We’ve grown over the last few years and have decided to move our environmental films to a brand new website at ecofilms.com.au and keep our existing animation customers happy on this site.

So no more odd stories about chickens, goats and permaculture on this site any more. This site will still be here but it’s emphasis will be on animation.

Because of the number of DVDs we’ve produced over the last few years, we’ve decided the time is ripe to split from our parent company and start to host our own Eco Films website.

If you want to catch up on the latest developments and see what we are up to in 2010 then update your bookmarks and head on over to our sister website at EcoFilms.com.au where over the coming months we’ll reveal a few new projects and video clips of where we’re heading over the next few years.

Our new site is exactly the same as this one – but over the next few months the content will dramatically change. Keep an eye out for it…

Its not often that you get to meet a living legend everyday and lets face it, the term is bandied around for all sorts of people, sportsmen and even celebrities – all the time. But Peter Andrews is different. Here is a guy not afraid to speak his mind and more importantly – back it up with evidence. We were invited down last year by Tony Coote the owner of Mulloon Creek Natural Farms to look at the possibility of doing a documentary explaining  the work done on his farm.

Tony had seen our Water Harvesting DVD that we made with Geoff Lawton and was keen to put in a major network of swales on the surrounding hills of his property.

He had already started work on the creek with Peter Andrews and his Natural Sequence Farming technique to re-hydrate the creek and flood plains during one of the longest periods of drought in living memory. To be honest, we weren’t really that interested in the project as we had seen Peter Andrews already featured on ABC-TV’s Australian Story and felt that his system was well explained already.

But we were wrong.

Walking around the creek in the late afternoon, you couldn’t help but marvel at the network of leaky weirs and the chain of ponds that were restoring a featureless eroded channel into a wetland, complete with reeds, willows and a wide assortment of biodiversity. And yes it even looked beautiful because it looked – well – Natural – the way you would expect a beautiful creek to look. I was hooked. I took a heap of photos. I wanted to know more. How do you build something like this? What is the hydrology like under the soil? How would you explain it all?

So we flew down to Canberra in the winter of 2009 and started filming the Mulloon Creek Project.

Fast forward to the Field Day held here on November 1 2009 and Peter Andrews is the guest speaker. 250 people from all over the country have assembled in the barn to hear him speak.
Its 9am but the day is already warm.
Tony Coote introduces my wife Jane and myself to him around the back of the barn. Peter is sitting under a tree eating a peach and cracking a joke about Tony being the “headmaster” of the show.
He reaches down into the green grass and pulls up a clod of dirt and inspects the mulch in his hand. He explains that his system is quite simple, yet most people fail to understand it.
He points out the gleaming droplets of dew glistening on the grass and explains how the natural system functions.
You suddenly realise that this bloke is actually looking at the landscape like someone with uncanny x-ray vision – he’s pointing things out that we are not even aware of.

Over the course of the day, people are broken into groups and given a guided tour by volunteers who have studied what Peter has accomplished. The next day we meet Sue a tour guide on the farm who describes herself as a “rocket scientist” who studied physics at university but feels that what has seen and learnt at Mulloon Creek is of far more practical value.
She describes one of Peters engineering accomplishments. Diverting rainwater run-off down a steep slope into the creek. In a sudden downpour water is diverted off its course by building a large earth barrier near the creek to turn the rushing torrent and make it turn and hit the stream head-on. Whats the point of that I ask? She explains its elementary physics. When two forces meet they cancel each other out. The end result is that the water is pacified and slows down any removal of precious topsoil. Its simple techniques that looks rudimentary to us but is subtle enough in an elegant solution when applied to the natural system. Like boulders sitting in the middle of the creek. We grill Peter in an extensive interview why they are there. He looks at us like an exhausted parent does with a dumb child.
“Its like a Kayaker rushing down a mountain stream.” he says “Ever seen that on TV?” Apparently nature doesn’t move in a straight lines from A to B – but in elegant arcs and figure eight patterns. Peter harnesses those patterns in his design to mimic nature and divert water to flow naturally and improve the landscape.

Its slowly making sense. You realise how little we really do know.

The next day we meet for our agreed interview but Peter is missing. He’s up the hill above the homestead treating a horse with a foot problem. Mixing a secret ingredient he applies the remedy directly to the hooves of the horse and seals the poultice with a plastic bag wrapped around the foot.

“The vets don’t know about this.” he adds.

By this stage – I’m beginning to believe him.

The man has a love for these horses as he talks to them gently saying they are more sensible than humans.

“Horses were my living laboratory.” he says.”They taught me a lot.”

Later that morning we go down to the creek and record our interview with him. He grabs a thistle and sticks it in one shirt pocket and another weed Paterson’s curse is placed in the other top pocket. Hi knows this action will provoke some farmers who strive to poison these weeds from their property. But Peter sees weeds as fundamental to good pasture management. He looks like something out of a Thomas Hardy novel with those weeds bulging out of his shirt, as he sits perched on a rock grinning at us with good humour ready to reveal all.

