New Year in Australia and Sri Lanka

My family and Jim at Camp Eureka

Boingology, Warbuton,Melbourne.

In January 2011, we were able to see the way Melbourne celebrated the New Year. Fire works, greetings, laughs, smiles and happy faces of people wishing each other a “happy New Year!” That was a n interesting experience.  Also we could experience how some other Melbourne people celebrated New Year too. Thanks to Jim Crosthwaite, our dear friend (Co Founder of JCJ) in Melbourne,  we were invited  to spend few days at Camp Eureka ( http://campeureka.org.au/) . It was a great experience for our family to spend few days on camping especially on the first day of the year. It was something similar to Sri Lanka as camp environment reminded us Sinharaja  Kudawa camp. We enjoyed New Year there by watching the nature, visiting a Buddhist Temple in Warbuton and visiting places like Boingology. Boingology is a new concept of art done by using wood carvings and left over materials (http://www.boingabob.com/). I conducted early morning environmental meditation and we all enjoyed cooking together (I cooked Sri Lankan style lentils), late evening cultural event where we all got together and performed.

When we came back to Sri Lanka in March I became busy with my work again after a year. On top of that Sinhala Tamil New year was in April. As it is the most important cultural event for us I had to get ready as soon as I came back. Unfortunately it was not a very happy New year (April 14^th) for my family as we all had to attend my best friend’s (Thilini Herath) funeral. It was heart breaking and we postponed all our social commitments. We went to Matale where I lived during my schooling days with my friend Thilini.

Laughing competition

"Lime on spoon" race

Some how I had to overcome the shock and had to face the reality so I was convinced to organize New Year festival for the kids in our neighborhood. It was an event that I started two years ago.  20 kids from 10 houses in our neighborhood came to my house (ECO-V office too) and enjoyed the afternoon of 7^th May actively participating in the games and events that we organized to celebrate the Sinhala Tamil New year.  On the same day morning I had a meeting with some of the active members of ECO-V to discuss about 10^th Anniversary. Of course it was the first meeting since I came back to Sri Lanka. We also discussed about next project of ECO-V the Kelani Nadee Yatra (www.journeysforclimatejustice.org.au). All were very positive about it and promised to give their fullest support to make it successful.

An innovative way to offset your carbon foot print - Journeys for Climate Justice (JCJ)

Journeys for Climate Justice (JCJ) is a new way for everybody to offset their carbon foot prints. My stay in Melbourne for a year was very productive as I have a strong bond/link with them even I came back to Sri Lanka. Last year I met many interesting people, who love and care about Mother Earth. 

Victorian governor, me, Mrs De Kretser, Jim Crosthwaite

The most interesting habit of mine; talking to animals and trees helped me to meet Jim and his dog Mimi. When I met them on the road, I never thought that will lead to a strong bond between Melbourne and Sri Lanka. Jim Crosthwaite and Mimi became good friends of mine later on. Jim, Thushara and me shared many common ideas towards environmental issues during many discussions we had over Sri Lankan and Australian meals. Slowly we planted the seed of JCJ (www.journeysforclimatejustice.org.au) and many people helped us to water the seed. JCJ was born in December 2010. I thank all the people who joined with us for founding JCJ as an incorporated organization in Melbourne. The official launch of Journeys for Climate Justice took place at Department of Sustainability and Environment in Melbourne on the 2^nd of March with the Governor of Victoria David de Kretser as the chief guest.  

I met many like minded people during many presentations I have given at the Department of Sustainability and Environment, at different climate change action groups, at other environmental NGOs in Melbourne over last 10 months. I learnt many new concepts, sharing great ideas and on top of that I felt that we are not alone as ECO-V and there are many people who admire ECO-V mission. What we have achieved for past 10 yeas as a voluntary organization in Sri Lanka had many successful stories to share with these like minded people in Melbourne and today ECO-V is a partner organization with JCJ. The first Journey of JCJ will take place in Sri Lanka under ECO-V in coming August along Kaleni River and I will come back to you with more details in near future.

“Westgarth Mothers” Join with Eco Friendly Volunteers’ mission

Westhgarth Mothers Group (WMG) is a small group of parents at my kids school who have got together to help ECO-V’s annual help kids program. Helping around 50 kids to go to school every year by donating all the books and stationary was an annual program we ran under ECO-V. This was done with the help of “Friends of ECO-V” in Sri Lanka and abroad. Now WMG will be with us in the future projects. See our earlier blog (http://ecofriendlyvolunteers.blogspot.com/2009/02/eco-v-helps-children-to-go-to-school-in.html) on our work.

