CHAPTER EIGHT - FRASER HOUSE OUTREACH

This Chapter details the various outreaches from Fraser House and discusses how these varied social actions fitted into Neville’s evolving frameworks for fostering humane caring transitions in the global-local social-life world. It discusses Neville’s use of advisory roles to legitimate and protect his social action, Neville’s pioneering of Community Mental Health, his evolving of intercultural networks among Colombo Plan Students and other Asians and Africans, his use of Cultural Healing Action using Festivals, Gatherings and other Happenings, his contributions to Divorce Law Reform including the inclusion of family counseling and mediation in Family Law, his adaptation of Cultural Keyline to business and other organizations, his entering as an independent candidate in the 1969 Federal election (Various Newspaper Journalists 1959-1974; Yeomans and Yeomans 1969), and his writing of a regular Newspaper column. Functional Matrices are defined and Neville’s evolving of many of them as an aspect of evolving the Laceweb is outlined. How all of this varied social praxis supported the evolving of the Laceweb is also discussed as a lead in to Chapter Nine.

ADVISORY ROLES

During the Sixties Neville was very active in many advisory roles including eighteen listed in Appendix 14. The extent of Neville’s advisory work evidences the breadth of Neville’s acceptance in many spheres and the breadth and inter-relatedness in his praxis.

Having these positions were all consistent with Fraser House networking focus and Way and was one-way Neville used to legitimate what he was doing and protect and support the Fraser House interfacing with mainstream. These links helped ensure Fraser House’s survival for as long as it did.

COORDINATOR OF COMMUNITY MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES

Recall that prior to leave Fraser House, Neville had energized the Lane Cove and Ryde Community Psychiatry Programs. Following his departure from Fraser House, Neville’s energies focused on extending the healing ways evolved at Fraser House into ways of individual and communal self help healing. He and his personal assistant Margaret Cockett were extending the therapeutic community option as shown in Figures 1 and 3 in Chapter Seven into the wider community as dispersed (not all living together) urban therapeutic communities. This was the precursor to the Laceweb as networked dispersed remote area therapeutic communities.

Prior to leaving Fraser House, Neville had spoken continually of the need to create a new section within the NSW Public Health System called, ‘Community Mental Health’. Neville wrote a detailed monograph entitled, ‘The Role of a Director of Community Mental Health (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 12, p. 66). This was a proposal, a ‘job description’ and a ‘CV’ all rolled into one. His suggestion was adopted and upon leaving Fraser House he became the Coordinator of the New South Wales Community Mental Health Services. Margaret Cockett characterizes Neville’s leaving Fraser House as his being ‘promoted upstairs’ because he was becoming too well known and a threat to parts of the Health Department hierarchy. Neville made ‘Margaret Cockett going with him as his personal assistant’ a condition of his taking the position of the first head of Community Mental Health. This was accepted. As an indication of the support within the department for this new section, they were provided with an unfurnished room a couple of blocks down from the main Health Department building. According to Margaret Cockett in an August 1999 conversation, some evenings in the few weeks after Neville got this new position, passers-by would have seen the two of them ‘spiriting’ ‘unwanted’ desks, filing cabinets, chairs and other little needs to make their section a little more functional. It says something about both the system, and Neville and Margaret. What the two of them were doing was all very new and resisted in many quarters.

Neville set up Australia’s first Community Mental Health Clinic in the vestry at the back of the Methodist Church in Oxford Street in Paddington. It was the first of such centers in Australia. Mangold, in his delightful photographic record of the history of the Paddington Bazaar speaks of Dr. Yeomans being the primary inspiration for realizing Reverend Peter Holden's dream of 'villaging the church' in Paddington (Mangold 1993, p. 4). The following two photos taken by M. Mangold are reproduced here with permission.

Photo 1 'Villaging the church' in Paddington

Neville’s suggestion was to surround the Paddington Community Mental Health Center and the Church with a Saturday community bazaar. This was fully consistent with the Fraser House model of imbedding the Unit within the local community.

Photo 2 Neville’s Community Mental Health Center surrounded with Community

In Photo 9 the Vestry where Neville had his first Community Mental Health Center is the brick building on the left. The Church is on the right. Between and around both buildings is Paddington Bazaar. Adjacent the Vestry was a hall Neville used for community meetings (Photo 3).

EVOLVING ASIAN LINKS

Neville’s interest in intercultural action towards epochal change within intercultural contexts is evidenced by his extensive involvement in cultural bodies during the late Sixties. He involved himself in the bodies listed in Figure 1 below.

