The RegenNarration

This is an extract from episode 74 featuring the end of my conversation with the founding director and current Chair of Perth City Farm, Rosanne Scott. We’d just been talking about some of the powerful stories of Aboriginal heritage where City Farm is located. That lead to the exchange we start with here, about arts and culture being central to organising societies in holistic, fulfilling and effective ways. We go on to trace this theme through Rosanne’s life – from her childhood in Kolkata, to her early incarnation as a primary school teacher, and on through a host of divergent and extraordinary threads that led to City Farm, and beyond.

We follow Rosanne through the Theosophical Society and Findhorn, to the PIA Wadjuri community and Wooleen Station in the Murchison, to Activate the Wheat Belt and the year of the pandemic. We end up at her life mantra, and some very moving and entertaining personal reflections.

Title slide: Perth City Farm (supplied).

You can hear the rest of our conversation in the main episode, ‘City Farm: From industrial wasteland to cultural icon, with founding director Rosanne Scott’. 

You’ll find a series of terrific photos on that web page too. 

Send us a voicemail

Support the show

Please share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, and subscribe if you can.

The RegenNarration is independent and ad-free, with hundreds of episodes freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, from as little as around $1 a week, to gain access to a great community, subscriber events and giveaways, and to help keep the show going, on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find some writing, photography and tunes too).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks so much for your support!

Last year was the 25th birthday of a cultural icon and regenerative hub, nestled into the inner eastern suburbs of Perth, Western Australia. City Farm is an extraordinary place – an urban farm with a big vision. This half hectare block was a degraded industrial wasteland. But an inspired community transformed it into a place for organic food, farming, community connection, arts, enterprise and education that enables people to live richly and regeneratively.

It’s first load of soil actually came from the original theatre production of another cultural phenomenon, Bran Nue Dae. So much of how City Farm came to be is an incredible story, often looking far from likely. And in the current context of the world, it feels like a powerful symbol of what’s possible, and an instructive experience for going about it.

Rosanne Scott is a colourful, open-hearted visionary. She was founding director of City Farm for its first 17 years, and is now Chair. All the while, she has been a trailblazer across many other areas and projects, all over WA, and has been honoured by organisations across the political and cultural spectrum for her decades of pioneering work.

Born in Calcutta to a South Indian Anglican Minister and accomplished Armenian mother, and initially a primary school teacher in Australia, not much of Rosanne’s story seemed particularly likely either. We met up at City Farm a couple of days ago for this conversation.

Title slide: Rosanne Scott (supplied). See more photos on the website.

Music:
Faraway Castle, by Rae Howell and Sunwrae.

Find more:
Perth City Farm.

Trillion Trees.

Rosanne Scott.

And the WA Museum dedication to Fanny Balbuk, the Aboriginal woman who continued to walk the Songlines as the colonial settlement of Perth grew.

Send us a voicemail

Support the show

Please share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, and subscribe if you can.

The RegenNarration is independent and ad-free, with hundreds of episodes freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, from as little as around $1 a week, to gain access to a great community, subscriber events and giveaways, and to help keep the show going, on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find some writing, photography and tunes too).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks so much for your support!

This is an extract from episode 73 featuring the end of my conversation with Amy Steel, former Australian netballer, global EcoAthletes and Sports Environment Alliance Ambassador, and Senior Manager | Sustainability and Climate Change at Deloitte; and Lily Brazel, now former Australian hockey player, global EcoAthletes Ambassador, and founder of Stature Clothing (including its podcast The State of Us).

We pick up here with Lily’s bombshell, letting go of her lifelong dream of playing for the Hockeyroos at the Olympics. And we follow the threads through navigating change and our deeper purpose, empowering sports people to step up on what matters most, and the stories that connect us to our genuinely ‘super’ human nature.

Title slide: Amy Steel and Lily Brazil playing their new roles for the bigger team (supplied).

You can hear the rest of our conversation in the main episode, ‘The Biggest Sports Story: Climate, business and a sense of ultimate success’. 

You’ll find a series of photos on that web page too. 

Send us a voicemail

Support the show

Please share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, and subscribe if you can.

The RegenNarration is independent and ad-free, with hundreds of episodes freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, from as little as around $1 a week, to gain access to a great community, subscriber events and giveaways, and to help keep the show going, on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find some writing, photography and tunes too).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks so much for your support!

Amy Steel and Lily Brazel are outstanding international athletes. Well, Amy was. Until a heat stroke after a pre-season game prematurely ended her career. Still suffering the effects today, she’s set upon a path of working with big business to help achieve perhaps humanity's greatest milestone - meeting the Paris Climate Agreements. Amy’s quickly established herself as Senior Manager, Sustainability and Climate Change at Deloitte, while also being a global Ambassador for EcoAthletes and the Australian Sports Environment Alliance.

