Michael Green

Writer and producer

We need to talk, Mr Mayor

In Social justice, The Age on

AS I stood in the city square on Friday morning, I locked arms with a quiet IT student and a man who has a doctorate in law.

None of us had done anything like this before. Contrary to Mayor Robert Doyle’s assertions, we were neither professional protestors, nor the usual suspects.

By chance, we had landed in an obscure corner of the human chain, inside a marquee, facing the back of the square, well away from onlookers.

Even the other protesters seemed to have forgotten our corner – for an hour or so, the IT student had no one else to link arms with. As the chant rang out for us to “hold the line”, I asked him how he felt. “Vulnerable,” he replied, with a light smile. The police who surrounded us shared our mirth.

And so, for the first few hours, the big showdown felt more like farce. I had a lot of time to consider my position. Why, exactly, was I there? Should I stay?

Earlier this year, I wrote a long article about homelessness for The Big Issue. Often, while I worked on the piece, I felt deeply shaken.

One day I met a woman who, through illness and ill fortune, faced eviction from her modest unit. She was a good woman, but could no longer pay her rent – the shortfall grew bigger week by week. She sat with me in her darkened lounge and sobbed.

Earlier that same morning, I’d read in the newspaper that Gina Rinehart’s wealth had doubled in twelve months, to $10.3 billion. Hers is wealth born of inheritance, extracted from our finite resources, and funnelled into scare campaigns against taxes.

And so, before the Occupy movement began in Melbourne, I followed its progress in New York. I was excited that Occupy Wall Street had made equality once more a matter of daily public debate.

I visited the city square on several of Occupy Melbourne’s six days, but I didn’t camp. I felt frustrated by the slogans and rhetoric, and by the unwieldy facilitation process for the public forums.

My optimism dissipated, but even so, there was something about the movement that challenged me. Everyone was welcome to participate. If I thought the process wasn’t working, or that the comments were more emotionally charged than deeply considered, then it was up to me to do better. If I didn’t stand up, it wasn’t fair to criticise.

On Friday morning, the police pressed more tightly around us as the hours wore on. When they tore the marquee from over our heads, the atmosphere of farce gave way to an air of panic.

I asked the computer student on my left why he was there. He told me he was a duel citizen of Australia and America and he’d been inspired by Occupy Wall Street. “For me,” he said, “this is about the separation of corporations and the state.” Over the previous days, he’d spoken with other protestors about the importance of curtailing corporate donations and influence on politics.

On my right was Dr Samuel Alexander, an academic who writes about simple living and limits to economic growth. He had just penned a 4000-word article, inspired by the protest, in which he outlined proposals for tighter media ownership laws, more progressive taxes and heavy investment in renewable energy infrastructure, among other things.

I’d also heard about another possible demand – for a Robin Hood tax on international currency transactions. For a movement comprising citizens in more than 1500 cities around the world, that proposal strikes me as elegant.

Nonetheless, as I stood in the line, I did not have a clear list of reforms in mind. But I had read about our current ways: about cascading financial crises in the US and Europe, about climate change, and about other environmental tipping points.

At Occupy Melbourne, hundreds of people cast off their apathy and sought to engage with one another on these matters, peacefully and publicly.

As I stood in the line, I was certain that these matters deserve debate, whenever and wherever possible. That is why I stayed in the square on Friday morning, and locked arms with other thinking people, as the riot squad bore down upon us.

Read this article at The Age online

Greg Hatton’s factory

In Architecture and building, Environment on

WHILE Greg Hatton shows me around the old Newstead Co-operative Butter Factory, he carries a tap and a pipe wrench with him.

In fact, he carries the tap and the wrench for the whole afternoon I visit, as he wanders around the factory – his new workshop and part-time home – with his elderly dog Kevin limping along behind.

When you spend time with Hatton, a self-taught furniture-maker, designer and landscaper, you get the impression he always walks with a tool in hand and a plan in mind. It’s just as well, because right now, he’s got a hell of a lot of renovating to do.

Last week, he tried welding – out of necessity, before relocating a tank. “I’ve never been scared of having a crack at something new,” he says. “That process is always really rewarding. It’s the way I approach everything: if someone else can do it, I can do it. All I’m missing is the knowledge.”

