For my money the Transition Town / Transition Initiatives concept has the potential to be the most important environmental movement in the western world, for it addresses peak oil, climate change in a holistic, productive framework, drawing on local skills and natural resources to relocalise economies in ways which can address a whole range of social, economic and environmental issues.   It can be done in ways which capture the imagination with plausible visions of a better, lower energy society.

That’s a broad and challenging brief — especially since it means working with lots of other brilliant, disturbed, bored, confused, creative, messy humans.   But with the triplet threats of climate chaos, energy peak and economic crises dancing around us, some brave souls are starting work on the projects locally.

Melbourne and surrounds Transition Groups

Transition Bell: transitionbell.groupsite.com

Transition Boroondara: See: www.transitiontownboroondara.org

Transition Darebin:  Some Darebin residents held a public meeting a couple of months ago and folks who were there are now in the process of forming a steering group.  Look out for an online presence and ways to get involved soon.

Transition Southern Inner Melbourne: See: www.transitiontown-melbourne.blogspot.com

Transition Mount Alexander:  Have no web presence yet, but you can contact via www.masg.org.au

The Community Harvest Project (Yarra Valley): Not technically a Transition project, but inspired by them, doing some great stuff on the ground: www.communityharvest.org.au (beta new site) www.communityharvestproject.org.au (old site, with project desription)

I’m sure there are more too, those are just the ones I know about.

Upcoming workshops

Municipal Association of Victoria conferences.  Never mind the price tags ($690 for the day)…  these conferences are at least bringing councillors and council workers together around some important concepts.

• Smart Urban Peak Futures – Future-Proofing Melbourne’s Vulnerable Fringe. Aug 19 & 20. Includes Janet Millington and Sonya Wallace from Transition Sunshine Coast, Australia’s most advanced Transition Initiative
• The Future is Relocalisation – Communities in Transition Conference.  Sep 1.

Kinglake Ranges Permaculture workshop:

• Training for Transition. Aug 8 & 9.

For more information on the Transition concept see www.TransitionTowns.org

Saturday 1st August 2009, 11:30am

CERES Environmental Park, Lee St, Brunswick

In the Multicultural Classroom

From the press release:

First a website, now a book by David Holmgren, Future Scenarios: How Communities Can Adapt to Peak Oil and Climate Change will be launched by Adam Grubb, founding editor of Energy Bulletin, an online news list on Peak Oil and Energy related issues, and Permablitz pioneer.

In Future Scenarios, co-originator of the Permaculture concept and leading sustainability innovator David Holmgren shows us what the future might look like in the generations-long era of energy descent that faces us – and also tells us how to adapt to the cultural, political, agricultural, and economic implications of two forces that will shape that future: peak oil and climate change.

Future Scenarios depicts four very different futures. Each is a permutation of mild or destructive climate change, combined with either slow or severe energy declines. Probably futures, explains Holmgren, range from the relatively benign “Green Tech” scenario to the near catastrophic “Lifeboats” scenario.

“These aren’t two-dimensional nightmarish scenarios designed to scare people into environmental action. They are compellingly fleshed-out visions of quite plausible alternative futures, which delve into energy, politics, agriculture, social, and even spiritual trends. What they do help make clear are the best strategies for preparing for and adapting to these possible futures.” – Adam Grubb

For more information phone 5348 3636 or email info@holmgren.com.au

A film by Tanya Curnow, 2006.

EAT THE SUBURBS takes the oil debate from the bowser to the backyard and follows Melbourne’s “permablitzers” as they prepare for the end of the oil age… one garden at a time.

Made 2006 but online for the first time now.

It’s an excellent 9 minutes, the only short film I know of which deals specifically with peak oil and food issues. Eat The Suburbs received its world premiere at the 2007 Hot Docs International Film Festival which is one of the most prestigious in the world. I got undue credit at the end, as other people speak a lot more than me including the uncredited, and most wonderful, Megan Floris and Matt Daniele.

