Murrnong is a community, rather than a family farm. Many more people than those listed here, as interns and travellers and family members, have made enormous contributions over the past 20 years, crucial to the development of the property as it is today.

Background

David was born in 1963 at Hay on the riverine plain in western NSW. His childhood and primary school years were spent on a sheep station near Carrathool called Gundaline, that his father Charles managed. In the 1970’s the station was bought by a US based agribusiness multinational, and converted by heavy earthworks to broad acre irrigated row cropping. As a child David observed the farm and these changes, usually when taken along as gate opener and companion for his dad. The remnant natural qualities – of what had been a well managed rich pastoral landscape before European settlement – were more appealing to David than the increasingly industrial agriculture. In the 1970’s the food self-reliance of the isolated homestead settlement, with vegetable garden and orchard, was fast giving way to weekly (180 km return) shopping trips. Parental lessons about economy and care of things were still strong. Occasional work at his family’s farm near Violet Town in the 1980’s gave David opportunity to interact with that landscape and experiment with tree planting to improve the rural landscape. This lead to his more consciously permacultural journey that began in 1990.