In this offering, permaculture elder David Holmgren is our guest in discussion with Patrick speaking about this next phase of global energy transition, and thus societal transformation in the local context.
Here’s the audio version (1hr 52mins).
David and Patrick’s hour-long conversation is followed by a compost of goodly questions from community participants who gathered and shared food together for this event. We hope that this long-form drop will aid in your preparations for the coming months.
This event recently took place at the School of Applied Neopeasantry, Tree Elbow University in Djaara Mother Country.
Huge, hug-filled thanks to Jordan Osmond from Folklore Pictures (formally Happen Films) for both the sound and vision.
We’d love to hear from you about your preparations, priorities and musings at this time.
but we were about to enter a temporary insanity zone. It was 8.25am at the Dharamshala local bus station and the Manali-destined bus driver was saying his prayers to an electric blue Shiva.
We left at 8.30am and drove into the mayhem of the morning.
We hung on,
and our bones rattled to every thrust and jerk, pothole and near miss. Elbows were uncontrolled and often connected with heads,
We had had such a charmed and magical fortnight in Dal Lake. It was time we fucked things up. The bus only slowed up a tad when things got really close,
otherwise it was an 11 hour near-death adventure, the driver maximising the g-forces of the black-cloud-generating-metal-box we were travelling in, racing at gaps in the traffic, breaking hard to avoid road craters or cows or people or trucks, and often driving on the oncoming traffic’s side of the road.
We copped dust and petroleum fumes as they streamed in the open windows.
This rites of passage into the belly of daily experience on a local bus in India gave us further insight into just how mortality-fearing society is in Australia. We felt this in ourselves. It was for us another process of giving up on what we thought was common and logical, and accepting what is.
We arrived late to a hotel that boasted online rooms in the centre of town. It’s true, it was in the centre of town, but not the town we had searched for and thought we’d booked. The room was filthy and didn’t in the slightest way fit the online description, but we didn’t care. We crashed and awoke to a bright new day.
We auto’d several kilometres to Manali and then onto Old Manali,
where we found this lovely, sunlit room.
While in India and other countries in Asia, we have combated the all night dog barking parties by turning the ceiling fan on a low settling and drowning them out with this white noise. While this room didn’t have a fan, it was situated beside the Beas River, which offered a more perfect muffling from a quite different electrical source.
In cooler Old Manali we came across old friends and didn’t realise how much we’d missed them. Old friends like dandelion and clover,
mallow
and apples,
and nasturtium, which we found growing beside cannabis, which doesn’t grow wild back home.
As we walked the streets and hills, we adults foraged a small amount of seeds and took a micro-dose for three consecutive mornings, once again confirming this medicinal flora isn’t for us. But this plant is for some, and Patrick wrote a poem about a notable cultural group who have made Old Manali a transitory home, and who like to partake.
Beside writing poems, Patrick likes to make things with his hands. We came across Tisha in her shop and we enquired about local Manali wool. She told us to come back in two days, and when we did she had just finished the spinning of a 1kg ball, which we bought from her.
Patrick cut some local willow,
stripped the bark and dried the branches in the window,
cut them to size,
put a rounded point on each one, and got knitting.
He was shown how to knit as a kid by his mum, and has passed this skill onto his boys. Throughout our time in Manali, the ball of wool and the willow needles accompanied us everywhere.
Like Woody’s cricket bat being a calling card for a game or a yarn, Patrick’s fibres of both wool and beard have introduced us to many, including Jimmy,
We were never too far from the source here, of everything. Of water,
of the valley of the gods,
of the givers of apples (thanks Raj!),
of Deodara cricket forests,
of pack anarchy,
and pack horses,
of snake charmers
(who turn trickster at the point of the money shot),
and of Gaddi people and their flerds (flock of sheep and herd of goats combined).
The source of our greatest love in Manali where for these humble, present people and their mythological animals.
We watched the Gaddi herd their sheep and goats through the towns,
and set up camp for the night.
