Elsie Lange
Sherryn Keily was driving through Western Australia with her family when she started noticing the trees – they were hard to miss, being electric blue.
What followed was the discovery of the Blue Tree Project, a nation-wide initiative encouraging conversations about mental health.
Ms Keily was blown away, and decided to take the project all the way back across the country to her hometown, Riddells Creek.
“I’m very passionate about community and in the Macedon Ranges, our numbers of suicide are really high,” Ms Keily said.
“There’s an elephant in the room when anyone mentions mental health.
“People are afraid to talk about how they feel, they feel like they’re going to get judged or they feel like they’re going to be looked at differently.
“I want to stop that,” she said.
Standing tall alongside Riddell Road, the image is striking: blue, leafless branches stretching up into the sky, its trunk surrounded by flowers.
“Our goal is to encourage people, if they’ve got a dead tree on their property, grab some blue paint and just paint it, whether it’s visible from the road or not,” Ms Keily said.
Chair of Macedon Ranges Suicide Prevention Group (MRSPAG) Steven Power said the new blue tree is an “elegant reminder” to have tough talks about mental health and suicide.
“MRSPAG recognises the creative nature of this blue tree and like most forms of art, it provokes and challenges us and stimulates conversation, so we welcome its arrival,” Mr Power said.
Ms Keily said her own challenges with mental health since her brother died when she was a teenager have inspired her to spread the word about the Blue Tree Project.
“There are so many services in the Macedon Ranges to help people if they are having a tough time with life and if it’s all getting too much for them,” she said.
“I just feel like we need to get that message out a whole lot more.”
