Fremantle...

Having completed our community hop and depleted our bank accounts we were now going to Fremantle for a work stop. We tried to get work in Margaret River with one of the wineries, but we had found ourselves there between harvest phases. So despite being almost out of money we chance making it to Fremantle and finding work - quickly.

After living in a caravan park on the outskirts of the city, we soon find work, and with work and an income, a room in a share-house on East Fremantle.

We are now both working in hospitality: Molly works at a restaurant could the Left Bank, and I at the Little Creatures brewery. Our aim is to live frugally and make money fast so as to continue travelling. Our hope is to get to Adelaide by Fringe and hopefully pick up more work there, then onto Japan for a month before returning to Tasmania and, for me, my PhD.

But fate intervenes and, perhaps, has other plans. Whilst in Fremantle we meet Captain Paul Watson from the Sea Shepherd and some of his crew. From our short discussion with him, and later with members of his crew who frequented Little Creatures whilst in port, we are quickly inspired by his work, his passion, and as such, find ourselves wanting to sign up as volunteers to crew for him and the cause. This is activism with real action!

So stay tuned to this blog...

Rosneath...

The final community of our WWOOF travel through WA, and in deed of Molly's whole three-year study, was Rosneath, near Dunsborough. This was clearly an example of intentional community going horribly wrong. I won't bother detailing what we learned and experienced about the pitfalls of setting up and maintaining an intentional community, but to learn more, click on this link to read an article in the Busselton Mail (published well after our stay) about its eventual and somewhat inevitable demise.

Our hosts however, and despite the enormous stress and disappointment they were managing at the time, were very giving and delightful company.

And should it have suceeded it would have been a really interesting and socially accessible (i.e. mainstream) community. It failure really is a shame.

Living Waters...

Our next community was Living Waters. We arrived there weeks later than anticipated due to them postponing our arrival several times due to a lack of WWOOF space: apparently there were three Israeli WWOOFers there who liked it so much they weren't leaving, which sounded promising at least, though a little frustrating. Living Waters had a Pagan festival being held on their property coming up which I really wanted to be there for, as I thought the preparation work would be interesting; not to mention the festival itself. Just before we were about to give up and leave Denmark we were told Living Waters could finally take us - despite the Israelis still being there.

Living Waters at first glance appeared a lot more raw and unstructured than the Wolery. And it was. The land was, although near the centre of town, a lot less 'managed' or developed than the Wolery's. There were fewer houses and other infrastructure, and even a few car wrecks for good measure. Though development was in progress.

The centrepiece of the Living Waters was a big building that had originally been built as a big dryer for herbs, but was now housed a flat, meeting and teaching rooms, a workshop and performance space. The building had been built partially with funding from the Government after their application to build a dryer won over another local submission by a consortium of growers. That the building had never been finished or used as a dryer was a sore point amongst many or the town, which still as a result had no commercial drying facility. Members of Living Waters claim the reson the dryer was not completed was not all funding promised was made available.

Of interest was a rift between its members and those of the Wolery. Rather than being bound by the commonality of their both being intentional eco-communities within the same town, they were divided by philosophical and social specifics, and by personalities. Also of interest was a former Wolery communard who had lived there ever since separating from his partner, who still lived in his former community.

Due to the Israeli WWOOFers still being at the community Molly and I have to sleep in our van, which is okay with us, but get to use the flat's kitchen and toilet facilities in the community hall (the building that would be a dryer). Due to all the work going on at the community, both in infrastructure and in prep for the festival, the roads and car-parks are very boggy; so we do our best to find a park for our van on a daily basis that wont see us getting up in the morning and alighting into ankle-deep mud.