We feel such kinship with Gaddi folk and the oldtimer orchardists in Manali.
When we tell people here we grow apples and tend sheep and goats their eyes light up, as did the lady gardening outside her house when we stopped to admire her magnificent creativity.
While much of India is going down to development dogs like Adani and his corrupted political mates, the soul of India remains in the land and the people who tend it. And while trickster energy is present again in Manali, in people and other mammals,
we met many who have not covered their eyes, blocked their ears or masked their mouths to what is going on. Road development, according to Sohan, who ran Dream River guesthouse we stayed at, is the main cause for the increase of flooding and landslides in the north of India, yet it is always reported climate change is the sole culprit in the news. He said, “the road workers are told to dump tonnes of boulders and rock from the cuttings into the rivers, raising the water levels, and the cuttings themselves into the sides of mountains bring about more landslides. The combination of the two in monsoonal rain times are wreaking havoc.”
Tourism and mining are big business here, and better roads mean more money for ‘development’. The social and ecological impacts of such capitalist enterprise in India are palpable. A local Manali man told us that since the 1960s the forest tribal people, the Baiga, have been victims of forced evictions by Indian authorities, often in the name of conservation. The Baiga also live where Adani and co want to mine for coal. With similar intransigence, concrete in India is the answer to all construction today, yet the intensity of rain, the steepness of mountains, and the cost-cutting by business means that concrete structures are forever falling apart. Great chunks of new road or retaining walls are regularly washed away or collapse. The more cuttings into a mountain, the more problems it causes.
It is the old ways being lived in the contemporary moment that charmed us most about Old Manali and this region. Not because we are romantics, but because we are also pragmatic performers of ancestral lifeways in the contemporary moment. Our methods are different back home, and our tools sometimes too, but we also make compost to grow more life,
store and dry wood for the winter,
ferment things,
carry fodder to our animals,
collect apples,
and store them,
and build in ways that don’t cost the earth.
For in our ancestral bodies and minds we are the us in them. There is no and. There are only lives embedded in the processes of lifemaking, in the continuum of living and dying. All the craft beer joints, wifi accessibility, bourgeois coffee houses, demanding tourists and major roads leading to lithium or coal mines will not improve India, as with everywhere else, these things will only impoverish it.
Life in Old Manali and its region is rich because of the attributes of mother country here,
and dangerous, offering a tender closeness with death.
Life here has stung us,
and soothed our bodies in hot healing spring water direct from the source.
We didn’t get to play much cricket with others, although a spontaneous game popped up in the town square on one occasion,
however, we did get to spend most days among giants.
Hoping you too have spent time this week among giants, dear reader. And among friends. Thank you for joining us on this leg.
We’ve been pollution-sick again, which has been inhibiting our enjoyment of this rich and colourful country.
Patrick and Woody have had it worse than Meg, but each of us have have struggled in our own way. Blackwood is also experiencing homesickness: “I miss our food, I miss my ball on a string, and I miss my friends at Forest & Free.”
When booking transport over the past 12 days in Thailand, we have found it best to stick with people on the ground and avoid the national railway or bus websites. While digital, cross-language communications might improve over time, it currently doesn’t match pointing, grunting, nodding, shaking, laughing or any combination of body gesturing to get on the right train, ending with a khawp khun kha/p!
What we’ve also found difficult about being in this beautiful country, apart from our own participation in what we dislike most about global tourism, is the homogenisation process that is creeping in everywhere there is development. An example of this is the Safety First signage that proliferates through the country.
We think the ‘Safety third’ ethos of the early Burning Man festivals is wiser. Without a little daily danger or risk, our bodies switch off, they lose an alertness, which we think pre-disposes people to becoming accident-prone and even compliant. We’d prefer to live in a world where sharp metal lugs stick out below bus seats,
and rusty metal blades come out of the footpaths,
and a billion or so unleashed dogs inherit the streets by day and night, than live under the cult of safetyism. We’ve loved beholding the autonomous culturing of dogs in Thailand. No one fears them here. When we think of life back home, walking with Zero around Lake Daylesford, there is always one, if not five people who recoil with horror that our little scruffy is off a lead. Oh, Zero! you would love it here!
