I didn't realise
that Ballarat was Victoria's third largest city.
Sorry, Bendigo - just pipped at the post.
But among other things, it's also famous for the 1854 Eureka rebellion.
And how fitting that barely 3km from the site of the rebellion
another revolution is taking place,
not in the goldfields but in a humble laneway.
It's all about growing vegies and sharing with the community.
And it goes by the hashtag 'foodisfree'.
To understand how it works in its simplest form,
let's say I had a great harvest at home.
I can't possibly eat it all myself,
so on my way to work, I head to the laneway and drop it off.
Meanwhile, another me, who doesn't have his own vegie patch
and needs some nice, fresh veg,
wanders down the laneway
and takes enough for a meal.
What a nice thing to be able to do.
Hey. (CHUCKLES)
See ya.
Meet the person in the vanguard of this food revolution -
gardener, community activator and all-round great person,
Lou Ridsdale.
So, how did it begin for you?
Well, it was sort of brought about from a place of sadness.
Uh, my mum passed away and I started gardening way too much
and it was a source of healing for myself,
so once I'd sort of run out of friends and family
to pass the food on to,
I just thought it'd be a really good thing
to open it up outside my laneway
so that people can just come and grab what they want
and participate and be part of it as well.
So the first few months, obviously,
people thought it was a bit of a crazy notion
and that, you know, people are always suspicious
of something that's free,
and people would walk past the laneway
and think it was a garage sale or that they were being pranked
and that, you know, people thought
that they might be on security cameras
and why would people offer something for free?
Then spontaneously, someone left a piece of parsley
with a note saying, "You may need this,"
and that's where I knew that, once someone had reciprocated,
that the community had really gravitated towards it
and then it just went great guns from there
and four years later, 100 people a day walk down our laneway,
so it's incredible.
This table here really is
the central, beating heart of Food is Free, isn't it?
It is. It's where the magic happens.
And this is where people drop off their spare produce
that's home-grown
and people take from this table.
And how much of this produce here is actually from your garden?
A little bit of it.
When it first started up, of course,
I dropped a lot of my own produce here
but, to be honest, I'd say at least 90% of it
is from our community, donated,
so it's incredible.
This is my favourite part of the whole laneway
because I love this sound.
(HINGES CREAK)
The opening of the toolbox says to me
that people are really thinking about the future
and grow for free - it's really easy.
We have a chart of what to grow in each season
and it's all educational.
People can come and get pots to grow their seedlings in too.
Yep. It's all about encouraging people to do it themselves.
These days, the project's really well established
but in its infancy, it had to be rescued from the brink of disaster.
I rent my house,
so just after about six months of actually running the laneway
and it had got a lot of traction
and the City of Ballarat was behind the project
and everything was just tracking so very nicely,
and then my landlady put the house up for sale,
so I was fairly stressed at the time
and wasn't sure of the future of Food is Free,
and an amazing local businesswoman bought the house
to secure the future
and I've got the house for as long as I want
and she's just an incredible woman.
Um, you know, that's a deep level of, you know, giving.
It's one thing to, you know, drop off food to a laneway
but it's another thing to actually buy a house
to keep the future going.
What an incredibly generous offer,
to keep you afloat when you almost lost it all.
Amazing.
I mean, it was such a brilliant gesture, such a generous gesture
and, you know, it gave us that sense of permanency then
and it gave us that impetus
to then take over the green space across the road,
which was offered from the council,
so we're really lucky.
I mean, look at it. It's so close.
It's perfect. A stone's throw. Oh!
The Food is Free green space opened a year ago,
after a team of volunteers
had transformed an unused section of a footy oval
into a thriving community green hub,
growing amazing produce all year round.
There's so many different styles of community gardens around the country.
What is it that you're trying to achieve with this space here?
Well, we thought we'd do community gardening with a bit of a twist
and we recognise that there's some members of our community
who can't afford a gardening plot like most community gardens
and so we opened this up
to marginalised and at-risk persons in our community
and they can come down here and garden with us,
gain some skills, grow some food for themselves
or take it to the laneway and, you know...
And it's much more impactful if we do it that way.
It's the best thing I've ever done in my life. Easily.