Every morning at Living Waters starts with a hot breakfast at our hosts' house, and with the other WWOOFers. Then off to work. The work was varied and most times interesting and rewarding - largely due to the festival. My biggest project was working with a local builder and supporter of the community to build a stone-wall retained earth stage in front of the community hall. The large boulders and earth was moved by excavator (which was bought by one of the new soon-to-be communards for all the upcoming development of the land), but much of the other work was manual and laborious, such as breaking and positioning the rocks for the retaining wall. Other work included, and varied from, cleaning land of industrial and green waste to building or fixing props for the festival's dance party.

Unlike at the Wolery, communards at Living Waters have title ownership of their piece of land. Finally, after many years, the community land was being devided up and allocated to members, many of whom had invested much earlier, but seen no return. Some were receiving land - a spot in the community - instead of their investment returned as there was no money to give. For all spoken to, it appeared that this allocation and development of land and community was very late coming, and even now somewhat adhoc and unfocussed.

Our hosts were great on a personal level, but work allocation and management was very unfocused. Much of it therefore fell into the hands of a would- or soon-to-be communard (the same one who had bought the excavator); who really should have been, or should be in the future should he finally move in, be tasked with the job of managing WWOOFing and WWOOFers at the community.

When the festival time finally came round, major works were taking place right to the very last second and beyond. But all was well and the festival went ahead seamlessly. Except for poor turnout. Members of the wider Denmark community started to trickle in, but once in there was nothing really to keep them there, so they left which in turn made the place look dead and uninspiring for the next visitors - and so it went on. Market spaces were unorganised, dull and few. Entertainment was scarce and disorganised, and relied heavily on buskers and alike. And many stall-holders and musicians whom they 'expected' to be there weren't. And not because they were unreliable but as it turns out, because they weren't invited. Turns out they were just 'expected' to turn up and participate/contribute once they knew the event was on and, moreover, there was genuine disappointment and a sense of being let down expressed by the organisers and hosts at this failure - despite their not having actively sought there involvement. All in all the festival looked to be a disorganised and ill-attended failure. But night finally rolls on and things look better.

At dusk their is a burning man ceremony. At this point the crowd is more numerous and settled. Upon reflection it was the earlier lack of scheduled events that contributed greatly to the festivals inability to hold patrons: if everyone arrived at a single given time for a particular event, the place would be busier and more lively at that time and thus more likely to keep peoples' interest and patronage. But now there was a focusing event, and a critical mass was finally being achieved.

Once the burning man ceremony was complete, the night time festivities (a dance party in the hall, and a bar and bands outside) roll on. Numbers and enthusiasm are up, and this part of the festival looks to be an emotional success, even if not a financial one. My recollections start to get hazy hereon, but the police did ultimately (and rudely and aggressively) shut down the party in the wee hours, and Molly and I woke very sore heads.

Festival over, it was now time for Molly and I to move onto our next WWOOF and community.

My First WWOOFing Experience...

The first town we decided to stay at was Esperance, as we had heard many, many good things about how beautiful it was. So here we also hoped we would find our first WWOOF host community for WA, though first we just wanted to spend some time being stationary and getting to know and enjoy the area. We couldn't find any sustainable communities in Esperance, but we did find a really interesting sounding WWOOF host, so it was here we decided that Molly would get back into WWOOFer mode, and I would gain my first WWOOFing experience. Not being a community, and therefore being irrelevant to Molly's research and documentary activities, would also allow us to ease into our work mode and frames-of-mind.

This first WWOOF host was Geoff Tonkin who owns and runs the Permaculture Education & Research Centre (Inc). He had been abroad for three years before returning to Australia and his property about three months ago. As a result his property was a little neglected, but compared to the state a non-permaculture property would be in after three years of no work being done on it, it was looking very healthy in deed.

Geoff is also a state distributor and installer for composting toilets, and as such had one in his house. The house was built of rammed earth, concrete, steel and granite and, as also demonstrated by the toilet, was designed along sustainable building principles that have affected decisions and design features regarding, inter alia, aspect, window placement and design (i.e. passive solar), power sourcing and usage (i.e. wind, solar and 12-volt), and water capture, storage and use. The house is as yet unfinished, with roof insulation and ceiling yet to be started (which made for some cold nights), but the house and the thought that has gone into its design are none-the-less impressive.

