Two girls with swollen bellies are comparing stretch marks in the girl’s bathroom mirror. It looks as if kittens have clawed out of their insides.
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Melbourne’s newest Makerspace opens to the public in February 2019. Inside the Dream Factory in Footscray, FAB9 will provide a purpose-built space housing high-end prototyping and manufacturing equipment that, for a monthly fee, anyone can access in order to design and make physical objects.
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Two days in the court of family violence
Everyone here in the waiting area of the Family Violence Court Division of the Magistrates Court is playing a game. It’s called Bad Guy or Victim? Women are curled on chairs, glassy-eyed and stunned, their family and friends dozing beside them, while men pace up and down in righteous indignation, or sit texting furiously.
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Since the federal government approved the manufacture of hemp seed for human consumption last November, Australian interest is high. But, as a fledgling market, our manufacturers are struggling to compete with the large, established markets of other countries. So, how to even the playing field?
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When urban planner Mitra Anderson-Oliver, 33, moved into a 300-dwelling apartment block in Melbourne’s Kew two years ago, she knew she’d have to make some changes.
“I decided that the only way apartment living could work for me is if I have a community garden,” she says. She is now part of the new 40-member gardening committee and the “game-changer” communal garden is starting to take shape.
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As polyamory grows in popularity, more polyamorous people will seek therapy to assist them in managing their lives and relationships. But is modern therapy keeping up with our changing sexuality?
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Innovator and designer Joost Bakker has taken shots at Australia’s bureaucratic system, stating he believes that it is destroying innovation in Australia.
Spring, 2013. I am pregnant with our second. The hormones make me feel sad and unhinged. My partner closes off tightly from me, like a fist.
While there are joys—does anything possess more anticipatory sweetness than a newborn-sized bonnet?—a taut balloon of anxiety swells underneath my chest-bones.
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Australia loves to consider itself a foodie destination, but imagine a city where every inch of public space is covered in something you could actually eat.
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If there is one thing from our interview with Mo Wyse and Shannon Martinez of Smith and Daughters that reveals the most about the duo, it is this: during the writing of the book, we asked them, did you have any moments of real soul-shaking doubt? They both thought—carefully—for several seconds, then replied. “No!”
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Community gardens, pop-up shops, and art studios temporarily appearing on land, and in buildings, slated for development are an increasingly common feature of our modern Australian cities.
Known as ‘meanwhile use’, the practice is being adopted by landowners and developers who are coming to see the many positives from leasing or allowing free use of these pre-development sites.
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Picture the inner-city landscape of an Australian city, and terrace houses quickly come to mind. The rows of picturesque, conjoined homes of stone, brick and stucco, with cast-iron detailing, that evoke an earlier time. But how much do we know about these historic homes?
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While many people dream about living an idyllic farm life, most balk at the prospect of a country move. Hellish work commutes and the social isolation of leaving established communities being the major reasons.
But two Australian families are living their farm life dream without leaving the comforts of the city.
Potter Edwin Wise (35) and his family – wife Maria Cameron and kids Ruth (6), Winter (2) and Rye (11 months) – live with Maria’s sister, Angelica (29), and her partner Michi (32), on a thriving suburban farm in Heidelberg West, just 14km from Melbourne’s CBD.
On their 700-square-metre block they have chooks, honey bees and sprawling vegetable gardens – overflowing with celery, parsley and lettuces. “We’re good for leafy greens,” says Wise. The family also grow their own fruit. “This winter we’ve had all the citrus we need. We’ve got limes, we’ve got lemons and we’ve got mandarins.”
They’ve also kept goats for six years. “People have dogs in the suburbs,” Wise says. “Why couldn’t we have something, like a dog, that was productive?”
They applied for a permit to the council and the “excited and super supportive” ranger inspected their goat shed and gave them the go-ahead.
The goats provide them with three litres of milk a day. “We drink most of it in coffees and cereal,” says Wise. The rest is made into cheese by Angelica (chevre and “haloumi is the current favourite”, says Wise), and shared by their close-knit community of neighbours.
The family have never felt tempted to shift to the country. “We don’t want to be socially isolated,” says Wise. “There’s a whole tradition of communal living, of self-sufficient ambition – you buy a bush block and you basically remove yourself. That isn’t the idea, it’s: how can we eat from the suburbs? You’re trying to make suburbia work.”
Over in NSW, couple Emma Bowen (34) and Michael Zagoridis (35), are also living a farm life in Camperdown, just 3.8km from Sydney’s bustling CBD. The couple, with their son, Banjo (2), four rescue hens and their farm dog, Pepe, have turned an old bowling club into a thriving 1200-square-metre farm.
Just a year old and Pocket City Farms grows a huge range of vegetables, including kale, kohlrabi, coriander and cucumbers.
They also have a “community food forest”, 100 square metres of fruit trees and herbs including pomegranates, mangoes, figs and cumquats that they encourage the public to pick and enjoy‚ and three native bee hives.
During the frustrating five-year search for suitable urban land to establish the farm, Bowen says the family questioned whether they should just move out to the country.
Potter Edwin Wise enjoys farm life just 14km from Melbourne's CBD. Photo: Anthony Rodrigeuz
“But we lived in the city – we loved living in the city – but we were really disconnected from our own food production and food sources. And we began to realise: so are most people living in the city. It’s really hard to be able to gain that connection to how our food is grown, and where, and the seasonality of food growing. We wanted to set up a farm in the city primarily for us, and other people, to begin to connect with that.”
This article was originally published in Domain on February 8th 2018.
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