All posts tagged: Clunes

Julie Casey | Milliner

Published by

The idea of leaving her career in banking had been floating around in Julie Casey’s head for some time. More time with her only son, Ben, and a change of direction were top of her list. Looking for something to do from home, Julie began testing the waters with a few millinery courses in Melbourne, the epicentre of the trade in Australia. She had begun to enjoy her new creative outlet, but it was a family accident eight years ago that finally forced her hand and cemented her decision. Aged seven and a half, Ben’s right foot got run over by the family’s ride on mower. It had to be amputated, and a prosthetic limb put in its place. Julie took three months’ leave to care for Ben and her mind was made up. “I said, ‘yep, that’s it.’ I wanted to be at home. It’s only a short time that your kids are with you, and I’ve only got one.” Growing up in Byron Bay, Julie and her husband, Paul, met at high school …

John Stewart and Leonie Lane | Creatives

Published by

When government arts funding was slashed and courses cut from TAFE campuses two years ago, ceramicist John Stewart went back to his first love. At the time he was head teacher of Creative Industries at Lismore TAFE, and he left a long and successful teaching career to get back to his workshop outside Clunes. John discovered ceramics as a teenager, teaching himself the techniques from books. When he chose it for his Higher School Certificate his teachers were surprisingly supportive. “Everyone was so relieved because I was a dreadful painter!” he says. John and his father made his first pottery wheel, and with books and practice, John honed his skills at ‘throwing’ (working clay on a potter’s wheel). “They say it takes seven years to get good at throwing”, he says, but these days his work uses other techniques, and throwing is more of a love. John’s partner, Leonie Lane, also recently left a teaching career to pursue her own art full time. Until January this year, Leonie taught Digital Art and Design at Southern …

Katka Adams | Artist

Published by

When Katka Adams and her mother arrived in Australia as refugees they didn’t speak a word of English. It was 1969 and Katka was seven years old. Escaping the political repression of communism in Prague, Katka and her mother moved through several migrant hostels, including Bonegilla near Albury-Wodonga, before settling in Melbourne. “They just stuck me in a class of regular kids. I had to relearn my whole way of writing, and I didn’t understand what the words meant”, says Katka, in her now strong, easy Australian accent. The language barrier meant Katka spent a lot of time alone drawing, even as a young child, and developed a fondness for art that never wavered. Finishing high school in Sydney, Katka had her heart set on going to art school. “The career adviser said, ‘You’ve really got to look at your other options’, and I said, ‘what other options, there are no other options!’” It is now 20 years since Katka and her husband, Russell, bought their small settler’s cottage on the eastern edge of Clunes. …

Jim and Doris Armstrong | Community Champions

Published by

James Byron Armstrong will tell you that one thing can change a person’s life. For him, that moment came in 1969 when he was elected to the now defunct Terania Shire Council by just one vote. Keen to accurately champion the needs of his new constituents, Jim needed a way to connect with them. “I decided to do something in every district, so I knew what the people wanted”, he says. Already playing table tennis at Dunoon, he took up bowls at Rosebank, and started attending euchre in the under croft at Clunes Anglican Church. It was at euchre that he met Doris Warburton, and in time Jim was invited to go dancing with her group of friends at the Casino RSM club. They married, both for the second time, in April 1974. Jim’s only daughter from his first marriage had returned to Sydney with her mother, and Jim moved in with Doris at her Walker Street home. Now 94, Doris attended primary school at Clunes, and has given much of her life to serving …

Howard and Elle

Published by

“You got me in my gardening hour”, smiles Howard, as we sit down in the bright kitchen of their Clunes bungalow. His vowels still reveal a touch of the classic New York twang even after 27 years in Australia. “I forced him to change!” says Elle, who is originally from Amsterdam where she and Howard met 42 years ago. Together the couple have three children and five grandchildren, and have helped pioneer the local organic herb industry from where we are now sitting. Howard Rubin and Elle Fikke came to Australia during the open-door immigration policies of the 1970s and 80s, hoping to start a herbal tea business. Having sold everything in the UK, they went on holiday to Bali, met some friendly Aussies there, and turned up in 1987 to a house in Tuntable Falls which had been arranged for them by some herb growers in Nimbin. “They made you feel welcome”, says Elle, “it was really nice, and so easy for us to come and stay here”. While still on tourist visas, the …