ALAN Davis was born in Melbourne where he lived for most of his life.
In 2005 he moved to Beechworth for a couple of years before returning to Melbourne to care for his aged parents. Alan shifted to Stanley in 2020 between Covid lockdowns.
Why do you like living in Stanley?
I love living in Stanley as it’s quiet and there are many interesting and helpful people living here. I also have a passion for adventure activities such as mountain running and mountain biking. The Stanley area and surrounds provides an enormous amount of quiet roads and trails for me to enjoy these activities. The ski fields are not too far away as I am a keen cross-country skier too.
What do you do workwise?
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With a major career change in 1992, I worked as an electronics technician at Northern Melbourne Institute of TAFE (NMIT) and now known as Melbourne Polytechnic. In 1998 the electronics department closed, and I moved to computer services. I left the college a year later to undertake contract information technology (IT) work. I also started a business drawing maps and still do some school maps and as well as orienteering ones.
What brought you to your role/career?
When I was younger my father gave me a book on electronics, and I studied that as a hobby producing many electronic projects. I loved it so much that I studied electronics for a couple of years, landing a job at the college later.
What did you love about your work at NMIT?
I had a great passion building electronic projects and helping students solve issues with their projects.
What do you do in the community?
I am very active in the community having taken up the role as editor/publisher of the Stanley Nine Miles News. As a volunteer I am currently training to work at the Stanley community run Post Office too.
I enjoy exhibitions set up by the Stanley Athenaeum with a new one running at the Stanley Post Office called “Apple Days of Stanley”.
What are you doing to help save the planet?
Moving to Stanley gave me a chance to experiment with living off-grid. In 2021 I bought some solar panels, two large capacity AGM batteries, a controller and 12V to 240V inverter. After setting a place for the solar panels and some testing, I finally went live with the system on September 11 three years ago, and my system is still running, providing power to a small fridge as well as lights for the night time. The system also has capacity to charge phone, laptop and a 24 Ah power pack for use when the system does not get a good charge. Advantages of being off-grid are no electricity bills. Also if the grid goes down (often does), I am not affected and my system still supplies energy to run everything and if the grid is down, no need to use candles.
If the person you would most like to meet came to Indigo Shire (past or present), or was already here, who would that be, what would you show them, and why?
I have been visiting the Stanley area since the late 70s and 80s bringing friends to the area to introduce them to the many trails and tracks for running and mountain biking. They still love coming here for the experiences.
What book are you reading?
I like reading about history and explorers. I just started reading “Broome’s One Day War” by Mervyn W. Prime. It’s a story of the Japanese raid on Broome on March 3 in 1947.
