by PAUL COLLITS – I HAVE two homes. One is in the wonderful Northern Rivers region of NSW, close but not too close to Byron Bay and accessible to its magnificent hinterland.
The other is in the majestic Blue Mountains, west of the hell-hole that is twenty-first century Sydney.
- Can there possibly be a greater hell on earth than for a parent to lose a child?
- It is certainly a weird Christmas. No family around, no shopping, no presents nor tree.
- Still, Mass will be celebrated.
The year 2024, an annus mirabilis by its end, has seen us acquiring a third home town. Not by choice, mind you. This one is in the deep north, at latitude 19 degrees south.
Yes, we are north of the summer solstice. Townsville’s Lahaina noon, aka zero shadow day, occurs before and after the solstice.
BLESSED
With Townsville, though, it always feels that the sun is right overhead. About fifteen miles away. The only time it cools down – to about 25 degrees – is when it is pouring with rain. Blessed relief.
Alas, with the rain comes the mosquito infestation, which, since we are merely a few miles from the Ross River which runs through the city’s suburbs, is not exactly comforting.
Today the Townsville weather report said “33, feels like 40”. Indeed, it did.
Townsville, like Miami Florida, only exists as a large city because of air conditioning. God knows its fate if Mad Bowen ever gets his way with his energy revolution.
It has been our dubious pleasure to be here in high summer. When we arrived (for the second time this year), the place resembled a desert. Palm Springs minus the visiting Hollywood celebs. With a few storms and the heavy rain that tropical locales know only too well, the place is now as green as Ireland.
And it is a half decent city, too. Despite its crap location.
Home has been a caravan park, mercifully peaceful to the point of somnolence. Overnighters come and go, not that many because, unsurprisingly, peak season is what they call here, with straight faces, “winter”.
There are permanent residents here, too. They are all of advanced years, and they all do their bit to ensure the quietude. They make their way purposefully each day to the shower blocks and the laundry. Exercise is done at 5am. It is way too hot after that.
Mercifully, there are no forced friendships, the kind so beloved of those over fifties “villages” that you see advertised, with their endlessly good looking silver haired types who walk along pristine beaches and who frolic around with “activities” like drinks at 4pm and badminton.
It is just a casual nod of mutual recognition at our peaceful, shared existence. One night a bloke said to me, in relation to my much-needed cigarette, “those things will kill you.” I said, “not so far”.
Cabin fever is a problem when you live in a cabin for months on end. Cabin life might be added to the marriage testers, along with selling a house and all the others.
Upon arrival the second time, I was quizzed about my home address and other things. It was to make sure I wasn’t a local homeless guy looking for a place to bed down.
Such is the homeless crisis in Australia. Another casualty of the recessed economy where people doing two jobs live in cars.
ABYSS
Despite the lies told by the Australian Bureau of Statistics and by Treasurers and their bureaucrats, the country is plunging into an economic abyss.
We visited Millers clothing shop this week. It is closing its doors in the early new year. Along with all the others that have gone into receivership.
I have spoken about the deep north previously, so I won’t go over that ground again.
Suffice it so say that regional Australia remains the home of poverty, of poor health, of obesity, of tattoos, of indigenous Australians and of manacled criminals being led by pairs of coppers into the hospital.
Why are we in this place? Well, it is all about an acute medical emergency, or, should I say, a whole raft of inter-related medical emergencies in the one patient. Our only daughter. And this is coming off another near-death health crisis, back in the autumn.
About early November, when we were told by the medical experts in Townsville Hospital ICU that our daughter would probably not survive, I expressed one Christmas wish. o have Christmas in Townsville.
That would mean that she was still alive. I got my wish. She is. I have no other reason for wanting to have Christmas in Townsville. Ever. I am dreaming of a white Christmas. As never before.
BUT…
The fictional Father Brown is fond of saying that God knows what it is like to lose a child. A terrific line, and Mark Williams does a great Father Brown.
Can there possibly be a greater hell on earth than for a parent to lose a child? And to continue living this, day after day, for the rest of your days?
A close second is to fear the very real possibility of the loss of a child. I am here to attest its truth of the latter. With apologies to Oscar Wilde, twice in six months looks like carelessness.
When doctors, who may or may not be people of faith, say that a miracle has occurred, you sit up and take notice.
They also said, with conviction, that constantly talking to an intubated patient on life support makes a big difference to the outcome, while they are under.
How do you prove a miracle? Well, maybe you can’t.
Nor can you precisely locate the precise time of the miracle taking effect. The Catholic Church has commissions which diligently investigate claimed miracles when deciding whether to make people who have led lives of heroic virtue official saints.
