Big things. Little things.
Conversations with inspiring community leaders about the big things they’re doing and the little things that make them who they are.
Big things. Little things.
Lauren and Oberon Carter - Spiral Garden
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
An episode from the 2021 archives featuring Lauren and Oberon Carter of Spiral Garden, Australian authors, permaculture designers, and prominent sustainability advocates based in Hobart, Tasmania.
Hi, I'm Sophie. Welcome to Big Things Little Things, a podcast series where I sit down with inspiring change makers to discuss the big things they're doing, the little things that make them who they are, and together we vision pathways towards a better future. Morning guys, welcome back to week 8. Today I'm sitting down with Lauren and Oberon Carter. They're a super interesting couple who live in Hobart, Tasmania. They have three daughters, and they live what they call a waste-free lifestyle. So you can check out a bit of their backstory by if you go um into the show links, I'll pop the link in there for um this short documentary by Happen Films, which gives a really beautiful outline of the family and their mantra and how they live. But basically, um that's Margot she's up, she's helping with this introduction this morning. Um but yeah, that documentary gives a really nice picture of of the family. But I'll give you a bit of a background now. So um as I said, yeah, an average family of five who live in a suburban house, um, just like with average incomes in Hobart, Tasmania. And so this couple, like they've been together for a long time. Um, and after they got together, they both um not at the same time, but close together, they both did permaculture courses, which really had a big profound impact on how they lived their life. And so one of the permaculture principles that really um got home and is something that they've really narrowed into in um in mastering in how they live their life is produce no waste. Um and because they see that as a really important um way that you can empower yourself to make actual change in the face of you know all these climate calamities that we're facing. Because a lot of stuff is sort of sort of outside of the individual control, but um, you know, the the waste within your own life and household is something that you can have a tangible um impact on. So they've really embraced that. They released a book called Waste Free Living, a family guide to waste free living, and I'll put the link in the show notes. It's a really beautiful book full of um inspiration and practical tips of how to how to implement this into your life. And I'd just say like don't be don't be intimidated because contrary to I mean, even me, like when I was speaking to them, I was like, Oh, but it just seems like it would be so time consuming. I don't have enough time to to make pasta from scratch, and they're like, Oh god, Sophie. It's not it's not uh actually that's just a you know a block in your mind. Like living waste free is uh so much simpler and quicker than we think. It's just how our grandparents lived. And that actually can can be. Once you know, once you just um create that internal mind shift, you know, it actually saves you time because you're buying in bulk and um it makes everything a lot simpler because you know what you need and you just have a lot less crap, you know, um, in your house and a lot less, I guess, crap that you're ingesting in your body, because a lot of the highly processed, highly wasteful things that we do buy do have a lot of you know, nasty ingredients tucked in there. So it's just a fantastic way to live, really. So I'd recommend checking out their documentary if you want a bit of their backstory, because I've listened to a few interviews in with them and and today I really just wanted to sit down and talk to them as people, you know, and and hear a little bit about their story and their work and and like how they they raise their girls, um, because they do the unschooling method. So yeah, it was really just a get to know them kind of chat, and it felt like I was sitting down with friends, like I didn't want to stop talking. They're so lovely, like honestly, they're so nice. And um I hope you enjoy it. And um if you do enjoy it, I hope you know you share this because um the messages that they're spreading are very important in in terms of action that we can take um individually for climate. So um enjoy and I will um I'll chat to you guys at the end. Oh, I did want to also mention that uh they have a super beautiful online store, which sounds kind of contradictory with waste free living, which they totally talk about through interviews, but it's a very highly um considered um ethical company, which which has you know a minimal amount of things on there, but they're they're things that are really um designed to be integral in this kind of a lifestyle. So I love it, it's beautiful. And in you know, if there's not something locally that I want and I need a present maybe for a for for a friend or something, like I bought some artwork on there previously, um it's just a beautiful store to check out. So yeah, definitely check it out. All right, bye guys.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, I I can say that that I feel like 2050 is is too far away in in the distant future to um to really have tangible actions now, you know, like it's it's aspirational, but it's not practical. Yeah um and we need we actually need stronger stronger actions to take place in the next decade. So if if they set targets for 2025 and 2030 and said this is this is the um to use kind of corporate jargon roadmap or blueprint of how we're going to get there, um, and it it actually spelled it out, and then then I feel like it it'd be something that'd be more exciting and that I'd be feeling good about. But you know, just making bold claims about something that's literally a generation away um from the current people in political power just just seems like a bit of a a farce. Uh that's the summary of it, yeah, from in in my view. I I I um there's so much that we can be doing right now, you know, and it's it's all well and good to have targets, but it all comes down to what are the actual what are the actual changes that are being proposed. And we know that really, you know, drastic changes are needed. And uh, you know, governments often put in a difficult position of having to meet lots of different people's needs. And so um, you know, what could could be bold action gets watered down into kind of weak, weak um actions, and and that's that's I think something that's really common in government everywhere, you know, that that can happen at every level at every level, local, state, federal, and international agreements too. Um things get watered down. And so we I think keeping that in mind, that's that's why we both are really strong on individual action, community level action, grassroots action, um, because that's where we have the control. This is that's where we can make the changes that we think are needed. Um, and hopefully, well not even hopefully, but governments will be um coerced, not coerced, but encouraged to follow suit. Once we're all doing things, they'll be like, we've got to catch up to to what the community is doing.
SPEAKER_00This is what voters want.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's right.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly. I guess in my mind, like I'm always trying to put it into like a logical framework, just just to make it more simple for my mind to understand what I can do. So I guess in in I'm thinking my vote in you know the next federal election is is really important, making sure that um you know I'm voting for somebody who is um who has climate safe policy. Um, make sure that I'm pushing for change on the state level as well, because I know that you know the the federal government's really trailing behind in terms of what they're doing with climate. States are slightly more ahead, but not where they need to be yet. Um and pushing for change in my local community. So um I think Hannah Maloney recommended I look up Voices for Indi, which has some really good resources for pushing for change in the local community. And then with what you guys are doing. So this is like on my own individual level. And I guess for the listeners, um I was thinking about, you know, how I would describe what you guys are doing with with your life. So um I you might remember, I think I tagged you in something. I did an art piece which was um part of a series called What If Wednesdays. And the art piece was what if the rubbish trucks just stopped coming? And it's trying to imagine, you know, like what if everything that comes into your house you're responsible for, and you have to take responsibility for like how would that actually practically affect how you live your life? And I think that it's exactly how you guys live because you're just taking it.
