A selection of our writings from 2009 to the present. If you'd like to keep up to date with our latest posts, please subscribe below.
In this podcast, recorded a month ago on her birthday, Meg reflects on the intimate, the big picture, and everything that stitches them together. We hope you enjoy this hour with Meg Ulman, chief executive witch at the School of Applied Neopeasantry.
As always we welcome your feedback.
Well, that was a strange 17 days! After our first magical spell on the road, starting to stretch our touring legs and build our fitness, the state of Victoria went into lockdown again. Friends Jo and Tony kindly offered us their sweet shack in St Leonards so we could lay low.
The day before the lockdown was enforced we went in search of a local bikesmith to help us with a rear tyre issue. On the way we came across another simple example of neighbourly generosity.
Unaccustomed to visiting supermarkets we spent far too long wandering through the aisles to see if there was anything we could eat. One thing! Unpackaged organic bananas were cheaper than some of the conventionally grown ones! Our waste free, nutritious lunch cost $8 for the whole fam. We found some nearby shrubbery and buried the skins discreetly. We could have eaten them, as they are higher in antioxidants, fibre and potassium than the fruit, but felt the municipal garden bed needed this food more than us.
It’s been a creative time in the shack with all that is going on in the world. We wrote and published our first blog post of the pilgrimage, recorded one of our busking songs, wrote a new one to rehearse, and a satirical one that we published, which saw us censored by YouTube for a day. This song came out of a cry for help.
The headline in The Australian triggered many emotions, as Patrick states in introducing our latest video, Anthropogenic pandemic – how to trust ‘the science’. This is part of our explanation for why we made the video, Jab the kids.
In this video we compile a number of sources who speak on the growing evidence for the lab leak theory, including Clive Hamilton’s two articles that made it past the gatekeepers. Why does this matter?
The Australian science ethics professor makes the case that not only did the pandemic originate in a lab, the virus was engineered to be more virulent by scientists to obtain gain of function research with the express purpose of developing vaccines. Seemingly, to be ahead of the game for the next global pandemic.
“A Bayesian analysis concludes beyond a reasonable doubt that SARS-CoV-2 is not a natural zoonosis but instead is laboratory derived.” You can download that analysis here. In this pre-reviewed report, which has been sent to both Lancet and WHO scientists for peer review, it states that the “Wuhan Institute of Virology analysis of lavage specimens from ICU patients at Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital in December 2019 contain both SARS-CoV-2 and adenovirus vaccine sequences consistent with a vaccine challenge trial.” This effectively means that vaccine research created the pandemic. This is not a comfortable conclusion for science, and we are very concerned it will be covered up once again.
While in St Leonards we reflected on how different the previous lockdowns were for us. We ordinarily live in a home which is highly energetic in producing our own food, fuel and medicine resources, one in which a television has no place, and positive actions are our main focus. With all the hard news and views encircling us we got suckered in to the dominant screen in the little shack, and became sickened by it. Charles Eisenstein has warned activists that if you wallow in the shit of the old story too much (we are paraphrasing in our own language) you become the same sickness of that story. The jetty was a major salve.
Each day we fished,
reeled in nourishing gifts (Arripis trutta) from Wadawurrung mother country,
collected and salted our own bait,
got wet and put the little ones back,
witnessed the sublime and the prosaic riffing off each other,
looked for many opportunities to eat outside the lock and key of the industrial food bowl,
practiced our breathing routines and rested,
and watched the dawns and dusks come and go with the pelicans, seagulls, cormorants and wrasse (Labridae) communities. We caught Australian salmon, local wrasse, ling and a baby flathead. Needless to say, the undersized went back from where they came.
We went on bike rides and walking excursions around the town, coming across these delicious feral fruits (Opuntia),
harvested oldtimer warrigal greens (Tetragonia tetragonioides) where there was evidence of the absence of pesticides,
exchanged books at another friendly roadside library,
found places to swim and spearfish,
places to embrace the cold as part of our immune strengthening regime, and places to tell our censorship story from.
We fiddled with a dumpster dived-for jigsaw puzzle,
and when Blackwood asked who the people were in the image, we laughed and told him they were world renown op-shoppers.
