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The Way of the Owl with Morag Gamble
636 Plays5 days ago
Three unbelievable stories about owls, and how to be a myceliating, possibilitarian practivist with the phenomenal Morag Gamble.
Morag has cornflower blue eyes and a glorious crop of hair that curls at the ends like pea shoots. She consorts with broad beans and leafy greens in bare feet, and has sent no dig gardening viral on YouTube.
This convo was recorded at Crystal Waters Eco Village where Morag lives with her family and 200+ other humans on 640 acres shared with a teeming assortment of subtropical wildlife.
📝 SHOW NOTES
Building your livelihood around the seasons of your life
How to find your flow and live with intention
More than human helpers and teachers
“I am the garden gardening”
Ways to access land when accessing land is insane
Myceliating ideas around the world
Why aren’t permaculture villages everywhere?
Possibilitarianism
Nourish threads of connection rather than fighting the fight
How the new unfolds through collapse of the old
The vital role of the arts
How are we to live?
What is enough in these times?
Why permaculture is everything
Gift economy how-to
Do you have what it takes to be a permaculture teacher?
Integrating permaculture with your profession
Morag is a beloved permaculture teacher and designer, founder of The Permaculture Education Institute, pioneer of urban permaculture projects like Northey Street City Farm, and an international changemaker who has led changemaking programs in 22 countries.
🧙♀️ LINKY POOS
Morag’s podcast ~ Sense-making in a changing world
Become a permaculture teacher ~ The Permaculture Education Institute
Vandana Shiva
Arne Ness
Helena Norberg-Hodge
Fritjof Capra
Recommended
Transcript
Return to Jarrah Country
00:00:03
Speaker
race scallia Hey, I'm Katie and this is Ruskillians, where we're tuning in to the beauty without turning away from the train wreck. Jordan and I have just arrived back in Jarrah country, central Victoria, after travelling up and down the east coast of Australia for eight weeks, hosting 14 screenings of The New Peasants,
00:00:25
Speaker
and staying in at least 40 different campsites along the way. The only reason I knew where I was when I woke up this morning is because I could hear our rooster Hector crowing, and I'd recognise his crow anywhere because it sounds like someone learning to play the bagpipes.
00:00:40
Speaker
It is super nice to be home, to smell the air, to see the garden, to eat from the garden, to be snubbed by the cat, but we also had a bloody excellent road trip, and I particularly loved meeting lots of you at screenings Being able to hear what you're up to, what you're into, and just make that human connection.
Love for Crystal Waters
00:00:59
Speaker
So the campsite where today's interview was recorded was one of my favourites of the trip. Crystal Waters Eco Village near Mullaney in Queensland. They've got their own caravan park type thing tucked in the forest.
00:01:12
Speaker
And I loved it because, well, for one, there were stained glass windows in the toilets, which was a welcome departure from skidmucks. It also felt exceedingly relaxed and friendly.
00:01:24
Speaker
And being a cat, dog and hunting free zone where wildlife are safe to be free and wild and alive, you can walk amongst the whip-tailed wallabies and wampu fruit doves in a jungly dreamscape.
00:01:39
Speaker
I don't necessarily idealise ecovillages, but it does seem like people genuinely care about each other at Crystal Waters. It was also the world's first intentional permaculture ecovillage, founded in the 80s. From what I've heard from residents, their 640 acres was pretty knackered at the start, which makes the beauty and biodiversity that we experienced even more impressive.
Introducing Morag Gamble
00:02:02
Speaker
So that's my TripAdvisor review of Crystal Waters, and now to the interview, which, if you haven't guessed, is with Morag Gamble, long-term Crystal Waters resident and permaculture maven.
00:02:14
Speaker
Morag has cornflower blue eyes and a glorious crop of hair that curls at the ends like pea shoots. She consorts with broad beans and leafy greens in bare feet and has sent No Dig Gardening viral on YouTube.
Morag's Permaculture Journey
00:02:30
Speaker
Morag is a permaculture teacher and designer, founder of the Permaculture Education Institute, pioneer of urban permaculture projects like Northeat Street City Farm, and an international changemaker who leads changemaking programs in 22 countries.
00:02:47
Speaker
Despite all these mighty accolades, when Morag and I sat down to record in the back of our camper van, only the best for Raskillian's guests, what poured forth was something stirring and personal and not really about permaculture, but also really about permaculture.
00:03:07
Speaker
I was reminded of what it means to hear and honour our gifts, our unique gifts, and the more-than-human helpers who show up along the way. It is just such a beautiful conversation and I really appreciate Morag's honesty and candor.
00:03:23
Speaker
Before we jump in, i want to express my gratitude to the noble humans who leave Reskilliancer Review on Apple or Spotify. Thanks for taking the time to write lovely things and make the podcast look good.
00:03:34
Speaker
And to my Patreon community, there are 71 people who donate to Riskiliants each month, including newly minted members Elliot, May, and Jenna. You are the podcast's soul and soulful way of obtaining a yield, well, a financial yield at least.
00:03:51
Speaker
And thanks to you, Riskiliants is 100% independent and unshackled, and tracking towards alignment with permaculture's ethics and principles. Thank you so much, everyone.
00:04:01
Speaker
And here is the marvellous Morag Gamble being ushered in by a little shrike thrush, which is a beautiful songbird that I recorded on a morning walk at Crystal Waters.
00:04:14
Speaker
It feels quite surreal to be sitting here with you, Morag, because I was reflecting on, I think I first saw you at a NENA conference in Melbourne and I looked back through my photos and it was 2018 and we were doing some filming, just filming the conference as part of a job and then i happened to look down the schedule and see your talk and i was like, that sounds bloody interesting.
