When Paris swapped her corporate career in Melbourne for the tight-knit embrace of Mallacoota, she didn't anticipate how the smoky haze of bushfires would paint her family's new beginning. Our latest episode navigates through the transformative tale of Paris from the Wilderness Collective, a story of resilience, community building, and how a small coastal town is rising from the ashes to redefine itself. As Paris recounts the critical moments that solidified her bond with Mallacoota, she also unveils the ever-growing sense of belonging that newcomers infuse into the fabric of East Gippsland.
Visit the Wilderness Collective website here!
When Paris swapped her corporate career in Melbourne for the tight-knit embrace of Mallacoota, she didn't anticipate how the smoky haze of bushfires would paint her family's new beginning. Our latest episode navigates through the transformative tale of Paris from the Wilderness Collective, a story of resilience, community building, and how a small coastal town is rising from the ashes to redefine itself. As Paris recounts the critical moments that solidified her bond with Mallacoota, she also unveils the ever-growing sense of belonging that newcomers infuse into the fabric of East Gippsland.
Visit the Wilderness Collective website here!
Welcome to the Rural Venture Collective podcast, the show that celebrates the string, innovation and resilience of women across East Gippsland. Whether you're a local resident or someone curious about the unique spirit of East Gippsland, this podcast is for you. Together, we'll explore the triumphs, the lessons learned and the dreams that fuel these East Gippsland women. Through this podcast, we'll dive into the heart of East Gippsland and shine a spotlight on the incredible women who are shaping business, creating art, nurturing the land and fostering connections across this vast region. Get ready to be inspired, to learn and to be a part of a collection that celebrates the shared experiences that make East Gippsland more than just a place but a home. So grab a cup of your favourite local brew, find a cosy spot and tune in as we embark on a journey of connection and discovery together.
Speaker 1:I'd like to acknowledge the Gunai Kurnai people as the traditional owners of the land on which we are gathered and pay my respects to their elders, past, present and future. Good morning and welcome to the next episode of the Rural Venture Collective. Today we are really lucky to be situated on the sunny shores of Malacuta with the lovely Paris from the Wilderness Collective. Good morning, paris. Hi Lou, thanks for taking the time to chat with us today. I'm really excited to be on location in Malacuta and having a look at your great facility here, and keen to hear more about you, paris, and also about the work you do at the Wilderness Collective.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Well, it's really great to meet you finally.
Speaker 1:Tell me a little bit about what brings you to Malacuta. Do you come from Malacuta originally, or how long have you lived here?
Speaker 2:So no, I grew up in Adelaide and moved around a couple of places and been in Melbourne for most of my adult life. For a number of years we used to come to Malacuta as our happy go-to place for holidays, and one year, while we were in Melbourne, we thought we need to shake things up a little bit with the kids and give them an experience. Everything was a little bit normal, vanilla, perfect, everyone was doing the same sort of things. So to experience something different, and we decided, instead of picking everyone up and going overseas and having doing that, that we'd just come and spend a term in Malacuta. So we enrolled the kids in the local school. We weren't sure what was going to happen with our work. We were both consulting at the time where our clients were going to completely freak out that we've gone to this small seaside village.
Speaker 1:I'll be green with envy that you get to live in somewhere really cool.
Speaker 2:Anyway, the term went past and by the end of it the kids were saying to us we don't want to go home, Can we stay here?
Speaker 2:And we're like, well, we can't really stay here, our entire lives in our house or back in Melbourne. Anyway, we all returned back to Melbourne and for the rest of the year we didn't fully settle. We just kept wanting to come back here and so we went. Maybe we could do it one more time. So we came back the following year. Melbourne schools are you really going to go again for a term like you guys crazy? Anyway, we came for another term and by the end of that we weren't leaving. We bought a house, we were here.
Speaker 1:Malacuta had hooked you.
