Film - Penny Stone, 'The Irrepressible Jack Stone', Australian Centre for the Moving Image

The Irrepressible Jack Stone
Penny Stone

Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI)

It has been a very sad week in Sydney, this young man is Jack Stone. Jack Stone is the son of George Stone the assistant….

Jack was born on the 12th of August 1987, our first born son. His entry into the world wasn’t what you’d call a smooth one but we were elated. The next few weeks were taken up with our lives being thrown into chaos, with not much sleep, nappies and our focus being on a third person. At six weeks of age, Jack was diagnosed with a heart murmur, although there were no outward signs of any problems, he was thriving. At nine weeks he was diagnosed with a life threatening congenital heart defect and we were told then and there it was incurable. After the initial shock and numerous visits to doctors and the Royal Children’s Hospital an operation was performed on Jacks tiny heart, approximately the size of a walnut. His hospital stay was about two weeks. We tried to carry on our life as normally as possible. He was on daily medication and three monthly visits to the cardiologist. He grew into a beautiful little boy, happy and laughing and we adored him. In January 1991 when Jack was three and a half his sister Sarah was born. He adored her from the moment he saw her in the hospital. They had a very special relationship as brother and sister. As a family we travelled to Queensland spending time at the beach and theme parks. Jack was a roller coaster junkie and loved it. His visit to Disneyland when he was four years old was also a memorable one. His dad was involved in AFL namely the Hawthorn Football Club and football became a huge part of Jacks life as he grew. His first written sentences in prep were about whether his team won on the weekend. He was always amongst the hype (?) that was going on on match day. Jason Dunstall became his favourite player and he wore number nineteen proudly on the back of his footy jumper. In 1998 we moved to Sydney, as his dad accepted the roll of assistant coach with the Sydney Swans. What a four year stint it turned out to be. We watched Tony Lockett kick his 1,300th goal, we went to the Olympic Games and were there for the 1999 New Year’s Eve celebrations. Jack embraced his new Club with gusto and was equally welcomed into it. He would position himself behind the goals at the SCG after helping out in the rooms before the games. Jack’s life was an amazing fourteen years, he had achieved a lot. His quality of life was fantastic for someone with a life threatening heart condition but it never slowed him down. He was just being Jack and living life to the full. Jack was having more chest pain as he went into puberty. He had a few episodes in casualty but was always allowed to come home, only occasionally being admitted overnight for observation. What started out as a normal day ended in such tragedy. He was having fun at his normal tennis lessons when suddenly at the end of the hour he fell down after winning the ball collecting competition, saying “I’ve won, I’ve won”. It was a sudden end with no time for goodbyes. Everything around us stopped. As well, I went into overdrive trying to contact his dad and ambulances. We were warned of this when he was first diagnosed at nine weeks of age. It was like a time bomb never knowing when it would explode. But time ran out for Jack that 16th day of August 2001. Our close little foursome is now a threesome but Jack is still with us and as a family we could never break that up. All the people who wrote to us about their lives being touched from having known Jack, a boy who embraced life, got on with it and enjoyed it, no regrets, was very comforting. We have all learned from Jack who never let it get the better of him. The enjoyment he got out of life was a pleasure to watch. We miss you and love you Jack.

Film - William Dale, 'Weekends in the Country', Australian Centre for the Moving Image

There is no deaf school in the country, so I leave my family for deaf school in Melbourne.

I am only 3. I stay in a hostel for the deaf. It is like living in a factory with hundreds of other kids.

The hostel is strict and the workers show us no love. It is abusive. I am very lonely.

On the weekends I travel home five hours crammed into an old bomb with four others. I arrive late on Friday night and leave by 3am on Monday morning. I do this year in year out. It is exhausting. At home it is hard. I'm tired from the travel and with the little time I have I find myself lonely and frustrated.

In a country town everybody knows each other, but they don't know me. To them I am different, I am an outsider.

I attend the hearing school at Cohuna, I am happy to be with my family but am lost at school and my education suffers, so I return to deaf school, this time in Bendigo. I am separate from my family. I leave school early to return home. The isolation becomes overwhelming, I am confused, should I stay, or return to deaf community. Depression sets in.

The Doctor prescribes tablets. I swallow the whole bottle and end up in hospital. I am released with no professional support and go crazy again. I leave Cohuna drifting all over the country. Nothing works. I move to Melbourne, I am still depressed, so I seek support.

I am ok now, but it has taken years for my depression to be properly diagnosed and treated. Many professionals are unable to communicate with deaf people. I am sure there are many other deaf people living in the country without networks and feeling isolated.

