Nara Dreaming

27/01/2020

SOME SAD NEWS ABOUT NARA DREAMING EXHIBITION

After a lot of thought and discussion we have decided to discontinue the Nara Dreaming Exhibition. We last ran the exhibition in May/June 2018 and it was extremely successful.

As some of you may be aware we did not run the exhibition in 2019 because of the ongoing ill health of Bill Whitbread. He had Open Heart Surgery in January 2019 which went well but after that contracted two different strains of staph which saw him hospitalised for two months or so. Bill has recovered well but given that the cardiac arrest happened in theatre where he was having a shoulder replacement he did not have the full operation. He has now been told that too much time has elapsed and any further shoulder surgery would not work. In the meantime Anne Conway had a serious health crisis - suffering the very long term effects of radiation to the throat she became unable to swallow and went months without food - only able to drink clear liquid. Anne is now being tube fed through a PEG and doing very well but before that intervention she was actually close to death.

Herman Oogjes has also had very serious health problems over the last few years and can no longer commit to the time and effort Nara Dreaming would take.

Robyn, Eddie and Trina are doing well but all very busy with family and work.

Both Anne and Bill are doing well now but recovery is still a work in progress.

In the time since we first set up Nara Dreaming we have all aged by ten years and all of us have to be more cautious in what we commit to. We feel rather than run a ho-hum exhibition which will be compared unfavourably to previous exhibitions we will not run any more.

In May 2020 (when this page runs out) we will cancell the web page but we will keep our page.

We will keep our mailing lists as this does not mean that we will never do any exhibitions in the future - perhaps just smaller ones for a shorter time - who knows but we are keeping our options open.

The six Nara Dreamers - Robyn Davis, Eddie King, Trina Dalton-Oogjes, Herman Oogjes, Anne Conway and Bill Whitbread thank everyone for the support they have shown us in the past.

We had our first exhibition in 2010 and the last one in 2018 - nine in total. We would have liked to have made it to ten but it wasn't to be. Each year the exhibition was bigger and more popular than the year before. We could not have done all that without the support of many individuals, the artists themselves and community organisations and churches who helped us in many ways. Far too many to list but thankyou to everyone.

At the beginning we never dreamed that the Nara Dreaming Exhibition would become as popular as it did and was an annual ritual for many people.

We are all still around - check out the page or send us an email - [email protected]

27/01/2020

SOME SAD NEWS ABOUT NARA DREAMING EXHIBITION

After a lot of thought and discussion we have decided to discontinue the Nara Dreaming Exhibition. We last ran the exhibition in May/June 2018 and it was extremely successful.

As some of you may be aware we did not run the exhibition in 2019 because of the ongoing ill health of Bill Whitbread. He had Open Heart Surgery in January 2019 which went well but after that contracted two different strains of staph which saw him hospitalised for two months or so. Bill has recovered well but given that the cardiac arrest happened in theatre where he was having a shoulder replacement he did not have the full operation. He has now been told that too much time has elapsed and any further shoulder surgery

would not work. In the meantime Anne Conway had a serious health crisis - suffering the very long term effects of radiation to the throat she became unable to swallow and went months without food - only able to drink clear liquid. Anne is now being tube fed through a PEG and doing very well but before that intervention she was actually close to death.

In the time since we first set up Nara Dreaming we have all aged by ten years and all of us have to be more cautious in what we commit to. We feel rather than run a ho-hum exhibition which will be compared unfavourably to previous exhibitions we will not run any more.

In May 2020 (when this page runs out) we will cancell the web page but we will keep our page.

We will keep our mailing lists as this does not mean that we will never do any exhibitions in the future - perhaps just smaller ones for a shorter time - who knows but we are keeping our options open.

The six Nara Dreamers - Robyn Davis, Eddie King, Trina Dalton-Oogjes, Herman Oogjes, Anne Conway and Bill Whitbread thank everyone for the support they have shown us in the past.

We had our first exhibition in 2010 and the last one in 2018 - nine in total. We would have liked to have made it to ten but it wasn't to be. Each year the exhibition was bigger and more popular than the year before. We could not have done all that without the support of many individuals, the artists themselves and community organisations and churches who helped us in many ways. Far too many to list but thankyou to everyone.

We are all still around - check out the page or send us an email - [email protected]

20/09/2019

Community radio station Phoenix FM's Indigenous program Koori Shout-Out is one example of its diverse programming.

08/05/2019

Because of illness, Nara Dreaming Exibition is not happening this year. Pleased to advise though that Bill is well on the road to recovery after having to spend another month in the Austin with a staph infection in his sternum and blood. There are lots of activities happening in and around Bendigo for Reconciliation week and I will post the flyers to this page as well as to other pages that I look after - Bendigo Reconciliation and Koori Shout-Out. Please keep in touch.

08/05/2019

18/02/2019

Good Morning

This post is just to let you know that we have decided not to run The Nara Dreaming Exhibition this year.

Bill Whitbread (owner of property and Bill's Shed) had a cardiac arrest back on 21st January and was clinically dead for almost eight minutes. Fortunately this episode happened whilst he was in the Operating Theatre having a Shoulder Joint Replacement. Naturally that operation was halted and he is still to have that.

Bill had Open Heart Surgery (2 bypass) on 7th February. He is doing well and is now back home but he has a long recovery ahead and sometime in the upcoming weeks or months he will need to
have the half done Shoulder Joint Replacement completed.

We just feel that he will not recover sufficiently in time and his imput is quite integral to the exhibition.

We were going to celebrate our Tenth Nara Dreaming Exhibition this year but now we will celebrate that milestone in 2020.

We may run other events later on in the year and if we do we will certainly let you know.

Please feel free to keep in touch if you would like any updates

Kind regards from Anne