My Story
My great claim to fame is I am a failed bum –
I was educated as an engineer but I heard Bill Mollison talk in the early 70’s about permaculture and what he was saying about monculture and ecology just made so much sense that I decided to become self sufficient using permaculture principles.
I was going to become a bum.
But I am not all that good at this poverty stuff so I decided to write some software so I had a car that went brmm brmm when I turned the key.
The software I wrote just happened to take off, the company I formed Moldflow became the world leader in its field, I was selected by the Institute of Engineers as one of Australia top one hundred innovators so I can claim to be a genuine failed bum.
1995 was a big year for me. At that time I was running my own company – Moldflow which was based on a computer simulation of plastic flow I had written. To the outside world it may appear I was living a life that most people would aspire to. I was recognised as the world leader in my field.
Twice a year I would fly around the world – first class – giving lectures and visiting my various offices in the 43 countries we operated in. We were the leading exporter of technical software from Australia and recognised as world leaders.
I had received many awards – they are all listed below in a conventional PR type dossier I took from the records, one I was most proud of was being selected as among the top one hundred innovators by the Institute of Engineers.
I think people had a right to be envious of me and may be thought I was totally daft when I threw it all away and sold my company which I am happy to say went on to further success and was eventually resold for $Au500million. (I did not get that, the money went to the vulture capitalists).
What made me do that? It may sound silly but I had written a book Faster, Better, Cheaper which was all about how to make plastics parts – you guessed it faster better and cheaper. I thought to myself is that what my life is really all about? Surely there must be better ways of using my energy and talents.
Soil and water
I had always been interested in soil and water and growing food (my early life was dominated by the Victory gardens and growing survival food in the war) so that was my new direction in life soil, water and growing food.
I knew I had taken the right decision when I was invited to go to Ethiopia to see if there was anyway I could help in providing sustenance food in the terrible drought of that time.
It had a real impact on me. Or course we have all seen those horrible picture of young kids with bloated bellies and skinny arms and legs – it is called Kwashiorkor and when you see it for real rather than on a picture appealing for money it has a psychological effect.
But what really got me was the mothers with babies who had no food and hence no milk so they were walking around with their babies dyeing in their arms. I think there are very few people who could see that and not feel grossly affected.
Equality
I know – I go on and on in my writing about the need for a level of equality in our world so if you think I am some kind of raving commy I am not. You just watch a mother with her baby dying in her arms because she has no milk and see how well you can justify any right wing views you may have.
But it did lead me to the idea of Wicking Beds, directing any rain water that happens to fall into a sump in the ground. Yes-the name Wicking Beds is mine but it is an idea which just took off on the Internet and with the basic principles being corrupted by well intentioned but technically unsophisticated but very skilled marketers.
But it did lead to an era of my life where I spent much of my time writing about Wicking Beds to help amateur gardeners set them up and grow some of their own food. They were not starving Africans but typically reasonably well off retirees with their own garden but this was not – as my granddaughters would say – a big deal.
Diabetes and modern food
But then two things happened in my life. The first was my wife, a qualified doctor and surgeon, became diabetic. Now being married to a medical doctor, and a compulsive reader and innovator I had to find out why. Not just why my wife became diabetic but why were so many people I new were diabetic or pre-diabetic and why had I not even heard of diabetes when I was a kid.
When I was a kid I knew all about infectious diseases – in fact we did not have vaccinations instead our mum would take us to chicken pox, mumps or measles ‘parties’ so we got infected while we were young and able to handle the infection. (Diseases like mumps and measles are really nasty for adults). The disease we were all terrified of was polio which would lead to a life of clumping around in iron leg clamps (if you lived). That happened to my Aunt Tillie.
Now I have said I am not some extreme left wing commie but when I understood the diabetes and a whole range of other diseases were a result of our modern high fat high sugar diet lacking essential nutrients I knew that doing something about this was just part of my new life.
Now let me be clear, if people want to eat sugary fatty food lacking essential nutrients that is there business and I have no intention of trying to stop them. What gets me is the misinformation and psychological manipulation – just for profit – which is now so much part of our modern life, particularly on the internet – which is one of the great innovations of our time.
The epidemic
The second thing that happened was an epidemic that you may have heard about. I can’t mention the name as anything I put up on the Internet is searched by artificial intelligence machines which when they see that naughty word I cannot use automatically grey list my site so no one can find out what I have to say about this critical subject. I will call it EpiX.
The problem with Artificial Intelligence is that it is artificial so does not actually think, if it just sees the naughty word then wham bam you are gone from public view. Not black listed but grey listed which is just as bad.
Now hopefully you are a real person so I can say that there is no way I am claiming that EpiX is caused by bad food – that is just nutter stuff.
But the wrong sort of food leads to a reduced immune system so people die when there is no need. (This is a medical fact you can check on the web).
Now I have no idea where EpiX came from but it highlights an issue which is one of the great threats to humanity – the way we are destroying our soils and natural environment.
We are totally dependant on the micro-biology which makes our soil and hence our guts. There are simply good bugs and bad bugs – if we create the conditions where the good bugs thrive than humanity can expect to be happily living on this earth for many more years to come – if we create the conditions were the bad bugs thrive then we can expect a pretty miserable future.
OK here is the PR brochure from my previous life.
Colin Austin’s story
In the early seventies engineer Colin Austin realized that computers would revolutionize the design process.
He wrote a piece of software that transformed the international design of plastics moulds using scientific principles rather than ‘gut feel’. So successful was this software that the company that Colin founded (Moldflow) became the most successful exporters of technical software in Australia, a multi-million dollar company selling in over 48 countries throughout the world.
