Tassie Perspectives 3: North Facing in the North West with Caroline and Kirk

For PGAP’s third and final episode on Tasmanian Perspectives, host Michael Bayliss returns back to the Northwest to with Caroline Smith and Kirk Hall. Caroline and Kirk share their reasons for relocating from the mainland and why a future of ditching rampant consumption and returning to a life of voluntary simplicity, local communities, permaculture and degrowth are critical – not only for Tasmania – but anywhere and everywhere!

Caroline Smith is an educator, permaculturist and co-editor of “Permaculture Pioneers: stories from the new frontier” with Kerry Dawborn. She now resides in Penguin and can often be seen engaged with the local community at Penguin’s Reseed Centre or Wynyard’s Live Well Tasmania centre. Caroline very warmly accepted me into her community and her home for my brief stay in Tasmania and I really felt the kinship and hospitality of a kindred, likeminded spirit! I was delighted that she agreed to share her journey in making the leap across the Bass Strait as well as many of her world views and perspectives.

Kirk Hall is committed environmentalist and Degrowth activist who is the moderator of the Facebook page ‘Degrowth It’s Urgent’ and ‘Degrowth – Join the Revolution’ group among several other groups. He is also launching a ‘Tiny House Orchard’ near Devonport and is writing a movie script on Degrowth. No rest for the wicked! Having known Kirk for years on social media, it was so great to meet with one of my social media colleagues in person!

Between the two interviews we welcome back the permaculture themed band ‘Formidable Vegetable’ for their track ‘Small and Slow’ from the album ‘Permaculture: A Rhymer’s Manual.’ This is a perfect soundtrack to the interviews on today’s episode.

Given that Friday the 05th of June is World Environment Day, it is so essential that guests such as Caroline and Kirk can continue to do what they do best – lead by example for local, lower impact communities full of community and food and without all the materialism, carbon and needless growth on a finite planet.

This wraps it up for the ‘Tasmanian Perspectives’ series. The community response to the series so far has been spectacular. PGAP enjoyed double the average number of listens over the course of May and the downloads have been steadily increasing all year. Did you know that ListenNotes now rates PGAP as in the TOP 10% of podcast series worldwide! This is just incredible. Long may this continue! (Until we’ve achieved the Degrowth dream so this podcast is no longer needed, of course!)

If you are interested in finding out more about Caroline's fantastic work and legacy, there are several links to her work in her Guest profile bio.

Krik Hall also runs (at least) three other Facebook groups, Degrowth - Population, Degrowth - Housing and Degrowth - Agriculture. If you are interested in finding out more about the Tiny House Orchard project, there is a Facebook group here

Rough time stamp:

Intro - 00:11 - 03:04
Caroline - 03:13 - 39:15
Music - 39:16 - 43:02
Kirk - 43:03 - 72:30
Outro - 72: 42 - end