Alba the brave (our week of screenings, meetups and foragings in Scotland)

Aug 23, 2026 | adventure, Alba (Scotland), camping, children's learning, community, community sufficiency, ecological economy making, enclosures, farming and colonisation, fishing, food culture, foraging, fungi, locavorism, neopeasant culture making, permaculture, rabbits, reculturing, relocalisation, revillaging, school of the road, social warming, travel, walked-for food, wild foods | 30 comments

We crossed unceremoniously into the rolling borders of Alba – the Scots Gaelic word for Scotland.

We headed to Ian Hamilton Finlay’s Little Sparta in the Pentland Hills,

to test out the right to roam principle in Scotland. We drove up the laneway and got as far as here (Little Sparta is just beyond the trees). We got out of our little hire car, stretched our legs and inhaled the good air, when

along came the farmer on a quad bike. “May I ask what you’re doing here?” he said in a stern though fair-minded Borders accent. “Can we not camp here?” Patrick replied, to which the farmer gave us a thorough explanation about the limited access to Little Sparta, which was currently closed and probably beyond our budget anyway. It was getting on, we needed somewhere else to test the right to roam. Nice fat cows, green pastures. Scotland was not in drought like the south of England only a pebble’s throw from here.

From Little Sparta we found ourselves winding and wefting through delicious country and popped out at West Linton, and pitched our tent on the village green (a corner of which begins here),

just across the way from this little cemetery.

We were taken by this little town and reflected on the town clock centrepiece. When town clocks began to appear across Europe and lives began to become ever increasingly organised by clock time, what was lost? This too-fast-for-pilgrimage adventure has had its side effects. Ordinarily when we travel by bicycle or on foot, time spreads out horizontally and it feels like a week is lived in a day.

Under the orders of a rental car and a full itinerary we are living in an industrial haze (an off-gassing city on four wheels) with little moments of getting out of the machine for connection and kinship.

From West Linton in the south we bolted to Findhorn in the north. When this itinerary of screenings was being crafted we looked on the map and saw that these distances (at least from an Australian perspective) where not that far. However, unlike back at home, when a journey is stated as being four hours long one needs to double that here in the UK.

When we get out of the machine our relating bodies default into a state of walked-for food creatureliness, craving the nourishments of Mother Country.

We arrived at Cullerne House at Findhorn, and pitched our tent among the happy cohort of permaculture students camping there.

We met a bunch of inspired folk and prepared for the screening and Q&A in this space.

Imagine 70-80 people squashed into these rooms to watch The New Peasants. The audience laughed and sighed, cried and cheered and afterwards asked a string of goodly questions late into the night. There was a wonderful buzz followed by a few days to have lengthier conversations and make deeper connections. Meet Kelly! Homeschooling mum of four, radical homemaker, powerhouse of positivity, AaF blog reader and super supporter. Kelly was the reason we came to Findhorn,

and she brought us many gifts, including her family’s heather honey. Yum!

We two adults have been fairly under slept on this journey so far. Another big gift was Kelly taking Woody out for a day of fishing. He caught a bunch of undersized pollock (lythe), that he put back.

After we adults woke from our nap, we explored Findhorn Ecovillage, stopping in at the Universal Hall,

and later visiting Sylvia and Cornelia, who had invited us for lunch (complete with delicious gifted apple tart).

Patrick spent an evening in a well worn Findhorn pub with Jonathan Dawson, who co-created Schumacher College’s Regenerative Economics programme. Both sipping a nourishing pint of Guinness over several hours, sharing their thoughts, work and experiences. It was a special night while Meg and Woody connected with homeschooling families living at the ecovillage.

The next day we departed this most northern part of our travels and returned to the fast road. Oh badger! We only ever see you in this state.

We returned south through lands misted in heather.

Being on a quieter road south we had a little more agency to pull over, the gift of which we take for granted back home.

While in Alba we have been learning more about the enclosures and The Clearances that have resulted in a handful of people having the majority of the rights to the land and income. We learned that while fiercely contested over the centuries by raiders,

access to land for growing food, and for hunting and fishing is mostly out of reach for the average punter. Unlike in Australia and the US, where hunting and fishing for subsistence is accessible to a broad spread of folk, in Alba – where land and inland waterways are largely controlled by a small handful of land owners – hunting and fishing is mostly a class concern.

