The Owl and the Pussy-cat, a Christmas fable

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea,

In a beautiful pea-green boat…

We pushed the boat off its moorings, skidded it on wet planks, rolled it on pipes, cajoled it, and a passer-by on the street helped us heave the last little bit. And all the while we told stories, with Gabe and Deena, the Owl and the Pussy-cat, and I always thought a kindergarten might be made special by its spaces, but of course it is the people, the educators, who inspire the children.

Here were two of them, on a Sunday morning, helping out.

The boat is falling apart. It needs fixing. Some TLC. They asked if I look after it for a while, resurrect it, and I am honoured to do so. Because there is something magical about this vessel, a half-boat, made of wood, used once at Luna Park, crawled over by so many children for so long at St Kilda Balaclava Kindergarten.

It is a boat that has taken so many on such wonderful journeys through the mind.

It has a whole other life ahead of it.

**

Recently, I installed another wicking bed garden box at the kindergarten, and the children helped out, a gaggle of them sat on the edge of the box as I worked, their legs inside, and I told them it was like a little boat, and they were on the high seas, on an adventure, and can you please pass me my hammer, and now BLOCK YOUR EARS, and it's time for a drink of water, where's your hat, and where are we sailing to?

One of the girls asked: "today, can you also please make us an aeroplane?”

And a boy called Yarra said: "And a believe station".

Yes, a believe station, they all screamed. A Believe Station!

What's a believe station?

They ran inside and returned with a drawing of one, and a map of how to find it, and as I was packing up tools they invited me to a meditation class, and I kicked off boots and lay on the floor, eyes closed, and was thankful for the cool air in their large hall, and the spinning ceiling fans, and the darkness, and to be laying on my back in the midday heat, and I could feel little bodies squirming near me, and opened my eyes and there's a girl peering over me, they are fascinated that I join in.

I do so because I am invited, and because it acknowledges the educators at the kindergarten, the work they do.

 And because it's fun.

 **

I’m soon to finish a backyard chook house I’ve built with Allison, a teacher, and a parent at the kindergarten, helped by two of her children.

We started the project on her first day of long service leave. I notched floor joists, put a hammer and chisel in her hand, gave instructions, said you probably didn’t expect to be doing this today.

“This is exactly what I needed to do,” she replied.

It is how I like to work: collaboratively, for-and-with-people, with recycled materials, using hand tools, and with an open heart. Everybody ought to chisel notches in wood at some point in their lives. See the grain, feel it.

It is mindful work, the materials and the process bringing with it a kind of spirituality.

Allison’s daughter draws the most free-spirited pictures of chickens.

Her children call out my name when I arrive for work.

She offers coffee.

All of it is wonderful and reminds of why I do what I do.

Because we are creating something, and caring, and a community of friendship is formed.

**

I haul the ‘love boat’ – that’s what the kindergarten calls it – to a friend’s farm in the Yarra Valley. On the drive, my boys ask why I have half-a-boat on the trailer.

We talk about Christmas.

I tell them I’ve decided this year all the gifts I’m giving are to be recycled or edible or experiential.

They say they are okay with this. They understand the reasons why. They know how troubled I am with the rampant consumerism of Christmas, its wastefulness, its over-abundance.

We all display our love in different ways. They know mine comes usually with handmade cards and in recycled wrapping paper.

Mr 11-year-old, in the front passenger seat, says he’d like to do a road trip to Queensland.

Feasible, I say.

Or a fishing trip.

Mr 8-year-old in the back seat likes the idea of a fishing trip.

We decide this is what we’ll do. Sometime next year. I’ll give them both a week off school, and we’ll go camping and fishing, just the three of us, take them someplace special, somewhere wild, and I know it’ll be a memory they’ll hold onto for all their days.

And a little wooden boat, it needs to come with us.

**

It’s a friend’s birthday party, and he’s a generous man, open-armed, full of curiosity, a crazy spirit, and we once shared a top-floor flat together on the crest of Richmond Hill, and with another friend backpacked down the Baja spit of Mexico, then jumped to South America, to Colombia, and climbed volcanoes along its spine, he can never stand still, and we’d take days off work and go fishing on the bay, or cross-country ski up Mount Stirling, or do overnight walks to the tip of Feathertop when the snow was still about, and all of us travelled to his wedding in South Africa many years back, because he inspires adventure, a thirst for life.  

He and his wife said yes, of course, they’re happy to look after this half-boat, nee of Luna Park, and latter-day of a kindergarten.

Bring it up, put it in drydock, under one of the pines, in the lee of the weather.

Halfway through the party, all with drinks in hand, our host is spotted in a far-off paddock, in butterscotch shorts and tweed jacket, holding a stick, herding a gaggle of goats toward a group of children.

It’s fabulous to watch.

I excuse myself, and with the help of a travelling Welshman and a local hill lad, we unload the boat carcass, put it on stilts, wrap it in tarpaulins and rope, for safekeeping.

Another journey awaits.

When leaving the party, my friend puts a dozen eggs in a plant tub, fresh from his hens, his girls, some still warm from the laying, insists I have them, take them home, for me and the boys.

My Christmas tree is a sprig, in a milk jug.

Cards this year are more rustic than usual.

I’ve cut lengths of hardwood floorboards, daubed them with white house-paint, then painted a little festive flourish.   

It’s a small batch.

All the materials used have been found.

The care is in the making.

My youngest boy rolls his eyes when he sees them on the kitchen table on a Saturday night.

(He’ll be getting one).

Here is my counterpoint, a touchstone, a tablet of wood, crafted to become something else.

The handmade, the slow, the rough-edged – sent now via digital technology, in an instant, a click, a scroll, a new page tab, downloaded.

The old, the new, each has its place.

And a merry Christmas to all.

And may all your boats sail true next year, and hold water, and may you hear the ocean’s sweet music as you go.

Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling

   Your ring?" Said the Piggy, "I will."

So they took it away, and were married next day

   By the Turkey who lives on the hill.

They dined on mince, and slices of quince,

   Which they ate with a runcible spoon;

And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,

   They danced by the light of the moon,

             The moon,

             The moon,

They danced by the light of the moon.

A city of playgrounds

In Berlin, a birthplace of playgrounds – of the kindergarten – there is a child’s play space, Kolle 37, set aside to be built by children.

It’s a dreamscape of adventure.

It’s what I’d like to facilitate: the making of places for child’s play. Creative, shaped by them, where imaginations can unravel, thoughts spool wild. Cubbyhouses, rope swings, climbing frames. Make it for their bodies, their minds, their spirit.

