Morag Gamble:

Welcome to the Sense-making in a Changing World Podcast, where we explore the kind of thinking we need to navigate a positive way forward. I’m your host Morag Gamble.. Permaculture Educator, and Global Ambassador, Filmmaker, Eco villager, Food Forester, Mother, Practivist and all-around lover of thinking, communicating and acting regeneratively. For a long time it’s been clear to me that to shift trajectory to a thriving one planet way of life we first need to shift our thinking, the way we perceive ourselves in relation to nature, self, and community is the core. So this is true now more than ever. And even the way change is changing, is changing. Unprecedented changes are happening all around us at a rapid pace. So how do we make sense of this? To know which way to turn, to know what action to focus on? So our efforts are worthwhile and nourishing and are working towards resilience, regeneration, and reconnection.

Morag Gamble:
What better way to make sense than to join together with others in open generative conversation. In this podcast, I’ll share conversations with my friends and colleagues, people who inspire and challenge me in their ways of thinking, connecting and acting. These wonderful people are thinkers, doers, activists, scholars, writers, leaders, farmers, educators, people whose work informs permaculture and spark the imagination of what a post-COVID, climate-resilient, socially just future could look like. Their ideas and projects help us to make sense in this changing world to compost and digest the ideas and to nurture the fertile ground for new ideas, connections and actions. Together we’ll open up conversations in the world of permaculture design, regenerative thinking community action, earth repair, eco-literacy, and much more. I can’t wait to share these conversations with you.

Morag Gamble:

Over the last three decades of personally making sense of the multiple crises we face I always returned to the practical and positive world of permaculture with its ethics of earth care, people care and fair share. I’ve seen firsthand how adaptable and responsive it can be in all contexts from urban to rural, from refugee camps to suburbs. It helps people make sense of what’s happening around them and to learn accessible design tools, to shape their habitat positively and to contribute to cultural and ecological regeneration. This is why I’ve created the Permaculture Educators Program to help thousands of people to become permaculture teachers everywhere through an interactive online dual certificate of permaculture design and teaching. We sponsor global Permayouth programs, women’s self help groups in the global South and teens in refugee camps. So anyway, this podcast is sponsored by the Permaculture Education Institute and our Permaculture Educators Program. If you’d like to find more about permaculture, I’ve created a four-part permaculture video series to explain what permaculture is and also how you can make it your livelihood as well as your way of life. We’d love to invite you to join a wonderfully inspiring, friendly and supportive global learning community. So I welcome you to share each of these conversations, and I’d also like to suggest you create a local conversation circle to explore the ideas shared in each show and discuss together how this makes sense in your local community and environment. I’d like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which I meet and speak with you today. The Gubbi Gubbi people and pay my respects to their elders past, present, and emerging.

Morag Gamble:

Well, it’s my great pleasure today to be welcoming to the show, Cate McQuillen. Cate is the writer and director of Dirtgirlworld, Compost Rocks, Get Grubby TV and the Get Grubby musical. Cate’s creative playground rambles through screens, mobile devices a nd stages. She talks to well over a million people each week, sharing permaculture ideas and stories. Her work with Get Grubby TV was awarded the Esben Storm award for best direction of a children’s TV show and an EMMY, too. Cate saystthat when she was five, she got hit in the head with a footy. And she said, that explains a lot and she attributes much of who she is to that event. And also to watching stacks of telly, singing 70s songs into hairbrushes and growing veggies with her dad in her formative years. She’s a creatively driven force behind so many programs that help to generate ideas, motivate, inspire, and, and for young people to get the bigger picture. So Cate lives up in the Northern rivers region in new South Wales with her partner Hewey Eustace and they run together mememe productions. So Cate, for much of what she does, it’s about wearing her heart on yoursleeve and being led by a values, gathering a great team greater than herself. She said, and then loving them into doing their best work ever. So I encourage you to check out her shows. Uh, I’ll put all the links below to all of her different programs because it’s not just these shows she does. She’s also created an early childhood curriculum. She has , even during the lockdown, she created a program around maths. You may well have seen a lot of Cate’s work. Dirtgirlworld has been around for 10 years now and has shows that are being shared around in, I think she said 126 countries. So it’s an extraordinary story. And I’m so delighted to welcome Cate to the show today. She’s also joining the Permayouth at their event, their festival next month. So anyway, I’d like to welcome now to the show, Cate McQuillen, it’s my absolute pleasure to have her here and to share this conversation with you.

Morag Gamble:

So it’s a great pleasure today to welcome to the show Cate McQuillen. Now , Cate is kind of one of the most dynamic forces I know in I’m going to say permaculture education, because essentially that’s what you do every day. I mean, you are transforming the way that young people are thinking about the world, helping to share a new story, create positive change, and you’re reaching millions every week. And so Cate, for those of you who don’t know, Cate is actually the creator of Dirtgirlworld, Get Grubby TV, and even a musical on that. And the creative force behind the characters of Dirt girl , Scrap boy and Costa the Garden Gnome. So Cate, what is it? What is the fire in your belly that this whole world emerged from?

