Click HERE to hear it.

We had a fantastic meeting, Wednesday 18th, to coordinate many of the great ideas that locals have had to make this a wonderful sharing event.

We hope to make this an annual fair and the level of success will be determined by how much people help make this one great.

We are looking for people to be involved as much as possible. Many small roles need doing – including the following:

• Stall coordination for preserves, jumble / garage sale.
• Coordinator for exhibition arts stall (all age groups), with prizes.
• Raffle coordinator
• Workshop coordinator (Tas Aboriginal shell jewellery? Shingle Splitting? Wildfire prevention and defence? Circus skills?)
• Help with letterboxing
• Transport / parking manager

Please contact Amanda if you can donate/sale/exhibit re any of these stalls.

We have achieved so much already regarding Harvest Fair, including involvement with Tas Fires Service, Council, Harvest Seed company, various stalls, craft, garden, cake stall coordinators, first aid, bushcare.

For more information please see attached minutes (below) and please do come to any of weekly meetings / morning tea at Amanda’s @ 144 Waterworks Rd.

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If you like what our local community has been attempting to achieve then you will like this. Click on image to visit the website of Sustainability Street.

This is all about communities in Australia that are achieving:

• up to 30% reduction in waste, water and energy consumption. Often much more!
• pride about working with friends and neighbours on locally devised and energised sustainability projects.
• deep satisfaction at having made new connections and friendships with others in the community.

I would be interested in feedback from anyone. Should we try to link up with this movement?

Chris at 195

Waterworks Garden Group is an informal collective of gardeners who meet to exchange ideas, help and equipment in their gardens in Waterworks community.

Some areas of interest and initiatives for the Group include:

• Seeds and seedling exchange
• Ideas exchange between members by email and face-to-face
• Tools and equipment register and exchange
• Guest speaker sessions
• Exchange/sell/give away excess produce
• Organise bulk purchases e.g. pea straw, manure
• Organise garden tours to see and learn from other people’s patches
• Working bees on projects in each others’ gardens
• Calendar of garden events
• Develop a large community food garden on Waterworks Rd

Click on the ‘food + gardens’ link on this web site to learn what the group is up to at any moment.

Contact Trish (or leave comment below) to become part of the garden group email list.

Trish Moran has kindly offerred to connect happy gardeners in the valley, so we can share ideas, produce and equipment and learn more techniques and do interesting things.

If you would like to keep in touch with this group, then please do get on the email list for it – contact Trish directly or go to ‘comments’ below.

Click ‘continue reading’ for the ideas we came up with at our first meeting:

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Come to the Sustainable Home Expo…. it’s on 1st week-end of November.

Green technologies, ideas, contacts, interesting talks… or just a place to catch up with friends.

A rather bad clash, this event is on same day as Home Expo. But it’s just down the road, so maybe go to both?

From all accounts the uniquely constructed Bahai premises is well worth seeing.

For more info CLICK HERE.

If we had the energy and commitment we could really do something in this valley. Click HERE and HERE to see information about the Green Precincts program.

The sort of plan that could be funded by this $500,000 program could entail complete solarisation of all the street households, a construction of a demonstration home / education centre for sustainable living and much more.

So… what do you think?

Chris at 195

Local ‘sustainable commmunities’ have now set up in West Hobart and in the Channel area. We can learn from them as much as they can learn from us. And we can collaborate on some things.

Click HERE to visit West Hobart’s site.

Note that this group has set up three sub-groups: Home Energy / Gardening / Transport. What do people think about us doing similar?

Ever wondered what it would be like if a team of locals came in the did your garden up – in one day! Well, that’s the idea behind the ‘Permablitz’ movement, now popular in Melbourne.

Instead of each homeowner slogging away on their own garden, groups of householders band together and do each other’s gardens. Your garden gets blitzed on a chosen week-end. Good gardening solutions and ideas come from many heads rather than one.

Nobody gets out of doing the work, but it is a fun way to get things done and it’s commuty bonding too. Is there scope to do this in our community? I know of somebody in West Hobart who had her garden done over this way.

Check out the Permablitz website for more.

(With thanks to Philip-136)

In Britain the name for it is Transition Towns – communities that have decided to break away from consumer culture and ecological decay. Or, more to the point, towards much more wholesome, vibrant, sustainable ways of living.

Well, that’s roughly what we are on about, so their experiences are well worth reading about – and learning from.

Click HERE to read all about it.
Click HERE to download the Transition Towns Primer – a manual on how to do it.

A group of Waterworks households has been buying each week from the All Organic Farm – they deliver free for orders of $40 or more.

Product lists come out each weekend via email, we then email Glenda (at 136) what we want by late Tuesday, she submits the combined order Tuesday evening and it’s delivered every Thursday.

Group members then call in to Glenda’s with shopping bags and money that day and our purchases are weighed, or otherwise divided up.

We find the quality is generally good and it’s much more convenient to make the short walk to a neighbour’s place than to go to the market or trawl the likely shops.

Cheaper, and good for the environment too.
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Believe it or not, our sleepy little community has been in the spotlight. Our activities have been noticed by other thinking communities.

People in West Hobart are organising to set up a sustainability community group for that suburb.  And we have been invited to Mount Stuart Progress Association to explain to them how we went about our Solar Acquisition Project. They want to do the same.

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