Be it on the TV, by the jetty, around the streets or in the virus, colonisation exuded itself everywhere. We showed Blackwood the place where William Buckley was found by Batman and his Boy Wonders.
“Always was, always will be.” Just for the record, Buckley was never included in “European society.” Alan Garner’s novel Strandloper about Buckley is the best thing we’ve read on his life. It shows how close the Greenman cosmology of Cheshire-dispossessed peasant Buckley is with Wadawurrung peoples’ cosmology. An escaped convict, Buckley spent three decades living in Wadawurrung (Wathaurong) country, becoming a fully initiated member of the local clan.
Just over the drink to the northeast we looked out to the pandemic embattled city of Melbourne, where friends and family are coming up for air as this lockdown ends. So many nerves frayed in the spray.
We are filled to the brim with gratitude that we have had a cosy place to be locked down in, but we cannot wait to get back on our deadly treadlies. We are committed to re-establishing the intentions for this pilgrimage – to not get caught up in the world online, to background our egoic minds, and to fearlessly, sensitively and lovingly inhale and exhale the living of the world. We are making a pledge to ourselves, and to you Dear Reader, to return to these intentions as we continue on our journey.
taking foraging workshops in Blackheath,
visiting next-gen food producers Erika and Hayden,
bumping into and then staying with an old school friend, Zoe and her family,
visiting dear poet friends Pete and Kate and their kids Ruby and Felix,
housesitting for 10 days, taking many a bush walk, contemplating life,
and having time to consider what being human means.
Restored by the mountains we zoomed back down to Sydney to house sit again, finding a very rare strip of safe bicycling bitumen in Centennial Park.
We skipped on Christmas, but Boxing Day’d it with fam at Bronte.
Took a roll or two at Bondi,
and jumped a train to Moss Vale, again smuggling onboard the only family member disallowed by the transport authority.
We gathered up cherry plums on leaving Moss Vale,
where we were invited to stay at this wonderful permaculture farm,
with Peter and Vasuda.
After taking an edible weed workshop on the farm and after a fun, shooting-star kind of New Year’s Eve with Peter, Vasuda, Zoe and her friends Andy and Paddy, we climbed up Bellawongarah,
where we spotted great swathes of Ginger lily (Hedychium gardnerianum), a non-edible garden escapee from the Himalayas that is apparently part of the lung cancer solution.
We rocketed down the mount to Berry and spoke at the local bookshop,
before setting up camp a few kms out of town on Broughton Creek.
We’ve been on the road for over two months now and most days have been fairly sweet, but on leaving Berry for the coast…
At the end of the day we came and stayed with Claire Wilson and her bike polo friends in Gerroa. Claire is a Warm Showers host, writer and gardener who lives without a car, and she offered the perfect antidote to our first day on South Coast roads.
We’re off to Nowra today to speak at DeanSwift Books at 3pm. If you’re in the neighbourhood, please come and say hello.
Thanks for joining us here again, Dear Reader. We hope that wherever you are, your soils are moist, your food is freshly-picked and your legs are feeling strong up the hills.
crossed the Wombat Creek,
and came across these little Green skin-heads (Cortinarius austrovenetus).
A little further on we came across the ghost fungus (Omphalotus nidiformis), a mushroom that illuminates the forest at night when we diurnal mammals sleep. For ring-tailed possums, high up in a eucalypt or protected from powerful owls in a newcomer hawthorn tree, they cast a magical light show.
Earthballs (Scleroderma sp.), a type of puffball, were out in great numbers.
None of the day’s autonomous finds was edible, so we stuck with spelt stick damper (Zeph’s specialty) and gum leaf tea for lunch.
The bush and knowing our small place in it — the joy of insignificance —
restored our housebound senses.
After such a long time on the back of their parents’ bikes, the boys were keen to get their own forms of mobility cranking. Zeph made roadworthy one of our old tip bikes and Woody gave his hand-me-down first bike a thorough going over. Thanks Carly!
We continued to bike and walk as our main forms of mobility. Woody now walks a few kms each day.
We pedalled up to the community garden working bee (blogged here), to contribute to the community gift economy going on there.
We painted up some new signs to be put up at two of the growing number of food gardens in our small town.
We helped Peter install the signs,
and we began to organise some music events that will take place in the Albert St garden to simply celebrate life there.
