Words: Kevin Childs | Image above: Contributed | Image below: Kyle Barnes

WHEN Edward Benedict lived in a bedsit in East Melbourne, his neighbours called him The Farmer. He had a small patch opposite the MCG, where his veggies grew and grew and grew.
Today, he grows even more at Adsum Farmhouse, a thriving market garden in Glenlyon and his produce has keen followers at the Daylesford Sunday Market and local restaurants. His property is three acres of which an acre is under cultivation.
“It’s great to know that you can make a living on an acre of land. You don’t need 100 acres. Think of this as a vitamin shop. This is the preventative stage of health care.”
He elaborates: “There are four keys to longevity: nutrition, exercise, sleep and emotional health.” He tracks both his calorie intake and his 15,000 daily steps.
For 53-year-old Edward, who previously worked in sales for an organic food company, there is greater purpose in growing clean, healthy food for the community.
His market garden is meticulously ordered. All beds are standardised at 20 metres by 7.5 metres wide, which allows drip irrigation to be interchangeable. To continue the maths: where there was nothing nine years ago, there are 18 sections in six rows.
Add up all his plants and they would just about stretch from Daylesford to Hepburn. He shows an area. “Three months ago, this was gherkins. My pickled gherkins
have a terrific local following.” Once the frost comes, the gherkins are out. Nothing is planted in the same spot for three to four years.
He points to a section, from this garden came a tonne of pumpkins and further on, capsicums and jalapeños. He shows beds of coriander and rocket, long stretches
of still-selling broccoli, an orchard of nashi pears and apples and, after one attempt, manages to wrench a carrot from the earth and chew on it. “You need a pitchfork,”
he explains. Once the garlic is out, in goes the basil, and now parsley, which he says grows like a weed.
Here are three varieties of blueberries, then asparagus, some spinach, rainbow chard in a greenhouse, tomatoes for next year. Oh, and he had rocket, onions and
chillies, plus a rhubarb patch and some leeks. There are 3000 garlic plants readying themselves for the harsh winter ahead to emerge after spring into rich fat bulbs.
We look at the handsome lavender cauliflowers and cabbages that seem to be almost bursting with life. “The soil,” he says, “is like chocolate cake.”

Also under cover are the last of the tomatoes and baby spinach. We gaze at a massive mulberry tree. “The farm is like a wild beast…something coming at you from every angle…insects, weeds, weather and wild life.”
Among his attributes is a lot of re-using. For instance, now that his daughters are aged 11 and 14 their playground has become a nursery, home to two worm farms. He rakes his hand almost lovingly through thousands of worms. A bucket catches their juice. “Black gold,” he says. The juice is diluted to water the plants.
Another nursery is for seedlings but is now holding pumpkins and firewood. A repurposed wash station incorporates sinks and timber rescued from the tip. All of this is tracked on A2 sheets of paper.
Just to add variety, and perhaps to show it’s not all deadly serious, a replica blue British police box stands nearby, just like the Tardis in the Dr Who TV series. “If I make a mistake I just get in the Tardis and fix it.”
There is no tractor, just a tiller which uses little fuel and doesn’t have much impact on the ground. What’s more, he can listen to podcasts, gaining more knowledge and philosophical insights, while he works.
He has a commercial kitchen for the pickled and sliced jalapeños and jars of traditional gherkins with dill and garlic that he sells at the market. The label of the gherkins says it is “packed by the gherking and his family”.
Sitting in the shade of a massive Himalayan cedar, their 1880s house is a former blacksmith’s shop (horseshoes are still uncovered while cultivating the soil as well as blue and white china). The front room of the house hosted lunches for local
councillors when they met down the road in the Glenlyon Hall. Some visitors remember being in the house as children when the great fire of the 1930s burnt out a third of the town. Now part of it is an AirBnB run by Fiona, Edward’s wife.
Spectacular bird and animal themed murals enliven the house and fences. Adsum Farmhouse was a title given to the property many owners back. Edward found it literally means to be present. When Latin was still taught in schools, students responded with “adsum” at roll call. It seems to fit: all present and correct.