And he does. Much more than I can say right now.

In this documentary we travel through much of Peter’s early life and in the course of this story he explains Natural Sequence Farming techniques and how it can be adopted to build fertility back into farm soils. But not before taking a swipe at multinational chemical companies who peddle their herbicides. He describes them as snake-oil salesmen. “We used to tar and feather them and run them out of town years ago!” he grumbles with a wry smile.

We hope to illustrate his theories with animation to show how the NSF process works. In the coming weeks we hope to post small video clips that highlight some of his ideas. His parting comment was “Don’t mix me up with that mob – Permaculture!” He has firm views about where he wants to take Natural Sequence Farming.

As we part, he sits in his car talking on his mobile phone. He winds his window down and extends his hand to me as I walk up to the vehicle. We shake hands.
I say to him. “You know Peter – You’re a living treasure.”
His soft brown eyes turn away and look somewhere else. He doesn’t say anything. He looks embarrassed.

The Peter Andrews documentary on Mulloon Creek will be released in 2010.

Making animated TV commercials is our core business. We’ve been producing TV commercials for the last 20 years for TV stations on the east coast of Australia from Rockhampton in Central Queensland right down to NSW, the ACT and into Victoria. Clients include WINTV, Southern Cross TEN Network and boutique advertising agencies and studios scattered around the country. We make hand-drawn animated characters talk, sing and dance. Need a business logo animated? We do that every day. We also do corporate spots and motion graphic elements for clients to add their own product supers and video elements.
Documentary film-makers use our skills to create design graphics, titles, maps, subtitles and even create the entire DVD authoring process. We’ve been in the business long enough to deliver on time and on budget. In fact, apart from this one page – we don’t advertise our services. All our clients come to us directly through word of mouth. Client loyalty is what keeps us going. Isn’t that the best form of Advertising?

Ten years after Permaculture guru Geoff Lawton’s attempt at greening a small part of the desert in the Middle East,  is a new video currently being produced by Craig Mackintosh called “Greening the Desert II.”  Geoff and Craig are currently in Jordan filming and documenting the site and looking back at what has happened ten years later. Geoff will play the video segment at the Permaculture conference in Malawi in a few weeks time.

The original “Green the Desert” segment was a flash based multimedia story made by us for ABC Online. It traces Geoff Lawton’s steps to re-green and desalinate a desolate sandy location in Jordan and turn it onto a thriving green oasis. With spectacular results, the site was transformed using permaculture principles  that dumbfounded the authorities. The video segment above was a recorded interview we did with Geoff for the Food Forest documentary made a year ago and explains what has happened to that site since it was transformed.

Over the last 10 months we’ve been busy filming part two of Murray Hallam’s Aquaponics Made Easy video series. We believe in giving people a lot of quality information in our DVDs and the response from people who have bought Murray’s previous DVD has been overwhelming. Yesterday we spent the entire day with Murray who has devoted years trialling and testing innovative advances in Aquaponics equipment and techniques and is now sharing his knowledge with the public. The problem for us is no sooner than we film a segment on a specific topic than we hear Murray chirp out, “I got another secret for you and I got this secret from an old fish farmer who lives down the road. I tried it now for about a month and I can tell you it works!” And so it goes. The good thing is that when Murray gets on a roll – the information just tumbles out in his customary fast paced delivery – full of exuberant enthusiasm. Murray claims he’s killed his fair share of fish through experimentation and trial and error and he’s not ashamed to admit it. But along the way he’s amassed a vast amount of knowledge that he’s now happy to pass along.

We were surprised to discover that his Paw-paw tree he planted last year is still bearing fruit as is featured in the photo shown left. The sweetest fruit is at the very top he says and its what he puts in his grow beds that make all the difference. Forget expanded clay balls and fine gravel media. Murray advocated using rocks no smaller than an inch or 20mm in length. He says that secret is why his 4 year old grow bed has never clogged up and keeps producing enormous cabbages, broccoli and heavy nitrogen feeding plants. His grow bed are always full of fat juicy worms. When Murray dug down into this grow bed he spotted an old worm wriggling like lightning to try and get away. They are absolutely huge and a testament to the thriving vitality of his mini eco-system.

The challenge for us is how to cut hours and hours of great footage and informative comment into a compelling 90 minute story on this amazing topic.

