Browse Forums Landscape & Garden Design Re: A bit of controversy here... 21Feb 17, 2011 8:01 pm Happy, Healthy Free Range Wessex Saddleback Pigs My doom and gloom paperwork nightmare viewtopic.php?f=31&t=32170 Construction viewtopic.php?f=31&t=43653 Re: A bit of controversy here... 23Feb 18, 2011 12:35 pm Building with Life$tyle Homes in Perth SOR Key Dates on First Page of my Thread viewtopic.php?f=31&t=38761 A bit of controversy here... 33Feb 18, 2011 8:10 pm My knowledge and connections with this particular topic go far deeper than many would be even close to aware. So far some serious misrepresentions and inacurate opinions are being spoken. The rich history and length of time the numerous indigenous nations inhabited this land speak very soundly of how and what it takes to live in absolute harmony with the environment. We must be a part of the environment, not apart from it as much of the industrial revolution has set out to achieve. No human is superior to it nor will we ever be superior to the environment. It's concerning that after just 200 years we are now reaching situation critical. Just 200 years! That is absolutely nothing in time compared to human existence let alone the earths life span. There is no way we as a civilization are going to see out a further 200 years at the exponential growth we are experiencing in both population and economies. As a species, we need to be able to live on for an indefinite time scale. Technology is what we need to achieve that. Out live the earth itself. As I said we can't even do 200 years. Useless. Yet a rich culture like that of the many indigenous nations that existed here for more than 60000 years in harmony to a greater extent with the environment can see out a future far beyond our European concept of time. I often think of humans being the plague, not insects or animals and the like. It takes everyone of us to do something. If it starts with a smarter landscape, then hopefully we cancontinue to evolve landscapes into the future. This really is the greatest adventure with Australian plants. There they have been infront of our faces for so long. Yet all we want to use with landscapes are materials and methods that are stagnating the development of urban and rural landscapes. We are not evolving them. We are lessening the richness of lifestyle a better landscape offers. We are shutting out healthier communities all because a small group run/control/influence the mechanisms we use to gain information, inspiration and the resources we need when deciding on how to construct new urban development, and domestic landscapes. Re: A bit of controversy here... 34Feb 18, 2011 10:22 pm Nice post Fu, it's so interesting that "man" has this in built psyche to always improve and invent better ways to do do things which is now becoming our very downfall. Even our earliest indigenous people sought to learn and better the way they hunt and grew their food. We are all the same, searching for more, doesn't matter what continent we came from. A bit of controversy here... 35Feb 19, 2011 12:12 am Well right now I'm looking at the relationship of urban landscapes now and how they used to be. It blends in town planning to a greater extent. Villages and towns developed with out the car are the ones that have a far more sustainable existence. Ok let's take Freo as an example. Homes and streets have evolved from a time (not long ago comparatively) when cars were not there as part of the plan. They have had room to fit but the city developed independent of them. So getting around is easy and enjoyable. Homes are full of character and overall the population are more in touch with their surroundings. That is the very essence of a good landscape anywhere in the world. Look at English seaside villages that have become almost at one with the environment surrounding them. Cars have had to fit in, not fit the village around the car. They have mostly been there for many 100's of years. Greek fishing villages are in harmony with what is around them. Your local subdivision is grossly out of touch with it's surroundings. Having assaulted the environment to create something habitable for superior humans. Modern urban McLandscapes in no way interact or enhance the livability of the spaces we inhabit. They are decorative and not interactive. An entire industry is based on this shallow concept. There is no lpng term future in that. 1000's of years ahead based on that rubbish? It is therefore imperative to the landscape industry both here and overseas to gear itself for something far more interactive. Something that gives home owners, garden lovers, new families, what ever interest in the landscape, a better choice. Both financially and environmentally as well as from a well being point of view for the local community. Landscapes need to bring communities closer. We need spaces that make us feel good and spaces where we can inadvertently learn about nature and therefore gain an awareness of our surroundings. From that comes a successful landscape from one home to the next. The issue of town planing is harder to address. The plants in them is easy and Australian natives offer an adventure not yet explored. We have 100's of years of breeding exotic plants. Look at what we have come up with. Australian plants have only really had a few selected species bred heavily for 30 years. Metaphorically we have made every shade of green but yet to explore anyother colour. It is almost inconceivable what will be able to be achieved with better landscape advice and inspiration. Re: A bit of controversy here... 36Feb 19, 2011 9:55 am It is wonderful having this forum where we can find others that think alike! It is a bit of a joke that people cannot see the advantage of living with our environment. How important our flora and fauna are to everything that enables us to exist - talking about the air we breathe, the weather and of course our sustance in food form. In China there are many parts of the country that do not have any insects - how bad is that! If they cannot live in that environment how bad it is for humans. We must take care of the planet we live