Patrick’s Musings

I’m on the train home from Powershift at UWS. I was up at 6am and left the house by 6.30 to setup the EWB stall not to bad an effort considering everything except the tables and chairs was taken onsite by me by train.

A huge thanks to Sophie from the AYCC who has received numerous txts, emails & calls from me in the last couple of days after I decided to attend at the last minute for Engineers Without Borders.

The keynotes were fantastic, if a little cultish, and it was a shame that some activists couldn’t let Nathan Rees have his say in peace. From 11.30 to 3.30 I manned the EWB stall with the help of a number of EWB volunteers, the interest was greater than I expected and we had a lot of interesting discussions and got a few new members and people for our mailing lists. Overall the time was well spent, though I feel a little more structure may have been better.

From 3.30 to 4.30 I was in the “Communicating the Climate Change Message” breakout, the discussion was good, but not long enough, only a few questions were asked. I think 2 hours per breakout might have worked better.

I then traipsed off to room 2.02 to hear Keillen from Greenpeace talk “Media Engagement”. After 15 minutes waiting I left. Advised the AYCC team at the front desk that our facilitator hadn’t shown and headed for a bus/taxi home. I didn’t have the good to walk up two flights of steps again.

I’m looking forward to tomorrow, and even more to future events, when AYCC can apply what it learns this weekend and hopefully hold many more successful events.

Amazon has released a larger version of their increasingly popular Kindle. Designed with reading newspapers and textbooks in mind. I can’t help but look at it and think “Council Papers”. This may finally be the tool that convinces a lot of Councillors (and elected representatives at other levels) to ditch the 4″ stack of briefing papers for each meeting and transition to the digital age. One I might add I’ve been in since I was elected, using my underpowered and poor resolutioned Toshiba laptop for the purpose.

Ars Technica have a good write up on the launch.

Last night The Minister for Resources and Energy, Martin Ferguson AM MP, announced the successful applicants for funding under the first round of the Government’s Geothermal Drilling Program. Full press release here.

With 2 grants of $7,000,000 to match a further seven million put in by each company that’s a solid boost on our way to lessening our dependance on coal. Geoscience Australia estimates that the potential of hot rocks is 26,000 times more than our current energy requirements. With just a few working plants Australia could have a reliable, redundant power supply, that is in the long run so cheap we could even export power to our neighbours.

Hopefully these initial trials will be productive and within a few decades Australia can turn off all its coal fired power stations for good. For more information on hot rocks geothermal power in Australia check out AussieHotRocks blog.

In all the excitement around the globe from liberal leaning people that Barack Obama has won the US election it’s easy to forget some of the other things voted on by the American people on Tuesday.

In California proposition 1A has passed, allowing the state to issue $10B in bonds to raise money for a Shinkansen style high speed rail link joining San Francisco & Los Angeles, allowing travel between the cities by train in 2 hours and 40 minutes. Which I am informed is faster than flying, and certainly less hassle.

Unfortunately California also voted for Proposition 8 which overturned a State Supreme Court ruling that same sex marriage was ok. I hope this will be overturned by a national Supreme Court ruling, or perhaps by a Democratically controlled congress. Several other states have similar bills defining marriage as between one man and one woman.

Still with California, overwhelmingly people voted for prop 2 and prop 3 which are both great propositions. Prop 2 sets out mandatory requirements for animal housing, this will especially improve the quality of battery chickens, but also the shipping crates used for cows and pigs will be abolished or increased in size to humane conditions. Prop 3 allows the state to raise $1B by bonds to build several childrens hospitals in the state.

If only the NSW or Australian governments would have such initiative at the polls. I’d love to vote for important things like high speed rail, new hospitals & human rights. By issuing bonds the market assumes the debt for the new construction so the states precious AAA credit rating won’t be hurt. Effectively the bonds pay for infrastructure which is state owned. Even if the government was to default on the bonds (Highly unlikely, and unknown to me if this has ever occured), the infrastructure would still be there. Pension and Superannuation funds love Bonds as they are a more reliable investment than stocks in the long term, with garunteed returns in the form of the interest repayments twice yearly. Instead of selling off public infrastructure like railways, power plants & airports, the government can raise money through the market to build more. Which provides an income stream to the government long after the bonds are paid off.

Pictures soon, last week we got a truckload of spent mushroom compost and now have 2 new garden beads, need to get some dirt for them still.

