Trailblazer: Joff Chappel

Vale Joff Chappel

Story by Kate Le Gallez. Photography by Josh Geelen.

Joff Chappel’s soul might have been in Adelaide’s East End, but his heart was in Aldinga. The iconic co-owner of the Miss Gladys Sym Choon boutiques in Adelaide and their Fleurieu sibling, Miss Gladys on Sea, passed away on April 4, 2020 after a long illness.

Joff’s death came just over a month after the official opening of Aldinga’s The Temperance Precinct, a project that Joff and his partner Razak Mohammed, together with David and Alison Smallacombe, had passionately pursued. ‘The end result is certainly something he was proud of and the community is proud of,’ says Joff’s longtime business manager and friend, Michele Bowler.

The Precinct is just the latest manifestation of the creativity, energy and adventurous spirit that were seeded in Joff from a very early age. Son of the renowned South Australian architect John S Chappel, Joff was drawn to Adelaide’s artistic community in the East End. ‘Razak was reminding me that as a school boy, Joff would actually walk through Rundle Street and back then it was fishing tackle and potato markets and that sort of thing,’ says Michele. ‘Back then [he] used to make leather bangles and things like that out of old leather sandals ... so he just always had a flair for design.’

By the eighties and nineties, Joff and Razak were firmly ensconced in the East End, mixing with artists like Stephen Bowers, Annabel Collett and Nick Bean. Razak, passing on his memories of Joff via Michele, recalls this as a time when their ‘whole existence was around friendship and a supportive community.’ Together, Joff and Razak took over the Miss Gladys Sym Choon store at 235a Rundle Street in 1985. The store had been first opened in 1928 by Gladys herself, who, at age 16, was the first woman to incorporate a business in South Australia.

It wasn’t just the name that lived on through the store under Joff and Razak’s carriage, but also the championing of young, enterprising talent. ‘Joff was always so concerned with the wellbeing of young ones and tried to promote their business and was a great mentor,’ says Razak. For Michele, generosity was one of the defining characteristics that made Joff, Joff. ‘Nothing was ever too much trouble,’ she says. Even as his illness progressed, ‘he would always give of himself.’ His business philosophy also came from a place of generosity. Boutique staff were always encouraged to help customers be true to their personal style rather than cleaving to passing trends. For Joff it was not about making a sale but gaining a customer.

Joff’s connection to the Fleurieu started not through fashion but through real estate. After accompanying his architect father and brother Simon on a number of jobs in the region, Joff was entranced by Port Willunga. He and Razak began spending their weekends there and over a period of twenty years bought, renovated and sold a number of houses in the area. Things changed in 2014 when the original Miss Gladys Sym Choon building on Rundle Street was put up for sale for the first time in one hundred years – it was an unmissable opportunity for Joff and Razak, but it meant selling their Port Willunga weekend home.

Serendipitously, the sale was brokered by David Smallacombe, who recognised that Joff and Razak would miss heading south on their weekends and offered them his newly vacated office in the old temperance building in Aldinga. It was a basic abode with just a bathroom, shower and serviceable bedroom – Joff and Razak added a rudimentary kitchen. Over the following years, this move would not only spawn Miss Gladys on Sea but would play an important part in the revitalisation of Old Coach Road.

It started with just a couple of racks of clothes. Joff and Razak had been in the temperance building barely a fortnight, but it was the height of summer and with the bakery across the road, there were people everywhere. ‘So they just started every Friday night dragging a few racks of stock down and putting them on the front balcony and having a little pop up shop,’ says Michele. ‘Then one car wasn’t enough. So instead of a couple of racks it was six racks and a table.’ Soon, they were moving out and converting the bathroom into a shop floor area (the black and white bathroom wall tiles remain in situ) and Miss Gladys on Sea was born.

Just as they did in the East End, Joff and Razak saw community as central to their personal and professional lives in Aldinga. Momentum was already building on Old Coach Road with Maxwell’s Grocery and Homegrain Bakery reinvigorating the strip. In the run-down condition of the temperance building and grounds, Joff saw an opportunity to expand the community further and approached David Smallacombe about investing in the property. This partnership made The Temperance Precinct possible, but it was Joff’s initial vision, his persistence in negotiating with council and his dedication to bringing the right mix of businesses together which defines the precinct today.

Joff’s passing meant he didn’t have the opportunity to see his grand vision for the area fully realised. He hoped to create the foundations for an artist community reminiscent of the East End experience, with ‘shop houses’ – similar to the Rundle Street terraces – enabling artists to have shop fronts at street level with accommodation above. It’s Razak’s hope that he can one day bring this vision to fruition.

