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Read the full transcript here.

Morag Gamble:

Welcome to the Sense-Making in a Changing World Podcast, where we explore the kind of thinking we need to navigate a positive way forward. I’m your host Morag Gamble, permaculture educator, and global ambassador, filmmaker, eco villager, food forester, mother, practivist and all-around lover of thinking, communicating and acting regeneratively. For a long time it’s been clear to me that to shift trajectory to a thriving one planet way of life, we first need to shift our thinking. The way we perceive ourselves in relation to nature, self, and community is the core. So this is true now more than ever and even the way change is changing, is changing. Unprecedented changes are happening all around us at a rapid pace. So how do we make sense of this? To know which way to turn, to know what action to focus on, so our efforts are worthwhile and nourishing and are working towards resilience, regeneration, and reconnection? What better way to make sense than to join together with others in open generative conversation.

In this podcast, I’ll share conversations with my friends and colleagues, people who inspire and challenge me in their ways of thinking, connecting and acting. These wonderful people are thinkers, doers, activists, scholars, writers, leaders, farmers, educators, people whose work informs permaculture and spark the imagination of what a post-COVID, climate-resilient, socially just future could look like. Their ideas and projects help us to make sense in this changing world to compost and digest the ideas and to nurture the fertile ground for new ideas, connections and actions. Together we’ll open up conversations in the world of permaculture design, regenerative thinking, community action, earth repair, eco-literacy, and much more. I can’t wait to share these conversations with you.

Over the last three decades of personally making sense of the multiple crises we face. I always returned to the practical and positive world of permaculture with its ethics of earth care, people care and fair share. I’ve seen firsthand how adaptable and responsive it can be in all contexts from urban to rural, from refugee camps to suburbs. It helps people make sense of what’s happening around them and to learn accessible design tools, to shape their habitat positively and to contribute to cultural and ecological regeneration. This is why I’ve created the Permaculture Educators Program to help thousands of people to become permaculture teachers everywhere through an interactive online dual certificate of permaculture design and teaching. We sponsor global Permayouth programs, women’s self help groups in the Global South and teens in refugee camps. So anyway, this podcast is sponsored by the Permaculture Education Institute and our Permaculture Educators Program. If you’d like to find more about permaculture, I’ve created a four-part permaculture video series to explain what permaculture is and also how you can make it your livelihood as well as your way of life. We’d love to invite you to join a wonderfully inspiring, friendly, and supportive global learning community. So I welcome you to share each of these conversations, and I’d also like to suggest you create a local conversation circle to explore the ideas shared in each show and discuss together how this makes sense in your local community and environment. I’d like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land in which I meet and speak with you today, the Gubbi Gubbi people and pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging.

It’s my pleasure to welcome to the Sense-Making in a Changing World show today, author of a brand new permaculture book, The Good Life: How to Grow a Better World, which is released this week, so go out and get your copies. She’s based in Nipaluna, Hobart, and is a permaculture landscaper, designer, educator and changemaker. You may have seen her as guest presenter of ABC Gardening Australia, or youtubing with her goats. Her bright pink hair and her bright pink house reflect the vibrancy of passion and commitment she brings to all her work for a climate safe future and a just transition. My guest today is Hannah Maloney. Enjoy! Welcome to the show, Hannah. It’s so great to have you, thank you for joining me today here and thank you the other day, too, for joining the permayouth in conversation. They were so absolutely thrilled to have you there, I mean you should have heard of the chatter after you left, they were so excited.

Hannah Maloney:

I’m so pleased to be here and I was stoked to be on the permies conference as well. That was wonderful. Yeah.

Morag Gamble:

Thank you. So I’m sitting here, I’m joining you from the land of the Gubbi Gubbi people on the nestled, on the banks of the river that is known as the Mary river, but previously known as the Moocooboola river. You’re down in Tassie, what’s the traditional name of Hobart.

Hannah Maloney:

Yeah. So Hobart’s traditional name is Nipaluna and we’re Muwinina country, which is the broader region around Nipaluna, the base of Kunanyi, which is also known as Mount Wellington, so yeah, beautiful country down here.

I look over the big ocean and river from where I am on top of a little hill. Amazing.

Morag Gamble:

You’re not originally from that area though, are you?

Hannah Maloney:

No, no. So I’m from Meanjin in Brisbane. So I grew up in Karumba, West end. So I have really fun memories of my childhood, but also Southeast Queensland and Northern New South Wales, which is where I spent the first 18 years of my life. To this day when I hear certain birds or if I’m visiting in that region, I can smell the humidity and the plants. It takes me straight back, like it’s a home sense. Yeah.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah. Well, I’m originally from, sort of the air around the Kulin nation along the Mullen Malong river. And it’s a similar thing. There’s a difference, like that’s, in the sort of the outer edges of Melbourne and there’s a dryness and a certain sense of the oiliness of these apple gums, which have amazing round leaves. And there’s something about that, you know, like I’ve been here for more than, well, most of my adult life, but yet there’s still something about home and there’s something I remember talking to an elder around here saying that really always acknowledge not just where you are, but where you’re from. And that deep connection to country is so much part of who we are and you feel it and you know it, don’t you?

