Second Take

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http://www.abc.net.au/compass/s1618196.htm

Father Ted Kennedy (archival):
I remember one cold night about 3am being called out of my warm bed by a man called Hughie who was drinking at that time. But he had a friend and he was really concerned the friend didn�t understand Christianity, and he asked me to do down and tell him about Christ. That was one of the turning points of my life. I realised that it would be an affront to Christ himself if I were to go back to that warm bed having given a class in Christian doctrine in a place like this. I decided very strongly at that time I had to open my home to the homeless and that I had to fight for social justice.
Rebel Cooper BBC archive:
If I knew God, I reckon he�d be the same, Father Ted is powerful, he�s just, he�s understanding, people say they mightn�t like me or something like that, but Fr Ted accepts me for what I am, a person.

Narr:
It was here in Redfern that Ted Kennedy carried out the first act that branded him a radical � he opened up the priest�s house to Aboriginal people, having as many as one hundred staying at any time.

Father Ted BBC archive:
A presbytery should not be a fortress as so many presbyteries tend to be, where the poor particularly don�t feel welcome. But gradually the Aborginal people who are undoubtedly the most dispossessed in Sydney found it became their home and I think I see now that this place, the old presbytery is much more the home of the Aboriginal people than it is mine. I like to think of myself as their loving friend, their guest.

Narr:
Ted Kennedy died at the age of 74 after serving 31 years as parish priest at Redfern.

Custard flavoured milkshakes. Villages lost in time. A sense of community. All these things he craved, and apart from the custard flavoured milkshakes, which were rarely seen in Australian milkbars after the 1960s, he found all of these things in the Redfern Streets. His little family, him and the kids, found their peace and security behind the well locked doors, the grated windows. Until an evil landlord named Ian Tuit destroyed their cosy life; a pissy little man exerting power over the only person he had power over. And so he felt utterly betrayed. These dogs were everywhere, these evil little pricks out to destroy, grubs, absolute grubs, and yet through his own mistakes he had allowed these ghastly little people to have power over him; and he was betrayed, utterly betrayed, by people he had naively trusted.

It was cruel; to have so much faith and to be so utterly double crossed. But these slime buckets would never have had their power if he had not fallen off the Sydney real estate ladder; if things hadn't gone so badly. The years passed and the kids grew. They passed from Primary school to High School and still they were there, behind the Redfern walls. Major, the dog, made their little grouping seem like a genuine family; the constant barking of Lucky next door, neglected by their Lebanese owners, gave it a sheltering, neighbourhood feel. And Craig next door, with his quiet wife Mel and his two young children, Venus and Annise, was always kind. Until it came to crunch time and owners always win out over renters; and they were dynamited out of their home, the only home the kids had known for more than half their lives.

Everything changed, where they lived, his work. What had once been so secure, so much a part of who they were, disappeared. The neighbourhood characters who dominated their landscape simply vanished out of their lives. Sometimes it seemed as if the car drove through Redfern of its own accord. The streets were so plain, washed of colour. Little groups of aboriginal kids gung on the corners, their fast patois, the voices of the street, impossible to decipher. There were no parents in sight. He stopped and went to check the beer garden at the Glengarrie, that crummy little piece of concrete where he had been so happy, where the conversation flowed so wildly across so many interesting subjects, where people confessed and drank and laughed and moaned and partied, partied, because this was the best day, the best life, the single best place to be.

Now it had all changed. As he walked up from Bondi Beach his 18-year-old son walked past in intense conversation with a girl, a little nerdy, with glasses, pimply, that terribly awkward age. They didn't even notice him as they walked past; and he stopped and watched as they went down the slope and onto the beach, and then walked towards the waves, still in conversation about God only knows what. Life had passed him by with astonishing speed; and here he was watching his own son, talking to a girl! He had missed them, as he had always said, long before they were gone. But this time it was for real. This time there was only a week left in Sydney and it all came to an end; and the life he had built and the life he had lived, it too was being washed away into history.

Televisions were on everywhere; with the Australian Open on constant display. There was no loyalty to him; only loyalty to themselves. He knew the world was a harsh place, but had naively believed that if he did the right thing he would be rewarded, one way or the other. It was in the back of a cafe in Paddington that someone said: those who try their best are on the road with all the rest. And it was so true. It didn't matter how earnestly he had worked, how cleverly he had marshelled the words, how many hours he put in at the mill, his fingers flickering across the keyboard. It didn't matter because it would make no difference, whatever the result. They were here for the briefest of times; the human lifespan barely a blink in the flow of history.

