Charcoal-making for household resilience Saturday 15 November 2014

Native Stingless Bee Workshop Tuesday 7 October 2014

If you cannot clearly see the detail above, click on the poster to increase its size

TEDX film at North Bank Gardens 28 September 2014

TEDx and North Bank Gardens Event


" For anyone who missed last year's TEDx talks, we have a screening planned for this Sunday arvo/ evening, weather permitting. Includes a warm up with relaxed open mic music and the Community Garden café open throughout the event. "
 
https://www.facebook.com/events/719739048098247/


https://www.facebook.com/Northbank.Community.Garden

Biodynamics in the Home Garden Tuesday 30 September 2014

"...simply be with each other in peace and goodwill" Sunday 21 September

☂Transition Bellingen

Pedestrian Access and Mobility Plan and Bike Plan Survey

PAMP AND BIKE PLAN COMMUNITY SURVEY


Bellingen Shire Council has commissioned GHD Pty Ltd, to undertake a review of the 2006 Pedestrian Access and Mobility Plan (PAMP) and Bike Plan.


The PAMP and Bike Plan document will identify the pedestrian and bicycle network hierarchy and include an action plan for Council to integrate walking and cycling into the transport system of the Shire.


Part of the review involves a short survey. Please provide your input via the survey up until Thursday 16 October 2014.
Click this link to Take the Survey Now. https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/VDG2T8J

Sandy Eager
Sustainability Officer
Ph 6655 7376
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday
www.bellingen.nsw.gov.au

Bellingen Seed Savers will be at the Plant Fair on Saturday 13 September 2014

for report and photos click on plant fair

Create your own Permaculture Garden - 14 September 2014

Create Your Own Permaculture Garden - Sunday 14 September

Centre for Ecological Learning

- Discover the practical skills of soil preparation and planting by creating a garden bed

- Learn how to make compost

- Learn about the people who inspired Permaculture

- Identify, use and cultivate useful plants for the garden

- Find out about different planting styles - backyard garden, market garden, food forest etc

When: Sunday, 14 September, 9am - 4pm

Where: Bellingen Highschool Community Garden

Cost: $60, morning tea included

Charlie has long-term experience in the design, teaching, research and implementation of Landscape, Permaculture, Edible Streetscapes and conservation projects. http://www.charliebrennan.info

Contact Zoe on 0400 665 810.

Back to back Bellopy markets on 29 August and 5 September

Bellopy Markets will be held on Friday 29 August and 5 September 2014 at Bellingen Showgrounds

PIP magazine second edition - see Kombu

The second edition of PIP magazine has been published  and is sold in good newsagents and at the Kombu Shop

Kombu features in this edition. see https://www.facebook.com/KombuWholefoods

Why are we excited?

The Transition Town Network is based on Permaculture principles and they are fundamental for the future

Direct link to PIP magazine https://www.pipmagazine.com.au

☆ Festival of Our Future 30 August 2014

Solar "write up" Wednesday 20 August 2014

On behalf of ‘Solar Citizens’ invitation to you to gather outside 5 Church Street for letter writing & petition-signing to celebrate solar in Australia and ensure it has a bright future….

WHEN:

10.30am Wednesday 20th August

WHERE:

Outside 5 Church Street, Bellingen

WHAT:

To enjoy a cuppa while writing letters and signing petitions to our cross bench senators about solar power and the Renewable Energy Target.

        **Please bring a stamped envelope and a pen**

☂ Bellopy Market is moving - next market 15 August 2014 at Showgrounds

☂

NEXT MARKET - 15TH AUGUST AT THE SHOWGROUNDS

OK we have an interim market site for the next market on the 15th August...

Our market site will be at the front entrance of the showgrounds at the main pavilion.


We will use this site until we can find a venue in town...as this will take some time....a big thank you to the show ground committee for pushing this through for me so quickly and making it so easy...Im very grateful for their support.

We will have loads of wonderful produce and we look forward to seeing you all there for a great day out. 

