Anne Elliot Interview with Carole Young - EcoSTEPS Anne Elliot is an inspiring, energetic woman who runs a bed and breakfast in the Blue Mountains and has been a driving force behind the mountains becoming certified as a Slow Food region. Anne talks passionately about food security, kitchen gardens and the importance of community resilience in the face of climate change. Let s start by telling me what you think the big issues are for people right now. I think our very survival is at stake. We ve got some critical issues all merging together at this point in time. We have erratic water supplies, we have changes in our seasons, we have peak oil, and we have rising food prices. The planet is groaning from over population and decades of mismanagement. I read the latest State of the World Report from the World Watch Institute, and I was interested in Chapter 8 which is on meat and fish. This report said that we cannot regard meat and fish any longer as the centre of the plate; we ve got to look upon it being a side issue or looking at other food sources. The report states the harvesting of our oceans has increased eightfold since the 50s or 60s; our consumption of meat has doubled since 50s or 60s. Rising affluence in countries like India and China is having a huge impact on what we grow, how we grow, how we collect food. At the same time in countries like India or China there s a move away from traditional staple foods to more meat products, more dairy and more eggs. In Australia, which is such an Ancient Continent, we have really fragile soils. In fact I read somewhere that we produce in a year the equivalent thickness of a lead pencil in topsoil. We are actually losing more topsoil than we are creating and we ve introduced farming methods that are European! This whole idea of monoculture, of huge farming systems with just one crop being grown, must go. We need to return to smaller, more diverse sorts of farming. We ve got these erratic seasons coming in now too. The real change is going to come from the grassroots and I feel really inspired by that because while we do have these critical issues to address; dramatic changes in the weather, diminishing water supplies, peak oil, over population, developed nations consuming more; we don t seem to be taking any dramatic steps to change our lifestyles. Do you see any hopeful signs that we are starting to adapt our lifestyles? There s hope at a grassroots level and I see it in the Blue Mountains because it s such an amazing community. To give you one example, I m involved with Cittaslow (the slow food movement) and when we were doing an assessment of the Blue Mountains for that, we had to assess the use of local produce and products and we scored really low. OK we are confined to the ridges and OK it s a very urban area, but that s even more reason why we must start growing our own produce. They ve got these indicators out saying that we must, we can t rely on food being transported in like it has been for decades. With this in mind we decided we would have as a major project A Kitchen Garden in Every Blue Mountains Home which we launched last year. Now, there was no money for any of this and I m really inspired by what s happened, because that whole project, I kid you not, has cost us $20. Everyone that has been involved with the project has donated their time. All the nurseries in the Blue Mountains are involved. Residents can buy their starter pack of seedlings with a voucher that is valid for two months. The key people who worked on this project had backgrounds in permaculture and seed saving, and they got really excited about it. They decided to develop courses for novices or even people who are more experienced. There is a competition for the person who s Not to be reproduced with express permission caroleyoung@ecosteps.com.au Page 1
got the most creative kitchen garden in the box. The only thing that cost us money was buying x kilos of broad bean seeds, which were then bagged into these little cellophane bags. It just showed what can be done. I remember reading early last year about a meteorologist who was saying things are so serious that we need to be on a war footing, governments need to be on a war footing. He said you don t need lots of money, what you need is will and strategy and I think that this Kitchen Garden in Every Blue Mountains Home Project is a really good example of that. We now have a template which can be rolled out in community s right around Australia. Urban agriculture is going to become increasingly important. It s more than just growing some of your own food. Our goal is that within five years most Blue Mountains residents will be producing their own green vegetables. It builds up community and it s something so simple, because you talk with your neighbour, you swap seedlings, you swap surplus food, you swap ideas and then it extends to more neighbours. I love it because I m a great fan of Mahatma Gandhi. I was always inspired reading about him and the simple actions he took like encouraging home spinning. And I really think this is the C21 st version of his Home Spun Cloth Campaign. It s a really simple act to create a kitchen garden, but it s so noble and so profound. That one act does a number of things. It empowers people and encourages them to start growing their own produce. It makes for efficient use of water and soil; it addresses key issues like food security and helps us to cope with climate change. The idea was to create a kitchen garden in a box, so it would be a really controlled environment. And it was equitable; because it meant people who were disabled or elderly could actually have access to their kitchen garden in a box by being at a suitable height. It can be near where you live, so you can keep an eye on it. You can move it around to face the sunlight and to make better use of the weather conditions, you can elevate it. In that simple box you can also learn the things you ve got to learn on a much larger scale, like coping with the creatures that come out at night time. We are getting some feedback from the nurseries that people are going in who don t even know what seedlings are, so we know we are getting into this target group that has never gardened before. Tell me a little bit about your background Anne and what influenced your values. I consider myself an activist and I m deeply in love with the Earth, it s as simple