Sadly our Covid Roulette podcast series has come to an end. But … the last few episodes were super interesting.

Episode 15 - Alistair, was recorded at the safe injecting room in Richmond. Alistair who uses heroin talks about the challenges he faced during the pandemic, Peter who also uses the facility talks about his homeless friends and explains what happened to them, and Dr Nico Clark who runs the facility discusses how they managed … and the worries and impacts on staff and clients.

Then in Episode 16 - Katia and Sue - many of you may know them from our Peer Support Playgroup - talk about their family’s recent bout of Covid, their hospital experiences (they both went, and to different hospitals) … and the impacts of the pandemic on people with ‘underlying health conditions’.

Our final episode, Episode 17 - Pat, features a wrap up from two doctors at Austin Health - Pat Charles and Andrew Casamento. They talk about the effectiveness of the vaccines etc. and what they are experiencing in the health system now. It is super to get access to this information … and very helpful.

So … we hope you take a listen here or on your favourite podcast listening app - just search for Covid Roulette on Sporify, Google, Amazon or Apple etc.

Thanks once again Tony Wilson for your fabulous interviewing skills, David Bridie for your music, Lee Arkapaw for your graphic design and the Victorian Government for the funding.

Anne and Marie-Louise are keen to rebuild our Friday morning Craft and Chat session … which somewhat petered out over Covid. With winter here there’s NO BETTER TIME to take a couple hours out of your week to get creative, and meet up with other locals who share your interests and talents!

Also, if you are just a beginner … Anne has loads of sewing skills to share … and we have some sewing machines here you can practise on. She’s also a knitter - if you want to learn to knit. And Marie-Louise is a crocheter - who is also happy to share her skills.

So, if you’d like to get together and Craft and Chat on Friday’s from 10am-12pm (with morning tea at 11.30am) please come along from Monday 11 July (the start of Term 3).

Anne and Marie-Louise would love to welcome you!

This week we had a donation of apples 🍏 picked straight from the tree delivered to us.

We’ll be using them to make some preserves and to do some community cooking and we also ate some at Morning Tea in the Garden on Friday … and sent some home with those that came along - everyone was very appreciative!

And … any spares will be sent over the the ASRC.

Thanks so much Bella for thinking of us and dropping them in!

If you ever have excess fruit and veggies 🥦 🥕 in your home garden (or on your rural property like Bella) we’re always very pleased to find a use for them - whether that be here - we use them for preserves, weekly morning tea or food relief, or at the ASRC - the donations we send their way go into their fresh food program.

Just give us a call or drop in when we are open!

We’re coming up to the last week of our podcast this week - we have 3 more episodes to publish.

You can follow along on our website here or check out the podcast where ever you regularly listen to podcasts - apple, google, amazon or spotify.

In the last few days we have published a couple of stories. The first is from local author Chloe Hooper - many of you will have read her books including Tall Man and The Arsonist. She talks about how worried her family was when the pandemic started because her husband Don Watson (also an author) was in remission from leukaemia. Her episode if very thoughtful and insightful and interesting!

Chloe

The next episode features local Fleur - and is all about aborted travel plans - Fleur and her partner Trent and her four boys were all set to head to Singapore in January 2022 when they all came down with Covid. In this episode we also talk to David Bridie (musician with Not Drowning Waving etc.) and also the musician who made the Covid Roulette theme music. He talks about his aborted travel plans as well, including a trip to Antarctica.

He also discusses the impact of the pandemic on some of the musicians from PNG who he works with regularly and are on the Wontok record label.

Fleur

And today we are publishing Ray’s story - which is a very sad one about his wife Marilyn, a nurse who stepped out of retirement to help out with the hotel quarantine program … and lost her life to Covid in November 2021.

Ray

Covid Roulette is a wonderfully interesting and personal record of the many ways that Covid has impacted our community in Yarra and Darebin, and we are very proud to have made the series. I really hope you have tuned in and are enjoying listening along.

Hi all we’ll be starting program planning for the second half of the year next week. So if you have a course you’d like to run for our community, a group you’d like to start or a great idea or a recommendation please get in touch!

Email info@alphington.org.au.