Welcome to Peter’s blog site. We have had many requests by visitors to our NSF websites to have an area where they could read what Peter has to say about current events and other things on his mind.
We have consequently set this blog up and pass it over to him and you, the visitor.
At times Peter may have too many email comments to reply to everyone personally, however in many cases he may cover the subjects on his next blog.
Thank you for visiting and now it’s over to you and Peter.
Lonnie
Webmaster
My friend and I saw Australian Story on Saturday afternoon and found it fascinating. We often watch Landline and enjoy positive stories about clever farming practices and terraforming deserts.
Perhaps by following Peter’s lead, we can green the whole continent from the coasts inland.
As Victoria has shown, we may have to limit the use of Eucalypts and other fire forest trees to isolated koala zones. Australia has a wealth of fire-retardant and rainforest varieties which assist in changing the climate for the better.
Hi my name is megan ward.
Please Write Back Soon As I have to get started!!! My teacher may not understand how busy Peter is.
I live in Victoria and i’m a student at Frankston High School,
I am currently in year 11 and studing Visual communication as a VCE subject.
One of the requirements for the year is to produce an event or campaign.
I have recently seen Peter Andrews documentary on ABC and i am very interested in what he is about and has achieved.
I was wondering if Peter would mind if i make my campaign about what he has done for the land so far and what has been achieved, but it would help if Peter could help me out also as i am want to make my school aware of this. In this assingment, we have to create posters and logos and have to make a speech about what we are advertising and other elements and i would like to base mine on Peters work, as i see it as a real way to address the drought issues of our country.
Kind Regards,
Megan Ward.
I saw the show on TV last night. I hadn’t heard of Peter,or his methods before. They are absolutely fascinating. Keep up the good work and I hope the polies will change laws to make it easier for everyone to follow.
Nice to have met you in Launceston last Friday at the Grasslands Conference.
Murphy’s Law predicts that I’ve lost the telephone numbers you gave me.
You said you were getting a new email address this week
I’d appreciate both, the latter so that I can send you the articles I wrote which fired up John Ryan
Kind regards Mike
Hello and thanks for visiting.
Peter has been so busy the last week or so since Australia Story consequently has not been able to get here to commence the blog. We are hoping that this week he will get some time but in the meantime please feel free to ask or comment on whatever you want as he eventually will jump into the discussion as soon as he is able. Thanks again for the visit.
Lonnie
Webmaster
A question for Peter Andrews,
As part of a web forum discussion we have been having, I inquired whether Casuarinas could be used as an viable alternative to Willow for streambank stabilistation, as it is my understanding they are the native species that commonly grow in the habitat of shallow wide spreading rivers.
Several of us are interested, to what is the advantage or disavantage of Willow vs Casuarina.
Love the work you are doing
thankyou and best regards, Tony
Peter is an inspiration. I wish that he could come to the Fraser Coast and talk to our sugar cane farmers. As a local Councillor with the Environment and Sustainability Portfolio, I worry that we are not ‘caring for our country’ in a responsible and sustainable manner. I also believe Peter is on to something when he speaks of the impact of water vapour and vegetation clearing in relation to climate change. Please don’t give up ever Peter. Many of us can see the importance of Peter’s work. Thanks, Sue
Reeds seem to like full sunshine; what can do the same job in the shade? Gympie QLD
HI LONNIE, MET YOU AT TARWYN PARK, YOU DID A GIG THERE THAT NIGHT
SHAKTI AND I WERE WORKING FOR PETER AT THE TIME’
A GUY CALLED TERRY, AND I ORGANIZED A GROUP OF FARMERS TO COME AND HEAR PETER TALK …….AT ” REGENESIS ECO FARM”…BYRON BAY
MY PATNER AND I GOT MARRIED LAST YEAR, WE BOTH RECEIVED A LITTLE INHERITANCE AND HAVE BOUGHT A PLACE IN EUNGAI RAIL 10 MINUTES SOUTH OF MACKSVILLE WE’VE SET UP A” KINDER-GARDEN” FOR KIDS BASED ON HIS METHODS.
WE’D LIKE HIM TO VISIT US AGAIN WHEN HE HAS TIME , WE’LL DO AN EVEN BETTER JOB THAN WE DID LAST TIME AND BE MORE PREPARED WITH PUBLICITY
ETC………TERRY WILL COME DOWN AND HELP ME . ONLY THIS TIME IT’LL BE OUR VERANDAH HE’LL BE SITTING ON AND BLESSING. WHEN HE GIVES THE LOCAL FARMERS THEIR …..WAKE…UP
OUR PLACE IS PERFECT FOR KIDS…BIG FENCED CHILD PROOF YARD, CUBBY HOUSE … SAND PIT ETC. ETC. AND HE AND FAMILY CAN HAVE 2 VERY NICE ROOMS FOR HOWEVER LONG THEY WISH TO STAY. WOULD YOU SEND THIS ON TO HIM PLEASE.
