THE PERMACULTURE PAPERS is a recollection of people, places and events encountered during my time as participant-observer in permaculture design, education and community work.

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The Papers are not an objective accounting of a successful but poorly documented social movement. Rather, they are memoir—an attempt to recall a few of the diversity of events and trends that have constituted permaculture in Australia. The book has a Sydney focus for that is where I lived for most of the time that it covers except for a period living in Byron Bay in northern NSW.

Motivation to produce the Papers comes from my observation that a great deal of permaculture’s early history is at risk of being lost because it has been poorly documented. More than several are the occasions that some bright young permaculture newcomer has announced a ‘new idea’ only for me to respond ‘Oh, you mean like the (whatever it was) that (whoever it was) did back (whenever it was)’.

It was after this had happened a few times that I came to realise that this, permaculture, was a social movement, was at risk of losing its collective memory. I realised that the design system’s public record is now to be found only in the yellowing pages of Permaculture International Journal collections of long-time permaculture practitioners. Overseas, I knew, there are similar magazines that have documented their respective national permaculture scenes—the Permaculture Activist in the USA, Permaculture magazine in the UK. The difference is that those are still in publication while Permaculture International Journal (PIJ) ceased abruptly in June of the year 2000.

Permaculture International Ltd (PIL) was set up to publish PIJ, and its folding in the early winter of 2000 left the organisation bereft of purpose, but only temporarily—we’ll look at that later in the book. Within the pages of PIJ were to be found the people and ideas, the practices and projects that made up permaculture. The Journal, under its several names, was the repository of the movement’s knowledge and experience as well as its social history over the 20 years of permaculture’s adolescence.

No nationally distributed journal has risen to continue the documentation of permaculture. Nor has any Australian website I know of, apart from www.holmgren.com.au and this site, attempted to document the history of the design system although the number of websites, Facebooks and weblogs with a permaculture focus is growing. The movement, however, is old enough for people like Bill Mollison (Travels In Dreams) and Ian Lillington (Permaculture) to write their own stories of life in permaculture.

Apart from PIJ and books on permaculture, the historic record of the design system is scatty. Until late 2011, most permaculture people who have been  practitioners for a sufficiently long enough period had yet to record their own stories. Then, in the Spring of that year, Holmgren Design Services published Permaculture Pioneers, a compendium of the personal histories of those who had persevered long enough to be awarded the title of ‘pioneer’ of the permaculture design system. at last, it seemed, permaculture was recovering its collective memory.

A personal story

A memoir, of course, is not a comprehensive accounting of what has been an inspiring and innovative movement. Memoir is a type of oral history… it is the ideas of only a single person written from that individual’s point of view. What appears in print has passed through whatever mental filters and biases the writer has. Memoir is necessarily subjective and selective.

Memoir may be disputed because other participants may recall the same events and personalities differently, or recall incidents occurring at different times. This I have encountered in shared writing of memoir elsewhere. Despite the shortcomings and errors due to the vagaries of memory, personal stories remain valuable records.

Just how partial particular perceptions of permaculture can be, became apparent at one of the Australasian permaculture convergences, the biannual conferences of permaculture practitioners. A Powerpoint purporting to represent permaculture was shown, however it soon became apparent to a number of those attending that the presentation was notable as much for those left out of it as for those included in it. It was a partial history only, and it left gaps in the history of the design system by ommitting a number who had made a substantial contribution. The presentation demonstrated that particular perceptions of permaculture’s history are contingent on variables such as with which permaculture educator a person does their training and of which permaculture community association or network they are a member. This suggests that any attempt to document the permaculture design system will only be a partial documentation. It too will represent the values, assumptions, priorities and understandings of its authors.

The danger that arises for a movement that is inadequately documented is that partial knowledge will lead to a partial writing of its history… that people will pass on their partial knowledge and that this will become accepted as the sum total of the movement’s history.

The Permaculture Papers too, as a personal history of the movement, is partial. It contains observation, interpretation and opinion with all the misconceptions and errors that memory brings. Some comments may be controversial, however comments about people should not be taken as criticism.

Beginnings

Bill Mollison and David Holmgren created the permaculture design system in the late 1970s while living in Hobart, Tasmania. Bill was instrumental in setting up Tagari pubications, which produced books on permaculture and established the Permaculture Institute, originally in Tasmania, then at Tyalgum in northern NSW. The Institute returned to Tasmania in the 1990s.

David left Tasmania after completing his studies at the Tasmanian College of Advanced Education, eventually settling at Hepburn, Victoria, where he established a rural smallholding and permaculture education centre, Melliodora. David continues to live at Melliodora and to travel extensively to teach permaculture design and permaculture solutions to the global and local challenges we face.

The Permaculture design system

Permaculture is a design system for the creation of socially, economically and ecologically sustainable settlements, whether in rural areas or metropolitan cities.

There are many definitions. The US magazine, Permaculture Activist, once described permaculture as ‘recombinant ecologies’. In this, we could include human ecologies as much as natural ecological systems as permaculture regards humanity as an integral part of natural systems. In permaculture, there is no humanity standing outside of nature as comes across in some environmental literature where the human influence on our world is regarded as something imposed on nature from without. If anything, permaculture is an integrative system of design.

Perhaps it is simpler to regard permaculture as a system of nature-assisted design that takes biogeographic knowledge as its starting point.

Permaculture developed as a do-it-yourself approach to making households into energy efficient, food producing and resource conserving places. At the same time permaculture proposes that moving beyond the household is a good idea… that community involvement is a means to self-help and improved quality of life. If we are to meet our sustainability challenges, then working within the community is mandatory. Even households making the most thorough changes cannot achieve the scale of change that contemporary challenges demand.

As a design system and approach to living, permaculture has inspired people to take action wherever they live. Its creators, Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, say that this is exactly where we need to make a start.

The ethics of Permaculture:

Care of people
Care of the earth
Distribution of surplus to assist others.

David Holmgren offers us these words on Permaculture:

In a world of constantly rising energy and resultant affluence, permaculture is always going to be restricted to a small number of people who are committed to those ideals which have some sort of ethical or moral pursuit. It’s always going to be a fringe thing.

In a world of decreasing energy, permaculture provides, I believe, the best available framework for redesigning the whole way we think, the way we act and the way we design new strategies.

The author

Russ Grayson has been a teacher of the Permaculure Design Certificate and of the permaculture elective of the TAFE horticulture certificate. He was a member of Permaculture Sydney (second iteration). In 2000 – 2001 Russ served on the Board of Directors of Permaculture International Limited, assisting in the establishment of organisation’s website and editing its newsletter. He returned to the Board of Directors in 2008 and remained on it until 2011.

Russ is a community food system consultant, developing community garden policies for local government and assisting community garden groups get started. He is media liaison and consultant for the Australian City Farms & Community Gardens Network and works with international development agency, TerraCircle, in the South Pacific.

In 2010, he was urban agriculture adviser to the Callum Park lands masterplanning assessment. Russ produced the Living Smart manual for the NSW Living Smart course in personal and community sustainable living. He is currently affilated with the advocacy and educational organisation, the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance, and works for the City of Sydney as coordinator of the City’s community garden and Landcare programs.

Most of us have at least a working familarity with climate change and its likely consequences, however the peaking of global oil extraction and the impacts that it is likely to bring are less known. Peak oil, as it has become known, is the time at which extraction from economically accessible oil wells reaches its peak. After that, extraction plateaus awhile, then starts to fall below demand. The effect of this will be to boost oil prices and the cost of anything that uses oil in its extraction, manufacture, processing, transportation or consumption. New oil field discoveries, such as those likely to be accessed by deep sea drilling made possible by the retreat of the northern ice cap, will bring temporary relief but are unlikely to affect the downward tend in global production.

Peak oil is not a theory. The US peaked in 1970, Australia in 2000, and the North Sea wells peaked in 1999 — there, production had dropped by 43 percent by 2007. David Holmgren made this point — that peak oil is reality, not theory — while speaking at the Conversations With Authors at the Randwick Ecoliving Fair this year. There is plenty of empirical evidence for the peak. As for the projected price rises as supply falls below global demand for oil, that relationship is basic market economics.

