Altona, 14 January 2020
Hi Marlis,
I hope all this bushfire unpleasantness
isn’t affecting you too much and that you’re nice and cool in your
airconditioned home, reading this and not worrying every day. I keep a close
eye on things in the ACT via social media, it doesn’t look good with the air
quality and smoke haze. But you are tough, so you’ll probably have found your
ways to deal with all this! For us, it’s been another busy two months, so let’s
get into it!
SES activities
I’ve been quite busy with SES I November
and December. The new recruits that started in September are much more
confident and the ten out of twelve that stayed are doing very well. It’s
really good for us too that we get some new blood in the team, finally some
others who are also willing to take things on. All the same, I’ve been out on a
few jobs, keeping Altona safe. None of them too interesting, but one was quite
funny. Some roof tiles had come undone on a house and there was no visible
cause. It happens sometimes that strong winds get under the tiles and push them
up with a bang. It looks strange because you see nothing wrong, but there they
are, scattered over the roof and yard. The lady was half-convinced it must have
been ghosts…We tried to explain a few times and then just fixed her roof and
let her believe what she wanted, haha. As long as there’s no leaks in the roof,
works for us! I’ve also been out for another few rounds of chain sawing on
farms in East Victoria. My skills have improved so much I am almost embarrassed
about how unskilled I was before. It never gets old to see the happiness and
gratitude of people when we show up and do the work of months in a matter of
hours for them. The last one late November was the most challenging as the logs
were really big, but by then I knew more or less what I was doing and cut up
all but the biggest trees without problems. I am also getting two people to
help me with the finances for our unit. Not that I need the help, but it would
be good if more than one person actually knows how to do these things.
The whole reason this letter is a bit
later than usual, is that I was deployed to Swan Reach near Lakes Entrance in
East Gippsland to help look after about 300-400 firefighters from everywhere
(even the USA, Canada and UK) for 6 days. I was the assistant to the Base Camp
Manager and basically ran around the converted cricket grounds from 6.00 to
22.00 making sure they had everything they needed to stay healthy and rested as
much as possible. Me and a team of 10 or so people did everything from laundry,
making up tents and beds, doing dishes, getting supplies, providing
information, organising repairs, you name it. The team really loved me, because
I also gave them a roster, let them run their own show (they needed no guidance
whatsoever) and stayed out of their way as much as possible. I came back
Saturday afternoon and am still a bit tired, but I am so proud and grateful
that I had the opportunity to go and be of service. It is hard to describe, but
knowing that you’ve done small things to help these brave women and men is very
rewarding. On the drive there I started to see how bad it really was, I drove
the last 200km of the 325km trip in smoke haze and everything seemed surreal
and darker than you’d expect. During the six days it wasn’t all that bad
actually, but after 4 days I realised I hadn’t seen blue sky or heard an
aircraft until I did see the sun and heard a helicopter. There’s almost
no birds and no normal nature sounds, eerily quiet at times. It was suggested
that I should do the training to be a Base Camp manager myself some day and I
might just do that. If it all works out, I might go again later this summer. I
hope it’s not necessary, but it’s not looking good.
Christmas and New Year on Christmas
Island
Yumi and I went on holidays to Christmas
Island to see the Red Crab Migration (only place in the world, you might have
seen it on David Attenborough’s shows) and do some diving, hopefully with whale
sharks (harmless, but really big!). We didn’t get to see the true migration as
the crabs appeared to be not quite ready just yet and now they expect them to
go on the 20th when it’s a full moon. We still saw a lot of them
though, sometimes so many that we had to get out of the car and rake them aside
to get through. They are funny little creatures. Start out as marine animals, then
at some point they go on land and lose the ability to breathe under water. Lots
of them die when returning to the beach and cliffs to mate and spawn eggs
(100,000 at a time!) but there are literally millions of them and it keeps the
fish and birds fed too. They scurry about, doing crab things I suppose. Some
are tiny, but some are quite big and the much rarer Robber Crabs, will actually
attempt to steal your shoes and other small items!
Christmas Island itself isn’t much to
speak off. The detention centre that used to be there is no longer in use. It’s
still open and employs 140 or so people at the minimal cost of $17 million per
year to look after that Sri Lankan Family’s 2 kids. It’s really ridiculous.
