Although Veridian is the perfect activator for Story of Place in a region through live regenerative projects… its not build for holding the story in deeper relationships with place

…Im not build for it

Living Places Institute is

…Anarkali is

The Living Places Institute

The Living Places Institute exists because the deepest thing a development leaves behind is not a building. It is what a place learns about itself, and what the people who live there carry forward.

LPI is the not-for-profit heart of the Veridian group — the institutional home for the work that outlasts any single site, any single project company, any single generation of stewards. Where Veridian builds and Regenerative Returns funds, LPI remembers, teaches, and tells.

It holds four things:

The Story of Place. Before a line is drawn or a dollar committed, we ask the place what it is calling us to. Geology, hydrology, ecology, songline, settlement, industry, story. LPI carries this practice — the Regenesis lineage, delivered on Country, with Traditional Owners, in relationship rather than in consultation.

The film work. Our documentaries are not marketing. They are the camera as witness — a longitudinal, honest record of whether a place, its people, and the body governing it actually evolve the patterns they claim. Twelve chapters per project, from first encounter with the land to the reckoning one year in. If we fail, the film shows it. That is the point.

The learning. Every project leaves behind transferable knowledge — materials that performed, planning precedents won, engagement methods that built trust rather than consent. LPI is the library that makes the next project easier for someone we may never meet.

The community. Living Places Collective is LPI’s network — the residents, patrons, practitioners and partner organisations who turn a curriculum into a culture.

Why separate from the developer? Because a development company cannot credibly hold place stewardship — the incentives pull the wrong way. Because knowledge locked inside a project company dies with the project. Because succession should not depend on any one founder. And because an institute is met differently to a developer by the Elders, institutions and communities whose consent this work requires.

The Living Places Institute is how the work travels. Beyond one site, one bioregion, one lifetime.

Deep story.

With the Story of Place spreadsheet full of incredible local legends who have loved and lived in this place for many years, its time for the team to hit the streets and gather deeper local knowledge of palce

The thing im most excited about is the adoption (cooption) of our new team members Chandra and Jahan (the kids)

so we are a fully functioning family affair in the making with is quite exciting for me

There will be a few weeks of restructuring the film and content creating and setting up the LPI internal infrastructure (YAY Me!), which should be rready by spring

This leaves me more room for the money focus and investment responsibilities which im confident the regen side is moving along

…not that these are two separate or siloed things

…just that i only have 18 hours in a day to work

and theres a lot of it

Its not like me to forget to post but i was wrapped up in digital infrastructure redesign

Our system had a lot of warnings that things were overdue and my immediate reaction was to down tools and rush to the fire

Turns out though…

There was no fire

Just unchecked boxes in an arbitrary system

Between Anarkali and myself, Stina and Garry, the work is powering along and we seem to be getting more energy from it than less

From weekly board meetings and compliance work, Sun Villages Newsletters, design and feasibility work, community engagement and Story of Place…

Im not sure what more could be done

The Realisation

This was an opportunity to pause and reflect…

Why did the boxes not get checked after the work was done?

Why does that matter if the work is done?

How have i structured this operating system?

…and thats when the realisation really hit me

Just like the way we structure our built environment ends up structuring us…

so does our digital environments

I create a filing system and checklist for a group of system thinkers…

to get compliance i would have needed to structure in another governance layer to have a checklist on top of a checklist to make sure the team are checking off the checklist…

and then i would have had to schedule a review day to make sure the checklist for the checklist is forcing people to do work that doesnt feel natural to them

kind of echos the redundancy or our global system doesnt it?

This is a pretty stupid situation to design myself into isnt it?

The Lesson

This is a very real and very important lesson for anyone interested in regenerative development…

This is the crux of our work and i just blew though it like an amateur…

In this field of ours

We start with whole living Beings

and design systems for their unique evolutionary potential

whether that be individual people, people in groups, living places, idea organisms (business) or flow spirits (finance)

my fundamental mistake was i started with a problem and tried to solve it…

we have a governance and planning problem…

here is a solution

What I should have done is…

Garry, Stina, Anarkali, and I have unique spirits and potential

our natural expression through this work is not only not being supported with the right infrastructure…

its being suppressed by the external conditions of a value engineered world while trying to birth something evolutional into it

How could i create a system that not only serves our outside compliance needs…

but also serves as the paintbrush for each of our canvases

The next layer to this is to start again with the living system design work for Sun Villages and its unique living model

The Reflection

This has been such an interesting 6 weeks, and test of my foundations in this field of ours

I was 9 months rusty coming back in…

I came in mid design to a strong established model…

We moved the whole family 20 minutes to the place I grew up and loathed…

I have more financial pressure on me that I think I have ever faced technically through the divorce…

and yet

Everything feels perfectly aligned and inspirational in this living moment

Its a funny old world

thats for sure

Next Steps

Finalise the new system (system thinking) overlay for operations to base camp level

Go back to the beginning with a couple of living system frameworks for the digital infrastructure design and also Sun Villages and Veridian team

This has flagged a few places i might have rushed through in the last 6 weeks to activate this system, ill do an audit of living Beings inside our ecosystem to see who i have neglected in my excitement and then slowly add them to the ecosystem map

It was an inspiring film focused on the lived experience of well known local artists after 70

The film’s subjects are Vince Jones (jazz musician), Judith Clingan AM (composer, performer and music educator, present at this performance) Malcolm Cooke (ceramicist), Marily Cintra (visual artist known for public and community artwork) and Elizabeth Cameron Dalman AM (dancer and dance educator). All are over 70 years old, and speak movingly about art and its centrality to their experience.- reviewed by Nick Horn, CityNews, 7 August 2026. Tuggeranong Arts Centre, 6–8 August.

The main line of the main song for the piece "To create, to create, to create!"resonated in my head throughout the show and it reminded me of the importance to create space and social containers that provide the infrastructure for people to express themselves in the million different ways we show up as humans in the physical world

it had me reflecting on whether i was seeing reality clearly or missing the deeper patterns of the human spirit playing out in real time

Where we see people out doing their thing, their landcare work, their social gatherings and worker bees, their this and their that…

Maybe im actually just seeing people working their canvas to the tune of their own frequency…

Maybe the real designing work of our projects is not to create infrastructure for the physical manifestation for their work but a more subtle container that frees them up and inspires them to find the joy in their unique form of expressed art

…and the natural tendencies of pure human intention will naturally flow and find its calling to contribute to the world

Maybe all the work is more art studio than community hubs and bioregional learning centres

Self-directed learning through the deep personal investigation of your own genius and expression is always the most prosperous path for the soul anyway

seems fitting that this should propagate out into the living world as well

Next Steps…

I think i have a new lens to see the community hub design through, on top of the new framework and other considerations

Continue with the Feaso generation and CC documentation

This usually mean there is something creative inside me trying to get up

The amusing part is that nothing else inside me at that hour is trying to get up

Certainly not my pain tolerance

But there I was…

sitting on the toilet with a sore everything and a headache to match

when it stuck me…

Through the financial needs of the development in Queanbeyan I had unknowingly started to focus on the older generations that this particular development seems more suited for at first glance

Our plans look a little lopsided on the multigenerational living component

Which is insane given the Sun Villages financial model and our regen foundations developing

I need to bring this back to ground

ground it in reality

Funny how money can ever so subtly shade the lenses we see the world through

How many times have i seen good people come together with the greatest of intentions…

only to watch it all blow up over money

This also points to a deeper flaw in my thinking…

If Im dropping the ball on such important matters it means im not using regenerative frameworks enough for my thinking and design work

In all the moving parts i have missed a step somewhere

and this is my reminder to go back and re-establish some important guardrails so we dont end up in Narnia…

Which is where great dreams go to die in the field

The cause of this is coming in too late and not having the Story of Place as a foundation to build from, but then not focusing on it now as a foundation to design from

hmmmm…

What trade-offs am i making that I am not conscious of and how are they affecting the regenerative capability of this project?