In late 2009, he bought the old butter factory on the outskirts of Newstead, a small town in central Victoria. It was constructed in 1904, a time when grazing had overtaken gold mining as the area’s main source of income. Most recently it was a candle factory, but Hatton, who still spends part of his week in Melbourne, is giving it another life.

Tap in hand, he ambles through the huge building, deciphering its curiosities and conjuring its hereafter. The places where the giant drive shafts and cream churns were located will be soon converted into apartments, common areas and exhibition spaces.

Already, the space is a designer’s dream: character literally flakes off the old tiles, bricks and beams; its varied textures are cast alternately in sunlight and shadow.

“I’m trying to make things I want to furnish this place with,” he says. “But I’ve been playing catch up with orders ever since I plonked everything down in the new workshop.”

Hatton is seriously busy, but he’s content. It wasn’t always this way.

After studying environmental management at university, he worked as government fisheries officer. Recently, Hatton recalls, his old boss contacted him, reminiscing that he’d been “a square peg in a round hole” as a public servant.

After six years, he quit and set about chiselling a niche he could fit into. He began crafting chairs from willow branches, gathering the sticks by crawling along blackberry-infested riverbanks. His choice of material had two upsides: willow is considered an environmental weed and, when he fetched it himself, it was free.

Ever since, Hatton has insisted on using recycled or reclaimed materials. He’ll buy offcuts from local timber mills, pick up couches by the side of the road or ask beekeepers for their discarded hives.

At the core of his work is a strong environmental ethic, something he ascribes to his parents, “semi-hippy birdwatchers” who dragged him “around every national park known to man” on holidays from suburban Croydon, in Melbourne’s east.

“A lot of my work is based on the principle of using the pile of materials I’ve got,” he explains. “I try to do that in the most aesthetic way, and that’s the challenge.”

Hatton’s distinctive materials, together with a DIY attitude, have become his trademark. He says he “actively avoided” studying carpentry or cabinet making.

“I try to put things together with old bolts and bits of wire instead, and that’s where the aesthetic for my furniture comes from. As soon as you go down the cabinet-maker mould, you end up making stuff like all the other cabinet-makers. A little less knowledge is sometimes better.”

In his workshop, Hatton shows me a four-poster bed he’s building. The base and slats are made from hardwood seconds and the corner uprights from unsawn Sugar Gum posts that are thin and sinewy, but hard and heavy as stone.

(A piece like this starts at about $3500, depending on the detail. A solid outdoor table, with benches, goes for about the same).

But his simple approach shouldn’t be mistaken as rough or slipshod. Behind all his work lingers a single-minded attitude to design.

“I try to make my things so they’ll last a hundred years. You always see rustic furniture that looks too heavy or clunky. I try and add classic lines to create something that’s not going to date too much,” he says.

Lately, he’s become interested in lighting: one of his fittings employs leftover landscaping netting; another, opaque plastic floral buckets. “I’m always trying to experiment with different materials so I’m not constantly doing the same thing. Everything has to have a little bit of fun or quirkiness to it, otherwise I get bored.”

Hatton’s source for the buckets-cum-lights is his partner, Katie Marx, a florist who specialises in large shows and installations. She is pregnant with the couple’s first child, due at the end of the year.

After my tour of the workshop, we all retire to the concrete slab at the back of the factory, for afternoon tea in the sun. “It was through work that we met,” Marx laughs. “I hired some logs off him – and that started the rot. I still get called ‘The Florist’.”

Recently, for Hatton’s 40th birthday present, she tracked down an old windmill to install on the butter factory’s disused well. The only catch is that it’s still standing in a paddock about 8 kilometres away.

But that’s no worry for Hatton – it’s just one more project to complete. He’s got it on his mind, alongside the concrete air-conditioning tank he wants to convert into a swimming pool, and the handcart he wants to build so they can ride the abandoned railway line that runs nearby.

“It’s quite risky when you say, ‘Fuck it, I’m going to make things for a living’,” he says. “There are a few minor heart attacks along the way. But that just makes you resourceful.”

Just before the sun sets, he wanders off again, finally heading around the corner towards where that tap needs to go, Kevin hobbling along in his wake.

