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Finding God in the Compost Pile with Gareth Devenish
126 Plays1 hour ago
It’s colder than a penguin’s big toe here in Djaara Country, so we’re cosying up by the fire for a yarn with Gareth Devenish. I call Gareth the Snoop Dogg of permaculture, he calls himself a sovereign man walking in Country, subject to natural lore, seeking a connection with the cosmos. Call off your obligations for the next hour because Gareth’s crackling mix of irreverence and truth telling is something really special.
🔥 How to yarn
🔥 Why land ownership is a furphy
🔥 Native vs. exotic trees and colonial malaise
🔥 What is our responsibility to Country?
🔥 Nomadic agriculture
🔥 Quantum physics, free will and a post-truth era
🔥 Useful jobs in the time of AI
🔥 Why peacemaking with first nations people should be our #1 priority
🔥 Pay the rent!
🔥 Finding god in the compost heap
🔥 Does consciousness even exist?
🔥 Tips for planting and growing healthy trees
🔥 The best way to learn new skills
🔥 The scars which make us beautiful
🧙♀️ LINKY POOS
Gareth’s tree nursery ~ The Farm Tree Nursery (ships around Aus!)
Gareth’s email ~ garethdevenish@gmail.com
🧡 Support Reskillience on Patreon (plz don’t use the app it takes a fee, go desktop) 🧡
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to 'Riskillians' and Host's Background
00:00:03
Speaker
race scallia Hey, this is Katie and you're tuned into Riskillians, a podcast about the hard, soft and surprising skills that will help us stay afloat if our modern systems don't.
00:00:19
Speaker
These sound waves are travelling your way from Jarrah Country, Central Victoria, where there's a thin layer of ice on the pond in the garden and the lawn is frozen solid.
00:00:30
Speaker
My fingers are so cold in the mornings that the goats flinch when I grab their udders. Sorry, ladies. And our cat has turned into a loaf of bread, baked fresh daily in front of the fire.
00:00:43
Speaker
We're spending a lot of time in front of the fire. Our old friend Fire, who arrives in autumn and doesn't leave till spring.
The Significance of Fire and Building a Backyard Fire Pit
00:00:52
Speaker
Each morning, I make fire breakfast, a crunchy platter of paper and leaves and sticks, followed by a main course of logs, and finally settling into a slow and glowing digestion which warms our home all day.
00:01:07
Speaker
Humans and fire have been pals for more than one and a half million years, and it's thought that our brains grew big and juicy when we unlocked cooked food, sending fats and proteins and lamb shanks straight to the neocortex.
00:01:21
Speaker
We all feel this ancestral rightness when sitting around a campfire. Backs cold and noses warm, stars falling and embers rising into the night sky.
00:01:32
Speaker
Stories that are too dark, too personal to share during daylight hours can be safely caught in the soft netting of firelight. And no matter how shy your singing voice, you can count on the fire to crackle its applause.
00:01:46
Speaker
If you haven't gathered around a fire in a while, or if you don't have a wood burner at home, it's easy to create a fire pit in your backyard or courtyard with an old washing machine drum from the tip.
00:01:56
Speaker
We found one amongst the junk on our block. And it's perfect because it's just the right size and it has all these tiny air holes so that the fire can breathe. Just don't go burning instant noodle cups or asbestos like the guy who used to live here did.
Introducing Gareth Devonish and His Permaculture Journey
00:02:10
Speaker
The conversation you're about to hear was recorded in front of our fire on a Sunday morning. My guest and I are sitting on either side of the hearth in green corduroy armchairs, paying very little attention to the microphones and having a good old-fashioned yarn.
00:02:26
Speaker
You'll hear the tick of the fireplace heating up, especially at the start, with the whoosh of wind down the chimney and around our poorly sealed windows, and hopefully the warmth of this exchange.
00:02:37
Speaker
I've had requests to get this local legend on the podcast, and your wish is my command. It's Gareth Devonish, who, when I asked him, how the hell do I introduce you? He replied, I'm a sovereign man walking in country, subject to natural law, seeking a connection with the cosmos.
00:02:55
Speaker
Gareth and I go back a few years now. We lived together at Meliodora, home of David Holmgren and Sue Dennett. And there's not much Gareth can't do. But to name a few standouts, he grows trees...
00:03:08
Speaker
He designs market gardens, builds glorious structures from scraps, teaches permaculture and gets very passionate about not being a dickhead to mother country.
00:03:18
Speaker
We yarn about how to yarn, land ownership furfies and colonial venom, nomadic agriculture, useful jobs in the time of AI, God in the compost heap, hot takes on consciousness and why peacemaking with First Nations people should be our number one priority.
00:03:34
Speaker
It's really beautiful stuff. Gareth almost cried about three times, which is definitely one of my podcast success metrics. I really loved this episode, but then again, I love every single one of these conversations.
00:03:46
Speaker
And thanks to everyone who gets in touch to tell me that you do too. You can send me an email at katie.com.au or opt for a public display of affection by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts.
00:03:59
Speaker
I am so grateful to those people who are supporting the show on Patreon, including newest patrons Tony, Samantha, Sally, Mel, and Alana. Thank you for helping me carve out more time for recording and editing and researching and all the to-dos which make podcasting a rewarding but intense sport.
00:04:17
Speaker
You're all ridiculously generous and so very appreciated.
Exploring Cultural Identity and Storytelling with Gareth
00:04:22
Speaker
We're all at patreon.com forward slash reskillings if you want to check it out. And here's my friend Gareth Devanish.
00:04:35
Speaker
This is the fire. You can hear clicking and crackling in the background, by the way. But it felt like a great idea to be cozied up against the fireplace for this conversation. But it's also making me feel kind of complacent and snoozy. And like, I don't have to do my job of asking you the right questions, which...
00:04:55
Speaker
is inherently effortful it would be nice to just curl up and yarn just yeah how do we do that like we can do that what's the art of the yarn let's start by asking questions i mean you know like first of all i guess you should ask me who i am because the the listeners don't necessarily know who i am and what my claim to infamy is and um I was thinking more credentials, but infamy is even more interesting. Well, claim to infamy, credentials, you know, you say potato, I say potato, you know, like, whatever.
00:05:30
Speaker
So why do you have a funny accent? Well, I'd like to think it's like not that funny. I mean, it's an interesting accent. Depends how you use it. accent, I was born in um the town of Edmonton in Canada. My mother's family were Australian. My mother was Australian.
00:05:46
Speaker
But I was born in Edmonton in Canada and I came here first when I was seven. Then I went back to Canada when I was 15 and lived there until was 24 and came back here.
00:05:58
Speaker
When I was 24 to Australia, yeah. That's why I have a funny accent. It's quite bizarre, like when I was in ki Canada, i spoke like a Canadian. When I first came back to Australia for the first, you know, four years, I'd actually fully regained my Australian accent, which I had when I was a child.
00:06:12
Speaker
And so my accent shifted and morphed, right? And there was about 30, I went on, I think, all the sacred run, and it was with Native American people had come to Australia to run around Australia carrying a message of hope and sobriety and peace and that, you know, as indigenous people, we were in solidarity with each other.
00:06:32
Speaker
And I was sitting around the fire late at night with Uncle Gabby Ted Thomas, who is now passed. And we were just all yarning away. And um Uncle Gabby Ted turned to me and said, what's your story, young fella?
00:06:46
Speaker
And I said, well, you know, i feel a bit confused. I'm caught between cultures. You know, I have lived here for so long and I've lived there for so long, you know, identify so strongly with both Australia and Canada in many ways.