Neville and Margaret Cockett started community based psychosocial groups. After sustained networking action by both of them, they had a number of students studying in Sydney under the Colombo plan join their psychosocial groups. These students were having trouble adjusting to living and study in Australia. Colombo Plan Students in Sydney Universities had set up their own social groups. Margaret and Neville divided these Colombo Plan Student Groups between the two of them, and approached and introduced themselves to the respective groups and became active in these associations.

Senior Vice President Japan - Australia Friendship Association

Councilor Japan - Australia Society

Council member Australia - Indonesia Association

Member:

Africa - Australia Association

Thailand - Australia Association

Pakistan - Australia Association

India League

Australian Institute of Internal Affairs

Figure 1 Some of the Associations and Societies that Neville Belonged to During the 1960’s

This involvement enabled Neville and Margaret to attend all of these organization’s joint and several activities and help them in forming mutual support networks among participants. Neville used this interaction to refine what he called ‘intercultural enabler’ competencies and sensitivities.

Neville married Lien, a Vietnamese exchange student in November 1972 (Yeomans 2001).

Photo 3 Neville and Lien on wedding day

The above photo was taken from Lein’s book, ‘The Green Papaya with permission (Yeomans and Yeomans 2001)

To aid intercultural networking, Neville and Lien started the Asia Club. This Group met regularly for social networking and social events. On one occasion Neville and Lien had energized a ball with others in the Asia Club. This was held at the hall in Paddington where the ‘Police Boys Club’ met. Around 100 had turned up and the band was playing. Neville and Lien began dancing. No one joined in with them on the dance floor. Neville could not pick what was going on. He knew the students liked Western waltzes and quick steps. Lien told Neville to ask a particular Thai girl to dance. As soon as Neville and the Thai girl commenced dancing everyone joined them. It turned out that Lien knew that this girl was a Thai princess and that this girl was the female of highest station in the room. Asian protocol required that Neville, as the principal organizer, had to be the one to dance with her to start proceedings. Neville told me that without Lien, the evening would have been a disaster

CULTURAL HEALING ACTION USING FESTIVALS, GATHERINGS AND OTHER HAPPENINGS

The First Festival – Watsons Bay Festival

In the Sixties Neville joined with Margaret Cockett and others in forming, and became the president of the Total Care Foundation, a registered charity. This entity was used to evolve the Watson’s Bay Festival in 1968 on Sydney’s South Head. Watson’s Bay Festival was the first Festival energized by Neville. In keeping with Neville’s intercultural focus, the Festival featured the cultural artistry from twenty-three different counties. Neville timed the Watson’s Bay Festival to coincide with the Sydney All Nations Waratah Festival during 6-13 October 1968. The countries and kinds of artistry at the Watson’s Bay Festival are listed in Appendix 15.

This Festival was from a time when ‘multiculturalism’ had not yet become a way of life in Australia. With the 1968 Watson’s Bay Festival, Neville was one of the pioneers of multiculturalism in Australia. However, the Watson’s Bay Festival in Watsons Park was more than multicultural, it was intercultural in that it fostered sharing links among strangers - a precursor of later Laceweb intercultural healing action. This Watson’s Bay gathering demonstrated an early Laceweb resonance with what Neville called Cultural Healing Action, where social action combines music making, percussion, singing, chanting, dancing, reading poetry, storytelling, artistry, and sculpting - all within intercultural festive and celebratory contexts. Cultural Healing Action may evolve intercultural respect and healing, what Neville called ‘peacehealing’. Cultural Healing Action is discussed in the next Chapter.

Photo 4 Watson’s Park Where the Festival was Held at Watson’s Bay

This is a historical photo from the 1920’s

In a Sydney Morning Herald article on 19 Oct 1968 reporter Michael Symons wrote:

‘The Watson’s Bay International Festival was organized by local residents with the overt objective of letting national groups perform traditional songs and dance. They gave out cups of tea, flowers, clickers and lays, but next time they promise much more, like tables of food.’ (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 12, p. 10; Symons 1968).

Writing of Neville, Symons when on to say:

‘He has this grand vision of Australia taking to its parks with a freely expressed culture, ‘combining the best of East and West. The parks, that’s where its all happening. In the parks. People are doing their thing in the parks.’ ‘The actual aim of the Festival was to undermine society by encouraging the use of parks for things free and wonderful.’

When I mentioned this newspaper article to Neville in April 1999, he thought the above quote would have been his, and totally ‘moronic’ behavior in the context of Laceweb being entirely moronic to the ‘dinosaurs’ - those of an aging, increasingly irrelevant, power-structure - in five hundred year scale terms (Yeomans 1971a; Yeomans 1971b).

