Please note this transcript is AI generated and imperfect, but hopefully serves to provide greater access to this conversation for those who need or like to read.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
permaculture, people, australia, years, book, put, live, coming, restoring, started, happening, trauma, kimberley, talking, vietnam, bit, worldview, big, wonderful, soil
SPEAKERS
Rosemary Morrow (guest), Anthony James (host)
Anthony 00:00
You're with The RegenNarration exploring the stories that are changing the story enabling the regeneration of life itself. It's listener supported, ad free and freely available thanks to people like Nelson Cheng, Damon Gameau and Jeremy James, the very first listeners to start supporting the podcast financially. Well before I'd got my act together to make it easier for people. If you too sense something worthwhile in all this, please consider joining these fine blokes, part of a great community of supporting listeners, with as little as $3 a month or whatever amount you can and want to contribute. There are all sorts of benefits, mostly, of course, continuing to receive the podcast every week. Just head to the website via the show notes RegenNarration.com/support. Thanks a lot.
Rosemary 00:49
I don't believe in despair. We've seen too many unexpected things happen good and bad that it would be presumptuous and arrogant to believe that I knew what the future holds. We have to accept that over my right shoulder or your left shoulder can be some solution. We don't know. And we don't know. And we can't say it's coming either. Just that that's a possibility.
Anthony 01:18
G'day, my name's Anthony James. This is The RegenNarration. And that was permaculture legend, Rosemary Morrow. for over 40 years, Rosemary has traveled the world blazing a pioneering trail teaching permaculture as a tool for restoration from Vietnam and Cambodia, to Greece, West Africa and Australia. Her at times death defying journey has helped countless communities in all sorts of situations restore healthy living systems. And it was arguably all set in tow when at the age of 15. She ventured solo to the Kimberley here in WA. This is a conversation Rose not accustomed to having, but she was customarily fearless in having it. And for me, it continues a kind of accidental series with women elders. One I'm finding to be a great gift. In this case, Rowe was kind enough to spend some time with me on a visit back to where she grew up. Here in Perth. She was touring her new book, a revised and updated edition of her classic Earth User's Guide to permaculture, now called The Earth Restorers Guide to Permaculture. It's been endorsed by the UN, as part of this decade of ecosystem restoration, has a foreword by Vandana Shiva, and throws down the gauntlet for what's still to be done. A little heads up, we talk about some parts of Rose's life that saw the worst of war. So if you prefer not to hear those parts, or have children nearby, just skip over between the 10 and a half and 12 and a half minute mark. But then be sure to stick with us till the end for a rendition or two from her Kimberley days. And a little surprise, he is Row. Row. It's just terrific to be with you here at the magnificent eco birbee amongst the gardens and the flowers and bird sounds. Thanks for speaking with me.
Rosemary 03:24
It's a pleasure. It's just great for me to be here at Ecoburbia because it's quite remarkable and unique. And I think it's a fabulous idea. I'm pleased to see it. My word, the people that are put into energy and time and vision.
Anthony 03:39
Absolutely. couldn't imagine a more fitting place to speak with you in Perth, actually, for that matter. Now, you are from Perth. So if I was to say welcome home, does that mean anything? Does it still feel a sense of connection to you?
Rosemary 03:55
Intuitively, what intuition is not prophetic sense or anything, it's rather your senses have been formed by childhood experience. And so you can relate to a situation afterwards. I relate to the beaches of Perth with the colored sands and the moving sand hills and I relate to open woodland. It's something I really, really love. And when I'm in tall rain forests, I think it's magnificent. It's a cathedral. That's not where I want to spend my life. And one of the first things about coming back to Perth was again the openness. You just look up these big skies and big spaces. And there are smells and there are plants I recognize when I was a child we had donkey orchids spider orchids banks here, and I realize I'm looking for the banks here and I'm looking for the you can look to see Xian I'm looking for a certain shape landscape which is also Mediterranean with different species. And there is a coming home in it. But Western Australia is so unique and special, I've felt for years that it should be put aside as a vast global National Park and no one builds here. No one does freeways, and no one builds tips and waste and no one pollutes and has oil refineries. It. I think Western Australia is so particular, the whole state should be there for the world. And everyone else for all its originality. And as I said, uniqueness.
Anthony 05:32
It's funny, you should say that because I had a guest on the podcast couple of years ago who was in Hawaii. And he was talking about the power of the landscape. I mean, I could appreciate to what he was saying, but I see in Western Australia, we're on three and a half billion year old landscape, and it does feel a whole other level to be living amongst you that way.
Rosemary 05:54
And when you're in other countries, you're looking at, you know, something like the Himalayan fringe or in Afghanistan, or northwest Pakistan, and it looks so young to go the lips peaks, and it's got fast, quick rivers that don't wobble.
Anthony 06:11
That's a very interesting observation. Home for you now, though, is the Blue Mountains outside of Sydney. How does that feel to you?
Rosemary 06:22
So surely that feels right. It's wonderful. In terms of landscape, I don't think people should live there either. Those 25 million year old landscapes last time they were raised up and then flattened, and they're not peaks. And I also love being in Bitney the sea I think that was growing up in Perth gave me a great love of the ocean. We will always there are on their bikes down to the river and we spent so much time at Cottesloe Beach, you do miss the ocean if you're not near it. I wonder if we're basically an ocean species. I think some enormous percentage of people live within 100 kilometers of oceans or seas. That's a bit speculative. But I don't really know what's most of the dose of ocean quite
Anthony 07:13
often you're talking my language, your experience, over East in the Blue Mountains included setting up a range of different properties, I believe, with the principles you've researched and taught for so long. And you applied them in a in a new way, after a traumatic event, which is nearly 20 years ago, I believe with that with the stroke, where you set up home that I believe you're still in now. What I'm curious about their Row is it's come up a bit in the podcast of late is the place of trauma, the often transformative place of trauma in our lives and the opportunities it can present. But the work that it can require to harness them. How was that for you? And I guess by extension, you know, through your life as as it's been. Has that been true for you?
