APC9 2008 Reflections by Sue Girard

Over the Easter long weekend a small group of BMPN members attended the ninth Australasian Permaculture Conference (APC9) organised by Permaculture North and held at Turramurra. Many other participants from across Australia attended for all or a number of different days and everyone thoroughly enjoyed themselves and learned new and stimulating ideas. The main topic on the agenda was Water use and conservation and this was very apt because the weather "drizzled" for the whole four days.

The Conference was called a "convergence" and this was indeed the right word for such a gathering because this year it was 30 years since Permaculture One was published; all the big names in Permaculture came to celebrate: Bill Mollison, David Holmgren, Geoff Lawton, Haikai Tane, Robyn Francis and Rosemary Morrow. A full list of Australasian personalities and Roberto Perez from Cuba, can be accessed from Permaculture North's website.

Proudly BMPN played a small part in the presentation of this event. Our Rosemary Morrow spoke on Water as well as being on the panel of experts and facilitating several sessions. Pat Rayner introduced David Holmgren’s session on his property Melliodora and later Aaron Sorensen and Dan Deighton speaking on Permaculture in Schools. Celeste Salter introduced Josh Byrne’s talk on Conserving Urban Water and also Ross Mars’ talk on Working with Water and my daughter Jessi Girard sang the opening song at the Public Forum on the Saturday.

I wanted to attend just about every session presented but of course with four sessions running at a time that was impossible. Any of you who know me will recognize that my interests are design of urban landscapes, and getting PC knowledge out there by education and different types of media. So I went to sessions on teaching delivery styles and ‘web entry’ for PC but I also sat in on sessions I thought I knew least about - such as sewage, swales/ keylines, and development overseas. I’m not sure I can relate in words exactly what I learnt but I was definitely inspired by what I heard at this convergence.

Highlights for me were meeting and talking with people I had heard so much about over the years: I sat with Bill Mollison for one of my meals and we talked exclusively about PC, David Holmgren was one of my neighbours in our tent city and we were able to talk about things other than PC, I talked with Carolyn Nuttal about her experiences in schools and about her and Janet Millington’s new book Outdoor Classrooms, I talked with Jill Finnane about book illustrations (anyone who has seen her book From Lawns to Lunch will understand why), I talked with Roberto Perez about lots of things Cuban and I became reacquainted with Russ Grayson, Fiona Campbell, Robyn Francis and Rob Allsop. Oh and Josh Byrne was as nice to talk to as he is to look at!