A planning letter from Total Care Foundation to the Sydney Town hall details that the Watson’s Bay Festival would be held Sunday 13 October 1968 from 11:30-4:30 at Robertson Park and Watson Bay Park and that it would be completely open to public with no fees. It would feature an international display of music, dancing and national costumes. Artifacts would be displayed at the Watsons Bay Branch library, including a display by artists John Olsen and Brian Cummins. Clickers would be given out so the crowd could ‘Clickerlong’ with the Bands in the evening. Another letter to the Town Hall in Sydney (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 12, p. 13) speaks of the Women’s’ Social Group (called the Care Free Committee) of the Total Care Foundation helping with the evolving of the Watson’s Bay Festival. It states that during the Festival there was an art exhibition at the Masonic Hall. One Gallery alone lent $14,000 of paintings. Note that Neville used the process of organizing the Festival for evolving network and community.

The Second Festival – The Paddington Festival

To launch Paddington Bazaar surrounding his Paddington Community Mental Health Center with the local community sharing public space, Neville worked with the local community in evolving the Paddington Festival. It was held over Saturday 21 June 1969 and Sunday 22 June 1969. On Saturday 21 June 1969 there was a market bazaar in the main Paddington Town Hall. The Paddington Mid Year Festival was held the next day. The Paddington Bazaar evolved out of the community energy and stimmung (shared attuned mood) of this festival. The Bazaar also called Paddington market, thrives to this day as a community market. It is a Sydney icon. This model of embedding self-help wellbeing focused action within everyday community contexts, and at times helping to constitute these contexts, is a central concept within the Laceweb. It is resonant with Tikopia way.

A Letter was sent from the Total Care Foundation to the Chief Secretary, Minister of Labor and Industry (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 12, p. 17). This letter speaks about the Paddington Festival and Market Bazaar being energized by the local community. The letter said that the Festival would include music, dance, drama and artistic exhibitions by Australian, Continental, and Asian artists. The letter mentions the parallel planning going on for the Centennial Park Festival to be held on October 12 1969. A letter to the Director of Parks and Recreation, Town Hall Sydney dated 13 March 1969 (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 12, p. 19) sought permission to use Walter Reid Reserve during Paddington Festival for small groups of folk singers and children’s’ painting lessons. The proceeds were for the development of Australian Asian Festival Activities. Note how Neville blends seemingly disparate things like links to Asia, networking people in charitable action, a community mental health clinic, a church, a bazaar, a festival, and various cultural activities. This is totally consistent with Cultural Keyline and a model for the Laceweb. This was a process Neville was exploring for re-appropriating Society and peoples’ lives from the State.

Festival Three - Centennial Park Festival

The next Festival Neville and others evolved was the Centennial Park Festival, a few kilometers from the Sydney Central Business District. According to one journalist (1969) writing on the Centennial Park gathering, ‘tough looking bikies mingled with old ladies, and mothers pushed babies in strollers between crowds of sprawling hippies’. This was Australia’s first hippie festival. It was called the ‘Spring Thingin’ (shown as Photo 31a and 32.

Photo 5 The ‘Spring Thing-in’ – with youth in audience wearing a Yeomans T Shirt

Photo 6 Photo of Centennial Park Attendees

Photo 7 A Photo-record of the Centennial Park Festival – From the magazine Annals 69 November Issue. (Yeomans 1965)

Neville was a founding member of the Sydney Opera House Society formed in 1968 that worked to have the Danish designer Jorn Utson complete the building. It was through this society that Neville met Elias Duek-Cohen a town planner who would be involved in furthering P.A’s work in the Nineties.

Neville was also a founding member of the Sydney Arts Foundation. This Foundation was the organizer of the Centennial Park Festival (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 12, p. 27). The key aim of the Sydney Arts Foundation was to establish an arts center in Sydney (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 12, p. 36). The Centennial Park Festival was supported by many Embassies, Consuls, civic groups, arts groups, national and international societies and clubs and schools. A Letter to the Director and Chief Botanist Royal Botanical Gardens (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 12, p. 28-37) speaks about the range of events and activities teed up as part of the Centennial Park Festival. These are set out in Appendix 16.

The Minister for Agriculture wrote a letter to the Sydney Arts Foundation expressing concern that the Festival was ‘taking over’ the whole of Centennial Park and that this was never the understanding of the government. The needs of others had to be allowed for. The Festival was finally allocated the North Eastern Valley near Ocean Street Entrance, an area of around 540 acres (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 12, p. 37). The North East Section of the Obelisk area of Centennial Park was used. (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 12, p. 23).

Other Events

A letter was sent to the Bondi Council requesting use of the Bondi Foreshore area for a New Years Eve Party December 31 1969/1 Jan 1970 (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 12, p. 39).

