By Tyler Wright
For the Ranges Trader Star Mail’s Person of the Year for 2023 – Arnold Dix – being able to wander around his home town of Monbulk without being recognised for his profession is becoming increasingly more difficult after rescuing 41 trapped workers from a collapsed tunnel in India in November.
The reason Arnold has been chosen as the paper’s standout person of the year is his philanthropic efforts and love of his community in the Dandenong Ranges.
“It’s harder for me just to go up to Woolies and get the half price specials and be a bit anonymous… people did know me, but people didn’t know what I did,” Arnold said.
“They just thought I was the worst farmer in town, so it’s sort of more commonly known that I’m actually a barrister and I’m actually a professor of engineering; I head up the United Nations peak advisory body on the underground, I’m the president, I’m based in Geneva.”
Following a request from the Indian Prime Minister’s department, Arnold was flown by helicopter to the Himalayas, where workers had been trapped in the Silkyara Bend-Barkot tunnel trying to connect sacred sites for easier access for pilgrims.
Miraculously, after multiple failed attempts, the rescue team managed to extract the men from the tunnel safely – and entirely unharmed.
“2023 was a huge year for me; not just with the Indian rescue,” Arnold said.
“I’ve been in Africa, down some of the most dangerous mines on the planet.
“I’ve been in South America, I’ve been in North America, Canada, I’ve been in Poland checking out what’s going on there with infrastructure and Ukraine and in Russia and the middle east. I’ve been in Western Europe, Asia and of course India.”
Arnold has also refused offers of exclusive production of his story and for money to reproduce the tale.
“I’ve been very focused on not trying to commercialise what happened in India,” Arnold said.
“It was a voluntary – I’ve come back and there has been interest in me selling the story and I’ve made what I think is the correct decision that this is a story of good people doing great things and it’s not the story to be sold because that’s not cool, and that’s not what nice people do.
“It’s a story that I tell to everybody, which is probably why I’m so busy and probably why I’m so poor; I just think that’s the right thing to do and that’s what nice people do, they tell stories because they should be told not to make money.”
He said the highly publicised rescue mission in India prompted locals to remember his local contributions to the community, which he otherwise would not have made public.
“For example, there was a lady on one of the Facebook groups, she said that there was someone with a terminal illness in their family, and they had to bring their wedding forward for them, have it like immediately, and they couldn’t find a venue or anybody who had somewhere they could come for their wedding photos, so I directly messaged them and said ‘you can come to my house, of course,’ so they came and they did their wedding photos.
“When McDonald’s was planned for where the police station is down in Belgrave, it was me who was behind the engineering rejection because of the troubles with traffic movements there.
“I helped [at William Ricketts Sanctuary] when William Ricketts was alive; I assisted him and the family to get better conditions for him to live in at the sanctuary.”
More recently, Arnold helped people who caught the train on the Belgrave line by organising a private charter bus to travel into the city for work.
“They’re just just little quiet community things I do,” he said.
“Up at the high school in 2023, I was really worried about student safety because they’ve got no pedestrian crossing from the high school to get across to the Monbulk side, so I’ve been involved in trying to assist the school to get that risk organised, but the school didn’t know why I’m so interested in safety.”
“I’m the independent engineering verifier auditor to allow Puffing Billy to safely operate with legs outside of the carriages, that’s me, that’s how Puffing Billy got operating again.”
The big thing that struck Arnold in 2023, he said, was the “increasing divide” between countries which are willing and able to deliver utilities like water, sewage and transport.
“The majority of countries on the planet for one reason or another either through breakdown of government or war or those sorts of things, or just don’t have the resources and haven’t been able to respond,” he said.
“I learnt that there’s more than one way to problem solve. And I really enjoyed being a part of the Indian style of problem solving. And it was as unique as the Indian dance, Bollywood and culture. And it involved everybody being listened to and coming to a collective opinion.
“It’s made me rethink how we make important decisions fast and how we listen to everybody and take everyone’s opinions into consideration and then take an action that might not necessarily everyone agrees, but we take action and deliver it because the success of what happened up there in the mountains was because we were able to not only very rapidly assess very dangerous and rapidly changing situations, but we were also able to make decisive decisions and then get on with it and do stuff.”
At the local level in the Yarra Ranges, Arnold said he is “disappointed” there has not been an initiative to encourage and facilitate fire bunkers for the safety of residents during a disaster.
“The mechanism is for putting in private refuges in your homes, which is something that is important for the shire given climate change will increase the likelihood and severity of storm events in the future.
“Something a little bit more user -friendly for people than having to go through the normal procedures as if you’re putting on a second -story extension on your house.”
On the horizon for 2024 is a new program Arnold has revealed called Koala Ready, which is set to reestablish or manage remnant bush by planting endemic species suited to koalas and other local fauna including the Helmeted Honeyeater.
“The idea is that in the event of a bushfire or some other catastrophic event, our bushland can be used as a source of food for koalas, say for example, Healesville Sanctuary, because they say ‘hey, can you get us some foliage because our koalas need a snack.’
“In time, if there needs to be establishment of new koala populations, we would have, over a period of say a decade, established koala corridors, so they’re ready for the introduction of koalas.”
Before his next overseas venture, you will find Arnold on his farm with his chickens, and maybe an attempt to grow some more sunflowers.
“Up here [Monbulk] is probably one of the most fantastic places on the planet to live; and I know because I work all around the world and in the end I choose to live here because I think it’s awesome,” he said.