SPEAKER_03I might have commented that. I think I might have said, Yeah, that's everything that we're doing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. And yeah, it's I I just thought that was kind of a good way to summarize how it is that you you're living because you're really taking full responsibility for all everything that comes in and out of your property, and so you're putting out a really practical set of um guidelines, which you go through in really great detail in your book Waste Free Living, which I've been reading and really enjoying. You mentioned um um before your um your work in ecology, because I know you're a state government ecologist. And so I was wondering if you might be able to tell the listeners a little bit about your job, because I mean that sounds to me like you you might be really on the forefront of of what's happening with our climate. And I was interested in in your role and yeah, how that looks from day to day.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, in general, yeah. I have been observing the impacts of climate change um and some of the impacts of huge wildfires and huge droughts and um sometimes floods and other kind of catastrophes in Tasmania that we've had over the last 15 years. And um it's it's yeah, really sobering when you when you get to visit all of these parts of Tasmania that people don't get to visit very often. A lot of them are on private land or really remote places, or I'm looking at really specific species that people might not have really paid much attention to and seeing their plight, you know, seeing the challenges that those species face and trying to work out practical solutions to conserve them. Um and my job specifically is looking at, excuse me, looking at threatened plant species. So we've got you know 500 or so threatened plant species in Tasmania, and they all have their own issues and different threats, different management challenges. And so my job involves learning about them, seeing what they uh their status is and what they need, and talking with land managers. It might be a farmer or it might be someone who works at council or at parks, and talking about what we can do to make the conditions better for these plants. Um, but in the looming over all of that is climate change and how that's that's kind of like the elephant in the room sometimes, you know. We might be talking about putting a little fence around this little patch of of a native grassland or something, um, or putting in a fire here uh or doing some weeding there, but then you've got the you know oppressing kind of climate change threat and how that can affect complete ecosystems and societies, and and everyone's going to get very distracted in the next 10 or 20 years just trying to survive. Um, and it's gonna make it harder for us to focus on these things that that I'm focusing on in my job because we've we're gonna have bigger issues that are imminently sort of facing us personally. So that's something that I that I keep in mind. And yeah, I think it's it helps uh me to frame um what I do in my home because sometimes in the past I've felt a little bit powerless trying to make change in in um in natural areas of Tasmania. And so I feel like, well, what can I control in my life? Are the things that we buy, you know, the things that we consume and bring into our home and what we wear and what we choose to do with our time outside of work. And so that's kind of influenced us a little bit, I think.
SPEAKER_03I'd say a lot, a lot, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, and so yeah, getting focusing on the areas where you can have control and make decisions um is really important to us. And I think that's partly because I'm I'm in a job where sometimes my decision-making powers are are limited, you know. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00I just when I think about your work, like that's very, very important work. Um, and for me, that feels like it would be kind of confronting sometimes, definitely.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you you do get a little bit uh I I don't know if desensitized is the word, but you get used to coping with with species that on the are on the brink of extinction without just you know crumbling into a into the fetal position and crying. You you know, you just have to.
SPEAKER_03That's where I'm at still. And you have had some teary chats with other ecologists about stuff though. Oh, of course. They've missed it.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah, and I have seen I've seen rainforests go under dams, I've seen um beautiful native grasslands filled with wildflowers go under highways uh in Victoria, um, and and I've seen stuff that should not have been uh destroyed uh become lost. And and so it, I guess it's it is emotional. Really, it it just motivates me to continue doing the best I can. I feel privileged and fortunate enough to be in this position. So I don't I don't take it lightly, you know, I take my job seriously and and it takes up a lot of my time, uh, especially this time of year. And and it because I really think that it's important to be doing what we can to protect or conserve nature in in all its kind of facets.
SPEAKER_00It's it feels like I'm talking about the ecologist version of an emergency doctor, you know, you're really in touch with those life and death cycles. Like, do you think that it adds a silver lining to this job that it really puts you in a place mentally where you feel connected to the importance of being in the present moment and enjoying the things that matter most?
SPEAKER_01Oh, totally, yeah. I mean, I feel it it gives me I really get a lot of fulfillment when I get out in the bush. So, so for many months of the year, I'm stuck in an office uh dealing with permits and providing advice on developments and some pretty, pretty dry stuff. But uh the the reason I got into working in conservation in the first place, and the reason I still do it is because I get to go out and connect with nature and it just feels the most real uh that that you can feel when you're when you're standing out in the bush um and there's there's no sort of obvious signs of human sort of infrastructure around, and you can just sort of yeah, remind yourself of of being part of that ecosystem as well, that we are part of it, that it's not something separate. I don't I don't like othering nature. So I feel like that's also driven how we do our thing too. We've we remind ourselves that um our society has become disconnected from nature, and that's why we produce so much waste. So we're trying to reconnect ourselves with nature and and reduce our waste as humans, indigenous humans have done in the past. They've been really good at managing that that side of things, um, but modern society is generally pretty crap at it. So we're trying to reconnect with nature and and that that is obviously linked to my thinkings as an ecologist. Um, yeah, I find that really helps. Yeah, that connection. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00It's a real point of interest for me of understanding, especially for people like yourselves, like where where did that seed of that connection to nature start and and how has that um brought you to the place that you are? And something that I read in your book, um, this was sort of specific to Lauren that I was interested in asking, was I know that that you you said that you spent a lot of time growing up in the garden with your grandfather?
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and and so I was interested because for me, my connection to to nature really started just in being around my mother, who was extremely passionate about gardening and just being outside and doing imaginative play in the garden. And um, and so I was interested in hearing about like who who was Lauren as a child and a teenager, and and just hearing a little bit about that thread of connection to nature, where that germinated from.