Neville’s collected papers contain a pamphlet inviting people to the, ‘Age of Aquarius Eastside Strip In’ on Australia Day, Monday 26 January at Camp Cove or Redleaf Pool, Nelsons Park, Bondi, with the 1960’s phrase, ‘Why not do your own thing.’ (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 12, p. 42).

Festival Four – Campbelltown Festival

Lien, Neville, his younger brother Ken, and his wife Stephanie were the key organizers of a small, though very important Festival in 1971. It was held at Neville and Kens father’s (P.A.) country property out of Cambelltown, 50 kilometers down the main highway from Sydney towards Melbourne. It was a small festival of about 100. Many of the cast and crew of the hit musical ‘Hair’ attended and added to the passion and artistry. Neville, Ken, and Stephanie have all attested to the fact that there was a real fervor among the attendees to mount a very large festival that would celebrate and engender possibilities for a new Age – to quote the ‘Hair’ hit tune, a festival for the ‘Dawning of the Age of Aquarius’. After the attendees had packed up the Cambelltown Festival they held a meeting in an old shed near the Yeomans’ farmhouse where it was resolved to put on a festival and call it the Aquarius festival. They had a target figure of 15,000 people attending.

It is possible to see Neville’s Cultural Keyline design principles having an influence on the decisions of this planning group. In their preliminary discussion at Campbelltown about the proposed Aquarius Festival they decided that they wanted to work cooperatively with local people around the proposed Festival site, have local people having a say in the Festival and sharing in any profits, and preferably using the farm lands of more than one farmer. They also wanted the whole process for evolving the Festival to be organic and natural – to be self-organizing.

Note the principles:

1. Enable a context where resonant people self organize in mutual help

2. Have them work and network with the local people in the region

3. The local people have the say in meeting their own needs

4. Support the local people in networking – (Festival on a number of farms)

5. Local people get flow-on (share in profits)

6. The local action is self-organizing

Figure 2 Cultural Keyline design principles

At that meeting Ken Yeomans used his knowledge of Keyline to scour maps of New South Wales to find a good place for the Festival. He suggested the Nimbin region in the hills at the back of Byron Bay. It was a beautiful green area of undulating forest and farm country, though stagnating economically. Two people were empowered by the meeting to set off in search of sites and the result became the Aquarius Festival.

Festival Five – The Aquarius Festival

The Aquarius Festival did take place in Nimbin and 15,000 people did attend. It became the first of the large alternative festivals in Australia. The Festival did make a profit and the local community decided that their share of the profits be used to create a municipal swimming pool. This was agreed to, and Ken Yeomans designed it using Keyline principles. The pool still functions well to this day. It is round and has a sand base over concrete. It very gently slopes in from the edges to become deep in the center. The water flows up from below in the center, and flows out at the edges. The sand stays in place. The young children enjoy the shallows. The Tuntable Falls Commune was started from some of the Festival proceeds, and was designed on Keyline principles. That commune continues to this day.

Photo 8 Ken Yeomans

Festival Six – ConFest

When Jim Cairns, Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister under Gough Whitlam, his personal assistant Junie Morosi, David Ditchburn and others in the mid Seventies began preparing the first ConFest - short for ‘conference-festival’, Jim Cairns and his group chose to meet in the Church room next door to Neville’s Community Mental Health Center in Paddington (Mangold 1993).

Photo 9 The Hall - next to the Vestry – where the ConFest

planning meetings were held

The above photo by Michael Mangold is used with permission. The Hall next to the Vestry had become a regular Sydney meeting place for people who had been the energizers of the Aquarius Festival. Neville and others had energized a small urban commune focused around the Paddington Community Mental Health Center and the Bazaar. Mangold writes of one small group associated with the Aquarius Festival coming down from Nimbin (where the Aquarius Festival had been held) in a covered wagon drawn by a draught-horse (Mangold 1993). The small group stayed near Neville’s complex at the back of the church. The draught-horse was used to take children for a ride around Paddington Bazaar.

Photo 10 Deputy Prime Minister Jim Cairns at ConFest

Neville attended the ConFest planning meetings next door and contributed to the planning of the first ConFest. Ken Yeomans used Keyline principles to set up the water system at the Bredbo ConFest, Mt. Oak in 1977. Ideas from his father’s book, ‘The City Forest’ book were used to lay out ConFest roads along ridgelines. Walking workshop/conferences were held on Keyline. ConFests have been held since the Seventies and since the early Nineties five/six day events have being held over both the New Year and Easter periods.

ConFests now run regularly over New Year and Easter, typically on the Murray River, or one of its tributaries in the Victorian–New South Wales border region. Typically a small advance group of around ten visits a site a number of times before ConFest. Around 100 volunteers do the core site setup work in the last two weeks before ConFest. Around 3,500 people attend ConFest. I am one of around ten people who select ConFest sites and energize the initial site layout and set up. I have surveyed 29 potential sites. Since 1992, I have regularly attended ConFest and have been the one providing enabling support to the workshop process since 1994.

