Category Thrive

If you’re interested in permaculture, chances are you’ve heard about, or visited, The Food Forest. An award-winning property spanning 50 acres, it is a certified-organic, permaculture farm and learning centre based in Gawler, an hour north of Adelaide, and is the life’s work of Annemarie and Graham Brookman.

Now in its 41st year, The Food Forest was established in 1983 with the intention of demonstrating how Australians can grow their own food, create a productive and diverse landscape, live in a low-energy, passive-solar house and earn a comfortable living, all while living relatively softly on the planet.

But this couple isn’t messing around. On their semi-arid property, they produce over 150 varieties of fruit including grapes (and wine), nuts, grain and vegetables and sell most of their produce at the Adelaide Farmers’ Market (which Graham helped found in 2006). All while raising two topnotch kids, juggling off-farm jobs in the earlier farm years and running a calendar of workshops – including their renowned Permaculture Design Course.

We’ve known for decades our transport choices are impacting the health of the planet and its inhabitants. So where are we at right now in terms of EV ownership in Australia?

Australia is massive; a land of sweeping plains and very long roads. With our relatively low population and mostly underwhelming public transport system, it’s no surprise that as a country, we love our cars and are often dependent on them. We have the second-highest rate of car ownership in the world, behind the US, to prove it.

But it’s coming at a huge environmental cost: last year the transport sector made up 19 percent of Australia’s emissions, according to the federal Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water. Passenger cars and light commercial vehicles contributed 60 percent of that (and over 10 percent of Australia’s total emissions). The department’s website states that ‘without intervention, the transport sector is projected to be Australia’s largest source of emissions by 2030’.

Thanks to a vision to prioritise food security, sustainable practices, entrepreneurial opportunities and wellbeing initiatives for the community, the regional Victorian town of Corryong has shown that from adversity comes new beginnings.

When a group of food-growing enthusiasts gathered at the local Corryong Food Swap after the Upper Murray region was devastated in the January 2020 bushfires, they recognised the lack of locally grown fresh food. Acutely aware of the fragility of supply chains and the community’s reliance on them to date, Acres and Acres Co-op was set up in March 2020 to establish a local food source. Now providing food security, resilience and easier accessibility, it’s a result that turned the devastating effects of the bushfires into one of positive change.

The six founding members of Dee Mcdonald, Shelly Neale, Jacqui Beaumont, Digby Grotts, Pam Noonan and current director of Acres and Acres Josh Collings, decided to implement an action plan and sourced funding that has seen the co-op grow from a small market garden and monthly market stall run by volunteers, to recently purchasing the local greengrocer and employing staff. The shop not only provides easier access to fresh food but is also a retail outlet for local growers to sell their seasonal produce.

A considered renovation and clever retrofitting turned a small dilapidated house on Wathaurong country into a rustic, coastal retreat for this creative young family.

When Harriet Birrell (otherwise known as Natural Harry) and husband Fraser West needed somewhere to live, they felt overwhelmed by the price of buying close to family on Victoria’s Bellarine Peninsula.

‘We had a very small budget,’ explains Harriet. But when the option arose to renovate a small, run-down house on land owned by relatives, the couple jumped at the opportunity. At 40 m2, ‘It’s not technically a tiny home, as it’s not mobile and cannot fit in a trailer, but it’s small nonetheless’. By utilising their own skills and labour and incorporating upcycled and reclaimed materials, the couple made the house liveable within six months, creating a compact but well-considered space, full of light and closely connected with the outdoors.

Author, filmmaker and founder of Local Futures Helena Norberg-Hodge explains how adopting an economic strategy based on the wisdom of indigenous cultures and smaller communities could be the answer to human, societal and environmental issues.

‘Buy local’ campaigns have been prolific over the last couple of years, indicating a growing awareness of the need to support our local communities. But localisation, or more particularly economic localisation, actually goes much deeper than just buying what you need from your nearby and independent stores. Because as paradoxical as it might seem, opting for small, slow and local is a big-picture strategy that can address the root causes of the global environmental and social crises we’ve found ourselves in.

Is it possible to run a market garden using permaculture principles in the middle of the desert and make it viable?

On the outskirts of Alice Springs in view of Tjoritja, the MacDonnell Ranges, with the red desert sands stretching for thousands of kilometres from his back fence, Rod Angelo runs a market garden. Known as The Happy Farmer, Rod supplies fresh greens to the residents of Alice Springs, and he makes his business viable by turning waste streams into inputs that would otherwise cost money.

The climate in The Alice is unforgiving to growers. Miss just a single one day of watering and you will have to start again. With temperatures regularly over 40 ºC during summer, growing food is an art and requires dedication and local knowledge in equal measure.

Dedicated to building resilience and food security through respectful community connections, Pip’s 2021 Permie of the Year recipient personifies the three key ethics.

‘Open hearted’ is how the 2021 Pip Permie of the Year Award recipient Mandy Milburn describes herself and, when you look at where the 49-year-old has found herself after a relatively tumultuous life, it’s pretty hard to argue.

These days, Mandy leads the team running the Kununurra Community Garden located in the eastern reaches of Western Australia’s Kimberley ranges. Just 45 km from the Northern Territory border, it’s a relatively small and remote community and its hot, semi-arid climate is extreme. She co-launched the Kununurra Community Kitchen five years ago and recently merged the two under the same not-for-profit banner, and now uses both entities to support, influence and nurture real and positive change within her diverse community.

With just enough money to pay for compost and mulch, plus a generous donation of land, Justin Hartley established the thriving and popular Duck Foot Farm: the first notill, small-scale and land-share farm in the Southern Highlands in New South Wales.

The importance of soil biology and health has become more apparent in recent times, partly perhaps spearheaded by books such as Matthew Evans’ Soil and Charles Massey’s Call of the Reed Warbler and, of course, a flourishing community of passionate permaculturalists across the globe. After centuries of using aggressive agricultural techniques that heavily cultivate land, many contemporary farmers are simplifying their farming methods by using no-till, no-dig or regenerative agriculture to inspire more environmentally friendly and sustainable farming practices. It could spell the end of depleting soil health, spraying chemicals and poisoning waterways.