permaculture

["Darren Doherty" <ozfx@bigpond.com>]

Hello Robyn,

I think I know the property that is being referred to - and I agree with you
entirely. Having inspected it recently I found  a system on its margins to
the failure of the wet season.. Clearly it was a system that is very people
dependant and consequently requires intensive and skilled management. It is
a very interesting archaeology - in that it has been largely abandoned and
looks like a permaculture ghost town! Most of the ponds and dams were bone
dry (perhaps due to poor pre-construction material investigation) - the
exception being the dams placed where naturally good construction material
would be found. Many of the trees - particularly the mangos and olives are
choked by grasses etc. The bamboos are a highlight however and did not
appear to be suffering too much from the lack of attention.

I also agreed with Robyn that honesty and openess are aspects that we need
to focus on as movement - unfortunately communicating this at times with
some out there has proved difficult. Nature displays total honesty and in
the case of the property spoken about this is a case in point.

Cheers,

Darren Doherty


----- Original Message -----
From: <permed@nor.com.au>
To: <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Wednesday, April 17, 2002 6:38 PM
Subject: Re: [permaculture] (Fwd) Interview with Bill Mollison Part Two


>Bill Mollison:  Yes, for example, I went to a new ecology, the tropics,
>latitude 28 and I went to the grasslands. Now tropical grasslands are
>fearful things: they're over your head, they're tangled, they're awful,
>and we turned it back into jungle, into rain forest; in about three
>years.  I put in some 45 dams and miles and miles of swales, so it all
>turned into a huge self-watering system. So, at the end of three or
>four years, I said: I can do it, I can create paradise out of hell. There
>were 57 big Herefords on this farm of 170 acres-and you couldn't
>fatten them so you couldn't make it pay. And that's all there
>was-just great big earth-tamping machines running around losing
>money and now, you know, we produce more fish out of a half acre
>pond than all the Herefords put together. And thousands of mangoes
>and endless bunches of bananas and on and on and on and on.

I had to read this twice to recognise the property Bills talking about here.
The reality of the farm is not quite as fantastic as it sounds and
unfortunately that's very typical of Bill.  Yes there were a lot of dams and
swales put in - the landform engineering was probably the best thing there -
quite a few hundred mango trees were planted but not maintained and stunted
and lost in the grasses, the fish ponds had a couple of productive seasons
before disease hit and the next entreprenuer managing them made fatal
mistakes as they really didn't know much about fish farming. I'm didn't see
any jungle or rainforest emerging after 3 years unless he's refering to the
little acre or so of food forest planted on the original 5 acre plot next
door. In the absence of grazing animals the grasses and weeds proliferated.
Hundreds of thousousands of dollars were pumped into the property, mainly on
ill-conceived and poorly planned enterprises that never took off. The farm
was never fully designed, had no management plan - I think I'd better
stop....
While I have much to thank Bill for, I really feel uncomfortable about the
way he hypes so many projects with exaggerated claims, projects that I'd be
embarrassed to take a PC class to sound fantastic, isolated good projects
are blown into whole regions and nations....
Just take what he says and downscale a heap and you'll be closer to the
reality. Bill's yarns and claims have lost pc a lot of credibility over the
years. The good stuff stands well on it's own honest merits without
exaggeration, the stuff-ups need to owned and lessons shared so people dont
go making the same mistakes over again.
Permaculture needs to be open and honest about its successes and failures if
it's going to be taken seriously and have a sustainable future.
Robyn
_______________________________________________
permaculture mailing list
permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/permaculture