Red Cross knits 1000th trauma teddy

The Narrabri Red Cross trauma teddy knitting group has delivered its 1000th trauma teddy out into the world to carry on the essential teddy mission of bringing comfort and kindness to children through times of crisis.

Red Cross treasurer Kath Davis joined the Red Cross in 2001 and has been knitting teddies for almost seven years since becoming an official trauma teddy checker and reckons she’s knitted too many to count.

“In Red Cross, we’ve got a few knitters and we wanted to do something, so I started holding groups here, and a lady in Tamworth sent me the patterns and taught me how to be the best ‘trauma-teddy-checker out’ and from that time on we’ve knitted them,” said Mrs Davis.

“The girls involved are fabulous, and we’ve got some of our friends involved too, there’s not a great deal of us but you don’t need a great deal to make a difference. We also do coat hangers, and rugs for Whiddon Robert Young and Jessie Hunt, sometimes we give Trauma Teddies to the Salvation Army.”

More than 600 volunteer knitters in 75 knitting groups across Australia lovingly craft 50,000 trauma teddies a year and have provided comfort to over one million children.

“I give trauma teddies to anyone that needs them or anyone that’s going through something, and we don’t charge for them,” said Mrs Davis.

“I took 30 to the hospital last week and they give them out in the emergency ward, when they’re taking blood, in pathology, anywhere they are needed.

“We don’t get to meet the kids we give them to, but I’ve been over at the hospital at times and seen a little one clutching their trauma teddy and trying to hold back the tears and that’s lovely. I love seeing that, I feel like I’m doing something.”

In their time in the world, trauma teddies have comforted refugee children coming to a foreign land, offered company in a speeding ambulance, provided friendly security in a hospital, a happy face in a lonely time, and comradeship while fleeing the summer bushfires.

Kath Davis’s own firsthand experience with trauma came synonymously with her knitting journey during the England wartime.

“I started knitting balaclavas and socks for the troops in World War II. When I started, it would’ve been 1941 and I would’ve been about four,” said Mrs Davis.

“I can remember saying to my mum because you had four needles, ‘I don’t think I can turn the heel mum,’ so mum used to turn the heel and then I could knit.

“During the war, I had a teddy, I’m the youngest of seven and my oldest sister cut its ears off, she had this beautiful doll with beautiful hair, so I cut it off and got into trouble.

“I loved my teddy, it was a comfort all through the war, I’ve often thought that they would’ve made teddies like these and handed them out during the war but I can’t remember anyone doing them.”

Coming from a little village called Caddington, near Luton in Bedfordshire, just 30 miles from London, Mrs Davis experienced regular bombings as a child, and daily life in tumultuous times just felt accepted.

“Living in wartime you just learned to get on with it, walking to school you never picked anything up because the Jerrys dropped bombs in toys targeting little kids who would pick them up.

“Once when I was six I was walking from school after a half day, and someone said, “Stop, don’t move” and a kid had trodden on an incendiary bomb, thank God she didn’t step off or she would’ve been blown up.

“I can remember when I was at school and people were evacuated from London, and we were only 30 miles out, so a little girl came from school, and she’d been buried alive in the blitz, and they got her out and she came to our school, I often think it would’ve been nice for her to have a trauma teddy.”

Migrating to Sydney in 1949 after the war and moving to Narrabri in 1968, Mrs Davis has been a strong advocate for disability services, having experience from raising her daughter.

“I have a daughter with a disability, and you want the best for your daughter, so that’s what you do,” said Mrs Davis.

“When I moved to Narrabri, I helped start a community tenancy scheme which started as special purpose housing that supported people in the community, started Special Olympics, citizen advocacy, personnel, ran a sheltered workshop, and was secretary for a very successful walkathon which raised money for the workshop.

“I like being able to do something that will ease someone’s pain or make people’s lives a little easier.”

It takes about five hours to knit each teddy, which contributes to about 250,000 volunteer knitting hours a year and 7.5 million volunteer hours in the past 30 years since the teddies started being made in 1990.

Knitting all those teddies wouldn’t be possible without wool, but the Narrabri community has kept the knitting group well-stocked.

“Narrabri is really good about supporting us for wool,” said Mrs Davis.

“People in the community drop it off, we ask for 8-ply acrylic but we get all sorts. We put an ad over 2MaxFM and our president Max Pringle said he’s got five more containers of wool because of it, I don’t know what to do with it, but they are amazing at the radio station, I’ve taken 2MaxFM president Anthony Welchman a teddy.”

In terms of dealing with challenging times and trauma, Mrs Davis had some experience with that too, seeing both her brothers survive the war, losing her husband of 58 years, and navigating caring for her daughter.

“How do you get through trauma? The most important thing is accepting trauma as it is – acknowledging and accepting what’s happened, that you’re still here so you’re meant to be here.

“I think it’s a bit of a British thing. You know you’re born to die.

“But it’s what you do and what you give with your time – you miss people, I miss my friends who have passed on, and they are now getting fewer and far between. I was married for 58 wonderful years to my husband, and people asked me if I was ok when he died and I would say ‘I am’ because I was. I had 58 years of a good marriage, how lucky!

“When he passed away, I played Monty Python ‘Always Look on the Bright Side’ at his funeral too, so if you haven’t got a sense of humour, you’re dead.”

The Narrabri Red Cross is always looking for volunteers to join their worthy cause and Mrs Davis encourages any budding teddy knitters who would like to dedicate their needles to the trauma teddy mission.