SPEAKER_03Well, I was thinking about this the other day. I was I had a memory when I was emptying the tea leaves onto a pot plant that I'd we I'd seen my dad do that when I must have been about two, and I remember asking him about it, and I would say that is the first recollection I have of understanding that I was connected to those plants and that we could have a relationship, um, that there were things that I could give to the plant that would help the plant grow, and um then I could because I think it was herbs that he was watering, and my dad is not like a practical gardening sort of person at all, but he did that, and so that was something that that really sparked that interest for me, and I was so tiny at the time, um, but I guess uh my mum was always super practical, and she was always making do and making things from um, I'd always have these amazing costumes that she'd pull together from old clothes and rags and stuff. She'd always whip something up, um, and she was great in the garden too, and she really encouraged me to just go outside and spend time outside um observing and drawing. She would put a sketchbook in my hand and sit with me and we'd draw a plant together. Um, and so that kind of um brought this interest in art and plants. Um, and then from there I really developed this passion for garden design. I actually really wanted to be a garden designer when I was growing up, and my school would let me design gardens for their oh, that's so cool. It was a little patch of garden that they let me design. I don't know if they actually ended up installing it in the end, but they they took on board some of the design ideas and incorporated them. Um, so they were quite encouraging of that too, which is quite interesting because it was a really um conservative girl's school.
SPEAKER_01I I think um another influence for both of us was the anxiety that was common in the 80s around pollution, nuclear war and stuff. So so I thought babe, maybe you want to mention your your anxieties around refrigeration and stuff.
SPEAKER_03Oh my gosh. Um yeah, I've always been fairly anxious. So when I was um it's funny because none of my family were really aware of environmental stuff at all. But when I was 10, I remember lying in bed and it was a hot night and the fan was on me. And I started thinking about all the kids all over the world with their fans or their heaters on them, and the amount of electricity that must have been used for that, um, and it freaked me out. I got up really quickly and turned off the fan, and then for me, that's kind of where wanting to um live in a way that that has a positive impact on the environment rather than a negative one that kind of sparked that. So yeah, I was pretty young at the time. Um and so yeah, I guess as as we've because we've done a lot of growing up together, haven't we? We got together when we were I was 19. Um so a lot of that growing together as adults, we moved out of home together and setting up our home together, that's always been something that we've consciously done is thought about the impact that we've had. Um yeah, not really because we were taught to, but just developed in that direction. Just because we yeah, we felt it was really important.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So can we go back to when you were 19 and you got together? Can you tell me a little bit about um I just am such a soppy romantic and I like to know the backstories of people. So I'm just interested to know like your your love story if you're happy to share it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, do you want me to share it?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you can tell it. All right.
SPEAKER_01So uh a friend of mine at uni, like first year uni, I think it was, um, was His girlfriend went to uni with Lauren. So we went to different unis. Um, and there was a party, and um, at the end of the party, or at the end of the food, like all of the guys went off to do something together, and I stuck around to help clean up. And Lauren liked that about me. I wasn't doing that as one to get girls, but I was just that was just what I thought you did. So um, so you liked me then, but I didn't know that, and it it took like over a year before we actually first went out on a a date. Um and we went and saw train spotting uh at the cinema. Uh and we went to a uh a restaurant called the Blue Train, and we but and I caught the train to our date, so it was very train oriented. My stepfather's a train driver, which is kind of weird too. But but there was there was a lot of train themes, and um, and then after after our first date, we just talked every day and we we were pretty much inseparable. That's 25 years ago. Um and uh that the the rest is sort of history, really.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. And so so did you when did you have your first daughter? Because you have um Audrey, Xanthy, and Maisie, which are such cute names, I just think so. You're together for a few years before you had Audrey.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, Audrey's 18.
SPEAKER_01So we must have had been been together about seven years. Yeah, we got we got married in 2001, so we'd been together five years. Um, we moved out after we'd been together three years, I think. Um yeah, 98 we moved out. Um, so yeah, all fairly kind of normal and average, I think. Although we were kind of the youngest amongst our friends group to get married and have kids.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I had no uh as a young mum, I had no friends that have babies. Um yeah, and you know, I was 25, I didn't think I was that young, but um yeah, it was just me at home with a kid, and you were at work and it was part of us, really.
SPEAKER_00Oh it can be very isolating that yeah, especially if you didn't have other um, you know, mums sort of your age around, like oh having young kids.
SPEAKER_03And my family were all working too. So um I guess yeah, learning how to do all of that on our own pretty much.
SPEAKER_01But the the more crunchy aspects of our lifestyle, for what for want of a better word, I think I think most of the listeners will know what we mean by crunchy. That really happened um uh when our second child, when you were pregnant with our second child, who is now 15, um, because we had a really rough experience with an obstetrician, and then you looked into you were looking into home birth and exploring that. And so that that opened up a whole community of of mums. And I I kind of got in that community too. So we were both in it together, and and that led to home birth, which which sort of is like a gateway drug to a whole bunch of lifestyle choices.
SPEAKER_03Um I would say the cloth nappies started the whole thing though.
SPEAKER_01Was that before then?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, we were using cloth nappies from the beginning with Audrey, yeah. And that I think that's because we'd witnessed our parents using cloth nappies, and that was just normalized for us. Um and yeah, so um I I spent a lot of time researching modern cloth nappies because they were brand new at the time, they were like a whole new phenomenon. So I spent a bit of time researching that and then connected with the home birth community that way, which then leads to the homeschooling community.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so um, yeah, there's been like this sort of and then into permaculture and then into waste-free living and although we were we were into permaculture when we were like when we first got together. Because we saw David Homgren once at some market at St Andrew's Market in Melbourne, remember he was giving a talk or something?
SPEAKER_03Something it was somewhere like that. I think it might have been a very early sustainable living festival.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, back type in the in the late 90s. So we knew about permaculture, but it was sort of it was not something that we knew how to grab hold of, like how to how to really apply.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, we had grand plans to move to Tasmania and build a kit home and uh permaculture property. So I guess we've kind of ended up doing that, except we're living more of a retro suburbia lifestyle.