Film - Richard Frankland and John Foss, 'Grandmothers', Koorie Heritage Trust

Our grandmother, she used to walk into Heywood for the rations…an’ it was only a lousy bit of meat an’ bread an’ all that sort of thing, because the pension that they used to get, you know, was hardly anything. So it was bad, as the rations you could only get a bit of meat and bread an’ stuff like that…it wasn’t a big grocery list. She’d carry ‘em home on her back in a sugar bag…that’s how much she could only buy with the money that she got…an’ along the road…she came along the road…all along from Heywood, an’ there’s about five houses…there were then, along the road…an’ there was six or seven or five kids or whatever it was, an’ she had a lolly for every kid…an’ that was black an’ white kids…she had a lolly for everyone of those kids…to give them comin’ home in the dark. You know…she was a marvellous old woman she kept us on the straight and narrow.

She used to tell us things about the Bible an’ things like that, you know, an’ in a way she taught us to be respectful of other people, you know…an’ even dad, an’ Uncle Chrissie, was another one. The old people used to say things to us that, even though they’re gone, we still remember them…an’ this is what I say with us there’s a spirituality there that we knew from these old people….like when it was a beautiful day Uncle Chrissie would say it was God’s own day. So, you know, you knew when you was doing wrong…if what you was doing was wrong an’ that’s when you’d get switched with the apple switch, you know, around the legs, because you knew better than that because you were taught better…an’ the elders that were around here then…they were…they were strict in a way of loving strict, they were, because they didn’t want to see you get hurt or they didn’t want you to be rude or anything to anybody, you know.

Film - Richard Frankland and John Foss, 'Granny Foster's House', Koorie Heritage Trust

Granny Foster, that’s my mum’s mother, she used to live at the dormitory an’ we’d come down here on Christmas times an’ that an’ all the cousins was here Like there was the Saunders, the Clarks, Lovett’s, the King’s, the Foster’s, all of the families was here an’ at Christmas time it was a good thing, that was before they was all taken away, you know…an’ it was a good thing we’d all join together an’ have a Christmas at Granny’s an’ that was the lovely times that I remember, you know, an’ it was always joyful when we were here together with each other because that’s the way it was with us as kids. Even saying it Brother Reggie and Brother Harry, they lived over there with Auntie Ina an’ them, and that’s where we used to slide down the hill on bags, us kids used to…an’ they showed us all these things and put us in tyres and rolled us around in tyres an’ things like that, so it was a good sort of a place that we had.

We didn’t know about what was really going on, sort of, you know as kids you don’t, but later on when we found out it was sort of disheartening to know the way that they took the children an’ you couldn’t do anything about it an’ even though the families fought, like went to court for them, they couldn’t do nothing…but there was happy times too, as kids you know…an’ when the fruit an’ that used to come there’s pears an’ apples an’ stuff like that down the old orchard…because that orchard was good then, it was giving good fruit…an’ then there was blackberry, granny used to make blackberry pies an’ when there was cream, we’d have blackberry pie and cream. We was really spoilt, when we were spoilt but then when we weren’t spoilt, we was living on hard tack like damper, but we loved damper and eel and all that sort of thing. The food that we ate was good food…it was only that you couldn’t get enough of the stuff we really liked an’ had to go into the shop all the time to get stuff like that, bread an’ meat an’ that sort of thing.

Film - Richard Frankland and John Foss, 'Uncle Peter Ewart', Koorie Heritage Trust

The most thing I know about Uncle Peter Ewart was when my dad's father went shooting, Grandfather Lovett went shooting through the forest. And he came upon this big eagle on the tree, and he was going to shoot him. And the eagle put up a claw, like that, and Grandfather never shot him. So when he came back to the mission, Uncle Peter Ewart said to him, you nearly shot me today Jimmy.

And Grandfather said, no. He said, I didn't see you. But he said, did you see that big eagle, he said, that put his claw up, he said, when you were aiming the gun? He said, that was me. Now, that old man was miles away at that time that grandfather left to go shooting. So how could he know all these things happened in that space of time? And even from Dunmore, over here, they asked him if he wanted to go to the football, and he'd say, no. I'll be there.

I'll be there. And he was. He'd be there before they went, and they'd be traveling in a horse and gig. He'd be walking, but he'd be there before they were at the gate.