00:04:34
Speaker
going to go and sit in on that. And I was just, it's funny thinking back like pre-permaculture, what you take from someone's message or presentation and I was like,
00:04:44
Speaker
barefoot comfrey goddess like that that's the image in my mind and since then you know so much has happened kind of strangely bizarrely serendipitously to bring me on this permaculture adventure and so I'm wondering were you always destined to be the barefoot comfrey goddess or like were you walking a different path in different shoes I'd love to hear how how maybe you you found your way in the permaculture movement yeah that's that's so funny the way it's the funny how other people see
Nature-Based Upbringing
00:05:15
Speaker
you. yeah
00:05:16
Speaker
i do do a lot of barefoot. I i do have shoes on today, um but I normally am barefoot. And I i grew up in Melbourne. I grew up on the outskirts of Melbourne.
00:05:27
Speaker
And it was a very nature-based childhood, though. My my parents created this beautiful bush block that they planted up and they built the house and oriented it towards the north like doing it all without knowing it was kind of a permacultury way they were just living that way and and then I spent all my summers down in the Gippsland lakes and so again it's just a barefoot free-ranging kid on my bike swimming in the lake, sailing, eating whatever berries were around, know, picking all the things. And I just, I felt really
00:06:04
Speaker
come and I felt really safe and I felt really happy when I was in those places. And then as I grew up, I went to university in Melbourne, right downtown.
00:06:16
Speaker
And I remember every time I came home from being in the center of town, mum's pathway down to the front was this lovely little nature walk with mint bushes and every and I'd come down and I would smell it I'd just take it in big gulps of it and and crush the leaves and smell it and just feel oh I'm home you know like this this sense of being in nature and then I had a bit of bit of a blowout I think when I was 19 or so like all these things I don't want to go into all the things that happened but my life kind of fell apart around me and I remember just at that time the
00:06:52
Speaker
to bring my nervous system back into its grounding. It was just that. Just spending time deeply connected to the places that I loved the most and just feeding myself from that, nourishing myself from that.
00:07:07
Speaker
And I remember... And then, you know, Dad was always talking about permaculture, actually. He heard... must have been when I was maybe 10 or something. and heard this guy on the radio. And I remember coming out and saying...
00:07:19
Speaker
gosh, there's this guy on the radio, he's making a whole lot of good common sense. You know, like if anyone's going to do anything that makes good common sense, I reckon they should do this permaculture thing. And that just stuck with me. Like it's kind of dropped. It's one of those seeds that drops in.
00:07:33
Speaker
And I ended up studying landscape architecture, environmental planning, design. And I remember going through feeling somewhat like a fish out of water there.
00:07:45
Speaker
And just the design was for for making things beautiful but not making things ecological. The design was to have a mark on the landscape or to apply a particular theory of design.
00:07:57
Speaker
remember going to one of the professors and saying, what about design with nature? And I remember him saying, oh no, that's par se. I think my gut just dropped and I felt, no, I really don't belong here so I never actually practiced landscape architecture as soon as I left that I started really diving into permaculture it's like okay how can we design with nature how can we design with people how can we be together designing places rather than having designs imposed and so yeah through a lot of other things along the way it kind of came to that of this realization that
00:08:36
Speaker
Together in our places, in our communities, we can create meaningful community hubs where we can start to think about what are the possibilities of how we can live here?
00:08:48
Speaker
How can we shift and change the narrative? Because, you know, through that too, I activist, peace activist, environmental activist, but kind of got a bit burnt out by that. i remember watching, I'd walk down the street, I remember seeing some of my friends at one point, i thought my friends crossed the road and i went, oh, bugger.
00:09:07
Speaker
Like, no one wants to talk to me because i'm always talking about the stuff that they're just too confronting, like, you know, anti-war, sort of, you know, about environmental issues and people just, it was too confronting. Or the way that I was presenting it was too confronting. So figured i wanted to find a way that was deeply positive, practical and nourishing.
00:09:28
Speaker
And, yeah, permaculture just seemed to kind of land in me in a way that was a seed that has been flourishing ever since that was a very long answer to a short question it was a beautiful answer and now i'm thinking about this this botanical morag with you know her seasons and her growth patterns and has there been a dis situation have you like dropped things off as you've grown oh that's a really interesting question i think what i've tended to do is to keep adding things
00:10:01
Speaker
And him I haven't really got to the point of of letting things go. Although I do notice that. the way that I've crafted my life and my livelihood has been consistently around the flow of where my life is. So when my kids were really young, I was focusing on programs of permaculture education that was really about young children and how to engage them.
00:10:30
Speaker
Before I had kids, I was traveling around the world, involved in permaculture projects. all life So it's just rather than a sort of a following, it's just a... a natural flow that happened and so I've never actually had a so-called real job I've just followed my heart and offered into into this you know the permaculture world a kind of educational offerings or design offerings or helping to facilitate or write or host different things and that's kind of always been somewhere that's deeply connected where I feel grounded deeply connected to what's happening in my life at the time and in relationship to what's there so
00:11:09
Speaker
I haven't noticed things fallowing, but I'm sure that they have.
Reflections on Nature and Life
00:11:13
Speaker
I am actually feeling a deep need right now to do that, though, only because we were talking before, I i um ah fell over and I broke my ankle.
00:11:27
Speaker
And all of a sudden, things change. I can't can't be out in the garden. I can't be doing the things I want to do. i can't be doing my... traveling and teaching and I can't even help build the new chook pan I'm like feeling like I'm stuck and I think why did I fall over and ironically i was having a ah self-care day that day i'd been to the dentist I was going to a health care practitioner and I was off to do something else and I was just rusting like Self-care day, rush it, rush it, rush it, get over and done with so can get back to the real business.
00:12:01
Speaker
And I fell over and snapped my ankle. and i And I've been really reflecting on that because it's been two months now that actually slowing down, allowing all of the things that I've been working on to really sort of settle.
00:12:17
Speaker
and find what that new branch because I feel like it's it's there's a bud there's a bud there and I can feel it but I haven't quite got a sense of its shape yet so that's exciting I always feel like that's a constant flow and I have this sort of internal guide it's always been like when I feel like everything's going really well I feel like there's this burning inside of my chest you know like I just like radiating and then it gets a bit constrained and constricted and I notice like my breathing's harder my I'm falling over and all these things I go ah okay it's actually time to just do that so I've been aware of that a few times in my life and I feel like this one's like a really big one so maybe there's a really new arm that's going to come out quite strongly soon I'm And I'm excited for that. Yeah.