The gardens have all been designed around permaculture principles that inform how water will be captured and distributed, where plants will be planted, and which ones to produce what, when. These principles included making sure

that plants always saw enough sun during the day (mature hight/competition considerations), that their root systems wouldn't compete with neighbouring plants, water catchment, mulching and nutrition systems, and use of keyhole garden beds (so that a garden bed never need be trampled on) and swales.

What was particularly interesting however was that already I am being challenged as to what actually constitutes a sustainable technology, or even a technology for that matter. This was exemplified by Geoff (who has also practised aromatherapy and reiki) using Pagan techniques and tools such as dowsing (in his case a pendulum) to help determine plant placement, and having an approximate 1:10 scale Irish Round Tower in his garden to harness paramagnetic/cosmic energy from the sun and to nullify negative energies brought in by underground water streams - all for the betterment of individual plants and greater gardens alike. More on dowsing and Irish Round Towers can be found in Alanna Moore's book 'Stone Age Farming: Eco-agriculture for the 21st century'.

Pictures of this property will be uploaded onto this blog on a later date.

Although interesting, the technologies in use here are however disparate, stand-alone, and do not constitute a formal information system as such. Though there certainly are systems and processes in place that in a holistic sense are interdependent they are manually operated and managed. As for digital technologies used, phone, fax and a laptop used for email (using a dial-up Internet connection) and word processing was all that was present. There was no digital management of significant and/or substantial data, crop management processes, or of domestic/house processes. Technology need and usage (and integration) may however be greater and more sophisticated in intentional communities, the first of which I stay with for one week in Denmark WA on the 27th of June. My quest for a new or modified PhD question continues...

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The Journey Begins...

Unfortunately this first entry to my WWOOFing travel blog will be a little light on specifics as I am yet to develop the self discipline to write as I go, therefore I have forgotten much of the details of what has occurred thus far. Two weeks into our journey, this should not be a problem however as we are yet to any work on the true purpose of our trip. This Sunday will see us at our first WWOOF placement for the trip, but it is not with an eco-community, but rather with a Permaculture Research and Education Centre - this is for personal interest aside from that of the main mission of our journey, because we happen to be in the right place at the right time, but will also serve as a good introduction for me into WWOOFing (and reintroduction for Molly) before we hit the eco-communities that we are interested in later on.

The trip so far has been largely leisurely and relaxed, with us choosing scenic routes over the quickest. Before heading across the Nullarbor we decided to explore the Eyre Peninsula. After leaving Port Augusta our first stop was Kymba, as our route was also to be somewhat dictated by 'big things', and Kymba is home of the Big - though rather emaciated looking - Galah. The next morning, after our photo-shoot with the galah, we drove to Cowell. It was here that I drove Chester for the first time. This was a somewhat momentous occasion for me as I had not driven a manual for about 20 years, and had from memory never driven one well, hence giving up the practice before ever really learning how. After brief verbal tuition from Molly I was way. To both our surprise I took to it easily and without incident. I would then go on to drive for much of the trip to this point so that I could clock up experience and confidence, with the latter only occasionally dinted through silly mistakes usually borne of being tired and/or flustered.

After Cowell we headed to the Knob rest-spot in Port Gibbon. A rather unattractive name, but a beautiful, out-of-the-way (and free/by donation) camp-spot. Driving in to the tiny village you pass what looks to be decommissioned military bunkers. These along with some at-the-time unexplained red lights along the inland horizon that night gave the place a distinctly Area 51 feel about it. These lights however were no more, or so we were told the next day by Tom - a local resident (one of only 10 full-timers) and volunteer 'watchman' - than those of the nearby wind-farm mills. Nothing sinister there!?

