Who is Greg?

My name's Greg Wise and I run the Docklands Community Garden on behalf of a rather large group of volunteers. Around 12 years ago my wife Julie and I first moved to Docklands from Perth. We happened to be wandering towards the supermarket one weekend and stumbled across a space that looked like it had once been a community garden but had since fallen into disrepair.

A little later we got a notice in our letterbox, the City of Melbourne was interested in discussing the future of the Docklands Community Garden space, and inviting input from community members who might be interested in forming a group to reinvigorate the space. Julie and I volunteered because we thought it would be a good interest for us. As we became more involved in that gardening community, it gave us an opportunity for lasting friendships with a diverse group of people from all sorts of different cultures and backgrounds.

For us as a family it's been particularly beneficial, but we've also loved seeing the community spirit and the culture that it's developed over time. We can confidently say that if you want to meet people in Docklands, Docklands Community Garden is a really easy environment to accomplish that.

What excited me most is seeing other people get pleasure out of the garden. Making sure that everybody is engaged and has everything that they need to be happily involved in the garden just makes me feel so good about the community that we are a part of. It's full of people who want to talk to and meet other people and have a good time.

The Garden has so many benefits beyond the opportunity to get your hands dirty. COVID threw a whole bunch of challenges at Docklands. The garden enabled residents within limits to maintain social connection, continuing conversations and friendships with people in an environment that was interesting and safe.

A lot more long-term volunteers joined the garden because of the positive experience they all had during that period, and we now have around 160 local volunteers who regularly do things in the garden.

For the past few years, we’ve been running a program introducing local school children to gardening. We show them how gardens work and what happens when you put a bit of effort and attention into it. We also provide seeds and seedlings for them to plant in a space we’ve put aside. The teachers bring them back every week to nurture their plants and the children glow with glee when they see the fruit and vegetables that they've produced.

We wanted an environment where all that was taken care of for us and we could actually enjoy ourselves on weekends, so we thought Docklands was going to be a great location. It was so close to a really vibrant CBD and surrounding suburbs, and it had the river and the harbour. We're very grateful that we chose Docklands, it was one of the best decisions we've ever made.

Once we started to get to know more of the local community, our perception of Docklands changed a lot. We've certainly had an invigorating experience involving ourselves in the Docklands community because it's reciprocated and given us a lot of pleasure.

The more you scratch the surface and dig deeper into things, the more you find, and there's a lot to find in Docklands. If you don't look, you'll never fundamentally understand the culture and the depth of community that exists here. I can certainly recommend it as a place to live, but like every other place, you need to understand it to get the most out.

We've made friends through a lot of community things beyond the garden since we first moved over here. That's just a natural progression of people introducing us to other people.

A long time ago I used to be heavily involved in a range of community activities and was forever being featured in the local newspaper. Julie and I would walk around anywhere in Docklands and people would recognise me, that allowed us to have interesting conversations with lots and lots of people that we probably would never have had.

We've always been involved with water. In Perth we owned boats and lived close to the river. We have wind surfed, surfed, scuba dived and fished, so we have an affinity with the element. Being so close to the harbour and the river here provides us with some fabulous walks in almost every direction, we can always find something different irrespective of how many times we'd walk the same path. When you look with your eyes open you see and appreciate the wildlife all around.

Our friends and family from Perth visit us quite regularly and they’re fascinated by the place. I think their experiences might have been different if they had just been short-term tourist visits, but because they generally stay with us, we show them around and explain how the place works. They take more notice of the excitement and the challenges that can be found in this area and they want to keep coming back.

The highlight of Docklands is that it has the potential for such a bright future if it’s managed well. The proximity to rivers and bays provides so much, not only for residents but for tourists. Investment and consideration in developing the waterside wisely will create the desire in people to want to come to live and to visit the area.

Those who think strategically about the future of Docklands would be well advised to spend more time considering how best to utilise that fabulous feature of Docklands, the fact that it's surrounded by water. Plan more ways for people to engage with it. Water has a profoundly calming and soothing effect on people, it helps people feel more relaxed and more comfortable with each other. When you walk around Docklands, when you look at people that you're approaching in the street, they want to smile at you.

I'd like to see the City of Melbourne invest more of the revenue they derive from the city of Docklands, within the city of Docklands. Not on short-term ‘sugar-hit’ investments, but strategic structural investments which will provide short term benefit to residents, but in the longer term will help develop the culture of Docklands and at the same time make it a more physically attractive destination.