Some time ago a good friend of mine sent me an article by Mic Dover called, ‘Once Were Toddlers’ from a monthly magazine ‘Sydney’s Child’, www.sydneyschild.com.au The article was all about the New Zealand based Good Man Project. The idea for the project grew out of a conversation between a college headmaster and ex-prison manager. The manager, Celia Lashlie, had been working with at-risk young children when she was shocked to see ...

Some are speculating that this year’s 98th celebration of ANZAC Day could be one of the biggest ever.  The curious thing is that more and more young people are getting up very early in the morning to take part in the traditional ANZAC dawn service.  This year tens of thousands will make the pilgrimage to Turkey to commemorate the heroic landing of our troops at ANZAC Cove. One could argue that ...

It started like any other day.  I remember vividly it was a warm blue sky with a light sea breeze from the east.  I had kissed my wife goodbye early that morning  and had raced into the office to get three major projects completed that day.  The beauty of the day  faded quickly into the urgency of the deadlines I had yet to meet. I was to take a call from ...

As Christmas is once again upon us, I would like to share a story that I guess explains what Dads in Distress is all about. It happened a few years ago in the very early days of forming DIDS, and certainly inspired me to continue the work. I was sitting in a  DIDS meeting sharing my story. It was early days into separation, then divorce. It was coming up to Christmas, ...

A lot has happened over the past year. I am about to celebrate 50 years on this planet. We had a party last Saturday and it was awesome to be surrounded by my friends and family, my five beautiful children and my new grandson. Life does seem to turn around. There were many times I thought I would never make it to 50, let alone have all my children gathered around ...

Dear Diary, IT’S A BOY! My beautiful daughter gave birth the other week to a beautiful boy, 8lb 3oz. I was supposed to speak in Parliament House at the Human Rights Conference about ‘DIDs’ that week. And you know what? Normally my work would take preference over my private life. That’s possibly why I am now divorced. But this time I said no. My beautiful daughter and the birth of my ...

It is nearly forty years ago since the first known father, an Australian, applied for legal custody of a baby girl and was subsequently granted legal custody of his baby daughter by the Supreme Court of New South Wales. Though this father was granted legal custody of his baby daughter by the Supreme Court of New South Wales, the Department of Community Welfare and the Department of Social Security of the ...

Wow, what a few weeks. Parkinson’s Taskforce Release of suggested reforms, Four Corners, Fatherhood Forum 05, The Lonefathers Conference, the Attorney General’s release of suggested reforms. Receiving a beautiful plaque from the Fatherhood Forum in Parliament House for our DIDs work.  My son telling me he is proud of me, my daughter sending me an email of how wonderful she thinks I am, doing the work I do. That she loves ...

I was travelling through Queensland a few weeks ago opening new Dads in Distress groups, and was convening a meeting that was being held in the back of a new church that had been established in an industrial estate. It was a new meeting and so we didn’t know what to expect, how many would turn up or what would happen. As I sat there at the back of this huge ...

The subbie was a weathered man in his late 50s with big, calloused hands and knobbly knees. His offsider was a skinny, tearaway kid with wraparound sunglasses and a hotted-up Holden. Watching them work at our house over a few weeks was an instructive experience. They were obviously on good terms with one another, and occasionally there was even a bit of leg-pulling. But there was no doubt about who was ...

I arrived home from school at about 4 pm one afternoon to find that my pigeons had been stolen, and one of the new chicks had been killed and was dead on the floor of the cage. I was 10 at the time. It was 1952 and we were living at 44 Canning Street, North Melbourne. I loved my pigeons. I had five excellent pairs and they all were good breeders. ...

Another piece of dad’s ‘irony’ was to allow me to do almost anything I liked (within the law), even take his new 1956, two-tone-green FJ Holden, registration GND 535 (that he would park in Kipling Street before leaving the keys on the ‘fridge’ and retiring to the lounge room to read the paper) for an unapproved drive past the milk bar where my mates were. He came out the next morning ...

I used to think that it was really tough of my dad to expect me, at age 18 (in 1958), to be home at 8:30 in the evenings on Thursday and Friday nights, so that my mother would feel secure in the house with my little sister. This had been the requirement for a number of years, and it included Tuesday and Sunday nights as well. The reason for this ‘cruel ...

There are quite a few things that I like about the Easter holidays. I like the traditional early morning surfs at my local beach. The king tides sometimes cover a rock outcrop that normally remains exposed at high tide. When the swell is small, this produces a nice little wave that I usually get to surf on my own. By the time other surfers become aware of it, the tide begins ...

Transcript of Alanna Siozos’ Eulogy, April 2003 This is the hardest thing I have ever done, most likely the hardest thing I will ever do. There are so many things I can tell you about my father, but at times like these I find it hard to say anything at all. Try to imagine a love so great, a love that makes you want to dance, a love that makes you ...

A young boy sat in a science class, his eyes fixed on a beaker sitting on the teacher’s desk. The teacher’s words were muffled to the boy’s hearing as he thought of his dad and how great it would be when he was no longer busy at the firm and they could go fishing one weekend. But deep down, he feels this may never happen. An executive sat in his leather ...

School holidays have well and truly ended, during which many fathers have had the opportunity to spend some time with their children. For some fathers, the sense that their children are merely ‘visiting’ them, often underscores the idea in both father and children that the children ‘belong’ somewhere else. This idea is often difficult to challenge, particularly when it has originated with court ‘orders’. The youngest of my children often refers ...