The Regenerative Journey | Ep 37 | Darren Doherty

Darren Doherty is a self-confessed regenerative integrationist and the conversation he had with Charlie certainly supports that description of this multi-talented consultant, environmentalist, and landscape manager. Charlie explores with Darren his career from growing up in Bendigo, Victoria, his days in hospitality and connection with producers, through to his current world-renowned landscape and holistic management consulting business 'Regrarians'.

Transcript

Mate, We're on. Darren Daugherty. Or Doc-er-te. Doc-er-te. Oh, Doc-er-te. Oh, Doc-er-te. Is that Irish Welsh? Yeah, Irish. Irish. Don't be calling me a Welshman. That's okay, They're Celts too, But we're from Donegal, Which is the northernmost part of Ireland. There's a peninsula called Inner Shine, Which is right at the top, And that's where our clan's from. Is that near the giant steps? Isn't that up north, In the northern north? I think so, I don't know exactly. Well, I've not been there. I went there years ago on a football tour. How'd you go? It was great. They broke your nose? No, We busted them. We played Queen's College in there in Belfast. In Dublin. Oh, Is that Dublin? We were in Belfast as well. I can't remember the name of the uni there, But it was. . . No, Trinity. Sorry, Trinity. Yeah, It would be Queens. It's Queens in Belfast. Yeah, There's no Queens in Dublin, As it were. They got rid of the monarchy a while ago. You might have heard of that. Well, We were on buses, And we had the Aussie flag at the back of the bus. Was there 50 of us? No, It wasn't quite that many. 40 or something. That's right, Because there was 40 of us, And we had a roll call when I was one and being an A, And then the bus driver was 41, So we just called him 41 the whole time. 41? Where are we going now? Anyway, We turned up with the bus and off the ferry with the Aussie flag on the back, And the bus driver didn't know, And then we were at the lights in Belfast somewhere, Or just going into Belfast, And we look across and there's a tank, Like those wheeled tanks, Armoured things, And it was a machine going, Pointed at the bus, And we were just going, Okay, What was that? And then 41's going, Get rid of the flag, Get rid of the flag. It's got the Union Jack on it. It should be still there, Isn't it? Yeah, It was still on the flag at this point. Now, Is anyone still listening? We'd better get into this interview, Because we weren't, How did we get onto, What was your name? That's me. That's you, Mate. So we apologise for a bit of echoing. We are sitting in a room at Creamtown, The cafe, Your… Cafe restaurant, Gallery, Arts hub, Creatives hub. Creative space, Which we will talk about, And we've cleaned a few things out of the room we're in, So apologies for it's a little bit echo-y. Got some remnants. Got some stuff there, You've got, That's pretty much your life right there, Isn't it? Yeah, It is. That's what I thought. Cricket bat, Some grog, A melon and a cookbook. A rock melon. That just ties the geology. I'm a fan of geology. Well that's pretty much, Thanks for the interview, Daz, That was wonderful. And a bit of wood. And a bit of wood and ironing. And I'm really good at ironing, So it's not just Tony Abbott, It's me too. So we've pretty much summed up Daz's life in our background there. Mate, We'll just get into it. As discussed, The regenerative journey that I like to dig into is about my interviewee's lives, And it's not necessarily based around farming. You know, I'm a farmer and I do this and I do that, And I've transitioned or whatever. It's about, I mean everyone has a story, Everyone has a, Dare I say, A regenerative type of story where they're developing, They're growing, They're pursuing life purpose, Whatever you want to call that. And I suspect you have that as well, Daz, That's why we're here. Mate, Let's start by talking about where we are. Is it Castlemaine or Castlemaine? Well there's a really good bumper sticker, Which I always pay attention to bumper stickers. In fact, Let's not go there. There's a really good bumper sticker that gets around here and it says that there's no R in castle. So that doesn't help the Novocustrian. No, It's Castlemaine. It does distinguish one if you say Castlemaine. You're a nut nut if you're Castlemaine. No, You're perhaps from Adelaide. Or let's just say that your parents paid for your schooling. Oh, Okay, Cool. So that's where we are. Yeah, We're in Castlemaine, Which is a lot of places here in central Victoria, Like old Goldfields town. So this was the richest alluvial goldfield and it still is in the world. So there's still mining happening? No, There's a little bit, But in terms of the volume that came out, It's still the record as far as I understand. And that had a pretty significant impact on the environment here. It's all creeks being alluvial. And Castlemaine's the convergence of two creeks and they were basically turned upside down. It looks like it. Yeah, It's come back. If you think about the savoury brittleness scale, We're non-brittle here. It's right on the edge of where blackberries grow. I always look at that as being that sort of indicator. Yeah, So there's been a lot of regeneration that's occurred over the journey of Castlemaine when it was taken over from the Dja Dja Wurrung. Upon whose land we stand. We stand and we chat about today. It does strike me as being, Like most of Australia, There's a sense, And my appreciation and perception of that, Improves every day, Beside the road, That's maybe not the best indicator, But certainly the profile, Some erosion, Creek lines and so on, That profile of soil and what's not on top is not unique to this part of the world. No, It's a quartzy loam. It's growing some things here. I've just come from the further south east. You're over at Monongeta, That's all volcanic through there, So relatively recent volcanics. That's actually the easternmost realm of what is the biggest volcanic plain in the world, Which goes all the way down to Hamilton. Fair enough. So once you get up into the ranges there, That's sort of like the edge of it, And then it goes all the way down to the South Australian border. So which is how far for our listeners? I'm going to say 400 to 500 kilometres. That's big. So about 250, 300 miles. Wow. It's a big area. So basalt soils. Yeah, And when you talk about the journey, I work a lot overseas as you know, And a lot of people say, Or there's a general narrative, That Australia is the oldest continent in the world and all that stuff, And certainly there's places where it is, And right here the ground's about 500 million years old. The mountain that's over there, The Yanganook, Which is also known as Mount Alexander, It's granite and it's about 450 mil, But then you go 10 minutes that way and there's lava flows which are in the tens or hundreds of thousands of years. So you've got that and that's part of that whole system. So a lot of those old, Or the newer volcanics as they're called, Are new soils. And we've got quite a lot of that and there's pockets of it all the way along the divide. So there are elements of Australia which are young and you come to our journey here in central Victoria. I mean our family came here in the 1850s, Various branches of my lineage, And they're up north where it's a new alluvium, Which is all the wash from all of this. The oldest soils. When you say north, So the wash was going north? Yeah, So the creeks here flow south and then they go north. So there's ranges in here which are the foothills of the divide and on the southern side, So all these creeks run south, And then they run into a river or rivers which then run north into the Murray. Oh into the Murray, Of course, Okay. So with the divide being where all those rivers come from. So part of my family were out on the northern plains around Corang and Swan Hill and all of that, Which is right out on the river there. What's the gear, Mate? Yeah, I know, It's bloody flash gear too, Mate. Anyway, Out there and then around the gold fields of Bendigo, Which is where I mainly hail from. So we've got all of that around here. And we're sitting in Cremetown, Which is this the first retail sort of situation you've really been part of? No, No. So when I left high school in, Was that 1998, I did HSC. I completed HSC but I didn't pass. Is that Victorian or New South Wales? Yeah, It's Victorian. Oh, They called HSC. It's VCE now. So I think I attended 37% of classes. I think it was the level coordinator told me. And I became very familiar with the adjacent park and the Albert Hotel. And in what town are we? Bendigo. They're called Bendy? Benders. Benders. Benders. Go for a bender of benders. Yeah, A lot of bending going on there. Yeah, Bendigo had 350 pubs or something at one stage. People used to go on pub crawl and it was a really bad idea. Even David Boone couldn't pass that test. Yeah, Right. Anyway, Yes, I went to school there and then the next year I went up to Cairns. I left home and went up with a few mates up there and did a bit of work. Not much. I was pretty well just getting stoned and not doing much up there as you do at that age. Well, I did anyway. And then came back home and then I got a job with an old mate, A primary school mate's brother. He owned a restaurant out here, Which was a hatted restaurant called the Eagle Hawk. And I started working on the floor there as a waiter. And that's about 1986. Yeah, I did HSC in 85. And then his wife, The late great Janine Canolan, She said to me on day one, She was awfully charming. The classic female, Powerful, Powerful female matridi. She's about, I'm going to say 20 years older than me. She was so charming. She said, I might be charming today, But I'll be the bitch of your life. You will hate me. She was right. But she was amazing. I actually saw her years later. I was up in Byron and I saw her up there. Lisa took me into a clothes shop or whatever. And there was Janine. And I walked up to her and I said, How are you Janine? And we hugged and everyone else said, I just want to thank you. You're fucking amazing. You're the bitch of my life. Because we're talking about, You know, Behaviours before and the way that people are. And sometimes you need it. Like I often say to people here, You know, Not every conversation you ever have has to be agreeable. It's important to have disagreeable conversations. And so much of what happens is that doesn't happen. And so everyone's happy, Happy, Happy. And then you get one little moment and then the whole house of cards fall down. So she didn't operate that way. And that was helpful. So I did that hospital thing. I then went down to Tasmania and work down there. I think I went up to Queensland as well up to I worked on Green Island. I was a chef and a matri d there and then went down to Tasmania and I worked, Opened an international hotel down there in Launceston. Some bloke made a billion dollars or whatever and thought he'd make a hotel. So he made this, Spent 40 million bucks or something. Robert Hoskin, I don't know where he is these days. But anyway, And did this fine dining and it was like super fine dining. So I was a chef there on there. We did six months of training. So I cooked at tables in the full. Oh really? Yeah. Turkey. What do they call it? Monkey suit. Tuxedo. You came out with the flaming trolley of something. Yeah. I made it. It was the best job I ever had. Were you the originator of that salt thing? No, No, No. I look at people doing that. That's not, That's a back of house thing. That's not a front of house thing. No, No, No. It's much more. Yeah. It's much more of this and it's voila. Yeah, Right. It's not like this weird sort of reptilian sort of thing. Did you have those silver hoods or you went. Oh yeah, Yeah, Yeah. Well, We used to do that and so we had, So that was a 44 seat restaurant and it had 11 floor staff. So it had what's called the full Departee system. So the Departee system is like a military system which is appropriated into hospo. So it's got, There's a full hierarchy and there's rankings and all of that with executive chef, The head of the whole thing and then Matra D in charge of front of house and the sommelier and the chef de wrong, Which is the chef of the range and then the commie de wrong. There's a whole hierarchy, Which again, You know, We talk about the journey so much of what we're, You know, So much of what we talk about now is sort of anti hierarchy. And I, Knowing how that works, It works. Yeah. Just like bees don't buggerize around with this stuff. They just go, There's a hierarchy. Thank you. I didn't ask to be born the queen. You know, I know what I've got to do. Yeah. So I get that. So yeah. So that's been really helpful in the journey. And but as a, As a little bit of a training ground. Well, Yeah, That and systems working with people. One of the great things that I learned in hospo, Which I talk about with people in my work in agriculture is for that job when we did training, Which most people in hospo don't get trained, Especially front of house people, Back of house people, You know, They do an apprenticeship and whatnot. Most people front of house don't. But we did. And one of the things we learned about was the psychology of selling and the psychology of the guest experience. And the guest experience was called control dimension. So when you go to a time controlled dimensions, So you would go to a table and you'd immediately assess the mood, The temper of the of that couple or that table or whatever. And then because your objectives were two things. One was to make sure that their experience was as wonderful as it could be. And two, To get one hundred and twenty dollars out of each one of them. Right. So it's not in 87 or eight. So it was a pretty expensive joint. So it was one hundred and fifty or whatever it was. But anyway, That they were the two things that you had to do. And so that was really interesting because as a person who then became a consultant, Ultimately, Or working in extension and doing training and all of that, A lot of the time I'm assessing people's temper and mood. So there was a lot of