Anne of Green Gables, The Diary of Anne Frank, Lipstick Dreams (starring Lorraine Bailey), The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin (Ken Lord), On Our Selection (Dad & Dave), Torchsong Trilogy, The Inquiry (based on the Fitzgerald Inquiry), Man For All Seasons, And The Big Men Fly, The One Day of The Year, The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, Noises Off, La Cage Aux Folles, Shirley Valentine, Love Letters, Don’t Dress For Dinner, Picnic at Hanging Rock

MacBeth, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet

Footrot Flats, Oklahoma, Brigadoon, Guys and Dolls, Stepping Out, The Sentimental Bloke, Some Like it Hot, Half A Sixpence, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, The Pirates of Penzance, The Mikado, Iolanthe, HMS Pinafore, South Pacific, The Blue Angel, Peter Pan, Oklahoma! Showboat, Oh! What a Lovely War, The Pyjama Game, The Desert Song, Rose-Marie, The White Horse Inn, Oliver, Annie Get Your Gun, Calamity Jane, Bye Bye Birdie, Billy Liar, Into The Woods, Les Miserables, The Snow Queen, The Silver Curlew (by Eleanor Farjeon), Finian’s Rainbow, Salad Days, I do I do, The Boyfriend

Wizard of Oz, Jack and the Beanstalk, The Adventures of Dick Whittington and his Cat, Cinderella, Peter Pan, Snow White, The Gingerbread Man, Pinocchio, Alladin, Mother Goose, Winnie the Pooh, Easter in Storyland, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Hating Alison Ashley, Banjo Paterson, I am David, The Silver Sword, A Christmas Carol, Bridge to Terabithia, Space Demons, James and the Giant Peach, Christmas with Rudolf, Nursery Rhyme Land, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The BFG, The 3 Stories, The Red Stories, Charlotte’s Web, The Australian Bush Christmas, Blinky Bill, Wombat’s Bumper Big Bush Bookcase

Gail Wiltshire with University of Queensland German scholar Geoff Wilkes.
Photo: Lyndon Mechielsen

TESS LIVINGSTONE
12:00AM NOVEMBER 27, 2019

A topic that began as an assignment in a University of Queensland postgraduate German class six years ago is about to culminate in an international literary conference in London, with 60 scholars from 14 countries.

The three-day conference — Between Departure and Arrival. Re-assessing the Work of Ilse Aichinger and Helga Michie — will be held at the Austrian Cultural Forum in Kensington and the Senate House of the University of London from January 15.

Geoff Wilkes, senior lecturer in the UQ school of languages and culture, will deliver the keynote address on his translations of Aichinger’s work. Her wartime novel, Die Grossere Hoffnung (The Greater Hope) — has been on the list of the top 100 novels of the 20th century in Germany since 1948.

COMMENTARY
Maxsted: hitherto a hero
ROBERT GOTTLIEBSEN

Three years ago, Dr Wilkes’s translation of the book won the Austrian federal chancellery’s translation prize, a first for an Australian.

Since then he also has translated Aichinger’s Film and Fate: Camera Flashes Illuminating a Life and Improbable Journeys. The latter is a collection of essays and articles about her family’s time living in London after the war. Dr Wilkes’s latest translation of Aichinger’s Kleist, Moss, Pheasants, a collection of works set in her home city, Vienna, will be published in time for the conference.

Scholars from Vienna, Salzburg, Texas, Maryland, Tokyo. Paris, Rome, Montreal, Michigan, Antwerp, Madrid, Zurich and London also will present papers.

The conference will focus on Aichinger’s writing and the experiences of “Mischling’’ (half Aryan, half Jewish) Viennese citizens under Nazi occupation. It will open with a forum on The Context, The Time, The Family, recounting how Aichinger and her twin, Michie, were separated before the occupation when Michie, an actress who later appeared in films including The Third Man, was sent to England on the last kindertransport to leave Vienna.