How western imperialism appears to work as a global-machine-conglomerate is to covet all the major issues of ‘the global village’ into a set of preordained arguments. These arguments are never framed by independent, bioregional, democratic, or indigenous thought – although there’s a fair bit of theatre in places like the UN and in universities that purport heterodox or alternative voices are heard – instead, they are created to serve large global markets, which always have a homogenising effect. That’s why this Thai motorway looks like it could be in South Melbourne, sans the signage.
Because the human world is now so advanced in preordained, market thinking, solving problems is difficult. Climate change has been a theory in the orbit of scientists since the 1930s and yet the machinations that reportedly drive climate change have only steadily worsened over 85 years. To make things worse there’s now a very large industry that’s grown out of ‘Climate’, a kind of Jevon’s Effect industry, making those who are financially welded to it hard to trust. Big money has a way with decision making that the empire is perennially blind to. This is why it is so hard to trust the expert class.
By contrast Monks here live with little and ask for their food, which encourages acts of generosity in the culture. They are trusted and loved.
When we crossed the border into Thailand in this weird little space shuttle of a van,
we came to realise that our fellow passengers were Malay dopenauts who’d come to the only country marijuana is legalised in southeast Asia. When they alighted, we too got out of the van and stepped into light rain falling in the little city of Hat Yai.
We changed currencies,
and found a family-run establishment to buy lunch.
Across the road from where we were to stay that night was a friendly little family-run garage.
By day they service motors. By night they serve beer and pork, and punters cook a ‘set’ or two on little drop-in table BBQs.
As we’ve travelled we’ve tuned our eyes to seek out local tree crop fruits that come with their own thick-skinned packaging,
and have sought out local snacks such as grilled banana,
which are sold wrapped in banana leaves.
And, as everywhere, we like to buy direct from growers’ markets.
In Thailand we delighted not just in the dogs that are left to dance on their own accord, but the plants too;
and in the technologies that quieten the streets and produce no exhaust;
and in the vegetables cultivated locally and sold proudly by growers;
and in the overhead lanterns that mark such a street a night market;
and in all the little,
and big places of ritual, offering and worship;
and in all the kind gestures we’ve witnessed, such as this lady bus conductor eyeing an elderly man who had no hope of reaching the bus stop in time, request to the driver to stop, then urge him to back up, before helping the oldtimer up the steps and into a seat.
The driver was not in the least bit annoyed by this delay in his proceedings.
It took us a few goes to leave Hat Yai. We’d booked our tickets online, and so we thought this was our train,
but it was two days early according to the computations of our tickets. We managed to get on one later that night,
which took us to Surat Thani. We arrived just after midnight in a bit of a blur,
and were thankful for another kind lady, who waited up and let us into our tiny room.
While in Surat Thani we did some day tripping,
We took a local bus, then a truck,
to a market, where we ate Shrimp Pad Thai,
which came in this beautiful little leaf bowl,
and bought bananas with sticky rice.
Later in the day we went in search of a nearby agricultural cooperative, only to find the gates shut and no one around.
We reacquainted ourselves with an interesting weed on the walk there. Mimosa pudica, which we were first shown back in Timor Leste by Sebas, who called it, Shy Maria, is a herb that responds dramatically to being touched, going from upright to prostrate at the slightest feel.
Mimosa pudica is not the broad cut-leaf creeping plant that dominates around Meg’s feet in the photo above, but the small little fern-like leaf plant she is gently caressing. You might have to zoom in to see. We found this paper on the benefits of this sensitive medicinal plant, which states, “[i]t majorly possesses antibacterial, antivenom, antifertility, anticonvulsant, antidepressant, aphrodisiac, and various other pharmacological activities. The herb has been used traditionally for ages, in the treatment of urogenital disorders, piles, dysentery, sinus, and also applied on wounds.”
