Spring 2012 Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) Course, Canberra, ACT, Australia, with Nick Huggins, Martyn Noakes and Colin Mclean (Staggered over four 3-day weekends)

Parliament House, Canberra

If we are going to effect change in Australia, then what better place to present it in than The ACT (Australian Capital Territory). On the doorstep of people who can effect broadscale change and policy.

The newly formed Permaculture Exchange Group, in Association with the Bredbo Community Land Care Group is calling for all interested ‘agents of change’ to sign up for Spring Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) course. The Spring PDC, starting in September 2012, will be a good opportunity for all folk to find out more about permaculture and study in the Canberra region with a course specific to the Southern Tablelands.

For more information see the PRI courses page for more details and booking.

Dates:

The course will be run over spring, staggered over four 3-day weekends:

• 21-23 September (Friday to Sunday)
• 29 September to October 1 (Saturday to Monday)
• 6-8 October (Saturday to Monday)
• 19-21 October (Friday to Sunday)

The course is the full 72 hour PDC set out by Bill Mollison. These date are now confirmed with our venue. All days must be attended to attain the Certificate of Permaculture Design. We are realistic, if you miss a day or two we will run catch up days following the PDC on demand at no extra cost.

Course hours: 9am to 5pm over the four weekends. Some extra time may be needed for field trips and course practicums.

About the Teachers:

Nick Huggins: Permaculture has always been in Nick’s blood. With a focus on repairing the Australian landscape, feeding 7 billion people and creating new enterprises and forms of fair exchange. A student of Geoff & Nadia Lawton and a self professed permaculture entrepreneur, Nick has a real passion for helping people make a new career start in Permaculture Business. Nick lives on a 103 acre farm in the Southern Tablelands town of Tarago NSW. His current vocation sees him travel all over Australia designing, consulting and educating permaculture full time, teaching at world renowned education facilities like The Permaculture Research Institute of Australia, to students from around the globe. See Nick’s Professional Permaculture & Business CV online.

Martyn Noakes: Ensuring he can feed himself and his family is Martyn’s reason for venturing into Permaculture and he studied with John Champagne at Boro on the South East Coast of NSW.

He believes there is nothing more important than healthy, nutritious, chemical-free food and clean water. Martyn, along with his wife Yvonne and two boys, run a 1200 acre property near Bredbo, South of Canberra. Martyn and Yvonne farm using biodynamic methods, growing heritage vegetables and raising Free Range Berkshire pigs, Plymouth Rock Chickens and Belted Galloway Cattle. A large portion of their property is being managed for conservation as they see it as essential to maintain as small a footprint as possible on the environment in such brittle country as the Monaro.

Martyn has been an active member of both the local Land Care Group and the Natural Sequence Farming Association and is a member of the Ecological Agriculture Association of Australia. Community is important to Martyn and Yvonne, they hold annual events on their property including apple crushing and wild berry picking. In the future they hope to run workshops on activities as diverse as straw bale chicken house building, sausage making, scything, wood fired oven building and pig keeping.

Colin Mclean: Colin has gradually embraced and implemented permaculture and other land management learnings over the past five years as he and his wife Lea transitioned from suburban life in the Blue Mountains to self sufficient regional life in Braidwood NSW.

An introduction to permaculture with John Champagne was built on by a PDC with Geoff Lawton at Mulloon Creek and set Colin up to build the permaculture design for his property at Braidwood, and then coordinate earthworks creating dams connected by swales to build hydrology in very depleted soil, and plant more than 1000 trees to build up soil health. The success of the recovery and rehabilitation work now sees Colin and Lea implementing productive elements in terms of fruit trees, house gardens, cider apple orchard and Dexter cattle (land management plus meat harvesting) in the next phase of what will be a long term and organically developing plan for life.

Find our more about the course, and book, here.