My brain exploded with an aneurysm a few years ago….
My wife left me…

I worked hard around home, I went to the doctor, I got some pills, I wrote a lot of letters; and I took the pills and drank myself asleep and awake. And, my ‘Band of Brothers’ saved me and sent me to the looney bin.

I had this little stint in Glenside Psychiatric Hospital in the Rural and Remote Ward which is for all us country bumpkins. I learned many lessons in the two weeks there; one was gratefulness and the other humility (historically not my strong point!).

Many visited me there to help me on my way, true friends and true family. An old mate looked after me for awhile and then I came home. We had built it as our home and called it ‘Pelan-Pelan’ which is Indonesian word for ‘slowly’. I came home, sad.

I met an old Riverland mate and he took me to the ‘Peppertree Shack’. You won’t find it on the internet as it was a shack under a peppertree, built by a bloke, for other blokes to come; have a free meal and some fellowship with other good men, some doing it hard, some recovering, and some extending a hand; some Christian, some not; all at home in ‘the shack’, all brothers in the shack. It burned down a few years ago, but buildings don’t make groups like this (It helps, but….?) and it moved to a hall in town.

These old mates, many the friends of my Mum and Dad; 15 years younger than them, and now 15 years older than me. I went to Church with them, and actually went to a lot of churches around town. I liked the singing?!! And, like Dad, I dosed sometimes and smoked out the back.

I met people which reinforced my gratitude. I met a lady called Jackie who was moving to Adelaide and asked me to look out for her son, Lucan.

Lucan came around and we made stuff in the shed. The one wheel bicycle trailer, the kids ‘little red wagons’, we fixed stuff and Lucan came up with an entire ‘course’ about doing nothing, and we told stories. (Click here for: one wheel bicycle trailer video – one of our favourite projects).

So, Lucan and I hung out in the shed; people dropped in and said hello, made stuff and we made stuff for them and other people. We said anyone who makes something in the shed, even just the once is a ‘member’ of ‘Shed Squad’. We had not Committee, we meet on Mondays and Bob joined us, then Alex joined us, then Steve joined us and ‘old mate Sleepy’ occasionally drops in. We still make stuff, for ourselves, each other and other people. We sit around a bit, have coffee and have lunch and sometimes start late and knock off early.

We volunteer, doing stuff for nothing and occasionally making a few bucks to buy more sandpaper, paint, tools and all the supplies you keep using and losing in the shed.

We had some interpersonal challenges but we had NO RULES.

Shed Squad still has no rules, we have values…

We don’t have committees, meetings, agendas, minutes, someone in charge or anyone as our boss…

We have no documentation, unless you count rough plans drawn on recycled cardboard from boxes…

We have values.

We volunteer and we help people out, including, and mostly, each other and ourselves.

I wrote Part 1 on the heading of this post because I am hoping to share some of our latest projects and a few failures – which we never complain about as most materials we use are recycled, repurposed or something free that came our way by generous people. We say if its a failure in wood – it’s firewood; if it a failure in metal – it’s scrap!

Looking forward to Part 2 myself – often we never know what’s going to happen at Shed Squad.