Cate McQuillen:

It’s interesting, isn’t it? Because, you know, you think to yourself, well, you know, why choose this route to , your thoughts about being a storyteller and a change maker? Y ou k now, I think i t’s, for me, it had to do with the fact that where my passion l ay was in creativity. I had trained as a teacher, I toured through Victoria with theater and education t roops, musicals and written stuff for kids. So my background was in that education world. And then of course we, my partner and I Hewey we debunked the city, moved up to the Northern rivers in our early twenties and then went on our own journey as a permaculturalist. Oneof the very first things that we did was we went to the permaculture fair. We met a whole lot of people who were definitely inspiring to us. And then of course I met the kids and the kids were just unbelievable. T hey w ere so connected. So grounded. It was like, these were kids who, who just knew things about nature. They taught me things about nature. U m, and I was really excited by that. I was excited by that, but then I realized when I looked around at the content that was there for them, there was nothing that was mirroring their world or reflecting back their feelings or the way that they navigate life. I mean, we had awesome k id shows Bananas Pajamas, etc. But none of it was grounded in any sort of world that they connected to. And so H ewey and I just decided that they got, why don’t we create something just for t hese kids. Then 12 years down the track just for these kids is just for every kid in the world. And, u h, I don’t really know that we knew that when we started this.

Morag Gamble:

You can know that, do you , but when you start something, when it comes from such a, I don’t know, like it’s a deep, innate response to something that you’re seeing that there’s [inaudible]. I think something that comes through everything that you do is this absolute love and and approach that’s kind of fun and uplifting, and that invites you to come along and play. I think that’s also where a lot of the work around environmental education for children has made a shift in your work because it’s not the kind of abetting and the deeply serious guilt ridden kind of education. You’re kind of taking people along on this amazing journey and saying like, this world is incredible, come and join us. And there’s something about that, the love that you instill in it and the attractiveness of it. And just that the joy that’s , it’s kind of it’s what’s the word contagious, I think.

Cate McQuillen:

Yeah, no , which is a bad word during a pandemic pandemic. Can’t steal that word. No , it can. [ inaudible] [laughter] Thank you so much, but it’s , you know, I suppose as an adult individual we kind of got to a fork in the road. Do you stand on a box and take a political path and find a way to change the world in that direction. And that just had held no attraction for us, that kind of lifestyle, that kind of world, that you needed to step in to, to be part of didn’t hold a place for me really, you know, like I don’t mind being outside of it, looking at it and having conversations with it, but the idea of being in that, and I think probably our best estimate of what that was, has proven, correct over the years.It’s not a place it’s not a place for us. So the other option is what does resonate with our hearts ? And this idea of love and connection has moved from , just being something that has been an alternative way of doing things to being a very mainstream thinking around behavioral change. And so while while we wrap everything in this glorious joy and love and heart and characters and fictional reality as this weird thing that we’ve created, that is so real that kids believe that these people are genuinely genuine and living. There is some deep thinking behind it, which is that behavioral change happens on a three-prong approach. It starts with love. And then it moves to knowing, and then from that as a combined force action follows naturally. And so it just seems that all of the behavioral scientists are saying this now, but they’re not running away. They’re not kind of being scared to say it’s love that leads. And then there’s another really core belief that I think is really coming to the front of the conversation. And that is, we are nature. We’re not above it, we’re not beyond it, we’re not in control of it. We are nature . And so I feel like that’s what happens with Dirtgirlworld is that we were able to explore those things. I love-led, knowledge-based, action happening world where we understood where we are in the greater scheme of things. Um , and then hopefully growing a generation of children and families and grandparents and all kinds of people who come around to feel the freedom, to feel what they know. We all know this, we know it intrinsically inside of us. We know this, we just give people permission to let rip and just feel it to the max and go for it.

Morag Gamble:

This theory of change, I think, is so important because flipping how we perceive change to happen, changes how we as kind of adult educators enter into that space and create conditions for change. So your theory of change is really important. And also like you’re saying that we are nature kind of more of a deep ecology approach. And there’s so many different things I can see weaving through this and the different perspectives on our relationship with one another and with earth and with society, too. So I wonder whether you’ve had, I’m sure you have, you probably every day you get thousands of them, but what are some of the stories that you’re hearing from maybe parents or children themselves, that you can feel and see how those ideas are impacting them or shaping them or inspiring them?

Cate McQuillen:

Look, it’s.. I’m in a really lucky position. I never have to doubt the value of what we do because people tell me all day long, you know, they, they show us, they don’t just tell us, they show us kids in the gardens, you know, growing things . Kids during the pandemic making pickles. All the things that we’ve all seen they share with us . Deep and profound conversations. People who’ve dealt with post-traumatic stress by raising a family on watching people. And that’s been across the world. We get letters from all kinds of people who just go, I did not know how to cope. So all we did is just did what Dirt Girl does. So from those all sort of things to of course, also families with kids on different levels of the spectrum, who only communicate using Dirt Girl language, you know, parents who thought their kids would never speak to them, who one day turned up and all of a sudden the family are living in Dirt Girl World for a little bit gives them great hope and faith that they can move to the real world at some stage. A man in New York who would go out to band practice and he would leave his parrot inside his house, watching children’s television, came home one night to the parrot singing the Dirt Girl World songs which is that’s a wild thing but on that day to day level, absolutely. Schools, centers, kids, families , uh, feeling the confidence. And I just think that that’s what we’re talking about. That it’s the love and the happiness and the joy , the non-perfect approach to everything . That mistakes are just part of it. You know, if you’re a gardener , you get that, you understand you can put your best intentions, you can plant something and it just doesn’t eventuate. And I think that that’s another thing that Dirt Girl World is not the perfect world. Uh, and I think families feel a framework of confidence in that, that they can give things a go and try it again, and then have another go move it over here. And we’re not just talking, as you said at the beginning, we’re not just talking about growing a garden, we’re talking about people starting to think about family manifestos and how are their values lived . And if , as a family sitting down and saying, these are the things we believe in, we want to make a climate-safe future. These are the things we believe in. Let’s make a manifesto and then let’s live it out. And so when they get to that birthday time and the plastic packaging world starts knocking on their door, they sit with their manifesto and say, hang on a minute, let’s think of another way of doing this. And I think that that’s where change comes from when, you know your values, when you know what is important to you , I think that there’s a lot of rudderless living happening that we just kind of, people are just kind of going all over the place and maybe the pandemic kind of found there was a bit more rather happening even in that swirl of chaos , that families have been starting to find. I think I’m seeing that I’m thinking, definitely feeling like people had a pause and that they have continued their commitments that they have made during that pause time, because it makes them feel good.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah. I think what you’re saying there with actually being a bit of a rudder and a direction, and I was going to ask you actually about how you’d seen a change during COVID times with the work that you’re doing and whether you’re finding a whole lot more people coming into that space because I mean, that’s what I’m feeling in all the work that I’m connected with, but actually I think before then, like you’re saying, you said something earlier about bringing it into mainstream. I think what you’ve been able to do is to bring this thinking out of it being like I’ve been in this so long and I feel these things of like, Oh, that’s just hippie stuff. Or that’s just what you do when you retire. Or that’s just something else over there. And, but actually at the end of the day in the real world, you know, all those kinds of comments, but you’ve kind of brought it right in and weave it into everyone’s daily life. It’s not an out there thing. It’s beautiful, and it’s normal as you’re saying, touches people in a place that can open up kind of the cracks, it’s a portal to another world. A portal to a world that you feel that sense of peace and connection and love and ease and, and yeah, we can drop down those things of having to be perfect. We can, you know, go and get grubby.

Cate McQuillen:

Yeah. Yeah. You can also be random and energized and wild, you know, like, and I think that we’ve got to remember, that’s what kids are, you know, a really interesting thing because I think sometimes we think that t his there’s permaculture journey as an adult. What’s the permaculture journey as a k id. How do we take all that abundant energy and let it run f ree? I mean, they’re doing it, little kids just do this, it’s natural to them. It’s us who stick them inside and then say, hang on a minute. It might be a bit unsafe out there. Don’t climb a tree m ight f all a nd all that sort of be careful kind of language that is breaking down. I’m s eeing it all the time. Parents are getting t hat t hey’re getting that l ive. You need to live to live, y ou k now? And, u m, and so, y ou k now, it is interesting. We’ve had this other just w anted to reflect on being on air for 10 years a nd o ur kids who were three or four, when they started with Dirt Girl, 13 or 14, 15 marching in the climate rallies, writing hundreds of letters last year, we got hundreds of letters from predominantly girls saying, thank you, Dirt girl. You seeded something in m e when I was little, you know, and they’re not saying that she, y ou k now, we’re not saying she was completely responsible w ith this, but they have a story of their childhood that supports their adolescents that will support their parenting. If they choose to be parents or not k now i t’ll, i t’ll support their a dulthood. U m, and t hen I recognize that. They contacted us and said, would you come to the rally and march with us, you know, will Dirt Girl come and be with us. Um, a nd Dirt Girl she was with the little kids she was with the big kids, you know, u m, and that’s another interesting conversation to be had too about walking this line of standing shoulder to shoulder with families and kids and yet not being polarizing and not being too politicized that Dirt Girl chooses to do things for the g ood o f things, you know, and for the connection with things it’s not about standing in a politicized spot, i t’s standing, it’s supporting living, you know? And I think that, that we’ve been very successful at that. I feel like we have great access to leaders and to d ecision m akers whose families l ove Dirt Girl world as well. And I feel like we’ve been very lucky, b ut it’s been a very deliberate thing to make sure that we don’t bring any kind of, u m, I don’t know, political doctrine into that world at all, because it’s, it shouldn’t be, it’s just good living, y ou k now. And I live in a community that is very conservative and I am loved and l ove my neighbors and the people who we’re with. That was a really good lesson for me. I think we are here standing living on our home together. U m, so yeah, it was, it is really important to us to make sure that t he, if there’s a battle to be fought, it’s just a universal one rather than a political one.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah. Yeah , absolutely. We have this sense of pressure now in terms of time. And I think working with young people is something that’s really, it’s not like, well , once you get through school and go to university, then you kind of find out what we really need to be focusing on. It’s like, well, it’s now, and we need to be shaping all the way that we’re living in and acting now based on these universal principles of love and earth care. And I really liked the base . I just did a masterclass last night, actually on the permaculture ethics. I’m really reflecting on that it’s that essence of care that’s at the very core of permaculture that I think is what attracted me to it in the first instance. And I know that you’re about to launch a new program about , maybe you want to talk about that declare to, to care, because I think it’s it is that declaration of really wanting to be connected and to be in a place where we just show our love for the world. And not be about this position or that position. It’s that, we’re all, this is our one earth, and this is one of living. This is our place together. And we know that people are different in different parts of the world, but we’re all here together and Dirt Girl connects people around the world. I mean, how many countries are you in now?