Libby and Me

During our stay in Melbourne for a year, we came across many great friends through the Westgarth Primary school in Northcote where our kids attend. Libby (whose daughter Labanya was with Nipuna at grade 1 last year) got the idea when I discussed the work I done so far with her and she suggested to have a fund raising event to help needy kids in Sri Lanka. She came up with this brilliant idea of having a Sri Lankan lunch for her friends as a fund raising event. It was such a fun event! We organized it on the 5th of February at Libby’s place. We expected at least 20 people but what a day! we got 28 adults and 25 kids!!! Parents helped us to cook a Sri Lankan meal while kids were playing happily. It reminded me arms giving in Sri Lanka as all helped us to prepare the meal. It was a learning experience for most of them as no body had experience in cooking Sri Lankan curries. I gave instructions to moms to cut the vegetables, anions and green chilies.Some happily rolled cutlets and wrapped them with bread crumbs. Some fathers fried papadam and cutlets and some arranged them on banana leaves…what a day…!! when everything was ready by 1.30 pm, all were exited about the food as they all loved the aromatic smell of spices.

 We ended up cooking rice, spicy chicken curry, parippu (dhal), mild cucumber curry, cabbage mallum, cutlets (Tuna balls), papadam, and avocado as a dessert. Libby and I explained the purpose of the event and we conducted a fun event distributing a questionnaire prepared about Sri Lanka. It was named as “Are you smarter than a grade 4? ” .
 Latter Buhusuru who is in grade 4 had to correct all the answers…surprisingly no body got all 5 questions correct. Most of them didn’t know about the way of greeting in Sri Lanka “Ayubowan” (meaning-may all living beings live long) but they all were able to name 3 popular cricketers in Sri Lanka!

 At the end of the day we were very happy and got enough money to run few more projects for the kids this year. It will be used to help needy kids when I go back to Sri Lanka next month. We also got many story books for the kids in Sri Lanka. What a wonderful day!! Thanks to Libby and her family who enthusiastically organized the event and I think it’s a long lasting bond between Westgarth Mothers and ECO-V.
Thank you for all who really had the warm hearts to donate towards this mission. Looking forward to keep you updated about our projects. Your friendship helped us to have a wonderful stay in Northcote! Thanks to Jemma (Libby's elder daughter) we have these photos and will try to arrange a slide show with more photos soon.

Diaspora Sri Lankans and Crystal waters - Queensland

Happy 10th Birthday  ECO-V!!!! - Thank you for all the members volunteers, and well wishes who have been supporting us to come this far!

We meet lot of Sri Lankans from all communities while we are here. Most of them want to do something for the country and they want to promote Sri Lanka and our rich heritage. There are quite a few who look at negatively about Sri Lanka and appreciate their life here. We don’t blame any one but they should not forget that most of them are sons and daughters of our country who have been educated with poor tax payers’ money. They can have their own vision but please do not criticize and compare. Try to pay your debt to the poor people who paid for your education. We need all brilliant people who have left the country if country has to develop.

Dimuthu and Niru

I met this amazing young couple Dimuthu and Niru who are trying to do something to promote our culture and heritage in Australia. We shared a common interest mainly love for your motherland and its heritage and eco friendly life style with minimum impact on mother earth. It does not matter where you reside or what you do. I am grateful to my new friends Dimuthu Dias-Mendis who is the founder of “Ariona” www.ariona.com.au and her husband Niru Mendis, who took the trouble to give me this great experience at Crystal Waters – A permaculture village (www.crystalwaters.org.au). Dimuthu is promoting our Auyrveda treatments at Crystal waters village while dedicating her time to Ariona to promote Sri Lanka.



Crystal waters



Free roaming Wallabies



“Crystal Waters” is in Brisbane, Queensland. It was such a wonderful place to live. I was lucky enough to spend a night at the village and visit around the village meeting some like minded people learning and sharing their experience. Over two hundred residents of all ages coming from many cultural backgrounds live on 85 private one acre plots. Two community plots are owned by a co-operative of residents containing buildings for community events and for the operation of businesses. Residents are engaged in a wide variety of social, cultural, environmental and spiritual activities.  Many homes are built from an interesting array of eco-friendly materials. Mud brick, pole- frame, rammed–earth, recycled and straw bale dwellings are found on the community. Most homes has the common features such as compost toilets (which reminded me our early days at village based life style), solar passive design and energy saving devices. The land is a sanctuary for wildlife. Meeting with free ranged wallabies and possums and eating home grown organic vegetables was wonderful experience .

 

community centre

 

Max and me

 I also got the opportunity to meet Max Lindegger whom I knew through Sarvodaya in Sri Lanka. He is the creator and Director of the Oceania/Asia secretariat of the Global Eco-village Network. He is a primary partner in the design and development of the Crystal Waters. Learning more about permaculture concept, sharing Sri Lankan experience (Max was very passionate about Sri Lanka and Sarvodaya) and looking at his bee keeping was a wonderful experience.
It an amazing experience to watch Rainbow lorikeets and Crimson Rosella that were sitting with us. They were trying to grab our cookies when we were chatting at Max and Trudies’s balcony facing the lovely landscape in their garden. I was always thinking about our village life style where people live with nature with a minimum impact on Nature. I think we had that life before the TV and other electronic devices invaded us. Can we go back to that life style again?? I think up to certain level we can if only you are ready for a behavioral change!

I thank Dimuthu and Niru for giving me this lovely experience!! May your all good dreams come true!

