More feature: The Trouble bubble

By Lauren Mitchell
Updated November 7 2012 - 5:09am, first published June 28 2011 - 3:51am
VILLAGE LIFE: Trouble publishers Steve and Melissa Proposch have found national success in Newstead. Pictures: MATT KIMPTON
VILLAGE LIFE: Trouble publishers Steve and Melissa Proposch have found national success in Newstead. Pictures: MATT KIMPTON
More feature: The Trouble bubble
More feature: The Trouble bubble
More feature: The Trouble bubble
More feature: The Trouble bubble

The Newstead Press window looks out across sleepy Lyons Street onto the local men’s shed – a dot of a building, no greater than a single car garage.Next to the shed is the town’s park – likewise pint-sized.But don’t judge this tiny town’s offerings by its dimensions. Steve and Melissa Proposch also prove that sometimes the smallest things have the biggest hearts.Newstead Press is the home of Trouble – a pocket-sized, free monthly arts magazine that has almost single-handedly gelled together a creative community.It lists arts-focused events, exhibitions, competitions and retail spaces, publishes feature stories, poetry, cartoons and art images. Eclectic and ever-changing.The mag started seven years ago with 1000 copies of 12 black and white stapled pages. Thanks to some loyal initial backers, such as The Capital, Bendigo Art Gallery, Castlemaine Art Gallery and the Penny School Gallery in Maldon, the second issue swelled to 3000.It continues today with a readership of 60,000 and some big-name writers and artists gracing its pages. “Now we do 20,000 copies a month,” Steve says.“I hate hearing that copies have been thrown away.” (He goes white,” laughs Melissa.)“At best we have 100 copies left over each month, for some issues we have only two, so at best we could put together two complete sets.”How did two creative souls with few start-up resources do it? Especially in the face of many who said they’d fail?“There’s nothing like being naïve,” Melissa says. “That’s one of the best things you can be – innocent.“And we just have huge stamina. That’s our strength – why else would you get up a 2am to finish a spread when you’ve been at it all day?”But it’s more than that.Melissa and Steve moved to Newstead from inner-city Melbourne in 1999, during that sweet little window before TV shows like Seachange glamorised a country lifestyle. Before the property boom.At that time metropolitan Melbourne was turning into a scaffold city – artists were being driven out of inner suburbs as rents increased.“Where artists move to they create a culture that everyone wants to be a part of,” Steve says.“The gentrification comes second and it pushes you out.“In 1999 we could buy a house here and the repayments were cheaper than you could rent for in Melbourne.”Melissa adds, “We had a feeling Castlemaine would be the next Fitzroy. “We thought, ‘this is where the next art movement will be’.”The couple looked at several properties in Guilford and Chewton, but when they stepped foot inside Newstead’s original bakery, they knew they’d found home.Trouble was launched four years later as an answer to what the couple saw as a disconnection between artists in central Victoria. Steve and Melissa would travel throughout the region seeking out exhibitions and local talent, only to find they were missing out on so much because of a lack of easy information.Steve had edited a number of street press titles in the city and Melissa was an established print maker and art teacher, so they decided to combine their skills and make a wholehearted contribution to their new community.First thing they did was complete the New Enterprise Incentive Scheme in Bendigo – a government course which helps get fledgling businesses on their feet and supports them with payments for a year. “We started with nothing,” Steve says. “It’s a great result from that program – it just gave us the head start we needed.”For those first issues Steve drove across the countryside delivering Trouble to hand-picked galleries and cafes. But when the distribution points hit the 800 mark, that had to stop.Trouble is now distributed nationally. “We can put a Bendigo artist that’s showing at a Bendigo café on the cover of something that’s going into the Fremantle Arts Centre,” Melissa says.This month, Bendigo illustrator Chris Kennett’s work, Bubble Rainbow, fronts the magazine. It’s a much-coveted space on a magazine that is eagerly awaited each month by artists, art consumers and high-profile galleries across the country.Trouble has also become an incubator for young writers and designers – the most recent employee to spend time here has just got a job with a television network.Back in Newstead it’s a quiet, rain-tainted weekday. The Dig Café is all potted plants and promised warmth, the general store façade flaps with the day’s headlines and Newstead Press is in the thick of Trouble. A well-stoked open fire warms the office. Polished floorboards, a coved timber ceiling and stained glass around the doors pay homage to the shop’s era. The space still embodies the quiet and steady ritual of the bootmakers it once was – in fact the signage is still on the window.“People still bring in their boots,” Steve laughs. “We’ve had people come in the front door with bags of boots.”Melissa says the whole community has embraced what they do here.“They love it,” she says.“They support us in so many ways. And they value the kind of things we can produce here for the community – we do the annual school yearbook for example.”The couple recently helped make a film about renewable Newstead, and the town’s kids can often be found here, when they turn the space into a makeshift gamers arcade.Steve and Melissa have two sons – Jethro, 11, and Lucas, 8.Trouble was also developed for them – to establish a lifestyle where the family could be together, and show the boys that life is limited by imagination – not geography, not finances.“We both wanted to be around the kids, none of us wanted to be the one who went out to work, so we thought we’d build our lifestyle around the kids rather than fight about it,” Melissa says.In doing so, the Proposch’s have also instilled the value of community.“That whole idea of living locally, spending locally, we really get that living here,” Melissa says.She remembers when they first arrived in Newstead, reading the little community newspaper and all the names of the volunteers. “Newstead has the highest rate of volunteers per capita,” she says.“I remember thinking at the time, that is really something to step up to. That time is now and we’re part of the next wave of people who really believe in that. “We’re involved in the kindergarten and the primary school, those are the things you need to look after because they’re the heart of the town. “We knew about small town living but we didn’t really know what that meant. “The benefits of that are you don’t even have to tell someone you need something, they’ll just turn up on your doorstep.”It’s been 12 years since Steve and Melissa arrived in town, and Newstead is buzzing.“When we came there was already an established art community here but a lot of people have come since,” Melissa says.“Quite a lot of people have said to us over the years that they’ve come here because of Trouble… It’s a good life.”

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