Cate McQuillen:

Yeah, 128. It’s kind of weird isn’t it cause we’re having a lot of conversations with Brazil because the project has just popped up on a new channel in Brazil. And so you get this sort of flash of people seeing it for the first time. Um , I have no idea why people make adult drama because you get people, watch your show once or twice. And that’s it. With us, kids will watch it a hundred million times, but then they just grow out of it and the next lot grow into it. And so we’ve got this continual flow of people who are discovering us so there’s a renewing all the time. You know, even though we’ve got this journey of path of moving forward as a legacy and with the kids and families who are growing with us, we just have these new beginning stories all the time. And that it’s hard to ignore that and hard to not feel the joy of somebody just realizing that they all have this for the first time. Um , and so it’s , it’s, it is really nice. The care thing is really important for us. If people only know us from TV, they will know the joy of what it’s been like to create a story world and a narrative in an animation format , in a live action form. And we just did a little project during COVID called for maths, where we had families creating maths in nature that the ABC commissioned a short run series of. So , um, people, a lot of people know us just for that other people know us because , Dirt girl’s got a band and we’ve got the live show in the musical. So people may have seen us at events or at festivals and have come up and had a chat and had that experience, which is like no other meet and greet too. I’m so proud of Dirt Girl, Scrapboy and Costa the Garden Gnome when they’re on country or on the meeting people the time and love that they give and share is just incredible. And kids will tell them everything about their gardens or the animals or their insects. It’s great. And then beyond that, we have this whole other world of education. We’ve got an early childhood curriculum and we work with , we’ve done a documentary series with the indigenous rangers across the top of Australia, from Broome to the great barrier reef and up through the Torres Strait , on biosecurity and saying how the Rangers are working to care for country, but we’ve worked on Thursday Island to help create with the community, a community farm and community garden there. And those ideas have spread, but we’ve worked with local councils to help them talk about waste. And I didn’t really think I would end up being a waste queen but bringing the key message in to to local councils. Our waste program is called rubbish handle with care. Uo we put care right up front and you know, we’ve moved to organic handle with care and recycling handle with care, country handle with care. So this care word has been so important to us. And when council started to sign climate declarations , we found that some councils were very happy to be that forthright and to sign a climate declaration, a state of emergency declaration, but some of the other councils didn’t sit well with them. But what did sit well with them is a climate declaration rather than a state of emergency. And then even that was sort of a bit confronting for some areas. So we had the conversation about, well, what about with, no matter what you do with council , what about if we talk to community about declare your care and just really just keep it really simple? And it’s probably just going to be a piece of paper. You blu-tack up onto the fridge, you know , like , so that it feels like a fridge magnet without the magnet, but the whole idea for the declare your care is, and this goes to your comment about sense of urgency and how do we move in a timely , rapidly, timely way without creating fear or freezing people, because there’s just, they feel like there’s nothing that can do all of those negative things that can sometimes happen. How do we bring this love, but this sense of urgency. And so we decided with declare your care, we would look at the 10 most impactful practices households could do not just turning the tap off when you brush your teeth, not turn the thermostat. The really hard core 10 things, and that we would take each of them and for a month, and that we would really focus on them and that you would take on some behaviors forever. You would take on forever behaviors. You would declare you care about energy, and this is what this house is doing to make that declaration. And so it’s ambitious. It’s interesting we will see how it goes. I feel like with most things that we do, it will start as a seed and we will get early adopters and they go hard and fast and love it. They will talk to their families and their friends and their communities and it will flow organically out into the community because I think we all know it’s so hard to harness media to have this conversation with us. And so even though they might tap on us once, or they might even would think that we would have this kind of..

Morag Gamble:

I thought you’d have open access .

Cate McQuillen:

Yeah . It’s interesting. Isn’t it ? You get like these little gems where we look at it all the time. We just get spurts all over the place. Hardly ever. When we read a fantastic article or a fantastic idea, we hardly ever get a follow up or let’s keep going on this journey. We kind of get these things. And that’s part of the trouble. That’s part of this. The three pillar approach is if you only show the know or only show the do, without having those three parts of having the love at the beginning, and if you don’t consistently have this kind of three-prong approach, then people just nibble on this. They go, Oh yeah, that’s great. We should be doing that next thing. Oh yes, we should be doing this. And it’s like, it’s just like, we keep getting fed these tiny bits all the time. And they keep us knowing that we should be doing something, but do they, do they really help us? This is what we should be doing.

Morag Gamble:

I wonder, you know, I feel this sense of anxiousness that people have thinking, Oh, I’ve got to do this and do that and do that. I’m just thinking about this while you’re speaking that I think it’s coming from that fact that it is just, just getting the bits rather than that whole picture. Like when we step back and have that, we can kind of see where it all fits with us and we’ve kind of located it within our, our way of being. And so I think the decorations brilliant, you know, it’s kind of that it’s a space, that’s a holder for all of these parts to kind of fit within. And each of those bits you’re doing contributes to that whole. I absolutely love it.

