My Space Clinton Nairn

November 17, 2007

Clinton Nairn Read the article

Wing it for the environment

19 November 2007

Wing it

Where does our food come from?
Suzanne Robson

13 August 2007

NOT many people would consider the miles their baked beans on toast have travelled to make it on to their breakfast plate.

But Sophie Gaballa, a teacher at CERES a community environment project in Brunswick and researcher Asha Bee Abraham have been keen to find out how far their food travels.

The pair has released a new report, which estimated the distances travelled by food items found in a typical Melburnian's shopping basket and the resulting greenhouse gas emissions.

The report will be used for a new CERES education food program with activities and resources about food choices for primary and secondary school students.

"With the present urgency to respond to climate change and peak oil challenges, the study highlights the need for Australia to respond accurately to the role our food system plays within these issues,'' Ms Gaballa said.

The report estimated the distance travelled by 29 common food items such as bread, baked beans and vegetables was 70,803km. It found the resulting greenhouse gas emissions from transporting the items was the equivalent of more than 4200 cars driving for one year.

Ms Gaballa said she hoped people would look at the food they ate and think about where it had come from. "It is not about making people feel guilty, it is making us question,'' she said.

Out of the shadows
Richard Cornish

July 31, 2007

Burmese refugees are learning the art of growing exotic mushrooms - in East Brunswick.

IN A SMALL shade house by the Merri Creek in East Brunswick are stacked rows of small, upright oak logs. Sprouting from under the bark are mushrooms. Some are large and velvety grey, with their soft white gills showing underneath. Others are just emerging and appear like small amorphous globes.

"These are shiitake," says horticulturist Parsuram Sharma Luital. "In Japanese shii means 'oak' and take means 'mushroom'. In Japan they grow on the wood from an evergreen oak."

Sharma Luital knows fungus like the back of his hand. He was born in the mountain kingdom of Bhutan and used to hunt for mushrooms in the conifer forests using his sense of smell. He trained in India and developed sustainable harvesting programs for matsutake (Asian pine mushrooms) in Bhutan. "The mountain farmers were harvesting the mushrooms and selling to Japanese buyers for $500 a kilogram. There was a threat of excessive harvesting, so we had to train people to harvest using a wicker basket with the gills facing down so the spores could fall back to the ground to reseed the earth," he says.

After finishing his masters of horticulture at Melbourne University, his latest fungus program sees him work with Burmese refugees in a training project with CERES (Centre for Education and Research in Environmental Strategies) and AMES (Adult Multicultural Education Service).

Horticulturalist Parsuram Sharma Luital at CERES, East Brunswick.
Photo: Rebecca Hallas

The Burmese are learning to grow shiitake on logs, swiss browns in compost and oyster mushrooms in bags of straw. The organic mushrooms are labelled "OM".

Sharma Luital introduces a tall open-faced man with a beaming smile. Beyame Benjamin is from the Karen ethnic minority in Burma. There are about 7 million Karen people living in the mountains of Burma and Thailand and they have been fighting for autonomy since the end of the Second World War. Benjamin and his family fled persecution after fierce fighting with Burmese Government troops in 1995.

"I used to be a school teacher," Benjamin says. "My family had a small farm and grew rice, peanuts, yellow beans and snake beans. But then I joined the Karen Revolutionary Army. I worked in the workshop repairing guns and other weapons. Now I use my welding experience to make racks for the mushrooms to grow on."

When the project finishes later this year, Benjamin and three other Burmese refugees will have a Certificate 2 Horticulture and will be able to continue to make a living growing mushrooms.

Luital explains the simplicity of growing mushrooms on logs. "This is done across Asia, in the US, NZ and a few places in Australia. All you need is access to wooden logs, a sheltered space out of the wind and some water. This is bringing traditional technology to a modern market. This is something that could be done not just by immigrants, but also by farmers wanting to diversify production. It is something that doesn't take a lot of investment."

Under the shade cloth in a spare corner of CERES are 600 logs. Although shiitake traditionally grow on oak logs, this test program has proved that the Japanese mushrooms grow equally well on shining gum, blackwood, elder and poplar, without affecting the flavour of the mushrooms.

