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Francis
I watched the two-hour Vatican ceremony, the requiem for Pope Francis, with Mass celebrated in sunshine in St Peter’s Square in front of the Basilica. It was April 20th, 2025. Here a crowd of around 150 thousand people prayed together. There was silence, there was mourning, there was song and there was ritual to honour…
Saving Lives in Brutal Times
This is the first time I have attempted to write a story while it is unfolding. More than a month ago now Anne Goldfeld, a long-time friend who lives in Boston, sent a message. ‘When can we talk, face to face online?’ Of course we can talk immediately. We have been friends since we both…
What Next
I walk along the Yarra River through the seasons of the year. Each season has a beauty of its own. People come from across Melbourne to walk, or bike, along the river’s edge as if in pilgrimage, and mutter ‘G’day’ as they pass one another. An immense government funded project is underway to make this…
Human Rights Day
The year was 1945. I was a ten years old that year, old enough to understand the horror of Hiroshima, to remember the newspaper images of young soldiers with limbs amputated, to learn about the holocaust, to watch the pain of our neighbour’s children when their father, a prisoner of war, returned a different man,…
Battlers All
A young woman who came to Australia because she could not stay safely in her own country talks to me as I water my garden; I hear her worries and her hopes. No matter how hard she works there will never be the chance for her to work in the profession she had chosen. She…
One Tiny Garden
Long ago, while close to war and atrocity, I learned that every act of goodness, every sign of beauty, must be noticed, remembered and treasured. It is happening again. Consider the orange tree that I have inherited. Until the time that Spring emerges in its fullness, I forget the joy of the perfume of orange…
A Letter From Bob
Bob Maat is a good friend, a good man. I met him on the Thai Cambodian border thirty-six years ago. He was a faithful mentor to me in my shell shock, as I struggled to work in this place. In those early days I learned that the sound of shells thudding on the frontline of…
PARIS
Paris, France. As I write my screen is showing images of the Olympics. The city is, of course, jam-packed with athletes at the peak of their performance, all straining to compete better than they ever have before. They gather in national groups united and excited in the rain sodden opening. I remember Melbourne and the…
Born Before His Time
Teilhard de Chardin was born in 1881 in Auvergne, France. He walked the hills with his father, digging for stones and fossils, uncovering the ancient story of this land on which they lived. Teilhard later wrote that the wonder and amazement that this stirred in him became as much part of him as the colour…
Cathedral of the Ricefields
Let me write you a story that I should have written long ago. It starts early in 1975. The city of Phnom Penh in Cambodia is seriously overcrowded with families from the countryside fleeing from war, seeking safety wherever they can find it. The Khmer Rouge rebel army is pushing towards the capital and controls…
Wisdom
See this. It is Battambang town in northwestern Cambodia at a specific time in history. It is 1992. Before Pol Pot times Battambang was a university town and those with a good education, those who were young students in those days romanticise it. I can understand. A river flows right through the heart of it.…
Silence the Guns
As you reach a ripe old age in my country each new health professional who meets you has a file of your medical history. Mine is a hefty document. Most medics thumb through it quickly. This medic, not my regular GP, is not thumbing. She is pondering. ‘You lived close to war when working in…
From Little Things
Imagine a campfire, up north in Queensland. There is a canopy of stars, and the flicker of flames. Family and friends are here; there’s been good tucker. It is 1966. The host is Kev Carmody, already well known for his published albums of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island songs. Paul Kelly, a song writer from…
The Way Things Change
I am writing in ‘back to school’ week. Summer holidays are over. I sit with a newly arrived family from South East Asia, father, mother and a lively, shy six-year-old boy in the office of the school Principal. It is late afternoon already and school starts tomorrow. The principal and his assistant give total attention…
We Were Young
I was nineteen, living and teaching in the small town of Loch in South Gippsland. It was my first venture away from Huntington Grove East Coburg, away from family, away from friends. When I was sixteen, I had signed a bond with the State Education Department. I would earn as I learned to be a…
peace justice LOVE
