I don’t think the Japanese would have bombed a dairy farm.

That’s what I thought at the time, or what I think I thought. It’s hard to know, at this distance, what belongs to the four-year-old and what belongs to the old man looking back at him. But that was the logic of it, as best as I can reconstruct it. We had gone west to Werrington to escape the Japanese, and even then, some part of me suspected they had better things to do than bomb a paddock full of Herefords out past Penrith.

After the submarines came into the harbour and the shells landed in the eastern suburbs, the fear took hold properly. Not in our house, not in any way my parents showed us. But you could feel it in the neighbourhood the way you feel a change in weather before it arrives. Families were leaving. Going west, going inland, putting distance between themselves and the coast. My parents made their own calculation and arrived at Werrington.

My uncle had a place out there. A small dairy farm on the flat western plain, the kind of country that feels like a different world from Coogee, no salt in the air, no sound of surf, just flat light and the smell of grass and cattle and the big sky going on forever. When the family needed somewhere to go, it was where we went.

My uncle had dug a shelter out behind the house. About a metre deep, lined roughly, big enough for half a dozen people pressed together. I remember looking down into it. It smelled of turned earth and had a kind of seriousness about it, the weight of what it implied.

It just sat there. Nobody ever got into it.

There was also a rifle. An old .303 kept at the back of the house, handed out to men across the country in those years as a gesture toward civil defence. I don’t know that my uncle had ever fired it. It had no ammunition, which rather settled the question of what use it would have been. I wanted to touch it, of course. I was four years old and there was a rifle and I had been to the pictures. I was not allowed near it, which felt like a very great injustice.

The logic of the whole arrangement did not entirely convince me. The Japanese had aeroplanes and submarines and had sunk some very large ships. An old .303 with no ammunition and a hole in the ground behind the house seemed an unequal response to all of that.

But nobody asked me.

My parents were exactly as they were in Coogee. My father with the same composure, the same complete absence of visible fear. My mother managing, as she always managed. The milk still needed collecting. The boys still needed feeding. The world that had not ended continued not to end, day after day, with the flat western light coming in the windows and the cattle moving slowly in the paddock and the shelter in the yard waiting for a catastrophe that never came.

We came home because the lease on the house in Coogee came due. Whatever calculation my parents had made about the Japanese and the coastline, the lease came due and the numbers worked out the way they worked out. You pack up the boys and catch the train and go home.

I’ve thought since about that shelter. About a man digging a hole in his own paddock because the world had come to the point where that seemed like a reasonable thing to do. Doing it carefully, doing it properly, knowing it probably wouldn’t save anyone from anything but doing it anyway, because when you cannot control events you do what you can with what you have.

The shelter sat there and nobody used it, and the war moved elsewhere and eventually ended, and the paddocks at Werrington were later swallowed by suburbs. But I remember looking down into that hole in the ground when I was four years old, the smell of the turned earth, the serious quiet of it.

Some preparations are made to be unnecessary. That doesn’t make the making of them foolish.

The post Out West appeared first on Des Walsh.

People don’t believe me when I tell them about the barbed wire on Coogee beach. They look at me like I’m misremembering, or confusing it with something I saw at the pictures. But I saw it. I walked through it. There was a gap left open like a gate, and you went through single file, and on either side the wire ran all the way down to the waterline. I was four years old, maybe five, and it seemed to go on forever.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I was born in June of 1937, the third of the Walsh boys, in Coogee. My father Lou was a Labor man to his bones. He’d joined the party as soon as they’d have him, probably standing on a street corner somewhere listening to some bloke on a soapbox when he was fourteen. He was a teacher, a union man, a councillor in the making. Politics was the water we swam in at home. It was at the dinner table, it was in the conversations my parents had after they thought we were asleep. I absorbed it without knowing I was absorbing it, the way you absorb everything when you’re small.

Coogee was the whole world to me then. The beach, the headlands, the walk up to the shops. The smell of salt and fish and somebody’s frangipani hanging over a front fence. I didn’t know there was a war on, not really. My parents made sure of that. I want to make this point clearly, because I think it matters: my parents never showed any sign of fear. Not once. There was every reason in the world for them to be frightened, and they chose not to show it to us boys. Looking back, I think that was a remarkable thing they did for us. We should have been scared. We just weren’t.

I have a memory, though I’m not sure how much of it is mine and how much came later from talking to my brothers, of standing outside a house in Byron Street, opposite the public school. Someone was walking up the street and stopped and looked at me standing there by myself, this little boy on the footpath, and apparently found it amusing. I would have been about four. I don’t know what I was doing there. That’s how memory works when you’re that young. You get a frame, sometimes just a fragment of a frame, and no story around it.

