AT the ripe old age of 80, George Cox still cuts a fine figure. Dressed in a crisp white shirt and straight legged denim jeans, he looks every bit the elderly statesman.
The Blackburn resident was state Liberal MP for Mitcham from 1976–1982 and an upper house member for Nunawading from 1988–1996. Before state politics he was a paint laboratory technician and a Nunawading city councillor from 1966–1969, and he has lived in Blackburn since 1958.
Once a prolific public figure, Cox was the founding member of the Nunawading Historical Society, the Blackburn Tree Preservation Society, the Blackburn and Mitcham Film Society, and is a lifetime member of the Vintage Drivers Club. He’s even competed in Belgium, Switzerland and Germany as an amateur cyclist.
“I’m not as active in the community any more,” he admits. “I did all that for 30-odd years, it’s my turn to relax now,”
So how does an over-active community-minded person relax into retirement? The answer is very sweet. About six years ago Cox became a member of the Doncaster Beekeepers Club after he discovered a feral bee swarm in a Telstra pit outside his home.
“Come on, they’re out the back, I’ll just put my gear on,” Cox says as he dresses in his protective beekeeping outfit: a white jacket, maroon rubber gloves and a beekeeper’s hood which covers his face in a protective mesh.
Cox says Blackburn is an ideal place to keep beehives. “There are a lot of indigenous plants here, they’re ideal for pollination,” he says. “You get excellent honey from the yellow box [eucalyptus].”
He did not have any connections to beekeeping when he started, apart from a few childhood memories of his uncle tending to his own beehives.
But Cox’s interests are so diverse the idea of him beekeeping is hardly surprising. Furniture making is another of his hobbies. Just inside the front door stands a redwood grandfather clock that he made in his workshop downstairs.
“I thought it would be nice to make honey,” he says casually as we follow him outside past tomato plants and into the buzzing of six stacks of white bee boxes.
Abut 10,000 bees live in each hive, with each box containing about 60–80 kilograms of honey.
The state government permits residents to house a small number of bees. But to sell honey you need a special council permit. Cox does not sell honey: “it’s just a hobby, I give it to relatives and friends,” he says. “There are two jars on the kitchen bench, make sure you take them with you.”
Bees buzz around our heads during the photoshoot.
“I’ve been stung uncountable times. It’s not your objective to get stung, but they’re sneaky buggers,” he says with a slight chuckle as bees land on our arms. Then in a protective, grandfatherly way: “Come away from there, I don’t want you to get stung. Stand by the wall. If they get in your hair, they will panic and sting you.”
To care for the bees, Cox opens the boxes once a fortnight. It’s not a big job, he says.
He collects the honeycomb trays, scrapes the honeycomb off with a hot knife and deposits it into a large metal honey maker. “You drop it in the metal basket and then spin it, and you end up with honey. Nothing is added. And then it is strained into various food buckets,” he says.
But as you may expect from a former public servant, beekeeping is also a form of civic duty in Cox’s opinion.
“They say if bees fail, human habitation will also fail,” he says.
And with our jars of Blackburn honey in our bags we wave goodbye to Cox. He’s off to a meeting.
“If it doesn’t rain I think I’ll take the Vauxhall out!”
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