Future Scanarios is more or less a paper version of David’s website of the same name. It’s not a large book in terms of number of pages, but it nonetheless serves as something of a wake-up call for those still in the slumber of an oil saturated present.

Exploring future scenarios

People familiar with David’s reasoning will find much that is familiar in the book. David takes the reader through his four scenarios that range from the consequences of business as usual to futures ranging through green technology, the survivalist ‘lifeboat’ scenario of social desperation that can end only in civilisational collapse, and his preferred scenario that he calls ‘earth stewardship’.

This latter invokes life as decentralised, self-governing towns and communities, with at least a partial abandonment of the cities which are mined for their materials. Life continues in the suburbs, however, though far from its present form. Although he does not go into detail in Future Scenarios, the multi-generational model of suburban conversion that David discussed during his 2006 national tour with US journalist and peak oil analyst, Richard Heinberg would likely be relevant here.

The model sees the development of multi-generational households and a substantial increase in food production, water harvesting and the use of renewable energies in the suburbs. In terms of urban infrastructure, it is a model I first encountered in the 1990s while working for Dr Ted Trainer at UNSW and that he called the ‘conserver society’, the title of a book be published on the topic. Through his books of the period, and in his courses at UNSW, Ted presaged many of David’s ideas on suburban conversion. This ‘ruralised city’ scanario is a model criticised by the authors of Resilient Cities, including the noted planner and educator, Peter Newman.

The book does not explore how this model would evolve in any detail — it is an investigation using the established scenario methodology that precludes detail, focusing instead on larger trends. The method has been used by government, corporations and civil society for some decades and takes existing demographic, resource, political, economic and other factors and projects how they could evolve within variables set for each scenario. Trends in oil production and other resources form the basis onto which David grafts projections about the possible impact of climate change to generate his four scenarios.

Return to appropriate technology

Earth stewardship is a model that is unlikely to be found universally appealing because it renders useless the skillsets of many. It is basically an agrarian future in which manual skills are those most valuable. It would be a profoundly different future, one less secure in many ways. Without hi-tech medicine, old diseases could return with little hope of cure. There is also the risk of a return to parochialism were global electronic communications to cease.

The scenario raises questions. How would human knowledge be preserved? Would we lose the extensive knowledge base drawn up over thousands of years of civilisation? Would there be any capacity to cooperate on projects of common endeavour over large regions ?

Writing this review, I recall ideas from the 1970s that were part of that exploration of what we then called ‘intermediate technology’, a term coined by British economist, Fritz Schumacher. Propelled by the 1973 oil crisis — the embargo of the West imposed by members of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries, in retaliation for Western support for Israel during the Yom Kippur war of the same year — intermediate technology (later to be renamed ‘appropriate technology’) sought simpler, cost-effective and more easily maintained tools and technologies to accomplish life needs. It was the dawn of renewable energy systems and paralleled the rise in popularity, although it remained organisationally separate to, organic gardening and farming.

Initially, intermediate technology found practical application in the intentional communities that developed during that period, however there was substantial interest among the more innovative of urban youth, especially those that considered themselves a part of the ‘alternative culture’ of the time, and by international development practitioners. Appropriate technology would certainly come of age in David’s earth stewardship society.

Imagining the scenarios

David outlines two ways of looking at his scenarios — as separate trends and in a nested structure. For me, it is the nested structure that is the most realistic as it recognises that different trends exist simultaneously, though at different scales and in different social milieus, in Western and, probably, other societies. Thus, the 1970s alternative culture existed within a growth economy then still expanding. Today, David’s earth stewardship model exists as loosely connected components in contemporary society focused around a number of movements such as permaculture, climate change and some elements of environmentalism.

Another way of looking at this is to see it as the new being born and prototyped in the bosom of the old. From that comes the resolution of what is a perceived contradiction among change agents making a living and pursuing their agendas within the infrastructure of a society they would severely modify or replace. Realistically, they have to live in both worlds at the same time, with a foot firmly planted in both. We all do.

Elements of the earth stewardship and the green technology scenarios are found within the permaculture milieu which David has some responsibility for co-creating. Here, there is a creative tension between the advocates of a basic and largely ruralised lifestyle and those who seek socially constructive solutions through green technology. Fortunately, David sees green technology a starting point for his journey to earth stewardship. The transition will come as energy supplies run down over time.

It is the force of David’s reputation, based on his role as co-originator of the permaculture design system and in recent years as its most prominent thinker, that leads to the ready adoption of his ideas by those within that milieu.

The influence of government

David writes that government has a substantial influence on these different nested scenarios, with local government holding most promise of influencing community-based initiatives that would form elements of the earth stewardship model. Through legislation, regulation and subsidies, local government has an influence on the structuring of households as, in effect, microcosms of the lifeboat scenario yet, at the same time, as components of the earth stewardship model.

What is implied here is David and his partner, Sue Dennet’s notion of the ‘household economy’. This views the household — whatever its makeup — as primarily a productive rather than consumptive entity. In reality, of course, households would be both consumers and producers, especially where they participate in a community-based, non-monetary system of exchange such as time dollars or LETS (Local Exchange and Trading System).

Seen as ‘prosumer’ (producer-consumer) entities and as micro-lifeboats, households would:

• produce in home or community gardens (and process as preserves) some of the food their inhabitants consume
• harvest and store for subsistence purposes rainfall and overland flow (the later where households have garden space)
• generate energy via photovoltaic or other system
• and form the basis, perhaps, for some home-based industry that produces goods or services for trade with others through LETS-like systems or as part of the informal or formal economies.

Local government, though in still-too-few cases, has made a start on educating people in these basic skills. Some offer workshops and courses in sustainable living where participants pick up largely forgotten skills in what Rob Hopkins, spokesman for the Transition movement, calls ‘skill-up for powerdown’ — growing food, storing water, producing home energy and other like things. Some councils facilitate the setting up of community food gardens and farmers’ markets. Others install photovoltaic systems on their buildings.

These things are not done as some deliberate policy of popular skilling-up but because they are components of the green technology model, the most popular model of sustainability, and because it is compatible with local government policy and practice for ameliorating and adapting to climate change. This motivation does not matter, of course, because such initiatives smooth the way to a earth stewardship society and have a firm place within it.

Both idea and template

Future Scenarios will no doubt be criticised because it will be seen to offer little option other than the evolution of earth stewardship societies.

Green technology advocates might feel a little chargrined that their preferred future might be only a transitional form between the present and the future. That is understandable, because much of the search for solutions to impending global trends focuses on technological fixes even though some proposing this foresee a less growth-oriented, perhaps even an economically steady state society emerging.

It is in discussing these different models that Future Scenarios provides a service. The book, and the workshops David offers as a means of exploring the topic more fully, introduce a sophistication to permaculture design that is not always present in its popular forms. In doing so, David once again offers permaculture a new lease on life as an applied technology for a community-based response to climate change and peak oil that complements that being developed by the transition initiative movement and that offers opportunities to the more innovative permaculture and sustainability, community-based organisations that are capable of addressing those parts of society outside their usual sphere of influence.

David Holmgren

IT WAS A BUSY FEW DAYS in Sydney for David Holmgren and his son, Oliver. First came David’s appearance at Randwick City Council’s annual Ecoliving Fair, followed next day with a full-day workshop and an appearance that evening at a TransitionSydney Cafe Conversation.

Many readers of this blog will know that David is a co-originator of the permaculture design system, which he and Bill Mollison unleashed on the world in 1978 through the pages of Permaculture One. David focused his efforts over successive years on the development of his Hepburn property, Melliodora, and marked his return to public prominence with the publication of Permaculture-Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability.

The writer of this report hosts Conversation With Authors, which is a regular event at the Ecoliving Fair, the intention of which is to introduce the authors and their ideas to the public and for the public to engage with the authors in conversation. It provided the opportunity for David to discuss his new book, Future Scenarios, however the discussion ranged far and wide around the general topic of sustainability.

Appearing with David was:

• Dr Mark Diesendorf from the Institute for Environmental Studies at UNSW; Mark has written the recently-released book, Climate Action
• Rosemary Morrow, the noted permaculture educator who lives in Katoomba, in the Blue Mountains, who recently produced A Good Home Forever and who  brought her unique variety of down-to-earth practical wisdom
• and Victorian permaculture designer and co-author of the Permaculture Diary and Permaculture Calendar, David Arnold.

