The 20-minute coffee van that keeps a small community together

Underbool residents start ordering their coffee at 7:30am sharp. (ABC News: Tamara Clark) Link copiedShareShare articleShe arrives out of the fog like clockwork. Headlights first. Then the hum of her SUV rolling into a gravel car park on a quiet stretch of the Mallee Highway. It's 7:25am. Underbool, the small country town of 215 people according to the last census, is still half-asleep. It is Tuesday. One of the two days a week when Lee Brown opens her coffee van for just 20 minutes. Lee Brown brews morning coffee in her truck five days a week. (ABC News: Tamara Clark) She does not waste a second: bins in, door open, awnings flicked into position. The coffee van decants with muscle memory. Inside, the machine kicks on. Grind. Tamp. Lock. Pour. And by the time the milk is frothing, utes are already lining up. The coffee van is a meeting place for Underbool residents and visitors. (ABC News: Tamara Clark) Underbool is about as far from Melbourne's laneway coffee culture as you can get before crossing the South Australian border. Among the gumtrees, about 500 kilometres north-west of the latte-sipping capital, a morning coffee ritual has taken hold. The coffee van is a morning meeting place for Underbool locals. (ABC News: Tamara Clark) Flat whites. Long blacks. Even caramel lattes. Like the town it services, the coffee is made strong. And for a short, precise, almost unbelievable window of time, Lee's coffee van is the busiest spot in town. Customers can choose from a wide range of beverages. (ABC News: Tamara Clark) At 7:30am sharp, the first three customers are at the counter. And almost instantaneously, three turns into more than a dozen. Lee Brown working her coffee machine. (ABC News: Tamara Clark) Lee moves quickly. She knows most of her customers by name and order, and most of them know exactly how long they have got. "People look at my hours online and think, 'What a waste of time,'" Lee says while frothing milk. It is important for the tradies, the farmers, the truck drivers, the socialites and the passers-by. Lee Brown's coffee fuels the people who keep the community alive. (ABC News: Tamara Clark) They time their morning around their freshly brewed barista coffee. Lee often makes more than 30 coffees during her 20-minute shift, before heading to her other job at the Underbool Neighbourhood House. Three days a week, she stays open longer. Three hours. That's when her alfresco chairs fill, conversations stretch out, and locals settle in. For customers, it's less about the coffee and more about what comes with it. For local shearer Hamish Farnsworth, the coffee van is a chance to see his neighbours. "The coffee is just the bit that brings everyone together," he says. Hamish Farnsworth has adopted freshly brewed coffee into his morning routine. (ABC News: Tamara Clark) "The coffee van does a really good job of just trying to be there for the community, more so than doing it for the money." For farmers, days are often long and solitary. Hours in a tractor without conversation. He says five minutes spent with peers makes a difference to their mental health. "If they can just catch someone before they go to work, it's so much better," Hamish says. "Some days you can drive past at 9:30 and you'll have the ladies here having their coffee, interacting and being a community again." Lee opened the van because she missed good coffee, the type she used to order from cafes when she lived in Swan Hill. She bought the van just as COVID-19 hit. She opened the business regardless of the challenges the pandemic posed. "It was really great for our community," Lee says. Coffee has become an important morning ritual. (ABC News: Tamara Clark) "People would come down, grab a coffee, get their mail and go to the shop." In a town where some services are thinning, the van has become a cornerstone. Underbool woman Sonia McVicar wears many leadership hats, including secretary of the local Country Fire Authority and being on the pool advisory committee. She says the coffee van brings together the people who keep the community alive. "It takes a village," Sonia says. "That's what we are." Sonia McVicar says the coffee van does wonders for community spirit. (ABC News: Tamara Clark) She says togetherness is a core value of the Underbool community. "A lot of volunteer work goes into the town to keep it going, and we just support each other," Sonia says. "It's great to support the local businesses, and Lee's been doing a fantastic job bringing everyone together." The Underbool population is aging. The median age in the area is 52, 14 years older than the state median, according to the 2021 census. Sonia says the aging population has forced some changes around town. "[Underbool] has gotten a bit smaller but we're seeing a recent growth," she says. About 200 people live in Underbool. (ABC News: Tamara Clark) But Underbool is determined to keep the community spirit alive. Volunteers

The 20-minute coffee van that keeps a small community together

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