A significant number of secret lives have been uncovered in Clunes.

There was once a man, let’s call him Toddy, and he stumbled quite unawares into one of them.

It all happened one Saturday when Toddy, visiting Clunes from inner Melbourne sauntered into Boom Clunes, the main street community retail hub representing local makers and selling books new and pre-loved.

Inside the handsome double-storey 1800s building, Toddy had wandered past a diverse array of  handmade products created by local artisans, craftspeople and cooks, and took himself straight to the pre-loved books room. He wanted some good holiday reading.

Toddy selected a biography penned by a reputable writer and took it to the counter, delighted with his find and pleased to see that all of the pre-loved books cost only $5 each.

“A bargain,” he thought, as the biography he’d found on the life of a former notorious sporting personality was in top-shelf condition and, he knew, that if acquired brand new would have cost him that asking price many times over.

The friendly woman at the desk flipped the book over and told Toddy “Ah! That book has a secret life”.

“Sorry?” replied Toddy, unclear as to what she meant.

“Yes,” said the woman. “It has a secret  life which means it comes with this…”

She reached  beneath the counter, pulled out a cardboard box and from it extracted a neatly filed white envelope which she handed to Toddy. “That’s yours to keep,” she told him.

And that’s how Toddy ended up immensely enjoying a secret life.

He’d just discovered the Secret Lives of Books project happening at Clunes. It’s a unique project, where anyone who may be feeling writerly (and there are reputed to be quite a few in Clunes who regularly do) can volunteer to pen anywhere up to a page-long “secret life” for any of Boom’s pre-loved books that they choose.

When a customer then purchases a book that has had a secret life written for it (and is especially demarcated with an ‘S’ on its back cover as such), they receive not only the book but also it’s written secret life in an envelope to take away and delve into as well.

It’s a bit like getting a surprise gift, or participating in an exclusive book club where you get to receive a personal original response to the book in hand.

A creative initiative between Boom Clunes, the Clunes Neighbourhood House (that manages Boom) and the Western Victorian Primary Health Network, it all  started during Covid in 2021 and since then has produced all kinds of “secret lives” to go with numerous selected books.

“It’s taking the interaction with the book to another level,” says Lois Nichols, project manager at Boom Clunes. Lois is a keen amateur short story writer with a background in magazine publishing who has so far penned 15 secret lives for selected books through the project, and counting…

Locals feeling inclined to pen a secret life for one of Boom’s pre-loved books get to read the book themselves for free first, before handing it back along with the secret life they’ve written for it.

These secret lives range from imagined fantastical globe-trotting pasts people by characters whose hands and lives the book previously graced, to interesting factual aspects of its narrative teased-out for special focus, to genuine heartfelt personal responses to the book’s content.

“Everyone’s got a different take on it,” says Lois. “Some write about how they related to the book as they were reading it or, if they were struggling with something, how the book helped them.

“It’s a bit of fun. It gets people writing and encourages people to read and it’s a way of connecting people.”

 “We sell pre-loved books donated to us by local people and we have two book rescuers here, Rhonda and Patsy, one is a book lover and one is a professional librarian, and they clean, sort and beautifully file the books on the shelves so we have a fabulous range and just about every known genre.

“The idea was inspired by a book called The Secret Life of Dresses which is about a pre-loved dress shop owner who made up stories for her dresses.

“At the moment we have about 60 books in stock that have secret lives. The books with secret lives are marked with an ‘S’ on the back and each secret life is very different.

“The customers who pick up a secret life book are fascinated, thrilled, and want to know more. What started as a retail promotion has become a community activity.”

 The Secret Lives of Books project fits snugly with Clunes’ reputation as a Book Town.

“We get a lot of visitors here on weekends,” says Lois.

Clunes Neighbourhood House manager Lana de Kort says the Secret Lives project is reaching and appealing to a wider range of people than the usual suspects who put their hands up to get involved in community activities.

“It’s a project that really appeals to people who are perhaps a little more introspective and who wouldn’t necessarily connect or volunteer in other ways,” she says.

“A good book really captures your imagination and this project takes that further. It’s brought a lot of people together and it’s drawn people in from Clunes and surrounding areas as well.”

Many have heard that Clunes has an annual Book Town event and they expect to be able find and purchase books in the town. Open on weekends, Thursdays to Mondays, Boom Clunes is helping to meet that expectation, Lois says.