00:13:07
Speaker
Oh, you've already intuitively answered so many of the questions that I had written down for you And especially around that felt sense of what it means to be in the flow of your life. And sometimes that's an eddying point in the river as someone who...
00:13:22
Speaker
I think a lot of people would look to in terms of living living a really integrous permaculture existence. It's like, what is the felt sense of that? Because sometimes I feel like I'm just hanging out on the riverbank, like watching things float past me. How do I jump in? There's that sense of resistance sometimes. And I don't know if you've experienced that personally or if you've got some guidance for people who might not be tuning into their own guidance. Wow.
00:13:47
Speaker
It's a really challenging one to to give advice on that. All you can ever do really I think is just find a way, find a place to sit and listen to that. And and you mentioned a river and and the river is is a really strong place for me. I need to just calm down, that's the place that I'll go. When I'm here, I'll just go and sit down by the river. It's beautiful, have this particular sit spot and it's this beautiful shady place I love the smells that come out of the river at that point because there is a lot of you know movement and flow and it just feels like it freshens things up but I you know it's this ongoing sense of
00:14:29
Speaker
questioning like is what I'm doing actually making a difference am I contributing am I feeling whole in this or the kind of relationships that I'm making and tending to in this work that I'm doing feeling alive or do I feel this like it's really feeling into how it resonates and and I can't explain it any more than that and and I feel like it's sort of something harsh or not quite fitting I have to stop and reflect on that and I I know mean I'm 56 now I've been doing this for like decades now and I sort of know when I hit those points that i have to stop otherwise come a bit of a cropper but there's been helpers along the way and I have to acknowledge them like the more than human helpers like this is one relationship that I have with a particular animal that keeps showing up at certain times in my life and I and I'm
00:15:29
Speaker
I haven't spoken about this particular match because it sounds a bit woo-woo, but I'm going to share it with you because it is important to me. So when I was... just opening up to like the this when I was about 19 I think and everything was starting to make sense and I was starting to work out where in the world I wanted to be with this I would be I was down the Gipson Lakes and every night I would go out for walk and just kind of let what I've been thinking about what I've been reading what I've been writing all day to percolate and as I was walking an owl would follow me along the road and it would actually like just be swooping down and then it would walk I'd be walking and it would be swooping back and we would do this evening thing together and it was so bizarre and I thought no that's not real but every night I went out the same thing would happen so I kind of had to trust that and so I just acknowledged and say good day and we'd have a chat along the way
00:16:20
Speaker
And I'd forgotten about that. And then it was maybe about 25 years ago, i was having a and like another big moment of awakening. And I came into, i was actually driving into Crystal Waters.
00:16:34
Speaker
It was in the evening time. And I had my windows down because it was this kind of summery time. It was hot. And I'd slowed right down. And this owl flew into the window, sat on my lap, looked me in the eye, and then with its wing, touched my face and flew off. And I just stopped.
00:16:54
Speaker
and i And I just had to take that moment to think, all right, what was it? I was thinking about what's going on. what's And so that was a moment when I just paused. I like, thank you, owl. I didn't see the owl again. That was that. But that was such a moment. It's like,
00:17:08
Speaker
Gosh, and then it was another time when i I was just in the flow of like racing through delivering courses I was you know delivering delivering I was you know performative and I racing down the hill because and I'd come down through crystal waters and out of the mist An owl was in the middle of the road, but it was just right there and I ran straight over it and I was horrified.
00:17:34
Speaker
And I, so I screeched to a halt and raced back. There was no owl. Couldn't see anything, not even a feather. I looked around for a while and and then so eventually hopped back in the car and I wasn't far from home so i drove around came up to hill got up drove in the driveway and the owl was sitting in my freaking driveway looking at me and I just went okay all right I need to actually slow down and I'm just racing over things, I'm not caring enough about the things that matter, I'm not noticing the things that matter.
00:18:10
Speaker
And so there's those moments that i just wake me up. If I'm not waking up, it's almost like there's this more than human relationship that kind of comes in and taps me on the shoulder and says, aurria actually, you really do need to pay attention to this. Can you just stop for a bit and do this? So...
00:18:28
Speaker
That's kind of my owl story, yeah which is why why on the Permaculture Education Institute I have the owl signal because the owl is my guide. Wow. That is just incredible.
00:18:41
Speaker
ah So, i yeah, it sounds a bit weird, but I kind of, I do listen. And it's a similar thing too with, I have um little wallabies and kangaroos that are around who, so, you know, I don't sort of think of it as, here at Crystal Waters, there's 640 acres where I live. I've been here for almost 30 years now.
00:19:01
Speaker
And we each have about an acre that's ours and then the rest is common land. And I love the fact that it's common land. Like there's no fences between people's places and more than 80% of the land is the commons.
00:19:13
Speaker
So the common forest and the river and the wood lots, all of that stuff is just on the commons. And so what it means is it's this beautiful wildlife habitat. I mean, that's what I love so much about this place. It's amazing.
Community and Biodiversity at Crystal Waters
00:19:28
Speaker
kangaroos and wallabies and turtles and echidnas and koalas up in the hills. Someone counted 260 species of birds. It's extraordinary life here.
00:19:39
Speaker
And when I had my babies, I always carried them around in a sling. I had this great notion that I would be able to garden with my babies in a sling. I don't know how they do that, but I could not. Just like they'd be pulling at my hair or they'd swiggle around. So i but anyway, I still would carry them around when I'm doing things as much as I could in a sling. and One day came out, because the kangaroos live territories. they keep I get to know kangaroos that around our place.
00:20:08
Speaker
and um And one day I went out there and and there was this beautiful wallaby just sitting in the garden, a pretty-faced wallaby. And she sort looked at me. And I'd just come home recently with my little...
00:20:21
Speaker
second child, Hugh, who's almost as tall as Jordan. And anyway, he he got called Hugh because he was humongous when he was born. Anyway, I was there with Hugh in this lovely little red sling.
