Don Green, President of the Triangle Tool Library, came to live in Cobargo 25 years ago when he and his wife were expecting a baby. ‘We wanted to raise our children in the country. We were living outside of Sydney on five acres, so we started to look at five-acre properties for sale, and prices started dropping south of Narooma. On our list was Cobargo, Quaama and Candelo, and we ended up buying the first house we looked at in Cobargo. Not knocking those other places, but we’re both just so glad we chose to live in Cobargo because we just love it and we’re not going anywhere. We’re actively planning for aging in place and say the next move is up the hill, to the cemetery.

‘During the fires our house was saved but the whole property burnt. I had spent a year and a half after the Tathra fires preparing our property and found reading the Black Saturday inquest invaluable too. I expected fires to come the summer before, so I got another twelve months of preparation. Fire planning isn’t about what you do when the fire comes, it’s about preparing and that’s ongoing. We had a lot of water and pumps, two adult children, so four able-bodied people, and a fire plan, which we followed almost exactly. The only thing we forgot was to let the chooks out, but if we had, they would have died.

‘After the fires, some fantastic community brainstorming events were held at the Cobargo School of Arts Hall. Very professionally run by Deb Summer and Dave Newell, it was just very beneficial for our mental health to throw good ideas around with people we didn’t know. Together we faced the fact that this had happened, and we asked what are we’re going to do about it together? I was present when the brilliant tool library idea came up. It was just so of the moment, because so many people had lost their houses, but also their tools, their sheds, all their equipment. And those people are the sort of people who were going to rebuild their houses themselves, but could they each go out and buy $5,000 worth of tools?

‘I wasn’t involved in the initial set up of the Tool Library, because I had my own trauma here. I basically hunkered down for two years rebuilding my garden because I was quite dismayed that the fire had destroyed 20 years of gardening. For the first couple of years, I was borrowing tools occasionally. I didn’t lose any of my tools, and I had a pretty good collection but, of course, they started to break, and I knew of the tool library so, within a year of its existence, I was a member and borrowing tools. And as the collection expanded, I realised that I would not have to buy another tool in my life. You don’t have to buy tools when you can borrow them for a $50 membership per year. What a bargain!

Don Green at the Triangle Tool Library in Cobargo, willing and ready to help you. Photo: Flick Ruby

‘Every single person who comes into the library for the first time says, “This is just such a brilliant idea – everywhere should have one!” And it’s true. I’ve had people from small communities as far away as Magnetic Island, Queensland, come in and say, “How do we get this?” Why I’m involved now so passionately, is because I really believe that this is going to be here for a long time, for the life of the town. We’re no longer in the reactionary phase of just helping people get back on their feet, we’re transitioning to a service, an asset that the town will use and rely on for decades.

‘For those people who aren’t members, or even those that are, you might not be aware that we have a woodshed with virtually every piece of equipment you need to build furniture, window frames, whatever your project is. Steve is there nearly every Friday, and he will help you build and make things. We run workshops to develop skills with chainsaws or building or planting, and we will be reintroducing them after a survey has told us what people want. I think a really important part of our continuing mission is to educate and build skills within the membership.

‘At the moment, we’ve got about 300 members, but I would like to see us at 500 by the end of this year, and then probably 1000 this time next year. It might seem a bit bold but there are about 6,000 households so we should have 6,000 members! If you’re not a member, you’re losing money and missing out on help, on food preserving gear, on all the great new tools we are getting all the time.

With more members we will need more volunteers. I’m currently putting the horse before the cart and getting volunteers first. What I would like to see is the volunteers basically putting aside three hours a fortnight, so doing one shift over the Tuesday, Friday or Saturday, whatever suits them. That way no one’s going to get burned out or stressed out. I personally think we need about four or even five people on each shift, because it does get busy and there’s other maintenance jobs to do. I want to get our volunteer numbers up so that we can move forward to the next stage, which is getting more members. If we’re totally inundated with volunteers, we could be open every day, but we’ll see.’

The tool library is open Tuesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, 9.00 am till 12.00 noon. Check out all the tools available on the Triangle Tool Library website or come on down and join so you can start borrowing!

Listen to an interview with Don on this month’s Triangle Podcast.

Flick Ruby