This Year’s Australasian Permaculture Convergence (APC10) and PDC Shaping Up to Be a Hit!
From a few days ago:
HOLLYWOOD star Daryl Hannah flies into Cairns tomorrow while Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson’s eccentric nephew, Ned RocknRoll hits town today.
The environmentally minded duo plan to spend a month in the Far North for a two week permaculture design course and the Australasian Permaculture Convergence.
The events will be at Kuranda.
Mr RocknRoll, the head of marketing promotion and astronaut experience at Virgin Galatic [sic], will be joined by his wife Eliza.
Other big names at the event include former governor-general Major Michael Jeffery and SBS Television’s Costa Georgiadis, of Costa’s Gardening Odyssey. – Cairns.com.au
Calling Ned RockinRoll eccentric is a bit over the top, but then again the Cairns Post is a News Limited tabloid after all.
The Free Range Permaculture PDC starting this Sunday is now booked out which is great and we have an amazing lineup with lots of locals, some indigenous guys from up the gulf, a smattering of others from around the country plus Daryl Hannah (Hollywood actress & world’s #1 female celebrity environmentalist), the Hon. Eliza RocknRoll (nee Pearson & Humanitarian Activist) and her husband Ned RocknRoll (Virgin Galactic and nephew of Sir Richard Branson), Ken Bellamy (Prime Carbon) and Costa Georgiadis (SBS). This promises to be an interesting time with a entirely revamped course outline (following the cessation of The Permaculture Institute ‘Teacher Registration’ program) with 7 design exercises (with 3-4 choices per design), up another 2 design exercises on what we’ve been doing the last year or so. We’re keen to put the design back into the design course obviously.
There are still a few places left on the post course convergence – don’t dally though….
I am sorry, I am not thrilled by this turn of events.
https://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/Australia-court-says-carbon-firm-misled-consumers-3G9SH?
Darly Hannah has done some hard yards,I think her stance on a number of issues is admirable.However what credence could this other lot bring to the table high living high flying space cadets.I think that the inclusion of the rock and roll factor only serves to lower the tone of what looks to be a great event.As for the prime carbon thing.I really think that permaculture should distance itself from things that may bring it into disrepute.Are we so desperate?
Again another brave person “Name withheld” making comment and trying to keep Permaculture away from people who could make a real difference and promote its value for the greater good.
Good idea “Name withheld”. You’re exactly what Permaculture needs. If you at the APC10 track me down. I’m sure we have a lot to talk about. I’m sure blokes like Darren would love to share their views.
It bores me senseless listing to this crap. Post something useful, and show that world what you’re doing to change things.
Looking forward to Costa and all the other people with media profiles raising the profile of permaculture.Excluding people because they are wealthy or famous just serves elitism which is not what permaculture is about.I am not sure what the full story behind Prime Carbon is but to me it looks like Ken made a few small errors in administration rather than a deliberate attempt to defraud people.Lets see if anyone can shed some light on this.
Best Wishes Fernando
G’day,
For goodness sake this is a comment that is breathtaking in its naivety in my opinion and even moreso it is interesting that you have chosen to have your name withheld which is of course your right though I think that if you are prepared to shoot the gun the you should own up to pulling the trigger.
The strategy of Australia Felix Permaculture has been from 1993 to ‘….move Permaculture from being a marginal methodology to an unconscious practice…’ With that in mind we have worked with many corporations and institutions whom under this comment’s criteria would lower or even diminish our respect in the marketplace. Though of course perhaps this has already happened.
Slurring Ned and Eliza as ‘high living high flying space cadets’ is again throwing stones without understanding at all what their motivations are, or that as with any human part of the role Permaculture has is to change the paradigms of human society that across the entire planet is the reason why biodiversity is decreasing at such an alarming rate. Above all else it is just plain rude to say stuff like this, especially in a public forum on Permaculture where obviously there are a few guiding ethics to guide what I would hope is a new paradigm of behaviour and candour.
You don’t get that change by not having the conversation with everyone of those humans, rich or poor, and laying out the options available from a Permaculture perspective. In fact there is an unprecedented capacity now for some humans to make decisions on behalf of others that can effect not only millions of humans but also Gaia herself.
In the word’s of PRI’s own Geoff Lawton these decisions can be positively directed or negatively directed. Part of the important role and responsibility that I (and others) have developed in attracting a demographic that includes people like Ned and Eliza who are sharing the same table as single mothers, TV stars, mums and dads, self-funded retirees, farmers, indigenous horticulturalists etc, who are willing to commit their time and energy (and a lot of fossil energy too!) to doing a PDC is to commit them to working for the primary client (remember her?) and her occupants and do so as fairly and as equitably as is possible.
The PDC so far (we just finished day 5) has been particularly effective and we completed the 3rd design exercise today. In this those ‘name withheld’ slurred have been particularly keen participants and have done a great job as have all of the other people who’ve taken the trouble to come to Walkamin for this event. Very much looking forward to the rest of this rather unique event and then APC10 soon after.
So I would like to encourage the opportunity to engage with all rather than make armchair assessments of who to talk to and who to not talk to when these are human beings who still need clean air, nutrient dense food, good quality live water, efficient shelter and regenerative energy systems like the rest of us, and might just according to the family that were born to or their specific capacity to concentrate capital and funds can with orient these capacities toward enabling a more equitable outcome for Gaia and her occupants, and that above all else they have a responsibility to do so.
This is not a nouvelle noblesse oblige, rather a responsibility that all of us westerners have with all of our privileges over perhaps 3/4’s of the rest of humanity and indeed the diminishing biodiversity and mineral resources we are all complicit in exploiting.
All the best,
Darren
For all of you involved in this event… congrats!!
It’s brilliant to see the particpation diversity in such a pivotal PDC. The feedback on the revamped course outline will be exciting. The melding of the minds is the alchemy of success! Champions play in the arena – Mentors coach the champions. Darren you are both. In life, the arena will always have spectators. Some people don’t even know there’s an arena! I’m hopeful, once spectators become aware of the challenges we collectively face, and given time to get over their fears, and loads of encouragement, most spectators will step into the arena . We all are potential champions and mentors. 99.99999% of all species that have ever lived on Gaia are now extinct. Homo Sapiens just happen to be able to consciously effect our own and other species survival outcomes. Our “Client” will survive us and I know we will design ourselves towards an equilibrium between commerce and community. It’s going to be fun.
Best wishes to all those already in the arena and to those about to enter. Let the E & P’s guide us all.
Glen A.