Candida Baker
When I was a young journalist working in Sydney in the ‘80s and ‘90s, it was hard to miss Richard Jones. It seemed as if he was everywhere, as an animal activist; owner of a successful mail-order company; the publisher of Simply Living magazine and as a politician with the Democrats, and later as an Independent.
Richard’s memoir, Merging with Nature charts the extraordinary trajectory of a rebellious young English schoolboy who threw himself headlong into a life that’s included numerous changes of direction.
Early on, he discovered he had a gift for writing advertising copy and turned his talent to good use, migrating as a ‘Ten Pound Pom’ to Sydney in 1962 to take up a position in an advertising company.
In his memoir, it becomes obvious that Richard’s ability to think up money-making schemes became the foundation for his ability to fundraise for his lifelong passion for animal activism, initially sparked by buying, and freeing, caged birds from Sydney’s Paddy’s Markets. (It was around then that peacocks first entered his life, when he went to Balgowlah to buy a desk, and absentmindedly came home with a mating pair. Many years later Shiva the peacock became a resident at Richard’s Possum Creek property, and it’s Shiva’s tail feathers that adorn the cover of the book.)
As he plunged deeper into animal and environmental activism, joining the fight to stop the clubbing of baby seals, the fight to stop whaling, the saving of old growth forests and koala habitat, to name just a few, he also, to coin Timothy Leary’s phrase: ‘Turned on, tuned in, and dropped out’.
In the book he describes how his first acid trip changed forever his view of the natural world, writing: ‘It’s as though your nervous system has extended outside your body to encompass every living thing on the planet.’
This credo began – and continues – to define his life. Leaving Sydney in the early ‘90s for the then-barren acreage he’d bought at Possum Creek, he started, with his wife Jo Immig, to create the flora and fauna paradise now known as ‘The Forest of Friends’. Reinventing himself as a ceramicist, he is still committed to saving the planet, with profits from his business going towards protecting rainforest.
Visit Richard and you’re quite likely to find the man, who once threw a bucket of calf blood over a Japanese whaling delegate, listening to the honeybees swarming in the wall cavities or talking to the paper wasps, or the resident python.
What shines through this inspirational, sometimes heart-breaking, often heart-warming book, is the optimism that Richard has brought to everything he’s done. The slice of heaven he’s created at Possum Creek is testament to the vision of a man who has truly merged with nature.
Merging with Nature by Richard Jones, is published by Richard Jones Publishing, and is available from: https://richardjonespublishing.com.
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