Words: Kevin Childs | Image: Contributed

AN ALMOST century-old silent masterpiece of documentary filmmaking will be given new life next month when an acclaimed singer performs a “sound-track”.
Grass, made in 1925, recounts the yearly migration of 50,000 tribespeople into Iran, taking 500,000 animals across fierce wide rivers and snowy peaks to fresh pasture. The trek has been going on for a thousand years.
The film will be shown at the Castlemaine Documentary Festival, which runs from June 16 to 18, with the music by ZOJ, a Ballarat duo comprising acclaimed singer Gelareh Pour and her partner on drums, Brian O’Dwyer.
Festival director Claire Jager found ZOJ, which is modern Persian for couple, through a computer search for Iranian musicians in Central Victoria who might compose an original score. To Jager’s knowledge, such a silent film-live music collaboration has not been done before.
Born in Iran, Gelareh is a singer and songwriter, who also plays a bowed lute
called a qeychak. She has performed in Iran, Tajikistan and across Europe. In
Australia she has appeared at festivals and venues across the country, collaborating
with leading innovative musicians as well as producing three albums.
So how did all this come about? “Inadvertently,” says director Jager. “A Turkish
woman got in touch with me to suggest a festival of Iranian films, which led to Grass.”
Another happy coincidence: it will be shown during Refugee Week.
It is one of the first films to study a culture. Jager says she knew of it through her
30 years in the field of documentaries and was able to track down a new print in the
US.
Under its full title, Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life, the documentary was chosen
for preservation by the American Library of Congress as “culturally, historically or
aesthetically significant”.
Another reason for Grass having such fame is that Merian C. Cooper, one of its
three directors and producers went on to make the classic King Kong.
Another producer was Marguerite Harrison, who also worked as a reporter and
translator as well as spying for the US in Japan and the Soviet Union in the 1920s.
She was held for 10 months in the notorious Lubyanka prison.
She first met Cooper at a ball in Warsaw during the early days of the war between
Russia and Poland, giving him food, blankets and books when the Russians jailed
him in 1920.
By contrast, another documentary takes the viewer into the world of descendants
of camel drivers in Australia, commonly called Afghans, although most were from
the far west of British India, including today’s Pakistan. Others came from Egypt and
Turkiye.
Watandar, My Countryman centres on an effort by a descendant of the cameleers,
Muzafar Ali, to film them to try to understand his new Afghan-Australian identity. It
is directed, written, and produced by Jolyon Hoff who, like Ali, lives in Indonesia.
Journeying far from his favourite surfing beaches, Hoff undertook a type of road
trip looking for the cameleers and filming Ali on his mission.
Another festival highlight is Weed & Wine, described by Jager as an intriguing
account of a French family with centuries-old vineyards and a son who runs a staterecognised cannabis farm in California.
And this year C-Doc introduces a second venue – The Yurt – a beautiful microcinema located in easy walking distance to the Theatre Royal. The Yurt features
an alternative program of family-friendly sessions across the Saturday and Sunday
mornings and enticing programs for young people in the afternoons and evenings.
It will also host an immersive interactive parlour game, Werewolves, for more daring
festival-goers.
Link and tickets: www.cdocff.com.au

BESTSELLING author Tim Winton is coming to the region with a message of hope: good
information and organisation can stop destruction of our world.
He’s spent decades striving to save one of the last intact wild places left on Earth, Ningaloo Reef on Western Australia’s remote coast, beside the Indian Ocean. Once given over to the fishing of turtles and whales and set to become a quarry and an oilfield, it now has World Heritage listing.
Winton will be in Castlemaine and Kyneton next month talking ahead of what is said to be his visually stunning three-part TV documentary on the reef.
Author of 29 books which have sold in the millions, and winner of countless awards, the 62-year-old father of three and grandfather of two is seen stopping a whale shark, getting hit by a critically endangered ray, holding a dugong against his heart, saving baby turtles and encountering sea snakes and
tiger sharks.
All this began about 23 years ago when he gave the campaign $28,000 from the Miles
Franklin Award for his book Dirt Music. Now a National Trust Living Treasure, Winton
largely set aside his writing to throw himself into the fight for Ningaloo, an indigenous
word for promontory.
Here, as he says, where the desert has its feet in the sea, survival depends on a clash of ideas. What has happened is a beacon of hope on the edge of an abyss. It’s a place, Winton says, that could teach us how to get things right if we just pause a moment and listen.
Not that it was a complete triumph, however. “We tried to get all three eco-systems (heritage) listed as an entity. Exmouth Gulf was to be included but developers white-anted it.”
One irony is that just recently thousands of people from all over the world came
to Exmouth to see another natural phenomenon, an eclipse of the sun.
So is he ever dispirited? “Every day. I’m enraged daily, and nightly, by the poverty of public discussion, but slipping into despair is giving victory to the dark side. We have to cling to life, we have to cling to hope.
“People are tired of being told something is impossible when it is possible. Every lake, every forest that is saved is because people acted.”
The documentary was made, he tells The Local, “in my other spare time” and done out of a sense of duty. He didn’t want to be on television but without him there was no money for the project, while cracking the old joke, “I’ve got a good face for radio”.
Cultural and ecological values are examined in the series which, Winton says, is not as outstanding as, say, the BBC might make, but nevertheless is blue chip natural history.
Making it meant working in “a bubble”, a massive, six-days-a-week undertaking
involving animals and children, where the day’s script changed all the time.
Having always worked alone, he found it strange at the age of 60 to be with a
team working for the long haul. “The writing is different. It’s a recipe, a wish-list for the animals to show up at a certain time…”
Filmed over 57 weeks during Covid lock-downs, and in collaboration with traditional owners and cultural advisers, the series involves almost 100 experts in fields such as archaeology, geoscience, biology, marine science and eco-tourism.
Now the documentary, called Ningaloo Nyinggulu, is to be shown on the ABC and in more than 100 countries.
This is not a campaign documentary, Winton adds. “I just hope that when people
see one of the last places of global significance they will be inspired.”
At the end of our 20-minute phone talk, Winton discloses that, in spite of the
demands of the documentary, he has that day finished another novel. “But I don’t
know if anyone will want to publish it. Shit, what else would I do?”
Words: Kevin Childs | Main image: Vee@BlueMediaExmouth