as that. I grew up in country South West NSW and had a lot of contact with animals and nature. I also witnessed what happened down on the farm. For example Dad would get half a sheep from a neighbour; I d see the bloody sheep skin on the fence and I knew that that was the sheep that was coming to our table and it started playing on my mind that this just didn t seem very fair. Every now and then my father would kill a chook and I found that deeply disturbing. Are you a vegetarian? Oh, yes! Ethical vegetarian. I did it initially because of my love for animals, but there are very strong environmental reasons for being a vegetarian. At the very least reducing ecological footprint by eating lower down the food chain. I ve always had a deep love for animals and nature and that s what really got me started. Years later when I left home and I found out about things like vivisection I joined a group called The Working Group against Animal Experiments that became The Not to be reproduced with express permission caroleyoung@ecosteps.com.au Page 2
Australian Association for Humane Research. Reading Mahatma Gandhi I got really inspired by this whole idea of being actively non-violent. I can remember sitting outside of a cinema actually in Sydney one day reading a book on Mahatma Gandhi and thinking: this is it, there is nothing else. I haven t changed my mind since. I just think it s the most embracing philosophy. You bear witness and then you take action in the belief that one person can make a difference. I think if we are born in a land of plenty, it s such a privilege to be in the land of plenty, we have a moral obligation to help not just people in our own country, but also elsewhere in the world. There are lots of people out there like myself who dream of a planet at peace with all living things and while we might not see it in our lifetime, I d like to think that at some stage in the future we will. But being an activist for so many years, it seems to me we are going through the same issues again, and again, and again. Activist work was very, very draining and I thought there s got to be another way. And that other way brought you to the Slow Food Movement? Yes. I found out about the Slow Food Movement. It s fantastic because it s so positive, everybody has to eat. I ve also been involved with work in the Blue Mountains to protect our region against any more fast food chains and we ve worked extensively on that but we have been unsuccessful. Even though it was the largest issue to which our community responded, it was obvious that powerful interests at both a State and Local level were quite keen for this not to happen. One of the reasons I feel so strongly about fast food chains is that they are so wasteful. They disempower people enormously, they plunder our communities, and they erode the things that we really value most. If one fast food chain comes in, it s quite a tragedy for our community, because they force small business to close. They cannot compete; it s not a level plain field. That small business is employing people of all ages, they re sending their children to school, and they re looking after an elderly person in their family, so it has enormous repercussions. Also these chains are transporting food in, transporting their money out. They are literally dictating what s being put in the ground and we have this situation now across the globe, where just a handful of crops - wheat, rice and potato - are feeding the world. They have a lot to answer for, and they re completely unsustainable. I think out of sheer necessity we re going to have to do a lot of re-evaluation and start really valuing our small businesses and what we have, because we could so easily lose them. Why do you think that the Blue Mountains are a good place to be living considering the threat of climate change? I think because of our community. We have a very, very strong community. And I love the fact that there is so much diversity in our community and there is quite a degree of tolerance and there doesn t seem to me to be any form of class distinction. I think people generally speaking get along very well. I like for us to be perceived as being a living laboratory. We show the rest of the world how it s done. I mean, look at things like vintage clothing. We ve always had vintage clothing, before it became even fashionable. I d love to see, for example, that we become an area that can support low impact manufacturing, within a strong environmental framework, so our artists are designing beautiful vintage clothing using old fabrics for example, recreating it, and they are manufacturing this clothing in a factory using solar energy. I think there is enormous potential. We ve got so many really, really Not to be reproduced with express permission caroleyoung@ecosteps.com.au Page 3
skilled people out there that we haven t really even tapped into. I mean the Blue Mountains has always been a place to retreat to, a place to be inspired. And we have a railway line, thank goodness for that! So I think an essential part of a very strong community is good communication, diversity in interest groups. So there is some hope for actually rolling out some critical changes that are needed here and I think the places that aren t going to survive are those that don t have that and that s what makes it quite unique. And what about those people who are living in the city and when they are reading this they think: it s all very well, put your garden in the Mountains What about solutions for people living in higher density urban areas? Start gardening too. Kitchen gardens can be put in anywhere. And of course, community gardens. Some of the best examples of community gardens are happening in these high density areas and the Blue Mountains don t have enough community gardens at the moment. We should have one in at least every village. And I can see that in high density urban areas in Sydney, community gardens would be important. Also I read in a Green Magazine, we can actually now buy a substance that you can attach to walls to create vines, so let s start taking up that, having gardens on the walls and also roof gardens. There is a major car company in America that has dedicated this whole roof to creating a garden, a rooftop garden. They are actually keeping bees and they are making fabulous honey. So it s just a shift in focus and a belief that community is