Category: Uncategorized

April 2006

This piece of doggerel describes some of the good times and happiness at an important family event in April 2006. It was a holiday in Kalbarrri, at the mouth of the Murchison river in Western Australia, to celebrate the wedding of Megan, one of my nieces, and Steve Noa. They lived at the time in Melbourne but have since ‘defaulted’ to the Perth hills where they are bringing up their two delightful and accomplished daughters.

• They hired a bus with little fuss
• Steve’s driving all did charm;
• But the Melbourne crew were overdue –
• Alert but not alarmed.

• This meant the lunch at Geraldton
• Became a trifle late:
• Not twenty-three at half past two
• But three at ten to eight!

• Lady played some major Rolls
• For Moggs (her owner’s daughter);
• But at Dongara she showed her age
• And damaged her hind quarter.

• The bus was stopped, the tyres were changed
• She soon felt wheely better;
• With all at sea Greg – patiently –
• Made Geraldton to get her.

• We put to sea in an easterly breeze
• To do a spot of fishing;
• Megan’s catch: a lifelong match
• To ward off constant wishing.

• The men toiled hard, the women starred
• And Kirsten caught a few fish;
• The gender save was made by Dave
• Who caught a lovely dhufish.

• The cricket game was sadly off
• It rained in little splashes;
• Too bad then for the Aussie lot –
• The Poms retained the Gashes.

• In Albany in years gone by
• They did a little whaling;
• To see Moggs hitched, two thousand six
• Saw several guests abseiling.

• Viv went up and Dave went up
• And Alpha tried to top ’em;
• She reached the face, came down with grace
• And landed on her bottom.

• Moggs and Steve I do believe
• Don’t need a rope to bind ’em;
• A ring will do for these fine two
• And in Melbourne you can find ’em.

• Finlay’s was the scene one night
• Of a feast of food and song
• Dan and Chris sang up a storm;
• Then Megan came along:

• She crooned to Steve her favourite tune
• (We feel her music still):
• “Love me tender, love me true
• And I always will”.

• Prue came by to see Steve off
• Was pleased to travel northward;
• She hopes they both will be like her
• And put their best foot forward.

• All their friends turned out in force
• As witnesses and aiders;
• But the only Force that worried Dan
• Were those against Crusaders.

• You’d have got good odds from Centrebet
• On The Force not standing tall.
• Who’d have thought it! What a contest!
• Twenty-three points all

• Some stayed at Lola Rosa’s place
• The breakfasts there are heaven;
• For all of us a busy time
• Just once we slept ’til seven.

• So here’s to Moggs and here’s to Steve
• For a loving, healthy marriage.
• For rhyming’s sake let’s re-gazette
• And call the town ‘Kalbarriage’.

April 11 is World Parkinson’s Day. Its main purpose is to raise awareness and advance research for better therapies and, potentially, a cure for Parkinson’s. But we might also use the stimulus of the international Parkinson’s Month, Week and Day to check on what’s happening with advocacy and organisation around Parkinson’s on the home front.

Parkinson’s 101

The condition affects about 10 million individuals worldwide, and 200,000 in Australia. In Australia thirty-eight cases are diagnosed every day. Twenty per cent of ‘persons-with-Parkinson’s’ are under 50 years old and 10 per cent are diagnosed before the age of 40.

In Canada it affects 1 in 500, with over 100,000 Canadians living with the condition and approximately 6,600 new cases being diagnosed each year

Parkinson’s is a progressive, degenerative neurological condition that affects a person’s control of their body movements. As is well-known, the symptoms and their progression vary wildly among those affected. Parkinson’s UK reports that there are over 40 symptoms, with The Big Three being tremor (shaking), slowness of movement, and rigidity (muscle stiffness).

There are also numerous non-motor symptoms such as sleep disturbance,  constipation, voice and speech malfunction, and loss of sense of smell. Because of a compromised autonomic nervous system, people with the condition can have poor control over body temperature.

Some of these non-motor symptoms can pre-date motor symptoms by as much as a decade.

