What’s your earliest childhood memory? I listened to a story about this on the radio a while ago. I remember where I was when I listened to it. I remember where I was going and what I was doing. I remember who was in the car with me.

Do you have a good memory? I used to think I did. I know as I’ve gotten older my memory is not what it used to be. My short term memory is non-existent and I constantly…um…I like the smell of chamomile tea. I walk around the house thinking “what am I doing here” and then return whence I came only to turn back having remembered what I was there to do. It drives me insane.

Today I was listening to my husband on a business phone call reeling off details for a range of deadlines he has over the coming months. Times, dates, places, names – he was flawless in his ability to recall what was required for this phone call – without any notes or reminders. Ironically, however, he has forgotten our anniversary almost every year we’ve been married.

I remember all my children’s birthdays, I remember their birth weights and most of their birth statistics – yet when I call out to raise one’s attention I inevitably yell at least 6 names before I get to the one I intended to call.

My earliest childhood memory was sitting on the back patio of my house in Stroud. I would have been probably 4 years old. I was painting one of those amazing books where water on the page turned into colour. I thought it was wonderful…probably, knowing me, not for very long. I probably got bored with it quickly. I don’t remember painting it at any other time. For that moment, however, it was magical – and I remember.

My second most vivid memory from that time was at a place called Quambi House. Quambi was built by convicts in the early 1830s as a school and remains as an historical museum in Stroud today. I was terrified of this building, the energy there is oppressive, to say the least. I remember vividly going there with my brother when it was closed one day. We were riding scooters – you know, the old fashioned ones from the 70s. I was standing on the verandah looking at the vine growing on a trellis then I turned around to see my brother scooting down the road and away from me. I vividly remember that moment as I realised I was alone. Alone at Quambi.

You know that 1/14th of a second that feels like time froze and the memory is imprinted forever. It feels like 5 minutes, but it’s not more than a fleeting moment in time. And so memories are made. When I look back at my life, the memories I can easily recall are all associated with an intense feeling – like Quambi – fear.

Another memory from high school years – being at home alone with the stereo blaring and seeing my parent’s car pull into the driveway and knowing I was in trouble. Big trouble. Getting caught smoking when I was 15. Finding out I had head lice 20 minutes before I was about to go on my first ever sleep over at a friends house is a vivid memory from primary school, as is getting in big trouble for the one thing I actually DIDN’T do in 4th grade.

It seems so unfair to me, in so many ways, that these are the memories that my head has decided that it needed to remember. They don’t make me upset or mad, I giggle at them mostly – except Quambi – that still scares me.

Sometimes our brains put memories in places so remote that our conscious mind forgets them completely…usually until a time when you least want to remember them. I’ve had one such memory restored recently which I didn’t even know I had. I wish, with my heart and soul, this memory had stayed in whichever compartment my head had kept it in for the last 27 years.

It’s bought into my mind a reason and cause for many things and explains why I feel the way I do about many things so I guess for that fact, I should be grateful, but I can’t help but think it’s one more of my happier memories that I’ll have to lose in order to make way for it to take up space in my brain.

Every evening my youngest son, Charlie, gives me super Charlie atomic cuddles. He bursts into my arms and wraps himself around me and squeezes with just the right level of enthusiasm. We kiss over and over and he tells me, as he did this evening, “I like you very much, mummy” and I say “I love you, too” and he says “I love you, three”.

I know I had a bed time routine with my eldest son(now 19). I know we used to say “I love you bigger than a huge, huge, train” but I don’t have the clarity of the vision that I have of some of the needless things that I wish I didn’t have to remember.

Sometimes, having grown up children, you realise that you didn’t fully understand the importance of the little moments that you wished away. The first child that you wished would hurry up and walk, talk and start school.

And then you’re left with your last child and you wish they would stop. And you rue every painful memory that you had from your own childhood and wish them away so that you might, just for a while, be able to store everything. Everything that really matters.

*******

Edited to add this photo. Thanks to Facebook I have the support of some of my happy primary school friends. We haven’t really kept in touch but they’ve supported me and Project 18 and for that I am eternally grateful!

Which one is ME??

There’s so much going on in my life at the moment and I don’t really feel like I’m making any progress. Normally I would be overwhelmed with panic that I need to do more and realise outcomes urgently, but I’m not.

Yesterday a phone conversation with my brother left me emotionally immobilised for the rest of the day, complete with cracking migraine and goldfish eyes. I haven’t really spoken much about my brother on here, he’s a top bloke – in all honesty – but we have so little in common that we’re not “tight” like I guess some brothers & sisters might be. I do know however, that if anything was ever seriously wrong, I could count on him to help me out. I also know if I was being a complete dick – he would also, conversely, bring my attention to that fact.

