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.
On this page — and soon in a dedicated website, I will chronicle my thoughts about community engagement and community development.
Bullying at Jarlanbah
I tried to become involved in this community four years ago. I offered some advice on how community meetings might be conducted. A few simple meeting protocol points based on research and years of experience. I was told it was “draconian”; that it was not necessary. Exhausted from the move to the bush from the city, I could not handle a concerted bullying attack from a long-term resident who ridiculed my simple offering. I cried for three days and resolved never to try that again. I can be paid to give my advice, I reasoned, in late 2005.
I’m an unlikely target for a bully but this one was an experienced professional. She’d had success with scores of others.
For advice, see:
For the full article on “Leaving Utopia”, click here: Leaving Utopia – MARY GARDEN
There’s great new research on bullying which is encouraging. The Shared Concern Method holds great promise. But this requires people not to be passive bystanders but to stand up against bullies. I’d love to see more of this in this community.
Bullying comes in many forms on our community. One elderly neighbour moved away because she was simply terrified of abuse and felt that she could not speak out without being shouted down. One particular incident forced her to move: just plain bullying.
Others (wise, experienced community activists with great community development credentials) left because their views were always ignored. “Expertise” (I have learned) is rarely appreciated here.
Sometimes more vulnerable or hesitant Jarlanbah residents are accosted in the street of the Nimbin village and berated about the activities of other residents. My tardiness in building our composting toilet has repeatedly been a topic of abuse from one resident to another without my even being present!
The Jarlanbah blackboard
And then there is the infamous Jarlanbah blackboard. A sweet idea, you’d think. For neighbours to advertise the Easter Egg Hunt or share good news. But for those of us who would like a small income stream from our property or who work at or from home (quite a few, actually, consultants, artists, chefs, gardeners, equipment repair people, authors, musicians…), a comment which appeared yesterday on the blackboard is a challenge (see below).
Many of the guiding principles of sustainability focus on working from home, the work-life balance, reducing automobile dependence… It was part of the founding charter of this community, for Pete’s sake…
A neighbour photographed it with a mobile phone and promptly erased it.
The Jarlanbah blackboard, yesterday…
Anyway, bullying will not be a problem for me any more.
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.
Even though there’s still lots of bullying around, 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:
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 and in the new website, I believe that we’ve seriously 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…
3 Comments
Well bullying is to be expected. People want power and when they have it they want to keep it. Bullying is part of that need for power. Professional bullies live on most communities but still a beautiful place to live. Bullies are generally unintelligent people.
My four years spent on Jarlanbah from 2002-6 were ones of delight – at being part of a committed community of staunch activists who had created a beautiful place for people to share their lives. Most of the many good people who had founded Jarlanbah were extremely hard workers, keen supporters of community values, who did their best to help mediate any of the inevitable tensions that will always arise when a group of hitherto strangers attempt to live side by side in close quarters.
I too have been busy writing about Jarlanbah and my time there in an effort to promote the positive values of permaculture communities. I have had various freelance articles re Jarlanbah published in respected magazines, and am finalising a book about my time there.
I don’t agree that bullying per se has been part of the Jarlanbah experience. What I felt, witnessed and believed was that a few unhappy individuals with their own personal gripes against the world in general, attempted from time to time to cause trouble. The majority of the wonderful friends I made there were very special people whom I admire and retain strong bonds with.
Great information! I’ve been looking for something like this for a while now. Thanks!
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