Speaker 2:Malacuta had hooked us, and I think it is a place like that. It's For some people, and for me especially, it was always a really weird feeling when I drive in that 24K road to come here. It would feel like I was coming home and yet it wasn't my home. It's very strange. So it just captured us and we've just slowly made it happen and tried to. You know, it has been an incredibly big shift for me. I was seriously corporate Collins Street, melbourne, well, and now I'm here and I think we were just trying to take it one day at a time and go. Well, if it's right for this year, it's right for this year, let's see, and when it's not right then we'll change. But it's not stopped being right and the kids love it. Really, it's been just such a magical experience for all of us.
Speaker 1:The sense of community is really strong in Malakuta.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, we kind of officially sort of started living here just before the fires, so it was a pretty big introduction. Absolutely. It was a social community in some ways, and a lot of people after that thought, oh, they're gone, like yeah, that'll be it, everybody won't see them again. But it's funny, it actually gave us more of a resolve to stay here and be part of the community and I think for me that was very much a turning point. I'd been doing bits and pieces of consulting work and so forth before then and then, after the fires, where I could see such a need, I started being more involved in community groups and it starts with oh yeah, I'll help with one ground application and then I'll be on that group. And then, before you know it, I was consumed by involvement in work to try and get Malakuta back on its feet.
Speaker 1:I think that's one of the fabulous things about the community in Malakuta and many communities across East Keepsland Is that there are a wealth of skills and knowledge that is brought into the region with people who relocate to our region, people who realise that we are all living this dream and hiding this fabulous secret that is East Keepsland, and I think that's what makes our community so strong. So you found you were quite welcomed into the community and people were very keen to have you as part of their groups.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it definitely takes time to go from just that friendly high down the street to actually feeling like you have friends and friendships, but always felt very welcomed here. I think you're right about the skills diversity. It just continues. It never ceases to amaze me what I uncovered, just not only in Malakuta but all of East Keepsland the strength of talent that is here and the diversity of it. And some of that comes through people that are retired here from all walks of life and we see that as you start to build opportunities and events and people sort of come out of the woodwork that oh yeah, they've got some skill in making guitars or they were an astrophysicist. You hear a professional golfer in a pass, like you know. There's all of these skills that you just go wow. And, of course, if you can harness that, there's no stopping their town.
Speaker 1:Yeah absolutely so, if we can just go back a little way, you spoke about moving here just before the fires. I'm interested to know how you work with your children after the fires and you know what the process was to go with. I know it was very scary for everybody, very scary for kids. So what process, if any, did you follow after the fires of working with the kids?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good question. I mean for us we were part of the. There was a group in the end that actually I'll say fled, because it was kind of fled the town in the middle of the night before the fires came, and that was again a very scary thing to do because at that stage all the apps were saying it's too late to leave and I would never I just don't go against bias like that but we had a direct input into what, or knew exactly what was happening up the coast through fire controllers and so forth. So we essentially had five young children in our house that night, with families staying, and bundled them into the back of the car at midnight, wake them up at midnight and drove up to Begar and then onto Canberra. So even just avoiding deer and so forth, looking at the app on where the fire was, etc. Was an experience in itself Once we got to Canberra and we still had family back here.
Speaker 2:So it was difficult trying to keep in touch, work out what was going on.
Speaker 2:Once we were in Canberra we tried to give the kids a little bit of a normal holiday amongst us, constantly looking at our phones on updates. It took us a whole month to get back here through road closures and various other things, and so our kids missed the first few days of school even coming back. You know our house was okay, but they did have friends that had lost houses I think that was very impactful, obviously and teachers that had lost houses. The school did have support with counsellors and various things, but it took a long time for the school especially, and all the kids within it, to try and deal with what was happening. I mean, there was still smoke in the air, there was still debris everywhere you looked. I think that trauma is still playing out For my kids, being definitely a growth curve, but they weren't as specifically impacted because we weren't here on the day and our house was okay than others in the community, just in school, some children never really re-engaging with school, things like that the scars are definitely still very much here.
