VIVIEN WILSON begun her journey as a preventative health care nurse working in Aboriginal communities in QLD. She spent the next ten years working for World Vision in developing countries including Ethiopia, Mozambique, Rwanda, Liberia and Central Australia. Vivien is now a Minister and is the Director of Teen Challenge Centralia where she works with Indigenous youth caught up in substance abuse. The following is an extract from her best selling book A Full Life...
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n September 1954, I was born in Brisbane, Australia, the third child of a typical white, apparently middle-class family. Our family, however, bore some differences that probably account for my unusual career choice. We children knew that all men were equal, regardless of race or background. Mum bought us books about Aboriginal history and legends not taught at school. She had been brought up on farms in Kenilworth and Maleny, north of Brisbane, and was aware that the land had belonged to Aborigines. Her mother had told her about a dilly bag found on the creek of their property, although she herself had not met any Aborigines. Mum told us not to forget that certain white Australians had taken the land by foul means. Long ago, there had even been such atrocities as the white people placing arsenic in the flour rations given to Aborigines. On the other side, Dad’s uncle, Erle Wilson, had written a couple of books on Aboriginal and South Pacific legends, Far Away Tales1 and Churinga Tales2. Dad was a highly intelligent man but was unable to cope with the pressures of life, after being in the Battle of the Coral Sea as a seventeen-yearold. He manned an anti-aircraft gun on board the flagship HMAS Australia and witnessed the first, and countless more, kamikaze attacks. He had seen mates burn to jelly and many sailors eaten by sharks in feeding frenzies that turned the waters red with blood. Dad suffered a severe war neurosis and found that no one, unless they had been there, could ever understand. His continual tormented grinding of his teeth was enough to impress upon us the horror of war: not only the loss of many young lives but the severe damage done to those 1 Far -Away Tales, by Erle Wilson (Angus & Robertson Ltd 1954) 2 Churinga Tales, by Erle Wilson (Angus & Robertson Ltd 1950)
26 | Find a Christian Mission Magazine December 2011