Between 150 and 300 workshops are held each ConFest on a very wide range of topics relating to all aspects of the web of life consistent with Cultural Keyline. The ConFest workshop process is totally self-organizing. About 20 meters of board space is erected, enough room to write up two days of workshops. Times are put down the side of the boards and around fifteen workshop space/places are filled in at the tops of the columns. Others find their own spaces to run their workshops, happenings and events, give these spaces names and enter them as headings on the top of one of fifteen extra columns Typically, others soon use the same place/space and it becomes another energy center. The boards are reused on the fourth and subsequent days. A maps shows the location of workshop sites. Extra boards are erected to let attendees know about large events and happenings during ConFest.

Photo 11 ConFest Workshop Notice Boards all prepared for ConFestors to arrive

Often ConFest has many different ‘villages’ that form functional matrices. Examples are, the Healing Village, the Spirituality Village, the Art Village, the Permaculture Village, and the Nothing in Particular Village.

Photo 12 Villages at ConFest

I typically run 30 hours of workshops each ConFest and have between 10 and up to 190 people attending a workshop. These workshops have enabled me to experience something parallel in size to Big Group and to explore group processes and social forces in sustaining groups of this size in experiential action to approximate the experience of Fraser House Big Group dynamics that Neville had written about in his paper, ‘Collective Therapy - Audience and Crowd’ (Yeomans 1966), and outlined in a paper called, ‘Introducing a Therapeutic Community’ (which Fraser House patients had largely written) (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 4).

Photo 13 A ConFest workshop I ran on Cultural Healing Action using life drawing

I have engaged in Cultural Healing Action many times at ConFest. In one group with over 600 attending, we used spontaneous drama (Cultural Healing Action) about chaos, complexity and self-organization in nature with the water down the plughole vortex as theme for ceremony. Randomly moving water molecules become highly organized in the tornado-like vortex (Capra 1997, p. 164-167). The vortex was used as an example of self-organizing in nature and its potential within the psychosocial sphere. Photo 14 was taken at the whimsical ‘Vortex Ceremony’ at ConFest. This photo is another example of stimmung – the mood that attunes people together. The crowd went ecstatic.

Photo 14 Carrying the sink to the waters for the ‘Water Down the Plughole Vortex Ceremony’ at ConFest

With Neville’s subtle orchestrating during the initial planning of the first ConFest, the site set-up process for this Conference-Festival after twenty years is still self-organizing and uses Keyline and Cultural Keyline features. Nature guides design and layout. Volunteers walk the site till it becomes familiar. The land ‘tells’ the set-up crew where things can be well placed. Natural barriers such as creek banks may mark the self-organizing edge of the car free camping area.

Various aspects of a ConFest site tends to suit different ConFest villages. The massage area and the healing and spiritual villages like quietness and shade. The art village likes the swimming area. Site enablers link potential villages to village-specific resonant space. When around 3,500 people arrive they are self-organizing and ‘do their own thing’. Almost invariably, the people intending to stay in the various villages find the localities tentatively marked out for their village, absolutely meets their needs. This is because the site enablers have a good idea of their needs and let the site tell them where the various villages may evolve.

The site is organically set up. Knowings about pressured water systems and water filtering and all the other aspects for setting up a temporary eco-habitat for 3,500 people are distributed in the core group. No one is ‘in charge’. It is set up by voluntary action. It is self-organizing. It works. Roads are made, beaches created on creek or river, showers and taps installed. There are hot tubs and steamrooms. Everyone attending is asked to volunteer two hours during the ConFest. Site pack up takes around two weeks and we hardly leave a trace that we have been there at all.

Photo 15 ConFest sites are always chosen with Special Places

Photo 16 An Example of Stimmung after Enchanting Group Movement

at one of my ConFest Workshops

Festival Seven – The Cooktown Arts Festival

Shortly after the Aquarius Festival and the first ConFest in the Seventies, Jaciamo Caffarelli a musician and painter, who was a Fraser House outpatient in 1961 and who had stayed in touch with Neville was a key energizer of the Cooktown Arts Festival in Cooktown on Cape York, Far North Queensland. Coincidently, Jaciamo was living opposite Neville in Yungaburra when Neville bought his house there in the Nineties. I spoke extensively with Jaciamo about the Cooktown Arts Festival and his memories of Fraser House and Neville while Jaciamo and I where at the Aboriginal Laura Festival in June 2001.