The strongest domestic organisation dealing with Parkinson’s has been Shake It Up Australia. It was founded by Clyde Campbell in 2011 and he is still at the helm.

There  are six State-based bodies, and a national body, Parkinson’s Australia.¹ All six are independent from each other and from Parkinson’s Australia. So the latter has been overshadowed (some would say neutered) by the former.

This is the archetypal challenge for national bodies in a federal political system. For a national representative body to be successful the state bodies need enthusiastically to cede a certain amount of power, authority and resources to it.

The struggle for Parkinson’s Australia¹

There has been a Parkinson’s Australia for a long time, but it has never had the support and close engagement of the populous states. It has therefore been poorly funded and unable to build a strong national presence.

In 2012 the CEO of Parkinson’s Australia was Daryl Smeaton. As a senior public servant Daryl had been an integral part of Prime Minister John Howard’s successful gun buyback scheme in 1996-97. 

In 2012 Daryl took the national conference of Parkinson’s Australia to Brisbane. It was opened by Australia’s first female Governor-General, now Dame Quentin Bryce. (She was kind enough to stay for the opening address I had been invited to present.)

More recently the head of Parkinson’s Australia was Steve Sant, after his time with the Rural Doctors Association of Australia.

For much of the time Parkinson’s Australia has been a body without representation from Victoria and New South Wales. Other jurisdictions have battled valiantly to have the organisation become a real umbrella group. But it has been holey and not entirely successful.

Its website advises people who are seeking information, resources or advice to visit the independent Parkinson’s organisation in their home state. In the case of the ACT (where I live) the running is being taken by a South Australian entity: the Parkinson’s section of the Hospital Research Foundation Group.

The larger state bodies tend to be abut service provision rather than political advocacy and lobbying. Parkinson’s NSW, for instance, provides counselling sessions, information and education sessions, and help-line calls. And it was in NSW – a long time ago – in which specialist Parkinson’s nurses were first road-tested with great success.

A new Alliance

The Parkinson Alliance was active from 2004. It closed its doors on April 30, 2023. It completed over 35 patient-centered research reports covering motor and non-motor symptoms. It supported over one hundred research projects, including many on exercise. It put its money where its legs were by managing the Parkinson’s Unity Walk from 2001 to 2021.

Even when shaken, Nature apparently abhors a vacuum. The space vacated by that Alliance last year has been filled this.

On 26 March 2024 Shake It Up Australia launched the National Parkinson’s Alliance. Itaims to build a network of groups to lead nationwide advocacy efforts. It has urged the Federal Government to allocate an initial $400,000 for the development of a National Parkinson’s Action Plan.

Curiously, the members of the new Alliance, as listed, are ten individuals affiliated with universities and research institutions. Just one state Parkinson’s organisation is mentioned: Parkinson’s NSW.

This new organisation is described as “a collaborative initiative bringing together the stakeholders living with Parkinson’s and leaders from those backgrounds to work towards aligned outcomes for the Parkinson’s community”. CEO of the Alliance is Vicki Miller.

On 26 March 2024 it organised the Australian Summit to End Parkinson’s. 

About thirty people living with Parkinson’s from across Australia attended alongside members of the Alliance and the research community.

Both Parkinson’s Australia and the new Alliance made pre-budget submissions to the federal government.

Enough of this melancholia! Why not read the piece on my blogg (aggravations.org) entitled Parkinson’s brings out the best – in other people.

It tells of some of the human spirit and kindness that no mere chronic condition can put down.

Go to: www.aggravations.org [August 2022]

¹ to try to avoid confusion, the name of the organisation is italicised.

One of my brothers is on the U3A committee in his home town in the UK. Recently he was leading a discussion on poetry. He asked me about Australian poets and poetry: who were the best? which pieces would I recommend for study by an English U3A discussion group?

My immediate response was something like panic. I could name very few contemporary Australian poets (Judith Wright, Les Murray) and none of their works. The near-panic was the result of a sense of shame and disappointment. Given the time I have on my hands and the extraordinary accessibility these days of ‘information’, how could I not know about and follow certain poets?

