene 4: Two first steps

Final Act: Choking the Uluru effect

Scene 1: Reverberations of the Uluru effect

Scene 2: The Winter Solstice

Scene 3: A hidden issue

Scene 4: Merry Christmas!

Main Characters

Other Actors:

Other key people:

PREFACE

Ayers Rock/Uluru is a mountain in the middle of the Australian continent belonging to World heritage of the UNESCO. Even experienced globetrotters consider this place as exceptional because of its beauty, but also because of its vibes linked to its importance for the indigenous people. In this enormous desert of the huge Northern Territory, a vacation resort with its own airport and not even a thousand employees cater to tourist from all over the world. The closest town is at a distance of 440 km, and there is only one connecting road. From Sydney, a jet takes more than four hours to get here so that even many Australians know their famous landmark only from photographies or films.

In the tradition of the other books of this series, all facts, independent whether they are geographic, cultural, or business-related, are absolutely correct. The same way as in the other books, the persons described here are all one-hundred percent invented. Any resemblance with living or deceased persons would consequently be a pure hazard.

However, in contrast with the other books, the finance subjects are pushed in the background of this fiction. They are dominated by an untypical, irrational environment with behavior patterns which are hard to explain. Instead of being in a world of measurable results, balance sheets, and factual planning, we find ourselves in an irrational set-up where not even time doesn’t play the usual role. Certain phenomena described here are outside our usual way of thinking.

A special thank-you goes to the Aborigines. Their way of thinking is hard to follow from our perspective and culture. It took a film in the special Australian station reserved for the indigenes to offer me an access to their approach to live.

When watching a film about the Australia of the many local tribes, I managed to comprehend more than in reading many clever books. The first thing that hit me: From start to the end, there was no commentary at all. Forty-five minutes with no music and no word, and still, the message was brutally clear: If you do not understand this, you won’t need explanations! What contempt of our rationalizing world!

The film only consists of outstanding shots of valleys, animals, and vegetation. The only action shows a father who wanders through this beautiful landscape, from time-to-time pointing out certain places or plants to his son. If you watch the film several times, you can survive in this deserted Australian environment, I am sure! Also, the silent meta-message was crying out loud: We only live to enable our children to survive.

What a contrast towards the typical nature films from the US or Europe with their schmaltzy closures! So, this film initiated the following book. Still understanding only very little of their thinking, the Aborigines may forgive my interpretations! Living ten thousands of years apart, I did my best!

Geneva, December of 2015

Larry B. Ritter

ACT 1: UNPREDICTABLE THINGS
Scene 1: Vacations at the Uluru

It was so hot that Bob didn’t find any cool-down even close to the outdoor pool at the Outback Pioneer Hotel. The thermometer at the reception showed 39 degrees centigrade and he was afraid to get a sun burn just by swimming in the water. Because of his super sensitive skin, the doctor had told him to stay out of direct sun shine. The hotel had distributed some rules, one of which was to drink a liter of water per hour if exposed to the sun. Normally, he was already suffering from 28 degrees on and began to be grouchy. In front of his children, though, he had to pull himself together. He had given in to his darling daughter, seven years old Lena, by promising her to stay here in the Out Back of Australia during the two weeks of her fall holidays. When asked how she came up with this strange idea for a little American girl living in France, she didn’t produce any meaningful answer but insisted on her wish: “Uluru is the present for my eighth birthday.”

The rest of the family found the idea absurd and when they heard that it took twenty-six hours by plane to get there, no one wanted to participate. Nobody wanted to suffer through this experience with the according jet-lag, and that twice in such a short time. Naturally, the exception was Lena’s adopted brother, eightyear-old Jaim who did everything just to stay close to his beloved sister. Not to stay without female companionship, Bob had asked Irina, the young beauty from Lithuania, to accompany the three. She worked with Lise, the boss of the Horner clan in the medical practice for children in the house next to Bob’s and was usually open for extravagant tours. Had she only anticipated what lied in front of her, she would probably have appreciated to stay home in their little town next to the Swiss border.

Finally having arrived, Bob had the time to let his thoughts wander around. He looked at the almost perfect body of his last conquest. He estimated himself lucky to enjoy Irina as his girl-friend. Smilingly, he was thinking back to the moment in the spring of this year when he first met her.