SPEAKER_01In a just an average size suburban block, you know. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00But I think that's that's really important. That message though, is like it is um, because I, you know, everyone at the moment, I reckon, with all the stuff that's happening, they're kind of freaking out. Like in my I live in Southeast Queensland, which has some beautiful um mountain ranges through here. And a trend that we're noticing in this region is that um a lot of people from the cities are um buying up blocks of land um on those mountain ranges or in the the country areas, I guess. And I guess with this kind of um impetus to start a homesteading kind of lifestyle. Right. But you know, that's not practical for everyone to flee the cities and start homesteading. Um, and I think that the retro suburbia book of David Holmgren's is really important because it's saying that you can have these beautiful lives connected to nature that are so meaningful, but you don't have to leave the city and you don't have to have like an acre block, you can be on you know a quarter acre block, or they do some incredible stuff on tiny little blocks in pot plants.
SPEAKER_03So we found this house. I would say that was really the catalyst for wanting to um dig deep into permaculture, moving to this house. We and our sub we, you know, we're lucky to live in a really lovely suburb that is between the bush and the water. We have access to both. So we have that feeling like nature is around us and we're we're nestled in it. Um, but we didn't really want to move too far out of town because we knew our kids were going to need to have access to things that were closer to town. We have uh concerns about bushfire safety further out in Tazi. It's a real real issue. Um and we just don't have time in our lives to be spending ages doing fire management on a large property. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Like we really struggle to keep up with keeping this garden look like and it's only 850 square 850 square meter block that we're on, and our house is like 120 square meters. So it's it's it's modest.
SPEAKER_03It's and it's being engulfed by the garden at the moment with all the rain. So like that is more than enough for us.
SPEAKER_00And this if you get rain right now, it's the garden just explodes with weeds in this warmer weather.
SPEAKER_01It's a really wet, yeah. But we we grow most of our own fruit and vegetables, so that's we know that it's doable, and and and that's not even we're not even utilizing every square meter of ground. That's in the longer term plans, but you know, there we could we could feed multiple families off our one suburban block, and that's what inspires us to kind of continue growing food. So because we we would love to we'd love to provide a little local like veggie box sort of scheme so that we could just we can feed ourselves and feed a few families in need, and that would just be like our measure of success, you know.
SPEAKER_03Um, and that's inspired a little bit by our neighbours. They've always grown food, they have um they had this amazing lemon tree and apples and raspberries and veggies, and they just go and knock on everyone's doors in the neighbouring houses and give them a bucket of food every now and then when they've got a surplus, and we just thought that was so beautiful, and um, they're getting older now, so we're at the point where our plants have grown enough that we can start doing that for them. Um, which is which is lovely. That's that's what we need our communities to offer people.
SPEAKER_00That's right, and um I guess there was a comment that I wanted to make in terms of like the waste-free lifestyle that you live and growing your own vegetables and things in your backyard. And I guess people can view it at the moment as like a trend. However, if you look at it in the broader climate perspective of what's happening in the world, it's actually a resilience tactic because in the future, when things are becoming more disrupted, for example, supply chains, which we've already seen through the pandemic, you know, you're you're developing a very resilient hub in your house, in your neighborhood, in your local community. Where, like, for example, the fruit trees, you know, like um Artist's family, they they made the comment that um uh generosity breeds generosity, you know, and so that act of sharing from your neighbor encouraged you to do the same. And and it's um the the more you do engage with the community, and like I have a a group in town where um I'm sort of pushing for this kind of thing where we we trade excess produce and extras excess household items and stuff like that. And it's so um just seeing people how happy it makes them when you take them down into the back of the garden and they're just like, here's the supermarket, what would you like? And they're like, What? And you pick them this mountainous basket of vegetables, and they're just so shocked, but so grateful. And yeah, just it provides this whole other like tingly, like heartwarming connection with people around you that you don't get when you go to woolies or coals. And yeah, I just think I don't know, that was just one of my comments on your Yeah, completely agree.
SPEAKER_03I totally agree. Yeah, we've been doing that with our homeschooling group for a while too, not so much with food, but with resources, clothing. Um, so when someone's baby is grown out of nappies or whatever, then those clothes will be passed on to the next baby. Um and that's been really it's been lovely to see um not families nurtured and cared for, um, and the connection that we all have with each other has grown exponentially just because we've been sharing with each other for such a long time. Um yeah, I think it's really not just food, but with everything. We need to think about resilience and how we share the resources that we have.
SPEAKER_00I was interested just with your comment about like the home birth and how that led into the homeschooling journey because I actually had so you know how you ch you went to the home birth, like I did exactly the same thing with our second daughter, and it is like a gateway drug to like oh the systems, like we don't have to go with the way that you know the systems go exactly.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's exactly right.
SPEAKER_00And like, holy shit, it was empowering. Like, I just had the baby like a few metres away in the living room, had Marg, and I oh, it was the most transformative um experience for for me, and and now definitely my mind has opened to this um the homeschooling journey. My girls are still quite young, but I was very interested to hear um just like how how your girls have have found the homeschooling process and what you think the homeschooling um equips the children with that perhaps maybe a mainstream education doesn't.
SPEAKER_03Well, I can say because we've had lots of chats lately with our eldest, she did end up going into the school system midway through last year after we came out of lockdown.
SPEAKER_01Into year 11.
SPEAKER_03Um, into year 11. So halfway through, she's arrived, everyone's in the middle of it.
SPEAKER_01She's never been to school.
SPEAKER_03She launched herself in school because she knew that she wanted to go to university, um, and that was a pathway that she wanted to take, and she also wanted to connect with some people her own age, uh a broader range of people, have a bit of life experience out there. Um, but I was chatting to her about how she felt that compared to homeschooling and and what she liked, and she is so grateful for homeschooling, she loved it. Um, and there there were challenging moments for her, but um the overall is that it was like this magical childhood that we were able to offer her, which is totally what we wanted. We wanted to prolong childhood, we wanted to her to have some um plenty of time outdoors and connected to the ecosystems around her, um, for her to understand that she was part of that ecosystem. Um we wanted her to have adventures and spend long days playing outside with friends, which she did. We made sure that we have uh a regular group that meets up one day a week and they just play for the entire day, and it's just creative play, a huge bunch of kids all together, um all different ages, and that was another thing. We wanted her to not feel segregated from other children of different ages and also adults. Um, and I think the result of that is she feels very comfortable going into any social setting. She's been able to relate to her teachers really well at um the school that she's at uh as an equal, and they've they've respected that, and the communication has been very respectful. Um it's yeah, the benefits have just been huge. We wanted her to have we knew very early on that she was an artist, um, and we wanted her to have time to draw and create. She didn't have time for sitting in her classroom. She was making art, she was too busy drawing, and so going to school, her the ability that she's had to sit and draw all day is really tapered off, and so her creative development has slowed, and she's found that quite frustrating because she's had to incorporate some writing um and analytical stuff. I mean, at the same time, she's she's now really great at writing, which was something she was always super against. She was like, I will not write, and that she's just finished a whole class on creative writing.
unknownOh wow.
