Charlotte Maudie Hazelwood

Here she is: my granddaughter, Charlotte Maudie Hazelwood, born on 19 April, weighing 8.4 pounds. Obviously, that's Mum and Dad (Zoe and Brandon) sharing the spotlight.

Charlotte is ten days old today, and a perfect picture of happy, contented babyhood.

Oh, Mum's doing well, too. In fact, she and Dad have taken to parenthood like ducks to water. They share all the tasks (even the messiest ones), acting as if they've been doing the job for years. I'm so proud of them all. And privileged to be allowed to share in the great joy of welcoming a new baby into their lives.

All's well on the home-front

After such a long time without posts, I have to start somewhere. So this is a just quick update of a few recent goings-on. But that's not to suggest there's really any excuse for my long silence. One simply gets out of the habit of posting. And as with letter-writing in the 'olden days', the longer you put off writing, the harder it gets to start.
 

On the home front, the news has been all about...RAIN. And lots of it. In the last four months alone, we've had more rain (1865mm) than in all of 2007 (1700mm) when eastern Australia was in the grip of drought. Of course, 2010 was was the year this state's drought finally broke: we had 2760mm of rain last year, 745mm of which fell in December alone! That had devastating consequences in many parts of Queensland this summer, though thankfully not in our area. Up here in the hilly hinterland we are relatively flood-free, though water poured down every hillside, including from the hill above our block.  

 

 I lost one whole bed of vegetables to the excess run-off, except for the row of Asian khon khang which was just getting started at the front of this bed when I took these pix. Eventually it ran riot over the whole soggy bed, and spread out over the path but everything else died. 

So in recent weeks Nev (a handyman who is truly deserving of that title) has helped to correct some drainage problems. (Well, 'helped' is not accurate; he did ALL the work; I was only the planner.)



Water can now flow freely over rocks, into the drain

Nev dug out the bank where water flows down from the hillside above our house, and replaced the clay with stones. That should prevent mud from clogging up the good drains I already had running down that side of the property – deep rock-filled drains with agricultural pipe at the bottom, that take the water away down toward the dam at the bottom of our property. In time I hope these rocks will discolour to a warmer shade. But as long as they do their job, I'll be happy. I expect a lovely waterfall here the next time we get big rains.

Raised vegie bed with additional rainwater drains

That problem bed in the vegie garden has been raised and a new drain added all around it – with ag pipe at the bottom of a deep trench filled with stones. That should direct water away from this vegie bed and down into the paddock, joining up with another drain there that channels water coming down from our driveway and parking area. The bank of soil we left alongside the vegie bed drain, still covered by tarps here, will be mulched next week.


Eventually I may plant the khon khang along that bank, and an armful of it is already taking root in a bucket of water, ready for transplanting. This Asian green is good in salads when young, and can also be added to stir-fries, though it hasn't much flavour itself and has to be jazzed up with sauces. But it's rather vigorous, so must be kept away from dams. Up here near the top of the block, it won't do any harm. And it will grow well anywhere other vegies would drown. 

My relatively new lemon tree, on the hill above the vegie garden, is carrying a nice little crop in its second year since planting. I just trawled through my plant tags but couldn't find one for the lemon, so I can't tell you the variety. But they're big, smooth, thinly skinned fruit with lots of juice.



Just alongside the lemon is a little grove of lady finger bananas. We've just finished the first bunch of the season, and there are another three bunches almost ready to pick. I have to cut them down green or else turkeys, possums and flying foxes eat some and damage others. A green bunch will usually ripen in a week or two. But after the first week, unless I'm giving some away, I put half the bunch into the fridge to delay ripening. Otherwise we have a glut of bananas all at once, then none for weeks. And with so much of the state's banana crop wiped out by this summer's severe floods, we're relying exclusively on our own supplies this year!

Also on the hill above the vegie garden is a thriving little batch of peppermint. I'm the only person I know who has always had trouble growing mint. It's supposed to spread so easily, as this one has. But in the past it hasn't liked something about my soil or my climate. But in this very wet year, I planted one punnet of mint and it just took off. I pick large handfuls every afternoon and make us a pot of mint tea. And I'm about to harvest even more to make a few litres of mint sauce before it dies down in the coming dry winter season.