Speaker 1:Then, of course, you hit the world with COVID straight after. Local people and local children had a lot more to deal with and a lot more potentially traumatising day to day life.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely. Part of why we'll get to this, why the wilderness work space and then the collective came about, is because during those fires the NBN was about to come into Malakuta and that got knocked out in the fires as well. So part of the whole impetus to us starting was to have a digital hub which could enable internet. So when you've got COVID and we just got the community Malakuta and District Recovery Association up and running, the kids were meant to be doing this online learning from home and you've got a town that didn't have NBN in place. Basically I think it's about 40% of the houses had internet capability. You're asking for almost an impossible task to try and teach kids online. So it definitely, definitely was incredibly bad timing because when the community really needed to come together and those kids needed to be together, that was when they weren't allowed to and, yeah, that is definitely has ongoing effects.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so how did you mitigate that lack of connectivity for kids having to learn and do schooling from home? Was that a lot more pressure, obviously, on the parents and on the teachers at the school?
Speaker 2:Yes, it was. So the school managed to get a whole lot of internet dongles and then some that still couldn't connect were able to go into school under strict supervision.
Speaker 1:So yeah, the community coming together again. Oh very much so. So you've been through COVID in Malakuta, you've been through the tragedy of the bushfires in Malakuta. You're in scones. Clearly You're in Malakuta.
Speaker 2:I think you have to be like 20,000 generations to a true Malakuta. And look, this is definitely feels like home and we love it, so it'll always play a big part of our lives for sure. Yeah, great.
Speaker 1:So talk to us a little bit about the wilderness collective.
Speaker 2:So, as I mentioned, it kind of started out of that, that necessity after the fires. So lack of internet, difficulty for existing small businesses to function. Because of that we have seen so many businesses around town that just did over beyond throughout the follow up to the fires are just exhausted. There's an intergenerational change amongst businesses in town where people you know legitimately are looking to retire and step down and that we could see was leading us to very much a cliff of economic sustainability in this region. The Abalone Cop was wiped out in the fires, tourism of course, with COVID, and the fires just disappeared overnight. So when you take all those factors in, it's a pretty scary picture.
Speaker 2:So under the Malakuta and District Recovery Association or MADRA, they started an economic kind of subcommittee under that and a couple of people within it started looking at the digital connected. What if we did a digital hub, initially to have some facilities people could use? So Mario Mali and Meg Allen, two of our co-founders, really started putting together. They did a feasibility study of what that might look like, where could we possibly go with it, et cetera. So slowly, myself and Dr Trisha Hiley and Bec sorry, belle Temby also joined forces with these two mighty women, mary and Meg, and we started up what was known as the Wilderness Workspace. We very quickly recognised that that was just kind of scratching the surface If we were really going to look at how Malakuta could be economically and socially sustainable and thrive again. Rejuvenate that it wasn't just about digital connectivity, obviously. It was about all of those interconnected elements. So how do we get new businesses up and running in town? How do we support people in having livelihoods that means they're happy to stay here? How do we get new people in All of these sorts of things? And so that's where the Wilderness Collective came about, and our whole kind of purpose is really to enable we say to enable a life fully lived in forest gift land. So whether you're a child or someone that's needing aged care, you have the ability to live here if you choose to do so.
Speaker 2:And under that we are focusing on kind of three main pillars, one being our co-working collaboration and we call it very much community collaboration because we work as closely as we can with other community groups in town to share what's going on. And then we have a knowledge. So we have a study hub here for students to access, a complimentary, within partnership with Gellin, the co-working space for digital nomads to come in as well as local businesses to work from. And under the knowledge pillar we're running a whole lot of skills based programs, whether that be digital related or gosh. We're looking at a whole business innovation series with the ESKIPSA and community foundation. So there's a whole lot of those sorts of things going on.
Speaker 2:And then we've got the enterprise or innovation pillar, which is all about trying to support new enterprises, businesses for good in town, and last year we ran an incubator with five groups went through looking at business opportunities and case studies. We're continuing that this year. We've run a social enterprise schools program in the local school and I guess our big kind of focus is how do we not only establish the new industries and opportunities but also community owned and led assets in town so that we can really take care of our own future and if another disaster happens, we're not so reliant on government funding and all those sorts of things. So in the process of trying to purchase our first community owned asset and we'll go from there.