SPEAKER_03She knew that she would she would actually want to write. So um, yeah, I think the time it gives you is has been that was the biggest benefit. It just was this gift of time where she didn't have to grow up and she could just figure out what it was she wanted to do. Follow her passions, and it's been pretty much the same for the other two kids too.
SPEAKER_00They have time and um is it um unschooling that you do?
SPEAKER_03Yes, yeah. Um we've dipped into using some programs along the way that have uh, if the kids have said, I wonder what kids my age are like actually doing. We'll go, okay, well, let's have a look, let's get our hands on some stuff, and then I'll do it for a little bit and then I'll go, no, this is boring. I want to just go back to doing my own thing. Um, yeah, so it's very yeah, it's unschooling. So just following their um interests and passions, and I'm really there as a facilitator, which takes a lot of the pressure off me uh because I don't have to teach them. I think if I had to show up and teach them every day, that would create a lot of conflict, yeah, and that would be really um challenging for all of us because they don't want to be taught. They're very resistant to being taught, but they love learning.
SPEAKER_01It's the mutual respect or the mutual just regard for each other from that unschooling approach that has also meant that it's easier when it's come to things like waste-free living, when we had our initial conversation with the kids about it, where like Lauren and I were both, you know, saying, We want to do this, we want to see if we can go a couple of weeks without making waste. Do you want to get in in on it? Are you cool with it? And they were like, Yeah, you know, whereas if we if we told them you're this is what you have to do, you know, in a very direction directive way, then they would have resisted it and and probably wouldn't be participating in it now. But it was very much uh we were all in agreement, it was like a family pact, and so uh, and and that's continued for the last six years, and and they're all there that's our norm, and um you know, boringly normal for us to be to be living this way, and and it's the it's times like this where we're chatting on a podcast that we're reminded that it's a little bit different, perhaps, to to what other people might be doing.
SPEAKER_03Um, one of the main things that I've I've come to realise about unschooling is that it it really is about relationship building. That's the key thing. It's it's about creating this relationship where you are supporting each other and it's it's really helping them learn how to live in a community. Um and the other reflection that I had based on what you were saying is creating a a um a family culture that's like um something that you have the freedom to do when you are removed from the school system and from that uh industrialized educational way of thinking. Institutionalized. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. When you remove the institution, you can kind of approach things in a very different way.
SPEAKER_01You don't have the same tension between what the school wants of your children and what you want to do want of your children.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. You just, yeah, you're free of that. That's sort of what I I feel very worried about. Like the more I think about school and the future, um is like putting the children into like a school these days. I know that there are a lot of standards, you know, it's much more regimented than it was even when I was at school. And, you know, they need to be meeting these benchmarks, and I it can create a big sense of anxiety for the children, you know. Am I meeting these expectations? Am I passing these tests and you know, when they're six or seven years old? Uh, and I don't I just wonder personally whether that's equipping the children for the future that they're going to have.
SPEAKER_03My experience is that that that's not how learning happens. Everyone learns at different rates and in their own time. Um, and there are definitely needs to support kids if they're struggling with certain things. But from what I've observed, kids learn in fits and spurts. So they'll they might do nothing for ages that you can really see that you can detect, and then all of a sudden they're doing it. And um that's that's kind of how we've always nurtured their learning is to encourage them to have those downtimes. Nature has downtimes, everyone needs those downtimes, but it's at that's actually where a lot of the work is happening when you can't really detect it, and then all of a sudden they can read and they do it confidently, and they don't feel like it's been difficult for them. I know I was always slow to read when compared to all of the kids in my class. I was the last to get my pen license, and I always felt like I was really slow or dumb because of that, and it's just that I was growing at a different rate, and my brain development was was different to some of my peers. I was much younger than a lot of them, too. Um, and I I really feel like those benchmarks they they they don't really serve a purpose for our children and how they develop because they're going at their own speed. And that's been a real um benefit for us with the Tasmanian homeschool system is that we can write our own curriculum, we can set our own benchmarks as long as they're developing and we're observing and supporting them. That's that's um encouraged.
SPEAKER_00Um I was wondering about that practical side. Like, do you do you have to prove to, I don't know, is there some government official knocking on your door being like, can your child read and do times tables? You know.
SPEAKER_03Uh it's not quite like that though. They come over and they have a cup of tea and we get out all of the cool things that we've been doing, and we sit them in front of a slideshow and show what we've been up to, all the stuff we've made, and the kids have a chat with them about what they've been up to, and they go, That's amazing, how cool, what a wonderful childhood. You hope you're doing so well, and then we see them again next year. Um, so yeah, it's it's really simple. Supportive, and I've been really grateful for that along the way. And yeah, because we don't have to meet those benchmarks, we can allow the kids to go beyond them. It's worked for our elders, and I can see it working for the younger two as well. But in their own chosen directions.