 But none of this is the really important news I hope to be posting this week. So watch this space closely in the next few days...





Family fun in the sun

A couple of photos today is all I have time for. Too busy enjoying this exquisite post-deluge sunshine. Allen and I have just come in from a long, luxurious swimming session.

Allen wears a yellow flotation device around his chest. This provides enough buoyancy for him to feel confident going up and down the pool in either a dog paddle or crude back stroke. He's never in the water alone, but without the belt he has a hard time staying upright even at the shallow end. (In our pool, even here at the shallow end, where Allen's standing, the water is chest-deep. We built this pool for swimming, not wading. So the 'deep' end is exactly that: more than two metres deep.)

Allen's balance is poor at the best of times, even on dry land. So when standing chest-deep in water he can't manage even to stand upright unless he has the support of his flotation belt. But with it on, he's quite fearless and gets a lot of good exercise at every session. He used to be a good swimmer once, but swimming is another one of many abilities he has totally lost since his post-operative confinement. Funny what skills have deserted him. For example, he can no longer 'read' an analog clockface. He can recognise that it's time for the news, or nearly mealtime. But he just can't translate the clockface into words – doesn't recognise that the small hand on 10 and the big hand on 5 means 25 minutes past 10. And this is not because he can't find the words; he just doesn't 'read' clock-language any more. Solution: we bought him a digital watch. Problem solved.

And here's another photo I took just a few days ago, when we had a very pleasurable day here with Allen's niece Helen and her husband Bill. Helen and Bill were holidaying down on the Gold Coast and drove up to spend the day with us. Helen is one of two daughters of Allen's late sister, his only sibling, who was much older than him. They had good fun going through some of Allen's old scrapbooks. At one stage we heard a hoot coming from Allen's office, when Helen came across a photo of her grandfather's old ute.

"We used to all go to the beach in that car when I was a kid", she said.

In those days no one worried about carrying a bunch of small kids in the back of a ute.

It was a lovely, relaxed day. Bill and I cooked shish kebabs and marinated chicken on the BBQ. And just as we were about to serve blueberry pie, a couple of friends dropped in and joined the party.

Allen, battling his own afflictions, and Helen, valiantly fighting MS for many years, obviously share the same gutsy and fun-loving genes.

Sunday visitor

Allen spotted it first. By the time I got to the kitchen window, our little visitor was happily sunning himself on the stones. But I think Allen said he had come down from the top of a nearby gas canister. I say 'I think' because it's very difficult for Allen to give a detailed, accurate account of any scene he's witnessed. He just can't find enough words to explain himself clearly. And if I ask too many questions to try and elicit information, he gets confused or upset. Then he's likely to tell me anything just to stop my questions.



Tree snake? Whip snake? Taipan??? (2011)

Whether this snake was climbing over the gas canister, or wound around the base of the canister is an important distinction. 'Climbing over' would mean this is probably a harmless tree snake. 'Wound around the base' means it could be a ground snake. In Queensland, snakes that climb up into trees and other structures are usually safe (unless the tree snake is a python and you're a baby or a little dog!) Snakes that only slither over the ground are best avoided, because they're more than likely to be poisonous. And even though this visitor was on the ground when I photographed him, I think he's either a tree snake (harmless) or a little whip snake (only slightly poisonous, and not very aggressive). (See * & ** below.) Whatever it is, you have to admire the wonderful camouflage. You could walk right by and never notice it.

Keelback on terrace steps (2010)

I don't think today's visitor is one of the little keelbacks who emerged from a nest under our terrace steps last year. The keelback had quite different markings, as you can see by comparing the top photo with this one of a keelback taken last year, when we seemed to have them all over the place for a few weeks during their breeding season. And even though keelbacks are ground snakes, in fact they aren't poisonous. Moreover, they are the only snake that can successfully eat small cane toads – those introduced pests that are slowly outcompeting our native frog populations. The cane toad is itself highly poisonous to any animal that tries to eat it. But the keelback somehow grabs the toad from the rear, and kills it before the toad can trigger its poisonous glands. Today's visitor didn't have the keelback's distinctive feature – those vertical black markings under the mouth.