Michie’s daughter, Brighton-based artist Ruth Rix, will speak and be interviewed in front of delegates by Gail Wiltshire, the conference organiser, whose UQ thesis, supervised by Dr Wilkes, triggered the surge in scholarly interest in Aichinger.

It was a fleeting statement by Aichinger at the height of her fame in the early 1990s that resonated with Wiltshire when she was studying German that eventually led to the conference. Aichinger was asked: “What is your greatest earthly wish?’’

She answered: “To see my grandmother’s face again.’’

Wiltshire, who was born in November 1945, did not see the face of her grandmother, who died in Boonah, west of Brisbane, two days after VE Day in May that year after being told two of her sons, Francis and Jack Raymond, were missing in action while serving in the RAAF over Germany and Italy. Wiltshire’s father, James Raymond, had told her that her grandmother’s gaze across the veranda from the bed was “fixed on the track, waiting to see a boy with a knapsack wending his way towards her”.

While reading for her thesis, Wiltshire learned that one of the images that had stayed with Aichinger from 1942 until her death aged 95 on Remembrance Day 2016 was that of her Jewish grandmother, Gisela, being taken away with other family members in an open cattle truck over the Schwedenbrucke (Swedish Bridge) near the centre of Vienna. They were heading northeast, to the Minsk concentration camp, in what is now Belarus. Aichinger’s niece Rix told Wiltshire her aunt talked about her memories of that day “every time we met”.

After completing the thesis (which was awarded 95 and 98 per cent from external, native German-speaking markers), Wiltshire submitted it to one of Germany’s leading academic publishers, Konigshausen & Neumann. It was accepted within a week. She was driven by the fear “that no English reader body will ever know about this wonderful writer”. She was determined to lift Aichinger’s profile and to see that her work was made available internationally.

The Greater Hope and the three subsequent books were translated into English by Wilkes and also have been published by Konigshausen & Neumann.
Proceedings from the January conference will be published in German and English.

FOR MORE INFORMATION GO TO – THE GREATER HOPE / GAIL WILTSHIRE

Dr Nicklin is currently an Associate Professor of Gynaecologic Oncology at University of Queensland, Director of Gynaecologist Oncology at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital and he conducts his private practice at the Wesley. He is a member of the Australian Medical Association, the Australian Society for Gynaecologic Oncologists, the International Gynaecological Cancer Society, the Australian society of Colposcopsy and cervical pathology and the Australian Gynaecological Endoscopy Society. A/Prof is also a Fellow of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.

Dwight Ferguson, Principal, Ray White Ascot.

Champion auctioneer wins 400 fans on the night 29 May at Twelfth Night Theatre. Aware of the limitations of time and carefully scrutinized by an ever perceptive bear, Dwight elevates the gavel. Can we raise $20,000 tonight?

Joined by Gail Wiltshire the owner of Twelfth Night Theatre who, with Lisa Broadby, TNT, has collected incredibly exquisite Objet D’Art of Past Times, Dwight stands poised to captivate the audience. Can he achieve this? The second hand of the clock quietly moves to the future.

Dwight stands poised. Bear has moved into a relaxed mode knowing that with Dr Nicklin present and Dwight holding the gavel, all will go well.

Gail opens a reproduction Tang Dynasty inlaid jewellery box, which she bought in Western China some thirty years ago. Bear is not sure about this one. He eschews jewellery preferring bow ties.

And they’re off………..

(Please note intelligent head formations in the foreground. Have they previously been aware of the QCGC? Alas! Probably not). Bear feels sad about this.

It’s a dragon! Let’s breathe some fire into the mysteries of gynaecological cancers. The clock ticks.

Lisa presents a magnificent piece of 70’s Retro glassware. Even Dwight is astounded. Gail ponders. Is there anyone in the House who will value this astonishing piece?

Yes! It’s happened and the bidding is on. Gail is holding the clock. Time is passing.

Only twenty minutes to go. Can we do it?

“We did it!” Gail cries, as she stands on one leg!

We have all defied gravity.