Film - Richard Frankland and John Foss, 'Greenvale', Koorie Heritage Trust

Well this is Greenvale or the place we lived before went into Hamilton an’ things like that. This was a place where a lot of my people…our people came, mums relatives an’ things like that… they came from everywhere to Greenvale here…an’ there was always a home even though we had nothing, as usual, but it was always a home for somebody that could come here an’ feel at home with the place, because that’s what Greenvale meant to everybody. It done good things for people who didn’t have a place to live…people lived here like Aunty Li and Uncle Monty lived here before they moved down to the Mission and before they got hunted off there. Aunty Dina came through visiting…people came through visiting, even people from South Australia came through and visited here an’ so it was more or less the hub of the place here…because the Mission was sort of finished then, you know. There was Granny Foster…was still there an’ that then, but this was, I s’pose, closer to the Road and everything else an’ rather than go there… so a lot of people came here. Uncle Freddie lived down that way, him an’ his family, Peter Kanoa’s grandfather that everybody knows…they lived down there an’ there was nine children there. There was fifteen children altogether in Greenvale between the two houses.

When the war came and everything sort of was uprooted then. We moved up to Hamilton too, from here, yeah we moved up there…an’ then we came back again to Greenvale…but the second time around then the houses got mysteriously burnt down an’ there was not electricity or anything here, there was nothing that would set a house alight. It must have been a devious move by somebody to get us off the land which it did do, which it did do. We owned the land because my father bought two places from the Mission, two cottages…they were two room cottages. One he put up here on Greenvale in 1934, that he had his dad and mum living there and whoever was there then with the family lived there as well an’ then in 1927 he bought the two rooms that we had here an’ that we knew as our house an’ until we got that place here. Dad bought it from the Mission, it’s documented that he bought these two places an’ that’s why I always say this was our home an’ Greenvale was ours, because otherwise they wouldn’t have let him put two houses on, one up there and one down here…you know he must have owned it.

Film - Richard Frankland and John Foss, 'The Mission', Koorie Heritage Trust

I was born here, we’re at the Lake Condah Mission an’ I was born here in 1926 at the place we call the Dormitory, which is over that way. This place that you see here now behind me was at one time the Mission House where the Manager lived and this is where he controlled the whole Mission from, this place here. It was a big house, this was an’ a fire came through here in 1938 and burnt a lot of people out. The Mission wasn’t like it is now. It was full of life an’ everybody was happy, you know, in a way that they could be. We all knew each other, loved each other an’ things like that. But this place holds a great significance for a lot of our people even they’ve been moved off the Mission an’ the Mission has been desecrated, broken down and things like that, the houses where people had lived in that area in 1918 and all that sort of thing.

We still hold a good memory here because I think when you are a child and hold a memory of a place that never fades. The journey through life is a different thing altogether. That’s where you build yourself up or let yourself down, one thing or the other. We used to roam all over this place but there were places we weren’t allowed to go. We weren’t allowed to go to places because of what the elders said, “don’t go there” an’ we never questioned ‘em. Once they said you don’t go you didn’t go and that was it. All the other things came out later on when we sort of found out about the Mission an’ what had happened here and went and looked at old records about how Stahle ran this place and how he treated our great ones, you know our grandfathers and grandmothers. In here my brother was born, my brother Charlie he was born here and my sister Feemie, so there’s three of us were born on the Mission …that’s why we hold it very dearly to ourselves.

Film - Edwina Morris, 'My Grandfather, the Spy', Australian Centre for the Moving Image

This is how I like to remember my grandfather. I didn’t know him then but this is him in my memory. He didn’t talk about his past. My grandmother was the witness to his life and her stories about their times together intoxicated my childhood. My grandmother was the only child in her family to survive into adulthood. Her mother was very protective and didn’t like to let her out of the house. “Mr Right will come knocking on the door”, she used to say, and that is exactly what happened. It was wartime, my grandfather had toothache, her father was a dentist, they met at the front door and married soon after. Only the postcards would return. My grandfather’s life after the war was making record players. He met Frank Sinatra and stood in for the Duke of Edinburgh. They travelled around the world on ocean liners and aeroplanes that had fold down beds, Buenos Ares, New York Acapulco and the South of France. He was even in charge of a top secret spy satellite base in the deserts of South Australia.

These are the stories I love to hear, over and over again. But in 1993 my grandfather was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. My grandmother cared for him as long as possible but his midnight awakenings to pack for the airport took a toll on her health. He was moved into a nursing home and a great sadness slipped over our family. I didn’t visit him very often but my grandmother visited regularly, decorated his room nicely and fed him with chocolates as they sat together. During the war he had witnessed a generation of unfulfilled potential, he didn’t go to church, the closest he got was to open a bottle of champagne every Sunday morning. This is how I like to remember my grandfather, he really enjoyed living.

Film - Roderick Marks, 'Take a Walk with My Son and Meet the World', Australian Centre for the Moving Image

Tyler is the product of the union of two families from north and south of the mighty Murray. I am a Wergaia man. That is the Wimmera. My wife’s family come from Balranald in New South. But Tyler was born in Gippsland, born and bred. The wife and five kids and myself moved about back and forth from the city and to Gippsland. Then one day the wife went west and the kids and I settled in the part of the University town of Churchill, known as “the Don”.