We are understanding that the right to roam ethic is merely the elite classes throwing the mob a manky bone – ‘We’ll control the land, take all its riches, and have majority access to its wealth, and occasionally you mob can walk across a field, pitch a tent, and have a little fish (in designated areas). However, if you take a salmon or a deer from our lands to feed your family we will call this poaching. Hunting and fishing is what gentlemen do.’

In a charity shop we found a timely copy of Danny the Champion of the World. Not only a wonderful story for Woody to read but a manifesto for all who have self-respect, and want to safeguard common-folk life for the future.

On the way back south we stopped at a little village called Boat of Garten, where a local, Kevin, called us in. Kevin has been a long-time blog reader and when he heard we were coming Alba way he offered to host a community screening and meetup in his home village. We stayed with his gorgeous family,

and Kevin took us on a little journey before the gig, which included foraging wild raspberries,

and guiding us to a happy pop-up woodland pub called the Gather Inn.

This sweet woodland was full of people thinking and acting for the relocalisation of food and culture, and it was mightily intergenerational with zip lines, cubbies and magical hangs.

A pretty nice old homestead resided next door to the pop-up pub,

and when Patrick looked down after he took the above photograph he discovered a helpless little critter in the grass.

Sadly, this little newborn rabbit was likely not going to grow up and live a goodly rabbity life among the hedgerows nor bound about the fields where these grand old cattle folk graze. Highland cattle can withstand the brutal Scottish winters outside.

We have to keep reminding ourselves that these are indigenous species – rabbit, blackberry, cattle and thistle – and unlike at home, there is no government regime for spraying the plants or deliberately spreading virus among rabbit populations.

So much of the biota of what constitutes our peoples’ medicine is freely living here. “Hello yarrow, my old friend.”

We gathered at the community centre in Boat of Garten and Kevin warmly introduced us and the film. It was a bonnie night of connecting and many conversations followed,

including back at Kevin’s where he poured a few drams of his favourite local whisky before bed.

The next day Kevin took us for a walk in the woodland behind his home. We excitedly gathered up chanterelles,

and wild blueberries among the tick realm of the heather.

We glimpsed a Common lizard in the undergrowth,

and two boys in the tree tops.

We gathered Penny Buns,

and orange birch boletes.

During the morning’s exploration in the woodland with Kevin and his two children, Dusty and Sorley

a morning which included spotting two roe deer and conversations about hunting, poaching and augmenting community organised food security, we gathered up a capful of mushrooms to take on our way.

We returned to the big road, passing both little and large curios of interest, too fast,

and then, for about an hour, at a snail’s pace.

Eventually, we crossed the hypertechnocivil suspension bridge back towards Edinburgh,

and arrived at Chris’s permaculture oasis in Penicuik in time for dinner. Chris had a number of volunteers staying with him, including Eleanor from France,

and he’d set up some tents for us to sleep in among the garden and various building projects.

Chris was getting his food, shelter and energy needs in order, and his volunteers were helping and learning, obtaining practical skills, which they were actively seeking.

The town centre of Penicuik was just up the way,

and a brisk walk before breakfast offered lovely heights. It is considerably colder here.

On our second night at Chris’s, Patrick cut and cooked our little haul of woodland mushrooms,

as our contribution to a potluck. Meg gave an honouring of the food,

and Woody learned new games. There was much discussion about The New Peasants,

which we’d showed earlier in the day at the University of Edinburgh, in a room above and to the left of this grand archway at the Old Medical School.

While walking around the city, Woody spotted a ball kicking scene and we asked to join in.

After a kick we glimpsed a hillocky rock through the city streets,

and knew we needed to get there. So we adults walked and Woody flew

to Arthur’s Seat,

where we startled a mother pheasant and her chick (out of frame),

before descending into an eight foot high patch of nettle.

In many places in urban Alba we’re reminded of Ivor Cutler’s, Life In A Scotch Sitting Room, Vol. 2, Ep. 11,

and in other places high-walled fortification speaks of pre-industrial militarisation, which Ian Hamilton Findlay was dancing with at Little Sparta.

