Adding community gardens to our parks would help build our resilience

Morning walks regularly take me past two or three of Shepparton’s small community parks south of the railway station.

One of Shepparton's many
small parks that could easily
be a community garden.

This mosaic of parks was once the focus of activity with regular gatherings, kids playing and people talking, adding much neighbourhood building and bonding.

With rare exceptions, and one is Victory Park in St George’s Road for with a cricket pitch and being big enough for soccer is used regularly, most have fallen largely into disuse.

The City of Greater Shepparton has invested, in some cases, in the establishment sophisticated and safe play equipment, but missing, mostly, is the throng of kids and adults that would bring life to the parks.

A fellow who lives near a park said that it was once a space used every two or three weeks for an event organized by a former local councillor, but now it was largely unused and simply little more than a “short-cut’ for pedestrians.

A retired fellow, who lived close to a nearby park when his kids were young, said they always wanted to play there, but now its use, despite having a sophisticated and safe playground, had dropped close to zero.

The parks, well cared for and ringed by houses are a wonderful community asset and are perfectly placed to play a critical role in helping those nearby feed themselves as a different future emerges.

Beyond being the perfect place for community gardens they are equally a perfect space to launch a community strengthening program; a program that hopefully would allow escape from the individualism that has predominated for decades, but happily goes missing when communities are troubled by disaster, as is evident with such things as bushfires.

Realities, facts that are clearly indisputable, point to the importance of the City of Greater Shepparton taking the lead, that is what leaders are meant to do, to begin a movement that would see our mosaic of parks become, in addition to what they already are, community gardens.

The present picture in Australia is one of plenty, but with the rapid depletion of various fossil resources such as oil, gas and phosphorous (an essential ingredient in fertilizers and without which most of Australia’s ancient soils will grow little), and to further complicate things, top soil, the abundance we enjoy is finite.

Living on the driest of continents, we need to do all possible to save water and with a whole neighbourhood contributing to just one garden, such conservation is possible.

Listening to many of Australia’s leading thinkers who have no obvious ideological bias or links to various lobby groups, say we have passed our economic “sweet spot” and with the resources boom in retreat, our future resilience is linked to far simpler things; things such as community gardens.

A discussion initiated, a discussion continued, but never finished

A discussion that began in August in the columns of this paper continued recently in the office of the City of Greater Shepparton’s mayor, Cr Geoff Dobson.

The mayor of the City of Greater
 Shepparton council,
 Cr Geoff Dobson.

The mayor, an amiable fellow near the end of his second term in that role, which, he says, will be his last, seemed remote from the political intrigue often associated with such roles.
Discussion canvassed many ideas, chiefly; however, those examined many times, and particularly in August, in this column.
The mayor appreciated considered views and both he and I wondered why those with an interest in the future wellbeing of our city did not take the time to make an appointment to talk with the mayor, whoever he or she might be.
People with a view about how the city can, or should, behave and respond to its community responsibilities should, it was discussed, formally talk with the council, rather than simply expand on their views among friends.
Without individual and thoughtful input from ratepayers, as opposed the emotional recklessness of groups, the council, in Shepparton’s case just seven people, is forced to operate in an incestuous vacuum, or at least a process driven by personal ideas or simple anecdotal opinions of others.
The connection between community wellbeing and so its accessibility of food turned talk to community gardens; public transit and its ever increasing need was discussed; talk shifted, at one point, to the need of increased residential density in the city, that being shop-top residences as an example; and, the mayor having another appointment, our cordial conversation ended.
The mayor encouraged me to consider initiating a group that was not (these are my words) argumentative, confrontational or critical, rather simply people who thoughtfully considered the city’s future and wellbeing, and then a few times a year presented its findings to the council.
Leaving the meeting, it soon became obvious that the “elephant in the room” had been overlooked.
Not even discussed and so inadvertently ignored had been the question of energy, a question so large, which, if answered successfully, holds the key to the future of Greater Shepparton.
Energy, in all its facets, is the essence of the Goulburn Valley, without which Greater Shepparton would be substantially different for what we know and enjoy today, even with an abundance of water.
Some groups, conscious of its importance, have taken steps to address impending energy crises with ideas that have been enthusiastically embraced.
That enthusiasm, in this case solar energy, illustrates that the community is often intellectually and physically ahead of local, State and Federal Governments.
That trio, however, is frequently hedged in by democracy, which is a lovely idea in principle, but works best for those with the loudest or most persistent voice.

A welcome from the future: from the present.

Being a regular columnist in The Shepparton News it seemed possible column space would be available in the newspaper's first Saturday edition on May 1.
An imaginary retrospective piece was written in prepartion, but that wasn't needed and so it is published here.

