Sustainable Gardening Australia - possibilities when communities grow their own food - urban agriculture

Sustainable Gardening Australia 

invites you to join an informal gathering where participants will engage in discussion regarding:

What are the possibilities when modern communities

grow more of their own food?

 The evening will conclude with questions 

addressed by a panel including: 

Natasha Kuperman (Founder of My Home Harvest)

Cam Walker (Friends of the Earth)

Peter Huff (Urban Agriculture Facilitator, City of Yarra)

When:

Monday June 17^th 2013 from 7:00-9:00 pm

Where:

Function Room, The Courthouse Hotel, 615 Sydney Rd, Brunswick

Transport:  

Tram, Train (Anstey Station), 

Car (Sydney Rd meter free after 6pm)

You can purchase meals and drinks at The Courthouse 

and there are lots of great eateries on Sydney Road.

  

To Register for this event go to:http://www.trybooking.com/Booking/BookingEventSummary.aspx?eid=50481

Places for this free event are limited so book early, 

and please let us know if you are then unable to attend 

so we can give someone else your place. 

Food & Advocacy: Tony Bilson & The Intervention: Evelyln Bilson & her Christmas Pudd

Picture from here

There's nothing like mixing politics and food.  My Aunt Bina used to mix her Marxism with interior decoration and dressmaking.  Thanks to Cheryl and Michele for passing on this letter of protest from well-known Sydney chef, Tony Bilson, to Jenny Macklin the Minister responsible for the horrors of the Intervention.

As well, I am taking the opportunity because of the Season to pass on a recipe for Christmas Pudding.  Behind every great man is a mother and behind Tony Bilson (Bilson's)  is his mother Evelyn who makes the most wonderful Pudd.  I have Evelyn Bilson's recipe from the Good Living magazine of The Sydney Morning Herald of Nov 23-Nov29 1999.  The recipe was republished at a reader's request from Good Weekend sometime in 1995. I make Evelyn's Pudd and highly commend it. Tony is serving the Pudd on his Christmas Lunch menu at his wine bar number one.  

So first, Tony's letter; then Evelyn's wonderful Pudd. BTW, the links inserted in the text are done by me.

~~~~~~

----- Original Message -----

From: Tony Bilson

To: jmacklin.mp@aph.gov.au

Sent: Saturday, October 30, 2010 3:19 PM

Subject: Indigenous Racial Disrimination Act and NT Intervention

Dear Minister,

I write as an extremely concerned Labor supporter of many years standing.

I have been working with the One Laptop Per Child organisation and other activities including a dinner in Parramatta to celebrate Indigenous culture at the time of Govenor Macquarie.

My time spent with the Yolngu in Arnhem Land and on the homelands has given me the highest degree of respect for the complexity and moral strength of their culture.

I am currently involved in two programs to try to promote their culture in a contemporary context.

One is with Professor Bob Holman of Columbia University NY who will be coming out to Australia to work with Yolngu poets and musicians to formulate a celebration of Alan Ginsberg's time spent with them in 1972 for the 'Ginsberg Year' next year. From this collaboration will emerge a celebration to tour here and the USA.

Secondly I am doing a small Australian cultural/trade festival in Dhaka, Bangladesh for two weeks in February featuring new music from Yolngu musicians.

At the same time I have been working with financial benefactors to provide training at the highest technological levels to allow the production and export of high quality food products from the community at Yirrkala.

My wife Amanda and I attended last night a screening of the film Our Generation, produced by Sinem Saban and Damien Curtis and were shocked by the proposals of the 'intervention' and the suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act.

We had previously been totally unaware of the campaign of falsehoods used to justify the intervention policy of the previous Liberal and Labor Governments and the cynical misuse of accusations of systemic pederasty to justify this inhumane and socially destructive policy. We now know these accusations were totally without foundation. A lie of Goebellian proportions.

We appeal to you in the strongest possible terms to abandon this policy and to institute a genuine dialogue with Indigenous representatives of the communities so as to guarantee theintegrity and continuity of their culture.

If you have not seen the film I ask that you do so as a matter of urgency. Here is the link : www.ourgeneration.org

Please Minister do not let our nation be further shamed by these proposals to treat our Indigenous peoples and cultures with what may be a final blow to their very continuity - in a word, genocide.

Yours sincerely

Tony and Amanda Bilson