00:20:36
Speaker
And the wallaby was just looking at me. And then she opened up her pouch just ever so gently to show me her little baby that was in the pouch and and so they were just like looking at each other and then I said well here's mine and we just sat there in this like mother's club for what seemed like ages and just those sorts of everyday encounters ah feeling like, oh okay, this is not this is not my place. This is our place. We belong here together and I'm not the gardener.
00:21:06
Speaker
I am the garden gardening just as much as the wallaby is gardening in that place and just as much as the you know the birds that come we're all and deepening and it feels like over time I'm able to sort of deepen into that sense of being in place and to notice and each each season that comes around what I understand about observation with permaculture just takes a whole new level and you know this whole kind of concept of time I think is one of the biggest things that we need like taking the time slowing down enough to notice to to sense into things to sense into how you're feeling about things you know we we tend to want to rush it and that's kind of the dominant paradigm I mean I grew up with that you know in the city if you grow up in a school system that's kind of the dominant paradigm you've got classes you've got assessments you've got this you've got a
00:21:57
Speaker
you're on a particular trajectory and then somehow I got off and it's been it's been remarkable I can't I can't imagine my life any other way and I I'm so glad that I've actually chose this like some people say oh have you how would I get started now like i you built your house ages ago and so it was affordable then but it wasn't affordable then I just like moved way out of the city and I got sticks of timber and I
00:22:32
Speaker
lived simply like yeah i don't know how it's it is a challenger now like i'm looking at my kids and they're saying mom you know we'll never be able to get a house like you got a house and i'm hmm there are other ways though know like here is ah is an example there's 260 people who live here you know how can you share land how can you maybe share housing how can you share skills how can you help each other to build how can you learn from each other of different strategies and ideas or you know someone was doing a straw bale build so everyone kind of went and helped them construct that someone else was doing a round earth one so a lot of people got together and so and i think there's a ah lot of lessons from here like i don't think we can replicate a crystal water somewhere else because it's you know there's planning laws and all the different things but the lessons and the insights from being in this place and So anyway, it's interesting to see the kids, my kids who are growing up here, what their perception is. My 19-year-old, who's currently living in Canberra at ANU, she's gathering up all the people she can to start an eco village.
00:23:39
Speaker
Go, Maya. The next one down, Hugh, he's still living here. He gets what we're doing, but he also is really interested in all the stuff that I don't particularly, you know, like he loves cars.
00:23:53
Speaker
And it's like, wow, how did that happen? But he's also really interested in thinking about how you can design the next generation of transport. So I kind of think, okay, that's right. And then my little one, strangely enough, just says, mum, you just talk about a whole lot of hippie stuff and it's really embarrassing.
00:24:15
Speaker
And I know somewhere deep down his heart, like, he gets it and he knows it and he can tell you the plants in there and look after the chickens and do all that sort of stuff. But I think there's that that ah sort of barrier. Like, I chose it, but they've grown up in it. So they have to find their own meaning in it, which is a really interesting thing to to look at. Yeah. And it's quite – it's a beautiful integration.
00:24:36
Speaker
As you know, the film that George Turing at the moment is with Megan – a portrait of Megan Patrick and Woody's life – and Zephyr and Woody's really into cricket and we were just chatting with them on the phone yesterday morning and they're talking about how Woody's interest in cricket has edged them closer to the mainstream that they separated themselves from and we're in a little happy permaculture bubble in Daylesford but they're actually enjoying this process of re re-integrating with so many different people from so many different walks of life and understanding
00:25:08
Speaker
the the delight in the difference and also the necessary kind of cross-pollination of that and how being invited into these spaces, it kind of humbles us and opens up so many opportunities as well.
Global Interconnectedness
00:25:22
Speaker
So I wonder, like, have you ever felt cloistered in crystal waters and like it's just a little enclave that you deliberately need to kind of come out of every now and then such a good question. I purposely do not cloister myself in crystal waters and my world is very... I live here and i my home is here and my food around me is here.
00:25:46
Speaker
But my world is interconnected across the planet and I need that desperately to feel nourished by ideas and to be feel that sense of wholeness and richness. And I think think it's not healthy or so to stay completely bubbled. I think we need to cross-pollinate our ideas and to see different cultures and practices and ways and understanding. And that to me is so important.
00:26:15
Speaker
and otherwise you end up sort of this you know sort of like an inch a little bubble and maybe arguing about things that really and not important to be arguing about. we need perspective. So my work in the world is particularly around trying to host conversations in a way that cross different worlds and to open up that so you know perhaps my 12 year old doesn't really see that now he just kind of thinks that I'm the comfrey barefoot goddess lady which is a bit embarrassing for him because that's not actually what I do what I do mostly is host conversations with you know the
00:26:52
Speaker
leading ecological thinkers of our time with you know systems thinking and localization and you know like scientists and the philosophers and the practicists and the farmers and what does it mean when we bring all of that together what what is the world that we can imagine you know then how can we create theories of change to myceliate that in ways that we hadn't thought possible before because i often feel like you know we have these tools like permaculture we have these villages like crystal waters we have all these experiments but why is it that they're not everywhere?
00:27:26
Speaker
How do shift how we talk about these things in a way that does open it up? that does make it accessible, that does bring a sense of new resonance to and a new language that invites people from all different walks of life into it. And I feel that that's happening. I feel there's a massive shift that's happened.
00:27:50
Speaker
And so it's kind of funny. It's kind of i like, I mean, i'm I'm devastated, but I also joke about how my... how young kids see me because obviously that's what's kind of reflected in the school environment about what it's like to live in crystal waters but for me I spend most of my time deep in conversation and sharing ideas with people and also trying to find you have new language to communicate this and to express ideas in ways perhaps that they've not been expressed before because when you hear the same thing over and over again it's just like oh yeah okay all right we've been there we've been doing that for decades now like what's fresh what's new where's the edge where are the possibilities so you know i love talking with people you know like rob hopkins who's really exploring that sort of the
00:28:37
Speaker
you know how to fall in love with the future and the possibilitarian nature of his work and also to to shift how we how we think about change. So the sort of theory of change that I work on is this myceliation.
