Lz Dunn
DR:
Were you living in Kyneton before you moved to Castlemaine?
LD: Yeah. For about a year, in a house of my partner's friend who is also an Osteo – not even a year actually. They were going travelling so they offered for us to come and look after the clinic and rent their house. Elan was only little then. We were looking at the photos of when he came here … [to Elan] oh you were tiny actually!
DR: How old were you then?
Elan: Two.
LD: I don't think you remember Kyneton really.
Elan: I don’t remember it one bit.
LD: You don’t remember it, but we remember. It just felt really good for you to be outside and in the country and not in the North Melbourne apartment up six flights of stairs.
Here it's in and out all the time instead of being inside or outside. You know that thing when you live somewhere with a backyard and you’re just in out, in out, in out? Whereas in North Melbourne, you had to get all ready and go out. There was a nice little courtyard area in the apartments, but it felt like everyone could see down on you – so not very private.
Here, we walk to school close by. If you're walking fast, it's 5 minutes. If you're taking your time, it's like anything up to an hour depending on how many places you stop to play at. Because we've got friends along on the way, don't we Elan?
DR: Did you know people from the LGBTQIA+ community here before you moved here?
LD: No. Well, maybe a few. There were quite a bunch of people, I guess who moved at a similar time to us. We knew Casey Rice, but we didn’t know her well.
I worked with her on a dance project. But it's a bit directionless at the moment. It was just one of those things that started before COVID and then COVID happened and every development's been thwarted. And then I was pregnant, and then had a baby…
And Jasper Peach is living with their family around the corner here. And they came with two big things of curry as a welcome to the neighborhood. We didn’t know them. They just turned up. It was pretty nice, it was like, oh that's very … kind!
DR: That's something that a lot of people have mentioned about this area – the generosity people have with food and produce.
LD: Yeah, I think it's a bit of an economy here. And when we moved, we had this great real estate agent. We were like, oh she's so nice to us – because we were not good on paper. But I felt like this really great real estate agent was advocating for us unexpectedly. Anyway, after the sale went through, she said, I just wanted to let you know I'm actually also in a female couple, and we have kids here, and we brought them up here, and they're teenagers. And it’s a great place for raising a family.
LD: She said she didn't want to bring it up initially, so I feel like she really did help us. It does feels like a bit of a utopia sometimes. I mean, of course it’s not a utopia, but there are moments. I grew up in regional Queensland and it had a very different energy and culture. In a lot of ways Castlemaine is about as queer friendly as a country town gets, really. But that’s not everyone’s experience. Those have been our encounters, but I know that may not be other people’s. I appreciate that, especially for some trans non-binary presenting people, it definitely can be challenging.
DR: Yeah, people say it’s North Northcote don’t they?
LD: Yeah, I get that too. But the thing about country towns is that everything's really close together, and you do stuff together. Definitely our relationships with neighbours are way more communal than in Melbourne. Because it is a small community. We will go and see Ron – he’s 96 – next door. We’ll pop in there today and have a chat. We just know everybody, and that's I guess a bit of who we are, we are up for a pop in.
DR: Tell me about the playgroup that you organised.
LD: I started doing a bush playgroup informally, which of course just ended up being … queers with kids, friends, people I knew. And then there was an advertised position for a Rainbow Families Playgroup Coordinator, and I applied and got the job.
DR: That’s fantastic.
LD: It's really interesting how you deal with questions about inclusion. There are people who might be interested in coming along that don't identify, or maybe people who have been in queer relationships or been part of a community, and then enter into a more heteronormative situation but are still connected to the community. Those conversations about who comes – and how you hold space for a particular community. It's really important to have spaces where you can just relax around certain things. Not have to explain everything, especially language and non-binary stuff. People who are in same-sex relationships or in a queer community are generally supportive and understand pronouns and that sort of thing. It’s useful to hold a defined space for people to come into because there’s lots of other playgroups that people could go to otherwise.
DR: Can you talk a little bit more about the use of language?