Take a walk with my 12 year old Tyler and I challenge you to find someone unknown to him. Sons and daughters fill the few hundred houses in a series of curving roads and courts abound the vast and lovely Glendonald. Tyler is a big brother to the tiny tots that play in every court. He stands alongside bigger brothers whilst they endlessly toy and tinker with rally bombs and trail bikes. He heads for the bush with friends, beyond the back fence to fish for yabbies from the creek and maybe follow the kangaroo mob as they feed on the hilltop and wonder at great goannas that do wander around. He is ready for a challenge, first on the site of a mishaps and dramas. He laughs with the games, he mops up the tears. He makes everybody feel unique whether he is giving you a serve of cheek or a shoulder to lean on.

I am immensely proud of my children and Tyler brings fresh pride, opens my eyes. These are his mates round here, families born far from here and growing in this town. Where they’re from, it is for the kids they came. Whatever the various dreams, this is the children’s home. The houses went up twenty years ago but the homes are being laid down by the likes of Tyler and his world of mate’s and the people and friends that make this town what it is.

Film - Rob and Carmel McGrath, 'Carmel: Storyteller', Australian Centre for the Moving Image

Carmel has always loved a good story.

Well, that’s because I come from a long line of storytellers. My great-grandmother told me of her childhood in Moonta and my mother told us stories about growing up in Kalgoorlie goldfields. My grandmother had a big black handbag and in that bag she had a large money purse with a clasp that made a loud satisfying ‘click’. As a child I thought grandma was very rich because the purse was full of lovely thruppences and sixpences and we were often given a coin to spend, even when we were young adults and grandma’s memory was fading. My mother’s stories were more along the lines of cautionary tales. She would say you may be injected with a sedative and wake up to find yourself on a slow boat to China, the victim of the White Slave Trade. This was known among us girls as NSA, you’ll ‘Never be Seen Again’. Be aware.

Carmel grew up in Caulfield, had a Convent education and Graduated as a trained Infant Teacher from Toorak Teachers College.

From the age of 6 until I was 20 I was in uniform, so it was a joy to dress up for my Aunts wedding and my Debutante Ball.

…and she headed off to teach in the bush

My first school was at a small sawmilling settlement in Gippsland. I boarded on a local farm and learned to adjust to the challenges of country life.

Carmel taught my younger sisters and we met at a local dance. We married at Glenhuntly in 1961.

After our wedding we drove to Horsham in our little black Volkswagen to begin our married life. After ten years in rural schools in Wimmera and the north-east we moved back to Melbourne. This time in a station wagon because our family had grown, we now had a boy and three girls.

As the wife of a rural school Head Teacher in the ‘60s, life for a city girl with four young children presented plenty of challenges. The drought, tiger snakes on the veranda, the mother’s club.

I was never bored or lonely. There were visits from many people, from the district inspector, a passing swaggie and once a clown in full make up.

In the ‘70s Carmel began a long association with St Mary’s in Dandenong. “Yes, I’m the manager of Wellsprings for women in Dandenong where Carmel is a volunteer. She is an incredible inspiration to the women who are here and Carmel is probably the most loved person and she just contributes so incredibly generously.”

At her third and final attempt and after 30 years at St May’s, Carmel retired. Our children had done us proud. They were settled and secure in their homes and careers and it was finally time for her to develop some of her own interests but there was yet another challenge.

After Rob recovered from a heart attack and bypass surgery, I encouraged him to fulfil his long held dream.

While I was in Kenya, Carmel was diagnosed with Alzheimer disease.

I seem to be moving in smaller circles, I wasn’t driving as far or as often. I’m a great reader; I haven’t really been interested in any new books.

Carmel has accepted this ultimate challenge and since that diagnosis in 2001 she has written a book which is now nearing publication. She has written her story.

“They want to sort of do the “Carmel, Carmel” bit, oh we don’t want this…and I say I want to go out for dinner, I want to do something. I don’t want to be ‘Poor Carmel’, I don’t want that.

Film - Jim Evans, 'Beautiful Boy', Australian Centre for the Moving Image

JIM EVANS (VOICEOVER): "Beautiful Boy." There was great joy when number-one son Gareth was born. Very quickly, he became known as "Fat Bowes," because he was a big boy. I played with Carlton in 1955 and was a very keen footie follower. Gareth and I played backyard football, but he began barracking for Geelong because of Gareth Andrews. When Andrews went to Richmond, so did my son's allegiance. Gareth was a gentle boy and shy, partly because of his slight speech impediment. He could become very fierce, especially when he had to protect his younger brother.