00:07:00
Speaker
And the Native American fellow says to me, well you just need to figure out where you belong. And I woke up in the morning, my accent was like this. So I've got a hybrid accent. I can, you know, I sound neither Canadian nor the Joyce sound, Australian.
00:07:16
Speaker
Some people say West Country or Wales, and other people say Southern Ireland. But no, none of those things, just a hybrid. Yeah, well, it adds to the mystique, in a way, the unpinned downableness of Gareth. I guess so.
00:07:34
Speaker
I guess so. Yeah, I guess so. It's interesting. when you know Of course, it freaked my friends out when I woke up and my accent was completely different. But I wasn't putting it on, as can be seen many, many years later. My accent completely, it's stuck.
00:07:51
Speaker
Yeah. And I guess that's because I decided who I was and where I came from. My subconscious knows, my conscious self can't really tell you, but subconscious must know.
00:08:04
Speaker
Well, I just want to acknowledge that there's wind, a blustery sound that's probably also infiltrating this recording that's kind of coming down our chimney and the blind is...
00:08:19
Speaker
flapping a little because we haven't really got some good seals in this house. So there might be some ambient sounds, which I hope just adds to the atmosphere rather than detracts from Gareth's words. I'm sure it will.
00:08:34
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I do want to ask you a bit more about yarning because I hear that word really oftenly used now. applied to all kinds of different conversations and hopefully a nod to a more grounded and emergent style of relating and conversing but what does it actually mean to yarn and like what are some some techniques that you know about having good stories and story time and you know around a fire and exchange of information and ideas like there things that you know about yarning that could help us
00:09:14
Speaker
have these conversations a little more fruitfully? Yeah.
00:09:23
Speaker
I don't know. Like over time, people in their lives, hopefully, you know, accumulate bit of wisdom, whether that's through the bitter bitter medicine of trial and error.
00:09:38
Speaker
Yeah, yarning... Yeah, over time you accumulate like a little bit. like It doesn't really matter how old you are, you've accumulated like you your amount of like some total of things that you might know and stories that actually have relationship to those.
00:09:53
Speaker
And then there's some stories that are just entertaining. you know and there's like life experiences which are like you know that we like to recount or talk about is it's just like telling our story you know and different people have different stories but you know some people's stories are really exciting and out there and have like you know um in my life just largely due to the way that i um grew up but then also chose to live it i've Filled it full of experience. Yeah, but interestingly enough only because I was in certain places at certain times, you know, like have Certain things happened. Not everything happens by design like the quality of our story About stories is is is I mean, we've all got them but basically it's the quality of our experience yeah What about perceiving the beauty or interestingness of something where others might overlook
00:10:49
Speaker
those details like I see just the perception of a piece of a story that you could bring to life you know you put some spit and shine on something and it becomes an amazing story but essentially it's like One time I heard this story that I'll never forget. it was um It was a woman talking about the fattening of a raindrop off the corner of a gutter. Absolutely. And it's like magic listening to that, but it was just a droplet of water.
00:11:15
Speaker
Yeah. But that story, it transmitted something to me and it stays with me. Yeah, and that's the art of words, isn't it? Being able to use words to evoke imagery or emotive response, you know?
00:11:29
Speaker
The English language, for all its trickery and its bizarreness, also has the capacity to be able to evoke enormous. I mean, all language does, I'm sure. So, you know, a good storyteller is poets, like these people know that sort thing.
00:11:43
Speaker
And you're right, I mean, you know, and in terms of people's personal stories, like you're you're right about like the droplet of water falling. But then, you know, it's like that's also about perception. don't know, some people take psychedelic drugs to be able to have that sort of like perception of like the importance of the intricacy of belief.
00:12:00
Speaker
we We're not naturally tuned in to like perceive that beauty in everything all the time, you know, you know, like not naturally or not habituated. We're not habituated to it. You're right. I think maybe naturally we are.
00:12:14
Speaker
One of my great joys is are sitting in the garden looking, watching bugs, you know, just because bugs are
Permaculture Philosophy and Lifestyle
00:12:19
Speaker
cool and there's a whole thing going on there. So I like to get a bit stoned and just sit in the garden and watch bugs for hours.
00:12:26
Speaker
And then, you know, like when we're talking about people stories, like, you know, like a life lived like all across the country, having lived in many places, done doing many things, might be all across the globe, lived in many places, doing many things, you know, and these people have great grand stories to tell.
00:12:43
Speaker
Yeah, but also a life lived in, you know, somebody who just decided to set down their roots and grew a garden. and then watch that grow and then year after year put energy in. So that also is a story.
00:12:58
Speaker
Words have the capacity to be able to transmit the joy and excitement that both the the wild life full of adventure but also the the the the beautiful richness of a life lived changing a garden and raising a family.
00:13:16
Speaker
And so we don't all need to have like mad adventures and some people are more attuned to that than others or some people require that more. And people like myself that have moved around a lot and have had many different adventures and like an extraordinarily rich life full of adventure miss out on the things that the person who watches the seasons come and the seasons go, you know, lives and dies in their own yeah people who know you Gareth and people who I guess are mutually connected to you and I have requested you to come on the podcast it's really cute yeah like if I've ever posted anything on Instagram like with you in it or we've had an interaction where you've come up people are like you've got to interview Gareth and why do you think people would want to hear from you in this space like what is that special something that you bring
00:14:16
Speaker
Well, last night you referred to me as the Snoop Dogg of permaculture, right? And that's not just because I spoke late.
00:14:27
Speaker
It's because, like, I think to a lot of people, like... um There's like the recognition that you can be really passionate about permaculture, you can be really passionate about um the environment, you can be really passionate about your community, and that can still be fun. It doesn't need to be all brown brown brown rice and lentils, you know? like As much as I love ram raisin lentils, it's it can it can still be fun.
00:14:53
Speaker
You can still have that like sort of... You can be really passionate about those things and actually contribute heaps to them. But it's not necessary to be at the pinnacle of...
00:15:04
Speaker
How would you describe that Katie? The apex of wholesomeness. The apex of wholesomeness. I love it. At the top of the trellis. Yeah, you don't have to be there. You can be at the bottom of the trellis.
00:15:15
Speaker
In fact, it's people at the bottom of the trellis that are holding the trellis up. I love it. I love the way you can just roll with a gardening metaphor. And what I also am really curious and excited to hopefully draw out in this conversation is the fact that you live really differently to a lot of like poster children for permaculture, if not, you know, sustainability and homesteading and that whole space, which does tend to evoke an image of someone with a cute cottage on ah on acreage. You're defying that stereotype of what it means to get back to the land.
00:15:53
Speaker
And I wonder if you could talk a little bit about like your living setup and the choices you've made around being more like, flourishing in, in the gaps and being kind of everywhere, but nowhere.
00:16:05
Speaker
That's just my perception of you, but we're not here to talk about like how you flip houses to get to the quintessential homestead. Like you're very much disavowing that particular pathway.
00:16:18
Speaker
Well, first of all, like you know um the ownership of land is a furphy. It's um when you buy a land, again, we're talking about the tricks of the English language. There's many of them, you know like um the word Aboriginal, for example, the prefix ab means not.
00:16:34
Speaker
So as in abnormal, so the word Aboriginal means not original. And you know there's many tricks in the English language. And one of them is lot of title. So you buy the lot.