LD: Well, there are a few things, I suppose. Lots of people are aware of the use of they/them pronouns for people who are non-binary, particularly people in queer communities. Not having to be in a space where there might be people who you have to explain that to is relaxing, and for your children too. People who value what you’re trying to do and support that through their use of language without it being a question. And then there’s the stuff around donors. People sometimes feel entitled to ask a lot of questions because they’re curious or whatever. Mostly I’m fine talking about that stuff with people, but lots of people don’t want to. The conversations you have with other queer families about your process are very different. It’s valuable to have spaces to talk about donor relationships because they’re different for different people depending on how you’ve conceived.
DR: How many people are in the group?
LD: There’s maybe between 4 and 6 families that come regularly on Fridays, and then we try to do once a month on Saturdays so that other families who can't get there on Fridays can join. And people who’ve got older kids who are at school and stuff. We had maybe 9 families the first one, and then seven the next week. Quite a few. And that was nice. There were people who came to the Saturday one that I hadn't met before. Lots of the Friday people know each other already because that happens when you have queer people with kids the same age, they find each other.
DR: Someone else mentioned that to me. How does that happen?
LD: Well … how do we? One of our really good friends we met through school, and we had connections through a mutual friend. We meet people through kids’ stuff, we met people at the circus class when we first arrived.
DR: What about your work? Can you tell me a bit about what you do?
LD: That’s the question of the decade. When I was living in Melbourne, I was making lots of art and I was working with Aphids then as a performer and co-creator.
Elan: Can we go for a bike ride into the town?
LD: Not right now darling. Soon Bebe and Sylvie will be coming so we could go another day during the week – tomorrow?
So, I was doing that and then we moved to Kyneton and I was trying to work it out. Elan was little then and I've always been home-parenting. So, that was a choice about being at home as much as possible. I feel like I've been in this long slow transition into being in the country, and also there was a lockdown and getting pregnant and having a baby in there so … I still like making work.
DR: Outside of the playgroup, do you go to any dedicated queer events in town and stuff?
LD: Sometimes, family friendly ones for sure, like Pride. And there are the Yellow Brick Road things but they're more of an adult thing. We try to. Have you heard of the Falcons football club – they’re a club for women and gender diverse players?
DR: Yes, are you part of that?
LD: Yeah. So, they have an Auskick team there for the kids. It’s a centralised program run through the AFL but each club can facilitate its own thing. They’ve had one of those this year. I volunteered a lot to help lead activities with the kids and it was so fun for me. Next year I’m going to co-run it with another parent. I’m hoping to do an art project with the club next year too – a choreographic game with the kids and seniors playing together.
DR: That sounds brilliant.
LD: Yeah, that would be really fun for me actually. Hopefully it will happen next year. And I've been doing a little bit of solo work with Casey. And actually just yesterday, I went to the first dance workshop that this person in town is running from her studio. Julia was there – she's a dancer who’s in her 80s now and has, over the last 2 years, had big changes with her cognition. She’s an amazing performer, and Feldenkrais practitioner. She worked at VCA for a really long time with students, particularly around Feldenkrais. Just an amazing wealth of information and experience, and it was beautiful to see her in this space of being in her body again. Just to see what it's like if you're somebody who's lived your life in such an embodied way in this dance practice. She is so lucid in that space compared to other places … if you encountered her there, you would just have no idea that she had this other process going on. Because she's so articulate, and so fully present – that's her world.
DR: Did you train at VCA?
LD: No, I did country town ballet. I haven't done institutional dance training.
DR: How did you get into performance?
LD: I used to do drawing and painting and stuff and then I moved to Cairns. I'd finished a DipEd in Brisbane and that was around the time of coming out. I didn’t enjoy my early 20s. Moving to Cairns, was a massive thing for me in terms of coming out and having space. Being in a place that was small but dynamic and a different kind of place culturally.