Looking up our road, from our driveway entrance.

In our fourteen years of living up here in the coastal hinterland, I have never yet seen one of the lethal eastern brown snakes. Most snakes seem to me to be to be brownish in colour anyway, but the genuine brown snake is one of the largest and most deadly of the venomous snakes. My neighbour tells me that my predecessor on this block, the man who built this house and lived here for ten years, did occasionally see a brown snake on the property. But at that time, this was the only house on this side of the road. Adjacent one-acre blocks and blocks across the road had not yet been built on. Now there are houses up and down the road on both sides, and what were formerly neglected fields of tall grass and bushes are now lawns and gardens. Also, many people have dogs and though a brown snake can easily kill a curious dog, snakes generally prefer to avoid big animals and humans rather than attack, though we all have heard horror stories of aggressive brown snakes chasing people when they could easily have got away instead.

Oh dear. I didn't set out here to discourage friends and family from visiting. Honest. But I have learned to live with snakes, or with the knowledge that they're around. And let's face it: they're a lot less lethal than the gun-toting neighbours I might have had if I'd settled in some rural area of the USA instead of Australia!

An elegant carpet python making his way to the hidey-hole over Allen's office, where he spent two consecutive winters just a few years ago

* I sent photos of today's visitor to someone whose opinion I respect. He consulted all his snake books and came back with a tentative suggestion that our snake could be a juvenile taipan! That's not a good result (for us). He suggested I send the photos off to a local snake-catcher for a more definite ID. Watch this space!

** The snake catcher has replied: "The lovely snake you have is not a taipan or a brown snake. It IS a yellow-faced whip snake . It has front fangs but is not considered dangerous to humans. It will however cause some effects. As always seek medical advice." But my friend is not convinced. He's sent the photos to the Qld Museum for a second opinion! In any case, if I see it again I plan to treat it with great respect, whatever it is.

Surprise: 'We're expecting a baby!

I can't believe I've waited months to shout this news from the blog-rafters: I'm going to have my own grandchild at last!

I'm already a grandparent-by-marriage to Allen's two grandsons and one granddaughter. I have learned so much from that experience and been grateful for those kids' acceptance of me in that role. But in April my own daughter will herself become a Mum. I've been both amazed and overjoyed by how much that means to me at this stage of my life.

I had long resigned myself to the possibility that this might never happen. That helping to nurse Z through the difficult birth of a PhD and acting as granny to a Jack Russell who thinks she's human might be the closest I would get to the pleasures of grannydom. But when Z&B married one and a half years ago after several years of living together, I allowed myself a little frisson of hope.

Still, it came as a wonderful surpise when, not long after she and B arrived here for a family weekend in August, Z whipped out a little plastic wand showing two blue stripes. I let out a genuine whoop and leapt off my chair.

Then in October, Allen and I were invited to join Z&B in Brisbane on the occasion of her important nuchal translucency scan at thirteen weeks. There we saw the 'little sprout' herself – though the baby's gender didn't become known until a later scan. But as my son-in-law said after that first scan, "it's much more than just a jellybean now". And so it was. In fact, I was truly amazed at the level of development, even at that very early stage in the pregnancy. I had never seen a baby moving inside the womb, other than on TV. It certainly is a humbling experience.

Now, six months into gestation, all is going very well down in Brisbane. And up here in Doonan, there's knitting and sewing underway for both bub and expectant Mum. I am looking forward to holding 'our' baby almost as much as I once looked forward to her mother's arrival.

With all that's happened in Allen's and my lives in recent years – my mother's stroke and then death, the diagnosis of Allen's brain disease, his near-death and long, complicated recovery after life-saving surgery, and adjusting to my caregiver role – this truly is, as I told Z, the best news I've had in years, a reason to look to the future with something other than anxiety. Life goes on...literally. And what could be more hope-giving than a new little life.

(My daughter's blog about this happy event is Iddy Biddy Hippo.)