Hannah Maloney:

Oh yeah, it’s in us. And I think it’s a beautiful thing to acknowledge that it’s for everybody, and it’s, we all have connection to place and that sense of place and will mean different things to us, but it’s definitely there.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah. Well, today’s a special day for you. We may be hearing this a little bit after when we’re recording this, but today is the day that your book, your first book, hits the bookshop stores. Congratulations, what an amazing effort and just the most apt book to have at this time. So, I haven’t actually had a chance to look at it yet because it’s in the bookstore. So I’m hoping you can tell us a bit about it, but what I really did like when I was reading sort of the overview of it, was that statement you’re saying that, by living an ordinary life, you can make an extraordinary difference. And that whole kind of notion, that living a good life is really about, you know, having, doing climate action. And I think sometimes we can feel a little bit that it’s all too big, it’s all too overwhelming. And that there’s this concept of big picture activism and that what we do in our own homes doesn’t really make a difference. And it’s so disheartening when you hear those sorts of comments, but what you’re talking about and where you are presenting is coming from a different place, a place of what I hear you talk about is it’s like a radical hope. So, can you just walk us through a bit about your book? Tell us about what, where it’s come from and why you took the time in your amazingly busy life already to do this and share it with the world.

Hannah Maloney:

Oh, of course. So the book is called The Good Life: How to Grow a Better World. And it’s very much answering the question of how to live a good life in the face of the climate emergency, which is what we’re living in now. And a lot of us have been thinking about this for decades. So I’d been personally thinking about this for around 20 years and deeply worried about the climate science and the political trajectory that we’re on, which is a huge lack of leadership and amongst many explorations of how to be good activist in my life. I kept coming up against this burnout, I guess. I’m running out of energy. I’m upset, I’m sad and angry. It’s like, how do we do this forever? And that’s where I really pivoted and turned to permaculture because it’s quite a holistic design framework, which can nourish yourself and nourish the broader world. And so that’s what I’ve really latched on to, to keep me going as an activist, and how to create a climate just and safe world. So that’s my motivation and the book very much does step people through how you can do that in a practical sense from a day-to-day and a small scale in your home or community scale, but it really sits in a broader framework of how actually we need to flex our muscles, our activist muscles, to put the pressure on politics, media, and industry to do some drastically swift transition, make sure it’s just transition as well towards the climate safe future. So, yes, we should all compost, but it will not be enough if you don’t vote for climate safe policies and demand safe practices by big industry towards climate safety. So we have to embrace both the individual and collective, which really is the same thing. So we have to drop the ideas, okay, I can just go and look after myself and my own patch, my own garden, my own farm, and we have to also drop the other side of the stories, which is don’t bother doing anything at home. We’ve just got to be locking on into the forest or the machines, which is fantastic. We actually need to do both of those things and more.

Morag Gamble:

So what is that more? Because if we’re thinking about, so we’ve got to this point with permaculture and we’ve got our house in order. What is that more? What are those things that you are advocating where we flex our muscles and do more of?

Hannah Maloney:

Yes, I think it will be different for everybody. And there’s a couple of things to acknowledge where the more privilege you have, the more capacity you have to do more things. There’s a lot of people in the world who don’t have that privilege to work towards climate safety and that they’re just trying to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. Fantastic. They need to keep focusing on that. And people like myself and others who have more capacity, more privilege can carry those people through to a climate safe feature. So when I think about doing more, I think about how can I create, help create a good life for everybody, not just myself. We personally have a very good life. It’s very abundant and very beautiful. We have secure housing security, we have meaningful livelihoods. We are so privileged. How can I flex my muscles to carry more people with me, beyond my own personal family and friendship circles. So that’s what I think about. And that’s why I think about politics a lot. I think about community structures that can help build resilience locally and beyond. Um, if we’ve got that capacity, why wouldn’t we have a crack doing more?

Morag Gamble:

Yeah. So when you talk about politics, what does that mean to you? Because, you know, there’s some things about like I just, earlier today was in Maleny, the local town, and there was a protest outside the local politicians office, that’s politics. Getting involved at your local community garden and transforming what’s happening on the commons is also politics. So for you, where do you imagine that political activism taking place?

Hannah Maloney:

Both of those things, I think I am very focused, like in Australia we have a federal election coming up within the year. So I am very focused on advocating for climate safe policies. So that’s a short term focus for me because that’s an opportunity that’s presenting itself. But beyond that, politics is everything. What you eat is political, how you transport yourself is political, how you invest your money is political. I think people sometimes go, hang on, I got to keep the politics out of permaculture and like, what are you talking about?

Morag Gamble:

Yeah. And I’m so glad you said that because that’s exactly right, isn’t it? We sometimes have this separate thing, but politics is all about the choices and decisions that we make and how we organize ourselves and how we’re in relation to one another and the land and our food system and it’s all of that.

Hannah Maloney:

I think there’s a cultural disconnect in Australia. I think this is a bit of a blanket statement, but I think there is a disconnect going, I don’t do politics. It’s over there. It’s not for me, it’s for a certain type of person. I’m not that type of person. When I really think there’s a huge opportunity to reclaim our democracy, reclaim that politics, go, actually we want our country to look like this, and we want these people to represent us. And to remember that they are working for us, you’re not going to have to just follow what they say. They’re going to know, we can explain to them clearly and intelligently and compassionately, this is how we want our world to be. And lovingly demand that. We don’t have to just sit and take in what’s happening right now. It is a completely irresponsible use of power, which is happening and it makes me furious. So when I think about politics, I think about voting responsibly, but also supporting people to run for politics locally and nationally if need be. But we’re seeing a really interesting movement of independent voices going to stand up, which I can break free of really strong party lines which can hold people back. And I think how can we support more independent voices to get voted and get elected, which can actually really speak for the people. Yeah.