How could I think of myself as a responsible citizen of Australia if there is no poetry in my life? Poetry is an important segment of a nation’s culture. It is a field where emotions are not just permissible but essential. There is beauty in poetry. It consists of bunches of words in particular sequences, and I have always found this fascinating.

A bit later I reflected on how my own ignorance is perhaps symptomatic of the status of the arts in Australia. (This was before I had discovered Jacket, the splendid on-line journal founded by John Tranter, recently deceased. It is now published as Jacket2.) The arts sector in Australia is underfunded and under celebrated. Whereas, as a nation, Australia punches above its weight in such things as Olympic sports and certain scientific inventions, it does not in the fine arts.

The two best-known Australian poets are still, I suppose, Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson. They are often paired together because of the similarity of their works. Both wrote what are called ballads, with regular rhythm, scansion  and rhyming patterns. (My own doggerel uses similar rhythmic and rhyming patterns.)

Both of them wrote about ‘characters’ living in the bush. Many people are unable to distinguish their works, the one from the other. As an example, ask an Australian  whether Waltzing Matilda was written by Lawson or Paterson.

The best known works of Lawson and Paterson include: Waltzing Matilda; The man from Snowy River;  Andy’s gone with cattle; Faces in the street (a favourite of mine), Mulga Bill’s Bicycle; The drover’s wife; Clancy of the Overflow; and The Geebung Polo Club .

When it comes to the most famous (and over-used) piece of Australian poetry of all, Lawson and Paterson must give way to Dorothea Mackellar (1885-1968). Core of My Heart was first published in the London Spectator on 5 September 1908. It reappeared several times in Australia before being included as My Country in The Closed Door and Other Verses (Melbourne, 1911). The second verse reads:

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains
Of ragged mountain ranges
Of droughts and flooding rains.

My brother and I discussed the meaning of ‘doggerel’ and whether it is distinct from poetry. We won’t go there again now. Suffice it to say that it would be brave of someone to suggest that Core of my Heart is doggerel.

Scholars would, I think, agree that Judith Wright (1915-2000)and Kenneth Slessor (1901-1971) are true Australian poets of substance.

Judith Wright was from Armidale. (There is a Wright College at the University of New England.) She is best known for The Generations of Men, the story of her family’s early days as land settlers in New South Wales and Queensland. This was published in 1959.

In the years that followed  there was a huge shift in the understanding of the white settlers’ impact on the Aboriginal people and the original landscape. Armed with what she described as “a sense of horror at what had happened”, Judith Wright wrote A Cry for the Dead, published in 1981. In that book Wright recognised the real story and the Indigenous voices of the traditional owners of the land her ancestors had settled.

This is right now a very divisive and emotive issue, centred around the Referendum on Indigenous recognition in the Constitution. Wright’s personal learning and reconciliation can be regarded as an elite example of the re-learning, or truth-telling, that is needed for all Australians.

Perhaps the fact that Judith Wright is regarded as one of Australia’s best poets but is arguably better known for her novels than her poetry says something about the standing of poetry in Australia.

One of Kenneth Slessor’s highly regarded pieces is Five Bells. I find it hard to see clear, immediate meaning in the poem, but the collection and juxtaposition of images is telling. So perhaps it would be a good piece to study?!

Les Murray, who died in 2019, was considered the leading poet of his generation. In An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow Murray portrays a crying man as representing the ability to deeply feel and openly express emotion—something that has been stifled by the busy modern world.

My fondness for cowslips was documented in this blogg on 24 July 2016. My fondness for the world’s Great and Thoughtful Givers was described in On the nature of giving – and the giving of Nature (October 15, 2020).

For my birthday in 2020 one of those Givers presented me with a small parcel. Inside was a damp, colourless morsel of plant life. It was Primula veris. A cowslip.