The Local has six books by Tim Winton to give away to readers. For the chance to win
email donna@tlnews.com.au with your name, town, contact number and which title
you would like to win from Eyrie, Shallows, The Shepherds Hut, The Riders, Three
Plays and An Open Swimmer. Entries close on Friday, May 5.

AS A a paramedic, Baydon Beddoe says he picks up the injured by ambulance. As a boxer, he says, he knocks ‘em down.
Now he’s up for a state title that could lead to a national championship. And all this after surviving bowel cancer.

A father of girls aged five and eight, 46-year-old Baydon, of Miners Rest, is training at his father Denis’s boxing club in Wombat Dam Road, Daylesford, for the State Masters Championship today Saturday,
April 1. And if 76-year-old Denis passes a fitness test he will also box in an exhibition.
Baydon will be fighting for a trophy he’s never won, a championship
belt, and coincidentally it’s against a boxer who beat Baydon 23 years ago in Baydon’s first professional bout.

That was seven years after Baydon started training, representing Victoria in the Nipper class in 2000, later competing in Olympic trials on the Gold Coast and twice in the Australian Masters event before Covid hit.
In that time, he’s moved through weights such as welter in 2000, light-heavy 19 years later and is now an 86-kilo cruiserweight. “You get heavier as you get older,” he says.
Cancer hit him in 2014-15 but looking at the fighter in the ring sparring with his father that’s hard to believe. “This year’s a bit of redemption,” says Baydon.
He’s been training daily since January, running half an hour in the morning and then spending up to 90 minutes on a punching bag, working on his footwork, getting ready for the four two-minute rounds.
Baydon thumps a speedball, rhythmically hitting it with one hand, then both. Then he picks up a big stuffed strike shield used for injury- free sparring.
Nearby is the Wombat Fight Club’s motto for sparring: “Only hit as hard as you want to be hit.” “Men fight in the ring, dogs fight in the street,” says another big sign.
Baydon has more one-liners: “Some think defence is the thing that goes around the yard.” “One boxer thought he’d won a title, but the only one he has is for his house.”
And a parting zinger: “There are three sorts of fighters, orthodox, southpaw and piss-poor.” Being only one of these, I make a retreat.
Words: Kevin Childs | Images: Kyle Barnes

Words: Kevin Childs | Images: Kyle Barnes

FOR some time now there’s been a belief that print is dead. Many say
the world is all online.
A chink of proof that this may not be ironclad is in the story of Chris
Olver of Yandoit.
Just over five years ago this paper told of his Wild West/Aussie outback model
village. Chris featured with his battered hat, rifle and Bowie knife.

The article was spotted by a representative of the Wolf Creek films, TV series and
touring show, who asked Chris if he’d like to go to a 40th anniversary celebration of
the film Mad Max in Maryborough. The Wolf Creek crew and those with Mad Max
are mates.
Chris, for 30 years a gravel truck driver, agreed but changed his mind. His wife
Shirley thought he was wrong. “Go,” she said, “you have nothing to lose.”
Putting on an old cowboy hat and red chequered shirt and strapping on a Bowie
knife he headed off. “When I turned up in Maryborough a bloke named Fletch, who
runs a car TV show in Sydney, came up to me. He thought I was John Jarratt, who
he’d interviewed recently.
“I was off to a pretty good start.”
Chris met the Wolf Creek representative, who made a short video that was sent to
Jarratt. Back came the word that Chris had the job of playing Mick Taylor as a stand-
in for Jarratt at shows around the country.
Then he was in the world of Wolf Creek, which features a sadistic outback pig
hunter called Mick Taylor who grabs his chance when he comes across a busload of
tourists from around the world. Their outback encounter is unimaginable.
Actor John Jarratt made Mick Taylor his own in two films and two TV seasons.
Chris has now been doing it for about four years, touring country Victoria,
including Melbourne, Adelaide and New South Wales, sometimes with Jarratt but
mostly with the Wolf Creek truck and crew.
The spin-offs include a fan club, Wolf Creek car badge, a Mick Taylor statue
($750), a pig-sticker hunting knife, a game and a pink cameo stretch gun sling.
Along the way there’s been some fun, such as when Chris was asked if the Wolf
Creek show would appear at a cancer fundraiser in tiny Lexton in Western Victoria.
“There were about three dozen people out front. A woman of about 24 looked a
bit worried as I did old Mick, so I picked up one of our movie props, half a human
leg with bone sticking out the top and blood running out of it.
“I went over to her and said in a raspy Mick Taylor voice, ‘Meet Sally or what’s
bloody left of her’. As the crowd laughed she looked at me and said in a stuttering
voice, ‘My-my-my name is Sally.’
“I had to do some quick thinking because she was a bit shaky, but she had a
little boy of about five, so I coaxed him up and we chatted and they both had photos
taken, so it turned out okay.”
Chris is full of praise for John Jarratt, “a great bloke. If I need to know anything I
ring or text him. He answers me straight away. He has a huge following.”
Jarratt appeared with Chris and others at the recent Australia Day Musicland
Theatre show in Melbourne. “The place was packed. It can make you a bit nervous
but I got through it okay.”