Authors at the Ecoliving Fair, from left: David Holmgren; Rosemary Morrow; David Arnold; Russ Grayson (program host).

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Educating the educators

The one-day workshop attracted participants from councils, community organisations and others

Monday dawned much less windy than Sunday and, by 9am, a total of 35 people had gathered at Randwick Community Centre for a day-long workshop based on David’s Future Scenarios.

The day was organised by Randwick City Council’s Sustaining The City team through Council’s Sustainability Education Officer, Fiona Campbell. Attending were local government sustainability and environmental education staff, sustainability educators from community organisations, a leading, local climate change advocate associated with the local Green Church and a number of individuals engaged in sustainability education activities including consultants, two architects, two members of TransitionSydney, an engineer and small businesspeople.

The material was found challenging, but feedback on the day and over successive days indicates that it opened new avenues of thinking.

The day’s tasty food was supplied by no-waste caterers, O-Organics, with fruit from Sydney Food Connect.

Transition at the cafe

The day event complete, it was time to head over to Glebe for the TransitionSydney Cafe Conversation with David and Oliver.

Held at the Fair Trade Cafe, this was another of TransitionSydney’s successful Cafe Conversations which were set up so that local people involved in sustainability, permaculture and transition activities have the opportunity to meet innovators from out of town as well as those from the city. The Cafe Conversations are essentially networking events in which attendees have the opportunity to meet each other and to talk informally with innovators. Previous innovators appearing at TransitionSydney Cafe conversations include:

• Dick Copeman, education coordinator at Brisbane’s Northey Street City Farm
• Michael Shuman, US, economist and attorney, employee of the US Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, local economics advocate and author of the Smallmart Revolution
• Robert Pekin, coordinator of Brisbane’s Food Connect CSA (community supported agriculture).

Cafe Conversations are not presentations of the guest’s ideas, rather, they are informal events providing a chance to get to know the innovators. Consequently, David and Oliver spoke about how they became involved in permaculture and sustainability initiatives and, following this, attendees had the change to engage them in conversation.

It was good to get to know Oliver, who assisted David at the workshop with administrative matters. He is deliberately seeking the experiences that will inform his role in life and has a keen interest in photography, with which he and the writer of this report had more than a few conversations. No way will Oliver be overshadowed by his father’s reputation as the leading thinker in the permaculture design system.

New rational for permaculture design

David Arnold (left) discuuses his work with Conversations With Authors host, Russ Grayson, at the Randwick Ecoliving Fair.

David seems to be repositioning the permaculture design system as an applied response to the challenging global trends of peak oil and climate change, a response to be implemented at the community scale.

Into that mix, Rosemary Morrow threw the declining fresh water reserve on which food production and so much else depends. At the Conversation With Authors, Rosemary challenged David, saying that she thinks that water will be of equal importance to progressively declining and higher priced oil in the near future.

David’s approach to permaculture may represent a shift in the way it is focused because it takes the design system beyond many of its popular manifestations and applies it to developing local solutions to the major challenges. Were this to be further developed, it could provide a filter on relevant technologies, practices and ideas to emphasise those of greater social value while not ignoring individual and household initiatives in sustainable living.

His goal is what he describes as an ‘earth steward’ society, which may be eventually reached through the current trend towards a ‘green technology’ society. These concepts are explored in his book, Future Scenarios.

Tiring they might have been for those organising them, these two days with David and Oliver were inspiring for those in attendance.

Read a review of Future Scenarios.

Swapping thrown-away bottles for a coin is one of those practices now long gone except in enlightened states like South Australia. It is the memory of such practices that has inspired Meg Bishop and Graeme Gibson to produce their little book, Stories of Experience — learning from the environmental experiences of older Australians.

Victim of affluent times

That many of the stories collected by the authors come from the 1940s and 1950s is no accident, for it was around that time that the post-World War Two economic boom started to transform Australia’s economy and culture, as well as its environmental practices. The frugality, thrift and recycling that had been part of our culture were suddenly swept away in a flood of modernism and money. Now, however, there is a resurgence of interest in those chronologically distant practices. And while it’s genesis can be traced back to the 1970s ‘alternative’ culture, it is in more recent times that it has gained impetus.

The new Transition Initiatives movement is the latest social formation to discover the value of past experience. In part, that’s because it sees these ‘old’ environmental practices being of value in a world likely to have to deal with both the impacts of climate change and peak oil – the point of maximum extraction of global oil reserves after which prices of everything that uses oil in its production (and that’s most things) are likely to rise dramatically. The ‘rediscovery’ of how to live with less oil and less affluence may well have much to learn from those times more than a half-century ago, and doing so is recommended by Rob Hopkins in his ‘Transitions Handbook’.

Old times, new values

So, what can the authors tell us about the wisdom of the past that is relevant to the new values emerging in response to a changing world? The answer, it turns out, is plenty.

Take the experience of Dorothy Bremner of Nowra. She tells of how water was highly valued in the late 1940s when she was a child, a time when there were signs about conserving water above the taps at her school. Dorothy invokes those days by describing how her mother would heat water in a kettle on the stove, then pour it into a tin basin on the kitchen table and wash the dishes in it. And after that? The water went onto the garden. History repeats, because this is what some people I know have started to do in the present. Today, we rather grandly call it ‘greywater recycling’, but in those times it was nothing more than common sense.

Mardie Smith took the lessons of the country to the city when she moved from Eugowra. Her memories are of making jams and preserves and storing them in the household pantry… and of sharing excess. Reading this reminded me of attending a workshop at a conference in Melbourne a few years ago. I didn’t set out to attend this workshop, but my partner wanted to and suggested I come along. I obeyed.

The workshop was led by a woman from Hepburn, a small town in inland Victoria. Her name was Sue Dennett and her presentation was on something she called the ‘household economy’. What she said there resonated strongly with the activities and mentality that I found in Mardie Smith’s story and in other stories in Stories of Experience. So, it appears that either that those old attitudes and values did not pass with those earlier generations or that – and this is what I believe – they are being revived in a new iteration for modern times that we could call Frugality Version 2.0. Oh… that Sue Dennett who ran the workshop is partner to David Holmgren, the co-originator of the permaculture design system.

Interestingly, Mardie Smith talks about how the word ‘economy’ had a different meaning in those days. Rather than being the signifier of an arcane pseudo-science, economy was about making the most efficient use of things.

Small book, big ideas

In a modest 90 pages, this small book documents old and now new-again environmental practice culled from the memories of older Australians. A couple stories feature the creative slant of mixing fact and fiction, but all bring stories of water and waste, making-do and repairing, chooks, food, biodiversity and the value of neighbours and sharing. It’s about hard times and frugal times and, through its pages, you get the idea that although those times might have been tough they were lived to the fullest and people got by through a shared set of humane values based around mutual support. If we can do this again, though in a modern format, then our children and grandchildren will be well served.

Stories of Experience was published by the Council on the Ageing through a NSW Environmental Trust grant (www.environment.nsw.gov.au/envtrust).

Publishers information

Bishop M, Gibson G; 2008; Stories of experience — learning from the environmental experiences of older Australians; Council on the Ageing (NSW). ISBN: 9780 9804  22306.

Retail: Expect to pay around $10.

www.realoptions.com.au

Reviewed by Russ Grayson, April 2009

The Australian City Farms & Community Gardens Network annual conference 2007.

An unofficial report by Russ Grayson

MARCH IN MELBOURNE is a meteorologically confused time. One day, it’s hot and sticky – T-shirt weather. The next, it’s cold and windy – jackets are the order of the day. Then the rain comes, not in any great downpour but in sporadic showers, for this is a city in drought.

There’s some indefinable quality about this southern metropolis that makes it a more… how do I put it?… a more humane city than its bigger, brasher cousin to the north. It’s easier to move around, something enhanced by its frequent tram services and the long main roads that take you on long, long journeys through the suburbs.Unlike Sydney, Melbourne is not a city fractured by harbours, ridges and valleys.

