Jaxon Law: Soil, Skin, and Second Chances in Shepparton G'day. I'm Jaxon. Born and bred on Dja Dja Wurrung land, in a town called Shepparton. Most folks know us for the fruit. I’m known, I suppose, for asking awkward questions about what we do in the dark. I'm a sexologist turned eco-dating writer, which sounds like a mid-life crisis dressed up as a career change. Maybe it is. But honestly, it just feels like coming home. I live on Welsford Street now, in a little art deco flat above a shop that sells nothing but vintage lamps. The light's terrible, but the view of the Goulburn River from my fire escape makes up for it. This town, it’s in my bones. The smell of the soil after a long, dry summer. The way the light hits the silos near the railway station at dusk. It’s where I learned about desire, about connection, and about why both are so damn hard to sustain. I’ve had more lovers than I’ve had hot Shepparton summers, and that’s saying something. But the one relationship I’ve never quite cracked is the one with the place you’re from. This town, it’s like a stubborn partner. You think you’ve left, but it’s already packed its bags and is waiting for you in the kitchen when you get home. So I stopped leaving. I started paying attention. I came screaming into the world on the 24th of August, 1985, at the old Goulburn Valley Base Hospital. It’s not there anymore, of course. Torn down, replaced by something shinier on Graham Street. That’s Shepparton for you—always growing, always canning more peaches, always rebuilding. Mum always said the wattle was in full bloom that week, the whole town dusted in that crazy, electric yellow. Maybe that’s where I get it from, this thing for bright, fleeting beauty. My old man worked the night shift at the Campbell’s Soup plant on Numurkah Road. I swear I came out smelling like tomato paste and the faint, sterile tang of hospital disinfectant. A weird, foundational mix: industry, agriculture, and the clinical. Sounds about right. Growing up here, you learn the landscape of the body young. Not in a sexy way, but in a practical, earthbound way. You learn the sting of a bull ant on the ankle near the river at Victoria Park Lake. You learn the first clumsy, fumbled map of someone else’s body behind the old brick pavilions at the showgrounds on High Street. By the time I was at Shepparton High on Hawdon Street, I wasn't just interested in the biology textbooks. I was fascinated by the code. The unwritten rules of who talks to who at the skate park near the aquatic centre. The silent negotiations behind the bike sheds. Everyone was conducting these incredible, complex research projects on desire and rejection, and no one was writing the results down. Except me, in my head. I'd watch the way a look held a second too long could change everything. Or how a group of us would go swimming in the Goulburn, near the old weir, and the dynamic would shift in the water. It was my first real lab. The water temperature, the fear of a redfin perch, the electric thrill of proximity—it was all data. That's what I took with me when I left. I studied human sexuality, formally. Not to be a therapist, but to be a cartographer. I wanted to map the territory between people. I ran a practice in Melbourne for over a decade. Saw every kind of desire, every kind of block, every kind of heartbreak. I had a few of my own, too. The kind that leave you hollowed out. The kind that make you realize all the theory in the world doesn't prepare you for the raw, stupid ache of it. And somewhere in that ache, I started missing the soil. I missed the specific quality of the light. The silence of a pear orchard in winter. The town I'd spent my whole life trying to get away from was the only thing that made sense anymore. So I came back. Which is where the eco thing comes in. I’d been watching the climate stuff from my city apartment, feeling helpless. Here, it’s not abstract. You see the irrigation channels run dry. You watch a hailstorm wipe out a season’s work in twenty minutes. You see how it affects people, their mood, their relationships. The stress on the land, it translates. It gets into the bedroom. How can you feel connected to your partner when you feel disconnected from the earth that feeds you? That’s the question I’m trying to answer now. I write articles for a project called EcocopyDating on the ecocopywriter.com website. It’s about, well, dating in the eco community. But it’s bigger than that, really. It’s about building relationships that aren’t extractive. That don’t treat the other person like a resource to be used up. It’s about finding someone who understands that a shared love for the Warby Ranges on a spring morning is a better foundation than a shared love for a restaurant chain. My piece on First Date Ideas: Nude Swimming in the Goulburn (At Your Own Risk) was surprisingly popular. My life in Shepp now is full of these small, specific joys. Grabbing a coffee at The Flats Bakery on Fryers Street, watching the world go by. Riding my bike along the river trail, past the old punt house. Having a beer at the Commercial Hotel and listening to the farmers argue about the rain—or the lack of it. I know the guy who runs the second-hand bookshop on Maude Street. I know which cafes use compostable cups. I know the best spot to watch a storm roll in over the lake. This town isn't just a dot on a map. It's a living thing. And after all my research, all my travels, all my mistakes, I’ve realized something. The most important relationship you'll ever have is with the ground you walk on. Get that right, and maybe, just maybe, you’ve got a shot at getting the rest of it right, too.
Dominant & Submissive Shepparton: A Local’s Guide to Power, Play, and Connection G’day. I’m Jaxon. Born and bred on Dja […]
