economy Archives - Living in the Future

When I was in school, the girls studied Home Economics. It was mostly cookery, baking apple crumble, rhubarb pie, scones, and on Shrove Tuesday – pancakes. I remember the mad scramble to get the ingredients together the night before. My Mum worked, so it was often late when we ransacked the kitchen cupboards for basic ingredients. A visit to the shop in the morning was often necessary. That evening, I bestowed my valiant effort upon the household, where my offering took pride of place at the tea table.

Although we baked at home, it was probably in school that I learnt the technique for making pastry, for “rubbing in” the hard fat into the fingertip-soft, always-white flour, adding just a pinch of salt. It was certainly there that I mastered rock cakes and developed my gift for creating sweet, sticky, oaty flapjack remains to this day.

I never gave much thought to the term “Home Economics”. To me, it was a cookery class and as I progressed through school, it became obvious that this was simply a ruse to keep women in the home. They even taught us how to wash up, first taking the glasses through the hot, soapy hot water, then the cutlery, then the plates, and finally the pots and pans. It’s a lesson I learned well and I still wash up in that order today. Why did boys not learn to cook and wash up? While we were “slaving over a hot stove”, they got to play with wood. When I was thirteen, I challenged the system and demanded to be accepted into the metalwork class. I wanted to do woodwork, but as it happened, they were doing metalwork that term. I gritted my teeth and took the teasing which went along with my presence at the workbench. I can’t say that my ashtray was the best in the class, but I got some satisfaction from finishing the exams in third place! Of course, this has now become the norm, with boys everywhere making pizzas and girls turning bowls, but then, I caused quite a storm.

I recently visited the small holding of David Holmgren, co-founder of permaculture, and his partner Su Dennett. They live in rural Victoria, near the sprawling city of Melbourne in Australia. Su and David walk the talk. Committed to a life of organic homesteading, they grow vegetables, keep goats and recycle their waste products (including humanure). They live a life which to some, might look frugal, but which is in fact, abundant. Su calls herself a radical homemaker and takes care of the food creation. Using the natural glut of the land, she bottles fruit, which she stores in her underground larder. Down there in the darkness, rich red succulence lurks under tightly screwed lids. Pears, nectarines, cherries. All preserved under her intrepid care. Bottles of cold pressed apple juice sit waiting patiently and pickles and chutneys of onion, beetroot and artichoke glisten lustily.

The business of Home Economics is, for Su, a reality. “I like making food. I love the sense of where the food comes from, that you’re getting everything that you eat locally…Food is a connection. It’s the centre of life, really.”

We share lunch out in the cool of a veranda shaded by curling grape vines, their fruit hanging temptingly in neat, tight bunches. We are joined by Su and David’s son, Oliver, and a pal of his and soon the conversation is flowing merrily as we pass around fresh goat cheese, home-baked bread and salad grown not six feet away.
“If you’ve got friends, you will often invite them around to dinner and what better than to offer them something that you’ve grown yourself, or that’s come from your local community.” says Su.
“I’m very happy to be the main cook and bottle washer and I think that the household arts have actually been maligned and that the place of the woman in the home has also been very badly maligned. It’s not that the woman should do this and nothing else, that’s not the case, but to take away the value of the household economy is very sad.”

David speaks even more vehemently about these ideas. In an essay published in 2010, he writes about what happened to the home economy after the industrial revolution.
“Women joined the workforce to help pay rising mortgage debts and support expanding personal consumption habits. The almost total collapse of the household economy followed. Much of the growth in fast food, home services, child care and entertainment industries simply reflected this shift of activity from non-monetary household self-reliance to the formal taxable economies dominated by corporations. Mounting psychosocial dysfunction expanded the need for the helping professions of health, social welfare and education as well as those of control from police and security services to deal with addiction, family violence and social fragmentation, both real and imagined.”

In these times when sauerkraut is the new pavlova, and “home-made” seems to be the ultimate hipster prerequisite. And at a time when social isolation is almost the norm, perhaps the Home Economy has something to teach us about a new (old) way of being.

NOTE : David Holmgren is a contributor in the new Living in the Future documentary Deep Listening:Dadirri, to be launched in Melbourne March 1st 2015.

In the south of Australia, Queenslanders have a reputation for being a bit thick, a bit dim, a few snags short of a barbie. I don’t know if that’s true, but according to Jon, the guy that drove our boat out to the Great Barrier Reef last week, not many people up there seem to realise the degree to which they all rely on the reef for their livelihoods. It’s not hard really. Drive into Cairns and you’ll notice an array of high rise apartments along the shore. The shiny new marina is packed with shiny new boats, all advertising trips to the reef. Daybreak tours. Sunset tours. Fishing, diving, snorkeling. You name it.
Further up the coast in Port Douglas, another row of resort hotels, day spas, camp grounds, and another shiny new marina, plus a shopping centre, all selling trips, or t-shirts, or fluffy turtle toys – essentially, selling the Great Barrier Reef.

The reef is a delicate, but prolific ecosystem. Snorkelling, immersed in that underwater world, it’s not hard to see why people flock to experience it. Coral blooms floral on the sea bed in columns which have taken thousand of years to form. Colonies of boulders or brains; branches like staghorns protruding up into the clear water. Angels, butterflies, clowns – so many varied, multi-coloured fish dart about, nibbling on the edges of coral. A green turtle pushes his face into a coral flower bed and comes out chomping. The coral is the bedrock of life here.

So it is good news that the Queensland government has just backed down and said that it is NOT going to dump dredging spoil into the marine park which encompasses the Great Barrier Reef. The question remains whether the coal they want to transport out of Queensland is worth the extra expense of dumping the spoil inland – and whether the taxpayers will wear it.

Latest figures suggest that the Great Barrier Reef generates 6 billion dollars every year, with an estimated 63,000 jobs, but when Jon takes his boat for some repairs, he asks the guy doing the welding at the boatyard about his thoughts on the health of the reef. “Well, it would be a shame to lose it” he says. “But life would go on”. “Would it?” asks Jon. “You’d be out of business, for a start!”. “How come?” says the welder. “Look around you” says Jon. “Where does your business come from? None of these boats would be here if the reef didn’t exist. None of the businesses which take tourists out would survive.”
“Ah.” says the welder. “I see what you mean”.

The same is true for every bar, restaurant, cleaning service, plumber, and retailer. Everyone up here relies on the reef. And if everyone up here relies on the reef, then think of the businesses in other places which benefit from the “also ran” effect. People come to Australia to see the Great Barrier Reef, but then they go on to Uluru, to Sydney, or to Kakadu. But it might just be the reef which is the star attraction.

Plans to build the world’s largest coal port at Abbot Point, just 50 km from the Great Barrier Reef can never be a good idea. The risk to this, one of the seven natural wonders of the world, from prolonged dredging and increased shipping far outweighs any financial benefit. Australia seems to be hell bent on stripping the land of all its natural beauty and resources. Soon, all that will be left is a vast wasteland fringed by a skirt of caravan parks staring at a gray, lifeless ocean.

Tag Archives: economy

Permaculture and the home economy

Great Barrier Reef