Photo 17 Jacaimo at Laura Festival

At the time of the Cooktown Arts Festival, Cooktown was an extremely remote outpost of about 350 people on Cape York Peninsula in Far North Queensland approachable from Cairns by a day’s drive over a torturous road. Given the remoteness and difficulty getting there, it was extraordinary that over a 2,500 people attended from all over Australia with people coming from overseas. Jaciamo the Fraser House outpatient modeled the Cooktown Art Festival on Neville's Watson's Bay Festival, the Aquarius Festival and ConFest. Given the remoteness, the Cultural Healing Action was very rich. The events included three three act plays complete with stage, scenery, costumes, orchestra and lighting. One was a Chekov play. A puppeteer put on regular shows. As well, the Cairns Youth orchestra played along with a number of swing and trad jazz bands, pop groups and a xylophone/percussion group. Spontaneous acoustic music jamming sessions abounded. Neville Yeomans, Jim Cairns (Deputy Prime Minister), and Bill Mollison, one of the founders of permaculture, were speaker/workshop presenters. There was a very active workshop scene on all aspects of wellbeing.

Neville did not, to my knowledge, energize other festivals or gatherings after the Campbelltown Gathering in 1971 until gatherings in the early Nineties. These later Festivals and Gatherings are discussed in Chapter Nine

THE KEYLINE TRUST

As part of Neville’s adapting Keyline to Cultural Keyline, he set up the Keyline Trust with support from Ken and Stephanie Yeomans, Margaret Cockett and others, (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 12, p. 44).

The Objects of the Trust were:

(a) To produce and distribute documents, papers, photos, stickers, films and other communications, cultural and artistic materials and productions

(b) Such materials and productions to be Australian in origin and dominantly for the purposes of enhancing community cooperation and mutual support, locality, self respect, friendliness, creativity, culturally appropriate peaceful nationalism and multinational regional cooperation

Notice the use ‘locality’ meaning connexion to place and the implied ‘cultural locality’ at the local, regional and global levels. The middle object of the Trust, clause (b), is a succinct statement of Laceweb action.

DIVORCE LAW REFORM AND MEDIATION

Neville was a key enabler in the development of the Divorce Law Reform Society of NSW. Branches of the Society spread to other states. Dr. Paul Wilson, a criminologist who was a Director of the Australian Institute of Criminology in Canberra became Patron of the NSW Society. Neville prepared a series of mediational submissions in his own divorce case relating to his first wife - particularly the desirability of setting up family and individual counseling and family mediating processes. These writings by Neville along with other submissions from the Divorce Law Reform Society, become a basis for submissions to Justices Evatt and Mitchell and played a substantial part in the formation of the new Family Law legislation.

From these beginnings, the use of mediation has been growing in Australian society. Australia is currently a World leader in the use of mediation. Neville with John Carlson wrote a monograph that researched the use of mediation in China and other places as part of their law degree at the University of NSW (Carlson and Yeomans 1975a; Carlson and Yeomans 1975b). Mediation in the context of what Neville called ‘mediation therapy’ is discussed in chapter Nine.

WRITING NEWSPAPER COLUMNS CALLED KEYLINES AND YEOMANS OMENS

Recall that Neville edited a regular weekly Newspaper column called Keylines. He used this to keep before the Sydney readership, Keyline, Fraser House Way and the various outreaches that he was energizing (Yeomans and Yeomans 1969).

Photo 18 Photo of one of Neville’s columns – Now Newspaper 24 April 1971

CULTURAL KEYLINE, BUSINESS AND OTHER ORGANISATIONS

Neville’s quest was to foster caring and being humane in every aspect of life including work-life. During 1969 and the early Seventies in Sydney Neville held a regular small group for young businessmen who were ‘on their way up’. Neville and Margaret Cockett set up a discussion group with managers of private businesses to explore the inter-cultural conflict they were having in establishing and sustaining trade with SE Asia. In keeping with Clause (b) of the Keyline Trust, a theme running through these discussion groups was how to sustain ‘culturally appropriate multinational regional business cooperation’. Neville explored the application of the ‘Social Problems Record’ developed in Fraser House to study personnel in business and other organizations (Yeomans 1965, Vol 11 p. 277). In keeping with Neville’s Way, a key aspect of these regular groups for business people was the evolving of a mutual support network.

In the late Eighties when I was consulting in organizational change I was approached by a Federal Department about creating paradigm shift and cultural and climate change in their senior executive. Neville and I wrote on one page what he described as a global-local realplay as a resource for senior executive change. When the Department decided to use American consultants they were not shown the Hypothetical Realplay. The Realplay is included as Appendix 18. Consistent with Neville’s, 1974 ‘On Global Reform’ paper (discussed in Chapter Ten) he set the hypothetical realplay in an indefinite future time where their has been a shift in World Order to Regional Governance with local governance of local matters.