Speaker 1:Welcome back to the rural venture collective. We are lucky enough to be recording on location from the Wilderness Collective Hub in Malakuta and we've just taken a break while we've had some fabulous locals pop in to say good day and touch base and let us know some of the great projects they're involved with locally. There's a real community feel here. Paris isn't there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it feels like we're right on the cusp of something great.
Speaker 2:I think there's been a lot of people in town that have been working absolutely tirelessly since the fires in all sorts of different areas, and it's almost like the fruits of their labour are nearly ready to sort of really spring forth. So I think it's an exciting time, and not only just in Malakuta, but right around in districts and across East Gippsland there's a real bubble of bubbling of passionate, determined people that, yes, I'm doing some amazing things and I think one of the good things I think that's come out of the whole experience of the fires in COVID is that people seem to be more willing to collaborate, and that's great. Talk about things and share resources, and we're certainly seeing that here. There's a lot of involvement across community groups to support each other, sharing of assets, from microphones through to tents for festivals, all sorts of things and that's a lovely feeling to have that involvement. We definitely can always do more and make it easier and more streamlined and all of that, but it's on its way for sure.
Speaker 1:We talk a lot about collaboration on the rural venture collective, and it really is. There is quite a move up to share skills and resources in small communities, which is something that has always existed to a degree, but I think that sometimes in the past people have been very protective about what they have. Things are changing and it's great.
Speaker 2:I also think a lot of what I'm seeing locally is just a support network to tell people that they can give things a go, and I don't know if they've necessarily had that Someone sort of be there in that role before. There's so much skill and ideas but maybe not the confidence on where to start or how to go about it, or people always saying, well, you live so far remotely that, what are you thinking?
Speaker 1:that's not going to work Absolutely. I think that's something that we face across the shy because we are so diverse in some areas are remote and really Malakutra is one of those areas.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I'm finding that just in going well, okay, maybe not, but let's give it a go, or let's try this way, or just saying I like your idea, how can we help you, is actually shifting that culture. There's always going to be the naysayers. There's always going to be. Well, we've tried that 20 years ago. It didn't work. You're not going to work, or no one's going to come in winter, or blah, blah, blah blah. It's like well, maybe, but just because it didn't work before doesn't mean it won't work now.
Speaker 2:It's a different time. Different people have come into town, there's different opportunities, there's different technologies, there's different wants and needs and if we don't try, then of course nothing's going to work. But there's enough of us now that have that fire in the belly to go. We don't want to change Malakutra as such, but we want to make the best of what we've got and make it more liveable and more enjoyable for those that do live here or want to come and visit, because wanting to live here but trying to string together a livelihood based on three or four basic casual jobs is not sustainable and it's not sustainable for the town either. When we can't, you know the businesses are struggling to get enough staff over summer to stay open, so the more we can do to safeguard against that obviously the better.
Speaker 1:So how are businesses attracting summer staff?
Speaker 2:Through a number of ways. I mean a lot of the ex-locals, if you want to say that, that have moved away for uni or whatever, come back over summer and work. There are some businesses that bring people in from overseas over the summer period to work, and we also have backpackers that put their hand up to come here over summer as well and they take on positions, and, of course, many, many locals that just work non-stop throughout that summer period and then take a break later in the year.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it really is a vibrant main street area and you know, you've got your food truck park with the unto the chef and sales grave. Yeah, origami, and our pizza.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the pizza place is great Fabulous gluten-free pizzas, by the way. And then you've got a pretty active main street. The pub's always going off and there's little gift shops and cafes along the main street are great. There's plenty to do here. There's plenty going on here, but you do get a bit of a feel that the over summer, particularly late summer, that the people running the businesses are getting tired. They're tired.
