So, You’re Thinking About Friends with Benefits in Geelong?
Friends with Benefits in Geelong: A Complicated Kind of Arrangement Look, I’ve been around this town long enough to watch […]
Australia, Connection, Intimacy, Victoria
Author name: Hudson_Lucas
Hudson Lucas: Geelong, the Stories We Tell Ourselves, and the Ecology of Desire G'day. I'm Hudson. I was born here, grew up here, and after a few decades of wandering—physically and emotionally—I ended up right back where I started: Geelong. These days, I write. About this city, about its parks, about how we connect. Specifically, for the Eastern Plant Dating project over at easternplant.blog. It's a long way from where I began, but honestly? It feels like the only place I was ever supposed to be. My past? Let's just say it involved a lot of listening. A lot of research. A lot of... relationships. I spent years as a sexologist and relationship counsellor. People told me things. Intimate things. Painful things. Hopeful things. I learned that the way we love is rarely as straightforward as we pretend. And I learned that the landscapes we grow up in—the parks, the streets, the salty air—shape that love more than we know. I came into the world on the 9th of September, 1975, at the old Geelong Hospital on Ryrie Street. Not the shiny new one they've got now, but the original. My parents had a modest house in Newtown, near the bend in the river. The sound of the rain on the tin roof, the smell of the eucalyptus after a storm—that's my first memory. Not a visual one, a sensory one. I was born during a hell of a spring gale. They say the old Norfolk pines on the waterfront were whipping like crazy. Maybe that's why I've always been drawn to wild weather. And to people who are a bit like that, too. Unpredictable. Forceful. Beautifully untamed. Growing up in Geelong in the 80s and 90s was... interesting. You felt like you were on the edge of something, you know? Not quite Melbourne, but not quite the Surf Coast either. We'd ride our bikes everywhere—down Pakington Street for a milkshake, out to the You Yangs on a dare. I remember sneaking into the now-demolished Eastern Beach swimming pool complex after dark with my first real crush. We didn't swim. We just sat there, talking, listening to the water lap against the concrete. That was probably my first lesson in intimacy—it's not about the act, it's about the shared space, the quiet vulnerability. Later, I studied at Deakin Uni, out on the Pigdons Road campus. I was supposed to be a psychologist. But the textbooks felt so... clean. Human desire isn't clean. It's messy, like the Barwon River after heavy rain. So I started volunteering at a community health centre on Moorabool Street. That's where I really learned. People don't come to you with textbook problems. They come with lives. Tangled, complicated, beautiful lives. So, the emotional bit. Why should you trust me? Maybe you shouldn't. But here's the thing: I've made every mistake. Every single one. I've been the guy who couldn't commit. I've been the guy who committed too fast, to the wrong person. I've had my heart stomped on, and I've done some stomping myself. That's not a brag. It's a qualification. After two decades of sitting across from couples and individuals in my consulting rooms—first in a tiny office near Johnstone Park, then later online—I learned that the only real expertise comes from your own scars. I'm not some detached academic. I'm someone who had to figure out, the hard way, that sexuality isn't just about bodies. It's about attention. It's about presence. It's about seeing the other person as a whole damn universe, not just a satellite to your own. When I talk about creating a romantic moment in Eastern Park, I'm not just listing trees. I'm talking about the feeling of being unseen in a public place. Of being truly seen by one person. That's the real romance. My clinical practice is mostly on hold now. I still do a bit of consulting, but my focus has shifted. I started writing. It began as a blog, just personal stuff—observations about Geelong, about the way the light hits Corio Bay in the evening, about the old fire stations and the quiet streets of East Geelong. Then it evolved. I realised I was writing about the city the same way I used to think about relationships. The city has a personality. It has moods. It has hidden, beautiful spots that most people rush past. The Eastern Plant Dating project on easternplant.blog is the culmination of that. We look at Geelong's parks—the Botanic Gardens, Balyang Sanctuary, the linear reserves along the river—and frame them as settings for human connection. It's part travel guide, part relationship advice. Because honestly, if you can't have a meaningful conversation with someone while walking through the Avenue of Honour, are you really connecting? Or just talking? Living here again, as an adult, is a trip. I live in a little apartment near the top of the hill in Geelong West, just off Pakington Street. I can walk to the markets, grab a coffee, and be at the waterfront in fifteen minutes. This city has changed—it's more sophisticated, more diverse—but the bones are the same. The thing that gets me, every single time, is the bay. You turn a corner, and there it is. That huge, moody expanse of water. It's a constant reminder that the world is bigger than your immediate problems. I know every inch of the place. The hidden path behind the Cunningham Pier. The best bench in the Botanic Gardens for watching the world go by (it's the one near the old fernery, by the way). The way the light filters through the pines in Eastern Park, making everything feel a little sacred. It's my city. It's not perfect. It's got its rough edges. But so do I. And somehow, we fit.
