John Oxenham Goodman

John Oxenham Goodman was born in Australia in 1941. He is of English, German and Welsh ancestry. As a young man he worked in clerical positions in government departments but found these jobs routine and unchallenging. He studied Spanish and German and then travelled extensively in Western Europe crossing into Soviet occupied Berlin and climbing a mountain in Norway to view the midnight sun. These and other travel experiences opened his eyes to the wider world and gave him a broader perspective...See more

John Oxenham Goodman was born in Australia in 1941. He is of English, German and Welsh ancestry. As a young man he worked in clerical positions in government departments but found these jobs routine and unchallenging. He studied Spanish and German and then travelled extensively in Western Europe crossing into Soviet occupied Berlin and climbing a mountain in Norway to view the midnight sun. These and other travel experiences opened his eyes to the wider world and gave him a broader perspective than that available in the geographical remoteness of Australia. Like many other Australians who have traveled overseas, he no longer felt isolated from the culture of the Western world. On returning to Australia he found employment in the Australian National University Library where he came in contact with many Asian people who frequented the university's Oriental Library. He developed an interest in Asian civilizations and in 1969 enrolled in the Asian Studies Faculty hoping to learn Asian languages and teach them. He first studied Indonesian and Japanese, as Chinese was then rarely taught in Australian schools. Eventually, in early 1973 he undertook an intensive course in spoken Chinese at the University of Canberra and then studied Classical Chinese at the National University where he began to learn the Three Character Classic and read parts of the Analects of Confucius. He finished his Indonesian and Asian Studies majors and studied Javanese and Arabic while completing a reading course in Dutch. After being awarded the degree of Bachelor of Arts (Honours) he went on to complete graduate diplomas in Education and Librarianship and he then majored in Japanese language at the University of New South Wales. He travelled frequently in Asia visiting Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand Vietnam, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan. He worked in the University of Sydney Library in the 1980s and later taught Japanese and Indonesian in Australian secondary schools. He studied the Teaching of English as a Second Language at the Australian Catholic University in Sydney and then taught English to migrants who came mainly from China. He attended art classes at TAFE (Technical and Further Education) College in Sydney thus enhancing his lifelong interest in art and photography. After retiring in 2010 he lived in China visiting museums and temples (Buddhist, Daoist and Confucian) all over the country and this gave him fresh understanding of China's 5000 year old civilization. See less