00:28:51
Speaker
we We now understand far more deeply about the science of what's going on underneath the soil and the whole mycelial process and that's how I feel like we're where the power and the strength of our movement is. It's not like we have to fight things and knock off the top players or fight the institutions or fight the government or fight the other.
00:29:10
Speaker
need to actually come down and nourish where we see these threads of connection happening and keep adding compost to that and to feed the soil that nourishes all the life that exists on planet and what's being fed over there is actually feeding us too and we see like the the mushrooms that are popping up are those little points of activation or the the visible parts of this world that's underneath and so like describing what that is and showing how these threads of connection and these cross-nourishing conversations can feed us and nourish us and there is collapse that's happening but what is that new wave that's happening simultaneously and there's a ah friend of mine jeremy land who talks about this kind carpet he says like imagine the world as a carpet and there's these threads and gradually each one of those threads of this you know capitalist destructive system is gradually being rewoven
00:30:05
Speaker
with new threads of ecological and as those fall apart you'll have a new wave and it feels like it's not going to be like this sudden collapse and then there's a new world and we're waiting for that collapse to happen so we can create something new.
00:30:15
Speaker
The new is unfolding through the collapse of the old and not to feel like, you know at the moment it feels like there's so much going on that is so destructive, so damaging politically, socially, ecologically, economically, everything.
00:30:33
Speaker
But yet at the same time, that's just what we see reported. If you actually turned our gaze to the things that people are doing and the love and kindness and joy that people bring to being in place, to caring for one another, to, you know, I was talking to my my mother-in-law the other day, she lives in Brisbane and she saying, you know, like, you talk to people down the street and they're not against immigrants, they're not, they really want help them to be here it's like people are really kind and it's like but I listen to the radio and it's all saying all the bad stuff that's going on I said yeah just turn the radio off and just you know focus on being present where you are and communicating and I think this is really important because the news and the ideas that we get are so shaped by the narratives that are not conducive to life thriving
00:31:26
Speaker
So how do we communicate the stories of thriving life? And it's through things like your podcast, it's through conversations, through film, it's through theatre, it's through a lot through the arts and how we can bring people together to have that shared experience and to see different different ways of
Living Sustainably: Learning and Impact
00:31:45
Speaker
approaching it. So I kind of see my life here at Crystal Waters as an experiment with my own life.
00:31:51
Speaker
Like, what would it... Because I always ask this question, so if we think ecologically, and our hearts in this, but how are we to live? know, I spent a lot of time at a place called Schumacher College, studying with Vandana Shiva and Fritjof Capra and Arnie Ness from Deep Ecology, all these different ecological scholars. My head was full of all these ideas. Yes, this is the paradigm that makes sense to me. This is this is the ecological paradigm where I belong.
00:32:19
Speaker
And then I ventured into up into the Himalayas and i worked with Helen Norberg Hodge up in Ladakh and I was working with these communities there that were just so deeply connected to place. Everything came from the earth, went back to the earth and the songs. there was yeah It was just an incredible experience of how to live a sustainable life. Like before I could write you an essay and say, sustainability is blah, blah, blah, but I never actually deeply, fully...
00:32:48
Speaker
embodied that it was still in my head so it's that integration that head heart and hands and after all of that I came back to Australia and went so how are we to live and that's the question that has been pretty much driving my inquiry the whole time it's like okay well so know, eco-village is a place where we can together restore a place, we can explore, you know, alternative economic systems, local food systems, natural building systems, how we live in community, social permaculture, all of those kind of things. And, you know, there's lots of things that fail as well, and there's lots of things that are really exciting.
00:33:24
Speaker
So that's ah that's a kind of a play there to see what it what's happening. And... it wasn't the part that I was expected to live I was expected to have you know like ah a government job and to have a safe secure thing and so when I decided to abandon all that and go in this direction I think my mum didn't talk to me for two years it was a really hard choice to say no actually this feels really important this is something that i really need to do she's now my you know 100 hundred 210,000 supporter. You know, it takes, it takes the courage to go actually what I feel deeply inside
00:34:02
Speaker
is something else and try and find ways to sort of reject. Maybe she felt rejected by me. Maybe she thought, well, what I'd planned for you in your life, youd you know, you've thrown that all away. It's like, no, mum, because of your love of nature, because of your love of nourishing life that I feel this way. And it's because of the way that, you know, dad talked about design and, you know, all this system stuff. And so I think perhaps, you know, I wasn't as well equipped to express that back then.
00:34:33
Speaker
So I think, actually, I probably never really expressed it to them. Maybe I should go and that. Seeing them next week. That's a really important thing, and I think, to when you're taking a step on a path that you feel is really important to not reject or not make people feel rejected that have helped you along the way. Yeah.
00:34:53
Speaker
Yeah. Thanks for that. Well, I know Charles Eisenstein, i can't remember where he spoke about this, but he spoke beautifully about the role of of mothers, of parents, the fact that for every significant leader of our times, for every person spearheading a movement, they had a caregiver.
00:35:12
Speaker
And that shaped them in some way. And to be a caregiver is such a gift, though, especially in these realms that we're talking about and working in, sometimes it can feel like we're not making enough of an impact if we if we simply tend to the needs of our beloveds and our children and our home. And I'd love to unfold this idea of impact with you, Morag, and what is...
00:35:34
Speaker
What is enough of an impact for each of us to have? Is it enough to simply bond beautifully with our child so they feel secure in this world and they can go forth and be open to yeah our medicine?
00:35:46
Speaker
Or do we need to push ourselves to go a little bit further? And I guess we can bring in that ethic, the ethics of permaculture too, the fair share ethics especially. do we need to push ourselves to kind of extend a little bit beyond just the home? Yeah, that's such a great question. And I...
00:36:03
Speaker
you know, that has to be responded to personally by everyone. Like, just to say that if what you choose to do is tend beautifully to your place and to the people around you, that is enough.
