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  • From: PacificEdge <pacedge@magna.com.au>
  • To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] where you from?
  • Date: Tue, 29 Oct 2002 09:38:23 +1100

IS anyone interested in disclosing their bioregion, so we (I) can see
where we are all from, and how that might open some discussion.

Been interesting reading people's entries on where they live. Here's mine...

I live in Sydney, Australia, a city of nearly four million - getting on for a quarter of the Australian population of 19 million. Monterey is the suburb, just 200 metres from the beaches of Botany Bay where the first Europeans landed in Australia around 210 years ago (that was Cook, closely followed by the French) and 20 minutes from Cronulla and Wanda's surfing beaches. We have a detached house with three people and three isobrowns (chooks) with a small garden on nutrient-poor sandstone soils that need plenty of organic matter to support fruit and vegetables. The linear parkland 100 metres on the other side of our land was earmarked as a freeway but the state government has decided that it will instead remain a strip of sportsfields and remnant bushland with only a smaller strip to be used for public transport - light rail and new forms of public transport are being discussed, such as the rail/ road vehicles as are in use in, I think, Adelaide, South Australia.

Sydney occupies the Cumberland Plain with its clay-derived soils and is surrounded by national parks occupying the sandstone uplands to north and south and the Blue Mountains to the west - an uplifted, dissected sandstone plateau home to a string of small towns and villages along the Great Western Highway that links to the lands west of the Great Dividing Range, as well as national parks and wilderness areas. You can imagine the city as a bowl shelving to the Pacific Ocean in the east and bounded by the mountains to the west and the national park uplands to north and south... like a sprawling cluster of urbanisation with market gardens and small farms linking it to the Blue Mountains.

Facing the Tasman Sea (the Pacific between Australia and New Zealand which is 2000 km away on the other side), Sydney is Australia's global gateway in both the economic sense and as its major point of entry. We're climatically fortunate here, with a warm temperate climate allowing us to grow some tropical and subtropical plants as well as those of the cool temperate zone to the south of the continent (Australia is about the physical size of the USA). Winter storms spiral in from the south to west sector, bringing cold wind and rain; the cool afternoon sea breezes of summer relieve the heat and humidity of the afternoon and summer's dry north-westerlies bring the winds and dessicating conditions that lead to the sometimes destructive bushfires that speed up out of the eucalypt gullies of the urban bushland to destroy houses.

The Sydney Basin produces 80% of the fresh vegetables and fruit of the state of New South Wales, mainly on small, family-owned farms. The city supports two organic farmer's markets and a number of other markets where organic and non-organic fresh foods can be bought from growers. There are a growing number of organic food retail shops and restaurants, four or so food coops and a CSA obtaining its produce from organic farmer Nicholas Pook at Primrose Farm less than an hour's drive north of the city, as well as a growing number of community food gardens.

Challenges to the bioregion include a growing urban population (partly made up of migrants) that local and state government are hard pressed to provide services for, urbanisation of the productive farmland in the north-west to south-west urban fringe, access to urban open space for medium density residents and road congestion. There is air and water pollution which are being tackled by the state government to some extent.

The socioeconomic profile reveals the most affluent occupy the city's global sector spanning an area covering part of the northern suburbs to Sydney airport and includiing the CBD and inner suburbs (undergoing redevelopment and an increase in apartment dwellers) - it is here the newer industries are located, such as IT/ communications/ education/ financial services/ media/ entertainment etc; a concentration of people with young families on the cheaper land of the expanding urban fringe who have a mixed economic status; and a ring of older suburbs in between, home to a large segment of the immigrant population, some poverty and low-income households and older-economy industries some of which are in decline.

It's not a bad city to live in - vibrant, multicultural, plenty of urban cultural life - but is less communal than Melbourne (probably because Melbourne is colder and wetter so people have to stay indoors and under shelter!) so getting community-based stuff running is harder.

...Russ Grayson





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