that. And Lisa, My wife, Often says that it would be useful if a lot of people spent some time in hospitality, Because you learn so damn much about how to be with people. You know, Joel Salatin talks about a lot of farmers wanting their happiest just living in their humidity crib of a tractor and listening to Charlie Pride or whatever. But I think it's got better than that. Sorry. Listening to Charlie. That's it. But, You know, A lot of people, Because they don't get out and about and have a broader journey, It's almost like Abraham said, Or his old man said, Abraham's old man, I can't remember his name, Said, Get out, Bugger off mate, Go and have a journey. Come back. Come back when you're ready. It's a good point, Des. Two different anecdotes, I guess, I'll throw on the table. One is when I left uni, I did four years of rural science at Armidale up at UNI in New South Wales, New England up there. And sort of knew what I wanted to do, Wanted to go farming, Wanted to get home. And Mum said, Why don't you go and work in a pub for two years in Sydney? Which I did. And I worked at Lord Dudley there with Jamie Cushay, The Governor. And I've said it before and I'll say it again, It was the best two years for that very reason, One of the reasons, Working in hospitality, Dealing with people. I started as a glassy, So you are in the thick of it. You know, You're the lowest on the rung pretty much. It's good for the footy too, Because you learn how to dodge. Totally. And juggle and ting. And hip and shoulder. That's it. I mean, Slipping through a crowd, When you're holding 100 plus glasses, It takes a bit of skill. So there was that. And then when I was managing and working on the bar, It was nice to have that buffer of the bar. You felt like you were in control and you were running the show. But absolutely gauging the mood and giving them what they want, But then giving them more and having an appreciation and managing people's behaviours. Especially when alcohol is involved too. Oh, Tardy. Tardy. And the other one is farming. You know, I know a lot of people who school straight home, Stayed at home, 10 years, Cracked the shits, Dad's going wondering why their son or their daughter is, More sons I guess. Why there's dysfunction. Why there's dysfunction, Why they're unhappy, They piss off, But if they'd said, You know, I guess like my mum had, You know, Go and work in a pub or somewhere else, Go out, Work it out, Create some new reference points and then come back and you'll be much, Much better off. So, Yeah, I totally agree that there's no better place to understand and appreciate social interaction. Well, Cato said in De agricultural, Which was written 2, 000 years ago, He said something similar. He said, Because that book was about returning Roman soldiers or legions and it more or less said, Don't come back and buy your little farm, Which they would often get, Sort of like the first soldier settlement scheme. Yeah, Right. They're quite progressive though, Isn't it? Yeah, That's right. Don't come back and get your 100 Iguera, Which is about 80 acres, Until you've sown your wild oats and you've fought all your wars and you'll be about 35, 36, You're in the right zone. Yeah, Good one. So, It's nothing new. But, Yeah, The retail thing I think is really helpful. You know, Life for most people these days is not one profession, Even in agriculture. And one of the things that anyone in agriculture would appreciate is that if you're a full-time agriculturalist, Then you are many things. It's the most diverse profession that there is in terms of your requisite skill base, Especially if you're also interacting with the public, Like so many people are now doing, Because the terms of trade in agriculture are so appalling, So it's any wonder that people would try and lift the lid on the opportunity of value-adding or doing direct marketing and all of that sort of thing. So, Again, You're adding this range of skills, Which have got to come from somewhere. And if they don't come from some outside experience, Like your mum was wise enough to provide for you, Or just me by the way it landed, Then that lack of experience can find you wanting. Or it means that you've got to find someone and then pay someone or split it with someone else to be able to manage that. And all farmers have stories to tell, Don't they? Which is, That is the hidden gem, Or doesn't have to be hidden, But that's their day-to-day life is generally quite interesting for those who don't know. Oh, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. Great environment to work in, And hopefully that is the case. Some farms these days don't have a great environment for a variety of reasons, But yeah, There's a sky. There's no windows, Largely. So being able to interact with, Well, I mean, Even the whole concept of a farmer having clients or customers, Because back then. . . That's relatively, Well, It's. . . It's novel. It's become novel, Yeah. So, You know, Especially in the industrial era. But I mean, If you were a Parisian market gardener, Well, Then that's not the case. That's wrong. So it does depend on the production system. But yeah, The retail thing is, After I did that, I got the shits with the hospital after a while, Because, You know, You. . . I was doing a lot of split shifts, And split shifts are just not healthy. They're a real young person's game, And so. . . Split being your. . . Well, You're working, You're doing a morning shift, Or morning lunch, So you're serving lunch, And then you're doing dinner. Yeah, Right. So you have a little break in the arvo. So you go off, And in my case, Go off and have a couple of big cigarettes, Or whatever else, Like everyone else. Go to the. . . Well, I was working at. . . Like everyone else. I was working at the Ince in Kildur at Jean Jacques by the sea for a while there, And go off to the Espy. Oh yeah. And have a few. . . Big de barbeau. Have a few pints, Or pots, As we have down here. That's for you, Yeah. We don't have schooners down here, Mate. And a few big cigarettes. And then get back to using knives and shit. And hot pants. And then do that until 11, 12 o'clock, And then roll back up. It's a hard life. And so I wanted to play footy. You want to play sport. I've always played sport, And all the rest of it. You just can't do that. You can't catch it with friends, Or whatever. So anyway, I came back home to Bendigo, And. . . When I was in Launceston, I. . . Launceston is, In northern Tasmania, Is what I would call one of the epicentres of organic production in Australia. And in the world, Therefore. And there's quite a little food, But again, It's new volcanic soils. It's one of those places of the necessary bio-wealth to support more easily organic or bio-dynamic production. So we would have a lot of different producers who would come to the restaurant as our suppliers. Just as we do here. And so, Having grown up on a farm outside of Bendigo, The sort of farm genie sort of clicked in, Because I had something to converse with. Whereas most of the other kids, Or young fellas, Or people that were working there had come from town. So I had something to. . . And that was really the start of my consulting career, In a sense, Because I became interested in, Oh, How are you producing this, And da da da da da da. So when I came back, And the whole organic things, I hadn't really thought about organics or bio-dynamics up to that point in my life. I mean, Our farm was just a farm. Yeah, It was organic by neglect, I might say. So I came back to Bendigo, And by that stage I was sort of. . . I made a mind Peter Crutchfield, Who's since passed, He gave me a copy of The One Straw Revolution, Which I'd read. And I'd moved back to the family farm with my elderly grandparents, And I was helping them. And at the same time as I'd read Fukuoka. So when you talk about turning points and big. . . Reading that book was amazing. I remember I built the most beautiful garden, And even my uncles came out and said, Wow, This is a beautiful garden. It was just stunning in the middle of summer. And your age, What? Oh, 20? Yeah, 19, 20? Yeah, Thereabouts. And I built this kick-ass garden in my nana's, Because my nana's, Like a lot of farms, Always had the garden in the same spot. And she let me take it over. And you've got all the bits, You've got plenty of sheep, Cow manure, Lots of compost, Lots of wood, Blah blah blah, Put it all together. Straws, All the rest of it. So yeah, Off it went. I remember one day I was in there, I read, There was part of it, I think it was his second book that I read, That had this thing about the philosophy of moo. And moo was, Well moo, Anyone listening would know better than me, It was sort of like this do-nothing philosophy. Moo as in M to below. M U. M U. M U, Yeah, Moo, Such Japanese. Which is just chill. And by that stage I'm still doing the big cigarettes and all that, So it's. . . These moo works. Moo, You were going, I can do this moo stuff. Yeah, I can do no dig gardening and I can do nothing. So that works really well. I remember I was lying in my garden imagining, You know, As you do, Probably had a big cigarette, And I'm lying there going, Well this doing nothing stuff's really cool. And my grandad came in and kicked me up the arse and said, We don't do that around here. We don't do moo around here. We don't do moo. But moo actually meant something much more elegant, Of course. And that was doing nothing is actually don't intervene. Like the late Paul Taylor, His great brand of his company, His bio-fertilizer, Organic consultancy was Trust Nature. And that's perhaps a variation on the do nothing thing. Sometimes you've got a. . . You know Michael Crawford, Dr. Michael Crawford? Soil CRC. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Totally. He's been a friend of ours for 30 years. Anyway, I was talking to him the other night and. . . Because we had dinner and talking about all that. And I said, Well, You know, The great success of industrial agriculture has been that it's sifted out all of the variables such that it's really successful at doing. . . At producing something with not very much. It's amazing what we can do. How many people we can feed in the world. You know, A lot of people in organics or permaculture or whatever else, You know, They're always kicking the foot. . . Putting the boot into industrial ag. But the reality is it feeds the world. And it uses a lot of inputs and, You know, We all understand that, But it actually does it. It's created efficiencies of such. Yeah, Of a kind. You start scratching it and it's a bit shitty. But it's amazing. And. . . But it's done that by eliminating so many variables. Whereas the organic regenerative, Whatever you want to call it, The lala producers, Like you. . . How rude. I think you're super lala. Mate, I'm rude. Oh, You're rude. I don't know about that. Anyway, You invite, You know, You plant trees. You plant a tree that invites a bird. It invites a bug. You know, You plant different crops. You don't poison. You know, That invites variability. And so. . . And that's where you really got to trust nature. So. . . And you've got to do nothing in a way. You've got to not intervene. You've got to actually trust that whether it's evolution or God or whatever it is you believe, Actually has got us to this point. And if you support that and do all of that right, Well then things will take care of themselves. Well, You know, With a little bit of help. And that's. . . So that was quite profound to have all of that from Fukuoka. And so I have a. . . Have him to thank. So I did all of that and I got a job then at the organic green grocer in Bendigo with Dennis and Mary and the late Dennis James, Who was still friend. . . Dennis died a couple of years ago. Mary is still a good friend. And so I managed their organic shop. And that was the next stage in this evolution. Of having this. . . Because I was a food buyer. And now I'm in the other epicenter or another epicenter of organic biodynamic production, Which is here in central Victoria. Yeah. So a lot of the pioneers, People like Ian Lloyd would come down every month from Naya. And Ian Lloyd was one of the breakaway people from Podolinski in that he and. . . So I got. . . It was like a gossip centre on. . . Because they'd all come in. And it's kind of like my life now in a way. So much gossip. You love gossip? Yeah. I don't know. What would we call the magazine? It's not New Idea. That's already taken. But. . . Moo Idea. Yeah. We'll just call it Charlie. We want people to buy it. Okay. Well, There's Oprah. There's Charlie. Isn't that where it's all going? Opera. When my step-children were young, Just a quick segue, There's the Opera House in Sydney. And they thought it was the Opera House. And they thought she lived in there. She lives in that big shell on the harbour. The Opera House. Kind of a head. Yeah. There's different connotations here. Yeah. So that was amazing because very quickly you go past the conversation of, You know, Here's your juice or here. . . You know, A farmer bringing in their stuff to then going, Well, How was that grown? And then them going, Hey, I see you're getting so and so's. How are they doing that? And that was really the start of the true start of my consulting career or extension conversation career because so much of my job now is about facilitating conversations and connecting people. And so when I was doing that, Like I'd have, Say, A person who was a spud grower down around the Central Highlands here and I'd have another one and I'd go out to their farm one day and then I'd go to the other one. And those two blokes wouldn't speak. Right. Because they knew each other? Well, Everyone knows each other. But it's more like I'm doing my shit, You're doing yours. Yeah, They're just busy. Competition? Oh, A bit of that. Yeah. But, You know, And they'd say, Well, What's he doing? What's their regime or what's he doing? Whatever it was. But so there was a lot of that. And I wasn't. . . I mean, Obviously there's commercial confidences and I understand and respect all of that, But a lot of the time it wasn't. And I was just trying