Learning to live directly

Posted on May 18, 2012 by Greg Foyster

Most of us live by proxy. We pay someone else to grow our food. We hire a builder to construct our homes. Our clothes are made in sweatshops overseas and our fuel is created by machines. We obtain the necessities of life through indirect means.

One of my goals on this journey, which I’ve only just realised, is to cut out the middlemen and experience these necessities of life more directly. To live simply is to remove the layers between you and the things that keep you alive and functioning: food, water, shelter, clothing, fuel, money, work, community. Few people manage it over the long term, but even those who quit after a few years gain an understanding and appreciation of the effort involved in gaining the basics of existence.

You might say this is all a pointless exercise. Why bother learning to do these things when they are so easily – and effortlessly – done for you? Choosing to live simply and directly will not make you richer. It will not improve your career or social standing. But I think it’s worthwhile because it teaches you the true value of the things that keep you alive. You learn the effort involved in the simplest thing, from growing an apple for lunch to building a beam that will hold up your roof. You can know, for a brief moment, what it means to obtain the necessities of life.

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At home with David Holmgren

Posted on May 8, 2012 by Greg Foyster

David Holmgren has spent a long time thinking about his house. When he moved into the one-hectare property in Hepburn Springs, central Victoria, he analysed just about every aspect of the site. He knew the average rainfall, the type of climate, the land use history, the geology of the area, the bush fire risk, the soil fertility and the solar potential. He even estimated that the big pear tree near the overgrown blackberry brambles was about 100 years old, indicating the neglected property was once owned by more caring stewards.

In the 25-odd years since, David and his partner, Su Dennett, have transformed their two sloping blocks into a food forest with more than 120 fruit and nut trees, a productive vegetable patch, and free-range goats and chickens. David is the co-originator of the permaculture concept, and so his house, named Melliodora after the ‘yellow box’ eucalypts in the area, has become a case study in applying ecological principles at a household level.

Sophie and I arrived on the Sunday for a tour of the property, and we were soon drowning in details. The house has a classic “passive solar”construction, with full glazing along the north side. Mud brick walls keep the interior at a comfortable temperature. The wood for the frame came from local traditional sawmills or was salvaged from bushfire-burned cypress and blackwood. Food is stored in a “cool cupboard” instead of a fridge. In fact, everything on the property seemed to serve a specific purpose, and by the time David described the chook pen as “our oldest nutrient recycling system”, my brain felt as densely packed with rich material as his sawdust compost. Speaking of which, here’s a pic:

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And some more photos of the tour:

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The next day David took us on a private tour of his mental landscape, which was also brimming with diversity. Over a two-hour conversation, he spoke about everything from household economics and greenhouse gas consumption figures, to theories of social change and the conflict between efficiency and resilience, and finally back to more prosaic matters, like roasting chestnuts on a wood-fired stove. All the time his hands roamed freely in front of his body. But while his “long rave”, as he called it, was interconnected and wide-ranging, it wasn’t the confused babble of some holistic thinkers, whose arguments have the intellectual coherence of a rainbow tie-dye. On the contrary, his language was precise and scientific. He sounded more like an academic than the co-creator of a radical counter-cultural movement.

We covered much territory, but the thing that struck a chord with me was David’s criticism of the commuting lifestyle. “People grow up from a very very young age feeling that a normal day happens when you get up, you have breakfast, you prepare for some other place, and then you go there. And without doing that you are not participating in society – you are not really a whole person,” he explained. In countries with compulsory schooling, children are programmed to live this commuting lifestyle from a young age.

The alternative, of course, is a home-based lifestyle. “A normal existence is place-based,” said David. But this doesn’t have to mean staying in the one room all day. Movement is still part of the home-based lifestyle – but it is movement on a human scale, such as walking short distances between buildings.

David sees huge advantages to this way of life. “Firstly, it’s way more economic. You can live at a much lower cost. Secondly, you are your own boss. You are not subject to the interminable regulations and demarcation controls…you set up your own rules.”

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Our conversation took place in the solar greenhouse attached to the north side of the house, and as David spoke the sound of chopping drifted in from the kitchen, where Su was busy preparing dinner. David said Su’s home-based lifestyle was punctuated by milking the goats in the morning and evening, whereas his routine was less structured. But most days involved a combination of physical work in the garden and intellectual work in his office.

