Venture capital needed for Worm Farm.

The house in Currumbin Eco Village

When we were at the Eco Village we lived in a magnificent house that is owned by a Dutch lady who spent the week in South Australia. While there, and walking around her beautiful garden, I noticed a structure consisting of round black plastic containers stacked on top of each other. Underneath was a bucket that contained a black molasses type of liquid that seemed to be oozing out through a tap fastened at the bottom of this multi layered structure. I thought at first it might have been a bee-hive. I opened the top lid and noticed it contained food scraps. I poked around a bit and soon found out this was a worm-factory. It was clearly something that would recycle food waste into soil by hard working worms.

There were whole clusters of shiningly healthy red coloured worms. They were clearly very hungry, squirming about. They reared their heads, looking at me as if in need of something. Were they giving me a hint? I went inside the house and told Helvi about my discovery.  She knew something about people breeding worms for the garden but it was too early in the morning for her. I could not entice her to go out and share in my newly found animal kingdom. She preferred instead to sip her coffee and look at mums and joey kangaroos  cavorting outside near our back balcony.

Cavorting Kangaroos at Eco Village

 

After our return from the delights of the Eco village at Currumbin, Helvi decided she too wanted to have worms growing by the thousands. We went to Home-Hardware and bought at great costs the basic worm breeding contraption. For unfathomable reasons this is called a ‘worm -farm’. When running this contraption past the cashier, she duly scanned it and we paid the amount that came up on the register. ($75.-) She was very friendly and asked ‘ are you planning to breed worms?’  Yes, I said, adding, ‘ how long does it actually take before you can ‘actually’ eat them?’ ‘I believe they make a good stir-fry’?   ‘Oh no, this is for the garden only.’  She took me seriously. I was going to ask, if one is not going to eat them ,why call it a ‘farm’? Usually farms are where people grow edible things , either in vegetation or animals. Anyway, I wasn’t going to expand on my silly joke seeing the girl wasn’t into  my school-boy humour at all.

The worms don’t come up by themselves. It can only be achieved by buying a ‘starter- pack’. A starter- pack costs $ 52.- for 1000 worms. A booster pack costs $28.- for a mere 500 worms. It is also suggested you buy a coconut fibre block. Apparently worms will simply refuse to cohabitate or mate, if denied the joy of this fibre ($ 22.-) . A warm fibre blanket on top of worms to give them privacy is also recommended. ($9.90)  With all the costs adding up I was tempted to suggest the name from worm-farm ought to be changed to worm-hotel.

The good thing is that all the carton packing and wrapping in which all these worm related items came in can be put into the worm farm for the worms to convert in rich black soil. It is actually called ‘worm-castings’, as if the worms are elevated on some kind of theatre- stage.

Anyway. It has been four days now since two lots of ‘booster-worms’ ( $56-) were released on top of the coconut fibre and underneath the blanket. They must be busy mating like mad. (something I can only be envious off) I gave them some left- over Basmati rice and marinated chicken from last night and only hope they will do their job and convert it into soil for our Clematis and Hardenbergia which we planted at the same time.

I just wonder how they can sell worms in lots of 1000 and 500. Do they count them? When worms mate, how do they recognize each other? Are they faithful?

Someone is making a nice little earner in breeding worms.

Re-visit the Eco Village. Is it Utopia?

We went back to Currumbin Eco Village to again search for the elusive Utopian way of life. We all know that it doesn’t exist. They say, it is the search and not the end-station that matters. That sounds a bit strict and pedantic. It is so personal. One’s Utopia is another’s hell. There are those whose dreams of communal celery fests or sweet potato gorging might well be found in the hinterland of some semi-tropical paradise, tucked at the bottom of a rarely visited valley, miles away from the frugality of Aldi or the culinary delights of Hog’s Breath restaurants. ( A chin dribbling Prime rib & Pork Combo for $ 42.-) It brings me to an observations on how anyone can be enticed to dine at such named restaurant? I mean, will you all join me at the trough?  Shall we slurp in unison and do a porker or a baconer? Yet, the Hog’s Breaths  cafes are hugely popular. It defies at least my logic.

Of course, and it goes without saying, that much of those fat, sugar and salt outlets are now under the micro- scope of our health ministers. The response of the fast food monopolies is to show photos of dew-dappled apples and juice exploding crispy celery sticks with all sorts of initiatives including helping the poor kids in hospitals with a Donald Trump look alike Ronald Mcdonald prancing about. This still doesn’t hide the fact that there is a world wide crisis of obesity looming that will easily out kill all wars being fought at the moment. In fact, it is a war like no other war ever fought before. Fast food outlets are achieving what all the rogue warlords with their laser guided bombs are not. And that is the indiscriminate killing of millions by selling addictive foods. All for the defence of nice profits and belching billionaires hoping to have a shot at some Presidency or owning golden Kingdoms.

