PUG Men's Shed: where men gather, and the community benefits.

If you've walked past the old stone arches beneath the light rail viaduct at Jubilee Park, you've probably wondered: what’s in those sheds? There's usually music drifting out on a Thursday, and something cooking - that's the PUG Men's Shed. You may know them from their Glebe Artisans Market stall with their woodworking goodies, or their various bands that perform in the park.

What’s less well known is how the men’s shed came to be, and it all starts with a boat.

In 2007, a handful of locals sat down to talk about starting a Men's Shed for the Pyrmont, Ultimo and Glebe communities. Peter Devoy, Bruce Napthali, Ian Avery and Uniting Church minister Robyn Davies had the idea. They also had some early backing from the Uniting Church, which had already helped establish a shed at Lane Cove. What they didn’t have yet was a space. What they got instead was a ferry.

The Kanangra was a timber harbour vessel built in 1912, once a familiar sight on the Cremorne-Mosman run. However, by the time the Sydney Heritage Fleet had it moored at Rozelle Bay it was quietly coming apart. The hull was close to rotting through and its 254 Australian cedar window frames gone soft with weather. Each frame was curved to match the banana-shaped hull, so no two were the same size. Jon Simpson, the Fleet's CEO, offered the group a workshop on the Kanangra's upper deck in exchange for their labour on the restoration. It wasn't a shed just yet, but it was a start.

About a dozen men turned up to restore the Kanangra, most of them newly retired (and in one founding member's words) with wives who didn't want them sitting around the house. They worked through the window frames: cutting new cedar, fitting thick curved glass, reweighting the sashes by hand because nothing could be done by machine. There was a certain absurdity to it: you had to pay to volunteer at the Heritage Fleet. They paid anyway. The first AGM was held in the cabin of the Boomerang Yacht, moored nearby.

Every morning the work stopped for tea. Ross Hindmarsh brought a bag of nuts. They'd sit around the table, talk about how things were going, and head back to the windows. The founding members working on the Kanangra in 2009 were Ross Brown, Phil Bryan, Tom Collins, David Daish, Peter Devoy, Ross Hindmarsh, John Kepski, Colin Knowles, George Kristen, Paul Limmer, Mok Shu, Bruce Napthali, David Porter, Paul Shea and Jon Simpson.

After a few years on the ferry, the group joined the Australian Men's Shed Association and in 2014 were offered the two arch spaces at Jubilee Park through the City of Sydney Council. They moved in, built it out, and the rest followed. The morning tea tradition came with them.

Today the shed runs across two spaces beneath the viaduct. Shed 2 is a serious woodworking workshop: table saw, thicknesser, drop saw, central dust extraction. The group mostly works with recovered and recycled timber in there. Shed 1 serves as the social heart of the place: a kitchen where Thursday lunches are cooked and eaten, a music rehearsal space, a drawing and writing room, and the weekly gathering point for a community of around eighty members.

Music arrived early at PUG and stayed. Jorge Campano's ‘learn Spanish guitar’ sessions pulled in Harold Adolphe on percussion, Richard Vickery on bass, Michael Hogan on harmonica and John Forest on ukulele. A jam session became a Thursday ritual; the Thursday ritual became a band; the band multiplied. There are now five performing groups, a ukulele ensemble managed by Allan Lonnon, and Jorge's Spanish guitar and percussion school. More than thirty members play.

Around them: Ian Chapman's weekly drawing group, Conrad Walters' fortnightly memoir-writing sessions, a book club, a tech group that meets Mondays and covers everything from 3D printing to microcontrollers. The group is quite the force when they put their minds together, like when the shed needed a new alarm system, they designed and installed one themselves.

On Thursdays, one member cooks lunch for twenty others. Vietnamese, Polish, Spanish, Argentinian - it all depends on who’s cooking! Members are invited to give a talk before or after the meal about their careers, their lives, the roads that brought them here. It's one of the better things happening in the community on a Thursday afternoon.

The fundraising record alone is worth knowing. In 2022 the bands raised more than $6,500 for Lismore flood victims via the Red Cross. In 2023, $8,000 funded music therapists at Concord Hospital, where sessions have helped Parkinson's patients retain their voices through the Parksingers Choir. In November 2024, a concert at Leichhardt Bowling Club raised around $7,000 for Fresh Start Missions and the people they support at Wentworth Park.

The woodworking commissions run just as deep. The shed built two handcrafted jury ballot boxes from recycled maple for the NSW Supreme Court as part of the Sheriff's Office bicentenary, then followed with 150 wooden court knockers for Court Officers at every courthouse in NSW. They've built street libraries, made indigenous art stencils for Glebe Youth Service workshops, and run monthly craft and music sessions with The Ella Centre in Haberfield.

The men who sat around the tea table on the Kanangra, passing around Ross Hindmarsh's bag of nuts, probably didn't picture what the PUG Men’s Shed would become - they were probably too focused on the task at hand. What started as a small group of men has morphed into a community staple that continues to make an impact - because when these men come together, the community benefits.

If you get the chance, head down to the next Artisan Markets and check out their stall for woodworking products - their team can custom build anything from toys to cutting boards, pizza peels to ballot boxes.

For regular updates on events and how you can get involved, you can check out their website here. PUG also have a terrific YouTube video covering their founding story and work on the Kanangra:

Thank you to Ian Cranwell and Conrad Walters from the PUG for making this article possible.