Feast and Famine

There is an interesting series of human interest videos on the ABC Northern Tasmania website. The overall topic is 'Change' but this has been interpreted in many ways.

I provided the producer, Richard Pree, with some scanned photos from our family albums, and a recording of me reading a couple of extracts from my book. He then put these together to produce a very moving short video.

The piece begins with a kiss. My father was in the Air Force, transferred from his home state of Western Australia to Melbourne, when he met a beautiful girl. My mother was 16 when they met and 18 when they married.

While I was looking through the albums I came across a photo of my mother at a party with the television star Graham Kennedy. Look how beautiful she is.

The piece ends with another kiss. This time my father is 90 and my mother 84. She has only months to live, but their love burns as brightly as it did at their first embrace. Even her Alzheimer's Disease cannot quench its flame.