Nick Warfield Bower bird sculpture at Bower House reuse centre Bellingen

Opening of the Bellingen Shire Council's Bower House Reuse Centre at Raleigh

Pat Collin's Workshops Saturday 26 July and Sunday 27 July 2014

North Bank Community Garden - membership drive July 2014

Dear Northbank Community Garden Supporter,

Firstly, thank you for your support in the past in building this wonderful community garden. We are a truly grassroots organization, creating resilient local food systems on the Mid North Coast!

We are currently contacting everyone on our mailing list to update our contact list and to move from our current membership system to a new one (that is aligned with the financial year cycle).

To do this we need to ask you what level of involvement you wish to have. Please consider the following options:
A) Mailing list only – you will receive occasional newsletters, invitation to events and calls for help.

B) Membership – costs $20 annually and helps us operate (for such things as paying bills and buying materials). This includes the above mailing list contact plus invites to member-only events, discounts to workshops and events, and the knowledge you are a part of something wonderful, local and important! If you are wanting to pay membership, the easiest way to do this is via paypal on our website atwww.northbankgarden.org.au/membership.

C) Committee membership – any member is welcome to join our hardworking committee. The Committee guides the direction of the Garden and oversees its operations, including its financial sustainability. We need more people involved at this level so the current group aren’t burnt out. Many hands make light work!

Please reply to this message (or return the slip below) or contact us via the secretary, Jennie Fenton, on secretary@northbankgarden.org.au or 0417 026 206. We hope to have our membership and mailing list confirmed prior to July  30, so if you can contact us before that date, we would be grateful.

We also wanted to let our supporters know that, in response to your requests for more regular working bees, we are now holding working bees on the first, third and fifth Sundays of the month from 12 noon (or 2pm during Daylight Savings). Everyone is welcome to come along and help with general garden maintenance, learning new skills or to work on one of our projects. Our current projects include toilet construction, mobility-friendly access, a new stage, new chook enclosures and re-opening the nursery. And if you have any materials laying around that you would like to donate to any of these projects, please contact us also.



Yours Sincerely,
Jesster Kerr-Wearne
President, Northbank Community Garden Inc.


2014

☂ Free Market Bellingen Showgrounds Sunday 6 July 2014 - big turnout

☂

More than sixty people attended the Free Market, deeply engrossed in finding their free bargains.

David Pepper has introduced a fruit and vegetable section - produce picked only hours before the start of the market.

Bellingen Free Market Sunday 6 July will include a Free Food Exchange. Bring along your own surplus produce to share but be prepared to take home your left-overs.

Transition Bellingen

Bellingen Free Market at Showground Sunday 6 July at 2pm

http://tbeventspics.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/free-market-1-july-2012-pgotographs.html

Bellingen Citrus Trail - cancelled for 2014

“the bellingen citrus trail festival”

OUR VISION

The vision of the Bellopy markets is to continue to build and strengthen our community through our celebration and appreciation of our local organic produce and our growers.

CONCEPT

Transition Bellingen will be auspicing this one day Festival. The citrus trail will be held on Saturday 26^th July. The idea is simple. We want to bring our community together to celebrate our wonderful citrus season. We have an abundance of citrus trees growing throughout our town either in peoples backyards or their streets. . The idea for this festival is to invite anyone living in town who has such a tree or knows someone who does to enter the citrus trail festival.

Participants can have a stall on their own or share it with friends or neighbours. Applications will close end of June . Applications can be picked up from the local businesses that have donated prizes for the festival….these include alchemy, kombu, Bellopy markets, sweet Bellingen, weave, bello food box, the IGA, 2 Oak street, hearthfire and the emporium. 

Participants will erect a roadside stall in front of their house and will make a flag indicating their stall number on their letter box.

The event will start at 9am at the Anglican church where all trail blazers will pick up their trailblazer map of Bellingen indicating the stalls and their products, the back of the map will be a scorecard.

Surrounding farms and properties can also participate but will have their stall at the church itself or can join forces with a friend in town.

The community can visit as many stalls as they want as long as it is on foot, bike, horse, skateboard and etc…. This way they get to exercise and meet new people along the way and see the town.

There will be prizes for both stallholders and trailblazers… which will be collated at the church after 1pm when the trail closes. Each stall will have a charity tin at their stall and trailblazers can deposit donations in the box to show their appreciation of the tasting. If people want to ‘buy’ a recipe they particularly like they can make a gold coin donation for it. If the stallholder wants to give the recipe away…they will indicate it at their stalls.