The re-visit confirmed again that the title of Currumbin being the best Eco village in the world is well earned. Here are just some of the thirty accolades.

“United Nations Association of Australia

Building Commission Award for Best Sustainable Residential Development 2008

FIABCI – International Real Estate Federation – Prix d’Excellence Award

The World’s Best Environmental Development 2008″

I thought that the most outstanding feature was that the community seemed to be connecting. None of that obsession of our privacy till the grave. No fences as proof of a demarcation of what is mine and that of which that is not yours. The houses higgledy piggledy jumbled at all angles to each other with at least some roofs facing the sun to carry the solar panels. I spoke to a few and they all loved living there and regretted not having made the move earlier. They cared about the landscape and worked together to make it even better. There were communal work bees in planting hundreds of trees and invitations to ecologists. There were a retired judge,  professors,  agronomists and agriculture experts living at the village. I was told many people living there were from Dutch, German and French backgrounds. I did hear their English spoken faintly in foreign accents from years ago. The European migrants of the fifties now getting old but happy. It looks that since the beginning of this Eco village in 2005, the hurdle of its hesitant beginnings have been overcome. It looks it is thriving and growing even stronger.

It is no Utopia but getting pretty close. It brings me to a fascinating bit of history which for some reason is kept well out of our history books. It is the story of the first  of the  Australian  diaspora.

I wonder how many of us have ever arrived penniless anywhere, away from own language and customs, trying to make sense of a world that is totally foreign? My parents did and so did many others.

In the past there was a group of brave Australians who did venture to a far away non-English speaking country with hardly any possessions, dirt poor. They were the very first of Australian Diaspora. They intended to set up for good, a new society with ideals of justice, sharing of the common good and away from the disappointment of what Australia had failed to provide them.

“We’ll all share alike, all be equal, and live as happy as turtle doves!”

“Yes, but who will do the washing up?”

This was the catchcry in about 1893 of their leader William Lane with a shearer asking the question about washing up.

The recent news about “The Tree of Knowledge” in Queensland’s Barcaldine, the birthplace of Australian Labor Party in 1891 as a result of the Shearer’s Strike, is what prompts me to write about this amazing piece of history that seems to have got lost somewhere.

It has me baffled that Ned Kelly or Bradman the cricketer rank in Australia’s history so much more than the heroic attempts by hundreds of Australians to start a new life elsewhere.

It is especially puzzling when amongst those Australians it included Dame Mary Gilmore (nee Cameron).

The Shearer’s Strike in 1891 resulted in many being imprisoned, when on March 7 a contingent of the United Pastoralists’ Association arrived at Clermont. They were surrounded by 200 rioting unionists.

At Barcaldine hundreds of shearers “stared down” soldiers rifles and hundreds marched behind the Oddfellows’ band. There were threats of woolsheds being burnt down, railway-lines being dynamited and things were getting out of hand.

Thus the Australian Labor Party (ALP) was born, and so was a communism believing group of people led by the charismatic, teetotaller and abstemious William Lane.

The seeds of leaving Australia to set up an Utopian community in Paraguay was born out of those tumultuous years both before and after the shearer’s strike when the pastoralists managed to introduce non-union labour including Chinese and Kanak non-union labourers, shearers and rouse-abouts.

During 1893 on board The Royal Tar almost 500 Australians set sail for Paraguay. They would try and set up a socialist utopia, live in peace and harmony, with equality for all. Can you imagine the feelings of those true blue Aussies and shearers to boot? On board were many tents, building materials, horses and buggies and also included a piano and organ.

After arrival, the men were to set up dwellings on a large tract of land that the Paraguayan Government had leased to the group providing that a minimum number of new Australian settler families would farm and cultivate that land within a certain time frame.

The group included many married couples of whom some of the wives and children would follow later, after the tents and other temporary dwellings were set up in the jungles of Paraguay. There were just 3 single women on board but many bachelors!

The present boatpeople arriving in Australian waters do not have a welcoming committee or a friendly Government that those Aussies had in Paraguay so many years ago. There are no speeches held, nor are they given tracts of land to cultivate.

Some of you will point out that the Australians entered Paraguay legally and that the present boat people are “illegal”.

