Surfing Safari To Road Less Travelled

Photo: Paul Harris

SYDNEY MORNING HERALD SATURDAY APRIL 26

Erin O'Dwyer meets a man whose pursuit of self-discovery on the '60s surfing and hippie trails has led him to seeing things around the world as they really are.

Geoff White had never been out of Australia when he saw the cult surf movie The Endless Summer. A few days later he packed up everything and set off in search of the perfect wave.

"I got a three-month ticket and came back 5½ years later," laughs the sprightly 64-year-old surfer from Austinmer, south of Sydney.

The trip was the beginning of a love affair with travel. White, a sandy haired kid in his early 20s, fell in with a crowd of surf photographers in South Africa. They went to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), to Mozambique, then across the channel to the volcanic Comoros archipelago and finally the Seychelles Islands.

White surfed, they took pictures and the images were published in American Surfer magazine. It was the late 1960s and he was living the dream. But somehow it wasn't quite enough.

He was in England when his younger brother took the hippie trail to India. White followed and together they did a meditation course with a young Burmese teacher called Satya Narayan Goenka. "I was open to it because the Beatles were doing it," he says. "They were studying under the Maharishi at the time."

It was at Bodgaya - the place of Buddha's enlightenment - that S.N. Goenka taught the ancient art of Insight Meditation. He called it Vipassana, and explained that it was process of self-purification by self-observation. All his students had to do was observe the breath.

For 10 days, White observed silence, meditated six times a day and went without dinner. Far from the rush he was expecting, it was agonising.

"All it brought me was a lot of misery," he says. "It was one of the most difficult things I'd done. It was like hitting a brick wall."

White's childhood might have been like any other in the idyllic seaside town of Austinmer. His mother was non-practicing Methodist, his father was a Mason. Surfing was his only religion. Yet something clicked inside him.

He describes "the pull" he felt towards Vipassana, but says really understanding it was like using a cigarette lighter. One keeps clicking until the flame ignites. He did a second course - "Nothing special" - and refused to do a third. "I'd had enough," he says chuckling again.

A few months later, in Burma, he and a girlfriend visited the centre where Goenka had learned from the teacher Sayagyi U Ba Khin. There he meditated for seven days.

"When we left the U Ba Khin centre we were as high a kite - naturally. We had a smile from ear to ear … a permasmile. When we arrived in Bangkok we could see the misery so clearly from our happiness. It was quite profound."

Back home, somehow, the feeling dissipated. White struggled to keep up the daily meditation and went back to his first love - surfing. He surfed every day and worked odd jobs to fund his surf missions overseas.

"I was going nowhere; I was just getting more lost," he says. "As a traveller you just end up drifting from nothing to nothing. Life gets harder and you get more alienated."

Yet on every trip he would find himself back in India, studying again with the man he now calls Goenkaji, or teacher. Then in 1980, 10 years after his first course, the flame ignited. "Goenkaji told me I'd wasted a lot of time and I should make a bigger effort. After that, it just happened."

Reluctantly, White stopped travelling, got his first serious job (in the Thirroul brickworks) and a few possessions. He hoped a routine would encourage him to meditate. It did.

"The meditation helped me hold that job for 13 years," he says, still proud of the record. "After a few years I decided to build a house. I didn't like that lifestyle but the meditation gave me that equanimity."

White helped establish the first Vipassana meditation centre at Blackheath in the Blue Mountains. He was also on hand when Goenka first visited Australia in 1983. But in the early '90s, the brickworks sent him to Indonesia, and the bug was back.

"I was working in a mining camp in Soweto when I got a phone call saying Goenkaji is thinking about appointing you as an assistant teacher."

The appointment should have been an incredible honour. But White felt panicky. He had itchy feet and he was painfully shy. How would he teach? "I was even shy at a union meeting, let alone sit in front of a group of people," he says. "The first course I took, I was too shy to even introduce myself, I just pushed play on the instruction tape."

Since then, the retired brickworker has become a highly sought-after meditation teacher. Known for his patience and empathy, he has conducted more than 90 courses across the world. And in a happy coincidence, he travels about one-third of the year.

He has taught in Russia, Romania, Turkey, Indonesia, Dubai, and New Zealand but says his favourite place to teach by far is Israel. Since 1997 he has been there four times.

On the first course, White taught a young long-haired fighter pilot. Now that man only flies commercially and White believes that in some small way, Vipassana is playing a role in the Middle East peace process.

"I'm sure it's changing things, it has to be," he says. "It's certainly giving people a lot more understanding."

At home, White, a bachelor, meditates in a small attic of his house for two hours each day. He lives on 30hectares of old mine land, with views through the bush to the ocean.

He is not Buddhist and points out that Vipassana is non-partisan. His only religion is a regular dose of travel. And a daily surf at Sandon Point.