This year is coming to its end, my December posting is precisely the 25th day before Christmas. While I hope and pray that my friends and family will experience peace and love during this Christmas of 2023, we all know that this is not the total story of the first Christmas. Mary and Joseph, whose…
Some Sing in Language
On October 14th Hamer Hall was full to capacity as we waited for the performance of Eumeralla. Four minutes before it was to begin, news that the Referendum had already produced a resounding NO spread through the crowd. Deborah Cheetham AO, first Nations Woman, renowned singer and composer, stepped to the front of the stage.…
The Healy Name
This great grandfather of mine brought my name to Australia, through his grandson, my father, Joe Healy. Daniel Healy was his name. I first heard his story when I was very young … heard it with pride I must admit. My great grandfather was Irish through and through, Irish with a great resentment of the…
Without Naming Names
There is a story that I cannot put on the web with names attached. You will understand as you read it. For safety I will tell it using only he or him. It is 1989. On my first working day in Site 2 I meet him. He is a medic and battlefield surgeon, but he…
What Now Cambodia
Hun Manet, son of Hun Sen the Prime Minister of Cambodia, will step into the role of Prime Minister on August 22nd this year. Manet is 44 years old. How can I make sense of this transition? The only time I met Hun Sen face to face he was very young. I heard him say,…
From The Heart
I yearn for bushland and wild Australian beaches. Without doubt this fascination started early in my life. As my proud parents pushed their first child, me, in a pram among the gum trees near our East Coburg home they would say, ‘Take deep breaths, smell the bush. Isn’t it lovely?’ We spent our holidays in…
I Must Remember This
At a time when I needed some medical care in hospital, I read words translated from Aramaic. ‘Blessed are those whose passion is sparked by deep, abiding purpose.’ I was being treated by a specialist who put his whole focus on curing me. He is thorough and persistent. There is no doubt that he understands…
Cambodia 2023
It was a journey of a lifetime, this undertaking of three weeks and two days in Cambodia. It was a string of encounters with people who are significant in my life, but whom I am unlikely to ever see again. What I record here may give you a sense of this. == There is a…
From Small Beginnings Restoring Life
This is not a story about Cambodia, it is a story from Cambodia. I am once more listening to the hopes and dreams of Cambodian friends and colleagues. I am in Battambang in North Western Cambodia. Once more I am breathing the aroma of steaming rice and the aroma of frangipani flowers. Once more I…
Under The Fig Tree
“Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should be aware that this site may contain names, images and/or voices of people who have since passed away. We wish not to cause any offence.” I met her under the fig tree where, in 1997, friends gathered in the backyard of the small house in Thornbury. She would…
To Be a Teacher
In a far distant time, in this city of Melbourne and State of Victoria, there was a high-pressure campaign to recruit teachers. The year is 1950. Joan Healy is 15 years old. She travels to her secondary school my tram. Standing in the crowd, strap-hanging, this tall, shy, awkward young girl is at eye level…
For Peace Sake
War-torn Battambang town in the early nineteen nineties was a place of violence. Weapons of war were everywhere. Early one morning as I sat sipping my usual cup of coffee at the little tin table near the market a Cambodian boy, perhaps 16 years old, slumped down beside me, put his AK 47 and rocket…
The Time has Come
A good friend of mine, Joan Hamilton, has stories that I need to hear. Joan lived among First Peoples in Redfern in the ‘old-days’ with Mum Shirl; she then shared in the struggles of the Barkindji people in Wilcannia for many years. She learned what it means to battle against grim odds and later in…
A friend of Kevin Malone
One of my friends from Cambodia times, sent a message with a request. Kevin Malone is now working with a Karuk tribal man from the redwood forests of northern California; his name is Terry Supahan. Kevin tells us that Terry will travel through Melbourne with a Californian group interested in ecological restoration. Kevin has convinced…
As the World Tilts
My front window reaches from ceiling to a half metre from the floor. The road beyond my mini garden is narrow and quiet; on the opposite side there is an ancient towering Chinese Elm. Its dark triple-trunk and spreading branches are there in front of me whenever I look to the light. At night the…
My Country
My country? Images flicker before me. It is 1943 and we are ‘in the bush’ at our favourite spot on the Yarra River, Veronica and me. We are clinging to a branch close to the water, and jumping in. Our mother says ‘Smell the gum leaves. Look at it all, so beautiful’. She will gather…
