Spaces - Jasper Peach

Sam Drummond 00:03

What makes a great space, and how does a space influence the way we live, who we interact with, and ultimately where we see ourselves in our communities? I'm Sam Drummond, and this is Spaces on Powered Media. Each episode, I'm taking our guests to their favourite place. We'll get an insight into why that space works for them, share some of the moments that have changed their lives, and hopefully learn something along the way.

Thanks for watching! I'm Sam Drummond and you're listening to Spaces... and it is the middle of winter, but I am feeling very warm in a lovely little space - with Jasper Peach who is a creator and has created an incredible place that is just beautiful. Thanks for bringing us into your favourite place, Jasper.

Jasper Peach 01:02

You're very welcome any time to come and hang out here, Sam, thanks for coming.

Sam Drummond 01:07

Can you tell us where we are?

Jasper Peach 01:08

So we're in my office... it is attached to my house, but it has a different door. Oh, I'm just saying that. Anyone who has little kids will... know, you definitely love your children. And it's very amazing to have a space that's all your own.

Sam Drummond 01:28

And so in this room, this is feels to me like a visual representation of you. There is incredible artwork on the on the walls. There's a pile of books of, from what I can for my brief look at them by a bunch of disability activists and writers, a wonderful bookshelf and a beanbag with your dog, Cool.

Jasper Peach 02:00

Yes, she can... you guys everywhere I go.

Sam Drummond 02:02

In your office, what were the must-haves when you were thinking of creating this space?

Jasper Peach 02:09

Well, firstly I wasn't able to create this space properly until it flooded and I got an insurance payout. There were there was some rain, it was like, a December rain situation a few years back and everything was so dry, the front front yard was a lake - and it seeped into this office... and at the time I was like Oh no, and I had to sort of wedge a tiny little desk in next to our bed and in amongst you know parenting to pre-school children during a pandemic and I've got pretty dodgy lungs, you can probably hear I'm a bit croaky at the moment because it's winter and there's lots of bugs going around, and yeah, the whole place had to be kind of gutted.

But it gave me the opportunity to put in flooring, it was different to the mix of concrete and really gross beige carpet - everything was real beige, it was pretty the opposite of how I feel... so I've made it... like a like a womb, that is also representative of coconut ice - if you were around in the 80s you'll be aware of that very pink and white sweet coconutty treat, so there's a pink feature wall at the back and there's a brick wall at one of the sides in the front with a Big Arch Window - the greatest window at the Play School calendar - and another just white plywood wall, it's really cozy.

I've got a big white rug, which used to be white and isn't anymore, because you know, life is grotty... you've also got Cool the dog here, and Cool is always here so there's a... fine film of dog hair over everything in my life, which any Labrador lover will have an awareness of - I don't fight it, I just go with it, like Oh good, extra warmth and proteins in the air... so I guess the must-haves, they didn't come easily, there's been a lot of getting by and making do with what we had and not really much money to put into things... but with... some money to redo the floor, have the space painted... and also I was very lucky to receive a Creative Victoria grant which included a sum of money for accessibility.

So I've got a sit-stand desk I've got a really great desk chair, the massive bean bag was part of that, so I can lay in that and work when I'm not feeling the best and I'm, and sitting upright isn't possible... it's very, there's a lot of ergonomic stuff that a lot of disabled people just kind of don't get to have unless something amazing like a grant comes along, and it means I can... I mean I don't mean to buy into the whole capitalist productivity machine thing but but it means that I can create for longer and get into that flow state, so that the work I'm able to do gets to those deeper places and it's more meaningful and more transformative and... it's changed everything having this office, it's really amazing.

Sam Drummond 05:55

The beanbag as part of accessibility is something that I'm drawn to. It seems like our work world has been designed around this concept of a desk that you sit at. Yeah. And then if you're lucky, you get some sort of ergonomic assessment that someone will pay too much for or charge too much for.

Sam Drummond 06:22

If we're paying for it ourselves and then it still doesn't feel right. The air.

