Deborah Wilson
SET amidst the news and views on your website recently, I have discovered a poem which my dad wrote. ( A Lawn Bowler’s Lament (A true story ) This made me wonder: do you sometimes try to guess what your contributors are like? My dad’s story, like everyone’s dads’ stories, is unique, happy, sad, funny, poignant, unique. I thought you might like to hear a little about him.
My dad’s name is Bob Wilson. He lives at Woolgoolga, which is a coastal town just north of Coffs Harbour. He moved up there about ten years ago to marry Alma Craggs from Woolgoolga. I still reckon that sounds funny. Dad is 79 years old. Some people are pretty old when they are 79. Dad is a little different. He goes to the gym most mornings, plays bowls several times a week, and writes the bowling news for the Coffs newspaper.
Dad went into hospital for a routine hip replacement a couple of years ago. Unbeknownst to his surgeon, Dad had a massive stroke whilst on the operating table. To employ that well-used cliché, he nearly died. Following months of hospitalisation, Dad was moved into a nursing home. Not wanting to die of ill health or boredom, Dad escaped less than a year later (there leaving Alma Craggs from Woolgoolga to her own devices), and moved into a tiny, dark old cabin at the gloomy end of a Woolgoolga caravan park. He bought himself various pieces of exercise equipment and, not surprisingly (if you knew my dad), got much better.
Dad comes home to Tasmania every now and then. He visits old friends and makes new friends. He stays with me and my children in Launceston, then climbs aboard the Redline for his trip to Hobart, where he stays with my Uncle John and Aunty Pat. He reminisces with them, and dines and bowls with others. Those others might be people who he taught with in schools across Tasmania, or people who he competed against and with in sports of all sorts, or people he drove taxis with in Launceston, or people who he drank with in many, many pubs.
Life in Woolgoolga is pretty good he reckons. He has upgraded to a much nicer cabin at the Woolgoolga caravan park. The internet hosts his global travelling, and it also enables him to keep his eye on Tasmania. He told me about a dodgy little internet news site called Tasmanian Times a few years back, and I had a look, just to appease him really.
Your website is dad’s favorite I reckon. It tells him what he needs to know about what is going on down here, and it motivates him. Best of all, it involves him. Tasmania’s lurches and belches sculpt my dad’s cogitations and opinions. He’s always got a question for me about the doings in our state.
So that’s Bob Wilson. From Woolgoolga. Married to Alma Craggs from Woolgoolga (sorry, had to get that in again as it usually makes people laugh. A lot.)