I was in Cairns for 3 years from 2007 and then in 2010 I moved to Melbourne. I started making work there with my partner who was an artist. I’d done a Post Grad DipEd in Visual Arts. When I was in Cairns we started an artist-run studio gallery thing. I didn't know what I was doing, which is the great thing about Cairns, you could just activate stuff. And there was a bit of a lull when I arrived, there was just a bit of a gap, I think. By the time I left, there were four other artist-run studios doing stuff. So it really started some momentum. I started making video work up there and doing a bit of performing for video. And then I came down to Melbourne because Jeff Khan came to Cairns scouting for regional Australian artists to be in Next Wave. So, I used that as an opportunity to move to Melbourne.
I hadn't been there long, when I met Lara and Willoh (from Aphids) through Next Wave, and bit by bit … I lent them a video camera for a work they were making, and then kind of got taken in, and that was it really. Then I started doing dance, I was going to dance workshops and stuff in Melbourne. One of the first things I did was a Brooke Stamp workshop – an authentic movement workshop. And that was really great. And then I started doing some stuff with Shian, Elan’s donor, who’s a dancer.
DR: Can you describe your relationship to the LGBTQIA+ community here?
LD: My experience has been really positive. I feel like it’s a community that in many ways prides itself on being progressive and open minded and politically engaged. I’m sure we live in a bit of a bubble. For us, it’s been very positive, in terms of bringing up kids and wanting to give them a certain experience of growing up which is being outdoors and having neighbours that can come and go, and being really embedded in the community. We feel really welcome. In the peak summer when it’s so dry, it’s like, What are we doing here so far from the ocean? But I don’t know where else we’d go and get this sort of community. Obviously for us, we still have really special people in Melbourne. And for my art work, it feels important to still be able to connect with Melbourne.
I feel really lucky to be able to have this place and to have these little people, and for them to grow up in the country with other rainbow families around.
What do you think about growing up here as part of a rainbow family Elan?
Elan: I like the slide
LD: We have a playground just around the corner. And a council has just re-invested in it, because in this area there’s heaps of families like ours that have moved here recently.
DR: Do you mean rainbow families?
LD: Not rainbow, just young families. But there's actually two double mum families around the corner.
DR: How do you describe your family?
LD: I guess I still use ‘rainbow family’.
LD: Yeah. For about a year, in a house of my partner's friend who is also an Osteo – not even a year actually. They were going travelling so they offered for us to come and look after the clinic and rent their house. Elan was only little then. We were looking at the photos of when he came here … [to Elan] oh you were tiny actually!
DR: How old were you then?
Elan: Two.
LD: I don't think you remember Kyneton really.
Elan: I don’t remember it one bit.
LD: You don’t remember it, but we remember. It just felt really good for you to be outside and in the country and not in the North Melbourne apartment up six flights of stairs.
Here it's in and out all the time instead of being inside or outside. You know that thing when you live somewhere with a backyard and you’re just in out, in out, in out? Whereas in North Melbourne, you had to get all ready and go out. There was a nice little courtyard area in the apartments, but it felt like everyone could see down on you – so not very private.
Here, we walk to school close by. If you're walking fast, it's 5 minutes. If you're taking your time, it's like anything up to an hour depending on how many places you stop to play at. Because we've got friends along on the way, don't we Elan?
DR: Did you know people from the LGBTQIA+ community here before you moved here?
LD: No. Well, maybe a few. There were quite a bunch of people, I guess who moved at a similar time to us. We knew Casey Rice, but we didn’t know her well.
I worked with her on a dance project. But it's a bit directionless at the moment. It was just one of those things that started before COVID and then COVID happened and every development's been thwarted. And then I was pregnant, and then had a baby…
And Jasper Peach is living with their family around the corner here. And they came with two big things of curry as a welcome to the neighborhood. We didn’t know them. They just turned up. It was pretty nice, it was like, oh that's very … kind!
DR: That's something that a lot of people have mentioned about this area – the generosity people have with food and produce.
LD: Yeah, I think it's a bit of an economy here. And when we moved, we had this great real estate agent. We were like, oh she's so nice to us – because we were not good on paper. But I felt like this really great real estate agent was advocating for us unexpectedly. Anyway, after the sale went through, she said, I just wanted to let you know I'm actually also in a female couple, and we have kids here, and we brought them up here, and they're teenagers. And it’s a great place for raising a family.