Make it crazy, beautiful, risk-taking, thought-provoking, asking questions always of us, and the children.

But for now, such a challenge is off-limits for someone like me.

To follow Australian Standards for play-equipment is easy enough (common-sense measurements for finger, foot, head entrapment, fall heights, etc), but schools and councils have other regulations, risk-adverse, often counter-intuitive and socially-conservative.

Monkey bars, for instance, are considered an acceptable risk, because for an adult they are easily understood - they’ve been part of the childhood experience for as long as all can remember. But set a few blueblock stepping stones in the ground, and they might be viewed as radical, subversive.

The best playground, anyway, is nature. A fallen tree. Ocean-damp sand. A wave. Stones in a river. A grassed hill to roll down.     

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*

It felt good to be working in a children’s space again.

It reminded of why I chose to do what I do.

A background in architecture, an interest in design, time on the tools, wanting to create a community, and the isolating effects of early parenthood - compounded for a dad among all the mums waiting at the kindergarten gate at pick-up.

Volunteer work at our boys’ child-care, kindergarten, primary school, led to little jobs that led to this.

*

Thank you to Sally and all at Renown who commissioned me to make three garden boxes for their much-loved community kindergarten in South Yarra.

It’s a privilege to contribute to the spaces of young children, to enhance their world with colour, materials, ideas, possibilities. I hope these garden boxes do this, for many years to come.

What I try to do is set an example.

By using what we have already, by salvaging, recycling, reimagining materials.

As with these three water-efficient wicking bed garden boxes. 

Each are made from ‘food grade’ IBC tanks cut in half, clad in a frame from lengths of pine (all sourced from builder’s skips!) and hardwood floorboards rescued from landfill. Most of the boards on these boxes are from a 1920s bungalow in Elwood (about the same vintage as Renown), with Launceston printed on their underside – most likely mountain ash (Eucalyptus regnans) milled one hundred years ago, from trees that might have been one hundred years older still.

It is wise wood, beautiful timber.

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I wanted them to look like little boats, which in some way is what they are.

I added splashes of colour, curios for the children. On the front box, I made the word ARK from metal road signs, creating an image for passers-by that’s likely to provoke thought, questionings. An ark is a boat, biblical with its connotations, a refuge, nurturing, a vessel of safety.

Maybe this is also what a kindergarten is.

And maybe this kindergarten garden box can teach others, inspire them, to grow food, to look after plants, be sustainable, live smaller lives, touching the world more gently. I hope many might be touched by it, full of edible greens in winter, and in summer maybe tall with corn stalks (like ship masts?) or cheerful sunflowers, open and ready to welcome children.

A yellow ARK, I’m hoping it might become a little part of the next one hundred years of Renown.

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On the other boxes I affixed road sign art, each framed with offcuts sourced from a South Yarra picture framer (she was thrilled I could use what otherwise was going to be tossed out). And some of the boards are painted with words or colours of meaning.

I rode my bicycle there this afternoon and added some more daubs of white paint. On the boxes and elsewhere in the playground. I think it is good for the children to see this.

Creativity.

*

From little things…

Children planted sweetcorn and climbing bean seeds

To see how these wicking bed boxes work - and a schoolteacher friend has calculated they use about one-fifth less water and produce more abundant crops than normal kitchen garden boxes - please see https://www.abc.net.au/gardening/factsheets/building-a-wicking-bed/9435452.

They are not playgrounds, but they are architecture for the school yard, for a play space.

And they are an opportunity.

And yes, I involved the children in setting one of them up: getting dirt under their fingernails, looking for worms, giving them jobs, discussing the merits of bugs, talking about compost, have them feel and smell the soil.

Then those who helped the most, I took them on a wheelbarrow ride around their yard, a jogtrot with precious cargo.

I think they enjoyed it.

One of the mums said the children now call me the ‘insect teacher’.

I told her I’d like to be known as Professor Worm.

The art of a fence

He barracks for St Kilda, she’s a Tiger.

Football doesn’t necessarily define friendships, but it can shape them, adding layers, other conversations.

I call him ‘Mr Melbourne’ and several years back, in my football writing days, I interviewed him in Yarra Park for a story about landscape; about the shape of nature, the emotions it holds, how it might affect who we are, the game we play.

He burnished the idea. A gun photographer, Simon O’Dwyer, took his portrait, lying on his back on the grass, looking skyward as Melbourne always has, his St Kilda colours draped over his chest, his heart. It was a story about place, and I was hoping for the front page, where he needed to be.

But life doesn’t always work-out so easily.  

Staff at the paper went on strike. The story slipped though the gaps, was published online only (see https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/footy-ground-fulfils-fundamental-human-need-20160317-gnl8bt.html

All these years later, going through the upheaval of a separation, the ground under my feet no longer certain, he texted.

Said he was re-landscaping his front yard.

Asked if I might be able to help. His hand of friendship, it looped beneath me.

Turning fifty a few months ago, I sought refuge in art. In making things.

I spent some of the day playing with murals I was working on. And painted discs cut into two redgum posts with spade bits, into colours for them.

Red, white and black for him.

Yellow and black for her.

A nod to them, this city, layers of meaning.

One post for him, one for her, with a gate in-between.

They stand now as two totems in a fence that’s like no other in Melbourne. Imbued with care, a deep respect, with consultation, rich with memory – of a time in our lives, connections made – stamped with the colours of football identity.

St Kilda, Richmond.

And what are the chances?

Last touches, and the two teams play against each other this week, a first finals together for goodness knows how long.

Andrew May and Christina Twomey are esteemed historians, the both of them..

At Andy’s professorial lecture a few years back, he took the audience on a journey through landscape, mapping the soils of Melbourne, the ground beneath us, the texture of place. Archaeological digs, shifting sands by the Yarra, market gardens, the foundations of this city. 

Now at his house, on a corner block on a west-falling hill in Ivanhoe, on a natural walking trail, in lockdown he has dug-over his whole front yard, tilled the soil lovingly, tenderly, found shards and fragments of porcelain - from which he will one day make a mural - preparing the site for a new landscape. It’s a big job. Bending his back, mostly on weekends, the footy running on the radio, his has been a very public performance of digging-sifting-turning-tilling, starting a shared conversation among neighbours, passers-by.

People stopped and talked.

Strangers encouraged him, gave compliments, admiration.

He built a community library box, filled it with books.

More gathered to watch, acknowledge.