This is the city that, late in March this year, hosted the Australian City Farms & Community Gardens Network (ACFCGN) national conference, the fourth such event. The others – the first in Bendigo’s wet cold, then in the sticky heat of the Sunshine Coast and, last year, in Adelaide’s dry heat – were more internally focused. The Melbourne ACFCGN crew – in the guise of Cultivating Community and other supporters – thought that something more ambitious was in order. And they delivered.

Ben Neal has done much to improve community food gardening on social housing estates in Melbourne. Ben was CEO of Cultivating Community.

Ambitious, successful, well attended and inspring

People came from all states – and, yes, that includes those well away from the eastern seaboard – Western Australia, Tasmania, South Australia and the Northern Territory. There were two from Christchurch, though I do not list them as coming from other states because New Zealanders get a bit touchy about that. Those two came from the Christchurch Community Gardens Association in that pleasant, flat, windy and otherwise freezing city.

Victoria’s Minister for Housing, Richard Wynne, opened the conference which was held in the somewhat ornate but faded Victorian (the period of history, not the state) opulence of Collingwood Town Hall. There, a changing audience numbering in the hundreds gathered to listed to speakers such as David Holmgren, co-founder of the Permaculture design system; international relocalisation and local food advocate, Helena Norberg-Hodge; gardener and author, Jackie French; ABC television’s gardener, Jerry Coleby-Williams; Indian campaigner and author, Vandana Shiva; the UK Federation of City Farm’s Mike Marston and others.

Given that the themes of the different days — school gardens and education, community gardening, seed saving (it was the Seed Savers’ Network’s annual conference) and food security— attracted the same core of attendees but a differing peripheral audience, the number in attendance may have been higher in total than that of the best-attended day.

Ian’s new book

Permaculture educator, Ian Lillington, launched his new book – TheHolistic Life – Sustainability Through Permaculture – at the conference.

The volume is a welcome addition to the design system’s library of titles. Ian speaks of how and why he became involved in the design system and how he used its principles to design and build his earth construction house at Willunga, South Australia.

Ian and family now live in Victoria where he is involved in training in the accredited Permaculture training courses.

Speakers inform, influence and inspire

David Holmgren spoke of a ” …design system coming from permaculture to look at food security in this world of less energy”. Permaculture remains relevant, he said, because “it is about people and food, about connection with nature, tools and community”.

David’s mention of ‘tools’ struck me as interesting. It reminded me of Stewart Brand and Harold Rheingold’s Whole Earth Catalog of the 1970s which focused on access to tools for self-reliant living for the ‘back to the land’ or ‘alternatives’ movement which later influenced permaculture. Just as successive editions of the Catalog made tools accessible and developed a network around itself, so too, I thought, does the sustainability movement and permaculture (which can be the same thing) bring new tools for thinking, sharing information and acting on the world.

David sees permaculture having entered a “new wave” in the new century and spoke of how localisation is the way forward, bringing with it the development of local food economies. As with global warming, ideas spread, he said, and ” …can change things quickly”. If the awakening of the last five or six years continues, David suggested, it could lead to policy change.

This, too, is an interesting point worthy of a little thought. I don’t know if anyone has documented the change in public attitude over that short period, but it seems that climate change, the potential peaking of the oil supply and other topics have come to some kind of maturity as political issues in the past five to six years. Sure, they were there in the 1990s but not with the political presence they now command. For sustainability advocates – and that includes permaculture people – the question is about how we respond to that change and seek to influence public perceptions and political policies.

David went on to say that, “The global to local message is profoundly empowering”, and that it links the local food movement to sustainability and the “economics of happiness”.

Localisation the opportunity, says Helena

The economics of happiness was also a theme of another keynote speaker who has long been an advocate of local food systems in the UK and Australia, Helena-Norberg Hodge (author, Ancient Futures; co-author Bringing the Food Economy Home).

Helena Norberg-Hodge from the International Society for Ecology and Culture spoke at the community gardens' network conference. Helena is a local food advocate who has promoted community supported agriculture in the UK and the development of local food systems in Australia..

After three decades of educating, campaigning, writing and developing new components of localisation (Helena was influential in the establishment of Byron Bay’s weekly farmers’ market) she come to the conclusion that “the emerging localisation movement” can influence public opinion and shape government policy.

“The economics of happiness, with the cultivation of community cultures of place, are essential to combating terrorism. The consumer monoculture destroys biodiversity and people’s self-respect”, she told an enthralled audience.

Global communications enables carbon-free speakers

In keeping with the carbon-neutral objectives of the conference, Vendana Shiva spoke from Delhi by audio link and the UK Federation of City Farms Mike Marsden appeared “from the snowy northern UK” on a large screen via video phone, his talk illustrated by a synchronised Powerpoint presentation projected on an adjacent screen.

If the world chooses a reduced-carbon pathway with less international travel, and if we are to retain effective global communications, then such technologies will have to become better developed and commonplace as well as cheap, very reliable and ported to handheld devices such as mobile phones. Their use at the conference may thus turn out to be a harbinger of the future and the conference organisers are to be congratulated in deploying these new technologies rather than flying overseas speakers to Melbourne.

Workshops – too many to attend

There were workshops aplenty.

Su Dennet from Melliodora, not far from Melbourne at Hepburn Springs, gave a succinct run down on the many different ways of improving food security at home through preserving, bottling, drying and so on.

Understandably for a conference in which food was a theme, the workshop was packed.

The Illawarra and Sydney food fairness alliances teamed up with Wollongong City Council’s sustainability educator, Vanessa John, to explain their missions and activities. Council employs staff to focus on food security in the region.

The enviable record of Cultivating Community

Cultivating Community CEO, Ben Neil, described how the work of the association has grown to include 20 community gardens, two food cooperatives in low income areas and the school-based garden-to-kitchen program.

Cultivating Community, the Victorian end of the Australian City Farms & Community Gardens Network, employs a number of people to work in assisting public housing residents develop community gardens for local food production on their estates. They also assist non-estate community gardeners and were involved in the Collingwood College school-garden-to-kitchen program with local chef and author, Stephanie Alexander.

Cultivating Community is now developing its own school-garden-to-kitchen program in which students grow, harvest, prepare, cook and eat the food they grow at school.

Tours to inspire

Tours offered the choice of visiting either school or community gardens.

Evident was the high productivity and good order of the public housing estate community gardens supported by Cultivating Community, gardens which are farmed mainly by immigrant peoples.

Oh, yes – the food, the places, the people

Let me tell you how good and inspiring the annual CERES Harvest Festival was on Sunday, the last event of the week. There, I met the CERES Food Project crew and was rewarded with home made baklava and dalmados just for taking their photo for Community Harvest – the journal of the Australian City Farms & Community Gardens Network.

I sampled a home made red brewed by an Italian gardener from CERES allotment garden and enjoyed a rather filling Harvest Festival feast featuring foods representative of the ethnically-diverse people who come into CERES. Conspicuous were the Seed Savers’ Network’s Jude and Michel Fanton, buzzing around pointing their video camera at anything interesting as they set out on their new careers as video producers.

And let’s not forget the sumptuous morning and afternoon teas and lunches prepared by different caterers each day, and the conference dinner at Lentil as Anything, adjacent to Collingwood Children’s Farm. Lots of varied food and no fixed prices — you pay what you think the food is worth. Yes, it’s a café run on trust.
There was also the conviviality of impromptu meals at places such as the Vege Bar in Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, with the crew from the Illawarra — including Dan Deighton and his wild bunch of school and community garden designer-builders.

Melbourne Slow Food people were there too, and they came on the bus tour of community food gardens. After the tours, we finished the conference on Saturday night with a party at Veg Out Community Garden in St Kilda, an exuberant place that combines food production (including cooking in the big wood-fired oven they built), the works of gardener-artists dotted through the allotments and the conviviality of good company. Unfortunately, they had none left of the crisp vintage they bottle under the Veg Out label, made partly from grapes grown in the garden and with the support of a friendly Yarra Valley vigneron.

An edited version of their article appeared in the magazine.

This is the article supplied to New Internationalist…

1972-1976 — the formative years

THE STORY OF PERMACULTURE begins in the early 1970s in Tasmania, Australia.