Colin became internationally recognized as the leader in his field of computational fluid flow and the company world famous for a series of innovations which sprung from Colin concepts of how to manage research, a process he calls ‘speculative research’ pursuing unconventional approaches on the hunch they may just work out, high risk with many failures but the one success could literally change the world.
He became increasingly concerned about environmental issues, particularly the management of what he sees as the world’s most critical resource fresh water. He examined the research programs around the world, saw they were largely financed by Governments, what he calls ‘competence research’, highly organized and planned but almost over organized, killing of those high risk – high reward creative ideas.
Colin felt that with his expertise in fluid flow simulation and armed with the technique of ‘speculative research’ that he may just be able to change the way we think and manage our water. He sold his multi million dollar company which gave him the resources to set up a research group of some dozen highly talented and creative researchers to tackle those high risk projects which were being ignored by the ever cautious bureaucratic approaches of Governments.
At first his group focused on irrigated agriculture with a number of innovations such as the development of micro flood irrigation which unlike conventional flood irrigation can apply precise quantities of water and replaces the traditional open channels which lead to major losses of water by evaporation and leakage.
He continued his software development with scheduling software which enables precise application of water by calculating plant water usage. While an important technology Colin was getting frustrated by the limited horizons of the bureaucracy who encouraged wasteful usage patterns by making cheap water readily available at highly subsidized prices.
However his life was about to change when he was invited by World Vision to go to Africa to see if he could work out a way that local people could grow sustenance food in the periodic droughts which cause so much hardship. Stunned by the cultural shock of meeting malnutrition first hand he began to analyze the heart of the problem.
Before leaving Australia he assumed that the problem was simply no rain, but he quickly learned that this was not true. The core problem was erratic rain. People simply cannot live where there is no rain.
Populations grow where there is an average adequate ran and are then thrown into despair when the rain fails to materialize. He felt the situation was just like Australia, no one complains about the lack of rain in the Simpson Desert, there is no one their to complain. The problems arise in areas like Perth and South East Queensland where there is on average adequate rain which encourages a high population which becomes threatened when the rain fails to materialize.
He was introduced to the reality of the green drought, when there is enough rain for the crops to start to grow. But a break in the rains, even of a few weeks, but at the critical times when the seed heads should be maturing, means the crop fails completely, resulting in famine.
Realizing the problem was erratic rain, rather than no rain; he developed a system called the wicking bed which is essentially an underground pond. Rain, when it occurs, is channeled into this pond which forms a reservoir which allows the plants to keep on growing to maturity even if the rains fail to materialize.
Having experienced the realities of living without proper water supply, seeing people scooping water from feaces infected puddles, experiencing first hand (or more technically correct first bum) the inevitable consequence of diarrhea Colin was in for a second cultural shock on his return to Australia. With his eyes opened to a new way of thinking about water, he was hit in the face by the stupidity of the way we manage water in Australia. How we rely on dams which only fill in freak weather conditions to supply the bulk of water. Then how we use that unreliable but valuable water in the most bizarre way when there is plenty of water available literally falling from the sky, free of charge, right on the doorstep.
After his experiences in Africa he found it unbelievable that people use high quality potable water for flushing toilets and watering gardens when the simple techniques he had used in Africa, catching water locally and storing it in tanks or in the underground ponds or wicking beds, provides a simple and cheap substitute for potable water.
Colin was stunned not just by the lack of interest from the bureaucracy, but their obsession in pushing ahead with totally unnecessary projects like the Mary River dam, an attitude which he finds difficult to divorce from the revenues arising from the monopoly distribution of water by the Government.
He realized that the wicking bed system had another dimension. Plants absorb some thirty times the total man made emission of carbon. Unfortunately most of the carbon simply re-enters the atmosphere giving little net gain. However if organic material is decomposed in semi anaerobic conditions such that decay is fungal rather than bacterial then carbon is retained in the soil. Worms can significantly improve this locking of the carbon.
A key to the effectiveness of the wicking bed was to fill the water reservoir with waste organic material provides an effective way of capturing carbon.
He now feels that the solution is to get this message out to the public at large.
Awards
He has received numerous awards including;-
1980 John Derham Award for Technical Innovation
1982 National Small Business Award
1983 Governor of Victoria, Export Award
1984 Governor of Victoria, Export Award
1984 Dept of Trade in Association with Confederation of Australian Industry’s Export Award for outstanding achievement.
1985 AITA, Cad software solution of the year award
1988 Australian Bicentennial Export Award, Services Category
1989 Australian British Chamber of Commerce Federal Award for small business export initiative and innovation
1990 Governor of Victoria Export Award to Colin Austin for significant export achievement by an individual
1990 Government of Victoria Export Award Certificate of Commendation, services category
1990 Business Bulletin Small Business Achievement Award
1990 Business Bulletin small business achievement award
1991 The John Hart Technology Award
1991 Rolls Royce/Qantas award together with the Warren Centre award for engineering excellence
1991 Governor of Victoria Export Award, awarded for significant achievement by an export product
1993 AITA Exporter of the year award
1993 ANTEC (USA) best technical paper award for lean plastics manufacture
1994 Southern Cross Award for Excellence awarded by Technology in Government Committee
1997 Fred O.Conley Award for outstanding achievement in plastics engineering &technology
2002 Triannual Plastics Industry Award for contributions to the plastics industry
2002 SPE Environmental Award
2002 SaveWater award winner agricultural section
2003 SaveWater award Regional Sustainability