Sam Drummond 06:30

And you only know to yourself what it feels like. And I'm looking at that beanbag, and to me that says that you have said I work best in a beanbag.

Jasper Peach 06:43

Yeah, it was so interesting because I had, look, anyone who's an NDIS participant and has had an OT, or like some people I know, I've had seven OTs because often it doesn't go well and you need to start again and use a lot of funding, and it chews through your plan pretty quickly. But the OT that I had at the time, when I told her that I'd applied for a grant and listed the things I'd applied for, she was quite miffed. She's like, Well, we haven't tested those, and you don't know if you can return them. And just really condescending, the things that I would have been told that I needed wouldn't have been things that I would use. 

So, I mean, there's also a joke that bisexual people and neurodivergent people don't know how to sit in chairs. So bean bags are often a very good option for us because, why sit when you can lay? Really, you can curl up with your co-regulation hound and the snoring will vibrate through your body and make you feel calm. You can have a little blanket and some cushions. I've got a little weighted blanket here and various cushions and pillows and blankets and whatnot. And sometimes that's where I work. I just curl up in a little nest and often for me work is having the space to daydream and let the thoughts come without judgment and let more thoughts come without judgment and play.

It's very playful. You play around with ideas and it happens really easily when you're in a nest with your dog. Yeah, it's called a therapy pot. It's full of memory foam and like it's a legitimate thing for, I think a lot of neurodivergent children use them to regulate and have some calm space, but it also molds around your body. So, for me, I've got a body that has chronic pain and always hurts and I'm not always aware of exactly how, but when I feel better and there's the absence of some of that pain, I'll go, Oh, that's really good. I lie in this big squishy situation. And I feel a bit better and now my mind's working a bit more freely.

Sam Drummond 09:21

Six or seven occupational therapists. Something's not quite clicking there.

Jasper Peach 09:28

Yeah.

Sam Drummond 09:30

How do we make that connection between someone who's been to uni for a while and thinks they know the latest things that will get government funding, and actually what the wants and needs of disabled people are? You seem to know that you're going to sit in that beanbag and you're going to be at your most productive.

Jasper Peach 09:56

Yeah.

Sam Drummond 09:58

What's missing there with those OTs or the medical system?

Jasper Peach 10:05

It's a very patriarchal system, and it's controlling, and it's about money and resources and it should be about people and agency and dignity. I'm in a situation at the moment where that OT has, I guess my interactions with that OT have resulted in really deep trauma and I employed someone to look into a new OT for me and do all that legwork of checking - are they going to misgender me? Are they going to walk into my house without knocking? Are they going to tell me the NDIS will start asking questions if I ask them about an accessibility aid, like I'm trying to be naughty or get away with something, when I just want to be able to open my linen press and put the towels away?

So I employed someone to have conversations, to find a list of people, run that list by me. I chose who they should look further into and have it be about, like I'm shopping for shoes because it's not about the provider deciding whether or not they have space and time for me, it's about who is appropriate for me, who's going to treat me with respect and like, I'm an adult with with a brain that can comprehend what I need, maybe give me some new information and knowledge that's useful through conversation not just instruction.

And so I've got an appointment with with someone to start again because I need what's it called something, a Capacity Assessment, in order to get the funding I need for the items that the previous OT had written reports for that took six months of many phone calls, emails, following up, asking that person to do their job, could you please finish this report now... I get the report it's got someone else's name on it, it's got a wrong birth to it, and it goes back and forth and that'll cost money from my plan.

I have a lot of AT which is assistive technology and house modification requests that the NDIS phone line tells me have been approved, but the funds won't come into my plan until I have this Capacity Assessment done - and I just can't allow that person to come back into my home so I've had to start again and find someone else. It's really demoralising, and if, like if anyone came to me and needed help advocating, no worries, I've got, I will fluff up like a chicken, I've got your back, I will write the email, I'll come with you, then maybe I'll make the phone call.