PPA and hospitalisation

I've written about this before (see Aphasia sufferers: Avoid hospital, if possible!). But something – I don't know what – has prompted me to summarise it here again.

My husband, Allen, was diagnosed with PPA in 2006. Annual scans since then show that the left side of his brain is deteriorating at a modest rate. And his communication competence has deteriorated accordingly. Even so, the extensive regime that he follows of various self-designed therapies of intellectual activity appear to be paying off, according to the gerontologist who treats him. And last month's annual visit to the specialist, following this year's nuclear scans, resulted in a big 'thumbs up': "You've made my day", was the gerontologist's summary. It might well have been otherwise, however.

In 2009, Allen required open-heart surgery to repair badly malfunctioning heart valves. The heavy sedation required for that invasive surgery, perhaps made worse by many hours on a heart-lung machine, had a catastrophic effect on Allen’s compromised brain. He experienced serious post-surgical complications. Initially, Allen did not wake for several days after surgery. When he did finally regain consciousness, he experienced epileptic-type fits. So additional medication was used to control those reactions, and this resulted in more days of virtual inertia and serious breathing problems. A tracheotomy had to be performed so Allen could be intubated, and a Pacemaker was inserted a few days later. After five weeks, further surgery was required when his original wound became infected and the surgical reconnections of the breastbone unravelled.

In all, Allen was nine weeks in Intensive Care, a further two weeks in hospital, and two more weeks at a rehabilitation hospital (though access to the latter was initially denied him, in view of his inability to fully cooperate with therapists; only the intervention of our surgeon secured him a place in rehab). Throughout Allen’s hospitalisation, many of the health professionals who treated him did not appear to allow for the complications that resulted from PPA brain damage. Eventually, after the second surgery that screwed together the damaged breastbone, Allen’s treating physician did give instructions that Allen should be allowed to do things at his own pace. This meant weeks of continued inactivity under full-time supervision of an Intensive Care nurse, and no rushing Allen to ‘get up on his feet’. Even so, it was weeks before doctors and nurses agreed NOT to give Allen sleeping tablets at night, as these had a devastating effect on his consciousness for at least 24 hours afterwards. However, they would not agree to stop giving him anti-depressants and, later, anti-psychotic drugs, even though the latter produced hallucinations that continued throughout rehab, where he was gradually weaned off all mind-altering substances.

It seemed to me that Intensive Care protocols made no allowance for the effects of brain damage on other medical procedures – even though we were actually warned about this in our pre-surgical briefings! After the operation, Allen was forced to try and stand and then walk long before he was sufficiently alert to cooperate – which placed great strain on his wound and, in my opinion, may even have contributed to the detachment of surgical repairs to the breastbone. Physical therapists did not vary their routines or timetables to take account of Allen’s good and bad periods of wakefulness. If he couldn’t manage the required movements at the time allotted for his morning therapy, often because of the effects of sleep medication, he would miss out on therapy for that day. There was effectively NO speech therapy administered in hospital or rehab – other than so-called ‘swallow therapy’ to determine what type of food he should eat and to ‘test’ his level of communication. Other than good physical therapy in rehab that resulted in his being able to walk with the help of a walking frame, the only useful therapy Allen received throughout his period in hospital or rehab was what I provided during long days at his bedside, seven days a week. Had he not had a partner to do that, he would most probably now be in a wheelchair in a high-care nursing home (which, at the time of his discharge from hospital, is where his physician told me to place him!)

We know that PPA damage is progressive, and that things may continue to get worse. But hospitalisation and surgery, far from being a remedy for a PPA sufferer, may well be a ticket to a nursing home, or worse. So before you or a partner who suffers from PPA undergoes any surgical procedure, be sure to do a lot of investigating and talking around. Make sure your surgeon AND relevant hospital staff understand something about PPA and the likely effects it may have on routine medical procedures. Find out what medication is routinely used in post-surgical treatment, especially in Intensive Care wards, and what if any effects such medication may have on a compromised brain.