Today power and colonialism are more covert, camouflaged in neoliberal window dressing. It appears as though we are evolved and peaceful, yet we modern subjects of capital are part of the most destructive empire to have ever existed.

This is the Edinburgh ‘Futures’ Institute where Patrick had academic work to do, invited by the University of Edinburgh.

While his dad was co-examining a doctoral thesis, Woody was contributing creatively at the Fringe Festival.

After Edinburgh we journeyed south to Macbiehill to stay with (another) Chris and Erinn,

in their lovely home.

Chris showed Woody how to make a bowl on his lathe,

and Erinn took us into their garden’s young food forest.

We shared a few gentle days with these goodly folk, yarning and gathering stories, and drinking a delicious elder flower sparkling wine made from this purple variety,

and devouring a magnificent haggis. You could tell Woody was not enjoying himself in Alba.

Growing up as a forager since birth, Woody never fails to be delighted by land that offers hidden treasures,

and while the wild raspberry party roamed, and Chris tended the haggis, Patrick walked along the road and brought back a bunch of lush dandelion leaves and three mature horse mushrooms to add to a horta dish.

Before we left, Chris and Erinn took us around to their friend James’ place for a meetup. James is a permaculture teacher and is currently building his family’s home with larch poles.

James and his family might be the only ones in Alba to have mature grapes on the vine.

James gave us a tour of his woodland, and the structures he and his volunteers have built.

One volunteer, Sam from New Zealand (blue t-shirt below, with Woody and Arlo) had recently returned from an IDF prison after being kidnapped from the flotilla. He and Woody had a great time talking about the merits of being unschooled.

Our time in Alba was winding up and we farewelled our new friends, dropped off the hire car in Glasgow and headed to the central train station.

We trained and stopped, ate blackberries,

and bussed to the west coast,

where at Stranraer we came to camp. We bought some bread and cheese and walked the town, encountering a medieval tower-house converted to a Victorian prison,

and an Episcopalian house of worship,

before pitching our tent for the night.

It was a rough Friday night in the park. Alcohol and hotted up street cars raged the streets til late, and when we woke at 5.50am the next day to catch the Cairnryan ferry to Éire, we had no idea of the big day that would unfold. More on that to come.

For those in Éire, we are screening The New Peasants at An Teach Saor in County Galway on August 25. If you are local and would like to come along, please get in touch for more information. If you are further afield, An Teach Saor (Irish for ‘The Free House’) is a land-based permaculture community and gift-economy smallholding in County Galway.

Our August UK & Ireland ancestral pilgrimage & screening tour (maps and some dates)

Jul 20, 2026 | adventure, ancestors, Artist as Family tour, camping, community on the road, cricket, culture, genealogy, Happen Films, Luddite, pilgrimage, screening event, travel | 16 comments

Hello! For the past several weeks we have been corresponding with kindly folk across the UK and Ireland, organising a route and itinerary for our August month of screenings and visitations in some of our ancestral places.

The first two screenings: While in the south of England we are attending two screenings/meet ups. The first in London at The Remakery on August 3.

and the second in Ely, Cambridgeshire, on August 10.

While in the south of England we’ll be visiting friends in Dorset and Devon, both of whom are part of the Mythopoetics Men’s Lodge that Patrick is also part of.

Some of Patrick and Woody’s ancestry in the UK is in the Midlands and Yorkshire, and we’ll be staying in Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire, where Sylvia Plath’s gravestone is. We are co-creating a gathering and screening there too – more on that to follow.

While in London, we will get to see Yorkshire v Middlesex at Lords. Woody is super excited for that one-day match. On his Dad’s side of the family, Yorkshire homes many of his old people, and is where the yorker originates, a full pitched ball that aims to get under the batsman’s feet that Woody is getting pretty good at turning on in a game. But more than cricket, Woody will also learn where some of the revolutionary genes comes from. Here is Patrick’s midlands and Yorkshire DNA overlayed by the Luddite Triangle.