Now have the following growing (like crazy after the recent rain)

Snow peas.
Purple Runner Beans.
Broad beans.
Capsicum.
Squash.
Perpetual lettuce.
Perpetual Spinach.
Beetroot.
Dill.
Thyme.
Rocket.
Parsley.
Celery.
Small Orange Watermelon.
Strawberries.
Cherry Tomatoes.
Passionfruit.
Peppino.
Sweet Basil.
Lemon Balm.
Lemon Grass.
Pineapple Sage.
Burpless Cucumber.

And seeds recently sown;

Carrots.
Parsnips.
Lettuce.
Chives.
Spring Onions.
Lebanese Cucumbers.

What a joy it will be to harvest.

There is nothing quite like a plan on the back of a cocktail napkin. I’ve been working hard to bring my vege patch up to scratch in time for August planting and just made it (Photo’s soon). I’ve also been door knocking Summer Hill in preparation for the upcoming election.

After September 13th, regardless of the outcome, I’ll have more spare time on the weekends. If there is one thing door knocking has shown me, it is that Ashfield is full of fruit trees. Mostly lemons, but also oranges, apples, pears, apricots, plums and even nuts like macadamias.

I recently read about the Portland Fruit Tree Project. A co-op who help people harvest and utilise their excess fruit. Most fruit trees produce far more fruit than the average household can use. For instance a box full of lemons that Crazy Mumma writes about.

So after the election I’m going to co-opt some friends into forming a co-op with me to start first an Ashfield/Burwood fruit tree co-op but then who knows, maybe even the world.

The idea is simple. A bunch of people agree to share the fruits of their garden. They either allow unlimited access, for instance a lemon tree in the front yard that anyone can harvest from when they need a lemon, or allow a working party to go onto their property during prime harvesting season to collect the fruit. Everyone who participates in the working party takes home as much as they’d like and the remainder is either sold through a co-op shop (probably wholesale to an existing co-op rather than at a retail level), or donated to charitable kitchens or houses (I think all youth houses should have a bowl of fruit at all time).

There is a nominal fee to join the co-op for harvesting, which covers insurance and also printing costs for flyers and advertising. As much as possible this should be a viral group to keep costs down.

So in a few weeks I’ll start hounding people about this, but until then feel free to email me if you’re interested.

Two more cities offering public bike rental services: Sevilla and Cordoba – AutoblogGreen Due to the success of the Bicing service in Barcelona and similar services in Lyon and Paris, two more cities have decided to support public bike rental services, Sevilla and Córdoba, in the region of Andalusia (Spain). The plans for Córdoba are very modest, due to the relative small size of the city: 35 bikes in 4 stations, linking the historic center with spots such as the City Hall and the High Speed Train (AVE) station. The service, called Ciclocity, is free for everybody but requires registering personally at the council offices. Sevilla has more ambitious plans. First of all, the model will be copied from Lyon’s bike, (I’m sure they took note of the strong criticisms that the Barcelona model has) with a beefed up service, named Sevici, with 2,500 bikes available and 250 parking stations distributed in all city districts, managed by JCDecaux. The cost is only 10 EUR/year or 5 EUR/week, with the 30 first minutes of rental for free (1/2 EUR for each additional half-hour). Currently, only two stations are working for free demonstrations in the city center but the complete deployment is expected for mid-2008.

I love this, these bikes combined with reliable and safe cycleways are a brilliant answer not only to public transport issues, but also obesity issues. Let’s face it, we are getting fatter, and not getting the exercise we used to when hunting on the Serengeti or fighting for King and Country with swords and 100kgs of armor. The cost of deploying something like this is obviously going to be peanuts compared to light or heavy rail, buses or even my favorite, the monorail. Lets get rid of the taxis and buses in the Sydney CBD and have nothing but bikes between Central and Circular Quay on George, Pitt, Castlereagh, Margaret and Elizabeth streets.

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Apparently my home suburb of Ashfield has a new name. I must be out of touch, I’ve never heard it before. Well ok, so my friends call the local pub (The Ashfield) The trashfield, but that is more an example of good old Australian (Cockney) rhyming slang. Certainly the Ashfield hotel is a lovely pub that has had a lot of recent renovation and is certainly not trashy (well, perhaps some of its clientelle…). Anyway, I digress. I read this in the Village Voice today

The decaying state of Ashfield’s town centre, described variously as “filthy, grimy, stinky and terrible”, could be blamed on the propensity of councillors to reject any substantial development proposal in the area, local businesses have claimed.