Rosemary 08:05
Not? Not at all. Yeah, really. And I'm really interested in this wave of fashion about trauma in Australia, particularly and how all trauma has to be addressed and looked at and patted down and some cream put on a band aid. So you can hear on my heart had taught really, I have seen so many people live in such difficult lives, of which small incidents would be considered traumatic. And I wouldn't dare put down anyone else's trauma unless I accept I've seen so much else. And understanding that my own trauma really isn't that much compared with others. The I've never had a debrief after I've come back from anywhere. And so all sorts of things have happened as I mentioned earlier, kidnapped in India, there was the the road was cut in the ambush of the Khmer Rouge and the first people were all killed and the second car was shot up and we were the third car and the driver turned around took us to compunction. I've always been on my own. So have you know then situations we just leave a landmine going up five steps behind you. I feel as if I'm a cat on my ninth life and lucky to have nine but when it comes to trauma, sometimes I've had nightmares where I've woken up the banging door where I think people are firing ak 40 sevens had behaviors that reflect trauma but I haven't had I've only had one lot of feelings that did it. Another one is helicopters make me very wide eyed and want to get under a table. I have been whether helicopters and they come down low with AK 40 sevens or bombs. At small bombs, and I'm very nervy around helicopters, even if they're saving lives in fires and putting out fires and doing things, I still have this, where's that helicopter ongoing and, you know, stupid stuff, but I can see it in that behavior. I don't really give it that much time or energy. I don't put oxygen on the fire. The one that really really hit me was a time in Afghanistan, where I arrived in 2002. So the Americans had just taken over Kabul, the place was just mud and rubble. There was 60,000 unaccompanied children coming into Kabul without families and orphans. And then with that, and I'd seen Vietnam 1986. And I'd seen in Africa in Cambodia, where men move in selling drugs, looking preying on children, and preying on women. So they come into these places, and they're sitting up full sets of drugs, stuff, they're sitting up. Maybe in Afghanistan, it was body parts from children, particularly these children who are on the street. I'm telling you stuff I don't normally tell people or wouldn't say if there were children around so tattered, if you like, the effect of that was to come home, I wouldn't have said I was mentally unwell. But I would have said my spirit was sick. And that lasted for quite a long time and my worldview of behaving and treating everyone as if there is ultimately good in them. Then at the end, that's nice to capitalize on the Hitler's and Hitler, look alikes who are going around and these children being bought and traded and women being bought and traded and people are being exploited by people who actually predate so after the big tsunami in Indonesia. Then we're on the beaches, they're looking for unaccompanied children, they arrive at the first plane. I have actually met them in these other places. I went to the embassy in Australia and told someone about guys who stood at my serve my room saying they're off to find a brothel. And they'd like the youngest ones, they could get your note that was having to change my whole worldview and say, I want laws. I want these people put away. I want to live in a place where the police will come. And these people will be stopped. And before that I was far more anarchistic, I think, prepared to say, oh, everyone's basically good. And if you appeal to the good in them, I don't know. These people have to go behind behind bars for ever have to be picked up and tried and put away this is I've found my point, which, and I've been in places where there are no police force. And that's scary because people behave very badly. Again, they burn down houses or threaten or MOOCs or we've seen a little bit with the fires and the floods in Australia, were looting went on and Lismore. So someone has to put it down, say no. And whether you believe they're totally evil, or not, I don't know I don't go there. But what I want is a reliable, non corrupt police force and a judiciary system that takes them out of the societies. So that was, I recognize that trauma because I was able to say, mentally, but something has happened to your spirit of life and belief in my worldview, I have to find something else. And it was understanding how we're lucky to live in a place where there is a legal system there is a justice system where these things work properly as well as humanly expected given human frailty. Take that out.
Anthony 13:51
No, no, I think that's also it's really interesting to me around third we've gone here I relate to it in some respects to I had nightmares about choppers myself for many years and and just running for my our lives in in dreams that came from my time in Guatemala, because with the terrain there, that was a case in point as well, where the choppers were the were the key mo for the in the genocidal attack on communities that was happening through the decades of the late 20th century through the Cold War decades. That would, it's literally called scorched earth and they would raise places to the ground and the choppers with a sign of it. So I became acutely attuned to that, too. It's so interesting to hear. I remember coming back to a footy game and they and my team used the bloody air raid siren Oh, cause it's the bombers right? Just like guts are ripping out. That's not a good idea. And I thought anyone from World War Two as well would be feeling the same. It's just not. It's anyway, there was that there were those clashes in my ability to relate partly to what you're saying. So I'm really interested in Row with your spirit. I come up with a word to use wounded of sorts anyway. And a reorientation required in you in that worldview. How did you go through that? And what emerged?
Rosemary 15:13
Well, I realized you need a new worldview. What's been wounded is oh herd got sick, is that almost protection that you get in places like Australia from probably the worst evils not on an individual basis, terrible things happen to people. But being a Quaker, I'm still a pacifist, more so than ever, that being a Quaker believing that of God or that good in everyone say, No, that's not real. We have to work to maintain a society which says people don't get a hold and don't do damage. And that is probably never been incompatible with Quakerism. Anyway, because all the people who approached slavery, got slavery removed, they were all pacifist with that idea that so, yes, it was just a reality check. When it comes to trauma, I don't give myself much time about trauma. I just think it's probably infinitesimle, small food compared with people whose lives are so much worse
Anthony 16:18
is your spirituality. Part of why you can do that?
Rosemary 16:23
Ah, I think my, my Quaker, I adhere to Quaker testimonies, which you're supposed on don't normally talk about them because we're not allowed to proselytize. So if anyone thinks they've been proselytizing, to they must drop out. But we do have a series of testimonies that you both hold to be true and live out. pieces the first, verbally, physically, socially, another one's environment, simplicity, integrity, in your own life, that's probably the hardest. Integrity are always being snatched away by some vanity somewhere. Or some social niceness. Simplicity, spice peace, integrity, community environment equality. So it just means that someone offers you a first class ticket is a white privilege, thanks for not doing. So it just, you know, it just is a very nice way to live with those, then permaculture. It's all the techniques and ways of living it that grafts onto those testimonies very, very well.
Anthony 17:34
Very interesting. The integrity piece that you said might be the biggest challenge. How has that been true for you?
Rosemary 17:43
I think having to make decisions, perhaps sometimes you have to be whistleblower when you don't want to be that protect others sort of talk about corruption. But never it's never a never a temptation to be offered a bribe. But I was offered the Vietnam friendship medal which they give to very few people. And I said no to that.