SPEAKER_00I just it was really interesting your comment about um how you took a longer to read and how you always thought that you were like dumb because of that, because I had exactly the same thing when I went to um a private school when I was in year one, and I remember the teacher making me stand up in front of the class and asking me to read off the board, and I couldn't do it. And she got angry at me like and made me really upset, like in front of the class, and sort of said like that I was dumb. And so that experience uh stunted my how I felt about myself for so long, you know. And um, so I actually couldn't read until I was about eight properly, and that was when I moved to a school in Warwick called the School of Total Education, which is kind of was kind of like a Steiner school. And when I went to that school, back then it was very loose and like they just took the pressure way off, like it was founded by an Indian yogi guru. And I remember he came down to the classroom one day to chat with our teacher and see how we were doing, and he asked us, so what would you guys like to do today? And we said, We want to go and pick mulberries on the mulberry tree. And he said, Okay, go do it. And and he let us go and do it. And so I went to that school, and with within six months, I was reading Harry Potter, like all of them, you know. I was and I I've gone and done law now, but that that um mental sort of picture of myself as being dumb and not being able to read has stuck with me. I didn't even when I went into law, I thought that's no way I can, I'm smart enough to do law. And you know, that really can mess with you, and that's what I'm just very conscious with my children. I want, I don't know, I want them to love learning and to be excited about life and not to feel anxious and like ashamed that they're not meeting expectations.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's I I think uh a lot of schools, I can't speak you know to all schools because I I'm outside of that system these days, but there's a tendency to to promote competitiveness and comparison, whether it's to an average or whether it's to the best kids in the class, you know. And whereas we're looking in in our home education setting more at cooperativeness rather than competitiveness and and comparison. We don't we don't try and because that can that can be quite demoralizing as well if you feel like you're not up to scratch in some way, um, as much as society tells you that competition's a great thing, and because that's how humanity evolves, but I I'm not convinced of that argument, you know. We we just should be, you know, um encouraged to express ourselves and be creative and fulfilled and nourished and and empathize with each other and get along um and work together. And I feel like those qualities and characteristics are what will put us in better stead for the future than constantly trying to beat each other at things.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, that's just my rant about that stuff. That's true.
SPEAKER_00No, that's that's so true, and that's what we we talk a lot about at that um on this podcast with different guests because that kind of competitiveness is driven by this like scarcity mentality of winning, you know, and wanting to secure something so that you don't miss out and the other person doesn't get ahead of you. But you know, to go forward in in the world, like the what the themes that you're talking about of collaboration and communication and you know, community, that is what's going to to to keep us alive, like as a species. And it's yeah, I think it's super important those themes that you bring up. Um, I did want to jump back a bit. I'm interested to hear about your permaculture journey. I'm at you know, only just uh starting to learn about permaculture. I'm doing the Milkwood course at the moment. Um, but I was keen to hear a bit because I know you did you got into it together, like after you guys were together.
SPEAKER_01I about eight years ago, you did your PDC.
SPEAKER_03I did my PDC, and it was my first thing after having the last baby. This was my thing that I was going to do for myself to learn something, and I got two weeks of just being Lauren outside of the house, which was really good.
SPEAKER_02Magic.
SPEAKER_03My mum came over to Tassie and looked after the girls for one week, and Oberon took it a week off work, and I went and did the Milkwood PDC, which was had an urban permaculture um approach. That was the focus. And Hannah Maloney was the head teacher, and she was great.
SPEAKER_00She's like my idol, she's so cool. She's wonderful.
SPEAKER_03Um, and so yeah, it was this two-week period to really just have these conversations with the other students and really entrench in that permaculture thinking. And I realized the really strong connection between permaculture and unschooling. It was, I came home and I said to Oberon, we've been doing this. This is how we've been living. We already think this way, isn't this great? And because he's an oncologist as well. A lot of those things really clicked. And he was like, Okay.
SPEAKER_01I was a bit skeptical.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, right. Okay, I'm a bit skeptical. I'm a scientist. You sound like my husband.
SPEAKER_01So I did the PDC the following year uh with Good Life Permaculture with Hannah, and and I even was up front with her. I said, Look, I'm I'm really interested, but I have been an ecologist for 15 years, and I feel like I kind of know it all, if you know, like I was feeling a bit arrogant about things, but but because it has such a social dimension, that really that really interested me, like how seeing humans more as part of ecological systems. Whereas previously, I think I I had othered nature and sort of in my work, I it had been like me in my office, nature is something that's out there and they're very separate. And I feel like the PDC brought it together in my mind, and then we both did a design plan for our property that we still live on, and we kind of started implementing things from that design, and and then that led to us bringing permaculture into zone zero, into our home, and that's something that is still probably our strength is working out how to apply permaculture in your day-to-day life. Um, and we ended up uh a couple of years later writing an e-course that was um called Seedlings, which is permaculture for families.
SPEAKER_03And um, yeah, so we've had that which has actually been really popular in homeschooling in the homeschooling community with families wanting to bring permaculture to their kids and have those conversations because of the focus is the permaculture principles and really um getting kids to understand them. Because we we feel like there was at the time a kind of a uh thought process that permaculture was for adults and not for children. Should children shouldn't really know that stuff, but we feel like it's really essential that families embody all of those permaculture principles and normalize that from early on. So having those conversations is really great.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's interesting because like um a permaculture design course for for anyone, I would highly recommend it. They're they're real, they can be life-changing things. Have you done one?
SPEAKER_00So um, so I'm just doing the Milkwood one now, which is which is online. So I I talked to Hannah Maloney a bit about this actually. Um, and she because she said like an online course is really good and beneficial for anyone, and I'm also going to do a Lauren, and once the kids are slightly bigger, I'm absolutely going to leave and go and do one somewhere else.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so they're they're they've they're just there's all these added benefits of being in a group of you know 20 people and and you're all into it for those couple of weeks, and you've you're all kind of on the same page, and you will inevitably make really good friends from it.
SPEAKER_03But it's really intense, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01But but I think that the the fact that it's such a like a mind melting, like awakening kind of that I don't know if that's the right word, but just an enlightening kind of experience made made us think, well, it probably doesn't have to be such a radical thing, because if you if children are taught the permaculture um principles and ethics and it's instilled in the way that that you live from a very young age, I think when our kids go and do a PDC in in the next five years or whatever, they're probably going to be like, oh yeah, I've done all this. It's not going to be this. I know this. They already sort of do it. And and I just think that we think that you know kids can can understand these concepts. Uh, I think that um the main instigators of permaculture, um, David Hongren and and Bill Mollison have somewhat of a like an academic, sophisticated language. It's it doesn't hasn't necessarily in it it hasn't intentionally tried to engage children, and so that's what we were trying to bridge that gap. Um, and I think we've we've had hundreds of families have have implemented our course now, and I think that's been good. And schools have have taken it on as a as a bit of a curriculum.