My only minor misgiving is that Tanya happened to film it at the first young activist crowd dominated permablitz, whereas usually there isn’t a single culture or age group that dominates the blitzes. One of the things I like about them is that they do get you out of cultural ghettos and meet people from lots of backgrounds and ages. Not that I have a problem with youngish activisty crowd, some of my best friends etc etc…

Note: The film happens to take its name from this blog, and I helped Tanya a little bit develop the idea but there’s no formal connection.

Links:
Richard Heinberg: www.richardheinberg.com
Permablitz: www.permablitz.net

The more I do face to face work, facilitating courses and permablitzes and working outside, the less time I find to update this blog, and while I regret that, damn do I feel lucky to be surrounded by so much generosity and eagerness to learn and share out there in the unpixelated world.  We recently celebrated our 50th blitz in Melbourne (see photos) and elicited some wonderful words of encouragement from four of my superheroes, who happen to have surnames starting with H: Rob Hopkins, Richard Heinberg, David Holmgren and Mae Wan Ho.

Background

For those who haven’t been to one, a permablitz is a kind of one day permaculture-styled backyard (or frontyard) makeover, with free workshops, fun and food — all based on volunteerism and a model of reciprocity.  Anyone can come, and for many it’s their first experience with permaculture design or food gardening.  If you come to three or so, we can help organise one at your house.

Our “ultimate aim is to make the suburbs edible enough such that should food become unaffordable, we don’t even notice”.

Many of us think that permaculture — an holistic system of ecological design — currently provides the best available framework for organising our activities for ‘energy descent’ — the period post the peak in global oil production in which we’re now probably facing less and less available energy each year.

So a permablitz is a really simple concept but it seems to tap into veins of enthusiasm, and they can be fantastically good days helping people on the road to some serious food production, and some beautiful gardens can result.

The permablitz concept started here in Melbourne in 2006 through a collaboration between permaculture student/teacher Dan Palmer and a South American community group in Melbourne’s outer eastern suburbs.  I was lucky enough to be involved in the first one thanks to my friendship with Dan.  Since, we’ve blitzed all around the city, with renters, in housing estates, on big properties, on tiny ones, in community gardens and schools.  For more background, read more at permablitz.net.

Before and After

Here’s some during-and-after shots of permablitz in the hilly suburb of Eltham earlier in the year, then six months later.  The home owners didn’t have any experience growing vegies, but had been to a few blitzes and reckoned they were ready to throw themselves into the deep end.  Two designers worked with them before the blitz to work towards something that suited.  On the day we built mulched paths, put in lots of vegie beds arranged along the contour of the slope for maximum water infiltration, plus we planted fruit trees and dug, lined and planted out a fairly large pond.

The blitz:

Six months down the track:

Nice work Rachel and Brent who’ve put so much time into their place, and Erin and Mike the designers, and all the blitzers who turned up and helped.

There are 54 and counting stories in the Melbourne permablitz annals, this is just one of them.

Words of Support

Below I’ll outline a few developments in the world of permablitz.  But first, here’s some words of support from our global H-heroes, which makes us feel most honoured!:

“Permablitz the world! That’s the path to survival, sustainability, and cultural renewal. Your lawn will kill you if you don’t kill it first, but a vegetable garden with fruit and nut trees will support you from cradle to grave.”
– Richard Heinberg, author Peak Everything and other essential books.  www.richardheinberg.com

“…What you guys have created is more powerful than the gardens you have made, it is the concept of the permablitz… the idea that landscapes of lawn, shrubs, concrete and dog mess are not the pinnacle of human achievement, but are an odd manifestation of an age with more oil than sense, and the idea that we can change them, and we can change them fast. Out with the lawn and in with the salad!”
– Rob Hopkins, Originator of the Transition Network, see www.transitionculture.org [read full article]

“The  permaculture movement began in the suburbs of Melbourne and other capital cities in the late 1970’s, but by the mid 1980’s, the action had moved to more remote rural areas as the culture of consumerism and greed in mainstream Australia made the suburbs a toxic environment for permaculture. Informed and strengthened by its experience in the geographic and social hinterlands, permaculture activism is now ready to reclaim Australian suburban landscapes and culture as the Energy Descent future of resource scarcity and climatic instability turns consumerist culture to compost. Permablitz is on the frontline.”
– David Holmgren, co-originator of permaculture, www.holmgren.com.au [read full, thoughtful article]

