“Communities and individuals can use permaculture to redesign the use of these resources to create sustainable self-reliance. It follows that including permaculture agriculture-based programs in any community development is the smart thing to do and a good legacy to leave.”
PA professional member Greg Knibbs is a permaculture designer and educator, working across Southeast Asia, East and West Africa and Australia. Greg did his PDC with David Holmgren and Leah Harrison in 1992, and has since taught permaculture workshops and courses alongside Geoff Lawton, Bill and Lisa Molllison, and David Spicer. Greg was instrumental in the creation of the Philippines Permaculture Institute and the Ghana Permaculture Institute, and has undertaken permaculture teaching and consulting in countries including Tanzania, Cambodia and Myanmar. Greg’s business Edge5 Permaculture provides permaculture design consultancy and delivery, and works with NGO’s to provide local permaculture solutions to communities
How did you discover Permaculture?
I first met Bill Mollison when I was 17 visiting the 1976 ConFest, a Conference and Festival of subcultures of the alternative movement. Bill was presenting a hands-on practical workshop. His appearance was scruffy, (like all of us at the time) in thongs with long trousers, blue rolled up shirt and hat, and chain-smoking cigarettes. He was raving on about how to plant a set of spuds without digging. He had a dirty old horsehair mattress, some straw and a bit of old cow manure in a bucket. He threw the manure down over weeds, then threw the mattress on top. He ripped a hole in it and placed a few spuds in the hole, so the spuds were touching the ground. Then he covered it all with straw. “So easy to grow a set of spuds just come back a few months later and harvest ’em”. There was only probably a dozen of us watching him as there was a heap of other workshops on at the same time. My initial thought was this guy is crazy. Slowly, I had a last look and quietly slipped away laughing to myself.
Permaculture remained floating around in the back of my brain along with mucking around with organic gardening. I remember looking for books on organic gardening in 1976. A few months later, I came across Bill presenting lectures at the Organic Garden Festival in NSW. The book, Permaculture One by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren was published in 1978 around the time I attended another festival where Bill was giving some of the earliest lectures on permaculture. Following the first PDC training with David Holmgren and Leah Harrison in 1992, I studied under Bill to complete a Diploma of Permaculture Design and Permaculture Teacher’s registration and then completed an Advanced Permaculture training with Robyn Francis. Since then, I’ve been privileged and delighted to co-teach permaculture with Geoff Lawton, Bill and Lisa Mollison, Dave Spicer, David Holmgren and many others. In my wildest dreams, I never thought I would become a traveling permaculture teacher, designer and consultant.
You’ve been instrumental in the setup of Permaculture Institutions in the Philippines and Ghana. Can you give me some insights into how these were set up and what we in Australia can learn from them?
Setting up in-country Permaculture Institutes is essential for a solid foundation of growing and building permaculture anywhere in the world. In 1976, I was visiting Bohol in the Philippines. There I was introduced to Carlos Echavez, who arranged for me to run a two-day Permaculture Introductory Course for 25 people who were active in their communities. Following that course, 15 people committed six weekends to complete the first Permaculture Design Course (PDC) in Bohol.
From that, the Philippines Permaculture Institute was created in 1997; initially as a collaboration between myself and students from the first of the four PDCs that I had taught in the Philippines. At the inaugural meeting, the Institute members, the students from the PDCs, took an oath and were sworn in as officers of the Philippines Permaculture Institute (PPI). The legal set up costs of the Institute and registration were funded by the students and the wider community. Today there are many permaculture activities in the Philippines, including The Philippines Permaculture Convergence, the Philippine Permaculture Association (PPA)and Nu Wave Farmers.
The establishment of the Ghana Permaculture Institute followed a different path, and began as a working collaboration between Paul Yeboah, a Ghanaian, and I. In early 2004, Father Ambrose, of Ghana, West Africa, was in Perth, Western Australia recovering from illness. Whilst in Perth, the Abbott contacted Bill Mollison inquiring about arranging a Permaculture Design Courses (PDC) and help to retro fit the Monastery’s 430-acre farm. Bill told Ambrose to contact me and suggested that I would go to Ghana to help him. I’ve now been to Ghana three times. During the first trip to Ghana in May 2004, I met Paul Yeboah, the farm manager of the Monastery. We became good friends and together set out a vision to set up the non-profit Ghana Permaculture Network, which became the Ghana Permaculture Institute, and which is now providing a demonstration of how to create stable food production and improve quality of life in Ghana.
Why did you start your business Edge5? What community needs are you addressing?