“We also have a really strong writers’ group in town and two book clubs which isn’t bad for a little town of this size,” says Lois, herself a member of the Clunes Book Club that meets at Attitude Clunes on the third Monday of the month at 7.30pm. Meanwhile, the Book Lovers book group meets at Boom once each month as well, she says.

With the project now set to continue throughout 2024 anyone interested in writing a secret life for any of the Boom books can simply roll up at the Boom Clunes counter in person to learn more, or can call the Neighbourhood House.

Words: Eve Lamb

Words and Image: Eve Lamb

THEIR parents may have been okay with becoming senior citizens, but as they move beyond a certain age, today’s baby boomers and the first of Gen X behind them – not so much.

It’s an observation evidenced in the fact that the building that two years back used to house Clunes’ Senior Citizens is now HQ for Attitude: Ageing Well.

Attitude by name – as solidly stated on their wooden signage – and Attitude by nature. It’s clear there’s no shortage of the stuff going down here.

Attitude is “a grass roots model of ageing well in community”, explains a flier. It’s a home-grown model that sits under the Clunes Neighbourhood House umbrella, and is starting to grab attention from further afield.

As I pull up a seat inside Attitude HQ, I’m here to hear first-hand from the regulars whether they believe there’s a need for more retirement living options in Hepburn Shire.

There is general agreement there is but it doesn’t take long to discover the Attitude focus is far more wide-ranging.

Gareth Sharp, a retired engineer who used to project manage for government, and Lois Nichols, a former city-based magazine sales professional, are quick to point out that social connectivity underscores much of what Attitude is all about.

“We run along the same lines as the Mens’ Shed movement,” Lois says.

Those who get along are invited to introduce any particular interest area and then oversee it becoming part of the program. Since Attitude started in November 2020 it’s conducted more than 600 activities involving more than 2500 participants.

Regular free film nights, weekly pétanque sessions, bi-weekly boot camp, easy indoor exercise class, ukulele, philosophy, art, and outdoors walking are all just a bit of what’s on their seasonally renewed program – as are social outings.

“When you look at the population of Clunes there are so many people who are retirees or wanting to retire here, but we’re very inclusive and we welcome anyone coming along including those who would not previously have been considered senior citizens.

“It (adequate retirement living) will be an issue. There will be people from our baby boomer cohort with health issues.”

Access to transport, particularly for those who may not have a licence or a private vehicle is also an issue that comes up. Ready access to a community bus would help Attitude run its ongoing outings to locations that include wineries. Funding is also needed to enable programs to be subsidised.

The issue of ensuring provisions are in place to age well surrounded by friends is a perennial one, and it’s quite a pressing one for Hepburn Shire, the director of Belle Property Regional Victoria, Will Walton, observes.

Being in real estate gives Will a unique vantage point from which to regard the wider issue. “I think the council needs to take a proactive approach to planning for growth that includes attracting operators of retirement villages,” he says.

“We’re one of the older local government areas in Victoria as far as population goes and hopefully both the state and local governments will look at options to enable people to stay in their community and remain connected.

“In the Daylesford area there’s a big problem, absolutely. The two issues are the availability of land to house an independent retirement village. The problem we have here is the land is very expensive.”

The other problem that Will mentions is the dearth of smaller private accommodation options – units and the like, built to house just one or two people and enable older locals to downsize yet remain happily living in their own community.

The lack of independent retirement living opportunities only entrenches the shortage of rental accommodation for younger, larger households with older singles or couples forced to remain in abodes that have become too big for them to maintain, Will says. “I think it’s a problem the entire width of the shire.”

“But I also think that independent living retirement options that come with all the bells and whistles, like cinemas and indoor pools, usually have a minimum requirement of 50 units – so I’m not sure if the smaller towns could sustain that.”

Hepburn Shire Mayor Cr Brian Hood also rates the availability of retirement living options for the Hepburn Shire as an issue demanding attention.

“My immediate reaction is that it does need attention. We do have an ageing population. We know that the median age for people living in Hepburn is 52 and that’s older than the state average, and it’s a significant proportion of our community.

“And we’re painfully aware that housing availability is a general issue for our community including appropriate housing for older residents.”

Cr Hood was among those who, a few months ago, attended the launch in Creswick of Hepburn Shire’s No Barrier Positive Ageing Strategy 2022-30.

He says provision of housing to meet the specific needs of more mature locals into the future is one of the main focus areas prioritised within that strategy. Others include transport, health and social connectivity and participation.