'Nothing is impossible' - Part 2, chapter 4-8 - The Spastic Centre

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‘We have no space’ What a way to spend a Sunday! 98
Country Children’s Hostel At Allambie 1948-1958 My wife, Audrie, as Honorary Superintendent of The Spastic Centre, was always conscious of the plight of country parents who had a cerebral palsied child. This was exemplified by the plight of one child, sixteen years of age, who started her life in a baby’s cane bassinet on wheels, and when she grew out of that the bassinet was extended, until at that time it was one and half metres long. She had had no treatment; her joints had become rigid, and the only movement she could make was with her eyes. They were alight with the brightness of intelligence, and though she could understand everything about her family, she could not communicate anything at all, except by the movement of her eyes. She was a Gracie Fields fan and had a collection of records which she loved to have played for her. She was desperately loved by her farming family. We were unable to help her; we did not have the money nor the facilities. Time, and the locusts, had eaten the family’s hope, but it should not have been so. Now after forty years, the haunting image of Pixie comes into my mind when I think of what her life really was and what it should have been. When The Centre was first started in 1945, there were no proper treatment or schooling facilities for the cerebral palsied throughout the whole of New South Wales, or indeed the whole of Australia. There were no trained staff, no apparatus, no transport and no buildings. In providing these, The Spastic Centre had been forced to first set up the facilities and get the children under treatment, and then work like beavers to pay for it, devoid of Government assistance. While this policy has meant the building up of a very efficient treatment unit in record time, it has prevented the building up of cash reserves for the future, and rightly so – our job is to get every possible child under effective treatment immediately, to remove the tragedy and the heartache from as many homes as we can. That is why the essential planning for the new Country Children’s Hostel, begun in 1947, took ten years to complete. We had first to complete the medical unit and school at Mosman, and provide for double the number of children seeking admission; and that in itself was an immense undertaking. Then we were free to take our weekend voluntary building teams to Allambie and start on the Country Children’s Hostel in earnest. That, we finished in 1957. For those ten intervening years the families must blame somebody for that dereliction of duty, and the Government must accept the strictures that go with it. A country child has missed his chance of walking; he should have been educated and missed out. 99
Page 1 and 2: Medical This chapter emphasises, wi
Page 3 and 4: One of the senior members of a dent
Page 5 and 6: We thought that this was a signific
Page 7 and 8: Splints/Braces 1949 In March 1949 I
Page 9 and 10: Heel cord lengthening by operation
Page 11 and 12: had an academic career in his unive
Page 13 and 14: training and psychological work lag
Page 15 and 16: The fourth significant call was to
Page 17 and 18: The Chromovox was a mechanical TV b
Page 19 and 20: Education 1945 When we started our
Page 21 and 22: This aim applies to our school at T
Page 23 and 24: Had the Department yielded to our p
Page 25: Academically - he is more likely to
Page 29 and 30: He has missed the bus if his speech
Page 31 and 32: trampling down his precious steelwo
Page 33 and 34: H.R.H. Duke of Edinburgh award winn
Page 35 and 36: Esther Woodhart presents a bouquet
Page 37 and 38: Nearing the end of the roof section
Page 39 and 40: Westbrook, to whose generosity the
Page 41 and 42: The boy, Bernard Doran, had been bo
Page 43 and 44: Finally at the age of six they had
Page 45 and 46: Jenny Takes up the Story My father
Page 47 and 48: was so floppy, so they made me a pl
Page 49 and 50: make less noise, but even so I stil
Page 51 and 52: much. Someone had to read everythin
Page 53 and 54: the plumbing and electricity. Mothe
Page 55 and 56: They teased me about my poor taste

'Nothing is impossible' - Part 2, chapter 4-8 - The Spastic Centre

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