But when it comes to me and my own advocacy for my own needs this, it feels really different, it feels really tender and... painful and it's really vulnerable I guess, because the job this person does says whether or not I am allowed to have a home that's accessible to me.

Sam Drummond 13:42

Hm.

Jasper Peach 13:45

So I guess what needs to happen is the system needs to do what it said it always would do, which is consider the people and have it be an insurance scheme, an insurance that we're assured that we'll have the measures that we need in an ableist world to create access. I'm disabled by the lack of access, not my disability.

Sam Drummond 14:19

I've known you for a while now.

Jasper Peach 14:21

For about 75,000 years, I think.

Sam Drummond 14:24

And in that time, you have moved from the city to a couple of country towns. And it seems like in the time that you've been in your current town of Castlemaine, you've really found your place. But there have been challenges associated with that. Is that access one of them? Do you think you'll be having a different time in the city?

Jasper Peach 14:52

I knew that my time was coming to a close in the city, because it was too... overstimulating and it just wasn't, it wasn't a place I could thrive... and my partner's the same, there's more, I guess there's more medical facilities and there's more people - but with that comes a lot more noise and... I needed quiet, I needed peace, in order to figure out who I was I guess, and how to be the best person that I can be - and that's really happened for me here... like I really I was saying to my partner the other night, I think this is the first time in my life that I haven't had some nefarious thing hanging over me, like something I was either feeling the need to conceal or that I didn't know how to express that was just in me.

I mean I'm sure there'll be more evolving and more unfurling and nothing surprises me these days, but... I feel very at home in my skin and I feel like I have something to offer. And then I know how to do that, I know when to ask for help, I know when to do it myself... I have an incredible community here, Castlemaine is a... gold rush town, it's Ye Olde and it looks a certain way and there's a lot of heritage overlay, and that means that disabled people don't exist so... Sorry but you won't be able to walk down that path, or you won't be able to access that part of the town, which is very frustrating... but there's a lot of us here and we do what we can in terms of activism, advocacy, communication. 

I'm having a lot of interactions with the council at the moment, about about all this stuff, and a lot of people have before me and have burnt out and have become frustrated and angry and a bit like with the OT... and I just said I can't anymore, I need someone else to step in so it's... I'm having a go-off that at the moment, one of the things, I got an email the other week about... We've got a working group in implementing accessibility in the town, are you interested, and you're really connected so can you disseminate it amongst your contacts... and I looked at all the information and it didn't have any clarification about whether that was voluntary or paid... Eliza might have talked about this as well... 

And I responded and said Could you clarify whether this is voluntary or paid, and because my volunteer hours are kind of allocated already I've got little kids, I don't mean to harp on about my kids, but they, you know, they take a lot of my energy and I know to happily give it to them and their needs and their lives and, but they're busy little bees, so I don't have heaps of time to volunteer on top of what I'm already doing with rainbow families, and so if the role is a voluntary role, that cuts out a lot of people and a lot of demographic... it will probably be retirees who may have the time, younger people like Eliza Hall, myself, we don't have the time or the energy - and that means our perspectives are missing from that working group. 

So I'm still waiting for a response it's a week and a half, yeah but...

Sam Drummond 18:46

You talk about that advocacy of the self-advocacy, and obviously that's unpaid but that's taking its toll and you come back here and you just want to collapse. Yeah. And then there's that extra layer of people wanting you to do further advocacy without pay. Yeah, it's so insulting. It's an untalked-about pressure of having a disability.

Jasper Peach 19:14

Yeah, it really is, because we're so often asked or it's expected of us to just spill our guts, tell our trauma, share our stories, share crucial information for a project where everyone else is being paid. There's something wrong there, that we are so devalued where the project is supposedly to benefit everyone but especially us. If disabled people have access, everyone benefits. It's not just us kicking up a fuss about a few sidewalks, it helps everyone.