Morag Gamble:

Have you ever thought of standing?

Hannah Maloney:

Well, it’s a good question. So one of my friends, Millie Rooney, who works with Australia Remade, she actually asks me this regularly and she makes a point, she asks, but not just me, but she asks everybody in this space, like, have you considered standing for politics? Not necessarily to put pressure on people to do that, but to make people start thinking, it’s an option. And that, because really, if you look at Australian politics, it’s very white and it’s very male and that’s how it’s been for quite a long time and Millie really talks about how we have to practice, remembering that we can be there to and to potentially take that opportunity when, if it does present itself and to be praised enough to have a go, currently I’m not convinced I’d be the most useful person in that scenario. My skills, I think, are better used elsewhere. However, never say never because why wouldn’t we try if it could potentially make the world a better place.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah. So in the kind of community activism space that you’re occupying now as well as the work that you’re doing, as an educator and now as an author and also the films you put out and what you’re doing on TV, what’s happening in your local community? Where do you feel like you can step up and speak up in that space?

Hannah Maloney:

That’s a really good question. I think in Nipaluna in Hobart, around the climate emergency with some really pressing issues in our valley, if you like. So we’re one of the most fire-prone cities in Australia, at the base of Kunani. The last big bushfire was in 1967 and it burnt huge tracts of land, enormous tracts of land. And it’s very, very primed to happen again. So every summer we’re seeing dry lightning strikes, which is a really scary time. So summer has a layer of stress and anxiety over us.

Morag Gamble:

Because you’re on a hill and you’re in a tiffin house, are you?

Hannah Maloney:

Oh yeah. So we’re very, very vulnerable here as is most of Hobart. And so that’s a quarter of a million people in the greater Hobart region. And so when I think about climate action here, it’s quite a practical thing that comes to mind ago, how, and there’s a lot of community groups working on local councils, I should really acknowledge do great leadership around bushfire safety, coal burnings, cultural burnings with first nation groups and, but still, it’s not enough, it’s underfunded, it’s hugely problematic. And so I’m not a leader in that space at all, but I’m an advocate and supporter. So that’s a really, very practical thing that needs to be addressed in the immediate future. So I think that’s the one burning risk or threat if you’d like to our Nipaluna City. But then I think about what my ongoing conversation I do with our communities, how to build resilience, which is very proactive. So we do what’s become an annual edible garden tour around Nipaluna just to show people what’s possible and small or awkward city spaces. So everything from really steep to really small, to really shady, to really sunny everything in between, just to highlight that you can use some of the food, sorry, use some of the land you have to grow some of the food you need.

Morag Gamble:

So just tell us a little bit more about that, because I think that’s a fantastic movement that seems to be starting to pop up in different places. So how do you organize that? Is that a group of you or how does that work?

Hannah Maloney:

Sure, and I should acknowledge, I copied this from the Darebin Council in Victoria. Oh, that looks cool. Because I’ve been working in, what I do for quite a few years, it’s easy for me to know straight away, I can ask 20 gardens in my municipality that could open their gates for the day, similar to the open house themes, like open gardens scheme. And I’ve been fortunate enough to get some grants from the local council to fund my time and another person’s time to help organize the day, which is pretty straightforward. We use our existing website for booking systems and, you know, once people, we have the cap numbers, especially with COVID in mind. But you know, once people have got all the bookings made, we give them their addresses and the instructions for the day. And it’s a self-guided tour. So it’s quite great, it means it’s not a lot of infrastructure, not a lot of staff required. They go look, here’s the address, here’s your host’s name. And here’s your time slot that you’re allowed to go visit this beautiful garden by.

Morag Gamble:

That’s really simple, isn’t it?

Hannah Maloney:

Yeah, super simple, because I think often we get over complicated in our brains, like, oh, I’ve got to do this big thing. And we have thousands of people go through, but I don’t, I just hang out in my garden all day. I’m not running around the town.

Morag Gamble:

No. And you’re just talking to people as they come through and explain things. And so what kind of feedback are you getting from people who participate in that?

Hannah Maloney:

Sure. It’s hugely positive. It’s what I’m looking at, it’s probably one of the most successful things I’ve done in terms of community engagement and positive outcomes. In permaculture, we talk about having systems with minimal input and maximum output, and that can be applied to a garden or a community project. This is one of the projects which has minimal input from me and maximum output, which has many, many ripples through our community and beyond. So I still get sent pictures of people’s new gardens or developing gardens, or just positive feedback of going, I feel more hopeful now. I feel less anxious about our future because I understand what’s possible in a city context. And that’s equally as valuable if not more valuable.

Morag Gamble:

And you know, I think too, there’s something about knowing what’s possible, but also knowing that there’s a whole lot of other people who are doing it too. And sometimes I think there’s a sense that, you know, feeling alone in the sort of the worry about it, but when you know that this is this ripple of people doing it all throughout the city, I think maybe that can also help sometimes as well.