His body ached from the manual labour.

It felt good.

The earth was giving back.

The street may never be the same again.

Ivanhoe’s own Capability Brown!

Andy and Christina asked how I might be able to contribute.      

They didn’t really need my help, but maybe they knew I needed theirs.

What I saw was an empty paddock with a new boundary fence (1920s-style post and woven wire), and an impressive resurrection of their water-damaged veranda, with new jarrah boards and proper drainage and sub-floor ventilation works. Andy had loosely plotted pathways, but all was negotiable.

A heavy brushwood fence divided the spaces between the front and north-facing side yard, which they were to replace with a standard treated pine paling fence. A lost opportunity, I suggested.

Their previously overgrown north-east facing yard was open now to the street.

How had this opened their lives, created new conversations, passing friendships, a newfound connection with place?

Our built forms shape our lives in so many ways. Why not a screen fence? Allow the flow of air and light through, a playful filter, and allow also an emotional and physic passing, a fluidity. Not be boxed – fenced - in.

I had a collection of hardwood roof battens (50mm by 25mm), probably ash, salvaged from a mid-century bungalow in St Kilda East, waiting for a job like this. Affix them on edge, close together, and it creates a pleasing texture of timber, like a dense forest, warm, organic, nature’s rhythm, a screen of trees that viewed from an angle cannot be seen through.

They liked it. And so we began.

Not all batten fences are the same. Some are better than others, a few still are quite beautiful.

Least pleasing are those built from treated pine, painted, with a 50:50 ratio of solid to void. It’s the cheapest, easiest option. And it shows. Most pleasing is those built of western red cedar, with fine-milled battens placed close together, forming delicate slithers of light and air, a refined sensibility. But do the maths on timber like that. You need deep pockets.

What I’ve made is something in-between. I like to think of it as an art installation. Rustic, careful, honest, true.

As is the Bowerbird way, many of its materials are recycled, second-hand. Two of the posts came from under their house. I didn’t want bog-standard cypress pine posts for the other two, so made two posts from four old redgum posts, using gal bolts on half lap joints. I love old redgum posts, their hardness, the story they tell, how they grey-weather with such dignity.

Two historians needed two old posts with a story to them; clasped together, like words, lovers.

All the frames are found: I’ve used hardwood rails, and old bargeboards painted glossy black. The steel gate frame was bought second-hand from a retired plumber in Moorabbin (keen for a chat, a lovely bloke) and again painted black. (Most of my paint supplies are surplus tins from clearing out sheds – Melbourne has enough leftover paint to give the whole city a fresh lick).

From the get-go, I didn’t have enough 2100mm length battens to finish the job, so put a call into a roofing contact, and a request: a slab of beer if I could collect what ordinarily they toss in a skip. But lockdown, and tightening budgets, and Melbourne now is living with leaky roofs. Not as many being replaced. Plenty of Douglas fir battens were on offer, but no Australian hardwood ones came up.

We gave up waiting. (The trick with using salvaged materials is to grab them when on offer, then store the bloody things!)

I bought a batch from a yard in Bulleen. Three dollars a metre for six-metre OB (off-the-bench) lengths. Not what I envisaged; green wood, heavy with moisture, with none of the rich colours of age. But as it dries it should weather and warm and lighten. And I’ll give them a splash of oil to mute the hue.   

Each is affixed with stainless steel screws, recessed in a counterbore, for visual effect.

A few finishing touches to come, but the structure is there, and I think it looks fine-boned, striking, bold, but with this sense of lightness, of letting things pass, not interrupting nature. A branch of an apricot tree has found its way through the slats already and my heart fluttes.   

Shade of a loquat tree. A singing wind chime. Knock-off beers, a bottle of whisky.

Friendship, counsel, support.

Andy and Christina helped me. I built them something I hope they cherish forever, gives them joy, raises their spirits in little measures in private moments.

Life, communities, and football - and a love we show in other ways.

John, I closed the side gate at the Marlo cemetery and knotted in tears, an uncontrollable sadness, and it was for you, for all I’d seen, for this loss. The pile of pebbles and dirt mounded on your plot - if I could, with others, I’d place a big granite boulder there, as big as a fridge, as a monument, nature’s farewell.

Billsy, I’d just been up Ellery and it’s all gone, right to the top, burned through the alpine ash and those big snowgums in the tors, as old as the mountain itself. Was an adventure getting in there – all the forests are closed - reckon you’d like the story, can see you smiling, shaking your head.

I stayed with Heather last night, John, and she misses you. I slept in the bed in the loft you made. Wish you could have known that, known you’d put me up, helped me out, a traveller, travelling light.

Remember when I lived in the old farmhouse up the river flats and I’d ride into town and leave my bike at your office and catch the bus up to Canberra and Sydney. You always helped me out, never questioned my ways.

Billsy, I went to the Marlo Hotel last night and of course your name came up, and there was talk about the going-away party I had, remember that poem I wrote, ‘First orange of winter’, I put in a line about you, something like “Heather’s a long distance runner, Billsy - he’s more of a sprinter”, and I met Al and Courtney and their little boy Will – you wouldn’t know about Will – and they’re lovely, and Al had heard the stories about the walk up into the Cobberas we did, the snow falling, snake country, the brumbies, a wild place.

John, I told Al I’d come back and we’d go there some school holidays, remembering you. What I didn’t say is we’d carry little Will up there, if we had to, cos you and I know what it’s like being a young boy growing up in this valley, the imagination it might instil.

Billsy, it’s been so long since I’ve been back – too long – and there’s a lot going on, I wish I could talk to you about it, but I reckon I’ve crossed a threshold. I cannot quit the river, the valley, the forests. I reckon it’s in me, part of who I am.

I think you’d understand, know what I’m talking about.

I caught up with Alexandra the other week, we had coffee; she’s lovely. Bet you’re proud. A fierce, independent spirit. She’s thinking of moving back. She will. Reckon children might be soon. Reckon Heather is waiting for her to come back. Everyone says her bloke is a beauty, a rock. Like the sound of him. I’ll go see them in Coburg, I’ve questions to ask.

And Hannah followed me on Facebook and sent me a message and said we should catch up for a coffee. We will. She lives only a few blocks away, what are the chances? I looked through some of her Facie pics and there’s one of her modelling something in her gym gear, Billsy, phwoar, made me feel old!

Sealy’s well, and did you know he’s now principal, and we had coffee on the Saturday morning in Marlo, he came over, was nice, sat around your kitchen table - Pete, Heather, myself - talked about the fires, the town, what’s going on, all the smoke, the changes.