Just back from one of his adventures, he was longing for attention but no-one seemed to have time for him in his house. The tired soldier of financial wars in the east was mad. “Such is life”, the exhausted hero was thinking, “You are going out for daily battles, bore yourself to death in unfriendly airport lounges and then, at home there is nothing but frustration.”

At this very moment, a human being showed up that made his humor change; a slim young girl with blonde hair in a doctor’s gown was floating towards him. Bob looked into her blue eyes when she smiled at him: “I am Irina, Lise’s* helper and I should bring you to the doctor.” When she talked, her chin moved in a funny way and when she looked questioning, she had a little double chin. She rolled the ‘r’ a bit when she spoke but all this didn’t take away the charm from that snow-white beauty. On the contrary!

Like hit on the head, Bob had followed the apparition through his garden over to Lise’s practice. They entered through the garden door into the office of the co-manager of his clan. Lise was not at all a beauty, but her eyes indicated a sharp brain and her voice was so assertive that everybody, not only children, had the tendency to follow her suggestions without discussions. He learned that Irina studied Medicine in Riga and was helping in Lise’s practice and in both houses also. With his six children, four adults, two houses, and a pool complex, there was a lot of work around.

In front of Irina, the two clan managers kissed and Lise asked Bob to sit down. An annulation in her agenda gave her the opportunity to update him. Like a caretaker, she provided him with an overview of everything important. This included the message that Bob’s wife Jela was recovering well from a serious burn out because of her dissertation. She managed to be attentive to all Clan members now and not only to Lena who was demanding attention without asking.

Asking for inputs on Irina, he heard that the girl didn’t have enough money to pursue her studies at home. Here she was mostly to save her little salary and to learn French.

“Hardly nineteen, she is totally innocent and helpless. If you touch her, I will move out, so you know!” she added in a business-like tone. Thinking of his wife’s weakness regarding beautiful women, Bob dared to ask: “And if Jela …?” Diplomatic silence from Lise’s side.

The first news In any case, Irina’s ok to fly with them started an avalanche. Sandrine didn’t want to let the object of her desires and father of her daughter travel alone with the beauty next door, so she wanted to use the fall vacations also. With no children of her own, Lise was quickly convinced to look after Amélie, Sandrine’s tiny daughter of not even two years. Bob was aware of the hidden motivations of the two women in his household.

An overview about the clan members and other major actors can be found at the end of the book.

Despite this threat, one beautiful day in summer, clan chief Bob and young Irina were alone in the two houses linked by a long hall and a huge swimming pool. Hardly had he touched her shining white skin, when they found themselves in bed. After that, his new sweetheart had

But the really important relief for the whole household had been that Lise’s threat to fire Irina and to leave them alone turned out to be empty. Everybody was afraid to lose the chief organizer of the family affairs and so Bob had promoted Lise onto the decision-making board and didn’t mind including Lise into his nightly tours of the two houses. After a long discussion between the two of them in early summer, they also agreed on a junior role of Irina in the clan. It turned out that the board members as well as the six children were charmed by Irina’s natural way of dealing as well with the adults as with the kids.

After having Bob’s child, Sandrine had become less competitive with the other women in the clan. The only remaining factor of jealousy could ignite if Irina would become pregnant – or even Lise?

So Bob watched the two women playing with the kids in the pool while he went to swim at least a few laps. How did they finally come up with six children travelling with them?

Here again, it was Lena’s fault: All of a sudden, she wanted her class buddy Jean-Pierre, called JP, to accompany her. Whether this was just to tease brother Jaim, Bob didn’t know. But by agreeing, he made a mistake. Looking at the jealous face of the second Arab prince in his family for several weekends, he asked Jaim to also bring a class mate along. Happily, Jaim presented Jörg to him, a German boy of the same age.

“Sometimes it is ok to be wealthy”, Bob, a well-known finance advisor, was thinking when he was counting up the bill for the flights. The final count was made when his eldest Saudi prince, Ahmed, asked whether he could come along too with his friend Kevin, another German. When Bob started to question JP about the origin of Lena’s strange Australian idea, Ahmed and his friend coerced him into playing with a ball with them. So he never got an answer to his question.

Consequently, Bob’s travel party consisted of six kids and three grown-ups, almost as many as his whole clan. The two German boys turned out to be clever, open, and helpful, not adding to the complexity of the typical family tensions already present. English being their major language at the boarding school they were going to in Switzerland, they had no communication problems.

