One for THE KIDS and old-timers

AUSTRALIANS WERE OUT doing good things in Bangkok last week – and having some fun in the process.
Commanding the spotlight was Jimmy Barnes, one of the best known and most successful recording artists in Australian history, most famous for fronting the band Cold Chisel.
Thailand has been one of the rock star’s secret passions, a place where he’s been able to slip away and relax unnoticed. In an interview last week with The Nation (www.NationMultimedia.com/video/play/8321), Barnes revealed that he, his Thai wife Jane (who he married in the early ’80s) and their family have been enjoying annual holidays here for more than three decades, usually in Hua Hin.
Indeed, Barnes’ love for the Land of Smiles is such that last week he was happy to give something back. The musician, who’ll turn 60 in April, performed a charity concert at the Sheraton Grande on Sukhumvit Road.
It was an affair for the whole Barnes family – with the singer’s three daughters – Mahalia, Elly-May and Eliza-Jane – wife Jane and son Jackie also onstage performing.
Proceeds from the event went to Hands Across the Water, an Aussie charity that funds seven homes across Thailand for tsunami orphans, children living with HIV and needy and abused kids, plus poor elderly people. The chance to sing a duet with Barnes was auctioned off, ended up raising Bt751,000 after a second bidder (and long-term supporter) decided, in a moment of madness, to invite the charity boss and another friend to sing with them.
Hands Across the Water was set up by Peter Baines, a former police officer from Sydney who flew to Takua Pa to do forensic work in the wake of the tsunami in December 2004.
Baines, who spoke to the media at the hotel before the concert, had worked in Bali after the 2002 bomb attack that killed more than 200 people – never thinking he’d be called to a far graver tragedy in southern Thailand two years later.
Baines managed to find a way of overcoming the horror of having to help identify more than 3,500 bodies at Wat Yanyao, where Dr Pornthip Rojanasunan was also involved, and the devastating impact on communities on the Andaman coast. He established an organisation that has reportedly raised Bt450 million over the past 11 years.
That money has gone to more than 300 children, plus elderly people living in seven homes that Hands supports – in Phang Nga, Yasothon and Surin in the Northeast and in Chanthaburi, Chumphon and Kanchanaburi. These homes are run by local partners and include two overseen by the Duang Prateep Foundation, headed by former senator Prateep Ungsongtham Hata.
“It was a blessing that we met Khru Prateep,” Baines said. “The biggest obstacle for this sort of operation is having trust with local partners. But the work Khru Prateep has done is amazing.”
Money raised from the “Night of Celebration” with Jimmy Barnes and his family “raised considerable funds which will cover almost a year’s operating costs” for Pama House in Chanthaburi. Kids from Pama House were on hand for the event.
Baines has three grown children, so when he resigned from the New South Wales Police as a detective inspector at the end of 2008, he focused on running his charity.
It needs $1.4 million a year to keep the seven homes going, but he appears to have some clever strategies to help raise the money. One is requiring that 100 per cent of the money raised go directly to the children at the seven orphanages, or to the small homes they occasionally build for elderly people.
The second is organising bicycle rides across Thailand for which participants must raise Bt250,000 to enter and also pay their own expenses. Remarkably, there are several supporters who’ve taken part in numerous rides. Nine riders have done them five times and three have been on nine, Baines said, while another raised more than A$100,000 in a single event.
Baines and his son often ride on these treks. In fact Peter is currently riding with a group from Hua Hin to Khao Lak. And his father, who’s 77, will be riding later in the year.
At the press conference last week was an impressive young man from the charity’s Baan Nam Jai in Phang Nga. Wattana “Game” is a tsunami orphan who never knew his parents. Raised by his uncle, he faced the prospect at age 12 of having to begin working for a living until he learned about the orphanage where he could further his education.
Game is the first orphan to go on to earn a university degree and he hopes to pursue a master’s in psychology to better help the community where he grew up.
Baines described the youngster as a “role model to the children” at Baan Nam Jai, having shown them the potential to secure a better future.
For Jane Barnes, the rock star’s wife, this is sort of thing they’re happy to back. To Baines, she said, “We love that you support the children all the way through. You’re pretty humble yourself, Mr Baines.”

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