As far as siblings go, you probably couldn’t find more polar opposites than my brother and I. He has no children – I had enough for both of us. He’s well traveled and well educated – I am … not. He’s comfortable in a suit and tie “hobnobbing” with politicians and corporate types – I’d rather never wear shoes and would prefer to sit on a street corner with a homeless man than waste my time on “beaurocrazy”.

Ultimately, however, I think we’re both working for the same or similar outcomes. I’ve said previously when people have commented on my penchant for spreading myself between multiple causes that there is but one cause – and that is to keep this planet spinning and preserve as much of the good on it for as long as we can. Ultimately, if nothing else I think we can all agree on that outcome. Anthony has chosen a completely different path to me, we don’t agree on many, many things but at the end of the day, we’re both trying to do the same thing – and so I respect that.

This morning I looked at Facebook and one of my humanitarian friends had posted a link to some shocking photos of severe mutilation of a young a girl. I paused before looking because I’ve come to the point of censoring my own viewing in the interest of achieving some balance. As I posted on Twitter this morning:

The balancing act is to let in enough horror to become outraged into action, but not enough to become overwhelmed with hopelessness.

I know of many people who don’t watch the news because they don’t want to know what evils lay beyond their front door. I personally can’t comprehend this concept, but if that’s what it takes to get you through… then OK, I guess. I’m not sure if ignorance is healthy, maybe it has its place.

I looked at the pictures mostly because I needed to click the link to read the story behind it. They’d been posted because the aid worker telling the story wasn’t believed when she told the story without images, and I thought “how true and yet how sad that we need to prove that this exists”.

I know myself that I can bang on about homelessness or orphaned children until the cows come home – it will touch a small section of the community but it doesn’t have the same depth as if I put names and faces to the ordeal. We have all of this technology available to us now that means that we can bring the developing world into our homes, if we choose to. 

My biggest concern when I started this work was never whether I could raise the funds or whether I could make a difference, it was always how well I would cope emotionally with what I would need to see to do what I want to do. My first trip to Indonesia well and truly compounded my concerns and I realised that I probably am too soft to be doing what I’m trying to do. Yet on the other hand I wonder if I weren’t able to be so emotionally invested in every single child I meet whether I could, or in fact, would actually do anything.

I believe my greatest frustration will always be not being able to share the personal side, first-hand with everyone else. Not having you right there when I’m sitting in the gutter with the baby so malnourished that I can feel every bone in their body and being able to hand her to you so you can feel that she weighs the same as your new born did, at nine months old. And then, the fact that a lot of you, won’t want to know … because you’re doing your own balancing act of what you can allow yourself to invest in.

I took my kids to the bus stop this morning, as I do most days. My kids are frustrated with me that I won’t let them do that alone. My almost 11-year-old son said to me:

Most adults that take kids only do it for the money. They take the kid and then they write a ransom note and send it to the parents and then when the parents pay, they give the kid back. No one would take US because we have NO MONEY!

 Oh, to be so innocent and still have a PG rated Hollywood version of how these things play out in your mind! I wanted to tell him what really happens to children who get taken by adults. I wanted to strike fear and dread into every one of their innocent little hearts so they would be too terrified to leave the house without me…EVER. But I didn’t. Perhaps this is a time where ignorance is best encouraged.

 A scuffle broke out between “almost 11” and “almost 9”…”almost 11” fell to the ground and “almost 7” accidently dropped her bag at exactly the right time to hit him in the head. As the bus approached, “almost 11” was indignant and angry… so I did what every good mother does and called him over to kiss me goodbye in front of the school bus. He momentarily hated me but left me smiling.

As the bus drew away, I smiled warmly again at the grumpy bus driver whom I smile at twice a day. He returned my smile with his trademark glare of utter disdain. I will crack him… even if it takes me all year.

For some Winter Sleepout might be a bit of a novelty, you get to camp out for a night and raise some money. It probably won’t dig up too many feelings of deep depression or leave a really long term scar.  

When we signed up to do it most of us were still sleeping in tents – it was , honestly, a bit of a joke – Sleepout? Sure,  why not.

I just bought a bed recently, after several months of sleeping in a tent we finally had the finances to arrange the house in a manner that could sleep most of the family inside the house. Two of our kids still sleep in a caravan that was kindly donated to us, and for the first time in a long time we have all six children sleeping in real beds, off the floor.

