March 30th, 2020Recognition for Dallas’s ongoing work
JUST talking to Dallas Kinnear is inspiring. So, if you put together all of the amazing work she has done towards creating a better environment for not just Australia but the world, it is no wonder she has been inducted into the Hepburn Shire’s Heather Mutimer Women’s Honour Roll.
But to do all she has done, Dallas had to dramatically change the life she was handed.
She was born into a very successful entrepreneurial business family in Geelong where she had a free-ranging childhood reared by staff with a live-in cook and cleaner. But at the age of just seven she was sent to an elite private school as a weekly boarder. She felt unwanted by her parents so worked hard to please her teachers instead – and became a high achiever.
As she grew up, she attended charity balls, had a coming out dance, was given a car and even presented at court. She taught for a while, back at the same school, and then married a successful television producer and had four children.
“And we had enough status and money to live in a grand, beautiful house right on the banks of the Yarra. I had it all! And that was when my personal shockwave hit me.
“I was in hospital having our fourth child and my husband met a young woman and dumped me. It was devastating.”
But after wearing sunglasses for a week, Dallas finally picked her shattered ego and pride off the floor and decided she could now live the lifestyle she wanted – with values and beliefs that had always resonated in her heart, but that she had been unable to act on.
While at the family’s holiday house at Metung, she had met a returned services pilot who was a passionate environmentalist, grew his own vegies, had a mudbrick house and a very happy family with four children.
“Everything he told me resonated with me, it just made so much sense. When I was dumped I knew I didn’t have to live in the stuff-rich, energy-gobbling life I had been living.
“So, I went around Australia for six months camping with swags on the ground with the kids and that taught me how much you don’t need for a rich and full life. I soon met my partner Murray and went to live in his house in St Andrews which was a really forward-thinking alternative community – and suddenly I had found my tribe.”
The couple and their combined six children then moved to a farm at Yea. There Dallas went on the local school’s Mothers’ Club and quickly turned it into a Parents’ Club. She also trained with the CFA. Sadly, when a fire did come through, she was in Melbourne and they lost 220 sheep just about to lamb. Another fire took out 1400 trees but using compensation from the State Electricity Commission, they just went and planted another 3500 trees. Surrounding farmers thought they were mad but when they sold the property, they got the top price for the region.
Among her many achievements are a literacy program for disadvantaged school children, she fought for funding to ensure an addition to the curriculum of secondary schools, TAFEs and universities so students could see the importance about CFCs, after a Democrat bill to move that all fridges were recycled of their CFCs before going to the tip was voted down. She also made a film with SBS called It’s Not All Rubbish about the importance of recycling in schools.
When the Montreal protocol on limiting CFCs was being renegotiated in London, she took a student from each state with her to create a lobby group. The flight was courtesy of Qantas and when they arrived, they bought a sheet from an op shop, painted a huge Save Ozone banner and hung it on Westminster Bridge. The photo went viral and Dallas was awarded a United Nations citation and gold medallion in recognition of her commitment to youth and the environment.
Dallas has worked and volunteered with the Australian Conservation Foundation in a number of roles and since moving to Hepburn Shire 25 years ago has taken a number of unsightly developments to VCAT – and won.
At 83 she is still going strong, creating media for last year’s student strikes raising awareness of climate change and she runs the café side of the Repair Café – and has done so since its inception. She is quite proud of a friend’s description of her as “a council botherer”.
She loves where she lives. “It’s been 25 years up here and I have had a wonderful time, I can’t tell you how rich and full my life has been. Much richer than that vacuous rich life I lived in the city. I have made wonderful friends and think that this shire is a vibrant and interesting place to live with lots of people with big hearts who value family and friends.
“And I love being old. I have lost the knowledge and quickness of mind and I am allowed to be slow and forgetful, unreliable, irresponsible, incompetent and inefficient – and I love it. No-one asks me to do anything anymore so I am time-rich to be with friends and family and to read.”
In finishing our chat, Dallas asks that I include the things which have given her the most inspiration. And who am I to say no?
The books, All Men are Brothers: Life and Thoughts of Mahatma Gandhi as Told in His Own Words and Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich, the philosophy of the Dalai Lama and a TEDx talk by Shani Graham, Take a Street and Build a Community.
Words: Donna Kelly | Image: Contributed
Pictured: Dallas Kinnear