The trail will close at 1pm…and will finish back where it started at the Anglican Church. There will be some food vendors and live music for all the families and stalls to enjoy and share the rest of the day…with the aim of finishing at 4pm. Winners will be announced and prizes handed out after lunch.

There will be prizes for best stall, best juice, best food, best stallholder, best trailblazer costume, best dressed trailblazer pet, best dressed trailblazer mode of transport, fastest trailblazers to sample every stall.

We aim to promote this festival to our neighbouring shire..coffs harbour, valla, bonville, bowraville, Nambucca, Dorrigo etc… in an effort to build our regional community as well as our town itself…hopefully we can inspire these towns to do something similar.

THE COMMITTEE

The festival will be run by a group of 4 local volunteers and we have applied to council for a community events grant we hope to receive something towards this event.

Kind Regards,

Susan Weil

Bellopy Markets

Bellingen Seed Savers Gathering Sunday 22 June 2014

Next Gathering:  Sunday 22 June 1-3.45pm at The Youth Hub in Bellingen

RSVP by Thursday 19 June  It will help the planning to know how many people to expect.

We all love to visit gardens but there is rarely any time to look back on our progress and discuss and make plans for the rest of the year and into the future.  

This afternoon will be an opportunity to share feed-back about our progress so far, share some visioning for the future, plans for the rest of this year and beyond.  We will also watch films, share an excellent afternoon tea and have some fun.  The Youth Hub is a lovely, comfortable space for us to do all these things.

Everyone is invited - if you have never been to any of our Gatherings, this will be an excellent time to get to know us and learn more about our philosophy.  We are a very friendly group and you will feel welcome.  We are all about sharing - our seeds, plants, skills, knowledge - 

Please bring some afternoon tea to share, any plants and seeds you have to share - labelled of course - and a notebook  + your ideas.

Planning Meeting - Thursday 29 May 2014 at Bellingen Youth Hub

We need Transition now more than ever...what part will you take? Come join us at our next PLANNING MEETING - NEXT THURSDAY, 29 MAY from 7:00-9:00 pm at the Bellingen Youth Hub (William St, Bellingen). We will be learning more about Transition Culture (see below) and also doing some hands-on Project Planning. This meeting is a follow on from last week's meeting, at which 12 enthusiastic people (some new, some old) shared and learned and planned together.  How is Transition like a cake?  (From www. transitionnetwork.org/ingredients)  L et's be clear; there is no right way to do Transition. Every initiative does it differently, and that’s part of the fun of the whole thing. Think of it like cooking. There are all kinds of amazing ingredients we can assemble in order to make, say, a cake, and the creation of every cook will be unique, reflecting his or her abilities and culture, and the local resources available. At the same time, there are certain time-proven stages to successful cake baking. You can’t just put the flour in a bowl, throw in some butter, put it in the oven and expect a cake to emerge. That wouldn’t work at all. Similarly, with Transition there are distinct stages the process goes through, from meeting equally enthused people and deciding to give Transition a go (‘Starting out’), to finding that you are now becoming a viable, vibrant project (‘Deepening’), then trying to broaden your engagement with the local community (‘Connecting’) and scaling up what you are doing in order to make localisation a reality on the ground (‘Building’).  Lastly, there is a visionary, speculative stage of looking forward to how things might be if this happened everywhere (‘Daring to Dream’).  That’s where things get really interesting. Things are already interesting in Transition Bellingen....we are definitely in the "Building" phase. Come build with us! See you Thursday.

Looking for people who want to help to make things happen Thursday 15 May 2014

WHAT:  You are invited to an important Transition Bellingen gathering this coming Thursday, 15 May - from 7:00-9:00 pm at the Bellingen Youth Hub (William St, Bellingen).

From 7:00-8:00 the focus will be on "Transition Culture" - who is Transition and how and why does it work? From 8:00-9:00 we will move into active planning mode.

