With the help of the Parkes and Forbes Shire Councils and community donations, enough money has been raised to cover the cost of transporting the container to Dili, the capital of East Timor, some $15,000.

Parkes Mayor Ken Keith who has had first hand experience volunteering in East Timor helped kick-start the appeal.

Bill Shallvey of the Uniting Church said the Parkes and Forbes Shire councils and the Lachlan Health Council were proactive in making sure the surplus equipment didn’t end up wasted at the tip.

“So many people have volunteered their time and resources to make this happen,” he said.

“Up to 30 volunteers in different working bees have packed the equipment ready to be stacked in the container.

“Garry Potts’ men from Potts Removals did an amazing job packing for us and Linfox will transport it to Sydney, all free of charge.”

The container is due to leave Parkes for Sydney on June 17 (today) and will take five to seven weeks to reach its destination.

From Sydney it will travel by sea to Indonesia and then by barge to Dili, the capital of East Timor.

Once in Dili the contents of the container, which includes an enormous amount of donated clothing, will be unpacked by Rotary under the supervision of local missionaries who support the clinics in remote East Timor.

The equipment will be distributed among three clinics in the villages of Same, Weberek and Wedauberek where medical services are basic and very dated.

Medical equipment including electric beds, examination tables, birthing beds, lockers and general hospital room furniture is to be shared among the clinics.

Bill said the Uniting Church has gifted  a further $5,000 to supplement the purchase of much needed medical equipment like blood pressure machines, portable ultrasound machines, glucometers, nebulisers etc.

“If the community would like to support us, we are more than happy to take further financial donations to purchase essential medical equipment for those clinics.

“And there will always be other clinics in other villages we can help, it is never ending,” Bill said.

Meanwhile, in a little over a week, 14 local volunteers will make the annual trip to the village of Weberek.

“This is the 15th year we have visited and it will be about a 15 day trip,” Bill said.

“Our main focus this time is to fence the clinic at Weberek and provide support to the missionary staff based there.

“We’ll also do some maintenance work on the solar powered water bores.

“Part of the reason for the trip is not just to do physical work but to actually provide encouragement and support to the East Timorese people, just to show them that there are others from a long way away that actually care about them” Bill said.

The villagers of Weberek are happy people who lead a very simple life. There is no power in Weberek.

Timor has a strong Catholic background and almost all of the children attend school.

As self sustaining farmers they try to eke out a living for themselves, with not a lot of marketing - they are actually quite remote from other centres.

They have their own small ag plots, growing enough maize to get through the wet season, and they also consume a lot of rice, grown in other areas of the island.

They run cows, chickens and pigs.

Bill said most Australians do not seem to be aware of the difficulties the East Timorese people faced during WW2 and thereafter.

“Australia and Japan played out the first "guerrilla" warfare on that little island totally uninvited by the East Timorese People,” he said. 

History also shows a presence of the Dutch and the Portuguese.

“There were somewhere between 200 and 700 Australian soldiers on the island 1941 - 42, with numbers varying depending on comings and goings.

“At the same time, there were somewhere up to 7,000 Japanese Soldiers.

“The Japanese were struggling to get a hold of the Australians because the East Timorese were hiding them, supporting them, fighting with them, feeding them, looking after the sick, looking after the wounded, carrying their supplies with small Timor ponies, doing all that sort of stuff.

“When the war was over, Australia had lost maybe 100 men, the Japanese lost an estimated 2,000 and the East Timorese estimated as high as 50,000 - 100,000 people.

“The sad part about that was, when the Japanese realised the East Timorese people were supporting Australians, they slaughtered villages as a warning - if you support the Aussies, this is what’s going to happen to you.

“Sadly, a lot of the East Timorese ended up having to fight with the Japanese - one moment they are fighting alongside the Australians, helping them… the next, the Australians are forced to defend themselves against Timorese "Black Columns" estimated up to 20,000 forced to support the Japanese.

“At the end of the war the Australians and Japanese went home to lick their wounds and East Timor was ignored. They were forgotten.

“But before they left, the Australian soldiers left ‘IOUs with the people they had built relationships and they had every intention of one day going back or the Australian Government repaying them for what they did for us, but as much as some of the ex-servicemen tried it ever really happened.”

“That’s why myself as an ex serviceman or even just as an Australian you feel like you actually owe them something,” Bill said. 

It should be said though in recent years help is flowing and there are a lot of other volunteer groups such as the Peak Hill / Parkes UC Team helping out in different areas.

There is another sad chapter in East Timor's history from the annexation of Timor by Indonesia in 1975 and the brutal exit in 1999 - a story for another time.

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Para Marcia is grounded in the love of God for all His creation, and is passionate about transforming the lives of the Timorese people and their Nation. 

They work together as a partner in building the capacity and ability of those they serve, enabling them to become life changing and self sufficient communities.

Para Marcia is Portugese for "For Marcia". 

Marcia is a baby who was born in the care of one of our midwives in East Timor who died through lack of basic facilities (in her case a functioning respirator).  

Their aim is to assist in meeting the basic needs of the Timorese people in Health, Economy, Family, Faith, Technology, Arts and Telecommunications, with the intention of helping the Timorese become self sufficient. 

They recognise the need for ongoing partnerships between Australian and Timor Leste and believe Australia is in a unique position to encourage healthier communities in Timor through development support. 

To that end they have fostered a Friendship agreement between the Shire of Parkes in NSW Australia and the village of Weberek in Timor Leste.

You can follow their progress at ParaMarcia