Gibber’s Creek Gazette, 22 March 1973
Sit-In Over Oak Tree, by Cheryl Gladstone
Gibber’s Creek’s first ‘sit-in’ yesterday against the cutting down of the much-loved big oak tree at Buttons Corner has resulted in an agreement with the Gibber’s Creek Shire engineer to widen the road on the other side, leaving the local landmark untouched.
‘I’ve loved that tree since I was a toddler,’ said Mrs Gladys Oppenheimer, 89. ‘It would have been like losing my best friend. You don’t have many best friends left when you’re my age. I didn’t want to lose that one too.’
More than fifty people attended the sit-in, organised by the Gibber’s Creek Women’s Electoral Lobby and the Senior Citizens Action Group. A number of Gibber’s Creek HSC students also attended, brought along by teacher Ms Isabelle D’Arcy, though strictly as observers of democracy in action.
Pictured from left to right: Mrs Gladys Oppenheimer, her granddaughter Elsie Sampson, Des Muttock, Ruby Osbourne . . .
SCARLETT
The woman stepped towards her, then stopped. ‘You really are Sharon Taylor? From the River View Home for Crippled Children?’
‘My name is Scarlett Kelly-O’Hara. I live with my sister on a property outside town. But, yes, I used to be Sharon Taylor. And I used to live at River View. But it’s never been called a home for crippled children.’
‘You . . . you can’t be. My Sharon couldn’t move. The doctors said she’d never even be able to sit up, or grasp anything. They said she’d die before she was five . . .’
Scarlett felt every vein burn liquid fire. ‘You’re Sharon Taylor’s mo— You gave birth to Sharon Taylor fifteen years ago?’
‘I . . . Yes.’
‘Your daughter is still alive? Presumably you’d have been told if she died,’ Scarlett added bitterly.
‘I . . . I suppose so. I didn’t think!’
‘Then it seems the doctors who told you she’d die before she was five years old were wrong. I don’t suppose you’re here to try to see her? Or her grave?’ It was the final tingle of hope.
‘I just stopped off the highway for a sandwich on the way back from seeing my sister.’ The woman sounded bewildered. ‘But you’re my Sharon!’
For a horrible moment Scarlett thought the woman was going to embrace her. She would rather be held by a dead fish.
She tried to say, ‘Go jump in the lake,’ but nothing came.
Mark too still looked stunned. He blinked, then stood, protectively, in front of the wheelchair. ‘Sharon Taylor did die, just like the doctors told you she would.’ His voice gained strength. ‘This is Scarlett Kelly-O’Hara, an entirely different person, who is,’ he paused and looked at Scarlett, ‘beautiful.’
‘No! Sharon, I need to . . . We have to —’
‘Goodbye,’ said Scarlett, her voice carefully steady. She managed to steer her wheelchair out the door. They were ten metres down the footpath, the woman standing in the doorway, staring after them but, thank goodness, not following, before Mark asked, ‘Can she take you with her?’
‘What?’ Scarlett hadn’t even thought of that. Had that woman any rights over her? She tried to think; remembered; shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. The River View Board are my legal guardians. My parents . . . that woman . . . they signed over guardianship when they sent me there. I suppose they could go to court to get me back.’
‘Court cases take a long time,’ he said reassuringly. ‘And when you’re sixteen, you can choose where you want to live anyway.’
‘I . . . I didn’t know that.’ Had never needed to know that.
‘Mum tried to make me leave the Chosen. But I was over sixteen.’
‘Why didn’t she want you to stay there?’
‘She wanted me to work in a nice neat job in a nice neat suit with a nice neat degree that I was never going to get. But I’m where I want to be. Where I need to be. Where I can be healed and whole, and part of something gigantic and extraordinary. Will you come and visit? Please?’
Mark had saved her from that woman. She was shaking now, as if someone had injected her with two litres of adrenalin and a beaker full of hormones and two cups of the coffee Jed said she was too young to drink. She was in no shape to make decisions. But she knew she owed Mark that much, at least.
‘I’ll ask Jed.’ Jed too would be grateful for what Mark had done today. Jed would make sure that woman never came anywhere near her again. ‘We’ll come to lunch next Saturday.’