This article was published in Smith Journal, issue one

Q&A: The Sharehood

In Community development, Environment on

For the current EarthSong journal, I answered these questions about The Sharehood and why I’m a part of the volunteer collective.

How did the Sharehood begin and what does it aim to do?

The Sharehood began in 2008 when it occurred to web developer Theo Kitchener that he probably didn’t need to walk all the way to the Laundromat – there were many washing machines lying in wait much closer to his house. He just needed to know their owners. And, of course, it wasn’t just washing machines that we could share.

So, together with other volunteers, he developed The Sharehood, a social-networking website that helps neighbours share skills, things and time. When you sign up, you see the hundred members who live nearest to you, and the things they’re happy to lend and borrow. You also see a local noticeboard, where people within walking distance can post events and questions.

People can share anything: veggies, tools, books or washing machines; gardening help, bike fixing, languages or childminding. Often, neighbours get the most out of spending time together – be that at a picnic, swap party, movie night, or with a simple hello in the street.

Tell us about a Sharehood activity which was particularly satisfying.

I’m very fortunate to live in a street with a park in it. In the summer, on warm evenings, we put on free moonlight cinema screenings for all the neighbours. I promote it using the website. Usually, just before it’s scheduled to begin, I knock on doors to gather what we need: extension cords, speakers, rope and so on.

Everyone loves those evenings – they’re easy, free and open to all comers. The movie screenings bring the street to life. They also feel a little wicked in a good way, because we’re gently breaking the normal rules of behaviour (and copyright and council requirements!) that keep us stuck indoors, apart from one another.

There are a number of local initiatives working towards a more sustainable future at the local level.  What is it about this particular initiative that attracts you?   What do you value most about it?

I particularly like The Sharehood, because to me, it gets as close as possible to the heart of the problem, and it does so in a fun, welcoming and generous way that improves people’s wellbeing. It not only challenges our pattern of over-consumption and saves money, but it brings people together. Once people get to know one another in a neighbourhood, a street begins to feel like a community: people are more likely to take an interest in their local issues and – I hope – also become more engaged citizens on a larger scale.

In Australian cities, it has become awkward to say hello to people on the street. My experience has been that most of us are thrilled to have an excuse or a reason to connect with one another – and The Sharehood helps give us the icebreaker we need.

Tell us a little about the worldview that informs your life choices.

I have a very strong sense of gratitude for the life I’ve been born into. But I recognise that my circumstances are a matter of chance. Given my good fortune, I would like not only to strive for personal contentment, but also to share that with others, in whatever way I can. To my eternal wonder, all my experiences have convinced me that these two purposes are inextricably entwined.

When you imagine life in 20 or 30 years time what do you see?

There are so many possibilities, but in one of them, The Sharehood (or something similar) has spread throughout our cities and towns, as one element of strong, engaged local communities – places where we provide for many of our needs while assisting others to do the same. I see a society where improving everyone’s quality of life is the priority, rather than improving material welfare.

How might interested readers connect to the Sharehood or similar initiatives which reduce consumption and increase local community connectedness?

The Sharehood website has all the information you need. It just takes a moment to sign on, and then you can start sharing! If you want to get your neighbours in on the act, we’ve written up a sample letter you can drop in their letterboxes, inviting them to join.

Andamooka boomtown blues

In Community development on

I wrote this in 2008, after visiting Andamooka, a remote opal-mining town in South Australia. It is about the way the big mining boom was changing the character of the kookiest place I’ve visited, anywhere in the world. The story was set to be published, but then the financial markets collapsed and the nearby BHP Billiton Olympic Dam mine expansion didn’t happen as soon as expected. Now, SA Premier Mike Rann has sworn he’ll stay in the job until its controversial environmental impacts statement is approved and the deeds are signed – probably by November. So it’s time to re-visit Andamooka:

I drive and drive. North for hours in the South Australian desert, then right at Woomera and keep going; right again at Roxby Downs and on through the red glare. Finally, I arrive at Andamooka: Mars on earth. And here, real estate is booming.


By the historic miners’ huts, the barbecue sizzles. It’s Sunday lunchtime, the sky is blue, as always, and the Andamooka Progress and Opal Miners’ Association (APOMA) is holding its annual membership drive. The secretary apologises as she asks for $5 to cover my meal, as a non-member.