It’s not something that I’d ever thought I’d be excited about. It’s not really something any parent should ever have to aim for — in Australia a bed should not be a long term aspiration.

Rick has worked really hard this year, and it’s really comforting to see him slowly coming out of the deep sadness that has engulfed him for the past year. We are by no means out of the darkness yet, but we’ve made progress and any progress is good progress. Having children not sleeping on stretchers and airbeds is a massive psychological advancement, especially for me.

Three weeks in Indonesia put things into a lot clearer perspective for me, and while I know it’s not fair to apply Indonesian living standards to Australia, I did have a far greater appreciation for how fortunate we are. By Australian standards our home is on the lower edge of acceptable, by Indonesian standards our house is a castle.

While I was in Newcastle recently I received a series of text messages from my dear friend Alit in Bali to tell me that his house was again flooded – this is the forth time in 10 years. 2 metres of water came into his house over night while the children were sleeping – 3 of his own and 2 nieces, all in one bed. He managed to get the children out of the house but again all of his meager belongings were ruined.

But even when I spoke to him later that day his tone was positive. He appreciated that the children were still alive, although crying and upset. I told him to take them to the orphanage to bathe and watch TV, have a meal and if needed sleep for the night or longer. The words he said to me were “It’s ok, this is my life” – meaning he was completely at ease with his destiny, he needed to endure these challenges on his own.

When Winter Sleepout came around we no longer had tents to sleep in. When we took them down the nylon fabric was so worn that it was impossible to collapse them without them disintegrating in our hands. I have no idea how they managed to keep us dry as long as they did, but clearly they did because that was just what was meant to be. So we pondered “where do we sleep?”

Our sleepout team included Ash 15, Bailey 13, Julian 11, Ailish 6 and myself. Julian has been unwell and there was no way I was going to let him sleep exposed to the elements and Ailish well… she’s made of tough stuff but I thought she was too young so the two of them slept in the caravan. I suggested that Ash & Bai who would have to vacate the caravan for Jules and Ailish sleep in the car.

Uhuh, thats me - double-beanied, with a hotpack on my nose.

“Where are you sleeping Mum?” Ash asked me. I don’t know why, but I needed to sleep rough. So I told him I’d sleep on some cardboard in the backyard, with a blanket. The older two boys didn’t hesitate in telling me that they wouldn’t let me do that alone. So it was decided.

Straight after dinner we built a fire towards the back of the yard and there we stayed for 10 hours. I know everyone thinks that Queensland doesn’t get “that” cold but I can assure you at 3am when it was 4 degrees – it was COLD. Early in the evening spirits were high, we toasted some marshmallows and had some laughs. We reminisced about our Christmas “camping” expedition – the jokes that had kept us sane, some of the silly goings on. We laughed a lot.

As the evening wore on and the cold set in, we dozed usually for not much more than an hour at a time. I was paranoid about embers from the fire landing on a blanket and setting everything on fire. I imagined how much more paranoid I might be in unfamiliar surroundings, would I be able to close my eyes at all?

I remembered in the camp trailer at Christmas that every new camp ground had a different sound. It took me one night at each location to get used to the bumps in the night. What if the little ones woke up in the night and wandered off without me hearing? At one location I woke at 2am to hear a baby crying in the distance, I immediately jumped into action to go searching for Charlie. It wasn’t him, he was asleep…and I was awake for the rest of the night.

At 2am on Sleepout night I woke up and headed inside to use the bathroom. I noticed the TV blaring and lights on in the bedroom – Kelsey, who suffers from an extreme anxiety disorder – was gone. He and Charlie weren’t included in the sleep out for obvious reasons – I ran through the house tearing back quilts from every bed trying to find him. Eventually I headed outside to the caravan where I found him huddled up at Julian’s feet.

“What are you doing?” I asked him.

“I was scared.”

And what I learnt from the evening (other than that 40 year old women with fibromyalgia should not sleep on the ground) is that:

 a) my children will never let me suffer alone and b) my family will always be better off outside together than inside alone.

And finally, even though we didn’t reach our target of $1,000 for Winter Sleepout we did raise $670 which is double what we raised for the last fundraiser we did for homelessness. This says to me that I’m finally making progress. It’s only small, and it’s not enough yet to change the world, but I’m slowly reaching more people and those people are more willing to open their hearts up for homelessness.

Will I do this again next year? I don’t know. This hurt far more than I expected — and I’m not talking about physical pain.

I’m always fascinated by people. I’m a question asker. I think it creeps people out a bit. I don’t do it to be nosy, I’m just genuinely interested in what people do… or perhaps just why.