Taronga Zoo and Tasmanian Davil

Last year I was able to visit few attractive places in Australia. Our family visit to Sydney was also very memorable as we were able to visit places like Sydney opera house, Harbor Bridge, Darling Harbor, and importantly Taronga Zoo (http://www.taronga.org.au/taronga-zoo). It was very interesting to see how they market the wildlife and conservation. The Bird show and seal show at Taronga zoo are still in my mind. This reminded me of my experience at Jersey Zoo (anyway highly different from all other zoos I visited) and other conservation oriented zoos in UK which I got the opportunity to visit during my stay in UK in 1999-2000. They all have similar goals and very much concern about the animal well being within the zoo environment. Many staff members in Zoos in our region have a long way to go in terms of ex-situ conservation when compared to the zoos in developed countries.

Among the animals seen at Taronga zoo, situation of Tasmanian Devil is critical. It is famous for its spine-chilling screeches. It is an Australian icon and is the world’s largest carnivorous marsupial. According to zoo website, early Europeans trapped and killed Tasmanian Devils for over 100 years, believing that they would eat their farm animals. Devil numbers decreased until 1941 when they became legally protected. But it is facing a new threat; Devil Facial Tumor Disease. This contagious cancer is spreading through devil populations in Tasmania and is threatening the species with extinction. Taronga Zoo has a special conservation programme for this unique species.

Asian elephants at both Taronga zoo and Melbourne zoo are the main attraction. Most of the public are exited about new arrivals of cubs and they show them in TV news. Most of my friends asked us to visit the elephants when we were going to the zoo. But I had to explain that we are lucky enough to see them free in the wild in Sri Lanka. But I am worried about the on going elephant-human conflict in Sri Lanka as it may lead our future generations to go to the zoo and see the elephants.

New Year eve in Melbourne - Happy New Year 2011

It’s another year! This year is very special to us as it is the 10th anniversary of ECO-V. Last year was different one for all of us at ECO-V. I have been in Melbourne since last March and the activities we were personally involved were different from the activities we did in Sri Lanka. Last few months were very busy as I had to concentrate on developing a new project. Today I am very happy to announce that now ECO-V is a partner of a new Australian based organization called Journeys for Climate Justice (JCJ). We will share more details later…

I took the kids to the New Year eve fire works at Yarra Park and Water front city in Melbourne which was interesting to them. I was thinking how harmful those fire work for the environment?? But again it was only for 10 minutes with very much less noises. The cost involved may have been high but the damage to the environment is low when we compare to the sound and air pollution taking place in our countries during such shows and in daily road traffic.

But the amount of carbon emission per head is much more here in Australia than in our country.  I believe that we can do much better than what we are doing to conserve our Mother Earth. Mother Earth greeted the world for New Year with a much cold winter and heavy floods all around the world. We should have a New Year resolution this year that we will be more conscious about our activities hurting her in order to save the planet.

I will update all our environmental related activities in Melbourne in the upcoming blogs.

I hope we all will have a happy new year where all living beings can live happily on the Mother Earth!

Counting caterpillars in Melbourne!!

In October, I got another great opportunity to get involved in a very interesting volunteer activity. When I received the newsletter from the Banyule City Council requesting volunteers to count caterpillars, I was thrilled and found the event very interesting. Counting caterpillars….!!!A very different environmental activity!! I have never experienced such a thing in my life as an environmentalist.

Eltham is a suburb within the Banyule city council and they have organised the event to count Eltham Copper Butterfly caterpillars. Each year these counts are carried out to assess population stability at each of the butterfly colonies. With this information, they monitor changes in population size, host plant use and butterfly distribution over time. The Eltham copper is a threatened species of butterfly that is restricted to small populations in Eltham, Greensborough, Castlemaine, Bendigo and Kiata, in Victoria, Australia http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/back-from-the-brink/2008/01/22/1200764265940.html. It has only one host food plant, Bursaria spinosa (sweet Bursaria); and the caterpillars are attended by several species of Notoncus ant. The ants offer protection against predators and parasites, and in return, the caterpillars secrete a sweet, sugary secretion from an organ on its abdomen, which they offer as food to reward the ants. During this survey, the number of caterpillars per plant, and the height and location of plants were recorded.

The cream coloured caterpillars live in ant nests at the bottom of the bushes during the day. They come out of the nest during the night to feed on the leaves of the bush. Therefore the event started at 8 pm in the night (it was the end of Spring and sunset was around 7.30 pm). I took the train to Greensborough which is about 20 minutes journey from Fairfield where I live in Melbourne.

There were 12 volunteers including me. After a briefing of the methods, all 12 volunteers started walking slowly with their torches ready looking for sweet Bursaria plants. We actually had to look for the black Notoncus ants who are accompanying the caterpillars. It took around 30 minutes to record the first caterpillar surrounded by a group of ants and we all gathered around the plant to see them as some of us had never seen this caterpillar before. We all were thrilled as we gained some good results as the time passed. We counted around 30 caterpillars by the time I left the team at 10 pm. It was such a fascinating time which gave me great satisfaction though it was freezing cold.