Hand-painted fabric souvenirs

For two years Mary’s daughter-in-law Pam had pushed her to operate a market stall. She kept saying, “You’ve got the talent, use it.” Well, not just the talent, but the qualifications too. Mary completed a degree in Fine Art in the early ‘80s when the family was living in Mt Gambier. Prior to that they lived in the shadows of The Grampians at Horsham, where Lew had a successful business and Mary was doing theatre and media work. Mary was always interested in art, but formal studies led to a deeper interest in pottery. She designed and made Aussie bush icons that became a successful commercial enterprise. Myer stores liked her range of swaggies, wool bales and dunnies.

Pottery gave way to a line of natural fibre bags with hand-painted Australiana designs when Lew and Mary moved to Two Rocks in Western Australia, a crayfishing village similar to Apollo Bay. Mary sold them through the Yanchep National Park Gallery nearby. After eight years of crossing the Nullarbor twice a year to visit grand-kids on school holidays, Lew and Mary came back to Victoria. Remembering family holidays at Wye River, they looked along the Great Ocean Road and settled on Apollo Bay. They had always liked the views but, having lived here, what they most like about being here is “the people, purely the people”, says Mary.

Ever ready to innovate, Mary is developing a new range of painted bags for the market. Environmental shopping bags, plastic bag holders, book bags, that sort of thing. No two bags will be the same; each one will be individually crafted and painted. Already a big seller is the washable tailored dog coat, which some people with scratch-resistant arms also buy for their cats. Mary says that people have said that she sells her products too cheaply, but she says if she’s happy with the price she’s set, then that’s great, everybody’s happy. If you see Mary at her machine in her house in the town she loves, you can see why it doesn’t take much more to complete her happiness. The market money pays for their travels but she will never be long gone from the Bay.

Pottery

The very first Apollo Bay Community Market was held on the front lawn of the house Phil and his wife Margaret were renting in town at the time. It’s been a long road for both since then, but now Phil and the market are fixtures of life in the Bay.

When Phil and Marg came back to Melbourne in the mid-70s after a year of travelling around Australia, they knew they could never again live in the city. Struck by memories of the natural beauty of the Otways and the Bay, the Lawsons came to stay, first at Wild Dog, later at Paradise and finally at Marengo, with a house and studio set in the middle of 30 acres of forest.

Phil came to Apollo Bay by choice but pottery came to Phil by accident. He remembers experimenting with clay up at the school with another market regular, John Smith, when he felt inspired to become a potter. He liked its ancient traditions and the limitless possibilities of shapes, textures and glazes. He liked the way a potter’s life fitted with his environmental values. He has a bedrock belief in the integrity of his profession and the way working with fired clay can hold a lifetime of interest for him.

Phil began with earthenware and terracotta, creating his own “recipes” for glazes until he found his signature, a blue-black stoneware glaze that is now collectable. He credits the community market with being instrumental in answering the challenge of making a living out of pottery.

Natural handmade soaps

Vega moved to Apollo Bay as a child and went to school here, but she’s not yet a local. Her husband is, and her three children are, because they were born here, but Vega has some time to go before qualifying, she laughs. If being a regular operator at the community market counts for anything, Vega would be a local by now. She’s been selling her soaps there since 2001, when her family returned to the Bay after a spell working in Western Australia.

She collected soaps as a child and has always used natural soaps herself, so when she was looking for a home-based business, she got a few books and started experimenting. That was in Geraldton, where her husband had gone to work and was often away, leaving Vega at home with a young baby. She didn’t want to put her daughter in childcare, so she worked from home and first sold soap at Dongara Market in W.A., at the Blessing of the Fleet.

She has 17 varieties in her range and is still adding to that as well as expanding into shampoos. The best-seller is rose and geranium but it was her little girl who came up with another popular line, lavender and orange. Vega began using a base of French clays but has changed to an organic Australian clay to support local products, provided they are all-natural.

With three young children, it’s hard to see where Vega finds the time for her small enterprise. “It’s a midnight job,“ she says. One day each week she makes the soaps, but after that she cuts, packages and labels them for the market when the kids are asleep. Vega would like to take the business to the next level beyond a hobby. Maybe that daughter of hers could help make it a business. She’s got the instincts for it.