BY THE WAY I’M JUST ABOUT TO START GIGING AGAIN, GOTTA BLUES TRIO TOGETHER. ….CHECK IT OUT http://www.hotozzy.com MAYBE SEE YOU ON THE ROAD. WHERE YOU GIGGING THESE DAYS?????
THANKS
Regards NARGA
PS MY MOBILE NO IS: XXXXXXXXXX (edited)
Peter was featured 08/05/09 on ABC “Catalyst bytes” so the message is still being broadcast.
Good luck with the blog.
Contact me if I can be of any help with the site “http://jimbell.id.au
Jim Bell
It is indeed great to see Peter gaining recognition. We have such an ingrained bureaucratic system that has its head up its fundus. We are working with fly ash carbon, lime kiln dust and other carbon based ingredients, getting remarkable results, aiming towards production and marketing our mix in the near future. Like Peter we have visual proof and scientific credibility but our political system does not want to know about it. On ya Peter
Regards
Ray English
Mandurah WA
Peter
I am develloping land in the top end of the NT. I firmly believe in your concept of storing water in the plants and soil but due to our extreme climate I am not sure how to implement your system. I am favouring ponded pasture to try to catpure some of the 1300mm of rain that falls in the wet season and try to extend my growing season due to the extremely low carbon soils I have got but this almost contradicts what you have found.
I have read your first book once and will read it again and then you second book.
There is a lot of interest up this way in your system so any clues would be much appreciated.
Many thanks
Ewan
Dear Peter,
Well congratulations on having created a sensation and hopefully an awakening to the plight of the Australian Landscape and hopelessly unsustainable farming practices. Amazing what a little media can do for you.
Anyway, I recently finished reading your book Beyond the Brink and was so captivated by its philosophyI have at once taken up its call as far as my small acreage is concerned. I came into owning a very messed up 20 acres in central Victoria where the previous owner had attempted to run a Yabby farm. There were 17 dams on the place, all dry. The place had been ruined and looked more like an army tank proving ground than a farm. Over the last 5 years I have slowly been rehabilitating the property by getting rid of most of the dams. I only have 4 left and they each have a reasonable catchment and provide good water throughout the year now. The trouble was that after the bulldozer had got rid of the dams and re-profiled the place, all I had was a big pile of bare subsoil on the surface with almost no organic matter to speak of, very depressing I can tell you. Even before reading your book I had an inkling of what to do to bring it back and have used seeding and dozens of rolls of weathered hay to make mulch for the bare ground. Much of it now has cover but I need to do more and you have shown me the way forward. What grass there was on the place I have been mowing the last few years and allowing the cut to just lie there and add organic matter. I am now growing healthy Olive trees (250) and will be planting caperbushes this year and pistachios next year. I have done extensive replanting of diverse native and exotic species and use no chemicals other than lime application when i first planted the olives. The depleted soil had a PH of 3.5! Unimaginable!
Anyway, enough about me. There was one thing that did disturb me in your book which I felt was quite erroneous and undermined the otherwise sound logic of the message. You stated that warm air moves to areas of cool air and that is meteorologically incorrect. Warm air rises and draws cool air in to replace it, that explains the phenomena of sea and land breezes experienced at the coasts. During the day the air over the land heats more rapidly than over the sea and so rises, this draws in air for out at sea creating the well known experience of the sea breeze during the day. The variation of temperature over the sea is much less than the land and so at night the opposite occurs, ocean/sea remains relatively warmer and the air there rises drawing winds from land out to sea, the land breeze. Of course all this happens nice and regularly only if undisturbed by passing weather systems which my over-ride these local effects. I am a mariner by trade when I am not trying to save 20 acres of land and so I see this effect almost daily.
YOU ARE TOTALLY CORRECT in your later statement that forests, being cooler than dry barren land, attract rain but this has little to do with the movement of air as above. The fact is that warm air can hold much more moisture than cool air. When warm air has the opportunity to pass over a body of water it will gather moisture in large quantities. When this air travels over a hot barren land it will not rain because it is just heated further but as soon as it passes over a cooler forested or vegetated landscape the air will itself cool and no longer be able to hold the moisture it is carrying, and it will rain. Whilst it appears that the air is moving from warm to cool as you stated in your book, it is not! The already warm moist air itself is affected by the coolness of the vegetation, YOU ARE SO RIGHT. These moisture laden winds may be brought inland from the ocean by the above effects I have described; drawn inland by the even hotter, but dry rising column of air over the land. These are two separate but related processes. Your book makes and error of fact in stating that warm air flows to cool air.
