The people make Geelong great
I WAS interviewed on radio last week about working as a personal injury lawyer in Geelong, my role as general manager at Shine Lawyers and living in Geelong.
The first question was what I love most about living in Geelong.
My answer was Geelong’s wonderful sense of community.
Geelong is a big city with big infrastructure. We have three fantastic hospitals, great schools and a world-class university.
We are 30 minutes’ drive to some of the best beaches in the world. It also goes without saying that we have the best footy team in the AFL.
With all that said, somehow Geelong still manages to feel like a small town. We look out for each other, we know our neighbours and in good times and bad we care for and help each other out.
In just one week, I have seen several examples of how we look out for each other and how our sense of community really is the cornerstone of Geelong.
Last Saturday, we had two netball games and a footy game in the Kardinia Park precinct.
The weather forecast said it wouldn’t start raining till lunchtime and we were arriving for warm up by 7.30am, so I thought
I would bring our two dogs with us for the morning.
While the children were warming up, I walked a lap of the precinct with our dogs.
The dogs were, as always, excited and unruly, darting here and there, often in different directions to each other for smells and to say hello to other happy hounds who were out watching sport with their families.
Somehow in that first lap my car key fell out of my pocket and on to the ground. I realised at quarter-time the key was missing and felt a sense of rising dread.
I retraced my steps and could not find it anywhere.
Then a mum from our primary school yelled out to me, “Rach, are you looking for a car key?”
Another mum had seen the key and picked it up and had done a lap of the ground asking parents watching the under-nine footy games if they had lost it.
Our school friend then walked me over to the mum who had found it. I was so grateful, I could not say thank you enough times.
Her response was fantastic. She said, “Well actually, you’ve done me a favour. I would have had to have driven to the police station on the way home to drop it off. You’ve saved me a trip”.
What a caring thing to do. To feel so much responsibility for someone’s lost key that you were willing to drive well out of your way to drop it off to a safe place.
The preceding Thursday, training for one of our children’s sports had been scheduled to finish early. We had picked our child up and saw one of their school friends walking along the road pushing buttons on their phone. We pulled over to check in on them.
Their phone had run out of battery, they had forgotten to tell their parent about the early finish time and were intending to walk home in the dark. Their parent would have arrived at the ground in approximately 30 minutes at usual pick-up time. They got into the car and we called their parent and then waited with them until their parent arrived to collect them.
Their parent was so grateful we had stayed with them, rather than their child walking home in the dark on their own.
On our way home, our youngest child asked why I did that. My response was simple. “That’s what we do in Geelong. We look out for each other. If it had been you, I would hope one of our teammate’s parents would have done the same”.
Then on Thursday, a friend sent a text saying she was off to a camping store to get some items for an upcoming school camp for our boys. She wanted to know if I wanted her to grab a set of equipment for Harv at the same time to save me a trip.
Such a thoughtful and kind text to receive mid-afternoon on a very busy workday. Texts like that are all about our wonderful sense of community in Geelong.
There are many special things about Geelong. The most special part of Geelong, however, is the people who live here and how we look out for and after each other.
THE MOST SPECIAL PART OF GEELONG, HOWEVER, IS THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE HERE AND HOW WE LOOK OUT FOR AND AFTER EACH OTHER.