We biked up to our local food co-op to buy what we couldn’t freely obtain and to support a more environmentally aware monetised economy.
We walked, bussed, trained and caught a tram to visit Woody’s great grandfather (aged 96) in the metropolis.
We pushed our wheelbarrow over to Maria’s, our neighbour, to collect cockatoo-spoiled apples,
to feed to our girls.
We worked in our annual produce area planting some more food. This row: cayenne peppers as food-medicine for the winter.
We welcomed back Yael and Matt, Akira, Essie and Dante, who so wonderfully tended the house and garden while we were away and planted food for us to come home to. Thank you beautiful family!
We got busy in the kitchen making sauerkraut with cabbages that Matt and Yael had planted with the kids,
we revitalised our five year old sourdough starter and have been making bread daily,
we have made music each night before bed too,
and we have made our version of vegemite: miso paste, tahini, lemon juice, olive oil and garlic. Delish!
It is lovely to be home, and so far we haven’t got itchy pedals. After so many months of uncertainty, the comforts of home and community life have been both regenerative and restorative. We thank you, Dear Reader, for accompanying us on our journey in settling back into domestic life, and hope you too have both regeneration and rest cycling around in your neck of the woods.
the Sydney Morning Herald was awash with letters referring to a particular article.
The content of the article and its subsequent letters were not at all news to us, however seeing this content published in a major newspaper was. Australia has been smug about energy for decades; our odious car culture is built upon it. Power to the people without petroleum seemed like the right byline to head out on our bikes again, only we didn’t ride far before, for the second time in the year, we put Zero in a box and boarded a train.
Breaking laws has been a big part of our trip. As long as no one gets hurts or anything is damaged we think a law is open for interpretative experimentation. Zero would certainly be happier if he didn’t have to suffer the humiliation of being disappeared from view. Sorry Zero! But we’ll have to wait for Sydney’s cars to be out of petrol before we attempt to cycle out of this particular city.
Our train took us south over the Harbour Bridge, west towards the foothills of the Blue Mountains and then north to Windsor station. North you ask? Yes, briefly. We were asked to give a talk at Permaculture Sydney West and to stay with Danielle Wheeler, who is actively involved with PSW, and her family in Wilberforce.
We had stayed with Danielle and Mark, their son Patrick and pooch Rory on the way up about ten months earlier and it was a joy to visit them again. But we couldn’t linger, our Patrick’s mum’s birthday was approaching and we wanted to be in the Southern Highlands to celebrate it with her.
On the way out of Wilberforce we came across swathes of roadside balloon vine (Cardiospermum grandiflorum) and while there is much ethnobotanical information on its sister plant Cardiospermum halicacabum, which is also called balloon vine (so confusing), there are no uses or benefits listed online for C. grandiflorum. We think the young leaves could make a good cooked vegetable,
and the seeds could be used medicinally as is the case with C. halicacabum, but we need to do some more research. Perhaps our friend Diego Bonetto knows?
Back in Danielle’s garden another balloon-like-flower plant, the Cape gooseberry (Physalis peruvians), grows without care,
producing delicious fruits which we got to sample.
And further back on Palm Island (in August) we found native or wild gooseberry (Physalis angulata), also called (rather confusingly) balloon cherry and is related to, but not to be confused with, Cape gooseberry.
After a day’s ride we arrived in Luddenham and pitched our tents near the Showies (once called Carnies) at the show ground and cooked some grub.
The next morning we were keen to get an early start so we skipped on cooking porridge, packed up the tents and headed up the road to the service station to buy some juice to put on our oats, ginger, raisins and chia seed breakfast of champions.
As we slowly climbed to the cool Southern Highlands, autonomous stone fruits began to appear.
As did black nightshade (Solanum nigrum), which we rate as one of the most adaptable species in Australia following us all the way from cold Daylesford to Cape York and back again.
Its leaf and fruit shape seem to vary from soil to soil, region to region, but as far as we’re aware it’s the same species. We harvested the following plant on North Stradbroke Island in May. You can see the leaf here is finer and less hairy than in the colder climates.