Meg’s ancestry hails from Siberia and Poland, and one day we may go on that ancestral pilgrimage too, although that might take a miracle (or a sailing boat) as the most significant oil war in history escalates just as we’re about to depart for this one.

Having spent 15 of the 20 years Artist as Family have been together refusing air travel it feels good to be travelling with intention, just before cheap oil permanently disappears.

A number of years ago Patrick’s father Robert traced (via the records) the family back to around the 12th century, that is to the earliest recorded common folk surnames (that came about for taxation purposes). And then a few years ago Patrick was gifted a DNA kit for his birthday and from this his ancestry was mapped as such:

What follows is a rough map of our August pilgrimage, including both ancestral places and screenings. We are being hosted by goodly folk along the trail and look forward to meeting up with some of our subscribers along the way. Please get in touch if you’d like more details for the various screenings and meetups.

Well, this is certainly a mappy and information dense post! Hopefully it will be useful for you as you either follow our journey or connect with us along the way. We arrive in London on August 1 and leave from Dublin on August 31.

We’d love it if you could let your friends and kin know of our screenings/Q&As in London and Cambridgeshire (more events to be posted soon). Screenings in Hebden Bridge, Findhorn Bay, Boat of Garten, Penicuik, Edinburgh, and hopefully in Ireland in the later part of the month.

We have one more online session this Thursday before we start packing – Joyful Resistance – online house and garden tour (the nuts and bolts of our systems).

Signing off for now from our cosy hearth,

AaF

On generative life and interrupting death (the prosaic roads from Hervey Bay to Bundaberg)

Jul 2, 2014 | bicycle touring, camping, gleaning, roadkill | 1 comment

Well, as some of you may have guessed, our decision has been to keep riding north and follow the sun, even if this means catching a train south for part of the journey to be home by January. On our last morning in Hervey Bay we left our camping site in the grounds of the local youth hostel,

and hit the road with itchy pedals and gay hearts.

We cycled a little uphill, a lichen downhill,

but mostly it was flat. On this sunny winter’s day we four mammals on our four inflated tyres passed a number of flattened fauna memorials,

which were by far the most significant things we came across on the rather uneventful road to Howard.

Howard is a proud coal-mining and timber town established at the expense of the Butchulla peoples, just inland from the Great Sandy Biosphere.

We camped near the local skate park, setting up our tents on dark among the wattles, gums and paperbarks, beside the supposed crocodile-free Maria Creek and woke,

to another chilly, though blessed sun-filled day. Woody tried on his old man’s hat for size,

before we departed the town for the dreaded Bruce Highway; a road unavoidable for the short (30 km) ride to Childers. Yes, we now agree with the Queenslanders we have met who have also bemoaned how Queensland motorists have a far lower BQ (Bicycle Intelligence) than drivers in Victoria and NSW. The roads are simply terrifying to all forms of fauna.

This is the carnage we witnessed on our first leg of the Bruce. We could ignore all this machine-derived death but it is so prevalent on these roads, alongside the systemic pollution and excruiating noise. Everything else to a bicycle tourer is washed out, backgrounded. And, while we know that in a car none of this violence really exists (such is the speed and sound-proofed estrangement of motorised travel) you can not disappear it on a bike. We stopped in Childers for supplies, rode on for several kms and arrived at a free camping spot at Apple Tree Creek and found our last memorial for the day.

Before pitching our tents we had to dry off the morning’s dew ahead of nightfall and another wet and cold morning.

Needless to say, being so close to the Bruce Highway didn’t enable much sleep, but miraculously we awoke in good spirits, dried and packed up our tents and before we rode off with bellies full of oat porridge, sultanas, chia seeds, raw ginger and local honey, along came Bernie Creagh,

a teacher from Sydney on his $15 tipshop bike. We enjoyed meeting Bernie, his spirit was a reminder of all the good reasons we cycle. Although we were going to be taking different roads, meeting Bernie harbingered a wonderful day ahead, starting with an early departure from the Bruce and getting onto the quieter Isis Highway to Bundaberg.

Monocultures reign in Queensland, sugarcane being the King Wally of them all. But on the Isis Highway an Indigenous plant, generally found in a diverse forest ecology, formed another monoculture of note.