Another benefit of this sort of home-based lifestyle, he said, is reduced environmental impact. The most obvious reduction is petrol or diesel because you’re not driving to and from work. But staying at home also tends to involve growing or making your own food, which reduces packaging. Plus, working from home saves having to heat and power an entirely separate building. 

It’s become a cliche to say that we’re disconnected from what we consume – especially the food we eat. A home-based lifestyle can address this disconnection. When you grow your own food, collect your own water, and gather your own fuel for heating, you become more closely attuned to your consumption habits. Put simply, you know what you use.

“A lot of these ways of living actually bring you face to face with the consequences of your own actions,” said David. “You become more responsible for them directly. You have to deal with them both at a practical level, and at an ethical level.”

In eras past, staying at home might have been isolating, but the internet has changed all that. “Today we’ve also got this huge added possibility of information technology that allows us to have the best of that thing that was so lacking in the home-based lifestyle, which was this connection beyond your parochial village locale.”

What David said made a lot of sense to me. But while touring his property, I asked myself if I could live this way. I quickly realised that although I have none of the skills needed to build a permaculture property and look after it, I could probably teach myself these things. But I didn’t want to. What was stopping me was not a lack of knowledge or training, but my old sense of identity. I couldn’t imagine myself as a gardener, and therefore I refused to learn how to garden. With a shift towards self-reliance comes a new sense of self, and I just wasn’t ready for the change.

Another thing holding me back was my perception of country life. I had grown up in a city environment, and so I viewed living on the land as inferior to living in a vibrant metropolis. That perception is starting to break down, but it still exists.

David’s response to all this was to say that his way of life is only one example. We need lots of different models of good, ecologically sound lifestyles, rather than holding up just one property as the panacea to all our problems. Once again, it’s about diversity. “There isn’t one message that’s right for everyone.”

Recently permaculture’s self-confessed contrarian has been investigating future scenarios, and he has a message for conditioned commuters like me. “People in the future will be living home-based lifestyles. So get used to it!”

The obvious question from all this is how to integrate a home-based lifestyle into a community. Next up we’re going to visit an eco-village David designed based on permaculture principles. I’m looking forward to learning more.

(To learn more about David’s ideas, see www.holmgren.com.au and www.futurescenarios.org)

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Meeting Murundaka

Posted on May 4, 2012 by Greg Foyster

It was 10am on a Sunday, and Heidi Lee was busy Blu-Tacking pictures of gardens to the walls of the Common House at Murundaka co-housing community in Melbourne’s north-eastern suburbs. She and another resident, Malcolm, had been at it for an hour, decorating the cavernous space with inspirational images of straw bale arches, cobblestone paths and native flowers. In the background, Heidi’s partner Chris chopped vegetables for a big communal soup.

The residents were preparing for an all-day design “charette” – a group meeting to decide what the community wanted to do with the outside areas of the recently constructed complex. At less than six months old, Murundaka is one of Australia’s newest co-housing communities. Owned by Common Equity Housing Limited, the facility was built for $8.2 million, including federal stimulus funding that was doled out during the Great Financial Crisis. The modern-looking apartment complex has 18 units housing over 40 residents, ranging from young singles to a family of five. Each unit has its own kitchen, but the laundry is communal, and residents have access to a common recycling room, shed, office/workspace, lounge room and dining area. The community is designed for low income earners, and rent is generally 25 per cent of household income.

Here’s a picture of the East Wing and Common House from the backyard:

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What makes Murundaka different from your average apartment block is that the residents share ethical and environmental values, and they’ve all signed participatory agreements to take part in community life. Each adult is expected to do 10 hours of chores per month, be a member of at least one committee and attend regular meetings.

Sophie and I arrived on the Saturday night and parked our bicycles in one of the bristling bike sheds out front. Normally when we turn up at people’s houses, we meet a single host, or perhaps a family. But Murundaka has more than 40 occupants, and we were, in a sense, guests of them all. And so followed a parade of introductions: Iain, a relaxed older man in blue overalls, showed us to the guest room; Dimity, a small and cheerful blonde in her 50s, took us on a tour while making borderline outrageous statements, then quickly adding “But don’t write that in your article!”; Malcolm, a thin and bearded older man popped out of room 13 to say hello; Tony, a public servant in his 40s, poured us a lager and explained how co-housing worked; Delphine, a single mum with a French accent, chatted while doing the dishes, and then posed for the camera:

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I immediately liked Delphine. She was cheekily candid about life in the co-housing community. “Some people give you the shits sometimes!” she said, screwing up her eyes and laughing. But there were benefits to sharing space with your neighbours. “For me the biggest advantage is combating the urban isolation,” she said. “I’m a social person.”