People are hurting, Billsy, and they’re divided, and no one really knows the answers, and me and Royston had a falling out – he blocked me on Facebook! – and Burnsy had a go at me, but you know I needed to come back and see for myself. Reckon everybody just needs to go for a long walk in the forest, it’s as good a way as any to sort things out.

Big trees are still burning up on Brown Mountain, John, they’re smouldering away, trunks have smashed and splintered and the fire must have been hot up there cos nothing has grown back, and the ash bed was as deep as a fingernail, all soft and spongey, I dug into it, and the earth was black and smoking from the root holes, and I camped a night in it, and it was FREEZING, hardly slept a wink, my sleeping bag was no good, packed in a hurry – you know what I’m like – grabbed the wrong one, and I was woken I reckon soon after five by two empty timber jinkers rattling up the Bonang to a plantation at Tubbut that went bust – heard the Chinese bought it, all the logs going there – then the kookaburras started singing and I popped my head out the tent door and the sun still hadn’t shown, and it was too cold to get up, but I couldn’t sleep, so I did, and first thing I did was crouch down in a burning stump, like a big pizza oven, a beautiful heat, could have slow cooked some real treats in there, and I warmed myself up nicely.

Just about bogged the car getting up there the night before. Went up a forest road, was closed and sticky after the rain, and geez, I could have easily put it in the side ditch, and I had no ropes, imagine the embarrassment, can see your wry grin, a shake of the head. Had to reverse a long way to find a spot to turn around. Got a sore neck.

I saw a bull-ant up there Billsy, and I felt like shaking its hand – a survivor! Congratulations little fella!

It’s all gone, so quiet, no crickets and spiders, it’s burnt along the road all the way up, and Brown Mountain has turned black, but those big trees and ferns by the Bonang River were safe. I called it an ‘ark’. I went down there and souvenired a sign, STATE FOREST, but the ‘s’ and the ‘t’ were burned off, so it reads like what the fires did, gobbled them all up.

Got a flat coming back down the mountain, in a borrowed car, two-wheel drive, low clearance, very unsuitable, and the first place to change it was by the last house up the north end of Goongerah. Geez, it’s a bit wild up there, sort of place a man could go hide in the mountains if he never did want to be got. Looked real Deliverance stuff, banjo playing backwoods. Gas bottles strewn outside, trailer stacked with all sorts of items – like one of those yard sales you used to do – and bits of old machinery, but it was something, a building, and it’s not as though there are many up there, and now there are fewer still, with many of them gone to a pile of twisted iron and bed springs.

Anyway, pulled over and the front right was on the rim and had no idea if the spare was OK – it was – and I thought, bugger it, I’ll have to drive down to Orbost to get this fixed, and I see Dooley’s has shut-up – gee, the town is struggling, so much is closed, not an upbeat story – and I’d have to go to Voss Motors and me and Clint had a bit of a stoush on Facebook a while back, it was about the fires and ‘climate change’, won’t go into it, it’s unproductive all this bickering, but I reckon you’d get the picture, and imagine me having to front and ask for his help getting the tyre fixed! A man has pride, Billsy, his pride.

But get this. I changed the tyre, then from this house out wanders this young bloke, a shock of ginger hair and beard, shirt unbuttoned, and he looked taut, all muscle and sinew, from central casting, and didn’t use his words liberally, and he asked what’s up, and I’m not sure what he made of me, but I told him I’d been camped out on Brown Mountain and was planning to get up Ellery, and how I’d grown up in these parts, out Bete Belong way, and mate I dropped Heather’s name, said how on Friday night I was going to the Marlo pub and was staying with her – everyone knows Heather, don’t they? – and I could see he was checking my bona fides, who I was, that I had some credits in these parts, someone who’s spent time here, seen it, done it, has the forests in them.

He said most of the people in town haven’t come up here and seen it, what it’s done, and reckon he’s right.

That’s what I liked about you, John, you took me places, showed me stuff, you got out and had a look to see what’s over the hills on the other side of the valley.

I remember I was driving the old green Peugeot up to Canberra – remember that car, I loved that car! – and I saw you looking over a property up the Cann Valley Highway, probably a yard sale coming up. You got out and saw stuff. Had a poke around.

Anyway, this young bloke came out of this hillbilly backblocks building – turns out it’s like a de facto community hall for the locals, owned by a woman called Fi who’s no longer there, had enough of the off-grid life, but she lets locals use it, probably a gas fridge inside with a few beers I’d say – and we got talking and he sized me up, and once I’d finished he rolled the flat tyre to the back of his ute, pumped it up, found the hole, plugged it, then rolled himself a cigarette.

Reckon he’s that type of bloke. One job at a time, then a cigarette.

His name was Owen Hanson, and someone later told me who he was, his big sister, etc, and I don’t care what anyone says, in my book he’s OK. I’m indebted to him. He helped out a traveller, like you did. I’m gonna go back up there soon, when I can, and visit him at Martins Creek. Got questions for him as well. About the forest. About living in it. About how the trees, the smells, sounds, the shape of the country, gets in your blood.

Sorry, Billsy, I’m rambling.

You know me, why use a few words when you can use a lot?

Heather told me you used to like reading my travel stories – pissing off the end of Australia, climbing Kilimanjaro, camping up in the snow at Kosciuszko, I used to enjoy writing them – got paid by the word, made myself a little living by doing a bit of wandering. I was touched to hear you took an interest, you followed what I went and done next. I had some rough years after Orbost, Billsy, I won’t say it’s been all smooth sailing.

I always thought of you ‘Billsy’, thought of how you helped me, what we did, those backcountry hikes, the compass you and Pete gave me when I left. It was Pete who told me about your death, think it was about two days before the funeral, I had had no idea you were unwell, and I was sad, upset about not saying goodbye. It wasn’t right. You should have told me. I woulda driven straight to your door so we could go take a drive somewhere, have a walk, and I woulda asked you questions about wood, and building, and property prices, and got a bit of town gossip.

I wrote some words about you and posted them on Facebook – my acknowledgement, a thank you – and I was pleased Pete read them out to the crowd at the funeral, but Billsy, if I hadda known, I would have written other words, better words, to say goodbye.

I wrote down thoughts just now as I sit in the car by the cemetery at Marlo, cheeks wet, sobbing, letting it all out. Been a while since I had a good cry, Billsy. A man needs a good cry every once in a while. Scribbled them on a notepad in the front passenger seat:

“Never got to say goobye, I never will, I will always try to prove myself to you, try and live up to your expectations, the standards you set.

