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ABC NEWS (Australia)
  • 2 hours ago
Nearly one in three people in Australia experience loneliness, but it's even harder if you're living in a remote location. But there's a growing community in the WA town of Carnarvon doing their best to make sure nobody's left behind and they call themselves the "Old Bastards".

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00:02Hundreds of kilometres from the nearest city, Carnarvon is an isolated place.
00:07Jonathan Foster had been living there for six months without any proper mates.
00:11That was until he ran into some old bastards.
00:17The organisation has chapters across Australia that raise funds for charity
00:22while celebrating community and friendship.
00:25We just turned up on a Thursday night out of the blue, not knowing anything about them.
00:29Yeah, they just put the arm there and welcomed us into the town.
00:31And they're not all old.
00:33Every week, members ranging in age from 20 to 90 years meet at the local pub.
00:39A lot of them are quite isolated, so to be able to come here and chat with friends
00:44and maybe have a game or two, that's not important.
00:47It's being amongst company that's the important thing for seniors.
00:52The Carnarvon branch has raised the most funds out of any old bastards group,
00:56often over $100,000 each year.
00:59The flying doctor gets quite a bit of it, because in this town, if you know yourself,
01:04for various problems, as excellence, giving birth to babies, etc.
01:09Carnarvons sends them all to Perth.
01:12Experts say there's limited research into the impacts of loneliness and isolation in Australia,
01:17but they do say it's on the rise, especially in regional towns.
01:20They say community groups do a lot of the heavy lifting to build connections.
01:25We know that volunteering itself, whether it's formal, informal, whether it's frequent or not,
01:33actually reduces our race or social disconnection by quite a lot.
01:37Crucial connections at any age.
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01:41no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
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01:42no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no
01:46You

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