Perth Voice Interactive

WITH a full-blown drama playing out next door, around 35 former national servicemen and their wives gathered at the Fremantle Army Museum last Friday to train up for a new battle.

As police bailed up an alleged armed robber on the roof of the Naval Store and confined the Nashos (as they’re known) to the barracks in case he jumped the fence, they joked that the last place he’d want to find himself would be amongst a troop of grumpy old conscripts trained to kill.

But these Nashos, amongst the 63,735 Australian men called up for mandatory national service through the dreaded “Birthday Ballot” between 1964 and 1972, never fired a shot in anger – and that’s at the heart of their grievance.

Despite undergoing rigorous and often demeaning army training, and living under the cloud of being sent to the front lines of the Vietnam War at any time, their lack of active combat denies them a veteran’s “gold card” which would cover all their medical expenses.

Veterans

The 48,000 Nashos who remained at home or were deployed as peacekeepers in places like New Guinea or Malaya only qualify for a white card which covers about 20 ailments directly related to their service.

With age now aggravating old injuries, hearing loss and mental scars, they launched a national campaign in September called Nasho Fair Go to try and get access to the gold card.

David Butterfield heads up the WA branch of the group and said the Nashos were fed up with arbitrary decisions about what qualified under the white card and delays in getting applications approved that have in some cases stretched into years.

He said army training was tough on their bodies, but the Nashos were made to feel like malingerers if they sought help at the base’s medical post and their attempts at self-care are now coming back to haunt them.

“I remember when I first went in Puckapunyal, we used to a lot of marching and running in the old bloody hobnail boots,” Mr Butterfield said.

“I don’t know, I might have one foot bigger than the other, but around the achilles area it was just red raw.

“Now, in city life I’d have maybe not taken a day off, but maybe put on some other footwear of something.

“But they’d just maybe give you a bandage and that was about it.”

Sitting around a table with Mr Butterfield and fellow Nashos Horace Misko, Chris Dawson and Cedric Bell, they all agree that being prepped up for Vietnam – the unpopular and undeclared war – took its toll, as did the demeaning taunts of their training officers.

Mr Misko was conscripted in 1972 as Vietnam wound down.

“But I’m in an infantry unit; I’m in the section of a platoon with 10 blokes and I’ve got an M16 machine gun.

“I’ve got the firepower, but I’m also the biggest target, and the number 2 on the gun, his job was to pick up the bandanas of ammo and change the barrel with a pair of asbestos gloves, because the barrel was so hot.”

Federal campaign coordinator Geoff Parkes met with federal veterans affairs minister Matt Keogh on September 7 armed with a petition containing 25,000 signatures and says he got a sympathetic hearing.

“There are many cases where National Servicemen stationed in Australia were subjected to verbal abuse an mental bullying that would not be tolerated today,” Mr Parkes said.

“Further, young men were forced, subject to imprisonment, to serve their country for ideals they did not support. And the community rallied against this injustice.

“In short, our medical and psychologicval welfare has been neglected for years by successive governments.

“We are upset that we are not taken seriously and urge government to address this matter with a generosity of spirit and compassion for a generation of men who were powerless to resist the law of the land,” Mr Parkes said.

A 34-year-old man was later charged with armed robbery.

THE respected Fremantle author and editor who ‘discovered’ Australian classic This Fortunate Life and mentored a generation of WA literati died last week aged 70.

Wendy Jenkins had been an editor at Fremantle Press for 40 years before retiring in 2020, and the authors she nurtured included double Miles Franklin Award winner Kim Scott and multiple nominee Joan London, “living treasure” Dave Warner, poet John Kinsella and a host of other award-winning writers.

Fremantle Press released a statement saying Ms Jenkins’ sudden death had left staff with “heavy hearts”.

“We were proud to call Wendy our friend and collegaue, and admired immensely her unsurpassable grasp of language, her quick wit, keen eye, finely tuned ear and her wicked sense of humour,” the statement said.

“Wendy, a fourth-generation resident of Fremantle, began working the Press first as a writer, publishing her debut poetry collection Out of Water into Light in 1979.

“Wendy went on to publish a second poetry collection, Rogue Equations, and four books for younger readers: Killer Boots, Hot News, The Big Game and Gunna Burn.”

At the time the publisher was known as Fremantle Arts Centre Press and operated from the heritage-listed building on Ord Street, where Ms Jenkins had been given a job as an assistant in the gallery.

She picked up some work assessing manuscripts for the press, one of the first being Albert Facey’s life story, which he’d titled This Fortunate Life.

Although Facey had only planned to print 20 copies for family and friends, Ms Jenkins later told colleague Georgia Richter the hairs stood up on the back of her neck as she read his extraordinary tale of abandonment and redemption.

New to the job, she later recalled that she didn’t initially cotton on to the work it would take to get the memoir into bookshops, but press boss Ray Coffey and other staff soon picked up her enthusiasm: “we had hooked onto a whale and it would be quite a ride,” she wrote.

The book became one of the Press’s most successful, selling more than a million copies and finding its way onto school booklists.

“In the 80s and 90s, Wendy played a significant role in variously identifying, nurturing and editing some of the most important Western Australian writers. Some of these were part of the writing community that she moved in and helped to foster,” Ms Richter wrote on Ms Jenkins’ retirement.

Devoted

“In recent years, Wendy has devoted more time to assessing the hundreds of manuscripts that come through the door every year (we estimate she must have assessed more than 10,000 manuscripts across 40 years!).

“She is a superb reader who can see the promise in a writer.”

Ms Richter said Ms Jenkins had felt a huge sense of responsility as a custodian of stories and always worked for the good of cultural literacy and the development of WA writers.”

In 2018 Ms Jenkins was awarded an AM in the Australia Day honours for her services to literature.

At the time she said: “Editing has been at the centre of my working life, and I have been privileged to be present at the emergence and unfolding of some of this state’s, and this nation’s, most defining voices, stories and talents. It has been work of quiet passion, from which I have gained more than I have given.”

Ms Jenkins is survived by her sister Lois and brother John.

AN UNAUTHORISED demolition of a heritage-protected Mount Lawley house has seen the son of a former Stirling mayor fined $8,000.

The Building Services Board issued a $4,000 fine to building company Riviera Homes and another $4,000 fine to company owner John Philip Italiano, son of former mayor Giovanni Italiano.

Number 5 Dene Street sits in Stirling council’s heritage protection area, and Mr Italiano had approvals to undertake some limited renovations that were supposed to comply with the rules around maintaining heritage character.

But Stirling council issued a disciplinary complaint with the state building department after discovering the works had gone far beyond what was allowed.

A release from the Building Services Board states the home was “mostly demolished despite requirements to keep key parts.

Slab left

“The approval required sections of the original house to be retained, including the roof structure, front facade, a verandah and particular walls. 

“However, site inspections and other evidence later revealed most of the original building was demolished, with only the slab and part of the front facade kept,” the board said.

The BSB says other unapproved works on the site included a below-ground swimming pool, a loft, changes to the roof, walls, windows and stairwells, and new areas added to the floor plan without approval.

The fines were issued over the company and Mr Italiano’s conduct breaching WA’s builder registration laws. The BSB says Stirling council’s still “in discussions” with Mr Italiano as to whether all the unauthorised works will be approved retrospectively. 

Building and Energy Department executive director Saj Abdoolakhan said a builder 

A COMMUNICATION board installed at Maylands’ Gibney Reserve is a Perth first, letting kids communicate no matter their language abilities – or even if they don’t speak at all. 

Communication boards are more commonly seen in hospitals and rehab settings, helping people communicate via pointing to symbols if their voice is injured, if they’re on a ventilator, or if they don’t have a common language with staff. 

The boards have also proven effective in helping kids who don’t speak to develop communication and socialising skills.

Socialising

Bayswater council won federal government funding to help upgrade Gibney Reserve in line with its plan to make play spaces more accessible and inclusive.

