It took over my life

14 July 2010:
Lindy from ABC Radio National’s programme ‘Life Matters’ plans to interview me in the next week or so for their segment ‘It took over my life’. The following is the gist of what I thought I’d say, if I get the chance. What do you think?

“During the 90’s, Dave and I were living with our children on a sheep farm near Cooma. We had a nice home, a swimming pool and a very rough, sheep-mowed tennis court and I often thought: ‘wish we had more people to play with’. I also thought that easier and more incidental social interactions, instead of my more common planned and diarised getting together with friends would be good too. So I first came to all this through the SOCIAL door.

I also had an interest in staying healthy by for example, sharing food preparation. Instead of daily getting the tomato out of the fridge and cutting off 2 or 3 wedges and then putting it back. What if I could be part of a cook team, say once a month (and others did the same) and what if we could use organic ingredients grown on site. I imagined the variety of our meals and the efficiencies in all this.
This staying healthy door led to the ENVIRONMENTAL door. How could we be healthy without fresh air, clean water and a few trees? Also at that time I was working as an accountant, so could see the obvious need to incorporate ECONOMIC sustainability in all this.

About then I became aware of places called ECOVILLAGES (you can do a web search) and they sounded to me like a vehicle for combining all this stuff. I thought: ecovillages display sustainability in a very broad sense.
I visited places around the world and did courses in the various aspects of ecovillage design. All this led to establishing a website, which my lovely daughter maintains from the US, and to setting up the SCEV Incorporated Association…….and somehow from there, about 500 people are now on our database and receive our newsletters.

Where are we today?
We have found THE best piece of land for an ecovillage – 160 acres, 1½ hours north of Sydney, near the coast and due to come up for sale in the next month or so. It has approvals for about 120 homes. Eventually, our plan is to offer a diversity of housing which will be owned in the normal way, with residents sharing in the rest of the land and facilities. No sharing of income at all and definitely combining privacy with social interaction when you choose.
This land has an area for chickens, flowers, fruit and vegie production, and whatever else the community decides down the track.
There are existing buildings for work and play and the property is located only 10 mins walk to the railway station AND the oldest rainforest arboretum in NSW.
The project is attracting all age groups and people with fire-in-their-belly about some or other aspect of life. I am learning so much just being on this ecovillage bus…I love it!

We have Tom the computer whizz, working images and designs for us all to comment on and engage our creative juices. We have two people, one an eco-sustainability director, the other director of social sustainability for an international consulting firm giving us a leg-up. A banker helping us structure up; a fella interested in doing father and son stuff; Linda keen to build a straw bale home; horticulturalists, permaculturalists, architects, renewable energy experts, and so many more.

Anyway, have a look at our website at www.scev.org and see what you think. Listen to your personal wisdom and if you feel comfortable (or even excited like me), leave your email address to receive our newsletter and see where it takes you. There is no obligation at all and actually at the end of the day, there are only 120 homes so it’s a very small, niche project.”.........seems pretty long hey? guess i can talk fast!