Hannah Maloney:

Yeah. And I think a lot of things, practical things we talk about for community resilience, which is food production, building community relationships and catching water, all those practical things, they’re actually really quick to set up there. And we saw that a little bit with the beginning of COVID, but things happen really quickly when you want them to, or you, when you need them to. And we used to run, help run the Hobart City Farm down here, which is now closed. But someone asked me the days, like why aren’t you running a city farm again, Hannah?, we need it now? And I just said to them, we all could, we could set one of those up within a month. We would have it growing vegetables. And within three months, you’d be harvesting from it. I’ve kind of gone to a space where those things can happen when people will really get behind and support them rather than only doing them, when people, some people loving it and not getting the support, you need to make it flourish. So I’ve got this, I’ve got a lot of tools in the back of my brain. Like these things will happen when the need is there and then they’re gonna pump in the best way. So it’s an interesting category and a categorization of how I spend my energy now to get.

Morag Gamble:

It’s kind of like triaging, isn’t it. It’s kind of like you look at, well, I’ve got this much energy and this is where the most value, it’s like you’re saying before that principle of like, what can you put in to get them the most impact? And I think it’s a really important thing to constantly ask ourselves. When we are focusing on this kind of work is to think, you know, have that reflective time, thing is what I’m doing the most effective use of my time. And that bigger picture of creating a climate-safe future is kind of the goal. We can become very busy. You know, it’s so easy to busy ourselves with a whole lot of stuff. We were talking about this just before we pressed record and so many great things to say yes to all the time, but where, and how you decide that is, is it’s really challenging sometimes. But I think it’s important to stay in that reflective space. And also to know, like you just said then, that you can, you’ve done it, you’ve seen that it can work and it’s really, yeah. It needs that sort of momentum to make it happen. I wonder what else about like, you also work in the transport energy space, tell us a little bit about that.

Hannah Maloney:

I think you’re referring to the good car company, am I right?

Morag Gamble:

I think I am, yes.

Hannah Maloney:

Just checking. Technically, I’m not involved in this. This is a business that my partner and two dear friends run and they import secondhand electric cars from Japan. I’m at reduced price and they run what they call community bulk buys across Australia. So people can access them more affordably and also not have to do the insane amount of paperwork and processing involved in bringing a car in from different country. So, um, I’m on the very much on the periphery of that, but, uh, we’re all very interconnected. So they started that business around two years ago, I think. Um, and it was directly after the last federal election actually, where we were really disheartened that liberal government got back in with no climate side policies at all. Um, and the complete opposite actually. So that was the very much like the motivation is like, what else can we do? So we’ve got my own business. Good Life Permaculture, which we really value that work. And Anton and two other friends went, what about transport in Australia? It’s hugely problematic with the amount of emissions it produces and helping the transport industry to transition to electric vehicles is one small thing. It’s not the solution at all, but it is part of a bigger picture of what could be happening. And if you look around the world, they’re leaps and bounds ahead in electric vehicles, normalizing them I guess, and making them affordable and Australia is woefully behind. So the Good Car Company just having a crack like, and that’s the beauty of this, of what people like myself and you and my partner, Anton doing, we are ordinary people trying to make extraordinary things happen and some of them are working and how wonderful and a lot of things that we’ve tried, haven’t worked.

Morag Gamble:

But like you say, you give it a crack and if it works, it works. And if it doesn’t, it doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily even a failure that there’s so many other things that you either learn from that, or that have sprung out of that, it’s kind of a compost, something else to happen

Hannah Maloney:

Yeah and it’s like in our culture, failing is not a good thing. And we struggle with that cause we’ve had many failures in our life and it’s real. You have to work really hard to act, to remind yourself this is not a bad thing, we’ve learned so much through this process. And now look at what this new pathway presents itself, which you couldn’t have possibly imagined previously. And I think we have that level of privilege where we can take some risks and being in a partnership, Anton and I can hold each other a little bit when I started my business quite a few years ago, now I just quit my job, and I’m, Anton, can you cover the rent for the next six months please? And similarly, when he started his business, I’m like, oh Carrie we now have a mortgage, we bought a property with the bank. I’ll carry the mortgage for the next two years while you do this and so we tag team, and I think that’s really important to acknowledge that privilege of having a partner, we can support each other to take more risks. So it’s not for everybody, but it is for a lot of us.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah. And taking the risk and I think, I don’t know about for you, but I can’t not take the risk.

Hannah Maloney:

Yeah. Sometimes I actually go, do it be nice to have a rest or just be a bit more comfortable emotionally, but then I might have like a week off or something and be like, okay, I’m ready now.

Morag Gamble:

And like while the holidays on, you know, I haven’t had the, I go away, am I unplugged? But I got a book and it’s full of ideas and plans and projects by the time I come back and my mind just doesn’t stop about it. And I think it’s because it’s not that I don’t, you know, I do enjoy going out for a break or going sailing or walking or hiking or camping or whatever it might be. But my mind is completely, always thinking about what’s happening in the world and how is it that we can make a contribution to that.

Hannah Maloney:

And I think someone wants to listen to me. So, you know, a life of activism, you have to be, get comfortable with being uncomfortable, because you’re constantly trying to push outside your comfort zone, stretching yourself and flexing those activist muscles as much as you can and constantly trying to do more within your capacity. And it’s still hard for me to be comfortable with that all the time. Like I’m naturally more of an introvert and I pushed myself to do more and more public things to check and see if it could be useful, but it’s not a natural skill, but I’ve remembered hearing Bob Brown speak many years ago, how he was naturally within my own words, but he is implying how he was also quite an introvert as a young person, and it is practice, practice, practice, practice. So he could hold that public space so beautifully and courageously as he did for many decades and still does today. And so people like that are a real inspiration to me. I’m like, oh, you can just practice this stuff. Yeah. Why not?

