Hand-Drawn Permaculture Maps & Broken Water Pipes: Phase One at Boonah
Phase One of The Eco Retreat is officially underway, and it began not with a Google search, but with a small business card pinned to the local IGA notice board and a knowing nod from the wonderfully knowledgeable man at Multiflora Nursery in Colac. That card led us to Dim, our permaculture consultant. Dim has walked the land with us twice now, asking thoughtful questions, reading the contours of the earth, and sitting over a warm cuppa to listen to our vision. Early on, we discovered a delightful plot twist: Dim isn’t on social media, carries no digital devices, and doesn’t even have internet access at home. She works entirely with hand-drawn maps, operating on a quiet philosophy of using no unnecessary energy, digital or otherwise. In a world that demands constant connection, working alongside someone tuned strictly to analogue and the rhythm of the seasons has been the ultimate breath of fresh air.
I hold a quiet confidence in what we are creating here at Boonah, though I’ll be the first to admit: most days, I feel like a complete beginner. Looking out across seventy acres, the inevitable thought creeps in, how on earth are we going to do it all? If you had told me years ago that I would step away from my private practice work to become a farm manager, I wouldn't have believed you. Truthfully, I blame my father. Growing up, he instilled a fierce, quiet love of the land in me that I could never quite shake. For most of my adult life, I realised I was simply trying to find my way back home to the soil.
Thankfully, I am not navigating this steep learning curve alone. Richie is always there in the background, a steady anchor applying his logical mind to gently simmer my wildly enthusiastic, big-picture daydreams, while bringing practical handyman wisdom to our daily farm dilemmas. Like the afternoon I triumphantly dug my shovel straight into an underground water tank pipe while planting out the beginnings of our orchard. (Silver lining: we now know exactly where that pipe lives.) Or the day we arrived to find the grass had grown thigh-high and the snakes were all out sun baking, and he calmly loaded us into the car for a spontaneous trip to Colac in search of a ride-on mower.
Last week, Dim unveiled the master permaculture design for the entire 70 acres. The blueprint is mapped out in concentric zones, a clever system designed to harmonise human activity, efficiency of movement, and energy across the site. Looking at those hand-drawn lines, we are staring down roughly a decade of succession planting. Over the next ten years, we will slowly coax these tired paddocks back to life, weaving in wildlife corridors, grazing land for livestock, organic food forestry, rare and endangered native bush foods, and thriving wetland habitats. And right around the house in Zone 1? An enchanted, enclosed sanctuary brimming with veggies, medicinal herbs, heritage fruit trees, edible vines, water foods, and rambling hedgerows.
The map also leaves space for a future campsite, which has us dreaming big about how to welcome our community into this unfolding story. We envision retreats and "regen camps" where Dim and our team facilitate circles alongside art-making, fireside sing-alongs, and deep connection beneath the Otways canopy and southern stars. At the heart of this project is a belief that the regeneration of the land and the regeneration of the human spirit are deeply intertwined. Getting our hands dirty in the service of healing a landscape might just be the best antidote to modern life.
As we move forward, we want to pull back the curtain entirely. We plan to document every phase with full transparency, sharing our budgets, our missteps, and our small victories so others can learn alongside us. Richie is already dreaming up ways to make the project open-source, collaborative and digitally trackable, bridging Dim's analog wisdom with modern technology. Best of all, every dollar generated from our upcoming events and retreats will flow straight back into the earth here, funding the permaculture work so that this land becomes both financially and ecologically resilient for the local community and generations to come.