I created Edge5 to help address the crises in global communities and ecosystems by working with corporations, business, governments and NGOs to implement proven evidence-based solutions. A key part of this is to train people in practical tools for ethical best practice Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Holistic Community Development to meet the needs of communities and landscapes. My decision to follow this path was based on my 30 years of experience that best practice permaculture education and training is an effective approach. A central aim of Edge5 is train people to become on the ground, on-location permaculture educators and designers. Then these people can gain their own experience and train others to care for the earth and its people, rebuild natural capital, set up demonstration sites, secure local food and water supply lines, set up open pollinated seed banks and plant nurseries.
We know from experience and research that community development projects have the best chance of being successful if they build on what is in place: the resources and people locally. Typically, the most accessible and useful resources are the natural resources available to local (particularly rural) communities. These include the land (soil), the climate – sun and water (energy), plants and animals, humans and their skills, knowledge and community dynamics.
“Communities and individuals can use Permaculture to redesign the use of these resources to create sustainable self-reliance. It follows that including Permaculture agriculture-based programs in any community development is the smart thing to do and a good legacy to leave.”
How does your teaching of permaculture vary between Australia and overseas?
In more affluent countries with abundance and available resources, large amounts of money may be spent implementing a permaculture design. This may include items such as raised vegetable beds, pre-mixed soils & mulch, automatic reticulation, books, further training & soil amendments and advanced green stock. In less affluent countries, this is a different picture. It is much more beneficial to accurately target permaculture training. We identify needs and then teach in more detail only those elements of the PDC that are relevant. For example, to focus much more strongly on designing the zones immediately next to the house and only for that climate zone and weather patterns. Water security for growing food is typically a key issue and permaculture offers a suite of tools to help retain water in the landscape and extend the growing season across the hungry gaps. Often, specific design tools and specific techniques offer huge gains. Two practical things that spring to mind are the use of resources of open pollinated seed and basic tools like a broad fork to ignite a project.
Under this new normal, is permaculture the solution?
COVID and climate change effects have shown that globalisation increase our risks of failure to fulfill essential needs that can adversely affect 100s of millions of people. One part of the solution is for the essentials of life to be produced and managed locally – or at least enough of them to avoid the above problems. The challenge is to provide stability by doing things locally AND efficiently AND under local control. Mostly, this concerns how we design how best to use land and other natural resources to live safely and securely. This means carefully designing the local environments to efficiently and effectively provide human needs – including aesthetic needs – that positively improves the landscape rather than degrading it. Permaculture design methods are a reliable way to do this. I see permaculture as the best solution right now, for communities and landscapes in crisis. Practical examples of permaculture have shown that it is possible to turn things around rapidly using the permaculture toolbox to restore landscape, rebuild natural capital, secure local food and water supply, and build and create self-reliance in communities. The success of Permaculture is due to the design methods and ways of understanding the world set out in the original Permaculture Designers Manual together with new understanding and evidence from on the ground working examples.
I’d like to give a short quote from Bill Mollison about the primary directive of Permaculture,
“The only ethical decision is to take responsibility for our own existence and that of our children. There is historical proof that within a region of environmental stability created by sustainable land use systems, stability in human population naturally occurs. If we do not get our cities, homes and gardens in order, so that they feed and shelter us, we must lay waste to all other natural systems and we become the final plague.
Permaculture as a design system contains nothing new. It arranges what was always there in a different way, so that it works to conserve energy or to generate more energy than it consumes. What is novel, and often overlooked, is that any system of total common-sense design for human communities is revolutionary.“
Bill, we are keeping up the anger and the fight. The revolution is in place and growing.
More information:
Greg is a Professional member of Permaculture Australia, the national permaculture member organisations. You can find out more, including how to sign up today, here.
“I support individuals, micro/small/family-owned business owners and people in not-for-profit or social enterprises. I do this because I believe that grassroots action and people working together locally is better for all of us. I see the enormous difference not-for-profits and social enterprises make in our communities. I believe that local business is a cornerstone of connection and resilience. And behind it all is you and I – just people with our own personal and family commitments, trying to do our best.”
PA’s Kym spoke with Bonnie Tuttle, one of our new PA members based in lutrawita / Tasmania about the links between permaculture & Holistic Decision Making, building local economy, and obtaining many yields by working with small community organisations/groups.
For those who don’t know you, tell us more about yourself?
I’m a business and community consultant and my core focus is on helping our communities grow through service and enterprise. I offer training, facilitation, coaching, project management and marketing/communications support. I’m based in the South of the beautiful lutrawita / Tasmania, on the ‘sunny Eastern Shore’ which has allowed me to create some lovely little microclimates in my garden, where annual veggies were a (very time consuming) passion before I discovered permaculture! Now we have significantly more perennials.
I can’t remember how I first came to permaculture. I think living here with such a small and well-connected community meant that I just stumbled across it when keeping up to date with fellow PA members Hannah at Good Life Permaculture, and Lauren and Oberon from Spiral Garden. I did some reading and although the gardening aspect really spoke to my hands-in-the-dirt obsession, it also set off all the bells in my strategic/solutions/design/planning brain, which had lived in the corporate growth economy for far too long.