“I love permaculture: saves effort in sowing and tilling, restores ecosystems to their wild, biodiverse and natural states as far as possible, good for putting lots of carbon in the soil to fight global warming, and the food harvested is really the best possible for health.”
– Mae-Wan Ho, Director of the Institute for Science in Society

Dandenong Development Board collaboration

Permablitz is running a project with the Dandenong Development Board called the Edible Gardens Project and we recently had a visitation from former AFL star and current Victorian Planning Minister, Justin Madden, who came down to a blitz and although at the time he apparantly seemed more interested in the lamingtons, he did have some quite decent things to say in a subsequent press release:

“At the heart of any town or city is the community and the more people help and interact with each other, the stronger the community. This project brings people together so they can help one another, and learn from each other in a relaxed garden setting. In a time when food costs are on the rise and our waistlines are expanding, the edible gardens project couldn’t be timelier.” — Justin Madden

See: dandenong.permablitz.net

Courses

We ran our 8th two-day Introduction to Permaculture Course this weekend. We’ve got a good core teaching team, and had anywhere up to six teachers on a single course (or as little as two), and each course evolves from the last, with lots of feedback and refining. We get great feedback, like: “Energetic, informative and empowering. And entertaining.”

It’s a super fun way for us to spend a weekend and for participants too.  Many write to us afterwards with stories from their backyard, or letting us know that they’re going on to study permaculture design certificates, or other ways of taking the knowledge to the next level.  We take people through the ethics and some permaculture design principles.

Some come expecting something more like an organic gardening course — although we don’t advertise it as such, and get more than they expected, but they are almost always grateful for this.  We don’t tone down our act much.  We get great people attending willing to come with us as we go well beyond the basics of companion planting, composting and mulching (we do that too), and touch on historical framings of permaculture, quite sciencey bits, and issues like energy descent, urban animal integration, weed ecologies, composting human manure, radical plumbing, guerrilla gardening, and an urban strategies brainstorm encouraging folks to think outside of the backyard, all threaded together and presented via our own fusion of permaculture design principles.  While some of it is challenging to people used to soft green lightbulb-changing approaches, I think we’re authentic and just intelligent-sounding enough to not come across as nutjobs, and actually inspire quite a few.

The Most Well Respected Grand United Melbourne Permablitz Designers Guild

We have about 65 local people with Permaculture Design Certificates on a mailing list, with the above arguably pretentious title.  Every permablitz has a pre-design visit by at least one designer.  The design is important — we are not making symbolic gestures, we want food producing systems which suit the skill level, time of the maintainers and are physically suited to the location.   Through this process young designers get experience and build confidence and have access to feedback and review.  Guild members can get some teaching experience on our courses too.

We occassionally get together, to share things we’ve learnt, give feedback on designs.  Last week ten or so of us spent the evening with Pamela Morgan with the theme of ‘permaculture and crisis’.  Pam is one of the key permaculturists who spent a lot of time in Cuba after the Soviet Union collapsed, celebrated in the must-see film The Power of Community, How Cuba Survived Peak Oil.  She shared her thoughts on a visit to Argentina to investigate how urban agriculture and other projects functioned during the peso collapse, in a capitalist context. There was much to learn as we enter into some troubling financial times of our own.

So who organises this this and who funds it?

Nobody funds us — so far our efforts organising and administering blitzes (except working with the Dandenong Development Board, and running courses) have been entirely voluntary.   There’s an evolving loose knit crew of people who chip in.  We’re looking at incorporating as a non-profit soon though so some of this will be a bit more formalised soon.

Manual

We’ve got a short manual for people wanting to organise blitzes elsewhere.  Email us permablitz@gmail.com if you’d like a copy.

Blitzes elsewhere

Blitzes have been happening or groups are forming in  Alice Springs, Bega, Bundaberg, Sydney and elsewhere.