We were drawn to stop and investigate a little further and soon discovered gleanable gold.

We got to work and were instantly reminded of Agnès Varda’s beautiful film, The Gleaners and I, as we bent and gathered the undesirable wastes of last season’s crop.

We harvested several bags of the macadamia nuts and rode on towards Bundaberg with a song in our pedals. We stopped at a roadside resting place, took out the hatchet and feasted, trying not to spoil the moment and think about what pesticides must be used in such a monoculture,

while also singing the praises, at this rest stop, of non-treated rain water. For travellers this can be a rare thing to come by. We tipped out the foul tasting chemical-treated bore water we were carrying and filled our bottles (trying not to notice the questionable peeling paint on the roof iron – the water tank’s catchment).

We left the rest stop with the promise of an unusually friendly prohibition,

well almost friendly, and legged it to Bundy passing our very first sighting of these generative creatures,

the magestic magpie geese (Anseranas semipalmata), as well as more signifiers of extractive technologies working against life as we approached the city of rum and ginger beer.

It was in Bundaberg we stayed with our first couchsurfing family. Meet Ange, baby Sophia, and boys Santiago (left) and Gabriel.

Ange so generously hosted us for two nights, and we enjoyed talking all things parenting, home-educating, community living, permaculture activism and many more positive things. Thanks Ange! Your home was a temporary sanctuary from the intensity of bicycle and tent life.

The Newcastle moment

Mar 2, 2014 | camping, cars, family, family on bikes, pollution, social warming, spear fishing | 6 comments

Newcastle would have to be one of the most likeable Australian cities. ‘Keep Newcastle Weird’ was a slogan we admired on the streets. It is a great place to find your own sub-culture and it has a climate that sings to be lightly dressed and loosely behaved. The scale of Newcastle is probably the key to its liveability, and the coastline, which is highly accessible, is transformative.

We had made a few local friends from our previous adventure in 2009, but never fathomed making so many others this time around. Some of whom invited us to stay with them, like Fiona and Phil that featured at the end of the last post, and Michelle and Tom and their boys Sonny and Max, who put on a bonza BBQ on our first night with them.

This artist as family clan playfully call themselves Boghemians. Of an evening and in dream states, Zeph and Zero became part of the art of this vibrant home.

Riding through the streets we met stay-at-home dad Billy and his kids Charlie and Isabelle. They were riding around on a cargo bike Billy had brilliantly fashioned from mostly reclaimed parts.

Billy invited us back to his home where we were able to put Woody down for a long sleep. Billy and his partner Amy, briefly home from work, hosted us for lunch, while Charlie also had a snooze.

We stayed and shared meals with Suzie, Dom and Bowie,

a gorgeous family Fiona and Phil had introduced us to and who live near the Sandhills community garden. Suzie, Dom, Bowie and Fiona all help out in the garden, which has been growing steadily for eight years under the direction of this remarkable person, Christine.

After a week of couch surfing and rich social life we decided to hang out for several days in Awabakal country. We headed south, climbed some hills and set up camp in Glenrock Reserve,

a two kilometre beach walk to the Glenrock Lagoon, where there was fish to catch,

and coastal greens to gather and cook.

Pigface (Carpobrotus glaucescens), we have found, is not always palatable. Sometimes the leaves are very astringent and leave an unpleasant film on your teeth. The best we’ve tasted them is when we’ve gathered young leaves and cooked them well on a fast heat with fish. We are realising we could live well on just fish, coastal leafies (Warrigal greens, Bower spinach and Pigface) and one or two other things. But there is still so much to learn.

The key is camping close to these food sources, something not always possible when the population is large. After three nights at Glenrock we again, by chance, met another lovely family who invited us to stay with them. Meet Gavin and Beck and their kids Barney and Lottie.

Gav and Beck had cycle-toured throughout Europe pre-kids and were intrigued we were doing it in Australia with children. We traded notes around saftey and the improvements local governments need to make for cycling to become a more dominant mode of transport. When car lanes become exclusively bike lanes we will start to see more and more people on the roads commuting, touring or just pollutionless having fun. Afterall, we may as well adapt now, the end of oil is on its way as our friend Charlie McGee will happily tell you.

