Landcare Team
Let’s reimagine a future where both people and the planet can coexist and thrive. And then let’s roll up our sleeves and create it! This is a call out for hands and hearts.
Connection Comes From Being there
There are so many opportunities to be involved in this project that don’t involve money. In fact, we suspect some of the best moments of connection, learning, and friendship will occur away from the buildings and on the land itself. Where money has no value and instead we trade in care, listening, story and actions.
So we’d love to meet you there. You can be involved sometimes or be all in. This is a land where we can all feel at home.
The Vision Comes to Life
We’re dreaming up a place where we can go to take care of the land and in doing so, take care of ourselves. Whilst the other three groups in The Circular Initiative will be focused on funding, building the retreat centre and the business around it, this group is straight into connecting on and caring for land. She needs our care now and into the future.
The property is 107 hectares, including over 1km of the Myponga River that connects from reservoir to the ocean. It’s dramatic landscape (read “hilly”) so we’re aiming to turn the easiest 40 hectares into protected native habitat, then see what we can do on the slopes by hand.
Here’s a rough map to get orientated.
Become a custodian of land
Support with your hands, head or heart can look like many things depending on the skills and resources you have. An ongoing piece of this project that we need your help with is landcare; rewilding degraded grazing land to a native low woody grassland that can support biodiversity of flora and fauna.
The landcare planning is being guided by our partners Bio-R and Seeding Natives, and financially supported through a government NVC grant. But the actions and effort will be on us together, to share the roles of custodians and carers of the land and hand that on to future generations.
This will mean listening and learning from ecologists, First Nations knowledge holders, and forming your own direct connection to land by immersing yourself over seasons and over years.
2023: Site Cleanup
In 2023 we had Human.Kind community start by taking down old fences. This makes way for the new perimeter fence which will keep the kangaroos under control until the natives have grown up strong.
In late 2023 and early 2024 we’ll be clearing out old plantation trees, using them to make leaky weirs to slow water way erosion, and store for reptile habitat later. And salvaging existing irrigation to reuse in the nursery. Many hands make light work.
2024: Seed Nursery
In early 2024 we will be establishing in ground and above ground seed nurseries. These are to help us grow and harvest native grass and shrub seeds, amounting to a massive 3.2 million individuals across 87 species.
Thankfully just 10,000+ of these (the canopy trees) will need to be planted by hand, the rest will be mechanically spread.
Growing the grasses and harvesting the seeds will be a consistent effort over the next 3 years and possibly beyond.
2024-2025:
There will be no shortage of learning and time on land. Some of this will be industrious as we grow and harvest seed stock, and continue to learn about the 87 local species of plant and get to know the existing local residents on the ground and in the air.
There will be First Nations wisdom, there will be overnight star gazing, there will be water way care, and there will be both deep conversation and deep silence at times. We don’t need a retreat facility to feel the connection.
2026: Planting days
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. And what they don’t usually tell you is the third best is in 2026.
By 2026 we will have removed existing pest weed stock in the soil, and grown the millions of native seeds and seedlings needed to revegetate such a large area.
Hectares of Breathtaking land
Minutes from City
Number of Native Plants Funded
you (...but many of us together)
The faces behind this project
We’re a group of friends who got together to invest in something meaningful.