The night the Japanese came into the harbour, I was asleep.

It was the thirty-first of May, 1942. Three midget submarines had slipped through the defences under cover of dark. One of them fired torpedoes at an American cruiser, the USS Chicago. Both missed. But one torpedo ran on and struck the HMAS Kuttabul, a converted ferry moored over at Garden Island, and broke her in two. Twenty-one sailors died in the water that night.

People have asked me if I remember the explosion. I don’t. Not that night. But I remember something in the days after, a change in the air in our house, something in the way the grown-ups talked to each other and then stopped talking when we came in. You notice that as a child. You file it away.

A week later, on the eighth of June, a Japanese submarine surfaced off the coast in the dark and shelled us directly. Nine shells came in over the eastern suburbs. One struck a house in Woollahra. Others came down near Rose Bay. The whole coastline was awake that night, lights going on in windows, people out in the streets in their dressing gowns looking east toward the sea.

I was told about this more than I remember it. But I know the fear that followed was real, because it changed things. People left. Property prices in the eastern suburbs dropped away sharply. Families packed up and went west, out past Penrith, some of them all the way beyond the Blue Mountains, as if putting the Great Divide between themselves and the ocean would save them. The Japanese had come into the harbour. The harbour. It wasn’t theoretical any more.

My own family went to Katoomba for a while, or somewhere out that way. I have a vague memory of it, a different house, a different smell, the cold of the mountains. As best as I can reconstruct it, talking to my brothers over the years, Mum and Dad had moved us up there to get away from what seemed like an impending invasion. The Repulse had been sunk. The Prince of Wales too, both of them down off Malaya. The barrier between Japan and Australia was gone, and Darwin was being bombed, and nobody was confident anymore about what came next.

We came back to Coogee because the lease on the house came due.

I’ve always found that both funny and quietly profound. The Japanese were at the door and my parents made a domestic calculation about rent. Life has a way of insisting on its own logic. You can’t stay frightened forever. The washing still needs doing.

It was after we came back that I remember the beach.

They had strung barbed wire along the sand. Not just Coogee. All of the eastern beaches, from what I understand now. Bondi, Bronte, Maroubra. The whole coastline treated as a potential landing ground, which it was. Because nobody could be sure it wasn’t.

Up on the headlands they had built concrete positions, pillboxes looking out to sea. Sandbags. Men with field glasses. The familiar shapes of the headland I’d grown up looking at were different now, hardened, purposeful. The beach where I played was part of a military installation. That’s not a phrase a four-year-old would have used, but that’s what it was.

You walked through the gap in the wire to get to the water. Single file, like I said. And you played, because children play regardless, and then you walked back through and went home for tea. That was just how it was. We were used to it.

There were Americans in Sydney in those years. I remember them. Big men, well-fed, with more money than anyone around us seemed to have, and they’d give us kids chewing gum and sweets, a fistful of candy, just like that. I thought they were marvellous. The American influence in Sydney was strong. You felt it everywhere. And they were our allies, which I understood even at that age in some vague way. They were the good ones.

My uncle Jim had been in the islands with the army. He came home to my grandmother’s house, and there was a day when he was about to take his shirt off to show my mother and the others his wounds. I was there, small and quick, trying to get a look before I was sent out. They shooed me away. I remember being annoyed about that. Children have a fascination with these things. You see it at the pictures, you hear about it, and when there’s a real wound in the room you want to see it. I never did see it. But I knew it was there.

He’d been found left for dead in an ambush. An Australian patrol had come through, and one of them had nudged him with his boot and said, this one’s gone. But he wasn’t gone. He’d survived with bad wounds and come home to Coogee and sat in my grandmother’s kitchen, alive, and that was what the war looked like close up. A man at a kitchen table who had nearly not come back.

Life went on in that way that life does. There was rationing. I remember going into a shop on the street and seeing a sign on the wall: one pat of butter per person. You got your pat of butter, and that was your lot. My mother was ingenious about these things, resourceful in the way that women of that generation and that circumstance had to be. She managed. She always managed.

I went to school. We played on the beach through the wire. I listened to my father talk about the union, about the council, about the party. The war was a thing on the horizon, literally and figuratively. It had come close enough to touch us, and then it pulled back, and we were still here.

I was born the year before the war began. It was the worst war the world has ever seen. It killed millions of people, and it reshaped everything, and it lapped at the edges of my childhood without quite swallowing it. My parents made sure of that. They kept their fear to themselves, and gave us their composure instead.

I’ve been grateful for that my whole life.

But when I tell people about the barbed wire on Coogee beach, they don’t believe me. And I say: I walked through it. I was there. The war was right there, on the sand where we played, on the headland where they’d poured the concrete and pointed the guns out to sea.