SPEAKER_03So I have these chats with the kids. Um like um I'm going through this evening's programme with our youngest again again. Um, we've sort of touched on it every year and had a look over it, but she's really wanting to to learn a bit more um and really put a bit of that academic thought to what it means and what the PAMACOC principles are. And so I've been yeah, just having a chat with her about about all of that, and um yeah, it's really cool to to watch her reflect on um the things that we've already done. She's like, Yeah, I know this, and yeah, it's yeah. When I originally said to her, Do you want to do seedlings with me? She's like, Oh, I don't really like gardening, mum, not really into gardening. And I said to her, No, but all the activities, there's actually like hardly anything in there that's gardening because permaculture isn't gardening, and um, yeah, so she's getting her head around that. She's the animals kid, she's all about wildlife and animals, so we're framing it in that way for her. Yeah, very cool.
SPEAKER_00This is this is slightly off track, this question, but this is just from my own personal interest, right? So, spiral garden your store, just so beautiful. Like everything about your aesthetic. I mean, I don't know if it comes from Lauren and Oberon or just Lauren. I mean, I feel like your history and textile design probably has a big influence of some of your aesthetics, you know. It's just everything you do is so beautiful. And particularly, you have the most amazing artwork by Phoebe Wall that you sell through your store. And I've bought a few, like um, I bought for my um private midwife for the home birth. I bought her a picture of like the the newborn baby with the two women like on the bed as a gift, and I bought my dual um one of the other pictures because they're just so magical. And I know you've said that you you met Phoebe when she was studying and you made that connection with her. What can you just tell me how you know Phoebe Wall? She's like a superstar in my mind.
SPEAKER_01She hasn't been to Australia.
SPEAKER_03It's just been this. Um, we've we kind of befriended her when she was just out of um, or no, she was still at college. The Rhode Island School of Design. Yeah. We connected with her because she was drawing, she was doing creating illustrations for Taproot magazine, which is another publication that we sell, which is beautiful. Lots of storytelling about pretty much how we live too. Um and uh we there was just something in her drawing, in her illustration that we really connected with. She was illustrating mums with babies on their backs, and anyway, it turned out that she'd been unschooled and had lived a life like that, and so had brought that to her illustrations. And she was just a delightful human, she's just lovely.
SPEAKER_01So we agreed to we we yeah, we we chatted with her via email, and we said, Can we please please sell your prints in our shop?
SPEAKER_03We'd love to. And so we were her first wholesalers, we were her first people that were actually selling her prints. Um, that must be and we were doing that here because the shipping rate from the US was huge and it was a lot for her to manage. So we said, Well, we'll take care of the southern hemisphere for you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, um yeah, well, they're so beautiful, like the quality, you know. When I received my I bought three when I got them, and the quality of them is incredible, that beautiful um thick paper. Yeah, and it looks like she has painted onto it, like it's yeah, they're such good quality.
SPEAKER_01We're a bit we were a bit um conscious about having things being shipped from from overseas, and so we we've now got an arrangement to to print them locally, um, uh so that we don't have to have things shipped from over there. So they get they now get printed in in Tassie and shipped straight from here.
SPEAKER_03And Phoebe's happy about that because that's half of the world that she doesn't have to worry about.
SPEAKER_01She's got enough on with writing books and everything else. Isn't she?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and every and she posts all these like pictures of how they're renovating the nursery and things. And her house is so beautiful, so beautiful. Well, um, I guess so how how I sort of finish up most of my interviews is I asked the guests to to paint the world that they would like to see in 2050. So I would love to hear what you guys have have in mind for the future.
SPEAKER_01Okay, well, to to kind of contextualize it, that's 30 years from now, roughly. And it's it's still easy for Lauren and I to remember 30 years ago, 1990, 91. I was buying Pearl Jam's first album, you know, I was we were we were like 15, 16, and and so it's actually it seems like such a long way away, but it's not. The 30 years is gonna pass really quickly. But we have seen radical change in the last 30 years with especially with things like the internet, you know, even in the last 10 years, people weren't really doing online shopping, and now everyone does online shopping, you know, like huge, huge societal shifts can happen in a short space of time. So, with that in mind, it's it's difficult to predict what what those radical shifts are going to be in the next 30 years. But it would be awesome if um there's a lot more uh well, I would like to see if I if I'm being really aspirational, I'd like to see the disintegration of um global multinationals and and industrialized agriculture and the the horrible corporatization of everything and everything being about the dollar. I would love to see governments and societies valuing um human welfare and the condition of ecosystems and nature as as like measures of where we of our of our success as a civilization. Um and so translating that into practical terms, I just want to see streets that are dripping with fruit trees and you know, like people that are that are feeling um safe um and able to express themselves and get nourishing healthy food locally and um collaborate on whatever it is that's going to be you know positive for the planet. Um it's it's hard to be much more specific than that. Do you do you have any other ideas about it?
SPEAKER_03Uh well, yeah. I mean, we formulated a lot of that view of how we want it to be together, so I guess mine is very similar. Um, I really just want my kid, our kids are gonna be our age at that time. So I want I want to make sure that there isn't a loss to their way of living. Uh, and I would love to see it get better, like you described. Regenerative. Yeah, I'd like to see the localization of everything. I'd love for them to be able to walk for their food and their entertainment and friendship and and uh feel supported and nurtured by their community and welcome within it.
SPEAKER_01And we we were talking about how we'd love if if the internet didn't rule, you know. So that in terms especially in terms of communication, um it seems like our attention spans have gotten shorter over the last 15 years since I first set up my MySpace account in 2006. Uh I I feel like it's harder for me to read read things without swiping, you know. And now we're down to 30-second TikToks and it's getting it's it's it feels like we're devolving rather than becoming more you know evolved creatures. We're we're reducing ourselves into bite-sized chunks of digital information. It'd be really great if we can step outside into the sunshine and and talk to each other and and problem solve together and listen to each other and experience things together. It's really hard when people are in lockdown for the last year and a half. But you know, like that's that's the future that it would be. It'd be great if the internet was there, but it was kind of like off to the side rather than front and center of our societies. Um, but I I don't know how I haven't got a solution for doing that other than to just turn off your notifications and you know, see find ways to take take breaks.