Welcome to Saturday, May 7, 2050.
The journey of the past 50 years here has been a little like the 20th century in reverse.
That troubled 100 years saw the world ripped apart by violence taking it to the brink of extinction in that it was assaulted by industrialism, consumerism, globalization and around that there was a distinct misunderstanding by all about what it was we really wanted, along with an absence of ideas about anything that might be good for the human race in the centuries ahead.
Fortunately, and in a geological sense, only seconds before certain disaster, we realized that the endless pursuit of our wants as opposed to our needs was to come with a cost that humans would have been unable to pay.
The deterioration that would have ended with human extinction fortunately eased in late 2010 when we realized that our appetite for fossils fuels had unleashed a dynamic that at the start of this century few understood.

'....living in sustainable and resilient communities'

Fortunately some far-seeing souls could envision what was ahead, understanding that if our addiction continued unabated, they overcame powerful resistance with a promise of a more fulfilling life for all leading through living in sustainable and resilient communities.
The sweeping changes to our society from one that knew only fragility and violence to one that we have now that is sustainable, peaceful and embedded in localism as opposed to globalization has been completed, by necessity, swiftly and is the outcome of wonderful world-wide co-operation.
We now understand that industrialism, consumerism and globalization, giving us among other distasteful things violence, were about short-termism, answering only human wants and ignoring, largely, the human needs that are at the top of our survival hierarchy.
The insistence that growth and profit were the hallmarks of success, whatever the human cost, have been replaced by a vastly more humanitarian ideal that celebrates intellectual achievement, rather than the knock-down drag ‘em out testosterone ignited confrontational way of living that had come to permeate society.
Climate change was, and still is, troubling the world, but our reliance on fossil fuels is almost only a memory now as our reshaped and restructured communities use primarily sustainable energy.
Peak oil in 2010 changed most everything about how we live with fossil fuels being used now only for our public transport system and that being so good that motor vehicles, of any sort, are a rare sight and of little use considering that our road network is gradually collapsing because of negligible or non-existent, and unneeded, maintenance.

'Everything is in reverse'

Everything is in reverse – what once were villages, but which then disappeared through the onslaught of the motor car, are returning.
Our communities are again just that, each with its own government infrastructure; a governance system responding to the needs of three or four thousand people; work within easy cycling or walking distance; shopping and schooling in the same area and entertainment and leisure both nearby.
Community gardens are common, nearby farms have developed community supported agriculture, little is imported and most everything the community needs is produced here – we are self-reliant as opposed to self-sufficient.
Local farms are no longer attuned to the needs of a global market; rather to the needs of local markets hence they grow a variety of crops contrary to the fossil-fuel era of mono-cropping where vulnerability was high unlike the security inherent through the farming of many different crops.
Most backyards have several chooks ensuring families have a regular supply of eggs to supplement the regular supply of vegetables from their prolific gardens.
Shepparton’s Rotary Clubs have combined forces and, after negotiating with the Greater Shepparton City Council, has taken control of several of the city’s major car-parks and having ripped up the bitumen, now operate them as community gardens.
Other city service clubs have also stepped into help the community and have planted and are maintaining an array of food trees throughout the city.
Small general stores are returning to our community and they are the place where people can sell or trade overflow from their gardens or chook yards.

'Growing your own vegetables'

Health is now becoming less of a problem as our more physical way of living – growing your own vegetables, walking or cycling most of the time and largely replacing oil-fired energy with human muscle – has almost ended the need for large centralized hospitals with smaller health care centres dotted throughout our communities.
The change, while challenging, has had a huge positive impact on our communities psychological health – depression is much less of an issue.
Shepparton’s railway station is now easily accessible from both Hoskin and Purcell Streets and each day is alive with activity with people from throughout the district coming and going as the train is the transport of choice, or more accurately the only viable way of moving about.
Water shortages continue to produce difficulties – climate change is not just a passing fad – but with more Australians having a better understanding of its more effective and efficient use, we are now finding we actually have more water available.
We have enhanced our understanding of community and we know that resilience and strength comes from creating things on a human scale and so we have more beautiful public spaces and they are surrounded by a compact and denser style of residences that blend with the environment, depend upon sustainable energy and built to allow for family growth and ultimately cater for extended and aging families, ending our need for what in the 20th century became the traditional nursing home.

'...live comfortably and happily....'

This century opened with an emphasis on learning about and understanding modern technology, but in the past four decades there has been a huge shift to both comprehending and employing the techniques that allowed people to live comfortably and happily in the 19th century.
Ideas have been at the forefront of this different, but unique opportunity, and those ideas have enabled us to preserve much that was good from early this century to combine them with ideas from the past to ensure the decades, and centuries, ahead will be bountiful, fulfilling and rewarding.
I guess you know it is not really 2050, but actually May 1, 2010.
That four decade journey is one we must make and faced with the certain difficulties of climate change and the complications of peak oil, it needs to be undertaken thoughtfully and carefully.