Anthony 18:12
With that same ethos of yeah, you need to be the hero talk. The I need
Rosemary 18:16
to know need to be recognized.
Anthony 18:20
There's a deeper reward.
Rosemary 18:22
Oh, the job is its own satisfaction. Yeah, what you do has its own meaning. And its own satisfaction. Yeah. Yeah. I've got lost.
Anthony 18:34
We've got lost very healthily. I'm conscious before we really like to get to your book next, but before we do, I was so curious that you have spent some time in the Kimberley. Yeah, in here in Western Australia. Yeah. When was that? What was happening?
Rosemary 18:49
Okay, so I left school in 58 when I was 15. Had you seen schools through where you're lifting? No, was called Intermediate then. And then I went. Next year, I went to the Kimberley. And I developed a passion was better living than I would live on a million acre cattle station. And there was a writer called Ian Idris Yes. He wrote all about the Outback. My dad's favorite Did you see and I loved it too. And I wrote to him, I don't know a garden and said, I want to go to the Kimberleys and live on million acres. I'm 15 What do you think he wrote back and said do it so it did it? Boy, so I can't find that letter to this day. I think my parents may have thrown it out. Well, he just wrote back and said that's a good idea. I would love to do it. So I took off to Darwin solo after working is after working liberal one travel agency over Christmas and earned the fare 45 pounds two shillings I've got the ticket on that plane and went to Darwin were wild for those who have visited every stock and station agent and said I want to go and live on a station and one day they came up said got a job for you. Governess on Gordon down 110 miles south of wolves Creek. Good. That was a wet season and we landed in Nicholson's Stewart Creek was five kilometers wide and we camped there and ate. You know, tinned potatoes. Yes, it batters you do not live there for the next few years and also ended up at Lincoln, PA. Both places had such an interesting history. Because while I was at Gordon downs, it was starting on Wave Hill. It wasn't quite the walkout, but it was beginning. And Tom Fisher came along and talked to Stan Jones, who was the manager, and they had big talks, so didn't want to move the set around at night. And they talked about what was happening with the natives, and what was required and Lord Vestey was going to come out because there was the unrest as well, because they're all blacks, Black Star black final Lord Vestey's properties. And I was lucky because I was so young, and everyone knew I could be a fly on the wall. The way they lived was absolutely pathetic. You know, the dining room, you had the station manager, and then his wife and then the bookkeeper. And then they'd Stockman. But the other Stockmans dining room was different, and I was way down below the salt. And I could listen to everything and mop it up. And I could also mix a lot. There was a big tribe, then about 110 people living on combat, the tragedy was that the negotiation wasn't for them to go on living there have that continuity, that was a terrible thing. Everyone's kicked off to go and live in Horse Creek and Fitzroy Crossing, that was really, really a big, big tragedy. But you know, everyone got their $2 or pounds a week, they got their sugar bag full of milk, sugar, stock camp without for six months was 50 horses and the big driving team went out for my mustering, you know, that all this stuff. And I was able to go on a couple of those which are wonderful. We have little child pulling the fence over the dining room, the punker on about six weeks a month or something, you know, it was completely and utterly 19th century, but they hadn't got to the 20th century, and then had to jump to the 20th century. It was a fantastic experience, because there was still Afghans coming around with camel trains, they would come around and help fix the saddles, do the saddles, and they traveled to town on my track in the desert, didn't go into the towns. There was corroboree every night when I went home, I couldn't sleep without the sound of the yeah yeah, I had the music right through my head of corroboree. And then I realized that television then was to play out the dramas of the station life. So we only get round the creek dry creek down there. And they'd play out the dramas of the day. And I realized later when I was in South Africa, resistance was small acts of defiance and semi ignorance. And I was at a service station in the Sutu. And this black African drove up and ordered some petrol and the guy answered him in Africa, they said no speaker my Africans Boss, boss said you something something something and why don't you learn you're all the same. As he drove away, he gave him the perfect sentence in Afrikaans. So by pretending you're ignorant, and I related that back to the Gordon downs where someone put a prickle under the saddle rug, or they wouldn't tie the surcingle up tightly enough, or they wouldn't. They would mismatch the knot tie perhaps tie up that but they do all sorts of small things. And the whole idea was to get the white man angry. It was happening in South Africa. And in the end the stock and the managers get ran the Horse Creek races. And that all compare notes on the stupidity of the natives. And all it was was and you'd hear the roar of laughter got in the camp. And they tell the story of how they lit the wood go out the stove and the bread fell flat. And what the minister said and what the boss said and and it was just pricing. Well that was ejido was the boss in that language you are in judo, however, it was a 19th century life.
Anthony 24:32
And how long were you there and then where did you go next few years
Rosemary 24:35
and then I went to Newcomb bar as an Newcomb bar for a while and I wasn't there when they said they sent the military up to the police saying oh diamonds there when they weren't all these dreadful subterfuges that governments do. So it's Kaldwin Yara noon, convert all that group. So that stage we talked about the Kimberley seas Kimberleys and most Kimberleys I and I could probably name most of those stations and tell stories, you know the Horse Creek races the men would go absolutely stupid. They'd earmark a stockman within marking clothes and just awful things. Really. It was all very brutal and work, but I was safe in the middle of it. Yes, I was just fine. Nothing happened. I fell off a horse. It's not like chills. Yeah.
Anthony 25:23
And then from the Kimberley, where did you go? Went back to Sydney.
Rosemary 25:25
I had family problems and had to live in Sydney for a year.
Anthony 25:30
And you're in your 20s? Not quite.
Rosemary 25:32
I was 21. Yeah, so and it was the lilies who came from a station who Kimberly's and Maureen, her brother was the first Aboriginal MP or counselor at Fitzroy Crossing. And they remember they came to my 21st birthday. And I didn't have other friends in Sydney, and I'd left school so long ago, and I've been earning my living so I wasn't the same as kids leaving school. However, the TAFE then ran a matriculation program where they put you through five years in one. You went nine in the morning, to finish five in the afternoon, you went to dinner, and then you did your honors at night. And you just worked flat out for 48 weeks. It wasn't like school. The teachers were wonderful. And a bunch of us did that and I ended up going to Uni.