Cate McQuillen:

Yeah. The , the idealist in me. Right . Um, cause I think here’s a big call. Here’s a big call, Morag. I think even as environmental groups, as permaculture groups, we work against each other. And I don’t think we intentionally work against each other. It’s just that we’re all trying to carve a notch for like a little space for ourselves because we all want to say something. We all want to make a difference. It’s not ego. I’m not saying that because of our own egos. I’m just saying that we all work in silence. And when we try, when I have tried to say to people, Hey, let’s get together. All of us organizations let’s get together and umbrella ourselves and have one big mighty push at this, you know, all hold hands and sing kumbaya. No, not quite, but you know, like all of us with all of this bank of knowledge, all of this wisdom, all of those resources, we’re all trying to get the same tiny bit of media. We’re all competing for this one tiny moment a week or a month. And while we do that, while we are siloed and separate, it’s a struggle, a battle burnout, you know, people go, why are people interested in picking up rubbish, three bits of rubbish for a month or a week or a day, but not a lifetime. You know? Like why is it then we’ve got to plant a tree over here and we’re going to do that. So I hope I just kind of.. I’m just pondering by myself and say, all right, when we get to the energy one, I’m going to look for all of the people who are working in the energy and put them all in as links all in, you know, these are people who are doing this work, but I still feel like the challenge is for us to join together and do something big and impressive. Put our marketing budgets together for a year. And , and if we were serious, that’s what we would do.

Morag Gamble:

I’m all in for that. I think I met you just, just as the bushfires had come through your place. And I’d been down in with the fires around and not far from where my parents’ house is. And, and I remember sitting in there thinking, nothing’s really… The response to this is absolutely ridiculous and everything t hat’s happening from, you know, the type of education we have in the world, the type of response we have to climate change, everything that’s going on in our world today i s not adequate, i s not addressing the need. And so I kind of was thinking, Oh gosh, I should bring together all the different, it was women actually, that I knew who were kind of leading in media or science or whatever field they’re in to come together to explore this and to do something like that, to share media. I had a silly name for them. I t hink it was the women’s parliament. Every time something came up there, we had a kind of a response to it that we would speak out and speak up a different reality, a different way of thinking about that situation we had.

Cate McQuillen:

That different thing was so seductive to people, but something that resonated with them, the minute they heard it, they went, hang on, we are listening, looking for a different voice in everybody is they kind of come to everyone, especially right at this moment. We’re all going, you know, no more, not good enough, no care, no love. Just, you know, we’re all thinking it . Right this moment in everybody’s houses, there could be nobody who was thinking that this was good enough. And we also have in the back of my heart, I have this absolute sad knowing that this will pass. It will just going, like this moment will pass. And then what do we have to wait for the next appalling moment? Like, because they don’t know how to get out of it, but don’t know how to get out of it. They don’t know. They really don’t know how to do it differently. And, that’s the real sad fact and that you’re right. Having another voice that just says, hang on a minute, just , just putting it up there. And, you know , and of course then of course, what we’re trying to do with, with a treaty, with voice of indigenous people to parliament, you know, first nations voices, it seems ridiculous that that’s even a problem. You know , why is that not just a yes, please come. Why haven’t we thought of this before? You know , like , you know, even if they could say that, even if they couldn’t say, look, we’ve ignored this and we didn’t really want it, or whatever, I don’t know. I’m not in their heads, but even when it’s offered to them, if they could just say, this is a brilliant idea, come in, sit at the table. Let’s sort this.

Morag Gamble:

Absolutely. I want to go back to this idea of bringing together people.

Cate McQuillen:

I think it’s true. I think we’re doing it now. Right ? Right here we’re starting it. I suppose it’s.. Is it a council? Is it all of these people who come together? The problem is that everyone’s going to have to let go a little bit, to get a lot more. And that is interesting. And I don’t mean we have to let , we should be able to do all our own seeing blah, blah, blah. But it’s almost like if we were a banking association, right. We would have a person on the board, every bank, and they would pop down on that . I would sit and put a check on the table and they’d get a marketing company who would have a manifesto of the banking association and they’d have one spokesperson. Yeah . And then same thing. Every time on the news on the drum, there would be the banking association person. And they would be sitting there speaking for all banks, you know , or all corporations because they see the business of it, you know, and we don’t see the business of who we are because we have a funny feeling that heart and business are not aligned. Where I go, we are in the business of heart and, you know, so that whole thing. When I first moved up here, Jyllie Jackson, her whole gang of women and the back of Lismore had this project called heart politics. And this is like all the way back in the 25 to 30 years ago, kind of my experiences. I wasn’t part of it because, you know, I was down here planting vegetables, and I heard them on the ABC radio. And I always used to think, Oh, that’s so good. They had a great heart song and they sang it on the radio and all this other stuff. And I suppose what the problem was that, and I think maybe those people turned into mandating manners if I’m quite honest about it, you know? So they found their route to where they were going. Um, and I think where we’ve got to be careful is that we don’t get called fringe alternatives or fringe grants, and we don’t even get called lefts or rights or politics. I just think we’ve got to keep thinking it’s got nothing to do with politics. It’s being a voice for a group of people is being representative, not political. Being a voice for the earth and earth care is not political. It’s just being representative. And I think that’s the challenge. I think we put it out there. I think we said it, everybody who’s listening, who else has got a plan? Someone in the world must have thought of this before you and me, you know, like somebody must be, must be thinking someone else must be sitting at home having a little bit of a sip of their cup of tea. I mean , we always think that maybe we should just have a constitution .

