Getting away

It was quite some effort to leave Daylesford last Friday. Months of work, teary farewells with friends and family and a general emptying of settled life. All this culminated at the Albert Street community garden before we pushed off towards banjo country, accompanied by our friend Clay.

At Guildford we spotted water ribbons (Triglochin spp.), a traditional bushfood, and dug up a small plant to discover that the rhyzome was comparatively small. While our digging tool was out we dug a hole for our first compostable nappy.

The hills of home flattened out and it was a cruisy ride into Castlemaine where Juliette and Tosh kindly offered their home and Lee and Dave generously cooked for us. But despite all the warmth and familiarity of Castemaine we were keen to push on.

There is free food everywhere (milkmaid tubers, roadside trees coming into fruit, dozens of edible weeds) but we have brought supplies still fresh from home to keep us going (thanks for the lovely cookies Chris),

so we just pass by many noteworthy things. A magnificant crop of roadside Salsify (Tragopogon spp.) en route from Redesdale to Heathcote.

We are just finding our pedals in our very new way of transitory living, which is tiring and mid-day seistas are mandatory,

for all.

Yesterday we travelled for 75 kms to Nagambie, happy for the most part. We found that our 70-80 kg bikes are rideable without electric assistance, even up the hills. We're in training for the high country.

Yet this is a year-long, low-carbon art performance, not the Olympics. We're only wanting to travel around 30 kms a day but we're finding out that sometimes a good camp spot is worth the effort. Zero leads our road train, forever on the look out for free food and free accomadation,

which isn't as difficult to find as you might expect.

We're spending about $20 a day and the nightlife is awesome.

Active activism

We, Artist as Family, stand firmly with our feet on the soil, as we stand with Jonathan Moylan.

Photo by Rasha Tayeh

For those of you who are out of the loop, Jono is a 25 year old from Newcastle who is facing up to ten years in prison and a $765,000 fine for sending a press release highlighting ANZ’s role in funding the Whitehaven open cut coal mine in north-west NSW. The mine threatens community health and food producing land at Maules Creek, and the health and survival of Koala populations in the Leard State Forest.

We reckon we're in pretty good company too:

Vandana Shiva

The photo of AaF above was taken by our dear friend Rasha Tayeh. Rasha is, among many things, a documentary filmmaker whose most recent work is The Growing Food Project, a short doco that explores some of Melbourne's urban agriculture practices and community food initiatives, where people are coming together to build local, fair and sustainable food systems. The film features Patrick's award winning poem Step by Step.

The film's premiere is on Wednesday 20th Nov at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) at 7pm.

The screening will be followed by a panel discussion of food activists inviting the audience to discuss the benefits of supporting local food systems.

You can purchase your tickets here.

And while on the topic of Patrick's poetry, a huge congratulations are in order:

Patrick has just completed four years of doctoral research. In a nutshell, Walking for food: regaining permapoesis is:

a biographical thesis that investigates how we might transition to fairer, more just and sustainable communities. It draws on Indigenous knowledges and permaculture modelling in the attempt to demonstrate achievable societal change from the household and community economies out. The thesis contends that modern living is inherently damaging; and on such a scale that personal accountability is degraded. The ecological and social consequences of this are clearly evident, and the thesis challenges us to transition to radically different forms of living where permanent making replaces disposability, and personal accountability is once again performed.

If you're interested in receiving a PDF of the final draft, please contact us.

And while we're on the topic of positive and inspiring activists, Perth based singer songwriter Charlie Mgee, AKA Formidable Vegetable Sound System, recently visited the Hepburn Shire during the Swiss Italian Festa where he played a fabulous set of some of his songs from his album, Permaculture: A Rhymer's Manual.

Charlie's album focuses on bringing simple concepts of sustainability into the spotlight using the power of music, rhyme and humour to convey the permaculture principles in fresh ways to new audiences. If you get a chance to see Charlie play, we highly recommend you grab it.

And, while on the topic of grabbing: there has been much handlebar grabbing in these here parts as the departure date for our adventure draws near - 6 days!! We have been spotted all over the place as we ride with our panniers fully loaded on practice rides from starboard to port.

If we don't get a chance to post again for a while, see you on our way up the continent!