Anthony 26:26
Really? Well. Yeah. Ag Science at that stage. Yeah. And this is very interesting, because you were not terribly impressed at the time. With ag science.
Rosemary 26:37
I was lost because we take bags of buffle grass, and either from horseback or the back of a ute. we'd throw the seed out to grow it or if it was burning time, we'd be throwing matches out to burn. And that was that was what we did. Yeah, most of it was branding cattle, you know, cutting them out. Breaking in horses. We had 200 Goats milking goats. It was all about the stock but it wasn't about the pastures or the soil or the water or the degradation. I mean, people would say there's good pasture over there. But it was open paddock, no fences. And so you'd take a little Bronco yard and be set up for the branding and castrating and you always your neighbors beef and you're killed one every two weeks and the whole camp and yourself gone is rotten meat to eat fresh the next day. And the supplies came from Perth every six months. And you'd listened for the store strap coming being brought up from Perth to Windham and then they unload the trucks and when was a town of drunkards with no water and crocodiles because they had the abbatoirs there is a bit you know, as a whole as a life that's gone, I guess they would they were starting to work on bandicoot bar at the time I left, and if so then at Sydney Uni and they talked about clearing trees and flowering and I couldn't follow. There was no ecology then. So there was no systems approach and no interactive disciplines. So just very reductive science is studied slowly studied water. You studied botany, state zoology, study anatomy study physiology, you studied chemistry and biochemistry, one after the other. And I think agricultural science has been responsible for a lot of destruction of Australia. I've got a friend who went through with me and Louise today is nature's prison Bush regeneration in Australia. And I said, if ever we go to a uni reunion, let's get down and pray for forgiveness. Because, you can't say what a great course is yes. Had no ecology in it whatsoever. Yes, it's just the soil is a bit like a greenhouse. You just fed up with chemicals in the trees, and you learned how to put up fences. And this was
Anthony 29:01
early 60s. This was before Rachel Carson even probably,
Rosemary 29:05
oh, yes. It was before Rachel Carson before the Club of Rome. Yeah, so those things hadn't really been seen at that stage. But I think some of us felt uneasy about this. That's the interesting thing. He just didn't like very much what was happening and you'd say, Why am I learning this? And it wasn't because the integral subject didn't make sense. It's much more than overall. It's sort of the opposite of what we do. Now. We're restoring water soil species, which is except through farming and gardening, and the other is mining. I think the big thing was agriculture as commodity couldn't not resource.
Anthony 29:46
I couldn't agree more. I still feel like that's the almost the cornerstone of where it's still stuck in many respects.
Rosemary 29:55
It's still commodity. You can see how it fell apart from Ukraine. Yeah, and Bangladesh. No, sorry, Pakistan with the floods? No, none of those neighboring countries will eat because they used to buying from Pakistan. They'll be hungry all this strange season.
Anthony 30:13
Yes. Let's circle back to some of the what to do's as opposed to that. But just following your life pattern in a sense, it's interesting that you had that feeling with that study. But then when he came across permaculture at the same time, you couldn't help but be skeptical of it like this. I guess it's all you had was the scientific training is that?
Rosemary 30:35
Yeah. By then I'd done some environmental science and some horticulture okay to round off because I'd been in the Sutu where I wasn't effective as an agricultural scientist. Now when the other agricultural scientists from other NGOs are saying things like, let's grow asparagus for South African market. And I was aware people were hungry. The anomaly hit you like, this is pretty stupid, isn't it? Who would do this? People are hungry here. And you want them to grow us? But it just didn't make sense. But that's still happening.
Anthony 31:08
I totally I mean, I'm thinking we hear these stories all the time. I mean, if you look, but you were in it, and it early time,
Rosemary 31:14
and I thought, what's something better? So I came back. I've tried horticulture, it was useful. A lot of plants and a lot of good techniques. You know, the first horticulture lesson was six types of hoes on the ground, whether you want a hoe or not, but least you like to use them, identify 30 new species every Monday, you just had to get that and understand it was good. It was very, very useful. And I also did environmental science that started weaving things together. I was looking for a science or an applied science which united and pulled together all the threads I had. So there was agriculture got enough science to understand what's happening in soils. There was horticulture, there was design, there was environmental science, but what was there that would look after the natural systems as well as the human, the product required for humans and animals. What was doing that? There was nothing across the board. And I was skeptical about studying permaculture. But as I sat there, I remember thinking I can pull this together better than this. Better than this teachers doing at the moment, because they were copying Bill Mollison, which was 72 hours of chalk and talk. And Bill could do it and entertaining and speaker and wonderful, but almost no one else can. And all the lot that came behind him, the students went to sleep and woke up and went to sleep and woke up. And and that was it, that only a few of the raconteurs can hold people well. And that was Bill, and few of them had the scope to be able to comment on what they were teaching. So they were teaching, what they were taught, but they couldn't encompass it together in a way that counted the people. I did my peds three, and within 12. And I was asked by that teacher to teach three months later. And instead, I got offered Vietnam, where the Australian Government had given quite a service Australia, a big lot of funding to grow coffee. There were no faxes, no phones, except through Russia, through Moscow, which was USSR.
