[imported from livejournal and backdated]
Perth Natural Learning Network Dwellingup Camp
Once
upon a time when Josh and I only had two kids, we slowly amassed a
collection of camping gear including a three room mini-house, sleeping
bags rated to -5C, and a pile of crockery from BCF and various army
surplus stores. All this was foiled when I got pregnant for the third
and last time.
Over the weekend just gone we added a fold-up
accordionesque queen sized bed with blow up mattress and a bunk camp bed
to our arsenal and sallied forth to Lane-Poole Reserve in Dwellingup
with a wonderful group of people, our partners in thoughtcrime, fellow "unschoolers" from the newly named (but not newly formed, been going for at least two years) Perth Natural Learning Network.
We
were intending on going on Friday and returning Sunday, but got
sidetracked by AFL. So we went on Saturday with the intention of coming
back Monday morning, with Tao hurrying us along all the way because he
was impatient to see his friends.
It is currently bordering on
winter up here in Australia-land, but even in the stubbornly thickly
overcast gloom Lane-Poole Reserve's Baden Powell campsite was a nice
location. I have no idea what was going on that weekend but the place
ended up being packed out and not by us, apparently "everyone" had
figured that "everyone else" would not go camping due to the coldness
and the weather, and everyone and thus gone camping. Maybe the place
was completely abandoned when it was lovely because everyone thought
everyone else was going, I have no idea. The fire had already been lit
when we got there, and the first thing the kids did was race off with
their friends down a nearby steep embankment, at the bottom of which was
a blackberry bush which had no idea what hit it as it was furiously
raided by blackberry loving children.
Today was pretty much the
same, the kids played non-stop with trips to whatever table had the
snacks that were laid out to grab and go. A couple of families had
arrived on the Friday night and planned on leaving today, but we all
ended up clearing out as it rained in t he early hours of the morning,
and continued to spit which didn't bode well for us, so we all opted to
pack it in. The kids got good and muddy with the almost instant return
to hardcore playing from the moment they woke up enough to get out of
bed and thus announce to the other kids that they were awake.
We
have thrown plans around for future camping trips in the beautiful
weather provided by spring and autumn, but closer to summer than winter
next time round.
Intentional Community
Again once
upon a time back in the day when we were little more than starving
students, Josh, myself and a few friends discussed the idea of an
intentional community. Basically what it boiled down to was that we all
liked the idea of setting up our own eco-village but none of us had the
resources, so it was all pipe dream.
Fast forward a few years,
Josh and I now own our house, have three children and are part of a
somewhat scattered but still awesome community. And, strangely enough,
quite a few of them had also had thoughts along the same lines. We are
tentatively discussing setting up an intentional community. I think
ideally this would involve pretty much buying out a neighbourhood
somewhere and knocking those stupid fences down, though there comes the
problem of finding a) a neighbourhood everyone can afford to buy/rent
into and b) houses conveniently next door for purchase. So we're mostly
focusing on the idea of buying a block of land not too far out of Perth
(for purposes of work commute) that is big enough for a large communal
garden and a bunch of houses.
I see a hell of a lot of time and
money involved in this and am quite happy to take it really slow and see
how it pans out, if it's even feasible at all.
I do have a few
issues with the intentional community thing. While there is a part
going "DO IT! DO IT!", I've kind of grown attached to this house, and
the outlaws have just moved down to Perth, and us moving further out
will make it trickier to visit my parents when they come over to visit,
as they tend not to like driving out long ways, not being that familiar
with the area and all, not to mention make it "interesting" for us when
we do want to go to Christmas Island. So I think I will have to wait
and see how I pan out.
Which leads me onto...
Starting local
Community
gardens. I read in an article something along the lines of the world
would easily support five times or so the current population if everyone
would just switch to a raw vegan diet.
Can't see that happening.
I like the idea of anarchist eco-villages cooperating in bioregions.
Can't see that happening in the immediately forseeable future either.
Last
idea, best developed because it's currently happening both in my
animation and in real life, community gardens. Currently in the name of
civilisation a comparatively small batch of farmers are operating on
ridiculous scales producing prodigious amounts of food just because the
majority of people in cities may or may not want to and "shouldn't have
to". This insane scale and method of food production, while convenient
for people who want it to be convenient, causes a lot of the
environmental issues that have people up in arms about climate change
and biodiversity.
Things like solar panels and rainwater tanks
and decent insulation and sensible climate-appropriate house design are
awesome and should be mandatory, but until the government (don't care
which, currently they're both equally useless, need The Greens to become a major party) do some proper serious subsidising, they're rather expensive options.
Community
gardens, on the other hand, cost about as much as you want to put into
them. More people producing food locally means less has to be grown
externally and trucked in. More people putting in to community gardens
means more free food which means less money spent buying it. And you
might even get to know your neighbours better and make new friends and
stuff.
We're taking over the verge. We'll leave a path for
people to walk, seeing as people seem to like walking along there, and
we're growing berries along the fence anyway (plants themselves just
happen to be on the outside of our fence, just). We might even run it
past the council just to be polite, but seeing as they seem to want us
to take care of it I can't see them having a problem.
The plan is
to get the verge going well and then seeing if we can convince
neighbours, across the road etc to convert their verges. From there,
the street. From the street, the world!
Join the movement and decentralise!