Protesting to save the planet
By Alan Hewett Sixty-five million years ago an asteroid struck the earth causing such wide-spread destruction that the dinosaurs became extinct. What would happen if a similar sized asteroid was hurtling towards us and would hit in a month’s time? Would we blithely accept the situation, go about our day-to-day business and say it is …
The night before Christmas
By Lauriston Muirhead ‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the land Wind turbines were turning supplying demand. The stockings were hung by the chimney with care; The chimney long rested to clean up the air. The moon on the gum leaves and new-fallen dew Gave the lustre of mid-day to the aspects in …
Breaking the Supply Chain
By Kirsten Coates The annual tradition of announcing the “Word of the Year” by various dictionaries is always interesting but never surprising. We have had “vax”, “quarantine” and “iso” in the last two years. But before that, the 2019 Word of the Year according to the Cambridge Dictionary was “upcycling”, the activity of making new …
Life. Be In It
By Kirsten Coates A generation ago, our public service campaigns were about “Slip, Slop, Slap”, “Keep Australia Beautiful” and “Life. Be in it”. Looking back nostalgically at this time is like comfort food; simple, palatable and easy to digest. How much more difficult is it now to consume the messages about climate change, refugee crises …
Learning from each other is the best way
By Sue Brunskill, Wooragee Landcare On a perfect autumn afternoon recently, more than 40 people came together to share and learn about cultural burning on a property in Wooragee. This was the final scheduled burn on this current project but hopefully the practice will continue in this region. Cultural burning projects have been happening in …
Tapping the potential in our own back yards
by Anne Stelling, Parklands Albury Wodonga Now seems a perfect time to take a fresh look at what we do in our everyday lives, to rethink our mindsets, to change our habits and routines. After all, we’ve all rolled with the punches throughout a pandemic as a matter of necessity and found that we can …
Getting a prickly pest under control
By Mick Webster, Friends of Chiltern-Mt Pilot National Park Many visitors to the western end of Chiltern-Mt Pilot National Park will see scattered clumps of Prickly Pear, an introduced cactus that was a real nuisance many years ago. This is largely controlled now by a species of cochineal beetle, which eats the leaves (technically called …
Vote as if life depends on it. Because it does.
By Lauren Salathiel In Victoria, local council elections are just around the corner, with voting closing on October 23. Voting for a candidate is about much more than the cliched “roads, rates, rubbish”, though. With climate change the defining issue of this era, this local government election presents us with an opportunity to ensure our …
Reading group shines a light on alternatives for living
By Lauren Salathiel
At 7.30pm every second Monday for the past 12 weeks, I’ve turned on my computer to “meet” digitally with a group of Yackandandah friends and neighbours for a reading group with a potentially world-changing difference.
Our group has been one of hundreds, nation-wide, to participate in a reading, discussion …
Restoring the river
By Anne Stelling, Parklands Albury Wodonga “River restoration” sounds like something beyond the power of ordinary people – something requiring engineers, heavy machinery and lots of money. But here in Albury Wodonga, a long-term community vision for restoration and reconnection of our Murray River corridor is quietly achieving just that, with volunteers, cooperation and community …
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About Living Lightly …
Living Lightly is a column in the Border Mail newspaper on Wednesdays featuring local stories about sustainable living.
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