The Eyre Peninsula has many beautiful places to visit all be they separated by long, tedious stretches of straight highway flanked by uniform pasture land, but I won't go into much detail here as this blog is not to be a source of sight-seeing information for tourists and travellers. One point I will mention however is that at Port Lincoln we were aloud to sit in the Clubrooms' bar at the Town's Leisure Centre complex and use their wireless connection to access the Internet for free (though we did end up staying for a meal and beer): so thanks guys!

News Flash: Molly has just found out, through reading New Idea in the waiting room at Esperance Hospital while I was doing exactly that - waiting - that her cousin in the US is again dating Pamela Anderson. Oh well, we can't all find someone as beautiful and amazing as Molly can we?

Now onto the Nullarbor, though again without much detail as the true purpose of our trip - and of this blog - is still yet to begin.

Before commencing this trip across the Nullarbor we were consistently told two things: one, be prepared for a long, monotonous drive where the scenery never changes; and two, take lots of water. Well, I personally found this drive much more beautiful and engaging than the one through Eyre Peninsula: there is a profound and overwhelming beauty in the ruggedness and vastness of the Nullarbor, and something almost incongruent with desert and bush suddenly dropping away to ocean.

We didn't spend long exploring off the A1 Highway, but we did take a detour to view the Bite's rugged cliffs. Even from ground-level it was obvious why it is call the Great Australian Bite, as the jagged cliffs stretching as far as you could see truly did look light some huge giant had simply taken a bite out of our continent. And to add to the wonder, below us we saw a colony of seals living within caves at the bottom of the cliff face. But no whales, which brings me to the first of two things that detracted from our Nullarbor crossing experience.

Upon reaching the eastern head of the Bite we saw a road-sign pointing us of the A1 to a spot where you could view migrating Great Right Wales, with a further promise of four whales currently viewable. After driving a reasonable distance to the lookout we then found out that we had to pay $10 each for the 'privilege' of viewing these whales. Nowhere was there a sign indicating why we had to pay, or where the monies raised went. This was not National or even state protected and managed parkland - and the whales certainly were not the 'property' of any entity other than themselves. So we left without viewing the whales.

The other negative experience was our misfortune at waking up one morning in a rest stop just East of the Nullarbor Roadhouse to the sounds of a truckie nearby yelling abuse at someone or something. I got up to investigate and to my horror found the source of this din to be a dumb-fuck Neanderthal with, I would suggest, a serious case of small-man complex hurling venomous verbal abuse at sheep on his abattoir-bound truck of death whilst he aggressively and abusively tossed them around to 'rearrange' them, every now and then throwing a dead one over the side.

To make matters worse his dog, Jessie, was terribly thin and malnourished and clearly terrified of its master - to the point that he clung to me for some minutes at on stage with the most pathetic pleading eyes I have seen in an animal ever (more so than even the look I first got from my dog when I rescued him from abuse and neglect on a farm).

After photographing the truck for an RSPCA report I left the site with tears in my eyes and remained somewhat traumatised for most of that day, regretting that I had not verbally and physically confronting the idiot-truckie - a decision I made in light of being with Molly and travelling in a very distinctive and uniquely painted campervan (I certainly didn't want every truckie on the East-coast trying to run us off the road a la Tasmanian Log Truck Tactics). But if you ever happen to see the truck in the photograph below please feel free to inflict as much damage as possible onto the truck and/or driver if you feel you could safely get away with it. And liberate Jessie from his living hell if possible also. And please, if you're going to eat meat, try to know where it's coming from - if you can, don't support the factory farming meat industry: buy locally and humanely, and from a butcher that cares rather than from a supermarket that doesn't!

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Ignorance, Apathy & Complacency: Be Gone!

Continuing from my last post, I would to like to further articulate (read: VENT) my reason for embarking on this journey and quest with Molly.