to, I suppose, To borrow Aldo Leopold's title. You know, The land ethic is really strong with me. You know, If I pare everything back in terms of the core motivation, It's really the land and its protection. And so. . . And I feel that organic, Biodynamic, Blah, Blah, Blah. Stuff that doesn't involve novel chemistry that the world has never been familiar with. Yeah. Or our bodies. Or our bodies, Et cetera. You can go down a huge amount of rabbit holes, Electricity, The whole bloody box and dice. But trying to keep it somewhat real. It's like for me, My biggest core motivation is land and its protection. And by protection meaning that it can get better. Because you can't protect something unless it can protect itself. And that's about inviting the diversity and inviting the variables and so on. So that's where all that sort of started. And then I started to get jobs from people. Yeah, Right. Let's say, Oh, Can you come out? Okay. Oh, Okay. And what will you charge for that? Or I'll give you a lamb roast or whatever, A bottle of wine or whatever. And soon stop taking that payment. And on we went. So that's a great role to be playing. I guess you're in the middle of that. You're in the part of the. . . Not the system, But I guess the flow of food and transaction and transparency from growing your own in your grandmother's veggie garden. Understanding that end of the process. You've already dealt with clients, Customers in the restaurant world. And now you're in a retail situation where you've got people buying food. So what's. . . And you're absolutely a facilitator of conversation and information. What's the. . . And now essentially that's your role. What makes a good facilitator? In the context of what you're going to do? Oh, In the context. . . Yeah, Well, So if you ask that of a. . . Like if I was to hire a facilitator, Well, Then there's classic rules to that. Someone who probably doesn't know too much about the topic is certainly not affiliated with any of the participants in whatever the facilitated session was. So I get that. But I think that there's another role for facilitation, Which is perhaps what I do. And I'll facilitate, For example, A conversation between a husband and a wife. When I go to their. . . Back in the day when I've done. . . You go and do a consult, You turn up, You're at a table. It's another table, Right? Are they at my restaurant or are they at my farming consultancy? I'm immediately. . . Same deal. Well, You know, I've often said to people. . . Sorry. No, You're wrong. Often said to people. . . It's a hard one because you're all. . . It's Joel Sallet. . . No, We're talking about this. Well, His mother actually. She said, You know, When you're in a position of judgment all of the time, And she's a very religious woman, She said, You know, There's only one judge and you've got to be careful that you get a bit too smart and that hubris sort of enters into it because judge not, Lest ye be judged, Right? So. . . Which I completely agree with. And so you've got to always keep a lid on your own power. Because you are in a power position. So coming into that. . . So. . . I probably prefer the term assessment. So when I drive into someone's driveway, I'm a very. . . I've got a photographic memory and I can, You know, I'll go down. . . I've got a high observation. . . I'm high on observation. So I'll go into someone's place and it's. . . Whether it's immediately assessing the land shape and what it can do, What its climate is. There's so many different clues that you can get when you're reading a space to then also seeing how much money they've spent so far. What kind. . . You know, What sort of fiscal managers are they? Are they accumulators of carbon or of junk? Farm junk, You know, There's all of that. It's a terrible thing to do in a way, But you've got to do it in a way that's. . . It's due diligence, Isn't it? Well, It's sort of. . . I think about it a lot. It's. . . But I don't articulate it enough. It's. . . You're making. . . You're sort of creating the frame. Again, It's the table, Except it's their table, Not my table. When they come into a restaurant, It's all ours. You've come into my room, Here's this table, It's just you two. Our cutlery, Da da da da da, Right? It's just you two. But when you go into someone's property or place and you walk in, It's all them, It's their expression. Or, If they're new to it, Then it's the expression of the person before them. Yeah, Sure. And so that then helps you with understanding, Well, Where are we going to go from here? So you're looking at, As often I say today, Within our Regrarian's platform context, I'll say, Well, What's the landscape context? What's the enterprise context? And what's the human context that we're dealing with? And how do we pull all of that together? And so when I arrive, I'm sort of. . . My algorithms, Logarithms, Whatever they're called, Are sort of going wild. And then when I say hello, Who makes the cup of tea? And what's the relationship? There's so much psychology in this, In the space, Which I definitely didn't appreciate until much later. And you didn't appreciate your grounding in that? Oh, Because I had no training in psychology or whatever and I've had to sort of background that. But you had that inadvertent training in retail in the restaurant anyway, Though? Yeah, In service. In service, Yeah, Right. So that's where I was getting to before that definitely helped, Because there was an outcome and that's ultimately happiness. Happiness to pay money. So there's a value proposition there on whatever case. Okay, A happiness that if I'm giving you advice about how you might plan your farm, Well then you've got to be happy with that. So there's that. But then that advice is going to also lead to the fulfilment of my context, Which is land repair and all of the rest of it, Which is usually why someone's asked me in the first place. So in terms of the facilitator part, It's about being able to listen sufficiently, Sum the whole thing up enough, And then sometimes just cut to the chase, Because the clock's ticking. And people often just want to get going. That's another thing that I've had to learn, I suppose. So if I look at the first half of my farm planning career, It was mostly design and development. External as in landscape design development? Yeah, So I'd go to your farm, You'd hire me to come, And you'd know that I'd come and design it for you, Right? You'd not be a really big part of that. I'm kind of like an architect typically. If you hire an architect, It's basically their house, Not your house. They'll listen to you, But it's basically you hire them for their house. Yes, Good. Yep. So I'd do that, And then I'd do that within the whole frame of context. And then I had my own tree planting teams and fencing teams and earth moving teams, And we'd go and basically do a giant backyard blitz. Do the job, Yeah. Yeah, And you'd be a lot poorer as a result. So we'd do that. And from the perspective of that kind of relationship, The facilitation part of it at that time was really to our own end. It's almost a negotiation, Not a facilitation. Well, It was really, I look at that time as where it was, Again, Like the architect. It was my context being kind of imposed on you. So I could take you to a lot of properties which we've completely developed, Including some down where you've just been, And they're amazing. I mean, There's all the trees and the fencing and the driveways and the dams, You know, All the beards, But it's actually me that did that, Not them, Right? So they just agreed to it, Right? And by and large, As I understand it, They really love it. So in that phase, I was looking at having a big, What I call a big M management, Sorry, A big D development type of approach as opposed to a small, As opposed to a big M management approach. And that's the way I frame it now is that a lot of, Say, The second half of my farm planning career has sort of shifted over more to understanding that in most cases, It's management that needs to be at the front end of all of this, Not development, Especially for people who are new to land. And they've got, You know, They've sold, You know, Especially ones who've sold a property in town and, You know, Have bought a block and they're, You know, They've got dollars. They're green. Well, They're green as they're enthusiastic. God help them if they've gone to any of the produce stores or whatever, Because I can tell immediately again, You know, Whether they've gone there first, Like if they've gone there first, It's you can tell just by the fence post spacing and whether they've got concrete troughs and they've, You know, They've got seven different implements and a dah, Dah, Dah, Dah who they've talked to or whether they've gone to a field day. And like, It's just all, Oh wow, This is amazing. What can I buy? I've got 400 grand cause I've sold my place in town. I've got equity. I've got to have a grid, A red tractor to be a farmer. And I've got to have all that stuff. And so you front end. So sometimes you're going in and one of the, One of the strongest things that I do now in terms of my facilitation, Using my power, Cause I understand I have power is saying, Hey, Maybe you don't need to do that shit. Maybe you could actually just take some time and use again, Some Fukuoka and advice, Do nothing. Yeah. Pay attention to how the land is. Because now you're the designer now you're the planner. And so I'm facilitating that to have more of a, What I call a big M management approach and a smaller D development approach. And then that, That means they're not spending a lot of money. They're not overheating and they're not getting to the point where, Cause a lot of people when they move, And this is again, Part of the journey is when they move to land, They're real. The phase is really high on infatuation and on innovation. And if there's anybody who's been in business for, For any enduring period would know that you can't have too much innovation because otherwise there's too much chaos because innovation invariably requires management and well, You'll get, There's lots of failures when you innovate, There'll be things that go wrong. And if you have too much of that dominating your life, Then your life's got too much chaos. And a lot of that early space in the transition has that, Whether it's with an existing farmer who's or agriculturalist, Who's transitioning over to a different method. We want to do it really incrementally. And I say, You know, Be incremental, Pragmatic and progressive in this, You know, Just, Just take your time cause you're not going anywhere. Let's just do it responsibly so that you don't kill yourself, Kill your relationship because it is a big, You know, You've had a stasis now we're about to put you through a pulse, But let's not make the pulse too disruptive because you may not be able to handle it. Your relationships may not be able to handle it and your business may not be able to handle it. So there's, So when we're facilitating, You know, There's a lot of that thinking that goes into it and some people, And this is what I largely find. Most people are not built for that. But they, They often do it anyway. Because of various factors. The infatuation factor is a really big one. Well, You know, When you fall in love, You fall in love, You do, You're a different person and that's the same with land. You know, You fall in love you with your family. It's like so much going on. Just, Just take a chill pill. It's a great point as, Because you know, The, And I just again refer to my own experience when 15, 16 years ago did grazing for profit as a sort of a holistic management education phase and learned about managed grazing. The government was handing out a whole lot of money to fence and water and wire. I got a fair bit of dough to do that. Went into it. The development, That's the big D, A lot of water and wire. Thinking this is what I need to do. Which if you're going to do something, That's not the worst thing that you can do. No, No, That's right. It was, It was for me it was stepping in the right direction because it was changing from a set stock to this style. The point is, It's facilitating management actually. Well, It is because, Well, This is my thing. It required management of that D development, That infrastructure, Which I didn't have. I didn't have the management skills. I didn't have the experience. So I went out with a whole lot of money, Public money, Essentially from government, Put this stuff in, Didn't know how to use it. So it had some really, Really tops disasters, Not disasters, But just failings and learnings, Thankfully. And so, You know, I mean, Sometimes the best way to learn how to manage something is just get in and use it and make the mistakes and make the cuts and the bruises and that sort of thing. But I guess in a, In a facilitated way, I totally get the sense in, I guess, Your role as a assessor of the management potential of the people that you're now saying, Well, We can put a dam here and some fencing here, Like that as a, As an order of service. Cause you could just go and give them a blueprint and go do this. But if you walk away and they're going, Oh wow, That's, We're so, You know, We love this, It looks amazing. And then they look at each other and go, Actually, How the hell are we going to manage this thing? How do we run cattle or sheeps with this? Or how do we, You know, Just R and M on, On staff can be, And that really can take the shine off things, I guess too. You know, You go, Hey Darren, Like, I don't know, But I mean, It was, What, What was the, What was the catalyst for changing from going from going in there with a big D to going in there with holistic management? Yeah. Okay. Yep. So when you talk about turning points, It's interesting because I've often reflected on this. I went to a barbecue with a mate and we went out and played some footy. I played in the seconds. Now when you're talking footy, We're talking Australian. Yeah. The game where you actually use your feet to kick a ball with skill, Not just some weird around sort of camp easy camp. Easy is