Roaming brings many benefits both to individuals and communities

R

iding a bike was a skill learnt in the historic-fog of personal history.

Professor Trevor Hancock used
this image to illustrate the
advantages to a community
of "roaming" - advantages
now largely lost.

That relatively simple skill brought many bonuses and chief among them was freedom.

Suddenly the world was my oyster (well, the geographical wilds of Echuca east at least) and I was free to roam, pretty much at will.

That wonderful freedom allowed to myself and my friends was not considered much until recently when a Canada’s Professor Trevor Hancock talked about how stronger, resilient and healthier communities were when kids had the freedom to roam.

That roaming, he explained unintentionally informed kids about their community in that they got to know a variety of people, understand how it worked, its strengths, weaknesses and along with that understood and learnt much about themselves, all things that enriched them personally and aligned them, ultimately with the unstated aims of their community.

A pictorial image illustrated clearly how our roaming has been reduced to almost nil as the decades have passed taking with it an almost inexplicable sense of community that arose from kids roaming about the place.

The image illustrated that a kid of today could roam, unaccompanied, about 300 metres from his home; his mother less than a kilometre; his grandfather nearly two kilometres and his great grandfather regularly roamed about 10 kilometres to go fishing.

The visiting professor lamented the loss of roaming and was able to equate it with the decline in the broader wellbeing of community, suggesting that it illustrated, in a practical sense, our personal disconnect with nature.

Humans are unquestionably a part of nature and have long and rich history of being a part of it, until modernity really took hold.

Professor Trevor Hancock - he extolls the
community benefits of "roaming".

Humans have been hand-in-glove with nature for most of their existence, and many still are, but as Professor Hancock pointed out, we now spend 80 per cent of our time in a building, and so disconnected from nature, and of the other 10 per cent, half of that is spent inside a vehicle..

That disconnect from nature is now almost total and what is happening in the world indicates that such remoteness is bringing unintended consequences – we are almost absolutely insensitive to the impact our behaviour is having on earth’s climate system.

Roaming, of course is not the solution, rather just a small part of it.

The almost incommunicable health roaming brought to our communities appears to be lost forever as most people, reacting to the few stories given broad coverage in our popular media about isolated violent behaviour keep their children pretty much within reach, killing off their natural adventurous spirit.

Learning to ride a bike was about freedom and primed my willingness to engage with the other, a desire still with me today.

Living and coping with the challenges of Alzheimer's disease

Australia’s ageing population brings many riches, but they do not come without a cost.

Old age offers much, but
brings many complications.

The knowledge and wisdom of the baby boomers, now mostly in their sixties and beyond, is being lost with Commonwealth Government statistics showing that about 250 000 people in Australia have dementia.
Dementia, the government’s Department of Health and Ageing has said, is not a natural part of ageing and there are many different types of diseases and conditions that cause dementia-like symptoms.
After the age of 65, it adds, the likelihood of being diagnosed with dementia doubles every five years and people over the age of 85 currently have a one in four chance of developing dementia.
The financial cost to Australia is huge and growing, but the unmeasured cost is the physical hurt and emotional pain imposed on carers and others supporting those who actually have dementia.
Dementia is triggered by many diseases, and among them is Alzheimer’s disease, which worsens the functioning of a person’s brain impacting on such things as such as speech and language, personality, decision-making and judgment or awareness and ability to interact with the environment.
Difficulties arising from a brain whose capacities are being eroded have become intimately familiar in the past decade with first my mother-in-law dying from complications associated with Alzheimer’s disease and now my father-in-law, although in his late 80s, is wrestling with the same adversities.
He is a beautiful man (I accept my familial biases), honest, loyal, generous, courteous and in every sense a gentleman.
Those qualities still exist and were evident when his daughter, my wife, and I cared for him for about a week just recently.
It was a lovely, but sad, time – Basil was a wonderful houseguest during which time it was important to focus on the moment and not think too much about him once being the efficient and effective manager of the Echuca livestock saleyards.

My father-in-law
 managed events such as this
 two or three times a week.

He had once, two or three times a week, orchestrated sales involving hundreds of animals, co-ordinating their sale, movement within the yards and, ultimately, their readiness for transport by the buyers.
Alzheimer’s disease has been the formal diagnosis and steps have been taken to slow its onset and although they have been effective to some degree, the side-effects, occasionally, have been unwelcome.
Patriarchs are often portrayed as the rock upon which families depend and the mental deterioration of one shouldering that responsibility brings a seismic shift in family dynamics.
His authority, seemingly suddenly erased by the disease, has shifted what were once his responsibilities to his children bringing convoluted undercurrents that are worsened by the complexities of emotions arising from these chaotic times.
The raw cost to society through the loss of a valuable member is measurable, but not so the unsettling confusion surrounding that loss.

Little in common, but a lot which was similar



Jack Styring where he seemed most
 at home - behind the microphone
 at a race meeting.

Jack Styring and I have nothing in common, but we do have one similarity and because of that historic connection I have an odd admiration for the 82-year-old race caller.The Octogenarian called his first horse race at the Echuca trots in 1950 and about 14 years later, as a cadet journalist I covered my first race meeting, at Echuca.I continued covering gallops and trots meetings at Echuca, and race meetings at Moama and Gunbower, and so our lives regularly crossed, mainly at the Moama meetings.Jack, now retired from calling faces a significant change as he once called more than 100 meetings a year at which the famous Styring patter could be heard.Arriving at the track it was always comforting to hear Jack’s voice over the public address system as the unique clip of his voice and famous phrases told you this was country racing as it was meant to be.Jack was polished in every sense, from his preparation through to his appearance and the total package was the epitome of the “racing gentleman”. Background and research was obviously important for Jack and no doubt his debut on New Year’s Day 1950 challenged his skills as that first race at the Echuca trots involved 29 horses and as there was no caller’s booth, he had to use the public stand.Styring, now 82, became famous, at least among racing enthusiasts, for his phrases such as, ''baring his molars to the breeze'' and ''he's pulling like a Collins Street dentist''.For me, a day at the races didn’t seem complete until Jack had used one of his colourful phrases making what might have been a somewhat tawdry race seem exiciting. His lines were so different and unique that he was the AFL’s Dennis Cometti of country horse racing.Styring called 60 consecutive Gunbower Cups at Gunbower, near Echuca, and more than 30 annual meetings each at Hanging Rock and Avoca, and through his Racing Topics website about horse racing, he keeps his intimate connection with racing alive.A “Jack Styring Appreciation Society” has been established on facebook, something about which Jack would simply say: “Thank-you” and smile.