Newsletters

The newsletters come out fortnightlyish.  Since I accidentally wrote a funny one a while back, now I feel compelled to keep it up which I do with mixed success.  If you’ll excuse an indulgence, here’s some of my favorite snippets:

~~~ Dirt is the New Prozac ~~~

Have you heard of the humble soil microbe Mycobacterium vaccae?  It was first found by scientists in a pile of cow dung.  Perhaps they thought they were ‘civilising’ it, elevating it above the depravity and ignorance of its fecal home when they taught it the ways of the petri dish?  But was M. vaccae fazed or embittered by their neo-missionary condescension?  Not if it’s subsequent behaviour is anything to go by.  When the scientists injected it into various rodents they found it released serotonin in the brain — the very same chemical boosted by anti-depressant pharmaceuticals.  Subsequent research has shown that it gives humans a happy buzz too.

And where do you get exposure to this microbial friend, also linked to reducing asthma and skin allergies?  Walk down Smith St Collingwood on a dark night and look for the jittery guy in the cap with the plastic bags of well composted soil?  No.  Just get out there in to the garden… Which you can do at one of the very exciting upcoming blitzes!

~~~ Blitz? Yes you can! ~~~

Have you ever tried smiling to make yourself feel happier?  It may take a while, but once you force your cramping and convulsing cheeks through the pain barrier, it can really work — perhaps in a not dissimilar way that a mystic finds enlightenment through fasting in a cave.  Somehow expression manifests attitude which manifests reality.

And out of what gestural seed did the permablitz network arise?  Why from little more than one man and a particular can-do expression.  I give you Dan Palmer and the can-do-dan:

On its own it’s a very powerful expression.  But get two fellows doing it while facing each other, and you have yourself what scientists call a mutualistic can-do excitation feedback complex.  No one yet knows what would happen if a larger crowd got together and did it.  It may go non-linear, and then it’s anyone’s guess.  But I’m willing to try it if you are… at one of the next two exciting permablitzes this month…

~~~ Get on the Frontline.  Of Love ~~~

Five simple steps to dealing with the modern world:  1. Find the abyss.  2. Approach the abyss.  3. Stare into the abyss. (Firmly, but compassionately.)  4. Hold the abyss. And gently caress the abyss.  (Don’t take advantage of the abyss’s vulnerability at this point.)  5. Feed the abyss soup.  Lots of soup, obviously, it being an abyss.  The abyss will be tame now, but take it out of the house regularly to experience the wondrousness and fantasticality that is Life. Like, for the sake of example, a most exciting permablitz event…

~~~ Sheep are Back! ~~~

My brother and I spotted these sheep grazing on grass growing up from the cracks in the concrete in an abandoned petrol station, in downtown Moe last summer.  As an allegory of peak oil, urban decay and the renewal of agrarian sources of sustenance, however, I found the the symbolism a little heavy handed.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/grubr/2281431576/in/set-72157603955116165/

We even get some relevant information about blitzes in there sometimes too. You can sign up on the permablitz.net homepage.

Futures

Some of us are establishing a business we hope can compliment and ultimately help fund permablitzes.  We’d like to see more local blitz groups form, so the concept can spread nodally.  The command and control alternative sounds like too much work anyway.  We want to make some software to help formalise our follow up process for past blitzes so that we are learning even more as we go, and have those lessons accessible.  There is a lot of generosity and opportunities opening up around the network, and many directions we could head.  For now we want to focus on doing what we do even better, and making the process easier for others to set up elsewhere.

Hopkins’ The Transition Handbook has just been released.  I don’t have my copy yet, but knowing the history and Rob’s writing here’s what I’m sure is a suitably gushy review:

Review of The Transition Handbook

By Richard Barnett, editor of Pulse.