Met Al at the pub and he said you never drank, he never saw you at the pub.

You were always happiest doing things, being busy. Couldn’t sit still.

A tear is rolling down my cheek, John, thinking of you. Life will continue, it has to, but for many people in your community and at least one bloke who lives outside of it, it will always be a little less.

I’m sorry I didn’t have the time or make the time to come back and see you, say goodbye”

**

Billsy, this next bit, I didn’t write it down, but will tell you, reckon you’d like it.

Late on the Friday I walked out of Ellery, actually, one of the forestry blokes clearing fallen trees from the track gave me a lift back to my car, and he said they’d sent a search party out looking for me, everyone was talking about what I was up to (the police said if I didn’t return from the forest by the Friday they were sending up a chopper!). Mate, gotta keep ‘em guessing! If a man can’t have a little adventure up in the mountains, what’s the point of life?

Mate, I must tell you what I saw up there – no one else has been up to see it, was a first account – but not now.

Anyway, everything took longer than I’d hoped. The track was burned. I had to walk a long way in (had to sweet talk my way past an Orbost forestry bloke who refused outright to let me in – YOU’RE NOT GOING IN THERE, THE FORESTS ARE CLOSED - I used every trick in the book to wear him down, and the last ploy, final roll of the dice…. “mate, I used to play centre-half-forward for the Snowy Rovers!”). I camped out up high, and hoped to get to the top at about midday on the Friday, but got lost in those big boulders going up – the fire has ripped through all of them – and didn’t make it to the top rock until 1.40pm, then had to walk back to the campsite, then with backpack, back to the car, then drive down the mountain.

Remember that time I walked for hours in the dark from Cowombat Flat, up there in the very fingertip headwaters of the Murray, because I couldn’t find that cairn that marked the start of the Black and Allen borderline? I’ll never forget that night! What sort of bloke walks into the forest alone to camp and forgets his torch? Was you who made me go up there, Billsy, you put it in my head to find that cairn.

Anyway, a timber-getter from the Yarra Valley drove me back to the car – they’ve been contracted to work clearing the roads since early January – and I needed to drop off an axe at Goongerah but an American forestry crew had dropped trees on the road back so I had to come out the long way, back to the highway, and it was getting late, and I’d told Heather I’d be staying at her place for two nights, but once I’d seen those burnt forests I knew I needed to spend two nights up there, so I left her a text message, said I’d text her when I left the forest, and the plan was to be at the Marlo Hotel on Friday night, have a beer, catch up with Chas, Lorrie, Rhyll, Pete, whoever might be there, and stay the night at your place.

I left the forest after five on the Friday, Billsy, all the forest crews had knocked-off and gone back into town, and my phone was low on juice and the first reception I got was on the outskirts of Orbost, coming into town, and I hadn’t washed for three days and had seen stuff that’ll stay with me all my time, it was nearing six o’clock, and Heather hadn’t heard from me for days, none really knew my whereabouts, and I called her and the first thing I said:

“I’m like that naughty teenage son you never had”.

Your girls and Heather miss you John, of course they do, and they’ll always remember you, and you made so much for them – that house, the adventures – and you took me under your wing, a stranger making his way in a strange land, and for that I’ll always be grateful.

These are the words I write for you, Billsy. One day I should just borrow a flatbed truck and go prise a big rock from the hills, big and smooth and round, and place it on your burial mound, something to mark the spot, John Bills Lies Here, resting from a long walk, gone too early, but not forgotten.

Not by me, Billsy.

Big hugs,

d x

River School

Boys didn’t want to go. There was yelling leaving the house, threats and scowls and disappointments, fuelled by Saturday afternoon tiredness. I told the 10-year-old he could sit in the front, program the music. The six-year-old nodded-off in the back seat before we hit the West Gate.

A boys’ road trip, of the primary school kind.

Near Little River on the Geelong Road I pulled-over, told the 10-year-old to turn the music down, how I needed a short nap. Highway driving is the best time to teach children about road safety, including driver fatigue. I kept the engine in idle; didn’t want to disturb his brother.

Light rain woke me. It activated the windscreen wipers, which spooked my watch-guard companion. He nudged me.

“Dad…”

South of Colac, in the foothills of the Otways, heading into the first forests, the road narrower, winding, the disputes and resentments left far behind, the conversation opened to camping and what would we be having for dinner and which site were we on and did I pack the hammock?

The landscape changed our moods. All of us were happy; to be in the countryside, going away.

A friend, a paediatrician, last year sent an abstract from Science Daily to a group of camping friends, about a European study of 3600 people that found contact with nature during childhood could lead to better mental health in adulthood. A recent book I read, ‘The Man Who Made Things out of Trees’, had several pages summarising latest research in environmental psychology. Most memorably, the author cited a study that “concluded that patients recovering from surgery in rooms facing natural surroundings took less medicine for pain relief than patients with a window facing a brick wall”.

Nature, it’s good for us, good for our children.

**

My inflatable mattress sprung a leak early on the first night. The six-year-old didn’t notice. Most of the night was spent rolling on the hard ground, his feet kicking at me.

It rained in the morning, quite a lot. The front annexe of the tent flooded. Clothes and beach towels got wet. A wind started to blow.

Then Zoe, next tent over, asked if I wanted a cup of coffee. Bless her.

**

My boys only wanted to camp one night. They insisted on it, bargained for it. By mid-morning, fed an omelette, the badminton net up, swinging on hammocks, playing with a group of children all of whom know each other through school, there was no turning-back. We were staying two nights, dad! We’ve changed our minds.

The camp creates its own routines, regularities. Josh forgot to bring a jumper, again. He doesn’t feel the cold, spends all his time in a T-shirt. Hugo finds a worm in the dirt; soon all the children are digging for them, feeding them in pop-up worm farms. Chali musters a group for a walk to the light house. They see two snakes on the way. The two older girls, Amber and Lulu, confirm a friendship, become inseparable. All the boys – Gabriel, Alastair, Oliver, Marcus, Ollie, Hugo – make a rolling maul, one game turning into another, then another. Francois, a tennis coach, suntans on the beach and I feel compelled to hold my tummy in. His visiting 21-year-old niece, Clotidle, studying medicine, takes photographs, steps lightly around us all. Abby looks happy to be away. Her youngest daughter, Clem, is our camping mascot. Lars offers his spreadsheet on which brand and model of mattress is the best to buy. I trust his spreadsheet.