The state of the suburb has earned it the embarrassing nickname “Trashfield”. But Ashfield councillors seem reluctant to support major developments which could help it shrug off its shabby image.

The situation has angered local developers, who are frustrated after failed attempts to gain council approval on projects they believe would improve the commercial centre.

Read the rest here.

I have just spent a productive couple of days in the garden and whilst my back is a little sore, I feel the better for it. On Monday Nikki and I drove out to Elf Mushrooms to pick up some spent mushroom compost. The mission was a success and for the princely sum of $9 we had 9 bags of 5 heaped spadefulls of the black stuff. On the journey home we stopped off and purchased 2 more water barrels, as well as 2 large blue plastic pots that I’m sure we’ll fill with something. Total cost $50. All in all we spent $65 on the day including the bags to put the compost in.

First I needed to build a garden bed. Fortunately I had already weeded and forked the strip along the side path for just such a purpose. While only about 30-40cm wide, it is several metres long, and ample space for some vegetables. I used some timber cladding I had purchased for a now canceled cubby house project to create the barriers. I made them 2 pieces of cladding high to keep Ash out of them, and to reduce the amount of mulch that would blow away. I dug in all the spent mushroom compost and mixed in some water saving granules. I then watered the whole mix down, and covered with a bags worth of sugar cane mulch. I spread the mulch as thickly as I could to kill of any weeds that are still alive in the bed. I plan to start planting in a week, in the meantime I’ll give the bed time to settle and soak.

I also cut down our orange tree, the oranges were never sweet, we assumed they were good marmalade oranges, but we don’t make marmalade, and who has the space for a massive prickly orange tree in their backyard. The wood I saved for use in a fire next month for my birthday celebrations, and the leaves and oranges I bagged and disposed of in a council cleanup that is going down our street. I could have mulched the whole lot, but we have had a major problem with fruit fly and stink bugs of late in this tree, and I don’t fancy the smell of a stink bug after the wood chipper has had a go at it. This weekend I’ll be removing the grapefruit tree, and hopefully this will deter the fruit fly and stink bugs permanently. The only other fruit tree in the yard is an apricot that is now dormant for winter. (Neither Nikki or I eat grapefruit, so not much point having a tree, see point above about marmalade.)

Lastly, in the same council cleanup I acquired a dozen various pots, including 6 terracotta ones. Two plant stands, a blackboard for my son & a BBQ, well more correctly a BBQ stand, the BBQ part is old and rusted, but the wooden base is quite solid, and on 4 wheels, perfect for a mobile gardening bench. Net result, as with all council cleanups, I have brought more stuff into my house than I have disposed of, but I feel like I won.

If you live in Sydney you know it has been raining for the past two days. If you live in the east or inner west you know it has been bucketing down. Further out west there was a lot less rain, and further out west is where the dams are and their catchment areas. According to the Sydney Morning Herald most of the city had 40-50mm of rain and some areas had up to 80mm overnight. Where is this water going? Well a quick stroll up my street the an open storm water drain that feeds into Sydney Harbour reveals thousands of litres of pure, fresh and drinkable water flowing into the ocean.

We have a 220 litre barrel under a downpipe at the back of our house to catch rainwater. It only catches water from one small section of the roof, approximately 25sqm, last night it filled to the brim and overflowed. That one barrel provides all the water we need for our garden for a week. If we had of had the entire roof (approx 150-180sqm) hooked up to barrels, we would have needed 35 barrels at a minimum to capture all the water, if not more. If we had a 10,000l tank it would be 3/4 full, and we would have all the water we need for almost 6 weeks for our entire household.

Clearly what Sydney needs is not a desalination plant, we need rainwater tanks, and many of them. Every house that can fit a rainwater tank should, every business, every hotel, government office etc etc. Councils should make it a requirement of all new developments that they have a rainwater tank of at least 10,000l included. Every train station should have its ample roof space hooked up to rainwater tanks, providing the water for the staff’s tea, and for flushing toilets, cleaning etc. Strathfield station would have collected a staggering 320,000l of water from the rain last night. (Based on a rough calculation of 1600sqm of roof on each of 4 platforms and 50mm of rain falling).