They could just put them in a house and be done with it, but government is as
government does. It’s not like they can go anywhere, it’s in the middle of the
Indian ocean! There’s about 1,500 people on the island and some 2,500 tourists
visit every year. Groceries are ridiculously expensive, there’s 1 pub, 2
restaurants and that’s about it. And you know what? It was great! We got up,
went diving, got home, did some cooking, some reading, laughed at the crab
antics (they are everywhere), made some dinner and watched some internet tv
(excellent reception, unless it rained) before going to bed. Not a bad way to
spend the day. The diving was really good. We made 10 dives and saw some Manta
rays, dolphins, a big Oceanic Manta ray (4-5 meters wide), various sharks,
soooo many different small fish, beautiful corals and we got really close to a
7-8 meter whale shark. It came to the surface and just hovered a bit around the
boat, probably curious to see what it was. So, everyone jumped in and paddled
their fins for dear life to keep up with it. I got some really good photos and
even a video before it zoomed away from us in two flicks of its tail. They grow
up to 15-18 meter, so this was a ‘small’ one, but they are so impressive.
I went for a few walks early in the
morning, stepping around crabs and chickens ( no dogs and cats on the island,
so chickens are the pets), but the weather is so humid and warm, with it being
29 degrees during the day and 26 at night, we just stayed inside with the
aircon on most of the time. We couldn’t really go anywhere anyway, because most
roads were closed due to there being thousands of crabs on the roads….The very
last day it rained like the end of days, but that was actually quite welcome,
cooled things down a bit. Yumi slipped and fell (she’s fine) and my phone fell
out of her bag and we didn’t notice until 10 minutes later. Drove back and
found it lying there in the soaking rain. It still works, very lucky!
Chameleon Cards
Late November I went to Brisbane for the
Chameleon Cards with my friend Peter and we had the best of times. Before the
work started, we managed to squeeze in a visit to the Queensland branch of the
charity that I’ve been supporting here in Melbourne and that lady had so much
energy even I was intimidated! She would just not stop talking and while it all
made sense and was very smart and clever, it felt like we were just bulldozed
by her enthusiasm. Love it! Then it was time to get to work with the Cards and
not only did we get to run an event on the 25th floor of some
building with a great view that night, the next morning we did an event with
the Brisbane Council too. We had dinner with Change friends and coffee with a
new professional connection and while I was walking towards that venue, I
realise that everything looked so familiar, but not quite. It took me a while
to realise that 9 years ago, Yumi and I had sat in that same park, near that
same bench, just looking at people. I didn’t get to see too much of the city,
which would have been nice, but it was still very cool to just be back there
and see how it has changed. This was the last trip we promised to make and we
managed to get a lot of boxes sold. The next day when I came home, we sold out
in about 3 hours and then we got to hand over $5,000 to the women’s
homelessness charity. I loved working with Peter on this and had not imagined
something we created would go this far and wide and see us travel the country.
It was a good way to end my career in Change.
National Homeless Collective
I’ve also been very busy at the charity,
getting everything ready for the big reveal party of the new and improved
building areas on the 21st December and it was a big success. The
kitchen, pergola, back yard, bathroom, meditation room, storage spaces, all
done! It was great to be involved with all the good things they do. I even
managed to sneak along a few boxes of care packs to drop off on my way to Sale
early January, which was much appreciated when I got there. I feel like I’ve
made a big difference for the folks at The Kala Space and that they are now in
a much better place then when I arrived. The bushfire appeal has wiped out many
of their supplies, so they can start restocking some of the stuff that got sent
off, but I really hope they keep things a bit more organised, but they probably
won’t. There’s a lot more to do business-wise, but we’ll see how that develops.
There are some developments in that space where they might even have some money
to pay me for what I used to do for free, but I am not sure how I feel about
that. Then again, I’ll be in school during the week and will only have weekends
for extra activities, so perhaps I am not the best choice for those things. All
the same, I am proud of the work we did together.
Yumi’s business
Yumi continues to do well, new clients
finding her, return business coming in and her calendar is pretty much booked
out until April for now. By early March she’ll be in business for herself and
no one will argue that it’s not been successful and the right step for her. She
is really enjoying the things she does and is starting to enjoy the
opportunities and possibilities more and more. She’s still very serious about
delivering everything 110%, but that will hopefully wear off in a while. She
has a lot to be proud off when she looks back on her first year in business.
