Sunny Grame makes a callout for a new home for the men’s shed. Here’s her letter.
The Men’s Shed in Kyogle closed on March 24.
For many years it has been operating out of the Gugin Gudduba shed, lead by Phil Ribton-Turner among other men in the past, such as Dennis Murray and Allan Price.
The program would not have been able to operate without this space and a big thank you our supporters from the community and the local Aboriginal Land Council.
Although the men’s shed welcomes women to join, there is still the underlying need for a space for men to meet and connect with other men.
And even though there are several men’s groups such as lawn bowls and golf clubs, the skills that older retired men in this town have acquired over decades is more than just pushing a buggy and hitting a target. 
Some of these skills include the lifelong development of relationship building and keeping an eye on your mates and careers spent working with hands on the job.
It would be sad to see these skills not being passed onto others.
Now this chapter has closed off there is new opportunity to open another door in the near future if the Kyogle community works together.
Kyogle has a strong community focus and without the support of volunteers many of our services would not exist.
Men’s health needs to be highlighted as a cause for concern mainly because it is one of the most pressing and underfunded areas of health in this country and also because men are less likely to reach out and ask for help. 
Mental health and substance abuse has been identified as the third highest contributor to the total burden of disease for Australian men, accounting for 13% of the total.
Men are more likely to die by suicide than women and this is almost double the national road toll.
A silent epidemic that needs more community awareness is that one in six men experience loneliness having no friends or family. 
Although there are promising new ventures possible for an interim place to gather in the near future to restore and repair furniture and other projects there needs to be a longer term solution that has all hands on deck and support from out local industries such as the timber mills and engineering businesses, clubs such as the Lions and Rotary, bowling and golf and social services.
Surely we can get together and take on this challenge and secure funding that is out there. We just have to step forward and work together to ensure our community does not miss out.
In the past, Dennis, a master builder, drew up plans for a shed and investigated potential properties including railway land but unfortunately no land could be secured.
So come on Kyoglians let’s get behind building a bigger and better shed where our men can feel confident that we do indeed have their backs. 
There are many valuable projects needed to help reduce landfill and encourage people to develop skills to repair household furniture or address emergencies to provide people with cheap restored items to replace what they have lost or restore children’s bicycles and build toys that are not made out of plastic, and help support the local environment by providing the community with habitat boxes for local birds and animals, insects using traditional trades.
If anyone knows of a shed or a space that is not being utilised as often as it could be in town or if there is any crown or state land available for the potential use of a future enterprising men’s space let’s start the conversations and see where it lands.
Sunny Grame,
Kyogle