Take
time out in this beautiful place and enjoy a unique opportunity to
focus on Knowledge, and prepare for possibilities in 2024. We look
forward to seeing you!
The Program commences Saturday 27th April, at the Conference Hall.
2.00pm
- Updates Meeting - with speakers from the KS Team, Ivory's Rock &
Amaroo Update, Sponsorship, Volunteer & Launch of the new PEPEDU!
More details coming soon.
3.00pm - Afternoon Tea served on the Verandah.
3.30pm - The first module of new PEPEDU for you to experience. 1 hour
5.00pm - Dinner, Live music. Bookings essential for Dinner.
Launch of New PEPEDU
As part of the launch, three modules will be offered for you to experience during the Retreat. Facilitated by Catherine Gavigan in the Conference Hall. 3.30 - 4.30pm Sat 27th (after Updates Meeting) 4.00 - 5.00pm Sun 28th April. 4.00 - 5.00pm Wed 1st May. Bookings not necessary * Please note change to schedule - three modules will be offered, not five.
PEP Facilitator Development Workshop
2 day PEP Facilitator Development Workshop. Mon 29 April and Tuesday 30 April. Daya's Restaurant. 20 person capacity.
*Now fully booked, thank you.
Participation
There are plenty of ways to participate and give back. Join
the teams preparing for a possible Amaroo event, or be part of the
Retreat team, taking care of the volunteers - Light duties and tasks and
lots of fun! More information
Special Screenings and Knowledge Reviews
Knowledge Reviews and Special Screenings will feature on both Sunday mornings. The new Los Angeles 'Understanding More' will be screened on Saturday afternoon, 4th May. You will need to register and bring your Smart Card.
Catering
Order now for delicious catered meals.
Self catering is also available with facilities and equipment provided.
The Farm is open Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday 10am - 3pm for fresh organic produce. A daily shopper service will pick up items in Yamanto.
*Bookings are now closed
Accommodation
You can arrive from 1pm - 5pm Thursday 25th April.
Cabins - Air conditioned Ensuite Cabins in Orange Campground or Cabins in Jacaranda Campground - contribution $20 per person per day.
BYO linen/towel or hire linen at $40. Blankets, pillow & quilt are supplied. Please clean your cabin when departing or you can choose the pay for cleaning option at $50.
Powered camp sites - Jacaranda Campground - contribution $15 per person per day. BYO Tent/Campervan (linen/bedding not supplied)
Like a half forgotten nightmare -- reminds me how being a 'premie' and 'keeping in touch' engendered an intense compulsion to repeatedly 'pass the test' of being able to put absolutely everything else in your life aside and make an effort so as to attend these 'events'. Half of the feeling of being a premie at an event came from a sense of simple relief that you had made it - once again. And with all that burden of sunken costs - over a lifetime in some cases - ever greater urgency to suck ever more determinedly and uncritically on whatever nonsense gets served up -- be it PEPS, PEPEDUS or whatever.
Lot of stuff there named after 'jacaranda trees'. Bit of a shame really - they are lovely when they bloom in the Spring - but being autumn the 'delegates' won't even get to see em.
Oh dear, If you draw a straight line like a railway line from Purga to Washpool it goes right past IRCC, close enough to measure the distance in metres not kilometres. Forty freight trains a day, coal trains.
When you're travelling through Queensland and stop at a railway crossing for a coal train, you switch off the engine and get out of the car to stretch your legs because they are long trains and it's a long, noisy wait.
Personally, I find that sort of thing inspiring, millions of containers arrive every year bringing goods and gazillions of tons of coal and iron ore leave. Its amazing.
Prem Rawat does love technology but it's only the sort of end point technology, the flashy cars and expensive amplifiers and remote controllers. He's not a man for physical work either, just wants technology that make up for his physical defects.
You might be inspired by unsustainable levels of extraction and consumption, but I find it appropriate that the line goes to as well as comes from, Purgatory.
The challenge is the world can't just stop, and while Oz's coal policy is unjustifiable, railed transport of freight offers the best sustainable options. There's never any perfect route for new rail lines but the hypocrisy and NIMBYism of Rawat and IRF is monumental.
yes to the NIMBYism of Rawat Inc but no to the rail line, I find it particularly annoying so I will unpack my reasons why.
We used to have a great freight rail service, as well as a passenger one. Then came the great finger pointing, they are such bludgers and grafters and sure there is a lot of that goes on in public service depts but you know what we still had a great freight service. I used to get boxes of Christmas decorations delivered from Sydney to the Gold Coast for a lot less than it became by road transport. Mainly that was because cost assessment by rail was by weight and road was by size. As you say transport of freight by rail has to be the better option, then as now. I also had a job at a trucking company around that time. Not been able to get the sight out of my mind of the mountains of truck tyres I drove past, just think of one of them big trucks lumbering by, what is it around 28 huge tyres, and they got changed every 2 weeks.
