Blog - PacificEdge

In Tasmania – Shakespeare’s excursion into the deep heart of this strange island

IT WAS LATE on a cold Friday evening when I dropped into Desire bookshop. Cars’ headlights had been turned on and clusters of commuters, hands thrust deep into pockets and heads bowed, scurried homeward along the Corso from the ferry wharf. The day was drawing to a close and a chilling wind was blowing in […]

Daring and exploration on Tasmania’s wild rivers

I’VE JUST FINISHED reading Johnson Dean’s Shooting the Franklin — early canoeing on Tasmania’s wild rivers, and have come away with a feeling of great admiration for those early adventurers who made hazardous voyages into what was literally the unknown.

Resilient Cities – planners post their visions

A couple weeks ago, I received a phone call from a woman in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. She wanted to know if the Department could use a short piece from something I had written in a set of guidelines they were producing.

Permaculture Strategy for South African villages

Bill Mollison’s Permaculture — A Designer’s Manual covers the broad sweep of the permaculture design system. So does his Introduction To Permaculture, though at a more basic level. The same goes for Rosemary Morrows books on permaculture, and Ross Marss’. Ian Lillington’s The Holistic Life takes a finer-grain view as he applies permaculture design to […]

Local economics initiatives stimulated by visit of US advocate

FOR MICHAEL SHUMAN, his visit to Australia was a whirlwind of appearances and presentations that started in Brisbane, took him into Northern NSW, down to Melbourne, then up to Coffs Harbour and Bellingen, down south to Hobart then north to Sydney. Michael works with the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies in the USA.

Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond

I HAD A DISTINGUISHED VISITOR staying at my little shack this week, and I’ve had the good fortune to watch the video CD she left me. It’s all about her Blue Mountains house, how she retrofitted it and how she developed her small garden and designed it and her home to make the most of […]

City in memory

We inhabit our own geographies... geographies formed by patterns of movement from home to work, from home to our recreational haunts or to the homes of friends. But geographies remembered and real do not always accord...

Small town off the highway

Wauchope, a minor country town off the highway.

Garden education in Sydney’s sandy east

The Eastern Suburbs sandy soils are starting to sprout lettuce and leeks, cabbage and capsicum thanks to a local government course in sustainable gardening...

A tale of sad liaisons on the high seas

I remember Pierre well but I’m not sure that his memory of me is as sharp. I got this impression one Saturday afternoon in the late summer of 2007 when a friend and I were walking the foot track that follows the Tamar River. It was on the banks of that river that we encountered him...

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