Much to deliberate on

Next Steps…

Retrace my steps to where i went off-piste

Insert suitable framework

The dynamics of this project isnt the linear path that would flow from a new design so i need to take five minutes to slow down and find this very unique potential flow

I need to ask the river how it flows here when its happy

I need the intelligence of water behind me now more than ever

How does that confluence work where the Molonglo meets the Queanbeyan river

What patterns have been generated there for eons that i am still oblivious too?

(Voice form the back) Shutthefuckup and go down to the river

(The Michael) Noted…

How do i show up as my most authentic and honest self?

How do i not sound like a prick but not act like a dick in equal measures?

How do i remember i am both The Michael and the Michael watching The Michael?

…holding that both of them are light and shadow, floodlight and spotlight of the same greater consciousness

How do i position that clearly in a way that people understand so what im doing makes sense to them?

How do i not use flowery regen language to explain processes that people have been doing from the beginning of time and framing it as part of ‘this new movement’

this new -ism…

What is real in an ever present illusion?

Who am i kidding anyway…

Im just going to get overexcited again, go like fuck, break things, upset people, and make jokes that only i laugh at anyway

Well…

lets not dilly dally then…

The Cringe File

Asking Ai to find overused or cringe regen talk…

Some of my posts might show up :)

Part one: the specimens

SPECIMEN 01 — The cosmic consultancy

“This is more than a consultancy, it is a movement, a sacred invitation to co-create a world where leadership is enchanted with meaning, organizations are vibrant and alive, and natural law guides our collective flourishing.”

“to catalyze a planetary shift from domination to co-creation, from exploitation to reciprocity, from disconnection to coherence, and from profit-at-all-costs to prosperity-in-harmony.”

“From traditional and agile project-management over regenerative governance to Web3 & Blockchain tools, grassroots economics, and cutting-edge AI integration...”

“WE ARE NOT HERE TO REFORM THE OLD, WE ARE HERE TO BIRTH THE NEW”

SPECIMEN 02 — The regenerative luxury developer

“Crystalline Geometry & Lemurian Seed Crystals”

“Electromagnetic Remediation [...] shielding living and sleeping spaces from harmful EMFs based on decades of peer-reviewed research.”

“transforming the real estate asset from a cost center into a self-sustaining ecosystem that generates tangible ROI and long-term legacy value.”

“This philosophy blends cutting-edge architecture, building biology, wellness science, and even ancestral wisdom with advanced engineering and ESG-aligned metrics.”

SPECIMEN 03 — The academy sublime

“True leaders of today understand that we’re all part of an interconnected intelligence rooted in nature’s regenerative living-systems.”

“We need builders and creators from all walks of life who understand systems-thinking, regenerative wisdom and can respectfully draw on nature’s 3.8 billion years of experience in thriving and evolving through challenging times.”

SPECIMEN 04 — The conference title arms race

“Bioregional Regeneration as Collapse Resilience: Earth-centric Biocultural Kinship, Knowledge & Governance”

“The third element (de-pattern & re-pattern) applies before, during & after collapse, it goes hand in hand with acceptance of the actual & potential states of collapse”

SPECIMEN 05 — The academic pluriverse

“Regeneration as beliefs and practices is an entanglement of worldviews, ontologies, and epistemologies.”

“It is unequivocally pluriversal in nature, and spans countries and cultures interweaving and inter-relating across uniquely different contexts.”

SPECIMEN 06 — The gift-economy summit

“Regeneration of ourselves through a deep and authentic connection with Mother Earth.”

“Bioregions are an age-old organising principle that is being upgraded for the present age.”

“This event is based in the gift economy, if you wish please give us a donation.”

“The Summit will happen in the [...] platform.”

SPECIMEN 07 — The corporate version, and what it costs everyone else

“high-quality crops while restoring the natural rhythm of our surrounding ecosystem”

“Sustainable agriculture starts at the farm, and every farm is unique.”

“It’s really a huge scam. It’s something that’s being used by corporations to justify their greenhouse gas emissions.” (a food systems researcher, replying)

“agribusiness has a history of using carbon removals as a fig leaf” (an agricultural policy analyst, replying)

“Restoring the natural rhythm of our surrounding ecosystem”

SPECIMEN 08 — The admission from inside

“Language struggles to communicate effectively, making the challenge quite difficult as anyone working in regeneration knows all too well.”

Part two: the four mechanics

“Worldviews, ontologies, and epistemologies.”

“Vibrant and alive.”

“A sacred invitation”

“Catalyze a planetary shift”

Part three: the counter-specimen, and it is not a language reform

“We gave Nature one vote as a director on our board.”

“if the agenda of the meeting includes any Nature Reserved Matters, the quorum of such meeting of the directors (including adjourned meetings) shall include Nature”

“the board of directors shall provide a balanced and comprehensive reasons for such decision” (where the board votes against how Nature voted)

“The Nature Guardian is able to call on and delegate responsibility for decision making to a committee of experts.”

Next Steps

Start the reachout for Story of Place work in the Canberra Basin

Continue with everything else as a work through the constraints

Why wouldnt you start every project by establishing the foundations and tools for everyone in the team to tap into

To build things that everyone can leverage to produce work that represents their best selves

While freeing them of all the mundane shit that gets in their way

Sun Village

For the Sun Villages core team, this has been through the establishment of:

1. Board Governance System

2. The LETS trading system for us to manage and exchange value across this $33million development, wider future community, and network of villages across the world

3. The regenerative infrastructure of Story of Place being developed

4. Media and content creation platforms

5. And now an Operations Console with inbuilt customer relationship management

Mmmm… being able to deliver work to a plan which is based around the critical path of the project

…all work from all hands compounding to one goal

Music…

Now the Do-ey Stuff

If the infrastructures at base-camp and in a continuous iteration cycle as we get better with it, its really time to amp up the love

…I mean work

90 day plans cycling into action next week which gives me one last weekend to lie to myself that im going to rest when really ill work

Next Steps…

Run final live tests on LETS system ready for maybe this Sunday Working Bee?