It was that close.

(Photo of WW2 Bondi Beach courtesy of Major Johnston Photograph Collection)

The post The Barbed Wire on the Beach appeared first on Des Walsh.

Suzie has set up a facebook group for both the Live and Zoom online Event

If you wish to attend please message Suzie Cheel

Des is at Peace

The post Memorial for Des Walsh appeared first on Des Walsh.

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Vale the blog Thinking Home Business.

After various experiments, it was my first “real” blog,

Born Jan 5, 2005.

Disappearing just shy of its 16th birthday.

Why the “Thinking” part of the blog name?

Two reasons.

First, even back then it was challenging to find a spare .com name for home based business.

Second, my intention was to distinguish it from the plethora of what I saw as “unthinking” sites for a market presumably of people who were apparently happy to earn a pittance doing keyboard work for remote and probably faceless employers.

Has that changed much?

I never really loved the name, but I loved blogging, sometimes two or three times a day.

I also loved sharing about creating and maintaining a businesss from home. And about the emerging world of social media, especially LinkedIn.

And that gave me entree to a wonderful global community of bloggers, many of whom I met in person at those memorable events, the BlogWorld Expos in 2007 and 2008.

Some of whom are among my best friends to this day.

It also led to invitations to post on some leading group sites, such as Business Blog Consulting, where I was privileged to be associated with various luminaries of the blogging world of the day. 

And b5media, now long gone but which in October 2007, boasted “more than 280 blogs, 15 vertical channels and over 8 million unique visitors a month” (hat tip to that titbit). 

And there was the LinkedIn Bloggers Group I ran for a few years, first on Yahoo! Groups, then on LinkedIn.

But that’s for another post, maybe, one day.

Anyway, the fact is I haven’t posted on Thinking Home Business for ages and when I got the final notice that the domain registration would expire today, I decided it was time for a change, which would include letting the site go.

To quote an old Arab saying, “The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on”.

Fortunately, a neat little free tool (All In One WordPress Migration plugin) has allowed me to save all the content over that almost 16 years.

From a cursory lookthrough today I’m thinking some of that content may lend itself to some fresh posts – on this blog – in the “new abnormal” of home based business that the pandemic seems to have helped create.

This is in fact all quite timely, as Suzie Cheel and I have just taken on a new home based project as part of creating the multiple streams of income more and more people are now looking for in a “beyond the pandemic, what do we do now?” world.

I’ll be posting about that.

Watch this space.

The post Farewell My Lovely Blog Thinking Home Business appeared first on Des Walsh.

 

There are all sorts of factors that can make working from home challenging – the lack of direct, daily social interaction with workmates, the lack of a suitable space in the house or apartment to work from.

 

As I do.

 

A major challenge for that will be how to replace their income and other benefits they still enjoy.

Some will be looking for what they will be doing in that regard after the current health crisis has passed and the world will be surveying the impact on the global economy.

 

Affiliate marketing is one of the world’s most dynamic and growing industries. There is room for entrepreneurs of every personality type and skill set in the new digital economy.

The post Work From Home to Navigate the Future appeared first on Des Walsh.

The kind of one on one conversation you have with a friend over coffee or a meal, when you are catching up.

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The terms probably speak for themselves, but for the sake of those not familiar with the marketing jargon, an example or two might help.

In the product area, according to a Google search I’ve just done a bottle of Yellowtail bubbly from one of our local liquor stores will cost you $10 – definitely low-ticket.

At the high-ticket end, a 1982 Chateau Lafite Rothschild will set you back around $9,126.

For services, a one-off coaching session, priced at anywhere from say $175 to $500, is low-ticket.

A 12 month, one-on-one coaching package will be priced in the thousands, and for a quality program will almost certainly be at least a five figure investment: high-ticket.

HOW WILL CONSIDERING THAT SAVE YOU PAIN?

Because marketing low-ticket is a tougher call, in terms of value for your effort, than marketing high-ticket.

For one thing, you have to sell a lot more low-ticket than high-ticket items to reach your income goals.

And it’s getting harder to market low-ticket.

The online marketing experts are telling us that it is getting much harder to achieve a reasonable return on low-ticket items.

In fact, one said that as we move into this new decade, it will become nearly impossible to sell low-ticket, because of the cost of marketing, unless perhaps you have special advantages, such as a huge audience.

So what’s a ballpark figure for “high-ticket”?

It will depend on the product or service, but generally not less than $3,000 and more likely, from what I read and hear, not less than $5,000.

And if you are considering affiliate marketing, I’d say you should ensure your commission per sale is not less than $1,000,

Think about that the next time someone tells you they have a great opportunity for you.