The newly published Transition Handbook is so important that I am tempted just to confine this review to five simple words ‘You must read this book!‘ But to do so would, of course, completely fail to communicate its message which is, I believe, so profound and inspiring that I want to do my very best to encourage its spread far and wide. Rob Hopkins is described on the book cover as ‘The Founder of the Transition Movement’. I would add to that that he is a superb communicator, visionary and one of the most important thinkers in our chaotic 21^st century world.Like many people I have been hearing snippets about Transition Towns for quite a while now. It seemed an interesting, if faintly ‘New Agey’, thing adopted by the usual suspects and really rather marginal at best. But now I know what it’s all about and for the first time in years I can feel genuine hope for the future.

The subtitle for the book is ‘From oil dependency to local resilience’ and that’s exactly the journey you are taken on when you read it. It’s divided into three sections – The Head, The Heart and The Hands – in other words get your mind round the need, become impassioned and then get working. It will engender very different reactions in readers depending on their current point of view and understanding. But I guarantee that everyone will feel a sense of change once they have read it.

The first section, The Head, starts with some familiar territory – climate change. Hopkins succinctly presents the key facts and issues that have gained so much attention in the last few years. He then moves on to what might be regarded as more esoteric ground – Peak Oil. Reactions to reading that term will have already occurred when you read it. For some it will be a reasonably well understood concept, for others something that has vaguely entered their consciousness, still others may not have come across it.

Wherever you stand at the moment I guarantee that you will learn more by reading this book. For the uninitiated, Peak Oil describes the point at which production of the world’s finite store of ‘liquid gold’ starts to decline in real terms. There is much debate about when this will happen, or indeed whether it has already happened. But one thing is certain – it will occur, and it will require fundamental shifts in the way we live. The price alone, of what will be increasingly scarce commodity, will dictate a radical new approach to energy and global economics.

Hopkins’ feels that oil has brought with it so many wonderful things that we have become addicted to it. And he invokes the language of addiction to consider how we wean ourselves of it. The ‘cost’ of our addiction in one sense is that the nature of communities and local networks that existed pre ‘The Age of Cheap Oil’ has vanished and our current world is shakily reliant on global infrastructures powered by cheap energy.

The twin threats of climate change and peak oil, which have to be viewed together, require drastic action to prepare for a way of life that can be sustainable. This is a scary prospect but Hopkins presents a positive framework within which to undertake the changes. The Transition Town model begins with the notion of building ‘resilience’ back into our villages, towns and cities so that they can continue to function without the underpinning cheap energy we currently take for granted.

Resilience is a truly positive and dynamic concept. It urges us to rediscover the potential for local production of food, services and goods that was commonplace only a few decades ago. To rebuild the kind of networks and close links that enabled people to actually know who lives next door and talk face to face with craftsmen and food producers. To rediscover how best to make use of local resources for building.

This is no rose tinted pipe dream. There are Transition Town initiatives in place across the UK. It is a fast growing movement that makes so much sense. Importantly it is about change coming from the community upwards rather than being imposed from above. And the book is packed with ideas, examples and suggestions that will help us all to move in this direction.

I could write pages about what I have just read but the best way I can conclude is to return to my original idea and say ‘You must read this book!‘

More at: www.transitiontowns.org and www.transitionculture.org

• 
  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…

‘The Oil We Eat’ Following the Food Chain back to Iraq
Richard Manning, Harper’s Magazine
The journalist’s rule says: follow the money. This rule, however, is not really axiomatic but derivative, in that money, as even our vice president will tell you, is really a way of tracking energy. We’ll follow the energy.
first published January 31, 2003.
(A true classic article which might change the way you think about food.)

Eating Fossil Fuels
Dale Allen Pfeiffer, From The Wilderness Publications
As Peak Oil and its effects become a raging national controversy it’s time everyone reads the story that puts the most serious implications of Peak Oil and Gas into perspective. Your biggest problem is not that your SUV might go hungry, it’s that you and your children might go hungry.
first published October 2, 2003.

Peak Oil and Permaculture: David Holmgren on Energy Descent
Adam Fenderson, Global Public Media
David Holmgren, co-originator of the permaculture concept and author of Permaculture: Principals and Pathways Beyond Sustainability, speaks with Adam Fenderson from www.energybulletin.net about permaculture and its role in an energy constrained world.
first published June 6, 2004.