Finish SV Feasibility

Start framing the intergrative design process for consultants for the Construction Certificate plans for the next step of the development

ANd here…

A little history of the LETS system in Australia people might not be aware off…

We have confirmation on the developments critical path, a 90 day plan for the investment raise, early works on the community hub, and something else im too tired to remember right now

The coolest part

apart from all the other cool parts

is its really time to kick the Sun Villages LETS system into gear with the Worker Bee sessions we are going to have on site over the next 90 days

Did i mention how tired i am??

ok…

good chat my friend

Next Steps…

Just be awesome

Ill be awesome if you be awesome

Then we can all be awesome together…

The type that lets us frame ourselves as more relevant to the world than we might be

…we are all equal part hero and victim of our own melodrama at most times

…intermitted with moments of clarity when we realise we just make everything up as we go along

And when we find ourselves at a cross road

This great tension comes to the forefront to play out in real time

Mine this morning was around the critical path for this development in Queanbeyan

DA Mod, no DA mod

Unit layouts work but basement could be bigger

Carpark separate finance play or part of S-Block stage one

This or that

left or right

black or white

all so important… all so trivial in the grand scale of things

I always found the Zen proverb was descriptive but not prescriptive

yes, i found myself wobbling

but how does being in the moment help me make the right decision right now?

Many of my regeny peers have not liked my open palette of life experience sources through the years…

but many of them have not materialised anything in the world either, so im comfy in my little container of one with this…

The field of war and military strategy holds deep insights into not only the human condition but the nature of reality itself

What doesnt work dies in the field and what does gives us deep insight through the cognitive bias of the rose tinted glasses we like to view our world through

The principles of strategy, the understanding of human nature as individuals, as groups, and in different containers, give us invaluable understanding of how we make decisions, the paradigm we are working from, and how we shape decisions in everything we do

If you cant see or understand that all of us in this modern world world are in a live psy-op at a global scale then you will never have a clear view of the ‘reality’ you believe you are working in

You will not see many of the blinders and limiters which give you the illusion of decision though the reality of a straight march to your own debt enslaved death

Much military strategy is based in observable patterns and organic evolution

one principle I lean into is the OODA Loop

a way to act in a dynamic environment when you dont have all the answers (which we never do)

How living organisms run the OODA loop

• Observe — sense the surroundings: light, moisture, chemical signals, pressure, threat.

• Orient — filter it through what you already are: your genes, your past experience, the conditions you were formed in. Same signal, different response, depending on the organism.

• Decide — commit resources one way and not another. Grow here, not there. Flower now, not later.

• Act — put out a root, a shoot, a spore, a movement.

The principles underneath it

• Probe cheap, commit expensive. Roots and fungal threads send out many thin, low-cost feelers. Whichever one finds water gets thickened; the rest are abandoned. Small experiments first, mass follows the winner.

• Loop speed matches the environment. Weeds in disturbed ground cycle fast. Old trees in stable forest cycle slow. Speed isn’t a virtue — it’s a fit to how fast conditions change.

• Every action rewrites the environment. A tree that grows shades the soil, drops litter, changes the water table. Its next observation is of a world it made. The loop is never run twice in the same place.

• Failure is mismatch, not weakness. Organisms die when their orientation stops matching conditions — still working perfectly, just reading an old world.

• Break down to build up. Growth means dismantling existing structure and reassembling it. Same in cognition: old models have to be broken before better ones form.

• The loop is often shared, not individual. A population, a colony, a mycelial network runs the loop across many bodies at once — no single organism has to be right.

Next Steps…

Dissipate the wobble through a framework

might need more information on the Observation so will ask the team today

Orientate through the principles of the Sun Villages model

Decide on critical path for the next stage of work

Act… mmmm, action

my favourite six letter word

…not exactly what my friend here was talking about but this sector does love a healthy dose of rationalisation and self-justification with a sprinkle of self-serving bias

Laying in bed for the last 40ish hours in writhing agony had me clutching at straws as to what lesson there was for me

I tried to think of it from every angle, but gave up to find solace in drugs and netflix on the phone, once i found momentary less pain positions

After the last hour session with the TENS machine up at full throttle and me brute forcing through twisting stretches something settled into place and i finally reached basecamp

Laying there in my first moment of peace

all the lessons ive already learnt around vibration ended up coming back to me…

My spine finding a neutral position from my muscles being electrocuted at high light frequency to massage

The Russian cosmonauts training body weight exercises on vibration plates to give their muscles more density, to combat the wastage on long space flights

Cats purring to heal their bodies and keep themselves limber…

Frequencies and vibrations…

Sound and hertz

the numbers of hertz to the physical geometry the sound waves produce in material

around and around it went in my head from vibrations to values to patterns

frequencies number geometry…

Maybe the combination of drugs and electricity dislodge something in my head

But i thought of that triad reverberating over the bit of land at young st with the community hub shed and cabin, and the map became the territory in dynamic flux

There has been a bulging disc in the Young st development and I wonder if working through this triad as an experiment might be able to settle something back into the neutral position in the back of this living Being of place?

…Only one way to find out

Next Steps…

Much deeper thinking as to the relationships between these elements

…between these three sides of the same elephant

layer over that patch of land between the two developments

Find Out…

As I sit here with a red hot needle braiding the raw tendrils between my L1 and L2 vertebrae in a thrusting throbbing motion, i reflect on all the times i was told to look after myself when i was young

advice i was far too wise to heed at the time

…why is youth so wise and so fucking stupid in equal measures

a sick joke of the Gods to bless us with deep insight but package it in desperate ignorance

I sit here deep breathing through throws of misery while internally swinging to Peggy Lee’s Fever and Nina’s Feeling Good, just to find a safe space to communicate to you through

Someone in the back of my head just asked if i needed a wet-wipe for my vagina, reminding me not to waste these good peoples time

But its my blog not his

and its my party

so i can cry if i want to…

Another voice in the swirling vortex of a post-coffee ADHD’s brain just noticed that the theme of these last few days has been deep vulnerability

and maybe this,

in some developmental way,

has been a blessing to give me a taste of lived experience while we’ve been talking to people about aging in place

what their later years are going to be like as they become more vulnerable

where are they going to get, if they continue where theyre going

maybe these are the dues i had to pay to have grown up conversations with grownups up to twice my age

(searing pain)

(the michael shuffles his ass cheeks in search of peace)

another voice from the back of the head whispers ‘thats what he said’

…no sympathy for the devil i guess

Yesterdays Downsizing Session with Sun Villages

Yesterdays three community session with Sun Villages was quite insightful

Being able to talk to people who might be looking to downsize, who have downsized, and who have varying different degrees of understanding about community living was a blessing

We dug a little deeper into the ways the outcomes of these action affect the lived experience and potential for people to express themselves as individuals, what it means to their identity, and how much uncertainty there is around the subject

It will take me a few days to process the page of notes i took

Next Steps…

cry myself to sleep

Although Stina has made an engaging slide show and Garry has planned an interactive round of investigative journalism into the undercurrent of local housing stress…

The deeper value today will be the connection with local, like minded people, interested in exploring better ways for us to collectively live together

Whats the difference between a community and a village?

Whats the difference between owning property titles or shares?