I hope I have made this clear enough to follow and hope you can correct this in subsequent re-prints of which I wish you very many! Thank you so much for your work! Please read also THE ONE STRAW REVOLUTION by FUKUOKA if you ever have time he shares your philosophy and re-enforces it in so many ways. It was written in the 1970s.
All the very best to you,
cheers, Thomas Clarke
The ABC suggested that I contact this site. I’m trying to complete a application for Peter Andrews as Australian of the Year. However, the form requests details such as address and telephone number. Can you please assist?? It’s now a matter of urgency as apps need to be in before August 31st. Great work Peter, all Australians need your practical brain!
Hello Thomas,
Thank you for the kind words.
In the absence of plants, who are the engineers who reverse these process because they are solar operated air conditioners.
Obviously there is a threshold where one condition is dominant. The reductionist scientists who are not gardeners have clearly only examined one aspect.
e.g.
If you have a forest along a coastline that fills with water vapour, it is therefore cooler than the one which has only been evaporating water from the seas.
The forest and the evaporated water that has absorbed all the heat, if the forest is extensive enough that the heat remains in the forest when the source of energy, the sun, recedes, the cooling effect condenses the water inn the forest, drawing warm saturated air to replace the water that is condensed in the forest.
Russians have extensively researched this process, calling it a biotic pump which can extend forests for around 2000kms inland.
That simple explanation is that sea breezes occur in the absence of veg and the biotic pump occurs when vegetation is in place.
Regards,
Peter
Hello Ray,
Please don’t forget that the biodiversity of this continent produced all the products you have above named. As we need to produce healthy compounds and products, we require the bio diversity, the hallmark of this continent,.
I applaud your ingenuity and capacity to produce plausible results that under economical rationale don’t ever effect the Australian landscape produced results far in excess of what we can achieve sustainably powered by sunlight and gravity. It is amazing that they are still available and we don’t incorporate them into our thinking.
Regards,
Peter
Hello Jim,
Like myself, you have one vote, therefore an equal level of power.
I applaud your interest, and will do whatever to speed your endevours to facilitate some action of all these principles.
I remind you that I am not talking of my own opinion. I am only talking of outcomes clearly evident that in this landscape, is offered to us.
Regards,
Peter
Hello Terry,
Plants only need 1% of the sun’s energy to perform.
All our fruit and most of our nut trees are under story to rain forest plants.
Regards,
Peter
Hello Sue,
Thanks for the response and please read the above answers.
Yes I would be pleased to talk with your people so that hopefully and collectively, we can make a difference.
Please write to info@nsfarming.com about your request. They will contact you.
Regards,
Peter
Hello Tony,
Thank you very much for your inquiry.
You will appreciate in the above dialogue, that the natural sequences of Australia, facilitated water moving through the higher area of the sedimentary deposits. This automatically guarantees that the water in the soil was under pressure and the source water was from the highest point.
Science has not been able to explain why plants live in a pressurised area of groundwater but they know why the likes of willows and wetland plants live in the negative areas. We have so changed this landscape that most areas now require the negative area living plants such as willows and recognised wetlands (swamp) plants. The Australian wetland system however traps sediments and therefore grew faster than the surrounding flood plain (similar to the formation of an extended delta) resulting in over 90% of those areas achieving a positive inground water pressure and facilitating the dominance of the Australian native plants. However, we have introduced 500 different species of foreign animals that has disrupted the native plants and we will require those plants that compensated for the impact of those animals in their evolved environments.
Now we have hard footed animals and many others that eat vegetation whereas most animals in Australia ate insects and had soft feet. I can’t believe the ignorance of people who quote native and non native when such profound changes have occurred. In short, from a perched flow system (Australia’s) to a drainage system (Europe), science requires us to examine all aspects before arriving at the solution.
Regards,
Peter
Hi Scott,
Like myself, you have one vote, therefore an equal level of power.
Thank you for your interest, and yes we hope changes will be forthcoming, sooner than later.
I remind you that I am not talking of my own opinion. I am only talking of outcomes clearly evident that in this landscape, is offered to us.
Regards,
Peter
Hello Richards,
Whilst your common sense understanding is to be applauded, only the continent that evolved from Gondwanaland should be the focus of our attention.
It had created arguably the greatest bio diversity of any continent on this planet. We have made extraordinary mistakes and the interest of people like yourself will contribute to the reinstatement of the natural process that was the feature of this continent prior to human intervention.
Regards,
Peter
Hello Megan,
You, your generation and the generations which follow, are the ones who will ultimately be left with the problems we do not solve today. We are trying to get things moving as fast as we can, however changing old habits and attitudes of governments and bureaucrats is harder than many understand.
I wish you well in your project and by the time you read this, someone from NSF would have been in contact with you to offer what we can, in the time you have given us.
Thank you for your interest. and good luck.