We’re also using a 12 foot camera crane to get a bird’s eye perspective on Aquaponics. Using a Sony High Definition EX1 camera and a 12 Kilo counter weight to balance the extended crane rods, we got some great shots taken from above the roofline of the house looking down at a growing aquaponics system. The challenge was plunging down into the fish tank and not frightening the fish swimming in the water as the camera breaks the surface! Well, okay -we’re not that dumb…we used trick photography to get that effect! Those cameras cost a lot of money…

Whilst we were filming the Food Forest DVD with Geoff Lawton he mentioned to us casually that he had a number of slides he’d taken many years ago of a Food Forest system he discovered was 2,000 years old. He discovered this system when he was a young man surfing in Morocco but walking through such a majestic system as this one, haunted him for many years as he thought about its potential. Its always a chance meeting in life like this one that can spin you around and set you up on a new direction in life. Geoff eventually came across Bill Mollison and discovered Permaculture but this Moroccan Food Forest was always in the back of his mind.
We filmed Geoff speaking about this forest at our dining room table and this became the segment you see today. Geoff recently went back to this food forest system for another look but it had already begun to look tired and neglected as the young people in this region look for work in the neighbouring cities and people abandon something that has an unbroken link to the past.
The location of the Food Forest known to the local population as Paradise Valley is about 12km inland from Tamraght on the coast of Morocco below the Grissafane Mountain Range. It is approximately 3km in length.

Tony Coote believes his chickens lay the best eggs on the planet and he’s got the proof to prove it. The eggs from his 12,000 chicken farm located at Mulloon Creek Natural Farms near Canberra were independently analysed by the Government CSIRO laboratories and found to contain twice the amount of Omega 3 and Omega 6 fatty acids that are found in conventional chicken farm eggs. Tony’s chickens get the 5 Star treatment as this short video clip reveals. Each group of 1,000 chickens are given approximately 20 acres of free-range farmland to graze over and are housed in movable sheds that also help to fertilise the farm with their droppings . They are also protected by Maremma Sheepdogs who patrol the boundaries day and night hunting any hungry fox on the prowl.
Tony believes that his reason his eggs attract a premium price is because consumers want certified organically fresh eggs that are also good for you. If sales are anything to go by, he currently cannot keep up with demand and wants other egg farmers to follow his lead.

See also: Rehydrating the Landscape
and
www.mcnf.com.au

Currently in production is Murray Hallam’s brand new DVD “Aquaponics Secrets” which will take you beyond the basics and will reveal some of the more hard to understand stuff of raising fish and vegetables in an organic natural system. In his previous DVD “Aquaponics Made Easy” Murray really spelt out the basics of establishing a simple Aquaponics system, but this DVD takes over where the other one left off. For a start we see a new system established and watch its progress over 6 months and beyond as it begins to mature. We see how the system changes as biological process take over and a mature system begins to establish itself. You’ll see the fish grow and new plants mature and are harvested. Murray is a great speaker and his friendly conversational manner really wins you over by his in-depth knowledge and love of his craft. Murray explains all the different Aquaponics systems that are currently in vogue so you can make the right choice in determining which one is right for you. Floating Raft or Flood and Drain? Continuous Flow or Siphons? We look at common plant and fish problems and how to deal with them. We look at adding plant nutrients and how to build your system to follow nature’s preferred method by creating water flows that fish love to swim against and little know aspects that round your Aquaponics Education to the maximum. We even look at new technologies that Murray has developed and tested and systems that he suggests are the way to go. We look at filters to fruit trees and a lot of stuff in between – we have it covered. If you want to broaden your knowledge then Murray Hallam is the right guy to learn from. Aquaponics Secrets will be out later this year. 90 minutes of quality information from the best in the business. Oh, there’s a lot of animation too in this DVD that shows the right way to set up your system and how to organise the plumbing, so if you want to build your own system, this DVD will take you beyond the basics. Thats no Secret!

The DVD looks at a small acreage farm and follows Permaculture teacher Geoff Lawton and a team of students as they consult with a client, survey the landscape and discuss the best way to capture rainwater and divert it into a series of swales to feed a dam system that they will construct over the course of three days. This DVD explains each step of the way and is a good introduction to Permaculture Earthworks construction and explains the basics of good design to harvest water passively as well as potential problems with excavation and how to deal with those issues. This DVD ends when the swale and dam system is completed. See our Establishing a Food Forest DVD on how to plant on the swale system and grow abundant food once your earthworks is in place. Video duration is approximately 70 minutes with a number of extras including an extended interview with Geoff Lawton’s “Greening the Desert” video and a look at Permaculture Earthworks systems around the globe.

One of the most popular DVD’s available at Permaculture.org.au
Follow the growth of a Food Forest from seed to maturity over the period of 10 years. Geoff Lawton takes you on a Food Forest adventure as he explains the fundamentals Forest Design in a 20 minute classroom lecture as we travel with him onto the farm and watch him plant the seeds of an emerging food forest on a swale system.
Three months later we see the forest emerge and watch it’s progress over 10 years.
Throughout the DVD, Geoff gives you all the essential information needed to grow your forest to maturity and harvest using the principles of Permaculture.
In the words of Geoff Lawton, “Where does Permaculture lead to? Abundance!”
Video Duration: 80 mins plus bonus extras