Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
coped, even while missing their mother desperately. It has helped our
relationship that every chance I've had I've taken them overseas on
my humanitarian trips as a politician and on behalf of the Red Cross.
Because they've seen the plight of people in the developing world with
no clean water, or suffering from AIDS, they understand why I do what
I do, and my absences from home are easier for them to bear.
I took them to Thailand's Agape Children's Home, which cares for
children with HIV/AIDS and was established by a Canadian woman,
Avis Rideout, in 1996. We had a short holiday, but the trip, I made clear
to Brooke and Dillon, was about working with the kids at the orphan-
age. I told them to get their crying over before they left home.
I was so proud of them, as they rose to the occasion. Brooke was
brilliant. They say babies turn adults into children and children into
adults, and this was the case with Brooke. She read to the little ones,
fed them, gave them love. There was one baby whose mother had died
of AIDS, and the child had contracted the HIV virus from her. Many at
the home believed that you could catch AIDS from simply touching a
person who has AIDS, but we knew that was not true. Brooke simply
picked up the baby and cuddled it. The others gasped. That child is
now thriving.
Dillon and I rolled up our sleeves and built a playground for the
home. We made play equipment and bought life-size wooden ele-
phants, horses, lions, tigers and zebras and concreted them into the
yard. We erected soccer posts and cubby houses and painted them in
bright colours. We constructed five bicycles from old discarded parts.
After we returned to Australia, I raised the funds to buy a bike for
each of the 58 children at the Agape home. They all rushed out of church
on Christmas Day to find the bikes waiting for them. The trip to Thai-
land awakened in Brooke and Dillon a need to help the less fortunate.
Every parent wants to leave their kids with something, and it is
my dearest wish that Brooke and Dillon become decent, independent,
compassionate adults, treating everyone the same, with courtesy and
respect. I want them to be leaders, not followers. When I was on the
ice, the other guys were procrastinating one day when the weather was
truly frightening, but I simply kept on going through the blizzard and
over the pressure ridges. They saw me pressing on, and they followed.
That night, I texted to Brooke, 'Never be afraid to take control because
this world needs leaders.'