Whats the difference between Body Corp, Management agents, and Co-investors co-designing?

Who’s tired of other people telling us how we should live?

Why Should we listen to Stina and Garry?

Because at their peak they had a property portfolio of over $20m…

They put it all on the line and their money where their mouths are on the 74 units of stage 1&2 development in young st…

They lost it all and got it back again, bringing deep, hard earned insights into the dangers of the wrong development model, and the wrong project partners…

They’ve rebuilt through their eco-motel putting the Sun Villages model through its paces… not just conceptually

They are the most honest and straight up people I know… in an industry that is bubbling over with bullshit and shisters

…and they are my friends

What to expect today?

Who knows?

Whatever insights, genius, and attitude you bring with you

Whatever questions you have that open up deeper conversations with a collective group of co-designers

thats the spirit of the meeting we are looking for…

We want to know what is important to you as local residence, astute investors, curious citizens, regenerative practitioners, permaculture designers, spiritual leaders, educated academics, avid gardeners, indigenous advisors, inspired artists, cultural curators, governance enthusiasts

How do you want to live out your days in this place?

What do you see for your future?

Where will you get if you continue where youre going?

what compromises will i need to make

what resolutions will i need to come to

how will i reconcile this within myself

…how much suffering will i inflict on myself through stupid pride

i think we all know the answer to that one…

And what of you my friend?

Where are you on your lifes journey?

What challenges are you facing and how are you reconciling this as a lived experience?

What quality of life have you resolved within yourself to live out?

And what is important to you?

I went back through the Sun Villages Principles at the next level of order for a deeper perspective on how they will be experienced by the community of the model

Part One. The ground under your feet

1. No debt, ever. No bank means no foreclosure, no rate shock, no third party who can cost you your home. Written into the Constitution, changeable only by 75 per cent.

2. Never subdivided, never sold. One bulk power bill instead of many. No collective sale vote can put you out. Nothing gets carved up in thirty years.

3. No developer margin, no bank interest. The 20 to 30 per cent that normally walks out the door comes back to you as bonus shares on completion day.

4. Wages indexed, both sides. Your income and your housing cost rise on the same rope. You stop doing the three-in-the-morning arithmetic.

5. Investors need you to stay. Nobody in the structure makes more money by getting rid of you. That is rare in Australian housing.

6. No serviceability test. A bank measures whether it wants your business. This measures how many shares you hold. Different door.

Part Two. The shape of an ordinary day

7. Three hundred metres. The distance at which walking stays automatic. At 66 it means nothing. At 88 it is the difference between a life and a waiting room.

8. A hub with a café. Adults will not attend things. Put the café where they already walk and you get everyone, several times a week, without anyone attending anything.

9. Community is organic, never compulsory. No committees and no shared money removes the two things that kill nine out of ten intentional communities. Architecture does the work instead.

10. Village scale, about 200 adults. Big enough to carry a café and a pool of care. Small enough that the person who turns up knows who you are.

11. Money stays local. The gutter is fixed by the retired plumber in Block B, not a contractor who drives in and out.

12. Two currencies. The SUN lets an 80 year old convert time and skill into lease fee. You cannot be put out for poverty while you can still do something for somebody.

Part Three. The arc of getting old

13. The home changes size around you. The signature move. When Ray dies, Jen contracts into a studio on the same corridor instead of selling and starting again as a stranger at 78.

14. One building holds every age. Retirement villages answer loneliness by grouping old people, and 19.4 per cent of their residents are lonely anyway. What people miss is being needed.

15. Security is people within walking distance. Isolation raises mortality risk 29 per cent, loneliness 26, living alone 32. Same range as smoking. Housing decides how much you get.

16. Social first, then environmental, then economic. Ordering is what a principle set actually is. Everyone claims all three. This one names which gets sacrificed last.

Part Four. A pattern, not a product

17. Nobody is being rescued. You are a part owner, not a beneficiary and not a customer with an exit fee. Nobody can withdraw a favour they never did you.

18. Meant to be copied. Shares in one village offset a lease in another. That is your portability and your exit, and it is the least built part of the model today.

19. Housing sits upstream of everything. A decision made at 64 sets the boundary conditions on the next thirty years, and most people make it in an afternoon on price per square metre.

20. Free association with free people. The narrow path between the retirement village where you are managed and the commune where you are obligated.

The position of Stina and Garry’s model in the market against standard housing, retirement, over 55’s and ‘community living’ is fairly obvious

Particularly if you have any lived experience of these sectors… watched a relative deteriorate in a pensioner death camp… dealt with all the tiresome bullshit of poorly managed and governed community living initiatives

…who wants that in their later years

Im not convinced ive really go the voice of the model yet to be speaking of it in a clear way, and might be confusing its promotion through too much technicalities

From my lived experience

People like to be around people but not be expected to engage them

We like the security and amenities of the infrastructure without the obligation to support it

We want everything we want and dont want everything we dont want and we want it cheap and affordable but want the largest returns for our future

In a Notshell

Theres no pleasing people

so dont bother trying

Just follow your path on what makes sense to you and the right people will aggregate

The Sun Villages Model makes sense given all of the above

Show me another that compares and ill happily consider it

I can continue on our own experience in the field, and even interviews of professionals in the areas of discussion, but it all leads to one place at the end of the day

Ive asked some of the network here though no warm connections are in place that I can see

The ‘modern’ story i can tell only accounts for 0.066% of the time horizon that there has been evidence of people here so im feeling a little constricted

Ive done my best to follow the protocol developed to not cause more harm or fan the flames of pain and disrespect of a people who have had enough for this 3000+ generation cycle of human becoming that we know of

What ive been writing too:

• We work from the public record only. We can state documented facts: more than 20,000 years of occupation, the naming of the Ngunnawal, Ngambri and Ngarigo peoples, documented colonial history, the Showground’s heritage-register facts, and the Bogong gathering as historical fact.

• We never speak the cultural interior: no ceremony, songlines, Dreaming content, totems, or sacred, secret or gendered knowledge. The meaning of the record belongs to the First Peoples of this Country to tell, or not tell, on their terms.

• The films witness and ask; they never answer on anyone’s behalf and never voice “an Aboriginal way of seeing.”

• Recognition among Ngunnawal, Ngambri and Ngarigo is publicly contested (sharpened by the 2023 ACT apology to Ngambri claimants). We state this as a living condition and never adjudicate it, and we never flatten the three nations into one lens.

• All reconciling-third material is gated by free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) under UNDRIP Articles 31 and 32.

• The consent pathway: approach all relevant bodies in parallel (UNEC/Buru Ngunawal, ACT Elected Body, Ngambri families, Ngarigo and Monaro custodians, Queanbeyan-side LALC network), with full disclosure of method including AI generation and the Sun Villages connection.

• Custodians hold staged approval, the right to decline parts rather than all, and the right to withdraw at any time. No shopping for a yes across bodies, ever.

• Informing is not co-authoring. Consultation theatre is the named central risk. Custodian-requested changes outrank the creative concept.

• Benefit-sharing terms are custodian-defined.