I was preparing to be interviewed once for a program, and the interviewer got quite irritated by my interest in them. I can understand to some extent having been a journalist – you do get quite attached to being in control of an interview, it does make you a bit squirmy when the tables are turned. My favourite question is “what made you want to be a *insert occupation*?  Which is always closely followed by “do you love it?”

So where’s this going? Politics. I’ve asked a mortician why he wanted to be a mortician. I’ve asked a zoo keeper the same question. I’ve asked a taxi driver and a check-out chick, I’ve asked a child care worker and a doctor. But I’ve never had the chance to ask a politician “Why?”

In case you’ve missed it, we’re coming up to a federal election. Just over a week ago, I was in Canberra with Planet You. We attempted to do some filming at Capital Hill outside Parliament House. Canberra has a lot of memories for me, having grown up there. I recall going to tour the new Parliament House before its official opening. I was bored shitless at the time, but I’m very glad we went now. In my geriatricy I’m becoming more fond of nostalgia.

We stayed at a hotel right near Parliament House and every time we looped through the tunnels and around the hill I looked at that building in awe. As far as parliamentary buildings go, I think it’s one of the best. I am madly patriotic, I cry with pride when I hear the national anthem…dammit my eyes are welling up just thinking about the national anthem.

I can almost understand how, on a whim, you might think that running for parliament might be a fulfilling career. In an ideal world you could probably be forgiven for thinking that parliament might be the place to be if you want to “get things done” – after all that’s where the rules are made. If you could just have some say, perhaps in the Senate… then maybe… just maybe…

I can’t remember how many times I’ve voted, but I know that I didn’t vote Kevin ’07. I also know this has been the first time I’ve lived under a government I didn’t vote for. I also know I didn’t like it. So you’d be forgiven for assuming that I’ll be voting for Tony Abbott. Unless of course you follow me on Twitter and then you’ll know how much of an idiot I think he is. The truth is, at this stage I can’t honestly say that anyone that stands before me as a candidate for this election is worthy of my vote.

In the good old days you voted Liberal or Labor. It didn’t really matter who the leader of the party was because you knew what each party stood for and as a united front they would work to deliver solutions to the issues that faced the nation in accordance with the party’s core beliefs. Yes, there were always factions, but overall, at the end of the day, the old party unity would prevail.

I’m not overly educated in politics, I take an interest because I want to have the right to complain about things when they’re wrong, and if I don’t pay attention something might be wrong without me noticing :) I’ve never been one for mindless politician bashing, for the sake of it. It’s a tough job, full of scrutiny and by national standards – not very well paid. But looking back on the last 10 years, it’s hard to see where anyone has actually made any real progress.

Any good the Howard Government did has been pretty much decimated under Kevin Rudd, and if in fact Kev did something good that hasn’t been bought to my attention yet… in all reality, if we see a change of government in 2 weeks – that will probably be taken undone as well. Sadly, even if his own party is re-elected there is probably the same chance.

And what frustrates me the most with less than 2 weeks to decide to vote is that no one seems to be remotely interested in the issues that most concern me.

I am grateful to live in Australia, but is it really too much to expect that our government and the people who make up our parliament be true representations of the Australian people? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our parliamentary question time was made up of something more than snide remarks and personal attacks? Why can’t we go back 10 or 15 years to a day you could contact your local member with a problem and feel like you might have a crack a solution?

So, politicians – why? Why are you there? I hate to sound cynical, but I question your motives. Why did you go into politics? Do you really love it? Do you represent me? Or do you represent you?

I’ve stopped mid-desk cleaning to write this. Those of you that know me well will know what a big statement that is. I can tolerate many things, a messy desk makes my brain explode. 

There’s two parts to this blog post. One is an apology for neglecting the blog so badly over the past month, and I’ll go on to tell you why later, but firstly I want to talk about apathy.

If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook you’ve probably read me saying this:

“Acceptance and inaction are the seeds and soil of injustice.”

So while you may consider yourself a pretty nice person, you’re not killing puppies or knocking over old people, which is lovely but if you’re seeing injustice in the world and walking away – you are enabling that injustice to occur.

How many of you can honestly tell me that you’ve never seen something that you knew was wrong and just walked away from it? I know I have. I think we all do at some stage in our lives. It creates a very apathetic mindset over time.

I remember when I lived in Sydney being heavily pregnant and catching buses. I was young and healthy, I didn’t really need a seat on the bus most days but it was interesting to see the attitudes of people. Many people would notice you and then completely avoid eye contact with you, because their ignorance is bliss. If they don’t know there’s a pregnant lady standing on the bus next to them, then they don’t to feel guilty.