Morag Gamble:

I think you’re right. It is some kind of council . They do some, it’s a voice for this myceliating network that exists. Like we’re , there is so wide. I mean, I had these conversations with friends. We talk about where does the power line within what we’re doing in a way, in terms of the possibility for change ?

Cate McQuillen:

The problem is we don’t believe in any of that. This is part of the deal, you know? So I think we have to understand there are two ways that we can live. Well there’s many ways we can do this, where we’re doing now, and then we can have this lovely, beautiful world that we all imagined in our hearts and minds over here, but there’s a bridge in between and that bridge to get to here. We can’t just think it’s going to go and sleep and wake up. There’s this bridge. And we’ve got to really understand that bridge. We’ve got to understand that with any kind of great change that all those, all the feet and have to walk across the bridge to get to a new idea or to another thinking. I look, to be honest, we don’t want to ditch everything over here. We just, we just want it to feel, you know, we just want, well, I dunno , maybe we do, but you know, I feel like that understanding that bridge is the trick, because it’s saying to ourselves that there is a bit of living in this world that we have to bring into this world to make a bridge. And so it is learning from other groups and associations and teams of people who do things. It is knowing that we would need to more than possibly have one idea, one project, one thing, one voice, one story. It doesn’t have to be m ine. One core concept that we’re trying to work on together. U m, everyone from here, like not just like the tasty makers who get to sit, t o do that. So then all of a sudden what we’re kind of trying to do in that group is to say, how does governance work over in this world? How does governance work in our ideal world? Can we reflect governance in this bridged world to demonstrate and can we as change makers change? Can we do the things we’re asking other people to do and can we deeply and profoundly do the things that need to be done for this to work?

Morag Gamble:

And it’s very much too about, you know, often when we’re talking about change making it comes down into sort of, well, what can I do in , in my place? You know, and that’s important and that’s the change making happening at that personal level. And having those bigger questions about energy and divestment and all these other conversations, but there’s always sort of say, you know, like this one is more than two faces , but there’s sort of like the , the inward facing, but then the outward facing. And I really feel that what we’ve just been talking about is working out how we can do more of that outward facing. We’re really good within this movement of working at a community level and a grassroots level and sort of spreading it out project by project person by person. And it’s just this, I was just about to say before about this mycelium network of people, people are everywhere. Like wherever you go in the world, you’ll find people who get this language who understand the language of permaculture , understand the language of dirt girl, you know, there’s a shared language that exists that connects us all and is creating positive ripples of change throughout the world. And that when you speak up, it helps to bring up, like if you think about this mycelium network, it helps to kind of create the flowering mushrooms there that then kind of spore and create these other things. But you do need that outward facing that voice that is heard somewhere else beyond the local. That goes, Oh, that’s, that’s what it is and helps them to shine and flourish and come out of the kind of underground world into the visible world. And I think this, this role of something like this group that you’re talking about is kind of the light that those, that mycelium network needs to come alive in that way. And I’m totally up it .

Cate McQuillen:

I always agree with everything that the group says, but if you of keep it simple, if we just literally talking about how do we create a climate-safe. future. Not even how we create a new economy, or how do people work, or do you know what I mean? Like if we just kept it simple to the immediate issue that we have here, which is keeping the temperature of the earth low enough, you know , for us, for our children , to have something vaguely representative of the kind of quality of life that we will have the luxury to have enjoyed. And also not just us, every living creature gets to actually continue its path in a healthy and connected and ecological way. Um, I mean, that’s a big enough goal. I think one of the things that the climate declaration does is they say, if you’re a council that declares your job is then to get the council next door to declare to encourage them. And then once that happens to them, then to encourage state government and then state government to encourage you like, so they have this kind of idea. And I think maybe, and I get this, I get this, but this is where I’ve been moved during drought or bushfire or pandemic to think differently. So in moments of thinking is my job now is not to just talk to the urban dwellers or the country elite or whoever it is who already are in their world and who find us easily. It’s my job to rock the suburbs. You know, if we do not rock the suburbs, you know, we , we are forgetting such a huge part of our community because it feels a bit difficult or a bit hard, or we have to do things differently, or we have to use words that aren’t even our language to find that bridge. Like, there’s, there’s a whole lot of thinking around that kind of behavior change. And I think maybe too, that notion of , um, even with this great network, can we just go out of our comfort zone a little bit and try and grab somebody who’s not anywhere near us because I know it’s easy to think that if we just change permaculture feeling of just changing the edge, you know, the edge of where, where you use your sphere of influence and you try and get these people here. So you kind of go like this and it kind of go like this. I dunno if we’re doing enough of that at the moment, but I definitely know we’re not doing this. Yeah . And that’s scary, right? That’s scary. But because of the time factor that we’ve got, it’s kind of what’s needed. And so my plan is to go from this sphere of influence that is close and comforting and gorgeous because they say, I love you Dirt Girl, Cate, you know, their easy to going out here where people say, what do you, what do you want about, you know, what, I don’t get that lofty language that you use. I want you to use words. I understand. That’s a challenge .