What are some of the wins and challenges of your work activities and running your own business?
The main challenge is that I have chosen to work with grassroots organisations, and people who don’t generally have a lot of access to funds. During my Permaculture Design Course (with GLP) I became more interested in the economic aspects of permaculture, because it helped me to better understand the issues, but also some of the solutions.
I am still grappling with how to best obtain a yield from my work whilst maintaining a sense of fair share, but I have adopted barter as a form of payment, set up payment plans, and joined the CENTS network to try to make my services accessible to everyone. I do a little bit of ‘Robin Hood-ing’ with corporate clients every now and then, as long as they align with my values – by working with some larger clients who have capacity to pay I can then offer time pro-bono to other volunteer-led grassroots groups, or start-ups without any capital.
“Although this ‘target market’ may not be the most appealing in a marketing sense, I am all the richer for it. I have created the most wonderful tapestry of friends and acquaintances, and I now have the opportunity to share my knowledge with people I know will use it well and build a better future for themselves and our community.“
Another ‘win’ is that I am able to live a more holistic life, with work integrated into the flow of my days. If I fancy a walk in the bush, I can take it. If the tomatoes need watering, I can pop out and do it. My days are still extremely busy, and I do work early in the morning and late into the night on occasion – but I pick my kids up from school every day, and am always here if the neighbours need a hand.
You are doing some great work in Holistic Design Management (HDM). How do you see this linking with permaculture (ethics & principles) and broader community resilience?
I learned HDM with Dan (Palmer) early this year, and it immediately sparked something. I have used the framework on a number of occasions now, with individuals, couples and groups. There are many similarities to other forms of strategy and design, and I tend to pick what I think will be the most effective tool for each client.
I see many linkages with permaculture. The most powerful impact I have seen so far (and I’m only at the beginning of my HDM journey) is the impact it can have on Zone Zero. Many people put substantial energy into People Care, but their focus is on the ‘other’. By using the nested wholes structure we can see that there is no ‘other’ – we all exist in symbiosis with the living systems we are nested within. Without clarity and care for ourselves, we can’t possibly be sustainable nor regenerative.
I love that it is a Patterns to Details approach, and this aligns with my philosophy no matter what the framework is. I always start with the ‘big picture’ and work down, because in my work I see people, in their personal and professional lives, get very ‘stuck’ in the doing. Using HDM it is easy to give appropriate space to these enabling actions, but they are always in service of something bigger, and of great importance to the person or the organisation.
For me personally, the whole HDM system’s value is in Applying Self Regulation and Feedback. The tools have really helped me to stay on track, Observe and Interact with the things influencing my progress towards where I want to be, and adjust – usually through self regulation! I am known for being ‘all in’, and have been prone to burnout in the past. Utilising HDM energises me, and gives me little indicators when I’m putting too much energy into one thing (and so it helps me to better value diversity too!)
You are a member of PA (thank you!) – why do you think permaculture and supporting the national permaculture organisation is important?
Although I have a very grassroots focus in the work that I do, I acknowledge that the impact we can have on many issues including the economy and climate change really needs to be addressed at a higher level. This requires momentum and pressure. We can’t do it alone, and our many voices make our message louder.
I also think a sense of belonging is important – to all of us, but to me as an individual too. I have been very lucky to have only experienced a short lockdown period in April 2020, but my work can be very isolated which is hard for a social person like myself. I went from busy offices to being alone all day with my sleepy dog much of the time, and it made me realise that the only connections I had were work colleagues and family.
“Being a member of Permaculture Australia and Permaculture Tasmania has given me opportunities to connect with like minded people and spend my time doing things I consider to be a good use of what precious time we all have. I’m also relatively new to permaculture, and I love to learn. PA exposes me to such a wealth of knowledge – I’m so grateful.”
What do you see as the challenges we are currently facing (e.g. climate crisis) and how could these be addressed?
Wow that is a big question! There are so many opportunities, but the one I focus on is building local economy and taking the wind out of the global growth economy. There is such big ‘bang for buck’ in local economy! People have richer lives because they can work close to home; they can get what they need in their neighborhoods, cutting down on monocultures and carbon miles; we would consume less, and what we would consume would be more necessary and less frivolous if it wasn’t just available at the click of a button from the other side of the earth. From a business owner’s perspective I think it would be easier to find our own place in the market, because we wouldn’t be competing with people online from everywhere. And services would be place based and therefore more tailored and effective…
This isn’t all necessarily true of local economies all of the time, and it would take a lot of work. But I think if as consumers and business owners we turned our minds to providing for ourselves and our neighbours, buying only what we need, and took our feet off the accelerator in the quest for global domination then a lot would change for the better.
