The Technical Animal: An Interview With Patrick Jones
WORDS || CAMERON COLWELL
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n reading environmental activists Patrick Jones and Meg Ulman’s book, The Art of Free Travel, I was consistently struck with a thought that runs, more or less like, Oh, wow, somebody is actually being optimistic about all this. By ‘this’ I mean climate change, peak oil, mass deforestation, and the other environmental issues caused by human overuse of nonrenewable resources, the existential barrel our generation is staring down. Patrick and Meg are permaculturalists, that is, they live a philosophy of communalsustainability, minimising their harm to the planet. Over a Skype interview, I sat down with Patrick to discuss the book, the environment, and the role of activism. What I’m talking about here is Patrick and Meg’s 400 day journey on the roads of Australia’s East Coast, almost-entirely without petrol, together with their two sons, Zephyr and Woody – or if you want to refer to the whole collective, they are ‘The Artist as Family’.
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First, we start discussing Daylesford, the Central Victorian town Patrick and Meg called their home. Here, they commit to a lot of work: Communal gardens, environmental projects and advocate for better bicycles access in the shire. This lifestyle provided the foundation for their trip, which was largely carried out on bicycles. The town is about a 90 minute drive from Melbourne, two hours by public transport, and four days on foot – “I know, because I’ve walked it,” Patrick tells me. I ask him a question a lot of people asked me while I read it, whether he felt unsure about having three-year-old Woody and twelve-yearold Zephyr on the trip. “Yes, we have to bring our kids. It’s impossible to not bring your kids, to not bring everybody for such a long adventure. They learned a lot, especially Woody.” Certainly while reading the book, I was struck by the independence of these kids. There’s a particularly striking photo of Zephyr looking very ‘Bear