Anthony 33:34
What time are we talking 1985,
Rosemary 33:37
no faxes, no phone. You didn't have your own phone. And there was nothing really. And you'd go there and you would land. And then you'd be out of contact for ages unless you went to the post office. But then they didn't have post offices because they all locked down. things, you know, there was no way to contact home. So I had a talk to this organization. And I said, I think we can do better than coffee. They said watch and I said let's do a trial. And I taught them a little bit of permaculture, how we could think about it and solve the problems of hunger and Agent Orange and the bombing 30 million bombs, and then how this could help restore food supplies. They said we'd rather do this. So I walked along the street in Hanoi and I went into place with an old French match and I walked upstairs and knocked on the door. Someone called Pat, who was the secretary to the Australian Ambassador said yes. And I said, Can I see the ambassador? And she said yes. Now walked in the door. I said Graham what had changed that project? He said, what do you want to do? And he said do it. Today that wouldn't be possible. First of all the embassies protected by guards. Huge changes. Secondly, no one could give that permission. So it was a quite amazing time to introduce permaculture into two rather than big Um, provinces in Vietnam, one of them very remote Shang lai and the other one Hanoi province around the city. And that was so successful that we were able eventually to teach in half the provinces and the FAO did the rest. And then we bought through teacher training. And that was it, I sort of had a model work with an organization don't set up your own and understand where you are, don't try to teach them what you teach at home teach, get them to tell you what the 10 best plants are. And the 10 fruit trees are how they make a salad from the equivalent of banana flour, or mango or whatever. And they'll tell you all that all you need to do then is say, how, what are all the varieties you've got? Where would you plant it? Where's the water? What are its needs? What are it's pests? What are it's everything? Once you had that thinking in mind, you know, you could bring the design elements in which were critical. So sort of took off from there. Yeah,
Anthony 36:05
indeed, took it from there. And then you then you started to write about it. So the book that is released now is that 30 years or so after the original edition, which was early 90. So out of all these experiences, I'm so struck Rowe by how you started this book, with being located in the Fertile Crescent, which we know well, in our culture. It's not fertile. Yet, somehow, it's still one of those things that then just flit us away to the background somewhere and sort of on we go with the practices that would have that sort of what happened there happen everywhere. It's unfolding in Australia as we speak. So it's a powerful way to ground. The volume, obviously, but also a powerful way, I think, to keep reminding us, is it of what can happen if you're not stewarding? Well, it can get away from you and end up like that, like you could never imagine at one stage.
Rosemary 37:10
It's a great sorrow I haven't seen. Because I was early in those countries in the early 70s. I was on my way to France, they gave me a scholarship and sociology, which is really Development Studies. And because I decided to go overland 1958 army truck, which is a bit rough when I think of it now. And we slept just on it wherever we were every night, you know, you just pull out his wagon. So you wake up and find six people looking down at you in the morning, or none of us beautiful thing is as the sun came up a group of camels in Pakistan and some were walking across the landscape, so everything, I saw those places before they were destroyed. And I was in Kashmir. Not that long ago, a year or two because it's an occupied country by British, beastly brutal Indian SAS forces. And they're they're taking out the timber and the wild animals and the other side, the Chinese and Pakistan is doing the rest. It's it's absolutely horrific. And it's filthy. And it's polluted. And this massive injustices and it just a horrific situation. And I remember it as it was. When I was in Afghanistan, when it was that short time was free. And working and woman drove cars and they were doctors and medicine and you will safe everywhere in the 70s. Yeah, probably about 71/72. And then I remembered that, then I remembered going down to Persepolis in Iran. And I remember turkeys that was and everywhere I've been for the last decade is destruction. I could just have easily started that book with a mean through Niger in Kashmir. And the old clear emerald Lake is full of plastic, so thickly you can barely you could almost walk across the water and the stench coming out and something nice like this and the Indian soldiers standing there ak 40 sevens. I could have started that. I could have started in Portugal a couple of weeks ago, I look out my window and I see what the drought has done in addition to bad land practices over the years since I first came to this country, which is not a lot but enough. And I have seen I've flown over Malaysia when it was a full Rain Forest the Malay Peninsula and today I fly over the Royal Palms. There's a lot of grief there. And what do you do with your grief? You just have to hold it there is there is no compensation for it. There is no nice drama counts. It's make going to make me feel good about it. The thing that does work is you don't give up. And you keep wanting to be part of a solution. And that has its own satisfaction. But it's always tempered with at this rate, the future is getting worse, not better. And for years, you could think the future is going to get better. And you could not be better for children. I'm not talking about materially, I'm talking about, you know, opportunities and things. They're not going to be there. And that is just a deep persuasive grief. I don't believe in despair. We've seen too many unexpected things happen, good and bad that it would be presumptuous and arrogant to believe that I knew what the future holds. I think that's, you know, that is that arrogance. We have to accept that over my right shoulder or your left shoulder can be some solution. We don't know. Yeah, and we don't know. And we can't say it's coming either. Just that that's a possibility. Well, ultimately, earth is merciful. Nature will recover. But it's going to be 10,000 years.
Anthony 41:07
When you say, Well, you've seen plenty of the possibility. And your work being its own reward, you know, talked before about being offered a high profile recognition in Vietnam, wasn't it and and you declined it. So you've seen plenty of the restoration. That is the thrust of this current quite different edition of your book, The earth restorers guide? Let's turn to that, let's turn to a hint of restoration, or the stuff that you could never see coming? How have you been surprised, perhaps over the journey. In these ways,
Rosemary 41:44
I've had suprinsingly up take of permaculture by people, and especially when it's taught by local people, where I might spend three years going backwards and forwards and training a group and Department of women's affairs, they put out trainers, they're moving to province to province at a great rate, and I do huge amounts of monitoring back of a little balloon, Scooter, you know, village to village looking at this one looking at that one checking the plate, partly for success, but partly for to make sure the project has been delivered properly. And I have seen the most extraordinary things. And then people say to me, if you could see what that project did, I was in such and such a province. And recently, I met up with someone who was my interpreter in Vietnam And I said wasit very good? Chinese are all there now with pesticides and insecticides. Oh, he said it kick started the food. And then Vietnam, he said that's what the integrated program design was able to do. And you don't know the results. And you can't count on that I think you'd do the work without, you wouldn't invest emotionally in outcomes. Because you can't know. Same with the teaching teachers, you don't invest in them or being teachers and doing thing. But it's very wonderful when you get information later that people are doing great things. And it was necessary. But that's not you couldn't depend on that. Or you'd have a breakdown. It's not a it's not an okay thing to do.
Anthony 43:17
bringing all this together. A lot of what you're doing with this book, it appears is is laying down a bit of a challenge to permaculture can it be more than it's been so far, and that you very much hope it can and it's got to do with connecting to a lot of your experiences around the world. Want to talk to that for a bit? The nature of your challenge?