While exploring Newcastle we came across this sand filter just off Nobby’s Beach. It is designed to process the pollution from cars and stop it from entering the water catchment and the beach.

The sand filter’s storyboard lists the lethal ‘cocktail’ of chemicals that cars produce (including lead, nickel, chromium, copper, P.C.Bs, Manganese, Zinc, Cadmium, P.A.Bs, Oil and Grease, Dioxine, Sulphates and Detergents) that end up in our streets and in our environments. With this list alone how are cars legal?

Is it possible to work towards industrialism’s end, not just through scholarly texts but actually lived? We say Yes!

But love miles (or love kilometres) are sometimes difficult to reconcile, as we too are finding. Because of the power of fossil fuels people have spread out around the globe. Meet Zeph’s lovely mum, Mel, who is Woody’s guide-mother and who lives in our home community over 1000 km from Newcastle as the ravin flies (there are no crows in Australia).

Throughout our year of supposedly low-carbon travel, Zeph will return home to see and stay with his mum on a number of occasions, and this will generally mean a number of highly polluting transits. AaF gave up air travel the year before we became carless in 2010, and even though the overall trend for us is a slow movement away from fossil fuel dependancy we can’t help but compromise at times, especially for love. Marrying values of care for the earth with care for each other does at times create contradictions. This is typical of transition, but it doesn’t undermine our household’s challenge of moving to a low-carbon existence, and teaching our children the skills and ethics to do so. Imagine if the norm in our society was to walk, ride and catch public transport, and cars were the exception?

The last time we were in Newcastle we flew here to take up an artist-in-residence project at the Lock-up Cultural Centre. We loaned bikes from the Newcastle Bike Ecology Library and became friends with Gerry Bobsien, the then director, now chair of the Lock-up. It was Gerry and her family that we had originally come to visit in Newcastle this time, but it took us a few weeks to hook up as we were inundated with chance invitations to stay with generous others.

Gerry (far head of the table) and her youngest child Polly (close head of the table) introduced us to their friends Rhiannon and Steele (either side of Polly). Rhiannon is one of the art teachers at Polly’s school, the Newcastle Waldorf School, a school that actually allows children to climb trees, hug calfs, get muddy, learn about growing food and making great things, like canoes. Zeph and Polly really hit it off,

and Zeph was keen to go to her school the next day. Rhiannon and Gerry arranged it, and after a day of immercing himself in probably the happiest school he’d experienced, the rest of the AaF were then invited to spend the following day talking to students about our trip and our practice. We spoke with Rhiannon’s awesome art class about making performative ecological and activist art.

We spoke to the year 10 students about renewable energies, the history of oil, and why we’re travelling around the country on our bikes. And, for Polly and Zeph’s class, we took a foraging walk, identifying dandelion, chickweed, flatweed, wild strawberry and spear thistle.

Polly’s dad Jeremy (above) is also a teacher at the school and responsible for teaching children to make all manners of things from wooden spoons to functional canoes. The AaF don’t usually endorse schools as places of learning fit for the future, but this school is definitely an exception. The students are happy, relaxed, fulfilled and are allowed to be children. The staff are also treated well and that seems to reflect how they then teach. We were invited to one of the staff’s delicious and life-affirming lunches,

which was concluded with some delicious, in-season baked fruit. This is when gift economies are at their best; when both parties are generous and both recieve beneficial gifts.

Because Zeph’s twelfth birthday is almost upon us and we’re away from his mates from home, he and Polly got to work to throw an impromtu (no gifts) beach party,

inviting all the kids in Polly’s class. The weather, however, had other plans and not everyone braved the cold.

Some of us hung back from the water and got into the serious business of eating.

We’ll be very sad to leave Newcastle and all our old and new friends, but our time in this lovely centre is coming to a close. We have once again what we call itchy pedals, and feel the call to part company with settled life and get on our freedom machines and sail north.

What ever you are doing and however you are travelling we hope you have gentle winds in your sail.

