Adapted from public lecture given at the Aldinga Arts Eco-village in Adelaide in January 2005.
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Last month while David was in Perth for the Australasian Permaculture Convergence he gave The Keith Roby Memorial Lecture in Community Science, a free public lecture funded by the Keith Roby Trust, established in memory of Dr Roby. Keith Roby was a foundation member of Murdoch University and a pioneer in the area of “Community
During the height of the millennial drought, I was peripherally involved in one of the side skirmishes of the “Water Wars” playing out across rural and urban Australia. Some of my talks, teaching and writing1See for instance Gardening Australia with Josh Burn at Melliodora in 2007 and ‘Garden Agriculture: a revolution in water use efficiency’ (2005) focused on introducing water allocations for suburban residents instead of the selective restrictions that allowed spa baths but prohibited food growing. At the same time, the bigger battles were being waged over the Murray-Darling Basin Plan (MDBP) controlling 70% of Australia’s irrigated agriculture.
As I have been working alone in the garden over these last few days I have been thinking about Vries Gravestein as an elder of the Australian permaculture movement at the same time that the nation is reflecting on the passing of another big man, Gough Whitlam. While comparisons between the two might be trite, in my garden solitude the emotions about the passing of influential elders did blend.
Beyond the family I have met and worked with so many of Vries’ students, most notably John Champagne who has played such a critical role in embedding permaculture in this bio-regional community and in maintaining the bonds of the national permaculture family.
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