Then his women saved him from the over-excited children: They wanted to discuss how to organize the dinner for this group of savages. And he wished to know what to do against the Australian plague: Billions of flies with a preference for Europeans. They were even more aggressive here than in Sydney where the Horners had spent three days to get used to the local climate and time. Both women had bought an anti-insect spray which Bob could not use because of his allergies. It turned out, however, to be almost totally useless. They all refused to buy the special hats with nets around them which made them look like beekeepers.

When watching the video film later that Ahmed and his friend Kevin were recording, the audience always asked who the bee masters were who were running around in the background with their rucksacks and walking sticks.

The two thirteen-year-old boys complemented each other extremely well. When informed by Bob, Kevin’s and Jörg’s parents agreed after some hesitation to let their boys leave with the Horners and provided the necessary papers. When Jörg arrived, he even had a check with him for the costs of the flights.

For a while before leaving, Bob was afraid of the thought that Sybil, his ex-girlfriend in Frankfurt would ask him to take her son along also. On a flight back from Kiev, where he was for business reasons, he had visited the blond manager of billions and had told her about Lena’s idea. Just a day later she called him, but it was just to ask him to add a few days after the vacations to scout the Australian market for a similar finance product as they had implanted in the Ukraine. She would ask Jerry, a mutual friend to support the due diligence support for that venture.

The only person who wouldn’t join the expedition to Australia in any case, was Bob’s Frau Jela. Despite of her burn out symptoms she participated in the absolute necessary minimum of lectures at the University of Geneva to get her master degree in Mathematics. This was the prerequisite that her PhD work could be formally accepted. It was finished since months and an unofficial copy was already discussed in the restricted world of nuclear scientists all over the world.

With the help of a student colleague, Carine, who happened to live in Divonne also, Jela was preparing the final exams which were foreseen for the summer of 2016. Because of her pragmatic focus, the only challenge for Jela was the theoretical orientation of some of the subjects. Bitching, she had to accept that, and Carine kept her on track. She even drove Jela to Geneva when it was necessary and took extensive notes when Jela could not make it to the classes.

Scene 2: Lena‘s Uluru Art

When Bob‘s expedition arrived with the rented Mercedes bus at the ‘viewing zone’ for the Uluru mountain, there was not much going on. Here in the middle of the Australian desert, clouds were covering the sun. Since a few days, unusual afternoon thunderstorms did not only bring quite some rain but also a lot of clouds. The parking lot was well selected: They had an exquisite view over lower lying brush areas towards the whole length of ‘Ayers Rock‘, as the white Australians used to call the mountain. At sun set, they should be able to see the changing colors of the red rock. The suspense was high: Would the sun break through the clouds on time?

Annoyed by the waiting time, the children started to play. Despite the interdiction to leave the parking lot, the boys tried to discover the brush close by, and Lena started to paint some circles into the red sand. With a stick, she added more circles into the big ones and filled in even more circles made out of sand. Finally she added many dots of different sizes into the remaining space.

The slow process of creating the picture with the Uluru in the background produced a strange fascination. For a moment it was as if a huge gate opened and a slow rhythmic swoosh could be heard. Bob shook his head because of this kitschy vision. He had to force himself not to stare at the picture anymore and suddenly he knew where Lena had seen these patterns of the Aborigines. In the reception of the hotel they had a little exhibition of local art and Lena was just reproducing the structures. Or was it just the simplicity of the visual elements that made her create the circles?

When asked where the idea came from, she just continued because she didn’t know.

Filming Lena’s Uluru art, Bob observed that almost every arriving tourist made the usual selfies, often in almost grotesque forms: “Myself in front of the Uluru”, or “Lucie with new hair-do in front of the mountain, what was its name?” The rest of the time, these people kept themselves busy with video games on their mobiles or their note books. Hardly did they have a look at the mighty mountain in this specific atmosphere. Bob felt as if it was a profanation even though he had not many background information on the mystical aspects of Uluru yet.

As if well managed, the sun fell under the cover of the clouds shortly before seven p.m. and the immense rock started to glow in a dark red color. The show of the changing reds on all 348 meters of the Holy Mountain of the Aborigines began. Rudely, Bob had to interrupt his two beauties in their conversation with some Australian families so they wouldn’t miss the few minutes of the event. All of a sudden, the total silence of the desert covered the area until the big klotz of a mountain seemed to become silvery. And then it turned dark within a few minutes.

