They're Killing Blinky Bill

Who (among Aussie readers) didn't count Blinky Bill and his bush land friends among their best friends during childhood?

(Readers outside Australia, google 'Blinky Bill, by Dorothy Wall')

The koala is an Australian icon. It attracts tourism. It drives campaigns for eucalyptus reforestation and preservation of wildlife habitats. Our furry friend is loved, it seems, the world over.

But the koala is in grave danger of becoming extinct.

Greedy developers and irresponsible regulators have converted thousands of hectares of the bush land it calls home to forests of brick and mortar.

Greedy timber merchants have cut down hundreds of thousands of the trees that provide the animals with food and shelter.

Our wildlife has been chased further and further into the remotest parts of the country where it struggles to survive.

On the Tweed Coast - an area where once the koala bred prolifically - there are just 144 of the species left. About 31 of these live in the Black Rocks area. Many of those live in the area immediately adjacent to Black Rocks Sports Ground. It's a key breeding area for koala, osprey, curlew, and other iconic wildlife. Echidnas amble across the roads and into nearby gardens regularly.

There are expensive programs in operation, partly funded by the local council, to re-establish eucalypt forest and preserve the bush land in the area.

Local residents aggressively support those programs, having bought into the area at premium prices specifically because they love living in proximity to beautiful bush land and the wonderful native fauna that inhabit it.

So you would think it logical that Tweed Shire Council would be quick to reject a proposal to convert a small, lightly used sports ground to a high use night sports ground with football towers and 48,000 watt lighting.

You would think the mere suggestion of a liquor license would horrify, and any hint of an expanded 25 ha recreation facility with potential to host motor cross events, go karts, shooting, paint ball, golf, etc. would horrify. Particularly after locals complained bitterly about wild partying at the sports ground with accompanying drag races, vandalism, littering and excessive noise, and council locked the gates on the road entering the sports ground in response, you would think there could be no way any councilor would endorse a proposal that involved opening the road to hoons, and allowing bright lights to blaze well into the night.

You would think... but you would be wrong!

Greed prevails. The almighty dollar speaks all languages, and pursuit of it - not concern for the local ratepayers who elect them - takes precedence over any concern for the environment or our native animal friends. Rich developers  influence councilors decisions, it seems.

Tweed Shire Council is said to be looking favourably at a proposal that threatens to kill off Blinky Bill and his mates forever - to deprive future generations of the pleasure of his company and the right of quiet enjoyment of the beautiful habitat that he made his home.

It appears Council approval of the proposal might actually be illegal. Law and policy states that development in and around koala habitats must be ''appropriate''. This isn't.  Policy states that sporting facilities should be centrally located and close to schools. This one is many miles away.

There are already adequate sporting facilities in Pottsville, servicing a very small community. Existing facilities are underused. We don't need more. Residents don't want more.

But Blinky Bill and his mates don't generate revenue for councils. Protecting wildlife doesn't win favours from rich land developers whose activities grow council coffers.

So Blinky Bill may soon be nothing but a fond memory - or a mythical literary character that readers think was a figment of Dorothy Wall's imagination.

The cuddly koala might exist exclusively in zoos - or, all too soon, not at all.

I am among the privileged Black Rocks residents who watch them mate in trees just beyond my living room window. My husband often uses a telescopic lens to photograph them chomping happily on the leaves of trees that grow just beyond our fence. We see them in the trees right beside that currently closed road into the sports ground, and we say a quiet thank you that cars can't enter, because we know that they wander across that road often.

But the car tracks are clearly visible where the hoons did wheelies a few months back, and in a few weeks Council is likely to clear the way for that activity to resume and increase.

Our furry friends will have to find new homes, or perish.

I have started a petition at change.org. I'm seeking support for demands that council stop this irresponsible development and observe it's own policy of working to protect koala habitat. You don't need to be a local to influence council's decision. This is a tourist destination - thanks partly to the beautiful bush land that surrounds it and the native animals that breed here.
Council has to listen to all voices - from anywhere in the world.

You can help save Blinky Bill and his mates.