00:16:44
Speaker
yeah But all in the sense in essence you're actually buying is the lines on the map. You have no sovereignty over your land. That land still is owned and held like legally by the crown.
00:16:56
Speaker
yeah all you have eat like all you actually buy the lands the The idea of land ownership, especially in this country, is foreign to the culture of the country. And so, you know, as much as as much as I understand that people want to have that illusion of sovereignty over country, over their patch or their capacity, to just so that nobody can ever throw them off it.
00:17:21
Speaker
yeah It's like it's mine and nobody can throw me off this. That's not quite true, but you at least have the illusion of it. and many people are able to stay on land that they in parentheses own but like for the most of their lives so there is value in buying land but for me it just seemed to be like a foreign concept and the more that I actually dug into it the more It seemed to be like an odd thing to want to do and to do
00:17:55
Speaker
And yeah, like when you have that sort of, when you actually free yourself from that burden, then all land becomes available to you. Yeah. In all places in all country.
00:18:06
Speaker
And I love the fact that I get to help so many different people people in their homesteading visions. And that I love to get to work with so many different people on know their properties and and creating their their visions and their ideas.
00:18:22
Speaker
The other thing is that I grow trees, as we haven't brought that up in this it'll come up in this conversation yet. And you know like I get to plant trees everywhere. i get to i get to like have effect in a positive way on vast amounts of land Well, I wanted to ask you about this.
00:18:43
Speaker
um I've heard, i think it was Tyson Yunkaporter say, um don't plant trees, country plants trees. And I wanted to put that to you as a as a razor of trees and a purveyor of trees and a planter of trees.
00:18:57
Speaker
ah don't know, where do you sit with that? One of the fastest ways to grow trees is just to fence cattle off of country. yeah Trees will naturally regenerate themselves. But that depends on what we're actually growing and where we're growing it.
00:19:11
Speaker
You know, there's huge amounts of money and funding available for planting endemic native trees in places. I raise some endemic native trees. But most of the trees that I raise are for permaculturalists with a view to creating anthropocentric, ecologically ah diverse and complex systems, right? But they're anthropocentric.
00:19:32
Speaker
It is for the purpose of humans to that habitation and to live, yeah? So in that case, it makes sense that Tyson Young-Kaporter is somebody I respect very, very much, yeah?
00:19:44
Speaker
And I understand what he's saying, like from a spiritual point of view. But we are also creating these and for anthrocentric spaces for people to live in, yeah for communities to thrive and exist in, and to provide the food sources for our children for generations to come.
00:20:03
Speaker
yeah And that that's that's literally what we're seeking to create in our villages and in permaculture, that's what we're seeking to create. These are ecologically diverse.
00:20:15
Speaker
They create habitat for other creatures. yeah But their primary function is to support us, our families and our communities. And the net result is like trees, tree trees, trees, trees.
00:20:29
Speaker
I mean, I'm very passionate about trees. Like they give us so much and different trees give us different things. And things from, you know, ah like other places, their unique but beauty, like in our anthropocentric, in our own communities, like within the context of my communities, like have a place, just like people from different communities have a place.
00:20:49
Speaker
What do you think about people poisoning willows along creek lines? I think it's stupid.
00:20:56
Speaker
I mean, it's better to poison them than it is to like fucking drive a bulldozer through the creek. And if you are going to poison them, just be sure that you've got something else to plant there really quickly. But the idea that willows somehow are like some huge problem to our waterways is simply fallacious.
00:21:12
Speaker
Willows literally slow water down as it moves through the landscape. And so places with willows on them often in a drought time will be greener. it's not because the willow is is rubbing the water as was once thought.
00:21:26
Speaker
you know, or conventional wisdom, what have you. But an observant people will watch, will will will look, an observant people will look and see the way that a willow will slow water down as it runs through the landscape.
00:21:40
Speaker
And the slower the water moves through the landscape, the more resilient the country becomes to like drought. We know that a lot of the waterways ah previous to European occupation, but a lot of the waterways in this particular region of central Victoria were very full of reeds and common water reed and kimbuji and other other plant species, bulrushes, other plant species.
Indigenous Land Management and Sustainable Practices
00:22:07
Speaker
We know that they were full of those things. We know that water moved very slowly through this landscape. And that in fact, rather than being creeks, it was a series of billabonds, which held water slowly as it moved through the landscape.
00:22:19
Speaker
So the European experience has been to like create rivers for irrigation and for the cattle and for traps and for all kinds of things. right and that's So that's part of the fundamental changing of the landscape that's happened.
00:22:32
Speaker
but Nature knew best, country knew best, to give nod to Tyson Younger Porter again. you know Country knew best and that slow movement of water through the landscape, whether that's by a willow or by those natural processes, is something that needs to be strongly encouraged.
00:22:51
Speaker
If you kill a willow, you better have something to plant there straight away afterwards or even as it's decomposing, as the roots are decomposing, because That root system is holding the bank of the river together.
00:23:03
Speaker
And to do things without forethought as as of the consequences of erosion and like other possibilities, like, you know, yeah, it's fallacious.
00:23:15
Speaker
So much of the the venom that is directed towards non-Indigenous plants, whether they're perceived as weeds or not, literally, I believe, comes from a deep psychological melee in Australia that we have not only committed genocide against the people of this country, but that we've just spoiled it.
00:23:46
Speaker
The accounts of the early settlers describe as Australia prior to European occupation when people manage the country, when there are enough people prior to disease to manage the country.
00:23:57
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's it's tragic. But that, again, leads to our responsibility. yeah And the thing is, like the idea of like taking a 1788 snapshot of what Australia used to look like and restoring Australia back to that, well, one there's two things. It's inherently racist.
00:24:19
Speaker
in that it denies the fact that First Nations people of this country traded in plants, traded with each other, that what occurred here was not some sort of hunter-gatherer lifestyle, but actually nomadic agriculture and under pristine conditions.
00:24:35
Speaker
yeah and that That was actually the lifestyle the people here lived lived in. um And that that that culture is never in a vacuum. And so the idea that we would put it back to something that is a vacuum is not only fallacious, but it's racist.
00:24:52
Speaker
What we need to do is, or what we could do instead of that, is thoughtfully, thoughtfully respond to what both our community's needs are going to be and what the ecology's needs are.
00:25:07
Speaker
And that includes, you know, not logging any more old growth forest. And it includes and ensuring that there are areas of biodiverse native species within our farms and within our, so that we're providing not only arboretum,
00:25:24
Speaker
of those native and endemic species, yeah? And that we're restoring the landscape and the bush, like, you know, in the way that it should should be. And to provide a habitat for animals and like that like those particular things and all those sorts of things. This is part of our responsibility as stewards of country.
00:25:41
Speaker
But then the other part is to provide for ourselves and our own communities. Yeah. And for the fact that we are going to live, we are going to die. We're going to have babies.
00:25:52
Speaker
They're going to live. They're going to die. They're going to have babies. And if we're going to exist as a species on this planet, yeah, we need to figure out real quick how to come back into harmony with those natural cycles.
00:26:09
Speaker
Two things. You're fucking awesome. And can you describe nomadic agriculture? I guess it's what I do now. Yeah, nice.
00:26:21
Speaker
Oh, nomadic agriculture. So I've seen places, for example, in East Gippsland, I've been taken by elders to to see places where the Murnong was dug and then other places where ginger lilies were dug. And they would go through and dig the ginger lily for example leaving just enough in there for the patch to be to regenerate and renew itself and go back there again the next year when the ginger lilies were right moving from place to place according to season and what was ripe in different places within like wide wide areas of like travel people moving from in long distances I mean in some places in v Victoria there's evidence of stone huts and more permanent settlements like down around Portland and have also been fortunate enough to be taken by
00:27:07
Speaker
Elders there to see those things, you know, and fish traps and all kinds of things that allow for permanent settlements, yeah, and longer term settlements. But even those people would sometimes move.
