Nadine Williams

A sunburnt country via the Ghan

When I was a young child visiting Grandma, the sweetest moments were when the train would clickety-clack past the front gate along the Islington line. I would swing from the gate, all bobby socks and long plaits, waving furiously to the engine driver.

Those memories, the sights, the sounds, the smells, and the sheer joy of trains,  flood back now as I board a mammoth, historic train, The Ghan, at the platform at Keswick Station, Adelaide.

The stationmaster blows his whistle and shouts “All Aboard’’ we begin the train journey of a lifetime – travelling by rail to Darwin – from south to north across our strange, intriguing continent.

My step-daughter is marrying in Pine Creek, 200 kilometres south of Darwin and I admit I was tempted to fly  Hop on,  Fly over the land and hop off  in city slicker style three hours later. Read more »

The grandchildren as guests

THE GOOD GRANDMA:

Ours is a house of bliss right now as we host grand-children from either end of the age spectrum.

Oldest grandson Andre, a solidly built 27-year-old fine arts student from Charles Darwin University has flown in from Darwin to transfer to UniSA with his Korean girlfriend, Saelim in tow. They are lively company with conversation filled with their dreams of success and plans to find a house, get a car and establish themselves supplementing a student allowance at Adelaide craft markets.  He hopes to become a sculptor and comes here on a remote area government scholarship with a glowing reference from Darwin’s Arts Faculty.  The first step in this endeavour is to borrow one of our cars and it becomes a familiar sight to see my Mazda 323 disappear down the driveway as they house-hunt and job-hunt and handle university paperwork.  His enthusiasm is our joy, too, when he is accepted at Uni and we celebrate with cocktails at Montezuma’s Mexican restaurant.

They are gone just days before my oldest daughter, Serena’s family arrives from London – son-in-law, Jon and three precious grand-children, Samuel, Angus and Josephine, aged 8, 6 and 2 years.  Now our settled life is delightfully disrupted and all four bedrooms are filled with mattresses for little bodies jammed alongside desks in both studies.  Suddenly we need shifts to use the bathroom and the house is not only filled with the musical chatter of children sharing their little worries with grandma and pappy, but also with myriad shoes and toys everywhere to trip over.   

They are the only grand-children on my side of the family and we see them for only a few days a year.   Now we are mesmerised by the charm of our youngest grandchild –and my only natural grand-daughter. To be a good grandma, one must stop and take time to sit down and listen and talk to them, to magically produce movies on DVD on demand and in our house, to read books to them. This exercise shows I am out of touch. When  I produce Father Bear Comes Home, and begin reading the 62-page tome to six-year-old Angus, he says in his cute British accent,  “Grandma I would like to read that myself.’’  Oh, well, Josephine, at two years 10 months, will love my Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes, which I have saved for 30 years in various bookshelves for this very moment. Yet, the world of children has galloped into the technological age and these nursery rhymes such as Wee Willie Winkie and Old Mother Hubbard seem ludicrous to imprint in this fresh little mind. After all Josephine had shown us her capacity to remember. She could not even speak when she visited a year ago. A toddler of 22 months, we had borrowed a colourful trike for her to scoot around on and within minutes of arriving here this year, she asked “where is the little car grandma?’’   She had remembered, and I am suddenly conscious of the drivel I am feeding into her sponge-like brain – banal nursery rhymes which had no contemporary meaning. Why didn’t I browse bookshops beforehand for Australian rhymes?

 Women not only win the hearts of men through their stomachs, the kitchen is the place to make one’s mark as a good grandma.  As I don an apron, I thank my own departed mother who would cook for hours for her 13 grand-children producing trayloads of  biscuits, cakes, tarts or sausage rolls.   So, I make pastry for lemon tarts and quiches  and they knead the dough. I make stuffing for the duck before my chatting audience. “Let me stuff the duck,’’ says Samuel and I patiently watch as he fills the cavity with a sense of pride. “You will make a good chef,’’ I tell him.  Praise wins the youngest of hearts. They are like the magpies outside on the lawn, mouths open waiting for food, fridge door swinging off its hinges, incessant questions, all against the drone of the washing machine.

All of it has brought our house alive again to the wonderful sound of children and we rejoice in our captivating young company, if only for five days.

No Buts, Butt out

My esteemed colleague, Peter Goers’ article today (Sunday, May 30) needs to be addressed and to set the scene here are some vital statistics to mull over on World No Tobacco Day – May 31.

The average Australian male can expect to live to 79 years old ; Women in Australia on average will reach 84 years of age.

Both men and women are now living 25 years longer than 100 years ago (55 years for men and 59 years for women) – a wonderful gift of time to be relished.

Chances are far too many long-term addicted smokers won’t live to enjoy the bonus years.

