Something to celebrate Story by Esther Thorn.
On a recent trip back to Willunga, as our red-dust covered four-wheel drive rattled past shiny new wineries on Main Road, I was overcome with the feeling that I wanted to live in this picturesque little town. The emotion took me by surprise because, over the two years we’ve been living in the outback, I’ve continued to think of Willunga as ‘home’. The feeling was akin to the sense of loneliness I sometimes feel when I realise my children are growing up right before my eyes. And in many ways Willunga – and the Fleurieu Peninsula in which it’s nestled – have come of age in the months we’ve been away. When we first moved to the Fleurieu there were vacant shops aplenty, playgrounds were metal ‘jungle-gyms’ with brightly-coloured peeling paint and Myponga was a ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ town on your way somewhere else. Fleurieu Living Magazine was in its infancy and I remember thumbing through the glossy pages of the latest issue as I stood in line at the supermarket checkout, wishing my name was listed under ‘contributors’. Soon afterwards, I took a chance and submitted a story, holding my breath as I hit send on the email to the magazine’s Managing Director Petra de Mooy. When Petra wrote back saying she would 10
be happy to publish the piece I was elated; it was the start of an enduring friendship between Petra and myself. Petra saw possibility in the Fleurieu. She moved to Sellicks Beach from Canada to be with her South Australian-born partner (now husband) Jason Porter. ‘The Fleurieu has a lot to be proud of and we endeavour to celebrate that in FLM,’ Petra tells me. ‘Locals often say they are amazed at how many positive things are going on in the region and we are conscious of focusing on the positive; there are always good stories – we just have to be on the ground to unearth them.’ Side-by-side FLM and the Fleurieu grew, evolved and flourished and a decade on the two are now fully fledged, wings spread and in full flight. Gone are the empty main street shops and house prices are higher in the region than they ever have been. My friends and I gasp over the latest real estate sales figures and I see Facebook posts describing Myponga as ‘the place to be for coffee on Sunday mornings’. So what has made Fleurieu Living Magazine so successful, at a time when many other publications have failed? ‘We started the magazine when print was going by the wayside, but Jason did some research and found that niche publications were actually the one area of print that was thriving,’ says Petra. ‘We have an embedded and proud following on the peninsula and print aligns with much of what the region is about; a slightly slower approach with a lot of attention to seasonality.’
