Interview Transcript from Illawarra Stories Wollongong City Libraries Oral History Project – Peter Snodgrass 

Interviewer: Edie Swift

Interview date: 5 April 2019

Edie Swift:  My name’s Edie Swift and, um, today is the 5th of April 2019 and I’m talking to Peter Snodgrass about the Thirroul Men’s Shed. We’re recording for the Local Studies Library at Wollongong Library and I’m Edie Swift. Do you want to start with the, ah, the Men’s Shed, the first one that you had?

Peter Snodgrass:  Yes. The motivation for the shed was that a fellow Lion by the name of Bob Askalon and myself had been a bit worried about the number of people that were retiring to Thirroul and losing the social background of their old neighbourhood and their old workplace and moving into considerably smaller premises and not having anything to really keep them active and to form a new social group. Our motivation to put our first ad in the paper was the fact that a well-known local identity, Keith ‘Woody’ Woodward, was very keen to see that the two buildings in Jackson Park were not demolished by the Council. So, he rang up and spurred me into action and Bob was away at the time, so I put an ad in the paper to meet at the, ah, green room as they call it at the local Bowls Club. And we met there on the 16th of August 2010 and you, we could not all fit in the room, there was such a big response. So then and there we formed a committee to, as a pilot committee and that committee stayed as the committee of the shed and some original members are still on that committee and we started off by having demonstrations and videos. We bought a little garden shed and we erected that in the Bowls Club grounds where we had a few basic tools that we bring out and show people how to use. Interest was good. It was growing but, we were in dire straits for accommodation.  Then the captain of the local fire brigade said to me one day, “There’s a very large garage around in Redmond Avenue,” that we had, that they had re-used to restore an old fire truck and that was likely to be available. Ah, we got that under a lease rental arrangement, and we stayed there for quite a few years, and we were crowded. We, most of our equipment was donated from, um, deceased estates or from member’s own materials and we threw together some pretty impressive projects including the restoration of a locally famous surf boat called the “Friendship” which we and we delivered it back to the Bowls Club where it now sits as a, as a focal point for people to sit and have a drink. And there’s a wonderful exhibition of how a group of men who didn’t have any particular skills but had enough amongst their group to be able to show them how to do it to what sort of a project we could pull off. Then in, um, 2016, ah, and efforts of the Committee finally paid off to finding a premises in, ah, with help of local politicians, we got the old amenities block. When I say old, the building itself was quite new but it was used as an amenity block in the railway yards in Church Street. And it had extensive facilities and a large security area fenced off. It had, ah, showers, toilets, tearoom and quite a large work area.  And the members put in a huge effort to get it to the stage where we could have dust extraction and machinery set up and, ah, power to all the machineries and so on. We don’t only do woodwork, we’re a Men’s Shed and we were sponsored by the Lions Club of Australia which included of course the local Lions Club and the local IMB Bank to provide the facilities of a Men’s Shed which in other words – a place where men can socialise with other men and discuss problems with them and seek the support of other men and form relationships that enrich their lives. One of our most gratifying things to do is to do work for local non-profit organisations, particularly schools. We’ve done, ah, at Coledale school we made a thing called a buddy chair, which is, it’s a, a large U-shaped chair that a teacher can sit in the middle and 2 or 3 people. We’ve made several of those for different schools. We made playground equipment for the Austinmer school, ah, which included a, ah, a bridge over a garden bed, a pirate ship and a mud kitchen which was a sink with a work bench where people, kids could, ah, put mud into tins and pretend they were cakes and all that sort of thing. Waniora school we’ve made an outdoor teaching table with, with, um, benches, we’ve done work I’m pretty sure for the Bulli high school and for the local traffic school in Thirroul. At times other organisations have asked for a lectern for the surf club, ah, signs for the golf club, ah, desks for the bowls club, ah, any nonprofit organisation. We are, I feel we are enriching ourselves as well as the community by doing volunteer work for them. Of course, there’s a large emphasis on woodworking and that is probably 80 percent of our activities. We meet on a Monday for general woodworking, Tuesday general woodworking but slanted towards classes. Wednesday’s computing, photography, um, mobile phone exploring, Thursday woodworking. We mainly finish by about no later than 2 o’clock in the afternoon and, ah, occasionally we stay for BBQ lunches. We do, ah, we’ve also got a, ah, an extensive garden on raised beds which provides us with some produce. It’s not the produce that’s the important thing, the important thing is that it gives people an opportunity to garden ah, usually happen of a Tuesday. Ah, the one that’s coming up next, I think is to the steelworks the Men’s Sheds. We’ve visited the quarantine station at North Head, we’ve explored Paramatta. We’ve been to Cockatoo Island; we’ve been to the Motor Museum at Dapto.

Edie Swift:  This just sounds wonderful, and it sounds like you’re really fulfilling a need for the, the men that have, ah, finished their working and it just sounds like a great thing that you’re doing.

Peter Snodgrass:  Yes. And I have heard, ah, men say in asides to other men that, “Thank goodness for the Men’s Shed.” That they were just about at the end of their tether with lack of purpose in their life and how they could come and do things for the community and communicate with other men and benefit from the shed itself. For instance, we, we have quite a few visiting speakers on health matters, on, ah, financial matters on, ah, ?? any topic that subject of interest. One of the one of our most appreciated, ah, lectures, demonstrations was from a guitar maker, and, ah, the work that goes into a guitar is absolutely amazing. And it held everybody’s attention and it was voted as probably one of the best we’ve ever had.

Edie Swift:  Well, would you like to conclude? You sure done a great job.

Peter Snodgrass:  Well, I would like to conclude by saying that there were a few really strong dedicated committee members that gave me the privilege of being called their president but who have carried this through absolutely magnificently.

Edie Swift:  Thank you so much Peter. Would you donate this to the Local Studies Library and the Wollongong library but a lot.