Joseph My Father
They say that every person born can evoke ‘the feel of the times’ from 20 or 30 years before the date of their birth. Conversations overheard meld with memories, or so it seems. It is a summer day in 1908. The place is Brunswick. Charlotte Healy is giving birth to her sixth child, a son.…
The Life of Irene McCormack
Many who read this will have heard of the death of Irene McCormack. This 52-year-old Australian woman was executed in Peru by Shining Path guerrilla fighters. She was one of a group of five captives who were ordered to lie on the ground in a line, face down. The other four were Peruvian men, respected…
Joy and Anticipation
I am letting myself hope and treasure the joy of life. Faith leaders representing Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu and Christian communities gathered is Sydney to pledge support for the Uluru Statement from the Heart. My friend Sherry Balcombe, a woman of Indigenous Spirituality, was there. My family joyfully celebrated wedding of Michael and Fiona My family…
Annie O’Neill
There was a baby girl born in a tent in August 1849 in Ararat, rural Victoria. Her name was Annie O’Neill. Why Ararat? Her parents, John and Mary, had landed in Melbourne in 1841 with two young sons after a difficult 4-month voyage on the Ward Chipman. The Port Philip settlement was only 6 years…
Women Speak of War
The suffering in Ukraine grabs at my heart. I need to see beyond the gruesome images in the media and to catch a glimpse of life in this place of war. I hear of a Ukrainian woman tending a wounded Russian soldier and phoning his mother in Russia to tell her that her son is…
Sok Thim Remembered
I heard by ‘snail mail’ from Bob Maat that Sok Thim has died at his home in Phnom Penh. Thim is a Cambodian friend whom I treasure. I met him in the Site 2 Camp. My first memory was of his wide smile and his quirky sense of humour. He laughed about himself. I laughed…
Footy
Nobody who knows me well imagines that I am an avid follower of Aussie Rules Football. Yes, I was born and bred in Melbourne where Aussie Rules is close to being ‘religion’. Yes, I was born into a family of avid Carlton supporters. I can even sing ‘We’re the Mighty Blues’ word for word. As a young…
Healing
In this grim time for planet earth I grasp for signs of hope, seeds of goodness. I recall the healing that gradually, gradually began after the Khmer Rouge horror ended. Even during this tragic month there have been some sparks of hope. The people whose spirit was nurtured here were plunged into suffering which has…
Park Hotel
March 28th 2021. This day is Magha Puja for Buddhists and First Night of Passover in Judaism. For Christians it is Palm Sunday, the day of Jesus entering Jerusalem knowing the danger of speaking truth to power. It is a night of full moon. On this night a group of women and men stand in…
Always
Sometimes two stories converge, and each gives meaning to the other. Stay with me while I show you. In the time between the two World Wars my mother became a vivacious red-headed young woman working in a factory making silk stockings. On Sunday nights at Jarvie St East Brunswick her family would gather around a…
Mary MacKillop and Little Lons
It was a time of world-wide depression. Those who were rich lost their investments, those who were poor lost their work, the poorest were homeless and slept on the streets. First, I need to tell you about inner-city Melbourne in 1891. A short stroll from the edge of Fitzroy where Mary MacKillop was born forty-seven…
Letter from Desmond Tutu
I once received a handwritten letter from Bishop Desmond Tutu.. This is the situation. Land mines should never, ever be used as a weapon of war. We both agree. Beginning in 1989 I work as a volunteer in a refugee camp. Asylum seekers held in the barbed wire enclosure of Site 2, on the border…
Camping
One magical part of the Port Philip Bay foreshore begins at the McCrae lighthouse and stretches a few hundred meters towards the head of the bay. This was our campsite, summer after summer, for years. It was bushland then, it became crowded later, now it is restored to its original state. When we camped as…
Assisi and Christmas
Once I stayed in the walled town of Assisi for seven days, alone and silent. It wasn’t planned, it was wonderful. On some whim or inspiration, I had taken a tourist bus up the mountain and into this ancient town. I had been busy and would be busy again. There were free days between a…
And then there was war
Veronica was not yet three months old and I had not turned four when World War 2 was declared on September 1st, 1939. Then Japan bombed Pearl Harbour and took Singapore. It was now the Pacific War. Australia was well and truly involved. In all there were 111 bombing attacks to the north. Gruesome posters…
Yoo-rrook
