Congratulations to Anthony Steel of 19 Dianella Walk (Lot 65) who recently received the Lifetime Award for his work as Festival Director. Anthony's award was highlight of the night at the Australian Business Art Foundation Awards in conjunction with the Ruby Awards, South Australia's annual, pre-eminent arts and cultural awards program.

Well done, Anthony! You are adding a shine to the "Arts" of our Arts EcoVillage.

It's been a while since we had a look at happenings around the Village - so let's catch up. Here are some snapshots from the farm planting, pizza oven opening, and Sustainable House Day events. Thanks to Lynda McCarty and Ken Creevy for photos.
070920 VILLAGE HAPPENINGS

The Community Centre Working Group is keen for you to contribute pictures to the "Story Book" that will help stimulate and bring together ideas for our "Village Hear". The concepts can be relevant to any Market Street facility, including both buildings and landscape surrounds. We have already received a number of interesting images and notes (see ATTACHED for a few examples), but we need as many ideas as possible.

Send your pictures (and caption notes) to Franka Gerlach, Working Group convenor by Email, or in hard copy to 5 Clematis Walk, Aldinga, SA 5173.

We will make a montage of the images and caption notes for display to the whole Community.
070917 Storybook call

Thanks to Michael Vawser for the following alert:
 
The Climate Institute (TCI) has just launched an innovative $2.5 million ad campaign, tackling climate change through the eyes of a nine-year old. It will be the biggest advertising campaign ever undertaken by an Australian climate or environment non-government organisation. Titled, “Change Climate Change” the campaign is designed to motivate people to speak up about their concerns about climate change and to encourage them to consider climate change policy when it comes to election day. You can have a look at the 45 sec version of the ad at:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Un4T9tAXNwI
 
The campaign will run until the end of 2007 Federal Election across TV, online, press and radio, focussing on three key policy areas:
 
1.    Reversing Australia’s rising greenhouse pollution in the next five years
2.    Ensure all new power is generated from clean energy
3.    Join the world’s only international agreement to cut greenhouse pollution by ratifying the Kyoto Protocol and agreeing to binding reduction targets
 
You can find Policy Briefs on these issues by clicking on "Factsheets" in the menu across the top of the Home page on the Institute's website at: www.climateinstitute.org.au

Thanks to Vanda Rounsefell for sending in this thought-provoking snippet:

Are you trying to keep up with the Joneses? Think about it - obsessing about money and materialism is a symptom of "affluenza" and our teenagers seem particularly susceptible to this condition.
 
Got five minutes? Maybe you can help stop the spread of teenage ‘affluenza’ in Australia. Watch this thought-provoking video clip. With its ironic humour and powerful message, the video has quickly become a monster hit. It received more than 200,000 hits in its first four days on the web!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFZz6ICzpjI&NR=1
 

This is further to the message I put out in the last News Feed (posted 6 September) entitled "Water and fruit: creating synergy of assets". The proposal was about using our plentiful reclaimed wastewater for irrigation of the fruit trees in our neighbourhood orchards under conditions of poor rainfall and increasingly expensive and restricted town supply water. I had several responses to the idea - all positive - and several offers to assist with putting in the extra irrigation lines.

It would be good, however, to get input from more community members.

What do you think of the idea?
Would you be interested in helping with the project?

If you would like to read the original news item again, you can find it via the following web link:
http://www.aaev.net/news/files/fa76efbf513c8b488d6594927c7ebeed-719.html
or in the PDF ATTACHMENT below.

John Heij - Phone: 8556 6892 or Email
070910 Water & fruit trees

As the winter has now officially ended and the time is near that we have to start watering our plants and trees again I would like to pass on some information about our water situation.

Thanks to the fact that we have our own Waste Water Treatment Plant (WWTP), we are in fact much better of than people in the suburbs. We can water our fruit trees with recycled water and reap the benefits of this. The fruit trees have now been in the ground for several years and we saw a dividend from the investment during this last year by being able to pick peaches, nectarines, apples, olives, apricots, etc.

I am perturbed, therefore, by hearing talk about which trees should be left to die to reduce money spent on watering etc.

Currently, we have the WWTP output of treated water connected to the irrigation system in 3 orchards: one at the end of Hakea walk, one at the end of Clematis Walk, and one at the end of Dianella Way. This takes care of about 160 fruit trees out of the total of about 600 planted in all the neighbourhood orchards. The treated water from the WWTP is very suitable for use with trees as the irrigation can be done below the soil surface. (If there are concerns about using reclaimed water in particular areas, the clean water currently in the big tank in Market street could possibly be used for watering trees in areas where Village kids tend to play.)

The output of the WWTP has been 48,000 liters per week over the last month. Considering that every tree needs approximately 10 liters of water per week during the summer, we could potentially water 4800 trees. This shows that water is not the problem.

Our problem at the moment is that we need to extend the delivery system to all neighbourhood orchards. This might sound like a big issue but, in fact, could be very manageable if the job is done in-house. Having observed the installation of the storage and pumping equipment at the WWTP, and the subsequent digging of the trenches plus the laying of the pipes, I would suggest that extension to the other orchards could be done by a group of villagers. We could also include the watering of the newly planted trees at Bowering Hill Road by extending the current irrigation system for the woodlot on the farm. With all this installed we would not have to worry about paying contractors to water neighbourhood fruit trees, or about paying for an increasingly scarce and costly SA water supply.

I see the bringing together of our reclaimed water resource with our fruit-tree resource as a matter of "essential maintenance" in the face of a rapidly drying climate. What do you think? Any ideas how to do the above project quickly and within a reasonable budget? I would like to hear from you. Respond from the News Feed via the "Email the author" function, or by direct Email.

John Heij