Ted Jones, the town’s oldest resident, is over at the picnic tables. The 93-year-old has a crinkly mouth like a turtle and broad strong hands. “I can still work a bloody pick and shovel and handle sixty-pound rocks,” he says, proudly. He’s been building a retaining wall in his backyard, with the help of his son-in-law. “You’d never find another place like Andamooka. That’s what I always tell people.”

He’s right. Homes jumble in among the tailings from the mines – mounds of dug earth like giant white anthills in the red sand. Coober Pedy, hundreds of kilometres north-west, is Australia’s famous, eccentric opal mining town, but from my table at the barbecue, I get the feeling that Andamooka matches it. About 800 people live here, in corrugated iron sheds, ramshackle weatherboards, rusting caravans and old buses. Car wrecks and corroded trucks fill vacant blocks.


“We were in the habit of doing what we wanted to do and then arguing the point about it afterwards,” says Ted, explaining the haphazard layout. “That’s the way we’ve always lived here and that’s why we don’t want it to change.”

The town has no council and no rates. No sewerage system. Neither water pipes nor street lights. The last police officer left a year ago and has only just been replaced. Only two roads are sealed – the way in and out, and the route to the nurses’ clinic. APOMA volunteers manage services as best they can on an annual budget of about $80,000, partly funded by the South Australian government.

The roads are still unnamed, but not for much longer. It’s a sign of the times: bureaucrats down south are forcing the recalcitrant locals to name their hundred or more streets and dead ends. Until now, although everyone’s address read ‘Government Road’, Andamooka has surely been among the least governed communities in the country.

In 1930, two boundary riders, Sam Brookes and Ray Sheppard, found opal at Treloar’s Hill, on Andamooka Station, a pastoral lease south of Lake Eyre. They tried to keep it quiet, but word slipped out and fortune seekers struck in.

It was a mining settlement, not a town; there were few rules. Newcomers pegged their claim and lived on it. They lived rough. “Several people got shot. Everybody had a revolver, and a rifle,” says Ted, a smile wrinkling from the right side of his mouth. “We only had the warden, we didn’t have any police.” Some men excavated their own “dugout” houses in the low hills to keep cooler in the blazing summers. There were no sealed roads north of Port Augusta, 300 kilometres away, so after every heavy rain the miners were marooned. Despite the distance, by the ’60s the opal boom was on and Andamooka was roaring.

I take my plate up for seconds. Bev Burge, with thin red hair, pink lips and pushed-up tracksuit sleeves, busies herself serving the food. Burgers, onion, gristly steaks and fat sausages are laid out on one trestle table; bread, coleslaw and potato salad on the other. Bev moved here in 1971. “When I first came up, [I saw] everyone had their washing out and it was dry in an hour. We were in Melbourne and it wouldn’t dry for days. And that tempted me.”

Bev ran Opal Air, the airline that flew daily during the boom years. She mined for over three decades and now she runs the bingo. Later, she tells me about the town’s old characters like Aggie Biro, whose car only drove in reverse: “Everyone just stayed clear if Aggie was on the road.” And Gelignite Jack, who walked along the creek bed at night, drunk, sparking and throwing explosive: “The first time it happened it went off right near my bedroom.”

She tells me about the old drive-in, which had open-air speakers: “The whole town could hear all the movies. Every night you’d hear trains and shooting and cowboys and Indians fighting all through the town.” Then she tells me about the gunfight in the Tuckabox, a local bar: “The Serbs were at one end and the Croats the other, and they had guns and they had the tables tipped up and they were shootin’ at each other.” She sighs and laughs. “We really loved those years.”

Locals say the population got as high as 4500, a mash of European immigrants escaping war and state tyranny. Opal miners and buyers found big money and lost it again with legendary excess. No one, of course, paid tax. “The whole lifestyle was gambling,” Bev says. “It was one big gamble.”

In the late ’70s, traces of the rainbow gem slowed and so did the town. In 1980, the year television arrived, Opal Air stopped coming. “All those years they kept saying the town’d finish one day. But it never did,” says Bev.

Judging by the barbecue though, I wonder if the end is nigh. APOMA had catered for 200, but after two hours the two-dozen comers have dwindled to single figures and a cold breeze has wrested control from the retreating sun. Bev has left her post and a stray dog barks at the remaining sausages.

