I was a child of the 70s, the time of hippies, the back-to-the-land movement and all the other counterculture stuff. I really didn’t give it much thought until I bought a book entitled ‘The Survival Handbook - Self Sufficiency for Everyone’ by Michael Allaby and others, including John Seymour. It was written in the UK and my copy was published in 1977, the year I bought it. Being a UK book it did not reflect the Aussie experience but contained a lot of ideas that were brand new, to me at least. It talked about farming, building, land, communities, making textiles and clothes and growing, cooking and processing your own food. It set the (non-working) course of my life for pretty much the next 25 years.
Me, standing on where our house would be built
Shortly after this I got married to the love of my life and moved into our house in the wild western suburbs of Sydney. This gave me the base to start doing a few of the things that I had read about, like growing food. It was just the start, and I continued accumulating more second hand books on alternative energy, alternative technology, organic food growing, and also giving the ideas a go. By trial and error, making lots of mistakes that I could learn from.
The journey continued.
During the early 80s I accumulated a couple of books (second hand from the Sallies of course) called ‘Permaculture One’ and ‘Permaculture Two’ by two gentlemen; Mollison and Holmgren. I had a cruise through them but did not really have the background knowledge to make use of them at that time.
Things moved on and with all the worries in the world I was moving towards the dark side, considering myself a survivalist or what we would call today a prepper. I was interested in being self-sufficient and by that time I had a wife and two kids to support so I continued to learn how to provide for us, just in case things fell apart.
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In the mid-80s I started a n external studies TAFE course in Agriculture, and in 1987 I was awarded a certificate in Agriculture. That same year I started the Farm Technology course at the local TAFE, which I completed in 1990. I had ideas of going bush to create a self-sufficient lifestyle but life got in the way and it never eventuated. Over time, what this forced me to do was to look at how self-sufficient we could be on out 600m2 homestead in St Clair.
In the ‘80s and ‘90s as well as working for a living and helping to raise my family, I was able to work on my skills and practice them, things like growing vegetables and fruit and preserving them, managing chooks, setting up water tanks and water gardens, making and using alternative technology like a 12volt power system, solar cookers, stored heat cooker, and blacksmith forge; growing and spinning cotton, food storage plus lots of other fun stuff.
Meeting David Holmgren!
All that I was doing was predicated on a prepper mindset of being able to keep my family going in the event that TEOTWAWKI (The End of The World as we Know it) turned up. The downside of this mindset, of course, is that it tends to focus on the individual rather than community.
Things carried on in this vein until I changed jobs in 2000, and went from being an OHS Manager to being an OHS&E Manager, and I realised that I had no idea about the ‘E’ – which stood for ‘Environment’. I enrolled in the Master of OHS & Environmental Management course with Western Sydney University, so I could bone up on what I would need to do.
As a byproduct this course of study turned out to be an eye opener for me into the environmental issues and problems that we were facing. The impact of what I learned was that we still did a lot of the same stuff (generating our own power, growing fruit and veg, storing and using rainwater), but for different reasons ie to reduce our environmental impact and be more sustainable rather than just be more self-sufficient per se. It also meant that some stuff we looked at differently, like the amount and types of waste we generated and the environmental impact of our purchases.
Costa (the Garden Gnome) and I at a PSW meeting
Also, as part of this course I learned about the concept of ‘carbon footprint’, which I learned much later was put together by BP to transfer responsibility for environmental degradation away from the petroleum industry and onto members of the public. While I thought it was an interesting idea, I found it to be not useful as a tool for planning a more sustainable lifestyle. As a result, the thesis which I developed for my Masters was based aound the Sustainable Lifestyle Assessment Matrix (SLAM – yeah, I know, corny name!). It can be used by an individual or family as a planning tool for developing a more sustainable lifestyle.
Thus, for some considerable number of years I had been developing and practising what was almost a permaculture lifestyle, at least as far as was possible in the ‘burbs.
For obvious reasons I had an interest in what was termed ‘alternative technology’, collected books on the subject and practiced what I could so that we could be more sustainable. That is probably why I was attracted to a stall run by the Alternative Technology Association (ATA who have since rebranded as ReNew) at a sustainability fair in Darling Harbour (Sydney) somewhere around 2008. After discussing what I had been up to with one of the gentlemen on the stall (Andrew Leahy) he suggested I come along to another group he was associated with – Permaculture Sydney West.
I attended the meeting as he suggested and did an impromptu talk on what we had been doing. I have been a member there ever since and after a couple of years I joined the committee, filling several posts over the years including Treasurer, vice President, President and Education officer.
In 2011, a good friend of mine, who was also a part of PSW, Danielle Wheeler, asked me to co-teach a PDC (Permaculture Design Certificate) with her. I had not attended a PDC so I did not feel that I was qualified teach it, so I had to decline her kind offer, but instead said that I would attend her course as a student. I found it to be a wonderful experience. While I had accumulated permaculture skills and experience in varying degrees in different subjects, I found that the PDC pulled everything together and increased my understanding considerably. The following year Danielle and I did co-teach a PDC together.
In 2013, working with others in the PSW group such as Greg and Vera Meyer, I started conducting workshops for councils around Sydney. Over the years the councils we worked with including Penrith, Blacktown, Hawkesbury, Cumberland, Paramatta and Sutherland.
Running a workshop for Blacktown Council
I also became involved with management of the Permaculture Australia Facebook group some years ago, as well as managing my own website called ‘Under the Choko Tree’ where I have been putting up the articles I write on living sustainably in the suburbs and Permaculture related subjects for almost 15 years. Some of these articles were originally published in Grass Roots or Earth Garden Magazines. I have also given talks over the years to permaculture groups such as Permaculture Sydney West, Permaculture Sydney North, Permaculture Northern Beaches, Permaculture Sydney South and at the Narara ecovillage.
Doing a presentation for Permaculture Central Coast
In 2023 I was given the surprise of my life when I was honoured with a Permaculture Elder Award at the Permaculture Convergence in South Australia in that year. Other recipients of the award included David Holmgren, Rowe Morrow, Robyn Francis, Robyn Clayfield and John Champagne, so I was in remarkable company.
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I don’t know where my Permaculture journey will lead me, although I do know that it will include interesting and productive experiences, allowing me to discover new and fascinating ideas and meet wonderful new people. The journey continues!