Her team is slowly coming on board with some of the things Yumi wants for the
business. I feel like they all have their own priorities and objectives, but as
longs as they get along well enough, who am I to say how they keep it together😊.
Carpentry School
This week I started my
pre-apprenticeship in Carpentry, which will last until 3 April and I am really
enjoying it so far (well, it’s only been 2 days…). We’ve been working with the
basic tools, just to see how it works, what doesn’t work and how to make simple
joints. My class is a group of 13, 10 kids (no really, they are 16-19 yrs old)
and 3 older guys like me. There’s even 2 young women! What is the world coming
to, haha. Our teacher is a pleasant guy and 35 years veteran, who makes
everything look easy, but then when we do it, it’s not that easy. Well at least
I know that’s how things are supposed to be when you are learning, I’ll get
there eventually. Yesterday I was plaining some timber and realised I was
actually enjoying myself. I try not to run ahead to far in my head, to just be
in the moment and learn to do some of this basic stuff.
Norm, the teacher, says that no
modern-day carpenter does these things by hand anymore, but it just feels right
to know how to do things properly. We’ll be building a house together by the
end of March, so that should get interesting, but for now I am just focusing on
accuracy and patience. It’s a much slower job than I had thought and it’s perfect
for me to practice taking the time to do it right instead of fast. We are the
only 13 students at the moment, because we started early and the whole school is
empty, areas are closed and the technology in the new building is not quite
working. There’s also something wrong with my paperwork, but Norm has said that
I should leave it with him, so I will, as he’s been there 17 years. On the
upside, we get extra-long breaks, parking is free and the place is quiet. Ahhh,
school, nothing ever really changes. So far I’ve been taking the car, but
eventually I will ride the bus when Yumi needs the car, that way I can finally
use my student discount card!
Small stuff
· NDS workshops across the state:
I spent a lot of time travelling across
Victoria in November and December to deliver Strategy workshops in all corners
of the state for National Disability Services. I’ve been from Wollongong to
Sale and as far as Shepparton and even though the numbers were small, I had a
good time and even landed some potential business for Yumi and got to promote
some of my change friends work. It was a good experience, but also good it was
the last time. After 3 years doing this, I felt I had said what I needed to say
and what they needed to hear, now they have to DO it, which was always the
problem…
· BeachPatrol
We’ve done our last BeachPatrol event in
December, or so we thought. Numbers had been going down a bit and we were a bit
over it. Then we got a government grant for $10,000 to spend on improvements
and the council is willing to give us some storage, which makes things that
much easier. We’ve put the call out a few times for people to take over the
coordinator role, but people are happy to participate, not so happy to lead the
initiative, so we’ll see how that goes. Now that I am back in school, I don’t
have as much time to walk around the neighbourhood and pick litter, but perhaps
someone else is making an extra effort, because it’s not too bad at the moment.
· Friends and family
All are doing fine, they worry about the
fires and if we are safe, but everything else is going quite well for them. Our
friends who lived just a street away when we lived in the Netherlands, have now
sold their house and are moving up north. They are in full renovation mode and
if their previous house is anything to go by, it’ll look great, but take
forever. They only move mid-March, so they’ll have heaps of time to do things
they way they want to.
· Saying goodbye to being a Change Manager.
Once the Brisbane events were done and I
had completed my Victorian tour, I said goodbye to all my Change friends via
social media. I got so much love and kind words, it was amazing. I feel like
I’ve done enough and all this well-wishing just made it clear I have done good
things for many people. Now it’s time to move on and see what happens next.
It’s weird to now say I am no longer a business consultant and a carpenter’s
apprentice instead. Then again, that’s to be expected after nearly 6 years, I
guess.
Okay, that’s the most of it for now.
I’ll have more adventures to share in 2 months’ time. By then I will know what
end of the hammer to hold and how to make a roof line, or whatever that is
called! 😊
Stay safe and out of the smoke when you
can, if there’s anything I can do to help, just let me know.
Be well,
Gilbert
0438 724 634
gilbert.kruidenier@gmail.com
