Permaculture Couple, Morag and Evan, SMH, The Age

Permaculture couple, Morag Gamble and Evan Raymond, featured in major newspapers.

The Two of Us Article: A permaculture couple

Our permaculture love story hit the papers last week. It’s a story spanning over a quarter of a century. The article, about us as a permaculture couple, was released while we are on a 7 week permaculture teaching, filming and research tour in UK/Europe … so we actually haven’t even seen the papers yet.

Here’s the link to read the the Two of Us article online. It was written by Laura McGeoch , who spent hours interviewing us individually back in January. The article was included in the weekend magazine of the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age in Melbourne, plus papers in other capitals – a friend in Tasmania told us they saw it too.

Growing up with Permaculture

This photograph was taken in the dining room of my Mum and Dad’s house in Melbourne – the house I grew up in. My parents designed and built this house (owner-builders) in the 1960s to be passive solar and use natural materials – like the local stone thermal mass wall behind us. I grew up with the notion that we needed to live a more simple, ethical, connected life, engaged with our surroundings and community – to care about the natural environment, create habitat and eat simple natural food.

My Dad heard about permaculture when it first emerged back in the 1970s and always spoke highly of it as an ethical framework for living well and a great way to design. We always grew some food – herbs in the courtyard, compost bins, fruit trees – and we kept chickens in our suburban backyard too. A big focus my Mum was so strong about was planting for wildlife and protecting native animals from cats and dogs. She was also very conscious about simple, healthy, unprocessed food and passed this love to me.

Permaculture & Inspiration

My awareness of permaculture from this early age definitely influenced my direction in life and the people referenced in Bill Mollison’s Permaculture Designers’ Manual led me to Schumacher College (named after E.F. Schumacher, author of Small is Beautiful).

At Schumacher College I studied directly with Fritjof Capra (Systems view of Life), Vandana Shiva (Seed Sovereignty), Arne Naess (Deep Ecology), Satish Kumar (Earth Pilgrim), Stephan Harding (Gaian Ecologist), Helena Norberg-Hodge (Counter-development and Localisation) and many more. I met permaculture again there with Patrick Whitefield, author of the Earth Care Manual, by Permanent Publications (film coming soon about Maddy and Tim Harland – founders of this permaculture publishing company).

Our Permaculture Life

Since the moment Evan and I met in 1993, permaculture has woven its way intricately through our lives. We met while taking a permaculture design course at Crystal Waters permaculture village – our home now for 20 years. Since we met, together we have travelled to 22 countries teaching permaculture, giving public talks, helping to start permaculture projects, advising permaculture organisations and community projects, as well as meeting with permaculture people, and researching and filming permaculture initiatives. It has been so great to do this together as a permaculture couple – sharing the experiences and passion.

My work has always been permaculture – I once worked for 9 months in the QLD Government Environment Department but figured I could be of more service creating local community-based regenerative projects, teaching others about this way of design, and teaching teachers too to keep it rippling out. Evan’s story is pretty much the same, but he did spend almost a decade from 2005 in local government advising them how to address Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation.

Permaculture Youtube and Examples

As a permaculture couple, we now have now created a permaculture youtube channel, that has been watched by over 1.5 million viewers and have created a debt-free permaculture demonstration home and garden at Crystal Waters permaculture village.  We helped start Northey Street City Farm – a huge permaculture community project in the middle of Brisbane.

Permaculture Education Institute

We have founded the Permaculture Education Institute to help more people become positive, practical permaculture teachers around the world. We wanted to provide a different way of accessing this knowledge and skill. Our Permaculture Educators’ Program is a combined online permaculture design certificate and permaculture teacher certificate. We mentor and support people in this work as well as meet with government and academics to discover ways to ripple this work further.

Stay in touch with our permaculture programs

To stay in touch with our work and receive updates of all the latest interviews and films we are about to release:

Image by Meredith O’Shea, featured in Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, April 27th 2019.