Darryl
Darryl, 51, sports a pair of flamboyant specs uncannily similar to those of Dame Edna Everage, whose voice and famous line ‘hello possums’ he can mimic to a tee. Darryl says he admires Dame Edna’s creator, Barry Humphries, for his generosity and charity work. Like his idol, Darryl is also a generous person, wanting to help others whenever he can.
This generosity is particularly inspiring given the challenges Darryl’s faced in his own life. During his birth the doctor used forceps incorrectly, and as result Daryl was born with brain damage, which led to epilepsy. ‘It was their fault. They damaged my brain bad’, he says.
Darryl’s mother was told she would not be able to care for him, and his father had left, so Darryl was put into a home when he was a baby. Throughout his childhood and adolescence he lived in different boys’ homes, followed by a stint on the streets, before eventually moving in with his mother.
Despite his difficult upbringing, Darryl has been happily married for 25 years and has a real passion for life, in particular, for gardening. His green thumb was one of the reasons he joined the Brotherhood’s Coolibah Centre six years ago. ‘I just wanted to sit with people, talk to people, help them out with the garden – and I wanted to do a gardening group.’
Darryl worked with other Coolibah members and Brotherhood staff to convert the abandoned basketball court on the roof of the Brotherhood’s head office into a rooftop garden, abundant with native plants and flowers, for all to enjoy. ‘I planted a gum tree,’ Darryl says proudly, ‘it looks really nice up there.’
Darryl’s latest horticultural endeavour is a weekly gardening workshop run at the Coolibah Centre by CERES (the Centre for Education and Research in Environmental Strategies). He was one of the first to sign up for the program. ‘It’s just so good, you can eat what you can grow; you can smell it and eat it and use it.’
As part of the CERES Well for Life program, Coolibah members have lessons with a trained horticulturist on growing their own vegetables and herbs, as well as health and nutrition sessions, and cooking classes about using home-grown ingredients from their gardens.
Darryl says he is looking forward to eating the beetroot and purple broccoli he planted. ‘Anything with gardening, I go, “yeah bring it on!”’ he exclaims.