Tag Archives: Sustainability

The Lithgow Valley just got more exciting, with the establishment of an Inspiring Australia Regional Science Hub that will serve as a focal point for local science, sustainability, and art community groups and businesses.

John Campbell with his Tesla Charger and LG Chem Battery “Alexa, play ‘Golden Brown’ by The Stranglers.” I’m visiting John Campbell, the President of the Rotary Club of Blackheath, and it’s my first time experiencing what’s described as a ‘smart home’. From the music John asks Alexa to play on demand, to the changing coloured lights in the lounge room, …

  In March this year, Japanese journalist Harumi Hayakawa wrote a piece for the Japanese publication Asahi Weekly in which she explained why the terrifying Australian fires of December 2019 actually made her like the Blue Mountains even more.     In her article she described the many ways the community came together during and after the fires and how, …

The Blue Mountains Pluriversity and its Permaculture Institute are offering free permaculture classes for young people (aged 16-24) in Lithgow.

To grow a long-term productive and abundant veggie garden you need to make sure your soil is rich and alive and continually fed and replenished. This supports plant growth and allows for repeated cropping within a healthy ecosystem. One way to do this is to encourage more worms to be part of that system. Charles Darwin said: “It may be …

As soon as you solve one problem in gardening, you’ll undoubtedly come up against another. Last week we were really excited because we read on the Gardening Australia website that land cress is poisonous to the Cabbage White Butterfly caterpillar. We were thrilled, as something had started to eat our tiny kale at Blackheath Community Farm and this seemed like …

  There’s an excitement and a lovely crunch as you run your finger down the side of a dried bean pod and split it open to collect the seed. If you haven’t done so already, now’s the time to collect your bean seeds to ensure a crop for next summer and potentially also meals over this winter. Some dried beans, …

  If you’d like a steady supply of homegrown food fast, whatever you do, grow radishes! Now is a great time to plant them because in summer they tend to bolt. You can use radishes to define rows between slower growing vegetables like beetroot and broccoli to remind you where you planted them, and, because they’re the fastest growing vegetable, …

After devastation, the restorative forces of nature begin the process of healing. On the 22nd December 2019, Australia’s biggest forest fire, which had already destroyed an area seven times the size of Singapore, raced up the gully below Clarence St and burnt to within 10m of Eva and Bill Johnstone’s property, just above Pope’s Glen in Blackheath. It burnt all …

Love Makes a Way is the largest faith-based civil disobedience movement in Australia’s history. Its focus is on getting the kids off Nauru.