Plants offer us the possibility of rewiring our nervous systems,
and appropriate technologies offer the possibility of maintaining or recovering our health,
and humourous exchanges offer up the possibility of living with lightness.
Prachuap Khiri Khan is a town by the sea. We stopped there for a night, walked from the station via the food market,
dropped our bags, where we took this photo,
and walked down to the ocean.
Subsistence and local market fishing at the scale of these little boats will never dismantle biodiversity in the world’s oceans.
Only ‘feeding the world’ via the global-machine-conglomerate will do that, as Patrick’s teenage love, Karina, unpacked in her film Blue.
The next day we were back on the rails. An old rattler, hot, noisy and fumesy. We all started off well,
looking out to the rice fields and lyrical wirings,
but as the day continued, and it got hotter, and the dirty squalls coming into the carriage refused to bring comfort, we all started to fade.
By the time we reached the outskirts of Bangkok,
a city of 17 million people, we were fairly wasted.
Although, Meg still had a little spirit, and so we awarded her this watermelon for being the most resilient member of the band.
We’d booked online a little cheap room near the station,
but didn’t know it was right in the middle of a western tourist zone. You know: beer, pizza, cocktails, dope, all night revelling, maybe a dash of Pad Thai and Houellebecqian sleaze. The only picture we took here doesn’t really capture it, rather we were once again collecting photos of vines growing over powerlines.
Woody and Patrick pretty much slept for two days and nights. It was a low key anniversary of Patrick and Meg’s, and Zero’s 14th birthday. Happy birthday little fella! We miss you Zero. Thanks for loving him in your home Black Cockatoo!
The pollution in Bangkok was next level, and after we’d slept through it for a few days, we hightailed it out on another hot, old rattler.
This six hour ride was gruelling, especially for Patrick. It is the combination of heat and pollution that is so harsh for this fella who has spent most of his life in cool mountain fields and forests. Patrick hadn’t had asthma since he was in Hong Kong, 27 years earlier. In Bangkok and on this train he struggled to breathe,
and if he didn’t go to bed when we arrived at our hotel in Nakhon Ratchasima and do 4 rounds of Wim Hof breathing, he would have required a hospital ventilator. The breathing method opened up his air passages, which brought a few hours of peace and rest, before he started burning up. He then spent the next two nights and days in and out of fever. He fasted, drank water, dried his sheets over the oven-like balcony rail outside our room, and collapsed back into bed.
When we all surfaced from this time, which included having to change hotels for another night of convalescing, we walked straight out into a street festival the locals had put on to raise money for the monks.
In leaving Nakhon Ratchasima, we thought we’d mix up the transportation a little,
and jumped on a bus,
to Khon Kaen.
We loved the stick food on offer here, though trying to buy food naked has been a challenge in Thailand. Shopkeepers seem to need to close the deal by wrapping your purchase in plastic. It takes a watchfulness to arrest this urge.
The following day we headed to the Khon Kaen train station,
where we were met by this little remnant life force.
We waited to catch the last train we were going to board in Thailand,
and that afternoon travelled to Nong Khai on the border with Laos. Feeling better than we have for days, we had dinner with the locals who have a penchant for green chairs,
and red shrines.
To get into Laos the visa process is a little complicated. So we have had some days here to wait, and to look across the river to the path we have chosen to get to India. Myanmar is too dangerous to cross at this time, and there is no longer a ferry or boat option across the Bay of Bengal. Hence why we’re here, in the north of Thailand.
We’ve been on the road seven weeks now and we’ve just hit another sweet spot here in Nong Khai.
Wherever you are in the world, Dear Reader, we hope you too are experiencing a sweet spot in your life. Sending much love to you from us here, and thanks so much for following along on our journey.
