Goodbye, Crystal Waters

Our time with Max and Trudi at Crystal Waters flew by. We spent the first few days helping Max with his cattle, weeding, watering, and doing some learning with him - about his time designing ecovillages, and Crystal Waters specifically. But to begin with, I wasn't blown away by Crystal Waters - it was nice, great to be in our own space and cooking for ourselves, and enjoyable being outside working.

Over time, I started to really appreciate the place. We have barely seen a kangaroo outside CW, but inside they just loll around in the heat, don't mind at all when you walk by. The wallabies are a lot more jumpy, but even so! And the abundance of food at Max's place is incredible - all manner of vegetables, plus oranges, kumquats, passion fruit, honey, eggs. And the place is so peaceful - blue skies and sun most days, birds, working in the garden.. aah, paradise. It really is.

We went to a couple of film nights, one market (missing Crystal Waters market, sadly), and read a very small section of Max's extensive library. We were lazy; we drank plenty of tea, rooibos, lemongrass (all sweetened with honey); we went for walks and bike rides, a trip out to the local cheeserie and ice cream shop in Kenilworth.

So what thoughts about ecovillage design did CW bring up? Well, a lot. Firstly that taking a project from inception to people living on the site is a long, arduous, and fraught process - I'm guesstimating 12 years. Secondly, that I can't wait that long before I settle somewhere - I want to get started with a permaculture garden, chickens, and bees as soon as possible. I don't want to get pulled back into a 37.5 hour a week office job. This led us to thinking about cohousing, and looking at 2+ acre lots in Canada.

Talking to Max also brought home how damned hard it is to get one of these projects through the many layers of bureaucracy there can be. Of his projects, a good percentage have got past the design stages, and then failed due to a change in political incumbency, local opposition, or other reasons. And Crystal Waters itself is far from perfect - various projects that could make the community as a whole more prosperous get stopped due to the slow process that is community decision making. There are no entry restrictions on people buying into CW, meaning that many of the lots have owners that aren't the least bit interested in permaculture, and may not take an active role in the community at all. This seems a shame, when CW is known globally as one of "the" ecovillages to go and see.

But.. boy, am I glad I went to see it. It is lovely, really really lovely. And despite any shortcomings it may have, the people are warm and friendly, there is a strong community there.

Perhaps we need to work on a form of community where meetings and procedure don't bog everything down. Or perhaps we just need to accept a much slower pace of everything in our "villages of the future".

So we had a fantastic time. It raised lots more questions than it answered, though!