[Pil-pc-oceania] Scribblings... a book review

[pacific-edge]

Scribblings... an occasional newsletter from PacificEdge

This time, it's the review of a new book on sustainable living the
Permaculture way...

CELEBRATING OF THE CONVIVIALITY OF PERMACULTURE
Imagine this. A small village on the seaward slope of a range of low,
rolling hills overlooking a coastal plain that displays the patchwork of
farmland. In the distance, beyond the plain, the blue of the sea goes all
the way to the horizon.

Looking out over this landscape is a family sitting around a large, wooden
table in their rammed earth house. At the end of their yard there's a small
vegetable garden and, just beyond that, fruit trees and a grassy playing
field. This is the village green, on the far side of which the pitched roof
of the earth-built community building is visible. On the edge of their
garden there¹s something special - a fig tree that produces the biggest,
sweetest and the juiciest fruit you have ever tasted.

Sounds idyllic, the sort of scene that literary journalists and novelists
paint before introducing some disruptive element into their story, something
that threatens the idyll. But there is no threat here; the idyll stands safe
though for this family it is no more. But for them it was real and the place
was South Australia, in a small village of earthern houses in the hills, not
far from the waters of St Vincent¹s Gulf. All that has changed is that the
family which sat around that table has gone, left to start a new life
elsewhere.

DESTINATION ACHIEVED
The new life that Ian Lillington and his family are building in southern
Victoria is the culmination of a journey that began a long way away and over
two decades ago. It came about, in part, because of the influence of two men
who lived and collaborated in that southernmost of Australian states,
Tasmania. At that time, the hills on which that small South Australian
village now stands were covered in open grass waving in the breeze blowing
off the gulf.

Ian¹s journey ­ the string or events, discoveries and realisations that
would eventually lead to those rolling hills - started when he was a youth,
a time when he became aware of environmental issues. Later, he enrolled at
university to study geography then went on to work in city farms and on a
project that installed insulation in the homes of people who had difficulty
paying their energy bills.

It was when he visited Australia in 1986 that fate or good fortune ­ choose
the term you like - intervened to make the connection to the work of those
two men who, by now, had both left Tasmania.

Ian¹s journey picked up a little momentum when he visited one of the two in
the southern Victoria town of Hepburn. There, David Holmgren and partner Sue
Dennett were developing what would become an exemplary model of rural
smallholding. Recognising that something of the sort could be created in the
UK where he lived ­ the cool temperate climate was similar - Ian returned
home, but not for long.

Like so many of his countrymen, Ian, his wife and first child emigrated to
Australia where they arrived in 1992. Within five years they had decided to
make the ideas of those two men ­ David Holmgren and Bill Mollison ­ a
reality in their lives. Their earth construction house in Willunga Garden
Village in the low hills not all that far from Adelaide was to be home for
almost a decade. 

AUTOBIOGRAPHY, REFLECTION AND MANUAL
Ian is a tall, slim, quietly spoken man perhaps in his forties. His manner
is thoughtful, his speech deliberate and his demeanor calm. You get the
impression that here is someone who thinks before acting.

In public, he dresses neatly and he is not afraid of hard, physical work,
much of which ­ though he didn¹t build it all himself ­ he put into making
the Willunga home a comfortable base for his family. Ian¹s wife, once a
nurse, has the practicality and straightforwardness that seems to be somehow
characteristic of people in that profession.

Ian describes his family¹s journey in the pages of his first book ­ 'The
Holistic Life - Sustainability Through Permaculture'. It¹s at the same time
an autobiography, a reflection on sustainable living and a manual for those
who would adopt a similar way of life. Through its pages, Ian describes how
he came to a different way of seeing the world through discovering the
Permaculture design system ­ the creation of David Holmgren and Bill
Mollison in Tasmania in 1978 ­ and he talks about the small but meaningful
steps his family has taken along Sustainability Street.

POSITIVE CONNECTIONS THE KEY
The Permaculture lifestyle, for Ian, is about making productive connections
with the people and organisations around you. This Ian and family did,
sourcing local food from the farmers¹ market and directly from growers,
obtaining dried foods from a local food cooperative and exchanging with
friends. Localism is a theme that runs through the book.

But for Ian, Permaculture is about a great deal more than food. It is a
whole-of-life approach to making our homes, our towns, cities and our lives
sustainable. Reading The Holistic Life you come away with the impression
that the design system is all about self-in-community and that, at essence,
Permaculture is about cooperative and convivial living.

The book ­ a large format paperback of 144 pages ­ consists of three
segments, the first of which introduces Permaculture and the need for such
an integrated approach to living. The design system¹s ethics, reflections on
the passivity of consumer society, the coming peak in the production of the
global oil supply and the likely results to follow, and the idea of design
as a life tool are covered in the heavily illustrated pages.

