A friend of mine, today, sent off a Letter to the Editor, of the Manly Daily. ( Bob Reed lives in Fairlight, in a house with views of Fairlight Bay and towards the entrance to the harbour and, on the left of that the suburb of Manly).

Manly, named by Governor Phillip, after the physique of the local Aboriginal people, used the slogan: ‘seven miles from Sydney and a thousand miles from care’ ...for many years, inviting people from the southern side of Sydney Harbour and visitors to Sydney to come and relax.

Bob is annoyed by the many signs in the area which tell the visitors what NOT to do but he cannot find one sign that tells the tourists where the public conveniences are and the ONE that IS located near the beach, ( and you need to be right there to KNOW where it is), he finds disgusting because of the smell.

As a Dutch-Australian visitor to my father's house just remarked: "No wonder, when there is only ONE of these."

My mind is still on: Only in Holland Only the Dutch, in which Marc Resch writes, under the heading: When you gotta go....., "In no other city in the world is it easier for men to find places to relieve themselves than in Amsterdam. Outdoor, and rather open, pissoirs are strategically dispersed throughout the city for men to relieve themselves at any given moment.
These pissoirs aren't inconspicuously placed or tucked away behind buildings, but are right out in the open and visible and visible for all to see while happy patrons conduct their business."
Whether this is the answer to Bob's beef, I don't know. I must also make it clear that, when I was walking around my city of birth, Gouda, particularly, in 1997, I missed the public toilets that can usually be counted on in parks in the suburbs of Sydney.
And, it's a bit along the lines of the kind of topic that might be part of a Seinfeld episode, but as someone who grew up as an only child, al-be-it, the first 12 years in Gouda, and someone who has lived in Sydney 50 years, (whether this is relevant or not, I don't know),

I am sure that if I was visiting Amsterdam again and 'needed to go', I could not make that work, in a situation as Marc Resch describes it: "At any given time of the day, one can witness one-to-four men relieving themselves in one device, while the industrious Dutch go along with their business,passing just inches away."

Can you speak Dutch? Do you wish to learn, the basics? I am intending to put a proposal to a college in Sydney to teach Dutch to beginners. I am a retired Primary School Assistant Principal, and have a Graduate Diploma in Educational Studies (Mult.Ed.) from UNE. 37 years' experience teaching, including a number of years as part-time teacher, at Colleges of TAFE, taking classes in Reading and Writing for Adults and English as a Second Language. I was a member of the Dutch Syllabus Committees advising the NSW Department of Education Booard of Secondary Studies on the Higher School Certificate and School Certificate courses, in the 1970s and early 1980s. I enrolled and taught the first students Dutch, in the Saturday Schools of Community Languages. I was a broadcaster in the early Dutch programmes on SBS Radio 2EA.
I am a member of the boards of the D.A.C.C. (Dutch Australian Cultural Centre) and the Federation of Netherlands Societies. Apart from teaching Dutch when the Saturday Schools of Community Languages were established, I taught it briefly through one of the former Dutch Clubs, in Western Sydney. I need to speak it daily, as a sole carer for an ageing parent and I write and correspond extensively (in Dutch) via the internet, in weblogs, web-sites and email.

In order to apply for the establishement of a course, I wish to prove that the need exists in Sydney for the learning of basic Dutch for travel to the Netherlands and communication with relatives, among other reasons.If you are seriously interested please email me: jo@ozcloggie.com

The website: here.

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