On a sunny winter morning, during a brief spell in Melbourne’s lockdowns, there was the chance for an hours-long breakfast at Riverside Spoons-in Swan Hill. The ancient gums, the paddle boat and the mighty Murray River spoke of history. The conversation was of history far, far back. Gathered at the table were Vicki Clarke Mutthi…
The 1928 Chev
Just before the second little girl was born Joe and Vera had saved enough money to buy a second-hand 1928 Chevrolet. This car, eleven years old when they bought it, was destined to find a place in the heart of family. Vera was in labour when Joe drove her to the city so fast that…
Melbourne and the World
For 86 years Melbourne has been my familiar ‘home base’. When a Qantas flight plays ‘I Still Call Australia Home’ I think ‘Melbourne’. If you had asked me on New Year’s Day 2019, I might have said, ‘This place is predictable. I could parachute into the inner city, the north, the west, the east or…
Joe Healy Meets Vera Martin
When Joe Healy met a beautiful red-headed girl at a dance in a parish hall in East Brunswick he knew he was not the only one who had noticed her. The lad from Whitfield was now a young man, a licensed plumber working for an established company on the best building site in Melbourne city,…
Cambodia’s Better August News
Throughout August 2021 I have followed global statistics charting the spread of Covid 19. There is a saying among foreigners who have lived and worked for decades in Cambodia, and have and forged lasting friendships. We tell each other, ‘You can catch Cambodeitis,. It’s a lasting love of this country’. Many of my Cambodian friends…
Archie Roach and Nellie Moore
In our country we carry a tragedy and a shame. The First Nations Peoples carry the burden in grief that cannot be quenched. We all call it the Stolen Generations story. Archie Roach knew it, he felt in his own being, felt from within. He searched for family, culture and belonging. In some parts of…
Charlotte
I was a young adult when Charlotte, the youngest daughter of my great-grandmother Honora was elderly but full of life. She loved to tell stories. She knew that a young granddaughter would want to know what life was like when her grandmother was young. Charlotte was a lively conversationalist who loved life. I thought she…
Love Story on Rathdowne Street
It is one of Melbourne’s crisp sunny winter days. There is a story that I need to re-trace; this is a story that Vera, my mother, told me. I have many details and an important clue. When she was a little girl my mother lived in the family’s King Street café, near the corner of…
For Justice And Equity
Today is the day of the Zoom meeting of the Josephite Justice Network. We meet each month. Two years ago there was a face to face meeting twice in the year in Sydney. ‘All is changed, changed utterly’. Here we are now, watching each other’s faces on a screen with a patchwork of 21 small…
Goodness and Grit in Melbourne’s West
This is a part of Victoria that I know well and love. The postcodes here are not postcodes of wealth. It is better than that. They are postcodes of pride, standing-up for each other, doing it tough, fierce loyalty, enduring friendships, resilience, dignity. If you set out from the city by train you will sense…
Courage, Conflict and Whistle Blowing
Witness K and Bernard Collaery are in trouble. They are being prosecuted as whistleblowers but the support for their cause gathers strength. The Australian Government spied on the East Timorese Government during oil and gas negotiations in 2004; this was a breach of trust between Australia and East Timor. Witness K was one of the…
The Albino Buffalo
Picture me. I am a newly arrived volunteer in a camp of Cambodian refugees: awkward, gawky, bamboozled. I wobble on a bike through squelchy red laterite mud and cross a makeshift plank bridge narrowly avoiding slithering into the water. I hear full throated laughter and turn my head for a second to glimpse the man:…
Abbotsford
I am writing this from Abbotsford. This is without doubt a place of beauty. It is also where I had my first close encounter with the exploitation and injustice which so many women suffered and still do. In these months I have cultivated my tiny garden, forged friendships with my neighbours, and harvested good memories…
They Came on Boats
My ancestors all came to this country on boats. Remarkable! Before the colony of Port Philip was 25 years from first white settlement the forebears of my father and the forbears of my mother had arrived, one by one or a family together, to start a new life. Their sailing ships docked at Williamstown in…
Nana Kelly and Mungo Man
It was early in 1998, in the glare and heat of a summer afternoon that I was summoned into the living room of Nana Kelly’s small cottage in Balranald. Nana Kelly was a much respected elder of the Mutthi Mutthi people; I crossed the dusty road and entered the darkened interior of this small house…
Stories and Musings 