• AI red lines, absolute: no generated Aboriginal bodies, faces or figures (even generic); no ceremony in any form or abstraction; no sacred sites rendered specifically enough to read as real; no rock-art or dot-painting style as texture; no “Aboriginal way of seeing” as a prompt concept.

• Landscape-only AI imagery of Country is high risk and needs custodian sign-off.

• A protocol guardrail pass runs over every shot list before any clip is generated.

• Deceased persons: warnings, family and community permission before any name, image or voice, and no archive use without a verified consent chain. Copyright clearance is not family consent.

• The reserved chair: the reconciling voice is left visibly unfilled in every cut, with no ghostwritten stand-in. The edit is built so a real custodian contribution can insert cleanly later, on their terms, or the seat stays open.

• Standing caution: confirm exact current-edition wording with a cultural advisor before quoting any framework on screen or in credits.

Reference links:

• Pathways & Protocols, Screen Australia, by Terri Janke (full PDF, First Nations protocols page)

• AIATSIS Code of Ethics (PDF)

• True Tracks ICIP framework, Terri Janke and Company

• UNDRIP full text (OHCHR overview)

• SBS NITV deceased persons guidance

The best I could think of for framing the first draft of this regions Story of Place videos is to take it from the perspective of the living Being of place itself and even that conservatively

If theres one thing ive learnt from years of my own confusion wanting to work with First Australians is to drop any expectation that they have any desire to work with you…

Theyve got their own thing running and hold no responsibility to entertain my needs and greeds

They have their own path to walk in the great long story of this Country

One i have little comprehension of

So we’ll see

Maybe it happens

Maybe it wont

Be a fairly empty story from our side if it doesnt though

Next Steps…

Obviously think a little deeper on this situation if any of this is going to work

Continue with:

1. Sun Villages website redesign

2. Stina’s audiobook

3. Sun Villages new feasbility template

4. Fix this neck issue.. ive got a splitting headache to the point my eyes feel like their going to start bleeding and ive stopped sleeping again

Theres a hell of a lot more to do but thats enough for one day

This full moon’s playing havoc on me

I reworked the Hydrology story of the Canberra Basin mainly just to make it clearer in my mind…

Indigenous story and the story of water here is going to be very high on the influence of this workj from what i have seen so far

Share this post with a friend if it might be of interest

It was an interesting session that was made even more interesting by the man, the myth, the legend, Peter Phibbs, Professor Emeritus at the University of Sydney and former director of the Henry Halloran Research Trust

OMG look at that cheeky face… you just want to squish it…

(I may or may not be a little bias as I worked along side Peter as one of the five original co-founders of The Australian Community Land Trust Network)

Peter was joined by Jon Stanhope, Chief Minister of the ACT from 2001 until 2011, and Hal Pawson, Professor Emeritus at UNSW and non-executive Director at Community Housing Canberra

The Discussion

The conversation tapped into the deep lived experience of these presenters, was heart felt, and you could see the issues of the times affect these men deeply, particularly given their contribution to the field for so many decades

We finished with Q&A that not only dug deeper into the content presented but reflected obvious deep insights from the crowd into the issues of housing in the ACT

My Take

Like most issues in a both complex and complicated society, the housing industry is pigeonholed into a siloed conversation of supply and demand due to the naked human brains inability to hold mass complexity in a coherent way

I say naked brain from the perspective that without frameworks to help it see complexity and dynamic systems from a more birdseye view, it quickly switches from floodlight to spotlight view

The aggregating problem that comes with this is that personality, identity, and personal opinions cant help but come with the living function of the spotlighting mind…

This is the lens where you flip from the eternal conscious Being that you are, to identify with the program in your head that helps you navigate the world, who convinces you that you are who you tell other people you are…

…with all your problems and opinions and stances and needs and greeds reframed as heroic missions masked by cognitive bias

If you dig deep into your own Being and are completely honest and transparent with yourself…

you will clearly see that you are as full of shit as i am

and they are

the they that you have ‘othered’ who you have cast as the enemy of your good fight,

your cause

the thing you have hung your ego on like a coat hanger

and Im no different or better

but i have lived experience that has shown me that this solves little at best, and creates more problems at worst

The Solution!

See what i did there…

Frame a problem and then reframe myself as an authority on the matter to sell my solution to you to raise my profile and take your money in some new and ingenious way…

This is the frame engrained in all conversations in the world of capitalism…

Problem, aggravation, solution, positioning, testimonial, sale

It can be overt like this, or more subtle like framing a conversation about housing unaffordability and get three panel members who obviously fight the good fight for more affordable housing without a conflicting opinion from the other side of the conversation, which probably supports their departments case for research dollars or funding from some other body

…this is not a slight on the ANU Capitalism Studies Network either, it was a great conversation for likeminded people who care deeply about this issue and the people it affects

but capitalism is a deeply persuasive and pervasive force of motivations that cant be addressed honestly without full transparency of all its mechanisms

The Potential

Without stepping back and understanding that our built environment is more than just a housing conversation but the foundation of our civilisation, we will stay in this ancient conversation about, supply and demand…

the people vs the state

black vs white

good vs bad

so boring…

isnt everyone sick of this tripe by now?

Or are we all still happy to either make developers profits or continue with the research grant funding for your guilt free profits?

Next Steps…

Continue developing the Sun Villages feasibility template

Next phase of work starting on the SV Local Exchange Trading System (LETS)

Start design on that glue section between the developments with the hub and the cabin

I feel Ive repeated myself a few times with this line

but once you start to see the paradox of this living moment it makes more and more sense

Grand gestures are great, but the subtle space in which you hold yourself before them is the energy which you really broadcast

Life’s big events like births deaths and marriages are only the manifestations of much smaller events and deeds…

the materialisation of echos through time

Its the seemingly little things we do which aggregate up and propagate out, and we see the tsunami, yet not the cracks in the foundations which triggered it

If you want to make big change… first tend the cracks in your own foundations

The Container

The initial Story of Place work we are doing in the Canberra Basin has uncovered the outer boundary of what seems to make sense here at first pass

When trying to understand ‘How big is here?’