This week saw Patrick telling two versions of our story. At Melbourne Free University Patrick speaks about why we use the term neopeasant, and how this term found us and what it means in the context of conquest, dispossessions, stolen land and climate change.
The word peasant is from the Latin pagus meaning country or land.
Earlier in the week he was in conversation with Bushy, Adam and Ged on 3RRR’s show Greening the Apocalypse.
It’s likely there isn’t enough fossil fuels to last us for very much longer, especially the way we are using them, so what is the future going to look like? This is the question I’ve been asking myself over the last few months.
Jason Clarke, the Australian film and television actor, says “we are most likely going to have to collect our own water, generate our own electricity and grow our own food – and “share, if you will.” To me this says the main money economy will change too. Sharing could play a bigger role in the future, where people help each other more. The Rockefeller family are one of America’s richest families, made rich in part by their financial interests in fossil fuels. Recently the Rockefeller family pulled out their investments in fossil fuels saying they’re too “risky“. They are turning to renewable energy because they know they are the future. This has nothing to do with sharing but it does tell us something about what the future might look like?
Climate change
Climate change, which has largely been caused by fossil fuels, has not been taken seriously enough. What will be the effects if we let human-made climate change get worse? We are already seeing many more extreme weather events. Renewable energy will help. We have got solar and wind power in some areas but it’s not enough, everyone needs to be turning to renewables now. We will also need to reduce consumption and live without many things. Germany knows that climate change is a real threat. In 2008 their renewable energy production was at 9%. In 2014 it was around 30%. In ten years time Germany could be powered by only renewable energy. Germany is one of the few countries at the moment seriously trying to adapt to the future. If other countries follow their lead we would have a greater chance of reducing the worse effects of climate change.
Fossil fuel pollution
Pollution from fossil fuels contaminates natural environments and reduces biodiversity. Low biodiversity makes people sick, produces diseases. Pollution ruins animal’s habitats and their food sources. Pollution comes from cars, factories, toys, toothbrushes, packaging, computers, bikes, etc. Most things that are made today are made by using fossil fuels, so we will be living very differently without them. The benefits for the environment and peoples’ health will be huge.
What will my family do to minimise fossil fuel reliance in the future?
Here’s a list of things we will continue to do:
-Recycle and reuse paper, plastic, steel, timber, clothes, glass and cardboard
-Grow a food garden and keep chickens
-Compost waste and build soil quality
-Capture solar power and keep a low-carbon house
-Capture rain water and use it wisely
-Exchange food with neighbours and community friends
-Be involved in local community gardens and food swaps
-Walk, bicycle and use public transport
In summary
Going back to my original question “what would my life look like without fossil fuels”, there may be things that would be difficult, especially if climate change is allowed to fully develop. Perhaps food and other goods would be very expensive. There might not be as many cars and trucks on the road. There might be violent riots against the government and big businesses. The police and the military could have a bigger presence in public places. People may be very hungry. Some could be in great debt and be kicked out of their homes. Then again some may be much better off, they may be able to harvest their own food and renewable energy and not have to pay big business a cent.
Zephyr Ogden Jones has been an active member of Artist as Family since the collective began in 2009. His previous writing can be read here.
We had three wet, windy but nonetheless restful days in Lawrence.
Our tents took a battering from two large storms but we remained fairly dry and warm. We fished catching only undersized bream (Abramis) from the Clarence,
and we learnt about these relative newcomers, cattle egrets (Bubulcus ibis), which are the smallest species of egret that live in this region.
This country is blessed with a diversity of bird life no longer seen in most parts of the world, and every morning we wake in some bird-rich neighbourhood singing their praises. But this region around Lawrence is even more exceptional for its bird life. Hundreds of feathered species live here as permanents or seasonal migrants, and all day their activity is pronounced in this quiet little town.
We made long leisurely walks and picked a belly full of guavas,
from this guy’s paddock,
which we woofed down with grunting rigour.