We were lucky in having a surgeon who was totally supportive of Allen’s needs and, most importantly, who recognised and validated my expertise in interpreting Allen’s behaviours and responses and my knowledge about PPA. Initially at least, I did not enjoy the same relationship with the other health professionals who treated Allen through long weeks of post-surgical hospitalisation. And if your partner suffers from PPA, be prepared for the fact that if you have done the minimum amount of research about PPA that caregivers usually do, then you will probably know more about the condition than anyone who treats your husband in a routine hospital environment. So you, as advocate, may well be your partner’s most important healthcare provider. And this may be a tiring and thankless job, since health professionals’ initial response to you may well be hostile. You may have to fight your way into ALL consultations about your partner’s care – including being present when ‘rounds’ are done (initially, I was locked out of the ICU ward at these times). The only medical professionals who really know and understand your partner’s needs – e.g. your family doctor (if you’re lucky), your gerontologist or other specialist – will not be accessible to you and your partner in hospital. So your partner may be treated as if he or she is demented, which is distressing. Or just as bad, information, questions and/or instructions may be directed at your partner, which he or she either cannot understand or remember, and which he or she cannot tell you about, if you weren’t there at the time.

It is a battle to get best-practice treatment for a PPA sufferer in hospital. And I’m told by friends who have had a stroke or whose partner has had a stroke, that the same applies to most aphasia sufferers. So even though we who live with PPA are prepared for the fact that our lives have been turned upside down and it’s a constant battle to retain communication function, it’s an even bigger battle if you also have to undergo what might otherwise be a routine surgical procedure. Be prepared for that, be vigilant throughout the experience and then fight your way back to health afterwards, even if the medical experts give up on you.

Spring cleaning in Doonan

After many months of mainly pleasurable slogging, interrupted by a two-week trip to NSW, I can finally claim that the garden is (more or less) under control. Oh dear. That sounds too much like a statement from the anal-retentive school of gardening! Let's say, instead, that these days walking around my undulating 1.3 acres of greenery gives me pleasure, not pain – and that certainly wasn't the case a few months ago, where every tour of the garden left me feeling I would never be able to claw back the mountain of weeds that had overwhelmed so many garden areas.

First, the stairway down to the so-called 'camping platform' is relatively weed-free, and the weeping lilly pilly hedge, the planting of which was Allen's last big pre-operative effort, is now well mulched. Admittedly, that nice little bit of level ground near the pond that we refer to as the camping platform has only ever seen tents twice, when the guest-rooms overflowed on two Christmases. But I live in hope that one day grandchildren or other young visitors will set up their tents down there to enjoy some peaceful sunsets. Meanwhile, we ought to refer to it as 'the badminton court', as that's what we mostly use it for in summertime.

The pool surrounds, too, are all weeded, and the annual springtime show has begun. At the moment, it's bougainvillea. But the humble abelia (bottom right in the photo) and showier gardenias will do their thing a bit later in the season.

Just in case, dear reader, you don't appreciate the amount of toil and bother this has all required, here's a peak at how the above area looked before the big spring clean-up! And that's not just any old weed in this shameful photo. Most of what obliterated all the plants around the pool is a dreadful vine with barb-like seedpods. The most I could do in any day's weeding was about two metres of garden! And each day before coming indoors, I'd have to unpick hundreds of the sticky weed seeds off all my clothes and gloves. That's subtropical gardening for you!

Some of the less showy corners haven't been overlooked either. This little pathway leads from the vegetable garden below, up alongside a small watertank the contents of which are used to top up the pool, to an area alongside my studio where we keep our wastebins etc. It's a route I often take, but until now it's been a slippery bank of muddy grass, and more than once I've nearly tumbled in my rush to get from one place to another. So I decided to use pieces of preserved pine and some of the gravel that was left over from the new drains that handyman Neville installed under my raised vegie bed, to make myself a set of secure little steps here – part of my ongoing 'make the garden safer and easier for old age' program!

When we finished draining and raising that vegie bed, to take away the water that pours down onto this area from the hillside above during tropical downpours, this is what the vegie garden looked like.

The next photo shows what it looked like this morning. So it seems those drains are working well. The 40 sugarbags of mushroom compost that I mixed in probably helped, too.