Did I tell you I didn’t sleep well?

Then the wind picks up and it blows and blows, scything off the ocean, up a headland, brushing and bunting a stand of stringybarks we’re camped beneath, a constant roar, unsettling, unceasing, into the afternoon, all through the night, banishing some to their cars for sleep, wishing for earplugs, telling the boys a story of when I once camped up near Koscuiskco and the tent blew-out (it gave them no reassurance), and on an atlas I check now our whereabouts: on a tip of Cape Otway, further south than almost anywhere on the Australian mainland, winds unbothered by landfall between here and Patagonia, a wild place that invites wild weather.

**

In the morning it is all worth it for this: all of us at the beach, children playing in the sand, making things, building things, beside the fresh riverwater that cuts its way to the ocean. Monday morning, and this is their ‘river school’, a classroom of nature, cooperation, teamwork, negotiation, hydrology, natural sciences, the tactility of play.

A last, quick swim.

Then a running race. All of us, with handicapped starts, the pure joy of running barefoot on sand, although I’m sure all the children at the front jump early from their blocks.

On the drive home I get lost in a state forest somewhere east of Barrangarook. Trying for a shortcut, using the sun as my compass. Doesn’t matter. We take dirt roads to Birregurra, then find the bitumen to Melbourne.

Putting our boys to bed tonight, Mr 10-year-old turns to me: “Dad, I just wanted to say thanks for the weekend away.”

Was a pleasure, I tell him.

Our children, earning their trust

In January’s first week, driving through a stand of tall eucalypts in the Otway Ranges on a southernmost elbow of the country, my eldest boy, unbidden, connected the dots. Dad, he said, ‘the fires give air pollution to the air and they’re also burning the trees that make the oxygen’.

‘So, it’s like, double the amount of oxygen loss.’

While Australia’s Prime Minister has questioned school children’s “needless anxiety” about climate change, here was my nine-year-old expressing concern about the very air he breathes. This is his reality, the world he’s growing into.

Back in Melbourne, he spent days on end indoors with his brother, quarantined from toxic airborne smoke pollution. I walked to nearby shops for supplies wearing a face mask. We closed windows, sealed doors. Play dates with friends at their swimming pool were cancelled. Our annual bush camping holiday, on the coast north of Mallacoota, was aborted.

Never has his childhood seemed so different from mine.

Now as a new school year turns, routines renewed, might this be a defining moment of change? School is their sanctuary. Through the shared contract of education, it needs now to be a place where they also see a collective effort to do all we can to improve the world they’ll inherit.

The crisis is real. Last September a group of British psychologists warned that young people feel betrayed and abandoned by older generations over climate inaction, sparking anxiety and depression. In Australia, a recent UNICEF survey of more than 1000 young people found they are “overwhelmingly worried” about climate change; 59 per cent think it as a threat to their safety.

ReachOut Australia, a leading youth mental health organisation, polled more than 1500 school students last year and found 82 per cent think climate change will diminish their life, and 77 per cent do not believe their concerns are being addressed.

And this was before the forests burned and the great Australian summer holidays turned to smoke and ashes.

State-based education departments have so far dragged their feet on the issue. Unlike in New Zealand, who have introduced a non-compulsory classroom program for 11 to 15-year-olds to address climate change and “eco-anxiety”, there is no formal curriculum material approved for Australian classrooms to educate children on global heating.

Our boys are lucky. Growing up in Armadale, an affluent Melbourne suburb, a privilege of place affords them great benefits – but comes also with responsibility. Both attend our local primary school, where a vibrant discussion evolves among parents, teachers and students about sustainability, and how best to make a difference.

Our school is doing wonderful things. Teachers and children are composting at school, growing food in kitchen gardens, planting trees through a program run by the local council, building insect ‘hotels’ and frog habitats. The children decided last year to collect e-waste, and to ban those little plastic fish soy sauce containers from school lunch orders. An unflappable mum has coordinated a masterplan that will see asphalt soon ripped-up and replaced with a bamboo forest. A deputy principal organised solar panels on the roof. Parents recently elected a school council that’s open to change.

But there’s more to be done. Climate change must be incorporated into the curriculum. We must build bicycle sheds, support families to ride to school. We must harvest stormwater, insulate for comfort and to save energy, compost with worm farms, plant for shade, birds and bees. We will set examples. We must show children we care.

Schools, for their part, need to keep raising awareness of the ramifications of each consumer choice, of the impacts they have on the planet. Australia, on a per capita basis, is the most polluting country in the world. Our high-emissions lifestyle, a culture of over-consumption, only exacerbates the problem. My sons, as young as they are, understand this, they understand the cause and effect.

Problem is, fundamental change cannot come unless it is underpinned by governments and corporations. When Scott Morrison rebuked the teenage Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg last year for the global climate strike she mobilised, he echoed his government’s priorities. “I want children growing up in Australia to feel positive about their future,” he said. If he truly believes this, then his government’s priorities must change – and change fast – to reflect the concerns of children, and all they are doing to abate them.

So, let’s restore our children’s trust in us. Change is within us all. It is coming from kindergartens and primary schools and trickling up. Children are offering guidance, and speaking up, offering true voices on the most pressing issue confronting the welfare of the planet. Maybe it is true, that children can save the world.

As responsible parents, in this new school year we must give them agency. Leave apathies and animosities behind at the school gate. School communities need to shine. Every school in Australia must challenge itself to reduce its carbon footprint and do all it can to encourage others to follow.

Time is now to act for better days ahead, for the very air they breathe.

The gift of giving

My mantra for this month: ‘I cannot do this alone, I need the help of a crowd’.

It is true in life, and it is the core of the Bowerbird business. I’ve been busy making things these past 18 months, but what I’ve really made are communities. For every job, each step of the way, I include people, involve them. As with young children, most of us like a job to do. I once heard a story, that if someone is depressed, the best thing to do for them is ask them to make you a cup of tea.

In being useful, in the doing, a simple task, there is enjoyment.

Thank you to all who offered gifts for the Bowerbird Block Party raffle. My heart skipped, and sang. I could hug you all, even Sam, the Carlton supporter.

