EP 161 FEATURES ENVIRONMENTALIST ZOE GAMEAU

We love to talk about our 2030 goals, but climate change is not some future worry – it’s here today. It’s already bringing more frequent extreme weather events, as we’ve seen in Australia recently.

In late February, early March 2022, catastrophic floods hit northern New South Wales and southern Queensland, after intense rain fell over the eastern seaboard. Rivers burst their banks sending houses, roads, farms and public buildings underwater. People died. Communications were broken. It some cases, it took days for the emergency services to arrive, and people were left to fend for themselves, rescuing their neighbours in whatever floated, and organising their own-off road vehicles and even helicopters.

Three weeks later, it isn’t over for the thousands of affected. Beyond the mind-boggling extent of the clean-up lies a housing crisis. But this is not a gloomy interview. Our theme is radical hope. Meet Northern Rivers local Zoe Gameau, who shares how her local community, and women in particular, sprang into action to help and organise on the ground. And, yes, there’s a fashion angle – clothes take on a special meaning when you’ve lost everything.

NOTES

ABOUT ZOE GAMEAU is “a gatherer, author, and speaker focusing on themes of consciousness, connection, creativity and human cultural evolution.” Find her here.

FLOODS. On “Wednesday February 23, 2022 Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology warned that an area of low pressure over the south coast of Queensland is dragging in moisture from the Coral Sea to the north and then lifting it over the coastline.” via Guardian: “What Caused the Rain bomb?” By Thursday large areas of south-east Queensland were under flood warnings. By the weekend, the city of Brisbane had woken up to major flooding and floods were coming to NSW." The State Emergency Service has since deemed more than 3,600 homes across the Northern Rivers Region uninhabitable. How rare was this flooding event? Read the rest on Weatherzone here.

LISMORE is the main commercial and administrative centre for the Northern Rivers. Known for it lively arts scene, university life and also its rich soils and high quality produce. There is an organic food market once a week; local restaurants are proud of their local produce sourced from surrounding farmland. The region is known for growing macadamias, avocados, sugarcane, dairies and cattle farming. They also grow a lot of veggies and fruit around here.

“Residents in Lismore have been left with no choice but to move back into their houses that have been deemed uninhabitable, with some sleeping on swags in mouldy rooms without electricity, as they are unable to find safe accommodation three weeks after floods devastated the town,” reports Guardian Australia. Read about the post-flood housing crisis here.

Lismore Library had to throw out almost 30,000 books, DVDs and other items, and the Book Warehouse Lismore store is closed. ‘So sad to lose our beautiful Lismore store to this devastating flood,’ wrote the Book Warehouse on its Facebook page. ‘Thanks to our wonderful community for supporting us in our packing up process. We got a lot of books onto our top floor.’ The bookseller is encouraging customers to buy new books or vouchers from the chain’s open stores to donate to Lismore Library: ‘Buying a book from the Book Warehouse and donating to Lismore Library is an awesome way to bring books back to our community!’ More info here.

The KOORI MAIL is Australia’s national Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander newspaper. The head office is in Lismore. Find them here.

RADICAL HOPE CLUB was founded by a small group of female friends to work on social and climate justice in their community. It’s named after a 2008 book by the philosopher Jonathan Lear, which explores the question: How should one face the possibility that one’s culture might collapse? Find them on Insta, here. Or found your own!

“TO BE TRULY RADICAL IS TO MAKE HOPE POSSIBLE RATHER THAN DESPAIR CONVINCING.” - Raymond Williams

JOANNA MACY is an environmental activist, author, and scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and deep ecology. She is the author of twelve books, including ACTIVE HOPE: HOW TO FACE
THE MESS WE’RE IN WITHOUT GOING CRAZY. More here.

SPELL is rad. You’ve heard us talk about them before. Here’s the website.

FRANK & DOLLYS (latest collection pictured above) is a sustainable label founded by Rachel and Joel Cooper. Read about their values here.

FLO HIVE is “a whole new way of extracting honey from Langstroth-style European honeybee hives”. Here’s the explainer: “Of course, you’ll still need to look after your bees, as the brood box stays the same and when it comes to taking care of bees, there’s much to learn. But the world-first Flow Frames have revolutionised the honey-extraction process. We’ve built an artificial foundation from BPA- and BPS-free food grade plastic, manufactured right here in Australia, on which the bees build their comb. Plastic foundation in beehives is nothing new, but in a Flow Frame, the cells are almost complete. The bees fill the honey cells and cap them off. When you insert the Flow Key and split the honey cells, gravity does the rest of the work, and the honey simply flows into the trough, through the tube and into your jar.” Honey on tap! Discover here.

Read LUNCH LADY magazine here and DUMBO FEATHER here.

ONE GREEEN DRESS was Zoe’s challenge to the red carpet’s culture of new, new, new. For the project she wore the same green dress and co-ordinating duster coat (designed by Spell) to every event she went to in 2019. Read the story here.

REGENERATING AUSTRALIA is a 17-minute short film by the team behind the high-impact feature documentaries 2040 and That Sugar Film. It is based on a four month interview process with a diverse group of Australians who shared their hopes and dreams for the country's future.