Joff expressly requested there be no long speeches to celebrate his life. There doesn’t need to be. The communities he helped create, both in Aldinga and in the East End, will speak of his spirit, creativity and inclusive nature loud and long into the future.

A timeless marriage of art and utility

Story by Petra de Mooy. Photography by Jason Porter.

Page left: The feature stone work on this Max Pritchard designed home in Inman Valley is a real standout. Above: Master mason Rohan Grantham in front of a huge thermal mass, internal feature wall of another new home build.

Early in the process of grappling with the COVID-19 lockdown I received a message on Instagram with a picture of our autumn issue attached and a note: ‘Got me a copy today. Who is the best person to talk to about being a partner? Always bought the mag. It’s time to contribute.’

This unexpected but welcome message came from second generation mason Rohan Grantham of Billy Goat Brick & Stone. I clicked over to his page and found a well of inspiration on his feed. One square captured the golden expanse of an in-process stone wall in the late afternoon light. In another, a large array of dusty hand tools told the backstory. It was clear that Rohan’s work was executed by a skilled craftsperson and I felt a bolt of excitement that went well beyond the prospect of a new partner. These are the moments that characterise what our magazine is all about: sharing the stories of the everyday artists in our community.

Stonemasonry is one of the oldest professions in history and South Australia is rich in stone buildings constructed from the state’s abundant limestone, sandstone, bluestone and slate. In times past, stone was seen as an inexpensive and readily available material, with buildings often built from unshaped limestone rubble quarried on site. This gave way to a more refined approach with many buildings having carefully shaped and carved facades with rougher side and rear walls. Now, the labour-intensive work required to quarry and build from stone has seen masonry shift from utilitarian to luxurious, with stone feature walls, fireplaces, retaining walls and fencing taking pride of place in many higher-end builds.

Rohan grew up in the Adelaide Hills in an old stone cottage that his parents restored from a derelict state. ‘My dad went on to build (amongst lots of things) a garage true to the era of the house with big stone gable ends and recycled red brick quoins and arches. I still love driving past this property, admiring his work. Proud he did the old cottage justice,’ he says. Rohan was still a teenager when he started working with his dad on replicating old buildings using recycled red bricks and stone handpicked from a small local quarry. From these basic building methods and materials, Rohan learned the fundamental techniques that would become his trade, while honing his sense of scale, balance and proportion has elevated that trade into art.

Above left: This new chimney blends stone recovered from an old ruin with paddock stone from the site and Goolwa quarry quartzite. Top right: Early to midcentury hammers that Rohan feels lucky enough to be the current custodian of. Centre right: Rohan’s number plate tells his story. Bottom right: Splitting a piece of sedimentary sandstone on site.

a few jobs, more and more work came in,’ he says. Building on this confidence, Rohan started bringing friends into his projects: ‘I wanted to teach them the trade my dad had taught me,’ he continues. So began fifteen busy years, with Rohan managing a large crew and taking on a good share of the masonry requirements on the South Coast. The work was good, but he began to feel the need to scale back and focus on more boutique projects and ‘getting back to where I started,’ he says. It also meant Rohan could get back to working with a smaller crew and focusing on the camaraderie of working in a tight team. ‘Building a close relationship with builders and clients along the way and the bond you have with your mates working alongside you day in, day out is the best,’ he says. ‘Problem solving, teaching and supporting each other. Having a laugh while doing what you love.’

Rohan’s experience over the years has given him clarity around what Billy Goat Brick & Stone is about and he is now sought out for his skills and artistry. The work he’s doing now is varied in scale, materials and technique. We spent an afternoon with Rohan driving around Inman Valley, seemingly a hotbed of amazing building projects. One home at Mt Alma designed by architect Max Pritchard and built by Dylan Gilbert has settled peacefully into the landscape. Owner Peter Bardy shares his appreciation of the feature wall on the west side of this beautiful building. ‘The joy of his work for us has been how he’s fashioned a strong ageless structure from the stone harvested from the earth below our house. The large wall stands as a buffer against the wild winds that emanate from the west as such walls have done since European colonisation. His choice of stone colour, size and shape was perfect. Every time you look at the walls you see something new.’

Rohan’s own satisfaction too comes from this timeless marriage of art and utility: ‘I think masonry would have to be one of the most rewarding trades – to start with a pile of rocks or bricks and some basic hand tools that haven’t changed in centuries – to then walk away at the end of the project with the creation of art and structure is something to be really proud of.’ His expansive stone creations often become a building’s most talked about feature. They’re there not simply for the enjoyment of the inhabitants today, but will stand the test of time ready for the day Rohan’s own son drives past, admiring the skills handed down from grandfather to father, father to son.