Slowly the conversations started again, and the Horners learned that the weekend before, the thirty-year celebration of giving the territory back to the locals Anangu people had been held in their village. Not every Australian was happy about this, it seemed. One after another, the kids showed up, all except Lena.

Bob‘s alarms went on: He had lived already once through a similar situation and he didn’t wish to go through this experience again. At once, he took an Aspirin pill which he always had in his wallet and sent everybody into the car. Taking the two big boys with him, he went to Lena’s piece of art to start the search from there.

The picture in the sand was destroyed, and the parking ground next to it was already empty. “You guys ask all people you meet if and where they have seen Lena. If you get meaningful inputs you ask the people to honk three times. Then I come to meet you. In no case leave the parking ground!” Just a few minutes in the bushes made him aware that there was no chance to find his daughter this way at night. Also he was in danger to get lost himself. He stopped and forced himself to think carefully. Good decisions were needed! But he was lucky; he heard the honking signal he had agreed upon with the boys. Blinking lights from a camping car helped him to find the boys quickly.

With smiling faces, they were sitting on some camping chairs in front of a small camper and Bob introduced himself to a young couple of Australians who had a boy of a similar age as his. Then someone came running out of the bus and he knew at once who it was. Lena jumped up on him like always: “Daddy-Chéri, je t’aime!”

It turned out that the couple didn’t allow Lena, who was playing with their boy, to leave them. Lena didn’t find her bus when it got dark. They were sure that the parents of the girl would show up soon, exactly what had happened. Bob was angry at his little one but kept it for himself. Perhaps he should have watched her better!?

The outdoor dinner next to the reception was something exciting for the kids; only a big open fire was missing. They could choose what they wanted to eat and had to prepare it with the help of the adults. They were sitting on wooden benches, and alcohol, even wine was only sold when one could show a room key. But water was for free. All this was not Nouvelle Cuisine for the spoiled grown-ups and the flies were quite disturbing.

The drop in emotional tension and the heavy Shiraz wine forced Bob to go to bed soon. He caught the four younger kids who protested wildly but went back with them to their small lodge. The darkness on the way would stop them from running back to the others. The rest of the family showed up pretty soon in any case, and everybody, not only the children, fell asleep very quickly.

At breakfast next morning, Sandrine announced the program of the day and a few rules for the desert. She imposed that the four smaller kids should always stay together and everyone was responsible for his or her water bottle. Sun tan lotion was to be renewed every two hours and Lena was to go to the toilet always accompanied by a woman.

The first expedition was a tour in their little bus around mount Uluru. Bob asked Ahmed to explain to the smaller kids why it was dangerous to climb on the rock. His boy did a good job so they had no requests in this direction afterwards. Perhaps it was also the 35 degrees at ten o‘clock that closed this subject. In any case, they could not discover any tourist climbing on the slopes.

Their last stop was in the museum of local art where the many circular pieces on wood or tissue didn’t please Lena at all: “All this is far too colorful. You cannot even see the mountain in it!” The adults looked at each other: There was a lot of truth in these simple words. When they left the premises, they smiled about a small sign which read: ‘Last stop sign for 440 kilometers’. Bob knew that there was only one road towards Alice Springs, the only real town in this territory.

Because of the heat, Sandrine had ordered a general siesta and the evening tour was planned only for five p.m. So it became calm in the Horner lodge after lunch. Even the children went to sleep so that Bob found himself with his two women in the queen-sized bed in the parents’ bedroom. They all enjoyed the calm and went to sleep, too, after a while. They agreed: The atmosphere in the desert was casually erotic but not too strenuous.

After most of the members of the Horner clan had swum a few laps in the pool, they all drove to the second viewing point, namely the one for the ‚Nine Olgas‘, another holy site for the Anangus. It is the twin mountain of the Uluru, just close-by for Australian distances: sixty kilometers or an hours’ drive. While the Olgas with their Anangu name of ‘Kata Tjuta’ is highly structured into nine groups of mountains, the Uluru is one absolutely monolithic block. They found out that the Anangus consider both mountains as living, mythical pieces of art created several tens of thousands of years ago.

Sandrine, generally enjoying her role as number two in the clan after Bob’s wife Jela, took the driver’s seat as Bob gave the impression to be still exhausted. She got used to driving on the ‘wrong’ side of the road; only when turning right Bob had to bring her back to the left side from time to time. And exactly like him, she used the windshield wipers instead of the blinkers when turning.