On Tuesday 6 October 2020, in a small ceramic pot in my garden, there occurred a miracle of Nature. That delicate single cowslip, despite finding itself in an unfamiliar location, proved that it was not going merely to cling to life. It was blossoming, growing and preparing for the next stage in the cycle of its existence. It was going to give perennial pleasure to verisophiles for years to come.

After six weeks of colour, in 2020 – like so much on Planet Earth – it lay low. I moved it from the ceramic pot to a prime spot in the garden. It bloomed again with increased vigour in the Springs of 2021 and 2022.

 A small white tag attested not only to its name but also to some of its qualities. The tag reads: ‘Small attractive English wildflower. Tea from the whole plant, particularly the flowers, is sedative and pain relieving. Cool position, protected and partly shaded. Perennial.’

In March 2023 I took courage and spade in hand and  cut it into two. One half of the rootstock stayed in the flower border where it had shown itself to be viable. The other was potted up and went off to a different zone in the garden.

The surgery was successful – so much so that right now (September 2023) the potted half is strong and luxurious, with multiple blooms of luscious yellow.

Now is a good time to pay back. The Giver has received an unwanted gift. Visits to second hand bookshops and antique galleries will be subdued for a while.

But the spirit of thoughtfulness and care will not cease. The cycle of life will continue, despite short-term perturbation. Friends will unite. Special friends will be specially united. The seasons will roll round.

Confronted with local frosts or global pandemic, the cowslip and other sure signs of repetition, resilience and renewal will not stand by – but flourish. 

At the beginning of the Second World War, Ted and his family lived in a small house near the Fremantle docks.

The dock area was resumed for military and security purposes. This affected so many families that the education system could only cope by switching to half-day schooling. You went to school  from 9.00 to 12.00 or from 12.00 to 3.00.

After a number of false starts Ted’s family moved to Spearwood, a market gardening and fruit growing area on the outskirts of Fremantle. In 1940, when Ted was 11, the family moved to Safety Bay, then a small fishing village some 20 miles south of Fremantle. Ted soon realised that for an adventurous teenager Safety Bay was about as good as it gets.

There was just a two-teacher school and Ted can still recall how happy he was there. The Headmaster was a great teacher, as was the second staff member. Both of them looked after three school years. Ted remembers the inspiration they provided. They used to bring all six classes together on Friday afternoons for a reading. Ted still remembers King Solomon’s Mines from this experience.

When not at school Ted and his friends were fishing, paddle boating,  swimming and exploring their home areas and the small islands nearby. This included Penguin Island with its colony of Little Penguins, and Seal Island. One of Ted’s friends suggested they climb to the top of a nearby island – just a large rock used by birds as a nesting area. One day they climbed all the way up the steep sides to discover that the rock was cluttered with thousands of birds and covered all over with years and years of their droppings.

The two potential young entrepreneurs considered returning to bag  up some of the droppings for sale to local gardeners. However when faced with its weighty logistical challenges this venture proved too challenging.

Ted would occasionally work on board one or other of the local fishing boats. These were 18 to 20 foot vessels, “little more than oversized dinghies”. They had a flat area aft for storing and handling the rope and the net.

Ted’s job was to help to retrieve the rope and net prior to its re-deployment. This involved getting very wet! To have a ‘lad’ for this work meant that at least one of the adult crew members could stay dry for the duration of the trip.

Net fishing at Safety Bay was a team pursuit, with two team members being on the beach and working towards each other, pulling the net to a close. This created an open channel for the entrapped fish to move into, at the end of which was the ‘pocket’, being a reinforced holding net.

It was to be hoped that there were not too many crabs in the catch because of the frenzied damage they would do to the fish in the pocket.

Ted was rewarded for this work with a feed of fish to take home to his mother.

Following his brief career as a deck hand, Ted started an apprenticeship in

patisserie. He stayed with his Aunty Thelma,trying to sleep during the day ready to be at work at 2-00am. He had to walk for about 40 minutes to sign on – there being no night-time public transport. After work Ted walked into town to catch a tram to his aunty’s house.

