By Callum Ludwig
Over 80 Permaculture Yarra Valley (PYV) members gathered at the Sydney Halbish Hall in Don Valley to celebrate the fast-growing group’s 30th birthday.
PYV was founded in Healesville in October 1992 by the late Adrian Francis, Graeme George and David Arnold with Mr Arnold and Mr George returning to speak at the celebration.
PYV President Peter Veeken said it was one of the biggest ever attendances they have had at an event.
“It was a good mix of some of our longest-serving and newest members, and it was wonderful to hear about the highlights of our 30-year history, it was really inspiring to hear of some of the things we have done over time,” he said.
“There are so many community-minded things our members did and are still doing, I’ve actually now got a collection of our old newsletters and am reading them. I even found out about how during Black Saturday, members organised working bees at the houses of other members whose properties had been affected.”
Other PYV achievements have included establishing the Healesville Farmers Market, establishing a permaculture garden at the Healesville Community Garden, teaching introduction to permaculture at the Healesville Living and Learning Centre (which PYV continue to do today), helping establish ECOSS at Wesburn, helping establish the Warburton community garden.
Mr Veeken said the celebration will hopefully convince people that PYV is continuing to be a worthwhile group to take part in.
“We’ve had a couple of lean years because of Covid, and have a lot of silent members who have signed up and then we don’t see them so we have identified member engagement as a key strategy for us,” he said.
“We will try to keep people informed of what we are up to and engage with our newer members to find out what they want to get out of it. A lot of them just want to understand permaculture a bit more as a concept, and so we will be running training courses and site visits to help that.”
Mr Arnold spoke about the early days of PYV and remembered as a teacher introducing students at the Worawa Aboriginal College to permaculture with a site visit to Graeme George’s property in Badger Creek. Mr George then spoke about PYV’s major achievements and was acknowledged as a life member alongside Nola Garbett.
Co-originator of the permaculture concept David Holmgren also attended and spoke about the local history of permaculture and how it has had a positive effect on the community.
Mr Veeken said as the president he feels a bit of pressure to uphold the group’s legacy but he is keen to continue to engage with members.
“I do feel a bit overwhelmed at times, but being a volunteer organisation, getting the time to do it is one of the key challenges we have, but we have got a couple of new faces on the committee and we are hoping to be a bit more active,” he said.
“There is so much I would like to do.”