…how big is the container we are working in that holds a relevant level of influence and dynamic tension that is suitable for the size and scale of our project

Im feeling that we have found the scale of nested living system that creates the container for the work

We will continue to peel back the layers of this onion of place over the next few months in an organic way, through direct place experience and then getting local knowledge across all the smaller systems of place

The Realisation

One of the realisations that percolated through my shadowed grey matter while on my nine month sabbatical was that to do this work, it might be best to do it in an organic living way

To me, this means having a deeper direct experience of place in the living moment

Holding yourself clean and clear and allowing the work to guide your directions in place

Understanding that organic unfolding is a more force sensitive way of moving though this mindscape of projected illusionry reality

I feel like this way, im able to hear the whispers who rest beyond the limitations of the physical breeze

…and this is proven through the synchronicities who show up to approve of the movements

Or I have early onset schizophrenia…

its definitely one of those two anyway…

ill get a proper diagnosis if this Regen Dev thing fails

The Little Thing

So while the storying of place continues, what has come up as the smallest end of the 50 unit development in young street to Sun Villages model, is a shed, a cabin, and a garden

To a property developer, stating the development build like this would sound like amateur hour on all levels…

These are sundry items on a checklist that you slap together at the end while sorting the occupancy certificates

To regenerative developers like Stina and Garry, this subtle space is actually the beating heart of the wider development that connects these 50 unit high density, to the previous 74 low density they have already developed in the past

The technical development area of stage 3 I’m talking about is the red box, but the living activation area that connects both development stages is the blue

I think what makes me the happiest about this next bit of work…

and entertains me the most

is that in a 3 stage new build development of 124 units, for over two decades…

its the two tiniest buildings from the original house estate, which are not only staying, but the activation force for the entire living system

The Design

This could be a shed converted into a community hub, with some outside paving for the cafe, and a nice garden retreat for the cabin… and still might be

But after a little looksee at our frameworks…

The fundamental ethos of the Sun Villages model is taking shape in the systems and programs that are developing around its renovation

(only just started so will have more on this in the coming weeks)

Next Steps…

1. Refresh the Sun Villages website to bring it up to date with open access to Stina’s book ‘Cant Buy Property’ and the Audiobook to remove all hurdles from people connecting to her work

2. Finish the Audiobook

3. Finalise feasibilities for Sun Villages AGM

thats enough work for now

Laura came down to perform her new albums in her parents home town in Canberra

The Road to TPot was recorded in Perthshire, a beautiful part of Scotland that I adore at the TPot studio

This music has been in my bloodline forever and we grew up listening to every aspect of it, with my uncle Terry McGee being part of the Irish folk music scene in Canberra for a while, and an avid instrument maker from flutes and tin whistles, to hamadolcima’s

Laura’s show was peacefully beautiful and funny, with her mate Tom on acoustic guitar supporting on stings and humour

I thought our two little angels were asleep through the later part of the show but they would start clapping right on queue at the end of every song which was pretty funny

For me, the soundscape she cast like a spell took me to a deeper place in the living moment that ive been skirting around but not descending to

I was reflecting on this work we do and dreaming of what it would be like to be able to take people on a journey through the living spirit of a place

What will it take for me to be able to walk this work like an artist

To be able to portal people to this exact moment in space and time and unveil the beauty of place in all its hues and shades of consciousness

To swing in this eternal lounge bar of melody of the living moment

to dance to the frequencies echoed from the sun that bathes us through the whispering breeze

Who do i need to let go of within myself to be able to bring people together and directly point to the meal, and show them theyve been trying to eat the menu, in total confusion as to why their soul remains so famished

how do i walk this work in a way that wakes peoples hearts like it has mine

and then…

i was back at the halftime break of the show…

so I bought the kids vegan chocolate brownies and fire-engines to drink…

Next Steps…

a quick reflection:

Function- im doing the work

Being- how i am within myself will project how i see the work

Will- being mindfull of the drivers behind the desire to do the work

…but there is something more there

…between Being and Will

something between the notes

a shade of glasses that shapes the world between The Michael that shows up and the projection of the world he sees

How do you see the music in the patterns of place?

I feel some days i have so far to go to do this work justice and question if i ever will…

anywho…

I loved this song on the album because it really offset the others with the swing and vocals

Its the start of platypus month so we jumped straight to hydrology and headed down to the Jerrabomberra Wetland Centre which is only 10 minutes from our house, and downstream of the young st development through the Molonglo river

The organisations behind the morning

Upper Murrumbidgee Waterwatch — runs Platypus Month and the community water-quality monitoring behind it: “communities caring for catchments,” supported by the ACT Government.

https://www.act.waterwatch.org.au

Platypus Month program: https://www.act.waterwatch.org.au/programs/platypus-month Platy & Ratty sightings portal: https://bit.ly/PlatypusPortal

Upper Murrumbidgee Catchment Network (UMCN) — the network of agencies, groups and individuals responsible for natural resource management across the Upper Murrumbidgee catchment. Network • Share • Collaborate.

https://umcn.org.au

ACT Parks and Conservation Service — manages the reserves, rivers and riparian corridors this water moves through. https://www.act.gov.au/environment/parks-and-conservation

Queanbeyan-Palerang Regional Council (QPRC) — custodians of the Queanbeyan River corridor and the riverside paths these walks follow.

https://www.qprc.nsw.gov.au

Molonglo Conservation Group — “United for Nature,” protecting and conserving the Molonglo catchment, the river system the Queanbeyan flows into.

https://molonglo.org.au

Landcare ACT — connecting with and caring for our land and water, supporting Landcare groups right across the ACT and region.

https://landcareact.org.au

NatureArt Lab — Canberra’s natural-history art school and environmental education centre, on the grass with field guides, illustration and “connect with nature” classes.

https://natureartlab.com.au

Invertebrates Australia — working toward a future where Australian invertebrates are valued and their biodiversity sustained across our lands and waters. The small things platypus actually eat.

https://invertebratesaustralia.org

Bug Hunt — the national citizen-science project from Invertebrates Australia and the Invasive Species Council: photograph a bug, upload it to iNaturalist, help track native and invasive species.

https://bughunt.org.au

It was interesting to hear about how the platypus is an indicator species for the river systems and that they are more common in NSW than you might think…

though endagered everywhere else

You’re only ever 20km from one if you live on the east coast which was quite surprising…

Think of all that urban, peri-urban, and rural run-off that ends up in our rivers…

Think of the disturbed hydrological system that now has massive boom-bust surges from hard pavements and hard dam walls that flush the waterbugs away as their food source

Fun Facts about the little sweeties…

• Hunts with eyes, ears and nostrils sealed shut — every dive is blind and deaf. It finds prey with ~40,000 electroreceptors in the bill, sensing the electrical twitch of a shrimp’s muscle. Only about five living mammals can do this.

• No teeth, no stomach. Prey and gravel go into cheek pouches to be ground at the surface; the gullet runs almost straight to the intestine.

• Males are venomous — a spur on each hind ankle, delivering pain that morphine won’t touch. It peaks in breeding season, so it’s likely a weapon against rival males.

• Lays eggs, has no nipples. Milk oozes through skin patches and the young lap it from her fur — and because it sits exposed, it evolved an antibacterial protein now studied against drug-resistant bacteria.

• Ten sex chromosomes, fur denser than a polar bear’s, a body temperature of 32°C, half its body fat stored in the tail, and a coat that glows blue-green under UV for reasons nobody yet knows.

• Lives over 20 years — extraordinary for an animal that size.

Deep time

• Monotremes split from other mammals well over 100 million years ago. Ancestral platypuses lived when this continent was still joined to Antarctica.

• Riversleigh in Queensland has yielded a toothed fossil platypus, and Obdurodon tharalkooschild — a platypus roughly a metre long.

The hoax

• The first specimen reached British scientists in 1799 and was assumed to be a fraud — a duck’s bill stitched to a beaver. George Shaw took scissors to it looking for the stitches. You can still see the marks.