You can help ensure that the lovely furry koala we all love so dearly continues to thrive on the Tweed Coast, and in other areas of Australia where councils, mindful of the precedents being set in Tweed, will feel compelled to respect the wishes of the people and do what is right for the environment and our native flora and fauna.

Please visit http://t.co/ocLsi0Edxg to lend your support.

Blinky Bill will be deeply grateful - and so will I.

The Pencil Case is published

Published at last!  After three years of editing and revision, it's finally live on Smashwords (http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/300714) and Amazon Kindle (http://www.amazon.com/The-Pencil-Case-ebook/dp/B00C4B9QLW/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1364864268&sr=1-1&keywords=The+Pencil+Case) and coming soon as a paperback available in US, UK and Australia.

It's controversial. It's provocative. It counters popular belief and media and political lies. But it happened. "The Pencil Case'' exposes ugly truths of Australian history that too many would prefer to hide. It's as story that had to be told. 

Read it.... Weep at man's inhumanity to man, at the hideous cruelty and hurt suffered by poor families at the hands of heartless bureaucrats and cruel ''Brides of Christ'', then cheer at the strength and resilience of the human spirit and the enormous healing power of family love.  

 

Neither wrongful incarceration nor childhood abuse and deprivation could break Paul Wilson’s indomitable spirit, but survival means an endless battle against the system that stole him from his family and denied him his identity. 

 

Paul Wilson survived being stolen from a loving Aussie bush family as a child, but that was only the beginning of his lifelong war against a cruel system and the arrogant pencil pushers who persecuted his family.

Paul's dad knew there was only way to survive against injustice. It took Paul sixty years to learn.

Join Paul as he takes his lawyer on a journey through time, from the post-war home of a poverty-stricken Australian family, to a cold, harsh Catholic Orphanage, into foster homes and an Anglican Boys’ Home, to an army training school for boys, and through an eventful adult life desperately searching for identity, acceptance, love and peace.

His story is one you will read between tears and fits of rage, but also one that will reassure you of the beauty and strength of the human spirit and the power of family love.

Until around the mid-1970s, government policy across Australia was to remove children they considered to be “at risk” in their home environment. The story of ‘’The Stolen Generation’’ is now well known internationally, but the whole truth hasn’t been told. Children weren’t taken solely because of their race. They stole white kids too.

Welfare legislation authorizing the removal of children from poverty-stricken homes was enacted by people who were untrained, and unable or unwilling to acknowledge that lack of money did not mean a bad home life. Children were removed to institutions where they suffered deprivation, abuse, separation from family, and withholding of affection that scarred them for life.

Financial benefits accrued to welfare workers and churches through increasing the number of wards of the state. Increased government funding of welfare departments meant more jobs, and churches profited by keeping children on subsistence diets and dressed in rags, spending far less than the Government allowances provided for the children committed to their care.

A minimally fictionalized biography, "The Pencil Case" is a confronting account of the life of one of the victims of this policy.

‘’Gritty and mesmerizing” (Kenneth Edward Lim)

“The author’s brilliance with imagery and words involve the reader to the point of being an observer in the time and place.” (Diana Hockley)

“Read even half a chapter of this and you'll know straight away you're dealing with a phenomenal writer and a fascinating story. This book is as important as it is riveting.” (Richard Walsh)

“…a story that I think should be mandatory reading in schools and colleges, and for most everyone else too” (Fran Macilvey)

A beautifully-written, utterly moving piece of art. (Faith Rose)

“…a story that should be heard” (M.A.McRae)

The Secret of Happiness

My husband is no writer; not even an aspiring one. He goes out of his way, usually, to avoid putting pen to paper. It rather surprised me, therefore, when he started a Facebook page. It quite astonished me when he told me that he wrote on it about what he believes is the secret of happiness.

This is a pearl of wisdom that just has to be shared. I hope he'll be quoted widely and often. I may have paraphrased slightly, but without changing the meaning in any way:
"To ensure your children grow up happy, teach them to want little, listen much, and speak only when they have something to say that will make someone else happy."
I guess he learned those rules well as a child. It was pointless wanting anything, growing up as he did. He certainly would have had to listen much, sharing a home with some 90 kids from age 7 to 12, then between 19 and 21 other boys from age 12 to 15, then joining the army and living in barracks. Surrounded constantly by so many, he probably didn't get a lot of opportunity to speak and it's likely he learned quickly not to say anything that upset someone.