Is Sustainable Agriculture an Oxymoron?
Toby Hemenway, Permaculture Activist / Energy Bulletin
Jared Diamond calls it “the worst mistake in the history of the human race.” Bill Mollison says that it can “destroy whole landscapes.” Are they describing nuclear energy? Suburbia? Coal mining? No. They are talking about agriculture.
first published August 16, 2006.

Some recent articles on urban and sustainable agriculture:

Don’t be Wasted on Grass! Lawns to Gardens!
Heather Coburn, excerpted from the forthcoming Food Not Lawns (Chelsea Green 2005).
French aristocrats popularized the idea of the green grassy lawn in the eighteenth century, when they planted the agricultural fields around their estates to grass, to send the message that they had more land than they needed and could therefore afford to waste some. Meanwhile, French peasants starved for lack of available ground, and the resulting frustration might have had something to do with the French Revolution in 1789.

Today, 58 million Americans spend approximately $30 billion every year to maintain over 23 million acres of lawn. That’s an average of over a third of an acre and $517 each. The same size plot of land could still have a small lawn for recreation, plus produce all of the vegetables needed to feed a family of six. The lawns in the United States consume around 270 billion gallons of water a week—enough to water 81 million acres of organic vegetables, all summer long.
(Cheers to Brad for sending us this one.)

Social Fertilizer: The big growth potential of urban agriculture
Amanda McCuaig, The Tyee

Community gardens are primarily hobbies here in Vancouver, but internationally they are known for their ability to feed entire cities.

Berkeley: Urban farmers produce nearly all their food with a sustainable garden in their backyard
John Fall, San Francisco Chronicle
An approximately 6,000-square-foot yard provides generous space for a bustling urban farm. From the street it is impossible to tell that the property holds everything from apple trees to tomato vines, rabbits to goats, and chickens to domesticated pigeons.
first published April 25, 2005.

Sustainable agriculture in CSIRO newsletter (584-Kb PDF)
Elizabeth Heij (editor), CSIRO Sustainability Network Newsletter
Includes two great features:
Soil fertility management for more sustainable farming systems;
Sustainable agriculture and the challenge to make it pay.

See Food & Agriculture news at Energy Bulletin for more:

http://www.energybulletin.net/news.php?cat=37

Background:
Kinsale, a small seaside town in Ireland, was the first community in the world to adopt a plan for dealing with Peak Oil.  But it was more than just a plan for mitigating the worst impacts of energy depletion, it was a vision for a better, healthier, more environmentally sound Kinsale.  The plan presents the possibility that Peak Oil need not be a disaster, if communities are willing to assess the situation, plan, design and work towards a managed descent.

Many of the recommendations might be quite relevant almost anywhere, many are regionally specific.  They serve as a good starting point for stimulating the imagination on steps any community might follow.  For more on Energy Descent Action Plans see the primer. And keep an eye on Rob Hopkin's Transition Culture blog.

Download the full Kinsale 2021 plan from www.FuellingTheFuture.org

I'm making some space  so this wide table can be seen…

If it's still under the menu you can download the word doc file.

ND 

Community lunch questions future

How to plan to live better and more economically, high levels of consumerism, and questions of future energy use, were just several of the topics covered at a fascinating community lunch, held at Mitchell Community House in Wonthaggi last week.

Guest speaker and member of the Bass Coast Sustainability Education Group. Jessica Harrison, led a lively discussion outlining the Kinsale Community Energy Descent Plan. Kinsale is a small seaside town in Ireland, similar to Wonthaggi in many respects.

The townspeople are among the first in the world to take charge of their future, by developing a step by step plan to take the town towards sell-sufficiency in energy and food production by 2021.

A captivated audience participated in discussion on the possibility ofusing such as plan in Bass Coast. Many people indicated that they were keen to be involved in future meetings to discuss various ideas and approaches.

Anyone interested in more information can contact Mitchell House co-ordinator Jan Bourne, on 5672 3731.