Rosemary 43:39
Okay, I think the challenge was every time said someone said you couldn't you give a definition of permaculture it was the most abstract thing that you couldn't put a picture in your head. You couldn't imagine anything. It's a toolbox of techniques and strategies, ethics and principles which enabled you to redesign lately. What does that tell you? You had nothing. And I thought about it a lot and if there were a way of describing permaculture there was simple and easy, not based on the ultimate thing, but what does it do? How does it function? Every single bit of design in permaculture is on restoration. You're restoring financial systems, you're restoring biodiversity, restoring water, you're restoring soil. At the same time. You're eating into those disciplines of farming and horticulture, which have always been mining, taking out, taking out, taking out and permaculture is absolutely excellent at restoring so we would say our agricultural systems should keep the soil in crop all year, no fallow. That needs to be a nitrogen fixing crop or a different crop or a green manure crop that goes back. And so your monitoring is all about restoration. Are we restoring forests are we restoring fruit, are we restoring heritage varieties? Are we restoring the monitoring thing is all about restoration, regeneration, growing it and producing it is whole part of it. But ultimately we'd like to see an earth restored. And how would we do that? Well, I can't think of anything else I would have jumped ship and gone to that. And I've looked, what else is there, organic gardening, you know, biodynamic, it's not enough.
Anthony 45:29
That you have said that that sort of narrative or approach that has been dominant in permaculture, I've just create a sort of parallel or alternate thing is not enough. This has got to get to the systems we live by, of course,
Rosemary 45:44
it does become self evident, suddenly, you think we've had 40/50 years to create all these alternatives and is the world doing? No. So what's required, let's work with local government. Let's work with local NGOs. Let's work with UN Sustainable Development Goals. Let's tie ourselves into the UN planetary boundaries. Let's accept the challenge for the eco system restoration and who is better placed to do then permaculture to just, you know, replace ecosystems of all types? It it is almost a shining beacon for me that self evident? Is there anything else? I would love to be challenged? I want to be challenged, I don't want to be delusionary and have talked myself into an opinion or state that wrong and erroneous and keep saying that it is going to. What else is there?
Anthony 46:38
You. Well you've talked about that what it's going to require is people to get in permaculture to be able to make a change in a respect to answer the call, if you like. And a lot of your call then is to be able to also connect with traditional cultures, a lot of which you've had something to do with and I wonder, even in Australia, if that's true if you've had connection with traditional cultures, you know, since the Kimberley days, in this way, like how can that be done better?
Rosemary 47:06
Well, we can't lump all traditional cultures together, you're talking about the ethnic Malay tribes on East Coast, Malaysia or Sri Lanka, living in little palm huts, they're not comparable to the Nepali living in the mountains or whatever. In some places, there are no indigenous people at all, as in the Iberian Peninsula, it is a concept that's very strongly Australian and European, and colonial nations understand it. But it doesn't work everywhere. And yet, it's utterly needed if you're talking about the Ainu of Japan, or the very small, largely ignored groups in Taiwan. So it has huge relevance for some and not for others. I worried that everything that people have done traditionally is considered somehow better and more valuable than anything we do today. Like that's called cultural romance. We have to be very careful. But if we look at what the Islamic nomadic tribes did, when they took goats into the Iberian Peninsula, within 300/500 years, 500 years, they'd turn rich oak forests and soils and pigs and livelihood and birds and running water, the same in the Tigris Euphrates with the goats, they turned it to desert, and what we see today, so a little bit of selection around understanding what it is to live in ways that maintain the systems that maintain light. So I'd like to look at the People's I've met and I'd say, how are they forests? How are they water? How's their biodiversity? How is their soils? Is it being degraded? If it's not, I'll do an immediate mad quick study and look at it and study it make endless notes that I never print up, but they're lost in the bowels of my computer somewhere, but very, very interesting. The Hawaiians, for example, to the river starts at the top of the hill. The Hawaiians also had forests that collected rain on the top of the hills, and they said, if you cut those down, the gods will be angry. You have to be able to read cultural storytelling. And that's not our way of thinking. We'd talk about dislocation and erosion or river drying up. When I've talked to the console, they bury their ancestors at the top of Hill, an animal's not allowed to graze there and no one's allowed to cut anything. That's a zone five, then they have the next circle around and you're allowed to take stock in there and graze that you're not allowed to cut anything that's assumed. That's a zone 4, and all that is preserving your water in the soil and the climate and bringing the clouds in this rain forest. And they will tell it in terms of their ancestors again. But it's a different story. And I think the best thing we can do is combine the best of Western and the best of traditional works. But I wouldn't go to Easter Island to find out about forests.
Anthony 50:28
So interesting you should say that I had a podcast earlier this year with a couple of Mayan people in Guatemala. So it harkens back they'd started this organization when I had started in Guatemala, though, I'd never met them were in different regions at the time, but earlier last year, I think they were getting a major global award, it was wonderful to see and we linked up, it's the Instituto Mesoamerica de Permacultura. They would
Rosemary 50:53
have heard of them. Yeah. I met them in Brazil. Yeah.
Anthony 50:57
Wonderful. And they talked expressly about confronting this situation as it is, you know, post colonial again, and just degraded, how can we work with this now that their traditional knowledge wasn't enough now in this different context? And I've heard some First Nations in Australia say similar. So we need to face with
Rosemary 51:17
climate change. Yeah. Exactly. Native species lost? Yes.
Anthony 51:23
So what we need to do is, is look at the best of each other. It was another case in point. And so they scanned what else was available and came to permaculture and felt that was the closest match to their worldview and practice and so forth. And now they're global. Yeah, globally recognized.
Rosemary 51:39
Absolutely terrific. Yes, I there's been too much change happening, colonial former colonial things for the the practices that went so long and global warming said throw it all out anyway. I think we have to combine both. There was a group up in Mareeba. And they called it Abiri culture, so not a Borah culture. But that was Aboriginal culture. And they had have still got notes on what they were talking about. But useful concepts of opportunistic agriculture. So when it's wet, you expand and when it's dry, you can track to your limitations of your resources. So stop putting in. That happened in Portugal this year, the government said it's too dry to put any crops in the ground. opportunistically, the government said nothing's to be planted it'll all die. But that was taking notice of what was happening. And not risking failure. It's a different way of response to what's happening not being prescriptive. And that has to that opportunistic thing has to come into a lot of what we do, I think, I don't know if I talk about it. But you know, I'm very keen on people to see permaculture as restorative. I'm hoping but I don't know that rich permaculture so restoration applied science for people and land makes more sense and it's a toolbox of somethings that something something I'd like something to click people think, ah, restore, restore what they are understand that word. I can use it, what are you talking about? And it leaves them into clearer and quicker way of coming to permaculture. Yes. Because
Anthony 53:24
you've got this sort of ultimate call to become the restoration species like to take that responsibility given we have the ability, it's an evocative vision like it's it can be, it can be an inspiring call for us
Rosemary 53:39
where the species who could do it now the species can.
