[Pil-pc-oceania] Festivals and sustainability the city's theme this season

[RussGrayson]

CELEBRATION - A MONTH OF FESTIVALS BRINGS INSPIRATION

I remember this highway. But back then there were fewer lanes and fewer cars
and it was sheep and cows that sprawled across the farmer's green fields,
not houses. 

My eyes wander from the road and gaze across those fields. The vistas are
still familiar enough to remind me that it was around here that I would
settle back at the start of those long ago, long runs down to Melbourne.

It's a straight and somewhat boring drive south from Sydney down the Hume
Highway where it transits that flat, grassy country between Liverpool and
Camden. Off to the east is the sprawl of Campbelltown, once a small farming
town of the historic type with its old sandstone buildings, like so many
others around here. Now it's a dormitory satellite of Sydney. Off in the
other direction, just to the west of the highway, is the equally old town of
Camden and it is towards it that I turn and cross the highway overpass. Just
down the road is number one, Mt Annan Drive.

"It's full in this carpark but you can park in the field up on the hill", a
man wearing an orange, volunteer T-shirt tells me, gesturing towards a
grassy knoll dotted with cars. From here, its only a few meters on foot to
the fair.


FIRST FAIR
This Spring has been festival season in the Sydney region, with two
sustainability-themed events within a month of each other. I am at the first
of them, having left the rainy weather of Sydney's northern coastal strip
for the warmth of the sunshine falling onto the Macarthur Cetre for
Sustainable Living (www.mcsl.org.au).

Officially opened less than a year ago, the Centre - which was inspired by
Melbourne's magnificent CERES - already has a busy programme of
sustainability education for local schools and an active volunteer program.
Their Work for the Dole team has made a patchwork of rectangular vegetable
beds on a little plateau near the main building and the local permaculture
group (www.permaculturesydneybasin.org.au) has built a modest keyhole garden
on top of the hill.

Stallholers have set up on the lower paddock where a local band gives forth
with lively country music and a Centre volunteer is talking to visitors
about the Isa-browns (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISA_Brown) in a little
moveable pen. 

"We've got chickens at home", a young woman who is standing near the pen
tells me. "My mother keeps them". Her statement makes me feel good, as if
the fact of a young woman being interested in chooks is somehow reassuring.
The volunteer, another woman equally young, is telling people about the
animals and exudes a knowledgeable enthusiasm.

Nearby is Clarissa and her crew promoting Illabunda ecovillage
(www.illabundavillage.com.au). You see them at events such as this and it's
because they get out and talk to the public that Sydney will, this time, see
an ecovillage become reality.

Up the hill meanwhile, in the community garden where a patch of bright
yellow betrays the location of a freshly sheet mulched garden
(http://www.agroforestry.net/pubs/Sheet_Mulching.html) is Vanessa John,
Wollongong City Council's sustainability educator. She's demonstrating to a
small group how to go about constructing such a garden.

Downslope is the Centre's energy and water efficient building containing
training centre, organic café and offices. It's made of a brick composed of
cement and sawdust and roofed with large, solar electric tiles. An array of
black, glass tubes mounted on the roof and facing to the north provides all
the hot water the Centre needs.

"It's a carbon neutral building", says Lizzie Rose, one of the Centre's team
of sustainability educators. Another, Kathy Giunter, can be seen leading a
mob of people up the hill towards the community garden - she's on tour duty.
The third member of the team is across the track where she is talking worms
to a number of children who reach out hesitantly to touch the creatures.

"All the water falling on the car park is used on site", says Lizzie. "Down
there you can see the greywater system, that series of rectangles with reeds
growing in them. And over here, behind us, is the main water tank that
stores our roofwater. You can see that children have painted it with a
mural". 


ON THE ROAD TO NOWHERE
We were lost. Fiona pulls council's new Toyoto hybrid over and consults the
map. "Yes, we are off course but, yes, we are still heading the right way to
get to Richmond", she reassures me and the two in the back seat.

One is here on a holiday from Germany. The other, Tina, is an event
organiser who, through her small business, Tide Event Management
(www.tideevents.com.au), is resonsible for many of the sustainability themed
fairs and events around Sydney. Her company name is apt as she is familiar
with the tides of Sydney's Northern beaches - Tina is a keen surfer and
conversant with the breaks and the left and right handers along the northern
coastal strip. On the way out here she told me how something had surfaced
next to her as she waited outside the break on her board for a swell, how it
had screeched at her and then dived. It was nothing more than a fairy
penguin (www.mec.org.au/fauna/penguins.html).

