In the lead-up to the official launch of the upgrade to the Dorothea Mackellar Memorial in ANZAC Park and the opening of Maas Walk, local author Cate Clark has put pen to paper to record her own reflection on the late Mikie Maas, who was instrumental in having the memorial sculpture built in 1983.
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As I entered the door to Mikie Maas’ home in March 2011, to conduct a pre-arranged interview, I was urged to take a lucky dip in a box which she had sitting in the living room.
I must confess to being a bit bemused at the concept of dipping my hand into a cardboard box full of wrapped items.
A lucky dip container seemed ‘odd’ for a lady who had spent most of her entire adult life in service to the community and was as well-known in her selected home town of Gunnedah as the poet muse, Dorothea Mackellar, with whom her name was often associated.
However, not wanting to appear rude (and after a second urging), I pulled out an item and placed it in my briefcase to open at home and at a later date.
It was only upon reflection at her passing that I realised that this lucky dip said quite a great deal about Mikie, her enjoyment in giving, her determination to make things happen – I felt pretty sure I would be rugby tackled to the floor and a gift pressed into my hands if I didn’t take one willingly – and her ability to think of new and unusual ways to see and participate in a world that she was not in the least jaded about.
It also certainly made me reflect on my life experiences in this community and how very much Mikie had been a part of them – without me ever really being aware of it at the time.
As a child of the 1970s and 1980s my home was ‘Country Party’ and that was that. I don’t know which way Mikie’s leanings were on the local council, but I do know that it wouldn’t have mattered. She could have been Labor, Democrat or Communist but in my home she was revered as someone putting local history on the map by not only ‘talking the talk’ but by ‘walking the walk’ to make it actually happen.
Politics wasn’t talked about much unless it was to cast aspersions toward the Labor Party (saying that you endorsed Gough Whitlam would have led to excommunication from the household) – but Mikie was in a category all on her own and it was rare that my mother, most particularly, wasn’t heaping praise upon a person she believed was not only identifying Gunnedah’s rich past, but was also placing it on display for the world to see.
Mikie said to me that “not everyone takes enough notice of the things they are so used to” so it was with almost a tourist’s eye that she set foot into her chosen home town in 1969, looking immediately for “some memorial” to Dorothea Mackellar – knowing of course of Dorothea’s connection to the local community through the property, Kurrumbede, where she had holidayed as a young woman.
To Mikie’s abject and absolute astonishment there was nothing. She asked herself ‘why was there nothing to commemorate her contribution’? And pretty much the rest, as they say, is history – with lasting memorials to Dorothea in the form of both the statue sitting adjacent to the Visitor Information Centre and the Dorothea Mackellar Poetry Awards both being achieved under her watch.
It is not to say that others didn’t help and in the course of the conversation Mikie was most keen to mention locals such as Judy Guest, George Paul, Anne Knight, Jenny Hawkins, Brian Gregson, Mary Darling and Don Thomas as being instrumental in the advent of the statue and the poetry awards.
Upon reading the transcript of the interview she even asked of me “do me a favour and sneak Bill Clegg in, he would be so hurt if he ever read this transcript”.
Earlier in the conversation she had mentioned Bill with the aside that “I worry about him. I have been praying for him for 20 years” – a statement both of her character and faith, as well as her dedication to people and to causes that she thought worthwhile.
Even as she grew more unwell with the illness that eventually claimed her, Mikie was still involved with those causes. She was still supporting the poetry awards, writing a chastising letter to the Trust of Dorothea Mackellar concerning their limited permissions to publish photos or poems by Dorothea on the awards website, and also attending the 2010 awards ceremony despite being obviously not well.
Similarly, in 2011, shortly before my visit, upon visiting the park where Dorothea sits sidesaddle and resplendent, Mikie was very disappointed with the state the statue was in: “I went straight over to the Visitor Centre,” she said.
It says much about the respect that Mikie was held in that the problems were sorted out very quickly and Dorothea was soon returned to her pristine state by the council.
With the cleaning up and upgrading of the area completed this year, it is only fitting that tourists and townspeople should see her name accorded the respect of appearing alongside Miss Mackellar’s – because without Mikie’s enthusiasm, dedication and determination, the local connection to one of Australia’s most famous poets would have been lost.
Such an attribution is also something that perhaps could not have happened in Mikie’s lifetime, as I feel reasonably sure she would have rejected the honour – seeing Dorothea as the part of our history that should be honoured – not herself.
However, I see this differently.
I see Mikie as a rich thread of Gunnedah’s historic tapestry and, whether she wanted it or not, incredibly important to the idea that one person’s drive, integrity and passion can make a difference.