About
welcome to Castlemaine Permablitz, an exciting new group forming under the Permablitz banner.
Driven by Hamish MacCallum, the group aims to intergrate a diverse amount of people from Castlemaine’s amazing community – by way of sharing knowledge and skills about edible, sustainable organic food gardens and coming together as a community to bring food gardening to people’s doorsteps.
the following is a direct quote from Permablitz Melbourne:
“Permablitz Defined
Permablitz (noun): An informal gathering involving a day on which a group of at least two people come together to achieve the following:
- create or add to edible gardens where someone lives
- share skills related to permaculture and sustainable living
- build community networks
- have fun
Permablitzes are free events, open to the public, where you learn a lot, share food, get some exercise and have a wonderful time.”
please visit Permablitz Melbourne at : http://www.permablitz.net/what-is-a-permablitz for more information!
its a great page – i particularly love their motto - “eating the suburbs one backyard at a time!”
We welcome and encourage visitors form other parts of Victoria and the world to come along to our blitz’s to participate, share and learn in our climate and community. Read below for more information on the Castlemaine, its climate and how to get here if you’re comming from Melbourne.
Castlemaine
Castlemaine is an old gold mining town in central Victoria, between Ballarat and Bendigo with a population of around 8000. Many of the buildings in Castlemaines compact ‘CBD’ reflect the architecture of the gold minig era, and you dont have to go far to see many signs of the ways in which the landscape was heavily impacted by that era. The bush is predominantly Box-Ironbark forest which is slowly regenerating after the gold mining period striped the forests bare and sluiced many of the creek beds.
The climate here is temperate with a mean annual rainfall of around 590mm. We can get heavy frosts in winter and go for long dry periods over summer. Soils are typically very eroded and clayey. We are experimenting with differnt methods of growing food particularly to suit the challenging, hot, dry period over the summer months.
Getting Here
To get here the low impact way simply jump on a V-line train from Southern Cross Station. Trains are regular and take roughly 1.5hours, dropping you off in the centre of town from where, for a gold coin donation you can hire a bike from the Mount Alexander Sustainability Groups Bike Library. Click here to see the train timetable. Send us an email if you are planning on comming along to a blitz, and we can also arrange for someone to meet you if you and/or a couch to sleep on if you need it.
You can also ride your bike (or drive) up the calder free way and take the turn off to Elphingstone/Castlemaine. Its about 120km or 1.5hours in a car.
