SYDNEY PARK AIDS MEMORIAL GROVES - SPAIDS 37th PLANTING

REMINDER! REMINDER! REMINDER!

37th Sydney Park AIDS Memorial Groves Tree Planting -SPAIDS

Linocut of SPAIDS REFLECTION AREA presented to SPAIDS by Lenore Bassan in 2006

11:00am Sunday 29 JULY 2012

Contact: Mannie De Saxe, SPAIDS (03) 9471 4878

josken@josken.net

http"//www.josken.net/spaids1.htm



Sydney Park, St Peters

Transport: 422 Tempe bus to St Peters station, Princes Highway; train to St Peters Station; car to car park in Barwon Park Road on west side of Park.

Sydney City Council has advised SPAIDS that the 37th tree planting will be at Sydney Park on Sunday 29th JULY 2012.

The 37th SPAIDS planting between 11am and 2.30pm will be in the dedicated AIDS Memorial Groves, signposted, in the park in Sydney adjacent to Barwon Park Road off Princes Highway. Look for the Old Brickworks Chimneys entrance, opposite St Peters Station.

SPAIDS invites you to plant a young Australian tree provided by Sydney City Council's tree nursery to commemorate the life of someone who has died from HIV/AIDS. SPAIDS plantings also include commemorating lesbians, gay men and transgender people who have died as the result of violence, the Nazi Holocaust and as another memorial alternative to the Quilt Project and Candlelight.

SPAIDS advises that plantings are also to commemorate friends, relatives and people known to you who you may wish to remember by planting a tree in a memorial grove area.

Food and drinks should be available from the Kiosk in the Park, but should it be closed, nearby King Street, Newtown has many cafes.

SPAIDS has a complete listing of all names commemorated since the first plantings on 15 May 1994. The list has about 1200 names after 36 plantings, and is available for viewing at each planting day. To date over 8000 trees have been planted in the Groves.

Join us for our 37th planting and visit the Reflection Area in remembrance of those we have lost in our communities. Plant more trees and help to enhance the growing beauty of the SPAIDS Groves.

PETER C OLLARD - SISTER MARY MARY QUITE CONTRARY - GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN!!

I met Peter Collard at his flat in Randwick in April 1988.

I had been to my first demo as a gay man when, at the age of 61, I discovered that there was to be a gathering outside the British Consulate at Circular Quay in April 1988 to protest Margaret Thatcher's introduction of clause 28 into the British Parliament. This clause was as homophobic as they come. It was an attempt to stop any mention of homosexuality in schools and also an attempt to prevent gay teachers being employed in government schools. It was a vicious attack and was so outrageous in its discrimination and vilification that it needed to be protested as much as possible and wherever possible.

At this demonstration I was informed that it was being held by a group called Gay Solidarity which held regular meetings at members' homes because they didn't have enough money to have their own premises.

The meeting to which I was invited - my first ever meeting to a specifically gay event - was to be held at Peter Collard's flat. Coincidentally, at that meeting I met Kendall Lovett, my partner, and the rest, as they say, is history!

Peter Collard became a very good friend and over the years he demonstrated what true friendship meant when we established the Sydney Park AIDS Memorial Groves on 15 May 1994. Peter must have come to every tree planting from then on up to and including the last one on 31 July 2011.

Peter's other persona was Sister Mary Mary Quite Contrary and it was in his Sisterly capacity that MMQC, as he was fondly known, mustered members of the Order of Perpetual Indulgence to come to tree plantings and do a "Blessing of the Trees" at every event.

Peter was an ongoing member of Lesbian and Gay Solidarity as the group became in 1992 after changing its name from Gay Solidarity, and contributed items to the LGS newsletter when possible.

Peter set up our web site in 1999 and taught me how to upload items to our pages and we are eternally grateful for all the hard work he did over the years to help us in whatever way he could.

Peter's life was complicated by the fact that he had a Thai partner who subsequently died of AIDS, leaving a grieving Peter and a son and other relatives in Thailand.

In fact Peter was due to spend November 2011 in Thailand when he seems to have been found dead in his flat in Randwick about 24 October 2011.

We still have no information about his death, but we are profoundly saddened and affected by his death at the very young age of mid-fifties!

We will ensure that trees are planted for Peter in the Groves which he came to love so much.

We will miss you Peter!

The following item was on page 9 of the newsletter of the New South Wales Anti-Discrimination Board issue "Equal Time Number 83 Summer 2011: