Planting The Seed

Will I, or won’t I? That was the question gnawing away in the back of my mind for four whole years. In the end I said to myself I will and I am ever so glad for that decision!

First, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Peter Duggan and I am the convenor of Transition Dubbo. I moved out here in 2015 after having lived in Sydney for several years. I must admit I didn’t particularly enjoy my time in Sydney, but taking part in various community and environmental groups made it worthwhile. One of those groups, and by far my favourite, was Transition Bondi.

I first came across Transition Bondi back in 2011 when I met Lance Lieber who invited me to the next film night they were putting on. First impressions were of friendly, welcoming people and I have to admit it took me a while to warm to the genuine friendliness shown by strangers. Straight away I recognised how relevant this movement is. Rather than fighting the world that we don’t want, we can instead help create the world that we do want and, most importantly, to do it together. I was hooked and found something I genuinely enjoyed, so putting the effort in to travel by bus and train to get there from Epping where I lived was worth it.

Fast forward to 2015 and I was living in Dubbo itching to get a chance to join similar environmental groups. Although there is a river care group and a field naturalists society I felt there needed to be a group that addressed having a right relationship with nature and each other, one that brought about change in people’s lives helped reduce their impact on the planet. The idea of a transition group in Dubbo beckoned, but I brushed the thought aside. There must be someone more capable (and organised!) than myself. So, I waited …. and waited. I put the idea on the shelf and stuck to my immediate concerns of developing my own business and building my home.

Life has surprising paths for every one of us, sometimes good sometimes bad. And a happy surprise came along in 2019 when I read a blog entry about what was called a Permaculture Living Course (PLC) on the website of Artist As Family, who I had recently found out about after reading RetroSuburbia by David Holmgren. They had positions open for people to attend their next PLC and I whipped up an application before I (or my wife) could stop me. A week or two later I got the news that I was accepted to attend their next course in Autumn. No turning back now. 

After a big train trip I was warmly received into their household (consisting of Meg, Patrick, Woody and Zero the dog). Let me just say that for two whole weeks my life was dramatically reoriented as I learnt about the daily activities of this wonderful family (check out the dozens of clips on neopeasant living on their YouTube channel). The course was for free with the express concern that the skills we each learnt was to be put to good use and shared with others back in our own communities. I meekly let Meg know that I kept dreaming of starting a Transition Dubbo group but I didn’t feel like I was the right person to start it. Confidence in myself must have grown after having done the course and her reassuring and positive words tipped the scales. After all these years I finally started Transition Dubbo.

I was told by friends I had a hard task ahead of me, Dubbo is, after all, a very conservative town, but this is exactly the sort of place that needs to shift in thinking and to reduce our impact on the planet. After a slow start the reach of Transition Dubbo has been growing. We have a regular and growing number of attendees at our workshops, food + film nights, farm tours, talks, food swaps, garden digs, social gatherings and other activities. I must admit it hasn’t been easy but starting on this journey has been the right decision and I can see the important and deep changes the group is making in people’s lives. Sometimes I have to give myself a reality check and not dream too big. Yes, there are many ideas I would love to see implemented but they must wait as the group slowly emerges and evolves towards what is relevant in the context of our town and region.

Just as the seed was planted in me all those years ago in Bondi, we may see a new flourishing of the Transition movement take wind in Australia as more and more communities take up the task of addressing the big issues of our time in their own way and in their own place. In its history Transition groups have made a great impact around Australia but there is still much work to do. We just each need to help plant the seed.