We moved to Bendigo when Gareth was nine. We were building a mud brick house near Maldon and Gareth helped me make the 3,000 bricks. It was very satisfying to work with the earth and Gareth and I shared this love of building. He liked yabbying in the dam with his brother and friends. He played kick to kick and cricket endlessly. He didn't like being moved from Eagle Hawk Primary, so one day, he wrote a note saying, "I have runned away because I don't want to go to Maple Street Primary." I admired his spirit and this burst of independence. When my marriage broke up, Gareth opted to live with me. I was moved by his loyalty and his gentle desire to help. I treasured the quiet conversations we had, usually about sport.

Gareth lived with me until he finished secondary school in Bendigo and then went to Monash University. He moved into a house in Richmond with his brother, which they quickly turned into a hovel. We would often go to MCG together. Gareth moved to Queensland and taught Aboriginal and Vietnamese students. This new direction in his life made me feel very good. He also worked in a child minding centre. He loved young people and he loved Brisbane. We kept in touch by weekly phone call and letters.

He was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis a short time ago. He's very quickly lost mobility and his eyesight. and speech are badly affected. Today, he is bedridden and completely dependent on care. Gareth will be 40 years old in December. I have and will always be proud of my beautiful son.

Film - Bridget Robertson, 'The Airport', Australian Centre for the Moving Image

BRIDGET ROBERTSON (VOICEOVER): The last time I saw her was at Melbourne Airport. She was leaving to go back to Western Australia. We grew up in a small town, in an old house, with a big, overgrown backyard. We drive around in an old Kingswood, and mum cooked for us in an old wood stove. In the hot, Mallee summer days, we would run around under the sprinklers and eat lemonade Icy Poles.

My sister never really got into trouble much, unlike me. She was neat and tidy, always laughed at my jokes, and could water ski. When she was younger, she had a pet chicken. She made a home for it in her bedroom from cardboard boxes and old blankets. It would follow her around everywhere. At 17, she moved into state. She always wanted to live by the sea. She was robbed once, and two days later, her stuff was returned to her front doorstep. She thought that was pretty cool, so decided to stay in Western Australian.

She soon met a boy. His name was Craig, and he rode a motorbike, she told me. The phone started ringing at 5:00 AM. I'd been out the night before. I finally woke up at 10:00, when I answered the phone. Two cars were following the motorbike. It was Easter Thursday evening. They were all going away for the weekend. The motorbike changed lanes. It didn't see the truck.

I'm going to the airport to pick her up. From the airport lounge, I see the black funeral hearse waiting on the tarmac. Tina is coming home on the next flight, and one by one, we load her bags onto the trolley. Friends told me later that they'd seen the accident on the news. They never mentioned their names, never said who they were. They could have said, Tina Robertson. She was 25 years old. Her nickname was Bops.

She drank beer and played tennis pretty well. She was the backyard trampoline champion when she was young. She worked in real estate and ate her lunch at the beach every day.

Film - Kristianne Turner, 'What ever became of Charlie?', Australian Centre for the Moving Image

"Ring around the Rosy, pocket full of posy, ashes, ashes, we all fall down…"

Charlie Cheese was a legend back in 1982 amongst us pre-schooler’s. He lived at the Grundy’s Entertainment Centre. You only ever got to go there for birthday parties. I always missed my own birthday parties. This is me and my then best friend Rhett he had to pretend to be me on my birthday one year. I got sick and had to be sent home. He blew out the candles on my Charlie the Cheese birthday cake. This is me and my brother, we were country kids we grew up side by side I copied everything he did except I liked Strawberry Shortcake and he liked the Incredible Hulk. My mum and dad were Indians, I was the Virgin Mary. We had many prestige cars during my childhood and a huge mansion with kept gardens. It was hot in Queensland so dad dug us a swimming pool. Ours was brown but the next door neighbour’s was blue.

This is my Auntie, these are my grandparents, my dad and me and again with my brother. My Nan is dying now. These are my grand parents too. They are both dead. I never knew them. Apparently I am a lot like Maggie. She was kind and loving. These are not my grandparents but them and I both pretend they are. Kevin once said to me if he had a granddaughter he would wish for one just like me. That made me cry. My dad is the funniest man I know he never fails to make my world a happy place to live in. He has strength and courage. We are best mates. my mum and I look very much alike now. I would be happy to be half the person she is. This is her as ? with my nephew she refused to accept the Grand title. My brother now is king of his own castle, and these are the heirs to his throne. Currently we are making plans to build a Turner empire. I have yet to contribute. Maybe next update.