~~~~~~~~~

Picture from here

Evelyn Bilson's Christmas Pudding

(serves 12)

Ingredients:

1 and 1/2 cups suet

3/4 cup plain flour, sifted

1/2 cup almond meal

4 cups soft breadcrumbs

1 cup white granulated sugar

1 teaspoon mixed spice

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

4 and a half cups mixed fruit (raisin, sultanas, currants, figs)

1/3 cup mixed peel

1/2 cup stout

4 eggs

2 tablespoons marmalade

1 lemon, zest and juice

1 fresh tart apple, grated

4 tablespoons of rum or cognac

1/4 cup plain flour, sifted.

Method:

Rub suet into the flour and add remaining dry ingredients.  Mix well.  Add stout, stir in eggs and add marmalade.  Add lemon zest, juice, and apple and finally the rum or cognac.  Let stand in a cool place overnight for the flavours to amalgamate.  Take a wet pudding cloth (use a 75cm square of unbleached calico) and wring it out.  Sprinkle liberally with the extra flour and place the pudding on top.  This helps give the pudding a better skin.  Gather corners and sides of the cloth around the pudding and pull tightly to give it a good, round shape. Tie tightly with string about 2.5cm above the top of the pudding to allow for expansion.  Steam pudding in a bowl sitting in boiling water in a large saucepan for 4 hours and then hang it in the pantry for at least 2 weeks, until Christmas.  This pudding must not touch anything. In hot weather, it is better to store it in the refrigerator. 

~~~~~

Picture from here

You're invited to attend a Live Export Forum 

organised by the City of Fremantle.

At the event you'll hear from a panel of speakers discussing the progress being made to end live export, why they're personally against the trade, and the effects it has on animal welfare, our overall economy, employment and Australia's reputation.

You'll also have the opportunity to participate 

in a unique public action to help end the trade!

Where: 

Fremantle Town Hall, 8 William Street, Fremantle

When: 

Tuesday 12th October 2010, 6pm, for a 6.30pm start

RSVP: 

Email humanechain@wspa.org.au by 11th October and let us know if you and any of your friends would like to attend.

Panel speakers will include:

• Brad Pettitt, Mayor of Fremantle
• The Hon. Melissa Parke, Federal Labor MP for Fremantle
• Representatives from the meat processing industry and meatworkers union
• The Hon. Lynn MacLaren, Greens MLC
• Jessica Borg, Campaign Manager, WSPA
• Jodie Jankevics, Campaign Manager, Stop Live Exports

We hope to see you there! If you are unable to attend please check back here on the Humane Chain blog for event updates, or follow our tweets from the forum. Please help us promote the event by re-posting this story on Facebook.

Interrogate your purchases : ask where they come from

BUY, BUY AMERICAN PIE

A long, long time ago
we used to get our food home grown
and toothpaste used to make you smile

It used to be you'd shop with ease
never eating antifreeze
You'd plan to keep on living quite awhile

But now our goods are all delivered
from somewhere on the Yangtze River
No none knows the source there
so you might find some horse hair

But if corporations make a buck
they don't give a flying... Peking duck
And with this system we get stuck
today it makes you sigh

Now when you buy, buy an American pie
your grandma didn't bake it
it was made in Shanghai
where they engineered the apples to be juicy not dry

But the crust is made of cardboard and lye
don't feed it to your dog
he might die

Now did you eat a Tasty Cake
and did it make your stomach ache?
I could have said "I told you so"

And the reason you are looking wan
is some guy took bribes in Sichuan
so you just bit into little Debbie's toe

And now the toys you bought from Fisher Price
have toxins deemed unsafe for mice
and Elmo tends to wheeze
cus he's laced with PCBs

But of all my problems seen so far
when I see my cheap new DVR
I'll even brush my teeth with tar

And you will see that I'll
buy, buy from some young guy
I drive a Chevy and it's heavy
but the price is too high

Soon twenty bucks will buy a car from Shanghai
and honey that'll be the day we all die

~ written & performed by the Capitol Steps

From here

