Retrosuburbia Conference in Fremantle

DH and I were excited to attend the Retrosuburbia Conference in Fremantle on Saturday 3rd August, even though it meant being on the local railway station at  8 am! We joined over 200 like minded people who wanted to hear the author of Retrosuburbia, David Holmgren (co-founder of Perrmaculture!) speak about this wonderful book. 

"RetroSuburbia is part manual and part manifesto. The book shows how Australian suburbs can be transformed to become productive and resilient in an energy descent future. It focuses on what can be done by an individual at the household level (rather than community or government levels)". 

.DH has heard me talking about the concepts and helped me put some of them into practice, but hasn't been able to attend a meeting. Now he is retired so off we went! DH was very impressed with the "Aussie Street" story that David presented.

If you click on the link below you will learn a lot more about this inspirational book.  

https://retrosuburbia.com/book/

A great part of the day was given over to discussion groups on any topic at all which a group of people wanted to discuss together.

• I learned from people who had established verge gardens (do you call them nature strips?) -what works and what problems might occur, especially with council regulations here in the city. I have been thinking about removing some of the brick paving we put down years ago, so I can plant native plants to encourage the wildlife around here.
• There was a good discussion of bartering: how to do it, what sometimes goes wrong.
• I attended a group which wanted to talk about rescuing building material from skip bins! 
• DH went to a discussion on the humane management of bees. 

The lunches and morning tea were all brought by the participants. You can imagine that the fare was really wonderful and we were very well fed. A bunch of happy volunteers attended to help with the logistics. We were modelling the kind of community spirit which Retrosuburbia advocates!

We met a number of people from my side of Perth. Did you know that Perth is divided by the Swan River -and in our minds- as North and South? The city spreads a long way in both directions, so it was especially pleasing to finally identify the "Northern Permies" group.

Community was also big in another way this week around here. Our local Street Pantry was the part of a story on the needs of the community, on one of the local TV stations current affairs shows. The pantry shelves were a bit bare, so one of our admins put out a shout for more donations, and people turned up with donations in response. I went down with a basket, hoping to get in and out before the cameras arrived, but they TV crew turned up as I got there. I ended up being filmed putting donations on the shelves. Here are the shelves as of today: much less full than on TV. We have a lot of need in our communities for people who 'run out of money before they run out of month" and whatever comes in to the pantry goes out again pretty quickly. The way our Government has failed to heed the calls to #RaiseTheRate of Newstart is putting huge pressure on people who are already struggling.

Apart from all of these exciting things, I have been spreading mulch on my garden beds. This is quite a workout, and I have been feeling it a bit as I climb into bed.
DH has a wood project which he has been working on, and we hope to tell you about when it is finished in a week or so.
I have also been unpicking seams on the quilt blocks I have been given. I have decided on a setting, and will be gradually working on adding sashing strips to the quilt blocks.

So, I am off now to get into the kitchen and do some preparation for the week.

Thanks so much for stopping by and reading my blog post today!