From my desk here in Binjareb Noongar country - way out west - I have observed a pivotal inflection of a movement that has all the answers in one context, and a profound absence of answers in another context.
I still feel very much a newcomer to both the movement, and especially to this Permaculture Australia community. My commitment to permaculture is based on the sense that this isn’t something I’ve just learned, it’s who I am, which is something that was finally uncovered just 5 short years ago. So I don’t have decades of history with the pioneers of the movement, I don’t have a long-standing relationship with a community of like-minded permies. I do keep in touch with my PDC educator and some key people in PermacultureWest after serving on the committee there for a few years, but I could possibly be the only person in my little town who’s done a PDC. So this perspective is uniquely my own.
OBSERVATIONS
I’ve observed that I now belong to a movement that started 50 years ago here in Australia, and it spread around the world like wildfire, yet sometimes it seems to be far more advanced in other areas of the world than it is here. Why is that?
I’ve observed that there are pioneers of this movement who are powerful, revolutionary giants - unafraid to challenge the status quo. They recognised the power of permaculture, and accomplished great and wonderful things. There are others who embraced permaculture as a wonderful new way to grow the best tomatoes, and left it at that. No judgement - just an observation of a fact.
I’ve heard - with great dismay - the stories of deep division among the community over the years. I’ve experienced for myself the toxicity of people who don’t get their own way, and others who refuse to see the writing on the wall. I’ve seen too many people who give and give until they’re all gived out, burned out, and done.
Permaculture people are - in one way - all “like-minded”, but we are certainly not “all alike”. We all align ourselves to this wonderful thing called Permaculture, yet there is a difference of opinion in even what the definition of Permaculture is. This has created a perpetual tension in many spaces. People are people, and even in the Permaculture Australia community, people can be kind, rude, giving, selfish, rich, poor, arrogant, humble, smart, dumb, and everything in between. Fancy that - it’s like we’re as human as the rest of the world.
EXPERIENCES
Having a set of ethics and design principles is great when it comes to healing the land, but it hasn’t always translated into how people behave towards each other, or how they hold themselves accountable for their own actions. No judgement - we’re still just as human as the rest of the world. And that’s ok.
From my desk - way out here in the west - I see the results of surveys and the findings of the market research. I’ve had profound conversations with the giants of the movement, and also the bright-eyed newbies who are thinking about doing a PDC. I’ve met people from aligned organisations, international organisations, and industry bodies. These conversations show me how important this is to making the world a better place. I’ve worked alongside inspiring people who have endless energy and commitment, and I’ve seen others who struggle to keep an appointment. And that’s ok.
There is a greater appetite than ever before for the solutions that permaculture offers, and there is greater confusion than ever about what to do - but I’m happy to report - that confusion does not exist within these walls of Permaculture Australia. To some, it may not seem like much has been happening over the past 18 months. I confess I’ve not kept up with all the chatter and controversy, I’ve been busy working. Here in Permaculture Australia, we’ve all been busy birthing a new understanding, and reimagining the role of this organisation within this movement.
Permaculture has all the answers in one context - anyone who has made a commitment to living a permaculture life knows what I’m talking about. The answer is always there, in the patterns of nature, just waiting to be discovered. It starts with growing your own food, and expands from there to impact every aspect of life and society. You can rely on this, and be certain that whatever the problem is, the answer is in nature.
So for a movement that has all the answers in that context, why the division? Why the dysfunctionality? Why the absence of support and acceptance? Perhaps it’s because people are human. And that’s ok - so what are we going to do about it? I believe in accepting people as they are, meeting them where they are, and understanding that everyone has a history I know nothing about. I do not believe that enabling these people to stay there is acceptable. Life is a constant journey of growth and improvement. So what are we going to do about it?
DESIGNING FOR THE NEXT 50 YEARS
The Permaculture movement is going to look very different in the next 50 years than it has over the past 50 years. What worked in the past has done its job, it’s served its purpose, and we are ever grateful. I look at the world my children are growing up in, and I see how it’s such an entirely different world to the one I grew up in. I can’t tell them “back in my day” and use that to dictate what they should do. That would be entirely redundant. My role is to make sure they have the skills to navigate this world with the correct ethics and principles, to be able to apply them to these new problems that I never had to deal with. I see the Permaculture movement doing much the same thing now.
We don’t have “all the answers” to situations that we’ve never had to deal with before. The answers are all there - waiting to be discovered in the patterns of nature - and all we need is the ability to apply those ethics and principles, and the answers will come.
I see that one of the missing pieces of this puzzle of the movement is the context of the local community. The bioregion. We’ve been told for years to think global and act local, and that’s been great for growing great tomatoes in your own backyard. Let’s expand that local thinking to encompass the bioregion. There are wonderful examples of this across the country - already established and doing great things. We need more of these bioregional centres. I’ve just started one myself within my local community garden. A whole committee - none who are “permies” yet - made a unanimous decision to commit to developing a bioregional resilience action plan. They see, without anyone trying to explain what permaculture is, that this bioregional resilience is the most important focus we have right now.
At the moment, in my town, diesel is 274.9c per litre. What if tomorrow it just wasn’t there? In a small country town that relies entirely on imported goods (whether it’s from Perth, from over East, or from overseas, it’s all imported for us) this concept is terrifying.
The development of bioregional resilience is the context - which has largely been ignored until now - that will bring together all of the other elements of positioning permaculture as the simple solution for the very complex problems of the world. As the national organisation dedicated to the movement, Permaculture Australia has an important role to play in weaving these threads together.
ORGANISATIONAL REDESIGN
And then we come to the other dysfunction - that of organisational capacity. In the past few months you’ve heard from Catherine Reynolds: Chair, Board of Directors, and Sam Parker-Davies:Treasurer, Board of Directors. Their insights have described quite plainly the tension we’ve been unravelling and repositioning. There is so much work to do. As an organisation, we simply cannot be everything to everyone, and we would be foolish to try.
In my profession as a Permaculture Business Coach, I’ve been promoting the concept that a healthy eco-system in a business would return an abundance. The Permaculture Australia model that has existed for the past few decades is no longer fit for purpose. The evidence of this is the outputs that this audience expects, but is not receiving, and the organisation has limited capacity to deliver on. This is the reason for the deep-dive into rediscovering the state of the movement, and our role within it. Things are going to look very different soon. In designing the eco-system that we need to produce the abundance of outputs that the movement needs, it may look very different to what you expect. I’m asking you to be ok with that.
Watch this space. I know we’ve been saying this for quite some time now, and I’ve personally been dealing with some big tensions of impatience, wanting to skip ahead to where we have the answers and we’re making things happen. Not yet, but oh my, we’re so close.
So as I attend my meetings from here at my desk - way out west - and as I type away at the emails and paperwork, as I have the conversations and observe how all these things weave together, I can’t help but feel equal parts of excitement and caution. As I begin to see the local action move forward in my little town, I will feel how we’re connected to the national network of other groups doing the same thing all over the country and the world. And yet it’s a really big thing to try to accomplish, and it hasn’t been done before.
In this new wave of the Permaculture revolution, we will see new giants emerge. The youth of today will be the Elders of tomorrow, and they will talk about how they forged their new path through their unchartered territory. The movement is evolving right before our eyes, and we are making history in this very moment.
Bronwyn Chompff-Gliddon
Secretary, Board of Directors
Permaculture Australia
1/10/2026