Then there was one incident where a 30-something-year-old man just couldn’t tolerate seeing a pregnant woman standing on a bus so he did what any decent able-bodied young man should do…he yelled at the kids in the next row to stand up. He didn’t get up himself, he shifted the blame and the responsibility to someone else.

I remember an episode of Lost where Jack Shepherd, the dashing young doctor who has a need to save everyone, flashes back to his childhood. One of his peers is being beaten up by bullies and he’s stood over by another child being warned to stay down and he won’t get hurt. He considers his options and his need to help over-rules his common sense and he gets up to assist. Of course he’s beaten black and blue himself but he has no regrets.

This is an extreme example of where the cons obviously outweigh the pros – sometimes the down-side to standing up for what is right is not as painfully obvious and immediate. It might mean that you piss off someone, you might lose a friend, it might take some time out of your valuable day, you may even… God forbid… lose some Twitter followers. So the temptation to exercise apathy can be overwhelming.

The saddest part of all this is that until you take that leap of faith and put your undies on the outside, you’ll never know what the returns on fighting for justice really are.

You don’t have to give up your day job, you don’t have to reduce your quality time with your kids – you just need to be aware and when you see something wrong, say no. Conversely – when you see someone doing the right thing support them. Tell the customer service person that they did a good job, tell your barista they made a perfect coffee. Support a charity, buy products conscientiously.

Allowing injustice to go unchecked, no matter what the size is as bad as perpetrating the injustice yourself. Apathy feeds injustice.

Clearly, you can’t fix everything. Maybe you can’t fix anything single-handedly – but if enough people stopped thinking “someone else will do it” and stood up against injustice, together we can facilitate global change.

</rant>

OK, so where have I been? I’ve just returned from a Planet You filming trip. Ash and I went to Newcastle and were on ABC radio with Carol Duncan. You can check that out here. This was Asho’s first interview where he wasn’t asking the questions, I think he did incredibly well.

Behind that beautiful smile is a young lady who can teach us all something about the power of positivity.

Then we went to Canberra and interviewed one of the most inspiring young women in the world Dainere Anthoney – you can read about her here. Planet You and I are going on another caped-crusade – this time it’s to get Dainere’s book into as many school libraries as we can across the country. Please check out the site and if you’re looking for a good deed to do, buy her book and donate it to your local school library. I’ll be hitting you all up for funds to get another run of Dainere’s book printed soon, so don’t go spending all your cash.

While you’ve got your wallets out, The You Crew and myself will be participating in the Winter Sleepout this weekend. You can see our meager fundraising efforts on the widget on the right of the page. I’d really like to not freeze for no reason, so if anyone can spare a few bucks for that – we’d be mighty grateful.

Got any money left? I have 94 books of raffle tickets left to sell for the Project 18 raffle, and only 24 days to sell them. They’re only $2 per ticket, with bonus tickets if you buy 5, 10 or 20 tickets. This is one of our major fundraisers this year, if we don’t sell most of these tickets I will have been a broken raffle ticket record for the past 2 months for no gain. The prize is 5 nights accommodation for 2 adults and 2 kids in Rydges Hotels and Resorts around Australia and New Zealand.

I’m also finalising the August Auctions for Education on Facebook. Our July auction raised enough funds to send SIX Balinese children to school for a year. I’m still completely blown away that I have the ability to sit here at my computer and coordinate a few things that results in kids getting an education and totally changing the course of their lives. That makes me feel very, very awesome inside. It’s a great opportunity for businesses to reach a new audience, just by sponsoring an item for auction. Of course the rest of us can bid on some great bargains and know that every single cent we spend is going directly to educating those gorgeous kids. I’ve also been making a few bits and pieces to put into the auction myself. Very grateful to have the creative-crafty gene.

Finally, we’re pretty excited that Ailish and Ash are now official Joey Ambassadors for Australia Zoo’s Wildlife Warriors. Ailish is so excited there is a real an imminent danger of self-combustion. The guys will be participating in a whole range of awareness and fundraising exercises over the next 3 months leading up to Steve Irwin day in November.

The kids join an elite crew of miniature Wildlife Warriors around the world and we’re super proud of them, as always. If you’d like to contribute to their efforts you can donate here – just select either Ailish or Ash as the recipient. All money goes to the Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital to help care for the 7000 sick, injured and orphaned animals which go through their doors every year.

That’s about it, I think. I promise to try harder to blog more and my endless and abundant thanks to those who sponsor the blog & allow me to keep doing what I do.

Peace,

Cate…xx