As much as on pains and embarrass me on some levels, my initial reason for making the decision – and the decision was made at this point and for this reason – was for love. I fell in love with Molly. She had spent the last two-to-two-and-a-half years travelling Australia studying sustainable communities, and had at least a year to go. So there were three options available to us:

1. That I suspend my PhD to travel with Molly, resuming my studies once Molly’s brings her/us to Tasmania;
2. That Molly suspend her travels and research to live with me in Tasmania for as long as it takes me to finish my PhD, at which point we would then both leave to resume Molly’s studies;
3. That we not be together until one or other of us has completed our respective research activities (or for Molly, those activities conducted on the mainland), at which point we - circumstances permitting – we pick up from where we left.

We quickly decided – independently of each other – that option three was unthinkable and very, very undesirable. I was in love; and damned if I was going to make this decision based on pragmatics rather than follow my heart. This left options one and two to consider. I considered these without discussing my thoughts – or even the fact that I was even giving any thought to the matter – with Molly. This was because I wanted to form a position of my own before broaching the subject with Molly.

I chose option one for two reasons really: firstly, and most importantly, I saw the work that Molly was doing, and the efforts she had put into it thus far, as being far more important and impassioned than my own - she was self-funded and very self-motivated: she was not treading a well-worn and supported path of education such as the one I chose – and I was concerned that should she suspend this work and lose her momentum, that she may never resume again. And again; I considered her topic, actual and potential outputs/outcomes and indeed reasons for pursuing this research to be of far more public value and vitality than my own.

Secondly, considering the final leg of Molly’s travels and research would bring her to Tasmania anyway, it was most likely that of the two options for suspending work – suspending mine or suspending Molly’s – it was the suspension of mine that would be the lesser time away from work for one of us.

However, two more positives that might arise from pursing option one soon came to surface in my consciousness - as if for love alone wasn't enough! One; that I could become better informed and more active in a cause that is close to both my heart and rational being. And two; that this journey and education may help me to, upon my return, reposition my PhD to a more specific frame of interest and inquiry that would both inspire more passion from me whilst potentially providing greater and more important benefits for a broader range of societal stakeholders.

And on that note the venting begins: I am sick of the ignorance, apathy and complacency that I find myself continually affronted with regarding the environment, global warming and alike. This from people who say they love nature, but never get out there amongst it, learn about it and take the time to truly understand it and how it’s degradation and loss will subsequently affect all cohabitants of this planet. I am sick of and sickened by people who say they are concerned about the environment but do no more to protect it than a bit of road-side recycling (as long as their local council make the process as un-labour-intensive as possible that is), café philosophising, brandishing bumper stickers with environmental slogans, and dropping coins into collection cans.

Worse still: I’m shit-scared of becoming one of those people myself! And it has been happening over the years – getting older and less active with assumptions that the fog of ignorance would lift from the general populace as they learn to negotiate mires of deception propagated by governments and media, and that the baton could or would be passed to a more informed and capable youth. And surely truths would prevail and people would accordingly become angry, active and empowered. But no: apathy and complacency still rule the psyche of our society. Hopes that the efforts of those already on frontlines and in war rooms waging battles of scientific and biotic righteousness would overcome the onslaught of lies, misinformation and corrupt self-interested actions of those in power have eroded and been dashed over time. Their minions are many while our empathy and concern for the long-term health of our planet succumbs to fears of fiscal and economic concerns that affect the individual.

And now, as things go from bad-to-worse-to-ridiculous the apathy just drains from my body, I get madder and madder, and subsequently more and more active, pro-active, and at times, aggressive – much like a cornered animal staring into the eyes of a predator that would wish it harm. And where as this welling of urgency and indignation has seen me commit more thought and energy to conscientious considerations, activity and activism, it has also seen me become more confused and uncertain as to what I should do; what I can do. So I now embrace this opportunity, and all that may flow from it, to make a difference. And I embrace love. I embrace love and all the good that may come of it - such as this. Thankyou Molly, for showing me true-purpose and, more importantly, true-love.

