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Amanda Muggleton

Amanda trained at London's Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Her career in Australia span's 28 years' working in all media including theatre, film, TV and radio. She has appeared in leading roles for practically every major theatre company and most leading entrepreneurs. She has won several very significant awards, for Shirley Valentine, The Rise and Fall of Little Voice (Norman Kessell Award), for Miss Hannigan in Annie (Colleen Clifford Award), Maria Callas in Master Class (a Green Room Award and a Robert Helpmann Award for best actress), and a second Helpmann Award for Best Female Actor in a Supporting Role in a Musical for her role as Mercedes Cortez in the Australian Musical, Eureka! Amanda has just been nominated for an AFI Award for 'Best Guest or Supporting Actress In A Television Drama' (2008), for her role of Kathy Booth for Network Seven's City Homicide. She is best remembered for her portrayal of Chrissie Latham in Prisoner and Connie Ryan in Richmond Hill, as well as for appearances in A Country Practice, Cop Shop, Holiday Island, Headland, Peter And Pompey, Sweet & Sour, Willing And Able, Women Of The Sun and Sara Dane.

Amanda's life on stage is extremely active and demanding. During her career she has experienced disabling and worrisome chronic pain for which she has needed help from time to time. She now manages her pain well and is happy to speak out for those people distressed and isolated by chronic pain.

 

 

 

 

 

Alison Thomson OAM

 

Alison speaks out for Chronic Pain Australia - she knows about the devastation of long term pain, being an aid worker in devastated parts of the world. Last year she won an OAM for her aid work around the world. Alison wrote this letter back home early in 2010:

 

Hi mum and dad

 
I won’t be around when they announce my award on January 26th.   I am with Sean Penn, diana jenkins, Oscar and 15 doctors embedded in the 82 airbourne ( USA)   Dante would describe it as hell here.  There is no food and wAter and hundreds dying daily. The aid is all bottlenecked and not reaching here . The other day i assisted with amputation ( holding them down) while they used a saw to cut a young boys leg off with no pain killers. Today I went with a strike force and army patrol in hummers into the streets and walked 5 miles through the camps set up on every street corner ..sewage and bodies stench is everywhere. As i attend to a patient 30 people crowd around me and it’s hard to breath.  I nearly fainted today as the sewage smell went straight down my throat. I went white and dizzy but couldn’t sit down as sewage is running through the streets. There is much infection and it feels like the job is too big. No antibiotics anywhere.
 
 Good news, today our new york doctors evacuated 18 patients with spinal injuries out to miami and we’re all so excited. Our mash unit is in the 82 air base overlooking a refugee camp of over 50000 people. The refugees start singing Christian songs at 4 am and line up for food until the army hands it out at 8 am ( thats if there is any food).On the first night I was in the nearby jungle camping under the stars with my team and woke up to the beautiful music drawing me to them. I thought it was a church and we went to find it and came across the 82 airbourne camp and the refugee camp.( that’s how we ended up here) as it wasn’t safe to stay where we were even though we had our own security force. We are totally self suffient with food gas and medicines and have a private donor (Diana Jenkins who was a refugee in camps in Bosnia as a child – her family died of starvation in the camps. ) Sean Penn is here purely as a volunteer and is cutting through bureaucracy to get aid moving and food water and medicines to the people. There is no agenda but to save lives. Helicopters fly over head and it feels like vietnam. That night 50,000 people sung me to sleep and they sing every night for the world to save them. There is always hope but she’s not here right now.
Alison xxx

 

The Leader – Australia Day Honours : Haiti Worker is Honoured - by Monica Leary

IN THE middle of the rubble and human misery of Haiti there could be a little pocket of celebration when Cronulla aid worker Alison Thompson officially receives her Order of Australia Medal (OAM).The medal is for the former teacher’s humanitarian aid work, particularly in the Peraliya region of Sri Lanka, in the post-tsunami trauma of late 2004. Now her proud parents are understandably worried about their daughter’s presence in earthquake-ravaged Haiti. More


 

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