There, it starts with two men – a teacher and student. But let’s go back before they got together, back to their formative years, for it is here that we find the influences that set those two on a course that would intersect… a course that would create something new from the social and political turmoil of that decade.

Origins – Bill Mollison

Bill Mollison was born in 1928 in the small fishing village of Stanley, on the Bass Strait coast of cool-temperate Tasmania.

Bill Mollison in 2008

He left school at 15 to help run his family’s bakery. Among the jobs that followed were mill worker, seaman, animal trapper and shark fisherman. A rough brew for someone who would become an environmentalist, they led him to nine years at the Wildlife Survey Section of the CSIRO (Australia’s government science research organisation) and then time with the Inland Fisheries Commission of Tasmania. What the two latter jobs provided were long stints in the wild forests and coasts of Tasmania, closely monitoring the life of those ecosystems. It was this time in nature that was formative to Mollison’s ideas on ecology and on how the provision of human needs, such as agriculture, could make use of those structures and processes he observed.

In 1968 Mollison became a tutor at the University of Tasmania, in Hobart, and, later, senior lecturer in Environmental Psychology. It was in that role that he linked with a student at the Tasmanian College of Advanced Education, David Holmgren, and the seeds of Permaculture were sown.

Origins – David Holmgren

David Holmgren was born in 1955, growing up on the other side of the Australian continent in Fremantle, Western Australia, with political activist parents.

David Holmgren makes a point.

After matriculating from John Curtin Senior High School in 1972 he spent a year hitchhiking around Australia before moving to Tasmania in 1974 to study environmental design (but gravitating towards landscape design, ecology and agriculture). It was during the brief but intense association between Mollison and Holmgren, thrashing out ideas in Mollison’s lounge room on the lower slopes of Mt Wellington — what became known as ‘the republic of Strickland Avenue’ —  that the backbone of the permaculture concept was formed.

Not all that long after devising the original concept of the permaculture design system, David started the work of setting up his rural smallholding – Melliodora — at Hepburn, a small town in Victoria.

No positive direction forward

Mollison wrote of those times: “To many of us who experienced the ferment of the late 1960s, there seemed to be no positive direction forward, although almost everybody could define those aspects of the global society that they rejected. These included military adventurism, the [nuclear] bomb, ruthless land exploitation, the arrogance of polluters and a general insensitivity to human needs. An unethical world could waste more on killing people than on earthcare or on helping people.

“From 1972 to 1974 I spent time, latterly with David Holmgren, in developing an interdisciplinary earth science – permaculture – with a potential for positivistic, integrated and global outreach.”

build an army of permaculture field workers to go out and teach the ideas of sustainable food production

Mollison has said more recently that, by the late 1970s and following the Club of Rome’s report Limits of Growth, there was increasing concern from governments and bankers about the world running out of resources.

“But no one had any long-term ideas and it was obvious to me what had to be done,” he said. “That was to build an army of permaculture field workers to go out and teach the ideas of sustainable food production.”

Nature and the intellect

For his part, Holmgren was attracted to the natural and intellectual environment of Tasmania. He was also lured by Tasmania’s Environmental Design School that was led by Hobart architect and educator, Barry McNeil. This, Holmgren says, at that time was “the most radical experiment in tertiary education in Australia”, attracting design students from around Australia and the world.

Tasmania… it is a place where modernity and nature collide, both destructively and creatively

“In this intellectual hothouse I met Bill Mollison, whose life and ideas epitomised a creative bridge between nature and civilisation and between tradition and modernity,” Holmgren wrote.

Holmgren says he is sometimes asked why permaculture emerged from somewhere like Tasmania. His answer: “It is a place where modernity and nature collide, both destructively and creatively.”

That can be seen along the edge, the zone, where the city of Hobart collides with the tall eucalypt forests that clothe the lower slopes of Mt Wellington. The mountain, with its precipituous dolerite cliffs known as the Organ Pipes. is occasionally snow capped in winter where it catches the moist, cold winds known as the Roaring Forties. It dominates the city, a presence both physical and in the minds of locals who intinctively look up to the summit for some indication of the weather or, perhaps, to remind themselves that they inhabit one of the most geographically beautiful cities in Australia. On its lower slopes, below the olive green of those euclaypt forests, is the property where the permaculture concept was born. A few kilometres in one direction is the city centre. In the other, well beyond the horizon, the great cool temperate wilderness of South West Tasmania.

Wilderness the South West might be, it was not inviolable and the politically powerful Hydro-Electric Commission was looking enviously – at the time that permaculture was being hatched – at its wild rivers and thinking about damming them. The Hydro had already inundated Lake Pedder below the grey, wind-whipped surface of a dam’s empoundment, an action that lay almost forgotten behind the emergence of green politics in Australia.

This gave rise to a growing environmental consciousness that developed in Tasmania at that time, but it was a consciousness seemingly unaware of permaculture ideas, being oriented towards wilderness preservation and nature conservation. When that consciousness became self-conscious and formed the early Tasmanian environment movement, it moved into oppositional politics, the threats to the environment perceived to be so great. This was the start of a mass movement that would culminate in the victory on the Franklin River.

Just how much the early environment movement fed the emerging permaculture concept is unknown, but it surely prepared the field for it in a conceptual and ideological way. On the lower slopes of Mt wellington, Bill Mollison was surely aware of that movement’s gathering strength.

Holmgren acknowledges this, saying that “the physical and cultural environment that gave rise to permaculture also produced the world’s first green political party.” In 1972 the United Tasmania Group (UTG), which evolved to become the Tasmanian Greens, was formed.

UTG was the first authentic green party in as much as it had environmental politics at its core. But whether it should be regarded as the first political party with an environmental policy remains open to dispute.

“I was living in Tasmania at the time”, permaculture educator and writer Russ Grayson says, “and figured among my friends and associates some who would later gain prominence in environmental politics in the state.

“I remember conversations with a UTG member, Des Shields, originally a Queenslander, who told me about the earlier work of the New Zealand Values Party which, while not ostensively a green party, had an ecological element to their platform. Des, I think, may have regarded this party as the first green party in history.”

Holmgren says the Australian organic agriculture movement also sprouted in Tasmania, part of, “An upwelling of intellectual and creative action at the edge of civilisation.” In fact Mollison was a founding member of the Tasmanian Organic Gardening and Farming Society, the same organisation from which Peter Cundall, who decades later was to host ABC television’s Gardening Australia emerged.

The island state, it seems, may have been instrumental in giving birth to more than one innovative social movement.

1976 – 1981 – spreading the word

Permaculture made its first appearance on the world stage in 1976 in an article in Tasmania’s Organic Farmer and Gardener newsletter published by the Tasmanian Organic Gardening and Farming Society. It was titled A Permaculture System for Southern Australian Conditions – Part One and was written by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren.

Max Lindegger in 2008. Max was one of the team that established Crystal Waters Permaculture Village in SE Queensland and was instrumental is spreading permaculture in Australia in its early years.

On the mainland, Mollison was interviewed on national radio by Terry Lane. What followed was an avalanche of interest and controversy.

A key permaculture pioneer in Australia, Max Lindegger, who went on to design the world’s first permaculture eco-village, Crystal Waters, said it was an electrifying time. Max, living thousands of kilometres to the north in Queensland, read that first article and realised that ” …it was exactly the way I felt but had been unable to put into words” – a common sentiment of people then and even now. He invited Mollison to come north for a speaking tour.

In 1976 Max formed what may have been the second permaculture group in existence, Permaculture Nambour. Meetings were at his home, and, interestingly, he still gets mail there for the organisation.

The permacultural concept has caught the imagination of hundreds of people in Australia… it may well have a wider impact…

Permaculture was starting to attract attention, but it took another two years for this rich ferment to produce the first book on permaculture – Permaculture One – a Perennial Agriculture for Human Settlements. It was published in 1978 by Transworld, with joint authorship to Mollison and Holmgren.

In the book’s introduction the authors comment: “The permacultural concept has caught the imagination of hundreds of people in Australia where we have given verbal descriptions and short resumes of the system. It may well have a wider impact, as the time seems ripe for such a synthesis in a world of famine, poisons, erosion and fast-depleting energy.”

