Last night was the official launch event of the [Sustainable Illawarra Super Challenge](http://www.sustainableillawarra.com.au/The-SuperChallenge.html), the programme that prompted the start of this blog.

It was a great turnout, with most of the 120 or so families participating in the Challenge represented. I was excited to see a few familiar faces – people I hadn’t seen for a while and had no idea they were participating. It’ll be great to catch up with them and perhaps work with each other over the next 12 months.

I also met a lot of new people. Christine gave me some good tips on local organic gardens I might be able to visit – one at Dapto, one up in the highlands, and a few local community gardens. I’ll have to do some web searches and see if I can remember their names. I don’t think Kiama has any active community gardens, so I’d like to investigate that some more too. Christine’s also involved in [SailAbility](http://saillawarra.4t.com/), which looks like it could be interesting as the kids get older.

I met up with Donna, who I’d made contact with through the [Aussies Living Simply Forum](http://www.aussieslivingsimply.com.au/forum/index.php). We’d chatted briefly online, but it was nice to meet in person. Both our families sound fairly similar, so it should be interesting to compare notes over the coming year.

[Ally and Richard](http://www.happyearth.com.au/) were there too – not surprising, since Ally is one of the two employees running Sustainable Illawarra :-). We chatted about chooks and gardens and lightbulbs a bit, so I’ve got more ideas to investigate now!

Unfortunately the Super Challenge participants’ workbooks hadn’t arrived yet, but I’m keeping track of everything here so I guess that’s not so bad. Hopefully they’ll contain some more ideas and prompts for things to think about.

It was interesting to see some of the statistics from the participants’ surveys. By far the most popular personal goal people had set was to grow vegies. I know that was one we put down! There seemed to be a lot of interest in reducing power and water consumption, keeping chooks, and reducing waste as well – not that surprising.

It’s going to be an interesting year ahead!

3 Comments

  1. Sounds like such a great event. I only just found out the challenge last week – I would so loved to have joined in. Do you know anything more about the garden at Dapto. I did read something about it very briefly once but was never able to find out any more info. I live at Kanahooka so would love to visit it, and maybe even get involved.
    Best of luck with the challenge. I’m going to subscribe to your blog so I can follow your progress.

    Libby

  2. Thanks Libby! I’ve seen your blog before too, discovered it via a comment you left at Happy Earth.

    I liked your post on homemade pizza bases – we’ve been making our own using basically a scone recipe. Just SR flour, butter and milk (I think!). It’s just as quick as buying frozen bases, but tastes so much better.

    I’m also going to try making bread rolls like you did. That’s a great idea. I love those cheese and bacon rolls, and they now cost heaps – $2.70 each at Brumby’s!

    I didn’t find out anything more about that Dapto garden yet, but I’ll let you know if I do. It is related to the Dapto Seed Savers group, I think – check out my latest post (in a few minutes!) for more info.

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