Ian¹s journey to Permaculture is found in the second segment. Here, too, is
a discussion of strategies for sustainable living such as the gardening of
food ­ what David Holmgren calls Œgarden agriculture¹ on account of its
productive focus and to distinguish it from the unproductive home gardening
of native and ornamental plants ­ the harvesting of rainwater for our
drought-afflicted gardens and households, diet, local economic systems,
community gardens and other local strategies for food production and using
less energy all appear here.

Segment three is about the principles of using Permaculture as a tool,
focusing on the revised set of principles devised by David Holmgren. Ian
talks about how we can put these to use. There are 12 of them altogether and
they provide a useful way to think about things in life other than those to
which Permaculture is usually linked. Indeed, many could successfully be
applied in our livelihoods and in dealing with social issues, planning and
management.

FITTING ADDITION TO YOUR PERMACULTURE LIBRARY
Ian¹s book is a fitting companion to others on sustainable living, like
Rosemary Morrow¹s 'Earth Users Guide to Permaculture'. Rosemary has remade
an ordinary brick veneer house in Katoomba, in the Blue Mountains west of
Sydney, into a home that demonstrates the do-it-yourself approach to
sustainable living that is characteristic of those touched by Permaculture.

In telling his life story and laying open the fact that his efforts are far
from perfect, Ian¹s book is fitting reading not only alongside Rosemary¹s
manual, but as a prelude or follow-on to Tom Hodgkinson¹s 'How to be Free',
a more anarchic but thoughtful approach to sane living in an English
village. 

Hodgkinson adopts a different tone to Ian and is more openly scathing of
consumer society but, like Ian, he highlights the value of convivial and
cooperative living and agrees that practices such as growing some of your
own food and producing some of your own household energy are liberating
things to do. Ian¹s book doesn¹t say so in the same language, but his more
considered style leads to the same conclusions.

The book is also welcome because of its autobiographical style, something
all too rare in Permaculture literature, scant that such literature is. We
have Bill Mollison¹s autobiographical tome, 'Travels in Dreams', and we
await David Holmgren¹s story of the path that led him to Permaculture.
Fortunately, the stories of how other people came to the design system may
yet appear if a Melbourne-based team is successful in finding a publisher
for their collection of Permaculture biographies.

Permaculture is about people and biographies and autobiographies are the
genre by which we learn from the journeys of others and perhaps become
inspired by them. But it seems that people are too modest to write about
themselves (perhaps they could find a ghost writer or let someone else do
their story as a biography) or they regard their story as too uninteresting,
too unexceptional to write about. What we need are Œlittle biographies¹ not
dissimilar to what Ian has written in The Holistic Life.

JOURNEY'S END
In a house in the low hills that parallel the coastline not far from
Adelaide, new residents now gaze over the coastal plain in the same way as
did Ian Lillington and his family. For that family there are now the new
vistas of another state ­ another destination in their travels in
Permaculture.

Perhaps, after you finish reading The Holistic Life you too will come to the
conclusion that this is not the last word of Ian¹s that you are likely to
read. Maybe, next time, it will be a more technical book, a manual, perhaps,
describing the design and detail of the many ways to make your life
sustainable. This is only speculation, however.

But what is not speculation is our need to move to a saner, sustainable way
of life. Rather than the deprived, do-without and rather glum and grey life
painted by environmentalists of old, what we need is a way of sustainable
living that is, instead, colourful, comfortable, convivial and lively. And
the prescription for such as life is there, within the pages of The Holistic
Life.

............

Lillington I, 2007; The Holistic Life ­ Sustainability Through Permaculture;
Axiom Publishing, South Australia. ISBN 978 1 86476 437 6

In bookshops or order direct:
$24.95 + $5 postage (cheque, postal order, credit card) Axiom Publishing,
Unit 2, 1 Union Street, Stepney, South Australia 5069. P: 08 8362 7052.
www.axiompublishing.com.au      axiom at axiomdist.com.au

References: 
Morrow R, 2006; The Earth Users Guide to Permaculture; Kangaroo Press,
Sydney. ISBN 0 7318 1271 9

Hodgkinson T, 2006; How to be Free; Penguin Group, London. ISBN 13: 978 0
241 14321 6
...........

Ian Lillington will discuss his book, his adventures in Permaculture design
and what's happening in Permaculture at the 'Permaculture On The Border'
event in Albury-Wodonga on 16 June at 10am.

RSVP by 14 June to National Centre - 02 6043 6700 or call rebecca 0410 594
282

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
RUSS GRAYSON
journalism, editing, online journalism & content, photojournalism,
instructional manuals/communication services for international development

PO Box 1045, Manly, NSW 1655 AUSTRALIA
info at pacific-edge.info
P: 0414 065 203
www.pacific-edge.info

TerraCircle international development team, Oceania
www.terracircle.org.au

Australian City Farms & Community Gardens Network
www.communitygarden.org.au

Sydney Food Fairness Alliance
www.sydneyfoodfairness.org.au

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^