Anthony 53:43
Yeah, how's that for a different story? So
Rosemary 53:46
what's our role? It's not to manage it's to get into relationships and become part of the solution. Stop being part of the problem. Men say, am I part of the problem? And where and how. And, you know, that's a Mollison to Bill says always say socially. Am I part of the solutions for this community? They're not how important I am but am I functioning well in my community? Look at this place well, what an example huh? The echo burbia via
Anthony 54:19
that's right and really got it community underlying here and bio region, there's a lot to be said about place zooming
Rosemary 54:27
into by a regional thinking, no longer thinking I'm in seige mentality. Yeah, lots more gift economy a lot more sharing a lot more. Yeah, all that
Anthony 54:40
speaking of the intrinsic intrinsically rewarding stuff, too, yeah. Vandana Shiva does the foreword to this edition and she's she uses that phrase economy of permanence and economy of permanence. And part of what you're, you're on about to is, is obviously, yes, changing these broader systems that we give them labels to. We never did talk about economy like this last century. Well the one before the last century, you know, more than 100 years ago, it's so interesting how things can feel like they're rusted on, and just the way it is today, we must take care of the economy. But being what it is, and where we are, to be able to reconstruct an economy in this mold to is something that is obviously part of what you're talking about. What's taking you fancy, and in that ways, there are the people going about it in ways that you admire, sort of, beyond that community level, like models that have sort of transcended and offer something to all of us.
Rosemary 55:38
In the Blue Mountains, we're going from Circular Economy, led by council. Council saying, we are going to really work at this. It won't be easy, but we're going to put our hand to the world, we're going to do it, we want to take the imagination of the people. I think also a behind the scenes concept is the seven forms of capital. The one I think that is so important, so at the moment, we have one form of capital, that's numbers in your bank account, really. And then we have our houses. But in a way that translates to same thing doesn't take time to people guess what my house is worth. And turn it into environment, and clean air and good community and the issues that are really important that will carry us through the disasters that we're still going to get because we're not holding it back at a rate fast enough. Caught us a bit disappointing, coming in really, really hard.
Anthony 56:39
Sort of predictable, though.
Rosemary 56:43
It was a bit predictable. But Australia is the canary in the coal mine, and we can see what's coming from there. So it's going to be a pretty uncomfortable talking and we need other things and money in the bank.
Anthony 56:56
Yeah. And you can see the shift coming. You've seen it. Yeah.
Rosemary 56:59
And it's happening with people. I think they I think COVID had a big effect. Yes, disaster. The understanding that green and quiet arrows are important physical and psychological health is now well established, people keep telling you how important it is. It's changing some of the structure of cities, urban Permaculture is doing a great boost at the moment in trying to green like Barcelona has got 6000 balcony gardens or roof guns or something. It's not many in the city. But still, it still is pushing on. And if you fly over city now you can see rooftop and balcony gardens happening and technologies moving first, we're going to have to print out a solar panel, stick it on the roof of your car. When it wears a bit, you just wash it off and print it again on that plastic. It's not here yet. But the answers are there. It's not the technology. And life will be better. It will be better when they walk instead of being in their cars. You it would be better when they work in the gardens and giving things cuttings. It will be better when they're not always on their phones and computers. Because the richness of the human experiences is never the same as when you're face to face.
Anthony 58:16
No hints why we are in person here today.
Rosemary 58:20
social animal. Indeed.
Anthony 58:23
Speaking of which, I did want to come to our close with the theme of eldership. It's something that you you embody for a lot of people is that and I know that a lot of what you want to bear in the stage of your life is helping people find their way in this space, encouraging others to succeed you. I wonder for you, as you take a broad sweep of your journey. If that was bestowed on you at any stage, were there people that really were there for you, even if they didn't know it at particular times?
Rosemary 58:57
Probably not in permaculture but they were always people. Yes, I love those Quaker woman in the Vietnam War. 80 years old out front with their son to save our sons like a chance. And they looked as if they come out of a beauty salon quite often. No, they didn't look. They were very ordinary middle class looking. And there they were the courage of their convictions.
Anthony 59:24
Reminds me of Lhasa Abuelas, they are in Tina, the grandmothers of Argentina. Yeah, and many other stories. And many of the stories of Indigenous women to in these
Rosemary 59:33
Black Sash women in Africa. They were terrific in the time of apartheid, absolutely marvelous. Also, I've been very influenced by reading. I think I've loved you know, things like Rachel Carson, good writing about the environment is hugely important. People to talk to who will talk about the wicked problems and whether Permaculture is able to meet them or whether it stops somewhere in its effectiveness. Should we not even try to go there? People like Nas and Padma in India 30/40 years of permaculture. In Australia, the food forest in Golang. I mean, what Ann Marie and Graham have done to look at mature crystal waters and eco village and that they might be examples, but they're also so replicable. But now we have to work with government and local, get on to your local government start working with they're all keen to change. They all want to run the SDGs. They all want to change, they want to cut their budget and cut their carbon. They're all a bit competitive about that. So it's a wonderful opportunity to tell them most people are uneasy. Floods make them unhappy. Ukraine makes them unhappy, the lack of everything? Is that unease and fear? And by engaging Well, in your local government, the fear goes away because you're part of people doing something. Or there have been a lot of people of influence is I just wasn't expecting the question. No, I'm sure always
Anthony 1:01:08
it's it's terrific. It gives you it gives us enough of a sense, everywhere.
Rosemary 1:01:13
I'd like to say there's a real danger in making heroes out of older permaculturalists. I really dislike the word wisdom and they mean experience. Because all I think about if you ask me a questions, Where have I seen or heard that? But it's not me being wise, it just is that true? And where was true? We couldn't be replicated with it's not what I call wisdom. That's just sort of processed experience. And so I think it's a little bit uncomfortable. We shouldn't put people on pedestals, everyone's got feet of clay. It's not okay to do that.
Anthony 1:01:54
There's a like I spoke to for the podcast, Stephen Jenkinson, who has written a lot about eldership. And he has older people coming to him and said, How can I be an elder said, it's not for you to say, young people will tell you or they'll just come to you, and just be what you can for them.
