by David Holmgren | Sep 3, 2019 | RetroSuburbia Roadshow
Wednesday was wet all day in Margaret River, with water on the paddocks and streams gushing as one might expect in August. After breakfast with Peter and Jan Lane (and a review of Peter’s latest presentation on WA geology and its relationship to critical conservation...
by David Holmgren | Sep 3, 2019 | RetroSuburbia Roadshow
On the Kwinana Freeway heading south we saw the expanding train networks, revegetation screening new suburban territories, paperbark and flooded gum wetlands, tuart woodlands and banksia heathlands on the sandy rises, much of it recovering from bushfires of recent...
by David Holmgren | Aug 26, 2019 | RetroSuburbia Roadshow
Sunday morning Shani and Tim had a slow start after such a high-energy day, while Su did follow up business stuff and buzzed around the kitchen on a high from all the good vibes. By afternoon we were all at it planting locally indigenous acacias (good goat fodder) on...
by David Holmgren | Aug 26, 2019 | RetroSuburbia Roadshow
Ecoburbia is a place of overlapping semi-autonomous households mixed with visitors from the walkable and wider neighbourhood, activated and energised by the “benevolent dictatorship” of Shani Graham and Tim Darby. In 2014 David and Nicole Foss were hosted by Shani and...
by David Holmgren | Aug 16, 2019 | RetroSuburbia Roadshow
The 30 km to Kalgoorlie to Coolgardie was marked by mine haul road intersections and of course C. Y. O’Connor’s great pipeline. David’s memory of Coolgardie was as a “ghost mining town” where he stayed at the youth hostel in 1972 when hitchhiking around Australia from...
by David Holmgren | Aug 16, 2019 | RetroSuburbia Roadshow
Down the Eucla escarpment to the coastal plain, past the roadhouses added since our last trip in 1999, and up the Madura escarpment took hours. Stopping briefly at the escarpment lookout David took a photo replicating the one he took in 1979 (originally taken with his...
by David Holmgren | Aug 16, 2019 | RetroSuburbia Roadshow
Our evolving plan was to visit old friend Lyall Dudley just north of Melrose on the footslopes of the Mt Remarkable Range and National Park. We had stayed with Lyall on our 1999 trip up through central Australia and had been a regular customer and consumer of his...
by David Holmgren | Aug 16, 2019 | RetroSuburbia Roadshow
Travelling the Eyre highway the thousands of kilometres to Perth brings to mind this country’s dependence on oil. Riding a bike or electric car from home to work and café in the inner city can give the impression that kicking the oil habit is a no brainer, but out...
by David Holmgren | Aug 15, 2019 | RetroSuburbia Roadshow
West across the tablelands the drought was taking its toll on native vegetation in a way we had never seen before. In places both shrubs and eucalypts had browned off leaves as if scorched by fuel reduction burning. The effect was worst in dense regrowth on shallow...
by David Holmgren | Aug 13, 2019 | RetroSuburbia Roadshow
Sunday 21st morning we were back over Horricks Pass down to Highway One, past the Sundrop hydroponic “farm” and into Port Augusta. There was dust in the air with a strong northerly and a temperature climbing into the 20s. With the aid of Google we did some shopping...