Abdallah House - Redesigning a Home

Principle 9: Use small and slow solutions Article published in the North Central Review, May 22nd 2012 I find it really interesting when other people write about our project here, looking at it from different angles and giving a broad overview to inform their own audience. While this article will be seen as infotainment for most the ideas are gradually getting out there to our local community that there are ways that we can prepare for an energy descent future, and improve our lifestyle in the process. This article was written as a bit of a 'good news story' in the wake of the pasting that Seymour got from the TV program 'Two on the Great Divide '. While there are plenty of errors in it and some artistic license with my quotes, I feel that it it give a good impression of what we have been up to. The local papers were full of letters to the editors for weeks after the first episode of the aforementioned program appeared, I thought that I'd include this o...

Principle 7: Design from patterns to details The cool cupboard project has been a very long one. While it demonstrates most of the permaculture design principles I thought that I'd focus on 'Design from Patterns to Details' because it really was the way in which the project evolved and was finally completed. The design was inspired by the cool cupboard that I saw at Melliodora, the home of David Holmgren and Su Dennett. David includes a section about the design of his cupboard in his eBook about the property. Since then I've seen other designs that use the same principles including a pantry in an old house near Sheparton that had a mesh covered hole in the floor and one that was covered up in the ceiling and 'Adelaide House' in Alice Spings which I visited in 2004 and wrote this short report on for my Permaculture Diploma: My cupboard is based more on David Holmgren's design, with a few differences. It draws air through the cellar (with a water tan...

Principle 8: Integrate rather than segregate The first episode of the ABC's Two on the Great Divide included a look at Seymour - currently available for watching on iView (about 34 minutes in). It was exceedingly negative, portraying the town as Tim Flannery puts it, a "a warehousing suburb ... for people who can't afford housing in Melbourne". After an interview with a young man from Avenel (not a local I'm told) they discuss teenage boredom when Flannery says "here it can lead to outcomes that are uniformly really bad", just as he passes our house (37:40 in to the footage - see Kombi in background). He later implies that the town is a ghetto of great disadvantage , not a very balanced view of the town by a renound scientist. The 4 minutes of video time has created quite a stir in town, with extensive letters in the local papers and our state MP urging us to write and complain to the ABC. Even our local councillors are up in arms with ou...