Peter Madden only truly realised his love of painting after losing most of his vision in a simultaneous stroke and heart attack.
He speaks to Luke Voogt about his passion for art and his role at Vision Australia Radio’s Geelong station, 99.5FM.
Tell us about you…
My family moved to Geelong when I was 11. My wife Maree and I live in Belmont and we have four adult children.
I had a stroke and a heart attack at the same time in 2000, which caused my vision loss. I have a bit of central vision in my left eye.
I did rehab for several years and it took a long-time to get my confidence back to get out in public and do things.
I always had an interest in art and in the mid-2000s, when I was starting to get over what had happened to me, I started painting with pastel.
I feel that it’s helped me to see better and be more observant, because I have to concentrate on what I’m painting.
I also like lawn bowls and ten pin bowling.
I do that with other vision-impaired people. We’ve all got a little bit of sight and we help each other out – it’s something we’ve learned over time.
Another vision-impaired man convinced me to do all these things.
Because I’ve gone through that, I worry that there’s a lot of people out there who haven’t been confident enough to try similar things, and have been sitting at home getting bored.
That’s why I try to organise events for people with low vision or find things of interest for them.
What’s your role at Vision Australia Radio?
I’ve been involved with Vision Australia since I lost my sight and was invited to join the radio station committee about 10 years ago.
We come up with programs that are best suited to our vision-impaired listeners.
We do about 24-25 hours a week of local content – a lot of that is newspaper stuff, including reading the Independent.
I present a program called Vine to Wine with Ron Lock.
We interview a winemaker or a horticulturalist from a local winery each week and promote what they do.
I believe the radio station is of vital importance. It gives people contact with what’s going on locally.
Some our listeners are not vision-impaired but can’t read the paper or like to listen for other reasons.
How are you coping with COVID-19?
We’ve been a bit up and down about allowing people in the building due to COVID restrictions.
Some of our people are not sure about coming back yet.
We had about 80 to 90 volunteers, but our numbers are really depleted at the moment, so we would love to get some new faces along.
What do you like to do locally?
At the moment it’s walking along the waterfront twice a week.
We walk from east of Eastern Beach to Western Beach and then into the CBD. It’s just a great area to walk around.
A Spot for Joe was great the other day, because they had a fire going when it was bucketing down and freezing.
Details: radio.visionaustralia.org/our-networks/geelong-99-5fm