The good thing about Murundaka is if you’re not feeling very social – and by end of the night I was thoroughly greeted out – then you can retreat to your private room. Normally when Sophie and I crash at people’s houses, we feel an obligation to stay up late and entertain. But here we had the option of retiring early. It was intimate but private, like a cross between crashing at a friend’s place and sleeping in a motel. “We’re guests of a community, not one particular person,” Sophie said to me. “Responsibility is shared for us.”

At the Sunday morning meeting, all the people we had met the night before were seated in a circle, talking about what they wanted out of the garden. On a red rug in the middle of the circle were books about permaculture, outdoor classrooms and Earthships. “We’re going to aim to be very productive today,” said Heidi, kicking off the meeting. “And start when we say we’re going to start, and stop when we say we’re going to stop.”

Then Heidi knelt on the floor, writing residents’ suggestions on a big sheet of scrap paper. Some people wanted the garden to include areas for quiet reading. Others wanted areas for food production or places for kids to play. Given the varied – and sometimes conflicting – needs, I held my breath for the inevitable squabble. But it never came. The mood was respectful and friendly. “With all that stuff going on, I’d like a space to feel uncluttered,” joked Chris, diffusing built-up tension. Everyone laughed. When it came to meetings, the Murundaka members knew how to behave themselves.

As it turns out, they’ve had a lot of practice. During the lunch break Heidi told me that the community had a whole group meeting about once a month, usually held on weekend afternoons or weekday evenings. These meetings were supposed to last about two hours, but they tended to run over time. Decisions were made by consensus, a very time-intensive process. On top of that, there were 15 sub-group committees that also had regular meetings.

Co-housing had appealed to me because I thought it would help reduce the domestic burden. Many hands, light work, you know the cliché. But all these meetings seemed like a hard slog. “It’s a lot more work than having your own little flat, but I don’t just have a little flat that I share with Chris,” explained Heidi. “I have access to this amazing facility, and I have all this furniture – we haven’t bought any of this – and I have these amazing gardens. I couldn’t have any of that unless I put the time in.”

Other residents confirmed the point: co-housing was more work, but the rewards were worth it. The key benefits were social support and a deeper connection with your neighbours. During the lunch break, Sophie fixed a resident’s bike, highlighting another advantage: sharing skills.

But more sharing often means more time organising and communicating. Is the trade off worth it? And do all these meetings pay off in the long run?
And then co-housing raises other questions: How do you deal with conflict that arises? What values are imparted to children in the community? What happens when the founders enter retirement, or when someone wants to leave?

Our stay at Murundaka was short and sweet, so I didn’t get to ask these questions. I don’t think I would have found all the answers – not yet anyway. After all, the community is less than six months old. Not enough time has passed for this fascinating social experiment to flourish or flounder. Over the next few weeks Sophie and I will be visiting eco-villages and intentional communities around Victoria, some of which have been running for decades. It will be interesting to learn how things pan out over time.

But it was a wonderful experience to visit Murundaka and witness the tentative sproutings of a new community. Perhaps Sophie and I will be able to return in a few years and see how all the suggestions from the Sunday morning design charette have taken root in the garden. Hopefully the same people will still be there, laughing their way through another community meeting.

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Susan Gunter – the joy of shearing

Posted on April 24, 2012 by Greg Foyster

“There they are! C’mon girls! Here girls!”

Susan Gunter strode across the lush green paddock, calling out to her flock of 10 cross-bred ewes. It was a misty day in Autumn, and the thick grass was wet from recent rain. “I shear because I love sheep,” she said, sloshing through soggy pasture in black gumboots, sidestepping to avoid the cow pats. “I think they’re just a really lovely, peaceful, gentle animal.”

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After checking on her small flock, Susan walked past a different paddock and knelt down to play with “Stockings”, a Suffolk cross sheep who thought she was a dog. “Stockings loves a rub on the head,” she said with a smile.