in, especially for the next generations to come. Medicine has gone ahead in leaps and bounds but is of no use unless we can get our environment under control. Re: A bit of controversy here... 37Feb 19, 2011 10:25 am Fu Manchu We must be a part of the environment...No human is superior to it nor will we ever be superior to the environment Humans are slowly (very slowly in some cases) starting to realise this. The scientific, industrial and medical revolutions of the last few hundred years have seen mankind expand greatly in population. For some time now we have skewed the balance that once existed. We need to return to, and improve upon, organic farming methods etc and not continue this reliance we have on chemicals. We're destroying our own food sources! If we were a so called 'lower lifeform' we would have starved to death by now!! Mankind's greatest talent is the ability to adapt. It has started out pretty slowly, but the more people who realise that something needs to be done now, the more momentum the sustainability revolution will gather. Fu Manchu It takes everyone of us to do something. If it starts with a smarter landscape, then hopefully we cancontinue to evolve landscapes into the future. This really is the greatest adventure with Australian plants. There they have been infront of our faces for so long. Yet all we want to use with landscapes are materials and methods that are stagnating the development of urban and rural landscapes. We are not evolving them. We are lessening the richness of lifestyle a better landscape offers. We are shutting out healthier communities all because a small group run/control/influence the mechanisms we use to gain information, inspiration and the resources we need when deciding on how to construct new urban development, and domestic landscapes. That is so true! If you add up all the home gardens and small holdings in the world, they would no doubt cover billions of acres. If these were organically managed and in harmony with their local environments, their contribution to the stability of ecosystems would be vast. Choosing to not use chemical fertilisers or horticultural poisons on your land is your choice. If you make the right choice however, you are benefiting the trillions of other living things on the planet. If you make the wrong choice, you are potentially contributing to ecological disasters of great size. Fu Manchu Well right now I'm looking at the relationship of urban landscapes now and how they used to be. It blends in town planning to a greater extent. Villages and towns developed with out the car are the ones that have a far more sustainable existence. Most traditional styles of human settlements involved a place for the community to gather in the centre and then the living spaces radiated out from this. These settlements are much more in tune with the enviroment and far more sustainable than what we have today. The difficulty with town planning now, as you probably realised, is how to create the same type of settlement, whilst allowing for all the necessities that we now rely on: transport & shops just being two. I remember that we did a school project on this back in the early 90s, whereby we were required to each design a sustainable town and consider all the things that we now expect to find. Almost everyone came up with a circular design, or a circle with spokes. Every house had large garden areas. There were always large parks or small holdings on the 'spokes', and the town was almost always surrounded by huge swathes of native vegetation. Transport was almost always trams, or electric trains (someone wanted huge travellators for some reason - hardly sustainable!) and there were never supermarkets. All food was grown and produced locally, without the need for chemicals (human waste was recycled to remove pathogens and make it safe for the land). Fu Manchu Your local subdivision is grossly out of touch with it's surroundings. Having assaulted the environment to create something habitable for superior humans. Modern urban McLandscapes in no way interact or enhance the livability of the spaces we inhabit. They are decorative and not interactive...Landscapes need to bring communities closer. We need spaces that make us feel good and spaces where we can inadvertently learn about nature and therefore gain an awareness of our surroundings. From that comes a successful landscape from one home to the next. The issue of town planing is harder to address. The plants in them is easy and Australian natives offer an adventure not yet explored. We have 100's of years of breeding exotic plants. Look at what we have come up with. Australian plants have only really had a few selected species bred heavily for 30 years. Metaphorically we have made every shade of green but yet to explore anyother colour. It is almost inconceivable what will be able to be achieved with better landscape advice and inspiration. I think any town that doesn't have dedicated native parkland near it's heart, that doesn't provide space for the residents to grow their own produce, and spends their money on ensuring that they can fit more cars through than developing sustainable alternatives for public transport, that doesn't spend time and money educating us to treasure and protect the environment around us, are failing. They're failing the people who live there by not giving them the best that they deserve and they're failing in their duty of care towards the environment. Julie R In China there are many parts of the country that do not have any insects - how bad is that! If they cannot live in that environment how bad it is for humans. Insects live everywhere - they are as adaptable, if not more so, than humans. There'll be a cockroach or two, just waiting... Insects and humans both occupy positions on the highest branches of the 'tree of life'. Some see us as being in a constant battle for supremacy - who will inherit the earth? I know who I'd put my money on at the moment!! I know it's a big enough post already, but just found these links to sustainable eco-towns in Australia and NZ and wondered what you thought of the ideas behind them