Rosemary 1:02:11
I'm a great believer in having some succession. So whether it's a refugee camps, or it's teaching in Portugal, I want some young ones there, I believe in the young ones. And I think they are the future. And I think the teal group of the future are really an utterly believe that they can do it, it will be harder than they think that they can do it. Me too. And opportunities for people with skills and ability. If someone haunts me often enough and long enough. I take them with me or give them. They have to they have to send me you know, a few phone calls a few emails and say remember me and I still want to do it. So you know, do you want us. We've got Greta? Greta want Greta came to live with me. And I just had a spare bedroom. And you know, I'm on the gift economy. So I don't charge for anything. And she she, she interrogates. So you know, why don't you do about this and brought that real learning thing. I've taken people from Europe. I'd love to give people opportunity. I think that's a wonderful thing to do. And I think it's the only way to get reasonable succession. And what I like is when there's so much better than I was at their age, you go Ah, now we're getting this is accelerated succession socially. They're a way they're running. And I was staggering through the mud trying to look for a direction when I was their age and they absolutely there. That's accelerated succession.
Anthony 1:03:44
That is wonderful. So the other thing you didn't get the heads up on is that I close every episode talking about music, a piece of music that's been significant to you in your life or even something you're just listening to.
Rosemary 1:04:00
Violin Concerto slow movement. Think it's number 21. You look up into bass, Cello Sonata, oh, Dear me Yes. And I in the Kimberleys I learned to love the Stockman playing a wind record at night. On Sunday afternoon, so all had a break. And we'd sit around and we talked and they would play stop songs and cry. So things like Old Faithful we roam the hills together, old faithful in any type of weather. Now your round up days are over. There'll be pastures white with clover, for you old faithful friend of mines. Giddy up poor fella because we got to get home to nah ha. I giddy up poor fella because the moon is very bright. When you round up days are over, there will be pastures white with Clover for you Old Faithful pal of mine. So I've got all the classical, baroque based. I've got all the country and Western, and I love folk, because so many traditions of people and history isn't and the (story in place). Yeah, just wonderful. So I'd like to get to a National Folk Festival if I could. And another one is the I'm sorry, I've lost I just got distracted.
Anthony 1:05:40
You have well and truly
Rosemary 1:05:42
a huge range of music really? I'm not very good on modern music. It's really loud. While you're dead, so not like this.
Anthony 1:05:53
I was a rock drummers. I plenty of that. I wouldn't, but I wanted to be responsive. But I was, I was also into the other side. I was into all this too. During that time, I come from a teen years
Rosemary 1:06:06
I was into and record a consort. I play a tenor. And we play all 14/15 century music. Hardly did tell anyone so sort of esoteric, but then there's a one when the dog died and Harry Dale, the driver who drowned you know, I've got all those. Well, yeah, and the folk stuffs gorgeous. I'm the trade union choir music. I love all those protests on Sunday by trade unions. Bring up the banners, all the achievements of Trade Unions over the years. Yeah, so wide range really
Anthony 1:06:46
wide ranging, indeed. I'm glad I asked. Rowe, thanks so much, I wish you very well for the tail end of the big period for you in these events coming up. And the book lands well and widely too. Thanks for taking time out of that schedule. And being with me,
Rosemary 1:07:06
it's been a pleasure. It's been a bit different from Oh, look, I think we have to mention Rob's drawings. Because they very, very special. He put so much time and work into. Sabrina does a concept when she draws. Rob does fact. Although they look folksy they're actually extremely accurate. And we've done it in such a way that people can lift them and use them in translations and take the captions off and replace them with their own and use them for teaching. So you can scale them up to a one without any loss of perspective or distortion. And then you can have you know, our water landscape. The way it would be naturally a water landscape, what we've done, where are you? Where do we intervene. So they're just wonderful drawings and I really want to pay tribute to Robbie's in the tradition of Bill and Andrew Jeeves and the black and white drawing. Then the young women are coming through with all the Color drawings and concepts which is just balancing the whole thing off. So tribute to permaculture artists and designers as well.
Anthony 1:08:13
Oh, yes, there was a recent podcast conversation on a book on quantum social change by brilliant woman in Norway. Kevin O'Brien is a no. And the artist was Tony Bjordam. So a woman in this case, full color, but extraordinary and and yes, the books where the art is, as you say, Pivotal and Central. So yes, hats off. Yeah.
Rosemary 1:08:36
So people used to say to me, I love your books. I'd say well, what do you love? I love that picture of the word trying to get into compost. I say what does the words say? I don't know. I thought that was the best thing
Anthony 1:08:49
was gorgeous. Thanks a lot. Right. Thanks for being with me.
Rosemary 1:08:52
Terrific. It's been great. Thank you.
Anthony 1:08:55
That was permaculture legend Rosemary Morrow. For more on Rowe, her new book "The Earth restorers guide to permaculture" and of course to pick up a copy, see the links in the show notes. And with thanks to Lucy and the team at Melliodora, you'll also see a link to a giveaway offer - a book package including Rowe's new one, along with a number of others. That offer closes at the end of next Monday the 13th of March. Now you'll have heard artist Brenna Quinlan's name at the end there. Her partner Charlie Mgee and his Formidable Vegetable band are about to release a new album. I thought to play something off it and have had a glimpse and it's outstanding, but it was the title track off the last album Earth People Fair that really seemed to sync in with this conversation. It might be a bit noisy for Rowe, but she'll appreciate the vibe, and the Latin roots are setting me off in all the good ways - helicopter nightmares be damned. The band is also on tour now - the link to all that is also in the show notes.
Formidable Vegetable 1:10:08
Anthony 1:12:18
we're getting close now to our live podcast conversation at the World Science Festival in Brisbane. I actually spoke with Zena and Jacob last Friday and wish you could have heard that hour or so too. Anyway, you'll find us at 10am on March 26, talking regenerating country with brilliant First Nations guests Jacob Birch and Zena Cumpston [this became ep.157].
Thanks, as always, of course to the generous supporters who have helped make this episode possible. And if you too value what you hear, please consider joining this community of supporting listeners so we can keep the podcast going. Just head to the website via those shownotes regennarration.com forward slash support. Thanks again. Of course do share this episode with someone you think might appreciate it. My name is Anthony James. Thanks for listening.