That was a small country operation, the lobbyists for the Lindsay Fox Trucking company was what you saw on the news. The rail service was discontinued and the public purse got spent on the roads. You can imagine the amount of real estate winners and losers that created, fortunes were made.
Is all this mayhem enough, no here comes the next round. Again the public purse is spent building a rail line. Where the old one was? of course not, it wouldn't fit for a start. No a new line, and now they are in the foothills of the Great Dividing Range. It just makes me want to cry.
What's not inspiring about having a nice house in a beach suburb with TVs, music players, mobile phones, tablets, vacuum cleaners, stoves and ovens, dish washers, air-conditioners, cars, etc?
You can't have one without the other.
In 1971 when I ran out of money living at Bells Beach I went and got a couple of weeks casual labour on the Victorian Railroads. I did all the work for a 4 man crew loading freight into carriages while they sat around drinking warm beer from bottles held together in large groups with plastic by taking off the bottle tops and using straws and chatting. As far as I could tell all the stories of overmanning, featherbedding and corrupt management were true.
'What's not inspiring about having a nice house in a beach suburb with TVs, music players, mobile phones, tablets, vacuum cleaners, stoves and ovens, dish washers, air-conditioners, cars, etc?'
You're so old fashioned! I do have a house with most of those things - though never a TV and there's no music system and no AC.
But I spend half my time in an off grid cabin. I really like it. Bird song, crickets, deer barking. Too small though (tiny!) so I'm building a slightly bigger one with mains water. No TV though, dish washer, AC, heating. Not interested. Not needed.
And whether you like all that stuff or not, I doubt it's going to be available much longer. What with climate change and all. Make the most of it!
I've spent my time in a shed, I built in the bush. Running water in the creek in the gully, no electricity. It has its charm though no deer but I could hear cows in the distance. I met a woman and so goodbye to all that.
This is going to be available long after we're dead and I'm making the most of it now while I'm alive. I love watching the Champions' League, the Premier League, Bundesliga, La Liga, the 6 Nations, etc. The best athletes in the world in motion.
I'd be more impressed with your choices if you weren't bragging about them.
oh goodness Ocker, what a comment to make at the end - it's completely untrue! where's the bragging in saying where he is living - you were the one who brought lifestyles up. Do you think I'm bragging in my post?
Inspiring about seeing all that extraction for the production of those goods.
I thought my answer described why it was not inspiring. I've lived much of my life without those things.
People regard such consumption as a sign of the good life, perhaps a universal and fundamental aspiration. I don't think so. I think it's a fad. No-one would choose to live in poverty, but there are other ways to find pleasure meaning and satisfaction that don't depend on the destruction of our environment.
But I accept that's the course we're on and will continue with until it's interrupted by war, or food or water shortages. So like I said you might as well enjoy it while you can.
Oh goodness. Yes of course the stories were true. But the railways were singled out for a public lambasting. My ex went to work for the Water dept. After two weeks he was taken aside by the boss of his section and told he had to slow down. They were on such a leisurely pace they couldn't even handle one person at a normal pace.
And no one was pointing the finger at the water board were they, it was all about the rail. And then we were told the money that was allocated to maintain the railway would be better spent on the roads.
okay so production - I have seen more than one person go on Shark Tank and say they are making a profit and are proud to say they are manufacturing in the US. The Sharks heads start shaking. The dollars will not roll. And they are blunt about it - you will never make a big profit if you don't restructure to manufacture overseas, they admonish.
Remember the push to get Australians to manufacture at home - keep our country strong. It was enthusiastically embraced. Well that became a certification thing and we're left to wonder were those Australian Made labels manufactured in China?
I don't want an air conditioner, don't need it with the sea breeze. The dishwasher was already here, I would never have installed it but I have to admit I like it and no longer believe I can clean dishes without it. You forgot to add the solar panels with inverter and battery or the plastic rainwater tank - actually I think those tanks might be manufactured here. Then there's my coffee machine, love my coffee machine, well not at the moment as yet again it needs replacing. My 6 cylinder petrol car. That's a Ford, 2006. Ford factory in Australia closed 1994 but it's still very good quality, lots of steel, an old fashioned car. I love it, I don't do much driving at all these days but grateful to have it when I do.
Oh and my solar hot water tank. well it's endless isn't it as you say. A steady stream of pillaged earth for a steady stream of manufactured goods of ever greater numbers, new features - but manufactured with diminishing quality and durability.
I would much more happily have a much more modest number of goods and a bit of happiness all round. Such a hippy I know.
My question was what's inspiring about making Chinese businessmen even richer. We know they do it by pillaging their people and their country.
Really my take is that it is that drive for super wealth that has caused the bulk of destruction and poverty all over the world.