Mapping our new route

If you live anywhere along this new route and would like to hook up, barter, organise a foraging class, host us or just have a cup of tea, please let us know.

Supported

60 days ago we launched our Pozible campaign calling for support for our upcoming research project Free Food. We are thrilled to announce that we successfully raised $3,727. From all of us here at AaF HQ we say a very very humble thank you to our generous supporters:

Anthony and Henrietta Cheshire, Luke Pither and Kate Gerritsen, Lucas Ihlein and Lizzie Muller, Louise Jane Cruikshank, Michelle and Joe Fiordaliso, Geoffrey Michael Clark, Chris and Vanessa Wood, Matthew Phelan, Clay Ravin, Anne Gleeson, Angela King, Kath and Liam Wratten, Angharad Wynne-Jones, Greg Foyster and Sophie Chishkovsky, Stuart Jonai, Jackie Kerfoot and Samuel Jones, Tim Woods, John and Franziska Ielo, Zara Pearson, Nicola Hensel, James Stuart, Su Dennett and David Holmgren, Sandy Lee Jones, Josh Franklin and Tracy Anthony, My Bearded Pigeon, Belinda Raposo and Cecile Knight, Diego Bonetto, Jeff Brownscombe and Rakaia Nault, Lena Mazza, Trudy and Primo Clutterbok, Mariana Teuila Isara, Petrus Spronk, Candice Boyd, Tia Crane and Jeremy Fullerton, Georgina and Geoffrey Williams, Adam Krongold, Deborah Kelly, Jill Berry, Tricia Meeley, Alana Napurrula, Bruce Thurlow, Becky Aizen and David Alter, Tiana Hokins, Britt Hollingworth and Josh Poidy, Annshar Wolfs and Jason Shorter, Lisa Jackson, Raia Faith Baster, Simon Holmes, Ivor Bowen, Sharonne Blum and Johnny Russell, Juliette Anich and Tosh Szatow, Lee and Dave Edmonds, Jason Maher, Licky la Grim, Peter Brandis, Petra Beuskens and Nick Wong, April Phillips, Joanne McCombe, Jacinta and Cameron Saunders, Nicole Brammy, Laurel Freeland, Dallas Kinnear.

With just 3 weeks to go before we leave, the preparations for our trip are well under way. We had a garage sale today as part of the national Garage Sale Trail. Thank you to everyone who came by and who left with armloads of our goods that we are thrilled have found new homes.

On the media front, Meg was interviewed by the lovely Megan Spencer today on ABC radio. You can read the blogpost here and listen to the full interview here.

Practice runs

We headed to Trentham this afternoon (sans Zeph) with some of our panniers stuffed full of camping equipment for the first of a series of practice runs. Thanks to Sophie and Greg who visited last friday (spruiking, or should we say spoking, their brilliant book Changing Gears at our local bookshop), we are feeling better prepared for the mid-November departure. Sophie and Greg are peddling their wares to 30 bookshops in just 60 days, between Melbourne and Sydney.

It was a pleasant 22 km to Trentham, which is precisely the distance we need to average each day in order to arrive in Moss Vale for the summer solstice. It was a sweet, slow ride after some early gear problems. Avoiding sticks and loose gravel in places were minor challenges, which nevertheless were helping us to get calibrated to the ins and outs of bike touring again.

We arrived at our favourite bakery, RedBeard to refuel with a late lunch. We joked, if only there was a RedBeard at the end of every 22 km stint. Their food uses the best regional ingredients and their breads are baked in a wonderful old scotch oven. Al Reid, one of the two brothers who set up the business, quizzed us about our bikes, the electric kits we've had installed and the scope of our coming trip. As we ate, chatted and rested we recharged our bike batteries. Thanks John and Al.

But the purpose of our trip is to find free food, and as we'll not have many RedBeards to call in on we'll need to find our own source of good food along the way. On the return leg we pulled over to photograph some lovely roadside clumps of new season cranesbill. The leaves make a good steamed vegetable. This mostly medicinal plant, used for the treatment of diarrhoea, gives new meaning to our current preoccupation with practice runs. The notes we have written so far for this particular cranesbill follow.