FUNCTIONAL MATRICES

In Yungaburra in November 1993 Neville said that he was using the term ‘functional matrix’ to refer to the generative and formative developing and shaping of functions, fields or foci of Laceweb action. The word ‘matrix’ is from the Greek word having the meanings listed in the following Figure 3:

· the womb

· place of nurturing

· a place where anything is generated or developed

· the formative part from which a structure is produced

· intercellular substance

· a mold

· type or die in which anything is cast or shaped

· a multidimensional network

Figure 3 Some Meanings of the word, ‘Matrix’.

Neville was using the word ‘Matrix’ in all of the above senses. The word ‘functional’ was used to convey that both the name of the entity and the social action involved had related functions. Describing organizations as functional matrices was also implying that Neville was not talking about top-down bureaucratic structures. He was talking about flat local-lateral networks by reference to what they do rather than what they are.

In 1993 in Yungaburra Neville told me that in talking about the Laceweb, people may refer to, for example, the Inma Nelps Lacewebs. When they used the term Inma Nelps Lacewebs no specific organization in the usual sense was being referred to. Rather, it was the function, field or focus of the action. Neville then drafted out for me the names of many of the Laceweb Functional Matrices that he and others had evolved and what he termed their ‘function, fields and foci’ of action. Neville was very interested in the derivation and meaning of words. Often we would look up word meanings. Neville took the time to very careful draft letters and other documents. We often engaged in hundreds of hours on some documents.

Examples are firstly the ‘Extegrity Document’ (Appendix 28); we worked jointly on that for ten months (Yeomans 1999). A second example is the paper, ‘Governments and the Facilitating of Grass Roots Action’ (Appendix 20) (Yeoman, N. et al, 1993). That paper was only six pages in length and three of us worked on it for nine weeks. The list of Laceweb functional matrices in Appendix 19 most of them dating back to the late Sixties and early Seventies, is not exhaustive and there is overlap between categories.

I followed Neville’s way of attention to detail in drafting written material in preparing with others the document to UNICEF entitled ‘Interfacing Alternative and Complementary Well-being Ways For Local Wellness’ (Spencer, Wijewickrama et al. 2002). This 38-page monograph took six months to write.

Evolving Functional Matrices

In 1969, Nexus Groups was registered in NSW as a Laceweb not-for-profit charity engaged in setting up self-help groups for people with psychosocial stress . Nexus Groups constitution is attached as Appendix 21.

Nexus Groups changed its name to ‘Connexion’ in the early Seventies and became the publisher of the ‘Aboriginal Human Relations’ Magazine (AHR) started by Dr. Ned Iceton in Armidale NSW (Aboriginal Human Relations Newsletter Working Group 1971). This Aboriginal Human Relations Magazine reported on community healing action among Aboriginals throughout Australia. This magazine is discussed later in Chapter Nine. Another Laceweb functional matrix called Inma Nexus took over publishing the magazine for a number of months. Rick Johnstone worked with Neville on the Inma Nexus publishing of the magazine. Rick was a key enabler for getting the Maralinga Royal Commission started on the Aftermath of Nuclear Testing on traditional Aboriginal land in South Australia.

Mingles and Healing Sundays

Mingles was another of Neville’s functional matrices dating back to the 1960’s. Mingles’ function was making it easier to form friendships. It was one of a number of mutual wellbeing, support and self-help/mutual-help networks/groups that emerged from Fraser House.

In the late Eighties, Neville, Chris Collingwood, Neville’s son David and others linked to that first workshop in Balmain where I first met Neville, held regular sharing gatherings on the first floor at 245 Broadway in Sydney. Many of these gatherings would also move for a time across the road into adjacent parklands.

Photo 19 245 Broadway in Sydney where the healing sharing gatherings occurred.

Neville and this same Mingles network energized a monthly event called Healing Sundays in Bondi Junction in Sydney. I participated in all of these. During these gatherings a caring sharing network of over 150 people was evolved over an eighteen-month period. It initially comprised this core group of around twenty people who had a range of healing skills. The day may be on a broad range of wellbeing topics or it may be focused, for example on say ‘love’. It was experiential, that is, simple healing ways that others have found to work are tried out.

No prior experience was necessary. Attendees could experience and learn many healing ways. It was also a day for extending social and nurturing networks. Some attendees were open to sharing their healing ways with the gathering. Anyone who wanted to could link in with the enablers for the day and tee up to enable a small segment - sharing with the group some healing ways.

ON BECOMING AN ELECTION CANDIDATE

Neville and Ken Yeomans entered as independent candidates for the NSW electorates of Wentworth and Phillip in the Federal election, 1969. Both were against sitting members and knew they had no chance. Neville, Ken and Stephanie all said that they were very active campaigners and used this as an opportunity to raise the profile of all of the various themes that were dear to their hearts – use of water, sustainable agriculture, community mental health, pollution, intercultural harmony and the like.