00:27:17
Speaker
Yeah, okay, so seasonal variation of location, but also seeding of the things that then are going to be come back, they're going to be returned to. Yeah, renewing, renewing things, like a deliberate, yeah ah like it's not just like taking everything. Exactly. Because you can, yeah. Yeah.
00:27:33
Speaker
So over time you come to an understanding of like, okay, we need to leave 10% of the ginger lilies here or maybe half of them. Yeah. So that we can actually get the same crop next year and be able to sustain our entire population.
00:27:46
Speaker
Yeah. These days we do it, do do things differently. do We do it via green manure. Yeah. And we might do it in one place. Yeah. And we've learned these like, you know, the amalgamation of like, um, uh, European farming techniques with first nations wisdom, you know, isn't necessarily a bad thing. That's actually a pretty good thing. You know, when we're able to, um, have that sense of place and we have to support populations far in excess of what the country supported in 1788. So that's just the reality of where we're at right now.
00:28:18
Speaker
Yeah. yeah Yeah, i think I think it was Wendell Berry who responded to someone's question around where do I start with putting roots down when I've had this pinball life of going from one place to another place and I know the value of of just deeply connecting with with the land and putting some roots down, but how do i how do I start that from this basis of kind of constant change and globetrotting in a lot of people's cases? And he said just...
00:28:50
Speaker
stop somewhere and begin that thousand year process or generations long process of belonging. And I wanted to ask you about this sense of belonging for white, white fellows and second peoples. And I know that the reclamation of our indigeneity is we're all earth beings. And so we're all indigenous to this planet, but not to particular places.
00:29:13
Speaker
Like what you think about folks really living into that sense of deep belonging and maybe like a connection with country when we're colonizers? Does that, is that like icky or is that something to be furthered and and celebrated?
00:29:29
Speaker
Like how do we do that sensitively? Geez, that's a curly one. And it's only curly because like no matter what I say right now, somebody's not going to not go agree with me. But I think it's really important that it's addressed. And so I'm i'm going to humbly give my perspective on it.
00:29:46
Speaker
Yeah. First thing is... We're all indigenous somewhere. Yeah. And it's been colonization and the process of colonization and empire building.
00:29:59
Speaker
And then more recently industrialization industrialization and consumer culture that has separated us from our indigeneity.
00:30:10
Speaker
Yeah. And it doesn't matter where you come from in the world or where you came from, at some stage you're indigenous to some place.
Critique of Colonial Impact and Capitalism
00:30:18
Speaker
Right. Now, due to the effects of genocide and colonial genocide perpetuated specifically in this country by the British,
00:30:27
Speaker
and the removal of people from one place to another, which is a deliberate attempt to break connection to country. yeah So the country can be transformed into more, ah again in parenthesis, more productive means.
00:30:43
Speaker
And often through no fault of their own, due to war or famine and many other things. People have moved all around the country and this country is reflective of not only the British british colonial diasporas,
00:31:00
Speaker
yeah um or the population of this country is reflective know of not only the British colonial diasporas and the penal colony beginnings of the country.
00:31:11
Speaker
And the people within it are victims, first of all. need all the people within it are victims of that particular brutality. yeah That particular poonsie, wig wearing, fancy costume, morally bankrupt.
00:31:30
Speaker
we don't Don't forget anemic and vitamin D deficient. Anemic, vitamin D deficient, weird ass. culture that somehow, despite its ridiculousness, managed to dominate the entire planet or large chunks of the planet for a long time and perpe perpetuate immoral, like absolutely immoral, heinous acts on people in order to maintain um and populations in order to maintain power.
00:31:59
Speaker
yeah And that's the reality of where we are today. We are a result of that. And any glorification of that bullshit, like in history or anything else, is just that. The glorification of just ridiculous bullshit.
00:32:15
Speaker
yeah It was wrong. It was bad. It was weird and fanciful jumping on somebody else's country and claiming it. Hear ye, hear ye, I claim this gland for King George. Like, really? Really?
00:32:28
Speaker
Where did the bullshit start? Is that just anomaly? It's entitlement. And there was something really deeply within the British culture, yeah, um that believed in the superiority of their race and the superiority of, know, especially the aristocratic group of people, the superiority of their class. They had this fundamental belief in in their right...
00:32:51
Speaker
to be able to, because of the superiority their superiority, like to be able to like despoil and to commit atrocity in claiming land and riches for themselves.
00:33:04
Speaker
So that's where it started. Is that being corrupted by the accumulation of money, which is like an artificial sense of someone's worth beyond the investment and the riches of just being in right relationship with place? Is it Does something change within us when we just have a stockpile of gold behind us?
00:33:26
Speaker
Yes, something definitely changed in large parts of the world where they actually created you know currency beyond you know what was useful. So when gold became currency or all the other things, there's something certainly changed.
00:33:40
Speaker
You know, we were discussing this just before, I don't know if you caught it before, but in the Bible it says that it's the love of money that's the root of all evil. It's not money itself. And one of my Garethisms is that money is like a shovel. You can either use it to plant yourself a garden or you can use it to dig yourself a grave.
00:33:57
Speaker
You know, it's your choice. Yes. And so, yeah, there is that change that happened when covetousness and the accumulation of wealth became much more important. And the maintenance of um decadent lifestyles, which were actually like extraordinarily unhealthy lifestyles in themselves, yeah?
00:34:14
Speaker
um So the maintenance of these decadent lifestyles, yeah? And I don't know if it is a natural tendency in humans to want to enslave each other or to want to you know dominate over others or to have others serve them.
00:34:28
Speaker
If that's a natural term in tendency or if that's learnt behaviour. I would think it's probably learnt behaviour and it's been held up. That sort of business has been held up to us as being the pinnacle of achievement. Yeah.
00:34:39
Speaker
When in fact you've achieved nothing but except for ah depriving somebody else of their liberty. Well we spoke about this around the fire last night, like the insidiousness and effectiveness of stories that spin something as noble and admirable and to be to be replicated when actually it's just completely, like you're saying, weird and strange behaviour.
00:35:02
Speaker
And what we need, like, you know, what we can do when where when we're looking at any set of behavior that we seek to emulate, it's like, okay, step back, right back from it, yeah? And step back from all the social mores that surround it and all those sorts of things. And like, is this good for me?
00:35:19
Speaker
Is it good for the planet? You know, is it good for my community? And that's those permaculture principles, isn't it it? Care of earth, care of people, and care of sharing surplus is the third one of that.
00:35:31
Speaker
Is it that easy when you're completely addicted to the the the drugs? Like we you also spoke about last night, the Orwellian futures and the Huxley futures and how the Huxley future is playing out where we're completely and we're actually willingly participating in our own numification and disconnection. But we know that there's no satiation that actually exists at the end of that road. You can know that, but you still go back.
00:36:01
Speaker
For But, you know, i mean, people can make choices too. Like how, how much do I engage with that? You know, well, that's the question. How much agency do we have? How much free will do we have? You've got it all.
00:36:14
Speaker
Do we really? Always. Are you sure? Yeah, absolutely. What do you, what do you say to people who think that free will doesn't exist? Oh, that everything in fact is you're preordained. And i don't know, I can really see that.
