Marc Jardine, a Sydney businessman, has released a charity record, the proceeds of which are being donated to the relief effort in Java following the recent earthquake.
I was in the 1995 Kobe earthquake with my wife, recalls Mr Jardine, and I remember only too well how tough it was. For a few of days it was big news around the world and then nothing.
At the time of the Kobe quake, Mr Jardine was living and working in Japan, just a few miles from the epicentre.
The problem is that, with the news changing by the hour on the TV, on the internet & in the newspapers, when the death toll stops rising, it'ss no longer news-worthy news. So once the
initial catastrophe is over, you don'st hear much about it after that. But what we tend to overlook is the fact that the real disaster is in the aftermath for those people who have lost
their homes, their schools, their businesses and their families. The earthquake is not so easily forgotten for them.
Mr Jardine continues, An earthquake isn'st just a scary few minutes where the ground shakes and a few people lose their lives. It destroys communities and infrastructures and it affects
every aspect of people'ss lives for many months afterwards, including the basic things we all take for granted: power, light, food, water, sanitation and health. It was tough enough for
the people in Kobe in 1995, but that was a small quake compared to the recent one in Java. And Java isn'st the sort of economy which can quickly recover like Kobe did.
The charity song is called Photographs & Memories and can be downloaded for just $1.25 from www.lulu.com/pinkgranny : ALL the proceeds go
directly to the Java earthquake relief effort.