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We were in Jackys Marsh, a small plateau of farmland in Tasmania’s Great Western Tiers, about 20 kilometres south of Deloraine. The surrounding mountain slopes were covered in thick forest and even thicker fog, making the paddock feel enclosed and isolated. The natural setting seemed worlds away from a corporate office environment, and yet the sprightly 60-year-old shearer kneeling next to me was once a successful solicitor.

Susan grew up in East Malvern, Victoria, the eldest of seven siblings. She went to Preshil, an “alternative” primary school with a system of collaborative learning, and later attended St Catherine’s private girls’ school. As a kid she loved animals and bushwalking, but poor marks in mathematics discouraged her from a career in science, and so she enrolled in law and political science at The University of Melbourne.

After finishing university she did a variety of jobs, but when she witnessed her first shearing near Gippsland Lakes in 1979, she knew she’d found her calling.

She sheared in Victoria and NSW until 1986, when she enrolled in Adelaide University to finish her law degree, graduating in 1989. For the next 17 years she worked in the legal field across three states as a solicitor at a private firm, a contractor for Aboriginal Legal Services, a lawyer with the Environmental Defenders Office and a prosecutor for the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions.

She enjoyed the mental challenge of working as a lawyer, but the job took its toll. “I found the whole environment of legal practice a very stressful thing. And I think being inside in an office all day really doesn’t suit me.” At night she’d dream about shearing, and the yearning for yard work would spill over into the day time. “I’d look out the window and think ‘What a day. There are people out there shearing sheep and here I am inside.’”

For years she had suffered from anxiety and depression, which she kept under control with regular meditation and exercise. Then, in 2006, after visiting a psychologist and undergoing cognitive behavioral therapy, she realised something needed to change. She went back to shearing, and now her confidence and calmness has returned. “I don’t seem to be struggling with depression the way I was.”

But her career change was about more than fleeing a stressful occupation. As much as she was driven to leave legal work, she was drawn to the rustic choreography of shearing, that rhythmic struggle between shearer and sheep. “I had some experiences of working away all day and the sheep just seemed to magically fall out the chute,” she said. “It’s hard physical work…but it can be the most amazing experience of letting things flow.”

Now Susan runs her own business shearing animals all over Tasmania. As if being one of the few female shearers in o state weren’t unusual enough, she’s also one of the few people who shear goats. But mostly she sticks to sheep, shearing small flocks for independent foarmers, averaging about 120 a day. She admits that’s pretty slow, but clients appreciate her attention to quality and welfare. “I try not to cut the animal, and treat them kindly and firmly.”

Sometimes clients don’t want to keep the fleece, and so Susan has a one-tonne “wool mountain” in her garage. Late at night we sat on bales of wool, talking more deeply about her change of careers, how one occupation is held in higher esteem than the other.

Law is seen as more prestigious than shearing, Susan suggested, because lawyers deal with people, but shearers deal with animals. And our society places people above other forms of life. The interesting thing she has discovered is that working with animals can be more difficult than working with people, and it can help cultivate higher-level human qualities, such as patience and mindfulness.

Perhaps another reason for the difference in perceived prestige is that law is considered mental work and shearing manual labour. And our society tends to value the intellectual above the physical. But Susan said shearing is as much a mental discipline as a physical act. “It’s not just brute strength. People just don’t understand the level of skill and training.”

Talking with Susan, I started to think that the prestige of certain professions can sometimes lock people into jobs that make them unhappy. I experienced this myself when I worked as an advertising copywriter. I was ethically opposed to the work I was doing, and I hated myself for doing it. At the same time, working as a copywriter carried cultural cache among my friends. People would see television commercials I had written and congratulate me for coming up with a creative idea. My job as a copywriter became tied to my self esteem, so although I hated myself for doing it, I couldn’t quit without giving up my identity. It seems silly now, but I thought that if I wasn’t in a “creative” profession, I was a nobody. So I stuck with a job that made me unhappy because I was frightened of losing prestige.

If my situation sounds familiar, then Susan’s advice is to choose a job you enjoy, even if it’s considered less prestigious than other types of work. “Why not be doing what you love, if you’re spending all day doing it?” she said. After years of pushing around paperwork, she’s happy to be back in the shed with her sheep.  “In terms of an occupation, I couldn’t think of anything better.”

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Oyster breakfast

Posted on April 19, 2012 by Greg Foyster

Yesterday a local told us about a secret little place on the Huon River where we could harvest oysters off the rocks. Last night we snuck out there and stealth-camped near a small cove.

