Living in Kangaroo Valley has many positives, including the opportunity to build friendships outside one’s own age group.
Academic and scientific studies have shown that cross-generational friendships can make us happier, more confident and even in some cases can beneficially lower blood pressure.
Dairy farmers Graeme and Lisa Cochrane, who grew up in Kangaroo Valley and Berry respectively, find it natural to have cross-generational friendships.
“For me, age is irrelevant – it’s more the connection you make,” Lisa Cochrane says. Her friend Kath, who’s nearer her mum’s age, is a close friend since they worked together years ago. They still have a weekly chat, by phone now Kath’s moved to Queensland. “It’s not a mum–daughter relationship, it’s a real friend thing. Age has never come into it,” Lisa adds.
“I can be friends with someone who’s 90 or nine, it’s just how you interact with that person.
“I know I kid myself I’m still young, hanging out with Toni [Champion] and […] then I think ‘hang on, are you?’” Lisa laughs about trying to keep up with the pace of fun.
An age-gap will feel different at different stages of life, as Graeme points out: “That age-gap, of when you’re 10 and someone’s 25, you have nothing to do with them. But then when you’re 30 and they’re 45 you’re probably mixing in the same circles, whether that be sporting circles, community things, you might be in the same field as them. I find that with farming,” he says.
“I remember the Smarts – Johnny Smart and also his father – we had a lot to do with them when I was growing up. We were almost neighbours and then with the Kangaroo Valley Rye Grass Seed Association,” says Graeme.
“I remember going off to hockey [as a kid in the back] with Johnny and Marion and talking farming things then. Now, spending time with them the age-gap doesn’t seem anything. And we’re friends with Abby and Bob and their kids too.” Abby Smart [Marion and John’s daughter] was still in a toddler seat on those trips to hockey.
In small rural communities it’s not uncommon to have friendships with multiple generations of the same family, something another Valley couple Jasmin and Jordy Mawson also enjoy.
A carpenter and a communications consultant (working remotely), the Mawsons grew up together on the Northern Beaches of Sydney in the mixed-ages community of a church congregation.
Was there benefit to growing up in a congregation? “Massive benefit,” says Jordy. “Relationally, being able to communicate with older people but also younger people.” Growing up in a community with structured mentoring and regular mixed-ages gatherings at each other’s homes helped prepare them for life here. It was different as well. Church was separate to other parts of life and on the Northern Beaches there are so many people even in one street that you might not know any of your neighbours, Jordy explains.
“[Our first address here], everyone on our street was 20 years older than us and we’re friends with all of them and still spend a lot of time with them,” he says.
“[In Sydney] you have to place yourself where that’s happening, it’s not just part of daily living,” Jasmin says.
“Also there’s an intersectionality with all of the community groups here, it’s not like the church is over here and the rest of life [is separate]. There’s more crossover of the different groups and activities.”
Jasmin gives the example of the Kangaroo Valley Football Club: “The pub’s our major sponsor, we use tables from the church, and the barbecue’s stored at the school.” She also points out that the school connects to so many different other Valley communities – unlike a school in a large town or city.
The tennis club and social competition is a similar context, which Lisa Cochrane had mentioned with fondness.
“There’s kids who’re eight or nine-year-olds, right up to 80-year-olds. And watching them interact is beautiful,” she’d said.
Between catch-ups with friends like Shane and Katy McEwen, Clare and Jeremy Chapman, Peter Wesley-Smith, and Sharon Haarsma and Ralph Barnes, their tradie friendships, and socialising with other school parents, the Mawsons figure probably 25 per cent of their social life is with people who are significantly older than them. They do have a core group of close friends their age too, some of whom moved with them from Sydney.
Because he offers apprenticeships and work experience through his Mawson Made business, Jordy also knows a lot of young people, including apprentice Lily Robinson. High schooler Riley Wright is an occasional fishing buddy. I recall Graeme Cochrane’s words about the years melting away when you share an interest.
“Most of the school parents are 10 years older than us,” Jasmine Mawson says. I think Mark [Stanford]’s 20 years older,” even though their kids are the same age.
“You get good diversity of life experience because of the age-gaps even in that context, which you wouldn’t expect.”
What do the Mawsons get out of their age-gap friendships generally?
“Wine!” Jordy says, and we all laugh (but I have to admit: good wine is a big plus of having older, generally more wine-knowledgeable friends).
“Keep that in,” Jordy says, “Shane’ll love that.”
Jasmin remembers her parents saying they felt 25 and thinking it rubbish but now, she says, “It does feel like that, like we’re all 25, all the same age. You realise there actually aren’t that many differences.”
She enjoys getting out of the “friendship bubbles” and “echo chambers” of spending time only with those one’s own age. In this, she’s not alone. Studies conducted in the UK and the US discuss this aspect of cross-generational friendships. Researchers also saw less of an urge to compete or compare our lives to our friends’ when they’re of a different age bracket so there’s less pressure to keep up, as well as the joy of varied experience.
“It’s super interesting being friends with people who grew up different times […] There’s a richness in that that’s maybe harder to get amongst people of your own age,” Jasmin says.
“There is so much to learn but when you’re in your 20s, you don’t [realise],” Jordy says. “As you get older, you’re more humble and you feel like you know less.”
He gives former neighbours Don Godden (who’d worked on the Smithsonian Museum’s weapons collection) and the late Ole Nielsen, a master woodworker, as examples of those he could learn from.
“Ole’s a nice person to mention,” Jasmin says with tenderness, “because probably the last year of his life he would come every day when Jordy was building our house. He’d sit on the verandah, have tea and Jatz and just watch Jordy build,” she says.
Jordy reflects on that, and how much he learned from Ole in their friendship. It meant so much to Nielsen, too, that when he saw his last days coming he told Jordy to pick his brains for everything he wanted to know about wood, and asked would he build him a coffin.
We sit a moment. Then Jordy finds another benefit of age-gap friendships: we don’t realise it but, over time, living with people who are older, and who die, it makes all the friendships we have mean even more.
When I asked the Cochranes what they thought moved a friendship from simply social to a close friendship, Graeme knew straight away: “They understand how weird you are.”
“I was going to say time, investing time,” said Lisa.
So, dear Valley Voice readers, consider this your sign to invest time in cross-generational friendships – nurturing those you have, or making some new ones.
Selena Hanet-Hutchins