Photo 20 Photos of Neville and Ken Used in Their Election Campaign

Photo 21 Advertisement in the Now Newspaper where Neville wrote a regular column

As part of their election campaign, Neville and Ken and Ken’s wife Stephanie created an extensive set of humourous and creative bumper stickers using a variety of fluorescent colors. These were called Licka Stickas. Some are shown below.

Photo 22 Sample 1 of Bumper Stikkers from the collection in Neville’s archives in the Mitchell library (Yeomans 1965).

Photo 23 Sample 2 of Bumper Stikkers from the collection in Neville’s archives in the Mitchell library (Yeomans 1965; Yeomans 1969).

REFLECTING

This Chapter has detailed the various Fraser House outreaches including Neville’s use of advisory roles to legitimate and protect his social action, Neville’s pioneering of Community Mental Health, his evolving of intercultural networks among Colombo Plan Students and other Asians and Africans, his use of Cultural Healing Action using Festivals, Gatherings and other Happenings, his contributions to Divorce Law Reform, his adaptation of Cultural Keyline to business and other organizations, and his writing of a regular Newspaper column were discussed. Functional Matrices were defined and illustrated and.Neville’s entering as an independent candidate in the 1969 Federal election was discussed.

REFERENCES

(1969). Hippie Festival in the Park. Sydney Morning Herald.

Aboriginal Human Relations Newsletter Working Group (1971). Aboriginal Human Relations Newsletter. Armidale, N.S.W., The Department of University Extension & Connexion (CBO).

Capra, F. (1997). The Web of Life - A New Synthesis of Mind and Matter. London, Harper Collins.

Carlson, J. and N. Yeomans (1975a). Whither Goeth the Law - Humanity or Barbarity. Melbourne, Lansdowne Press.

Carlson, J. and N. T. Yeomans (1975b). Whither Goeth the Law - Humanity or Barbarity -. The Way Out - Radical Alternatives in Australia - Internet site - http://www.laceweb.org.au/whi.htm. M. C. Smith, D. Melbourne, Lansdowne Press.

Mangold, M. (1993). Paddington Bazaar. Sydney, Tandem Productions.

Spencer, L., D. Wijewickrama, et al. (2002). Interfacing Alternative and Complementary Well-being Ways For Local Wellness - Internet Source - http://www.psychosocialnetwork.org/faq_interfacing.htm, SE Asia Oceania Psychosocial Support Network.

Symons, M. (1968). The Pop Scene - A Rowe Bit Over the Fence. Sydney Morning Herald. Sydney.

Various Newspaper Journalists (1959-1974). Neville Yeomans Collection of Newspaper Clippings. Neville Yeomans Collection of Newspaper Clippings. Sydney.

Yeomans, A. (2001). Green Pawns & Global Warming - The Agricultural Solution to the Greenhouse Effect.

Yeomans, L. and Q. Yeomans (2001). Green Papaya : new fruit from old seeds. Milsons Point, N.S.W., Random House Australia.

Yeomans, N. T. (1965). Collected Papers on Fraser House and Related Healing Gatherings and Festivals - Mitchell Library Archives, State Library of New South Wales.

Yeomans, N. T. (1965). Collection of Newspaper Clippings, Letters and Notices. Dr. Neville Yeomans Collection of Newspaper Writings. Sydney.

Yeomans, N. T. (1969). Yeomans Omens - Licka Sticka Catalogue in Neville Yeomans Collected Papers Q659.12/2. Sydney, In Mitchell Library within State Library of NSW.

Yeomans, N. T. (1971a). Mental Health And Social Change. The Collected Papers of Dr. Neville Thomas Yeomans - Mitchell Library Archive. Sydney: 295.

Yeomans, N. T. (1971b). Mental Health and Social Change - http://www.laceweb.org.au/mhs.htm. Collected Papers. Mitchell Library. Sydney: 295.

Yeomans, N. T. (1999). Extegrity - Guidelines for Joint Partner Proposal Application -Facilitation of Indigenous and/or disadvantaged small minority Psycho-Cultural Healing, Humanitarian Law, and Humane Democracy - Internet Source - http://www.laceweb.org.au/ext.htm..

Yeomans, N. T. and K. Yeomans (1969). Collection of electioneering hand-outs and newspaper cuttings by N. T.

Yeomans and K.B. Yeomans, independent candidates for the NSW electorates

of Wentworth and Phillip in the federal election, 1969.

Yeomans, P. A. (1965). Water for Every farm. Sydney, Melbourne, Murray.