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This morning we woke up at low tide and we were greeted to a view of oyster-encrusted rocks stretching hundreds of metres to either side of our camp.

Sophie and I collected about 150 loose oysters in half an hour.

We had a dozen each for breakfast, then gave the rest to friends. Later we found out the locals don’t bother collecting oysters because they are so abundant down here! They prefer to collect mussels or abalone, which are rarer.

So there you have it: free oysters for breakfast. What did you eat this morning?

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Miranda Gibson – the tree sitter

Posted on April 18, 2012 by Greg Foyster

I’m standing at the base of a 400-year-old eucalypt in Styx Valley, Tasmania, with my legs threaded through a climbing harness. Next to me is 23-year-old forest activist Rosie Phillips, listening to a crackling voice on a small radio tied with a bright pink ribbon. The voice belongs to Miranda Gibson, a 30-year-old teacher turned conservationist who has been living 60 metres up this tree for the last four months. And I’m about to be hauled up to see her.

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“So how many people have you hauled up this tree?” I ask Rosie, trying to adopt a casual tone, as if I often spend afternoons dangling from the branches of ancient gum trees.
“Me personally?” she answers.
“Yep.”
“None.”
Gulp.

I hear a coo-ee from above, and then Rosie and the other “ground crew” start pulling. I’m now two metres off the ground. Three metres. Five. Ten. The rope is swaying in the breeze and I’m swinging from side to side. My face turns white and my hands cling to the climbing harness. I’ve honestly never been this scared before. As I reach the halfway mark, I can’t help thinking that living up a tree is, well, a little bit nuts.

But once I’m through the trap door and sitting on the platform, Miranda is reassuringly hospitable. “Are you okay? Let me know if you need anything,” she says. “A drink of water?” We’re perched 60 metres up a tree, but she’s playing host as if we’re having cups of tea in a lounge room at ground level.

Meanwhile, I’ve got my eye on the ropes holding up the platform.

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These forest activists have been climbing trees for years, so I’m sure they know what they’re doing, but I’m used to being in buildings with steel or timber frames, and the sight of just a few ropes holding us up doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence.

But the thing that really freaks me out isn’t the precarious platform or the view of gum trees spearing up from below. It’s the fact that Miranda is standing here – seemingly one slip from certain death – with her shoelaces untied. She says it’s okay because she’s harnessed to the tree, but still…

We sit down on the platform. Miranda pours cold water into the lid of a thermos and offers it to me. I take a sip, then ask the only question I can ask, given the circumstances. “What the hell are you doing 60 metres up a tree?”

She giggles. “The reason I came up here in the first place was to highlight the fact these forests are amazing and they’re under threat from logging,” she says. Called The Observer Tree, Miranda’s upper canopy home is located in an unprotected area of forest known as “TN044B”. She climbed up here on December 14 last year to film the logging and document wildlife living in the forest, including the endangered Tasmanian devil. “Every day our forests are getting logged in Tasmania, but nobody sees it.”

From her perch, Miranda keeps vigil over swathes of wilderness across the Styx and Weld valleys. “Pretty much most of what you can see that way is under threat,” she says, sweeping her arm to indicate the mountain ranges in the distance.

The forest behind The Observer Tree is included in the World Heritage Area, but the valleys below are largely unprotected, and some sections have already been logged. They appear as smooth patches in the fuzzy landscape, like scars on the fur of a marsupial.

Right then a gust blows through, and the branches around us sway wildly. “It’s the windy season,” explains Miranda. Over the 126 days she’s been up this tree, she’s experienced everything from soaring summer temperatures to snow during autumn cold spells.

But as an experienced forest campaigner, she’s used to life up in the foliage. Her first “tree-sit” was in East Gippsland in 2006, and since 2007 she’s spent most of her time living at nearby Camp Florentine – a long-running forest blockade with permanent platforms in the trees. Activists sit in the platforms, which are tied to a wooden structure blocking the road. If a bulldozer destroys the structure, the platforms collapse and the activists fall to their deaths. Essentially, they’re saving the forest by risking themselves.

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Most tree-sits barely have enough space for one person to lie down. The Observer Tree is unique because the platform is about three metres square, and the site has internet and phone reception. Through Skype calls, radio interviews, and a blog , people can “vicariously connect” with the forest Miranda is trying to protect.