00:36:29
Speaker
I see that in myself. I see that in history. It feels like there's an inevitability to the way things unfold.
00:36:38
Speaker
But apparently we have to believe we have free will because that is healthy for our minds. but it doesn't actually exist. This is one of those um questions that I would have to say i don't know, right?
00:36:51
Speaker
Yeah, but I do know that, you know, given certain life choices at various times in my life, that there were choices that i actually made. And I could have gone left and I could have gone right. And instead of going left to go up to Nimbin and Byron Bay and that area, which is my intention at that time, I thought, I haven't been cold in a while. I might go see what vi Victoria, was beginning in winter.
00:37:16
Speaker
I might go see what Victoria is like. Yeah, I've never been there. I had been when I was a little kid, but I'd never been. so I created an whole life as a result of simple, simple,
00:37:28
Speaker
simple turn on the road. So how do we... Was that inevitable or was that a choice? I don't know. But I would like to think I made a choice that day. Okay, so... But every other reality, if you listen to quantum physics, every other single reality is also playing out, right?
00:37:43
Speaker
And every other choice that I made, and every other choice that I made that I went left instead of right, you know And they're all playing out all at one time. And there's something like really comforting about that. i find that so comforting too. I'm like, I'm really fucking stylish in a parallel life.
00:37:57
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I get haircuts in another dimension. And when you think about that, like you know like you know whether it's pre-will or whether it's pre-ordained, becomes a little bit moot.
00:38:10
Speaker
yeah It's just like, what are we experiencing right now? like What are we experiencing in this incarnation, in this place, right now? yeah And if we are all all that is experiencing itself, if all of us are all that is experiencing itself, then we want to make the most of that situation. I think we have the pre-will to make the most of things.
00:38:30
Speaker
Do you think that there's meaning and opportunity in where we are in where we are right now in terms of how messed up the situation is and how precarious our collective situation is? Is there some kind of sweet possibility in just how low we've sunk that we can find a way out and through?
00:38:52
Speaker
Or is it simply like, no, that was all really fucked up and now we have to change course?
00:38:58
Speaker
I think some things have made it really difficult. I think like even as this podcast will go up on the internet, so will 500 other podcasts, right? in which Far inferior podcasts. Far inferior podcasts with completely different information sets will also go up on the internet as well.
00:39:14
Speaker
And that's one of the problems that we have is that we've created ourselves like almost a post-truth society. Any fancy that you have can be followed up on the internet and justified in so many different ways.
00:39:29
Speaker
I think the importance of actually restoring the planet is apparent to most people. How we go about that is like largely how we differ. To large corporations who are making huge amounts of money out of the so-called renewables revolution and and all this sort of business, like you know we're watching another thing play out where capitalism is taking advantage of people's fear and creating yet another layer of like consumption.
00:39:55
Speaker
It's sad to watch it play out. Because crisis should give us the opportunity to do great things as communities, yeah? But we're watching capitalism take advantage of this.
00:40:07
Speaker
And we're watching huge amounts of money being made. The marketing of the latest renewable energy technology, whether that's ah driving a Tesla or whatever, without ever realising that there are not enough resources on the planet for everybody to have a fucking Tesla, yeah?
00:40:23
Speaker
It's just not possible. i don't think people want to be associated with their Teslas right now. Well, you know, whatever it is. There's just not enough resources on the planet for everybody to have. The sort of energy that we consume, mostly as in you know most of us in our Western cultures
Simplicity, Satisfaction, and AI's Impact on Jobs
00:40:40
Speaker
consume. Well, it's the most unsexy prospect to have to minimize or reduce or small or slow our behavior as opposed to just...
00:40:48
Speaker
buying something that facilitates our progress. That's where the satiation lies. And that's what's perverse about the idea of like um looking for satiation in accumulation.
00:41:00
Speaker
yeah Or looking for satiation in that ah attempt to like climb to the top of the heap, which is only ah you only get there due to the enslavement of others anyway, yeah due to the ump depriving other people other other beings of their liberty.
00:41:16
Speaker
You only get to that sort of top of the heap kind of mentality or place. Whereas satiation lies in actually living and loving what you have.
00:41:28
Speaker
and This is my fourth winter in a row. I'm living without heat. And one of my aspirations is for a wood heater in the next place I live winter in. It's a simple aspiration. It's enough. So I'm guilty enough of aspiring. Don't get me wrong.
00:41:43
Speaker
I've lived just fine. I'm healthy as all get out living in the cold. yeah Not always comfortable, but I'm healthy as all get out living like living in winter without heat. um I think it's a con contributor to my great health.
00:41:57
Speaker
So I'm also guilty of aspiring to things I don't really need. so where do you know to draw the line? Well, I don't know. like but As I'm saying, i'm i'm only with maybe I don't need it. Maybe I'll realize that the satiation actually comes in learning not just to live without heat, but fully embracing it, yeah and fully understanding how good it is for me, and all those things.
00:42:21
Speaker
And the satiation comes with all of us, yeah by accepting what we have. If the universe is going to give you something more abundantly, yeah it can happen one of two ways. One is because you strive it, which is all good.
00:42:37
Speaker
But the other way is just because you accept what you have with such joy that the universe can't help, but just offer you more blessing. And that kind of circles back to the storytelling piece around how we use our language and our missives to others to evoke that.
00:42:56
Speaker
That joy and delight and really simple things that might then draw attention and recognition towards all that is rich without being tethered to money.
00:43:08
Speaker
Well, there's a reason they call it spelling. Yeah, it's a spell. And you can use that for both good or evil. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For great beauty or, you know, the entire legal system keeps us bound within words.
00:43:22
Speaker
Yeah. And that's what it is. We need lawyers to be able to decipher that. Although potentially with, you know, we haven't really got into technology, but we brush lightly on the overload of information on of the internet.
00:43:36
Speaker
We haven't really got into technology. Potentially with ChatGTP, it means that lawyers will be out of the job. So that's a really intriguing thing. I like my lawyer, but I prefer he was a farmer.
00:43:49
Speaker
I hadn't really thought about, like I've been frustrated by how language and how that impenetrable thicket of jargon prevents us from engaging in certain spaces.
00:44:03
Speaker
But I hadn't really thought about it to the degree that you're now clarifying. AI is intriguing. Do you use it? I do. yeah Yeah. So I use it for ideas.
00:44:16
Speaker
I use it for, like I use the Google AI, for example, when I want to know something, because I, I, cause I, I get lots of information, not just like a website where I can find information, but I get a synopsis of everything that's been written that Google has available on how to germinate a, I think it was Sequoia seeds because I just wanted to see if anybody had any tricks.
00:44:37
Speaker
Yeah. It's really useful. Yeah. AI is really good. When I'm writing, when I'm writing, currently I'm working on a ah course where I'm teaching organic soil management for, yeah.
00:44:48
Speaker
And I typed in the parameters of the questions that I want to ask and it came up with some stuff. Now I'm not copying that verbatim because that would be cheating, but it gave me a framework under which to let me know the structure of these lessons um that I'm doing and it just saved me a whole bunch of time.
00:45:04
Speaker
So I do use it. Yeah. I think it's really hilarious. I was talking to, some people about this last night, how now you get that synopsis at the top of your search results. And so back in the good old days, you used to have to go into a website and look at the information in the same way that back in the good old days of yore, you had to go to the library and look in a book. And before that, you had to talk to someone. So it's just like these layers upon layers of convenience.