What does the rest of 2021 have in store for Bonnie Tuttle Consulting?
I fell into working for myself because of a family emergency, and so at the time I didn’t have time to do things ‘properly’. I certainly didn’t go through any of the steps I advise my clients to take! So I have recently spent a lot of time and energy on the business – looking at systems which support my way of working and reduce the time I need to spend at my desk. I also continued the momentum which started in January this year with my PDC and HDM study, and really looked into who I am and what impact I want to make – how I exist with my business and how that exists within the world. It led me to a rebrand, which I have just launched. So for the rest of the year I will be continuing to get my systems in place, and become more routine in the way I work. And now that I have something I can be proud of, I’ll be promoting the brand a bit more.
I have also been working hard to develop relationships with local government bodies and other organisations who have access to funds to support grassroots organisations, and so I will be delivering some workshops called Business Fundamentals for Grassroots Organisations over the next few months. I have teamed up with my dear friend and fellow permie Jo Smith (Naturally Well with Jo, and Bruny Island Market Garden) and we are running a ‘Living with Purpose’ workshop too – that should be great fun.
And last but not least, I have a Permablitz I’m helping out with in October, and my husband Andrew and I will be starting to roll out the permaculture plan I created for our own space. It will be a slow process, and Small and Slow Solutions is the principle I struggle the most with, but we make a great team so I’m sure we will get the balance right.
For more information:
Check out Bonnie via her Website, Facebook and Instagram. PA members are able to access a generous 10% discount on services from Bonnie too – log into the PA website to find out more.
Bonnie is a Professional member of Permaculture Australia, the national permaculture member organisations. You can find out more, including how to sign up today, here.
“I love permaculture because it doesn’t just highlight what’s wrong in the world, but it provides the tools for us to craft genuinely new solutions for how we could move forward to create the world of our dreams that’s good for everyone, not just for our individual selves. ” Hannah Moloney
PA’s Kym spoke with PA member Hannah Moloney, Good Life Permaculture about her new book, radical hope, living the Good Life in lutrawita / Tasmania and the busy time she’d have doing great things as Prime Minister of Australia for a week!
Thanks for chatting with me Hannah. How did you get into permaculture and how do you think it can address some of the challenges our society is facing?
I’m originally from sunny Kurilpa, Meanjin (West End, Brisbane) and the youngest of five wildly different kids. I grew up on a quirky herb nursery my Dad ran while Mum worked as a Research Librarian at The Native Title Tribunal. By default I absorbed a strong sense of social and environmental justice which has undoubtedly helped shape me into who I am today. Having grown up in a herb nursery (not a permaculture garden) in a rather alternative community the word permaculture was often flitted around. I think I first saw Bill Mollison speak at an organic fair when I was 17 years old. But it wasn’t until I was travelling Australia when I was 18 and met Annemarie and Graham Brookman at the legendary Food Forest in South Australia that I really learned what it was. Their holistic approach to farming and living hit home with me and I *got it* – deep down in my heart I went “yessssssssss”.
For the next few years after meeting them I was mostly involved in front line activism helping to defend old growth forests in lutruwita / Tasmania. But at some point I looked at myself and knew that I was sad and approaching activism the wrong way for me personally. There’s many different ways to be an activist and my big learning in that time of my life was finding out how I could be an activist forever. That’s when I pivoted and focused 100% on permaculture and community work. I see permaculture as a form of positive activism that addresses all the big challenges of our time.
“Many people still don’t realise it’s not just about gardening/farming – permaculture is a holistic design framework that can be applied to anything – including urban planning, the building industry, education, health and wellbeing and the climate emergency to name a few things. “
Congratulations on your first book – exciting! How did you come to write a book & what was your inspiration?
Thanks! I was incredibly fortunate to be approached by Affirm Press who suggested I write a book. While flattered, I was very hesitant as there’s so many books already – do we really need more? The short answer is yes, we need more story telling of meaningful and positive ways to move through our world. Right now we’re being bombarded by either a denialist and/or negative narrative around climate change. My book is part of a broader movement in reclaiming that narrative and grounding it in reality (can’t dodge the sobering facts) while drenching it in radical hope. Radical hope is the act of living with optimism and courage in the face of the huge uncertainty that is the climate emergency.
Tell us more about your book – what do you hope folks will take away from reading it and importantly the action they’ll take?
My book answers the question “how to live a good life in the face of the climate emergency”. I draw on my own life as a practical example – but for the first time ever I step into my vulnerability and share my personal experience in coming to terms with our world and my small place in it. It hasn’t been easy. I also highlight other wonderful people and organisations across Australia doing incredible work in their homes, communities, for their whole regions and our country. I have two hopes for people reading my book. The first is that they learn about some of the effective initiatives already happening in Australia (there’s so many) and realise the solutions are already here, we just have to support them. My second hope is that readers remember that we have everything we need to bring about stunning transformation to create a just and safe world for all. Every single one of us ordinary humans are capable of doing extraordinary things when we apply ourselves.