The Pencil Case is his story - hopefully to be published soon.
Check it out at http://.thepencilcase.rainbowriter.com or visit  http://www.authonomy.com/books/44295/the-pencil-case/.

Lessons Learned from Mothers: A Mothers’ Day Tribute

My family faced terrible grief a year ago.  It tore a close family apart. It caused bitterness and anger. Hatred and resentment replaced deep love and appreciation. It led to jealousy, selfishness and self-centred motivations where once generosity, appreciation and a spirit of sharing prevailed. It turned happy celebration days into lonely days of resentment and sorrow.

On Mothers’ Day this year, there were no phone calls from two of my three offspring. They sent no cards or messages of love. I had no opportunity to share a family day with the four beautiful grandchildren who have been the light of my life.  Instead, I spent a happy day with a loving husband and a joyous evening with my eighty-six year old mother, delighted over flowers sent by one of my children, and retired to ponder the secret of happiness and the cure for grief.

My mother-in-law knew grief: terrible grief; grief that no mother should ever have to bear and that most mothers would declare unbearable. Weakened by poverty and cruel injustice, she had three little children taken from her. For eighteen long years she was denied communication with them or knowledge of their well-being.  And then she lost a fourth, snatched cruelly from her arms by the Angel of Death in his third year of life.

My mother was no stranger to tragedy and grief either. My father was accidentally killed when I was just six weeks old.  Her darling sister had passed just a few years before — giving birth to her first child.

My grandmother lost a daughter on the day of a grandson's birth. Her son-in-law hitch-hiked for days from his soldier post in New Guinea to central New  South Wales to welcome his son into the world, only to find his beloved bride was dead.

Last year, three of my loved ones lost husbands. Eight loved ones lost fathers. Five loved cousins lost their mother. My mother lost her only surviving sister. My son lost a wife. Four small grandchildren lost a mother. I lost a daughter-in-law, a beloved aunt, a brother-in-law, and two dear friends.

All around the world, every day, others suffered heartbreaking loss. Fathers, mothers, grandparents, uncles, aunts, in-laws, and children were snatched from their arms by the Angel of Death, or by the ravages of hatred and evil. Friendships were destroyed by vicious gossip, hateful assumptions, or cruel betrayals – or were ended through the insuperable challenges of life and circumstance.

Tragedy. Grief. Hardship. Sorrow.

It comes to us all. We all bear our share. We all carry burdens, and there is no valid way to compare the weight of our load with that of another. 

To each of us is given a measure of sorrow, and a measure of strength to bear it. 

To each of us is given a measure of happiness, and a measure of wisdom to appreciate it.

The choice we face is how well to use our strength and wisdom, and whether to wallow in darkness and self-pity, or embrace and be grateful for the sunshine and happiness that lights our way.

My mother-in-law knew sorrow most of us could never imagine, and yet she was a happy woman. Her heart was filled with love and appreciation of the many blessings she claimed were bestowed upon her.  She responded in kindness to those who treated her with contempt.

She often cried at night, but in the morning, she welcomed the light. At the end of a storm, she gave thanks for peace. She accepted hurt and hardship as an inevitable and necessary part of life. Darkness makes the light appear brighter. Rain puts colour in the rainbow and feeds new life. Emptiness and cold makes the warmth of love more precious.

On Mothers’ Day this year, I prayed the Serenity Prayer.  I begged for strength to accept that which I cannot change; the courage to change what I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.

On Mothers’ Day, I prayed a prayer of thanks for the wisdom of the mothers who walked this way before me; who learned, as I am learning, that:

·         We find happiness in serene acceptance.

·       We find contentment when we forgive foibles and force down memories of pain to count our blessings and give thanks.

·       We find wealth when we give without expectation of return, and when we appreciate those gifts of love and nature that can’t be bought or sold and that bear a value that cannot be quantified except in terms of the joy they bring.

·       We find joy when we reject negativity, compartmentalize pain, and embrace love, warmth and sunshine with appreciation.  