The National Ageing Research Institute at the University of Melbourne reckons the extra quarter-century is due to better disease prevention, better knowledge of how lifestyle factors affect health and a much better public health system.
The link between lifestyle factors – no-smoking, low-moderate alcohol consumption, healthy weight and regular exercise – and disease prevention is well-known to babyboomers. It’s an important reason why vast numbers of boomers have quit smoking already. But today – World No Tobacco Day – is about those who are still addicted, whose habits, according to many federal government reports breed disease – heart disease, stroke, and lung cancers in both sexes.

The Institute admits genetics plays a role in our life span, but how we live day by day to prevent or breed disease places our long life chances in our own hands.
This is all sober stuff on the cusp of World No Tobacco Day – the ideal time to give up smoking – and increase your chances of long, healthy life.

One must weigh up the discomfort of temporary cravings and higher stress levels with the benefits of butting out – and dramatically reducing the risk of smoking-related diseases and dying prematurely.

Quit smoking before middle-age (45-50??) reduces your risk of developing lung cancer by 90 per cent.
• After a year of quitting the habit, your increased risk of death from heart attack will be halved.
• Quit smoking for 15 years and the risk of stroke will have fallen to that of someone who has never smoked. No Butts!

Action on Smoking and Health states smoking is still the leading cause of chronic disease in Australia – and it’s preventable. No wonder smokers are socially ostracised because the economic cost to the taxpayer in treating life-threatening smoking-related disease is a huge drag on our hip pocket. Also consider that the National Preventative Health Strategy states a massive one third of Australia’s health budget is to treat disease caused by lifestyle factors, such as smoking, which can be altered through choice to prevent debilitating illness and premature death.

Help is at hand. Call Quitline 13 7848 or visit www.quitsa.org.aufor a FREE QUIT kit.

Family first as Chris Nicholls turns 60

(From left) The Nicholls Family-Stan, Cameron, Julia, Rob, Nancy and Chris

Former Adelaide model and co-founder of Rave Model Agency, still glamorous Chris Nicholls recently turned 60 with a family shebang in Wellington, New Zealand where she was born.

Chris and husband Robert Nicholls, former South Australian businessman, now live in Doonan, in Noosa  Hinterland, Queensland

The milestone birthday has ushered in profound change for the family with Chris and Rob convincing his ageing parents, well-known South Australian couple, Nancy and Stan Nicholls, to move to Queensland where they can care for them in their dotage.

Nancy and Stan have lived in Adelaide all of their 85 years, and lately independently in their Kingswood unit, so it was a massive move for them.  Now the octaganarians live at the Coolum Waters Retirement Resort, Coolum Beach, Sunshine Coast. Read more »

Love,Lust and Lies

Diana Doman, Kerry Carlson and Josie Petersen with Gillian Armstrong (second from right). Photo by Helen Orr

Their names are Josie, Diana and Kerry and their suburban lives have become rivetting social history in Love, Lust and Lies, a documentary by Gillian Armstrong.

The three Adelaide women – Diana Doman, Kerry Carlson and Josie Petersen – all attended the recent packed world premiere of the film  held in the Palace Nova cinema in Hindley Street, Adelaide.

Love, Lust and Lies is the combination of five films from Gillian Armstrong dating from 1976 covering the women’s life passages through dating, marriage, having babies, rearing children, divorce and scandal. The SA Film Corporation was the first to commit to funding the film.

When the women were all 14 year olds, Gillian Armstrong had walked into a youth drop-in centre in Thebarton in Adelaide’s western suburbs, seeking some girls for a short 20-minute film about being 14-year-olds. Read more »

Zonta celebrates fine fundraising

An impressive pile of 40 colourful hand-made blankets were donated to Catherine House for Adelaide’s homeless women at Zonta International’s handover dinner for the Adelaide/Flinders club this week.

The event at Ayers House attended by 50 women and some men, saw retiring president  Carolyn Colquhuon  hand the reins of the women’s service club to Jodi Knoop.

Guests also viewed an illuminating video of Zonta’s Australia-wide birthing kit program for third world countries, including Ethiopia, Chad and Cambodia.

The kits are assembled at workshops where groups of Zontians and friends pack the individual parts including a clean piece of plastic, soap and plastic gloves into neat packages, which are then distributed to poor regions of the world where hygiene is low and infant mortality is high. In some regions, there is not even running water in the huts with dirt floors where babies are born.

The video stated that 500,000 women die each year around the world delivering their babies or from high rates of infection.

The service club also presented a cheque for $4000 to Margaret MacDonald for her sponsorship of Cambodian orphanage Mekhala House.

The Foundation for Developing Cambodian Communities (FDCC) operates Mekhala House, a home for orphaned and underprivileged girls in a rural province of Cambodia. It is home to 45 children and was established by a group of Australians four years ago.

All Australians involved are volunteers andtheir aim is to empower girls so they can become leaders in their communities. See www.fdcc.org.au.