Desperate refugees’ plights are far worse than our own 1893 Diaspora. Would it not be nice and civil and obliging our Human Rights obligation if the mainly Afghans, Sri Lankans and some others were at least allowed temporary settlement on shore rather than in the isolation of detention camps at Christmas Island, Manus and Nauru?

They might have been smuggled by unscrupulous dealers but they are not illegal people.

Australia is the least populated continent in the world. This is why migrants were and are still allowed to settle here by the hundreds of thousands.

My own parents arrived here with just the clothes they were wearing and a few suitcases. “Speak f***ng English?”, we were told, and Italians and Greeks were dark skinned garlic eating, knife pullers. Anyone darker and the White Australian Policy could prevent settlement in Australia till 1973.

The Paragayan Utopia failed for many reasons. The insistence of temperance by William Lane in favour of the local ‘yerba mate’ tea drink did not go down well with the Australians that had solemnly promised him total sobriety, (after a couple of beers), before departing from Balmain, Sydney.

A very youthful Caroline Jones retraced their steps and an ABC documentary was produced in 1975. The centenary of the 1893 departure of The Royal Tar was celebrated in 1993 which I attended with a few hundred others.

There are some books written on this fascinating piece of Australian history. It does not seemed to have gripped historians to any degree though.

Perhaps it is all too boring a subject. Perhaps the idea that Australia was once seen by some as less than a desirable country? Perhaps also that the word Communism is part of this story?

Who knows?

A Finger’s journey and our garden.

Can it get any better?

We are going to the Eco village in Queensland for a week or so. There is an air of High Excitement. Milo will be taken to the ‘ Doggy-Hotel’ of which he is as yet unaware. There are no pets allowed where we are going.

I do hope to be able to use my lap-top but no guarantee, especially not since a finger packed it in.

The finger

The doctor reckoned it would just ‘go away’ after a couple of days. It would ‘drain itself’, but it did not. I took myself to emergency at the local hospital. Here is my finger at the hospital.

Finger at hospital

Within minutes I was taken in and after a few medical inquiries was whipped onto a bed. I asked if I could take my shoes off but that wasn’t necessary. Here I am on the stretcher and you can see my RM William boots at the end of the bed. I was given local anaesthetics  on both sides of the crook finger. I am fine now with the finger having been drained.

Finger seconds before being cut open. Notice my RM Williams!

I just felt like balancing this piece by giving you a look at what Helvi has achieved in the garden. It has never been more beautiful.

The garden from inside.

Notice Milo tucking into his food.

Just glorious.

This life of camping out. ( Autobiography)

The moving about, even just in the mind can be unsettling. Ten days in Bali, ok, let’s move there. Two days at the Eco-village in Queensland, lets go! No wonder my Helvi is getting nervous. “You will still take your own with you. The black curmudgeon sits on your shoulder night and day”, she says.  “People know that,  they can see it,”  is added for extra impact.  The dream of living in like-wise communities is what plagued me since birth.  And that’s how it goes. The attraction of living somewhere were low impact on nature is shared within a community, does pull. That’s apart from the bonus of a ban on fences, especially colour-bond fences, and  electricity burning air conditioning.

It is true that the social skills of easy laughter and merrymaking in company of others is wanting. A demeanour of a seriously looking  man exudes around, and leaps in front like a warning, well before actually meeting.  It can’t be helped, even when wearing my partial dentures.  However, lately I do go around smiling more which helps, but only in combination when walking with our Jack Russell ‘Milo’. I got a smile back last Tuesday at Aldi’s tying up Milo at the trolley bay. I saw her again inside the shop as she was bending over the carrots next to the capsicums. My H is the opposite. She has a Mona Lisa smile. It comes naturally. She feels the smile. People often talk to her which I envy. She draws in people. I seem to repel but am working on it. It is never too late and I can still climb stairs two steps at a time. That has to be worth something.

With the autobiography or memoirs if you prefer, it seems to have stalled. The moving about has rippled into the consciousness of everyday living. The living in a town- house  of seven others in the compound is magnifying the stark differences between communal design and the exclusive or excluding design where privacy dominates.  People might peer from behind the blinds. Perhaps not even that! A garage door rolls up but the owner is already in the car. We can’t see him as he drives off.

In Eco-village last week we saw people moving about inside their houses. There was proof of life. Some were working in the garden. Children were running about. Kangaroos were lulling about sunning themselves on grass with the black water-hens picking morsels out of the compost bins. A man with binoculars was trying to spot birds. He had lost his wife some time back but he had not given up. He recorded all birds and had bought cameras to photograph whatever he felt like photographing. He was happy.