the only person I've been able to see who can actually kick a ball. But anyway, That's not good. That's a good reference point. He was a legend. Well, He did play Aussie rules to start with. Yeah. That's how he, That's how he was such a good kick. Yeah. He was a legend. Although those roundables are a bit harder to kick too. Those are a bit more round. Yeah. So anyway, I digress. I tell you men talking, We're going to get into sports. Anyway, I went over and I played a few cause I stopped playing footy, But I don't know. Well, I stopped playing footy, You know, In an organized fashion. I had a mate say, Oh, We're a bit short in the seconds. So can you come over? And I, I applied, I think it was for some other or whatever and play this in the Scraggers. And I think under the pseudonym of ball bag and I don't know how. You were registered. I think it was part of the pregame inspection. Mr. Bag. So it was just ball ball or bag when they yelled my name. Anyway, We played our game and then we went for a barbecue after the game. And there was a bike. You might know by the name of George King. And George is a George, I think is about our vintage. And anyway, He was there and we were there with some other mates who were farmers and blah, Blah, Blah. So we're in Victoria. We're in Victoria. So now it's about an hour west of here. Yeah. It's right on the edge of the Wimmera. Okay. Cool. Anyway, So George is there. This barbie and he's just done. He's this is like 1994 or something. Sure. And George has just done a holistic management course with Bruce Ward or Ellen Savory, Blah, Blah, Blah. He's 22, 23, 24. He's like me. He's pumped. I've just done a permaculture course. So I'm all permaculture. He's all holistic management. And we're at a barbecue and we're drinking. And you're at each other. And we're at each other. Right. My permaculture is better than your holistic management. And vice versa. And I'm not saying George again. But it's really interesting because there was that moment and then there was another moment in 95. I think it was the year after I went up and did a permaculture design course with Bill Mollison. Oh yeah. The late Bill, Who I knew very well. And anyway, That was the first time I went and met the great man. And it was up at his farm in northern New South Wales, Toyelgham. He had a farm up there, Permaculture fantasy land. Anyway, He set that up and poured huge amounts of money into it. Anyway, I was there with about 75 other people. And I was in his library. Bill had the most exceptional library, Private library. And it was all in hoop pine cabinets. So he had all these glass fronted cabinets. And it was an amazing, Took about four rooms up. Anyway, I was there one day and he was standing by me and I pulled out a book called Holistic Resource Management. This is the year after I met George. And he said, Put that away, That's destroying Africa. And I went, Oh, I've told Alan this. He thought it was pretty funny. Anyway, So I just. . . But Bill had a copy of it. Bill had a copy of it. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. And Bill and Alan have met. Anyway, I'll talk about this later. But anyway, So I put it away. And this is the thing, You know, So much, Or maybe I'll lift the lid on this a bit. So much of this space is built on demigods. And in my development, As we'll no doubt discuss, Is the Rigurians platform. And what we do is about paying homage to those who come up with insights. And these pioneers, These ecological pioneers, As Martin Mulligan's book called them, These bombastic, Hard-headed pioneers. Now they're now Stuart Andrew's. . . Stuart Peter? No, Stuart's son on the website. They've now classified Peter as a weed. So he's a pioneer. He's a bit of pioneer vegetation. And that's exactly right. And I'm really grateful that they've done that, Because it actually. . . It's a psychological recognition of a profile that someone's had. And that's okay, Right? I was talking to him this morning, Actually, And he's very weedy in a good way. He's a absolute pioneer, Peter. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. He's a difficult man. But he won't be unrooted. He's a thistle. He's like a deep-rooted thistle. And the thing is, I guess, And we're sort of getting to, Is that people approaching the world with new ideas have to be that type of person. Oh, Absolutely. Yeah. So anyway, I put the book away, And I didn't. . . I bet you that was Bill's little test, Like a trap. He goes, Anyone who touches that book, I know. I don't know. Bill was again. . . Bill and Peter Andrews were very similar in personality. And apparently they've met. I mean, Bill loved it. Loved the blue. Like a physical blue. He could be quite aggressive and so on. And I've seen that, Witnessed that, Or had that firsthand. You never punched me, But he was. I know what that scar was on you. Yeah, He threatened to. You and that bloody holocaust man. Well, He just didn't respect my Irish humour. Anyway, One day. Anyway, Probably fair enough. But yeah, I put that to one side. And so the permaculture blinkers were kind of stayed on for a while there. And that really didn't sit because I was. . . Someone asked me once what are my greatest influences, And it was really Fukuoka and Yeomans. The permaculture thing was there because they were the only land management courses you could do. More or less. Holistic management training wasn't super available at that stage. RCS were just getting off the ground. The Bruce Wards of the world were hardly doing anything. But there were permaculture courses everywhere. You're talking about the mid-90s. That was like the zenith of permaculture activity. And I did my whole farm planning course over at Certificate with the University of Melbourne in 95 at Longrenong. At the University of Melbourne College over there. And stuff. So I was at that time pulling it all together. But HM was something I unfortunately didn't do. And so when I eventually lifted that lid which was in, I'm going to say, The mid-90s. So quite a while later. I went, What the hell? I almost felt sick in the stomach. That I'd overlooked such a critical thing, Especially being a systems thinker. Because I love a spreadsheet. Like Lisa says, If our conversation mentions a spreadsheet, She says, Don't tell Darren. Because he'll go and make a spreadsheet about it. Spreadsheets get you going. Well, Spreadsheets. I read the E myth in 1993 when we started our farm planning business. And that was all about systems. Like the E myth was basically a treatise on looking at creating a franchise prototype based on what McDonald's done. Blueprint. So do what McDonald's. . . That's one of the great things about McDonald's. It's all about systems. It's all about quality control. It's all about time and time and motion studies and systemizing everything. So when we were doing 100 to 150 farm plans a year and developing about half of those, I needed to be organized. Because we had machines everywhere and crews everywhere. And it was like, Oh, Oh, Oh. It was always teetering on the edge of chaos all the time. So I needed to be super organized to do that. So anyway, So when I got to the point of the holistic management thing coming back into my view. And now being part of it was like, Oh, Okay. That was a big. . . Huge. I'd say bigger than anything else, Really. And I think to an extent, Too, It was probably better than in a way because it was actually more better articulated. Yeah. I don't know that holistic management was completely articulated. And it's still a work in progress, Which is. . . Permaculture to an extent, When I think about that, It's not as much of a work in progress. And some permaculturals out there will definitely disagree with me, Which is go for your life. But it's framework of ethics and it's framework of principles, Whether they're from David or whether they're from Bill. They're pretty well there. They're set as it were. Yeah. So now it's just about. . . Well, I'm being simple here, But it's simplistic. But it's more or less how you reflect and apply those. If you're calling yourself a permaculture, You're following that methodology. Holistic management's still got more to go. There's still, I think, A lot more intellectual growth in it. What was it about when you did the course? What were some of those. . . I read the book first. And then you did the course with. . . Yeah, I did the course. Well, I actually hosted. . . That was around the time. I did the world's first carbon farming courses in the United States. I was working for Mars Incorporated from 2004 to 2007 in Vietnam. So we shifted our whole family over to Vietnam. Mars. Mars has the Mars bars. Yeah, Right. And dog food and all the rest of it. One of the world's biggest food companies. Completely privately owned. Owned by two brothers and a sister. Wow. Okay, That's another story. Yeah, So I was working over. . . Well, I met Howard Shapiro actually at Bill Mollison's in 2001. I was teaching a permaculture course with Bill the first time I taught at PDC. When he moved back to Tassie. And Howard turned up. And Howard was one of the founders of Seeds of Change, Which is a really big seed and food company. And Mars bought them out. And when they bought them out, They bought their brand, They bought Howard and Howard then went in to become the director of food science and external research for Mars Incorporated globally. Howard's an Aussie? No, Howard's from the US. He's a Fulbright scholar and a PhD. He's a superhuman, Like a genius. Anyway, He's got this old Russian Jew, That's what he calls himself. He calls himself a biodiversity-farian. He's got the most of the domain. You would have serious beard in. You and Costa, His beard comes down to here. So it's sort of like Costa's beard, But it's pure white. Oh, Cool. And he's got a bald head. But he's a genius. Upside down man. Like so smart. Yeah, Cool. A great agroforestor, Loves the whole thing and has been a long-term friend, Well was a long-term friend of Bill's. Anyway, He came to Bill's and we met and we were talking about agroforestors. And then he kept me in his mind. And then a couple of years later he said, I've got this job, Do you want to go up and do it? So off we went. The whole family, The kids were only, I think Isabella was only 10. But the two, Pearl and Zane, Were only like three or four or something. So we all moved up into a village in country Vietnam. And off we went. I had this project there which was to train agriculture and, Government agriculture and forestry extension offices in my sort of brand of key line and soil conservation, Regeneration, Et cetera. And so to do design and demonstration plots on that and then do training. So I shifted my whole thing, I can't thank Bill enough because Bill rang me one day. And he said, Oh it's about, Because Bill, Hey Darren, It's about time you started teaching. No it didn't. I've got this course coming, Come down and tell you. The dinner God had spoken. Yeah, Yeah kind of. Although Bill and I smoked a lot of cigarettes together and had a lot of cups of tea over the years. But anyway, So Bill spoke and I went down there and we did a couple of courses. But yeah, Because up to then I've done stuff all as far as training was concerned. But yeah, After that, That shifted everything and then I became a professional trainer of professional trainers without any professional training. But it worked, So what was the outcome of that? Well the outcome of that was to, The prime purpose was to introduce cacao to Vietnam so that Vietnam could grow chocolate. Because the Ivory Coast around that time, I mean the geopolitical situation was that you might remember the French were bombing the Ivory Coast, The Lecote d'Ivory. And who produced I think half or two thirds of the world's cacao. And cacao I think is number five or six biggest commodity on the planet. It's a really big game. And Mars are one of the three or four big players. There's Cadbury's, Hershey's, Mars and whomever else. Anyway, And Kraft. So they and the other chocolatiers who were part of the World Cacao Federation, They got together and said we need to look at some other places to grow cacao. And Vietnam was identified. It wasn't the ideal place but a stable government. Because a lot of places where they grow cacao are unstable governments apart from Malaysia and Indonesia. You go to the African tropical countries and then in South America they're often quite unstable. So that provides poor conditions for value chain stability. So that's why they were looking at it. But we needed to tweak the landscape because it was a seasonal rainfall. So irrigation, Dams, Blah blah blah. Hello Aussie. Yeah, You're the man. So that was that. Had you been to Vietnam before? No I hadn't. And it was very interesting because the day that I arrived was the 37th anniversary, And as I didn't have nothing to do with this, Of the day of my father's death in Vietnam 37 years ago when he was fighting in the American War. As a conscript at 23, Paul Bogart. And when did you arrive that day and go, I'm here and this is the anniversary? Or was it something you remembered later on? Oh both. I knew it on my ticket. The 18th of February has always been a significant day, As we all have significant days. But it's an overwhelming place. I'd not spent much time in the tropics apart from when I was younger going up to Cairns and shit like that. But this was a truly foreign place. Up to that point I think I'd only been in New Zealand, Which is a truly foreign place. Aotearoa. I've never been. New Zealand. Oh mate, You'd probably need to get a rider to carry all this shit. I'm dying to go. Because we've had a lot of interest in doing some courses over there. Yeah, You would. No, There's some, Yeah, You would. The beauty scene is pretty big in New Zealand. That's the home of something with John Pierce and Peter Proctor and all the good guys. Did that, You go, No. I was just going to say, Landing in Vietnam that day, I mean it was, Like I said before, Very visual person, Visual learner. But people ask me what was my first memory. My first memory is lying in my, Or being cradled in my Nana's arms and it's the smell of the tallow soap that we used to make on our farm. Because we used to kill the beasts and then we'd render, Preserve, Get all the fat and he'd make soap out of it using the tallow. And Nana used it for everything. Our clothes. It was everywhere. It was everywhere. And that's my first memory as a smell memory. So anyway, So when I got to Vietnam the first thing you do is you go, Whoa, This is a different smell. And it's telling it, Like it's a huge amount of signals that your brain is taking on. So that's my first memory of Vietnam. It wasn't, You know, It was another airport and it's a hot, Da da da, Airport. But it was really the smell, Like wow, This place has got a lot going on. So, All good. I know this building's like from 1862. Yeah, Something like that. And that door opening, I was going, Hang on, There's two ghosts. There's someone behind it. Probably. I feel like a ghost sometimes. Have you had this place looked at by, You know, Patrick McDaniel? Our middle daughter Pearl, She's really perceptive like that. And we've got a little dog. That's all right. We've got a little dog who apparently sees that sort of thing as well and he gets a bit spooked when he's here. Fair dinkum. Yeah. I'm not surprised. There's a lot of it around here. Yeah. Well, I'm not that perceptive. Yeah. I haven't turned, Oh, It's not there or it's not turned on. I'll leave that to others. So Vietnam, Progression of your, I guess, Another, Your professional development. Yeah, Well, That's it. And I mean, You know, I mean, I look at my life to this point. I mean, I think, What year were you born? Not telling. Oh, Shit. Sixty seven or sixty eight. Sixty six. I'm not telling. And around that. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm actually like, I'm 70, But I look much younger. I knew that was coming. You know how it works. Anyway. Vietnam. Yeah, No, I, I don't know. I have another leading question for you there, But now it's gone. I just lost my train of thought. Anyway. What's for lunch? Yeah, Plenty. Pia dina. So, Yeah, So Vietnam, That was another stepping stone. Yeah. Development. Yeah. The professional development thing is, Yeah, I was going to say in my life, Even though it's, You know, Money on what am I now? Fifty three with 54 this year. It's I think because I started so young. A lot of people, You know, My life, Everyone's life's different, Of course. Captain Obvious. But, But by the same token, I mean, My life up until I was a, I mean, I left Victoria for the first time, I think when I was 18. And that was to go to Moana. Right. Or Wentworth, Which is across the border. So up to that point, You know, It was all about Bendigo and football and swimming and tennis and cricket and family and the farm. And it was all very localized. Yeah. Bendigo is, You know, There's there's no cult. Well, Up in the point of up to that point in my life had very little cultural diversity. You know, There were the people we met with great ownership shop or, You know, Great sign for the fish and chip shops. Yeah. Asians own Chinese shops. Yeah. That's it. That's that's the frame of your life. And so so there. So it's like kind of talk about reference points or turning points that you you have these. Well, In my case, I'll sort of look at it in blocks. You've had that block, That block, That block, Because there's always and that's it's kind of like nature as well. Well, It is like nature. Nature often typically functions in a form of stasis. And then there's a pulse. Yeah. It's kind of like when you do the when you do the stirring and biodynamics, You know, You're as Paul Alinsky said, You know, You don't want to have it. So you're stirring for so long that the music becomes boring. You know, That's not how music works. You've got to actually get in there and crash it, Create the chaos. And then and then you go back to a rhythm again. Yeah. And so sort of steps of exactly all the way along. Then this is why I love BD from that perspective is especially the stirring. I used to do a lot of BD back in the day. And, You know, You just you're feeling an improvement as you go along. So over the hour of that stir, You've you've actually taken the ingredients and you've you've you've transformed, Transformed. So by the end of it, You've got this material which is viscous and it's almost like it's just a. Yeah. So it's like food and life. So those steps that have been along the way when I look back, I think so far it's been really super rich. I've been incredibly fortunate to be all the place. I mean, It's sort of like I feel sometimes because of where I've been, Where I know who I am, How I grew up, My family, Etc. It's sort of like what might. I've got so many anecdotes and I kind of feel a bit shitty about sharing them sometimes because it's almost like you're bragging. I like. But that's just general life. Someone someone says something. Oh, Yes. I've got a mate in Uruguay. It's like who has fucking friends in Uruguay? But I do. And it's like I can't help that. But so I feel a bit shitty sometimes sharing things like that because it's. Well, I suppose part of that is that especially the Irish, Perhaps Australian thing, You know, You don't. They stick your head up. They don't stick your head up. That'd be a smart ass. All that sort of stuff. Don't try and think you better. But think of it this way. You're being selfish if you don't. Because if that's going to help someone. It is what it is. I mean, You know, That's just been the way it is. But I feel incredibly fortunate. And that the COVID thing is certainly made me reflect on that because you can't just. So saying when we did a we just finished a Rex the other day and we did the last the last layer was energy. I said, You know, We take for granted that we can get in a car. I said two years ago, If I had enough reflection of energy in my pocket called money, I could go down to the airport and buy a ticket and go wherever the bloody hell I wanted to. Because there's a reliable fuel supply. There's reliable planes. Everything is reliable. And all of a sudden, COVID just said, Nah. So you just can't do that. So my imagining of resuming the life that I had of constant travel tours. I mean, I did a tour in 2019. You just we just bought one way tickets the whole way. Just went around. I went to 20 countries just going to talk about. And I could do that without even thinking. I won't even contemplate such a thing now. I don't know whether I'll need vaccination certificates or whether you actually get there and I'll tell you, You can't go. You better go back. And that's like, Whoa. So it's a very different world. And so I'm really appreciative of the experiences that I've had to date that have been so incredibly rich and met so many people. That's probably the biggest thing I'll miss meeting if I can't do it anymore. I'll miss meeting the new people, Getting the new smells, Catching the vibe of the place and all of that. But by the same token, I'm in an incredibly rich place here in Victoria. Victoria is incredibly diverse as a state. So if I didn't have to leave again, That's OK. You're adapting to the new. Well, Maybe not. Hopefully not the new world, But a new chapter of travel or lack of or, You know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, You know, You can put your trust again, Trust nature, Trust God, Whatever it is. Here it is. So, Yeah, That's where I'm at at the moment. It's which is cool. But I'm certainly I'll be I'm sort of wondering what's what what's the next thing around the corner, You know, Because they sort of pop up, As you know. Is there a new biodynamics? Is there a new permaculture? Is there a new what's the next holistic management? Yeah. Because in the way that we've developed the regrarian's platform is talk about that. Well, It's as I've described it several times, It's like a methodology of methodologies, Because as I've realized that if you would ask me what my religiosity is, It's probably pantheistic in that, You know, God and the universe are the same. If you're going to if there if there was some omnipotent being or beings out there, If that was what was real, Then it's Yeah, Then that's the way I look at it. It's a bloody big thing. Unimaginable. So that sort of then applies into the layers of thinking about how one goes about managing your world in the universe, Your life in the universe, Because it seems pretty clear to me that you can't just follow one gig. You can't just follow it. You can't just be a biodynamic farmer. Well, You could you could like people do. Yeah. But then maybe maybe that will then find your landscape wanting for more. Because the world doesn't work that way. What nature does not work well. Yeah, There's David Holmgren so eloquently puts nature is an equal opportunity employer of the greatest mind. Right. And you haven't talked you should go and chat to him. Yeah, That pop. Yeah, Yeah. Anyway, He's not far from here. No, No, No, He's he's 30 minutes from here. Which way? Towards Tammy's. So if you go through, Well, He's actually before dials for the headburn. And you go on. That was a cricket bat. Oh, It wasn't the ball. But um, So as I say, An holistic manager, I think was Kirk Gadze or Alan or whatever, Whomever, You know, You got to play with a full deck of cards. Yeah. And but, But even then, The deck, The idea that there's a limited deck is another thing. There's always something that because nature is so diverse. I mean, That's why there's no laws of biology. There's no laws, There's laws of physics, Because they're, And there's laws of chemistry, Because you're dealing with basically numbers. But there's no law laws of biology is super random. I just finished reading a book about the great British scientists or British then Indian scientists JBS held on, And who was a genius, Early, Early geneticist in the sort of work from the from about the 1910s to 1950s. And a lot of what he found back then is what we know. And this was before they discovered DNA officially. But yeah, They were all over it. And that was what he was saying. I mean, It's like, This is this is that's why, For him as one of those great polymaths, Who just, You know, Could recite Greek could, You know, Could could do the Iliad. In three days, Backwards, Yeah, Three days or whatever it took, But also knew everything about biology that there basically was to know at that time, And this and that and so on. You know, Genius guys like that would even say, This is really big shit, Right? Yeah. So when you come to the noble task of repairing agricultural landscapes and trying to make a living out of that something I've personally not done, I should say, I'm not a farmer on a piece of land. So just put that out there, But working with people to help them facilitate them to do that. You have to realise that nature is a really, Really diverse thing, As it were. And then you've got the climate. And then you've got the economy. And then you've got the layers, You know, And then you've got you, Yeah, Because you'll change, Your wife will change, Or your partner will change, Or your kids will change. So there's all of whom are biological elements, By the way. So it's, It's a, It's a, So you know, You don't want to confine yourself to any, I believe, You don't want to confine yourself to any single philosophy and that my title at, Which Howard I think he gave me when I worked for Mars was an integrated consultant. Yeah, Which I think is an awesome one, Which makes sense. So the main thing really, But, But yeah, It's sort of like whatever works, Whatever bloody works at the end of the day, And I guess really that whole philosophy, You know, Call yourself an integrative consultant or, You know, An adaptor of situations and practices. That is reflective of nature, Isn't it? Yeah, Absolutely. Like David said, You know, Diversity of, Of, Of resources, Scenarios, Temperatures, Geology, When you look at Peter Andrews and son Stewart, You know, They're sort of thing about the species that they will use. Yeah. Which is where David, The context of what David's thing about equal opportunity. It's not about being specious about being nativist or whatever. It's about what works. What's what's what's what's what's required. Well, When I look at a weed infestation, I think, Well, First of all, It's actually got a specific name. So let's start with that. Yeah. All right. It's got a it's got a genus and a species. Weed has connotations. Right? Yeah, Exactly. Who, Who am I as a human to think that I'm smarter than that plant? Now, If there's a field of that plant, Well, I might know, Do I feel smarter than that plant? You know, And that's the no. No. When if I was to leave it and facilitated again, Well, That plant and that plant community is actually giving me a whole range of signals about probably my management. And the thornier and more bastardy that it is, Is an even greater smack in the head to you that you should wake up to the bloody hell what you're doing. Right. So now that can be a hard pill to swallow. But it's one that sometimes you've just got to look in the mirror and face up to responsibility sometimes and you know, The stronger the way the bigger the responsibility, I suppose. And that is a big paradigm for farmers, Especially new farmers getting back to clients of not specific clients, But I guess in the context of you facilitating assessing your clients and new farmers go to a farm, Which is the usual thing that I'm usually involved in startup startup thing is so you're turned up. There's a paddock of thistles. And they're going, Oh, What are we? How do we get rid of them? You know, I've got an order. Yeah, Because they may well have an order to get rid of them. They're being frowned upon by their neighbors or they've already got the MCP in the in the shed, Ready to go. And that understandably is the initial reaction of a new manager, The new owner of the farm. I'm going to you know, Thistles are bad. That's what they understand. Not reading, Not reading. It's their paradigm. And, You know, Remember, Just as an aside, You remember that old roundup ad a few years ago, Where it