Our wonderful Pavilion was officially opened on Saturday the 2nd of September 2023.

The following is our Vice President and Pavilion Building Manager’s speech on the day.

As Tom mentioned I have been managing this project for the past 18 months with the slab going down in February last year.

Permaculture Noosa (PN) -was formed in the Noosa shire nearly 30 yrs. ago by Geoff Lawton
Unexpectantly, Geoff had to head over to his project in Jordon where he has been greening the desert for the past 10 years. His next project is in Hungary. However, as a special treat we have the next generation Lawton, his son Danial, stepping up to take his Dads place here with us today. Danial’s mission is to heal the world through Permaculture. In fact, Jane Goodall in her latest book speaks about Permaculture being a solution.
Geoff has sent us a video congratulating us and promises to visit here early next year.
It will be shown here in the Pavilion around 3.00pm after the official opening.

This land is owned by Noosa Council and Permaculture Noosa are the custodians of the Cooroy Community Garden.

Permaculture is really all about living in an intelligent way, finding the best ways to live in harmony with our environment and in full health, so this building is a practical demonstration of that in several ways.
The building of this Pavilion has been a community project from the very start.

It could not have been completed without the generous support of grants, donations, local businesses, and volunteers. Getting volunteers to help was a huge challenge.

Bendigo Bank have generously donated 30 % of the required funds. To honour their contribution and our appreciation this building has been named the Bendigo Bank (BB) Community Pavilion.

We were 15 months into the project when Trish from BB heard that there was something exciting happening down at the end of Emerald Street and as a result BB injected $50,000.00 which enabled the builders to put up the iron bark posts and install the roof. These funds certainly fast tracked this project.

This pavilion will serve as a hub for reconnection, community, learning, workshops on how to care for our soils, grow survival foods and medicinal herbs and to care for one another. It’s an opportunity to bring hope into the lives of our children and grandchildren.  Their future…our planets future.

Interestingly enough it took our builders Maxbuild just 4 weeks to put the roof on and building these cob earthen walls has taken the last 6 months working 4-5 days a week. Fortunately, we were able to employ Elena an architect from Mexico with a passion for building with what’s under our feet..Earth..she was able  to guide us through building the cob walls and then rendering them. Elena always made it a lot of fun. She would pump up the music and have us stomping the clay and aggregate with our feet to the beat.

The walls were built one hand full at a time.  Most of them are 400 mm thick. It was a huge effort. Elena’s Mum has flown all the way from Mexico to be with her and celebrate with us.

There are a few groups I’d like to mention who have given amazing support to this community project..We have had a home-school group of teenagers come in every Wednesday as part of their curriculum to learn about building with earth. It was so heartening to watch them be here all day without an iPad or iPhone interacting with each other. They were here learning important life skills. Next semester they are planning to come here to learn how to compost, build healthy soil, save seeds and grow their own food.

Bob Cameron the owner of Rockcoat has been here every week for months running workshops on how to build a cob oven or as Bob calls it…a   retained heat oven. He spoke about sacred geometry and shared his passion for making sourdough. He has been here firing up our pizza oven weekly and he has generously donated all the render and non-toxic paints. Thank you so much Bob for taking such a big part in this project.

Local Giles Whittle owner of Whittle Waxes donated his time and non-toxic finishing products to all the beautiful red gum timbers in the office, the bench near the cob oven and the servery. Thank you Gilles.

We’ve had Noosa Community Training group headed by Graeme who always would willingly come in anytime with his students to help me with any part of the construction that I needed.

As I’ve said it’s been very much a community project. We have created a legacy.
If you have a look around the gardens they have been transformed to bloom and be fruitful.
We are just so thankful to Lottie and her gardening team for so passionately tending the gardens every week.
PN’s fundraising efforts has raised around $70,000.00. for our Pavilion.

I’m so personally grateful to Jenny and Michael Haydock, Wayne Oldham, Liz Webb and Chantel who together we ran monthly BBQ at the Pomona markets for over the last 2 1/2 years. We’d get up at 4.30 in the morning, pack up our cars and head off to raise funds to accomplish the vision we had for these community garden With all my crazy fundraising ideas they were always fully there fully supported by them …  all the way to the bank.

At around 3.00 pm this afternoon after the formalities in this pavilion this afternoon Danial Lawton, Morag Gamble giving a talk titled  ‘Why Permaculture’.

And our building designer Brett and Elena will be talking about cob and why it was chosen.

I encourage you all to stay and listen. It will be interesting with a powerful message.

After their talks just after 4.00pm the home school group have made a great video documenting the whole story of building these cob walls.

If any of you are interested in becoming involved in these community gardens or utilizing these facilities. Please put your name down on the sheet at the information desk.

So, a huge big thank you to everyone who contributed to our vision becoming a reality.

Enjoy your afternoon. Thank you. Again