We tried some local cumbungi (Typha), from a roadside bourgie café, but found it was a little stringy at this time of year.
While in Lawrence pecans and guavas were our greatest finds,
and with local bananas and farm gate cucumber they made a fine start to the day.
After breakfast and after drying out the tents we departed Lawrence by catching the ferry punt across the Clarence.
We passed a barn that seemed to be in hiding, or was it just shy?
We passed houses that were being retrofitted for the aggregating effects of climate change – people are preparing even though their governments, who could greatly help mitigate the effects, are not.
We spotted a Black-necked Stork (Ephippiorhynchus asiaticus) that, like the beginnings of the sugar cane monocultures just south of Lawrence, signifies we are entering the north of Australia.
We arrived in Maclean to a spot of op-shopping (undies for Woody and some local pickles),
and looked for a place to camp. But none availed in Maclean so we rode on to Yamba, found a site on Hickey Island and moved in.
Looks magical doesn’t it? Don’t be fooled by the frame you’re peering through, this image doesn’t reveal the millions of tiny predators that all vied for our blood from the moment we arrived. This is more the reality:
If you’re not used to them, like us, sandfly bites are extremely itchy. Mozzies are definately preferred. We tried to forget both despite their large numbers in Yamba and headed along to the mid-weekly farmer’s market where we bought garlic, corn, zucchini, capsicum and a few of these old variety cucumbers.
In the public park where the markets were held we discovered pandanus fruit (Pandanus tectorius), parts of which are edible when roasted and parts can be eaten raw. A fruit we’re eager to try once we come across a ripe one.
Yamba also boasts edible community gardens throughout its streets, encouraging people to pick the herbs, fruits and vegetables growing there.
We like Yamba but felt we couldn’t camp another night because of the insect life, and so we decided to catch the ferry over to Iluka and ride 15 kms north to Woombah, where Deanne, the sister of the delightful Sonia who we met back in Avoca, was offering us hospitality. We had a few hours before the next ferry, so we set up a Woody nap tent in a local park (to say the mozzies swarmed here is no exaggeration),
while Patrick visited the local bike shop, as the tandem was having problems again. Bill from Xtreme Cycle and Skate took the rear wheel axle apart but didn’t have the right size cassette pawls to replace the ones he discovered were damaged. The tandem was still rideable though and we thought it could make it to a bike shop in Ballina. Despite his time and effort, and giving us a place to charge our phone, Bill refused payment. Thanks so much Bill!
We rolled onto the ferry and were greeted by the effervescent Linda, who accommodated a family on extra long bikes with great enthusiasm.
By the end of the ferry trip Linda had offered us her granny flat in Iluka. We were extremely grateful because the tandem didn’t last the short ride to Linda’s before it became unrideable. We were grateful too for a warm shower, something we hadn’t had for a week. Thanks for ferrying us to your sanctuary, Linda!
So, we were in Iluka, being hosted by a lovely lady and her son, Nicholas, with everything we required
except a particular bike part for a particularly uncommon bike. It was then that we sensed again our significant dependance on industrialised travel: the need for a specific bike part and a car, loaned to us by the lovely Deanne, to head into Lismore to obtain it. While driving there we passed a cycle tourer and were mortified that we were not, for this moment of the trip, part of his community. We discovered in Lismore that our bike problem was bigger than we thought, and we were going to have to wait several days, so we set about looking for some good food to stock up on,
with minimal packaging. Linda kindly offered us the flat until the bike was sorted. These forced stoppages certainly do work for us. We are able to rest now in beautiful Iluka, joining Woody for midday sleeps and taking walks through the Bundjalung rainforest that is home to these incredible public composting toilets,
(talk about biomimicry!), and walk across the rocks at low tide at Iluka Bluff in Yaegl country.
Without these forced stops we have the tendency to keep moving because there is nothing quite like having all that you need attached to your bike and taking off into the unknown again and again.
What will my family do to minimise fossil fuel reliance in the future?
