It’s been a long time since this page was updated, but that doesn’t mean that a lot hasn’t been going on in Melbourne’s world of post-petroleum preparations, urban and suburban greening projects and relocalisation happenings:

• 
  4th Annual City Farms & Community Gardens Conference was held in Melbourne last month featuring the brilliance of Vandana Shiva via video link, Helena Norberg-Hodge, David Holmgren and many many others. It was a hot bed of visionary insight, seed swapping, skill sharing, and conversation. A kind of activism rooted in the soil, but looking at the big picture. Vibrant, inspired and forward looking. A lot of the energies of the Melbourne Food Network members are to be thanked for their long and hard work getting this happening. Audio from the event was recorded and I believe will be available online soon for those who couldn’t make it.
• Permablitz action continues… check out the website, and come along to the first rural and first overnight permablitz on May 12-13!
• Eat the Suburbs: The film! by Tanya Curnow (I’ll elaborate on this in a full post coming soon)
• Efforts continue in Wonthaggi…

Transition towns

Away from Melbourne for a second… A large part of the inspiration for this website and related activities comes from the Energy Descent Action Plan concept started by Rob Hopkins and Catherine Dunne and others in Kinsale, Ireland. For those who haven’t checked it out yet you, well you absolutely must (really if you value your sanity you should) learn about the Transition Towns concept, the evolution of the EDAP idea. Transition Towns, which is growing out of Rob’s new home in Totnes, UK is really taking the concept to the next level of community involvement and is inspiring a great many more people too (including perhaps even Prince Charles his royal self we heard on the grapevine).

See for instance:

• 10 First Steps for a Transition Town Initiative - absolutely essential reading for relocalisation organisers!
• Audio from the 2007 Soil Association conference on Preparing for a post-peak oil food and farming future - in which Rob and the Transition Towns concept take a front seat - great to see the leading UK organic network thinking small, in a big way
• An article in The Guardian last week about Transition Towns
• And, as always, Rob’s brilliant blog www.transitionculture.org and the www.transitiontowns.org website

As for me (Adam)… I’m currently out of the city, housesitting Melliodora until October, well documented permaculture property in Hepburn Springs belonging to PC co-orginator David Holmgren and his partner Su Dennett. Maybe I’ll post some photos of me milking the goats sometime…