One night as he was waiting for the other workers and the boss there was a fight nearby which resulted in the death of one of the men involved. Together with the transport difficulties and a lack of sleep, this alarming experience proved too much. Ted left after about three months.

His big break came with a job in Fremantle in 1944.

Given that the world was at war, he was surprised to find that GJ Coles was still importing pottery, china and kitchenware from England. In Fremantle there was a team responsible for unpacking the large  cane baskets of crockery and homeware recently arrived from the UK.

The Manageress was Miss C.

.. Her team comprised ‘Mister Mac’, Miss M. and Ted. Mr Mac and Ted handled the actual unpacking. Frequently the packaging was wet straw, which meant that cleaning was needed before Miss C. could finalise orders to be filled for distribution to various Coles stores in Western Australia.

Ted was a tall 15 year old, whose dress was always short pants. Miss C. insisted he be fixed up with long pants and it has always been Ted’s suspicion that Miss C. paid for the first pair herself.

On his first day in the new job, Mr Mac told Ted that Miss C. wanted to see him at lunchtime. Ted went ‘upstairs’ to find that his three colleagues had made up a plate of lunch for him from their own provisions.

Maureen was ‘upstairs’ and did the stock-taking. Ted enjoyed stocktaking because of the opportunity to have the company of another young person.

It was Mr Mac who explained to Ted that having been to the toilet it was essential to wash one’s hands. And it was Mr Mac who explained to Ted about the importance of brushing one’s teeth. In 1944 Ted and many others like him had no toothbrush and little conception of oral hygiene.

During his time at GJ Coles Ted took the bus to and from Safety Bay each day for work. The bus fare was ten shillings a week, leaving nine shillings a week for his mother.

One day Ted was absent from work, having heard at lunchtime that the war was ended. He made his way to the docks – already re-opened – and helped the crew of a vessel there obtain fresh oranges from town.

Not long after this Ted saw an advertisement encouraging 16-year-olds to join the Navy as cadets. He resigned from Coles and made application but was unsuccessful. He was therefore out of work.

However, Ted was soon on his feet again. One of his friends at Safety Bay was the daughter of the owner of the Savoy Hotel in Perth. Ted became the hotel’s Junior Hall Porter. His main responsibility was running messages between various hotels in Perth. He had no bicycle – just shanks’ pony.

When he recalls his upbringing in Western Australia and his transition from knockabout kid to member of a workforce team, Ted reflects gratefully on the welcome he had and the help he was given by the likes of Miss C., Maureen and Mr Mac. One of Mr Mac’s specific instructions to Ted was to read Dale Carnegie’s book on self-improvement. Which he did.

Eighty years on, let us reflect on and give thanks to the three of them for the decent, kind and caring workplace they provided for a young person just setting out on a working life.

Their generosity has never been forgotten by the young man who went on to have a distinguished career in the Royal Australian Air Force. How he got there is a story for another day.