LD: She said she didn't want to bring it up initially, so I feel like she really did help us. It does feels like a bit of a utopia sometimes. I mean, of course it’s not a utopia, but there are moments. I grew up in regional Queensland and it had a very different energy and culture. In a lot of ways Castlemaine is about as queer friendly as a country town gets, really. But that’s not everyone’s experience. Those have been our encounters, but I know that may not be other people’s. I appreciate that, especially for some trans non-binary presenting people, it definitely can be challenging.
DR: Yeah, people say it’s North Northcote don’t they?
LD: Yeah, I get that too. But the thing about country towns is that everything's really close together, and you do stuff together. Definitely our relationships with neighbours are way more communal than in Melbourne. Because it is a small community. We will go and see Ron – he’s 96 – next door. We’ll pop in there today and have a chat. We just know everybody, and that's I guess a bit of who we are, we are up for a pop in.
DR: Tell me about the playgroup that you organised.
LD: I started doing a bush playgroup informally, which of course just ended up being … queers with kids, friends, people I knew. And then there was an advertised position for a Rainbow Families Playgroup Coordinator, and I applied and got the job.
DR: That’s fantastic.
LD: It's really interesting how you deal with questions about inclusion. There are people who might be interested in coming along that don't identify, or maybe people who have been in queer relationships or been part of a community, and then enter into a more heteronormative situation but are still connected to the community. Those conversations about who comes – and how you hold space for a particular community. It's really important to have spaces where you can just relax around certain things. Not have to explain everything, especially language and non-binary stuff. People who are in same-sex relationships or in a queer community are generally supportive and understand pronouns and that sort of thing. It’s useful to hold a defined space for people to come into because there’s lots of other playgroups that people could go to otherwise.
DR: Can you talk a little bit more about the use of language?
LD: Well, there are a few things, I suppose. Lots of people are aware of the use of they/them pronouns for people who are non-binary, particularly people in queer communities. Not having to be in a space where there might be people who you have to explain that to is relaxing, and for your children too. People who value what you’re trying to do and support that through their use of language without it being a question. And then there’s the stuff around donors. People sometimes feel entitled to ask a lot of questions because they’re curious or whatever. Mostly I’m fine talking about that stuff with people, but lots of people don’t want to. The conversations you have with other queer families about your process are very different. It’s valuable to have spaces to talk about donor relationships because they’re different for different people depending on how you’ve conceived.
DR: How many people are in the group?
LD: There’s maybe between 4 and 6 families that come regularly on Fridays, and then we try to do once a month on Saturdays so that other families who can't get there on Fridays can join. And people who’ve got older kids who are at school and stuff. We had maybe 9 families the first one, and then seven the next week. Quite a few. And that was nice. There were people who came to the Saturday one that I hadn't met before. Lots of the Friday people know each other already because that happens when you have queer people with kids the same age, they find each other.
DR: Someone else mentioned that to me. How does that happen?
LD: Well … how do we? One of our really good friends we met through school, and we had connections through a mutual friend. We meet people through kids’ stuff, we met people at the circus class when we first arrived.
DR: What about your work? Can you tell me a bit about what you do?
LD: That’s the question of the decade. When I was living in Melbourne, I was making lots of art and I was working with Aphids then as a performer and co-creator.
Elan: Can we go for a bike ride into the town?
LD: Not right now darling. Soon Bebe and Sylvie will be coming so we could go another day during the week – tomorrow?
So, I was doing that and then we moved to Kyneton and I was trying to work it out. Elan was little then and I've always been home-parenting. So, that was a choice about being at home as much as possible. I feel like I've been in this long slow transition into being in the country, and also there was a lockdown and getting pregnant and having a baby in there so … I still like making work.
DR: Outside of the playgroup, do you go to any dedicated queer events in town and stuff?