For those who cannot attend the Block Party but would like to contribute with a raffle ticket (& thank you Clare Murayama who dropped-off $20 last Saturday for 5 tix) the easiest way to do it is either find me and give me the cash, or transfer money to this account:

First Orange Pty Ltd (trading as Bowerbird Gardens)

06 3143 1061 9265 (put your name on transaction description)

Tickets are $5 each, of 5 for $20. Please send me a text (0425 005 531) to let me know. I can appreciate there is a lot of trust in this transaction, but again, this is the ethos of my business. Trust and fairness. Without this, what I do and the way I do it would never work.

All money raised will go toward a project with Indigenous school children. I will publish the final tally. I will fully document what the project is, and how it is applied, and will seek media to spread the news. It is a tangible example of one community coming together to help another - less advantaged - community. There is no politics involved in this. It is an exercise in cooperation, in giving.

Now, the fun bit, the PRIZES! (drum roll, please….)

TWO NIGHTS ACCOMMODATION in a four-bedroom beach house overlooking St Andrews Beach golf course on the tip of the Mornington Peninsula. Donated kindly by Sandra McKay. Sandra is a friend from my newspaper days. We sat diagonally opposite each other for a while at The Age in the Spencer Street days, and I’ve always been very fond of her. Since returning to Melbourne I’ve bumped into her at the footy, and remember once taking her boy out for kick-to-kick. She is a wonderful woman, always smiling, strong and determined, a gentle heart. She barracks for Richmond, which helps. (Although I also keep tabs on her two nephews, who are key position stars-in-the-making at North and Carlton). Thank you Sandra.

TWO NIGHT STAY in a two-bedroom Deluxe Holiday Unit at the Inverloch Big4 Holiday Park. Donated kindly by Adrian Edwards. I went to school with Adi, and all our year who graduated catch-up regularly, in a very casual event organised by a mutual friend. I sent a group email to this cohort a few weeks ago, and Adi’s immediate reply: “Congrats mate. Happy to donate a weekend’s accommodation for the raffle Duges.” That’s Adi, matter-of-fact, gets-things-done, helps out, generous to others, always with a wry smile. I owe him a beer. I know his twin brother is a Tiger, so that’s good enough for me. Thanks Adrian, I could hug you.

BOTTLE OF VEUVE CLICQUOT CHAMPAGNE. French bubbly. This is wonderful. This was dropped at my doorstep by a woman I’ve never met, but who could be one of my several guardian angels. On social media (Facebook) she is always so encouraging of what I do, so supportive. It means much to me. All of us appreciate some acknowledgement. It is such a gift to give it out. It shows such generosity, such confidence in one’s character. Her name is Jennifer Berry. I’m not even sure how our world’s met (we have one mutual friend on FB, Corrie Perkin), but they did and I am all the richer for this. She’s a Geelong fan, bless her heart, but one of her boys is a Tiger, the little ripper. Thank you Jenny, you are a treasure.

(Must mention at this point all gifts are transferable, and I’d be very happy to, etc…)

BOTTLE OF WINE. Not yet sure if it’s a red or a white but it’ll be a nice drop. It’s from Pippa Cox, the art teacher at Armadale PS and our eldest boys’ teacher in prep and Grade 1. Pippa is a sweetheart, and she’s always been so encouraging of what I’ve done at our boys’ school. With her help, and that of others, in little but incredibly significant ways, I’ve been able to transform parts of the landscape of that school in very creative and imaginative ways. It is important. It is not about ego or money. It is about improving the welfare and experiences of and for children. I owe Pippa a bottle of wine (she came and helped clean bricks for a job I did at Nelson Street Kindergarten in Balaclava), but this is the sort of woman she is: she donates the wine! Thank you Pippa, you the best!

VILLAGE CINEMA MOVIE GIFT CARD. To the value of $50. Annie Exell arrived on the front doorstep the other week and gave me the card. This is for the raffle, she said. How incredible is that! I know Annie from my mid-20s, and mutual friends, and remember always a ski trip she organised, and a few years ago at a local pub I was admiring a young boy and his woolknit Richmond jumper and it turns out his mum was Annie and they named him Dougie! Worlds entwine. Annie also gave me some choice chocolates and Bunnings gift cards for facilitating her husband snaring a ticket to the GF. He’s a tiger, their two boys are tigers. Annie, you are so very generous. Thank you.

LORD OF THE FRIES gift vouchers. Have five of these to give away, each worth $50. There’s an outlet at Flinders Street station and if you have time before your train arrives, their chips are the bomb! Thank you Sam Koronczyk for this gift. I know Sam through our local primary school, although I had met his daughter earlier at the whole swimming lesson thing.. She’s lovely. Sam is a great hands-on dad, always doing the drop-off and pick-up, always open to a chat, talks with a smile. He’s an avid Carlton fan, who travels regularly to interstate games, who has football under his skin. He would arrive at school so heavy-shouldered on a Monday for most of this footy season. I was so glad for him when they changed coaches and started winning. A weight lifted. There is hope. Thank you Sam, you are the man.

REDBUBBLE gift vouchers. Three, each to the value of $40. Chris Rees, my dear and valued friend in Hobart, a very talented graphic designer (he created the Bowerbird logo, created the Block Party flyer for free), my confidant and co-creator of a community-building football blog www.tigertigerburningbright.com.au (will always maintain we played a valuable role in turning the fortunes of our hitherto woebegone footy team), an artist, a wonderful dad, admired by so many of us. I am so fortunate Chris came into my life. With others, we’ve created a really vibrant and engaging and accepting and inclusive football community. He’s a tiger, and a lovely man. Thank you Chris.

A POGO STICK. Offered by Claire Heaney who I knew of at first through Cheryl Critchley, who knows the Nettletons who I used to milk cows for in Orbost, and Siobhan Dunckley who I met through our local kindergarten and school, and, oh, it’s complicated. But I met Claire the other week when I gave a talk about the ‘reverse economy’ and she lives in Richmond and is a Tiger and I offered to ride my bike to Tigertown to pick up the pogo stick but she says she’ll drop it on the doorstep in the next day or two. Thank you Claire, you’re a good sort, as they say!

TWO BOTTLES OF WINE. A gift from my father. May be of variable quality. He is a retired engineer. He has no idea what I do and how I go about it, but has always been supportive (so long as I make him a cup of coffee when he pops over). I love him. He’s a good natured man, fair-minded, even though he barracks for Essendon. Thank you dad.