Ask, are the products high-ticket (“tell me more”) or low-ticket (“Next!”).

Then ask what your commission per sale will be.

ALWAYS SOMETHING NEW TO LEARN

Until this morning, I thought I had all that pretty well worked out.

Then I sat in on an online Q&A with the CEO of our Affiliate Institute business, that provides a platform and community for comprehensive, continually updated information, education and training in online marketing.

With just a few distinctions, the CEO took to a whole new level my understanding about the crucial business importance of the distinction between high-ticket and low-ticket.

I am so loving the education, training, and mentoring about online business from the Affiliate Instiute platform and team.

I’ve been around the online business world for a long time now and can say, hand on heart, this is definitely next level.

Suzie Cheel and I have set up our Facebook #FreeedomGang group, for people who want to know more about online business, especially affiliate marketing, raise questions, have discussions in a safe, spam-free space.

Does that interest you? Come and check us out at this link (note: there are a few simple questions for joining, to help us to get to know you) https://www.facebook.com/groups/345101279198063/

#affiliatemarketing #onlinebusiness #high-ticket

The post THINKING ONLINE MARKETING? SAVE YOURSELF SOME PAIN appeared first on Des Walsh.

But I was shocked the other day to see how long it had been since I had blogged.

On my Thinking Home Business site,  it’s been about 18 months since I’ve done a “real” post.

And on this Des Walsh dot Com site, apart from one brief announcement post, it’s been about 10 months.

In the meantime, it’s not that I’ve been idle on the social media front. In that time I’ve been posting almost daily on Facebook.

But not on my blogs.

A situation I am now ready to remedy.

Because I actually love blogging.

And after about 19 months of posting on Facebook, and doing a lot of training for online marketing, I feel I can post now in a way that is more enjoyable for me and that I am confident will be more engaging for readers.

In another post I’ll talk about my latest thoughts about particular blogging platforms, and share lessons I’ve learnt along the way, that may be of help to others.

If you’re a blogger, have you ever taken a break from it, whether intending to do that or by “drift”? And if so, how long were you away and was that helpful?

The post I DIDN’T ACTUALLY DECIDE NOT TO BLOG appeared first on Des Walsh.

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Looking for previous issues of Social Business Bites? Here’s the link.

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Till next time, be well, be social

 

Des

 

PS: If you are not on the list yet to receive Social Business Bites in your email inbox, and would like to try it, you can register for that at this link. And remember there is an easy unsubscribe link in every update).

 

 

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Shan Moorthi is Director, Center for Coaching & Mentoring, at Teamcoach International. He is a Professional Trainer, Facilitator and Coach. He is Vice-President of the International Association of Coaching (IAC) and Member of the IAC Board of Governors.

Shan has been in Learning and Development for the past 20 years. He has been inspiring leaders to seek their purpose in Leading, Coaching and Mentoring others. He is the author of ‘Coaching with R.E.S.P.E.C.T’ where he shares his own Coaching journey and shares his personal insights in coaching others.

Click Here for More About Shan

Or you can subscribe via Stitcher Radio or via email

A Taste of What We Discussed

Leaders and Ethics

• People often want to sweep the issue under the carpet
• Leaders need to clarify their purpose (why are they there?) – different from vision
• Need to constantly discuss ethics, so that it’s ingrained

Leadership is at every level. First of all we need to lead ourselves and then lead others.

Emotional Intelligence

Knowing about Emotional Intelligence is not enough. We need “emotional excellence” – the heart motivation to practice emotional intelligence.

Emotional excellence is very important in this digital world. We can be as high tech as we want, but we need “high touch” and for Shan that is all about practising emotional excellence.

Drum Circle Facilitation

Trained as a Drum Circle Facilitor, Shan finds value in using it to empower groups, and related it to the Bruce Tuckman “Forming,  Storming, Norming, Performing” development stages.

The digital revolution

A big opportunity. Automation helps us save time so we have more time available for conversation and interaction.

What keeps leaders awake at night

The question, “How do I continuously serve my purpose, despite all the challenges?”

More about Shan and Contact Details

An Internationally Certified Trainer, Facilitator and Coach, over the past 20 years Shan has trained, facilitated and coached participants across the Asian region on various aspects of Leadership, Team Development, Emotional Excellence and Performance Coaching. His innovative, interactive and high impact approaches empower his participants to experience, reflect and act for self and organizational improvements.

Shan’s contact points: His LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shan-moorthi-aa21a42/ Web site: Teamcoach International

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You can subscribe to the Let’s Talk Leadership podcast show via iTunes, Android, Stitcher, RSS, or via email.

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