~~~~~~~~~

Related reading:

Food Security for the Faint of Heart

Gardening For the Faint of Heart

Further reading:

Permaculture research institute of Austraslia

China considers buying land overseas to secure food supply - report

Melamine in foods from China

Ban Chinese food imports

Chinese food giant to explore NSW

China takes steps to enforce food safety standards

China foods on the rise

 

Coal v Food v Water - on the Liverpool Plains of New South Wales

Fiona Simson

From Pauline Roberts of the Caroona Coal Action Group, via Networker Denis Wilson of The Nature of Robertson:

Dear All

We were delighted to welcome Lee Rhiannon MLC and Tony Windsor MP to our 1 Year Blockade Anniversary Thanksgiving Party today. Yes, we have kept this community-based blockade on the Duddy's property "Rossmar Park" going for one year preventing access for further damaging coal "exploration" on Prime Agricultural Land.

We held a multi-denominational service of thanksgiving today in the glorious sunshine, thankful for our productive land, our critical above-ground and aquifer supplies and our strong and resilient community. 130 people attended this great day with an open fire, enjoying mulled wine, hearty stew and damper and sticky date pudding laid on by the SOS Liverpool Plains girls. We were very pleased to find Graham Brown and Lance Batey in our midst and are grateful for the pledges of support from other similarly affected communities on the Darling Downs, like Felton.

Whilst we wait for a proper Water Study to begin, we are as committed as ever to preventing coal and gas mining on Australia's scarce Prime Agricultural Land, so this Blockade continues.

This Monday 20th July at 8.30pm, Four Corners will be running a story about our area: "The Good Earth" [www.abc.net.au/4corners] on ABC1. (It is repeated 11.35pm on Tuesday 21st) We hope you will be able to watch and that it has a positive result for those of us who believe food and water security is important.

Our thanks to Coal Communities for your continued support and good wishes.

Kind regards

Pauline Roberts

www.ccag.org.au

CCAG & SOS Liverpool Plains

~~~~~~~~

There is an excerpt of the transcript on the ABC website here.

~~~~~~~~

If you watched The Good Earth on Four Corners last night, you will have confronted one of the major issues facing us in Australia. What is happening on the Liverpool Plains, as Mrs Duddy so emotively pointed out, goes to the heart of our identity as Australians.

The Liverpool Plains is rich agricultural country - with its own underground aquifers. George Clift pointed out that in his seventy years of farming, he had suffered only one crop failure. On the dryest inhabited continent on earth, that is a boast that can seldom be made.

Under the ground is not only water, but coal which two separate companies, BHP Billiton and Shenua, have exploration rights for which they have spent stratospheric amounts of money to the cash-strapped New South Wales (NSW) government.

The Liverpool Plains is not the only place in Australia or the world in which this is occurring. I recently posted on the situation on that other place of great fertility, the Darling Downs in Queensland.

The essence is that one resource is being played off against another and against another: coal -v- food -v- water. What seems to have been forgotten by both miners and government is that we, in Australia, can survive without coal. We cannot survive without clean water and quality food.

Socially and politically, the protests and blockade on the Liverpool Plains is interesting.

The situation has the landed gentry whose huge agricultural holdings date back several generations and whose traditional political allegiance is to the conservative National Party resourcing the blockade and treating with The Greens as well as the local independent of National Party origins, Tony Windsor.

The Nationals are angry as can well be seen in the persons of Queensland Nationals, Barnaby Joyce (Senate Leader) and Ron Boswell. In fact, the anger, the action and re-action of The Nationals brought back memories of a similar response to the in-roads made into The Nationals vote by Pauline Hanson. It brings a smile, because decades - and a couple of generations of politicians - ago, Jack McEwan, Minister for Trade, did his best to provide an insurance policy for The Nationals who are reliant on a declining agricultural electoral base still by orienting his party to the mining industry.

