So we've skipped over the adventures in the bush. When we had had simply too much drought and floods and geographical isolation and intellectual isolation we headed back to the coast to our little hobby farm which had been rented out and we started again.

We were right. We had many more skills than before and were ready to make a real go of the self sufficiency thing. However, still lacked money. As a result I am now working 50 hours a week with nearly two hours of commuting each day and hubby is working full time.

We now classify as time poor.

But I really loved the idea of relocalization and jumped on the scheme when I heard about it. This is because I know that one day I will not be working and my local people will be my main group with whom I will interact. I need to start relationships now for when I am at home.

Also, I remembered the Joh electricity strikes. Does anybody else remember these? Joh went head to head with the electricity unions who then went on strike and power supplies were dramatically cut. We were supposed to get one hour one and 1/2 hour off electricity. In reality it turned out more like 3 hours off and 45 minutes on.

Now I was living in a largish country town and I can remember just laughing at the poor people in the south east corner. In our town we had an abbatoir, a dairy which did milk, butter and ice and a large small crop industry.

The council stepped in and made sure that priority electricity supplies went to the hospital, dairy, abbatoir and some cold stores. Health needs were centralised, we had plenty of milk and ice to keep food fresh, fresh meat and fruit and veg. We seemed to have plenty of local baked bread as well so they may have been working with gas ovens. We saw vision on the TV of how consumers in the south east were panic buying and running out of things.

So we were fine during what was a difficult energy supply time. But that town has since grown. And it no longer has a dairy. It has closed and all dairy production is centralised in Brisbane and freighted back to other areas. There are still a few local bakers but most bread is baked in Brisbane and sold through supermarkets. I don't know if the abbatoir is still there - I don't like to ask. The fruit and veg industry is still there but it is mainly grown under contract to the supermarkets. And a lot of the farms have been cut up for housing.

So if energy supply became an issue today, would we still be laughing? These things I have been through makes me understand the absolute necessity to decentralize production and services throughout the country. However, this is not government policy and it is not economically rational so these difficult times which may occur at any time due to production problems, supply problems or just simple accidents would have a much greater effect on our daily lives than it would have 20 years ago. We have made ourselves vulnerable to incidents which would impact on community security and stability of the necessities of daily life. This must be amended and if we have to start personally and one at a time to get the message happening, we will just have to do it.

One day, when I finish work......