Turning onto the red sand away from the parking area for the ‚Walpa Gorge Walk‘, the Horners noticed that the Olgas were geologically quite different from the Uluru. Whereas the latter is just one pressed block of sandstone, the Olgas are formed of pressed cobble stones which make it very strenuous to even walk on the paths. They hardly noticed that several pick-ups of the locals were parked at one end of the parking lot.

As the ‘Valley of the Winds’ was closed because of the heat, they decided to walk up the Walpa Gorge cutting into a mountain in a V-shape. It looked like an easy walk but soon they found out that their shoes were not good enough for the cobblestones. The views, however, were offering a compensation for the aching ankles: On each side, the mountains in their rust-red color were going straight up into the sky for several hundred meters. Here and there, holes were visible which left the valley sprinkled with rocks of different sizes. On the left, a forest of desert oaks and Eucalyptus trees followed the lowest parts of the valley where the water was coming together when it rained. However, there was no sign any more of the rain of the day before. Looking back into the desert, a landscape of softly rolling hills covered with brush was to be seen. Bob knew that there were sand dunes under the hills.

Even though the valley path only moved up gently, after a kilometer the younger children were already tired and started to suck on their water bottles. So Bob decided to leave Ahmed with them and continued with the others. Because of the reflection of the sun from both sides of the rocks, the heat went up continuously. It felt like being in a baking oven. Only the wind offered some comfort. But to make it worse, the fly plague was especially horrible here.

Using his soft tropic hat, Bob invented a multi-task hit-mewhere you-can sequence of fast strikes against his body which gave him some relief of the aggressive beasts for a few minutes.

Hikers coming back from the end of the now canyon-like valley gave them news about the remaining stretch in the baking oven. But then Irina and Sandrine gave up, too, so that Bob continued only with Kevin who didn’t seem to suffer much. Bob started to like the German boy.

Then, just before the end of the canyon, Bob suddenly knew why the mountains have a woman’s name. A giant female being made out of stone was lying here on her stomach. They had climbed up between her thighs and were now in front of her ridge closing the valley vertically with a small forest at its bottom looking like a bush of hair. On both sides, beautifully shaped rock formations rounded up this picture.

The two managed the last bit and sat down in the little shade a meager tree provided for them.

The way back was sheer hell: Both drank a lot but their sweat attracted only more flies. A while later they finally saw the rest of their group but interestingly enough Sandrine and JP were missing! Jaim came running towards them. Bob saw that the boy was excited: “Lena has disappeared again. Sandrine and JP are searching for her.” Jaim was alarmed that something could have happened to his darling sister. Bob embraced his son.

Then he had to sit down, not noticing that the hot rock was almost burning away his pants. What was going on here? Who was after Lena? Why always his darling? He took two pills out of his wallet and swallowed them with the rest of his water. Pulling himself together, he went to meet the other children and arrived the same moment Sandrine and JP did. They came up from the woods down in the trough. Lena was not with them! Bob’s head seemed to turn; he almost fell down. Ahmed and Kevin put him gently down and stood in a way that gave him a maximum of shade.

“Down at the parking lot is a rescue phone”, Sandrine took the command, “From there we can organize some help!” and she asked the big boys to take Bob in the middle.

They all went down ‘quite calmly’ to their car. “Nobody runs. It’s ‘verboten’!”

The children were almost as shocked as their leaders and repeated Sandrine’s orders like little robots. Then she explained Bob what had happened. Lena wanted to ‘do pipi’ and had climbed down to the forest close by. When she didn’t come back, Irina who was just arriving and JP went to look for her but had no success:

“I don’t want to hurt you, Bob”, Sandrine told him, “But it is evident that someone took your daughter. She would never do something like this and certainly not under these circumstances. But who could be interested in something like this?”

Finally back in their bus and all of them sitting in the fan of the air conditioning, Bob came back to life. He wanted to get out when Sandrine came in: “We should wait here. The police will be here soon. JP, Bob, and I will have to stay here. Irina will drive everyone else back to the hotel and she is in command in our absence, is that understood?”

Now even the tough school master Sandrine was exhausted. She asked Ahmed and Kevin to go and fill up all water bottles because they would have to stop the engine pretty soon. Bob was proud of her. This was exactly the style in which she had helped Jela and him when Jela’s friend Dora was shot. He took her in his arms and noticed that she tried to keep her posture not to show in front of the kids how concerned she was.