Thoughts from The Crossing

We have travelled far and wide down the east coast of Australia and arrived at a land education and permaculture centre named The Crossing. We have dirt under our fingernails, windswept hair, and new friends after the first few days of conservation work. After a conversation about hot sauce and strata quiche at the dinner table, we asked the crew how their experience is going so far.

Celia spoke about permaculture. "When faced with that word, many people have no idea what it means. When that word was one of the only hints given to us when we asked what 'The Crossing' was, many of us were left wondering. Fast forward to three days later. To arrive at the this land education centre, we embarked on canoes in the small town of Bermagui. After two hours meandering the shallow waters, we arrived at this sustainable paradise. The first thing you encounter is a tap next to the outhouse with half a PC pipe underneath with a sign that reads 'water for your hands And the tree'. That's when it starts to make sense. One of the aspects of permaculture is to reuse as much as possible. These last couple of days have shown us so many ways to help the earth by reusing. We use old weeds as mulch for the garden, we feed compost to the chickens who eat it and provide eggs, we use newspaper as weed killer and odds and ends as household parts."

Mary is learning that permaculture and closing loops can be applicable to all aspects of life- whether in the home or everyday living.

We have been together three weeks today. Sky reflects on how much your energy affects not only yourself, but those around you. We are becoming highly tuned to the norms and needs of those around us, and we are finely tuning this little unit of ours to become highly functioning.

Abby notes that at The Crossing, when we use the bathroom, we use sawdust to cover up our waste which results in a product we can reuse on the environment.

Andie hasn't used her phone at all at The Crossing. She states that "being in the moment and being disconnected from home and everything else isn't a bad thing."

Julien says "I can have hot showers in a place without a water heater. I didn't know that would be possible. I have been enlightened about the way you can capture and use solar energy - technology has made that possible."

Christian learnt that chickens can sort through our food scraps and take what they want, and the rest can be used as mulch for other purposes.

Sylvie believes there are so many improvements that need to be made, but we are learning that anything is possible. Simplicity is key.

Andy held on to the revelation that food travels on average 2000 kilometres to reach our lips. Here at the Crossing, we aim for 20 metres.

Yoni says it's always so tempting to eat the food that we are harvesting but we always have to wait for the last person to arrive at the dining table before we dig in, because that's what families do.

Passionate Dan responded, "A better question is: what haven't I learnt from The Crossing? I discovered an entirely different way to live ones life. To be able to completely cover your tracks, to be off the grid, to create 100% of your power and food/water, to not produce any waste, to not only leave no footprints but literally add value to the environment and essentially fix what we've broken. I didn't even know this way of life was possible."

Celia remarks, "It's only been a couple of days, but digging in the dirt and planting trees has been grounding, literally. I hope we can all take the tools Annette and Dean have gifted us with and apply them at home."

That's all from us tonight. We are exhausted from a local ball at the town hall we volunteered at last night; lots of dish washing and hip shaking were involved.

I'll leave with one last final quote that sums up some of the ideology we've been absorbing: "Live simply so that others may simply live," Ghandi.