Hello

The urgent purpose in joining your group is to find like minded people with whom we might visit and perhaps have some accommodation overnight during a visit to California from June 14-18 2008.  We are also seeking to arrange visits to see Chris Alexander's works.

I am a management consultant, and Gillian is a retired nurse.  We have been involved in Permaculture since January 1988, and have spent much of that time on the executive of the local committee which ran the IPC 1996 conference.  Since then, we have been involved in attempting to establish an ecovillage near Dunsborough, which has recently failed.    On that site we built the first strawbaled class 1 residential builing in Australia.

The unique feature of the design of the ecovillage was that it chose to be totally unreticulated; that is, each house was totally independent for water, power, heating, sewerage, etc..

We have a wealth of experience and knowledge we are happy to share with like-minded people, and would welcome the opportunity to learn from you too. 

The avatar is of our 3 yo grand-daughter Rosie teaching herself how to row on the 2ha dam we had at the ecovillage.  For me, this photo sums up the ultimate goal we are pursuing - leaving a healthy world for our grandchildren.

Please email me if you know of events or other possibilities to which we might contribute.  I am rebuilding the extensive web-site we had for the ecovillage, and hope to have it lauched before we leave to go overseas in mid May.