Morag Gamble:

Yeah and I sort of see the same sort of pattern in what I do. Like I remember there was a point when I was about, I don’t know, 18 or 19, I wouldn’t get up and speak in public. Absolutely no way, I would just not. And it took a long time of just trying and I think what happened was that, the flame inside me was so strong about wanting to speak about certain things that it was that, that spoke. It wasn’t me, it wasn’t me speaking in front of a group. It was that bigger picture. And I think somehow, when you are speaking from the heart or that you’re part of this movement towards a change in a certain way, it just kind of, I don’t even know where the words come from. Sometimes they’re just kind of there and they have, they come.

Hannah Maloney:

That’s wonderful. Well, I think it’s important to foster that level of trust, which I’m definitely still trying to work on. It’s like, trust that I belong here, your voice is valuable and it’s important to be heard. And trust your intelligence and experience that you have, your words are meaningful. Yeah. And that’s an interesting thing to keep practicing and keep trusting that feeling.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah. That’s a little bit too, like I think, permaculture itself is a practice as well. It’s not like, okay, you can come and do one of our courses or something and all right, you’re done, you know, like that’s the opening of the door. And then it’s like what we’re talking about with David and last night with his new movie about reading landscape, then that’s practice as well. That you don’t just come with all that knowledge and skill about how to read landscape it’s about taking the time to notice and practice and being the landscape, be in community, be in communication, you know, design, design, design, speak, like it’s just putting yourself out there and being, finding those opportunities. I know, I sort of, I think I was saying before, I don’t say no very often because I just keep saying yes to different ways I think that I might be able to bring something to the table.

Hannah Maloney:

Yeah. Beautiful.

Morag Gamble:

So going back to the energy thing, I was kind of got a bit distracted there. What I was asking you about was the bigger part of that question was around transition. And if we’re to transition away from all them gas, like what, where is it that you’re speaking, maybe through your book or through the work that you’re doing in your community, you know, able to sort of offer some insights for people about how does that even happen, particularly when you’re living in a city?

Hannah Maloney:

Oh, sure. So I think that, that again, there’ll be many different answers depending on people’s needs. And so car’s an incredibly useful too especially with people who, I’ve got some friends with chronic fatigue and they rely on cars to get from their home, to the corner shop. What a wonderful tool to support them and their lifestyle and their meaningful life. And so I think cars are not evil, it’s what I’m trying to say. It was, I think we could use them more smartly and in cities, we have an incredible opportunity to share more resources. So there’s number of enterprises that are set up across Australia now that you can have do car shares. So you don’t have to actually own a car, but you can book your car use in, on the online calendar. And in Tassie, we actually sold our car in 2019 and entered an informal car share agreement with some friends around the corner. And because there’s no formal car share enterprise and Tassie at the time, so we just set up our own online calendar and it’s been going for over two years and it’s really great.

Morag Gamble:

That means, oh yeah, we sold our car, I bought a second electric bike and we made them really big, long, bikes so we can put a daughter on the back of them and that’s not for everybody, but it works really well for us. So we’re really happy with that. And we also, if we need to, if our car share friends need their car, we’ll just rent, we’ll just hire a car, there’s so many cars that’s hanging out in the city. And so I think, it’s not a perfect solution, but it is a very quick and instant solution for a lot of us and when we talk about transition, we can’t go from where we are now to this utopian fantasy of everything’s perfect. That’s probably never going to happen, so let go of that but hold on to elements of it.

Hannah Maloney:

But I think it’s like, what are some really practical, realistic pathways and steps we can start doing now? And there’s some of them, I just outlined of being really straightforward. You just have to be a bit more organized and think a bit more creatively sometimes. Another big obvious one in cities is that public transport infrastructure could be so much more especially in literature, in Tasmania, we don’t have fantastic public transport. So most of our towns and cities are designed around using cars and not trains, buses, all those other options available to some of us. And so I think that’s a missed opportunity. So I do get a bit disheartened when I see another new highway going in. I’m like, why don’t you just invest, you know, attempt that in good bus systems? Like, there’s a lot of short-term thinking going on with infrastructure development and that’s a shame.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah, Is there a really big movement? Well, it feels that from an outsider’s perspective, but for the relocalization of the food system in Tassie, what is that seeing really intact there in terms of access to what you need?

It’s an interesting question. I think literature to Tasmania has always had a really amazing food scene or culture, it’s a better word. We are blessed here as well, because we’re an island, we have a level of, I don’t think protection is the right word, but we’ve got this nice level of sovereignty or something like where we really look after our own, if you like. But we have incredible, diverse farms and food systems so we can eat so well here. And I forget that because when I have traveled in the past, on the mainland of Australia, I come back like, oh, I was so lucky, just the quality of the fresh produce, even if it isn’t organic, it’s still significantly tastier and more fresh, which is really interesting. So I think food down here is really important and it’s part of our culture and people I know, when tourists come, they’re like, we’re just here to eat? And definitely, I would say in the past 10 years, I’ve been in and out of Tassie for around 19 years and the past 10, I think food tourism has really just boomed. But that’s led to a lot more opportunity, maybe for small producers, to really craft what they’re doing. And so there’s been more celebration of local food production and local food eating as well amongst that. There’s also a really wonderful, I guess, movement of young farmers and small farmers and family farmers around Tasmania. I’d say we could always have more because, there’s, we need more local food diversity, and resilience everywhere, really, including to which, Tasmania.

