Late May 2017. A slight chill enveloped the air as the last rays of daylight danced behind the silhouette of Sydney’s skyline overlooking Queen’s Square. The preceding hours, if not days and weeks, had been devoted to writing the final chapter of one of the more intriguing David versus Goliath defamation battles in recent Australian legal history. Having reached the difficult frontier of compromise, the protagonists, and their lawyers, were united by a Kumbaya-like sense of relief. Or so it seemed.
Unknown to all involved but one, the possibility the ink was dry had since vanished in a remarkable flash of introspection. With implacable calmness, Simon Mulvany — an almost stony-broke Victorian beekeeper, single parent and founder of social movement Save the Bees — sacked his pro-bono legal counsel at the eleventh hour and refused to settle. More than two and half years would pass before Australia’s largest honey producer, Capilano Honey (now Hive and Wellness Australia), would retire its defamation claims against Mulvany.
Much has recently been written on the corrupting influence of social media. But the tale of Capilano, Mulvany and Save the Bees defies that narrative.
When Mulvany learned of the Capilano lawsuit in February 2016, among the first things he asked his solicitor was whether there was anything standing in the way of him using social media to raise public awareness about it. Perhaps sensing the near irreverent way Mulvany had reacted to the lawsuit, his lawyer said, “you’re the first person to see a positive in getting a defamation suit I’ve ever met”.
Within days, a GoFundMe campaign not only raised tens of thousands of dollars, but had, as Mulvany predicted, galvanised widespread public attention around the very subject of the defamation suit: the quality of Capilano’s Allowrie brand honey. Though certainly not free from risk, it soon became clear Mulvany’s crowdfunding gambit was far more than a discreet holstering. It was, in chess terms, nothing less than the capture of Capilano’s queen.
Throughout the litigation, Mulvany brandished his choice of weapon with the same deftness and seamless ability as Dustin Martin plays football. On the heels of every twist and turn in the case came the predictable click and swoosh of another Save the Bees Facebook or Instagram post. At one point, Capilano’s own insipid social media presence inspired such pity in Mulvany he felt compelled to sit down and earnestly advise Capilano’s then chief executive Ben McKee on ways to improve it. Capilano’s lawyers, meanwhile, had little to show for all of their old-school pretrial tactics, their frustration eventually erupting in a bizarre attempt to bring separate contempt proceedings against Mulvany in 2018.
A colourful raconteur, Mulvany smiled wryly as he recounted this experience with me, his conversation animated by the occasional aside or brief, concentrated pause, as though he was yet to make complete sense of it. “Nobody could see my view that if you’re happy with nothing, no one can take anything away from you,” he said after a while.
Mulvany, 46, is a curious blend of erudition and focussed enthusiasm for all things bees and nature. On the topic of bees, his eyes light up as he speaks with the self-assured authority of an expert. On other matters, he is discerning but inwardly diffident. When asked who has most influenced his life, he cites neither family nor friends but rather a range of celebrated public figures, from Einstein and Picasso to Buckminster Fuller and John Lennon. His overarching philosophy is to adapt and apply the central learnings of history’s greats towards his own ends.
Though plainly the cerebral type, it is a mistake to assume Mulvany has always been well-read. Growing up in the wealthy beachside suburb of Brighton in Melbourne’s inner east, his strong calling to nature set him apart from his family and friends from a young age. Close friend Alex Buxton, who met Mulvany at elite boys’ school Xavier College, said Mulvany was well-liked but also known to operate on his own wavelength. “Simon was a bit of a maverick — he didn’t subscribe to the straight-lace conservatism of the school at all,” Buxton said.
Mulvany either did or did not perform tolerably well in his final year of school. What is known is he dropped out of university within two years, firmly resolved to shrug off his conventional upbringing for the ill-fitting suit it was. Over the ensuing decade, Mulvany trekked the world intent on discovering the incandescent beauty of nature in all its manifest variety.
On his return, Mulvany said he brought with him an important lesson which had previously eluded him: human beings, like bees, are social creatures which depend for their survival on connection and cooperation. “I always thought I could handle living alone for long periods of time, but I came to realise we have so much to learn from bees in terms of how we live,” Mulvany said.
A few years after becoming an apiarist, Mulvany used Facebook and Instagram to establish Save the Bees — then an organisation, now a social movement — which is committed to rallying public awareness around the importance of bees and the threats they contend with. What inspired the idea was, in large part, Mulvany’s eternal gratitude to bees, which, among other things, he credited as having lifted him from the depths of despair at critical junctures in his life.
Unlike most people, Mulvany is not averse to discussing human vulnerability – that messiness of life we all tend to conceal beneath the veneer of our public selves. He spoke candidly of occasions in which the looming possibility of losing custody of his son, the insecurity of his circumstances and the piercing gaze of judgment from those seemingly closest to him (and perhaps himself) had reduced him to tears.
“I remember one day getting up at sunrise, crying, and saying to the universe, ‘I just can’t do this’,” Mulvany said. “But then this voice within me said, ‘you know how to do it’.” The following day, Mulvany said, he came across the most majestic of bee swarms he had ever seen. To Mulvany, this was the crucial lesson: “never doubt your intuition”.
It was precisely that winning combination of steadfast faith in oneself and autodidacticism which prompted Mulvany to dismiss his legal counsel back in May 2017. One month before the settlement with Capilano in February 2020, Capilano retired its Allowrie-brand honey.
In recent years, other Save the Bees online campaigns have met with similar success, most notably, the forestalling of a plan to implement a toxic mosquito control program across the Mornington Peninsula and the removal from sale of Confidor, a harmful insecticide. Other achievements include the ever-expanding network of small-scale beekeepers across Victoria and primary school bee education programs.
There can be no doubt the founding of Save the Bees was a life-changing moment for Mulvany. It brought to the fore the full panorama of Mulvany’s strengths: his determination, adaptiveness and his relentless self-belief.
“You don’t need money or degrees to make a difference. You just need to be passionate and authentic,” Mulvany said.
True. But you probably also need social media.
Journalist
Maeve McGregor
Photo James Geer