Living Lightly is a collection of local stories about sustainable living.
The column commenced in 2012 and until 2023 was published in the Border Mail newspaper each week.
The content is community sourced – groups, organisations and individuals have written and contributed each of these informative and entertaining articles – all overseen by a local volunteer coordinator.
We are currently considering a monthly schedule for articles, stay tuned as we explore this option.
Here you can browse and search previous articles or subscribe to receive an email each time an article is published.
The Living Lightly coordinator is always keen to receive articles! Use the link below to find out how you can submit an article for the column.
With a big thank you to all the Living Lightly authors for contributing to this wonderful collection of articles.
By Lauriston Muirhead The challenges of COVID19 and climate change are global in scale but also affect all our lives. The two issues are having, and will continue to have, major effects on our health, our society and our economy. Since many human lives are at stake in both situations
By Lauren Salathiel This time last year, my husband and I were setting out from Yackandandah towards Queensland on two bicycles. The 2000-odd kilometre trip took us over mountains, through storms, down highways and across gravel roads, and by the end of it, we promised ourselves we’d not get back
By Lizette Salmon, Wodonga Albury Toward Climate Health (WATCH) and Gardens for Wildlife Albury-Wodonga Project Officer We’ve long associated autumn with leaf fall and spring with blossoms, but this autumn you may have noticed something odd. Several locals spotted unseasonal flowers on pear and apple trees. In most cases it
By John Whale I met Wally early one morning while I was walking around Willow Park, after having moved down to Wodonga, just two and half years ago. I instantly recognised his foliage and we immediately formed a close personal bond because he too had recently moved down from the
By Chris McGorlick In times of crisis, governments of all persuasions are wont to encourage citizens to focus on the future and the response to the crisis, rather than the circumstances that led us there in the first place. The words ‘now is not the time’ have been used so frequently in response
By John Whale It was the hour before midnight, the moon shone brightly and some very welcome rain, which had been falling since I went to bed had finally stopped. From out of a rain drenched garden, I heard a distinctive voice calling out, or more precisely I should say,
By Kirsten Coates In times like these we all need inspiration. Unlike climate change, where we are barely noticing all the various canaries in their cages and frogs in their boiling water dying slow but sure deaths, COVID 19 has slapped us in the face. Short of joining an Apocalyptic
By Graham Parton There is of course an upside to this virus and the disruption it brings to our lives. Reports from China indicate that within a few days of their extreme “lock-down” the skies cleared and people blinked under an unfamiliar blue sky. In Venice rivers are running clean
By Jade Miles, Black Barn Farm When I deliver school programs, I ask the kids where their food comes from. Ninety per cent of the time they say ‘the supermarket’. Sometimes they say ‘farms’. Very occasionally they say ‘We grow it’. Never do they say ‘We forage it’. I outline
By Les Langmead I came across this moving photo when I researched my grandfather’s war service in the trenches of France in World War One. During that war, thousands of Australian men marched towards our capital cities to enlist. These men were not conscripts, they were volunteers. The group in
By Dr Juliette Milbank I too attended the National Climate Emergency Summit recently and I found that there was hope, strategy and the shared experience of attending a seminal event and coming away with fuel for the journey. Many sessions were fascinating but the ones I liked were about transitioning
By Alan Hewett and Joan Jones We are climate change refugees. That of course is an exaggeration but has a semblance of truth. My partner and I lived in the Indigo Valley for eighteen years on a 53 hectare property that had a covenant on the title to protect the