Dr Jim Nicklin looks on remembering the prognosis he had delivered to Gail and her family some fifteen years previously. Gynaecological cancer is not the end. It can be the beginning. We have transcended time.

Would you believe it?

A voice from the back of the auditorium cries: “The Clock! The Clock! What price the Clock?” Knocked down at $90.

A group of 450 people, shoulder to shoulder, have conquered time.

All barriers can be broken by a bonded community supporting the ongoing research of QCGC.

Donna Lee, the Dubbo Housewife, star of MENOPAUSE THE MUSICAL – WOMEN ON FIRE, kisses the beloved head of Dr. Jim Nicklin – a benison, in fact. “Awww”, murmured Gail.

Donna Lee comes from a long line of show business royalty, and grew up travelling the country performing with her famous parents Frank Cleary and Gloria Dawn. Donna’s spirited performance as Ado Annie in Oklahoma won her a Green Room Award, followed by numerous other awards and nominations, including 2 Mo Cabaret Awards and a Glug Award for her spellbinding cabaret shows.

DONNA LEE LOVES DR. JIM NICKLIN.

DON’T WE ALL?

(Bear was so jealous he had run into the auditorium and found a bidder who would take him to a secure and happy home and give him a name. He did not want to remain ANONYMOUS).

Lisa Harrold ran a raffle which raised $1235. Donna Lee drew the tickets and learnt that she must “Dig much deeper!”

It was at this point that Donna revealed her own story and this was the highlight of the evening, more importantly indeed, than the show which had proceeded it.

Do you remember the wonderful Gloria Dawn?

Gloria Dawn was an Australian female actor and singer of stage and screen. She was one of Australia’s leading stage stars in her day.

Donna revealed to the audience that gynaecological cancer had taken her mother, Gloria Dawn, at the age of 47.

Gail Wiltshire recalls Gloria Dawn on stage at Her Majesty’s in 1962 in Albert Arlen’s production of “The Sentimental Bloke”. The ticket for this show was a birthday gift from Gail’s father. When she left the theatre and met her Dad, who of course like most Australian “blokes” preferred to spend his time at the cricket, she said:

Dad, I know what I want to do when I leave school.

I want to be like Gloria Dawn.

She was wonderful as Picklelilly Lil.

Theatre is absolutely amazing.

She and her father then drove for two hours into the night to a small country town, Boonah.

And the journey never ends.

We are all travelling, side by side, and we can change the world.

Bear is eagerly awaiting for you to suggest a name for him. He refutes anonymity. So do we all.

Collectively and individually, let’s support the QCGC and the wonderfully committed and devoted medical team who are aware,

in Queensland every year 1,000 women are diagnosed with Gynaecological Cancer.

Let us fight the anonymity and invisibility of these women who await our support.

Put your hand up for the QCGC.

Let’s move into action.

The clock is ticking!

Total amount raised by ticket sales, auction, raffle, donations and Past Times Antiques

Raffle of Past Times Antiques drawn by accountant, Shaun Reeves.

Past Times Corner in the foyer of Twelfth Night Theatre.

The BEARS prepare for the auction.

Yes! They know that the moment of departure is imminent.

They are aware that the clock is ticking.

Together we can contribute to QCGC research.

Professor Andreas Obermair (centre back row).

He is joined by Lewis Savage, Lisa Broadby (back row, left), Donna Kosiek, Vicki Sheppard, Professor Ken Wiltshire (back row,right), Kay Spencer, Gail Wiltshire (front row)

Wednesday 22 June, 2016.

We wish to thank Professor Andreas Obermair

Professor Andreas Obermair is a Brisbane-based, RANZCOG accredited Certified Gynaecological Oncologist (CGO). He is a full Professor at the University of Queensland and leads the Queensland Centre for Gynaecological Cancer (QCGC) Research.

The Queensland Centre for Gynaecological Cancer (QCGC) is a state-wide service for the management of women with gynaecological cancer (cancer of the ovaries, the uterus, the cervix, the vulva and vagina).

