2/16

photo 1: snake on clock

photo 2: snake in rafters

photo 3: playground finished

photo 4: Pacha helps with playground construction

photo 5: goanna in garden

photos 6: A hot day


News Flash:

· Koko, from J-wave, has just been to visit us with her family here at ‘morinkokoe’ - which was lovely. It was great to see her enthusiasm for our ‘wild’ life here and to watch her daughter Tera laughing and playing with Ollie, Pacha and Yani. It was refreshing to feel their trust in nature, acceptance of our simple life and interest in practical solutions like our banana circles and compost toilet.

· We finished the playground at the school with the help of over 20 parents coming in at the end. The kids are very happy!
· We had a beautiful visitor, a carpet snake. In the morning Yani said:
‘Mum, there’s a snake on the clock’ in a very normal voice. I thought he was joking! He wasn’t. We were very excited and happy, the snake is harmless and will keep the native rats under control. Pacha wrote a story about it(attached).
· We started a new environmental program at school with our friend Dom involving all the children in a beautiful activity where they learned how everyone and everything is supported in the ‘web of life’.

* The weather has been hot. Ollie and the kids found a way to keep cool!

Blog:

Today I received an email calling for a ‘Remembrance Day’ (on February 16th) for victims of vaccinations. I read the heart-wrenching story about a mother who lost her child due to reactions from vaccinations (http://www.naturematters.info/ ) and share my tears.
I have heard many stories of other vaccination victims, in varying degrees of suffering that very rarely get any objective mainstream media coverage.

And I observe with deepening concern the chronic diseases increasing among children (asthma, allergies, continuous coughs and colds, etc, etc). I suspect that over-vaccination is one of the many contributing factors that seem to be weakening immune systems of children being born in our modern world. I wish I could believe that the drug companies who make these vaccinations do so because they truly only wish to alleviate suffering but my deepening suspicion is that their main motivation is to increase their profits.

(Recently the Australian government purchased ‘swine’ flu vaccines for every Australian and encouraged wide-scale vaccination – not only were their some devastating side effects, people soon realised that the actual disease was not as life threatening as the media had made out. In fact I found it an interesting coincidence that a major media group in Australia: Murdoch, is linked to the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute that I believe helped develop the vaccine which cost Australian tax payers over $130 million. Now apparently most of that vaccine has had to be thrown away because it was ‘out of date’.)

I am among the rare mothers who refuse to vaccinate their children. I accept the consequences of being regarded as ‘irresponsible’ by many people in mainstream society. These ‘unconventional’ choices started at their homebirths and will continue while their care is my duty.
I look at my children every day and marvel at their health and vibrancy. They are hardly ever sick. They have no allergies or breathing difficulties. They are great at sports, they do well in school and they are enthusiastic about life.


I don’t want to attack the whole medical world and I don’t want to argue with all the parents who seem to need to believe that what the doctor (and TV) tells them is always right, but I would sometimes like to feel some acknowledgement that I have not harmed my children by making unconventional choices like homebirth, non-vaccination, reducing meat and junk food consumption, travelling and living in ‘third world’ countries and letting them play in the dirt. I grow many different herbs in the garden and love studying their uses in healing (and am shocked to hear there is a move in Europe to make the use of many medicinal herbs illegal).

I want to celebrate the ‘wild child’ who has the capacity to survive and thrive in this changing world, both physically and mentally. I hope that one day this is acknowledged by ‘mainstream’ society.