Creating culture, taking action and building resilience

October Culture Club

This is a watch and learn workshop.
No bookings required - just rock up on the day.
This is a free event - everyone is welcome.
See you there!

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Want to save the planet but don't want to go it alone?

Hook in with local climate action group - Extinction Rebellion Daylesford

Their aims are to raise awareness in our local community as well as participate in non-violent direct action locally and in Melbourne.

Calling all musos. dancers, singers, performers and everyone for a FLASH MOB style action coming soon!


Non-violent direct action workshop

Saturday October 5

1pm – 3pm

Senior Citizen's Hall (rear Daylesford Town Hall)

Run by Extinction Rebellion Daylesford.

For those interested in participating in the week of action planned in Melbourne from October 7 or other future events.

This is a free event and everyone is welcome to attend.

RSVP on the FB event, or just come along.

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Facing Fire

Now that spring has sprung, it's time to start thinking about how you are going to prepare for the bushfire season ahead. HRN has some fire rakes and other tools available to borrow for free. Perhaps you might like to organise a working bee in your street or in a nearby gully with some friends or family? Please email us for more details about the tools.

HRN has a dedicated page on bushfire info, which you can find here.

Hepburn's own David Holmgren was recently interviewed for a Canadian film about bushfire resilience and understanding fire (as opposed to fighting fire), which you can watch below. (If you are reading this in your inbox you will have to click through to the blog to watch it.)

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Some reminders re upcoming events:

Saturday Oct 5: Daylesford Culture Club - Spring clean your gut

Saturday Oct 5: Non-Violent Direct Action Training with XR Daylesford 

Saturday Oct 12: Daylesford Community Food Gardens monthly working bee

Saturday Oct 19: Wild Fennel

Sunday Oct 20: Daylesford Repair Café

The last harvest of the season + Frenemy Fire

Hello vegetable lovers!

The crew at Captain's Creek Organics are just about to harvest the last of the season's veggies: carrots, beets, cabbages, radishes, leeks, onions, silverbeet, and everybody's favourite: weird looking broccoli.

From 1pm to 5pm this coming Wednesday (August 7), at 16 Fourteenth Street Hepburn, you can come and take as many organic veggies as you'd like for a gold coin donation to HRN.

Please note the veggies will be picked on the day, and will be unwashed. Please bring your own boxes/bags.

Many thanks to Serge for growing the veggies, and to Jacques for co-ordinating the picking and sharing.

See you Wednesday arvo!

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Internationally renowned environmental historian Stephen J. Pyne is visiting Castlemaine while on tour in Australia. Professor Pyne will be giving a talk at Phee Broadway Theatre on

Thursday 8th August 

6.30pm - 8.30pm

Entitled 'Frenemy Fire: the best of friends, the worst of enemies,' Stephen's talk will draw on his work on the history of fire in Australia and globally, along with his experience as a fire fighter, to discuss how we can best live with fire as a friend, not just an enemy.

Stephen is one of the first authors to explore fire stick farming (indigenous use of fire for shaping the land). Stephen’s stories weave together fire science, fire history and cultures of fire across the ages and across the globe.

This event will provide practical ways that people living in central Victoria can understand fire management as it relates to them.

Stephen is Emeritus Professor at Arizona State University, and a much sought after speaker on fire. You can catch watch his TED Talk for a preview.

    You can book tickets at: www.trybooking.com/BEHPH

    Tickets are $12 or $10 (concession and Fryerstown residents).

    Light supper is included.

    Look forward to seeing you there.

Bill Gammage in Daylesford November 29th

Bill Gammage, the veteran historian and author of the ground breaking book, The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia, will give a talk at the Daylesford Town Hall on Friday Nov 29.

Bill Gammage is adjunct professor in the Humanities Research Centre at the Australian National University.

In this multi-award winning book, Bill refutes the common notion that pre-1788 Aboriginal people had no system of land management, on the contrary he shows that the people who lived here then had developed, over many generations, a complex, elaborate system of management to ensure the survival of their culture.

He suggests that time spent maintaining the landscape was a cultural obligation of great import. Bill Gammage uses written accounts by explorers and historians, and early landscape views (sketches, paintings, etc) to explain how Aborigines created an ideal landscape for obtaining the variety of food items they needed in their diet, and kept the countryside clear of dense vegetation (and thus dangerous fires).

A current exhibition of works by colonial artist Thomas Clark at the Hamilton Art Gallery illustrates Gammage's argument that the landscape was open and parklike. A room full of 1850-60's views of the western district ......wide open spaces, clear of stumps. Clark and other artists of the day had no agenda to paint anything other than what they saw. Where are the trees, now so plentiful?

The indigenous Australians were more efficient than Europeans, Bill asserts, in getting food, shelter and other needs from the land, mostly by the use of fire and manipulation of the life-cycles of food plants.Once the fire-based land management system was removed with the arrival of Europeans, the continent became overgrown and thus more fire prone (made worse in recent times, by the climate changing to a much drier one). With The Biggest Estate on Earth, Bill Gammage has updated the history of Australia, and our way of seeing our land.

The central premise of The Biggest Estate on Earth is that before white settlement, the continent had been looked after by the mindful and meticulous caretakers maintaining by cultural and religious norms which were essentially unified across the whole continent including Tasmania (that had been separated from the mainland for 8,000 yrs). The implications of Gammage's evidence and conclusions speaks directly to concerns with sustainability and landcare. The ensuing debate will change us and the land hopefully for the better.

Do not miss this rare opportunity.

7.30pm Friday 29 November Daylesford Town Hall

Entry $10 / $8 pre booked $15 / $12 on the night. Refreshments included.

 Here's Bill Gammage talking about the book:

Review on the Wheeler Centre website.

 For more info hrn@internode.on.net or phone 5348 3636.

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

Dinner at Conti Thurs 28th Jan, Veggie boxes and Fire plans

Hello to all in this very fine New Year marked by enough rain to make us all just that much more fire safe.

Hope you all have your fire plans ready and start implementing them immediately. Have you joined a Community fireguard group yet? If not, we strongly urge you to do so. Our local fireguard officer, Jay Gardiner, is good value. See our fire bulletins from Joan Webster that give clear, simple practical guidance on what to do when in your fire plan.

To welcome in 2010 and start the year with a healthy, fun event we are having a community dinner (of vegan delights) at Conti on Thursday 28th, $15, please book in advance. Come at 7pm for a 7.30 start. Councillors Seb Klein and Rod May are coming to discuss with us the development of an EDAP (Energy Descent Action Plan) for Hepburn.

Veggie boxes are happening weekly so if you are not getting one and would like to, sign up by Tuesday 8pm to get one this week. Please pay in advance for your box.

Remember you will have to subscribe to this blog to continue to receive HRN updates. For those who are not so familiar with blogs, to subscribe:
1. Enter your email address in the box on the right hand side under "Subscribe via email" and click Subscribe.
2. You will then receive an email asking you to verify your subscription and you will need to follow the instructions in this email.

It works just like our usual emails once you have subscribed, you will simply receive our latest post as an email to your inbox. You won't be receiving any more or less emails than you would otherwise. It has the added advantage that you can then add comments to posts if you go to the blog site, which will make things more interactive, and you can also look at our past messages on the blog site.

Add your ideas for 2010 to start the discussion!


Cheers,
Su, Maureen and Liz