It’s been a challenging few years with bushfires, droughts and a global pandemic. If you were PM for a week, what changes would you implement to try and address some of these challenges or advocate for?
Oooo, I’d have a really busy week and;
Prioritise and centre First Nations engagement and wisdom. As a starting point, this would include adopting the Uluru Statement From the Heart.
Legislate and regulate non-biased, responsible media as the norm to ensure people are not ingesting blatant misinformation.
Introduce a quota in Australian government to ensure gender equality. This would include good detail about gender diverse people to ensure genuine inclusion.
Ban political donations from big industries to prevent corruption.
Transition to 100% renewable energy which would involve closing all coal power plants justly which would include supporting the workers into new industries.
Provide significant financial and technical support to farmers so they can transition towards methods in line with regenerative land management tailored for their context.
Invest in well designed/built social housing that provides secure homes for people.
Invest in the arts to re-establish them as part of our country’s foundation of cultural expression and development.
You are a long term member of PA (thank you!). Why are you a member/why is being a member of PA important?
I’m a proud PA member as I love belonging to a national community of passionate people dedicated to doing good. It encourages me to strive to be better in my work and as a human, and connects me with people across the country for support, ideas and friendship.
What else does 2021 hold for you and Good Life Permaculture?
Well, it’s been a big year – as well as our usual calendar of permaculture workshops and landscape design projects – I’m gearing up to launch my book into the world in September. This will coincide with me re-starting fun, educational weekly You Tube videos from my home/garden to share free skills with people and I’m trying my hardest to pull together a podcast based off my book for people to enjoy as well. Plus I’m excited about a new collaboration with dear friends Milkwood which will kick off later this year (watch this space). But mostly I’m really hoping I can continue to soften into myself to get closer to reaching my full potential so I can do more good in the world – as far as I can tell this requires a lot of courage and willingness to fail. But I’m going to have a crack!
How can folks get a copy of your book? (and will there be a second or third! book coming too?)
You can find the book at your local bookstore or here online at Booktopia. You can also ask your local library to order it in. In terms of writing another book – I’d love to! But let’s give birth to book baby number one first and see how that rolls.
More information:
Hannah is a and Co-Director of Good Life Permaculture based in lutrawita / Tasmania & guest presenter on Gardening Australia. You can follow the journey of Good Life Permaculture via their Instagram, Facebook and You Tube channel for heaps of great inspiration on growing food, implementing permaculture ethics & principles, and building community.
Hannah is a Permaculture Australia Professional member, the national permaculture member organisation and has completed a Diploma of Permaculture, You can find out more and sign up as a member here today, and join Hannah and hundreds of members across the globe who are advocating for permaculture solutions and positive change. Find out more information on VET Permaculture offerings, including the Diploma of Permaculture here.
Ben completed a Diploma of Permaculture with Eltham College in Victoria. In this article, Ben shares experiences of using permaculture to design for disaster, and how his VET Permaculture knowledge assisted with the recent bushfires.
“I first heard about permaculture while WWOOFing on farms in New South Wales and Victoria. It seemed to me that the people talking about permaculture had a different approach to their land, animals and life in general, so I took notice. After reading about it online and in books, I became interested in studying and commenced the Diploma of Permaculture in 2012,’ Ben Buggy
Tell us about the permaculture studies you’ve completed and what were the highlights I completed the Diploma in Permaculture, which included a PDC qualification as part of the study as well as Dynamics Groups training with Robyn Clayfield. There was so much good in that course, but the highlights were often the practical days and field trips, where we visited people to learn about specific skills like bee keeping and cheesemaking. I remember one morning spent on the course with John Seed, the Deep Ecology pioneer, where he took us through a process exploring the birth of the universe and life on earth. That was a powerful experience that has stayed with me.
Designing for a changing climate & resilient communities is an important consideration for permaculture design – how can we promote this better in Australia (and internationally)? Permaculture design is a great framework to tackle big problems, such as the climate crisis. It’s a way of thinking that, together with Indigenous knowledge, can be harnessed by leaders at all levels. Also, the grassroots work we can do to share this knowledge within our community can help mitigate the worst effects of the crisis. As permaculture designers we need to be a part of the process – thinking deeply and walking together. There are so many inspiring permaculture examples and stories around the world that people need to see and hear. I think media like Pip Magazine and Happen Films are doing a great job at finding these stories and sharing them more widely.
