Your Lifestyle

Still Inspiring: September - John Couzens

We've always sponsored kids through World Vision and so on, as you do. But then, my son, Clinton was in hospital after an accident, a chainsaw accident and while he was there I read in the paper about kids in Cambodia who'd lost a leg to landmines and could have a new one, a prosthesis, for $180. Well, Clinton had nearly lost his leg and we were so lucky that they saved it and his fingers - they did a lovely job at the hospital. And I was so upset about these Cambodian kids that I thought, ‘Look, I want to do something about this,' and so Elaine and I joined Red Cross. For the next four years after that, I did fundraising through my performances.

I'm a singer impersonator: I can become twenty-odd people - Elvis, Roy Orbison, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis. Even Dolly Parton. I play guitar, electric organ whatever. This is what I've done for the last eighteen years. I get a huge, huge kick out of hearing people laugh at a joke I've told or applaud a song that I think I've sung well. I was travelling all over, doing the clubs, up to twelve shows a week.

With me, I get the bit between my teeth and I make a decision and then I just want to go and do it! But I have to admit that I got very tired. I'd done one million eight hundred thousand kilometres in my commuter bus. It has had four engines, four gear boxes, three diffs and sometimes you'd end up sitting in a motel room at sort of one o'clock in the morning, and you've just done a fund raiser and you've ended up with $80 after three hours on stage and you're thinking, ‘Gosh, is this really worth it?' But the end result was phenomenal. By the time Elaine and I decided to retire, we'd paid for two hundred and fifty children to have a prosthesis.

I looked forward to a rest but then of course, there was the tsunami and we were off again. So within a week, we did a fundraiser and raised $5000. And then we found out about the Hope Orphanage in Bali.

Elaine and I go to Bali every year: it's an ongoing love affair: we just love the people. We have a friend, Gaye from Lakes Entrance who lives in Bali now and she said, ‘When you're next here, how about you come and have a look at this little school that's pretty desperate because it's taken in the orphans from the Bali bombing'. So we went and had a look and then we came back and started to fundraise to help them with various things: their building fund and re-roofing, teachers, food. After our last trip we came back determined to do more.

What I don't want to happen is that now that I've retired, that people forget me. I still like the phone to ring like it did this morning, with someone saying, ‘Could you come and sing and do a fundraiser for us? ' and I say, “Yeah, we'll do that.' And I'm quite happy to go and talk to groups anywhere in Victoria. And it all adds to the fun and it means my source of help for others is still active.

The only shows I do now are for charity. Often I work with Lions and I say to them, “Put on a fundraiser and I'll put on a show.” The call this morning was from a Lions Club. We've met some absolutely fantastic people on the road: we've got friends from one end of the country to the other through it. My wife Elaine is integral to everything and a wonderful part of my life. She moderates my sillier ideas for fundraising and has her own ideas. I'm very lucky. I'm sixty two going on thirty…and she's a lot saner than I am!



If you would like John to help with your fundraising efforts, you can contact him on sharpe@net-tech.com.au