The Wesley-Smith brothers were recently presented with the Order of Timor for their long and varied support for the country. Pictured above , in the Presidential Palace, Dili , from the left, are Martin Wesley-Smith , President Taur Matan Ruak , Rob Wesley-Smith and Peter Wesley-Smith.
In his report to this blog, Rob said he had introduced his brother Martin, suffering from cancer, to tea made from boiling a grass , Phalaris arundicaecae "Picta", which several Timorese in Darwin claim has cured their cancer. There is a suggestion the grass may have come from Timor in the first place and is now sold in the Bunnings store in Darwin.
While in Timor-Leste, Rob , an agronomist , had taken some of the grass to a Catholic orphanage , where he had worked in the past , and instructed nuns on how to grow and transplant it. He suggested tea made from it could be given to a child with a cancerous growth on his neck , mentioned in a recent ABC documentary , which featured the work of Dr Dan Murphy, and asked to be kept informed of any reaction .
Martin Wesley-Smith is a pioneer in Australia of audiovisual composition . He taught composition and electronic music at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, where he founded and directed its Electronic Music Studio. Many of Martin's songs and choral works use words by his twin brother, Peter . In 1997 their documentary music drama Quito, about schizophrenia and East Timor, was awarded the Paul Lowin Composition Award (Song Cycle). The Song Company has performed this work in Amsterdam, den Bosch, Copenhagen, Gent, Groningen, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur and Cascais (Portugal) as well as in Sydney and Kangaroo Valley,where Wesley-Smith now lives, raising aid for Timor-Leste .
In 1987 he received the Australia Council's Don Banks Composer Fellowship. In 1998 he was awarded an AM (Order of Australia) for services to music, as a composer, scriptwriter, children's songwriter, lecturer, presenter of multi-media concerts and a member of various Australia Council boards and committees.
Other issues he has covered ; Who Killed Cock Robin? (1979) had a choir wondering if the real culprit was not the sparrow with his bow and arrow but pesticides instead; Weapons of Mass Distortion (2003) deplored official propaganda, doublespeak, lies etc, especially those that led to the 2003 invasion of Iraq; and Papua Merdeka (2005) brought attention, through sound and image, to the suffering of the people of West Papua. Rob Wesley-Smith's long involvement in the East Timor struggle has been extensively covered in Little Darwin. (Photo by Cathy Heptinstall.)