Morag Gamble:

I think it’s a really exciting movement, isn’t it? The young farmers movement, I find that so encouraging because they’re coming into and often doing it differently.

Hannah Maloney:

Yeah. And I really like, especially when you think about land ownership, so it’s more and more, just not possible for a lot of people of all ages, but especially younger people. And it’s like, okay, how can we farm without owning land or owning tens of thousands and sometimes more dollars worth of equipment, you know? So that’s been like there’s more land sharing happening, there’s more leasing of land and different kinds of arrangements, which again, you can look overseas and you’ll find lots of really established precedents, but here it’s still a bit strange.

Morag Gamble:

Have you got any community land trusts going on down there at all yet? It’s something that’s starting to, I hear lots of talk about, I know again, overseas as well, it’s so well-established, and this idea of actually creating community land trusts, not just for community farms, but also for community type housing, affordable. I wonder, too, whether that housing affordability is starting to affect younger?

Hannah Maloney:

Oh, yeah. It was crazy 10 years ago. It’s even crazier now and I think someone just told me yesterday, I housed around the corner for myself for $1.9 million. And it’s not even that great of a house, and I’m this little Nipaluna in Hobart, we’ve got a really poor economy in our island and I bet you 10 bucks, it wasn’t a local who bought that house, someone from Melbourne or Sydney.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah. We’re having the same issue here, up around Maleny, and here in the eco village. There’s not so much here in the ecovillage, but around the Hills that people who’ve been living here for decades and can’t live here anymore. They’re having to move away.

Hannah Maloney:

That’s a really sad thing when people have to leave the community that they’ve grown up with sometimes, or lived with it for a long time. And what does that mean for our culture? And so when people are being displaced from where they’ve grown up, so, it’s a big chat and of course there’s homelessness amongst that as well, which is, so we have a housing crisis where people can’t even get access to secure housing, let alone a long-term or quality housing. So, I actually, I talk about it in my, in the book I wrote because sometimes people think, well, they forget that things like the housing industry is actually part of the problem and solution towards countering the climate emergency. And so these things will be found in every sector. There’s huge problems, but there’s huge opportunity as well, towards thinking more creatively and living differently. Yeah.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah. I wonder, like in an urban area like yours, what are some of the solutions that we could, like, opening up spare rooms, creating space for cabins? Like, what are the sorts of things that you’re suggesting?

Hannah Maloney:

Yeah. Like there’s definitely, and we’ve seen it everywhere. Like the tiny house movement, like where you don’t actually have to own them, but you might park a moving house on somebody’s property. So there’s those kinds of really quick fixes if you like, there’s other interesting ones, that is, a project called Home for Homes, which is the big issue set up. So it’s a national program and it’s where people can put a, I think it’s zero, 0.01% of the amount that they sell their property, they give that tiny percentage to Home for Homes and they invest that into buying homes for the homeless people and it’s quality housing. So, it’s been working really well and it’s a really simple, again, minimal input, maximum output program where you can harness a tiny bit of surplus cash and redirect that to creating a different way of housing and potentially could eliminate homelessness if people joined in.

Morag Gamble:

Thank you for sharing that, I haven’t heard of that before. I know there’s something else that I’ve heard you speak about before that there’s not, there’s a whole completely different issue, but it’s around rent and it’s about paying the rent and that’s something that I’ve heard you speak a lot. Do you want to just chat a bit about that maybe?

Hannah Maloney:

Oh, sure thing. So it’s about how do we acknowledge and center first nations people and communities in acknowledging that we are living on their unseeded land across all parts of Australia. And we can, I talk about this a lot in my work and making sure that there’s really good acknowledgement there, especially in permaculture is important. We stand on the very broad shoulders of first nations cultures across the world. Paying the rent is one really tangible way we can put your money where your mouth is. So I do a monthly donation to the local Tasmanian Aboriginal Center down the road from us. And that’s just an ongoing, no obligation donation, going look, I acknowledge I live here on your unseated land, here’s some money that you can determine what you do with it, do what you will with it. And they run fantastic programs and a range of different areas for the Tasmanian Aboriginal community. It’s a way of just giving back some self determination when so much has been taken away from them, so much. It’s just devastating to really think and feel into that. So we try to do things in every angle. That’s like one of the easiest things I can do. I’m like, why wouldn’t I do that? And some of the harder, more complex things I do is that ongoing self-education about racism, colonization, white supremacy, what that means, what’s that meant for the past 200 years, what that means now and how I, not willingly, but help perpetuate that in the size of the society that we live in. And how can I help unravel that? So self-education is again, it’s an uncomfortable thing because you have to go, oh, sht, oh fck. I’m sorry, I swore. It’s not an easy pleasurable walk in the park.

Morag Gamble:

How do you educate yourself on that?

Hannah Maloney:

Yeah, I guess it’s a lot of reading, a lot of listening to so many podcasts now, so people go, where should I look, I’m like, I feel like I see it in every direction. I look like so many books and podcasts and radio interviews and essays are out everywhere. Like, I don’t feel like that’s an excuse?

Morag Gamble:

No, it’s just opening up your mindscape to see.