Thirty kms north of Camden the tandem’s front tyre burst a hole and Patrick, Zeph and Zero came to a dramatic stop. We had absent-mindedly left our spare tyres in Sydney (under the cousin’s mulberry tree) and so we had to draw on our wits to get us out of this dilemma. We went foraging for old rubber material, found an old truck tyre, fashioned a piece to fit, repaired the tube, which had also burst, and hobbled on to Camden.
Thanks for the help and the generous discount Camden Cycles.
On the way to Picton we passed unintentionally planted fat hen or lamb’s quarters (Chenopodium album),
old wild rose hips (Rosa canina),
and new shoots of roadside wild fennel (Foeniculum vulgare), obviously thriving on all the Roundup its been getting.
We arrived in the town with the rain and observed all of civility’s industrial pollutants (mainly car detergents) being washed from the road into the little nameless creek that runs under the main drag,
before being snapped by the local press.
In almost 12 months on the road, living mostly outdoors, this was one of only a handful of days in which we got a soaking. We had stayed in Picton on the way up and camped on the edge of the botanical gardens where the friendly gardeners had encouraged us. This time we spoiled ourselves with a dry room at the George IV hotel. Again we had to smuggle Zero, this time through the window, put him on his bedding and leave early the next day without a trace of dog hair or scent.
It is about 150 kms from Wilberforce to Moss Vale where we were heading to visit Patrick’s parents. From Picton we needed to climb 60 kms or so to reach our destination. Along the way we discovered salsify (Tragopogon porrifolius) in flower and therefore too late to harvest as their roots become too woody to eat after buds appear.
But when we got to cooler Bowral we found some plants that were harvestable,
and we took them back to Patrick’s folks’ place where we cleaned and grated the roots and served up our delicious find.
Since our time in the Daintree, we had been carrying a small box of Daintree tea to bring back for Patrick’s mum. It was a somewhat rough and ready birthday gift having just survived the wreckage of life inside one of our panniers. But we found some used wrapping paper, Patrick got out his watercolours,
and we celebrated Nana Jones’ birthday with rich food and happy hearts.
Patrick’s brother’s family also live in Moss Vale and they had previously invited us to design and build them a chicken area. The arrangement that suited everyone was to be part gift economy, part family love, part money in the coffers. The bikes were overdue for a service and we booked them into Cycliste for the week we were to be in Mossy building. For any locals to this region, this was probably the best service we’ve had and we can highly recommend them. Thanks Marika and Stuart!
Before we began work Patrick mused on what makes happy chooks in order to get us all in the right frame of mind to begin work.
Ideally chooks are happiest and healthiest free-ranging but they also need protection from foxes and other creatures (pythons up north). We started out by marking the area we were to fence with kitchen string and flour,
and before going to the local hardware we first visited the local tip to see what we could recycle.
We found recycled wire, a small hutch that the Moss Vale Joneses could turn into a portable chook weeder, and a small homebuilt wheelbarrow for the cousins, Fred and Henry, and Woody to use while on site.
We also found a water tank we could install for the chicken’s water supply.
The only thing we had to buy new were posts, screws, nails and self tapping stirrups. No need for concrete! The rest of the material Patrick’s brother, Sam, had previously collected and stored near the site, awaiting our arrival.
We got to it. Zeph painting posts with old primer paint, Patrick doing the carpentry work, Meg documenting the process and bringing refreshments and Woody standing ready with his barrow to collect any off cuts.
We needed more wire so Uncle Sam and Zeph attacked the back fence and untangled some from various roots, shoots and leaves.
We built a gate, put flag stones under it (for fox proofing) and started work on the nesting boxes and coop.
We cut out privot from the garden and used branches as roosting limbs.
We stole some insulation from the roof in the main house,
and lined the walls, which will aid in extending the laying season.
Below where the chickens will roost is a slatted floor which enables easy scraping out of precious poo. A ramp helps the chooks up, especially young chicks who need the extra assistance. We built a small wall to come down in front of the roosting perches to block wind, although this opening is facing east and gets the least amount of weather. Making this area dark is appealing for laying hens but will also work to deter any egg thieving crows, who tend to avoid small dark areas. Uncle Sam still has to put on spouting and hook up the roof catchment to the water tank.
Outside the coop the nesting boxes can be accessed for quick egg retrieval. Above these boxes a ‘floppy top’ (chicken wire that flops about on top of a fence) has been installed to put off foxes jumping over it.