Back home in Yandoit Chris shows his Wolf Creek museum, its props including
a charred body, severed limbs and a skull, posters, signed photos and, dominating
the space, a sky blue 1977 Ford F250, a replica of one in the film, signed within by
Jarratt, and a massive 1978 HX Holden Statesman Caprice, used in the TV series.

At age 77 Chris is not sure how long he’ll keep playing Mick. “It’s a fair build-
up before each show. I don’t shave for well over a week and I’m down in the bush to
practise the Mick Taylor laugh a lot. It’s not easy to do. And I practise Mick’s voice.”
(“What are you buggers doin’ ‘ere?” he rasped when we arrived.)
“Shirl has to put up with me as Mick, which can be a bit trying.
“At the end of it all,” he says, “it’s good to get home, have a shave, get cleaned up
and get back to being me.”

Words: Kevin Childs | Image: Contributed

LIKE a never-ending game of chase, the campaign to protect the Wombat State
Forest manages to save some trees, then logging starts elsewhere in this vast area.
Now it appears to enter a new phase with a threat to Daylesford’s water.

And one of the many odd aspects is that taxpayers subsidised VicForest’s logging with $54 million
last year, a figure predicted to double this year. The increase is expected to come from the cost of paying
retainers to contractors, who may have no work.
Another curiosity, according to Daylesford forest activist David Stephens, is that it is 21 years since the
local ALP branch voted to have the forest managed as a national service, providing clean air and water.
That same year the party pledged to create a Wombat National Park.
Instead, according to Mr Stephens, the most massive equipment to enter the forest has been
clearing swathes. “There has been overwhelming forestry reduction, with the greatest damage ever
seen,” he says.
“Muddy water is running into the Wombat Dam, which is Daylesford’s water supply.
“Removing ground cover leads to erosion and pollution. Then the fine regrowth increases the fire
risk because there is more fuel. It takes 40 years to get sufficient regrowth.”

Intriguingly, VicForests did not comment on the water supply threat but acknowledged that it has
paused all commercial harvesting while a new survey is done, while insisting that its work is recovery, not harvesting, subject to external audits and independent sustainable forest management standards.
Another worry for locals, says Mr Stephens, is that six B-double trucks have been seen on narrow bush roads, concerning parents of children at Bullarto Primary
School.
Such was the worry that a woman, pictured, supported by about 20 peaceful
protestors chained herself to some equipment on January 30. After talking to
authorities she undid her lock and was allowed to leave but is expected to be charged
by police. Logging has stopped in this area.
Mr Stephens, long a community activist and mentor to forest community groups,
says up to 20 hectares have been cleared at Barkstead, off the Daylesford-Ballan road.
“We would like to see a moratorium on all industrial-scale extraction until laws
are introduced to protect Wombat Forest.
“We have seen logging protection lifted in 2019, allowing drainage lines to run
into Wombat Creek. Anything dead on site is washed by rain into the catchment.”
After an exacting inquiry, state government agreed to adopt almost all
recommendations, including preserving and protecting the forest, but no laws have
been introduced.
The Supreme Court agreed to protect the vulnerable greater glider in the Central
Highlands, but there is no such protection in the Midlands.
Logs from here go to mills in Sale, Orbost, Beaufort and Heyfield. “This,” says
Mr Stephens,” is the last resort.”
And the future? More than 7000 hectares are listed for logging. As for VicForest,
it said “recovery work” in the forest is in response “to removing debris and treating
hazardous trees” after the 2021 storm.
“Timber removed through these operations will be going to the highest and best
end use. This potentially includes community use, utilisation by traditional owners,
customers, as well as community firewood.”