Sam Drummond 19:57

There's that physical accessibility in a town like this that was built 170 years ago. Yeah. But there's also a generational and a mindset of people who might have been here for six or seven generations. How's that been as a relative newcomer? A new latte-sipping blow-in. Yeah, that's right. Rather than the guy who I saw crossing the road on the way here with his dog and stopping people in the middle of the road and then doing a rude gesture to the people who were yelling at him. Like he's probably been here, I guess, for eight generations. And he's trying to stop the people from Melbourne coming in. What has that been like?

Jasper Peach 20:51

Well, I think the rightful owners of this place have been here a lot longer than that.

Sam Drummond 20:58

Yeah.

Jasper Peach 20:59

This is [?Jara] country, this isn't crusty old angry man country and our first responsibilities respect for the rightful owners and respect for the country we're on. I mean, yeah, it's really interesting. There's a lot of talk about how the first thing someone will ask you when you meet them or run into them, How long have you been here? And I do it too, because I'm interested. I'm interested in what brought them here and where were they before. And we probably know people in common if they have come up from [?NAM]. But I guess I like that there's crusty old dudes here. I like that it's not all gentrified and that, I wouldn't call it a melting pot because it's very white.

That's really the only thing missing is a more diverse population. I feel sad for my kids that they're missing out on that. But we go into Melbourne every now and then, we took them to a great cake shop on Sydney Road, after a work gig I had in Brunswick Town Hall once and oh my gosh, the little one's got such a sweet tooth and their eyes nearly exploded just looking at all these cakes. And then we went out for Vietnamese for dinner and they were really interested in all the food. It's nice that Melbourne's not too far away, but it's far enough away that it's not just a pop down the road kind of thing. I guess what helped us find our community here, we knew a few people.

But what really helped was joining a sewing class. So when my partner turned 40, I enrolled us both in a sewing class run by a local woman here by the name of Julie Rhett. And she's incredible, so she ran these sewing classes where it's a real social outing and you can make whatever you want. And if all you do during the class is thread your sewing machine, that's fine because you've had a cup of tea and you've hung out with some people and talked about, Oh, where can I find some fresh sage?

I'll go to this grocery store and there's all those little things that you need to know. That's how we found our people, really, was through that. And we hosted a little birthday party for Julie, who I think may have turned 40 as well. It was some significant. We can't disclose it or just get her age. Sorry, Julie. She's just evergreen. But we had a little party and we said, everyone bring something. No one brought anything savoury, everyone brought cake. And we had a fashion parade of things that we had made in her classes. And our house was full of people, some who'd been here for generations, some who were latte sipping blow-ins like us. And that really kicked off our community here.

And then having kids, of course, you meet so many people and it's wonderful. It's a wonderful place to raise a family here. Yeah, lots of rainbow families, lots of neurodivergent families, lots of families in the disability community. So there's lots of people that we get along with politically and socially.

Sam Drummond 24:49

I'm coming back to this space.

Jasper Peach 2 24:51

Yeah.

Sam Drummond 24:53

And your kids are next door, essentially, but in the same building. Yeah. And then you talked about this incredible arched window where you look out onto what is essentially bushland. It's beautiful. What would this, would it change the space if they had direct access to you? Do they ever come and just break that third wall of all the time?

Jasper Peach 25:21

Sometimes, like you might have seen on the veranda there's scooters so they they scoot up and down and then now they'll come in I've got this button that I purchased because I'm a people pleaser and it says it says No in lots of different ways, so they like to come in and push that. 

Sam Drummond 25:41

Do you sometimes push it on them, No just go away?

Jasper Peach 25:47

No no, I mean come and do it and I've got a big, I'll show you, I've got a big sort of notepad here that the kids do drawings on and then a smaller notepad that I do, I've always just got a big notepad here to to keep notes of things that pop into my head and go Oh that's right, I forgot to do this, and I'll write it down but there's always, they're always welcome for a finite amount of time and then I'll text their other mum and say What's happening with the kids? And she's like Oh sorry, they were just coming to say hi but tell them if they come back I'll get them a snack or, you know, yeah.

