John White 
No Bars Hold [EPUB ebook] 

John and Jennifer live on Magpie Ridge Eco-Farm, a small rural retreat they have established near Toodyay, Western Australia. Here they try to live as ‘deliberately and sustainably’ as they can in a straw-bale and recycled material house they built themselves, produce ‘sensational’ extra-virgin organic olive oil from groves they planted by hand, and enjoy being in the ‘bush’.
Over the last 35 years John has mainly worked as a school teacher and psychotherapist, and has always been ‘drawn to whatever gives life to people and to the planet’. Over the same period he has been working part-time as a volunteer in the WA prisons facilitating restorative justice groupwork with inmates. ‘I learned a long time ago that “but for the grace of God there go I”. No-one has the right to judge anyone else. So many of our institutional systems are failing the very people for whom they are established. Retribution needs to be replaced by restoration”.
John partly expresses his ‘soul’ in songwriting and, more recently, in this book, ‘No Bars Hold’. He is grateful for his parents’ legacy of the attitudes and values that facilitate ‘fairly intact families’, and enjoys good relationships with everyone he knows. He and Jennifer have two adult children and two grandsons.