EDITORIAL

Happy New Year to all readers. We hope that, despite the onslaught of Covid during the weeks around Christmas, all who celebrate this festivity have had an enjoyable time. Christmas carols in Darlington seems a long way back now, but see Trea’s write-up of the event that took those who participated back to the simplicity of a singalong version. The Darlington Social Cricket Club notes remind us also to reflect back on the annual festive DSCC versus Darlington Pony Club (arising from their original close proximity when Pony Club was held where the skatepark now is) and also of that childthrilling run through the village by Santa on the fire engine!

It has been said often before that “It takes a village to raise a child” and I think that we can fortunately say that Darlington does a pretty good job of it! Bob and I consider ourselves extremely fortunate to have found Darlington when we emigrated from Scotland and we have been privileged to raise our two girls here and also to teach locally, Bob at Helena College and me at Treetops for the past two decades.

My younger daughter Kirsten will be known to many of you at the Hive, when she is not working the season as a ski in ski out café manager at Falls Creek in Victoria. Katie, my eldest daughter, also currently teaching at Treetops but about to head on the adventure of two years gaining a Masters in Montessori education in Girona in Spain, is joint editing this Review.

Belle

Belle will be known to many of you as one of the senior stylists at Mosh where she has been working for the past almost five years. Belle, who had only ever been to Bali until now, and had never even seen snow, is currently in Sunshine Village in Banff. Her coldest weather day so far has been a mind-chilling minus 36 degrees! Sunshine Village has a current base snow depth of well over one metre.

Adaptability is clearly important here! Belle is working in retail and has enjoyed the “absolute” beauty of the Rocky Mountains including snow-boarding (a definite first for her but she has learnt quickly), visiting hot springs, touring and being part of an amazing team of new friends. She says it is a “magical experience”.

Her inspiration? Gaining her apprenticeship at Mosh gave her the confidence (but also made it hard to leave, hopefully temporarily, a job that she loves). In her words, “I feel as a young person it is important to step out of your comfort zone and experience what the world has to offer”.

Having sat and listened to Sue with her young employees in Mosh there is no doubt in my mind that one of the role models who has supported Belle and helped to give her confidence and determination is Sue.

When Covid was affecting her staff just before Christmas Sue herself was left working three ‘columns’ of clients – her take on it: “Well you can’t ring people and tell them that they can’t have their hair done for Christmas, can you?”.

Young people are always an inspiration to me - I am daily in awe, at school and in life in general, of what each generation achieves and becomes involved in. And my observation over four decades of working with young people is that you do not need to be exceptional to be able to do positive or exciting things – you just need something, sometimes only one thing, to create that motivation. So, I decided to interview three young people connected with Darlington to help me to explore this idea and ask, what are those things, and how does the influence of Darlington help?

Adventurousness, creativity, putting your hand up to be involved, all have been shown to lead to many benefits: the future ability to adapt to change and unfamiliar circumstance, the further development of creativity and curiosity, greater self-belief, being able to push out of comfort zones, getting into the ‘flow’ i.e. the release of all the feel-good dopamine.

So where does Darlington come into that? Read on and see what this tiny selection of our young people have to say. There were so very many young people I could have interviewed about things they were doing, and some of the awards detailed later tell you about some others. This is a small sample, a tip of an iceberg that could be explored further in future editions.

Darlington resident Max, while still at school, has created something that may make a difference to the future of our planet and the future of Darlington! For his Year 12 Project at Perth Waldorf School Max designed, and eventually created, an Aerobic Digester using household scraps to provide both compost and also methane gas capture for energy use. Max first worked on the design, (receiving very useful support from his Dad, who had conducted a Masters project in anaerobic design which informed a Thames Water (London) construction used for sewerage digestion in the 1990s).

Max was able to visit Richgro and Fairbrossen winery in the area that are both using industrial Aerobic Digesters to manage waste. Darlington Community Garden’s Louise Stelfox and Sue Lennard were mentors, Louise as a hydrologist and Sue Lennard providing composting technique information. Another helpful mentor was a teacher who warned him that if he did not get his act together he would not pass!! This led to the production of the unit but also clearly demonstrated that perseverance, not just talent and opportunity, is an important part of achievement!

Max also had to overcome the obstacle of the digester not operating properly during Winter because of not being in a sufficiently sunny spot to reach the necessary 35 degrees and he has learnt a bit along the way about the hazard of unintentionally setting up a siphoning effect! Max gave a talk at the Community Garden and provided them with compost, gave a TED talk at school and wrote a 4,000 word report. Excitingly, there is talk of creating another digester (the first is at Max’s home), for the Community Garden which may be able to process food wastage from some of our Darlington food and hospitality businesses. Watch this space! I asked Max about any other influences apart from those great Darlington mentors. Max stated that he has grown up in his household in Darlington with environmental consciousness at the heart. He has been taught to upcycle – important in the use of almost entirely second-hand materials to make his digester. And, and this is something that we can appreciate with gratitude in Darlington, he attributes playing in the bush and around the village in what he considers

Rosie

to be a ‘cared-for’ and clean environment to have meant that rubbish and littering has never been normalised for him.

His inspiration for having the courage to construct an actual digester (as opposed to just researching and writing about it) came from researching villages in Africa that had no gridprovided resources and where the entire community worked together. This inspired him and further activated his desire to make a difference.

Photos and illustration showing Max’s Digester in his garden and how it operates.

In 2018 Rosie moved country in order to attend Hartpury University in England to pursue Equine studies under Olympic coaches and make use of the amazing facilities there. You may remember that a previous Darlington Review ran a feature on her doing this. So what is she doing now?

After an amazing four years of riding and studying, Rosie was able to present at conference in the area of mental skills in Elite level riders and, having ridden professionally for a while, she has now decided that her current interest lies in sport psychology. She is studying for a postgraduate diploma in performance psychology at the University of Edinburgh. I asked her what it was about her Darlington upbringing that might have been influential in giving her the courage to embark on these years of exciting study?

Apart from the opportunity to ride horses in the Hills at some great local riding centres and a supportive family that enabled this, (despite music, not horseriding, being their main background – see paragraph on Jon Tooby and Darlington Concerts), Rosie says, “Darlington is a really cool place. There are so many people doing so many different things…and everyone supports everyone no matter what they are trying to do…you were never forced down any particular pathway and that allowed me to do something slightly unconventional and go and study horses!”

A rescue mission for Carols!

Many locals were delighted when Carols by Candlelight returned to a beautifully decorated Darlington Hall on Christmas Eve – a setting far more atmospheric than the pavilion – and you'd never have known that the event was hastily put together. Previously organised by Pauline Clark, who had let the community know she was unable to continue doing so,as Christmas Eve approached, locals wondered who could step into this role.

One name kept coming up – the Whissons: busy Darlington musician Glen Whisson and his wife Tania, a whizz at organising events such as the Festival's Soir Noir. As Tania would later observe: “Communities are strengthened by traditions, and Carols has been a Darlington tradition for decades, so, yes, we were more than happy to step in and keep the tradition alive.” Glen quoted this at the event because, sadly, Covid kept Tania from attending.

As always at such times, our community rallied as did the entire Whisson clan –local choir singers banded together to lead the singing, Earnshaws Real Estate paid for carol books and the Darlington Review picked up other expenses like insurance.

And the weather gods produced a beautiful evening that attracted lots of enthusiastic carol singers of all ages. This “no frills” Carols by Candlelight was very warmly welcomed and the hope is that the Whissons can be persuaded to make it happen for Christmas 2023. Thanks to Cathryn Cann for the photos she provided to the Review.