The Australian Women's Weekly August 2016

I WAS FOUR YEARS old when my best friend was abducted. We’d been inseparable since she was born, two months after I was, and had spent much of our short lives sharing playtime and imaginary tea parties. Our happy, simple existence was a far cry from the adult complexities that, it turns out, were playing out over our heads. I’ll never forget the morning my parents told me her mum had taken her back to Germany to live – they’d stolen off to Melbourne Airport in the night-time. I recall thinking, too, that my mum seemed remarkably unsurprised. Later that day, we visited my friend’s dad, a dark, hunched figure who couldn’t bear to see me after that. I was too much of a reminder of his daughter. Most of…

PEARL OF WISDOM “Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world.” K. Wilson, Deakin, ACT. Believe in miracles It was wonderful to read about Kerri-Anne Kennerley’s husband, John, and his journey through the early stages of recovery (“The Day My John Came Back To Me”, AWW, July). There are small miracles which Kerri-Anne values; those miracles have brought the power of their love, strength, the good doctors who have always held a belief John can recover and the healing from his beloved retriever, Digger. S. SEYMOUR, NORTH TAMBORINE, QLD. Let horses run free I read with horror about our beautiful highland ponies (The Battle To Save Snowy’s Brumbies, AWW July). I am a horse and animal lover, and I find it…

Our story on Cate McGregor, (“The secret I kept for 50 years”, AWW, Jan 2014) who transitioned from male to female, is still striking a chord, two years after it was published, as this new letter shows: My oldest child, aged seven, decided to change gender 10 months ago. It has been up and down at times, but she is happier and much livelier as a girl than she ever was as a boy. Articles that I have found, such as this one, have made my life a lot easier. My parents are very strongly Catholic. There had been a lot of criticism of my parenting, and derogatory remarks towards myself and my child. However, that began to change when Mum started reading articles and viewing TV shows about transgender…

FOR A DECADE, every trip to The Royal Melbourne Hospital seemed to be tinged with dread. With her husband, Greg Lange, locked in an unwinnable battle with brain cancer, Carrie Bickmore remembers lurching from one MRI to the next, her stomach churning every time they had to wait for test results. “That’s the thing – it goes on for so long,” says The Project co-host. “There are periods of inactivity where you go for the MRI and there’s no change, and you go, ‘Hey, we can breathe for another six months’, but it’s only six months that you’re breathing for, and then, in the months leading up to the next MRI, you’re already fearing what that result is going to be. It’s just a cycle and it goes round and…

Let’s celebrate! Twenty-four years after the “annus horribilis” that saw her children’s marriages in ruins and a terrible fire at Windsor Castle, the Queen celebrated her official 90th birthday with family unity, ear-to-ear smiles and a debut Buckingham Palace balcony appearance from her great-granddaughter Princess Charlotte. The annual Trooping the Colour was truly historic and, at The Patron’s Lunch the next day, 10,000 charity workers dined along The Mall. A very Royal Ascot Despite months of fabulous – and exhausting – birthday celebrations, the Queen still had energy to spare to enjoy one of her favourite events of the year, Royal Ascot. In high spirits, Her Majesty attended throughout the racing festival with her family by her side and was regularly greeted with cheers of “Hip, hip hooray!” In a…

THERE WAS A moment back in her Sydney hotel room after the best night of her life, a night when Magda Szubanski, aka Sharon Strzelecki, won Book of the Year and Biography of the Year at the prestigious Australian Book Industry Awards in front of a crowd that included rock star authors Jeanette Winterson, Gloria Steinem and Tim Winton, when Magda said to herself: “I must remember to tell Dad … and then I thought, ‘Oh, he’s dead’.” It’s 10 years since cancer claimed Zbigniew Szubanski at the age of 82. “I’ve never forgotten that he was dead before, but it was like for a moment he was so present,” says Magda. Actually it’s no surprise that Magda conjured her father at this peak of celebration, for the memoir, titled…