NEWS UPDATE
The winner of the Australian Schools Challenge Eco-Speaker Award 2006 is the Australian Theatre for Young People with their group entry “eco-rap”. More details of the award soon.
Wow! what a weekend in Sydney! The inaugural National Greenbuild and Eco-Show was a huge success, especially as it was the first one. We have to wind down, then we will give a full report when we get back from Boulia, see you soon.
our stall at the show
Sydney June 9-11
www.ecoshow.com.au
In this issue
*Launching the
kalkadoon.org catalogue of sustainable housing products
*Baganan’s Message
*News
*Tribal Warrior tours on Sydney Harbour
*Domes
*The Errol Wyles Foundation
We have included a new permanent page on the site for this organisation
http://www.kalkadoon.org/index.php/the-errol-wyles-foundation/
for more bacground see
Channel 9 “Sunday” program 26/2/06.
The story of 2 Aboriginal people killed by hit and run drivers in Townsville and the leniency and inaction of the authorities to investigate and prosecute the drivers.
Palm Island school children march against family violence.
Baganan’s June Message
Greetings and hello
We had a lovely stay on Palm Island and talk about busy there is just so much things to do we thought we could relax but there is not enough hours in the day to do everything so we just take it easy and take your time in murri time where all you want to do is swim, fish, and take in the scenery, and spend time with family and friends.
We also had the special privilege of having Drew Hutton and senator Andrew Bartlett visiting the Island as well where they mingled and had a good time there with all the bwolgcomens there.
Now we’re back in Brisbane and feeling the cold on our way to Sydney where we will be freezencold but were looking forward to the eco show and to meeting a lot of eco friendly people.
I will be performing with senator Andrew Bartlet on drums and featuring Sean Tracey on guitar as my backing band the “Too hard basket band” as we will perform and entertain with songs written by Sean and m.c. Baganan and poems while Senator Bartlet plays a mean beat on his drums, with all the passion and persuasion that kept him floating while he was drifting on Palm Island.
Over and out
m.c.baganan kurityityin
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Drew Hutton, the leader of the Queensland greens being interviewed with Senator Andrew Bartlett of the Australian Democrats,(below) interviewed by elder of the Palm Island community and indigenous music and radio scene, Mr. Mick Thaiaday (right) on Palm Island radio. Drew Hutton and Andrew Bartletts recent visit to Palm Island was facilitated by kalkadoon.org
We encourage you to join up to our e-reminder list, telling you when a new newsletter is on on the site, and encouraging your friends to sign up to. We hope this newsletter will develop a network of information and support for eco-projects in Aboriginal communities, and the more who are involved in this the better. Supporters will be offered a range of products to buy from Aboriginal producers in the near future. In light of the Australian media’s sensationalism about issues such as domestic violence and child abuse, with no focus on solutions, we feel it is very important to “spread the word” in mainstream Australia about positive developments that are occuring. This is not to distract from the serious social problems, far from it. It is to develop realistic and long term solutions to these problems and allready the “kalkadoon.org” process is providing a focus for hope amongst many on Palm Island as well as the Kurityityin clan as it provides a working agenda, model and specific tasks to strive towards for such things as housing and community infrastructure developments.
From little things big things grow. That song was written by Kev Carmody and Paul Kelly, but it seems to be relevent to kalkadoon.org right now.
All we had a few months ago was a donated website. thanks again to kalkadoon corporate solutions, our web host. They are not part of the Kalkadoon Aboriginal nation, “Kalkadoon” is also a region in the European homeland of our web-hosts and the co-incidence of our meeting through the name has assisted us to get this far.
We still haven’t got to Boulia this year , but that is within weeks away. In the meantime we have been to Palm Island again and asked by the Palm Island Men’s Business Group to assist with new and innovative ideas about housing, education, and economic development. We have also taken a step further in negotiations with the Palm Island Council to establish an experimental sustainable housing project on the Island in conjunction with a number of town planning acedemics and resource people in Brisbane.
Well the plans, options and alternatives are there on Palm Island, from our point of view, because it is exactly the same as on Baganan’s homeland at Boulia and Mt.Isa. which she has been working on for ten years. It has become obvious through our travels and conversations that the models of housing and infrastructure that we are exploring are very relevent to all regional communities, Aboriginal or otherwise, but particularly to the desperate needs for housing, community and economic development in remote Aboriginal communities.
