Regenerating...

Regenerating People Place Prosperity Preparedness is a two day conference exploring a diverse range of community regeneration and disaster preparedness issues and opportunities, experiential learning and the latest in-depth research findings.

Featuring fire scientist Kevin Tolhurst, ecological historians Tom Griffiths and Bill Gammage, trauma psychiatrist Paul Valent, economic regeneration consultants Peter Kenyon and David Engwicht, social entrepreneurs Margi O’Connell and Jan Owen, climate modeler Penny Whetton, sustainability activist Cam Walker, community safety policy experts John Handmer and Blythe McLennan and socio-ecological resilience practitioners David Holmgren and Erin Bohensky.

You can download the program here.

For those who are unable to attend, the event will be filmed and hopefully screened at an upcoming HRN film night.

For those who are able to attend, please email us for carpooling possibilities.

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Wild Foods: Regaining Local Knowledge 

Want to know more about what local food you can eat for free without doing any work, except for a restorative walk? Join Patrick Jones for a four hour forage on the outskirts of Daylesford identifying edible-medicinal leaves, seeds, mushrooms and fruits that constitute bush foods, weeds and other naturalising plants. Learn some of the eighty-five species that Jones and his family incorporate into their diets.

Saturdays starting 20th April till end of term
1-5pm (all weather except torrential rain)
$30 per person
Contact Daylesford Neighbourhood Centre for bookings on 5348 3569 or daylesford@ourneighbourhood.org.au

Hepburn Energy Descent Action Plan

Dinner & discussion with Councillors May, Klein & Barrell

                      on    Thursday 28th Jan at 7pm at Conti

Unique opportunity to influence this exciting move by your shire councillors to create an energy descent action plan for the Hepburn Shire.

The decision by council to take this step can be seen in part as the culmination of years of education and advocacy by HRN to get an open, positive and planned approach to the massive changes we face in the near future from the climate, energy and financial crisis. But this has also come as a surprise opportunity for all of us already acting along these lines. What exactly does the council mean by an Energy Descent Action Plan? We are not sure but we understand this is different from most council planning processes that are driven by State government legislation, regulations. This is a genuine initiative of our council and the councillors taking the lead in this process have all agreed to meet the Hepburn Relocalisation Network to explain their thoughts, answer questions and receive our input.

Don’t miss this opportunity to contribute to what may  be the most positive and far sighted action by Hepburn Shire for our community’s future.

Check out the HRN blog for a brief discussion paper by David Holmgren on the background and options for a Hepburn Energy Descent Action Plan.

Please book by tomorrow (Wednesday) 8pm

About Us

The Hepburn Relocalisation Network is a loosely formed community group based in the Central Victoria regions of Hepburn and Daylesford, on beautiful Djaara Country.

The Network has been screening films that show local initiatives strengthening communities and building local resilience, and other films that are relevant to the issues of Peak Oil, Global Warming or the concept of Relocalisation, with an attempt to find films that inspire.

The group recognises the urgent realities of Peak Oil and Climate Change and is responding by;

• Raising awareness of how peak oil and global climate change affect our community, and then
• Looking at how we can respond to these realities with a plan for the future.

Our local responses will vary from other communities’ responses, as local needs differ from place to place. The specific situations of each community can only be addressed by a relocalisation strategy i.e. a return to looking at the local situation and looking for a local response.

A couple of years ago our group was inspired by the work of permaculture students at the Kinsale Further Education College, who under the mentorship of Rob Hopkins in 2005 produced a very important report outlining how their small town of West Cork, plans to move from a high energy consumption town to a low energy one.

This town, similar in size to Daylesford/Hepburn seemed like a mirror town of our own. We then set out to begin on a process of articulating, in our own way, to also develop a plan for our town, which will help us to move to a low energy future. Our plan may be a story, a written vision, of how we see our future unfold during the next few years, decades and over the century of decreasing ‘cheap’ fossil fuels.

This year HRN has hosted an international guest speaker from Cuba, Roberto Perez (who featured in the film The Power of Community – How Cuba Survived Peak Oil), at the Daylesford Town Hall for an extremely successful event that brought together people and groups interested in sustainability from all over Central Victoria.

We are continuing to show films and plan to keep building networks within our community, our neighbouring towns, as well as the larger cities of Ballarat, Bendigo and Melbourne.