00:45:28
Speaker
that I just find really hilarious that we're not even doing the work to look at a fucking website, let alone open a book. But then at the same time, i mean, you know, like one thing, i understand exactly what you're saying and for sure.
00:45:45
Speaker
But one thing that it does mean is that entire layer layers of middle management, yeah, or people that interpret certain things, Sadly, they're going to be without jobs. So they might actually have to retrain themselves into doing something fucking useful but with the project.
00:45:59
Speaker
What are those useful jobs that you think are immune to the AI-ification of the workforce? Well, they'll be able to build houses using a c combination of AI and 3D printing.
00:46:13
Speaker
And there's like lots of different things which like eventually will come to be. yeah But anything creative. yeah And they'll never be able to replace gardeners. AI cannot.
00:46:25
Speaker
replace a gardener. You can't get a robot to sensitively interact with soil. So not only is gardening like a spiritually wholesome pursuit in life, not only is it both gardening and animal rearing, yeah, are
Empowering Indigenous Communities and Governance
00:46:44
Speaker
spiritually wholesome pursuits to do in life, extraordinarily rich in the variety of experience that they give you,
00:46:53
Speaker
interacting with the earth at the deepest level, which is highly beneficial for your well-being. Not only is all of that true, but it's also future-proof. So get into plants, guys.
00:47:04
Speaker
Get into plants. Nice. And we're going to get into trees very soon, I promise you, but you're just on such a roll that I want to keep asking some of these more philosophical questions for a minute, if that's okay. Sure. One thing I wanted to ask you is i have this vision of Paul King's North Calls the calls it the machine that's kind of this apparatus that we can visualize that is the thing that's gobbling up the resources or turning priceless forests into our form of currency whatever that might be so anyway the machine i visualize is all these cogs and then i think well there are ways that we can kind of throw a chicken bone in those cogs sometimes and grind it to a halt
00:47:45
Speaker
Do you have chicken bones that you're throwing in the machine and what are they? And how would you recommend people consciously intervene in this thing that really is truly on a kind of death, it's got a death wish?
00:47:57
Speaker
I just believe, I believe really strongly in um putting your body where your mouth is. yeah If you want to if you wanted to um speak of defending the planet, you need to defend the planet. um So, for example, in my past, I have often taken part in civil disobedience campaigns to protect certain things.
00:48:14
Speaker
The most recent longer-term blockade campaign was a part of was up in the Northern Rivers where we assisted in stopping coal seam gas mining. These are things that we can do to throw chicken bones in the machine occasionally.
00:48:28
Speaker
yeah But the number one thing we need we we could do to really throw a chicken bone in the machine, right, is actually make peace with the First Nations people of this country, yeah? Because it is in that, when you asked about indigenisation previously, first, like, I didn't really get to finish everything wanted to say because we got dabber in yeah? And I do, I do want to address that.
00:48:50
Speaker
Like, and I think that this is the biggest chicken bone that we can possibly throw. First of all, First Nations people have a sovereign right to country. yeah They lived here, they never ceded it.
00:49:03
Speaker
It's been taken from them through genocide and by force of arms. It has been immorally stolen from them. And they deserve to have it restored. The second thing is First Nations people, most of the ones that I know aren't all that interested in freehold land, but all that crown land, that land that belongs to a foreign monarch, ridiculously belongs to a foreign monarch, could be returned to First Nations people for that for their management and for their empowerment.
00:49:31
Speaker
which is very important to empower First Nations people in their countries to take their place by way of restitution. It's not just important for them, it's important for us.
00:49:44
Speaker
yeah So their conscience can be put to rest. It's important for them because they have secrets that they'll be able to teach us in how to interact with and how to work on country. yeah True government in this country does not sit in Canberra.
00:50:01
Speaker
True government in this country does not sit in Melbourne, it does not sit in Adelaide, it does not sit in Brisbane. or Perth or any of the capital cities Hobart any of them.
00:50:15
Speaker
True gun for government in this country sits in the parks often with a flagging of Port. True government in this country is literally waiting for you to approach it.
00:50:28
Speaker
Make friends.
00:50:31
Speaker
The way forward will become abundantly clear.
00:50:37
Speaker
Important that we pay the rent. Robbie Thorpe says 2%. Really important that we pay the rent to First Nations people, that we actually empower their aspirations outside government funding. Government funding in government institutions, and in fact, even the Aboriginal organisations, because of the government funding, in and of themselves are both coercive and like all things to do with that which enslaves us.
00:51:03
Speaker
Yeah? all things to do with that, only seek to perpetuate the enslavement. They do not seek our liberty. yeah So the more that we can independently do as a result of that, to empower First Nations people, to allow them to independently take their place, elders in council, to seek in country, men's business, women's business, elders in council, right?
00:51:22
Speaker
And the more that we can um do that, our way forward as community becomes more abundantly clear. Until eventually, as a result of living in harmony with nature and living in community with each other, we all become one people.
00:51:41
Speaker
And we all become off-place.
Life, Death, and Nature's Cycles
00:51:44
Speaker
Yeah, we're we're a long way away from that.
00:51:51
Speaker
But you have to plant seeds, you know, because what doesn't happen in my lifetime is gonna happen in somebody else's. Yeah, so that's the biggest chicken bone. It might be a whole cow femur.
00:52:02
Speaker
That's definitely a femur. Probably a kangaroo femur.
00:52:09
Speaker
Do you know the first question that I asked David Holmgren when I moved to Meliodora that I still don't know the answer to, which you won't be surprised to hear because it was such a complex response and I'm going to ask you and see if they overlap or wildly diverge.
00:52:24
Speaker
I asked David, when is a tree dead? Because trees seem to have amazing powers of regeneration and and we also know that There's a web of connectivity happening below the ground.
00:52:40
Speaker
And I've never quite been able to understand when a tree stops living. Well, you know, yeah I'm probably the wrong person to ask that because I don't see... i don't really see death.
00:52:53
Speaker
Well, I'm glad you brought that up. Yeah, I mean, you know, there's the transformation of the particles that contribute to my existence, you know, into something else.
00:53:06
Speaker
And just the same as a tree. Why do things not want to die then? ah said Well, we don't want to die. Well, I don't see animals being too keen on the idea. ah yeah, that's just because you're unsure as to what comes next.
00:53:20
Speaker
But when you do become sure as to what comes next, yeah. And I i found God in my composting because I recognised I was coming out of I'm going back into it. I look forward to becoming a tree. Because to live in simple service without cognitive thought seems to me to be the highest form of existence.
00:53:36
Speaker
It's my cognitive thought that gets me into trouble. the quote from Bill Morrison made famous by Charlie McGee so you know don't mourn for me when I'm gone I'll be shading out somebody's walls
00:53:50
Speaker
or comfrey plants Yeah. So we get to become other things, yeah? And if we have any understanding of quantum physics, like what science has taught us about um physics itself, yeah energy never never changes to something else. a trend It changes. It doesn't dissipate. It doesn't go someplace. It changes into something else.
00:54:10
Speaker
What about our consciousness? But can we, this is, this is, this what I find bizarre. This desire that humans especially have, right?
00:54:20
Speaker
To have this separate entity outside their natural existence, yeah? Whether people call that their consciousness, their soul, their spirit, those other things. I don't know about that, yeah? I don't know about that.
00:54:33
Speaker
But I do know that I get to become everything at all times. I have been everything and I get to become everything, yeah? So we are all literally comprised of the dust of stars.
