CHERUBS Australia
Perth Get Together - Saturday 4th October 2003

CHERUBS Australia held it’s 3rd national Get Together in Perth in October 2003. A very special thank you to Cazz Gould for all of her hard work putting together a great weekend for all our attendees.

We had a total of 24 people attend the get together this year. While numbers were down on previous years it was still a great turn out as Perth is so far away from the rest of Australia. We had members from Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria fly across the country to gorgeous Perth to attend the weekend and then spend a few days checking out the sites of Perth and its surrounds.

After introducing ourselves to each other upon arrival on Saturday morning, we broke into separate groups. One for the surviving families and one for the grieving families. This allowed all members to discuss their experiences with CDH openly and honestly without risk of upsetting others who had not experienced the same outcome. After breaking for lunch we returned to have a short ceremony to honour our cherubs. A candle was lit and the names of all of our Australian cherubs were read out. Throughout the day we had the slide show that featured photos our Australian cherubs running.

After the ceremony, we held a discussion on how CHERUBS Australia was travelling what the future held for us.

Throughout the day the cherubs and cherubs’ siblings were looked after in a separate play area. This allowed the parents to relax (at least a little bit!) and get to share their CDH experiences. The children were truly wonderful and made everyone very proud.

We met for dinner at a local restaurant which had a great play area for the children. After we finished a few of us went for a drive to Kings Park to a wonderful night time view of Perth.

The next day we met for a family day at Kings Park – wow that place is amazing! The children got to play while the adults all sat around talking. After a lovely day our tired and emotionally drained group said their goodbyes.

A huge thank you to all of the members who helped organise the day and thank you to those that attended to make it the great success that it was. We are all eagerly looking forward to Sydney 2004 – hope to see you there .