Working With and Learning From Nature
The Art of Free Travel with Patrick Jones
Episode 130: In 2013, artists and Permaculturists Meg Ulman and Patrick Jones embarked on a 14 month, 6,000 km journey by bike, cycling along Australia’s East Coast from Daylesford to Cape York. Their travel companions were their sons, Woody and Zephyr, and their Jack Russell Terrier, Zero. Patrick and Meg wrote a book about their journey called The Art of Free Travel: A Frugal Family Adventure.
Meg and Patrick wanted to apply Permaculture principles to travel – to take Permaculture on the road. In the end, Meg and Patrick applied every Permaculture principle, but one, to their trip.
One of the goals of their four hundred day journey was to document some of the edible wild plants of Australia and to eat and enjoy free and foraged food along the way. They left knowing about 100 species (of mostly plants) from their bioregion. When they came back after 14 months on the road , they knew 256 species of plants, fungi, animals, and insects. Patrick talks in-depth about some of the plants they encountered including yam daisies, a tuber native to Australia. Patrick also talks about pre-1788 indigenous Aboriginal land tending and shares some of the history and science that demonstrates reciprocal agrarianism across Australia pre-contact.
For a link to the Latin names of the plants that Patrick talked about, click here.
You can read more about Patrick and Meg’s work at their website.
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2 Comments on “The Art of Free Travel with Patrick Jones”
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I muddled up my maths in the interview regarding the history of bread in Australia. Archeological evidence puts bread making in Australia going back at least as far as 32,000 years, making Aboriginal people the first bread makers.(Ref: ‘Dark Emu: Black Seeds’, Bruce Pascoe 2014)
Thanks Jill!
Patrick