00:54:45
Speaker
And back into the dust of stars, one day we will all go. You know, there's like lots of trite sayings. There's ones from the Bible. It's like, oh, where, oh, death is your victory? Oh, where, oh, death is your sting?
00:54:59
Speaker
Because it's if you truly understand ecology and nature, there is no death. It's merely the transformation into something else. First Nations people believe in the spirits existing and coexisting with us all around us all the time.
00:55:17
Speaker
Yeah. And maybe that's what you refer to as consciousness. Hmm. but we coexist as other things as well our mortal remains literally transform into something else first of all it's food for worms so then you become a worm then it's food for trees so then you become a tree or blade of grass or whatever eventually back as a Something eats the tree and then eventually the energy that is me will become a human again.
00:55:47
Speaker
And all of these things happen. We know this happens in our ecology. We see it happening around us all the time. yeah This concept that there is something so much more than that has to do with human arrogance.
00:56:00
Speaker
I think anyway. That's enough. It's enough. I am immortal. You are immortal.
00:56:08
Speaker
Yeah, I also get to that point when I'm really honest with myself and I notice that it's the desire for there to be more to the story when there's plenty enough infinity to the story.
00:56:21
Speaker
in the Bible, it talks about people living till like 900 years old and then it just got to be too much. Yeah. So God knocked off a whole bunch of years and said, you'll live for four score years, three score years and ten, which is still 80. Oh, sorry, three score years, 70.
00:56:38
Speaker
And if by reasons of strength you make it to four score years, which is 80, right? Yeah, I mean, modern technology and all these things, we expect to live to it forever, you know, without just simply accepting that we are going to die.
00:56:51
Speaker
And even like the brown bread and lentils version of permaculture and all those things, it's all about longevity and all that sort of stuff. You know, it's kind of cool to just be accepting of the fact that I am going to die and that I want to do that with as much grace and dignity as I possibly can.
00:57:08
Speaker
Hopefully leaving behind a good memory or two. But I'm not going to around for that, so it gives a fuck, really. What tree would you be most excited to be?
00:57:20
Speaker
Well, I think tree form is pretty good. So I'd say a sequoia because they're one of the longest living trees.
00:57:26
Speaker
Or maybe a box tree because they not only do they live long, like ah an Australian native tree, not do they live long, but they coppice amazingly. And the question of when is a tree dead, which is an interesting one that you just asked before.
00:57:39
Speaker
Can you describe coppicing for people who aren't familiar with that term? Coppicing is when ah tree has been cut down or removed. And mean, coppicing can occur like on higher on a tree as well when you cut a stump and it shoots out branches.
00:57:54
Speaker
But often coppicing will happen when somebody cuts a stump right down to the ground and the root system around that tree will send up shoots and little copse of trees.
00:58:05
Speaker
will be created in place of the existing tree. It's interesting because like around here I've seen coppices of trees like that were about 20 metres across, which means that the tree itself must have been 5 to 10 metres across.
00:58:19
Speaker
That's wild. And so seen some pretty crazy, amazing coppices from really big, what must have existed as really, really big trees here here in the in the in central Victoria on the red side of the area.
00:58:35
Speaker
all right we've done a lot of pontification let's round it out with some practical tree planting information because we're coming into the time of the trees although you might be able to dispel a few myths about the best time to plant trees and whatnot but i think that if trees are on people's minds whether they've got ah parcel that they're tending or they want to do some gorilla planting on the common land or whatever they might be doing with trees coming into the cooler months what are some of your key tips for healthy trees yeah so you don't plant a tree directly into a rip for example if you're planting trees you know um in like if you're using machine to rip the ground previous to planting trees you plant them just to the side so they can access the water and nutrient you don't want the root system to grow in a straight line along the far out like through the through the um
00:59:30
Speaker
disturbed soil yeah because then what happens is is that the wind can then blow that tree over it's not well rooted on all four sides of it or eight the multiplicity of sides of a circle which there are no sides in the circle I don't but you get what I mean and like other things like um other You need to dig a big hole and fill it full of organic matter and put the tree there again.
00:59:58
Speaker
tree will only live within that organic matter and will not, especially in clay, people try to do this. yeah The tree will only live within the context of that organic matter and won't go looking for nutrient elsewhere and because it's it's got everything it needs in that hole.
01:00:12
Speaker
So how do you... So the best way to do it is to dig a hole, mix your organic matter through the existing clay and put it down into the tree, encouraging the tree to go looking for a nutrient elsewhere and then feed it from the top.
01:00:26
Speaker
Put the soil back into the hole and feed it from the top. Yeah. And that'll encourage it to like have strong, deep root systems. I actually made the mistake of using... I had a mobile shit pit.
01:00:37
Speaker
I was planting fruit trees in, leaving it for a month or two and then planting fruit trees in sandy soil over in East Gippsland. And um a big wind came and blew a lot of my fruit trees over in about their third year because they were only, they hadn't gone looking for nutrient. The shit was providing all of their nutrients, so the root system hadn't developed properly.
01:00:56
Speaker
So don't coddle the trees. Well, ah don't dig holes. Don't give them... Don't give them like the equivalent of a giant pot to live in in the ground. yeah Yeah. Like allow them to develop root systems. Yeah. um Trees also do like when you buy trees or if you're looking for trees or growing trees, um make sure they're hardened off. They don't come straight out of the greenhouse and out into the cold weather. Make sure that they've been sitting out in the cold weather for a period of time and acclimatize to the conditions that they're going into.
Learning, Design, and Personal Responsibility
01:01:27
Speaker
Best time to plant trees is in August, this August, September. And the main reason for that is, I mean, you can plant deciduous trees at any time through winter. You can plant any trees at any time through winter. But the very best time is when they're in growth and the soil doesn't warm up until August, September.
01:01:43
Speaker
Yeah. So if you plant your trees in August, in September, when the soil warms up, suddenly the roots will start to grow. Nothing grows during the winter. It doesn't grow in. I mean, you know, we can get some lettuces to grow and we can get some things to grow, but the root system does not grow vigorously.
01:01:58
Speaker
The top will not grow vigorously in trees. So the best time to plant stuff is August, September. Although, you know, as I said, if you're prepared to put guides around stuff and and look after it, then it's okay to plant now well once once there's some moisture inside.
01:02:17
Speaker
Diversity is really important. Growing like different things, different species. Thinking about what you're growing. Designing ecosystems so that they actually thinks function well together.
01:02:28
Speaker
And if you don't know what to do, get hold of somebody who has ecosystem thinking and talk to that person, you know, about how can I actually create that. And it becomes a way of thinking.
01:02:42
Speaker
which like pervades all parts of your life. If you think like an ecosystem, you know when you're designing or planting a forest, but then you can think like an ecosystem in all parts of your life.
01:02:54
Speaker
It becomes a way of thinking, a way of being. yeah Do you have an example of what that might look like as applied to your your kitchen or your relationships or something unexpected? Well, you know, an ecosystem is a grouping of individual items creating and a harmonious coexistence. yeah So you can apply that to your relationships and you can play apply that to your kitchen and you can apply that to any of those things. It's like, how do I create harmonious relationship within...
01:03:28
Speaker
within whatever context that i'm looking to what haven't i asked you gareth oh okay because the podcast i remind myself is called reskillience and sometimes i forget to talk about skills at all even though listening and critical thinking are skills that we exercise every time we listen to a podcast hopefully you have a lot of skills and thank you
01:03:56
Speaker
That was pretty its fucking obvious. But I'm curious about how you cultivate skills because i don't think I'm alone in feeling a lot of barriers sometimes to learning new things, especially especially as I become more and more fossilized.