Incidentally, the white chair in these photos is one of four that I picked up at the tip shop for a few dollars. I've placed them in strategic locations around the garden where Allen might need a short rest while taking his exercise. He can pretty much walk around the whole block now, thanks to four different sets of railings installed for us by Maroochy Home Assist.

The Home Assist Secure service is a State Government program that helps people who have disabilities continue to live in their own homes. Allen became eligible for this assistance when an Aged Care Assessment Team determined that his post-operative problems entitled him to 'high care' status. That ACAT assessment was intended to convince me that Allen should be placed in a nursing home. Luckily, it failed to do so, but it has proven to be a useful label for other reasons. 

So far Maroochy Home Assist has built us access ramps over door sills (when Allen was first home and needed to use a wheelchair), adapted our shower so that I could roll Allen in and out using a shower chair (that's also when he was first home – now he walks in and out on his own steam) and installed numerous 'grab rails' in the bathroom and toilet. They also send someone to clean out my rain gutters whenever I request it, and a plumber came to give me advice about our sewage drains. If there are materials needed for any job (e.g. the timber and cement for the various railings and support posts), we pay for the materials. But the labour is free. Unfortunately, they don't do big repairs or general gardening and weeding. But it's a great service, and we couldn't easily have managed without this help, especially in the difficult first months after Allen came home from rehab. A lifetime of our tax dollars coming home – that's how I see it!

The very first area I worked on when I began the Big Spring Clean was the garden alongside the driveway parking area. And I finished that just in time for our own little annual azalea show. In fact, this photo is now more than a month old, so the azaleas are almost ready for their post-flowering trim. But that's not nearly as photogenic a stage as bloom-time. So I'm showing you that slightly older photo here.

Luckily, my garden doesn't usually get as much out of hand as it did this year. But it was a difficult winter for both Allen and me, thanks in part to his fractured shoulder injury. Suddenly Allen again needed assistance with just about every one of the basic tasks he had relearned to do for himself over the previous year (like showering and even cutting up his food). So for four months during his slow recovery from the fracture, we focused mainly on indoor pursuits and twice weekly visits to the rehab hospital. And of course, we also spent a lot of time preparing for Allen's Sydney presentation. But things are getting back to normal now, so I hope that not only will it be easier to keep the garden in shape this summer, there'll also be more time for blogging.

Rose-coloured leaves on lilly pilly trees and azure flowers on jacarandas mean Spring has arrived in Queensland.

My Life in the Theatre – and Afterwards

What follows is a copy of a 'talk' that my husband, ALLEN HARVEY, gave in Sydney recently, at the National Conference of the Australian Aphasia Association. Allen had written the text over the previous two months, and rehearsed its delivery for weeks prior to the conference, which had the name: 'Beyond Words'.

Primary progressive aphasia, the condition which is slowly eating away at the part of Allen's brain that controls speech, was the subject of one strand of the Sydney conference. Allen's presentation, which was accompanied by a slide show containing 90 photos, formed an interlude between papers presented by speech therapists with a special interest in this form of aphasia. The text of Allen's talk and a selection of photos from the slide show are included in this post.

Allen read his talk from a written text, because even though he can no longer converse fluently in complete sentences, he is able to read just about anything aloud from a written text – word-perfect, in this case. Indeed, one of the conference participants congratulated Allen afterwards, saying: "Your speech was so clear that I understood you better than any other presenter at this conference!" The training of a lifetime still serves, I guess.

Here, then, is Allen's talk...

I was born with holes in my heart.


The doctor told my mother: “He will not live beyond his thirties.”

Look at me now! 81 and still going strong.

I had my first open-heart surgery in 1962. Last year, I had open-heart surgery again. The heart was fixed OK, but I had big problems after the operation.

I have Primary Progressive Aphasia, and my brain didn’t like all the drugs I had during surgery. So! I was in Intensive Care for nine weeks.

The doctor told my wife: “You’ll never take him home.”

Well, here I am again! Just stubborn, I guess.

Aphasia is a sneak. I didn’t feel anything. I never had a stroke, and I didn’t get hit in the head like some others. Actually it made me laugh when I said the wrong word, or when driving my wife asked me to turn right and I turned left. At first, I took no notice. But my wife and kids noticed.

