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| Catch Up: Winfred Peppinck |
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I was late to the meeting. With a sharp rap to announce my arrival, I pushed open the heavy glass door. The dignitaries were already seated, deeply in conversation, but now looked up in my direction. My boss, the President of the Senate, waved a cursory arm towards me and said, "Mr President, this is my Senior Adviser". President George Herbert Walker Bush, the 41st President of the United States of America jumped out of his chair with alacrity and with all the spring you would imagine of a former athlete. "I am very pleased to meet with you, Sir," he said, clasping his hand firmly in mine. "Mr President" I said, "That was going to be my opening line to you". There were six of us in the room, The President of the United States, the President of the Australian Senate, the Speaker of the House of Representatives and an adviser to each, and the man with the briefcase – and we all laughed. For twenty minutes we spoke as a group, me asking the President about his term as Ambassador to China and his work as Head of the CIA. It was quite like a meeting in a coffee shop – banter and argument, back and forth, and it stayed in my memory forever. A coffee and a chat with the "most powerful man in the world", something that I could only have dreamed of, given my origins, and I reflected, many times since that meeting, on how lucky much of my life has been.
I came to Australia in 1951, a non-English speaking son of Dutch immigrants who grew up in a house beside a sawdust track on the fringes of Perth, Western Australia. Mine was a real "Huck Finn" existence, growing up in the bush environment with its fires and floods, snakes and spiders, going to school barefoot, playing sport till I dropped and swimming across the Swan River and walking to Perth Airport, just to watch the planes take off and land. I spent a lot of time outside the Nissan hut terminal, sitting on the grass, watching passengers come and go, and always dreaming that one day it would be me. My "travel bug" was born there, and reading travel and adventure stories has been part of me for all of my life. I failed academically as a younger student but grasped an opportunity to sit for a mature age University entrance and then, surprisingly, won a scholarship to continue my studies. An Honours degree in Politics and a career in the diplomatic service followed, with postings to Latin America, Africa, Asia and finally the Caribbean where I served three years as Australia`s High Commissioner/Ambassador to a host of countries before taking up my position as an Adviser at the Prime Minister`s Court in Bahrain. Bahrain has now been our home for nearly four years.
For a decade I also worked for the Australian Parliament as the Senior Adviser to the President of the Senate and extensive travel and meetings with people on the world stage followed. In many instances they were people who had changed the politics of their countries and, in some instances, the politics of the world. People like Lech Walesa of Poland and his predecessor, General Jaruzelski, Bishop Tutu, Thabo Mbeki, F.W. De Klerk, Gerhard Schroeder and Laurent Fabius. Al Gore, Michael Dukakis, and Strom Thurmond, Michael Manley and Kenneth Kaunda, Havel and Dubcek, King Hussain and Yitzak Rabin, the Dalai Lama and Neil Kinnock. Scores of Presidents, Prime Ministers, Ministers and opinion formers, I met and talked with them all. I flew on Concorde, rode on the world`s fastest train, dined in the finest restaurants, visited chateaux and yachts, stayed at the best five-star hotels and have by now visited well over 80 countries around the globe. My love of travel has been blessed with abundance, and that love of travel has been inherited by my sons through my genes, for they share with me this great joy, as did my first wife, and now also my second. Travel stories are meant for sharing, to enthuse and awaken the spirit, to go and see for yourself and I hope these stories do just that for you – the reader!
In a moment of reflection, many years ago, I started writing in my diaries, quirky little travel tales about things which I had seen and things that had amused me. I loved the travel tales written by Bill Bryson, Clive James and Paul Theroux, but they belonged to them, and I yearned to tell my very own stories. Not as well crafted, or a prose as polished, of course, but nevertheless, my own. A String of Pearls …and a few little nuggets, are my own attempt to bring a little humour, joy, and hopefully a little interest, through my very subjective observations of places visited as well as the means by which we travel there. Little stories that you can read on a beach or on a rainy day, or at night-time in bed before you nod off. It starts in the Caribbean, but like every good travel tale, meanders elsewhere, to places well travelled, and to some less well so. Yes, and even some of those places that I used to dream about when I was growing up in the Australian bush, oh! so long ago.
Winfred Peppinck March 2008
A String of Pearls will be available later this year.
The Diplomatic Dog of Barbados is available to buy now, by clicking here.
We also catch up with Lorraine Hockley.
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