In the middle of this decade the country music capital, Tamworth, was also the centre of a passionate campaign to legalise medical cannabis in New South Wales. Local resident Dan Haslam was a young man who’d been living, and suffering, with cancer for four years, through treatments that took a huge toll on his body. In desperation, and after research about its effectiveness, he tried cannabis. It gave him back some quality of life, but it was illegal, and he and his family did not want to have to buy it illicitly. Dan’s mother, Lucy Haslam, campaigned with her son for changes to the law.
Dan died in February 2015 at 25 years of age; exactly one year later an amendment to existing legislation was introduced to the NSW Parliament as Dan’s Law. But access to medical cannabis is still not straightforward – so the Mother Flower Collective came into being to raise awareness about this issue.
The collective’s members are Jen Mize, Shane Nicholson, Kevin Bennett, Lyn Bowtell, Felicity Urquhart, Jeff Gibson, Jeremy Edwards and John Krsulja; Krsulja runs the DAG Sheep Station and it was at the DAG one cold July night in 2019 that the collective wrote the song, after watching the documentary High as Mike. ‘Mother Flower’ was written at the suggestion of Lucy Haslam, who continues to lobby for better access to medical cannabis and education of health professionals.
‘“Mother Flower” is more than just another country music song,’ says Haslam, ‘it is the anthem for a movement based on love and the dignity that comes with relief of suffering. I hope Australia gets behind it to help us Fix Dan’s Law.’
Buy the song at www.dcstories.com.au
For more information about Lucy Haslam and Dan Haslam, go to unitedincompassion.com.au