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By Carol Altmann

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] F [/dropcap]or those left behind after a suicide, the question is always and agonisingly the same: why?

On Monday, August 11, this question reverberated around the world as news spread that actor Robin Williams – a person who seemingly had it all – had taken his own life.

A day later, the friends and family of Warrnambool man and musician Nick Fox were grappling with the same heart-breaking question. Nick was born in 1985, the same year as my own brother, Ian, took his life at the age of 24. It is almost 30 years since that terrible day, and I still don’t know why.

In trying to understand the “why“ we hope, of course, that we can stop another suicide from happening: that we will know what to look for, or know what to do, or say, to help change a person’s mind.

This is the premise, in many ways, behind the “R U OK?” campaign. That by asking a troubled friend, family member or colleague if they are okay, we might be able to change their course. The hard part, however, is when someone says “no, actually, I am not okay”. What can we say or do then?

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] P [/dropcap]anmure artist Lisa Firestone has been grappling with these questions since a friend and fellow artist took her own life earlier this year.

At that time, Lisa used her art to deal with the “raw grief and shock” of losing someone who was a treasured friend, cheerful neighbour and artistic colleague.

“Doing that work really helped me process my grief and to work through it. I wanted to show the ripple effect that suicide has and how many people are affected,” Lisa said.

Her collection of nine paintings – a series of sentences across brightly coloured, sunset or ocean-like backdrops – capture the anguish and helplessness felt by those who have lost a loved one to suicide.

[box]Reads one panel:

“Depression, anxiety and pain are a deadly mix.

I wish there was more I could have done.” [/box]

The series of paintings was recently exhibited in Melbourne by the Mental Health Foundation of Australia, but Lisa’s most recent work broadens the focus from the personal to the collective and asks us to contemplate how we, as a society, can make suicide redundant.

[box]One asks:

“What is the message that humanity isn’t getting regarding suicide?

What needs to be lifted in us all to make suicide redundant?

Enough is enough.” [/box]

They are not easy questions to ask, or to answer.

“I am asking people to go deeper with their thinking, to really look at how we operate as a society and how we can better address these issues,” Lisa said.

“One woman who saw the painting (on display during the recent open day at Factory Arts, in the Fletcher Jones building), scoffed and walked away, but I hope it will touch other people’s hearts.”

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] W [/dropcap]hile suicide is universal, it is far from uniform.

Why is it, for example, that South Korea has the highest suicide rate in the world (24.7 per 100,000 people) while Greece has the lowest (2.9 per 100,000)? Australia sits in the middle on 11.2 per 100,000  – double that of Mexico or Italy. What different social and cultural factors are at play?

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the national suicide rate has fallen significantly among men since 1997 (23.3 per 100,000 down to 16.8) and for women (6.2 down to 5.6), and the peak age group is not among younger people, as we might assume, but the elderly (37.6 deaths per 100,000 in men aged 85 or over). Indigenous men are also at a much higher risk than non-indigenous men.

Although we are headed in the right direction, the statistics are still too high and have a way, like numbers do, of removing the individual stories.

Lisa believes we need to share more of these stories – to let the air and light in and to remove the shame – and she speaks openly of her own battle with depression and suicidal thoughts in the past.

Her healing came not from thinking about the impact her death would have on others – “I actually thought people would be better off without me, which is part of what depression is about” – but from a holistic approach that involved medication, art, Reiki and “spending a lot of time in nature”.

“My art is now a way of helping others, to reach out to people and to start a conversation about how we can make suicide redundant: if we are talking about it, the answers will come.”

[box]Lisa will have her work on display at the Brophy Community and Youth Complex, 210 Timor St, Warrnambool during National Mental Health Week October 6-11. ABC Open is also running two projects – Speak Your Mind and Mental As – for full details visit here.

If you need to reach out to someone, please try any of these contact numbers for 24/7 support: Lifeline 13 11 14; Suicide Callback Service 1300 659 467; Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800; MensLine Australia 1300 78 99 78. [/box]

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OPINION – Carol Altmann

If there was any doubt as to how much the Fletcher Jones Pleasant Hill site in Warrnambool means to locals, the recent spring picnic has laid it to rest.