WHY: Transition Bellingen has been going strong since 2009. And that is because there have been a lot of people putting the hard yards in. Right now, inspired by our latest workshops and all the ideas and projects that have come up because of them, Transition Bellingen is in need of people who are keen to take on some useful tasks - publicity, meeting facilitation, project planning, all that good stuff! If you are looking to do some good work with some great people for a meaningful purpose....COME ALONG to the gathering. If you can't make it but would still like to put your hand up for a task/job/project - contact us ontransitionbellingen@gmail.com.
 

And furthermore..

At the recent Economics of Happiness workshops, a small group of writers/editors was formed to create regular 'Strengthening Local Communities' articles for our local newspaper. The aim is to profile successful localisation initiatives and ideas from around globe and explore how they might be relevant to the Bellingen Shire. The next steps for this group are to work up some sample articles and approach the newspaper with the idea. Anyone interested in writing and/or editing for this group can contact Melissa via transitionbellingen@gmail.com.

Strengthening Local Communities articles

At the recent Economics of Happiness workshops, a small group of writers/editors was formed to create regular"Strengthening Local Communities" articles for our local newspaper.

The aim is to profile successful initiatives and ideas from around the globe and explore how they might be relevant to the Bellingen Shire.

The next steps for this group are to work up some sample articles and approach the newspaper with the idea.

Anyone interested in writing and/or editing for this group can contact Melissa via transitionbellingen@gmail.com

Economics of Happiness workshop 11 and 12 April 2014

photos click on happiness

Inspired by her film ‘The Economics of Happiness’ or perhaps simply curious about the ‘buzz’, sixty people attended the two Bellingen workshops with Helena Norberg-Hodge last week.  And they were not disappointed.

The 68-year-old pioneer of the localisation movement, articulator of core ideas for counter-development and director of the International Society for Ecology and Culture shared her ideas about the suffering created by the impacts of globalisation with warmth and enthusiasm.

With the wisdom gained from 30 years of careful observation, she both demystified the mixed messages about the global economy and offered hope in what is often seen as a bleak future.

“We are told consumerism is the glue of the world and at the same time we are made to feel guilty for being consumers and therefore promoting global warming,” Ms Norberg-Hodge said. “We are prisoners of this global economy … but we are also able to liberate ourselves, it is not an easy thing to do but it is possible.”

Hers is a realistic voice of how that bridge can be built between the global reality and the lifestyles we desire that give us and the planet time to breathe. “I call it creative schizophrenia,” she laughed.

Her two-prong approach is simple: “Firstly we must actively raise the consciousness about holistic views that offer solutions. We need to build the numbers of people who are actively involved in order to help force policy changes.

“And secondly we need to work on connecting locally, connecting as communities and creating community-based solutions that empower people to create their own economies. The system we have now destroys jobs, local economies, our water, our health.”

She said local food networks were an excellent example of an alternative system that benefited many. “This is consumer supported agriculture… that shortens distances, offers more diversity, uses fewer chemicals (as opposed to monocultures) and results in greater productivity. This leads to a better lifestyle for both the farmer and the consumer.”

But the workshops were much more than a talk-fest. A session with local choir maestro Brian Martin gave participants a living experience of what connectivity feels like … in the space of 30 minutes he had the group tuned in and singing three part harmonies – and sounding pretty good!

Then the gathering morphed into a World Café (community-sharing forum) where ideas of what could be done were shared and honed.

These included everything from large-scale ideas like a shire-wide electricity generation scheme and a plant-based economy using hemp and bamboo to connecting people to harvest each other’s excess citrus or helping people identify bush tucker in their own gardens.

Co-coordinator Lisa Siegel said it was exciting to see so many people engaging with the ideas. “Helena’s message is so timely – many people have a real thirst for meaningful things to do,” Lisa said. “The workshop offered not only information but also the opportunity for people to start focusing on projects.”

Everyone certainly walked away feeling inspired and motivated. Participant Christel Wecker said for her it had been wonderful to spend a day with someone who knew how to explain the impact of globalisation so clearly. “And who is also offering hope and a path to counteract the impacts locally,” Christel said. “She offers a path that takes away the guilt and celebrates the beauty of diversity … and emphasises the importance of global co- operation as opposed to globalisation.”