LD: Sometimes, family friendly ones for sure, like Pride. And there are the Yellow Brick Road things but they're more of an adult thing. We try to. Have you heard of the Falcons football club – they’re a club for women and gender diverse players?
DR: Yes, are you part of that?
LD: Yeah. So, they have an Auskick team there for the kids. It’s a centralised program run through the AFL but each club can facilitate its own thing. They’ve had one of those this year. I volunteered a lot to help lead activities with the kids and it was so fun for me. Next year I’m going to co-run it with another parent. I’m hoping to do an art project with the club next year too – a choreographic game with the kids and seniors playing together.
DR: That sounds brilliant.
LD: Yeah, that would be really fun for me actually. Hopefully it will happen next year. And I've been doing a little bit of solo work with Casey. And actually just yesterday, I went to the first dance workshop that this person in town is running from her studio. Julia was there – she's a dancer who’s in her 80s now and has, over the last 2 years, had big changes with her cognition. She’s an amazing performer, and Feldenkrais practitioner. She worked at VCA for a really long time with students, particularly around Feldenkrais. Just an amazing wealth of information and experience, and it was beautiful to see her in this space of being in her body again. Just to see what it's like if you're somebody who's lived your life in such an embodied way in this dance practice. She is so lucid in that space compared to other places … if you encountered her there, you would just have no idea that she had this other process going on. Because she's so articulate, and so fully present – that's her world.
DR: Did you train at VCA?
LD: No, I did country town ballet. I haven't done institutional dance training.
DR: How did you get into performance?
LD: I used to do drawing and painting and stuff and then I moved to Cairns. I'd finished a DipEd in Brisbane and that was around the time of coming out. I didn’t enjoy my early 20s. Moving to Cairns, was a massive thing for me in terms of coming out and having space. Being in a place that was small but dynamic and a different kind of place culturally.
I was in Cairns for 3 years from 2007 and then in 2010 I moved to Melbourne. I started making work there with my partner who was an artist. I’d done a Post Grad DipEd in Visual Arts. When I was in Cairns we started an artist-run studio gallery thing. I didn't know what I was doing, which is the great thing about Cairns, you could just activate stuff. And there was a bit of a lull when I arrived, there was just a bit of a gap, I think. By the time I left, there were four other artist-run studios doing stuff. So it really started some momentum. I started making video work up there and doing a bit of performing for video. And then I came down to Melbourne because Jeff Khan came to Cairns scouting for regional Australian artists to be in Next Wave. So, I used that as an opportunity to move to Melbourne.
I hadn't been there long, when I met Lara and Willoh (from Aphids) through Next Wave, and bit by bit … I lent them a video camera for a work they were making, and then kind of got taken in, and that was it really. Then I started doing dance, I was going to dance workshops and stuff in Melbourne. One of the first things I did was a Brooke Stamp workshop – an authentic movement workshop. And that was really great. And then I started doing some stuff with Shian, Elan’s donor, who’s a dancer.
DR: Can you describe your relationship to the LGBTQIA+ community here?
LD: My experience has been really positive. I feel like it’s a community that in many ways prides itself on being progressive and open minded and politically engaged. I’m sure we live in a bit of a bubble. For us, it’s been very positive, in terms of bringing up kids and wanting to give them a certain experience of growing up which is being outdoors and having neighbours that can come and go, and being really embedded in the community. We feel really welcome. In the peak summer when it’s so dry, it’s like, What are we doing here so far from the ocean? But I don’t know where else we’d go and get this sort of community. Obviously for us, we still have really special people in Melbourne. And for my art work, it feels important to still be able to connect with Melbourne.
I feel really lucky to be able to have this place and to have these little people, and for them to grow up in the country with other rainbow families around.
What do you think about growing up here as part of a rainbow family Elan?
Elan: I like the slide
LD: We have a playground just around the corner. And a council has just re-invested in it, because in this area there’s heaps of families like ours that have moved here recently.
DR: Do you mean rainbow families?
LD: Not rainbow, just young families. But there's actually two double mum families around the corner.
DR: How do you describe your family?
LD: I guess I still use ‘rainbow family’.