The year 1978 is a significant one for the permaculture design system. As well as Permaculture One, also appearing in that year was the first permaculture magazine – initially called, simply, Permaculture. Its editor was Terry White, a resident of the Victorian town of Maryborough, on Australia’s mainland.

Of the Mollison-Lane radio interview, White says: “I found it galvanising. Bill’s interview kindled my imagination in a profound way.” So much so that White invited Bill to visit Maryborough for a public meeting

“At that time”, says Terry, “there was a lot of concern about youth unemployment. In an attempt to address this, Maryborough had started two employment cooperatives, one making clothing and the other making bicycle trailers. An alternate technology foundation was planning the establishment of a technology demonstration centre and there was considerable concern over dryland salinity, which was attributed to the removal of trees and the subsequent rise in saline groundwater in the area.

Maryborough… a significant hub for the permaculture movement for its first ten years

“It was this context of concern about youth unemployment and land degradation that provided a responsive setting for the discussion of permanent culture – permaculture – and an emphasis on positive, practical whole-system solutions.

“Permaculture One was printed in Maryborough”, said Terry White, “ …and Maryborough remained a significant hub for the permaculture movement for its first ten years. The town hosted two permaculture conferences and two of the first ten day permaculture consultancy courses”. The first permaculture course had been held in Tasmania in 1978.

More than Maryborough

According to David Holmgren, it wasn’t just Maryborough that was ready for the permaculture message.

“At the time there was an upheaval in new, positive environmental solutions as a response to a sense of crisis, especially the energy crisis”, he says. Concern over the energy supply was the outgrowth of the OPEC-led reduction in the supply that triggered the oil crisis of 1973, and which led to rationing in some Western countries.

The work of Terry White was critical to permaculture's early development.

White says that people were receptive to Mollison because, ” …he stood for something rather than against things.

“Bill had positive, practical solutions to problems… to real problems. He came across as a doer, not a talker. He proposed that instead of waiting for government or for funding, we just go and do whatever it was that was necessary. People found this approach empowering… it released energy. Permaculture might have been seen as a bit fringe but it was hands-on.

“While in Maryborough, Bill was invited to visit the tip and the sewage settling ponds. His suggestions for the productive use of wastes from these two sites were taken seriously by the council and a plan for the productive use of sewage waste was published in the first edition of the Permaculture quarterly journal of the national permaculture association.

“I was attracted to Bill’s idea of seeing problems as solutions, of reframing questions as positive solutions. There was also permaculture’s systems approach – it’s holistic way of looking at things.

“Permaculture, to me, is a community development model… a grassroots approach”.

Impetus from the Maryborough meeting led to another of the earliest permaculture groups in Australia, and then the National Permaculture Association.

“Before that”, says permaculture early adopter-now-Permaculture-educator, Robyn Francis, “Bill Mollison spent 1976 and 1977 overseas, collecting ideas that would find a place in the still-developing permaculture idea”.

Wit, provocation and charisma

Mollison is renowned for his wit, provocative style and charisma, and all were in full force at the time. Lindegger remembers the first permaculture design course, taught by Mollison over three weeks in 1979, with 18 participants ‘invited’ from all parts of the country. The venue was an old hotel in Stanley.

He says the impact on those involved was life-changing and many became a driving force for the movement. Tens of thousands of people have since taken design and introductory courses, going on to work on projects or in their communities around the world.

In 1979, Mollison published Permaculture Two, focussing on design. In 1981, still in the early days of permaculture, he received international recognition with a Right Livelihood Award, sometimes called the ‘alternative Nobel Prize’. In his acceptance speech, he said: “All my life we’ve been at war with nature. I just pray that we lose that war. There are no winners in that war…”

The 1980s – binding a growing network

The publication of Permaculture magazine was pivotal to the history and spread of the design system. Like its eventual successor, the Permaculture International Journal (PIJ), it bound together a geographically dispersed network of emerging permaculture practitioners. Permaculture was the first publication to highlight the important role of the media in the spread of the design system. That would be more than amply demonstrated over 15 years later with the broadcast of the Global Gardener television series.

When White handed Permaculture over to Robyn Francis in 1987, the magazine moved to Sydney. At the Permaculture Epicentre in inner-urban Enmore (now Alfalfa House Food Coop), in a building shared with a small permaculture shop and Australia’s first ethical investment company, Damien Lynch’s August Investments, a team of media volunteers typed, cut and pasted articles and images into pages of what soon became the International Permaculture Journal.

Robyn Francis, one of the design system's early adopters, has made a career of permaculture education.

Soon, Permaculture Edge appeared, produced by a Permaculture Nambour in south-east Queensland. After a few years of increasingly sporadic publication, Permaculture Edge disappeared after its last edition went on sale at the 1997 International Permaculture Convergence in Western Australia.

The Permaculture International Journal (PIJ), as it became known after Robyn Francis assumed editorship and, later, handed that role to Steve Payne – now editor of ABC Organic Gardener magazine – remained the mouthpiece of the design system although, in the 1990s, Green Connections, which also reported on permaculture, came on the scene. That magazine ceased publication in December 2000, six months after PIJ.

Significantly, PIJ became the first permaculture publication to go mainstream, quite some time before Green Connections. “That was when it became available on the news stands”, says Robyn Francis.

With the turn of the decade, news of the permaculture design system was spreading and, according to White, by the mid-eighties the ten permaculture groups in Australia had grown to around 80 worldwide. In 1987, with key input from Robyn Francis, Permaculture International Ltd was incorporated to expand the distribution of Permaculture International Journal and to support the growing global network.

Permaculture also continued to be advanced through books, in particular, Mollison’s 1988, 576-page cornucopia of ideas, Permaculture – A Designers’ Manual, self-published by his own company, Tagari.

Soon, permaculture’s early adopters were teaching the design system. There was Max Lindegger, and Robin Francis, today based at the Djanbung Gardens training centre in northern NSW, who taught her first Permaculture Design Course in Sydney. She was instrumental in having an elective subject in permaculture accepted in the TAFE horticulture course at Ryde College.

Enter Rosemary

“Janice Haworth said there was going to be a permaculture course with Robyn Frances at Newtown and that I might like it,” she says. “I was suspicious at first but soon realised that it was the approach that enchanted me… it was interactive and overlaid with interconnection of disciplines.”

The different Permaculture Design Courses were often quite erratic.

The Blue Mountains are less that two hours from Sydney by train but they might as well be on the other side of the continent, they are so different. Lifted above the lowlands to their east and west, the mountains are an ancient sandstone plateau dissested by deep river valleys and clad in the olive green of eucalypt forest. Rainforest inhabits the darker, wetter gullies. Rather than the warm temperate climate of the coastal plain, the altitude of the mountains creates a microclimate more akin to the the cool temperate of the southern states.

Rosemary Morrow

The town of Katoomba is the largest of the small towns and villages strung along the Great Western Highway where it crosses the Blue Mountains. And here, in a modest brick veneer house that she is refitting for energy and water efficiency and home food production, lives a woman who has accomplished much permaculturally, Rosemary Morrow.

Rosemary became a Quaker in 1978, she says, the year that Permacultre One was published. She describes her discovery of permaculture.

The different Permaculture Design Courses were often quite erratic

Rosemary recollects the early days of permaculture.

“Well, they were chaotic really. The information was all over the place and some of it was relevent then, but today it’s quite dated. Some of the claims were extravagant and not realistic. It all sounded so simple.

“It took me ages to realise that design was the main subject and that Network Science was the key to it all. My background in agricultural and environmental science and horticulture helped me to make sense of it at a deeper level. It was very attractive because it put all these in the same frame.

Permaculture became my vocation

Rosemary tried to make order from confusion and explains that permaculture education has changed from its early days.

“The different Permaculture Design Courses were often quite erratic and no one had a sense of the skills and knowledge they wanted participants to have by the end of the course. It was taught by enthusiasts with no teaching skills. Copying Bill Mollison meant a 72 hour talkfest which few could emulate. That’s pretty well changed now.

“I was also intrigued by a course which began with ethics… none of my other studies had ever mentioned the word. There was a correspondence between Quakerism and permaculture. They had in common things like care for people, simplicity, community, ethical use of money and right livelihood. I was at home.

