Freemans grow food, connect and conserve

GILBERT Freeman and Dr Meredith Freeman bought a fresh, locally grown, native and organic food movement to South Gippsland and the Bass Coast well before it was considered a trend.
Their tireless and innovative work with food for over 25 years has earned the couple an OAM for service to conservation and the environment.
“It is good to know that this work is being recognised as significant,”
Meredith said.
“We’re very privileged to have been able to live a life that has allowed us to be able to follow our noses and think of projects and then go ahead and work on them. It’s been a privilege and doing it together and with a lot of lovely friends and the communities around us.”
Moving to Kardella in the 90s after raising three sons and in Melbourne and working primarily in education, and with an interest in permaculture, the couple came to the area to retire.
“I think all our lives we’ve had an interest in conservation an in the environment and then when we came down here 25 years ago ostensibly to retire, I suppose, which is a bit funny really,” said Meredith.
The couple found themselves with the space to experiment with growing different varieties of plants on what was an old dairy farm. This opportunity fuelled their interest, and they became part of the Southern Bushfood Association.
“We became involved in growing bush food here, growing Australian native food plants. That came before the organic fruit and vegetable project, that was the first thing”.
The couple subsequently set up a local bush food association, called the Prom Country Bushfoods Association.
“It brought together a number of people who were in interested in Australian native food plants and incorporating them into their farm management,” Meredith said.
Gil and Meredith then started Grow Lightly Connect, which is now incorporated, but started out as a simple project within their community. 
“It was just a loose arrangement with friends to collect locally grown, organically grown fruit and vegetables and distribute it to local people, because it was very hard back then, even twenty-five years ago, for people in South Gippsland to get food that was grown in South Gippsland. It all went back to Melbourne,” said Meredith.

They started packing bags with food in a friends shed and as it outgrew the space they moved to a shed in Coal Creek and then into the building, where Grow Lightly Connect now operates still within Coal Creek.
“Grow Lightly become bigger because it had a really popular remit which was about fresh food grown locally. Clean, fresh, local was our mantra and we extended into Bass Coast. We took the message down to Phillip Island and the Waterline and Wonthaggi and it became quite a big group with 40 members or so.”
Gil and Meredith’s work helped to establish the Australian native food industry locally and being a relatively new concept, it became established as part of the food culture in Victoria.
Many successful careers and ways of life were inspired and developed because of the couples work and this is something they are both proud of.
“There are still people in South Gippsland who work in the Australian Native Food area,” Meredith said.
“We didn’t do it, but we were part of it.”
Meredith has also a recently published book, A Garden Full of Useful Plants, with Gil and their granddaughter doing the illustrations. 
“It’s much more that a gardening book, it is reflections on the world, how it began and the Indigenous people,” Gil said.
The couple’s newest interest is looking back to the First Peoples way of living to inform how we can thrive sustainably in the future.
“If you think of a theme for our lives, it is about conservation, and energy, and efficiency, and our attempts to essentially deal with the climate emergency, because that’s hanging over us all and coming at us like a freight train, and we need to, everything we do, make efficiencies if we can, live simply.”