1966 I had found a job with BOAC as their accountant in Australia and was able to travel to Europe, Asia and America. Again new doors opened and again I was absorbing so many amazing possibilities in life.
That has always been my problem. The cornucopia of life is so abundant—there is so much to find in joy and fulfilment I could never understand how anyone could be bored for a moment.
The bank had been my life. I knew its workings at a branch level from manager down. I really loved it and got on so well with the customers and fellow workers. My intuition with regard to who was trustworthy and who was not always held me in good stead. My intuition was never wrong.
But the urge to travel was huge and as I was so poor the opportunity provided by this opening with the airline was too good to pass. Again music was central to my life and I attended so many wonderful concerts, recitals and operas both here and abroad.
I joined the English Wagner Society hoping to get a seat at the Bayreuth Festival and had applied for many years with no results. Finally I did succeed through a friend at Lufthansa and was able to go in 1977 for the first time.
As I said — to experience these music dramas in their true home and setting was like an initiation into a special realm. I went again in 1979.
The following year a man who was going for the first time asked me about it my experiences there. The reservations assistant at Lufthansa had told him to talk with me as I had already been twice. I said to him, “Why don’t we start a Wagner Society in Australia?” He was overjoyed at the thought of it and I suggested obtaining a copy of the British group’s constitution etc and we could model it from there. He did and today the Society is still flourishing with many hundreds of members. Groups have also formed in most mainland states. All play an important role in furthering the work of Richard Wagner; in the form of scholarships and sponsorships, etc.
So again from that one concert by David Oistrakh all those years ago so much has blossomed and brought forth so many positive, wonderful outcomes for so many artists, musicians and music lovers all over this continent. Who knows if any of this would have happened, had I not attended that concert on a Saturday afternoon in 1956.
It is not unlike the stone thrown into a still pond, sending ripples in all directions. One never knows how far the strength of that ripple will carry and what effect those changes to the surface of the once still pond will have on all that is touched.
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