Hannah Maloney:

Yeah, it’s everywhere and a lot of first nations voices in Australia and across the world, incredibly generous with providing really coherent resources for white people, which is kind of them and really breaking it down very simply. So I just read there’s nothing in particular I would point people to, but like, there’s so much to explore. And just to acknowledge the three permaculture ethics that we work from earth care, people care and fair share. And I really come back to that people care ethic, if we’re real, if we really want to be authentic people working towards good change, let’s start centering the people who are suffering the most and first nation communities are very much part of that pool of people. We lose nothing and we gain everything when we do this. Like people sometimes we’d be like, oh, it’s too hard, it’s too confronting. I don’t like this. And it’s like, this is a good positive thing. Positive things aren’t always easy, but they are always better. Yeah.

Morag Gamble:

And I guess too, it’s at, um, another group of people that is really needing, um, some support or the refugee communities and asylum seekers. And I wonder whether there’s any work with the permaculture community and those communities where you are.

Hannah Maloney:

Yeah. So absolutely acknowledging that moment and obviously we’re seeing huge atrocity in Afghanistan at the moment. It’s very much in the spotlight. We could go to unfortunately a huge amount of countries and see similarly atrocities. And so we’re in Tasmania, we don’t have a huge influx of refugees in recent years. We did, but it very much slowed down with political decisions. And so that was very sad to see. There’s amazing, different organizations like the Migrant Resource Center and associated groups who do fantastic ongoing programs for people to welcome them here and also help integrate them into the broader community in different ways, which is wonderful. And when we had literature some years ago, we had quite a lot of people coming from different African countries and parts of the Middle East. And we partnered with what’s called the Phoenix Center, which is a branch of the Migrant Resource Center, I believe, and we would work with newly arrived refugees to build food gardens in their rental properties. Like no one owned a house, but we just build these great gardens with them, make lots of food and play heaps of soccer and listen to lots of hip hop. And again, it’s a really simple thing. People go, oh Hannah, why would you even bother, like, it’s only like a six month project and I’m like, it’s cool. Like, why wouldn’t you have a crack? This is, we’re making new friends here and these people, we don’t even know the trauma that had been through, we can only imagine, and I can guarantee it’d be devastating and the very least we can do as well for them to our community in this way. So I tell that story just to highlight, it doesn’t have to be a big thing, doesn’t have to be a huge commitment necessarily, but every bit helps. I really believe that and you never know what’s going to stay in somebody’s hearts and minds as a positive impact for their life and yeah.

Morag Gamble:

And, you know, having someone who just opens their arms and their hearts and their big broad smile and have a game and a laugh and have a dance, but like, that as well as the food gardens and just the world that it’s, it’s so amazing.

Hannah Maloney:

Yeah. So these little things can have big impacts.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah, totally. Wow. So I just want to sort of, if we can bring our conversation back into your book, because I just think this is something that I would love everyone to grab a hold of and have a little bit, I’m also totally fascinated by how you even make time to write a book. And I, this is a very selfish question, what is your writing process? Like I just don’t seem to find a moment to write my blog posts at the moment, let alone, how do you do it?

Hannah Maloney:

Well, it’s a funny thing. So I was approached by a firm press who was the publishing company to write the book. And I initially said, oh, thank you so much, but no, thanks. I’m so busy. There’s enough books in the world, you know, thanks, see you later. And they gently just persisted and they were, which I’m really grateful for. And I said, look, there’s a good opportunity to add another voice to this conversation, a really positive voice, we need more of that solution-based thinking in this time. I’m like, Okay, yep, you’re right. And so I said, yes and then they said, Can you do it in four months? And I went, Oh, maybe?, and they’re like, Oh, you know, you can recycle a lot of your writing, which I’ve done over the years on my blog, we can cut and paste some things and, Oh yeah, that doesn’t sound too hard and then it ended up being, I wrote the whole book from scratch, you know.

Morag Gamble:

I’ve tried doing that too, like recycling your posts. I just think if it was written at that time, with that thinking and those examples then, and I’ve grown since then, and there’s something new I want to add in. And I, yeah, I can understand that.

Hannah Maloney:

I don’t know what it is, but for me, if I commit to a deadline, 99.99% of the time, I’ll just stick to it. And I’ll just, I don’t, it’s in me, I just can’t not try. And so this book was written around a very busy time in my life, but I would, I took myself away, I think for two weekends and that was at the beginning of the book and towards the end of the writing process, just to try to have deep thinking time. And then in between it was a lot of 4:00 AM starts and occasionally 3:00 AM starts and I’d have two to three hours some mornings and then occasionally a day here or there, but I did find it really hard in the day times to focus on that because in our life it’s quite busy. I worked from home but I have to talk to a client or my daughter will come running through and oh, the goats need to be fed and so it’s very, lots of distractions, but I remember hearing Leigh Sales talk about writing one of her books, she’s an ABC Australian journalist and she wrote her book, I think over two years, I can’t quite remember, but she said every five minute break that she had, that’s where she would write it. I was like, Oh, like in between interviews or whatever she was doing and she said there was no other way, but it did take two years of that. And I’m sure, hopefully she had some longer little spurts in there as well.

Morag Gamble:

Because I just can’t. I mean, you know, in five minutes, I’m still just kind of sitting like catching my thoughts.