"Whenever Sandon is working and I'm home, I'm out," he says. "When you get caught up in the teaching - mixing with those guys, with their Australian nature, they quickly bring you back down to earth."

Many surfers liken it to meditation. For White, "Surfing is just chasing the pleasant sensations.

"Vipassana is about coming out of craving and aversion. When you surf, you might feel peaceful but it's nothing like Vipassana."

Back home, somehow, the feeling dissipated. White struggled to keep up the daily meditation and went back to his first love - surfing. He surfed every day and worked odd jobs to fund his surf missions overseas.

"I was going nowhere; I was just getting more lost," he says. "As a traveller you just end up drifting from nothing to nothing. Life gets harder and you get more alienated."

Yet on every trip he would find himself back in India, studying again with the man he now calls Goenkaji, or teacher. Then in 1980, 10 years after his first course, the flame ignited. "Goenkaji told me I'd wasted a lot of time and I should make a bigger effort. After that, it just happened."

Reluctantly, White stopped travelling, got his first serious job (in the Thirroul brickworks) and a few possessions. He hoped a routine would encourage him to meditate. It did.

"The meditation helped me hold that job for 13 years," he says, still proud of the record. "After a few years I decided to build a house. I didn't like that lifestyle but the meditation gave me that equanimity."

White helped establish the first Vipassana meditation centre at Blackheath in the Blue Mountains. He was also on hand when Goenka first visited Australia in 1983. But in the early '90s, the brickworks sent him to Indonesia, and the bug was back.

"I was working in a mining camp in Soweto when I got a phone call saying Goenkaji is thinking about appointing you as an assistant teacher."

The appointment should have been an incredible honour. But White felt panicky. He had itchy feet and he was painfully shy. How would he teach? "I was even shy at a union meeting, let alone sit in front of a group of people," he says. "The first course I took, I was too shy to even introduce myself, I just pushed play on the instruction tape."

Since then, the retired brickworker has become a highly sought-after meditation teacher. Known for his patience and empathy, he has conducted more than 90 courses across the world. And in a happy coincidence, he travels about one-third of the year.

He has taught in Russia, Romania, Turkey, Indonesia, Dubai, and New Zealand but says his favourite place to teach by far is Israel. Since 1997 he has been there four times.

On the first course, White taught a young long-haired fighter pilot. Now that man only flies commercially and White believes that in some small way, Vipassana is playing a role in the Middle East peace process.

"I'm sure it's changing things, it has to be," he says. "It's certainly giving people a lot more understanding."

At home, White, a bachelor, meditates in a small attic of his house for two hours each day. He lives on 30hectares of old mine land, with views through the bush to the ocean.

He is not Buddhist and points out that Vipassana is non-partisan. His only religion is a regular dose of travel. And a daily surf at Sandon Point.

"Whenever Sandon is working and I'm home, I'm out," he says. "When you get caught up in the teaching - mixing with those guys, with their Australian nature, they quickly bring you back down to earth."

Many surfers liken it to meditation. For White, "Surfing is just chasing the pleasant sensations.

"Vipassana is about coming out of craving and aversion. When you surf, you might feel peaceful but it's nothing like Vipassana."

Read more!

Divorced From Wealth

Photo: Ben Rushton
SYDNEY MORNING HERALD SATURDAY APRIL 19

JULIE Di Gregorio used to be a Volvo mum. She managed a business with her husband and lived with their two daughters in an inner-Sydney terrace house. These days, the 50-year-old lives in public housing in Wollongong and sometimes struggles on her $259 pension.

"Living in Alexandria there was a block of housing commission flats opposite," she sighs, "and I used to think, 'How could they let themselves get so low?' I had no understanding of how anyone could get to that point. Or how your life could unravel."

Carole Ouellette, a former nurse, tells a similar story. She once drove a yellow MG and lived in a five-bedroom home with her husband and three sons. These days, she drives a second-hand Mazda to fetch free bread from a community centre in Wollongong, which she delivers to her friends. Once a week she eats lunch there, too.

"I took my sons recently. They all have university degrees, and they were very uncomfortable," says the 58-year-old softly. "I said, 'You look around because you could be like this one day. You never know what is ahead.' "

It is rare, you might think, to find women like these - once married, now divorced; well-educated, once affluent and successful - queuing up at no-cost community centre lunches alongside some of society's most disadvantaged.

But Australia's traditional middle class is being swallowed up by the higher cost of living. Our so-called "working families" are the working poor. And it is single women who are doing it the toughest financially.

A community paper produced for the Federal Government's 2020 Summit says there will be about 450,000 older single-women households by 2026, compared with about 200,000 lone male households.

This follows a report to the Senate last month which identified single pensioners, in particular older women, as "at extreme risk of falling into poverty". Older women had little or no superannuation and their meagre singles pensions had to stretch further than couples' to cover basics such as rent, food, petrol, and utilities.

