Our Humans

Daan Spijer

I started out as a foetus on a boat on the way to Israel in 1948, where I as born in July. Three years later I was again on a boat, this time to the Netherlands. Another four years and another boat — to Australia.

At university I changed to studying law after one year in science. This led me to practising law and to my involvement in the early days of the Fitzroy Community Legal Service.

From May 1976 I spent 3½ years travelling in Europe and working in England, the latter for 2½ years. There I studied various forms of therapy and on my return to Australia established a therapy practice. In July 1991 I went to work part-time for the Australian College of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine (ACNEM), where I worked for 16 years.

Since late 2008 I have been running a business and legal consultancy practice, working a great deal of that time for a small, specialist pharmaceutical company which manufactures nutritional injectables. I am now also developing a mediation practice.

In the early 1980s I was involved with the establishment of what has become one of the main massage therapists' organisations in Australia and I taught massage at the Council of Adult Education for 14 years.

I have a deep-seated concern that humans are forgetting their true role in a wider ecology. There is an evident split between our sense of who we are and how we belong in the wider reality around us. As a result of this concern, which I share with my wife Sally, we are working on establishing an enterprise the aim of which is to encourage and support businesses to find ways of having their waste be useful to other businesses. (See Bring It Around).

Writing and photography have been avenues of expression for me for decades, along with music. I have had some success, winning awards in all three areas.

I live with my wife, Sally, in Mt Eliza, on the Mornington Peninsula. I write when I can: short stories, plays, poems, children's stories and essays and I am working on several books (fiction and non-fiction).

I have had a passion for teaching since as far back as high school. I have taught music, astronomy, massage, meditation, relaxation and reading and I have tutored in English comprehension and expression and in mathematics.