Page 25 - C.A.L.L. #45 - Summer 2019

'We are under challenge':

The Healesville community built on

survival

By Hannie Rayson
The Sydney Morning Herald
April 19, 2019

In 1974 Peter Cock drove up a mountain.
He was responding to a small
advertisement he’d seen in The
Age offering 245 hectares of land for sale

on Mt Toolebewong, 10km south of
Healesville.

As he drove, the dirt road curled up Moora Moora members, from left, William Cody,
through towering mountain ash and lush Peter Cock, Chelsea McNab, Pepa McOliver, Bob
Rich and Ari McOliver.
ferns, streaked by sunlight, then opened
out at the summit. Standing there, awed by For Sandra, it is the exquisite air of the

the majesty of the place, he was reminded mountain that fills her heart. And the
of the words of John Batman: ‘‘This is the dark, bountiful soil. ‘‘You can dig down deep
place for a village.’’ here,’’ she says. ‘‘Living on community

teaches you that.’’
Forty-five years later, Peter and his wife
Sandra are still living in that village. It’s In the beginning, when Peter was lecturing
called Moora Moora, a co-operative at Monash University, a pregnant Sandra
community of 50 adults and 20 children. was living up here alone on the mountain

with their two-year-old. Peter joined her
Peter tears up at the memory of that first on weekends.
day and the long journey they undertook to
secure the property. ‘‘I wanted to live in a ‘‘You were here all by yourself?’’ I am awed.
place where nature was powerful; not ‘‘Wasn’t I lucky!’’ says Sandra airily.
subservient to human activity.’’

They both had impeccable credentials as
At 73, Peter Cock is fit and charismatic. alternative-lifestyle pioneers. They lived at
‘‘Maybe I chose a place that reinforced my Kent State University in the 1960s. Peter

strengths and allowed me to avoid dealing was a conscientious objector during the
with my weaknesses. I am a big-picture Vietnam War. He is a sociologist, she is a
person. I don’t always attend to the psychologist. They experimented with a
details. I don’t really look below my knees.’’ few ways of communal living before Moora
He smiles, sheepishly. ‘‘I’m working on Moora.
that.’’