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 what I knew was missing. We hadn’t moved house in those middle decades, but as my view of the world evolved I had ‘moved spiritually and philosophically', so there weren’t many deep relationships that survived over the years. 

In 2009 a few things changed. We bought a caravan and committed to living and working from it for at least three months every year, which with a few little aberrations, we have maintained. We also experienced real trauma in our immediate and extended family for the first time and our perspective on life shifted further. For the first time in my working life I was earning more money than we needed so we did what most privileged people do … spent it on overseas travel and home upgrades. All good.

And then we gave away everything we owned except what we could fit in a tiny (1.5x1.5m) storage unit and our two cars and caravan and moved to the Sunshine Coast where we jagged a sublime furnished apartment overlooking the top end of Bribie Island. We lived in paradise for two years. I commuted every week; Port Moresby one week and Melbourne the next, so I lived on aeroplanes, in hotels and every long weekend in our resort style apartment. Unfortunately, the good QLD friends we’d developed over the years from winter surfing holidays together in Byron lived too far away to see regularly. So I still had no mates.

Then when Maria’s dad got sick, we found ourselves another furnished apartment on the Seaport marina in Launceston. In the 18 months that followed our time was split between helping out in the final season of his life and, even though we’d both grown up in Tassie, we spent the weekends exploring as if we were tourists. Which was incredibly good. But I still didn’t have any mates. 

In our hearts, we knew we’d end up back in Victoria, but the experience of life since we moved out of our home in Brunswick had changed us substantially and in the stage of life we were in, we decided we couldn’t go back to the city. We needed sand, not concrete under our feet. Our Sunny Coast apartment balcony overlooked a largish pool that belonged to a resort that was popular with families. Almost everyday, the sound of kids playing in the pool would waft up through our often open balcony doors. It was a delightful soundtrack to our lives there. We’d been super super lucky to live in the places we’d found, both there on the Sunny Coast and on the marina in Launceston. And we consequently made a commitment that from then on we’d ‘live where other people holidayed’. 

So we got out a map of Victoria and identified the towns that were candidates. And we visited them, driving slowly around and trying to let the ‘vibe’ soak in. We loved Inverloch, but it was just that little bit too far away from family and work in Melbourne. In our caravanning lifestyle, we’d previously spent a six week period based in the Riverside Caravan Park on the spit between Ocean Grove and Barwon Heads (now known by its original name, Bukareeyoo). Not surprisingly, we found ourselves gravitating west over the bridge for coffee and meandering. So Barwon Heads was already favoured in our hearts. We drew a rectangle on the map and said, if we can find a place on one of these streets, we’ll move. 

We always knew we’d love living in Pearl Bay. What we didn’t know was how quickly we’d feel like we’d ‘come home’. (Of course the homogeneity is a blessing and a curse right? It’s easy to live alongside people ‘like us’ but having experienced multicultural living in Brunswick, only being around people who are basically the same cultivates an impoverished understanding of how life works.) One day, soon after we’d arrived, I was riding my bike back from the IGA when I spotted some neighbours out on the road chatting, so I took the opportunity to stop and say hi. 

I immediately liked Graeme and Karen. Now I love them. Not only were Graeme and Karen great neighbours, but they made sure we started to meet people. They invited us to dinner with Nikki and Roger. And when Graeme found out I was from Tassie, he told me about a mate who lived a couple of doors down who was also from Tassie. What he didn’t know was that Lawrie and I had been good friends at Uni but had hardly seen each other since. Even though I’d never been on a road bike in my life, Lawrie lent me his when they went to Canada for the summer, and he and Graeme suggested I ride with what they described as a social club on wheel. And Graeme said, ‘It’s mates on tap’. 

I’ve always gravitated to the ocean. Maria is a mountains’ girl. It’s one of the many concessions she’s made in my favour over the years, we always end up near the sea. Often to her embarrassment, my natural inclination when I get to a new bit of beach is to strip off and jump in the water. Not great for you if you happen to come across me, but good for my soul and body. So, I became increasingly curious by this group of hyped beings that crashed our civilised post ride coffees at Annie’s with loud exuberant laughing and shenanigans. Hmmm. 

When I thought about being with mates, I thought I’d be in Brunswick Street opining over social justice issues or sitting with blokes on back decks drinking beer talking about sport or work. Instead I get up early everyday to get into the ocean and share stories of life’s joys and challenges over coffee with both women and men before most people are out of bed. It’s a bit odd but also wild and beautiful and feels like the most natural thing to do. 

Barwon Heads for me is so much more than an incredibly good place to live. It is a community of ordinary, flawed, beautiful and talented human beings among whom I feel at home and connected. It is a rare gift, and I am grateful. 

So why is it important to belong? And why is community so integral to our wellbeing? 

My starting assumption is that every person is both beautiful and f@#&ed. Some of us are better equipped to veil our insecurities and flaws from public view, but whether we are aware of them or not, we’ve got ‘em. And in parallel we’ve got this incredible capacity for resilience, competency and love. It makes a huge difference if we’ve got a ‘home’, by which I mean we’ve got somewhere where we can be our complete unguarded selves and be totally accepted for it. Without such a ‘home’, we tend to project our idiosyncratic insecurities out into our public lives. Which is where the importance of community comes in … 

If ‘home’ is where we can be completely ourselves and experience love without judgement, then ‘community’ is where we get to do what we’re good at, and be who we are in the world with a tribe of people who are looking out for each other. There’s a running joke in regional communities about how many decades you have to live somewhere before you are considered a local. It’s mostly bullshit right? I’ve got two much better ways to understand community. 

Firstly, if you have a ‘giving and taking’ relationship with the life of the community (beyond using the economic and civic infrastructure), then you are a local. Communities are made up of people who self-organise into interest groups of different kinds. These are the forums in which locals engage. Secondly, if you relate to multiple local people in at least two, and probably three different contexts, you are in community. So perhaps you buy your meat from the parent of one of your children’s friends, or you are part of the refugee action group with someone who you know from the dog park etc. 

I know it’s romantic and is pragmatically out of reach for many people in this urbanised world we live in, but I am over the moon grateful for local communities. I wonder if it’s where we belong as humans? The fact that we have accidentally designed a world that makes it almost impossible for most people to live in a local community, doesn’t make it ‘right’.

And so as the odometer of my life clicks over to 60 I am thankful. To my incredible family tribe who offer me a ‘home’ with their love and humour, and everyone who has honoured me with friendship and collaboration over the years, thank you. And in this season of life, to you weird and wonderful people who gather at the beach on Bukareeyoo, you have made my life so much richer than I could have imagined, you are a very special crew and I love youse all.