One coming up in 2025 is called Carlo Acutis, a young boy who died a couple of decades ago of leukemia. He is already vetted for canonisation but he was prominently placed in my own target prayer list.
Others have been coming up with saints I have never heard of.
God, as they say, moves in mysterious ways and collaborates with human actions, too. He picked terribly faulty practitioners to lead his Church at the outset, for example.
Observers of Rome might well suggest that He still does. In our case, He chose uncertain, confused, frankly struggling medicos, and, on occasions, cranky, officious hospital telephone operators.
STORMING
A veritable army of petitioners has been storming heaven in 2024. From the Archbishop of Sydney (a friend and former colleague of my son’s) to the local – inevitably Indian – chaplain to Townsville Hospital.
(Townsville consists largely of Cowboys and Indians. Certainly, the priests, nurses and doctors are well represented by folks from the sub-continent.)
I would say literally hundreds of people have been praying for the miracle that has seemingly been delivered. Anointing of the sick occurred on the night that we were advised to get from northern NSW to Townsville as soon as possible. That is one candidate for the miracle.
After that, our extreme fear lasted for a long time. It never goes away at the height of the health crises of loved ones.
It has only abated relatively recently. I wonder if G Gordon Liddy and the actual progenitor of the famous aphorism, Friedrich Nietzsche – what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger – actually had this right.
I am almost now convinced that what doesn’t kill you only makes you weaker.
Looking back, medical decisions were taken that made huge differences. At the time when the last throw of the dice was upon them. Some measures suggested desperation, but also hope.
At times the hope was forlorn. Corners were turned. Judgement calls were made. There was some inspired joining of dots. Gamble is not too strong a word, here.
As the name intensive care suggests, the care provided in a superb public hospital has been intensive. Nurses in colourful scrubs, lately with an increasingly festive orientation, skilled intensivist-doctors who occasionally had brilliant insights but who largely got us through with uncertain knowledge of what was going on and why.
With the help of Big Pharma and its products, dieticians, speech therapists, psychiatrists, muscular orderlies with big smiles for their favourite patient – who, having clocked up around 80 days in ICU, almost has shares in the place – cleaners, and the rest, have all formed the primary care team.
There were uncomfortable doctor moments, too. This is the dreaded “family meeting”.
DIGNITY
We didn’t much care for an implied “dying with dignity” culture that we sensed, in a State that, along with all the others, has gone recklessly down the assisted dying route.
Having that legislation can only affect the medical profession in one direction, methinks.
And my broad knowledge of COVID era medical practices and philosophies doesn’t especially endear me to the profession that was once guided by the Hippocratic Oath.
There is also a thing up here called Ryan’s Rule – at all costs and at all times “listen to the patient”. And to his or her family.
That was not always followed by those who have information on this rule prominently displayed on walls around the hospitals.
But, mercifully, we avoided those “difficult conversations” that were, at times, foreshadowed. There were woeful misdiagnoses on occasion.
One especially bleak day – delivered not by Townsville doctors but by those of a more rural location – we were told the verdict was pancreatic cancer.
That has proven incorrect, though pancreatitis is not much of a consolation. Painful too.
My Sydney-based GP, who knows a thing or two about this affliction, says it is like having a fiery blowtorch inserted in your belly.
There have been other bleak days and continuing uncertainty of (lung) diagnosis. When you don’t know what exactly you are dealing with, treatment becomes problematic.
So, we appear to have witnessed, and been the beneficiaries of, a Christmas Townsville miracle.
MIRACLE
In the absence of any other explanation, a miracle will do after months of surreal, blurred, living-on-the-edge, confusing and confronting time.
Everlasting gratitude scarcely begins to sum up our current state of mind, of course. Gratitude is also tempered with relief. But also with weariness, ongoing confusion – did this all actually happen, and why?
Stress, residual shock, the need for down-time, and, at times residual anger at the mistakes that were made and that could have been consequential, not in a good way, and with less-than-perfect communications. PTSD probably sums it up.
The journey has been a little like a long commercial flight – seemingly endless boredom followed by moments of terror.
It is certainly a weird Christmas. No family around, located thousands of miles from home, no Christmas shopping, no presents nor tree or decorations.
Still, Mass will be celebrated, the Chandon will be chilled and the chicken and ham-driven roast dinner will be welcome, in an air-conditioned little cabin in a party-less caravan park.
We also have acquired a new profession, too. That of long-term carers, post-survival. It will be our pleasure to re-skill, given the circumstances.
Of all those saints that were entreated on our beloved daughter’s behalf, there is one possible heavenly driver of our annus mirabilis. His name is George Pell.
