Sue Walthert

The moving poem “In Flanders Fields” was written in 1915 by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae for the men he buried in Ypres, Belgium, during World War 1. Recently our Flagstaff Community Choir has been singing the lyrics. In the second verse, a drum takes up the beat and the words connect with me.
My Grandfather Pops, an ANZAC soldier, marched in Flanders fields and in Gallipoli. He was decorated twice for bravery, imprisoned once for forgery and twice badly wounded. He returned home, his life muddied by war. He tried to wash that mud away – unfortunately, with alcohol. His life was one of suffering and sadness. That suffering is still felt through the generations.


Dad was a papyrophile; he loved paper. Not necessarily what was written on it, but the feel of it, the size, length and shape of it. He viewed paper in its various forms in a way that most people don’t: as the end-point of a long, careful process of ruling, sizing, cutting, fitting into a desired product.
Here comes Polio
(Read the first part of Carolyn McCurdie’s reflections on this topic 
I told myself it wasn’t so bad. After he’d knocked me down, he never kicked me. He never broke bones, never did anything that needed medical attention. In eight years, he forgot discretion only twice. Then I had the black eyes, fat lip, swollen, discoloured face that the world could see. I hid inside, rang in sick, made carefree jokes about walking into cupboard doors.
In 2003, a year after our youngest daughter died, my husband Chris and I travelled from our home in New Zealand to Oman to live and work for a year. The challenges of living in this fascinating culture helped us learn to live with our grief in a way we couldn’t at home. Gradually I regained my ability to write. When we got back to New Zealand, I started recording our experiences from that time. This is one of the stories.