QCGC works in partnership with Queensland Health for the State’s gynaecological cancer services. QCGC is lead by a Director and seven gynaecological oncologists providing services to major hospitals in Brisbane, including The Wesley Hospital, Mater Misericordiae and Greenslopes Private Hospital. The team also travels regularly to regional Queensland, particularly Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, Toowoomba and Darling Downs, Far North Queensland and the Northern Territory.

QCGC Research is the research branch of QCGC and is an academic (non-profit) institution situated at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital (Herston, Brisbane). Its research funds are administered through The University of Queensland, School of Medicine.  The Director of QCGC Research is Professor Andreas Obermair who leads and develops the unit to produce meaningful research outcomes.

QCGC Research’s mission is to develop the best standard of care for women experiencing gynaecological cancer. This may include finding causes for and preventing gynaecological cancer or finding better treatment options to cure women affected by gynaecological cancer.

We closely work with gynaecological oncology groups nationally (The Queensland University of Technology, The Queensland Institute of Medical Research, and the Australian and New Zealand Gynaecological Oncology Group (ANZGOG)) and internationally (MD Anderson Cancer Centre, Houston, TX; Johns Hopkins Medical Centres, Baltimore, PA; Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre, New York).

The topics of our research are listed on Gynaecological Cancer. We focus on conducting surgical clinical trials in the field of gynaecological cancer but we also perform groundbreaking work outside the conventional clinical trials framework. We also teach and train new researchers (M.D. and Ph.D. programs) who will then take over as the research elite of tomorrow.

Contributors to QCGC fundraising event, MENOPAUSE THE MUSICAL – WOMEN ON FIRE, at Twelfth Night Theatre, Sunday 29 May, 2016.

A family group of the challenged was formed spontaneously in a Sing-Along at a party for a friend of the Wiltshire family, Harry Walker. His favourite story was Douglas Bader’s Reach for the Sky.

Bader was an inspiration and his courage remained a key motif for members of the group. Their first public performance at Twelfth Night Theatre, with the extraordinarily talented group, The Musical Chairs, was launched and titled Reach for the Sky.

Favourite songs selected by the group members have sustained this thematic:

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Love Changes Everything

Don’t Give Up On Us Baby

We Are One

Something Tells Me You And I Can Make It

Bridge Over Troubled Waters

The Australian theme of traditional ballads and national songs has remained ever popular in the repertoire of THE FANTASTIXXX as they travelled Australia.

Uluru

Alice Springs

Coolangatta, Gold Coast

Noosa North Shore (3 occasions)

Sydney

The Scenic Rim, Boonah, The Fassifern District

Caloundra

This group has never comprised of less than 50 members. All travelling costs (aeroplane, bus, cars etc.), accommodation and food, the distinctive RM Williams hats and bands, rainbow scarves, multi-coloured T-Shirts have been provided by Twelfth Night Theatre.
The self-named group decided that they were indeed fantastic and therefore they became one of Australia’s most exciting and productive, Creative Arts bodies –

THE FANTASTIXXX

• Membership free.
• Funded by the Oz People Pty Ltd trading as Twelfth Night Theatre.
• Not-for-Profit Organization.
• Workshops, coffee club, seminars, choir, drama group, music, movement and Creative Writers comprise core activities.
• Public display of the end product of creative activities:
  1. Musical performance/Choir
  2. Art auction
  3. Readings of verse and prose presented by individual members of THE FANTASTIXXX and/or group presentation

HIGHLIGHTS

CONCERTS:

Reach for the Sky

Wedding Choir for Vicki & John Peters

Camp Fire Songs

The Best Australian Ballads and Bards

Songs Under the Stars

Choir at the John Flynn Chapel, Alice Springs

Choir at St Stephen’s, Sydney

The Woodland Choir

ART AUCTIONS of the paintings/craft/sculptures of members of THE FANTASTIXXX have raised over $35,000. These auctions are held at Twelfth Night Theatre and there is no commission or fees.

JOIN US

Phone 07 3252 5122