The logs are soaked in water and a hole is drilled in the side. A piece of dowel inoculated with shiitake spores is inserted into the log and covered with beeswax. The fungus grows like white threads under the bark and into the wood. After six to seven months it is ready to send out its fruiting body - the mushrooms we eat.

To encourage the fungus to fruit, the logs are traditionally soaked in water but can be shocked into fruiting by refrigeration or being hit with a stick 10 times. "This is my own trick I learned from other mushroom experts in New Zealand," explains Sharma Luital. Soon after the shiitake mushrooms appear and are ready to harvest in 10 to 14 days.

Sharma Luital and his team are producing up to 10 kilograms of shiitake mushrooms a week, most of which they sell at the Melbourne Market. Jimmi Buscombe from Ceres Cafe buys the rest. With them he makes shiitake and daikon omelets. The shiitake are gently stewed with a little clove and cinnamon. This mixture is spooned over an open omelet, which is then folded and covered with nori strips and toasted sesame seeds. It is a textural experience - crunchy and slippery at the same time: the shiitake adds a gentle woody fragrance.

To support the shiitake project, the team grows up to 400 kilograms of swiss brown and oyster mushrooms every week. "It's a chance for the Karen people to get a new start and an education, employment and a chance to learn the Australian cultures," Luital says.

Benjamin chips in: "Sometimes we take them home and make soup with garlic, a little stock and some meat. We are lucky because we (Karen) share a lot of the ingredients with the Vietnamese so we buy vegetables to make a lot of our traditional food."

Benjamin says this is a way of bracing himself against the chill of a Melbourne winter. "We miss our food. But this mushroom project has been good for us. A lot of the Karen people were once farmers and now we will be again here in Melbourne."

For more information on the CERES Organic Mushroom Project email Parsuram Sharma Luital on parsuram@ceres.org.au
or visit the web page

ABC Organic Gardener Magazine, Winter 2007

Green mum turns to cloth nappies
Lachlan Hastings

19 March 2007

Lucy Westerman, 27, and her son Matthew, two, are the faces of Reusable Nappy Week, a fledgling campaign to encourage parents to consider reusable nappies for their children.
Matthew can't even say ``climate change'', but he's already doing his bit.
The Macleod toddler wears reusable nappies such as the bright red number he modelled at CERES Environment Park in Brunswick East last week.
A week of activities around Melbourne for parents and bubs was launched at the park yesterday.
``Reusable nappies have come a long way,'' Ms Westerman said.
``Their look is very modern and they are made of breathable and environmentally sustainable fabrics.''
Ms Westerman said she washed Matthew's nappies in her front-loading washing machine. ``We don't use any more water than a typical household,'' she said.

Reusable nappies were good not only for the environment but cost less.
``It is possible to save $2000 with that amount increasing when the same nappies are used on a second or third child,'' Ms Westerman said.
Her second child is due next month but she said she would not have to buy any more nappies because Matthew's could be reused.
Ms Westerman said she had Matthew's nappies washed and flapping out in the sun in just minutes.
``There are no back-breaking buckets full of water anymore,'' she said.
And forget plain white cloth nappies reusable nappies even come in a range of bright colours.

- Reusable Nappy Week events will be held across Melbourne this week, including at Alphington, Eltham, and Macleod. Details: www.modernclothnappies.org.

Lucy Westerman and her son Matthew. Picture: KYLIE ELSE.

A WEALTHY Glen Iris retiree has pledged millions of dollars to expand Brunswick East's iconic CERES sustainability park.

But Leonie Van Raay's pledge a lion's share of $9 million the park needs for a bold expansion plan is conditional on governments and donors coming to its aid. Ms Van Raay, of Glen Iris, said she would sign a cheque to seal the deal only when another $2 million had been raised. Planned at CERES (the Centre for Education and Research in Environmental Strategies) are a meeting hall, performing arts venue, educational facilities, volunteer centre, community workshop and meeting rooms. The first stage a new visitor welcome centre, nursery and staff offices opened last week. Ms Van Raay said her pledge was in memory of her late husband, John, who died six years ago. They ran a series of highly-successful businesses, most recently a precision plating firm.

``We have been fortunate enough to have the ability and breaks to succeed in our careers and it is now time to redistribute that wealth,'' she said. When Ms Van Raay first visited CERES last August she was impressed by the terrific work done there. CERES project co-ordinator Cathy Nixon said demands on the park, built on the site of an old tip on the Merri Creek banks, were growing. More than 350,000 people, including 65,000 students, visit the park each year. CERES has applied to the state and federal governments for funding and is asking Moreland Council, businesses and individuals for help.

``We hope to start building next year,'' Ms Nixon said. ``We are looking to the Government, industry and the community to help us''.

State Government spokesman Matt Nurse said a CERES application was being considered and an announcement was likely mid-year.

If you can help CERES phone the Leader newsdesk on 9489 2222 or email moreland@leadernewspapers.com.au.

Leonie Van Raay tells Karl Quinn why she decided to free herself of 28 companies and offload $4.5 million to a good cause.

A hard-working, wiry 57-year-old, John Van Raay was worried that his wife Leonie might struggle a little with the trekking they planned to do in Nepal. She was a few years older than him, and more fond of a comfy mattress than a sturdy pair of hiking boots. But they were both looking forward to the adventure.

They spent their first day in Nepal exploring the capital, Kathmandu. In the evening, they found somewhere to eat, then walked back to their tiny hotel for an early night. John climbed into bed, complaining of a headache. He told his wife he couldn't concentrate on the book he was trying to read so he would sleep instead. By the time she slipped beneath the covers, he was dead. Heart failure, according to the local doctors.

In that moment six years ago, Leonie Van Raay's life changed forever. "I'd never spent a night alone," she says, her eyes even now misting a little at the thought. She had two grown children and a good network of friends, but there was a huge void in her life. She needed something to fill her days, and in the tangled network of businesses John left behind, she found it.

Some of them she knew about, like Precision Plating, the chrome-finishing business in Burwood that had been the bedrock of the family's not-inconsiderable wealth for years. But when she walked into her husband's office on the Monday after his funeral, the former teacher, factory owner and advertising executive found cabinet after cabinet crammed with papers - "He didn't use a computer, luckily," she says - relating to the 28 companies in which he was involved. And so Leonie set about understanding each and every one of those businesses. And then she set about selling them.

Lonie Van Raay doesn't quite fit the image of hippy benefactor, but last week she donated $4.5 million to CERES, the community environmental park in Brunswick, to help build a new state-of-the-art sustainability education centre (the project still needs another $4 million of funding).

The Van Raays had been quietly giving money away for years. They established the Precision Foundation in 1994 (with the couple who co-owned the business), and each year disbursed about $50,000 to those they felt were worthy. There were two criteria - social equality and individual responsibility - which rather neatly reflected the differing political views of husband and wife. "I think you have to always be weighing the options," says the slightly left-of-centre Leonie. "But John was straightdown- the-line Liberal. Even if the Liberal person had two heads and said, 'We're going to shop up everyone in the land,' he'd still vote for them. As a joke, in 1972 I put an 'It's Time' sticker on his bumper bar, and it was nearly the end! It was something to do with being an immigrant, I think."

John Van Raay was born in Holland and arrived in Melbourne, aged five, in 1950. He was one of 10 children; his father was a shoemaker. His was a genuine up-by-the-bootstraps story. Leonie started in better circumstances, coming from a clan of shopkeepers in Essendon, but her father died when she was three, leaving her mother to raise two children on her own until she remarried seven years later.

The memories of ration books and food stamps and general struggle never left either of the Van Raays. The Precision Foundation was their way of making good on a promise that if they did well in life, they'd give something back.

In 2005, Leonie Van Raay decided to wind up the foundation. It could have kept ticking over for years, but with John gone and the businesses sold, Leonie felt it was time to do something different. Something that would keep John's name alive.

