What we have learned about social reform and social change in Western countries over many decades is that burning books and silencing dissent are very dangerous practices.

What is my dissenting voice really saying?

I am saying that exclusionary practices in the Jarlanbah Permaculture Hamlet make me and many of my neighbours feel excluded and unhappy.

At a higher level, they are inequitable, unfair and destabilising of community strength, solidarity and, ultimately, sustainability.

It’s not fun being the focus of sustained attacks.

But I am willing to wear that discomfort to have my voice — my small single voice — heard.

I come from a long line of people who spoke out against injustice. As a Canadian-Armenian, I know what happened to my father’s family and his father’s family. The blood of the martyrs runs in my veins.

Social exclusion and bullying in Jarlanbah are hardly genocide. But they are definitely ways of killing community.

I guess I just have to be unpopular. Tearing off the gag.

Speaking the unspeakable.

And I am going to fight for the rights of the disenfranchised and silenced members of communities with my dying breath.

Charity begins at home!

Jarlanbah Permaculture Hamlet from Shirley's house, 1993

Here’s a photo of the Jarlanbah Permaculture Hamlet from Shirley’s place (lot 6) in late 1993. An exhausted dairy farm being transformed into a Permaculture Hamlet.

Shirley has been explaining to me how the process worked. That heady mix of dreaming and practical realities.

She’s been explaining what her intentions were, coming here alone as a widow in her early sixties. She was dreaming of community. And support. A place to put down roots and live into her older years. Her own, ecological, architect-designed house.

A place where she (a distinguished fine artist with works already in the National Gallery) could paint and create in peace — embraced and supported by Nature’s beauty and bounty.

Embraced and supported by a community of like-minded people caring for Nature and for each other.

What exciting days those were!

The dream was so inviting; the vision so bright; the intentions so clear.

Promotional material for Jarlanbah Permaculture Hamlet

Here’s the Jarlanbah Permaculture Hamlet insert in the Northern Star for late March 1994:

Star Focus on Jarlanbah March 1994

This is the vision we need to revisit.

How can we update the vision and re-align with our current version?

How can we move forward in harmony, cooperation and peace?

I look forward to your comments.

All ideas are welcomed. Contrary views are welcomed and and invited.

Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter…. Obliged to you for hearin’ me….

It’s Easter weekend: a time for reflection on renewal, blessings and hope.

I am awash with fresh insights following a fascinating community mediation about the dual occupancy (accessory dwelling unit) issue on this community.

Sometimes people leave intentional communities. See “Leaving Utopia”, click here:  Leaving Utopia – MARY GARDEN

Things are different now. We’re settled in, the toilet is built, the deck is a daily marvel and my three books have been birthed and are now for sale.

I realise that I can no longer turn my back on the goings-on in my own immediate community and focus only on other communities.

There is much to learn from this small eco-village and much that needs to change.

The Jarlanbah archives

With the help of my elderly artist neighbour, Shirley, a founding resident, I have been exploring the Jarlanbah archives from the early 1990s.

What a tale they have to tell us!

Robyn Francis

The birth of this community in 1993 was accompanied by deep reflection and much dreaming, bearing in mind the state of the Earth and a deep desire to care for Nature in all her wondrous beauty. The developer was completely aligned with these ambitious social and environmental objectives. The designer, eminent Permaculture educator and designer, Robyn Francis, keeps in regular contact with many of us and recently has been helping us understand the deeper intent of our founding principles with respect to intergenerational equity, density, community infrastructure, inclusion and sustainability.

She’s reminded us of the strong focus on inclusion in the founding documents. Given that today there’s a lot of exclusionary thinking about in the world, it’s a salutary reminder!

Those of us who live on Jarlanbah are blessed to have Robyn as a neighbour. Awarded NSW Rural Woman of the Year a few years ago, she’s a Permaculture designer and educator of international eminence.

For Robyn’s award-winning teaching, education, training and design work, see:

www.permaculture.com.au

and

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/utopias/dream_machine/docos/jarlanbah.htm

How I wish I could have been part of that early planning process!

The far-thinking developer, John Hunter, his planners and designers (and then the first residents) spent long hours exploring alternatives for the social and physical design of this place. It was a dream that was both far-looking and practical; resilient and able to be modified.

We’ve lost our way…

For reasons that I will explore in this blog, I believe that we’ve lost our way here in the Jarlanbah Permaculture Hamlet.

But I am confident that it’s not too late to bring the original vision up-to-date, realign with it and and move forward in cooperation, self-reliance and harmony.

I’ve pasted in below the poster that used to be on our sign at the front gate:  the original dream. The sign went missing but the dream is still alive in the hearts and minds of many early Jarlanbah Hamleteers. And the newbies are now learning what our founding mothers and fathers had in mind.

The details of the dream are spelled out in a detailed Management Statement and fascinating early newsletters, which I will also post for people to read.

We need to understand our history here.

I need to understand it!

Blessings on you all this Easter weekend! May we all live in peace, cooperation and harmony.

The promise, if not (yet) the reality…