Flow

The swollen creeks swirl effortlessly through pastures, sweeping all and sundry along on their merry way. Water finds the path of least resistance and uses all sorts of tricks to erode the land to make way for it. We are water too, and should remember that we came from the ocean and still carry the same 35ppm of salt we share with it. When we see the flood waters taking the land away to the ocean, we would do well to remember the impermanence and changing nature of our land. Humans too, will flow in and take land, as we can see in Ukraine. War is again upon us as we see the flow of humanity moving along the path of supposed least resistance, to some, it seems water must flow against rock. For our beautiful country, it is a time to ensure that what goes into our environment is clean, as it surely will end up in our waterways and ocean if it is on the land. There is a long list of potential contaminants that could flow into our water ways when the soil is super saturated like it is now. Water tables rising bring with them natural pollutants such as acid sulphates as well as Arsenic from old dip sites and DDT from old banana shed hot spots. Years ago in Brisbane I alerted the Dept. of Environment about the dioxins from the old transformers that were leaking their oils into the Brisbane river in the old powerhouse. Kids had been using the thick transformer oil as blu tack to arrange broken mirrors in art inside the derelict building. They were quite alarmed and began the process of cleaning up the place that led to the current powerhouse gallery / theatre. The most important thing we can all do is to look after our own by-products. Sustainability starts in the body. If we can take responsibility for our own shit, literally, we can extend that level of consciousness to every part of our existence. When I first moved to this area, most hippies had long drop toilets, including me. In the wet season they would be full and overflowing, not pretty for the faint of heart. Thankfully, the advent of the home built compost toilet wasn’t far off, and many people used council issued plans to build block toilets that are still performing well today. A Brisbane based company, Clivus Multrum, saw a market for a plastic version of the block toilet and many people bought one as it was a bit easier to install and had a nice porcelain pedestal. The old loo’s are still going strong and prevent humanure from contaminating our waterways much more effectively than septic systems, which spill their black water into our environment and over flow in saturated soil conditions. We now have a new range of modern well designed composting toilets ideal for every situation. The evolution of the compost loo is alive and well, with a new R&D department looking at future versions that will perform even better.