Film - Carolyn Scott, 'Sins of the Fathers', Australian Centre for the Moving Image

I have three brothers and two sisters, none of us have children. We grew up with a father who was a violent alcoholic. He fought in New Guinea and World War 2 and was run over by his own side and came home with his spine and his nervous system shattered. In the street where I lived every father was a returned serviceman and an alcoholic, except for Ken whose drug of choice was Bex, around 100 powders a day. There was a lot of violence, the worst was Sam over the road. One night when he was roaring drunk he chased his family around with an axe. My mother, my siblings and I all lived in a state of perpetual anxiety wondering just how drunk and aggressive my father would be when he came home each night. Wondering if we’d have food to eat and a roof over our head because he had lost yet another job through drinking. All my family developed psychiatric problems. Depression, paranoia, acute anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, post traumatic stress disorder.

I was to witness this pattern again. I came of age in the Vietnam era and several of my male friends’ numbers came up. When they came home they were angry misfits. They’d relive the war in their sleep and wake up screaming, until they were afraid to fall asleep. One could only sleep under his bed. Their marriages failed, now their children have psychological problems from growing up with fathers who were scarily unpredictable. I fear for the children of the Iraq war. One of my nieces is married to a Kurdish doctor so I follow the American/Iraq war from both sides. He tells me of the terror that ordinary Iraqis live through everyday. War touched everyone. Not just the soldiers but their wives, their children, the next generation and it seems that before anyone gets a chance to recover, another war starts. My siblings and I were nearly 40 before we began to come out of the shadow of our father’s war. By that time many career opportunities were closed to us and half our lives were over. It was hard for us, we hadn’t learnt to socialise, friendships were hard to form, relationships difficult to maintain and trusting in others remains an ongoing challenge. But we have made it through to our own forms of happiness.

I work with people with psychiatric issues showing how they can use art and writing both as a healing agent and a voice to express their vision. Showing them that no matter how old you are, how poor you are there are always possibilities to move forward. I am still on my journey.

Film - Elizabeth Downes, 'Busty', Australian Centre for the Moving Image

When we were little we were used to having wild animals of different shapes and sizes around, but there was only ever one Busty. The Australian Bustard or Plains Turkey was once found in the grasslands of Victoria but now lives only in the Australian outback and is seriously threatened even there. Ardeotus Australis, or Busty as he was more commonly known, came to Allens Road, Heathmont in 1965. He was born in Western Australia and arrived in the mail. For the first few weeks he lived in a baby’s basket. We fed him on treats of clover and oranges, in addition to his official diet of chook pellets and mince. He used to wander around the garden with us, watching for insects while we played and roamed around the block. In the evenings he would settle down by the fire in the living room, unless distracted, occasionally becoming a bit too interested in individual coals winking in the fire. When visitors came he retreated to the hallway, sticking his head around the corner to watch the stranger. He had dust baths on the rug, fluffing himself up and sending soft down and feathers floating through the air. He would practice flapping his wings and on one memorable occasion, he accidentally launched himself in the air landing in the middle of mums roast lamb and peas…or was it chops?

After 40 years the story has changed a bit in the telling. Dad said Busty looked as surprised as mum. He used to add a new complication to our games, eating the little brightly coloured toys from the Corn Flakes packets. I remember dad said if we’d just wait a couple of days we’d get them back but it was hard to feel quite the same about them after that. Eventually we left Victoria. Busty went to live at a wildlife research station. Years later I went back to ‘Serendip’. He grew to be the biggest of all the birds there and lived for around 25 years. According to the staff he was the toughest and most difficult to handle of all the Bustards. If he could hold his own with the Downeses then he wasn’t going to be pushed around by a bunch of scientists…after all he was one of the family.

Film - Heather Matthew, 'A Writer's Legacy', Australian Centre for the Moving Image

[TYPEWRITER KEYS CLACKING]

HEATHER MATTHEW (VOICEOVER): My father was a great collector. He collected many things, matchboxes, stamps, coins, and little sayings of note. After he retired, he compiled detailed family histories with geological notes, shipping records, photographs, and other ephemera. But the most significant of his collections were his family letters. The earliest of these letters dates back to 1900. The last was the letter he wrote to accompany his will, which my brother and I read after his death.

These letters were bound with string or bundled up labelled in his deed box. I could not bear to read them until now. There are letters from my great-grandparents, birthday greetings from his mother spanning 30 years, letters he wrote to my mother during their engagement, and the letters my brother and I wrote to him after we left home. He often talked to me about these letters when I was growing up, saying that some day, he would read them to me. "August 9, '49-- my very dear son, my only sadness is that the years have all gone too quickly-- your loving mother."

My father came from a long line of writers whose voices survived in their letters. "Dear Alick, Auntie Annie and I wish to join with your friends in wishing you a happy birthday. We know that you're birthday falls in such a disturbed and anxious time. But all the more, it calls for us all to stand fast in the faith in which we have been trained and to believe more earnestly than ever that the only hope of coming to a sane and peaceful world lies in the saturation of the Christian forces throughout the world Your affectionate uncle, Henry Matthew."