I’m keen to learn how she manages to survive up here, so she gives me the official tour. “At the moment we’re in the bedroom,” she says, pointing at the swag she’s sitting on. Above her head is a tarp to keep the rain off, next to the bed is a wooden bench that serves as a desk and chopping board, and behind her are three plastic tubs filled with food, books and electrical equipment. She has two small netbook computers, which she charges with 12 volt batteries lugged up the hill by committed volunteers. There are also two 65-watt solar panels strung to a branch, but they’re not giving out much power.

Activists camped below cook hot food, which is hauled up to her through a system of ropes and pulleys. To keep up muscle strength, she does yoga on the south-west side of the platform. Sometimes she’ll climb further up the tree to sit in the branches above. “It feels a bit more connected to the tree than standing on the platform.”

Most of her time is taken up with media and blogging, including hosting curious (and slightly crazy) writers like me. But she still gets time to enjoy the forest around her. “Sometimes I like to listen to the birds or sit and watch a really nice sunset,” she says. She shares her observations on her blog, which features detailed descriptions of the natural world and photos of insects living in her tree. The environment is constantly changing, she says, so it’s never boring.

After months up here, she’s starting to bond with her aboreal home. “I’m up here on my own, but in a way I feel like it’s me and the tree as a team,” she says. “Everything that the tree experiences, I experience.”

Miranda has even written a letter to the tree on her blog. Here’s an excerpt:

“Tree, I want you to know that I love you. And although you do not know them, there are many others who love you too. Many who have seen your branches, from right across the globe.”

After so many years of fighting for areas only to see them logged, she’s now rediscovering what she loves about the Tasmanian wilderness. “Being in this tree-sit gave me the opportunity to reconnect to the forest.”

Living in the forest gives her a unique perspective on human society. “It starts to feel like that world out there – the world of cities and people doing things – isn’t a reflection of the real world,” she says. “When you’re living in a city, everything can be focused around people…you can often forget that we’re just one species out of many.”

“When you’re in the forest you can get that perspective back.”

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Cygnet – Tasmania’s eco-outpost

Posted on April 12, 2012 by Greg Foyster

Cygnet is the perfect place to sit back and watch the end of the world. Situated at the southern tip of a southern island in the Southern Hemisphere, this small coastal village 50 kilometres south-west of Hobart, Tasmania, is about as far away as you can get from the constant wars and financial worries in northern countries. The air is fresh, the water is clean, and the climate change prognosis is surprisingly positive.

So it’s no wonder that Cygnet is fast becoming a little outpost of sustainability – a remote location from which the environmentally enlightened can watch the prophecies of climate change come true.

And who better to introduce us to the town than a world traveller herself. In 2008 Kate Flint was living in Adelaide and blogging at Hills and Plains Seedsavers when she published a post asking if other vegie bloggers would host her for a few days. Over six weeks she visited 30 bloggers from five countries – Singapore, England, France, Canada and the USA. Upon her return she started a new blog called Vegetable Vagabond, and in March 2010 she discovered Cygnet and decided to move there permanently.

Here’s a photo of Kate showing off her lovely apple tree.

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Now 53, she agreed to host us for the night – and introduce us to some like-minded locals. Over a wonderful dinner of home-made bread with dukkah, pumpkin soup, and pear and apple crumble, the guests shared stories of how they ended up in Cygnet.

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Photo by Kate Flint

Matt and Mary Evans, a 30-something couple with a two-year-old son, spent 16 months cycling from London to Australia, arriving in Cygnet in January 2010. Matt said they chose the place partly because of inexpensive land prices. “We wanted to live by the mountains and the sea, and this was the cheapest place to do it.”

Sandra and David Shepherd, both 48, sold their apartment in Brisbane and moved to Cygnet in January 2011. Their 22-acre property in the nearby hills is completely off the grid, featuring a solar power system and a large vegetable garden surrounded by electric fence (to keep out the possums). David works in customs, and Sandra is a pharmacist who decided to retire early. “If we’re in the hills, then we can live a very simple lifestyle and stop working,” she explained.

Peter Dufferin, 63, moved from Newcastle to a property at Petcheys Bay, about seven kilometres from Cygnet, in May 2007. He bought the property because Tasmania is expected to fare better under climate change than most other parts of Australia; while many mainland states can expect more drought, the coast of Tasmania is forecast to receive increased rainfall. “It’s a global warming bunker,” he explained. “I’m doing the best for my kids and my grandkids. Because they might well need this property in 40 years’ time.”

