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Terry White
Western Alliance for Greenhouse Action Co-ordinator
The brown rice pitter-pattered into the cooking pot as we talked, in the seventies kitchen of brown laminate and floral tiles. Terry White had agreed to talk to me about his work in the 'green movement' and had generously offered to cook some dinner for me as well. I was a little embarrassed to receive such warmth from someone I knew a lot of information about, but whom I had never met. I was out of my comfort zone here in Melton. The drive to this outer Melbourne suburb was foreign and flat. It was too far from trams and bluestone-cobbles, but not close enough to bushland or forest to be attractive. Terry's part-time address is connected to his work at Brimbank City Council, but his home of Maryborough was never far from the conversation.
While the water went into the pot, and the heat was tempered to a boil, Terry talked about the move to Maryborough and his work with the local community. 'Project Branchout was inspired by the (American) President (Franklin D) Roosevelt and his Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) of the post depression era.' With large government funding the Maryborough group 'attacked' the salinity devastated areas of inland Victoria by planting over 300,000 trees in thirty-three municipalities in the 1970s. 'It was recognised at the time, that the removal of trees through farming and clearing had created an imbalance, and the saline groundwater had risen to the surface,' he said. This phenomenon literally poisons the earth and stops anything from growing. Branchout created work for the rural unemployed youth, and was the largest project of its type in Australia.
The project was to become a signature of Terry's strengths, of building connections between people and rebuilding broken ecological systems. Other organisations he initiated or was recruited to were Saltwatch, the West Australian Ribbons of Blue and Waterwatch. These organisations bought volunteers, landowners and students together to help monitor the health of creeks, rivers and tracks of land. Through this information gathering and education of communities, the organisations developed partnerships with local and state governments to build strategies to repair broken bits of land and clean up waterways.
It occurs to me that brown rice takes quite a time to cook when I realise I have relaxed with chin on hands on elbows on the laminex bench and Terry has leaned into the kitchen corner, at arms length for stirring the pot. I am slowly matching the information I have read with the man cooking the rice. He is a pioneer in thinking and action, he cares about people, he shares ideas and encourages thinking.
I had read about his editing the Permaculture Magazine and I ask him about its co-founder Bill Mollison. He heard Bill talk on ABC Radio National in 1978. 'I found it galvanising,' Terry says. The interview 'kindled my imagination in a profound way'. Permaculture is a system of mimicking natural ecological processes developed by Bill and David Holmes. It was part of a revolutionary way of thinking that was making sense to many people around the world. So inspired by his work, Terry invited Bill to talk to the mainly conservative community in Maryborough. They found his practicality and hands-on approach very appealing. Terry explains: 'So I think that conservative thread of rural people has been a can-do culture of necessity, when you wed that to a few crazy ideas then often they go together.' The meeting was to launch one of the first Permaculture groups in Australia and the National Permaculture Association.
Terry edited the Permaculture Magazine for over ten years and launched it internationally. He was inspired by the exchange of magazines via snail mail, from like-minded people around the world. 'I was in seventh heaven,' he says. 'It was a barter system and cross fertilisation; it was terrific. Permaculture was revolutionary and unique to us, but it was happening with different names all over the place, the New Alchemists in England doing similar work on solar energy and Heart in the UK who were doing food forests.'
As the water starts to reduce and the rice is getting close to being cooked, we start to talk about his work in Brimbank Council.
Terry founded the Centre of Greenhouse Alliance in 2000, an organisation that works to reduce greenhouse emissions on small and large scales. In 2000 he recruited ten Councils at once, to do energy audits on consumption and energy savings. Working with the Council officers, they checked through the daily routines of lights, computers, rubbish and car usage to see where practical savings, in energy and money, could be made and then how the routine and habits could become embedded in work practices.
Now there are six Alliances covering three quarters of the state. While working with the Western Alliance for Greenhouse Action, Terry is living part-time in Melton. Members include Victoria University, seven Municipal Councils, Western Region Environment Centre and Toyota.
He says the group's focus is on questions like 'What changes do you make to transform the behaviours of householders and what strategies have we got to make that cost effective? We are looking to retrofit 50,000 households in 5 years - we have identified the low-income population in each of the 7 councils and then we would be attempting to retrofit every house by 2020.'
Sometimes a retrofit can be as simple as sealing up doorways and skirting boards to reduce heat loss and energy use.
As the rice is starting to sound very close to being cooked, Terry outlines the work he had done with mapping of roofs and micro providers. In an experiment in the Hobson's Bay area, they mapped the large industrial roofs in the locality to measure the rainwater catchment capacity. 'We mapped all the big roofs for their water capture potential. We knew that 477 mega litres was being used to water the sporting fields.' Only one quarter of the playing fields were in use because of the lack of water. They found that, '900 mega litres landed on the roof area, even in the current climate. These roofs could be seen as assets to their owners and the community. It was obvious this water could be re-directed to playing fields or the Koroit Creek to improve the flow.' The same equation was done with Photo Voltaic cells for solar energy, and the potential for providing energy to the local area was very promising.
I was starting to worry about the rice but Terry continued, and I couldn't interrupt because the micro energy provider idea was bubbling in my brain. I could imagine large industrial roofs catching the sun with solar panels or the previously wasted rain, filling up tanks and then being directed to where it is needed most.
Here the renewable energy research starts to make an inroad to supplying energy needs. With university students researching how each Council could be a micro provider, the results are looking like they will debunk the theory 'unable to provide sufficient power' debate. Terry says, 'Then we have broken the myth that this stuff (renewable energy) is impossible.'
Over the pre-prepared chickpea curry and recently cooked rice, I asked Terry how he has kept going with his work in the face of the escalating bad news about the state of the planet? 'It's difficult,' he says, contemplating, 'but I see myself as a catalyst, throwing seeds - they do eventually pop up. That job is worth doing. I am a promoter and encourager of ideas. I get an immediate payoff from ideas.'
I had previously asked, in my embarrassment, if I was eating his food for tomorrow. He remarked, 'Oh, tomorrow will look after itself.'
At a time when it seems that unless we do something quickly there will be no tomorrow, his faith in tomorrow was startling. But then what else can we do but have faith in each other and tomorrow? As the graffiti near my house says, 'the future will be scary, unpredictable and beautiful'.
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