I did him favours at his lowest ebb on earth, in the form of over fifty thousand words publicly defending him against his many enemies, at a time when supporting the late Cardinal was definitely not in-season.
GRAVE
He never thanked me for this while he was on earth, a matter of no felt hurt whatsoever on my part, but I cannot help but believe that he has just returned the favour.
It is an inkling only. I will never know this for sure, this side of the grave.
Oh, and a very happy Christmas to all the faithful readers of this humble piece of online real estate. May all of your Christmases be miraculous, too.
And if miracles are not needed over your way, let there at least be peace, hope and happiness.
And as the ABC’s awful Louise Milligan once said, in a different context, go hug your children.PC
Good article Paul, and our thoughts and prayers are with your daughter. BTW, another regular writer, John Mikkelsen, tells some very engrossing stories about growing up in the bush near Townsville in his memoir Don’t Call Me Nev. Amazing he survived. One chapter describes how he accidentally shot himself in the foot as a kid but didn’t tell his parents until the wound became infected and he ended up in the same Townsville Hospital for a day to have the bullet removed.
Many of us would certainly prefer it if you laid off the Catholic proselytisation, especially when you use the image of a convicted Catholic pedophile to headline the story.
We’re here because we are politically conservative, not because we are Catholic or even Christian. Your inability to see the difference places the conservative cause in real danger.
Politicom is an occasionally useful newsletter only when it confines itself to actual politics and kerbs its religious impulses.
Perhaps you are too harsh. Certainly your comment about Pell was uncalled for. His conviction was overturned, as you are doubtless aware.
Those who write from a spiritual perspective and whose writings accord with the general moral and political assumptions of this newsletter, should be encouraged to do so.
Likewise, those who write from a purely secular perspective and whose writings accord with the general moral and political assumptions of this newsletter, should be encouraged to do so.
You obviously have an interesting perspective yourself, you have been free to express it in brief in this comments section of the newsletter. Perhaps you might care to expand upon it and send it in for publication. I for one would very much like to read and think about it. It is called the exchange of ideas.
“Those who write from a spiritual perspective and whose writings accord with the general moral and political assumptions of this newsletter, should be encouraged to do so.”
The problem arises when those who write from a “spiritual perspective” have no idea what they are talking about. To put it bluntly, those with a “spiritual perspective” that is informed by roman catholicism are dealing in demonstrably false teaching, and the root of all false teaching is ultimately demonic. I happen to know this because it falls within my area of subject matter expertise, and I heartily concur with William Bligh’s sentiment as expressed above. Even the introduction of sound theology into what should be a purely political discussion would serve, at best, to muddy the water; the introduction of roman catholic teaching will ultimately prove to be thoroughly toxic.
If you doubt the veracity of my assertions, you should perhaps compare catholic teaching with the truth of what is written in the Bible. If you want to know the nature of the spirit behind roman catholicism, you need look no further than the Christians who were imprisoned, tortured, and murdered during the various Inquisitions (when a mere man arrogantly arrogates to himself the title “vicar of christ”, then it logically follows that his conduct will not necessarily be constrained in any way by such inconvenient things as scruples).
Excuse me? Cardinal Pell was exonerated by the full bench of the Australian High Court. His conviction was unanimously overturned. Deception – and the woke mind virus – has infected you.
I found this to be a most moving account of your family’s tribulations. I am sorry to hear of these and am most sympathetic. I wish you and your daughter good fortune for the coming year. I love your account of Townsville – a delightfully droll [and accurate] take on the place. I know – I live 100km north. God Bless you and yours.
“The Catholic Church [decides] whether to make people […] official saints.”
The Apostle Paul addressed the readers of his epistle to the Romans as “saints”. He addressed readers of his epistle to the Ephesians as “saints”. He addressed readers of his epistle to the Philippians as “saints”. He addressed readers of his epistle to the Colossians as “saints”. He addressed readers of his second epistle to the Corinthians as “saints”.
Do you know why? It’s because they were Christians – that is to say, they were *ALL* saints. If you don’t believe me, just look at your Bible – and remember what Jesus said: “The scripture cannot be broken”. As it is written: “It does not depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy”.
I wouldn’t want to be the man who is so arrogant that he presumes to set aside the plainly stated truths of the word of God, and I certainly wouldn’t want to be found calling the Son of God a liar. because people who do those sorts of things are going to spend their eternity in the Lake of Fire…
I was a friend and colleague of Lincoln Hall. He should have died on Everest. No-one in history has survived a sleep-out at 30 thousand feet. He did. Only God knows why.
Paul, your experience reminds me of Sophie Delezio. The little girl in Sydney who, by all doctors’ accounts, should not have survived. God decides the timing of everything.