Amanda Healy and Christine Pinniger of Transition Darebin; Peter Duggan of Transition Dubbo; and Nettie Hulme of Active Hope online shared their stories (recorded) followed by informal discussion (not recorded) at a zoom meeting on Monday 8 May 2023
Scroll down for a video of each story.
Amanda Healy and Christine Pinniger spoke of Transition Darebin whose activities include food swaps, boomerang bags, a repair cafe, FUN-raising, Fix-it-Newlands and Darebin Fruit Squad. They spoke of organising a virtual repair cafe due to restrictions during the Covid-19 pandemic and the qualities and factors that keep the group going: a spirit of co-operation and a shared goal; respect for each other’s skills, preferences, varying energy levels and capacity; acceptance of the natural ebb and flow of a group; a good organisational foundation to ground their activities; and a local Council which generally provides good support for their activities and was the first in the world to declare a Climate Emergency.
Peter Duggan spoke of activities of Transition Dubbo, particularly their food + film nights at which they serve up a great meal with options for vegetarian, gluten and dairy free, and often use produce from their own gardens. They focus on positive films about solutions rather than what is going wrong with the world. Some highlight films shown over the past 4 years are: Living the Change; Call of The Forest; The Story of Plastic; The Economics of Happiness; and Inhabit: A Permaculture Perspective. Other events include social gatherings, and free workshops for sharing skills and knowledge such as making compost. making your own worm farm, wicking beds, electroculture, olive curing, and boomerang bag making. Transition Dubbo has held a number of tours including a bike tour to the local community gardens, edible weed tours by the river, garden tours and farm tours. Recent tours were to a permaculture farm near Mudgee and to Bruce Maynard, on his property near Narromine. Bruce is a pioneer in regenerative agriculture and won the National Landcare Award in 2022. Other activities are market stalls, garden blitzes and guest speakers, including Thiago Barbosa, a specialist in syntropic farming and gardening. The group visited Lightning Ridge where Thiago has been helping to create a syntropic food forest in an arid region.
Nettie Hulme spoke about Deep Ecology and Active Hope. Deep Ecology could be defined as bridge-building between Western and Indigenous worldviews. Active Hope is a practice born from deep ecology developed by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone. There are activities or practices that can happen at each of the four stations of the ‘Active Hope Spiral’: Gratitude, Honouring our Pain, Seeing with New Eyes, Going Forth. Elders such as Mary Graham, Anna Poelina and emerging elder Ella Noah Bancroft remind us that we are all indigenous to the planet and the universe.