Lily’s a slightly different story. Still at the outset of her international sports career, as part of the Hockeyroos – the successful Australian women’s hockey team – Lily was in training for the postponed Tokyo Olympics. This was a lifelong dream. But dropping a bombshell just prior to this conversation, she revealed she’s resigned from the team. In Lily’s case, it was the start of her international career that was transformative. And living by her values is forging a changing path. That path includes founding a business called Stature Clothing, a sports clothing brand with the mantra to ‘repair, repurpose & regenerate – that waste is not an option’.

Leading into the next Australian summer here again evokes images of last summer’s horror fires. Caught up in that cataclysmic event were mass cancellations of sporting events, and extensive damage to sporting facilities and clubs across the country. Since then, the northern hemisphere fires, and of course the related pandemic (another symptom of destabilised planetary conditions), rammed home the message - just how vulnerable we are on our current trajectory.

That has spurred another level of engagement by sports people and organisations everywhere, to help us change that trajectory. Sport is such an important, enlivening and powerful part of societies everywhere, so the value of sport in this transition can’t be understated. Amy and Lily are two international athletes who have felt all this acutely, and are stepping up in brilliant ways.

Title slide: Amy Steel and Lily Brazil at the height of their international sports careers (supplied). See more pics on the episode web page.

Game sounds at the start of the episode are from the 2011 Trans-Tasman netball championship win that Amy was a part of (source).

Music:
Faraway Castle, by Rae Howell and Sunwrae.

Find more:
Amy Steel.

Lily Brazel and Stature Clothing.

The Australian Sports Environment Alliance National Summit, online throughout November 2020, featuring Amy, Lily, Anthony and many others.

Send us a voicemail

Support the show

Please share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, and subscribe if you can.

The RegenNarration is independent and ad-free, with hundreds of episodes freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, from as little as around $1 a week, to gain access to a great community, subscriber events and giveaways, and to help keep the show going, on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find some writing, photography and tunes too).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks so much for your support!

This is an extract from episode 72 featuring the end of my conversation with author, systems thinker and regenerative soils educator, Nicole Masters. We talk about what she’s seen of human transformation, particularly where people have been navigating change pro-actively, as opposed to responding to trauma. We go on to chat about where the regenerative movement is at, her changing focus, and the powerful marriage of story-tellers with the regeneration happening on the ground.

Title slide: Nicole Masters (supplied).

You can hear the rest of our conversation in the main episode, ‘Restoring the Metropolis of Living Earth: From the chemical paradigm to nature’s paradigm’. 

You’ll find a series of photos on that web page too. 

Send us a voicemail

Support the show

Please share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, and subscribe if you can.

The RegenNarration is independent and ad-free, with hundreds of episodes freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, from as little as around $1 a week, to gain access to a great community, subscriber events and giveaways, and to help keep the show going, on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find some writing, photography and tunes too).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks so much for your support!

This extra to episode 72 features an additional few minutes with author, systems thinker and regenerative soils educator, Nicole Masters. It stems from the enthralling part of our conversation in the main episode about soil, the microbiome, gut health and our immune systems (from around the 40-minute mark). This triggered a question that I’d thought about a while back, after speaking with Dr Zach Bush on all this for episode 62. What are the implications of all this for the polarised debates around vaccinations?

Title slide: Nicole Masters (supplied).

You can hear the rest of our conversation in the main episode, ‘Restoring the Metropolis of Living Earth: From the chemical paradigm to nature’s paradigm’. 

You’ll find a series of photos on that web page too. 

Send us a voicemail

Support the show

Please share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, and subscribe if you can.

The RegenNarration is independent and ad-free, with hundreds of episodes freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, from as little as around $1 a week, to gain access to a great community, subscriber events and giveaways, and to help keep the show going, on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find some writing, photography and tunes too).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks so much for your support!

The world is desertifying at a truly alarming rate. It’s estimated that thirty footy fields of soil are lost per minute around the world. And after thousands of years of human agriculture, there may only be 60 harvests left in those soils. But if you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, you’ll know there’s another option here – a regenerative transformation is emerging with at times staggering speed and success. And in some of my recent conversations, you’ll have heard me mention one of the brilliant – and entertaining - women leading the way.

Nicole Masters is one of the world’s most respected advocates and educators in regenerating our food and related systems. She is a systems thinker, regenerative soils educator, founding director of Integrity Soils, and author of the brilliant book ‘For the Love of Soil: Strategies to Regenerate our Food Production Systems’.

Nicole is bringing living soil into view, for farmers and other producers, and for all of us really - helping us see, value and tend, perhaps our most vital fellow living organism on the planet.

Nicole joins Anthony online from her home in Montana, USA, for a deeply personal conversation grounded in this transformative time.

Title slide: Nicole Masters and friend (supplied).

See the episode web page for more photos.

Music:
Faraway Castle, by Rae Howell and Sunwrae.

Find more:
You can hear more of my conversation with Nicole in an extra to this episode, coming soon.

Nicole's website (including a link to Nicole's renowned TED talk and more on her book).