00:36:16
Speaker
Like, never feel that that's not enough. I mean, I think often because we don't feel that's enough that we're constantly driving to do something else and actually living simply in place is possibly one of the most nourishing and beautiful and harmonious and kind things that we can do.
00:36:35
Speaker
I have something inside me that feels like I need to do something else as well. I love being with my family. i love taking care of place I am, but I also love to be conversation with people around the world and to be connecting with projects and to sharing stories and to be celebrating what what is the unfolding of a new story of our society and I i feel drawn into that space and it can look like anything I just speaking some of the students I work with
00:37:06
Speaker
So I teach permaculture, but mostly I'm teaching permaculture leaders and communication and education. Like, how do you how do you take permaculture and share it in your world? And so there's people who are creating theatre that's on, you know, in being performed in London. There's people who are.
00:37:22
Speaker
uh taking it and and applying it in refugee cinemas like different ways that you can show up and apply it as long as it has that resonance and meaning and purpose and and connectedness to to what you're doing but i you know it's such a deeply personal thing and i think it also goes with the seasons of your life you know when i was with very young children my world was very much about the local community. we were creating little community kids clubs and, you know, little community kitchen gardens and connecting the elders the community with the kids. And that was, it was very much in this space, the scale of...
00:38:00
Speaker
And then, you know, now that the kids are grown up and and going off in different directions, you know, when when they were 10 and 12, we headed off to East Africa together. And we, you know, we went and explored there and connected with a lot of people and our relationships have continued there. So the whole Permute movement that unfolded out of that has this relationship between young people around the world and young including young women from refugee communities people from the United States to indigenous New Zealanders to like all over the world
00:38:34
Speaker
all coming together and having conversations about what it means to be a young person today and how we can show up. So I kind of, my role in that has been to help host the space, to like create a container where those conversations can happen and to offer the platforms that those connections can take place and a big part now of what I'm doing too is a lot of the elders who i mentioned before who changed my life and open up my world who are now in their 80s and so I feel at the moment actually a big part of what I want to be doing is to be finding ways that they feel that they
00:39:17
Speaker
their legacy is carried on and that they have the capacity to deeply connect with the next generation. So let's take Fritjof Capra, for example. So I now host his alumni network. There's like thousands of people who've trained with him over the years. and And so I'm hosting that alumni network to create spaces for conversation of people who have been inspired by his work.
00:39:39
Speaker
And he'll be able to come in every now and then. And also i host young a group of young people from around the world to come and explore his work and he's so delighted because it's like oh um I don't personally know how to reach the young people but you're kind of like this bridge so this so I feel in this little this space in the middle where these incredible thinkers who open up the door to me and now sort of reaching to the younger generation through this sort of conversation I'm holding. And so it doesn't feel like I'm doing anything, you know, like I'm not doing a project like making a Crystal Waters or I'm not setting up a North East Street City farm at the moment. What I'm doing is holding space for conversations to happen across generations and across cultures. And that feels important to me. So that's where I'm spending my time.
00:40:35
Speaker
I sometimes forget that the title of this podcast has skill in it. like i just go off on two-year tangent away from that idea. But what are the kind of skills that you may innately have or consciously cultivate, can consciously cultivate, especially if people are listening to this and thinking, yes, i'm I am that kind of holder of space or communicator or intermediary, you know amongst many other things.
00:41:00
Speaker
like What kind of skills are involved in that? Oh my gosh, just a curiosity. but I'm always so curious about like how did you get there? what what is What is it that you've discovered? Like asking the question. So I also hold up host a podcast called Sets Making the Changing World and I love the conversations that happen there. Also, like from a very practical skill for the the global conversations, I've had to do a deep dive into understanding digital platforms that enable...
00:41:32
Speaker
people to be able to communicate effectively. I've also had to really learn how to do trust-based philanthropy. So it's really looking at how to create like a crowdfunding situation where the people who are in say Australia or the UK or Europe who really want to have this relationship and ongoing communication with people who are say in refugee communities or in the global south that there's some way that they can be supporting one another so every time i host something like a film club or master class or a festival of ideas people donate to to come to that and then i'll send 100 of that across to make sure that the learning centers and the communication centers and the facilities to
00:42:20
Speaker
enable the conversation to continue can happen and then sometimes it's even one-to-one so there's like those practical skills of how do you create how do you set up a communications channel how do you do it in a way that's not controlling it but inviting so it's the art of the invitation i think is one of the big things that I've learned how to invite people into this space and hold the space without controlling it and that that's yeah that's a big big thing it's been a an ongoing learning experience to step out from being also a teacher to her to a host like i really feel like that's kind of my role as a host hostess
00:43:06
Speaker
It feels really naff saying that. Like i don't I don't even, I don't know whether I really relate to that
Integrating Permaculture Principles
00:43:13
Speaker
word particularly, but that's how to invite people into a space so they feel welcomed and so that they can feel like they have the possibility of participating and connecting.
00:43:25
Speaker
and also hearing what others are saying and listen and and that some sort of transformation can take place in that space. And it's not going to happen at that moment, the change.
00:43:40
Speaker
but Did you invite the fly? I did invite the fly. You are welcome, fly. the um That I think the the transformation happens not at that moment of the action and the doing, that it's about creating...
00:43:56
Speaker
kind of tonality of connection where as you move away from that space that ideas keep rolling around and then it lands ah you you've probably experienced it yourself you know someone will come back to you remember when you said that or that podcast episode you did with that something landed down and then that percolated and to really notice that every time you show up that you show up with that integrity and that heart and the authenticity so that you know so hopefully something about that conversation might be part of the transformation but if not it's just a nourishing connection it's not yeah trying to step away from the deliverance to being deeply connected and so the skill is really just having ah having care for
00:44:41
Speaker
others care for being where you are it's it is know and that's why i really so resonate with permaculture like the earth care people care fair share i mean it you can roll that off and it can just be like writing words on a piece of paper you can roll that off and each of each part of that is so deeply deeply meaningful like i think if we all could show up with a far deeper level of care and and kindness and a sense of you know being in service to others being in service to life how different the possibilities and so that you know that
00:45:18
Speaker
So the words that come out for me, like often, it's like to to myceliate. How do we myceliate change? How do we myceliate ideas? How do we be practivists? So positive practical activists.