Frustrated, Angry, and Very Much In Love; I'm Hitting the Road...

I’m frustrated with university life (I’ve had only a total of 21 months away from uni in the past ten years), I’m angry and disappointed with what’s being done to our planet, and I’m in love – so I’m about to put my money where my mouth is and my heart where my sleeve is and hit the wide open road with my true love to work with and study sustainable communities within Australia (and possibly New Zealand). Molly has been studying such communities for the past two-to-two-and-a-half years and is approaching her study of them from an anthropological perspective. More on her travels and research can be found on her blog.

Whereas I will only be joining Molly on the tail-end of her journey – covering only two states and possibly NZ – I also hope to approach this as a researcher (i.e. methodically, and with a hypothesis and/or academic objective in mind) hoping to gain some valuable insight and knowledge from the experiences and activities of sustainable communities and community members.

With my field of Information Systems (IS) being multi-disciplinary in nature, and utilising elements of more traditional disciplines such as (inter alia) psychology, sociology, management, law, operations research, and science and technology to understand sociotechnical phenomena, there is clearly going to be overlap in Molly’s and my research interests. And this I believe will be a good thing, both for the research and for us personally as we will be able to use each other as sounding-boards to share and workshop our observations, insights, opinions and ideas, or to just brain-dump and/or vent if necessary.

But my research interests will differ from hers with its stronger focus on the technical aspects of the socitechnical. My research has to date focused on:

• Corporate Governance
• Decision-Making
• e-Communities
• Knowledge Management
• Strategic Use of IS by SMEs, NGOs and NFPs

My research has always been qualitative in nature, though sometimes employing a more mixed-methodology approach. Of late I have been applying an Action Research approach and methodology to my studies, and using tools/techniques such as cognitive mapping and business process modelling.

Outside of academia my activities and interests has included activism in the following areas:

• Education
• Environmentalism
• Politics (as a former student union president and NUS delegate)
• Social Justice

Where as my academic interests have at times flirted with those of my activism – e.g. studies on (inter alia) how corporate resource companies engage in greenwashing, how environmental NGOs and NFPs can better-use strategic IS to achieve mission objectives, and how and if IS can help facilitate improved corporate accountability and stakeholder contribution to corporate governance – I am hoping that my time travelling with Molly and working with and for sustainable communities will finally wholly merge these interests. My objective will, at this early stage, be:

to observe and understand how and what technologies are being used to facilitate sustainable practices and communities, both at a micro (within particular communities) and macro level (how they all communicate with and disseminate information to other communities and interested stakeholders), and, if possible and if opportunities present themselves, also how environmental activists do the same.

I am then hoping that when I return to my PhD, this will be the new direction that it takes. The research I think will not only be very interesting, but also very timely. At it’s conclusion I would hope that Molly and I will have some very good ideas on what people and communities are and can do to live sustainably, both from socio and technical perspectives, and how this may impact on micro and macro cultures, community building and management, decision-making, policy-making etc., and the means to share this information with the general public for broader environmental and civic benefit.

More on my plans, travels, and love, later...

Knowledge Management: The Emperor's new clothes!

Written and posted on previous blog site: Wednesday, August 27, 2003

Knowledge management - the Emperor's new clothes! Why are so few people willing to tell the Emperor that s/he is in fact naked? Or can the masses really not see; are they spellbound by the very supposition that such a fine set of clothing should exist; or just very trusting of those whom seek to benefit from the fictitious clothing? But wait... do my eyes also deceive me? The Emperor is in fact clothed; but not in the fine garments described by the KM Consultants and Practitioners; rather, s/he is merely wearing the drab but functional garments of IRM - only with sequins hurriedly tacked on for the purposes of superficial glitz and consumer deceit. I for one say bah-humbug to your claims of being able to codify tacit knowledge - be gone with you, you unscrupulous charlatans.