THIS is a story about Bill and Gary and what they get up to on the beach most mornings.
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Bill is a dentist. I don’t know if he’s one of those smiley “How-ya-doin’-my-name’s-Bill-and-I’m-here-to-help” kind of dentists who promise pain-free teeth removal, until you’re inclined on a chair with your mouth wide open, and there’s a whispered “Oops” in your ear and blood on the floor.
He doesn’t look like that kind of dentist, but then none of them do.
Anyway, he lives in a nice house on a leafy street with great views of the ocean.
I know this because a friend of mine lives next door and I’ve occasionally glanced/peered/spied on Bill as he’s cleaned his pool.
It’s because of the glancing/peering/spying that I recognised him on the beach one day, a while ago, when he was there with another man I’ve come to know as Gary, Bill’s mate.
The first time I saw them they were doing push-ups together. On the beach. Try it sometime. It feels as lousy as it looks.
The next time I saw them they were running together in the soft sand. It was like watching the opening credits for Baywatch – all slow motion action, hair billowing in the breeze, muscles bulging. Except Bill and Gary were wearing middle aged men-type t-shirts and baggy shorts rather than body-hugging red swimmers, and there wasn’t a Pamela Anderson to be seen.
The next time I saw them they were running together in the soft sand. It was like watching the opening credits for Baywatch – all slow motion action, hair billowing in the breeze, muscles bulging.
The other difference was that the world suddenly hadn’t gone slow-mo on me, but Bill and Gary made it look like they had. But good on them, I thought. What didn’t break them, or give them a heart attack or heat stroke, would only make them stronger.
Why am I writing about Bill and Gary today, while sending them up, ever so slightly?
Because they’re good guys, and I think we need to hear about good people doing good things without even a thought of getting recognition for it because the bad guys seem to attract and hold our attention way too often.
Most mornings Bill and Gary are down on the beach doing sporty things, but they also clean it. For quite some time now they’ve picked up the rubbish left by other people.
It’s a popular resort beach. People leave loads of rubbish.
The plastic bottles are annoying, the glass bottles are dangerous. People leave cans. They leave pizza boxes and half-eaten pizzas, kebab wrappers, clothes, thongs, piles of paper rubbish, broken chairs, umbrellas and sun shades, sunscreen, towels… the list goes on.
It’s clear they don’t mean to leave some things. It’s also clear plenty of people have left the beach without giving any thought to what could happen to the rubbish they’ve left behind.
So Bill and Gary clear it up before most of the rest of us are even out of bed.
That’s not the only good work Bill and Gary do, without fanfare, but it’s enough to make my point here.
There are many people like Bill and Gary who act like the oil that keeps the wheels turning in our communities. They don’t do big stuff, but they do the kinds of things that lift us from being a lot of individuals living in close proximity, to being groups which are capable of thinking beyond just our own needs.
We’re a few days away from the Australia Day gongs. The likes of Bill and Gary don’t get nominated for awards for picking up other people’s rubbish, day in and day out. They’re happy with a “Good on you, mate” from passers-by, or better, another volunteer rubbish cleaner to lend a hand.
Over the past few years of writing about child sexual abuse I’ve met other extraordinary people who have been not so much the oil in the wheels, as the squeak in the wheels – the ones who wouldn’t give up fighting for justice for the many.
In the Hunter there are many who fit that category, quite a few who don’t want to be named, but some who recognised they needed to be.
Bob and Bev O’Toole, Peter Gogarty, Rob Roseworne, Graham Rundle, Audrey Nash, David Owen, Bishop Greg Thompson, Michael Elliott, John Cleary, two men I'll call Tom and Steve (because they know who they are), are just a few who deserve awards for their championing of some of the most vulnerable people in our communities, up against some of this country’s most powerful institutions.
Beyond the Hunter there are many more – Craig Hughes-Cashmore and Shane McNamara of SAMSN (Survivors and Mates Support Network) and Broken Rites in Melbourne being outstanding examples - but I’d like to write about just one more person now.
Leonie Sheedy was born in 1954 but has no memory of family before she was made a ward of the state and placed in a Catholic orphanage. The National Library of Australia has an interview by Leonie for the Forgotten Australians and Former Child Migrants oral history project, in which she talks about an orphanage childhood and decision to set up a support group for thousands of people who shared her experiences – Care Leavers Australia Network (CLAN).
Leonie Sheedy was at the September, 2012 meeting in Newcastle that showed community backing for the Newcastle Herald’s campaign for a royal commission into institutional child sexual abuse.
She has been at royal commission public hearings supporting survivors, and has been an outspoken and outstanding advocate for some of the most neglected and abandoned people in our communities.
In 2007 she was awarded the Order of Australia medal, and in December Malcolm Turnbull appointed her a member of an independent council to help shape a $4 billion national redress scheme for survivors of institutional child sexual abuse.
We should give thanks to all of them – and many others – on January 26.