John Sawyer, a 60-year-old singer-songwriter and carpenter originally from Colorado, USA, had similar reasons for settling in Tasmania. He was living in Balingup, Western Australia, when he learned climate change would reduce rainfall in the area. He moved to Cygnet for the cheapness of land with access to water. Again, there’s a bunker mentality at play: “I looked for a place where I could live well while everything was crumbling around me.”

John’s 65-acre property is on marginal land in the hills because it “hasn’t been poisoned yet”. He tries to drive only once a week, uses hand tools where possible and has a “humanure” toilet that turns faeces into compost.

It was a wonderful dinner, and we spoke about many things – much more than I can include in this post. But there was one common theme that stuck in my mind. Many of the people at the dinner table had set up new lives in Cygnet with capital accumulated elsewhere. Their new lives were, in a sense, a challenge to the more conventional lives they had led previously. So from an economic point of view, they were using their capital to rebel against the system that had allowed them to accumulate that capital in the first place. It seemed to me that this little eco-outpost was a lovely place to live, but it wasn’t self-sufficient because it remained buoyed by outside wealth.

Kate disagreed, arguing that the Tasmanians who had lived here for generations tended to live very simple lifestyles. They still hunted and fished, and they still possessed practical life skills that had been lost on the mainland. (And, as she clarifies in a comment below, her reasons for moving to Cygnet were unrelated to climate change.)

John had spent much of the dinner rubbing his white beard, thinking quietly. But now he spoke up, asking the group to take the idea of a sustainable community to the next level. “It works pretty good when you take a bunch of retired people, a bunch of people who have a reasonable income or who have paid their properties off, which is not the majority. So our challenge as a society and actually for you younger people is to figure out a way to make it more real, to where it can be adapted to a wider community and not just a bunch of retirees,” he said. “We need some experimental towns where people can do exactly what we’re talking about.”

To be honest, at the start of the night, the “bunker mentality” of the guests’ stories had alienated me. Fleeing to a remote island to escape climate change seemed defeatist and selfish. It could be seen as the action of people who had given up trying to save the planet and were now seeking only to save themselves.

But after John’s little speech I saw that fleeing to Tasmania might not be a form of escapism after all. It could also be a way of starting a new society. And it was the young couple, the non-retirees, who represented this positive step forward. “I had a bit of doom and gloom about way the world was heading. But since I got here I’ve had a bit of faith restored in me because there is a community that’s preparing,” said Matt. “As governments are failing, people are picking up and doing it for themselves.”

There’s hope in these hills after all.

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Photo by Kate Flint

Posted in Environment, Our journey, Profiles, Shelter, Travel, Work | Tagged , , , |

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More hills – Tasmania

Posted on April 11, 2012 by Greg Foyster

It turns out we’re not the only ones who think Tasmania is a bit hilly.

Over the last few days locals had warned us about “Break-Me-Neck” hill on the road to Hobart. We thought it was a joke – or perhaps an affectionate nickname – until we reached the top of one hill and saw this sign:

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Just over the crest we were passed by the ultimate hill climber. Steve Cooper, an anaesthetist from Sydney, was cycling down Tasmania’s east coast with his son and daughter. Having once ridden across the Himalayas, he must have found the name of the next hill quite an exaggeration.

As for myself, I’ve been finding Tasmania’s hills tough. But today the locals taught me an important lesson: don’t take the ups and downs too seriously.

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Just surviving

Posted on April 7, 2012 by Greg Foyster

The sun has just gone down, but it’s already cold and dark outside. Sophie and I are in the tent. She’s hunched over our makeshift chopping board – the black plastic bottom from a re-useable green bag – slicing half a wilted zucchini into thin strips. I’m stretched out across the tent floor, massaging my right thigh muscle with an aluminium drink bottle to help relieve the pain in my knee.

“I’m hungry,” she says.

“I’m tired,” I say.

 A solar-powered light hanging from the ceiling of our tent illuminates the food scattered around us: a packet of dried pasta, half a packet of lentils, a tin of tomatoes and small plastic bags filled with spices. We’ve decided to prepare food inside the tent because we’re sick of doing it outside in the cold. After six days of non-stop cycling and camping, we’re getting fed up.

 ”I can handle the cycling,” says Sophie, now curled up with her head between her knees. “It’s the camping that’s hard.”

