Turning points: July 06 - Sonia Gidley-King

Helping those in need, listening to one’s heart, living through heartache for a miracle, and taking a risk to chase a dream… four women share the moments that changed their lives.

Sonia Gidley-King, 78, was watching a news report of a disaster in Mozambique 13 years ago when she decided she needed to do something to help, and came up with the idea of knitting Wraps to keep those in need warm. Her idea grew into Wrap With Love Inc, which last year distributed more than 20,000 Wraps. 

“I was moving back from the Gold Coast to Sydney after my husband died in 1990 and a well-meaning relative said to me, ‘If you go to the Double Bay Bridge School and learn to play bridge, you’ll be so popular, you’ll be able to play bridge seven days a week. I thought, ‘Oh no, the rest of my life is worth more than playing bridge seven days a week’.

“I once saw this lady on television who was doing her fourth university degree at the age of 87 through the University of the Third Age. She stood there and said, ‘I don’t count the years; I make the years count’. I thought, ‘Good on her; that’s what I’d like to do’.

“Not so long after that, I went in for my second major surgery and I said, ‘If I come out, please make my life useful’. Well, I did come out and three months later, I was sitting in my little apartment enjoying my cheese and bickies and olives while watching the Mozambique disaster on television. I was watching these people with legs like sticks of celery and I was talking to the TV saying, ‘Someone should do something about those poor people. Look at them – it’s disgraceful’. And a little voice said to me, ‘What are you going to do about it? Sit on your hands?’

“I looked around me and thought, ‘I’m the mum who washed the nappies and peeled the vegetables; I can’t do anything’. So I had another sip of my evening lemonade, and then for some reason I was propelled out of my comfortable chair and to my wardrobe. My daughter had gone to England to get married and had given me her leftover knitting yarn, and I had some of my own left over from making my son’s boarding school jumper. Something said to me, ‘If you’ve got leftovers in your cupboard, thousands of homes will have leftovers’. There are people wanting to help but don’t know how to – so the idea came to me to take this yarn and knit a square, then join the squares up and make a rug.

“People might not have a lot of money, but some of them have time on their hands and I thought if I could marry that time with the wasted yarn in cupboards, then it may turn into something.

“I met a friend for lunch that Sunday and said to her, ‘I’ve got this idea’, and told her about it. She looked at me as if I’d flipped and said, ‘Oh well, if that’s what grabs you’. But that didn’t stop me.

“That same day one of the newspapers listed the ten main aid agencies and I thought, ‘I’ll give it a go – I’m over sixty and if I make a fool of myself it doesn’t matter’. I started ringing agencies on the Monday; I didn’t really know what I wanted to say to these people because the whole idea was still embryonic. But they caught on to what it was all about. I was sitting on the other end of the phone thinking, ‘I don’t believe this – they actually understand’.

“All the agencies I rang said it was a good idea, but, unanimously, they also said the rugs wouldn’t get out of Australia because the cost of transporting them would be too prohibitive. However I thought I’d press on anyway, and met with a group of ladies I knew and told them about the idea. They all said they had a bit of wool and would make squares too. Then I came up with the name – Wrap With Love; I thought we could wrap people with love.

“After a while, I received a letter from World Vision Victoria saying again that they thought making the Wraps was a great idea, but that the cost to get them overseas would be too high. I rang up my friend Fran and told her about the letter, and said, ‘Well, we’ll just keep doing what we can and we’ll leave the transport to providence – we’ll put it out to the universe’. She said, ‘Oh yes, good idea – now I’ve got to go and put on the potatoes for dinner’. You see, we still had our feet on the ground.

“Twenty-five minutes later, I received a phone call from someone I had never heard of – Neil Cowan. He worked for a Community Aid Abroad/Freedom sub-committee which recycled farm equipment and machinery. He had heard we wanted to send Wraps to Africa and told me his company had a container of recycled machinery being shipped to Africa in six weeks’ time – we could pack as many of our rugs as we could fit in between the machinery in the container for no charge.

“And where do you think the consignment was going? To Mozambique! I couldn’t believe it; I cried when he told me that, and I still get teary thinking about it. A group of us worked like crazy and got together thirty-eight Wraps. It’s all miracles – we have had many, many miracles, but that was the beginning.”

 

Wrap With Love

Wrap With Love started in 1992 and now has more than 25,000 volunteers throughout Australia. Since its inception, more than 112,000 Wraps have been sent around the world to more than 70 countries, including East Timor, Afghanistan, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Colombia, Uruguay and Zimbabwe, as well as to people in need in Australia.

A simple Wrap can stop someone from developing hypothermia, thus literally saving their life. Wraps can be knitted, crocheted, woven or patchwork-lined, and can be made from any yarn (wool, acrylic or cotton mix). Squares for Wraps are to measure 25 x 25cm, and finished Wraps should measure 102 x 178cm, each made up of 28 squares.

For more information, write to
Wrap With Love Inc
PO Box 10
Rosebery
NSW 1445

Call (02) 8399 3000 or email wwl@pacific.net.au.

 

This year the annual 702 ABC KNIT IN is again supporting Wrap With Love. KNIT IN will be held on Friday 28 July from 7am to 11am at 700 Harris Street in Sydney’s Ultimo. Last year, the ABC collected 1,200 Wraps, 13,000 squares and 1,600kg of yarn.

Words: Karen Spresser and Josephine Brouard. Photography: Scott Hawkins. Styling: Nicholas Sholl. Hair & make-up: David Novak-Piper.