00:45:31
Speaker
And to be, yeah, possibilitarians, how we can unlock our imagination so we can see what's possible. So they're the kind of skills to be a practivist, a possibilitarian, and myceliator. They're the things that I really focus on.
00:45:44
Speaker
Amazing. I was just thinking of my inner halloumi monster. And this is the monster that comes out when I've made a big batch of halloumi. And I just want to keep all the halloumi because it's the most precious thing in the world because it took 20 litres of milk, raw milk from the goats and it's so delicious.
00:46:02
Speaker
And I want that to be under my custody. was actually speaking to um Linda Coburn, who's down in Tassie, who's a wonderful Permie. And she was also telling me about how they make halloumi and they take such joy in giving the halloumi away.
00:46:16
Speaker
And I really had to reflect on what it is in me, this this monstrous creature who feels such scarcity that giving things away, even some cheese, is tough.
00:46:27
Speaker
And I know you mentioned philanthropy and you work a lot as a conduit for money, going here and there to wonderful causes, redirecting wealth. And like how do we get into the mindset of of giving?
00:46:39
Speaker
and even if it's paying the rent, if it's being involved in a fundraiser, if it's sharing your harvest with your neighbour, like what is that abundance mindset that we can have that makes you want to give the halloumi because it feels so good?
00:46:53
Speaker
What a wonderful question.
00:46:57
Speaker
I think there's something about when you ground in place and in community and you lean into that sharing economy, the gift economy, it becomes quite clearly evident very quickly that by giving stuff away you end up with way more than you could possibly manage.
00:47:21
Speaker
and it's And it's like when you when you grow a garden I'm looking at my garden at the moment and I can't eat all the broccoli that's growing. I can't eat all the kale. I can't eat all the coriander. I just cannot manage it myself. There's so much abundance.
00:47:35
Speaker
So it's far better for me to be able to share that because then, you know, I might get some honey and maybe not today, but maybe next week or next month or next year even. But there is this sense of the the gift moving continuously and when you can lean into that and trust that. And it does take a level of trust.
00:48:00
Speaker
And I think, you know, when we when we the way that we've kind of grown up in a sort of a monetary economy it's like well i I'll trade money for this or ah and it being able to sort of sit back and trust but it does take a community to do that I think you know like when you're if you just give away all you you know if you make halloumi here in your van and then you travel ah along and you give it to someone and then you might you're not part of that community so you might they might not know but I do sort of think somehow energetically that there is ah kind of a what comes around goes around particularly when you show up
00:48:37
Speaker
in the way that you do with a smile on your face and an open heart and a you know gifting yeah film and storytelling and all those things that there's always something that comes around. So like I think the gift economy, living in the gift economy is something that you just need to, if you're not used to it, to step into it lightly, to just tip your toe into a little bit and have a play around and see what happens.
00:49:05
Speaker
And I'm always amazed at how much comes back. And it... might not be directly it might be indirectly it might be to my children it might be to to the to the forest it might be to but it's it go what comes around goes around and the the abundance it comes out of it is just so far more than anything else but I don't have any advice apart from just to say just dip your toe in and give it a try and so you know you can't eat all that halloumi before it goes off I'm sure
00:49:40
Speaker
and and then what are you supposed to do it it's it's a disappointment you know I i did this sorry a little bit of a side I did this in experiment we we've just finished it now but we've had for a long time a collective dairy here at Crystal Waters and so there'd be about 10 families who'd look after a couple of cows and we'd each take a turn like it was our turn every second Wednesday to go and look after the cows and so we would be making halloumi and feta cheese and all these different sorts of things and And we'd we'd also bottle up the milk. And one day I just left a bottle out by accident.
00:50:15
Speaker
And then I thought, oh I'll just leave it out and keep seeing what happens to it. And I left it there for three months. And it didn't go green. It didn't go yellow. It just turned into this beautiful collaborative. It was something that every kid that came through our house was going, oh, what's happening with it today, Morag? It was this curious thing that was going on.
00:50:32
Speaker
But what the what the dare what the dairy taught us too here was that yeah on a day when the cows were full of milk, we would get 40 litres.
00:50:43
Speaker
We couldn't possibly manage those 40 litres. But we would bottle it up because it was our day to collect it. And then we'd sort of ring around and say, want some milk. Or I've made some cheese. I can't eat all this cheese. Do you want some? And so the more that you...
00:50:58
Speaker
create that abundance and share it then you know that like a when they milk well you know there'll be some coming back again so that's what I saying at the start i think about having when you have a relationship of community and a community of trust and building that sort of sense of belonging in place and it can even be in a like an urban environment in it you know have a few neighbors up and down the street or around the area that you have that sort of sense of connectedness with it just begins there like these things begin small and then grow and as you grow your trust and grow your sense of appreciation for it and there's some things that you can't trade I mean I need money for lots of things I mean that's basic but if I can not need money for all these other basic things then the money that I do get can be in that sort of world where I still do need I still need to pay rates I still need to pay know
00:51:51
Speaker
taxes and all sorts of things but um the rest i live an incredibly abundant life without having to have enormous riches in terms of financial wealth to be able to do that 40 liters of milk is some bank balance i reckon oh my god it's like a ah massive bucket of halloumi it's like i can't manage it all by myself it's impossible yeah And, you know, like, why let things go off?
00:52:17
Speaker
And when when we sort of see that, it's like in the garden, it's like, I don't want that broccoli to go to waste because it's so beautiful. It's a spectacular broccoli. But I will, yeah, so I can share that and trade it with someone else.
00:52:30
Speaker
And that's a really beautiful thing to be able to step into. Yeah. Well, one final question, because I know you're all for the permaculture teachers. And i It's ah this funny relationship with, you know, permaculture is this...