Around 1500 people flocked to the gardens last weekend to wander among the market stalls, listen to the music, stretch out on the grass and – like so many thousands of children and adults before them – take pleasure in the many garden delights that Sir Fletcher Jones created in his factory grounds.

Cr Jacinta Ermacora has leapt on this huge wave of support to announce today in the local newspaper that she thought it was “time to tell the Fletcher Jones story”, and a meeting would be held shortly between all of the interested parties to work out how this could be done.

What Cr Ermacora failed to mention, or was not reported, was that the council was first asked to collect these stories way back in 2002, when it was a key recommendation in a report it commissioned into the future of the Fletcher Jones site.

What has been done by anyone on the council since then?

Absolutely nothing.

There is also a vast amount of precious Fletcher Jones memorabilia cast about Warrnambool, with some in History House, some at The Artery, and some in people’s private homes, that needs to be collated, assessed and preserved for future installations.

What has any council member done about that so far?

Absolutely nothing.

In the interim, as people age, and pass away, the stories are being lost and the memorabilia is getting harder to trace (and let’s not forget that many items ended up in a skip bin when the site was first sold by the council in 2005, only to be retrieved by artists).

This is why a small group of people, led by Julie Eagles from the Warrnambool Planning and Heritage Group, has been asking the council for months whether there is any funding set aside in this year’s budget to at least start the process of gathering these stories.

It was hard to get a clear reply.

Bluestone got a reply on Thursday and this is it in full:

“We have no funding specifically allocated to telling the story of Fletcher Jones in this year’s budget.

However, the history of Fletcher Jones and other elements that tell the story of Warrnambool will be on the table when the time comes to look at public art as part of the city centre renewal.

Once we have the foundation stage of the renewal plan completed – which addresses issues including accessibility and mobility – we’ll be engaging the community in a discussion on public art.” – Nick Higgins, Manager Communications.

So how much funding is there for the Fletcher Jones story project?

Absolutely nothing.

By contrast, Melbourne University has already started work on collating and recording the business story behind Fletcher Jones and Melinda Barrie, from this project, has shown a willingness to work with local groups to capture the local stories.

It is embarrassing, to say the least, that a Melbourne institution has been more motivated and excited by our local, contemporary history than our own council.

And by contrast to the council’s inertia on what we might call the whole Fletcher Jones package – the stories, the site, the potential – last Sunday’s picnic was a triumph of what can be done through hard work, passion and belief.

Not only did it showcase the magnificent efforts of resident gardener Lex Caldwell and his team of volunteers who have kept the gardens alive, but it was a celebration for all those other volunteers who believed that the best parts of this iconic site were worth saving.

Those who pressed hardest to keep Pleasant Hill on the public radar – Julie Eagles, The F Project arts collective, us here at Bluestone Magazine, and the consequent Save the Silver Ball and Fletchers Gardens Facebook page started by Tonia Wilcox – all did so without any official backing.

Similarly, the spring picnic was organised within weeks by The F Project/The Artery without a cent of funding and relied heavily on volunteers who pulled it all together – people like Dr Emma Charlton, Megan Nicolson, Des and Helen Bunyon, Ruby Richardson, Danielle O’Brien, the Factory Arts crew, Julie Eagles – the same names that keep coming up time after time and who continue to make exciting things happen around the city.

They don’t sit around waiting for others to do something: they just get on with it.

The F Project, for its efforts, made less than $400 on the day from a raffle, but it was never about raising money. It was all about bringing life back to the gardens through the arts, but you can’t keep expecting volunteers to do all the heavy lifting.

And so it is with the capturing of the Fletcher Jones stories.

The funding is there: it’s just how the council chooses to spend it. 

It recently found $10,000 on short notice for the Oddball movie, and another $3 million of state and council funds are about to be plunged into sound and light shows at Flagstaff Hill.