Morag Gamble:

Hmm. So talked about Dirt Girl world and Cate, so how’s that relationship there ? Like Dirt Girl is your voice, isn’t it? I mean, how does that play out for you and you having like, almost multiple personas to be able to express many different voices or perspectives on what you’re trying to say. I think that would be kind of fun .

Cate McQuillen:

Luckiest girl in the world. *laughter* I just want to say it’s a village. It’s not just my voice. Of courseDirt Girl, Scrap Boy and Costa have their own voices because they’ve lived experience of 10 years of this. So they’re obviously there’s their voice. They’re not, I’m not like some kind of creepy puppet master, but yeah, definitely. And I think it has to be said that if you want to understand Dirt Girl world, you listen to the lyrics of the songs and you will get everything because all the magic is in them, all the messages in them, all the joy in those songs are like gifts to our generation. And so even , even just singing like the families that sing them at home. Families, that quote the lyrics to each other and because they’re just unforgettable, those songs, you know? And, and so we’ve got, we’ve got that. So we’ve got the music as part of the village and t hen of course that comes from Hewey there his words and so while I’m sitting here, it’s really, it’s a mistake to think that, that this is all coming from me. You know, this, we’ve got all of these people, every person w hose hands and hearts in this part of t his story, but yes, o n a day to day basis o n probably answering emails and doing Facebook and doing Instagram and channeling us all through t o families. U m, and yeah, look, it’s a joy. I mean, for me, Dirt Girl, Scrap boy, being Costa is hilarious. But the real fun ones for me of course, is when I be grubby because in the animation having two insects that are just every word t hat I’ve written, like having t hese horrible ambitious g rub is part of my psyche is, she’s not horrible, she’s delightful, but she’s definitely just a corner of my mind of t hat, that pushy entrepreneur. And then of course, Ken, who is every s cared child. Every child who doesn’t believe they can succeed and yet succeeds every day, you know, u m, i t’s nice to be able to have no villains in o ur s how. There’s no one e vil or there’s n o villain. There’s no one t hey’re scared of. They all have good and bad that sometimes they’re overly ambitious. Dirt Girl’s very competitive. And just to watch that, um. So, you know, they all have the foibles and I think that’s what we wanted. I wanted to have a group of characters that were imperfect and just like every person can see that you can be everything at once. You can be kind and unkind, you can be loving and not loving. You are not an unloving person, even when you are feeling unloving. Not unlovable when you’re feeling unlovable. And I think to get grubby TV took the animation series was that d o t his emotional intelligence for kids because that’s part of permaculture too.

Morag Gamble:

And when I was thinking about that too, there’s multiple voices that you have is because as well as speaking that to children, and I guess their parents and carers who are with them as well, but harking back to what we were talking about before, about the possibility of communicating into a world where the language that you, or I would speak in these other characters can speak there. And I think the possibilities of having the , sort of the multiple personalities that you can kind of put different messages that come from different voices to actually start to have those conversations, cracks open a whole raft of possibilities that, you know ,

Cate McQuillen:

Yeah. Like it allows real vulnerability. It allows real strength. Um, we’ve ditched, I’ve ditched hope this year. I’ve just gone. That is just gone from my vocabulary and being replaced with courage. Um, the words we choose to use with our families with our community are important. They’re really important. I think a lot about the words that we use. I just, I think hope has.. It’s for somebody else. I’m up for courage this year. And for the journey forward, that’s a much more actionable.. You be courageous, you know, like it’s a being out there thing. Hopefulness is something that’s kind of introspective and, you know, it doesn’t feel like, I mean, I get it. I know that for lots of people, hope is a really important word, but for me, I’m all for courage. So I just think that we do have to really choose our words and and we have to be consistent with them. You know, like I often think about those other people in the world who have got done very well with their messaging. People like this is living or, you know, slogans that corporate companies have not changed for 50 years. And they have said over and over and over again. And we know them. I’m not going to say them because I don’t want to connect with, I don’t want to connect with them. Right. But we know them. And like the lesson they’ve taught us is you need to say the same thing all the time. That’s how people get a message, keep it simple, say it all the time, little things make a big difference. ‘We protect what we love, we are nature.’ We just say those things over and over and over again, all in different sorts of manifestations, you know, but we, when dirt girls out on the ground, when scrap boy is out in the ground, they are the words I say to kids. Um, because I don’t think, I think it’s something wild. I think the psychology of hearing something is you have to hear it 27 times before it registers to being sort of something that is relevant to you. Otherwise, as we say, they kind of just wash over us. You know, they’ve worked it stuff out. Scientists have gone, spent lot of money doing this stuff and you just go , well , it’s just common sense really that we need to be consistent with our messaging. And so I feel like that’s what all of us, all they need to really do is choose one sentence and make sure that that sentence is core of what they’re doing. And so that when everybody sees what they’re doing, we all have the same thought. Even if it’s for a month, we all go this month, it’s all this month. It’s all we can make a difference, whatever it is. But then we all say that. And it might even, that’s what, that’s, what it might only need to be to start off with just a group agreement of this is the term of the year.