She sat down with her advisers and worked out what she had, what she needed to live on, and what she could get rid of. At the end of it, she decided she could afford to give away $4.5 million and still live the life she enjoyed - bridge, golf, overseas trips. "My accountant and my insurance adviser thought I was absolutely mad," she says. "But there's a big difference between needs and wants."

Not that she's taken to wearing sackcloth. "I like to help people from luxury," she says with a laugh, sitting in the comfortable surrounds of her neo-classical spread in Malvern.

And what about the kids - Carl, who runs Precision Plating, and Niki, an actuary? What did they think? "Oh, they were fine. They said, 'Yeah, we know what you and Dad thought.' They're not struggling. But we always told them that unless they did their own things they wouldn't feel proud, they wouldn't feel a sense of ownership."

In July last year, the Precision Foundation let it be known in the philanthropic community that the money was available. About 10 organisations applied. When the three-page application from the Centre for Education and Research in Environmental Strategies (CERES) arrived, Leonie Van Raay had no idea who they were. "Had I been a little busier that week, I might just have dismissed it outright," she says.

Instead, she decided to take a drive to the inner north of the city. Of course, she got lost. She was almost ready to give up when she found CERES, tucked down a side street. As she got out of the car, she couldn't believe what she had found - four hectares of crops, mud huts, ponds and ramshackle outbuildings near a bend in Merri Creek. "It was like stepping into a little country town," Van Raay says. She saw schoolchildren, unemployed people, refugees, ordinary working people, all making use of the place. She was instantly sold.

The Van Raay house was half-built when John died in 2001. Though finishing it without him was hard, Leonie takes some small comfort from the fact that there is no echo of her late husband in the house in which she lives alone.

Her life is quite rich, she thinks. Just the night before, she had 50 people in here for a fundraising function for the Australian Wildlife Conservancy. Later this year, she is off to Vietnam to inspect a mangrove reforestation project she funded. And at the weekend, she will play golf down the coast. "Golf's the sort of thing you can go to not as a double," she says. "So that's been good."

But at 65, she's starting to feel the aches and pains, and she knows how quickly things can change. "And that's really why I wanted to do something with this money now, so I can see it while I'm here," she says.

From the kitchen table of her house, you can see the back garden. Over in the far left corner, there's a small tree surrounded by young shrubs. "That's where John wanted to have a glasshouse," Leonie says.

"When I walked around CERES, I came across a couple of young men that they were giving a chance to, producing organic plant seedlings. And I thought to myself, 'John would have loved this.'"

Deep pockets
Philanthropy is coming out of the closet, at last. According to Gina Anderson, CEO of Philanthropy Australia, "philanthropy in Australia has in the past generally been about anonymous giving, although we've had some significant and visible leadership from some of the established families, particularly in Victoria". She cites the Myers, the Pratts and the Besens as examples.

More recently, she says, "we've started to see a new group of people making large contributions in order to encourage greater philanthropy in Australia, which is very exciting".

"It's really about passion," she adds. "People come into philanthropy because they're passionate about something and they want to encourage others to join in."

SOME RECENT SIGNIFICANT GIFTS
- David Thomas, founder of Cellarmaster, last year set up the Thomas Challenge. Under this scheme, Thomas promised to match, dollar for dollar to a maximum of $2 million per year for five years, contributions greater than $10,000 from individual donors. The aim is to encourage new philanthropists, and the recipients of funds raised are Australian Bush Heritage Fund, Australian Wildlife Conservancy, Greening Australia, the Nature Conservancy and Trust for Nature.
- Greg Poche, owner of logistics company Star Track Express, donated $32.5 million at the end of 2005 to the Sydney Melanoma Unit at North Sydney Mater Hospital.
- In October 2005, Eve Kantor and Mark Wootton (members of the extended Murdoch clan) donated $10 million to establish the Climate Institute.

**************************************************************
CERES Community Environment Park
Cnr Roberts and Stewart Streets, Brunswick East, Victoria, 3057

Sandra Castro :sandra@ceres.org.au
Phone: (03) 9387 2609
Fax: (03) 9381 1844
Email: ceres@ceres.org.au

Out of the shadows Richard Cornish

Out of the shadows
Richard Cornish