And I do think many of us would be happy with sticking to a modest amount of wealth. Me, I find super wealth super yucky. I am distressed by poverty.
Like us all I was born as a consequence of an ongoing circumstance - one among billions. tbh I don't even feel guilty for liking the dishwasher.
I don't expect the rail line not to happen, I don't even want to try and fight it, but it doesn't change how I feel about that rail line. I know it's not the first outrageous grab and I know it's not the last but somehow I am feeling it, maybe because I live under Mt Chincogan which is on the Range - it feels like a desecration of country, a bite too far, a super bite.
I only lasted 2 hours on the Water Board when I was told "Son, we don't work that way on the Water Board." I took the job mainly to see how the other half lived. It was the first time I worked with an Aborigine and old Yugos.
The Chinese Miracle is inspiring. I don't know the figures but untold millions of Chinese had their quality of life improved enormously by the rise of capitalism in China. Like from starvation and poverty to a safe healthy life by working in factories turning coal and iron ore into the trappings of a modern life and selling them overseas.
Super wealth is not really a problem. The rise of the super wealthy has co-incided with the most amazing rise in the quality of life for over 6 million people in the last 60 to 70 years. The information is available, I suggest you ask at your local library for 'Factfulness' by Hans Rosling and find out what's really going on in the world. You can borrow it from the Tweed Richmond library. The Byron Bay Echo's view of the world is that of bitter old hippies who have become passé. Poverty has always been part of life but it has a much smaller role now.
okay, so I can answer my own question, you are serious!
I am not going to the library for that book, but if I were a US student I would at least briefly entertain the idea of taking Bill Gates up on his offer of a free copy just for the fun of getting a present from him.
This seems very Pollyanna was the thought wandering across my mind as I read the article in Wikipedia and looked at their faces in the photo of the professor with his children and then I see Pollyannaism is the word one of the reviewers used.
There's a few issues I have just from reading an extract but let's stick to wealth - categorising the wealth of people by their country?! Isn't that just a wonderful way of sweeping the poverty stricken under the carpet - average them out with the millionaires and billionaires.
I think you're right there must be some sort of a middle class developing in China, not going to categorise working in their factories as safe or healthy though.
And let's juxtapose it to the story I heard about a remote village. These are people who have lived in the same place up in the hills back into the mists of time. Along comes someone waving his modern licence and before you know it their forest is gone. There is a factory being fed by the logs, they have to work in it and are being told what to grow in their fields.
I don't know for sure that story is true. I believed it at the time, I do think it probably is true.
Asia is still a lot more feudalist than capitalist, isn't it. And that's the sort of act that makes someone super wealthy.
Its not Pollyanism, its based on actual national and United Nations statistics. Its like how many people in a country now ride motor-bikes instead of bicycles, what is the average amount of food being eaten, how many extra years of education, how many villages have electricity. The things that matter to poor people. Its not about averaging out paper fortunes.
I have no doubt that many terrible things are done in the world but overall there has not only been an improvement over the last 500 years but a dramatic improvement over the last 70. Why are you sohung up over the super-wealthy? Its what happens to the poor that matters and if poverty is being alleviated and it is to an extent never before imagined then that should override your concerns about the super-wealthy.
Ocker, if it isn't pollyannaism I don't know what is.
nothing wrong with a bit of pollyannaism, looks like writing a self-help book on how to embrace it has been profitable for them.
I don't think it's a good idea to always be downplaying or pushing aside awkward facts.
Looking around Google I can't find the graph that I was looking for but found plenty of stuff saying the same - world forest after Ice Age 6 billion hectares, goes down to 4 billion hectares at the turn of the century which doesn't seem so bad except that half of the lost 2 billion just happened in the previous 100 years.
pollyanna that away if you like but I'm not going to. and I sure as hell can't pollyanna away that Chinese Miracle of a spring roll that gave me anaphylaxis.
It's a long time now that I have thought we are the lucky generation born into a time of relative peace and plenty and I just hope it stays in reasonable shape for the term of my natural life.
Then 13 pointed out that it wouldn't take much to turn things around, actually still possible to aim for a healthy world.
But then came the ban the plastic shopping bag campaign. Do you think this will stop the plastics factory from making one less bag? For some reason this didn't stick in people's minds but the next week after the bags were banned we got a give away of little coloured plastic toys and of course we get to buy those very nice insulated plastic carry bags with the straps that give way too quickly.
I do not necessarily vote Green. Sorry, I just think it will spawn a feeding frenzy and I shudder at the thought of a wave of little hitlers enforcing the new rules.
In other words I agree with my teenage self - might as well enjoy what we have now and not expect it to last.
I am not hung up on the super wealthy, how we got to the Chinese Miracle seems a bit after the fact to me but here we are and my after the fact musings have had me wondering whether we could have prospered as a whole without them. ie hungry we are going to be, greedy we can handle but super greedy was too much?
