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Excuse me, but half our problem is that anybody can't slap a table together. We are so far behind in basic skills that a lot of re-learning of the basics will have to take place before quality craftma ...

There are major differences between the Australian and American economies. Firstly, the Australian real estate market is not suffering from an oversupply in the way the American market is. Secondly, t ...

There are many, many ways to "sell" preparations for Peak Oil. Going "OMG ZOMBIE HORDES!!" is probably one of the least effective.

For example, you could introduce a food garden like this:
"Infla ...

Alpaca fibre is slipperier than wool fleece. Spinning it requires a bit more care, but can be done. The main advantage is that it is much lighter than wool for the same amount of warmth.

Wool is th ...

Jesus Christ, Cashmere, do you even know what a relationship IS? It's that thing when two people share mutual affection and RESPECT. Why should a woman hang around if you're going to crap on her opini ...

With the rising cost of petrol, more freight rail is being looked at as an alternative to trucking goods. The thing to remember is that Australia is very nearly as big as Europe, with the capital citi ...

Skills inventory ... hmmm ...

Basic cooking, knitting, sewing and crochet from my family. Carding, dyeing and spinning from the local spinning group. Basic gardening from family, trial and error an ...

The amount of specialised knowledge lost through the dying out of old trades is terrifying.

I'm part of a textiles craft group. We experiment with different plants for dyeing and basketmaking, spin ...

Heineken, if you get the chance look up Ted Trainer on the 'net. He's an Australian academic who has written several books on how powering down to a lower-consumption, zero-growth society could actual ...

Oddly enough, one of my hobbies is making quilts and blankets out of old jeans. I can get the old, torn unwearable ones at the op shop down the road for $1 per bag, cut the legs up into rectangles and ...

I think Australia's a fairly good place to be (almost as good as NZ, but I'm not moving there - too damn cold).

The low population density is a double-edged sword: on one hand, the zombie hordes p ...

Slightly OT - Shakespeare's line "Now is the winter of our discontent..." at the opening of his play Richard III actually meant that things were going well. It's a double negative - the discontent was ...

Given the sort of kids you might end up having, Jack, plus a reduced police presence and a possible societal backlash against previous generations, I might suggest that having children is not an effec ...

When I went on honeymoon to England at the beginning of this year, we stayed with relatives near Cambridge who seemed to have an unusually comprehensive knowledge of global climate change. A trip to t ...

Re: potatoes being safer than corn - I've always thought that the green potato tops looked exactly like weeds. I can recognise quite a few types of weed inedible plants, and tell potatoes apart from ...