Sam Drummond 26:28

You once told me that if you didn't write, you'd die. 

Jasper Peach 26:34

Did I? That's true, yeah.

Sam Drummond 26:37

Is that part of this place as well, this enables you to do that?

Jasper Peach 26:42

Yeah this is... where I wrote my first book, my second and third books, two of which haven't been published yet but working on it... there's a saying of, I don't know if it's the same, a lot of people talk about being drawn to come up here to Jarra country from Melbourne or wherever, and the earth has been turned upside down, it's been completely, like it's all completely devoid of nutrients, so gardening's a bit tricky but... it's upside down and it's exposed to the underbelly of what lies beneath, and that happens to every person I think who moves here too - and that's why we move here, because we want to understand, we want to dig deeper, we want to expose what's being hidden and make peace with it... and I feel that very deeply, I... every day I figure out something else that was kind of hidden away and now I can understand, life is a lot more clear and beautiful and possible.

Sam Drummond 27:56

Do you think you'll stay in this space?

Jasper Peach 27:58

Hope so, I hate moving. My partner will say Oh, shall we move to the here or there? No getting me out of this place in a box, I'm, I can't deal with it. I think it took me a year to recover from the last move, especially like we've never moved with kids before because we had both the kids while we lived at our last place on Eddy Street. Oh it was beautiful, that house was a little three-bedroom blonde brick. The plumber who installed all the plumbing lived next door and it's handy if you've got a blockage. Yeah, oh he was a little bit past that but always good for a chat, he never minded that our dog barked because he had barky dogs as well, and here there's Dalmatians over the back fence so we've got a similar situation, and I swore I'd never move from that house.

So look, never say never, but I really love it here, I feel very drawn to this place. I have a lot of family from Mum's side in Marabara which is about half an hour 40 minutes away, so that feels really nice as well to have that connection to family - not that I see them, but I know they just stopped the road. You can if you want to. I could if I wanted to, yeah and that's really nice, it just yeah, it feels like the right place for us. Before we came to Castlemaine we moved to the wrong place and tried very hard to make it work, and then we house that up here for some friends and we're walking down the street and just like Oh, this is what we're looking, it's just a feeling, it's a feeling of belonging and possibility.

Sam Drummond 29:46

Is there anything that you want to improve about your little office here, or is this it?

Jasper Peach 29:54

Always, always, yeah... mmm, look if I could be a bit more tidy that would be good, but I've just got to embrace who I am. I'd like a printer that doesn't make me angry every time I try and use it, but I think that's every human who uses a printer... there's little things I'd like to change but the bones are good and I I feel like I can work here for the rest of my life, I feel really positive about it and it's a very safe space, I'm very connected to the outside world here, I got a great microphone set up so I can do lots of interviews from here, I do a lot of work from home for various organisations, there's nothing that's impossible here and that feels really good. Yeah.

Sam Drummond 30:53

After books two and three are published, what can you achieve here then?

Jasper Peach 30:58

More books, more chats. It's always about a good chat, I think. Yeah, always about a good chat and the reflections that emerge from that, the little diamonds that pop up through the soil, or gold nuggets as it may be. Never found one of those, but I did find a nice big chunk of gold at a shop. So I bought that and that's sitting on one of my shelves.

Sam Drummond 31:27

I guess we can just keep digging. Yeah.

Jasper Peach 31:29

I kept telling the dog to go find a nugget, but no luck so far.

Sam Drummond 31:36

Jasper Peach, creator, and to your dog, Cool, thanks very much for showing us your favourite space. Thanks, Sam. Spaces was recorded on Wurundjeri, Jara and Bunurongland. Spaces was produced by Humdinger for Powered Media. The series was created by Sam Drummond, with support from Emma Sharp and Lucy Griffin at Humdinger. Field audio recording by Matthew Hoffman, editing by Simon McCulloch.