Last week, about 30 budding permaculture teachers from Australia and abroad gathered at Mt Keira Girl Guides Camp to learn from an Australian luminary.

Rosemary Morrow, author of the Earth User’s Guide to Teaching Permaculture, led the six-day intensive teacher training course, along with Brenna Quinlan, permaculture illustrator and educator. Local permaculture company Earthrise hosted the event.

Jacqui Besgrove from Earthrise has more than 10 years of experience in permaculture design and is part of local permaculture movement, Permablitz the Gong. She is passionate about using permaculture principles to transform our way of life.

Rosemary Morrow is a pioneer of permaculture in Australia. After travelling overseas, particularly in Africa, she realised that we needed an alternative to conventional farming practices. She found permaculture and has been teaching its practices ever since.

Brenna Quinlan grew up in the Illawarra and has since moved to Western Australia. Brenna spent four years learning about permaculture from one of the masters, David Holmgren, on his property in country Victoria.

I was invited to attend the final night celebration for the newly trained permaculture teachers. I walked into a room full of people energised and inspired by the previous six days, and in awe of the force that is Rosemary Morrow, now 79, who left earlier that day to prepare to fly to Portugal to continue her work.

Spread in front of us was a final night feast. Course facilitator Jacqui Besgrove sourced most of the food locally to cover the six days of catering for more than 30 people. Jacqui told me that, earlier in the day, she had invited a team of participants to create a feast from the food that remained. The result was delicious quiches, stews, fried rice (Balinese style), salads and cake. 

During the evening I met several of the participants.

Katie was a teacher at Ajuga, a special education school in Sydney’s south-west; she told me there were about six other school teachers in the group. Deb was the proud custodian of a permaculture property at Bawley Point who attended the training to learn the skills she needs to share her place with others. Benedetta was from Italy and has recently spent time in South Australia working on a program called Permaculture for Refugees. Benedetta told me that she was returning to Italy in the hope of attending the Slow Food University in Pollenzo. Medoune was from Senegal and came to Australia specifically for the training, his attendance uncertain until the last minute with his visa granted in early September.

I learned that Medoune is from Kedouga, a region of about 30,000 people south-east of the capital of Dakar. He grows vegetables and tropical fruits on about four hectares of land by the River Gambia, which he shares with hippos.

Medoune first studied permaculture in 2012 in France with another Australian permaculture pioneer, Robyn Francis, and undertook the permaculture teacher training here so that he can help his fellow Senegalese to reconnect with the farming practices of their ancestors.

Medoune told me that life in Kedougou is now dominated by artisanal gold mining, which has disrupted the traditional way of life. His country's people have moved away from small-scale farming to gold panning, and the mining practices are having severely detrimental effects on human health and the environment. Medoune told me that his neighbours and friends think he is crazy for his beliefs in permaculture and coming to Australia for the course, but he is determined to take the training back to his own land and share it with his people.

The last thing I expected of my outing to the Mt Keira Girl Guide camp on a cold wet night was to learn about the people of Kedouga. I was struck by the irony that Rosemary Morrow was originally inspired by the traditional farming practices from her time spent in Africa in the 1970s. She is returning the favour to Medoune and his community. I left in awe of the human spirit, the Australian pioneers of the permaculture movement and the power of food to bring people together.

If you would like to read more about gold mining and its effects on the people of the Kedouga region, check out this Guardian article