Notes from the outback

Story by Esther Thorn. Photography by Channie Matcott.

Page left: Charlie soaking up the Oodnadatta sunset. Above: Another spectacular sunset over the dam.

Long-time FLM writer Esther Thorn is currently living in Oodnadatta, where her husband is the town’s police officer. She reflects on living in one of the most remote places in Australia during a global pandemic.

‘DO NOT ENTER – 5 years imprisonment or a $63,000 fine’ said the sign posted at the entrance to Oodnadatta.

It was 2am and we’d just made an 800 kilometre dash from Alice Springs back to our home in outback South Australia, as COVID-19 fear swept across the country. In the two weeks we’d been in the Red Centre, coronavirus had gone from being an unfamiliar word to saturating news bulletins, dominating social media feeds and blanketing the ABC News page. Our world was at once expanding and narrowing.

We’d gone to Alice Springs in order for me to complete my final teaching practicum. This trip was supposed to be the last hoorah to a master’s degree that had been hard won; essays written while breastfeeding newborns, extensions begged for in desperate emails to tutors, placements interrupted by gastro outbreaks. You know the drill. But this was the sprint to the finish line. My husband Sam had taken time off from his job as the Oodnadatta police officer, three of our four children had been enrolled at the Alice Springs Steiner school and we were now somewhat uncomfortably ensconced in our camper trailer at the MacDonnell Range Holiday Park. All was going well.

Then the Ruby Princess passengers disembarked and COVID-19 began its insidious spread through the cities. The swimming pool at the caravan park was taped off, communal pancake breakfasts were cancelled, student numbers at the school in which I was working rapidly dwindled and, finally, my placement was cancelled. Then Sam got the call telling him all police officers’ leave was revoked and we had to return to Oodnadatta. Our town, with its high Indigenous population and geographical isolation (it’s a bit over a thousand kilometres from Adelaide) was in lockdown under the Biosecurity Act 2015. As the sign, illuminated by the headlights of our four-wheel drive on our return home spelled out, no one was to enter the town without quarantining for fourteen days.

Sam, as the town’s only police officer, was exempt from quarantine, which left me home on my own with our children, aged between two and eight. In many ways it was a relief to be in self-isolation. I could relax my compulsive washing of the children’s hands and no longer had to constantly scream ‘Do not touch anything!’ (Only to turn around and see the two year old licking the floor of the caravan park toilets on one occasion.) I felt guilty watching livelihoods crumble on the small screen and seeing images of New York brought to its knees, while our lives really hadn’t changed greatly.

While the rest of the world reeled under the new social restrictions, our social (and geographical) isolation had begun eight months earlier when we moved to Oodnadatta. We’d left our little slate cottage in Willunga in search of adventure and a simpler life in the desert. I wanted to work in Indigenous education and Sam was very willing to swap his police blues for the khaki uniform of an outback cop. We took the kids out of their beloved Willunga Waldorf School, re-homed our chooks and headed north.

We were in good spirits until we left Coober Pedy and the enormity of the move, and the landscape, hit us. We felt like we’d landed on Mars; red gibber plains stretched in every direction as far as the eye could see. The only break in the landscape was the dirt road, pitted with bulldust holes and strewn with jagged rocks, waiting to pierce an unwary tyre.

I often think back to that first drive; our enthusiasm posing for a family photo under the Oodnadatta Track sign, of the children’s pockets bulging with ‘precious’ rocks collected when we stopped to explore a creek line that provided short relief from the ‘Marscape’. I had just read Bruce Pascoe’s book Dark Emu and was full of ideals about what life in an Aboriginal town was going to be like. >

Top left: Cracked earth. Top right: The roadhouse. Bottom left: The kids take in an evening stroll. Bottom right: A thirsty rainbow bee-eater.

What we found, when we arrived in Oodnadatta, was a community that was all too familiar with another white copper and his family rolling into town, setting up home in the only house with a large fence around it and telling people how they should live, before packing up two years later and going back to the comforts of city life. No one was interested in my many views on the colonisation of Australia and the disempowerment of its First Peoples. They were all busy living their lives in the middle of the desert, as people had done for many thousands of years before we got there and would for many thousands of years after we left. Our arrival in Oodnadatta meant everything to us, but nothing to Oodnadatta.

The kids took to life in the outback immediately. They kicked off their shoes, jumped on their bikes and rode off down dusty tracks. Sam too settled in; he had a role to fill and a job to do. But who was I in this town? I wasn’t a teacher (yet), I wasn’t one of the cattle station mums and I wasn’t a local. All the ties that had anchored me in Willunga had been cut loose and I was adrift on a sea of uncertainty. I longed for the green tapestry of the Willunga Hills, for coffee at Three Monkeys and pizza with friends at Russell’s. I missed the routine of the Willunga Farmers Market, dropping the kids off at school, writing for FLM and grocery shopping in McLaren Vale.