In his will, my father bequeathed me my grandmother's inkwell and writing desk. I often wondered where my passion for writing came from. And now, reading these letters, I know. My father believed in me as a writer when I did not believe it myself. I discovered he had collected everything I had written over the years, articles, from newspapers, poems, my first illustrated book, which I wrote when I was 15, and theatre programs of the community plays I had written and directed.

When he died, I was in the process of completing a five-year local history project complete with book, short film, and play. He remarked only a month before he died, "I hope I live long enough to finally see your play on stage." Unfortunately, he died when we were still in production. He never really recovered from my mother's death two years previous. I wrote a eulogy for his memorial service. I continue writing about him to this day.

Film - Noel and Max Oliver, 'For Amy and Emily', Australian Centre for the Moving Image

MAX: I was born in Stawell, Victoria, 30th of March, 1932. I was really a keen cyclist from the age of 14 and won many races in the-- in and around Stawell. My best achievement, in my belief, was that I was able to win the Stawell 50-mile road race from a field of 140 riders. I left school age of 15, but I should've kept on with it, Still, I did go back to school for another three years. I joined the ES and A bank at Stawell. Eventually, I was transferred to Casterton, where I met Noel.

NOEL: My dad was pretty unimpressed with you as a banker. He didn't like bankers. Then, I told him that you were a bike rider and suddenly, you were fine. And then, we got married in the same church that my mum and dad were married in.

MAX: Your daddy was born on the 21st of December, 1960. We were transferred to Foster in south Gippsland and made many, many good friends. I was able to fulfill a dream of mine and that was to be able to fly an airplane, an achievement that I'm very proud of, because I never ever got lost.

Your mommy and your daddy got married in 1990 and we welcomed our first grandchild, which was you, Amy, on the 28th of November, 1991. Emily, you came along on the 29th of June, 1994.

NOEL: We were really enjoying our life being with you and mommy and daddy. Unfortunately, there was a car accident and all of you were in the car accident. You were all slightly injured, but your daddy died in the car crash. And then, something else happened, which was just as bad. Your Great Pa died about six weeks after Daddy died. And I remember you running through Great Nana's house looking for Great Pa, when you came up and you said, he's not in his chair. He's not in the bedroom. He must be dead.

Now, it was during this time that poor Grandpa started to have trouble with his memory. In 1999, our doctor said that Grandpa should see a specialist, but it just got worse. This must have been difficult for you and Emily, because you didn't understand what was happening to Grandpa. The diagnosis was Alzheimer's. I see myself as losing Max. Max is still here, but I feel that I'm losing the person that Max was once.

MAX: The reason for creating this brief snapshot of my life is I am very proud of your achievement individually. And I hope your future will be bright. I would like to think that there will still be more of those happy times to come.

Film - David Tytherleigh, 'The Little Frenchman', Australian Centre for the Moving Image

Roger was my neighbour. He lived across the road in a dilapidated weatherboard cottage surrounded by an over grown garden. Everyday he would stand by his front gate and watch the passing traffic, occasionally engaging in conversation with a passer-by. That’s how I got to know him that was the beginning of our friend ship. Roger had found an active listener in me and so he began to share his stories. Over time I learnt of his life experiences and why he was living alone in this cottage. His wife Jean had died in 1985 after a long illness. Her death had been traumatic and Roger recalled again and again this story to me, as he did the story of his fathers death during the Great War. Roger carried in his jacket pocket a small photo of his father given to him by his grandmother in later life. Declared an orphan of war by the French Government, Roger, aged twelve began working as a pastry cook and in 1939 prior to the outbreak of war was called up into the Army Reserve. He was captured by the Germans in 1940 and spent the next four years as a prisoner of war, escaping three times but always recaptured. Liberated in 1945, he immigrated to Australia in 1951.

Roger invited me into his home and I saw firsthand the environment that he lived in. It was like time had ceased. Jeans possessions were still everywhere, the hallway wall and lounge room ceiling had collapsed, dust covered everything. Amidst all this mess Roger carried on with his life, walking to the shops in the morning for supplies, then back home for a meal, standing by the fence in the afternoon, then off to bed. This was his daily routine seven days a week. It became evident there hadn’t been any outside support or activity in Rogers life for years. Over the next two years our conversations remained the same; it was becoming clear that Roger was slowly becoming senile. Illness forced Roger into hospital and then into a nursing home. He was never to return to his cottage. This was sold, then demolished and made into a car park. Fortunately he was never to know this.