A HOMEMADE CAKE. I’ve no idea what it will be, nor the ingredients used (GF, anyone?), but I know it’ll be good! It will come with care and love and passion, from Liz Lopez, another friend from past journalism days (although curiously we were passing colleagues). But I have a sense of kindred spirit with Liz. We keep bumping into each other. On a street corner in Redfern, Sydney. A house Christmas party of hers in Collingwood. Then reconnecting on social media. She was one to encourage me to start a business doing what I’m doing. She contracted me on my first private job. I built her a garden. I met her parents, her sister, her neighbours (still have some edging bricks they gave me), all the people who walked by. Her garden started conversations. I’ve been having an ongoing conversation with Liz for all my adult life. I reckon she’d screw up her nose at football, and that’s all the more reason to love her. Thank you Liz.

**

Thanks also to Dan O’Grady (we’ve known each other since about Grade 3 of primary school), Clint Evans (went to secondary school together) and Jeff Gooden (we play Monday night ‘old farts’ hockey together), and probably a few others, who’ve also offered very generous gifts, but I’ve decided to limit it to 10, and told them to come along and make merry and buy some raffle tickets if they can.

Hope to see many on Saturday.

I will need some ‘raffle ticket sellers’. I have a few people in mind.

The love-hate of Bunnings

Parents of an U10 soccer team I coached gave me two Bunnings gift cards as a thank you present.

It was the perfect gift for a bloke like me.

I love Bunnings.

It is my favourite place to shop because it has so much that is useful. I love its staff, always helpful when they can be, and sometimes knowledgeable and filled with good advice. I love its returns policy. I love its rows of fixings, especially all the bolts and screws. I think these are my favourite aisles, although recently I’ve been pulled also to the paints. I love its variety. All the plumbing supplies, light bulbs, oils, bags of potting mix if you need it, drill bits, tools.

I have other hardware stores I visit for things, one of them regularly, with squeaky timber floors. Usually I bicycle there. Sometimes I dink my youngest son. He quite likes visiting hardware stores. My eldest boy detests it. He couldn’t think of anything worse.

It reminds him of all the differences he has with his father.

I like the Bunnings TV advertisements, the way they put the staff on centre stage. I don’t mind the tool shop either, although I buy tools also from other places.

But the parents of the soccer team I coach gave me a Bunnings gift card, and they know me well enough to know how much it was appreciated.

With the money, from the Alexandria store in Sydney (visiting on a family holiday) , I bought:

• a 24 oz Estwing hammer. Made in USA. I already have this hammer, but several years ago bent the shaft when trying to prise a nail from a post (will never do that again). Estwings are the best hammers money can buy. This one was $84.55. I emailed the parents, told them whenever I bang a nail, I’ll think of their boys.

• A pair of Peltor earmuffs. Made in Poland. I have some Peltor earmuffs, but they’re at least 20 years old and figure it’s time to replace. These were the top range at the store. $38.86. You can never spend too much to protect your hearing. Told the parents I’d wear them to training next year. The boys do make a lot of noise.

• A Lufkin builder’s rule. My last one broke, pulled apart by some young boys. Made in Sweden. I’ve been using the pieces of the broken one, but here was an opportunity to upgrade. It’s not the best on the market, as my old one was, with its bevelled edge. But this one is yellow-and-black. It’s a premiership builder’s rule.

• A 4lt tin of Feast Watson Wood Shield Oil. I have no immediate need for this, but it was in a reduced-to-clear bin. Marked down from $90 to $30. I’m always using timber oils. Feast Watson is a quality brand.

Yes, I love all the possibilities within a Bunnings store, all the things that can be made or done.

But I hate some of the logging practices they’ve been involved in. I hate that recently they were caught underpaying staff. And I especially hate all the useless crap in them, all the cheap-quality materials and products, stuff to tizz-up houses and backyards, designed for profit, with a short lifespan that invariably ends up in landfill.

I hate all the useless JUNK in Bunnings. Aisles and aisles of it. Junk. Cheap and nasty. So often I see it at schools and kindergartens and elsewhere - a cheap ‘Bunnings aesthetic’ I call it - stupid stuff designed for bored or uncertain or unquestioning consumers. And the planet takes the hit. Stuff made often in China, so often plastic and synthetic materials, hardly built to last, hardly honest in its design, made for a disposable economy.

I hate that Bunnings stocks and sells and encourages this needless high turnover consumer society.

I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.

But nowhere am I happier than in an aisle of galvanised bolts, or among tubs of galvanised coach screws or stitching screws or batten screws, and so often this is at Bunnings.

I love Bunnings. I hate Bunnings.

How a circular economy works

How a circular economy works.

This is Ali.

A few years back I wrote a story about him. Our lives crossed because of football, Richmond, and social media, and because both of us were open to new experiences.

He calls me 'brother'. I call him a friend.

A few weeks ago he made contact, said he could help out. And he could. Their old family home in Fawkner is to be demolished. He offered materials. Take what you want, he said.

I met him on his doorstep this week and he gave me Turkish bread and home-made dips for sustenance, and I set about salvaging as much as I could.

Wheelbarrows of volcanic scoria (for the base of wicking bed garden boxes); three steel post stirrups and coach screws (always useful), and two rooms worth of hardwood floorboards and joists, all prised-up and put in the trailer. I'll go back for the bearers.

Ali gave me materials.

Other friends have given me a place to store timber for peppercorn rent (a bottle of wine a month, plus occasional dog walking duties) in the back yard of their rental property (I'll write a story about them shortly).

And yesterday I texted other friends, told them I've sourced timber for a 'tree house' they've commissioned me to build in their backyard (for their three children, but maybe also for them to hideaway when it all gets too much).

A circular economy [source-keep-use], touching the earth lightly, bringing others together.

I'll tell this story more fully at a public showcase next Saturday week in Toorak (invite attached, all welcome!), for a workshop I've been doing. I'll post more details next week, but there's a large garden perfect for children to roam in (other participants will host some 'forest bathing' to calm all down).

But for now: thank you Ali Yesilyurt for your giving, and helping.

The story I wrote about him can be found here: https://www.richmondfc.com.au/…/oh-were-from-tigerland-ali-…

He couldn't source a ticket to the Grand Final two years ago. If Richmond make it again this year, if any have a spare, I know a bloke who's deserving.

A circular economy: of people, friendships, helping each other out.

Please squeeze a local lemon

Please squeeze a local lemon!

keep giving & good things come back to you.

I collect coffee grinds from our local cafe, put them in compost bins at our local kindergarten, use their garden beds to grow things to give to the cafe.
(plus lemons from our tree).

Gives pleasure, makes others happy, creates a community, recycles waste, the cafe owner gives me $3 coffees.

A circular economy.

Think like a mountain.

#this(sign)making life