Pictured: A sales and display cart made by the Men’s Shed for My Horizon disability services to support fundraising. Photo: Supplied.
For many of us, Men’s Shed evokes immediate images of men – in a shed – beavering away with power tools, creating things of use and beauty, passing on their accumulated knowledge and skills, learning from others and pausing for the occasional smoke-oh and a yarn. That’s part of it, but not the whole. Damien Malone is the secretary of the Alexandra Hills Men’s Shed, and he knows the deeper benefits to be had.
“The overarching purpose of the Shed is to provide a safe place for men of all ages, a place where guys can share stories and their burdens; we all carry our own baggage of some sort. Men join for different reasons: wanting to feel included, depression, anxiety, needing a sense of purpose, filling in days rather than moping around at home. Sometimes wives or daughters refer men to the sheds,” he says. “That might sound like we’re a bunch of cranky old men, but at the Shed, at least we get to vent and end up feeling better about ourselves and better about the community.
“It’s a changing paradigm, but men still find it difficult to talk about their feelings and mental health. An environment like the Men’s Shed at the very least raises awareness. It’s not the be-all, end-all, but it can help, and it’s a good way to get out of the house and to get out of yourself.”
The building/making/power tools aspect does have a place, and it benefits the community.
“We do jobs for the Redlands Community Centre, like rebuilding their front counter. We installed cupboards for CWA, repaired chairs for the Lions, and built fete furniture for schools. We raise funds through barbecues at retail outlets and sales of surplus tools so we can even make cash donations to community bodies,” Damien says.
“We have a wide range of skills – die casting, welding, carpentry, mechanics, there’s a teacher, a baker,
a bloke who’s a born inventor and a retired farmer who can do anything that’s needed to maintain a farm.
I used to make fine furniture. We’d like to draw in more skills like that and offer more opportunities for teaching and learning because a lot of this knowledge is going to disappear in time.”
If you’d like to donate your skills, learn some new ones, or just enjoy a cuppa and a yarn, you can contact the Alexandra Hills Men’s Shed through www.alexhillsmensshed.com.au.
