Melton Sustainable Living Group

Community Announcement.  My family and I will be there, will you?   WALK AGAINST WARMING 12pm – 12/12/09 - State Library, Melbourne This year, we’re sending a safe climate message to the world. Are you in?   This December, our world leaders are gathering to decide how much they’re prepared to do about climate change.   Join thousands of Victorian individuals and families concerned about climate change at this year’s Walk Against Warming, and help us form a massive human sign on Princes Bridge –  a sign so big they’ll get our safe climate message all the way over in Copenhagen.   The Walk Against Warming is Australia’s biggest day of community action on climate change.  Similar Walks will be happening across the country, and across the globe as communities everywhere come together to tell their leaders they want action for a safe climate.    If you’ve ever replaced an old light globe with an energy efficient one, taken public transport instead of driving, switche...

The group got together for our monthly meeting this afternoon, and we had a great time learning about how Michael keeps his garden green during the summer months even with the scorching temperatures we have here in Melton.  He has a fantastic irrigation system set up that is all fed by rainwater and the bi-weekly mains water we are allowed whilst on water restrictions. Just last Saturday his garden featured on Vasili’s Garden which airs on the community Channel 31.  It used to be shown on SBS. Here is the write up about what Vasili thought about Michael’s garden; and here is the 25 minute episode which was very entertaining and the entire family got involved. Here are some photos taken by Kim during the workshop. Some of the members listening intently to Michael, The proud gardener! Green everywhere. The runner bean bed. The broad beans are still going. H...

All I can say is that I believe that our stand at the DJ festival was a success and fun to boot.  Not only did we get the message out into the community that we exist, met many like minded people from other environmental groups in our shire, we made $121 for the group by selling plants grown by Michael, Jan and Gavin, chicken and duck eggs donated by Jan, and T-Shirts and hats for members provided by Kim.  I must say the the Sunflower plants were the biggest seller of the day followed by the salad gardens and the multitude of heirloom tomatoes. It was a great day, and it was good to see that many members and volunteers were able to man the stand throughout the day.  Here are some photos of the event taken early in the morning. Setting up at the start of the day The first shift.  Left to right; Amanda, Amy & David Inside the marquee as you move from left to right; The Gardening Panel.  Green Cleaning and Energy efficiency panels Pou...

November 7th, our Sustainable Living Group has a stand at the annual DJ festival.  We will be located in the Environmental Hub which I believe will be on the grassed area near the Honey Shack across High Street from the Community Hall.  We will be there from 0900 - 1700.  The stall will be manned by willing volunteers (members & friends) who are more than willing to share their own sustainable living journeys with anyone who pays us a visit.  We will also be selling some vegetable seedlings with all proceeds going back into the group.  We will have educational displays and many donated handouts about the following themes; Growing your own food Water saving (rain water harvesting/grey water use) Renewable energy Reduce, Reuse, Recycle Urban poultry Energy conservation, and much more! Come along, drop by and you will learn to save money and preserve the environment.  You may even want to join our group!  New members are always welcome. Warm regards, Gavin Webber President

Hi Members and Friends, Great news for those who expressed interest in cheese making courses.  There will be two courses held at the Melton South Community Centre in November 2009.  Here are the details from the Melton Shire Learning Directory Term 4: Cheese Making - Basic Class Make your choice of either Wensleydale, Feta, Haloumi, Parmesan or Cheddar. You can then add your own spices and flavours to personalise you cheese. Date: Sunday 8 November 2009 from 10.00am - 3.00pm Cost: $55.00 includes lunch Contact:    Melton South Community Centre Cheese Making - Mould Course Choose from Brie, Camembert, Blue Vein or Stilton. These soft cheeses have the addition of either white or blue mould and have a slightly different preparation technique. Date:    Sunday 15 November 2009 from 10.00am - 3.00pm Cost:    $65.00 includes lunch Contact: Melton South Community Centre To book call the community centre direct during business hours. Melton South Community Centre Inc 26 Exford Rd, Melton South ...