01:04:10
Speaker
So I wonder what your advice would be to people who also want to be ah Jack or Jill or Jane or Gerald of all trades or like a bunch of cool trades.
01:04:21
Speaker
How do you approach learning things? But the best way to learn new skills is to go and find the person that knows the most about that thing and hang out with them. And I was real fortunate that, know, my organic agriculture journey, like, first of all, Alan Broughton in East Keepsland and then Rod May here in Central Victoria that I had as mentors and, you know, with Rod May in particular, like, huge philosophical discussions over cups of tea and spliffs and...
01:04:49
Speaker
hours of like chilling in the paddock and just working in the paddock but you know just very relaxed but really wonderful person and a great person to learn from you know um and more recently david holmgren of course as well like and has he well not more recently but over the years has had a really profound influence on me so i've been real fortunate that i've been able to find people that have that are peaks of their thing and hang out with those people.
01:05:23
Speaker
In terms of the other trades go, I mean, not being afraid to have a crack, like so the other things like carpentry work and building, it's like not being afraid to have it have a crackp good design has either symmetry or completely is completely s symmetric is beautifully symmetrical or completely chaotic in one or the other and you can't be half where the tricks of design is you can't have half one and half the other you can't have something half chaos and half symmetry doesn't work yeah it's either got to be be complete chaos or it's got to be you know absolutely random or it's got to be symmetrical and make sense in patterns
01:05:56
Speaker
And the trick to creating beauty is like understanding and recognizing the inherent beauty in nature yeah and in natural materials and how that goes together. And it doesn't take a lot to like look at things.
01:06:10
Speaker
What do you find beautiful? know The trend for like all white interiors and all black exteriors on houses, I think, should be decried. as not it's just painting things white and it's not actually allowing elements to shine in their own beauty which is one of the main reasons i have done a lot of like um bar renovation and restaurant renovation where you know recycling timber and its beauty is like really appreciated you're actually creating fantastic fantastical worlds for people whereas a lot of people seem to want to live all white um housing these days
01:06:52
Speaker
I'm very unsure as to why you would want to live in old white house. Maybe it's our own inner narcissism that in an old white background we stand the fuck out.
01:07:05
Speaker
Isn't the idea that your your furniture and your your decorations and your paintings really pop, maybe not so much your own personhood, but... i think it's your own personhood as well.
01:07:19
Speaker
I'm very conscious now about not painting the interior of this place white. You know, it's hard to find an alternative. What are you meant to do? Antique white is good. Okay, just an off-white.
01:07:30
Speaker
And also, like, having trade having having walls with colour. Like, feature walls are well underutilised in modern... design but only a few years ago, like having spaces with color was really important and spaces with features like timber, you know, cover a wall with old palings sanded up just nicely so that they look beautiful and not but not too much to take away the character.
01:07:55
Speaker
It's our scars that make us beautiful, it's the same with all natural things, scars and the effect of wear and life. Unfortunately, we don't always live like modern consumer society doesn't value that sort of beauty.
01:08:10
Speaker
We look at what is young and flawless as being beautiful. But we miss out on so much richness as a result. That's a very...
01:08:22
Speaker
It's a very unhealthy obsession with beauty, with that form of beauty. And also when when you seek to achieve that that sort of beauty and genetically you're unable to do so, you've got snaggled teeth or whatever it is. yeah And it's just not possible for you to achieve that. Very damaging for young people to not see the actual beauty, to to be taught that rather than The absolute beauty, like not, and this applies not just to people, it applies to, you know, the materials that we use when we try to create beautiful things.
01:09:01
Speaker
I'm real lucky I've got to create some beautiful, beautiful plates. I thought you going say, I'm real lucky to be so hot. Well, there's that.
01:09:13
Speaker
sorry go I'm real lucky to have got to create some really, really beautiful spaces like over the years. yeah Is there anything else that you wanted to share with the good people of Reskillians today, Gareth?
01:09:28
Speaker
I guess the only way anything's going to change is if we change it.
01:09:36
Speaker
The concept of waiting for somebody else to change what needs to be changed in the world will never happen. The only way that anything's going to change is if... And it sounds like a trite, like, sort of, like, thing to say, something you might have heard a thousand people say before, you know.
01:09:51
Speaker
But it's the actual truth. And you don't need to be all brown rice and lentils, you know what I mean? At the apex of permaculture wholesomeness or whatever. You can just be exactly well who and where you are, yeah?
01:10:03
Speaker
But that fundamental change that you... that you make has to be towards that satiation with having enough. yeah not this constant reaching for having more and the lack of satiation the unfulfillment that exists there and so the first thing we need to change is that the second thing we need is is ourselves and and how we exist the second thing is that we need to change is by showing that sort of level of happiness we get to have an effect and a
01:10:36
Speaker
An immediate effect that's beyond anything the internet could possibly do on those around It's so powerful. On our families and on our neighbours and our communities.
01:10:48
Speaker
And then, if that happens, if we are able to do those things slowly, incrementally, yeah the empire will fall. Because it has to.
01:11:02
Speaker
Because it's not sustainable. It's not godly. It is simply wrong. So the Empire will fall. And we we make that change.
01:11:14
Speaker
We make that change individually within ourselves. We make that change in our communities. We make that change, you know, a at a regional level, at a national level, you know, at a global level.
01:11:30
Speaker
And Margaret Mead said it very well. She said, never doubt that small group of people can change the world.
Connecting with Gareth and Podcast Closure
01:11:37
Speaker
Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.
01:11:42
Speaker
Do you invite connection with people? Like how can people get in touch with you if they like, if they're vibing with what you said or want buy some trees, like what is your scope?
01:11:52
Speaker
So I operate the Farm Tree Nursery, the Farm Tree Nursery. um There's a Facebook page for that. Happy to send me to send you a message there. I do permaculture consultancy and regenerative agriculture consultancy.
01:12:09
Speaker
ah work with people to... help develop their country as good as like yeah like to its sort of maximum capacity or you know thoughtfully place elements in within their country to sort of achieve their off-grid or whatever like you know their their urban farming dream.
01:12:30
Speaker
I also work with large landholders and with farmers to help them with forest systems, tree system, tree systems, windbreak design, all those sorts of things on larger farms and in fact have a real interest in working with larger farming communities and families because of the effect that we can have on large parts pieces of country you know at once yeah by getting in lots of trees and by assisting people to move to more financially economically socially and environmentally sustainable ways of farming yeah so people are really welcome to get a hold on me a hold of me through through the farm tree nursery Facebook page and that's probably the easiest thing to do thanks
01:13:19
Speaker
Brilliant. It's been so great sitting by the fire with you today, Gareth. I'm really excited to be able to share you with the people who listen and I'm really grateful. It's been fun.
01:13:32
Speaker
It's been fun, Gareth. It's always fun actually hanging out with you. We should do more often.
01:13:40
Speaker
That was Gareth Devenish, who I've got to say is pretty low key, but you can find and order his trees online or catch him teaching with David Holmgren if you're lucky.
01:13:50
Speaker
And I've linked those things for you in the show notes. And there's also a great video of Gareth chaining himself to the underside of a truck in Mullumbimby back in the day and being arrested, which Google will serve you up if you ask it nicely.
01:14:02
Speaker
I can't wait to catch you for the next episode in a fortnight. Thank you so much for listening to Riskillians.