David Arnold
David came to permaculture as a country person living in the city. After his PDC in 1991, he started by permaculturing his back and front yards in West Preston, Melbourne. He has been developing Murrnong, just on the edge of Violet Town, since 1996. Along the way he has done permaculture design and development work across North East and North Central Victoria. Through these various projects he developed skills and expertise in design and development for home self-sufficiency, farm planning, farm scale tree and shrub landscaping, farm forestry, homestead orchards, tree crops, ecological building and energy efficient retrofit of existing buildings, and even a dabble in publishing when he conceived the Permaculture Calendar.
David Holmgren
David co-originated the idea of permaculture with Bill Mollison back in 1976, and wrote Permaculture One as his honours thesis. As well as being a highly capable practical person – gardener, builder, environmental engineer – his impressive list of publications have provided much of the intellectual and practical foundation of permaculture. His most recent book, RetroSuburbia, is a pleasure to read and is a very helpful companion to this PDC.
David Holmgren on wikipedia
Beck Lowe
Master of Sustainable Agriculture, BSc, Diploma of Permaculture
Beck has been practising permaculture since completing her PDC in 1994. In that time she has been doing permaculture in rural and urban areas, and on community projects such as Gravel Hill Gardens in Bendigo. She lives near Heathcote in central Victoria on a 40-acre permaculture farm with food forests, milking and meat goats, poultry and other food systems, as well as areas of native vegetation.
She has a special interest in animals in permaculture, and in ecological systems. She has written for various publications including Permaculture Activist, Pip Australian Permaculture magazine and Earth Garden’s City Permaculture. Beck loves tutoring on PDCs and also runs Accredited Permaculture Training. (Her website includes the blog of her 2015 visit to the very hardy original wild apple forests of Kazakhstan.)
Joel Meadows*
Note: in the first half of 2023 Joel is taking a break from teaching, and won’t physically be part of this year’s PDC. He has made his teaching resources available, and is available to David for discussion and support on his specialist areas.
Joel Meadows is an environmental educator, energy auditor, building designer, sustainable transport consultant, illustrator, maker of things of steel and wood, grower, cooker and preserver of food, avid gardener and musician. Joel has studied Sculpture, Blacksmithing, Renewable Energy Technology and Permaculture, he has worked for private, government and not for profit organisations and runs the Green Hand Institute.
Joel illustrated the second edition of David Holmgren’s ‘Principles’ book and ‘The Rocket Powered Oven’ e-book with Tim Barker. Joel lives with his family on the fringe of Castlemaine – Central Victoria, where he continually works on his permaculture business, property and ideas.
Joel did a pdc in 1999, and an advanced permaculture principles course with David Holmgren and Su in 2007.
Richard Telford
PDC (2000). Diploma of Permaculture (2010). From 1998, Richard spent seven years living in two permaculture designed intentional communities. In 2001 he collaborated with David Holmgren on the design of the Permaculture Design Principle icons and has since produced many of his other titles, using skills he developed as a graphic artist.
In 2008 he launched permacultureprinciples.com and produced the Permaculture Calendar with David Arnold to illustrate the design principles and convey the foundations of permaculture to a wider audience. He now co-directs a permaculture book distribution enterprise, available through melliodora.com
In 2008 he bought a small run down home on 580m2 in Seymour, rebuilding it as an urban demonstration of low-impact living with his family. Since 2010 Abdallah House has become a local attraction and a small scale ‘permaculture playground’ where ideas can be put into practice.
Charlie Showers
Charlie Showers has worked in agriculture, soils, geology and natural resource management for close to 20 years however for the last 5 has started to use that knowledge to build a fairer food system in North East Victoria. He and Jade co-founded the Beechworth Food Co-op in 2014, and undertook a research tour of Vermont USA’s food system in 2015. As a geologist Charlie became curious about resource depletion and then working in environmental economics he came face to face with the limits of endless economic growth. This lead Charlie and Jade to permaculture. They have used permaculture design to guide their development of Black Barn Farm since 2016.
Charlie did the Murrnong PDC in 2016, as did Jade in 2018.
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