Association president Peter Allen, clad in khaki and sitting alone on the low wall near the dugout huts, offers two explanations. First, is a scheduling clash: every Sunday afternoon, the Opal Hotel runs a popular poker tournament. That’s where Bev went and about 30 others with her – no surprise really, in this town. Second, is BHP Billiton’s Olympic Dam mine.

In the mid-’80s, while opal rarely surfaced in Andamooka, Western Mining Corporation began trucking copper, uranium, gold and silver from an enormous ore-body not far to the west. With the South Australian government, the company fabricated the Roxby Downs township – a suburb-island in the burnt sand – to service the mine. Many Andamookians also found jobs there and commuted. It was good for the old town.

Olympic Dam expanded in 2000 and, now owned by BHP Billiton, is set to expand again – at its peak, the open cut could be the size of the Adelaide CBD and parklands. They’ll need a lot of workers. Even now, before the expansion, Roxby Downs real estate is scarce and steep.

Miners are once again moving to Andamooka in spades. But with 12-hour shifts and continuous production, the big mine doesn’t schedule for community spirit. The old timers complain to me that they don’t see the new townsfolk: if they’re not at work, they’re at home in bed.

Allen, a charismatic ten-pound Pom and ex-crocodile farmer, is wrestling with change. He wagers that the population will burst to 2000 within two years. Shacks worth $20,000 four years ago can fetch $200,000. A 62-apartment eco-village is under development. In two days, new owners will take over the Opal Hotel and will begin construction to double its capacity by mid next year.

Fresh water is in short supply. The tip, on a hill just out of town, has no fence and the rubbish pile is spreading. Ever more sewerage seeps into the natural watercourse. Allen is riled: “What we’ve been saying to government is, ‘If you want to have your two-bobs’ now with building rules and all the bullshit – all right. But give us some infrastructure.’”

The big mine is bringing jobs and money to Andamooka. It’s bringing progress, order and rules. More people will come and, eventually, the infrastructure, but then the old opal miners will leave. Many already have, striking high prices for their land.

“Even with the big influx of people from more civilised environments, I would like to think they will be incorporated into the community,” Allen says then breaks into a knowing smile. “And relax.”

Few holidaymakers stay in Andamooka and the locals are still generous. Someone offers me a free bed for a few nights in an old bus. It’s that sort of town. APOMA lets passers-by camp on its grounds for $2 per night. I leave the barbecue and walk on the abandoned opal fields towards the great white cross on the horizon, where, my new host says, a drunk man died years ago. He had fought with friends, fled their car and set out for home across the fields. In the dark, he plunged down a shaft.

Allen and a handful of flannel-clad drinkers linger all afternoon, arguing over town politics. The leftover meat and salads are stowed in the bottle shop fridge. At sundown, the stayers adjourn to the Opal Hotel. Tonight, before the pub changes hands, the long-time owner will shout the drinks. 


Outdoor space in the city

In Architecture and building, The Age on

The population is growing and gardens are shrinking, so where will the children play?

STICKYBEAK over the back fence of a typical new home – in an inner or outer suburb – and you’ll likely see this: a patio, paved and covered, with an in-built barbeque and outdoor heating. You’ll spot neat, ornamental shrubs and tidy stone gardens in narrow beds by the fence. And, if you peer down the side, you’ll spy a retractable washing line.

As our cities expand, a vast change is occurring; not only in the landscape, but also in the way we engage with outdoor space, both private and public.

Andrew Whitson, the Victorian general manager of Stockland, says that as a developer, he’s observed a clear trend towards smaller gardens in new homes.

“People still want some outdoor space and they want it to be functional and useful. But we’re all becoming time poor and we don’t want a large area to maintain. The days of dad spending the weekend out in the garden are changing,” he says.

“From what people are buying, we’re seeing that people love al fresco entertainment areas and I don’t see that changing.”

Mr Whitson says that although yards are much smaller, they’re more carefully designed. “We’re seeing fewer large trees planted and more manicured, low-maintenance areas, with paving, weather protection and heating, so they can be used year round.”

While he’s sanguine about the change, Griffith University academic Professor Tony Hall is worried about its implications. In a book published last year, called The Life and Death of the Australian Backyard, Prof Hall lamented the downsides for the community at large, including the loss of biodiversity and natural drainage, hotter cityscapes and the health impact of more indoor, passive pastimes, especially for children.