On Sundays I would visit him and we would sit and play cards, listen to Edith Piaf sing and eat little coloured marshmallows. Sometimes we just sat in silence and held hands. In Rogers’s house I had found a box of old photographs but the places, persons and times captured were now unknown to him, the memories and stories had all been lost. Rogers’s health steadily declined, his spirit was fading, he said it was time to die. He died quietly one Wednesday afternoon at around five o’clock. Three people attended his funeral. I feel as a community we let Roger down, that the service that he had given in his younger life was not returned to him in his later years. He had stories to tell and share, this is his.

Film - Fiona Currie, 'Camping Legends', Australian Centre for the Moving Image

As you know, our family goes on camping holidays. I want to share with you a camping family legend. In 1936, my grandparents, Marnie and Lyn moved from Lithgow to Ayr in North Queensland. They drove the trusty 1927 Dodge with open wheels and narrow tyres up the route of the New England Highway, before it was the Highway. They camped under a canvas lean-to strung off the car, cooked on an open fire and dried wet clothes on anything handy.

They dug themselves off creek banks that were too steep for the cars front and back wheels to touch down at the same time. They loaded the back of the car with rocks to increase the weight of the car to get extra traction up mountains. Marnie talks about being so frightened by the precipitous edges of the mountain roads, that she ate the newspaper that was wrapping the food parcels at her feet. They were planning on a break in the Darling Downs with the Fletchers, but a day or so out, it rained.

The car span off the road in the black mud and nearly rolled. Grandpa John walked the remaining distance to the Fletchers and called in the ‘Rescue Vehicle’. The mud was so sticky that it built up on the wheels of the gig and they had to keep stopping to scrape it off. From the Fletchers they chose the inland route, because it was straighter on the map and headed north. The track at times, were the wheel marks of the Postman’s car from six months prior, Speargrass, sometimes so high you couldn’t see over it.

Then, south of Charters Towers, they hit “The Swamp”. Three days and nights of cutting saplings and jacking the car up, then moving forward a car length, before sinking back down. Grandpa John again walked out to a station who sent a horse to pull them out. They gave them a bath in a tub on the kitchen floor. Marnie remembers the floorboards had shrunk and you could brush the dirt through the gaps.

Taua did not approve. Time had run out by this time, so they put the car on the train at Charters Towers and finally reached Ayr and their new home on stilts. Grandpa John, Taua, Marnie and Lyn took the Dodge on other camping adventures. Marnie took her family camping and I will take you camping and perhaps, we can make our own legends.

Film - John Estlick, 'Cardin Street', Australian Centre for the Moving Image

Two houses I lived in got pulled down. Cardin Street, that's where I found me wood.

It was a big house. The front door was made out of wood, it was white. My room was white. I liked living there. We cooked, had lunch at the house. I have a beer, and a cup of tea.  

Kribbin he lived with me, and Collin Jenkins. Corn, he was a Chinese boy. I have a coworker there, called Ann, and Janice and Tarni. 

It makes me feel sad cause the holes got in the wall, big holes, it got pulled down. They knocked it down cos it was old, pretty old house. The gate falling apart. You couldn't see it properly. Every time you open the gate it fall down. 

I saw the house getting pulled down, I was going to take a photo of it but I didn't have time. I went back there the next day. The house was pulled down.

It was all gone. The front door knocked down. There was nothing, only a door. Before they knocked it down, I went to have a look. They said, you better not come in here. Cos the Police will come. If the Police see you in here, you're going to get in trouble.

I took a bit of wood... a little bit... near where the kitchen used to be. Not too big. I keep it with me all the time. I like that piece of wood. Because it brings back memories. Good memories. About Cardin Street.

Nobody that I know lives there now. It makes me feel sad to see the new house. I cry about it. I miss it. I miss the house. There's a new house there now, it's made of brick. Not wooden anymore.
It makes me feel sad cuase the holes got in the wall, big holes, it got pulled down. They knocked it down cos it was old, pretty old house. The gate falling apart. You couldn't see it properly. Every time you open the gate it fall down. 

I saw the house getting pulled down, I was going to take a photo of it but I didn't have time. I went back there the next day. The house was pulled down.

It was all gone. The front door knocked down. There was nothing, only a door. Before they knocked it down, I went to have a look. They said, you better not come in here. Cos the Police will come. If the Police see you in here, you're going to get in trouble.

I took a bit of wood... a little bit... near where the kitchen used to be. Not too big. I keep it with me all the time. I like that piece of wood. Because it brings back memories. Good memories. About Cardin Street.

Nobody that I know lives there now. It makes me feel sad to see the new house. I cry about it. I miss it. I miss the house. There's a new house there now, it's made of brick. Not wooden anymore.