We are sitting in his sun-filled living-room, looking out across the Yarra Valley, framed by a large picture window. He points to a massive gum in the foreground. It was planted 45 years ago. ‘‘That gum was beaten up when young. The tops were eaten off. But look at it now. That tree has taught me how to stand tall.’’

At 73, Peter Cock is fit and charismatic. It’s hard to imagine him having to learn to stand tall.
‘‘Maybe I chose a place that reinforced my strengths and allowed me to avoid dealing with my weaknesses. I am a big-picture person. I don’t always attend to the details. I don’t really look below my knees.’’ He smiles, sheepishly. ‘‘I’m working on that.’’

For Sandra, it is the exquisite air of the mountain that fills her heart. And the dark, bountiful soil. ‘‘You can dig down deep here,’’ she says. ‘‘Living on community teaches you that.’’

In the beginning, when Peter was lecturing at Monash University, a pregnant Sandra was living up here alone on the mountain with their two-year-old. Peter joined her on weekends.

‘‘You were here all by yourself?’’ I am awed. ‘‘Wasn’t I lucky!’’ says Sandra airily.

They both had impeccable credentials as alternative-lifestyle pioneers. They lived at Kent State University in the 1960s. Peter was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. He is a sociologist, she is a psychologist. They experimented with a few ways of communal living before Moora Moora.

‘‘I visited other communities up north and they weren’t for me,’’ Peter tells me. ‘‘I didn’t want to be sitting on a veranda smoking dope in a benign climate.’’

Peter was never interested in dropping out. His focus was – and remains – to create a place of life-long learning. Living here keeps people active.

‘‘We are under challenge,’’ he says. ‘‘It’s no easy place. People can’t sit on their arses. Fire is ever-present in the summer.’’

But now it is autumn. The fire season is over for another year. The community breathes out and gives thanks. A brisk wind blows up from the valley and bustles through the gum trees.

‘‘The wind is a great source of energy,’’ Peter says. ‘‘A great cleanser. Even my anger can be blown away.’’

Moora Moora has a written manifesto built on the principles of conservation, sustainability, community and education. The language can feel a bit 1960s, lamenting the superficiality of human relationships in the suburbs. And the need to get away from the foul air and pollution of the city.

Some of it reminded me of the essays we had to write at high school in the '60s: ‘‘Competitive, violent and materialistic values permeate our society. Discuss.’’

I meet Bob Rich, a psychologist and author who lived on Moora Moora for almost 40 years. Originally from Hungary, Bob married his fabulously capable Dutch wife Yolanda and together they built their mud-brick house among a cluster of other houses on the mountain.

Now 76, Bob has reluctantly come down to the town, acquiescing to Yolanda’s plan for a new chapter in their lives.

When I meet them in their new abode in Healesville, I find two lively, defiant and slightly mischievous elders.

Bob and Yolanda joined the Moora Moora community in January 1976. Bob wanted to change the world. Yolanda wanted to build her own home.

‘‘This is why I came to Australia,’’ says Yolanda in her matter-of-fact Dutch way.

This is why I came to Australia.

Yolanda Rich, originally from The Netherlands

‘‘Yolanda is a practical person,’’ says Bob. ‘‘She’s not interested in philosophy.’’

‘‘I always thought, I am going to marry a guy who can do things. But I married Bob.’’

Bob grins cheerfully. ‘‘I was born with three left hands.’’

Bob says that his philosophy is all about creating ‘‘a survivable world – one worth surviving’’. His fervent belief is that mainstream society only changes when creative minorities on the margins come up with new solutions to the challenges of survival.

When I ask what attracted him to life on this ‘‘intentional community’’ he quotes an Egyptian architect, Hassan Fathy: ‘‘One man cannot build one house but 20 men can build 20 houses.’’

A year after they joined the community, Bob and Yolanda set about building their house. Despite being dubbed ‘‘the most impractical man on earth’’ by his brother, Bob taught himself all the necessary skills.

‘‘None of us had any money or contacts or expertise. We just applied ourselves to learning.’’ A decade later he published a book about how to do it, which became a bestseller: The Earth Garden Building Book.

‘‘Bob dug his house-site by hand, because he didn’t want to use fossil fuels,’’ one member of the co-op recounts, with a slightly bemused smile.

‘‘I’m not the kind of leader who persuades people,’’ Bob tells me. ‘‘I’m the kind of leader who says, ‘I’m going this way. Copy me, if you want’.’’

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Yolanda recounts an incident when one of her sheep got stuck in a cattle ramp and had to be shot. Not wanting to waste it, she butchered it with her son’s pen knife. She packed the meat up to share.

‘‘You’d be surprised how many people in this community suddenly declared themselves to be vegetarian,’’ she chortles.

The co-op requires every member to contribute 60 hours of physical work per year. They also attend monthly meetings about land management, maintenance and the myriad challenges facing a community committed to living co-operatively.

For Yolanda, the meetings were a chore. For others, they are the engine room of the community, even when there is conflict. ‘‘If you want a vibrant community, you’ve got to vibrate,’’ says Bob.

If you want a vibrant community, you’ve got to vibrate.

Bob Rich, former Moora Moora resident

Chelsea McNab, 42, is one of the new generation who are leading the community into the future. She is a fit, clear-eyed woman who radiates strength and goodwill. She came to Moora Moora as a child to play with school friends. She always knew she wanted to live on community. Despite travelling and living in many places around the world, she says that Moora Moora feels like home.

She has three children, Ari, 15, Pepa, 13, and Tiga, eight. They are free to roam the leafy bushland that surrounds the community, including a garden planted by Baron Sir Ferdinand von Mueller, one of the early directors of Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens.

The children have plenty of mates to hang out with after school. It’s a fabulous place for kids to grow and learn. The first afternoon we meet, a gang of kids pour through the airy hexagonal house that Chelsea built with her partner, Ollie. She despatches two of the girls to feed the goats. They whinge, like any kids. But they do it.

Chelsea acknowledges that co-parenting poses its own challenges. Other parents in the community have different values: different views about discipline or what’s acceptable for children to watch on TV. On one occasion, a parent asked Chelsea to make her own daughter’s birthday party sugar-free. She laughs good-naturedly. ‘‘That wasn’t going to happen.’’

Darkness embraces the mountain, and the community settles in for the night. I drive back down that winding road, through the ghostly and silent forest.

I leave behind me a robust, idealistic and practical group of people who are powered by optimism, curiosity and commitment to the planet.

And somehow, the world tonight seems like a slightly better place.