“Permaculture became my vocation and the more I worked with the content, the more interesting and the deeper it went… links started to happen with special nodes around water, plants and soil. I saw design as philosophy and practice and the true subject of the course.

After discovering permaculture, Rosemary went on to take its ideas to Vietnam and Cambodia and to other places. Today, she teaches the design system in the Blue Mountains, where she lives, and promotes the virtues of localism. Rosemary has built a network of local permaculture practitioners.

She has also become an author of permaculture books. First, in the mid-1990s came the Earth Keeepers Guide to Permaculture, then a teacher’s manual based on the content of that book. Later, she wrote a manual on saving seeds for use in developing countries. On a sunny late Autumn day in 2006, a new, updated edition of the Earth Keepers Guide was launched amid the sweet white blossoms of the heritge apple tree collection in the Blue Mountains Community Garden.

Growth continues

“The 1980s were a period of growth for Permaculture”, says Francis.

“The decade started with the Alternative Economic Summit in 1984 – which introduced permaculture to economics – and in 1987 August Investments made a start.

“We had the the Earthbank Conference – that was the outcome of Bill talking with the Schumacher Society. There was the establishment of the Maleny Community Credit Union, the first and second international permaculture convergences, the first permaculture design courses in Nepal, India and Zimbabwe and then the third international conference in New Zealand.

“There was the opening of Crystal Waters Permaculture Village, Australia’s first ecovillage, a project driven by Max Lindegger (now with the Global Ecovillage Network) and his team.

“Declan and Margrit Kennedy, in Germany, taught the first urban permaculture course, for the first time taking permaculture beyond the rural. Canadian, Michael Linton, introduced LETS (Local Exchange and Trading System) to Australia. In 1988, Bill taught the first permaculture course to an Aboriginal community at Alice Springs and the decade culminated with the publication of Bill’s Permaculture – A Designers’ Manual, the most substantial of permaculture texts and one still in print.”

It was late in the decade that the design system appeared on the tube in front of a mass audience, thanks to the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation), an event that sparked wider interest in the permaculture agenda. Two early programs featured Bill and permaculture, one entitled In Grave Danger of Falling Food and another, a permaculture garden makeover, shown on the Extra Dimensions program.

The Manual, along with a cut-down version, Introduction to Permaculture (1991), still sells well today. Among Mollison’s other books, which collectively have sold more than 100,000 copies worldwide, are The Permaculture Book of Ferment and Human Nutrition (1993) and his autobiography, Travels in Dreams (1996). Mollison was rumoured to have been working on a number of other publications in recent years but none have yet been published.

1990s – years of consolidation… and expansion

The decade started well for permaculture as it continued to spread its influence. It was growing overseas, too, in both developed and underdeveloped countries. In Australia, the PIJ held the movement together, providing it with the news and information that bound it into a diffused but coherent movement.

Permaculture was still far from mainstream but it was gaining in respectability and credibility. Change, however, was only ten years away.

“The 1990s brought further growth”, Robyn Francis continues. “My own project, Jalanbah Ecovillage, made a start in rural Nimbin, as did my permaculture teaching base and permaculture demonstration centre, Djanbung Gardens”.

The Australian City Farms & Community Gardens Network was operating by mid-decade, promoting community-based urban agriculture as a venue for permaculture and associated ideas. Notable also was another television program, the four-part Global Gardener series shown on the ABC, which swelled attendance at permaculture courses.

“In Sydney, the television broadcast of Global Gardener boosted attendance at our permaculture introductory and Permaculture Design Courses, something that other educators reported too,” said Fiona Campbell, who led a Sydney-based permaculture education team that developed a 110-hour, part time urban Permaculture Design Course. “More so that the earlier television programs about permaculture, Global Gardener brought permaculture before a mainstream audience in a powerful way”.

Fiona Campbell led a permaculture teaching team which developed an urban Permaculture Design Course in Sydney in the 1990s and worked with the Permaculture Sydney association.

By this time Mollison had established for himself a reputation as the visionary communicator of permaculture. He stirrer his audiences and was the outspoken public voice of the design system, a reputation he had built over the previous decade. He travelled widely to deliver the permaculture message to audiences both eager and curious.

Holmgren re-emerges

While Mollison was increasing his public presence, Holmgren remained largely out of the public eye, quietly and busily testing permaculture principles on his own property at Hepburn Springs, a couple of hours from Melbourne.

In 1995 Holmgren published a documentation of those years on the land in the form of the large format book, Ten Years of Sustainable Living at Melliodora. This set out in detail the creation of his productive small farm and permaculture demonstration site that included a passive-solar sustainable home, contour planting and tree crops.

Other case studies and writings followed, including case studies of Holmgren’s integrated house and landscape designs in south eastern Australia. Most recently, the landmark 2002 publication, Permaculture – Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability has appeared. Popularised through a speaking tour that promoted the book, it quickly captured the permaculture imagination. The book offered a reinterpretation of the design principles of permaculture and Holmgren’s are now more frequently cited than the earlier set although they in no way disagree with it.

Permaculture – Principles and Pathways and Holmgren’s national tour to promote it did more than remind the permaculture network that David was still there, applying the design system on his own land, overshadowed by Bill’s public presence though he might be. It marked the emergence of Holmgren as the most prominent authority on permaculture in the country, a reputation increased later by his speaking tour with US peak oil writer, Richard Heinberg.

The popularity of Permaculture – Principles and Pathways rests on Holmgren’s reputation as a permaculture pioneer and its serious approach to design concepts. This, despite the appearance of other permaculture books in the period between the publication of Mollison’s Designers Manual and Holmgren’s book. There was West Australian permaculture educator, Ross Mars’ introductory volume and Patrick Whitefield’s books in the UK. Significantly in Australia, Rosemary Morrow’s Earth Users Guide to Permaculture was published in themid-1990s, a book which, thanks to being written in her down-to-earth style, achieved status as a recommended text for a number of Permaculture Design Courses.

In recent years Holmgren has ‘come out of his shell’, speaking and lecturing around the world on permaculture and peak oil and sharing the platform with prominent environmental activists such as Richard Heinberg. He continues to live with his family at Melliodora.

Going home

The Tweed Range falls as a rugged, precipituous escarpment clad in subtripical rainforest to the less-precipituous but still steep hills that abutt it. Over the generations farmers have opened the country, clearing those hills to graze their cattle. It was this rolling country that attracted Bill Mollison and led to his establishing the Permaculture Institute on a 2ha block near the end of a narrow, dusty road not all that far from the town of Tyalgum.

Here, Mollison and others living on the site rehabilitated the old farmland with tree and vegetable crops as an example of rural permaculture design. Within a few years the adjining farm went on the market and Mollison bought this, setting up the Permaculture Research Institute.

An experiment with a Permaculture Commonworks was launched, a scheme through which individuals were given access to land, for a fee, on which they would set up income-producing enterprises. A market garden appeared down on the flat land by the creek; a bamboo plantation was started to supply shoots to the food market and to market bamboo stalks; a large, free range chicken system was fenced; a hillside was terraced and tropial fruit trees planted; and a large dam was seeded with edible fish. The scheme seemed to thrive for awhile on the enthusiasm of those setting up the enterprises. Within a few years, however, it had collapsed.

It was now the late-1990s and it was a time of change for Mollison. Having lived for many years on the Institute property in the sub-tropics, he returned home to Tasmania to write and occasionally teach.

The Permaculture Research Institute he handed over to Permaculture designer, Geoff Lawton and his team. When the property was sold, Lawton reestablished the Permaculture Research Institute near The Channon, in northern NSW, not all that far from where Mollison had originally set it up.

Mollison now lives with his wife, Lisa, at sisters Creek near Deloraine in northern Tasmania… his homeland and not all that far from his humble beginnings in Stanley.

Permaculture – established at last

Permaculture is now mainstream in Australia, at least in gardening and environmental circles, with ‘permaculturists’ on national television and writing for major publications.