You mentioned that your permaculture studies and design helped save your property during the bushfires – can you share some of the design components you utilised and also any lessons learnt? My family and I were able to stay and defend our home from the Badja Forest fire that burned through our community around Cobargo, New South Wales, on NYE 2020. When my mum and I moved onto a property, which adjoins the vast Brogo wilderness, we knew that bushfire would be a very real threat, and because of my studies I had seen the ways that we could prepare ourselves. That preparation included meeting up with neighbours to talk about our fire plans, as well as a visit from the local RFS and a consultation with permaculture elder and designer, Phil Gall. Our defence fire system was a big investment which we prioritised over a tractor. We installed a large steel tank (110kL) that would be dedicated to fire fighting, and a decent sized petrol pump, which sends water to a network of misting sprinklers over the house and other buildings. Our sprinkler system is in copper pipe and is designed to endure a firestorm. We have a number of fire hoses that come off that system. We planned to shelter in the house during the fire front. Other things that are part of our fire kit include protective gear, smoke masks and battery radio.
The fire was stopped by the green growth in the orchard, but the bird netting was taken.
“During my permaculture course, we visited a couple in Kinglake, Victoria, where we learned about the ways that they prepared for the event of fire, and stayed and defended their home. It was that day when I learned that we would need to prepare our home to fight fire, and started to gather the knowledge that we needed to do it safely.“
The fire that burned through our property was not a firestorm, which was raging further to the north of us, but a grass fire that spotted ahead of the front. In retrospect, the system we had designed was not well suited to this type of fire. The house and buildings were soaked and very well protected, but the gardens further out from the buildings were burning, and we didn’t have a mobile option. We also fought fire for about five hours, so we needed to turn the pump off at times to conserve water. We used 80kL of water that night, and kept our buildings from burning. We are now adding an extra loop of sprinklers further out in the garden, so we can keep fire further away. We really love our gardens, and realised that we hadn’t done enough to protect them. This new ring of sprinklers will help to keep our gardens greener during drought, which is also a great buffer against grass fire. It will also give us more control to direct water where it’s needed.
The portion of the 90 acre that was unburnt after the fire.
“The experience of staying and defending our home was traumatic and exhausting and not something I’d wish on anyone. The weeks afterwards were even harder – living in a home unrecognisable and barely functioning. We would do it again though. We love this place and we grew through that hardship. I want to help other people see that preparing to stay and defending safely is possible.“
Would you recommend others study permaculture – and why/why not?
My mum Nina, (Kovo), Manu and Ben on their first outing together after the fire
Yes I would recommend this study to anyone who hears the call. The PDC is a small but mighty program that has the potential to flip thinking on it’s head and open new pathways. You really do see the world through new eyes. Then there’s the extended [VET Permaculture] certificates where we had the time to broaden that understanding through other aspects of our human habitation – working together, self care and planetary reverence.
My experience of permaculture is as a pathway, an open invitation and a responsibility. It is a pathway to a deeper and healthier connection with plants, the natural world, and other people. It is an open invitation to share in the vast wealth of knowledge and loving care that exists all around us. And it’s a responsibility to be a part of the tradition of sustainable human existence. I’m grateful for the opportunity.
More information:
The VET Permaculture studies include accredited Certificate I – IV and a Diploma of Permaculture courses. They are offered by a variety of TAFE and Registered Training Organisations in Australia. More details of where you can enrol in these courses can be found here.
The Permaculture Design Course is generally offered as a 72 hour course, either online or face to face, by permaculture practitioners across Australia and internationally. We’ve collated a list of PDC’s offered by our PA members here, including many which offer a discount to PA members.
Debbie Hunt and Kieran Malone moved to Bungonia, NSW in 2012 to escape the city, lower their carbon footprint and live in line with their values. They have regenerated their block, combatting frost, heatwaves, lack of rain and wind, and have opened An Alternative Life Learning Centre, to provide workshops, tours and design consultancies on sustainable living, gardening and food production. Debbie’s property was on high alert for bushfires for 79 days straight during the 2019-2020 bushfires in southern NSW. Just 6 weeks later, she had to close to visitors again due to COVID-19. PA volunteer Julia talked to Debbie about her approach to building resilient systems and what permaculture can teach us in the face of food insecurity.
What brought you to make the big move from city to rural and why Bungonia?
There was a combination of factors that led us from our suburban life to living An Alternative Life on a small rural property in Bungonia NSW. The never-ending cycle of bills, work and feeling like there was never enough time, to spend with the kids, to get out into nature, to do the things we loved. Feeling like we were stuck on the treadmill just doing the daily grind was one of the driving factors, we wanted to feel more connected to each other, to our surroundings, to our natural world. We wanted to downsize our debt and our bills so we could work less and live more.