Cranesbill (Geranium dissectum) purple flowered native of Europe; naturalised in Australia; roots are rich in tannin; used for the treatment of diarrhoea, gastro-enteritis, cholera and internal bleeding; externally, used for the treatment of cuts, haemorrhoids, vaginal discharges, thrush, inflammations of the mouth. It is best to harvest the roots as the plant comes into flower since they are then at their most active medicinally; leaves can be cooked as a vegetable; roots and leaves can be dried for future use; seeds roasted. 

We also made this little video during the week, which speaks our notes on wild salsify. Now is a good time for many autonomous root vegetables such as spear thistles, dandelions, hawksbeard and salsify.

Mapping our first leg

This is a rough map of our first leg. If you live somewhere along this route and would like to host us, barter with us, organise a meet and greet, put us up in your backyard or any other form of exchange we'd love to hear from you. We can garden, cook, fix things, teach foraging and a do range of other things in exchange for a camping spot, an occasional hot shower or recharging our bike batteries. Please contact us by email, Facebook, Twitter or leave a comment on our blog.

There are hundreds of food species that are free and live outside of supermarket idolatry.

Help us to achieve this new work by clicking this link and sharing and/or pledging your support.

Free food – our new adventure project

We're getting prepared to rent out our house and head off for a year of bike-camping along the east coast of Australia, extending our knowledges of free food that we will forage, hunt and hopefully barter for along the way.

Photo: Dave Cauldwell

We're loading our most essential tools onto just two bikes that we've recently had converted to electric to help haul on the hills, and we're doing plenty of practice rides before we go.

Photo: Dave Cauldwell 

With successive GFCs looming, climate chaos and the end of cheap crude oil, Artist as Family want to take the gloom by the handlebars and extend our everyday art practice of resource generation and accountability into evermore 'social warming' opportunities. This new adventure will be a kind of biographical nomadism where we will share our experiences weekly (from mid-November), recording recipes, making ecological notes, airing our dirty laundry and generally performing our unique form of art based on our family's idiosyncrasies and taste for permapoesis. At the end of our travels we will compile a book and possibly even stage an exhibition that will include videos, drawings, photos and writings we make along the way. We aim to show that it's possible to live without being entirely dependent on the monetary economy, as we adapt to change and engage further with lean logic.

Rent our home for a year

Open plan, double-glazed, solar powered, fully furnished (negotiable), permaculture house and garden in Daylesford, Victoria. Short restorative bush walks to Lake Daylesford and mineral waters and even shorter walks to town. Buses to railway stations for possible car-free living.

Shop for groceries at the Hepburn Wholefoods Collective, walk and bike everywhere, order your organic vegie boxes direct from nearby farms, grow your own food in our garden's delicious soil and/or at one of the community gardens, walk out and camp in the surrounding bushland, shop for clothes at the community op-shop or see the latest films at the community run cinema.

However you want to live, come and trial living in Daylesford for a year. Our home is two bedrooms although the study/office can become a third bedroom. Apart from extensive fruit trees, the garden also features chooks and ducks, a trampoline, rainwater tanks and a dog run. We will remove all personal belongings from the house so as it is as much a neutral space we can provide for you to make your home. However happy to leave plates, cutlery, pots etc...

lounge

kitchen and dining

main bedroom

entrance

southside

produce

$350 per week plus bond. Available from Novemember 2013.

Call us for more information or to arrange an inspection: Meg 0418 523 308 or Patrick 0400 897 850.

Tagging, birthing and ploughing radical identities

As artists, homeschoolers, public transportees, community witnesses, friends and as family we travelled to Melbourne today. We arrived early because (by chance) Woody woke us in time to catch the first bus. We walked the drizzly city streets and Zeph bodytagged the laneways, not with toxic paint but with biophysical exuberance.

We lost ourselves in the dreary dreamy morning and only after asking a passer-by for the time did we then run to the County Court to meet our community friends and persecuted midwife, Sally. Sally is another independent midwife hunted by a nanny-state that foregrounds institutional hysteria over feminine intuition, ethics and rights. One of the central arguments against her was that the public needs protection from such risk, yet outside the court the state was ratifying cars, Coke and climate change. Ideologies of mass toxicity and pollution reign in an abuser’s paradise while loving independent midwives are deemed a threat to 'the public'.