had a scotch thistle? I think was beautiful. It was a brilliant ad. I mean, The psychology of it was breathtaking. Lots of psychology. Well, There was a there was a scotch thistle. So a pink shock of punk here. Right. So turned a turned a thistle into a punk here, Everything and everything that was anti authority and anti orthodox. And actually, I don't know if it was random or something or one of these herb that was called stomp or something, You know? Yeah, Yeah. And just go. You know, Bigfoot came out on it. That'll learn you. That'll learn you punk. Yes. Right. Yeah. And you see that sort of psychology. And will you know, You've been that punk. Totally. Yeah. So you go into the pub, You go to the footy club or whatever you don't want to put your head up, Right? Because you get stomped on. Totally. So the dynamic guy. Yeah, I'm the I'm the weirdo. Well, You remember, In WA, I've still got some clips of it there. They were dissing. Yeah, The cowhorn thing. This is back in the 90s. I remember there were clippings newspaper clippings they'll put in the rural press over there. This happened the other day. Oh, Really? And just as an aside, And I hope I get this, This right. So and this is not having a go at anyone. This is just what happened. Yeah, Sure. That I think it was the Minister for Environment in WA last year when or maybe the year before when there was some seriously good stuff going on, You know, Approaches to regenerative agriculture. I can't remember who, The Ag Minister, Alana. Yeah. And I can't remember who might have been was it Diane Higgity. There was that, Oh my god, This is amazing agriculture and approach to farming. And I think in her reference in her, She was quoted as saying, You know, Regenerative Ag, Or maybe not that cowhorn stuff. But you know, So there was a little bio bullshit stuff. Yeah, There was a bit of an aside, A bit of a back end, Which is fine, Because you know, That'll, That'll kill. Well, I hope Michael doesn't mind me. I'm quoting from a private dinner the other night, But we were talking about this, About the variable conversation that I had earlier. And, And he was saying, Look, You know, We know, We know so much about all the soil chemistry, Soil physics. That's all pretty. And he's a, He's a soil science of international science. Science of international soil scientist of international caliber, Head of the, The cooperative research center for soils in this country for soils excellence. And he's saying the big thing now, And he's trained at Melbourne Uni, PhD, All that, And the big thing now is soil biology. Yeah. And it's like, What is that? What's that? Which, Which, You know, Again, On this thread of us not wanting to back one horse or be on one horse. And, You know, This world is not a one horse world. I mean, We look at this. We were smooth sailing in 2019. No one saw COVID coming. And bang. And, You know, Just on that, Daz, In the, You know, The courses, The Biodynamic courses we run, You know, We talk about, Or Hamish talks about the measurable and unmeasurable. You know, The two streams, The Newtonian scientific stream that everything's measurable, Essentially, And can be pulled apart and analyzed and reduced, Which is a good thing, Because it enables us to understand things somewhat, And at least in isolation. Yeah, You shouldn't throw that baby out with the bathtub, Which is what a lot of people do. They write it right off. And then there's this sort of the Goethean side of it where it's, And dare I say, Indigenous side of it, Where it's the unmeasurable. And thank God that's there. And thank God that everything isn't, Hasn't been pulled to its parts and analyzed. And we understand it because it's in that space between the not understanding and the understanding or the measurable and unmeasurable. That's where the good stuff happens. You know, That's where we can sort of combine the two, The stream of science, Which is fascinating that we can look at into things in such detail. But the immeasurable indigenous, You know, Ancient, Unmeasurable side of it. And you know, In Goethe Biodynamics, You talk about nature spirits or elementals, And there's a whole cosmic side of all that. That's where the color is. Yeah. And I know you talked to our mutual friend Cindy Lovett recently or Cindy O'Meara. Cindy's from Bendigo. She's an old family friend. Yeah, That has been one of the most popular, I've got to say. Oh, She's a great human being. But I mean, You know, You get into our inner biology. Totally. And then all of the influences of everything on all of that. I mean, It's a whole brave new world. It's quite amazing. And exciting. Yeah, Absolutely. And one that'll, Again, This is when I say this is the thing, It's not just there's a whole range of things. But you know, These are all steps in our journeys that if, And we're capable of it, I think, If we are allowed to manage it well enough. Open to it. Open to it, Exactly. To really improve our health and our prospects and those of our families and the broader future of the place. And that's the choice we have, Isn't it? Like as operating humans in the world, Who have access to information, Experience. A lot of people don't have choices. And I speak about that. I mean, It's always, You know, We all sit within our own context. And it's, Again, When you come to the to being the facilitator, Again, You've got to appreciate that it's not you you're here for, It's them. And a lot of people who've got the whole privilege argument is around that to an extent. And that goes within a lot of people who apparently have privilege, Which is part of my discussion on that is to say, Well, Yeah, There's privilege and there's privilege. I know, You know, There's a lot of people who, For a variety of reasons, Say have a really shit debt to equity ratio. There's not a lot of privilege in having a really bad debt to equity ratio. Yeah, They're landowners. Yeah, They're well, Kind of. Yeah, Yeah. They're stewards. If they're not stewards, Yeah, They can't be stewards. Because when you've got that kind of economic situation, Well, And then the land is the loser. Yes, The land has to be exploited. Yeah, The lot. And that's, That's unfortunately, Especially I think we got to the 80s, The great drought of the early 80s. Really, It's sifted out a lot of people who are really bad managers. And I think, In a way the banks, You know, A lot of people probably kill me for this for saying this, But they actually probably in large part did the land of favour. A lot of landscapes at that point were released from the terrible management practices, Which had ensued. And in some ways actually got the drought to be as bad as it was. Yeah, Well, There was atmospheric and ecological, The season, All the staff, And there's also, How bad was it? One of my good mates, Wayne Robbins, Who's out at Minyip, He's a conventional, Well, Conventional no till cereal producer. And we were talking about this, I was telling Michael Crawford about this the other day, You know, He was saying that, You know, I think it was two years ago, I think it was 2017, 18, Or 2016, 17, I can't remember. But anyway, It was a pretty bad year. And during the crop crop growing season, They had five and a half, Six inches of rainfall. And he said that my dad bought a crop that was a little bit more than a year old. And my dad, Bob, Is fortunately still with us. In 1982, Three had the same rainfall conditions and had nothing, No crop. I'm here, You know, Using all of the modern agronomy tools, Herbicide, No till by what, But he actually got a regional average crop with the same rainfall. You know, He changed farms or anything, Or he got more out of the sky, It was basically a carbon copy of the conditions. And here we are. It was all about the management. Yeah, Exactly. So and practices, Which a lot of people, Perhaps in the regenerative agriculture space, Unfortunately, Diminish, You know, The novel chemistry and this, That and the other. But again, My point on that would be that don't throw that baby out with the bathwater. A lot of people would just love to see that there was no novel chemistry, That there was no Roundup used anymore, That was no artificial phosphorus being spread, You know, And on it goes, No, Not, You know, Artificial and stuff, But that would be, That would be akin to us not having JobKeeper last year. Yeah. It's, You know, It's because Keynesianism equates over to landscapes as well. Yeah. And I think, As they are. Yeah, Totally. And I've lost my train of thought there now. Yeah, Well last year, I was thinking about transition. So I went cold turkey because I learnt what I learnt in a short period of time, Went, Oh my God, I'm not gonna do this shit anymore. Well, There is that. Yeah. But there's also that transition of, You know, As a grazie or as a cropper? Well, I mean, I cold turkey cropping straight out, Straight out. I just thought I don't, That's harder. It is harder and it was probably not the wisest thing. And I guess I was quite ideological at that point going, I don't want to be spraying shit on my ground anymore, Knowing what I was doing. Or me. Or my family and the whole thing, You know, Because I've been doing it for years and doing a good job of it. And I just, You know, The guilt of doing that again, Even in a transitionary sort of phase. What I'm saying is that I always talk about transitioning and suggesting if you're using, If you're spending some hundreds of dollars per hectare in a cropping situation, Don't change your budget. Just change 10%. Put that into a biological or a different, Or even if it's a course, You know, Spend 10% of that on a course and just don't put as much urea or whatever it is and transition and find your way through it. And again, Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Yeah, Absolutely. Because that would cause some dramas and it did for me. Daz, Let's talk more about your platform, Agrarianz, And the Rex. Tell me about the Rex. Oh, The Rex. Well, The Rex. Do you want to join it? We don't have to. Yeah, No, Absolutely. All right, Now, Here comes the advertorial part of this presentation. This episode is brought to you by. . . No, No, No, I'm up for it. No, So am I. No, Well, The Rex. The Rex actually goes back to the beginning in a way in that, Well, In the beginning of my farm planning journey, Because if you strip out the permaculture thing and the keyline thing and a few other elements, Maybe not so much the keyline. The keyline, When it was originally mooted, Especially in its halcyon days of the late 50s, Early 60s, Was mooted as being a system that farmers could learn and then they could develop their own systems. It was very much about self-determination. Yeah, Principles and then you applied it. Yeah, You learnt the basic framework of the keyline scale of permanence and how to apply that. And you looked at a landscape and you looked at, You broke it down into its various components, Which is not that different to soil conservation based land planning. But you did that and then you came out with a plan and Yeoman said, You know, If you got anybody who was well trained in keyline, You would give them the same property, Put them in separate rooms, Bring them back together. The plans would pretty well be the same. Yeah, Same principles. Which I get that, Right, Because I've seen that with the people that we've trained in keyline, In the keyline plan as it's called. Because it's a very peculiar pathway, Which if you understand it, Then you'll get very similar outcomes. Permaculture you don't, Because that's much more diverse and there's a lot more elements to permaculture than there is to keyline. And I guess there's also, And also that personal, You know, What's my vision for this land? And do I prefer this type of enterprise to that and all the elements? Yeah, I mean, Keyline largely was developed for graziers. I'm talking permaculture as the more human element and overlay. Yeah, Yeah, But I mean, It tends to be like a lot of people who are in permaculture, Just as a side point, A lot of people who are in permaculture are probably what, And David Holmgren talks about this, Are you a plant person or you're an animal person? And I would say that most people in permaculture are more plant people. And when I say plant, Usually horticulturalist and perennial horticulturalist. So there's a really strong basis of that and that extends to forestry and all of that sort of thing. I don't know why that is, But that is what it is. And I would say also politically, A lot of people who, Just to broadly categorise, A lot of people who are into permaculture are probably a bit more left of centre, That's my observation, Than they are right of centre. If you were going to holistic management, A lot more people, I would say, Are definitely more right of centre politically. And they're more into grazing. And some of them have a complete antipathy for anything that has wood in it, As tissue. It's all grasslands, Wall to wall. Oh, Even fencing shouldn't have wood in it anymore. Dan, Away with you wood. Away with you woody tissue. How dare you come onto my property. So, Yeah, You get those two worlds. So when I look at the Rex, The Rex was very much, I think, When I finally came up with it, I remember being on a plane one day and I was, When I was doing the carbon, We were all on this carbon farming, So I came up with this carbon farming tour in 2007. That's where we got on the Vietnam thing. I saved up all this though. We had a little property outside of Bendigo. We were going to build our dream farmhouse, Blah, Blah, Blah. And I had about 50 or 60 grand saved up. And Alan Yeomans dumped on me the manuscript of Priority One. And Alan was the first person in the world, In an address in California in 1989, To come up with agriculture as being, Not agricultural soils, As being a primary place to download the atmospheric carbon pollution, Put it into egg soils. He was the first person to come up with that whole concept. Cool, Yeah. And when we took Priority One, Which prior to that was called Green Pawns and Global Agriculture or something, Which wasn't really politically correct, But that's Alan, He came up with this whole key line agricultural solution that said, If we, Well, Basically he said, If on the 5 billion hectares of arable land on the planet, So class one, Two, Three soils of the planet, If we can increase the soil carbon by 1. 