By Tom Chadwick
As the sun climbs above the Norfolk Pines at Mona Vale Beach, scattered groups patrol the beach and sift through the dunes bordering the car park, stooping with long-handled grabbers to free cigarette butts and bottle caps from their hiding places beneath the sand and shrubs.
Rhythmic ocean sounds permeate the Sunday morning air, occasionally interrupted by the clatter of a glass bottle dropped into a plastic bucket or the excited chatter that accompanies a rare find.
In the centre of the car park, rising above the cars and bikes, is a bright red fire truck – the epicentre of the morning’s quiet commotion. Adorned with sponsorship logos, an enormous painted emu head, and hand-lettered signage that reads “Emu Parade”, the peculiar vehicle is hard to miss.
Emanating from the side of the truck, the whirr of an espresso machine and the rich aroma of fresh coffee draw even more attention.
People return from the dunes, their buckets now filled to the brim. They arrive at the coffee station embedded in the truck’s flank where they are greeted warmly by a tall man in a well-worn hoodie, with short brown hair, a stubbly beard and a beaming smile.
This is Roland Davies, sole founder and operator of the not-for-profit organisation Emu Parade. In exchange for the freshly unearthed rubbish, he offers café-quality coffees and hot drinks – a small ritual of reward and connection.
But this is not just a quirky trade of trash for caffeine. It is the result of a story that began in solitude – one that started with a single man picking up rubbish alone on a beach, trying to outrun a creeping sense of futility.
In 2019, Roland – known to most as Roly – was juggling hospitality jobs around Sydney and feeling increasingly disillusioned. A lifelong surfer and environmental enthusiast, he was weighed down by a growing sense of helplessness in the face of environmental collapse. Seeking clarity, he took a month off, drove to Stockton Beach north of Newcastle, and started picking up rubbish.
Each morning he’d step out on to the dunes, the sand still cool underfoot. Alone there, he dragged tangled nets, Styrofoam chunks and beer cans into piles. The wind was relentless, the sun searing, and no one thanked him. But slowly, his thoughts quieted.
“That month in the dunes at Stockton I picked up an entire tonne by myself,” he said. “That was a big catalyst moment: ‘I’m one person, and I can pick up a whole tonne, on one beach, in one month.’ “
It was lonely, repetitive work. But it gave him clarity. There was power in doing something – even if it felt absurd, even if nobody saw. The idea that would become Emu Parade took root. He came home with a mission: to make environmental action feel easy, joyful, and social.
Having sold his stake in a co-owned cafe, Roly bought a second-hand fire truck that he affectionately named “Trish”. He converted it himself to run on used cooking oil instead of diesel, transforming it into a mobile coffee van that he describes as “the most environmentally offensive-looking vehicle imaginable, but running on rubbish”.
He sourced sponsors for beans and milk, and launched a simple idea – turn up, grab a bucket, pick up rubbish, and get a free coffee.
At first, no one came. Then a few did. Then more. And over time, Emu Parade became part clean-up operation, part community ritual. One person at a time, the vision caught on.
The morning is now in full swing. Mona Vale Beach is buzzing, and more people gather around Trish, buckets in hand, awaiting their liquid reward. Next up, a father and his two young daughters. The girls giggle as they reveal the weathered flip-flop and glittery phone case they had just excavated. The offering is accepted, and they stand on tiptoe to watch Roly steam milk into velvety foam.
“I just have to believe that small actions matter,” Roly said. “Not just because of what I’m doing with rubbish clean-ups, but because if not, then why are any of us here?”
Since Stockton, he estimates the Emu Parade community has collected well over 10 tonnes of rubbish. It’s still a shoestring operation and, most of the time, he’s scraping by.
“Technically, the not-for-profit has a massive loan from me,” he said. “But I’ve been really lucky with sponsorship – milk, coffee – and I do private clean-ups for companies too, which helps. Still, I’m working six or seven days a week just to keep it going.”
His new café in Manly, The Nest, helps subsidise the operation, but what he really wants is time. Not just to rest, but to scale.
“If I had unlimited time or money I’d be on the road full-time,” he says. “Do a clean-up, leave behind buckets and grabbers, help link the group with a local business who’ll offer a reward, and then leave. They keep going in my absence. That’s the dream.”
The deeper dream, he admits, is to vanish entirely from the equation. For Emu Parade to become so normalised, so ubiquitous, that no one even thinks about where it started.
“I’d like there to be Emu Parade happening all the time, everywhere, without me,” he said. “Just an obvious thing to do.”
Roly’s face lights up when he talks about his favourite moments from the clean-ups. For him, it’s not just about the clean-up itself, it’s about the small shifts he notices in the volunteers. A teenager sulking at the start who ends up finding a crisp $100 note in the sand. A corporate team that arrives reluctantly and ends up laughing like schoolkids.
Some finds are scarcely believable – three kilos of cocaine, a wallet full of nude pictures, soda cans over 50 years old. But what stands out the most are the intangibles; strangers talking, people scanning the ground with new-found vigour, and a community forming around something gentle and good.
Earlier this year, Roly received a community service award on Australia Day from the Northern Beaches Council. A woman who had attended several clean-ups nominated him and did all the legwork. It was never about personal recognition for Roly – the real reward was seeing the community he’d built take shape. He took his parents to the ceremony.
“It was nice for them to see that checkpoint of legitimacy,” he said. “Like, this is a happening thing.”
Still, the work never stops. Some days, he needs to remind himself it’s okay to pause.
“Some days I have to remember, everything I’m trying to do – it’s all just come from nothing,” he said. “If I don’t tick something off, it’s okay. I’ll forgive myself.”
Back at Mona Vale, the clean-up has wound down and the crowd has thinned. The last few volunteers hover around Trish, sipping coffee and trading stories about the strange things they unearthed. Roly shares the moment with them, still chatting, still smiling, as he sorts rubbish into neat piles to be recycled.
The sun sits higher now, glinting off the ocean. The beach is a little cleaner, the day a little brighter, and, with any luck, someone else is starting to believe that small efforts, quietly made, still matter.
Featured image: Trish the fire truck. Photo: Roland Davies