Why the walks matter

• Platypus and rakali are top predators in these rivers, so their numbers read the health of the whole catchment — which is exactly what Waterwatch is counting.

• Status is contested: Near Threatened on the IUCN list, Endangered in South Australia, Vulnerable in Victoria — but still officially “common” in NSW and the ACT, despite UNSW researchers recommending a threatened listing.

• They’re crepuscular — dawn and dusk. An 8am start on a cold August morning is genuinely the right time to look.

Next Steps…

Direct geology and climate experiences somewhere in the Canberra Basin

Draft stage of the Sun Villages Feasibility template taking shape so continue with that

Continue with the project feasibility work and start to think more deeply on the next investment raise cycle

Kids back at school so a change of pace in the house, the renovations, and other considerations starting to raise their heads

I was trying not to be too proud of my genius at getting stage one of the development to stack up with finance if needed (and wanted) by the shareholders, while also stacking as a built to rent model with a 20year monthly cashflow forecast

…all without needing a DA modification ie… if we had the extra cash now we could have the Construction Certificate in 12ish weeks and start building, instead of another 6+ months in planning

Double checking with Stina and her model yesterday afternoon, it turns out she already had this modelled and we came out at basically the same conclusion, meaning i just didnt listen properly the first time

…this is not the first time

…i wish it was the last

…but the squirrel in my head never joined me in quitting meth all those years ago

For Stage 1, 18ish month build:

With finance we know we could get the extra $2m to get moving now

Strict Sun Villages model of no finance and I need to find another $6m on top of the $2m

For Full Dev, 30ish month build:

With Finance need an extra $2m we can get plus $4m

Strict Sun Villages model of no finance and I need another $23m

…and this is all modelled on a 20 year hold revaluation/divestment, on a cap rate no one can predict in 20 years from now as an exit metric

What all this did highlight is I need to create a bespoke Sun Villages feasibility for a development set on commercial yield return, with the constraints/benefits of the exact model, for the full duration of the 99 year leases, and it not look too silly to investors positioning us in a way that looks like we know what the world will look like in a century little own next week…

Actually…

just typing that now there might be a benefit of looking at social and environmental cost benefit analysis built into this new feaso if this truely is a long term regenerative ‘housing as infrastructure’ project with that time horizon…

Why didnt i think of that before?

Ok gotta go before i lose the thread…

Next Steps…

Do more good shit…

Dont be a toolbag…

Look after your people…

Be honest in your dealings in life…

…pretty simple stuff

(This Video just reminded me i need to model Cross-Laminate Timber (CLT) over concrete in the feaso as well… need to get prices)

This human intervention of a usually more organic process is so stark it can throw you off a little

but also makes it extremely interesting as a puzzle

Its like unpeeling an onion and half way through theres another onion inside that onion, and for some reason it identifies as the boss and not a cultural cancerous growth

…not saying the ACT is a cancerous growth obviously

…but if it was your own flesh you would cut it out of your system

I think whats tripping me out the most is that it IS here

…you know what i mean?

Its like

for whatever reason

this place as the foundation of the ACT has a pattern of energy that called for the pattern that is the ACT

the ACT is only a track to this pattern…

only the eddy in the river of this place, where that kind of energy has swirled and gathered

and its core is Canberra

and Canberras core is this three mountain system of geometrical structure.

It was interesting when we took the family to see the Canberra Exhibition Centre to understand how Canberra was designed as a monument capital city

The curator of the exhibition talked of how there was a triangle made between the three warn mountain peaks and how a direct line of sight was made with land, which was crossed with water

Whats that about?

Does some energy of straight lined sacred geometry exist in curved lined living world?

or just figments of the human condition?

I have seen a pattern of it being real before, in more than one place

The Griffin plan for Canberra

In 1911, the Australian government launched an international competition to find a design for its new national capital. 137 designs were received from all over the world. They included an entry from American architect Walter Burley Griffin. His wife, architect Marion Mahoney Griffin, produced the drawings illustrating his ideas.

In May 1912, Griffin’s design was announced as the winner.

Walter Burley Griffin’s plan for Canberra was based on the natural topography of the site. He proposed a city located centrally between 3 hills (Black Mountain, Mount Ainslie and Mugga Mugga) and north and south of an ornamental lake made up of a series of linked basins. The city structure would be based on 2 main axes: a land and water axis. Within would lie a triangular government group, including Parliament House on Camp Hill (the current site of Old Parliament House).

Despite Griffin’s win, an Australian government board appointed to review the finalists’ designs decided not to adopt any of them, instead creating its own. After much controversy, and a change of government, Walter Burley Griffin was invited to Australia to discuss his winning design. In October 1913, he was appointed Federal Capital Director of Design and Construction.

Years of delay followed. This was partly because of a decline in spending due to the outbreak of World War I, and partly due to poor communication between Griffin and other members of the Federal Capital Administration.

In 1920, Griffin left Canberra to work as an architect in Melbourne, and his formal relationship with Canberra came to an end - https://www.naa.gov.au/students-and-teachers/learning-resources/learning-resource-themes/government-and-democracy/parliament-and-elections/plan-canberra

And what of the relationship that this creates between the two major cities of Queanbeyan and Canberra

This sibling rivalry of symbiotic relationship

and then of the other towns outside of the geological and hydrological basins but maybe not of the social one?

I still dont have the faintest idea on these relationships…

so much work to do here

What of this core of cores…

Is this just a modern manipulation of matter or some sacred semblance of sorcery?

Its wise to start from the principles of what someone is trying to achieve rather than design goals, outcomes, or features, because the latter assumes you can see all the possibilities, all the potential

A design goal or outcome of ‘more space’ doesnt light up or satisfy the human condition in the same way that ‘room to grow’ does…

More sound proofing or stricter body corp rules around noise, pets, or movement, doesnt soothe the soul in the same way ‘peace’ does

…and the last thing you want is to arm some old gestapo resident with a rulebook in hand to ruin everyones peace of mind, feeling of safety, and security of tenure

…particularly when youre talking about multigenerational living and wealth

Some of the Principles of the Sun Villages Model

Part 1. The Principles Underneath the Model

1. How we house ourselves matters. Housing is treated as the root cause of a long chain of issues: mortgage stress, isolation, anxiety, addiction, homelessness, food miles, sprawl, energy waste. Fix the housing pattern and a domino effect follows. This is the book’s whole thesis.

2. Social sustainability comes first. Before environmental and before economic. Design that creates connection is the foundation, and the money model exists to make that design buildable. Stina fought partners, architects and her own husband to keep this ordering.

3. Housing must generate belonging, not just shelter. Her bedrock line: real security is not the amount of money you have in the bank, it is the number of people you are connected to within walking distance.

4. Grass-roots only. “There’s simply not a possibility of successful solutions being implemented from the top down.” The model is an empowerment tool, explicitly not a charity: no means testing, no grants, no subsidies. It dies without people’s own time and money.

5. The majority already has the money. Small amounts pooled (super especially) exceed what is needed to build all the housing Australia requires. Australia holds roughly $3 trillion in super, about $1 trillion of it offshore in the “global casino”.