6% on those 5 billion hectares, Then we would withdraw 100 parts per million of carbon dioxide of the atmosphere and bring us basically down back to pre-industrial levels of about 270 parts per million ppm. And I thought, Wow, That's pretty bloody compelling. And I thought, And I said to Lisa, What do you reckon? She goes, Yeah, Let's go on a tour. So we bought five round world tickets and got our kids together and said, We're off on a tour. Well, At that stage, They were already, Zain had never been in Australia, Hardly. So anyway, So we just got in our bike and for 13 months toured the world doing what we called was the water, Which is a play on Yeoman's water, Soil, Water and carbon for every farm, Because Yeoman's book was Water for Every Farm. So we did that world tour from March 07 to about April 08. And during that time, That was when I pulled it all together. I went, OK, We've got this modality, We've got that, Because it was sort of like, I called it my interview of the planet, Because I went around, I went, You know, When you teach, As you would know, Doing that, You go around and you're basically finding new things all the time. It's a really good opportunity for that. And being a bit of a soak, I'd go here, I went to Spain, I went here and you get, When people invite you on those sorts of things, Like you get invited to this the most amazing farms and then you got all these people who come, Come and see my farm. So I've got all these amazing joints and all this amazing food which came with it, Which is another passion, Obviously. And you've got all of that. And that sort of all combined to what you might say, You know, To put my culinary hat on, A fusion restaurant, Right, Where the influences are global, Where the methodologies are global, Where now we've got a complete composition, Which you can't just throw everything away. You can't just throw everything together on a plate. It's got to be composed correctly. Right? Yes, You've got, You know, Someone orders something because they like it. But the plate is going to be put together in a way that you can't just put a couple of bits of zucchini and put a squeeze on it. That's actually that doesn't look attractive, But you can put the same components together in the right way. Exactly the same components, But artistically dressed. So there's a function to the form, Or there's a form to so on. And it all works. And that's really how the whole Rex thing came together was assembly of all these parts, Because my next thing was, I remember I drew this diagram where it was discs. So I thought of each methodology as a disc, Right now icon, Which, You know, Like a Facebook icon. So here's permaculture, Here's keyline, Here's soil food, Where they are, He's biodynamics, He's natural sequence farming, Holistic management, There's just a ton of them, Mycology, Etc. There's all of these things that are going on in the broader regenerative ag, Ecological ag, Whatever space. So I'm putting all of that together. And then I came up with what's called the carbon farming course and the carbon economy course. And that was the genesis of all of that. And then around that time as well. I, That's right in 2011, Which was a bit later, Bruce, The late Bruce Ward, Late great Bruce Ward rang me up and said, Oh, Can you come up and teach, We're getting the we, All of us holistic management educators we've got together, And we've identified that land planning is a weak link in our in our holistic management. I was like, Yeah, Sure. He said, I'll talk to Ian Chapman about it. So I talked to Ian Chapman, Who's a great fellow. Do you know? I know. He's in the orange district anyway, And a really good key liner. And I said, So and how do you because he was teaching key line at TAFE with holistic management. So how do you do it? He goes, I use the scale of permanence. And I went, You do what he goes, Well, My whole teaching is I started climate and then I do landshaking. I just like was like, I like the old wizard little cricket that big four inch blocks. But they use that a big Dave Warner. Bullshot. I was sitting there all that time. I've taught key line for years, La la la. And I just as a process guy, I just can't. Anyway, So I am. So I go up there. And that was the first time I use the scale of permanence as a as a thing. But then I realized the scale of permanence is is limited because and the oven said this when he released that when he first talked about the key line scale of permanence of all things agricultural, That's the full terminology. He said, Yeah, I think this is pretty good, But I probably need to probably be thought out a bit more. And he was damn right, Because what it didn't, It wasn't holistic. So it didn't, It didn't think about or discuss the psychological context of a farmer, Or an enterprise, It didn't talk about the enterprise health, Its economy, Etc. And it didn't talk about energy, Whether that's metaphysical, Or whether that's, You know, Do I have how my power is, How my energy is, Etc. I have my power in my journey, You know, Where's it all coming from? What machinery Am I using, Etc. So that was so I thought, Well, How do I add that on? So I basically, I looked at them when there's no changing yeoman scale of permanence, He got that right. Right. And but I thought, Well, Where does economy go? And where does energy go? And I felt well, Economy, These days, You can change your economy pretty quickly. Especially in this internet era. I often talk about Shopify, Or Facebook marketplace, Or whatever you can, You can turn your shop on really quickly. Whereas, You know, When you and I were with Tiger snakes, You had to go and you had to physically drive to Sydney or Bathurst, Or were a major center and go into the business name joint and stand in line and data that was whereas now it's all online, It's so fast. So you can change your situation, Even selling stuff, You can go on Facebook marketplace, I can put that that that saw on it. To my own, And it's all bang money in my account, Jobs over. So and then I thought, Well, Energy, Well, Energy ultimately comes down to a photon of light. That's where it all starts. And a photon of light, As far as I know, Is has the shortest timeframe of anything. So and photosynthesis is the is the engine of everything that well that we're involved with, Whether that's the oil that we use from way back when, Or whether that's up you and I having the energy from photosynthesis to sit here. And all of those who've made all of this gear, All of this internet, Everything, We're all driven by that. That's it. And gravity, Which is keeping our asses on these seats right now. So that was where I sort of got to. And then I thought, Well, And then I started to look at the platform and go, Okay, Well, We went through each category and tweaked each one. So I looked at I looked at climate, I thought, Well, Yeah, The climate is the climate, You can't do much about that. But then I went, Oh, The climate of the mind. The holistic, Where does holistic management fit into this frame. And that was when I thought, Oh, Well, That's, That's the, You know, When you try when you're looking at it from a from a pedagogy, From a teaching tool, Or a process tool, You got to come up with, Well, Yeah, There's a layer, But what's within that layer. And so when I look at when I look at broadly describing the climate layer, It's you to start with you wake up with you every day. It's you. You're pretty involved, You're pretty involved. You've got your attitudes, You've got your backstory, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, And, And you've got your skills and your outlook and your capabilities. And then there's around the people around you, There's society, Your own society and the broader society and so on. Then there's regular visit, You know, You start to look at the way the word climate is used the regulatory climate. It's a climate because it's hard to bloody talk about it. It's a climate because it's hard to bloody change, Right? Yeah. And variable and variable and so on. You go from jurisdiction, Jurisdiction, Etc. So the climate layer worked really well for that. And then and then it was land shape. I went up should be geography because geography is a lot more of a encompassing word, You know, Geography is really where you're looking at the place of people and where they are, As well as just the raw landforms and its geology. Yeah. Right. And then water. What else was what is water? What's what goes on with water? It's right. And then you've got he had farm roads, I went access, Because access is a lot more accessible and more encompassing. He had farm trees, I went forestry, Because that's it. And I look at that as being basically the biology layer, You know, Flora fauna, Fungi, And other organisms. And then we looked at what's the next one? Forestry or buildings, He had farm buildings, What things buildings, And then you've got fencing, We had subdivision, I called it fencing, Because that which is a reflection of that era, Which is what you were doing when you got your grants years ago. It was all about subdivision, Subdividing, And all of that, Whereas now, You would do all of that was really lightweight, Really much lower cost, Temporary fencing, And all of that. So it's all it's all it's all a reflection of the time. And then you've got soil, Soil soils. And then economy and energy went on the back of that. So that moment with Ian, That's why I'll always be thankful to Ian and Bruce as well, But particularly, Ian was the major step, Really major step in everything, Because up to that point, I was sort of like a bit confused. How do I put this together? Yeah, You know, You come to a place and you do X, Y and Z, It was sort of like there wasn't, There wasn't, There was an X, Y, Z, But it just felt empty, Sort of didn't feel complete enough. And it didn't address, It didn't allow me to address the broad, Broad enough context of the different production systems, Agricultural production systems that are out there. And I just wasn't satisfied, I just became decreasingly satisfied with permaculture as a framework. I mean, A lot of people, It's a great framework, Don't get me wrong, It's amazing. But it just started to get really limited for me in its application, Particularly when it came to commercial ag, For a variety of reasons. And holistic management the same. And part of that's because of the people who are involved in that. And like I said, You know, There's plant people, And then there's woody plant people, And there's grazing people, And they didn't really come together too well. And so I sort of tried to pull that together. And I think we've done a reasonable job of that. And then that, My study of, Like, I look at Yeomans a lot, I mean, Yeomans was a towering figure in Australian agriculture. And if it wasn't, I firmly believe if his wife hadn't have died in 1964, As she did, Unfortunately, Then his influence on Australian agriculture would have been much more profound, Because he had to sell all of his farms to pay the death duties. So he bought all of these farms, He and his wife, And he unfortunately did it, They did it in joint names. I mean, He'd know his wife was gonna die. So he had to sell all of it. He had farms all over the joint, And he was flying. Demonstration farms as it were. Well, They were actual running farms. And he lived in Vaucluse, You know, He was a wealthy man, He was a wealthy young man. I mean, He started Keyline when he was in his early 40s. He had three genius kids. Well, His two younger boys, Two older boys were really, Really precocious. And he had them young. So he was young when they were late teens. And they were, They and their mates who were all going to, You know, They were all going to be young. And he was going to university Sydney and New South Wales, Like he's kids all into King's College and all that. So he's got all these bright young fellows and women around him and a whole world paying attention to him. And he's coming up against orthodoxy, But he's gone pretty bloody well, Because his farms are speaking for themselves. And he's a force of nature as a speaker, And then his world dies, In terms of his wife, And all of his properties get taken away from his machinery business gets taken away. It's a major, Major disruption in someone's life. And he didn't, I don't think he ever really recovered from that. And you see that in his writings and whatnot. So. But the biggest thing that yeomans didn't leave behind in his legacy was a pedagogy. And when you look at the history of different movements, Whether it's religion, All religions have a pedagogy, They all have a book, And they have a teaching. There's a there's a training, You know, Did you? You can't just be turned up and say, I'm a priest, You actually have to go to a seminary, You have to go through a training program. You permaculture, One of the reasons why permaculture is so successful as a as a movement is because they're mollison had the genius to create a course, Which can be taught by anybody around the world. That's more or less the same course, It's got the same curriculum and so on. Holistic management, The same, They got courses. So when I look at the legacy of our impact on on the on the big goal here, Which is land regeneration, You know, Us as a species having a role in that and having a future broadly, And this planet is in a pretty good shape when we finally peg out of the same as a species as all species do. Apart from sharks. And crocodiles. Maybe that says something. I think they're all going to Mars. They're already there. They're already there. That, That this, You've got to have that in order to and that's that. And the other thing about it too, Charlie, I've been very aware of the sort of cult of the personality thing that goes with all of this. And I, Again, Probably a homage to my upbringing, That