We also had a growing understanding of the vulnerability of our food system to extreme weather events and the impacts this could potentially have on price and potentially supply so we wanted to develop our own self sufficiency farm, that would supply our family’s food needs and to reduce our reliance on the corporate food.
We chose Bungonia as it is a beautiful area, the landscape and sunsets are stunning and there is huge areas of National Park and native bushland, but it was also about convenience and the ability to be within travelling distance of Canberra and Sydney allowing for off farm employment when needed. The area is a cool growing region, getting enough frost each winter to be able to grow stone fruits, berries and grapes. We also knew it would be a difficult area for growing food, conditions can be pretty extreme, at an elevation of over 700m it is incredibly windy at times, we get extreme heat over 45˚C, annual rainfall is low, on average 600mm and drought is a regular occurrence. It also gets extremely cold in winter, down to -8˚C
A rare snowstorm!
Paint a picture of your site: how has it transformed since you purchased it, what kind of processes and practices have you implemented to improve and care for the land?
Our block was an old bush block that had never been farmed or had livestock, half of the farm was remanent native bush primarily of Casuarina and Eucalyptus. The other half of the property was heavy clay that had been baked hard as rock as it had been cleared of all vegetation by the previous owner, other than a handful of large trees everything had been stripped and exposed to the sun. There were some radiata pines had been planted as wind protection, but little or no soil or pasture improvement had been undertaken.
When we arrived we sectioned off parts of the farm that were to be dedicated to bush regeneration, as there was no previous farming on the property the seed bank in the soil was mostly native so letting nature rewild these areas was our approach. They are now overwhelmed with native plants including grasses, shrubs as well as fruit and seed bearing trees that keep the cockatoos and parrots with a supply of their favourites and for the most part out of our orchard. We have planted over 300 food trees including things like sugar maples for maple syrup and stone pines for pine nuts.
A before and after at Bungonia
What is your approach to your gardening system?
Our focus across the farm is on creating resilient and adaptive food systems.
We draw on a multitude of approaches from numerous land management, growing and garden systems both old and new. We get our inspiration and ideas from people and cultures from around the world, there is much knowledge that has been lost since the inception of modern farming however in some parts of the world practices that have sustained people and environments for centuries are still being practiced and offer us great insight to the sorts of solutions that can be implemented even when resources and modern day machinery is not available.
We admire, respect, and learn from the skills and knowledge of local Aboriginal people who managed the land and used it for food and shelter, in a sustainable way for tens of thousands of years. We try to our utmost to manage the land is a way that is sustainable – meeting our needs now whilst not reducing the lands capacity to provide for generations in the future.
Have you taken any inspiration from permaculture principles?
Yes in one way or another we use all the permaculture principles across our property and in our lives but I guess the one that resonates most with us do is “Value and respect diversity”. We have a diverse range of growing systems, some gardens are under cover and protected from animals and birds that might steal our food, some are out in the open and free for all to share. We have food forests, traditional raised vegetable gardens, a mixed orchard integrated with chooks and ducks, aquaponics system and a small undercover market garden. We have trellises of berries, grapes, kiwi fruit and passionfruit. Some of our vegetable patches are planted traditionally other are just allowed to go to seed and grow much more naturally.
We plant a huge range of fruit as an important part of our personal food security strategy and ensures we have something to harvest year round in Autumn we are harvesting figs and raspberries, in Winter and early Spring it is citrus, in late Spring and the beginning of Summer, berries such as boysenberries and strawberries are in season, then we get apricots, cherries, plums, apples, pears, almonds, hazelnuts, nectarines and peaches from early Summer through to mid-Autumn. Some of the fruits we grow require heavy frosts, some are much more tropical this way regardless of the season we always have something to harvest. We also plant a large variety of annual vegetables this way if one of our crops is attacked by pests or suffers disease, we do not loose our entire food supply.
We encourage biodiversity on the farm by protecting large parts of our property for native bushland that supplies food and habitat for all the local birds, animals and insects. Without a doubt diversity is the key to our success at being able to supply ourselves with an abundance of food from the garden year round and through extreme weather.
What gravitated you towards your philosophy of “fair share for all”? How do you practice this in your everyday life and work?
We believe that fair share extends beyond people, to all living things, with this in mind we dedicate more than 70% of our farm to native habitat. Our efforts to preserve land for native flora and fauna is repaid a thousand times over, it is the diversity of life on the farm, the insect eating birds and reptiles that do the bug and pest control in our gardens, it is the health of the mycorrhizal fungi beneath the soil that keep our fruit trees and gardens growing strong.
We strongly believe that the skills and knowledge to grow food should be available to everyone in particular those struggling to meet their food needs. We sponsor people in need through our courses and workshops for free and when they have completed the course, we provide seeds, tree and resources so they can get growing on their own.