 I feel the same way. The cycling, so far, has only taken five or six hours a day. But the rest of our time has been spent finding food, water, fuel and shelter. After arriving at each destination we have to search for a safe campsite, fill up our water bottles, set up the tent, start the cooker, unroll our matts and sleeping bags, begin cooking rice and lentils, eat dinner, wash the dishes and go to sleep. The next day we wake up early and do it all in reverse. We seem to be spending all our time on basic necessities – things we took for granted when we lived in a house.

 Add to that the constant adjustments we need to make to our bikes, and we basically have no free time. I’ve always thought of daily chores as minor annoyances that get in the way of life, but now daily chores are my life. I’m spending twelve hours a day just surviving.

 The experience has made me realise that there are so many things humans require to function in modern society. A person needs treated water, cooked food, safe shelter, dry clothes, reliable transport and access to electricity just to achieve what we consider a normal standard of living. Obtaining all these things when you don’t have a home is very time-consuming. Without a stable base, it’s extremely difficult to achieve anything.

 The other thing I’ve discovered is that these practical necessities have to come before anything else. In university I studied Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs”, the theory that humans need to fulfill basic requirements such as food, shelter and sleep before they can hope to attain higher goals such as self-actualisation. Now I’m living that theory in practice. I can’t do anything intellectual (like reading a book or writing this post) until I’ve done the required practical work (like airing out the tent or boiling water). If I ignore the practical work, then my equipment breaks or I get sick, so I have even less opportunity to do the intellectual things that make me happy.

 When you live in a house with appliances that take care of your most basic needs, you can forget just how important it is to have things like clean dry clothes and a roof over your head. You can even forget that those mundane necessities make everything else possible. I’ve always taken the practical aspects of life for granted, but cycle touring has taught me that the most basic necessities are the foundation upon which everything else rests.

Posted in Clothing, Food, Our journey, Shelter, Travel | Tagged , |

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Hills, hills, hills – cycling in Tasmania

Posted on April 6, 2012 by Greg Foyster

Car drivers have no idea about hills. When I stop to ask for directions and a driver tells me that a section of road is a bit hilly, I don’t take his warning seriously. That’s because the sort of rolling hills drivers notice aren’t a problem for cyclists. You can use the momentum from going down the first hill to coast up the next. The only real hills cyclists need to worry about are in the mountains where the road rises in elevation.

So when I asked a driver in Launceston for directions to Scottsdale, a town in Tasmania’s north-eastern forest, I didn’t quite believe him that the road was a bit hilly. But boy was he right.

Altogether, we cycled up five massive hills – each one several kilometres long – on the way to Scottsdale. Here’s a photo of the beginning of a shorter hill:

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The trip to Scottsdale was only about 60 kilometres but it took us all day, and we arrived at our campsite utterly exhausted. But as we soon discovered, we had only just begun to tackle Tasmania’s north-eastern hills. From Scottsdale the road snaked another 100 kilometres across mountains to the seaside town of St Helens.

On the second day, about three kilometres out of Scottsdale, we met a local named Mal who cycles into town three days a week.

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We told Mal our destination – Weldborough pub – and he wagered we wouldn’t make it there by 5pm. The bet was on.

We spent two and a half hours climbing hills into the old mining town of Derby, had a one and a half hour lunch, then cycled into Weldborough. Just when we thought we were in the clear we had to climb five kilometres up a rainforest-shrouded mountain range. If you squint at the centre of the photo below, you’ll see Sophie’s fluro jacket as she rounds the bend.

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But we made it to Weldborough by 4:30pm, and at 4:50pm I called Mal from the pay phone outside the pub to let him know we had arrived. Since then he’s been calling me every second day to find out how far we’ve travelled.

So far the hills in Tasmania have been bigger than anything I’ve ridden up before. At one stage I sweated so much my sunglasses fogged up. In the past I’ve had health problems from dehydration and overheating when riding up big hills, and last year I collapsed after cycling up a mountain in Kinglake West, Victoria. I had to be taken to the hospital in an ambulance. But despite the size and steepness of the hills in Tasmania, my body is holding up and I only need to drink three or four litres of water a day.

The hills were hard work, but now that we’ve made it to the coast we get to camp in stunning places like this:

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And enjoy views like this:

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That car driver in Launceston was right. Tasmania is indeed a bit hilly. But the climb is worth the effort.

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