that doesn't sit well with me. And I've had a few people have said, Oh, You know, You should, Should put yourself out. You know, When I've been around all these people, You know, It's sort of like, I get it. And I've worked for a lot of high net worth, As you know, A lot of super high net worth people and all that. And I know that there's a personality and there's a position. And there's an exposure that goes with that in terms of the context of your family, The impacts of all of that, And so on. I just, That's not me, That's not where I want to go. So although I'm, I'm sure I'm more than capable of doing it, And there's an awful temptation to succumb to the ego that goes with that, But the ego rewards, You might say, Climb the ego ladder. Yeah, Yeah. So from there's that so I've tried to make it so that which is a bit of a different tech, Try and make it more about the platform than about the founder of the platform. And so that was that platen the, The, That is, Can be perpetuated forever, Like the person if it's too tight up in the individual. Well, That's right. That's well, I mean, I've, I did a I did a series of consultations for Amma, The hugging site from India, Love for some reason, A lot of people like what I was doing, And they brought me and I said, And I, You know, Once you get past the, I immediately became fascinated in her, In her program. And I said, And I said to the to her people, I said, What happens when Amma dies? What have you got? Because what you've got at the moment is the Dharma, Which is the hug. And really, Once she goes, She's not gonna live, She's not a mortal, Right? Once she goes, Who's going to give the hug? And where's the value proposition there? And it's, You know, So I look at all of that. And you're right. I mean, The other thing too, When I spoke about a myth, One of the things that Michael Gerber wrote about in the a myth was that when you when you the the idea behind creating a franchise prototype, Is that if you exit the room, As it were, Then it won't be the collapse of everything. Because those who are inculcated in how to make a burger. You don't need it, That burger will but the burger will still be the same. So you go to any Macca's restaurant around the world, Which I know you're awfully familiar with. Oh, That's my first. Well, I'm gonna fill it a fish. But anyway, Especially on a good Friday. Hot Caramel Sunday. Yes. Yes. You make hot ones. Do they? A Hot Caramel Sunday? I still love them. I'd always order a fillet of fish. Was it fish? It's gonna be shark flake. Yeah, Probably. Fillet surprise. Fillet surprise and a Hot Caramel Sunday and surprise. On a Choco Pie. Yeah, I'm still I'm still I'm still some of it in me. I'm sure. 20 or 30 years later. Residual. Yeah. But anyway, You know, It's the same experience. So you take all of those experiences. And that's where the Rex. The other thing that big influence on the Rex too, I think and I was talking to you about this recently. Oh, Shit. Limited space remaining. Okay. Thanks. We're still on. Yeah. 15 days. Yeah, That's about right. Anyway, You'd have to say. Thank God is running out. Thank God you've got an editor. The other big influence, Which I just wrote about recently, Which we haven't discussed was the Potter farm plan. Yeah. The Potter farmland plan, Which the Ian Potter Foundation, Which is one of Australia's great philanthropic foundations. They funded in I think it was from 8283 to about 85. And they got that Andrew Campbell, Who's pretty well known now in the lank space. So lank has started here in Victoria, In Maryborough, That district just only 2030 minutes from here to the west of here. I didn't know. Oh, Really, Go you go back even further to that, Like the true start of it was in the early 80s. Yeah, Range of different activities that were going on officially. Yes, Yes, Yeah. But it really started earlier than that. Anyway. The the first really big, Organized project, I'd say around that whole space was the Potter farm farmland plan, Which happened in the Western district. So a whole, I think there was 10 or 15 farms. Most of the people went to John grammar. I think it was should have been called the July grammar farmland plan. It's all right. I designed it's not too late. And so that's beautiful. It's amazing. I've never been Oh, My buddy. I'll do some. I reckon they'd be up for a bionic workshop. Oh, No, I might have a crack at that. Yeah. Anyway, I'll talk to each other. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. So they always graze, Mostly grazing with a bit of mixed cropping and stuff as is typical to that part of the world. They had a combo of government. And I think it was the Department of Ag and at back then. And private farm planning, Agricultural consultants came together and the concept was that the farmer became the planner, Which is that self determination thing. So when I went and did the farm planning training in 94 or five or whatever it was at longer on the impact of this, The spark the the influence of the Potter farmland plan was was all over that. Yeah, And it was and it was basically the blueprint. So there was this. And that's what yeomans was coming up against. See, When yeomans was getting about he was so far ahead of the soil conservation. Like he was originally in the soil, Soil conservation as it as it was as a practice or set of practices which came out, And were from the United States and were kind of adapted here, And in New Zealand, I throw and and he found the limitations of the that feelings because he is he said, You know, It's not about conservation conservation is not good enough. It should always be about creation creation. So and, And exactly you to conserve something kind of like sustaining something. It's like someone said to me, Would you describe your marriage is sustainable? And well, What Lisa thinks sometimes she doesn't. Rude, She gives me that's fair enough. Anyway, I'll have to get rid of you. Her now. But yeah, So. So when you look at those two different spaces, The yeomans went along with this whole big, Big day development approach and dah, Dah, Dah, Dah, And like he, He paid no attention to land classes, For example. Because he thought a land can always change in its capability. Yeah. Whereas as you would have learned at Ag school, You know, Land, You class, You know, It's it's crop, You know, It's class one, It's class two, It's class eight, It's class five, It is what it is, Right? You just do you just run that set of land uses on that particular class, You do the best. There's a series of practices and treatments that go around that. But it's classes, It's class and yeomans went, Don't know so much. We can do all of these things, These sort of advanced treatments, Which and add water to it. Yeah. And I press guys, Right Scott, Yeah, To an extent. So there were those different philosophies that were going on. And so it was really interesting to go and do that, Because that was farm planning orthodoxy, As it was coming up against at the same time, I was doing the key line training and the permaculture training, Which were obviously outside of orthodoxy. And so bringing that all together into the Rex has been a really great journey. And I don't know how many people we've put through the Rex now. So in the in the face, Because we started we we started by doing 10 day Rexes. So we do a day to a layer. So I go to a place, It'd be the host farm, The farm would be the topic, If you like, And we'd have 30 to 80 people turn up, We put them into groups. And day one, We do the climate layer. And then you know, We do that in the morning, Like presentation, And then the afternoon, They'd come up with in their groups, They'd work and come up with, You know, The the water layer. So they come out where the pipes going, Where the dams going, Whatever it is to do with the fencing layer. So they come up with that, And we present and they talk. So we did, I think we did about 500 people or so I did 13 courses in six months around the world in 2016 on that Rex tour, And that was amazing experience. It was amazing. And then was hard because we did pretty well back to back 10 day, No brains. Yeah, Yeah, It was full on. And kind of catering as well often. Yeah. So do all of that. And then that, Then I did came back home in 20s. At the end of 2016. I thought, Well, We'll probably do. Oh, That's right, We moved back home, Because my wife's mother was we took on her care. And we lived with her for two years. And so I thought, What am I gonna, I can't go around the world doing anything. So I went online and sort of transferred that online and off it went from there. So it's always been that sort of way, Charlie, You know, You sort of respond to the that's what I mean, The diversity of things that get thrown at you, Humans are incredibly adaptive, If you allow yourself to be if you give yourself again, Trust your own nature, As it were, We look at that as an overriding thing that I'd probably like to carry through here is that, You know, You perhaps need to trust yourself and agree that you're not too bad. And that you've got if you don't know already, You do actually have enormous array of capabilities that you may need to express a bit better, As I say, There's success, Or luck, Or whatever word you want to put there is the confluence of preparation and opportunity, You know, And there is endless opportunity, If we if we if we know where to look, And if we're prepared to take that on. And I think, You know, The way you put all these things together into and given people I guess, The opportunity to learn these things, And then adapted to their farm. I think that's a wonderful thing. They can go to regrarian's website. Yeah, To change. I can do all that. I mean, I think the great thing about I think my end game with this is, As it were, Is what we've created in our digital network, Which is called the regrarian's workplace, Which is amazing in itself is, I mean, A kind of like the American concept of a barn raising that a farm plan is actually best done by peers. Yeah. With someone or a framework. And this is like I say, You know, My, I think my where I'm at at the moment is the regrarian's platform is, Is a framework to help, But it's a framework of many other frameworks, You can go in there. Yeah, It goes, You've got an A to Z, Which helps with a lot of way that a lot of people think because you know, They want to, It's linear, It's linear thinking, But you can pick and choose, You can self determine with some with with the help of a buddy. Someone else who's been out there, Because there's always someone who's a year ahead of you. And there's always someone who's 30 years ahead of time. And that's really I love the thing about the regrarian's workplace that we've got people like that, Because it's useful. A lot of this space is dominated by people who are 30 years ahead of you. And they don't necessarily remember what it was like, And different and their context then is very different. Like if you started in 1980, The rules of the game in 1980, Were vastly different to the rules of the game now. So it's often useful to have someone who's just a year or two ahead of you, I reckon, With with the others. So we've created that space, Such that the farm because I don't see that the farm plan is something that you can do in five minutes, It's something that you that is going to have to be something that you do over your lifetime. It evolves, It's it evolves, It has to, Which is the savoury thing, The biggest thing that I probably got from the holistic management framework was the in the feedback loop, You plan assuming you're wrong, When it comes to the environment, Which is a statement around there are no laws of biology. So therefore, It's too complex for you to even contemplate. That said, Don't suffer inertia, You still got to move ahead. And there's some rely relatively reliable treatment and management options, Which are there for you to use. So how about you do some of those like move your animals more frequently? Yeah, You know, That sort of thing. Try and cover your soils, Try and increase landscape or ecological function, Try and increase biodiversity. Try and try and be a better person. Mate, I'm just looking at my little ticking thing ticking over, It's gone red. Now one last quick one. If you could put a billboard on the side of the Hume highway, Or whatever the colder hot hot freeways out here and said something, What would it say? That people could read? Well, The first thing phrase question statement, Okay, It would be topsoil formation is the most important outcome of human civilization. Leave it at that. That's good enough for me. Yeah. Dad's we might have to split this one. We're over the two hour limit. And my little red cards going on. I'm sure I'm sure you're dedicated and experienced team of thousands of your crew. We don't edit a thing. This is this is it. They're all the people that you can't just bring 30 people to a restaurant like that. We fed them all. You got this bloke carrying tape around and another bloke doing this. I know. It's like, Where's my coffee? PA has been knocking on the door. PA has been doing the same. I need my nap now. Where's my van? That was fantastic. And I was not surprised that we did we busted the two hour limit. And appreciate so much your time, Dad. And thank you for inspiring. You got enough time for a few? Yeah, I think so. Be rude not to thank you for inspiring me. Thank you for inspiring others and giving them the opportunity to expand their their opportunities. Yeah, Because that's what you're doing. And you've been able to put it together in such a wonderful way and many different levels. Yeah, Well, We'll keep at it. Thanks. Thanks for the opportunity. And don't stop. I picked up. There's no choice there. You know, No choice. They don't pull up stumps. As we say we're doing it for life. We're committed lifers. As long as we have a pulse. Yeah. Thanks. It's all about life. Thanks, Man. Thanks, Man. Appreciate it.

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A really entertaining, candid and interesting talk. Enjoyed this a lot😊 Thank you🙏🏼