Edible Alconasser: Travels in Bunyaland

Last northern winter I finally got to do a permaculture design course. Not that there is any shortage of courses nearer home, but I'd also been wanting to make a trip to Australia for some time. So, with my trusty Bike Friday, I set off for south-eastern Queensland and north-eastern New South Wales, a region with a subtropical climate, locally high rainfall, and high biodiversity. In addition to both temperate and tropical biota, the region also has a high degree of endemism. What it lacks is a punchy name, as Eastern Australian Subtropical Zone isn't it. So, in the manner of early explorers, I hereby propose the name Bunyaland, after the magnificent bunya pine, whose giant pine nuts provided the peoples of the region a periodic abundance of food unmatched in pre-European Australia. Here are a couple of fine examples next to a piece of real-estate with renovation potential, near Uki, NSW.

I spent two months in Bunyaland, first of all doing the PDC, then travelling the back roads, visiting permaculture sites, meeting a lot of intersting people, striking up innumerable conversations by the roadside and even increasing the girth of my thighs. Australian roads tend to follow ridge lines, and this makes for relentlessly up and down riding. Do this on a bike loaded up with camping gear, food and, at least initially, Bill Mollison's Permaculture Design Manual, and it's hard work. In a fit of optimism I had even brought a travel fishing rod on board; eventually I did manage to catch my dinner with this, but for a long time it seemed like excess baggage.

The Permaculture Design Course

Maungaraeeda, Kin Kin http://permaculturesunshinecoast.org/ . Tom and Zaia, fourteen students, representing every continent except Africa. Zaia plus three WOOFers holding theplace together while Tom was occupied teaching, as well as producing superb food for all of us. What a fantastic, mind opening experience this was. What I think I remember most vividly are the evenings in the dining area between the two buses, talking about all things permaculture. That's when there was no "permie TV": a brilliant collection of video material viewed in the cinema bus. Many thanks Tom and Zaia and all my fellow students and the support crew. After my experience working with groups, there seemed to me something really special about the group gathered at this spot, in a small valley backed by rainforest covered hills, under the southern cross.

Tom Kendall, framed by a banana leaves, infront of turmeric plants. These stabilise a bank and produce a valuable crop of rhizomes.

And with pigeon pea and arrowroot.

Gardens at Maungaraeda

With the new biogas generator, now in operation and supplying gas for cooking.

Another fantastic meal, in terms of both food and company, in the dining area between the two buses.

On the road

After this, back on the bike, seeing everything with new eyes. All those lawns and paddocks crying out to be turned into gardens and food forest. A steady supply of fallen mangoes on the road, while mangoes in the supermarket come from Bowen, a thousand kilometres to the north. After the delicious blue java bananas at Maungaraeeda, supermarket bananas from even further north tasted pretty insipid. All of this improved somewhat on crossing the border into New South Wales, where roadside honesty boxes were much more frequent. Accommodation was my trusty Macpac tent, completely water and insect proof. Apart from a bit of guerilla camping in Queensland, it was all campgrounds; free camping seems to be impossible in the "Rainbow Region" of north eastern NSW. Sites ranged from the Hare Krishna community near Murwillumbah to the spaced out YHA at Nimbin and the secluded Maccas near Mullumbimby, where macadamia nuts lay thick on the ground.

The greatest highlight would have to be a private tour of Zaytuna Farm, home of the Permaculture Research Institute - many thanks Tulakh. Another was the Mullumbimby farmers' market, which stood out as the best of all the markets I managed to visit. It was great to see Bundagen again after landing up there by chance thirty years ago. The beach north from Bundagen headland still ranks as one of the most beautiful in Australia, and great to know that now, unlike back then, the hinterland is protected as a national park.

All in all, a great experience and and a fantastic trip. I come back to Alconasser full of ideas about how to take the project to its next stage.

The Friday, on a back road at the border, crossing from Queensland into NSW. People were surprised I actually managed to ride this overlaoded bike with undersized wheels. Looking at the pic, so am I.