Warm showers and chance encounters of the coastal kind

Feb 10, 2014 | bush food, camping, chance, family on bikes, garden design, permaculture | 0 comments

Around the camp our bare feet scuff across old shards of broken glass. With our movements the shards are brought to the surface of the humus and lie among the melaleuca needles. It’s old glass, previously smashed by rocket-fuel rage or fits of youthful chemistry. The little pieces shine up towards our growing astonishment. Why haven’t they sliced us open? There are so many. The melaleuca humus is soft, spongy and comforting under foot. This little forest encloses and protects us, gives us shelter from the coastal winds and privacy from nearby suburbia.

We left Erina Heights with the intention of heading south to Little Beach, but only after a few minutes of riding the heavens opened. Despite the roads becoming greasy and the traffic more dangerous we were at first invigorated by the rain. However soon we became soaked and took refuge in Avoca,

where we were rescued by Carol and John, their kids Ben and Angelina and their dog Kara.

They invited us to stay in their downstairs studio and in return we offered to cook the evening meal. Carol took us in saying we didn’t look like psychopaths, and we responded that we were more akin to cycle paths. While staying with this happy family we discovered many common interests, such as a developing productive garden,

a growing love of chooks,

and a mutual respect for wise words.

If Artist as Family were to have an epigraph, it would be this one. It encapulates the joy of chance, mutuality and embracing a no-expectations openness that refuses to cling to the anxieties, pollutions and nihilism of art careerism.

By the next day the rain had cleared and we farewelled Carol’s family. We abandoned the idea of Little Beach, and we once again set our intuitive compass north. But we didn’t get very far. Just down the hill we were intrigued by a little café growing some of its own produce. We stopped in and met one of the owners, Melissa, who so sweetly picked us basil to take away to have with our breadstick, cheese and tomato lunch.

Melissa and co’s cafe Like Minds sees itself as much more than a business. It is a little hub of local food and environmental advocacy. They run a series of sustainability events and talks and it was exciting to experience their spirit. At Like Minds we also met more beautiful peeps. Sonia and Shane invited us to join their family at the Wetlands Not Wastelands Festival at Calga.

The festival was an awareness raising event concerning the proposed mining of sandstone aquifers that lie across the highlands above the Central Coast, as well as the social and environmental costs that extraction ideology causes more broadly. One highlight included Jake Cassar talking about the edible and medicinal benefits of various indigenous plants. Specific to our current project we here publish his gift-economy presentation (with his permission). Thanks Jake!

As we move further north our plant knowledges are decreasing. Local knowledge therefore becomes more and more important, especially if we are to keep eating well, and as much outside the damaging industrial system as we can manage. While at the festival we were also inspired by a young group of Indigenous performers who so confidently shared some of the riches of their culture, including a very local (non sweat-shop) textile of their own making.

We are finding other local resources too. A while back we signed up to Warm Showers, a bike touring (couch surfing) website hooking up like-minds all over the globe. So when we arrived in Terrigal, found some local produce,

set up camp among the melaleucas,

played shenanigans on the beach,

and built a cubby,

we called a couple of Warm Shower locals, who live just around the next beach at Wamberal. Meet the delightful Rodney and Deborah, who invited us around to do some laundry, share meals with them (including Rod’s mum’s home grown produce) and exchange bike touring stories.

These generous peeps went out of their way to host us, including taking Zeph out for a surfing lesson,

while we older ones got to work designing Rod and Deb a simple permaculture garden that features wicking beds, a food forest, a compost rotation system and a chook tractor on their 600 sqm block overlooking the Wamberal Lagoon and the Pacific Ocean.

We were getting pretty settled in the Terrigal-Wamberal area and despite all the gift economy exchanges, lovely people and delicious meals, we were also keen to stop buying so much food. We knew of the joys of Bower Spinach (Tetragonia implexicoma), which we found in great plenty along the edges of the lagoon.

All we needed to complete our non– transported, packaged or farmed meal was to spear a fish large enough for dinner,

and to cook it up with garlic, lemon and the freshly picked bower spinach. In this case the fish we caught was a predator species called the dusky flathead (Platycephalus fuscus). While hunting fish we are both predator and prey. We saw large stingrays in the water and a grey nurse shark was reported nearby.