Our food in Oodnadatta comes on a truck from Coober Pedy every Thursday. If the road’s bad the truck’s late. If it has rained then the truck doesn’t come and we drink powdered milk and eat baked beans. The only shops in town are the iconic Pink Roadhouse, where we pick up our post, and the general store, where we buy things overlooked in our ‘bush order’. Soon after we arrived, the pub shut down. The Transcontinental Hotel does this periodically by all accounts, depending on the number of tourists passing through or simply whether there’s anyone with a ‘responsible person’ licence to sell alcohol. We were saddened when it closed this time. It’s a focal point for the community with walls steeped in history. You can still see a bullet hole above the bar from a 2001 police shooting and the roof has been held up with a temporary strut ever since someone drove into the front bar a couple of years ago.

Oodnadatta has long been a place of beginnings and endings. The town made its way onto a map in 1890, as the northern terminus of the Central Australian Railway. It was also the starting point for the camel caravans laden with supplies for remote desert communities. When the railway closed in 1980 the community was told to leave, but they stood their ground and founded their own council, known as Dunjiba. Many current day community members are skilled visual artists, musicians and craftspeople, and all have a deep connection to their land. They have seen this country in all its cycles – dry dams and dying brumbies in fifty degree heat, downpours of rain, swarms of mosquitoes. The only constant is the flies.

As our weeks in Oodnadatta rolled into months, my vision adjusted. I saw subtle shades of green, where previously I had only seen brown. I noticed wildflowers growing against all the odds and heard birdsong in the trees. I watched a pair of Willie Wagtails build a nest in a Mulga tree and hatch a chick that was almost as demanding as my two year old. Slowly I started to pay attention to the small things,

Top: A small dust storm breaks up the clear blue sky. Bottom: Cockatoos settle for the night in the silhouette of an enormous moon.

and it was only then that I was rewarded with a smile from a local and snippets of songlines and stories. I softened and my surroundings softened with me.

Still, I was looking forward to our trip to Alice Springs. I was eager for a hairdresser and takeaway coffee, a visit to a bookstore and a new pair of shoes. I wanted the kids to be back in the Waldorf system doing morning circle and drawing with Stockmar crayons. Alice Springs is a long way from Willunga, but it seemed somehow like a step closer to home. So when the coronavirus outbreak cut short our trip, it was with disappointment that we packed up the camper trailer and started the long journey back to Oodnadatta.

The children were cranky and tired, with infected eyes from fly bites, and I was anxious about the unfolding pandemic and how the world was dealing with such an unprecedented event. Whenever we came into phone range on the journey, I would obsessively scroll news sites searching for the latest COVID-19 death toll. At the Northern Territory border we passed a stop point with army-style tents set up and police on round-the-clock duty. They waved us through, our check-point would be at Marla. When we arrived there it was a bit of an anticlimax. We wrote down our address, showed our driver’s licences and were told the kids and I would have to quarantine once we got home, which we were happy to do.

At first quarantine was kind of fun. I homeschooled the children, they called me Miss Esther, we planted a herb garden, stuck an avocado seed in water, I sought inspiration from Instagram. But as the days wore on, my intake of wine steadily increased and my patience rapidly decreased. And then it rained and rained. And rained. We had 56 millimetres of rain in one day. The bone-dry dam filled in a matter of hours and the waterhole overflowed cutting the town off completely. Parched creek beds turned into flowing rivers. Quarantined behind our high fence, we could only see glimpses of the water from our front yard and by looking at photos on Sam’s phone.

But the day after our quarantine ended and not one of us had so much as a sniffle, we walked down to the dam and found a landscape transformed. The red gibber plains had turned into a seemingly endless meadow of wildflowers. Delicate daisies, lilies, orchids and grasses rippled before us. Creek beds were swarming with tadpoles, frogs and strange prehistoric looking creatures I would later find out are Shield Shrimp. Butterflies and dragonflies zigzagged around us with every step we took. This was not a dry, barren landscape, it was teeming with life.

I want to write something neat and tidy, comparing the transformation of Oodnadatta during our time in self isolation to the transformation I hope to see in a post COVID-19 world, but I’m not sure life works like that. Nothing is that clean cut. But maybe if we use this pause in our busy lives to let our eyes adjust, like I have been trying to do since we arrived in Oodnadatta, maybe then we will start to see a different world. In the words of Arundhati Roy ‘Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.’