His daughter, dolled up to the nines, went out to a party with a friend. She, too, was suddenly grown and flown, looking model-like, as he told her, as she flounced out the door, seeking his approval but at the same time determined to announce that she was woman, on her own, indepedent, almost a woman now. He had walked down the streets with the two of them on either side, snuggling close to him so that it was impossible to be any closer. Now they were teenagers and there was no snuggling to be had. Now he was old and they were young. Nausea gripped him as the medication changed. The person he was was not the person he would be. Sparkling sands were only part of the story. Now the narrative was entirely different. He could no longer suffer the journalist's disease - you're only as good as your last byline - because he no longer worked for a newspaper.

It had been the proudest moment of his ofe, there at the Sydney Morning Herald, when they had reached out their hand and given him the job. Now, decades later, he was the grey haired old hack and new young things populated the news floor and the general news pages. It was someone else's turn. But the fact that it was his own children's turn, their time to twirl in the spotlight, to live their own lives, was the hardest to bear. They had been so close, so inseparable, building their cosy union in a hostile world. But it wasn't to be, wasn't to be. He could not see any way out; except day by day. One thing passes and another begins. One door closes and another opens. How could we have been so stupid? How could they have been such arseholes? Couldn't they see his distress writ large?

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/fairytale-as-prince-visits-the-block/story-e6frg6nf-1225821403692

IMAGINE for a moment that you are a nine-year-old indigenous girl, and you've been told that a handsome young prince is coming to visit you.

What would you ask him about?

Little Peneloppee McGrath, who met Prince William on day one of his three-day Australian tour in Sydney's Redfern yesterday, didn't hesitate.

"Does your grandmother live in a big castle?" she asked.

"She does," replied the prince.

The exchange was one of many that will linger long in the memories of more than 30 delighted indigenous children, and hundreds of other Australians, who met Prince William at the Redfern Community Centre yesterday.

That such a meeting would ever take place was surely inconceivable, even 20 years ago. The community centre sits at the heart of The Block, a neighbourhood once notorious for filth, violence and Aboriginal hopelessness.

Successive governments poured money into The Block but in the end, it was the community - the Gadigal people - who took the place back from the pushers and spivs who once roamed its streets.

Such has been their success that instead of drunks rolling around, there was an ice-cream van parked there yesterday, selling soft-serve cones to the crowd.

Many people in the 1500-strong crowd admitted they'd come not only to see William, but to pay their respects to his late mother, Princess Diana, whom they loved.

http://www.smh.com.au/national/two-catholic-worlds-collide-as-church-disagreement-deepens-20100118-mgt6.html

The fight, ostensibly, is over a baptismal font and some words in chalk on a wall, but the latest in a series of rows at St Vincent's Catholic Church in Redfern shows the conflict runs much deeper.

A recent clash between the parish priest, a conservative Catholic from Brazil, and a group of long-standing parishioners is really a battle between traditional Catholicism and the more vernacular version practised in Redfern for years.

A group of St Vincent's church-goers has accused Father Clesio Mendes, a 41-year-old Perth-trained priest, of disrespecting local Aborigines by scrubbing a line of hand-scrawled poetry from the wall of the church.

They also say he has removed a baptismal font sacred to the memory of the late Father Ted Kennedy, the beloved former parish priest whose shoes his successors have struggled to fill.

The font was brought to the church by Father Ted, who is revered as a compassionate priest who was unafraid of church authorities.

Len De Lorenzo, who has attended St Vincent's for about 30 years, said the font had been removed by Father Clesio, prompting one concerned parishioner to send a petition to the Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, asking for it to be reinstated.

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/prevent-jail-time-for-aborigines-calma-20100122-mpyj.html

The money spent on incarcerating indigenous Australians would be better spent on preventative programs, a report has recommended.

Delivering his sixth and final Social Justice Report in Sydney on Friday, Social Justice Commissioner Tom Calma called for what he labelled "justice reinvestment" in communities with large numbers of offenders.

Indigenous adults were 13 times more likely to be imprisoned than non-indigenous adults, while indigenous children were 28 times more likely to be placed in juvenile detention, Mr Calma said.

He said better prevention programs were needed to target problems like substance abuse and chronic unemployment to help drive down the imprisonment statistics.

"You can put an individual offender through the best-resourced, most effective rehabilitation program, but if they are returning to a community with few opportunities, their chances of staying out of prison are limited," Mr Calma said in a speech at the Redfern Community Centre.

"The money that would have been spent on imprisonment (should be) reinvested in programs and services in communities where these issues are most acute in order to address the underlying causes of crime.

"Justice reinvestment is as much about economics as it is about good social policy."

Mr Calma, who steps down as commissioner next week, has also called for better protection of native languages.

"Prior to colonisation, Australia had 250 distinct languages which expanded out to 600 dialects," he said.

"Today, only 18 indigenous languages are fully intact and even these are endangered.

"Without intervention, indigenous language knowledge will cease to exist in Australia in the next 10 to 30 years," Mr Calma said.

Redfern Station, Sydney, Australia.