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How agrivoltaics model permaculture

LIFE AT 42°S - Russ Grayson @rg1.bsky.social · 19d

COMBINING ENERGY & AGRICULTURE…
Agrivoltaics integrates farming with solar energy production, producing a double yield from the same field for farmers. photovoltaic panels. Research suggests panels improve livestock welfare, wool quality and some crop yields.
#farmingy #photovoltaics

Photo source: I don’t know where this photo originally came from. A reverse image search on Firefox reveals multiple sources. My use is…

THAT’S Todd, Dave and Melinda there on the sand. Melinda always uses her full name when she is introduced to people but all of her friends…

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LIFE AT 42°S - Russ Grayson @rg1.bsky.social · 23d

LIFE'S COMINGS AND GOINGS…
People are like characters on a stage. They appear, play their role, then step off. And what are we left with? Something else that might be familiar. That hollow feeling… questions unanswered… a longing to know what became of them.

READ it here: medium.com/pacificedge/...

Four friends

Sometimes, home comes with wheels

LIFE AT 42°S - Russ Grayson @rg1.bsky.social · 23d

BUS AS HOME
A couple want to live by the sea. They haven't the money to build. They do the nest-best thing. They buy a used bus and set up home in it.

READ it here: open.substack.com/pub/russgray...

The bus

open.substack.com

LIFE AT 42°S - Russ Grayson @rg1.bsky.social · Sep 9

A REWILDING MOMENT…
Jagged branches twist skyward, stubbornly defying the passage of the years, of the decades. Morning sun glints off of a trunk hardened and smoothed by summer sun and the winds of the Roaring 40s.

#photography #blackandwhitephotography #trees #Tasmania

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LIFE AT 42°S - Russ Grayson @rg1.bsky.social · Sep 7

FRANSTRALIE: a nation that could have been…
What if the French maritime explorers who charted the Australian southeast coast had been followed by voyages of colonisation?

Here’s an alternative history of our continent.

READ IT HERE:
russgrayson-au.medium.com/franstralie-...

Franstralie: a nation that could have been

Terra Australie: le nouveau territoire français. It could have been. Maybe. If France’s early explorations of the Australian coast had…

Old land, new food: the story of what we eat

LIFE AT 42°S - Russ Grayson @rg1.bsky.social · Sep 7

OUR LAND, OUR FOOD…
You come to settle a new land you know nothing about. You carry seed to start agriculture. But will it be enough to sustain your colony?

READ IT HERE:
medium.com/pacificedge/...

A preliminary commentary on a book still being read.

LIFE AT 42°S - Russ Grayson @rg1.bsky.social · Sep 6

Paywalled. Anyone copied the story and can post?

LIFE AT 42°S - Russ Grayson @rg1.bsky.social · Sep 1

Video of fascist blackshirts violence at yesterday's march for Australia rally in Melbourne.

Just one of the violent incidents in Melbourne, Brisbane and elsewhere.

www.facebook.com/share/p/19mK...

Redirecting...

www.facebook.com

The French in Tasmania’s maritime history

LIFE AT 42°S - Russ Grayson @rg1.bsky.social · Aug 31

An anti-tourism car sticker in Tasmania discloses unease over the number of tourists, most from the Australian mainland, coming into the island state in summer.

LIFE AT 42°S - Russ Grayson @rg1.bsky.social · Aug 31

Signs of spring: first flowers on apricot tree.

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LIFE AT 42°S - Russ Grayson @rg1.bsky.social · Aug 29

VOYAGES OF EXPLORATION…
Had the English not established a colony at Port Jackson, would we be eating croissants for breakfast instead of porridge? Perhaps, because the French were exploring the south east Australian coast before and after the English arrived.

medium.com/pacificedge/...

Tasmania might have been colonised by the English but it was also explored by the French. It was the English who planted the first European…

It is no secret that fiction writers draw on observation, on events in the real world and on their own experience to concoct their stories…

LIFE AT 42°S - Russ Grayson @rg1.bsky.social · Aug 28

The first flowers of the season bloom on the apricot. The plum, too.

Nearby, the golden spheres are Cape gooseberries (Physalis peruviana).

Out front, the wattle trees are in bloom.

The first sign of spring.

#Gardening #Flowers #FruitTrees #permaculture #Tasmania

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LIFE AT 42°S - Russ Grayson @rg1.bsky.social · Aug 28

A REWILDING MOMENT…
From the sun
A journey of eight minutes and twenty seconds
Then, sunrise
Golden light spreads across the land.

