Working for nearly 20 years to help keep GV Swap Meet moving

Kris Healey - she has been
 working behind the scenes for
 nearly 20 years to help
organize Shepparton's
anuall GV Swap meet.

Kris Healey has been working behind the scenes on the annual GV Swap Meet for nearly 20 years.

Kris and her husband Lloyd has been members of the Goulburn Valley Motor Vehicles Driver’s Club (GVMVDC) for about 27 years and naturally moved into having key roles in the event’s organization.

The meet began in Numurkah in 1971 and has been to Congupna, Shepparton’s DECA and the trotting track on Melbourne Rd before settling at its present home at the Shepparton Show Grounds.

It is, however, not a complete stranger to the showgrounds as it had first been there, but relocated while the whole facility was restructured, reshaped and, finally reopened as fresh public facility ideal for such events as the annual swap meet.

The swap meet is the major public event held each year by the club.

Saturday before the Sunday swap meet and the showgrounds are alive with people busily preparing for the rush to come later in the day when the sites are opened to those planning to show their wares.

Kris said the sites, of which there are more than 600 for exhibitors with an amazing array of goods for sale and swap, sell for just $20, which includes to passes at $5 each.

Kris had seen the meet go from an intense day out for the blokes with its seemingly endless collection car and motorcycle bits and pieces, to an event with an increasing emphasis on goods that interest women and children.

 

Our understanding of phases and words frustrates the pedestrianization of our towns and cities

An entrenched way of living and our understanding of phases and words are just two things that stand in the way of making our towns and cities pedestrian friendly.

The freeways of the world have no
 consideration for the pedestrian.

Progressive thinkers sense that our way of life is herding us into a cul-de-sac and the way in which we think about and understand any possible solutions is only worsening the over-crowding.

A revolution that started in the late 19^th century with the arrival of the first motor car has since enveloped the world – the coup that has reduced humankind to passengers (literally) is complete.

Our towns and cities have been taken over by motor vehicles and despite adventurous ideas and enthusiastic attempts at securing our liberation we continue to huddle in the shadows while we afford absolute freedom and the joy of life in the sun to the motor car.

We conceived of the car as a tool to make our lives easier and more comfortable – it was, at first, our servant and now roles are reversed with us living in a way that ensures the motor car has the run of the world.

We built the car, a mindless mechanical thing, with the thought that it would free us, but something quiet to the contrary has happened. We have given the car freedoms and rights we afford to almost nothing else and as it rampages around the world, we stare out from the gloom almost like refugees on our own planet.

Roads of tar and cement spill around the world looking like a tangled and heartless mess and what were once beautiful spaces are turned into soulless parking areas for these modern day monsters.

The car has the world in a sleeper hold and we can’t even talk our way out of its embrace for we can no longer understand the language. Everything we do, every decision we make is tinted by this strange dilemma – the car tightens its grip and we begin to lose ours.

Mention pedestrian friendly to a community and immediately most see the job as done – that is that the community is already pedestrian friendly – it has a few walking paths, a couple of pedestrian crossings and a few pedestrian refuges that allow a few moments relief as the behemoths of the road surge by.

There is a distinct difference between walking for relaxation or exercise to walking as a part of daily life – walking to work, walking to shop, walking to school, walking to see a friend or walking to and from social events.

It is this difference, along with our failure to understand how we need to look at our towns and cities again with the need to reconsider our designs relegating the car to its rightful position of servant and the pedestrian becomes elevated, honoured and respected, making it easy and desirable.

Australian towns and cities are suffering from a similar difficulty as many in the population – obesity. We are becoming grossly overweight, spreading as we shouldn’t, while we should be trimming up, ensuring our towns and cities are taught and trim like a fit athlete.

Rather than sprawl we should be designing for compact communities that not only encourage walking, but make it possible, rewarding and so enhance our wellbeing as we walk our way to healthier and safer towns and cities.    

Defining, understanding and identifying courage eludes most

Courage is as difficult to define as beauty.

It is something that has been on the minds of many following the tragic deaths recently of five Australian soldiers in Afghanistan.

Courage - as difficult to define as beauty.

Notwithstanding this, danger awaits anyone who questions the popular idea of courage and dare suggest they were not courageous rather, just doing their job, a job they the knowingly and willingly signed up for.

What is courage? Where and why does it emerge? Why is a soldier, whose prime task, when all the finery is stripped away is about killing other people, more courageous than the soul down the street who wrestles with life’s daily dilemmas?

The institution that is our armed forces removes many of life’s risks and so in essence the only thing a soldier is gambling with is his or her life.

Our symbolic soul “down the street” gambles not only with their life, but also, particularly if they question the status quo, their broader wellbeing, and that of their family, without having the vast and resourceful infrastructure of our armed forces to support them.

Enlistment is a clear indication of person’s values and beliefs and as they equate with most in the country, rarely, if ever do they have to put their head above the parapet to contest popular opinion.

In fact, as demonstrated repeatedly those most at risk in our society, certainly psychologically and if at times not physically, question the status quo and wonder publically if life would not be better if we were more conciliatory rather than militant.

Life’s truly courageous souls are those who ask the questions most would prefer to avoid and have us listen to answers we would rather not hear.

Socrates, an habitual questioner, had a passion to “know” and because of that interrogation was considered socially disruptive and so put to death.

Socrates had the opportunity to escape his persecutors, but being a believer in the rule of law, stayed, drank the hemlock and died. That was courage remote from the battlefield.

Soldiers fight for the values of the society to which they belong and that act demands a certain type of courage, but our true unsung heroes demonstrate an unrecognised courage using little more than words, and art in all its forms, to protect human rights, be it at the primary school through to those who seek asylum in Australia.

Humanity’s golden years appear to the crumbling as a burgeoning population strains earth’s resources and with our market driven economy in disarray, a few courageous souls talk of alternatives, risking reputation as they confront entrenched ideologies; ideologies that have brought the good life, but which are now unravelling.

It takes courage to discuss new ideas, it take even more courage to adopt them.