Key breakaway movements, now also mainstream, were inspired by permaculturists in Australia, from ethical investment to community gardening and the national Seed Savers Network. Some, like community gardening and city farms, were not originally established as permaculture projects, however permaculturists soon found them fertile ground in which to implement their ideas. Northey Street City Farm in Brisbane, set up in 1994, has perhaps taken the link with permaculture the furthest with permaculture educator, Dick Copeman, offering the recently-national accredited certificate courses in permaculture as well as the traditional Permaculture Design Course.

Holmgren believes permaculture’s popularity to be at least partly due to its comprehensive nature as “ …a design system for sustainable living and landuse that’s concerned both with the consumption and production side and that’s based on universal ethics and design principles which can be applied in any context.

“It’s a grassroots, international movement of practitioners, designers and organisations – networks”, he concludes.

Numerous books have been written here by other permaculture teachers and there has been a coming together of permaculture and organic gardening groups into a strong and vibrant force for the future.

Going international

The road from the coastal plain is long, narrow and dusty. Towards its end it rises through farmland and eucalypt forest and ends abruptly in front of an old, weathered timber building at a place called Pappinbarra. Here, in 1984, at its first international convergence, permaculture was born as an international movement. Present were permaculture’s early adopters, the people who would take the design system to the world.

The international story of permaculture is so diverse and idiosyncratic, it is impossible to throw a net over it. Certainly, an army of field workers has taken the design system far and wide (as Mollison set out to do), even if many no longer wear the public cloak of permaculture, preferring to use its principles within their occupations or community work – whether farmer, architect, planner, simple gardener or community activist.

More recently, permaculture has started to infiltrate the new local government area of sustainabilitty education, although this is taking place only in limited areas such as among some NSW councils. Why the development is significant is because the predecessor approach to local government community education — environmental education (the actual meaning of the terms is somewhat fluid) — has focused mainly on the conservation of the natural environment, water and waste.

Even in the 1980s, without the aid of the internet, word of permaculture spread rapidly.

The first International Permaculture Conference was held in Pappinbarra, Australia in 1984, kick-starting its international outreach.

The second international conference took pace at The Evergreen State College, Olympia, Washington (USA) in 1986 and featured not only Mollison, but famed Japanese natural farming pioneer, Masanobu Fukuoka (author of The One Straw Revolution), and Wes Jackson, founder in 1976 of the Land Institute (researching perennial agriculture in the USA).

Guy Baldwin, founding editor of The Permaculture Activist magazine (launched in 1985 and still going), says the conference was pivotal in bringing permaculture to a mainstream audience in the US although courses and talks had already been held there and a key networking organization, the Permaculture Institute of North America, had been formed.

There is still strong activity in permaculture circles in the US although Baldwin believes that, to some extent, “the momentum started by permaculture in the early 1980s was largely swallowed up by activism in other ‘alternative’ movements such as organic farming, sustainable agriculture and deep-ecology.” Nevertheless, he remembers a great buzz around the international conference which led to many courses and further visits from Mollison.

Outside the US there have been conferences and courses in diverse locations, including New Zealand, Nepal, Zimbabwe and Denmark. The New Zealand conference included cosmologist, Paul Davies, and Ecologist magazine founder, Teddy Goldsmith, as keynote speakers. The latest international gathering was held in São Paulo Brazil in May (2007), featuring alternative and innovative thinkers from around the world.

Many countries now have their own peak permaculture bodies and publications, among them the Permaculture Activist and, in the UK, Permaculture. Although PIJ is no longer published, the Permaculture International organisation remains, maintaining a website and a global directory as networking tools.

Permaculture’s future

Rosemary Morrow describes how she sees the future of the design system in an upcoming book of biographies of people with a history in permaculture.

“I view permaculture today as still a prototype. It is barely thirty years old and continues to grow and stretch out into people’s lives and take forms of its own, especially if we think how David Holmgren has stretched the parameters.

“I remember Mollison saying to me ‘permaculture is about tangibles.’ Today I see the tangibles embedded in intangibles… the conversations, the solitude, the insights, reflections and feedback and new findings in every part of the Permaculture syllabus”.

……Bio notes: Russ Grayson is a journalist who has taught permaculture design, worked on international development projects and is active in food security issues in Australia. Steve Payne is editor of Organic Gardener magazine in Australia and was a former editor of the Permaculture International Journal.

An ability to read the landscape is a critical skill for landscape designers, farmers and other landusers.

David Holmgren describes four techniques that have proven of value.

ACCORDING to David Holmgren, author of Trees on the Treeless Plain – A Revegetation Manual for Central Victoria and Permaculture — Principles and Pathways Towards Sustainability, there are four approaches to reading the land: scientific information, field naturalism, contemplative awareness and the reading of indicators.

“An ability to read landscape”, says David, “provides the landuse designer the opportunity to work with rather than against the processes of nature.”

The value of scientific information

Bodies of scientific knowledge such as ecology, geography, geology and botany provide a systematic set of tools for understanding landscapes and the processes which have shaped and that remain active in them.

The use of analysis, field guides and botanic keys to identify the geology, soils, plants and animals in the landscape, and knowing something about their interactions, gives us clues about natural processes and how they shape sites.

Field naturalism

“This is a more subjective approach than the use of scientific information because it involves the use of the senses — sight, touch, smell, taste”, says David.

“In this process, we make use of the techniques of the nineteenth century naturalists. In assessing an area of land for potential use we utilise observation and the recording of what is observed, then we make deductions to uncover patterns and processes active in the landscape. “

Drawing, photography, the use of a tape recorder and, in the case of plants — pressings— are the tools of field naturalism. Simple field sketches showing the outline of landscape features, with labels, is another useful tool.

Contemplative awareness

Passive, relaxed perception is the key to the use of contemplative awareness as a tool of landcape design.

“The brain’s reasoning processes are not made use of and the mind is allowed to enter a relaxed, quiet and receptive state. Immersion in the process is the key”, insists David.

He says that mountain tops are especially suitable locations for the use of contemplative awareness.

“The high vantage point induces a sense of detachment and allows perception of patterns of vegetation, geography and settlement in the landscape.”

The use of indicators

“Indicators are signposts in the landscape”, says David, “the knowledge of which is gained through scientific information, field naturalism and contemplative awareness”.

Plants, animals and geographic features can be indicators that signify processes and environmental conditions in the landscape.

“Knowing the appearance of particular patterns of vegetation found in a region and making deductions about microclimate and soil conditions facilitates the rapid reading of landscapes”.

Other methodologies

“Pattern is a particularly important factor that leads to insights into landscape processes”, says David.

“Patterns may be of gully, ridge and valley, vegetation and drainage. The colour of vegetation, the form of tree growth and the way that foliage reflects light can indicate conditions such as the type of vegetation, the microclimate and soil conditions”.

A knowledge of geographic and geological features is useful in reading pattern in a landscape.

Techniques are complementary

“This suite of techniques to read the land is complementary — each techniques complements the others”, David explains.

“Together, they build a broader appreciation of the landscape, its condition and the processes shaping it. With this knowledge, designers can work with landscape processes to develop solutions in accordance with the land’s unique characteristics”.

The landuse designs resulting from the use of this combined suite of techniques have greater chance to be time and energy efficient, productive and durable.

Landuse planning tools

Remote sensing

The use of satellite and aerial photography images are of limited use in the planning of small parcels of land but provide an idea of the larger landscape. Satellite images are made in visible and infra-red light, less commonly by radar with synthetic colour.

Geographic information systems

Integrated, computer-based land information mapping systems combining remote imaging, topographic and cadastral mapping and text-based information.

Topographic maps

Available in various scales and showing the height of land above a datum point (Australian Height Datum) and topographic, vegetation, settlement and transport patterns.

Cadastral maps

Show the location of property boundaries.

Orthophoto maps

Combine aerial photography overlaid with conturs, the location of structures, transport routes, towns and landuses.

Sketch maps

Hand drawn, topographic impressions of an area made with limited land survey information. Less accurate than topographic maps.

Tourist maps

Show landforms by colour, transport routes and the location of settlements. Little topographic detail.

Oral history and traditional knowledge

Documented or undocumented information that may be useful to landuse planners as a record of earlier landuse, events and processes. Information may be held by older community members and documented in books, articles, old photographs, illustrations (such as art work) and official records.