The Permaculture Research Institute of Australia

I've been interested in permaculture since circa 2005, soon after learning about peak oil via a random email (a happy little accident!).

The mainstream paradigm suddenly appeared so obviously broken! Since then I have trained in and experimented with permaculture design. In 2010 I quit my decade long career in video game development and started a permaculture consultancy, All You Can Eat Gardens, providing a complete service: design, install, supply and maintain.

I'm interested in many areas, which I suppose is the permie's lot. My current passions include bee keeping, aquaculture, aquaponics, food forests, rainwater harvesting earthworks, biofuels, integrated animal systems, chinampas, and soil fertility improvement. I'm involved with the Graceville Community Garden, Brisbane Permablitz, and developing Permaculture design as a profession.

I grew up in semi-arid rural South Australia, my family being in primary industries: citrus, grapes and wine. I worked in a dried fruit shed supplied by monoculture. My folks still live there and when I visit I often see the result of mechanical thinking - monoculture fields and rows plowed bare, pesticides, fungicides and herbicides sprayed, river water is pumped to irrigate land seemingly designed to accelerate evaporation and salinity concentration, rain events celebrated as run-off erodes the soil and then wafts into the atmosphere. Cattle feedlots where the grass is poisoned from excess urine - the solution being to spray with glyphosate. We can do so much better and have more fun and healthier bodies doing it the permaculture way.