As discussed at the last meeting, here is some more information about campaigns in our local area.  Click on the links for more information. The Big Picture hosted by BREAZE in Ballarat. ATA's 350 Photo Challenge .  Danni, and I have already submitted photos to this campaign. and finally, on Friday 23rd October, MGC Pedal Powered Launch Party .  They are powering the event using Future Spark to generate enough electricity into the grid to power the show.  Comedian Rod Quantock will MC the entertainment and perform his show, “Bugger the Polar Bears, this is serious” starting at 7pm.  I wrote about Rod Quantocks show on a post called " Rod Quantock's Guide to Climate Change ".  As for our own campaign, I am all ears, but we will need to act fast!  Post ideas for a local Melton event via comments so that we can organise something quickly, or if we can't organise quickly enough then I can contact the Melbourne Girls College for tickets to the sh...

I recently received an email from Rodney Dekker, a local Melton resident who is married to Desrae, one of the friends of the MSLG. He is a freelance photo journalist focused on climate change storytelling. He has travelled to Bangladesh and made a story board for Oxfam about the effects of a cyclone that occurred in 2007 that killed tens of thousands of people in low laying areas of the country.  Here is a video of what he saw.  It is quite powerful and eye opening. Eyewitness Climate Change: Bangladesh from Oxfam Australia on Vimeo . The images he took are a timely reminder of why the up-coming negotiations at Copenhagen in December are so important, and this may be the last chance we have to set realistic targets that reverse or at least stabilise the climate before the human race creates climate chaos by our own negligence.  I for one feel ashamed that our country has the dubious honour of over taking the USA as the worst polluters per capita in the world....

Don't forget that Sunday 13th September is Sustainable House Day.  If anyone is interested in visiting a few homes in our area have a look at the link for details. http://www.sustainablehouseday.com/ If a few members want to get together and have a look at a few within a 100km radius of Melton, let me know, we may be able to organise a quick excursion.  Happy to give the Hybrid a flog for the day!  Email me at my normal address if interested. Gav

Fellow Members and interested locals,   The next meeting of the Melton Sustainable Living Group Inc. will be held on Thursday 30th July from 7-9pm at the Melton Community Hall, Meeting room 4.   We will start off with a short presentation about "Saving money through energy efficiency".   I also would like to spend some time as a group brainstorming/thinking/talking about a project that will benefit  the community and promote Sustainable Living in the shire.  Now that we are a little larger in size, I believe it is time to kick off a project that will help keep us and other like minded people engaged for the longer term. Also, please feel free to pass this email to anyone who you think would be interested in attending.   Hope to see you all there.   Regards,   Gavin President

Well, what a great day out we had on Saturday!  Only a few members came along, but we had a great time at CERES this weekend. There was Gavin, Michael, David, Kim and Ben and Liam.  Kim was taking the photos.  We spent about 3 hours walking around the Community Environment Park, and it was great fun.  Here are a few photos of our visit. Renewable energy galore! Now that is what I call a bakery.  Ben sampled a croissant and said it was yummy! This is where the Cafe gets most of its food from. Fresh organic fruit.  The labels even had the food miles listed on them. Organic Free Range chickens of the ISA Brown variety.  They had so much land to run around in.  About 2 acres I reckon. The cob oven was pretty cool.  It even had its own herbs growing on top of it.   With wonderful mosaics.  Kim wanted to give it a go.  There were mosaics all over the park and it added a lot of colour to a winters...

This fortnight we have an evening meeting on Thursday, 2nd July, at the Melton Community Hall, meeting room 4, from 7-9pm.  The meeting will start dead on 7.00pm as we have a full programme, so please be a little early.  The hall will be open from 6.30pm onwards.  I have invited the team at ecoMaster to come along and present to us, and they have kindly accepted.  Listed below is what they intend on covering in two presentations; The most effective presentation would be about the Fed. Govt program which starts on 1st July.  Our group will be the first ever group in Australia to be presented with the Home Sustainability Assessments and the Green Loans program. We will cover: LYN: what is a home sustainability assessment and how does that work with a 'green loan' what is the purpose of the green loans scheme potential benefits the 'mechanics' of the scheme  eligibility for the loa...