everywhere, and if it s not, there is something wrong, so just start creating it and work in a very small way and go out with that. There is incredible interest I believe in developing more of a community feel in these high density areas and more pressure to have much more efficient public transport system, more areas for walking, more areas for sitting and conversing with people, with your neighbours. You said earlier that you were quite terrified about the future. How do deal with that fear? OK. I am quite terrified, there are incredible warning signs out there at the moment, incredible shortages in, for example, rice, with people in the Philippines queuing for rice. The rice has been rationed and the army has been called in. So there are already riots over food happening at the moment. I can see that people in poorer countries are really going to suffer. And I guess what we have to try and do, and it s happening with various activist groups, is place demands on governments to stop going down this crazy road of bio-fuels and also get people educated on growing their own where they can. For example, the UN declared the international year of the potato, because it s a very easy staple to grow. For example, if you put it 10 Kilos of potatoes, you get 50 kilograms of potatoes in return. Wheat and rice are more difficult to grow. Potatoes are not difficult to grow and they grow in a number of regions all around the world, they grow extremely well here too. And so, that s one way around it. It s seems like we are putting off the inevitable, which means really fundamentally changing how we live, all of us. All of us, we can t keep on going the way we have been. Any of us. It means fundamental change. And there are other warning signs for us in the Blue Mountains. Look at the blackouts that we are having. They are becoming so, so frequent. I want to be solar independent and other people feel the same way, but it is very expensive, that means that we have to look at, you know, pressuring our Government as well to subsidise, solar energy. We are a great country for doing this. Not to be reproduced with express permission caroleyoung@ecosteps.com.au Page 4
Getting back to this fear thing Do you see hope for the future Anne? I do, but I think there is going to be a lot of suffering. I can t see any way around that. I think especially countries that are already poor, that are already overpopulated, that are increasingly polluted, that don t have good infrastructure And what s Australia s role in helping those countries? I think if we have expertise here that we can use to help, let s use it. Like for example, permaculture, that s one solution we have to all be growers. To be growers of food and collectors of water where we can. And to simplify our lives and think twice before buying the latest mobile phone. Technology can be fabulous, but not to become a slave to it, so to think: well, what do I really need? Do I really need that latest mobile phone? No, I don t. And creating an attitude just in our own lives of repairing rather that replacing, I think we ve lost that in recent decades. At recent Council collection services, I was wondering around seeing what was thrown out and it was mainly lounges and chairs and they were perfectly OK, they just needed recovering. I know an upholsterer here in Katoomba and he said to me that all those cheap Asian imports have killed off the upholstery industry as it works out cheaper for people to actually buy a new lounge or an armchair than to get it re-covered, so we ve got to work our way around it. OK, I m going to pay a bit more but I m going to get it re-covered. Or go to that wonderful op-shop and antique shop and buy from there, so it s not something that is brand new. So I think that simplifying our lives is really important and it goes right down to how we clean, where we buy, even eating at home is actually less impactful on the environment than eating out. I m not saying that we shouldn t go to cafes, but that s a consideration too. We ve got to lot of skill in the Blue Mountains that can be exploited. We ve got to a person here who is a world leader in water recycling. I know he spends a lot of time too in other countries as well. So there is a heck a lot of expertise that can be utilised, just from our one area alone. Tell me a little about the importance to you of a sense of place. I felt really drawn to the Mountains. For years I wanted to live here. I couldn t explain why. I thought it s either the trees or the water. Its trees that are drawing me. And the more I m here, the more I get this sense of being in this ancient place, this sacred place, and I feel a very strong feminine energy here. I can t explain it, but I feel it so profoundly and we aren t very far away from the Three Sisters. I know that s women s business. Then I feel this really strong feminine energy emanating all around there. It s something that the more you are here, that more you can absorb and draw in It gives you great strength and it also makes you reflective. It s so beautiful and because I really love animals, I love the fact that these wild birds will fly and I can actually talk to them and hand feed them. And as a child I always had this dream I got to talk to animals and have birds coming in, and it s happening in my life and it s really beautiful. It s something so precious and the guests who come and stay where we are, the things they really love most are those simple pleasures and they are the things that make your life so rich and so deeply satisfying. My inner fire has always been this love for animals and nature, it s always there, it s above everything else, you know, home, marriage, the whole thing, career, whatever. That s the thing that drives me and a feeling that we are doing an injustice. Somehow we must do our little bit to correct Not to be reproduced with express permission caroleyoung@ecosteps.com.au Page 5
it. And I feel that animals are especially vulnerable, because they can t speak up, just like children. They re part of the environment too and we need to be their advocates. A world with diminishing forms of life, we are losing all this diversity out there, is a world diminished. But also it s a world on the precipice, it s a world that could collapse and I just think that s very tragic. Finish Not to be reproduced with express permission caroleyoung@ecosteps.com.au Page 6