SPEAKER_00Um I did something that's really helped actually. I don't even know how I did this, but there was some setting on my phone that was just said limit screen time, and I just input the hours that I wanted to limit my screen time for, which was 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. And I did that like two weeks ago. And every time I I look at my phone um after like in those hours, it just it doesn't have anything on it except for limit screen time. And every app I press to open, it's saying, like, are you sure you want to? And and I've slept heaps better, actually, because through the night, even if I like go to look at my phone at the time, I don't see notifications and things like that that you know wake me up. Um, I guess one one interesting comment is like with that What if Wednesday art series that I did, one of the ones that I thought about doing but I didn't do was what if we broke up with technology? And well, I don't mean like a clean breakup, I mean, you know, like we stay friends, but we don't like hang out all the time and um you know we have like healthier boundaries. Yeah, um, because I think that that's what we're gonna have to do because we can't keep having phones that break down every two years that we have to upgrade because it's just like mining, you know, the world's resources. We have to have things that that last longer and and yeah, we've got to become a little bit more conscious rather than just blindly thinking that technological advancement equals human, you know, um evolution. You know, they're not they're not they don't have to be so intrinsically linked, like keep the good parts of technology, but like can the parts that are making us anxious and making us depressed, you know, insomniacs.
SPEAKER_01So um and I I I think um what one other thing that springs to mind is is not feeling like you have to wait to change the way that you live. Um so so 2050 might be far off, but I actually hope that I'm not living too much uh differently to the way that we live now. It'd be awesome if a lot of other people like I'd love for waste-free living, as we call it, to be boringly normal and and and for millions of people to have adopted it so that there's nothing particularly different about what we're doing, um, trying to consciously avoid waste in every every decision that we make. Um yeah, that so it'd be really great if we can just you know see see more of that.
SPEAKER_03And it's really not that hard to do, it's a simplification of how we live. We're living like my grandparents would have lived.
SPEAKER_01We preserve food, we go foraging, uh you know, I we still have um hobbies. Like I I collect secondhand books and like we have lots of interests, we've got lots of musical instruments in every bedroom, every room in the house, and you know, we're all we're all just doing stuff. It's not like it's all just about how do we reduce waste all the time.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, there's a like a government push to wait for the technology to fix it for us, but we have all of that ability to work out how to live without the technology. Any of that technology, I feel. Yeah, um, yeah, it's just how do we bring all of our communities up speed with it?
SPEAKER_00Well, I think I think it's happening. Um we're we're in this kind of awkward phase, like this weird teenage phase where we're trying to work out ourselves right now, like as humanity. But um, I I can just see it. I can everybody I walk into town, I'm in a little tiny conservative rural town, but like five people I meet in town will say things about how they wish that they could still be. Buy milk in bottles and that they take back to their dairy farmer, or people are starting to get much more into gardening, or thinking about sourcing their meat from a local regenerative farmer and participating in the like CSA agreements. Like it is, it is happening. People are yearning for it, and people are starting to push for it. So the work that you're doing is so important for encouraging that. So I I yeah, did want to say like a big thank you. And I guess like it might feel like there's a big heavy weight on your shoulders sometimes because you're like this like a community leader in this space.
SPEAKER_01But I think uh you're doing such a good job, and like I see the work you're doing, and I'm really it does feel it feels sometimes like we sound like broken records because we're saying we feel like we're saying a lot of the same stuff over and over again, like get into composting, grow your own food, avoid the supermarkets, just say no to buying stuff, like these sort of like mantras that we just keep spouting in it. It feels like they they all feel like quite simple things um that a lot of people, not everyone, but a lot of people could quite easily adopt. But as frustrating as it is to repeat ourselves, we we do recognize that we have to just keep doing it, and and we have to as much as we want to avoid the internet, you have to have to keep up and re re not rebrand, but re-package the messages, the same messages being, you know, you would know Brennan Quinlan's artwork, you know, like she's she's repackaging the same stuff that we've been saying, or the same stuff that Hannah's been saying, or that Bill Morrison was saying, or Costa is saying, and Milkwood are saying, we're we're all saying the same stuff, but we're just doing it in slightly different ways to capture a little bit more uh of a different sector of of the population, and hopefully if if enough of it can enough of us can do it, we'll we'll get some critical mass and it'll it'll cause a tidal wave of of uh ecological revolution or something.
SPEAKER_00Well, there you have it, guys. I hope you enjoyed that chat. I had a really nice time speaking with them. And um, in particular, yeah, I'm really interested in what they had to say about unschooling, because I don't know, I got some concerns about about the school system just with kids, but I don't know. That's a future Sophie problem to solve, but their insights are really helpful in um yeah, informing me about my options, so that was cool. Um so later this week uh I sit down with on Friday, I'm gonna chat with Ariel Gamble from Grounds While Giving, which will be awesome. So I'll probably release that on the weekend. I want to get that one out because we're gonna be touching on some like um, I guess climate news topics, which are you know relevant to right now. So I'm really looking forward to talking to her. And then next week I'm sitting down with Alex Dewitt, Low Tox Life Empire Guru. She's released a new book, Low Tox Life Food, which is really cool and very important messages for um just for everyday people and how we we eat in the modern day, especially in light of um the climate crisis. So uh I'm so excited to talk to Alex Stewart. I've been a big fan of hers. I've got her original book, Lotox Life, and I've listened to her podcast, which is super epic. So yeah, I'd check her out before next week if you haven't heard of her. I'm sure you you'll listen to her and you'll be like, oh yeah, of course I know Alex Stewart. She's you know, she's big time, she's cool, and so nice, you know, such important messages. So I'm just constantly grateful for all the people that have said yes to coming on this podcast. I am constantly shocked and very happy. So yeah, anyway, I hope you guys are having a good week. We're going okay here. Both the kids are awake. In the um recording of the intro, Margot went in to Sylvie in the cot and screamed at her and woke her up. So we're all awake now. Fantastic. Um, but that's about all that's going on with us. My Mastartis has resolved, and we are unconditional on our house purchase, which is um on this beautiful mountain range about 35 minutes out of Warwick and um sits at the top. It's called Hilltop, Little Shed House. Oh my god, like the dream. So I'm definitely gonna be sharing some insights about our um our transition out there, and I'm really gonna bite the bullet and try and implement, you know, a permaculture design um into the garden there to do it, you know, do it right from the beginning. And also I'm gonna really embrace this like low-waist living lifestyle because we don't have a bin service out there. And we also don't really have internet, so it's gonna be interesting. Anyway, I'll talk to you guys later. Okay, bye.