Renewable inspiration to be had at Wagstaffe Hall

On Sunday the 16^th of October, the community of the southern end of the Bouddi Peninsular, consisting of the suburbs of Wagstaffe, Pretty Beach, Hardys Bay and Killcare, will be holding a Community Action and Sustainability Gathering from 2pm onwards at the Wagstaffe Hall.

A 17-minute inspirational short film, ‘Regenerating Australia’ will start the proceedings. This film was made by the same team, led by Damon Gameau, that created the hope-filled ‘2040.’ There will be guest speakers, lucky door prizes, live music and food and drink available to purchase.

Most importantly there will be an opportunity for community members to put forth ideas, and, hopefully, the beginnings of an action plan and working groups. ‘Communities around Australia are empowering themselves to become more resilient and sustainable.

The Victorian town of Yackandandah is a wonderful example. Climate change is unfolding so rapidly, we all need to do our part before it’s too late.’ Donna Cameron, one of the organisers of the event stated. ‘There are three main things we all need to tackle in terms of sustainability – food, water and power.

So, for instance, with food, the creation of a community garden is essential, encouragement of home vegetable patches and edible verge gardens accompanied by an establishment of an effective food swap system. For example, if someone has too many tomatoes they might be able to swap tomatoes for cucumbers etc.

In regards to water…it’s hard to believe at the moment with all this rain, but scientists predict, after these years of intense rain we will go into a period of extreme drought and those drought periods are only going to become hotter and longer, so enabling our community to become more water resilient will be our second priority.

Whether this be the purchase of community water tanks, or the encouragement of home purchase of water tanks through community grants etc. There is more and more funding becoming available for communities to access.

One of our guest speakers will talk about the different avenues of funding available. This is something we would like to look into as well – particularly in regard to power, which will be our ultimate goal.

We hope our little initiative in our community of around 2500 permanent residents will inspire and encourage other communities to do a similar thing, so it spreads lie a feel-good disease throughout the Central Coast.

Unfortunately, the cogs of governments move too slowly. We have no choice but to tackle this from the ground up because time is running out.’

Media statement: Donna Cameron October 14, 2022