The RegenNarration

Tanya Massy is one of three brilliant daughters of regenerative agriculture legend, Charles Massy. Though she’ll tell you she’s been equally inspired by the strength and spirit of her mother Fiona. Great lineage aside, Tanya is forging her own pivotal path as a regenerative farmer, award-winning writer, and highly respected researcher. A couple of recent reports, in particular, are making a big im...

I had this conversation with Cathy McGowan in the middle of last year, just as the community independents movement in Australia was really picking up. Since then, it’s been astronomical – the number of ‘voices for’ groups has exploded around the country, followed by an array of quality candidates that have responded to their communities’ calls to contest the next federal election. And many of them...

This is a Spanish version of episode 113. Esta es una versión en español del episodio 113. Aqui, por supuesto, Inés habla por sí misma, y Rony traduce mis palabras. Desafortunadamente, no incluye las partes del episodio principal donde Rony y yo hablamos en inglés, cuando me dirigía a él directamente. Pero incluye una platica divertida extraoficial donde hablamos entre nosotros tres en español. Re...

El Instituto Mesoamericano de Permacultura (IMAP) - the Mesoamerican Permaculture Institute - is a not-for-profit coop that started in 2000 in San Lucas Tolimán, on the shores of the spectacular Lake Atitlán in the Mayan highlands of Guatemala. It was created by a group of Maya Kakchiquel with the desire to use native seeds, permaculture, traditional Indigenous knowledge and education, to create s...

This extra to episode 112 features the rest of my conversation with Traditional Custodian of the Martuwarra Fitzroy River, Natalie Davey. We pick up our conversation with a couple minutes more of Natalie’s description of the kinship systems of her Indigenous community. Then we delve into the brilliant story of how Nat and her old man ended up hosting a show on the local First Nations radio station...

Our final episode recorded in the Kimberley last year features Natalie Davey, a Bunuba-Walmajarri woman, Traditional Custodian of the Martuwarra Fitzroy River, first Indigenous Chair of Environs Kimberley, broadcaster, artist, educator and so much more. What a privilege it was to be welcomed to her home and Country, on the banks of the River just outside Fitzroy Crossing. The Martuwarra is one of...

David Pollock is one of Australia’s most prominent regenerative pastoralists. He and wife Frances have featured a few times on the award-winning ABC TV series Australian Story. But I’m more fond of telling people these days they’ve featured a few times on this podcast! David’s also known for his brilliant book, ‘The Wooleen Way: Renewing an Australian Resource’. That was aptly described as ‘The as...

Kate Chaney is another of the growing number of independent candidates being announced around the country who might have a big say in the next pivotal federal election here in May. Kate is being described by many media outlets as Liberal Party royalty. That’s the nominally conservative party in Australia – or at least it has been, prior to this incoherent incarnation currently in government. Kate’...

Clinton Walker is a Traditional Custodian of the incredible Murujuga (or Burrup Peninsula), on the north-west coast of Australia. You might recall my conversations with archaeologist Peter Veth and the co-authors of Songlines, Lynne Kelly and Margo Neale, last year. They all related back to this place – where the Songlines start, as Clinton puts it. So at the end of last year, as my family and I h...

Damon Gameau has been a wonderful presence in so many of our lives for a couple of decades now - from his prominent acting career, to his transformation into an award-winning film-maker. There’s his timeless Tropfest winner Animal Beatbox, through to his legendary documentary features That Sugar Film and 2040. Now there’s a new film about to launch, with the vision honed towards 2030. This vital d...

Dianne Haggerty probably doesn’t need an introduction these days. When last on the podcast for episode 68 around 18 months ago, I’d come to visit Di and husband Ian to learn about their world breakthrough regenerative farming operation. You’ll have heard them mentioned in a number of episodes since (and featured on ABC TV and elsewhere). Their natural intelligence ethos, fierce grace and incredibl...

Petrine McCrohan is the founder of Bridging the Landscapes – our inner and outer landscapes. This has emerged from spending the best part of the last 20 years in the Kimberley, engaged in empowering processes and skilled therapeutic interventions. She’s been doing much of this work as a group facilitator and direct mentor to Aboriginal communities and social enterprise developers. And in the proce...