Using aerial photographs of developments around the country, he analysed the difference in backyards between older and newer subdivisions. He found that before the 1990s, suburban homes typically took up less than one-third of their lot. Newer houses, however, were much larger – covering up to two-thirds of the land.

In Victoria, the planning framework contains standards for private outdoor space in all kinds of dwellings. For detached homes and ground floor apartments, the minimum area is 40 square metres, depending on the block size. According to Prof Hall, until the last two decades, our suburban backyards were between four and ten times larger than that.

Like Mr Whitson, Prof Hall attributes “the disappearance of the backyard” to wider social changes. “Substantial sections of the population now work extended hours and have long commute times,” he writes. “Functionally, the house is seen as a place to wash and sleep… more as a financial investment than as a place to be enjoyed.”

To halt the shift to smaller backyards, he argues that planning codes should specify rear setbacks and maximum plot coverage of just over one-third.

Craig Czarny, from planning and design consultancy Hansen Partnership, agrees that the shifting balance between indoor and outdoor space has major repercussions for the way we live.

“It could mean that families spend more time inside, with children playing on their PlayStations and not spending as much time amongst nature. That has various implications for health and wellbeing,” he says.

“But you could also argue that the less space there is for private gardens, the more people will gravitate towards public spaces. I live in the inner city and I don’t have a large garden, so my children and I spend our time at the park.”

He draws on the Dutch concept of woonerf – a kind of street where pedestrians and cyclists have priority over cars. “It’s the idea that our streets are communal spaces. Yes, we share them with cars, but they are also parklands, pathways and play spaces,” he says. “As a denser city, we need to be more aware of living our lives more communally.”

Mr Czarny says the notion of the quarter acre block, so often described as intrinsic to Australian identity, actually only goes back two generations. Enabled by cheap oil and the rise of the motorcar, it too will change.

“Whilst many people will lament the loss of the private garden, the implication is that we should begin to use public space more effectively,” he says.

Recently, the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council completed the first ever survey of Melbourne’s publicly owned land. Its report revealed that the city’s public open space varies widely between municipalities: Glen Eira and Stonnington have the smallest proportion, while Nillumbik and Cardinia boast the most.

The report found that while our parks, squares and fields make a vital contribution to the city’s liveability, the amount of open space per capita will decrease over time as population grows. This will happen everywhere, but most significantly in established suburbs.

Mr Czarny says we can face the problem in two ways: by improving the quality of the outdoor areas we have, and also, by transforming utilitarian spaces, such as rooftops, decks and walkways.

“For example, we’re seeing gardens and tennis courts established on the roofs of commercial buildings, in areas formerly inhabited by air conditioning plants,” he says.

Children playing on the roof

IN the rooftop garden at The Harbour Family and Children’s Centre, at Docklands, a toddler in a yellow t-shirt is waist deep in a clump of greenery, tugging at the fronds.

The centre’s manager, Michelle Gujer, from Gowrie Victoria, approaches the boy. “Are you looking for Hoppy?” she asks. He nods, clearly chuffed to be in the thick of the garden, if somewhat perplexed as to the rabbit’s whereabouts.

“Young children learn through sensory play,” Ms Gujer explains. “So he’s really showing you exactly what this place is all about.

“The natural environment draws out their curiosity. It’s extremely important for children to be able to explore without the restriction of a confined space, especially for families who live in the inner city.”

At ground level, this part of Docklands is a dusty construction site, populated by cranes and beeping trucks. But on the roof, the air is rumbling with children’s chatter instead. Little people are marching to and fro, making mud pies, investigating the rocks along the dry creek bed and sitting beneath improbably large trees.

Matthew Mackay, from Hassell, was the project leader for roof garden, which was designed in collaboration with Children’s Landscapes Australia.

He says that although it can be complex to establish parks on roofs, he expects them to become more prominent as the city densifies.

“We need to have these kind of facilities close by, so we don’t lose touch with nature,” he says. “An important part of this project is to help children to understand natural processes and systems. We wanted to allow for as many play experiences as possible, with all kinds of materials and vegetation.”

Read this article at The Age online