#photons#Sunrise #Morning#Tasmania

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LIFE AT 42°S - Russ Grayson @rg1.bsky.social · Aug 10

TALES OF THE NOT-QUITE-TRUE…
Sometimes, fiction is based on fact. The characters, their actions and dialog might be made up, but the core of the story that forms the plot really did happen.

So it is with this story…

READ IT HERE:
F: russgrayson-au.medium.com/the-pack-208...

The pack

IT IS DIM and still. Little light penetrates the canopy of eucalypts and cabbage tree palms. I’ve been following the rough track down…

LIFE AT 42°S - Russ Grayson @rg1.bsky.social · Aug 9

A REWILDING MOMENT…
Eucalyptus, Lewisham foreshore track, SE Tasmania.

#trees #eucalypyus #tasmania #bushwalking #hiking #photography #landscapephotography

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LIFE AT 42°S - Russ Grayson @rg1.bsky.social · Aug 1

THE WILD…
Crossing Tasmania's Franklin River is easier these days. An old photo reawakens memories on journeys past, and on the present state of wilderness walking.

READ HERE:
medium.com/pacificedge/....

#tasmania #franklinriver #rivers #bushwalking #bushwalkingaustralia #Backpacking #memoir

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LIFE AT 42°S - Russ Grayson @rg1.bsky.social · Jul 29

THE OUTDOOR MUSEUM…

Here, near the southeastern Tasmanian town of Cygnet, a rusting traction engine decays through the decades next to an early gasoline powered road roller.

#Tasmania #Cygnet #Technology #machines #IndustrialRevolution

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LIFE AT 42°S - Russ Grayson @rg1.bsky.social · Jul 29

STORIES OF THE COAST…
The beach shacks at Bulgo on the Illawarra coast in NSW are typical of the informal vernacular architecture of Australian shack building…

#shacks #beachshacks #huts #coastalliving #NSWAustralia #Bulgo #Bulgoshacks

russgrayson-au.medium.com/shacks-on-th...

Shacks on the seashore

Alone, and the value of bushcrafting

LIFE AT 42°S - Russ Grayson @rg1.bsky.social · Jul 22

THINGS IN THE WORLD…
What does the TV series Alone have to teach us about the psychology and physical skills of survival in hostile cold and wet environments?

READ THE STORY:
medium.com/pacificedge/...

#Alone #survival #survivalpsychology #survivalskills #survivalequipment #Tasmania #TV

Finding the TV series, Alone, took me back to my experience of camping in the bush under a tarp, under what Australians know as a hoochie…

Two tales of the mountains

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LIFE AT 42°S - Russ Grayson @rg1.bsky.social · Jul 12

THE MOUNTAINS…
When was it? some time ago now. I was looking through old photos when I came across some I took decades ago on walks into the Walls Of Jerusalem, the cluster of peaks near Tasmania's Central Plateau.

READ THE STORY HERE:
medium.com/pacificedge/...

A brief memoir of bushwalking in Tasmania’s Walls of Jerusalem in the 1970s…

Permaculture in a time of crisis, war and displacement

LIFE AT 42°S - Russ Grayson @rg1.bsky.social · Jul 10

THINKING ABOUT PERMACULTURE…
How do permaculture practitioners deal with the deteriorating geopolitical scene forcing itself upon us today?

Some are already taking action. Let's take a look at them.

READ THE STORY HERE: medium.com/permaculture...

We stand at a moment of crisis in our world. Wars rage in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, producing huge refugeee flows. An…

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LIFE AT 42°S - Russ Grayson @rg1.bsky.social · Jul 3

You will find this superb example of an Art Norveau doorway at the Saint Marys Hotel on Main Street, St Marys, Tasmania.

The flowing line of the window frame that makes an almost-complete circle that is repeated in the surrounding brickwork.

#ArtNorveau #architecture #StMarysTasmania #Tasmania

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LIFE AT 42°S - Russ Grayson @rg1.bsky.social · Jul 2

THINGS IN THE WORLD…
Nearly every morning a large, black bird with a pointed head lands on the railing, and looking inside through the window makes the same three note call.

What is it after?

#Birds #Wildlife #Tasmania #Tasmanian wildlife #ForestRaven

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LIFE AT 42°S - Russ Grayson @rg1.bsky.social · Jul 2

It’s so good that we are not Americans over here. We watch as your country self-destructs to a banana republic and as you betray your allies.

Basket case USA.