Moonrise Permaculture

About

Tamara Griffiths is a "New Designer", having done her Permaculture Design Certificate with Bill Mollison and Geoff Lawton in January 2007. She has since completed a Permaculture Practical Certificate course with Geoff and Nadia Lawton at Bill and Lisa Mollison's farm in Tasmania.

Tamara and Andrew have been working on Moonrise Sanctuary, their acre in beautiful Bunyip, for 2 years. They have designed and implemented swales and ponds, a heritage fruit orchard, grape trellises, "Forest Garden", chicken tractors, ducks, nursery and companion vegie patches with predator insects in great numbers. They have a grey water system, tanks and other water systems so that barely a drop of water leaves the property.

Tamara formed Bunyip Urban Landcare Group (BULG) in 2006, and the inaugural planting of 350 windbreak and orchard nurse plants was at Moonrise Sanctuary in June 2007. There are 6 additional plantings planned for Bunyip this year. Tamara calls this her Zone 4 management. In 2008, she is overseeing a survey of Bunyip's flora, fauna and cultural heritage using a $27K grant BULG received from Envirofund (Federal government environment grant).

She runs the "Bunyip Backyard Produce Exchange" blog, where people can sell, barter, exchange or give away excess food they have grown.

Tamara is also an historian, having completed her Masters in Public History in 2003. She has worked for Aboriginal Affairs and archeologists; and she chairs a geographical place names committee for the Victorian State Government.

Having grown up in Whyalla, South Australia, she has lived and worked most of her life in regional and remote Australia. In hot dry Whyalla, she played under a massive grape trellis and ate lemons, oranges and figs from the garden. Planted with all of these, of course, was her beloved and hardy geranium. She has a gardening grandparent on both sides of the family and loves being outdoors, observing nature and growing food.

She spent two years in Halls Creek, in the east Kimberly region of WA working for an Aboriginal organisation that keeps the approximately 30 local Aboriginal languages of the region strong. Up there she also gardened, learned about bush tucker, got completely obsessed with frogs and met bush mechanics. She was given the skin name Nyanjilli (Nungary) and still feels part of the community.

Andrew, on the other hand, was born in and grew up in London. He came to Autralia to do his PhD in the 80's. After a few years in England, he returned to our sunny shores to work at Monash University as a politics lecturer in the early 90's. His professional biography is at: http://arts.monash.edu.au/politics/staff/abutfoy.php At Moonrise Sanctuary he digs holes and builds all sort of stuff, hangs out with the dog in his hammock and has a home office.