I couldn’t remember names. I would say the wrong word and even stutter a little. This went on for some time. Eventually, we decided to see a doctor. We thought maybe I had a stroke.

 I had a brain scan, and the doctor told us: “No, not a stroke. You have Primary Progressive Aphasia. There’s no known cause. And it will probably get worse.”

Let me tell you about my life, so you will see what aphasia has meant to me.

All my life I’ve worked in the theatre. Here’s how I got started.

When I was twenty a friend asked me, would I be in a musical comedy? “We need men for the chorus”, he said. So I said: “All right”.

I went to a rehearsal and I saw a lot of people of all ages, talking and laughing. Suddenly a voice called: “Attention, please, ladies and gentlemen. I want to do the scene in the ballroom”.

I found out this man is called the producer, and he tells the actors what to do. I decided: that is what I want to do.

In the Sydney paper I found the Independent Theatre in North Sydney. It pre­sented plays and also had a Drama School. So I started doing two classes a week.

Over the next five years, I learned stage management at the Independent by watching the plays, and I learned producing by watching rehearsals.

So that’s how I got started. After that, I worked six years in stage management, production and acting, in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth.

These pictures show a few of the shows I worked on.

I also did tours to country towns...

...and several tours of New Zealand

In 1960, Canberra Repertory asked me to be their Manager and Producer. I said yes. With my wife Meril (Grace) and sons Julian and Andrew, I was in Canberra for four years.

Next, the Elizabethan Theatre Trust and the British Council gave me a scholarship to study acting and production in the UK for one year. And the French and German embassies added some money.

And so I visited drama companies and saw plays, operas and musical comedies in England, Germany, Italy and France – one hundred and twenty-nine different productions. On my way home, I saw twenty more plays in New York and Canada.

Back in Australia, the Theatre Trust made me production director of the Theatre Royal in Hobart. During two years there, I produced about fifteen plays, one opera and two musical comedies.

Next I went as director to the National Theatre of Perth, and after that back to Canberra for a while.

Through someone I met in Canberra, I was invited to Hawaii to open a new theatre for the Bishop Museum. I stayed two years in Hawaii, producing plays, exhibits, dances and songs – all relating to Hawaiian history. I also wrote, produced and acted in a play about Robert Louis Stevenson, who came to Hawaii many times.

Back  in Australia I moved into arts administration, first at the Australia Council and then as Executive Officer of the Tasmanian Arts Advisory Board.

Then I wrote two plays – one for the ABC and one for a theatre-in-education company. I also wrote dozens of radio and TV scripts for ABC education.

And I wrote and produced a series of musical revues.

In Tasmania in the late 70s I also met my current wife. Carol and I have been together for more than 30 years.



  Our family includes my sons Chris and Julian, daughter Zoe and three grandchildren.

Son Julian marries Teri in September 2009

  

Daughter Zoe marries Brandon in July 2009

Another son, Andrew, died in a motorbike accident. 

Julian & Chris at my 80th birthday

Andrew Harvey 1959-1968

When I finally retired in 1996, I had been a director, stage manager or actor on one hundred and sixty different productions. 

For the next 10 years Carol and I lived and travelled in developing countries, where she worked on aid projects.

We lived in the Philippines and Laos, and we stayed in Vietnam and Cambodia. We would visit villages and schools. Carol says I was like Prince Philip. I would walk behind her with my hands behind my back, and chat with everyone. 

Now I have a new job: dealing with aphasia! I’ve had speech therapy several times. I had two semesters at a University clinic for people with aphasia.  

This year, Carol and I took part in an aphasia clinic on the Sunshine Coast for eight weeks. The seven couples from that clinic have now formed the Sunshine Coast Aphasia Group. We meet two times a month for conversation and activities.

At home, I spend my time writing memoires and letters, reading, doing word puzzles and computer programs for aphasia, and singing every day.

Sam helps Granpa Allen with his speech therapy homework

I also try to keep active. I go to rehab twice a week for exercise and therapy.













And I help Carol in the garden.

Well, that’s my life so far. I’ve gone well past thirty. Wouldn’t my mother be surprised!