You know that at the age of over seventy five, the egg-timer is slowly running out of sand. One is not totally without optimism. My mother was 96 when she quit. A good omen. Dad smoked but enjoyed it till the end. At his funeral and going back afterwards, my mum cleaned for the last time his ashtray. He was still alive the day before and drove his car. He hated hospitals and going to the doctor.  No sooner when he was taken to a hospital, he died. He died at 78 but not because of smoking. So all up. If we split the difference, ( one has to be fair) it would allow another ten years before the egg-timer would run out of sand.

I would be happy with that. So much still to smile about.

A way of doing things better.

River flowing through Currumbin Eco-village

A break from blogging and delving into the past was welcomed with open arms.  So, if responses to some of you dear friends went missing, a mea culpa. We are now back again. We decided to drive to Queensland and escape the tail end of winter. Apparently, no sooner after we left the Highlands, the heavens opened up. Over 400 millimetres of rain fell within a couple of hours. There were trees blocking roads and weirs overflowed. Evacuations of people into church halls were organized. Volunteers made sandwiches and gave comforts to those whose houses became flooded. Cars were seen being washed down causeways, yet children were cheerfully defying the rain, splashing about, no care in the world. Why should they? Life is yet to arrive for them.

My sister and husband after many moves here and there, told us they had found their ideal nesting ground at a place called Currumbin. Currumbin is just over the border in a state called Queensland which is even closer to the Northern sun than where we live in New South Wales. Queensland has a warm and sunny disposition. People wear sandals if not  going around barefooted. Most also wear shorts all year around. The closer to the beach the more you are likely to see bikinis for girls and board shorts for boys. Shark attacks have put a dent into surfing but not into casual living.  What more could one wish for?

We arrived at my sister’s place late in the afternoon after getting hopelessly lost on top of a mountain top. The GPS system must have had murderous intent and deliberately put us into great danger. We were close to a final embrace and quite prepared to be  found in a state of an advanced decomposition some weeks later.

Some of you might know my stance on endless suburbia were people succumb to such a state of spiritual if not physical inertia and dehydration, that even the fear of Border Control Force Protection Patrol with guns drawn, can’t get a single twinge of  life out of the millions of hapless inhabitants.

Well, Currumbin Eco Village is where the good ones finally find life back again. It offers salvation to the true believers of a form of communal living like nowhere else. It is a place of good design and harmony with interaction between people encouraged instead of the discouragement of being fenced off, privacy till the end, (in the grave while still alive), colour-bonded separated Zinc Alumina side seduced by smarmy Estate Agents sold as the Australian dream of ‘Own Home.’

Instead of rows of separated fenced off cottages it offers clusters of free standing homes around  central hubs. Fencing is not allowed. Instead of having numerous small pools it has one large communal pool suitable for real swimming. A community hall for residents to meet and mingle. Communal wood-fire places to sit around for those who feel like getting back to the days of campfire and talking with Adam and Eve. Post boxes together in an encouragement to meet each other. In fact, this Eco-village was designed for  living together instead of the much accepted dreadful separated and obsessively private till the grave, way of life which so many seem to end up with.

The Ecovillage at Currumbin achieves:

Self-sufficiency in energy usage and complete autonomy in water and waste water recycling:

• 80% of site as open-space, 50% environmental reserve, and the same yield as standard development
• Food and material self-sufficiency through edible landscaping and streetscaping, household farming and other productive strategies
• Preservation of natural landforms and rehabilitation of the degraded site’s environmental integrity
• Extensive wildlife corridors, negligible vegetation loss and extensive native plant regeneration
• Cutting edge integrated water quality measures to exemplify Water Sensitive Urban Design
• Cultural Heritage honoured and integrated
• Mix of socially-oriented innovative ecological, energy efficient housing catering for diverse needs
• On-site work strategies and facilities for village and local community
• Waste recycling strategies including an innovative RRR recycling centre
• Comprehensive traffic saving strategies to reduce vehicle impacts on and off site
• Well researched administrative framework providing social equity & enduring community integrity
• Initial and ongoing social planning to foster cohesion and promote sustainable community
• Continuing education of sustainable living and development practices via the Interpretive Centre
• Sustainable economic performance both with the development and the ongoing community.

Have a look for yourself. ( Obligatory solar panels, thermal mass, recycling of all waste including all water,

communal vegetable growing. etc. One drawback, because of the abundant wildlife, no pets)

http://theecovillage.com.au/