INSPIRATIONAL AUSTRALIAN WOMEN
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Shirley Gash
Shirley Gash was born in New Zealand but now lives in Melbourne. She spent twenty-two years of her working life in the travel industry, most of it managing a corporate travel office. Greg T Ross: Good morning, Shirley Gash, how are you? Shirley Gash: I’m very good. Thank you. GTR: Shirley, you have had an attachment. There are many things, I guess, that make people inspirational, but you’ve had an attachment to Red Cross, Australian Red Cross of course, and a number of other things during your life. Tell us a little bit about your background and what led you to be working with Red Cross and your involvement with them? And I guess it does become a spiritual thing because of course you’re helping lots of people through your actions too. SG: Yes, that’s true. Actually, my attachment to the Red Cross is probably mostly because of my own father... he was the inspiration for me to take such an interest in the Red Cross. But as you say, I mean, I have a background of being first in business in the travel industry, but then secondly, I went on to doing full-time Christian ministry. And I worked as a speaker and an assistant pastor for many years. But those were not really the influences necessarily for me to be involved with the Red Cross. With the Red Cross, it was much more about my father and his life. GTR: Yes. Your father was a medic in World War II. Tell us a little bit about that too, Shirley, if you can, and how that affected you and your family life. SG: Yes, sure. Well, my father was a medic in World War II. In fact, he was, I don’t know of many people have seen the movie Hacksaw Ridge, but he was probably a little bit of a down under Hacksaw Ridge man. Because he didn’t want to take lives. He’d become a Christian himself in his teens. And so he didn’t want to take lives, but at the same time he wanted to save lives. And so he volunteered to go with Red Cross into the war and because he had objected to the idea of carrying a gun. He was actually put in the front lines for years. So he was at El Alamein, he was in the battle of Cassino. And so yes, these were two very important battles and it took its toll on him too. I think he returned from the war
48 THE LAST POST – 2022 ANZAC DAY EDITION
A radical shift from this moved her into over twenty years of Christian ministry. She spent these years as an ordained minister and Christian speaker. Over these years she also wrote educational material for a hospitality and travel school. She earned her doctorate in practical ministry and is now semi-retired and working on writing. Her interest in the work of the Red Cross began because her father had been a medic in WWII with the Red Cross, and he had respected this wellestablished organisation and strongly encouraged Shirley to always remember the work they do. Leaving a legacy has become even more important as she also battles an aggressive leukemia, a reminder that none of us can take anything with us.
in his late twenties and probably had post traumatic stress. But back in the day, I don’t know if he really know about the depth of that, or anything like that. They were getting told, get married, have a family and that. He marriage was my brother, he was the oldest. And I’m not sure whether it was partly due to the trauma of my father had been through or whatever else, but today, he would’ve been diagnosed as having low functioning autism, I would imagine. GTR: Right. SG: They didn’t have a name for it back then, but he was definitely a challenge. My sister came along two years later and then five years later, I came into this family that was struggling very much, his demons, if you like, that had come from the war and also with what was happening in the family. But by the time I was four, my brother actually had run away from home and was lost for a week. And so it was one of those stories that you often see today that I always feel such compassion for.