Speaker 2:They're just getting hard. Yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely, look, absolutely, and I think it would be nice to, it'd be nice to be able to enable more diversity, to give them a break when they need it.
Speaker 2:And especially we've talked about this as a community, especially over winter those businesses, that's their time to have a break and yet if they close down then there's nowhere in town for us to get a coffee or there's nowhere to get a takeaway pizza or so looking at ways of trying to stagger that or bring in other people or something like that to enable them to have the break they deserve is definitely something on the agenda. Childcare is another one. Here that there is no specific childcare opportunities and that locks up half of our workforce. So that's something that's been looked at by a number of people, continues to be looked at to see what can be done, because that's a no brainer really. It would shift quite a few opportunities almost overnight if we could solve that problem and I know that's something that's you know, all bosses looked at and can, and lots of places, a lot, of, a lot of the issues we're facing are similar right across the region.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Lots of the small communities are feeling that, but you have lots of great brochures and things sitting around, and one of them that I've seen is the services provided for aging, so can talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 2:So many people love to retire here and then, of course, as they, as their needs increase, it's become increasingly more difficult to stay here. We don't have an aged care facility in town. We do have some amazing medical services and allied support staff and we're just finding that. You know, it's difficult for people anywhere to understand that whole aged care scene and how to navigate it and go about it. So the Malacuta Inlet Age Care group and some health and wellness allied health professionals in working with CHEF, we supported them to put together this in home care directory and the idea behind it was for a people to local people to work out how to navigate that whole aged care package and process and how they might go about managing their own packages, because there's not really choice here at the moment unless.
Speaker 2:And then who is in town? There are providers in town that can do everything from personal care to gardening to meal preparation, etc. Who are they and how do they contact them? So we put together a directory and it's really about trying to support those workers in town, those businesses that are looking to do work in that space, but also, obviously, helping people stay here longer if they can.
Speaker 1:Yeah right. So from child care to supporting people in business, to supporting other community groups, to aged care, it seems to me that the Wilderness Collective is the whole package. What you're doing here is really taking some boxes.
Speaker 2:I do want to say. I mean we're not trying to take on the health or aged care, but we do partner in with other community groups that are doing that. So we are very firmly trying to focus our energy and efforts on those knowledge enterprises, co-working spaces. I guess one of our other pillars is partnerships and there is only so much we can do at the moment, but we're hoping that we can at least support others to also take up the challenge and work with us. So at the moment I'm the only full-time employee and we have a couple of people that help us on sort of bits and pieces here and there, but an amazing board that's hands-on as they can be amongst their other lives. But there's obviously a huge amount to do that we're focused on. So it's not about us trying to take all those angles on. We're looking at partnering as widely as we can and collaborating, and that's not only in Malakuta, that's more broadly as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, terrific. Now we are in this hub, this shared workspace, which is Brighton, gorgeous, with a fabulous view. So you're moving, you're relocating to an even higher profile site. Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, we're very excited about that.
Speaker 2:So in the next few months we will be moving to 56 Morris Avenue, so it's right in the centre of the main street.
Speaker 1:Certainly, being located in the main street is going to make the Wilderness Collective more accessible for people. You're going to drive past it, a walk past it, perhaps you'd like to pop in and chat to some of the locals in there, or maybe you'd like to use it as a remote workspace. The Wilderness Collective certainly has its place in the community in Malakuta and is doing a great job. So, on behalf of the Rural Venture Collective, we'd like to say thank you to you today, paris. Thanks for sharing your local knowledge and telling us a little bit about the Wilderness Collective. We'll put some links in our show notes. And thanks again for joining the Rural Venture Collective today. Well, that's us for today. Thanks for joining us on the Rural Venture Collective. Remember to like and subscribe so you'll be updated when our next podcast lands. Most importantly, stay connected and get out there and enjoy our beautiful East Skips Land Bye. This podcast is brought to you by East Skips Land Marketing with the support of the Victorian Government, recorded at the James Yates Studio, benstown.