Now, on Four Corners, is displayed Barnaby & Co on the horns of a dilemma for The Nationals: miners -v- agriculture; Australians -v- Chinese; Australians -v- international conglomerate pretending to be Australian.

So that gives one an idea of the politics and the economics involved. Then there is the personal, the social. Farmers on the blockade are promising not to succumb to financial blandishments from the miners. George Clift says that it won't happen with him. He will go out in a box first, he says. The much younger Chris Howarth has sold to Shenhua.

Chris is not the only one - but he, commendablyl, came to the camera and explained. And who can blame him. This is a man in his middle years with a wife and a young family. Shenhua are offering farmers more than the value of their property. Chris says that if he stayed, the situation of his property in relation to the geography of Shenhua's rights is such that his family would be living next door to an open-cut mine. How could one live with that? Lifestyle gone; livelihood jeopardised; property declining in value and the opportunity to underwrite the family's future. Surely, a no-brainer?

What is needed here is a clear-thinking response from government. Government must break the nexus of the clash of rights and resources. Government must stop behaving like an addict with its hand in the till and prostituting itself for every dollar it can get while selling the birthright of Australians - to food security - for the Biblical mess of pottage.

It is also high time that the electorate became able to see politicians withstanding the "winning ways" of international corporates and high-flying lobbyists, many of whom have long-standing personal and political connections to the government which happens to be in power at the time which means corporations frequently have a choice of political attractive lobbyists depending upon who is in power.

So we wait to hear what happens next?

• Will the agricultural interests of the Liverpool Plains be successful in the latest round of Court proceedings?
• Will the farmers of the Liverpool Plains remain entrenched within the National Party (my own prediction given the disciplined nature of the National Party vote) or defect to The Greens?
• Will the major and far-reaching environmental issues facing Australia transcend political, factional and social boundaries to establish cross-party support for intelligent and sensible policies on resource management?
• Will the miners be checked now that their behaviour has been aired on television?
• Will governments begin to look and act as if they represent the interests of Australians?
• Will governments take a tack away from the cynical and self-serving glad-handing of corporates and lobbyists and desist from forelock-tugging?

Building...stone upon stone

Our own small stone of activism,

which might not seem to measure up

to the rugged boulders of heroism we have so admired

is a paltry offering toward the building of an edifice of hope ...

For we can do nothing substantial toward

changing our course on the planet, a destructive one,

without rousing ourselves, individual by individual,

and bringing our small, imperfect stones to the pile.

- Alice Walker,

The Impossible Will Take a Little While:

A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear.

Water: it's a no-brainer

If you click on the pictures below,

they will be enlarged and

you can read their vital message.

If there is one thing

more important to species on this planet

- and that includes human beings -

than food,

IT IS WATER.

Water is shaping up to be the activism issue of 2009.

In Victoria,

three water focussed groups,

Clean Ocean Foundation;

Watershed Victoria;

Plug the Pipe,

have coalesced into the

Victorian Water Forum.

In NSW,

people are beavering away

to establish a nationwide organisation,

The Australian Water Network.

Ordinary people are looking on in amazement

at how governments are managing water.

They wonder how

their communities and their livelihoods will fare.

Insufficient consultation is a glaring deficiency.

We are left to wonder, in some instances, whether

corporations or individual post-politics careers

are influencing decisions -

not communities.

There is no clear indication that

either the Victorian or Australian governments

recognise WATER as part of The Commons.

There is little indication that

decisions are being made on water as a human right.

In Victoria,

activism on water has been a regional affair -

with visits to Melbourne

to rally outside Parliament in Spring Street.

Melbournians have been

installing water tanks and solar panels,

growing their own veges,

and harvesting grey water.

Their is much good will

which the Victorian government is not building on.

In 2009, the Victorian Government

might awaken one day

to find that

the activism of the bush and the surf has come to town.