A tribute to local tribes, especially mine
When I turned 50 I had a big gathering in the basement of donkey wheel house in the CBD. It was a gathering of family and friends. In those days my connection to friends was almost exclusively via work. It was a retrospective event: Five different people gave a little speech about each decade of my life and those gathered in the room represented the various communities that had shaped me over the years. It was fabulous. I have always considered myself lucky. But one of the things that I knew I had missed in the middle decades of life was casual ‘mates’, by which I mean people who I was genuinely comfortable with outside of work and family. I knew lots of people, I’m a friendly bloke. But I missed having honest conversations with people who I felt like I had stuff in common with. It wasn’t a mystery why this was missing. My life was so full of family, work and the complexities of living in a metropolis that there was no time for community sport or the other connections that facilitate