00:52:46
Speaker
amorphous entity that it is. It's like, on the one hand, it's the simplest and most elegant and most logical thing in the world. On the other, you have to be absurdly clever to understand these these principles and apply them in a design sense. And mean, these are just my beliefs. It's like, if I wanted to be a permaculture instructor, I'd have to be such a clever cookie but i'd love to understand from your perspective morag who who can start to learn permaculture in a way that maybe then they can propagate that out and do we have to kind of know the language of of everything that's how it seems to me like it's this whole vocabulary of understanding how things work so then you can put them together in a design or have I got kind of a lofty notion of what it really means to be able to practice permaculture and and learn it and then share it yeah it's an interesting one and i love the way that you say it's such a simple and elegant
00:53:39
Speaker
way and And that's what I feel like it is too. And I think I also had the idea that to be an educator of permaculture, you had to know everything in the world. but i i was terrified when I first started teaching permaculture. think, what if someone asked me a question about something I have no idea about?
00:53:57
Speaker
And, you know, permaculture is about everything. So there's absolutely no way that anyone, whatever they say, is ever going to know everything there is to know about it.
00:54:08
Speaker
about living a permaculture life. What you can know is a way of approaching, a way of perceiving your relationship with place and a way of making connections. And so it also takes time to build that.
00:54:21
Speaker
But what i encourage everyone to do is to start where you are with the skills that you have with the knowledge that you have from all of your life so for example there's people who come and do courses with me because i i run these teach permaculture courses for educators and they'll they will start at that point going oh gosh i've got to learn all these things before i do it and and then i'll have to work out how to do a pdc a permaculture design course like forget like you might want to do a permaculture design course but you might just want to offer like a permaculture women's circle in your garden
00:54:58
Speaker
and And you're teaching permaculture. Or you may want to be offering playgroup for children, growing a garden, harvesting things, cooking it up in a cob oven or a pizza oven, whatever you want to do. Or you might be an architect.
00:55:16
Speaker
And your practice of architecture has started to show you opportunities where you can bring in permaculture way of thinking and integrate design of the landscape with your building and and and so there's people who've done the course who then oh okay I see how my world and my knowledge and my profession intersects with this world of permaculture and then so they've taken that and designed up a permaculture course for architects in a master's level to show other architects how to integrate permaculture thinking
00:55:50
Speaker
So what what I'm trying to do is not to teach people how to teach a particular type of permaculture. It's like, okay, here here's this world of permaculture. How does that intersect with your world and your understanding and your life and your profession and all the experience that you bring in? Like, it's not you start here now and you're going to become a permaculture educator.
00:56:11
Speaker
You are you with all your beautiful uniqueness and all the things that you, all your life experience and the life experience of your family that's been shared with you. And maybe you just put a lens of permaculture or cast your eye towards a more ecological way of doing things, perhaps. Or maybe you've already been doing that and it's just a new language, a few things.
00:56:30
Speaker
Start where you can. Build up your confidence in doing that. Play with it. Try it out. Maybe start with a workshop. And then you might build it into something else. You might be a...
00:56:41
Speaker
ah musician there's one woman who she's a um performing cellist and so she then started writing songs to create a performing tour of a classical piece of music with children's artwork to express permaculture through that.
00:57:02
Speaker
That's permaculture education. ah You could write a book and that'd be permaculture education. You could do a podcast and that could be permaculture education. And so what ah what I really believe very strongly is that all of us can begin now. It's not like you have to wait until you've got a certain level of experience. like Every conversation that you have is an opportunity to be able to play with permaculture ideas.
00:57:28
Speaker
and it's shifting away from that sense of like I have to know everything and then I'll be your teacher. like We're kind of over that way of being in a learning environment. like Every breath you take is a learning. like When you breathe in, like you get a sort of a sense of what the kind of species are out there or you might get a sense of whether there's a fire happening. everything Every moment of every day,
00:57:52
Speaker
is a learning experience. Every conversation is a learning experience. And so just shifting our notion about what is education and what it means to create space learning spaces.
00:58:04
Speaker
I don't know if I answered your question, but that's kind of how I see permaculture education. It's not like you have to climb this great big mountain, then from the top of the mountain, and yell out to permaculture wisdom. so you just live into it and live into it with all your heart and in and all the ways and with the gentleness and kindness to invite other people into that space and to like, yeah, really practice that art of the invitation of like how you can connect in many different ways as possible.
00:58:31
Speaker
and that's what permaculture education is for me that's what i really try and invite everyone who comes into the sort of the worlds that i engage with to think like yeah what does it what does it mean for me what does it mean for my community how is it that i can show up in a way that i feel safe and confident to speak up and then if you take that first step you don't know where it's going to go from there. You can't actually you can't plan where it's going to go from there.
00:58:57
Speaker
know every time you take a new step new opportunities unfold and then you take another step and more opportunities unfold and then you just keep them making choices and decisions along the way. If you have a sort of certain lens and perspective that you're entering into then you'll attract those kind of opportunities.
00:59:14
Speaker
So I think that's kind of how I see the education world in permaculture.
00:59:20
Speaker
Wow, Maura, thank you for bringing such aliveness into this sweaty little container we've been inhabiting for the last hour or so. It's just such a treat to be in your presence and I feel like my brain is alight with so many creative connections that are forming. I think you've really expanded my understanding of permaculture and i I'm sure that people are going to be feeling that that buzz when they listen to this too. So thank you so much.
00:59:47
Speaker
Well, thank you for having me. And it's absolutely amazing that we're going to be screening a film here tonight and here at Crystal Waters. I feel absolutely honoured that you've decided to stop here and and screen the film at Crystal Waters and be part of our community. and Thanks for having me on your show. Such a pleasure.
01:00:07
Speaker
That was permaculture designer and teacher Morag Gamble, whose offerings I've linked in the show notes. And please do share this episode if you thought it was a bit of all right and spend the night at Crystal Waters if you need to hear a Wompoo fruit dove going Wompoo, Wompoo outside your tent.
01:00:25
Speaker
And in 14 sunrises time, I'll be back with another inspiration-drenched Riskilliance episode. Thanks for tuning in.