Today, Sally’s verdict was basically the final nail in the coffin of her long practice as an independent midwife and marks a further erosion of rights for women. The legal costs and the rulings handed down from the so-called expert panel have made it impossible for her to appeal and keep practicing. A number of us, as representatives of all who love and respect Sally, rose early to travel for a few hours to support her. This is a person who was awarded the highest acknowledgement in our community at the International Women’s Day Honour Roll celebrations two years ago.

Sally’s great mistake was that she spent more time adorning, caressing, heartening and massaging the mothers she cared for and not enough time filling out forms and following a patriarchal-Cartesian regime of risk assessment and legal accountability. All the letters from the mothers of the births under investigation were ignored, and so too the fact that the overwhelming majority of mothers Sally tended were able to birth in the manner that respected their wishes, free from the panic of obstetrics, clock-time and legal risk assessors that shape all decisions a birthing ward makes. If any mothers had written criticism of Sally we’re sure this would have been used against her, but instead all our letters of support relating to her case were blatantly ignored.

We left the court teary-eyed and Artist as Family walked soberly to the State Library where we saw an exhibition of another state-made outlaw, Ned Kelly. Homeschooling Zeph has enabled so much more flexibility in our family life, so that learning has become more applied, less abstract and much more relational. We marvelled at Ned Kelly’s armour made from parts of an old plough. This was engineered by a blacksmith evidently sympathetic to the politics of the Kelly gang who were in turn abhorred by the smug ruling elite who had brought class war to what had always been a classless country. In another exhibition we observed an early painting of our home town’s main street, intrigued by the inaccuracy of the painter, and more than aware of the terror Jaara people must have experienced at this time, so picturesquely absent from this civil street scene.

Today we thought about those who are persecuted; the likes of Julian Assange, Ned and Sally. All three are bound by a staunch belief in peoples’ basic rights for self-determination. All three share various experiences of homeschooling and all three have been cowardly persecuted by those who wish to control us.

Walking a poemline

The joys and trials of our walk to Melbourne... more thinking about post crude oil art forms.

Walking for Food

Artist as Family plan to walk for five days to Melbourne from our home in Central Victoria and we wish to do this respectfully acknowledging the elders and traditional communities of the country through which we travel.

We are a carless family and understand how ecological knowledges are foregrounded when technologies are backgrounded. This is our first walk to Melbourne which takes only an hour and a half by car.

We aim to leave Daylesford on March 31 and be at Point Cook or thereabouts on April 5. We aim to walk out from our home in Daylesford in Jaara country through the Wombat Forest, across the Lerderderg State Park, dropping down East of Bacchus Marsh before heading on to Port Phillip Bay.

We will take as little food and equipment as possible and put our foraging/walking/camping knowledges to the test.

Artist as Family proposed walk April 2013

The walk is also to celebrate the completion of Patrick’s manuscript, ‘Walking for Food: Regaining Permapoesis’. His book and our walk to Melbourne both attempt to raise issues around food and energy sustainability and environmental ethics. The book heavily quotes Aboriginal voices and sensibilities relating to the respectful treatment of country. This book is the result of three and a half years doctoral research based on our family and community’s transition to local food and energy resources. Patrick has conducted the research in our home community of Daylesford and through the University of Western Sydney.

On the afternoon of April 5 Patrick will give a talk at The Real Through Line poetry symposium at RMIT, a free event open to the public.

When things are easy

We rest

and camp

and draw

and feast

and pick

Karkalla pigface (Carpobrotus rossii) 

and pick

Bower spinach (Tetragonia implexicoma) 

and hunt

and wash

and walk

and dig

and kill

Leather jacket (Oligoplites saurus)

and cook

and feed

and feed

in clear-eye ease.

An ample leanness (camping with friends)

We walked, bussed, walked, bussed and walked our way from home to the beach to join friends for a camping adventure.

We set up camp and all pitched in under the shade of some grand old cypress trees.

We found out more about the locals,

experienced new sensations,

and wrote a poem about what we understood there.

Then on the last day we all celebrated Meg's birthday and a song was made to mark the day.

Happy New Year