So unless Cr Ermacora can come to the meeting armed with a firm proposal for council funding, it is nothing more than hollow words on the back of very successful picnic and that – unlike a pair of Fletcher Jones’ scissors on the factory floor – just won’t cut it.

[dropcap style=”color:#DC943C;”] I [/dropcap]t began as a good idea for a housewarming party that has taken on a life of its own as a regular rug-twisting, hip-swinging, good-time-guaranteed-get-together for a group of friends who love LPs.

If you know what the acronym LP stands for, then you are off to a good start to be a “Spinner”: a person who loves listening to actual vinyl records rather than CDs, MP3s or digital downloads.

“It is the sound – the richness and quality of the sound – and when you hear it again after not having heard it for a long time, it is wonderful,” explains the founder of the Spinners in Warrnambool, Claire Jennings.

Claire inadvertently started the Spinners when planning her housewarming party in 2011 – a year after she had moved in – and decided that because she was a year late with the festivities, the party had better be something out of the ordinary. Why not set up a stereo and play some records?

“But I didn’t have a record player and I didn’t have any records – I had nothing,” Claire throws out her hands and laughs.

[dropcap style=”color:#DC943C;”] T [/dropcap]he solution was to borrow a couple of turntables and ask the guests to bring along their favourite records to “spin a set” in a seamless transition between one turntable and the other, just as DJs used to do when Claire and her friends were in their teens.

“I organised for a bit of a practice-run a month before the actual party, just to see how it would work, and the few people I invited ended up dancing all night…I basically ended up having two housewarming parties,” Claire says.

Like all memorable nights, the talk the next day was all around “we must do that again!”

So they did.

And then they did it again.

And now a core group of around 12 people meet four times a year, with other “Spinners” included by invitation-only, to play their 25-minute “sets”, enjoy some food and, if they feel like it (which they usually do), to dance.

“To hear Smoke on the Water again on vinyl after so many years, well, it’s just magical,” Claire says, adding that she loves rock and roll and is a mad Beatles fan.

[dropcap style=”color:#DC943C;”] S [/dropcap]pinner Toni Jenkins said the group reignited her passion for music – she has eclectic taste from The Cure, to Janis Joplin, Bette Midler and just about anything from the 80s – and that there is a particular joy that comes from hearing great songs.

“There are still songs out there that you have never heard before and, every now and then, someone will come up with an absolute gem,” she says.

Toni admits she has her favourite Spinners – Roy Reekie, Paul Sheehan – who can keep her on the dance floor for most of the night.

“To dance through a whole set of about 10 songs is not for the faint hearted,” she laughs.

A few rules have been added in recent times, such as playlists being written down rather than chosen at random, and each Spinner bringing their own glass and taking their shoes off at the door, just to save on dishes and floor damage.

In the end, however, it is still all about the music.

“The songs represent a particular time and a particular era – it is our history – and there is great joy in being completely immersed in that again,” Toni says.

[box] The Spinners are hosting a farewell and tribute night to Warrnambool’s legendary Capricorn Records and owner Mick Fitzgerald (who is a Spinner) on Sept 20 at the Ozone Room, Warrnambool Hotel. Tickets are $10 from Long Gone, 115 Fairy St, Warrnambool. [/box]

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Words and photos by Carol Altmann

[dropcap style=”color: #dc943c;”] T [/dropcap]he most commonly told story about Port Fairy editor and author Jock Serong is that he was a lawyer who became a writer, but in fact it is the other way around: he was a writer who fell into law.

“English and English Lit were always my favourite subjects at school, but when I told my career counsellor that I wanted to be a writer, they suggested I do a law degree, because ‘there’s plenty of words there’,” he says with a wry grin.

But what every writer knows-  and what career counsellors never quite understand – is that there are words, and then there is writing: storytelling, building a narrative, creating a scene, turning words into living, breathing objects.

Worse, once you know that you love to write, the bug never leaves you.

All of the teenagers who kept journals and wrote short stories and loved English – and then grew up to become anything but a writer – still have a writer’s heart. Some listen to that nagging voice, most don’t.

Jock listened.