When we saw the windpump spinning in the distance we knew we were near, and
soon we were reversing onto the grassy verge. Once again, it had been a case
of leaving behind the rainy coast and heading inland to a place where the
sun always seemed to shine. On the other side of the fence was Hawkesbury
Earthcare's second Sustainability Fair (www.earthcare.org.au).


SUSTAINABILITY IN A FIELD
Located amid the green fields of the UWS Richmond campus, Hawkesbury
Earthcare boasts an energy efficent, earth construction building with a line
of photovoltaic panels arrayed along its roof line above the solar water
heater. They also make use of an old piggery that has been converted into
workshops and meeting spaces. Immediately outside is a large community
garden (www.communitygarden.org.au) of the shared type resplendent with a
late season crop of broad bean and a wide range of other vegetables that a
garden tour was busy identifying.

An old bathtub converted into a water chestnut paddy stands nearby and
citrus trees with heavy crops of fruit appear here and there through the
garden. It's a garden of geometric pattern, one side reminescent of those
European kitchen gardens designed as crisscrossing paths forming large
angular beds. On the other side is a large circular garden with winding,
convuluted paths of the popular mandala design.

My purpose here was to make a presentation on community gardens, after which
one of the Hawkesbury Earthcare people was to follow up with a talk about
the organic community garden we stood in. Usually, I have a slide show on
Powerpoint to give people an impression of community gardens, but as I
thought there was no projector available, we had printed out the Powerpoint
slides as large posters on paper. Whereas paper has given way to projected
Powerpoint presentations, we had reversed the process and had a Powerpoint
presentation on paper. As a talk accompanied by the printed slides in the
form of a flip chart, I can say it worked well despite there being no
computer, no projector and nothing at all electronic or digital.

People familiar with permaculture in the Sydney region would have recognised
faces here. There was Robyn Williams with her new hairstyle and her
Seedsavers' Local Seed Network (www.seedsavers.org). Clarissa and crew were
there of course, with their Illabunda display. Sue Mossman, too, with people
from her new Permaculture Sydney West group
(permaculturesydneywest at yahoo.com.au; www.permaculturesydneybasin.org.au).
Missing this year was Rosemary Morrow
(http://www.permacultureinternational.org/Members/pacificedge/our-people-our
-permaculture/rosemary_morrow.jpeg/view?searchterm=None), who at the fair
two years ago had led an introduction to permaculture talk.

The Alternative Technology Association (ATA - www.earthcare.org.au/ata) were
there, of course, as they are one of the site users out here. ATA stalwart
Jenny Dibley  
(http://nccnsw.org.au/index.php?option=com_sobi2&sobi2Task=sobi2Details&cati
d=0&sobi2Id=14&Itemid=994) was busy talking renewable technology to visitors
while, nearby, a man demonstrated a solar reflector cooker with a wok
mounted at its foci and a classy looking timber solar oven nearby. The TAFE
aquaponics team where here promoting their courses and demonstrating their
organic, combined fish and vegetable production technology (info: 1800 064
242; aqualife at dodo.com.au) and Biolytix stood opposite with their innovative
black and grey water treatment system (www.biolytix.com).

Hawkesbury Harvest (www.hawkesburyharvest.com.au), a community food security
program operating in the region (they are an associate of Sydney Food
Fairness Alliance - www.sydneyfoodfairness.org.au) were trying to interest
people in the Hawkesbury Food Trail that takes visitors to a range of farms
and food production sources in the region. Inside the building, the
community cooking team from Global Food Relief
(contact at globalfoodrelief.com) supplied hot meals. And good to see was a
local farmer with his locally-grown hazelnuts, lemons and home made jams.
Among others, he grown a range of berry crops at his Mt Tomah farm.


FAREWELL FOR ANOTHER YEAR - AND WELL DONE HAWKESBURY EARTHCARE
It was mid-afternoon when we left this year's Hawkesbury Earthcare
Sustainability Fair and, this time, we didn't get lost. Instead, we talked
about how good are these fairs because they bring people together and renew
acquaintences and give us a chance to see these innovative technologies and
ideas in action. 

I know these fairs take time and energy to organise but I also know that
they are necessary celebrations of sustainability that inform and inspire.
So it is thanks to Macarthur Centre for Sustainable Living and the Henry
Doubleday Research Association and Hawkesbury Earthcare that this month has
been an ideas month in the city.

As the hybrid petrol/electronic drive took us quietly and economically back
to the city, I had a chance to look out at the passing market gardens and to
recall that, here on the edge of the city, are those little farms that keep
Sydney supplied with most of its fresh vegetables. It was, for this reason,
a far more interesting drive than that long, straight highway that takes you
south, towards Melbourne.

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