Which brings us to the Greenbuild and Eco show and our catalogue of Sustainability products. The ecoshow will be a collection of the worlds best suppliers of appropriate housing and related products, all in one place at one time. kalkadoon.org will be inviting them all to present their goods and services, for free into our website initially, but this will evolve into a regular printed catalogue also. This catalogue will be made available to Aboriginal community councils, housing authorities, home owners and development groups as well as public sector housing agencies to create more choices in housing options, from light bulbs to mudbricks and everything else. As this catalogue will be on the website it will provide those same resources for whoever else wants to drop in to kalkadoon.org for a visit. So if you provide goods or services, anywhere in the world, put your free ad in the catalogue. You will get a good profile through this catalogue, not bad for free!. If you have a product but cannot organise delivery to “Anywhere in Australia” , then perhaps we can link you up with a transport company that can help, so don’t let that stop you.
As this catalogue develops we will be seeking sponsors for the whole process - the catalogue, the experimental centre on Palm Island and housing and eco-tourism projects at Boulia. However we do not want to charge any advertising for suppliers so that we can maximise the range and choices of goods and services available in the market place.
Posted by kurityityin as HOME - current news at 11:48 PM Eastern Daylight Time
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This has been a fascinating experiment, organsing the inaugural eco-speaker award for the inaugural Greenbuild and ecoshow. We had no idea what was going to happen when we took on the challenge, but we are very glad we did. The project snowballed over the last few months as it became incorporated into the Australian Schools Challenge. We now have some very good ideas for how to do it bigger and better next year. We thank all the entrants for being our guinea-pigs in this experiment, you have made it easy for us to commit to developing this whole thing into the future. Not only we been shown that there is an interest in such a competition but we have also been touched by the depth of feeling, understandings and positivity in the presentations.
Unfortunately “technical difficulties” prevent us from announcing the winner of the competition until the award ceremony on Sunday the 11th June as part of the Australian Schools challenge. We considered ourselves too biased and the entrants, who have taken the process so seriously, deserve a fair process. We felt it was important to get an unbiased judge, so we have asked Qld. Senator Andrew Bartlett, who will be visiting the eco-show on Saturday 10th, to make the final decision about who will win the Australian Young Eco-Speaker 2006 award.
The winner will be posted on this site as soon as we can get to a computer after the award ceremony.
Posted by kurityityin as HOME - current news at 11:40 PM Eastern Daylight Time
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Tribal Warrior returning to Sydney on 9 June 2003
after circumnavigating Australia.
Because of the Greenbuild and Eco-Show we have also come into contact with the Tribal Warrior association. Tribal warrior is an Aboriginal tourism enterprise as well as a training scheme based around two sea vessels that operat on Sydney Harbour. The Tribal Warrior association is not just a good example of a successfull business, but it’s management structure is designed within Aboriginal cultural frameworks including acknowledging the importance of elders in the whole enterprise. So we are very happy to promote this business, not just because it is the most interesting way to see Sydney Harbour, but because it is a leader in developing Aboriginal modes of doing business in the 21st century and deserves support.
Tribal Warrior Association
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We have decided to present domes in this issue for a couple of reasons. Firstly because they provide a cheap, strong and easily transported and constructed building system that is very relevant to our explorations of appropriate housing and other building options for Aboriginal communities. We are also presenting this section to promote “The Dome Company” who we are working with at the Greenbuild and Ec-Show. Robbie Lusher from The Dome Company has helped us heaps by lending us a display dome frame for our stall at the show. We hope to explore with Robbie the options for domes, we have already put together a dome proposal with Robbie’s assistance to Pitta Pitta traditional owners and the Boulia Shire Council for an eco-tourism project based around domes. We look forward to thrashing out this idea and other options for housing solutions during our time in Sydney - stay tuned for what we come up with.
Because Domes do not rely on large beams or other “big” materials, but lots of smaller prefabricated components they can be transported in a ute, trailer or even a small boat and therefore have obvious benefits to remote building programs. As they can be fully transported to a building site without the need for motor vehicles, construction does not have to involve the destruction that often occurs through trucks, tractors and the roads that they need.
Domes are cheap, flexible, and very strong too. But they do have problems. Collecting water from a dome roof is not easy and traditional roofs or “skins” are either canvas or some kind of plastic which have limited life spans, or they are made of ferro cement which is not at all recyclable or sustainable, though they do allow for guttering to collect water. However all these “problems” are easily overcome with a bit of creativity, and that’s what kalkadoon.org is hoping to do in order to develop an innovative kit home package as part of our future range of housing options.
The Dome Company
some groovy photos of domes from Pacific Domes
Posted by kurityityin as HOME - current news, Sustainability at 11:39 PM Eastern Daylight Time
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