For the next generation of single women, it is about to get worse. Lawyers and social researchers believe changes to the child support scheme which come into force midyear will leave about 60 per cent of single mothers worse off than before. Fathers, in particular wealthy fathers, they say, will pocket the windfall.

"Our preliminary research indicates that a large proportion of our clients who are primary carers will be receiving significantly less child support under the new formula," says a policy lawyer, Edwina MacDonald, from the Women's Legal Service.

Wealthy fathers are already better off, with the first round of changes introduced last year capping payments for non-resident parents who earn between $130,000 and $140,000 each year.

Under the complex new scheme, fathers who care for their children at least two nights a fortnight will receive a 24 per cent discount on child support payments.

There is widespread concern that much less money will soon be flowing into single-parent homes - most of which are run by single women. The amount single mothers can earn before child support is cut is reduced from $39,000 to $17,000.

A boost for some women in family tax benefits is unlikely to counter the cuts.

A sociologist, Dr Elspeth McInnes, from the University of South Australia, believes the changes herald another generation of poor, single, older women. "It will be compounding the feminisation of poverty," she says.

"It was always the case that the person who had primary care of the children suffered the worse financially. The child support changes will mean there is less income in households where children spend most of their time."

For decades, research has shown divorced women are worse off than men. They are more often victims of domestic violence, more likely to work part-time than full-time, and more exposed to homelessness and depression after separation or divorce. Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show that one in four single mothers experiences high or very high psychological distress.

"We know that women experience much higher levels of poverty than men in general," says Karen Willis, from the NSW Rape Crisis Centre.

"Often that's because women have been at home instead of working and superannuation doesn't kick in like it does for men. Also, if they leave a marriage they chose safety over material possessions. So that does leads them into poverty too."

But the housing affordability crisis, with rising food and petrol prices, is compounding the problem.

"The big middle class is being eroded," says Dr Eileen Baldry, from the University of NSW's School of Social Work. "There are more people who were middle class who are finding it harder. Charities are now feeding families who have work but can't make ends meet."

Dr Baldry also points to regime changes under the Howard government that are now starting to bite: welfare-to-work policies that penalised single mothers, and changes to child custody laws that introduced a presumption of shared care - even where there had been a history of violence.

She says it is not surprising that more middle-class women are relying on charities to supplement their weekly food bill.

"This is one of the hidden faces of poverty," she says. "It's been the case for some time that the most disadvantaged group in Australia are unpartnered mothers but it's the cumulative aspect of all this that we are now beginning to see.

"Women and their children have lost their homes and jobs, and been forced into a lifestyle which is often hard to get out of, especially if you are an older woman."

Out in the suburbs, more stories of women in poverty are emerging.

Phoenix van Dyke, from the Tenants Union of NSW, says many older women are struggling to pay the rent in Sydney's northern beaches.

"Some landlords would actually say to them, 'I don't think you can afford to live in this area any more ... Maybe you should move to the western suburbs,' " she says. "It was humiliating for them."

Humbling is the word Tanya Whiteside, 50, uses to describe how she felt when she first joined the Centrelink queue. A businesswoman from a respected family, she worked in fashion, cosmetics and real estate.

"I grew up wanting for nothing," she says.

She and her husband lived in inner-city Sydney and their two daughters went to selective schools. When the marriage crumbled, Whiteside got an office job and moved into a one-bedroom apartment. But her health suffered, and she took a room in a share house. Later she moved in with her daughter in Wollongong.

Now, living alone in a tiny granny flat, she spends $140 on rent and $45 on food each week.

Her grocery receipts for the week make a tiny pile of paper scraps: $23.42 for staples such as tea, coffee, milk and yoghurt; $13.90 on fruit and vegetables; and an additional $9.25 on beans and lentils and canned fish from an Asian grocery. Already she is over budget. The remainder goes on counselling and bills.

"I thought I would carve a new life for myself when I left the marriage but my health didn't stand up to it," she says. "Going to Centrelink was humbling. It was a lesson in learning how to ask. But I've been so grateful for the support."

But Whiteside remains extremely positive. She says she is the happiest she has ever been.

"It's been a journey but I am learning how to be free," she says. "I have my life and it's simple and I'm dealing with only the aspects that matter."

Julie Di Gregorio and Carole Ouellette agree. Di Gregorio left an unhappy marriage with almost nothing but is now starting to return to her practice as an artist.

Ouellette delayed her marriage settlement for 16 years so her children could live in the family home but says the decision empowered her emotionally, if not financially.

"You really start to go back to basics," says Di Gregorio.

"You think, 'It's such a beautiful day today. I'm alive, I'm not sick. I can hang the washing out.' Oh my God, I'm getting off on hanging the washing out. That's what happens."

Ouellette says, "You focus on what you do have, not on what you don't have. And you don't stop to think about what choices you once had."

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