The Mens' Shed

Broadcast: 28/09/2007

Reporter: Phillip Williams

QUENTIN DEMPSTER: Now out of work and into the men's shed. Thanks to medical science, we're all living longer. For many, that presents new challenges, which is where the men's shed fill a void. Phillip Williams reports.

Even at its most frenzied, life in Boorowa is not exactly the fast lane. But if it's Thursday morning and you're looking for action, this is where you will find it. Welcome to the Boorowa Men's Den.

In tin sheds across Australia, there's a miracle of sorts. For many hear, the hard work and the woodwork give a focus, but what's really being built here are friendships, networks, conversations

DON FITZGERALD: I used to be all left alone, got to do things on me own and not worry about anyone else. But now, here we've got the social contact.

PHILLIP WILLIAMS: That's made life a lot better for you?

DON FITZGERALD: Oh yeah, I enjoy coming down here.

PHILLIP WILLIAMS: And while 77-year-old Don Fitzgerald repairs people's chairs, it's the social glue that sticks the strongest.

GARY CARTER: I'm not a clubber. I'm not a sports - never been interested in sports. And not active in the churches or anything, so it was the only way to meet people. All these facilities are there for women. The women know each other and all the women know each other, but very difficult for men to be able to do things, community things.

PHILLIP WILLIAMS: When Carroll Kew gave up work as a vet to look after his sick mother, he didn't think she'd live long. She survived another seven years.

CARROLL KEW: I had very little contact with anyone. I lost my professional contacts, with friends. Seven years was a long time.

PHILLIP WILLIAMS: It must have been an incredibly isolating period for you.

CARROLL KEW: Yes. And I think worse that I became an old person myself, prematurely. Pottering around behind a little old lady, living an old person's life.

PHILLIP WILLIAMS: Did that lead to depression for you?

CARROLL KEW: Yes. And in fact, amongst these groups you will find - I haven't tested this one yet - but there's a high level of depression problems amongst the blokes. In the group, we started at Goulburn, I put up my hand at a lecture about depression and I got 50 per cent of the group finally joining me, agreeing they were either at present or recently depressed.

PHILLIP WILLIAMS: But life changed dramatically. First at the new Goulburn shed which he helped set up, and now for the past two months, here in his new home at Boorowa.

CARROLL KEW: Uniformly we're retired people who've lost their reason... The reason for existence if you like, almost, through their loss of professional status in my case, through loss of job and I can't call myself a veterinarian anymore, I'm just a retired person and it's a place where you start to get new roots coming down. They're a very friendly bunch of blokes and you've accepted in as one of the group straight away.

Women already do all this stuff by themselves es in CWA and groups like that, they automatically go to each other when they're in trouble. Men don't.

There is no restriction on women being involved in these groups, but in fact women often are the driving force behind them - pushing the bloke out to get him out of the house and go and join a group instead of sitting drinking beer and looking at television.

PHILLIP WILLIAMS: And there's another unexpected benefit.

JOHN MCGRATH (to group of children): Have you tried it?


JOHN MCGRATH: It's very good.

JOHN MCGRATH (to young girl): How's yours going, Molly?

MOLLY: Pretty good.

JOHN MCGRATH: That's alright, that's good.

PHILLIP WILLIAMS: The men have already repaired and donated a cubby house to the local preschool. Now, they're helping the young ones with their school projects, building a pencil box, and connect generations that may otherwise have passed each other by.

JOHN MCGRATH: I think the community are aware that we're doing something for the community, not only for the elderly but these citizens. Future citizens.

PHILLIP WILLIAMS: And maybe some of them future members.

JOHN MCGRATH: Well, that's right. Yeah. Hopefully.

PHILLIP WILLIAMS: 50, 60 years down the track?

JOHN MCGRATH: That's right.

HUGH DARLING: It's interesting too, Philip, that you know, well, John, for instance, his family are all here. So he's got grandchildren, all my grandchildren are in Sydney, so, you know, it's good for the likes of myself to, you know, have contact with young people.

PHILLIP WILLIAMS: Here, any loneliness and depression is met by the quiet hum of friendship, support and a sense of purpose. And a practical forum for all those men's health issues we love to avoid.

HUGH DARLING: We've got coming up, in a fortnight's time, is another men's health day, but this time it is concentrating on men's cancer. Prostate, testicular, bowel - all these sort of things that nobody wants to know about.

PHILLIP WILLIAMS: Serious issues.


PHILLIP WILLIAMS: We're not just talking woodwork here.


HUGH DARLING: And, you know, in lots of ways the woodworking is probably just purely the vehicle to move into other things.

PHILLIP WILLIAMS: For all the costly therapies invented, a tin shed and a bunch of old blokes may simply be the most effective.