Bayswater mayor Filomena Piffaretti said via press release: “We all know children learn through play, so I am delighted the City has been able to enrich the interactions between children and their caregivers when they visit their local park.

“This communications board will assist children with disabilities and people who are non-verbal to communicate with their friends and family while enjoying the space. 

“Using the symbols and icons on the board, children can point or gesture to emotions that describe how they are feeling, or to different playground elements and lead their parent or caregiver in the type of play they want.”

The park’s upgrades include a new sheltered, accessible bbq area, picnic spot, and other playground upgrades based on feedback from nearby Maylands Peninsula Primary School students who wanted more of a nature-play adventure-style playground.

“Local residents told us they wanted the playground to be accessible to everyone, so the communications board is one of a range of new additions including a basket swing, harness swing and wheelchair accessible carousel,” Cr Piffaretti said. “These complement an interactive sand table that will allow children to experience sensory play.”

Bardon Park in Maylands is the next to benefit from the accessible playground movement, with council endorsing Cr Catherine Ehrhardt’s motion to install a wheelchair-accessible swing there at its December meeting.

by DAVID BELL

WRITER, horse trainer and literature lecturer Portland Jones will immerse herself in the historical surrounds of Peninsula Farm as a writer in residence.

Dr Jones will use the time to work on her third novel, which harks back to 1860s Perth. 

Her first novel Seeing the Elephant was praised as a sensitive and lyrical Vietnam War-era examination of learned helplessness, which was explored through the relationship between a Vietnamese translator and an Australian soldier sent to the Vietnamese highlands to recruit and train the local hill tribes for the war effort. 

Her second novel 

Only Birds Above follows a blacksmith who served in the 10th Light Horse Regiment in World War 1 and explores the impact of war across generations. 

For her third novel Things of Whim and Bone, Dr Jones has looked deep into her family’s history for inspiration. 

Her 15-day residency at Peninsula Farm is part of the third year of the Inspire Writers in Residence program run over summer by the National Trust 

WA and the state culture department.

NTWA CEO Julian Donaldson says “connecting artists with heritage is an important way to take a new look at the shared stories that bind us and connect generations”.

Things of Whim and Bone

by PORTLAND JONES

FOR an historical novelist your own family is a rich seam to mine for stories. 

My great-great grandfather John Kirk arrived in WA as a convict in 1865 aboard the Vimeira. 

My name, Portland, he gave to his first-born daughter and was the port in England from which the Vimeira sailed. 

I’ve always felt a connection with John because he was a blacksmith and worked with horses, as I do. 

The Vimeira’s manifest also records that he was literate and had lost a toe in an accident – another connection, as I have similarly lost a thumb. 

The novel I am currently working on, Things of Whim and Bone, is partly set in Perth in the 1860s. 

The opportunity to immerse myself in the history of the Peninsula Farm building is very exciting. 

In the 1950s and ‘60s the farm was used to keep and train racehorses and this, to me, feels like another significant connection. 

I am fascinated by the stories that are not always privileged by official histories, by the stories of women and those of the original custodians of the land, the Whadjuk Noongar people. 

I’m also interested in the mighty Derbarl Yerrigan, which flows past the farm, it is both constant and ever changing and reminds me that against the backdrop of nature our own lives are insignificant. 

STORIES, photos, documents, memories and meanings are sought to tell the history of Maylands’ Peninsula Farm, stretching back to when the area was known as Wu-rut by its traditional Whadjuk Noongar owners.

The property’s been vested with the National Trust since 1977. Ahead of the 2029 bicentenary of colonisation, the National Trust WA has brought in social impact consultants KOTA to compile a cultural landscape plan for Peninsula Farm. 

The plan aims to integrate the land’s many histories and meanings across the centuries, from its long Aboriginal history when it was known to the Whadjuk Noongar as Wu-rut or Woorat, to the 1830s colonial era farming by Joseph Hardy, the surrounding peninsula’s industrial transformation in the early 1900s, and its modern-era rebirth as a heritage site.