Grief locks us in a world of darkness, blinding us to beauty and causing wounds to fester.  We find relief when we cease to dwell on what we have lost, and focus, instead, on what we were given and the beautiful memories that are left to treasure.

We find happiness when we welcome the sunrise, rejoice in new birth, and open our arms to warm embraces and our hearts to love. 

My Mothers' Day prayer is that someday soon my children will welcome the light and open their hearts to the love I hold in my heart and the arms that long to embrace them once more. 

My Mothers’ Day tribute is to the mothers who taught me to wait serenely and patiently for that joyous day to dawn, and meanwhile to embrace the sunshine and love in my own life – and be grateful.

Soon to be released, “The Pencil Case”, by Lorraine Cobcroft, is the slightly fictionalized biography of the son who was stolen from my mother-in-law.  (Names have been changed in the book).

A heart-wrenching story, it tells how the memories of his parents' spirit and love helped a child survive deprivation, abuse and cruel family separation. Finally reunited with his family at age twenty-six, he continues to struggle with the loss of his identity and self-worth. Now a prisoner of his own mind, he struggles against continuing injustice as his life’s journey teaches him acceptance and finally brings peace.

Herbie's Private March

Herbie’s Private March: Salute to an Unsung ANZAC Hero

by Lorraine Cobcroft (the Rainbowriter)

He didn’t pin on medals and march on Anzac Day.  He wasn’t honoured as a veteran on the day they laid him to rest. His sacrifice is not one the esteemed and revered would care to remember and his private march is one historians would be embarrassed to record.

I remembered it, briefly, in my book, “The Pencil Case”.  I honoured the man as he deserved to be honoured: an ordinary bloke, who survived the persecution of the enemy to be brutally  tormented and ultimately destroyed by the nation he suffered so much to honour and defend. A humble man who seldom complained, worked hard, cherished his family and always wore a smile.

We used to routinely rise in darkness on Anzac Day… his son and I…to pray and salute in the faint pink light before the dawn. We would watch the sun rise behind a wreath-covered memorial, listen to the bagpipes and the drums and watch the proud veterans lift their shoulders and stride to the beat. We laid flowers at the foot of the memorial and placed hands over hearts in memory of the fallen brave. Tears often welled at the mournful bugle call. Herbie’s son always played “The Last Post” with with such feeling.

As a child, I routinely donned a starched white dress and pinned my dad’s medals across my chest. I remember wondering, as I stepped into the lines, what he would have thought of me had he lived to know me. I wondered who he was, and what traits I might have inherited from him. His courage? His strength? His commitment to fighting to defend the values he held dear and the lifestyle he wanted his child to enjoy?

As a young mother, I lifted my children high to see their uniformed father, cornet at his lips, near the front of the march.

Today, we take no part in the celebrations. My husband does not join his veteran friends to toast a victory or salute the sacrifice of so many. For us, now, it’s a day of fighting down anger at the cruel betrayal of an unsung hero. It’s a day to remember Herbert’s private march and to grieve the awful message that his story carries.

Herbert Cobcroft wasn’t killed in war. The enemy killed neither his body nor his spirit. Not the shrapnel that shattered his legs nor the tuberculosis that scarred his lungs carried him to death’s door. Neither the bullying Japanese guards in the prison camp he dwelt in for three years, nor the maggots that gnawed at his wounded flesh, broke him.

After three years behind wire in a foreign land, he returned home to a lover and the life he knew before it all began. He wore long trousers to cover his flesh wounds and took an oath of silence to cover scars of another kind. He donned his bush hat, tied on his pack and rode out behind the cattle herd. He broke horses and wove whips and won applause as a gun shearer. He worked hard and drank hard and his wife toiled in his humble little cottage and the vegie garden out back to help him feed the beloved children who were his greatest joy.

Then the nation he fought to defend achieved what the enemy could not. The people he fought beside and for killed his soul.

Herbert’s private march was a week-long trek powered by a heart filled with hope, followed by a  defeated week-long crawl nursing a heart battered and broken by the cruelty of the society he had fought for, and the heartlessness lies and hatred of so-called ‘’women of God’’.

