Massage and reflexology

Bryan is living proof of the healing arts he practices. A Type 1 diabetic since childhood, he was told in 1984 that he would need dialysis. By 1986 he had reversed the symptoms. Two years with reflexologist Trevor Steele at the Gawler Foundation was ample evidence of the restorative effects of diet, meditation and natural remedies. Ever since then Bryan has been a learner and a teacher of reflexology and self-help therapies. Having proved his capacities to care by curing himself, Bryan was asked to be part of a clinical team with Dr Carmel O’Toole. After five years of clinical practice, he began teaching.

He has been on the road ever since, which was second nature to Bryan, who is also a professional musician. For 15 years he played percussion on studio recordings and for touring musicians. He also taught music in schools, but found that as education became more of a business it was losing the personal touch. When his partner Marianne won a raffle for a weekend on French Island, they knew the time had come for them to live in the country. Carmel O’Toole had said so herself. Bryan had been riding his motorbike along the Ocean Road to Port Campbell for 25 years; he knew where he wanted to live. Marianne dreamed of a boot-shaped property fronting the beach, with hills, a valley and a spiral road. When that exact property came through the fax machine at C.J. Keane’s at the very moment they were trying to explain to Sam Rowarth what Marianne had seen in her dream, they knew it was all meant to be. All the elements were in place.

Together, Bryan and Marianne are working to create a health retreat on that property at Johanna. Their B&B at Castle Cove is within the sea’s roar of where they will eventually live and work. There Bryan will continue to practise reflexology but he will also return to drumming to lift and strengthen spirits. Music or massage, the healing is in Bryan’s hands.

Massage and reflexology

Marianne is a pioneer, a survivor, an achiever and a dreamer. Let’s take them one at a time.

As a pioneer, Marianne was one of the first to learn welding as part of an arts course when she won a scholarship to study art and design. Working at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London, she was one of a team developing the world’s first talking book machines under a three-year British Council program. She spent part of the eight years she worked at Sotheby’s helping curate the Black Museum at the Victoria and Albert, a space dedicated to the world’s best fakes.

Marianne survived machine gun fire helping starving refugees; she has been shipwrecked; and a last-minute change of mind meant she and her charge of blind children missed an I.R.A. bomb at Queen’s Way underground station by 10 minutes.
It wasn’t life threatening but sailing to Europe from Perth on the last of the Russian cargo ships with only borscht and propaganda movies to sustain her should count as a feat of survival, especially since she was 20, alone and all but broke. She spent her 21st birthday picking grapes in the south of France, surviving the serious attentions of a determined but elderly suitor.

Marianne worked with the Salvation Army in Calcutta for two years, living on rice and dahl. There she was introduced to natural therapies. Since 1981 she has turned an interest in shiatsu and massage into formal qualifications that have led her to being accredited as a supervisor at the Melbourne College of Natural Medicine. She opened Circa Art and Antique Gallery in Elwood, which is now Turtle Café. Marianne isn’t afraid to try something new and isn’t accustomed to second-best.

But the reason she has done so much, gone so far and survived everything is to live her dream. How she found the place by the beach at Johanna to create a healing space for the sick and their carers is a story Marianne has to tell you. A 15-minute massage will barely get you started on the incredible journey she will take you through.

Massage and sports therapy

Stand in line behind David Bowie, KISS, Heather Locklear, Bon Jovi and Hootie & the Blowfish if you plan to be one of Jeanine’s regular clients. Born and bred in Apollo Bay, Jeanine McKenzie is a woman of the world. She has 30,000 sea miles behind her, including two Atlantic crossings. Splitting her time between sea and snow, Jeanine has practices in Apollo Bay, at Zermatt in Switzerland and in Orange County, California.

She gets her spirit of adventure from her mother Olive and her energy from her father Alistair. He could tickle a trout and spin a yarn with legendary eloquence; Olive was one of the first skiers in this country, back in 1939 when there were mountains and snow and little else. 40 years on, in 1979, Jeanine left the Bay for an adventure of her own, not knowing that she wouldn’t be back for 25 years, save for some short spells. She ran a business maintaining yachts in Orange County and went skiing in Colorado. Jeanine met her boat-builder husband Phil at Newport, Rhode Island, where Australia II won the America’s Cup in 1983. They continued to work in the U.S.A. and travel the world until Phil decided America was not the place to raise their daughter Amber.

Jeanine wanted to conceive Amber in the high mountains, so she could be close to the spirits of her parents, but as it turned out Amber was conceived in Italy, spent the pre-natal months in Switzerland and was born in California. Amber is a citizen of the world, clocking up sea miles and flight hours every year.

Like her parents, Jeanine can turn her hand to most things. Identifying a natural talent, respected massage therapist Cynthia Ribeiro persuaded Jeanine to enroll for a two-year course in massage in 1987, specializing in sports stresses, given her sporting interests. She still surfs, swims, skis, runs, rides, hikes and dives. Since graduating, Jeanine has developed a client register of 150 in America and more in Switzerland. You may not be one of her celebrity clients, but in Jeanine’s hands you always get the royal treatment.