“I started writing professionally as a freelancer about six or seven years ago and had, if you like, three jobs: as a parent, my legal career and my writing, and the pressure to keep those three going all at once was increasing,” he says.

[dropcap style=”color: #dc943c;”] H [/dropcap]aving relocated from Melbourne to Port Fairy 10 years ago, Jock had already chosen between lifestyle and a more traditional career path.

He was a barrister in Melbourne, but came to Port Fairy to work as a solicitor after he and his wife Lilly, a nurse, decided it would be a better place to raise their children (they now have four, aged from 3 to 10.)

And besides, the surf was excellent.

Jock, a surfer, began writing for two or three different surf publications, while also working at Maddens Lawyers. It was his surfing connections, however, that eventually opened the door to a life submerged entirely in writing.

“Early last year, Mick (Sowry) and Mark (Willett) were nursing this idea of a high-quality magazine built around ideas of the ocean and they asked me if I would like to edit it,” Jock explains.

Like a cliff diver in Acapulco, Jock stepped to the ledge and took the plunge.

Great Ocean Quarterly was developed over the next six months and, like Bluestone, has just marked its first birthday. Also like Bluestone, GOQ is edited in the front room of a house, Jock’s house, which is where he does most of his writing.

“The last 12 months have been exhilarating, in that usually at this stage in your life, you have a sense of where things are going and you are consolidating. I feel like I am back in that period of your 20s, where you throw it all up into the air,” Jock laughs.

[dropcap style=”color: #dc943c;”] A [/dropcap]longside GOQ, Jock has recently published his first novel, Quota (Text Publishing), a crime novel based in a remote town in south-west Victoria.

Just in case you thought – like me – that Jock might never sleep, the novel was developed over several years and involved several major re-writes before that magical moment of being accepted by a publisher.

“All writing has that edge of hard grind under it, the hard work, but I was happy to keep going and to keep at it; I find the process fascinating,” he says.

Quota has been well-received by readers and reviewers and has been optioned for a television production by Madman, in Melbourne. Jock will write the adaptation.

As Jock wanders down Sackville St on a perfect spring day in Port Fairy, saying hello to everybody who has already said hello to him first, there is a sense that his life has turned out exactly as it was meant to be.

When asked if he misses law, he gives a writer’s answer: “I miss the characters and their stories”.

“But no, no regrets. The alternative was to spend the next 20 years not ever knowing if I could have done this.”

[box]Jock Serong will join authors Regina Lane and Clint Greagan for the Warrnambool Books Bookwiz Trivia Night this Thursday, Sept 18, at The Last Coach, in support of the Leila Rose Foundation. Click here for full details. [/box]

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(Advertisement)

If you are struggling with how to make a living from your art, an affordable all-day workshop next Sunday (Sept 21) in Warrnambool will help to set you on the right path.

Almost half of the Australian population is creatively engaged in some form of artistic creation, but only a tiny fraction possess the skills and experience to transform their passion into a successful career.

Secrets of Success is an all-day seminar for independent artists and small-medium arts organisations presented by John Paul Fischbach, founder and CEO of Melbourne’s Auspicious Arts Incubator.

[box]“Lively, engaging, respectful and inspiring. Lots of great practical examples, very positive. I left feeling affirmed and inspired with practical tools to make my business work.”  – Shepparton participant[/box]

Secrets of Success takes participants through a comprehensive evaluation of their own work as entrepreneurs, offering real tools to manage their finances, time and mental attitudes towards creativity as a rewarding and lucrative asset.

Presented in an engaging and accessible manner, the day aims to dispel the murky half-truths and flat-out misconceptions many in the arts world have towards business.

What’s common knowledge in other industries can be alien to artists, who frequently don’t have access to the knowledge and resources required to succeed in business. This one-day event aims to turn that situation around.

The seminar is subsidised by the Warrnambool City Council, so tickets are only $25 a head.

The day runs from 9.30am (for a 10am start) to 5pm at the Lighthouse Theatre Studio and all participants receive a 70-page Arts Business Tool Kit.

[box type=”download”] For more information and tickets, visit www.artsbusinesssuccess.com[/box]