Two years before his march, a bureaucrat came to visit the struggling veteran’s family. Herbie had hurt his back in a fall from a horse and hadn’t worked for a time. He’d moved his family to a humble shack and struggled to keep five small children clothed and fed. His means didn’t stretch to buying enough blankets to give each their own separate bed. But his kids were warm and happy. They were wrapped in thick layers of love.

The bureaucrat didn’t bother to tell Herbie he was entitled to veteran’s benefits to help ease his burden. He didn’t offer to help him fill in a pension application form. But he completed forms for him: forms that charged his beloved children with the ‘’crime’’ of being neglected. He relieved Herbie of the responsibility of caring for five by loading three into a black car and taking them far away. He took three children to a forbidding brick building where fearsome women in black robes would beat the devil out of “the fruit of scum” and society’s misguided charity would condemn them to a life in sterile dormitories, marching to the sound of bells and snapping to harsh orders, wearing the brand of the unwashed and unwanted, and never again experiencing the joy of a simple hug.

Herbie’s march was a mission to find the babies whose loss made his wife weep at night. He marched to find his son and daughters, and bring them home. He went to the right place. It took a week of walking to reach that huge brick tower. He knocked respectfully at the door.

The nuns had seen him lumbering wearily up that long drive. They had herded the children up the stairs and into dormitories where they locked them away for their safety.

“You must be mistaken,” the black-clad witch said, sneering at the grubby tramp. She’d opened the door just the barest crack and stood pressed hard against it. Her sisters were busy locking windows.

“No children by those names have ever lived here.”

Herbie’s nine-year-old son watched the departing shadow. He was nearly forty when he learned that had he called to the man, his father might have recognized his cry and turned back to him. His father loved him. His father had come for him. He was twenty-six before he heard from his father again.

The letters were all burned. The gifts they sent were set aside with cards removed. The boy received a little boat one Christmas. It was one of the few Christmas gifts the child was ever given. He was thirty-eight when he finally learned it was a gift sent by his mother.

The court said the lad should be sent home at age twelve, but the bureaucrat who interviewed the parents who so desperately wanted their son sent home signed a statutory declaration declaring he was unable to locate them.

The court said the boy should leave care at fifteen and fend for himself. The ‘’’Boss’’ at the Boys’ Home thought him too immature to be set free. He forced him to sign an eight-year contract with the army. The bureaucrat who visited his dad asking for parental consent claimed his parents were nowhere to be found. The boy’s brothers remember their angry father shouting that he’d never let his boy wear uniform; not after what this ‘’grand nation’’ did to him. 

The boy went home when he was twenty-six. A brother found him, and he, in turn, found six siblings he had never known. He returned to the bosom of a mother who had cried for him for eighteen years. He returned to play the cornet for an adoring dad who, though loving and enjoying five younger sons, had never stopped longing for the return of his first boy.

Herbie toiled to past his sixtieth year, sick and scarred from those years in a war prison and broken by the loss of three of his twelve children, and the tragic death of one in infancy.

He never drew a cent of veteran’s benefits. Nobody ever told him he had that right.

He wore a happy smile most of the time. He laughed a lot. He taught his children that every day brought a fresh challenge, a chance to do a kindness for someone. Excepting in the small hours of the morning, when he confided in the love of his life, he never spoke of the tortures he endured.

Six sons carried Herbert to his final rest. His two eldest daughters came to grieve. That sad day saw the realization of his lifelong dream. They were all there together. His family was at last reunited. But Herbert was gone. The body from which the soul had long since departed had finally conceded.  

We don’t rise before dawn on Anzac Day now. We don’t attend the march and we don’t join the celebrations. But we remember Herbie’s private march: the march of a soldier betrayed by his own; the march of an unsung hero.  

Soon to be released, “The Pencil Case”, by Lorraine Cobcroft, is the slightly fictionalized biography of Herbert’s stolen son (Names have been changed in the book).

A heart-wrenching story, it tells how the memories of his dad’s optimism and spirit helped a child survive deprivation, abuse and cruel family separation. Finally reunited with his family at age twenty-six, he continues to struggle with the loss of his identity and self-worth. Now a prisoner of his own mind, he struggles against continuing injustice as his life’s journey teaches him acceptance and finally brings peace.