Regards,
Peter
Hello Jill,
Whilst I am honoured you’d think of me for Australian of the Year, I am more interested in helping Australia become sustainable for far more than a year. With people like yourself helping to spread the word, maybe we have a chance.
Regards,
Peter
Hello Ewen,
When the Australian landscape particularly Qld, had a feature referred to as gas melon holes the function of these systems was to establish dynamic bio diverse communities of plants that could create a hydrological pattern that allows these plants to co exist in such a way as to maintain a surface fertility because the rim on the melon hole was a contour. When the melon hole filled in the wet season, the organic floating material was deposited on the rim of that contour line automatically lifting that fertility to the highest area in that biological progression.
The recycling of these residues was the dynamic aspect oft the Australian landscape that compensated that extreme wet/ dry process allowing the uniquely efficient plants that were the hallmark of our landscape.
We have now seen 60,000 years of human intervention first by burning and disrupting these these plants, second by the grazing on introduced animals that has created the circumstance that precipitates your question. As this is a highly complex set of relationships, I have only attempted to describe the simple functions you are able to manipulate…
1. a contour, storage pond which creates a water table facilitating the maintenance of surface fertility. W e can’ t go further at this point, the detail can only be explained by understanding the relationships that we have described and how our European requirements had used these principles to their advantage.
Hello Narga,
Congratulations on your marriage. When we are up in that area again, we will try to get over to seen what you have there now. It sounds interesting.
Lonnie is still recording and performing all over the place as always, and sends his best.
Regards,
Peter
Lucky to catch Australian Story today. Also caught the story 4 years ago and don’t have time to view a lot of TV, so this is a bit of an omen.
Hopefully the flood gates are opening, pardon the pun.
For too long the community has had to follow the bureaucrats – regulation by compliance rather than best use practice.
I’ts difficult to research if you don’t get the money and adhere to timelines and guidelines for the wrong sorts of returns – the true philosophers such as yourself tend to starve or be strangled!
Lots of strong, irrefutable messages from you Peter.
Here’s a couple, just to let you know we are listening.
1. Nature depends on cycles and when we burn, plow etc we are causing components to be lost from the cycles which can collapse.
2. What worked in Europe may not work here and in many cases, didn’t due to different soils, turbidity, climatic conditions; the list goes on. Then again, it is easier to use someone else’s tools than build your own. If it doesn’t work, you have someone to blame.
3. Lateral thinking is depressed. Leonardo Da Vinci, Aristotle and Peter Andrews were/will never always be 100% right, but have sure made a positive impact. We now concentrate on Leonado’s successes, is there an ulterior motive to concentrating on what might be seen as Peter’s mistakes?
4. Sometimes it may not seem complicated enough to work!
I often get the feeling if there’s not enough numbers or letters in the formula, it’s doomed to failure.
Well done.
My wife and i are hoping to travel to one of your field days in the near future.
Regards,
Les.
I recently watched the repeat of Australian Story on the ABC and applaud what you are doing for the enviroment in this country. My job is in an office, working on a helpdesk talking to people in the cattle industry and every now and again the subject comes round to how the drought or floods are affecting these people. I listen and hear the sadness and frustration that comes through in their voices. These people are committed to the land and hard working. They need help to combat what is happening to them and I believe that the help should be positive, constructive help. Not just a government or charity hand out that they have to justify and fight for. These people deserve our respect and something needs to change in the way things are done, the government should understand that and rethink what they are doing at the moment.
I don’t work on the land so I cannot “preach”, I am an observer living in the suburbs of a city hoping that your message will be acted upon. I can say thank you though and mean it from the bottom of my heart because what you do gives this country hope.
Can I ask if you have any do’s or don’t for us city folk. What can we do to help, most of the population of this country live in or around our cities and towns. What can we change in our lives that will help the land, what knowledge should we gain to change our ignorance and make us a part of the solution?
Hi Peter,
If I could take some of that precious time of yours I’m curious about the statement you have made about how we have stuffed up this continent in the last 60,000 years, initially by burning. Could you elaborate your thoughts on this subject? Are you suggesting there is a link between regular buring over many millenia and the adaption of sclerolphyll vegetation and development of a dry and arid climate?
Yours appreciatively,
Jareth.
Enough of Penny Wong’s nonsense on the Murray Darling rivers! If only the Abbot could encourage his followers to read Peter Andrews book Beyond The Brink, then with the support he could achieve, he could easily bring his “mob” back to the position they once held? Surely us “aussies” can see through this “blonde haired wonder” that we have now? I don’t wish to use this as a political statement as i have little time for any of them! However i am sensible enough to realise that if we do not implement Peters methods ASAP, then we will not have much hope for the future? I just hope a lot more “aussies” can spread the word?
Come on “Singo” open your purse strings? Get up your mates and get “em” moving too? Peter needs every “aussies” help.