and their designs? http://www.illabundavillage.com.au/ http://www.earthsong.org.nz/ A bit of controversy here... 38Feb 19, 2011 1:05 pm I have said in other media that the greatest problem we have right now is not the argument of if climate change is happening or not. It's not about who's fault it is (although recognizing there is a problem is important) it is about the dulling down of the situation, suppressing our ability to adapt. We are not adapting. Just arguing about if we need to adapt. I guess we are like a train heading for a cliff. Full steam ahead. There are people on board who have researched the railway project and say "hey there is no bridge and the line isn't finished, we better stop." Then there are those who have blind faith and no research or are just ignorant to their situation and say, "no the train will be fine everything will workout, I trust the rail company" Re: A bit of controversy here... 39Feb 19, 2011 2:41 pm Those early towns and villages were created in that way so that people could walk no more than half an hour to work or to the markets. It has changed over time, when trains were invented, it was no more than half and hour in a train and then cars - should have been no more than half an hour travel time. But this has changed and likely not for the better. People are now travelling for more than half an hour to get to work. And this is to do with poor development. You can have the most ecologically sustainable development on the outskirts of a city but do you really expect professionals to work in a deli or local supermarket? So they commute to the city because there is no work for them nearby. I may be lucky as I am surrounded by many people who care about the environment and the direction we heading. In landscaping, it was always hard to get people to have native plants in their gardens. Always grass. And these were foreigners too so I believe it doesn't matter where you are from, there will always be uninformed people who go with what is "traditional". (Although there were times I snuck in native plants in traditionally English gardens! hehe) Re: A bit of controversy here... 40Feb 19, 2011 11:28 pm topiarius Velouria topiarius I find it strange that everything that goes wrong in Australia is blamed on the Europeans. Before the euros arrived there were people here who arrived a couple of thousand years earlier. At that time there were not too many brain cells around so they did not know how to make traps to enable them to catch animals for food or even hunt them. So they would set light to vast areas of forest and bushland and stand on one leg waiting for injured animals to emerge,kill them and then think they were the greatest hunters on earth!! So why is there not one person on this thread going further back than white settlement and giving some of the blame for todays problems where it should be directed? If they had not burnt the forests at that time,which is documented,we may be in a better situation now. Topiarius Are you SERIOUS? This would have to rate as one of the most ludicrous things I have ever read on H1. Not only is it factually incorrect (look up some Austalian Archaelogy and you will find countless examples of finds of traps, spearheads, shell middens...even the boomerang for goodness sakes, as evidence of significant knowledge of trapping and hunting animals) To infer that the indigenous population are somehow responsible for the problems with the environment today, defys any form of common sense. Please explain how they could have possible done the damage that we have done in our 200+ years of settlement? It speaks volumes that from all the msgs. about damage done to Australia you did not once disagree until I gave my opinion on where it first started.If you carry on reading your books you will find these people came from Africa and yet the boomerang has never been found in any African country. This tells me that when they first came here they did not have any of the items you have named but that they were developed over time as they got used to conditions. When they do digs in Italy and find Roman chariots it does not mean that the Italian Neandertal had them so why use excavation finds as an excuse to try and bolster your opinion. Topiarius Yes I do disagree with you that the first inhabitants were the catalysts for the environmental problems we face today. 100% in fact. I disagree (and find it slightly offensive) that you portray the first Aboriginals as backward and simple when the archaeology is tangible evidence that this is not the case (that is why I referenced archaeology, rather than paint a picture of a people who "stand on one leg and wait for injured animals to emerge"). I find your posts confusing because on the one hand you appear to say that they were simple and unsophisticated and yet your statement "This tells me that when they first came here they did not have any of the items you have named but that they were developed over time as they got used to conditions" contradicts this as it shows you believe they could adapt and learn. As to why there are no boomerangs in Africa...EVOLUTION. The people who emerged from Africa and spread through the continents of the world and arrived in Australia, were thousands of years apart, and hence when they left Africa they did not have the technology. By the time they reached Australia they did (or at least had the ability to develop it) As I stated in my previous post I feel that this is getting off the topic into an area which can be quite inflammatory and I don't believe it was the OP's original topic. **EDITED TO ADD*** I note that an extra line has been added to your post If they had not burnt the forests at that time,which is documented,we may be in a better situation now.---- Just to clarify, this was not included in the original post that I was responding to. Happy, Healthy Free Range Wessex Saddleback Pigs My doom and gloom paperwork nightmare viewtopic.php?f=31&t=32170 Construction viewtopic.php?f=31&t=43653 Hi, we live in an area where the black soil is prone to a lot of movement. 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