We also share our harvest with those in our community who are struggling to meet their food needs and do not have the capacity or room to grow their own. We also share our knowledge and services to community groups who are working to “sow the seeds of a sustainable future”
Tell me about An Alternative Life Learning Centre. What inspired you to start this business and what need are you filling here?
Primarily we started An Alternative Life Learning Centre as we wanted to bring together a network of people who are looking to be part of a community not based on competition, consumerism and capitalism but instead operate on a basis of compassion, collaboration, and cooperation. At the same time, we saw a growing need for people to learn skills associated with personal food production and resilience. Working overseas I saw how communities were implementing a range of strategies to improve outcomes during and after extreme weather events, improved communications systems and networks, the building or evacuation centres and organisation of teams of on call volunteers, local food storage for communities that may have transport routes interrupted, new methods of growing and food preservation techniques. I also saw that these programs were indeed working and saving lives. In Australia we either deny that climate change is happening or tend to think that we will somehow be unaffected, that it is something that will happen elsewhere to other people.
Having studied climate change extensively over the years, we knew there was an increasing likelihood of our communities being impacted in negative ways by extreme weather events and there was a growing need for people to understand the risks and undertake strategies to build resilience at personal and community levels. There was also an increasing awareness of climate change and a move of people looking to live more sustainable self-sufficient lifestyles, so we opened the learning centre to give people the skills, knowledge and confidence needed to make the change.
What is on the horizon for 2021?
There are always a multitude of new projects on the go here on the farm, we have just completed building a bedroom cabin for guests, both those attending our workshops and those just looking to experience living an alternative life for a few days.
We have designed an urban food garden that would supply a family of four in fruit and vegetables year round and intend to implement the design over the coming months.
We are hosting a new range of on-site events including month “Get a taste of farm life” tours which include a guided tour of the farm and all the gardens and growing areas as well a 3 course lunch of farm produce.
We are running “design and plan a food garden” and “design and plan a mixed orchard” weekend workshops as well as a range of practical skills workshops including planting, pruning and propagation of fruit, berries for beginners and will also be hosting some family farm fun days during the school holidays that will include a host of family fun activities.
The pandemic has caused a lot of people to consider making the move from urban to rural. Any advice on how and where to start?
We started to see people making the move to urban to rural prior to the pandemic, a lot of people were made aware of our need to build resilience personally and at a community level happen during the fires of 2020. Images of people in Australia on the beaches waiting for the navy to come and rescue them, people spending NYE fleeing fire under terrifying circumstances, the loss of communications and basic services electricity, clean water, sewerage, and service stations running out of fuel was a considerable wake up call for how underprepared we are to cope with and recover from disasters, the pandemic only emphasised the problems with our food system and supply chains and increased the realisation that the current systems could not always be relied on and again increased the numbers of people looking to grow their own food and live a more sustainable self sufficient life.
In terms of where to start, before you start spend as much time as you can understanding your site and your local conditions, research the rainfall and temperature ranges. We always advise people not to just look at averages but extremes, how much rain will you get in drought years, how hot does it get in a heatwave, how much snow or frost your site gets in an extremely cold year find out what the fire history in your area, this information will give you a good guide as to what sort of resilience strategies to use when designing your food system.
If your strategy is long term then we always suggest people start with what takes longest to grow and produce, food trees – fruit and nut trees can take year before they are producing a reasonable crop so get them in first, they will grow and provide shade and shelter for your vegetable gardens and growing areas but it takes time for them to establish.
You can follow an Alternative Life Learning Centre through their Facebook page, and hear about their latest events, tours and workshops through their website.
“For me, permaculture is finding people’s best selves and putting them in a position where their best selves can flourish“
Cecilia Macaulay is a PA member, permaculture educator, designer and Declutterer Extraordinaire, specialising in “life design”, She runs classes on sensible permaculture design both inside and outside and workshops on decluttering and communication. Her work is accessible through her website and blog, and youtube channel. She has travelled extensively, particularly in Japan, and has taken inspiration from her travels to her work.
PA volunteer Julia chatted to Cecilia about the importance of “people care” and “life design” in her permaculture philosophy, the role Japan has played in her life and work, and the simplicity of permaculture’s applicability to all areas of our lives. Cecilia’s approach to life and work is simultaneously highly pragmatic and optimistic. She sees permaculture in all aspects of her life: from outside to inside to cleaning to reading — she knows that permaculture is always around to offer solutions to our everyday problems and to help us feel more alive and happy (though not “comfortable”– that is a word Cecilia does not like!).
Cecilia’s work on a house in Annandale, SydneyCecilia during a rooftop gardening and permaculture workshop at Tokyo University, JapanCecilia’s work on an inner-city Melbourne sharehouse with shady courtyard bricks and a self watering edible verandah
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