Morag Gamble:

I think that’s, it sounds absolutely perfect. And the consistency that it has with the message that you’re sharing already. And yeah , it’s so simple that you can have the multiple descriptions from all the different groups coming in and , um , each find their way to connect with that. Oh gosh. Well, it’s been so wonderful talking with you this morning and , I know we’re going to be getting together quite soon again with the permayouth, too. The global permayouth. So also just, can you let people know where they can find out all of those? I know they can find out Dirt Girl World, but you mentioned so many other things like your early childhood curriculum and all those other resources that you have, where do they find out about all of that?

Cate McQuillen:

Well, luckily we’ve just done a beautiful upgrade of the dirtgirlworld .com website . So you can go because of course, social media is failing us all at the moment. And for many reasons that are not just, not just physically failing as well , but it’s also, you know, psychologically failing us all. So we’ve gone back to as much as we’re doing lots of socials you can click on a link link. You can get involved by getting into our newsletter so we can send you stuff directly. So you don’t have to worry about whether you’re finding it or whether it’s in your stream or where the Facebook chooses to serve me to you. You know, you just choose to have us come your way. We’re the most unbaggy group of people we don’t spam, or just like , you know, we’re so busy. We’re lucky to send out an email once every three months, but when we do, it’s a beauty, you know? So , we’re on Facebook, we’re on Insta . Uh , we’ve got a shop . nd the reason I’m only saying that is because we have got some, the first circular economy doll that you make yourself and stuff with your own socks , um, doing things differently. Um, you can be rest assured that anything that we’re doing has had the planet at the front of every decision that we’ve made. So and I don’t suppose I want you to go to the shop to buy stuff. I want you to go to the shop to see how shopping can be different. That’s what I would love people to explore. Uh , especially if you’re somebody who’s out there creating content or trying to monetize what you’re doing. Um, have a little look at different ways that we can do it because I think every step we need to take, we need to elevate and , and go, here we go. We can do this differently. Um, yeah check out the shop.

Morag Gamble:

If anyone’s listening this week, you’ve got an event that’s coming up at the end of the week, part of the sustainable living festival, just want to mention that.

Cate McQuillen:

It’s like, we’ve made pickles, we’ve made a sourdough. Now you can make your own, do it yourself, backyard festival, and we’ll stream into it. And we’ve got Mark Seymour, [inaudible] Billy Otto and the [inaudible] and a whole heap of amazing speakers. Everyone we love that the plastic free mermaid , lovely Bella has got Bella’s challenge , but all these incredible people, two hours of mayhem, and you can get your free ticket at SLF – slf.org [inaudible] creating mayhem at the festival, we’re online, asking you to take your device out i nto b ackground 5- 7:00 PM, it’s a Twilight thing. Hang out with your family. T une i n t o t his gig. U m, and it’s been great fun, and it’s the start of our streaming adventures. So, u m, I’m sorry if there’s anything that goes terribly wrong, kind of learning on the fly of how to, w e k ind o f just do something simple. We’ve got to do the biggest streaming e vents. And if you want t o feel like anything is possible, and you want to just sit with people who love life and love nature, and love the world as much as you do, then tune in, you don’t have to stay for the whole two hours drop in and drop out. There’ll be something very cool happening all the time. With Costa, with Dirt Girl and Scrap boy, anything could happen. It’s always an adventure for me, as well as everybody else.

Morag Gamble:

Well, we’ll be there. The permayouth will be there. I think we’re doing a little event just before that session. So we can kind of go straight from that. Also the sustainable living festival straight into that fantastic.

Cate McQuillen:

It’s now it’s called now, cause the theme of sustainable living festival this year is now or never, but or never crossed out. And so we just decided to steal their festival name and make it our event because we like it. I think I’ll be doing them all Now and exclamation Mark. And I know we all as community and everybody listening here as a community I think all of us love and know the work that you do and just know that , um, having sat and stood and worked and put your hands and your heart into this space for so long, I’m so appreciative of the wisdom and beauty, guidance, joy that you bring and your connection to young people. I just want to say from all of us at Dirt Girl World, hank you so much for the glorious work that you do every day . You know, we, everyone listening loves you and loves the work that you do because it’s because it’s your life.

Morag Gamble:

Oh, thanks, Cate. That’s… Beautiful. Well, thank you for being my guest today on the podcast. And I’m really excited actually. I’m k.ind of like, you know, that the edge of excitement when you know that there’s something really exciting about to happen. That’s what I feel..

Cate McQuillen:

It might take us a while, organic spread. But you know we’ve got to start somewhere.

Morag Gamble:

We do. Well until we see you again on the festival. Well actually, no, we’ll see you this weekend. And then at the Permayouth.

Cate McQuillen:

Oh you won’t see me. I’ll be behind the scenes pushing a million buttons at once. *laughter*.

Morag Gamble:

Sounds so fun! Well I hope it goes well and it streams beautifully. Alright take care. Thanks a lot, Cate.

Cate McQuillen:

Talk to you later. Bye!

Morag Gamble:

So that’s all for today. Thanks so much for joining us. Head on over to my YouTube channel – the links below, and then you’ll be able to watch this conversation, but also make sure that you subscribe, because that way you’d be notified of all new films that come out and also the release of the extended tour of Lammas Ecovillage where we go into the landscape and the common spaces, too. And also you’ll get notified of all the new interviews and conversations that come out. So thanks again for joining us, have a great week, and I’ll see you next time.

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