Hannah Maloney:

I know, I do. I had some envy for some people’s brains seem to work a lot quicker than others and they’re just like, they’re sharp, they can just make it all fly together. I’m what they call a reflective thinker.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah, I often take myself off for a walk down along the river and if I’m stuck for ideas I’ll go for a walk along there and it’ll all become absolutely clear. And then sometimes by the time I get home, I’ve remembered other times it’s just gone. And I think, oh, no, I had it all worked out or I’m lying in bed, you know, just in that sort of moment when you’re waking up. And I think, okay, I’ll just set my mind to think about this particular challenge that I have at the moment and, you know, like a writing challenge or a project or something, and I’ll work it all out. And then I’ll nod off and I’ll wake up again. I’m like, oh no, it’s gone. But you know, I think it’s there somewhere. And then it just, I just need to sort of, so I think sometimes when I stopped trying, it just kinda happens. But I think, like you’re saying just having a daily practice of.

Hannah Maloney:

Yeah, having that pattern does definitely help, but I think also, I’m very good at I guess you could say pushing myself, but I can go, oh, Hannah, there’s an opportunity here. If, do you want to take it or do you want to let this one slide and a lot of them, I go, I know this is a good one. I’ve got to really try and I just make it work and for short bursts of time, which could be a few months here or there, I can make that work. I couldn’t sustain that my whole life, but I think, okay, this four months, it’s going to be big four months. Let’s do it and then I just kind of go, and then, I’ve actively, this year, I’ve actually cut down on my workload a lot this year because I just, I needed to get some balance back into my life. So now I have weekends, every weekend, I won’t work at 4:00 AM this year. I often start at 6:00 AM, but I won’t, it’s not a compulsory thing.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah. Good on you. Wow. I need to take a leap out of your book, yeah I’m still up one AM, I’m a bit, I’m the other end. I’m the night owl.

Hannah Maloney:

I’m an early bird. Yep.

Morag Gamble:

You know what it was, when my kids were little, well, they still are kind of little. I have a 15 year old, a 13 year old and an eight year old. And it was when they went to sleep, you know, cause they, I homeschool and they’re around, my office is at home, but it was when they went to sleep was when the house was quiet and there wasn’t, it was just kind of like a breath out. And then all of a sudden it was this moment of clarity. And so I just trained myself to make my work time in those spaces in between life, you know? And that’s kinda guess how I ended up there. I keep thinking, oh, it’d be nice to sort of get up really early and do the other end. I did it a few times, cause you know, you must get up early. It’s the best thing for your body. I felt jet lag for weeks. So out of whack. So anyway, I do think, yeah, I think, you know, making, giving yourself a weekend, I think that’s something that’s probably a really good step to take. So what’s coming next for you. What’s your next big burst of projects you’ve got coming along?

Hannah Maloney:

Well, I do have a thing. I’m not sure how to tell you what it is, I don’t know.

Morag Gamble:

Oh, well, if you can’t tell me no, that’s fine.

Hannah Maloney:

I’ve got lots of ongoing rolling projects. So I have quite a large landscape design workload. So I’m always looking with a range of clients and developing the beautiful landscapes to be regenerative and beautiful and then we have great calendar workshops that we have a source of teachers that come and go on as well. But they do, I do have a couple of other projects in the background that I’m just developing. I don’t think I can tell you that yet, sorry.

Morag Gamble:

Oh no, that’s all right. That’s fine. Good luck with those.

Hannah Maloney:

I guess the big one for me, right, is in front of my face this week. I launched my book, down here we haven’t got COVID restrictions, which touchwood. So we’ve managed to having 300 people in the local town hall which feels really special. It feels nice that we can gather because it is special. So that’s, so next month I think I’ll be really doing little community chats to my book and online as well. And just focusing on that kind of just having that, those climate conversations.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah. That’s huge. Have you got, like, if they, is your publishers organized for you to do a whole lot of talks, you know, radio around the countries and all sorts of things so we don’t travel.

Hannah Maloney:

That’s right. So doing a little online things and then in Tassie, I do a mini Tassie tour up in the Northwest regions, which I’ll launch shortly. S then we’ll do, yeah, lots of online things and some local things as well. So that’s my immediate focus. And then I’ll do some other things as well on top of my other workload which are all centered around how to build skills and resilience towards climate safety and justice. And so that’s as much as possible, I try to center that in my work. It’s all. That’s why I do my work, but it’s not always at the forefront of the conversation. And I’m like, how can we make that at the front of every conversation? It’s what I’m really interested in. Yeah.

Morag Gamble:

Fantastic. Well, good luck with your coming tour and the release of your book. It’s a wonderful contribution into the world of permaculture, but broader than permaculture and into the world of, you know, how we can actually move forward in a really positive and, and hopeful way. So thank you for taking that time and dedicating yourself and your 3AMs to bring that to life.

Hannah Maloney:

Thanks for having a chat with me.

Morag Gamble:

It’s been an absolute pleasure. Thanks Hannah. So that’s all for today. Thanks so much for joining me. If you like a copy of my top 10 books to read, click the link below, pop in your email and I’ll send it straight to you. You can also watch this interview over on my YouTube channel. I’ll put the link below as well, and don’t forget to subscribe, leave a comment, and if you’ve enjoyed it, please consider giving me a star rating. Believe it or not, the more people do this. The more podcasts bots will discover this little podcast. So thanks again. And I’ll see you again next week.