Jess Beckerling is Campaign Director of the West Australian Forest Alliance (WAFA), and much more besides. She’s a highly respected figure here in the southern reaches of Western Australia, by both those who would traditionally have prioritised conservation, and those who might not have. I spoke with Jess back in July last year for the Clean State podcast, a spin-off series from The RegenNarration...

This is our customary sign-off episode for the year – a package of highlights from our brilliant array of guests throughout 2021, accompanied by some of the music and sounds of Country you heard along the way.  Here's the 'track list': To the podcast theme song The System, by The Public Opinion Afro Orchestra - Damon Gameau (ep 77), Jeff Pow & Michelle McManus (ep 78) To the sou...

Welcome to the final conversation for 2021, featuring globally renowned doyen of regenerative agriculture, Charles Massy. This best-selling author of Call of the Reed Warbler has recently written for Paul Hawken’s NYT best-seller Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation. And perhaps less predictably, he’s also been busy writing a new kids’ book. It’s called The Last Dragon. It’s a...

This is an excerpt from episode 102 (part 2) featuring the last 20 minutes or so of my conversation with Nyul Nyul Traditional Custodian, Bruno Dann, and partner Marion, at Twin Lakes Cultural Park. These 20 minutes are a real highlight. We pick up the conversation with evidence of the original circular economy, when being shown a fig leaf that feels like sandpaper. We go on to talk about the best...

Welcome to part 2 of episode 102 as we join Nyul Nyul Traditional Custodian Bruno Dann, and partner Marion, on a walk out to the old people’s camping, hunting and ceremonial grounds. To even write these words, I feel a wave rise within me. The conversations spring from the old trails we tread, connecting back in with some of the threads from part 1, and charting the journey of how Twin Lakes has e...

This extra to episode 102 features an impromptu conversation I had with Marion by the fire on our first night there, before the morning walks. It wasn’t intended to be recorded - I’d just been recording some ambient sounds when we got talking. We chat about Marion’s life, and some of her perspective on this incredible story that none of them saw coming – though an elder had prophesised it. Marion’...

Bruno Dann is a Traditional Custodian of Nyul Nyul Country, and together with partner Marion, they’ve spent a little over 20 years creating the incredible success story that is Twin Lakes Cultural Park. Lying to the north of Broome on the Dampier Peninsula in far north Western Australia, Twin Lakes had been stripped of its First Peoples, and badly neglected. But Bruno still found a way to learn fr...

Eva Orner is an Academy and Emmy award winning filmmaker. While she lives in the US these days, she’s from Australia, and was here when this country burned so horrifically in the bushfires of 2019 and 2020. Like a lot of us, Eva was struck not just by the fires, but by the defensive political intransigence that persists to this day. So she joined forces with a team that includes the production com...

This is an excerpt from episode 100 (part 2) featuring the last 15 minutes or so of my conversation with pioneering regenerative pastoralist, Chris Henggeler, on-location at Kachana Station. In some senses, our entire visit to Kachana is distilled into this excerpt. We pick up our conversation where I ask Chris what he needs. A nice initial exchange gives way to some profoundly moving reflections...

Today’s final stanza from our visit to Kachana Station features a very personal conversation with the pioneering regenerative pastoralist, Chris Henggeler. It felt akin to a kind of life statement in the end. It wasn’t scripted that way, of course. It just seemed to be the culmination of having spent ten rich days together, which also included the looming deadline to shoot the donkeys, Chris’s bir...

The day after our extended conversation in the gorge, featured in the main episode, we headed out to where the donkeys do their work. As mentioned in that main episode, it’s crunch time in many ways for this great story of regeneration. And by extension, for all of us, as a shoot order hangs over the donkeys’ heads. So we head out to take a closer look for ourselves at how the Henggelers are manag...

Tens of millions of ‘pests’ degrade lands and waters in Australia alone – pigs, goats, camels, buffalos, donkeys. Cruel, wasteful, expensive, mostly futile and often counter-productive culling programs are no solution. But what if it didn’t have to be this way? What if some of those large wild herbivores could be harnessed towards regeneration? This is the story of a family that has regenerated an...

Momentum continues to build in our efforts to gear economies towards shared quality of life, rather than sheer quantity of stuff. With COP 26 starting in Glasgow next week, I reached out to Dr Katherine Trebeck for a sense of how it feels on the ground there, along with how the event might leverage more of that broader momentum. That’s our take-off point for looking at some of the significant shif...