Send us a voicemail

Support the show

Please share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, and subscribe if you can.

The RegenNarration is independent and ad-free, with hundreds of episodes freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, from as little as around $1 a week, to gain access to a great community, subscriber events and giveaways, and to help keep the show going, on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find some writing, photography and tunes too).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks so much for your support!

This is an extract of our live panel conversation from the end of episode 71, ‘The Law of the Land: Creating a regenerative system of law’. Each speaker has just presented for 10 minutes, so we pick up here at the beginning of our all-in conversation with Professor Kate Auty, Dr Alessandro Pelizzon, Nicola Rivers and Michael Leunig.

It starts with Kate relating the success of the Koori Courts to our collective needs right now. We go on to explore varied cultural understandings of law and the living world, where and how people are making law work well, and how we might reframe our thinking to regenerate the law of the land.

Title slide (L-R): Michael Leunig & Anthony James (obscured here but visible in full on the website), Kate Auty, Nicola Rivers & Alessandro Pelizzon (pic: Chris Grose).

You can hear the rest of our conversation on the main episode 71, ‘The Law of the Land: Creating a regenerative system of law’. 

You’ll find a series of links in the show notes of the main episode too, including to an extra with the rest of this conversation along with audience Q&A. And there are some photos of the event on the website (linked above).

Send us a voicemail

Support the show

Please share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, and subscribe if you can.

The RegenNarration is independent and ad-free, with hundreds of episodes freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, from as little as around $1 a week, to gain access to a great community, subscriber events and giveaways, and to help keep the show going, on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find some writing, photography and tunes too).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks so much for your support!

This extra to episode 71 features the rest of our live conversation with Professor Kate Auty, Dr Alessandro Pelizzon and Nicola Rivers. We pick up the last 5 minutes of our conversation on stage, before 20 minutes or so of outstanding audience Q&A. The conversation delves further here into the global movement for the rights of nature, including where it’s being done well, the “intensely practical” role we have in all this, and how to think about law as part of the overarching transition to regenerative societies.

Title slide: Coolamon tree (source).

Find more:
You can hear the rest of our conversation in the main episode, The Law of the Land: Creating a regenerative system of law.

You’ll find a series of links in the show notes of the main episode too, and a photo of the panel in action on the website (link above). 

Send us a voicemail

Support the show

Please share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, and subscribe if you can.

The RegenNarration is independent and ad-free, with hundreds of episodes freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, from as little as around $1 a week, to gain access to a great community, subscriber events and giveaways, and to help keep the show going, on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find some writing, photography and tunes too).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks so much for your support!

Decades of legal protection for the living world haven’t stopped it being progressively destroyed. So what do we need to do, and what’s currently being done, to regenerate the law of the land and better protect and restore the living world?

Thinking about all this again in recent weeks prompted me to go back to a recording of a live panel event I produced on the topic at Melbourne’s Federation Square back in 2015 (billed Preventing Crimes Against Nature at the time). I was moved all over again by the conversation that night, featuring some of the major system changes at play, and the cultural changes so intertwined with them.

You’ll hear:

• Nicola Rivers, co-CEO of Environmental Justice Australia, who came to this event directly from the first national conference of the Panel of Experts on Environmental Law deliberating on the 'next generation' of legislative frameworks for the protection of nature
•  Dr Alessandro Pelizzon is now Senior Lecturer in the School of Law and Justice at Southern Cross University, one of the founding members of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature, and supported the drafting of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
• Professor Kate Auty, brilliant community figurehead, former Victorian and ACT Commissioner of Sustainability and Environment, and now Chair of the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) Victoria
• Michael Leunig, National Living Treasure, cartoonist & esteemed elder of the Understandascope, generating a wellspring of commentary on political, cultural and emotional life spanning more than forty years. 

Each guest speaks for 10 minutes, before our all-in conversation.

Note: Ellen Sandell, MP for the seat of Melbourne where this event was held, sent a brief message in, which is why you’ll hear her referred to. 

Title slide: Gantheaume Point, near Broome in the Kimberley region of WA (pic: Anthony James).

Thanks Carly, James & the Understandascope team for co-creating this event, Chris Grose from Scout Films, & the National Sustainable Living Festival.

Music:
Faraway Castle, by Rae Howell & Sunwrae - watch the wonderful film clip.

Find more:
You can hear the rest of our conversation with audience Q&A in an extra to this episode.

Sign this petition ahead of the federal government’s current bill reaching the Senate shortly.

With the growing movement asserting ‘First Law’, support this petition from the Martuwarra Fitzroy River Council.

David Mowaljarlai.

Send us a voicemail

Support the show

Please share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, and subscribe if you can.

The RegenNarration is independent and ad-free, with hundreds of episodes freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, from as little as around $1 a week, to gain access to a great community, subscriber events and giveaways, and to help keep the show going, on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find some writing, photography and tunes too).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks so much for your support!