No.	Title	Cat.*	Date published
1	How did rural people vote in the (2016) Federal Election?	Pol	6 July 2016
2	English rugby: no longer Down Under	Rem	15 July 2016
3	Does the Brexit vote mean an end to the not-keeping-sheep industry under the CAP?	Pol	16 July 2016
4	For Leanne Coleman’s birthday (17 July)	P	17 July 2016
5	Quad bike safety	RH	20 July 2016
6	The tale of a cowslip	Rem	24 July 2016
7	Tour Defiance 2016	P	1 Aug. 2016
8	Marriage equality and greyhounds	Pol	9 Aug. 2016
9	Dear Dr Gillespie: Don’t narrow the rural health agenda	RH	10 Aug. 2016
10	Submarines and greyhounds: industry policy with a heart	PWE	13 Aug. 2016
11	An agenda for the Minister for Rural Health	RH	17 Aug. 2016
12	The language of ‘health promotion’	RH	19 Sept. 2016
13	Fields of Gold: the 2016 AFL Grand Final	P	6 Oct. 2016
14	Rolling over	P	6 Oct. 2016
15	“Look at the tyres!”	Rem	2 Nov. 2016
16	On electoral ‘mandates’ and furphies	Pol	2 Nov. 2016
17	For good rural health we need good rural jobs	RH	2 Nov. 2016
18	On holiday with Anne Cahill-Lambert and (photogenic) Rod	P	2 Nov. 2016
19	Parliamentarians and the plebiscite	Pol	4 Nov. 2016
20	Pounds, shillings and common sense	Rem	4 Nov. 2016
21	Structural change in the economy: a real life and political issue	PWE	4 Nov. 2016
22	Dreams of home: Beardy Street, Armidale	P	21 Nov. 2016
23	To market, to market, to buy a fat pig…two case studies of economic change	PWE	14 Dec. 2016
24	A jogger’s diary	P	17 Jan. 2017
25	parkrun: healthy movement	P	24 Jan. 2017
26	The Art of Professional House Cleaning	F	24 Feb. 2017
27	Health advocacy needs to be more specific, less ‘motherhood’	Pol	9 March 2017
28	Comments on accepting Louis Ariotti Award for Excellence, 6 March 2001.	RH	9 March 2017
29	Quad bike accidents: “It’ll never happen to me”	RH	17 March 2017
30	Extracts from debate in House of Representatives on Bill to establish a National Rural Health Commissioner (NRHC)	RH	21 March 2017
31	Adelaide Crows Women: next year can we police have the chorus too?	F	4 April 2017
32	“Julia Gillard is not a liar” – written in April 2012	Pol	12 April 2017
33	Reflections on retirement	P	19 April 2017
34	Surfing the ‘waves of health reform’ in Australia	Pol	31 May 2017
35	Drones: workers of the future?	P	1 June 2017
36	The challenge for the National Rural Health Commissioner	RH	8 June 2017
37	Lines in the Trouser – Introduction and Part One	P	12 June 2017
38	Lines in the Trouser – Part Two	P	18 June 2017
39	Rural Generalism: One of the best games in town for rural health?	RH	20 June 2017
40	A poem for the Winter Solstice	P	22 June 2017
41	Lines in the trouser – Part Three	P	23 June 2017
42	For Bev Glover	P	2 July 2017
43	On politics, paramedics and the Sunburnt Country	Pol	30 July 2017
44	‘Reasonable expectations’ of human services in remote communities	RH	3 Aug. 2017
45	“This was the most unkindest cut of all.” (Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 2)[1]	P	14 Aug. 2017
46	Dual citizenship explained – by Duncan Kerr – in 1989!!	Pol	1 Sept. 2017
47	Rural people face high, unmeasured and increasing out-of-pocket health care costs	RH	29 Oct. 2017
48	Dear Scott, So you want to clearly understand about split infinitives?	P	10 Nov. 2017
49	Lawrence’s daffodils	P	15 Nov. 2017
50	Marriage equality – a case study in too much democracy	Pol	18 Nov. 2017
51	Obstructing the field – Alex Ross is out	P	11 Jan. 2018
52	How Green Was My Lily & other terrible Fotopuns	F	14 Jan. 2018
53	Much to report – September 2008	P	30 Jan. 2018
54	Two-wheeler Kate: in praise of speech recognition software	P	16 Feb. 2018
55	Retiring slowly – Match report for Saturday 20 January 2018	P	19 Feb. 2018
56	Command and control	F	13 March 2018
57	Rural and remote gaps in NDIS rollout	RH	15 March 2018
58	NRL: a bird in the hand is worth 30% of what’s in the bush	P	19 March 2018
59	Just Loving It (Our theatrical holiday in the UK)	P	19 May 2018
60	Stalking George Gently	P	19 May 2018
61	ANZAC Day in Knaresborough, North Yorkshire	P	19 May 2018
62	Paddling his own canoe: for Dane	P	24 May 2018 (re-posted)
63	Australia’s health research effort	RH	5 June 2018

Cat* = Category: P is Personal; RH Rural health; F Fantasy; Pol Politics; Rem Reminiscence; and PWE People’s wellbeing and the economy.