6. Peer funding replaces the bank and the developer. Banks force developers to hold a 20 to 30 per cent margin, and charge interest on construction finance. When the people fund construction themselves, both amounts stay with them. Everyone else in the chain (architect, project manager, builder) is paid a fee for service, never a margin.

7. Zero debt, forever. The Constitution (Rule 15.3) prohibits borrowing, guarantees, security interests and debentures while the primary business purpose stands. A building with no mortgage can never be foreclosed. The legal advisory calls this clause “the correct and sound foundation of Stina’s model”.

8. Never subdivide, never sell. One title, one entity, held permanently. Strata subdivision is rejected as a pure cost multiplier (rates, insurance, water, management all multiply per title). The company keeps the whole building and is valued like commercial property, on its return.

9. Wages-indexed economics, not market economics. Returns are capped at 6 per cent net and rise with the wages component of CPI. Lease fees start at market rent and then also rise with wages, not the rental market. Income and housing cost stay in a fixed relationship to the average wage for life. That is the whole retirement-security promise.

10. True synergy: investors gain from residents’ success. Not extraction. Residents’ continuity of occupation and care of the property is what makes the investors’ return reliable, and the investors’ capital is what houses the residents. Win for investors, win for residents, win for the environment.

11. Community is organic, never compulsory. The explicit break from cohousing and intentional communities. No committees, no jointly owned social spaces, no obligatory meetings, no financial entanglement between neighbours. Design makes paths cross; relationships form on their own. Stina’s figure: nine out of ten intentional communities fail, usually over money and decision making.

12. Two currencies, yin and yang. From Bernard Lietaer. National money is yang: external, scarce, hoardable. A village trading system (LETS) is yin: generated inside the group, abundant, cannot be hoarded or used to control. A village needs both to weave a durable social fabric, and the yin currency is the safety net when money is short.

13. Built for the people the market fails. Older single women (the fastest growing homeless cohort, around 680,000 women over 45 cited), the young priced out, the self-employed and divorced who have a deposit but no loan eligibility, and small super holders. Also explicitly women-led: Stina describes founding a 100 per cent women-led property development and investment community.

14. The village is the healthy cell. Get the cell (village) structure right and the larger body (society) can form. Village scale means small enough that residents know each other by name, large enough to be self-sustaining.

15. A repeatable open pattern, not a project. Modelled on permaculture and Steiner schools: teach the principles, let any group apply them anywhere. The financial formula works across projects rather than each project self-financing, and every new village deepens the share market for all of them.

16. Local first. Keep money circulating inside the neighbourhood (Shuman, Hoffer, the Wörgl precedent). Local investment of super, local food, local work, local trading. Every dollar that stays local multiplies two to four times.

17. Stated values (from the website): respect the planet, respect all life, seek free association with free people, actively work at synergies, seek happiness for all.

18. Housing for the entire life cycle. The “entirement village”: studio to family home to studio again, in the same place, among the same people. Elders are the key to re-weaving the social fabric, not a burden to warehouse.

Part 2. The financial and Ownership Mechanics

• Vehicle. An unlisted public company limited by shares (Sun Villages (Queanbeyan) Ltd, ACN 603 326 281, registered December 2014) owns the land and building outright. Shareholders fund construction by buying ordinary shares. Minimum $10,000, no maximum. Up to four people can pool super into one SMSF (workable from about $250,000 combined) to participate.

• Investors act like the bank. Funds are released in construction tranches on the authority of a quantity surveyor, exactly as a bank would release a construction loan.

• Profit becomes bonus shares. On completion the building is commercially valued; total development cost is subtracted; the difference (the developer margin plus the interest a bank would have earned) is distributed to shareholders as bonus shares. Early money earns a higher bonus (founders were promised 50 per cent; a later resolution proposes 1:2 on the first 15,000 shares and a decaying formula after that).

• Then a capped, indexed income. After the occupation certificate, all shareholders receive a maximum 6 per cent net per year, indexed to the wages component of CPI. Income comes from lease fees, serviced apartments, the café, workspaces, storage and car spaces. Surplus above the formula stays with the not-for-profit village entity for the village’s benefit.

• Residents hold a 99-year lease with a 99-year option, carrying owner-like rights and responsibilities (the ACT and NT leasehold analogy). Leases are inheritable but not sellable; shares are what get sold. Residents must hold a minimum shareholding ($10,000; the Rules say 100 shares) which also acts as their bond.

• Dividends offset the lease. A resident’s share return is credited against their lease fee. More shares, lower weekly cost, all the way to zero, reached far quicker than paying off a mortgage. Overpayments buy further shares automatically. In an emergency you sell some shares, not your home.

• Living costs roughly halve. Around $54 a week versus $136 for a comparable strata apartment, because one entity owns everything: bulk metered power, water and internet, halved rates and body corporate costs, shared services. Entry costs disappear: no deposit hurdle, no loan qualification, no mortgage insurance, no stamp duty, no agent fees, no foreclosure risk.

• Worked comparisons (2021 figures, pre the 40 per cent construction cost rise): a $500,000 apartment carries about $160,000 (32 per cent) of avoidable middleman and transaction costs. A conventional investor nets about 3 per cent after the roughly 41 per cent of gross rent lost to holding costs, or goes backwards after mortgage interest; the SV shareholder keeps the full 6 per cent with nothing else to pay. A resident’s total weekly cost in the example is $381 versus $716 for a mortgaged owner.

• Capital gain lives in the share price. Shares trade on the open market (a register of buyers and sellers is planned, and existing shareholders get first offer). The long-run pitch: a wage-indexed income stream that a 1975 investment would have grown tenfold by 2017, with the share value floating on demand. Shares can be sold down in fractions, willed, gifted, and used as loan security.

• Portability across the network. Shares in any Sun Villages development offset a lease in any other. Move villages without selling anything. Apartments can join the serviced apartment pool while residents travel, and short-stay income lifts the whole return.

• Estates divide cleanly. Heirs split shares instead of fighting over a house. A cohabiting partner or heir who holds the minimum shareholding can take over the lease.

• Trade-for-equity (2026 extension). Trade companies deliver QS-verified construction packages and take part payment in shares, so the people who build the village own part of it.

• The co-operative side door. Sun Villages Co-operative Ltd is intended for smaller investors ($10,000 to $99,000): $1 shares, 10,000 share minimum, $100 entry fee, $100 annual subscription. It buys shares in projects or lends to them, spreading the model to more locations.

Part 3. The Three Design Principles of Social Sustainability

Principle 1. Architecture that expands and contracts. Homes change size within the fixed structure of the building as life changes: studio for the young single, expanded home for the family, contraction back to a studio in later years, with the lease fee adjusting up and down. Australians move on average every seven years; staying put saves around $5,000 in transaction costs for every remaining year of life, and saves the far larger cost of severed relationships. Farmers, singles, families and widows all cycle through the same building. Only single-entity ownership makes this possible; strata title can never deliver it. This is also what ends the retirement village: the “entirement village” holds the entire age range.

Principle 2. Density within 300 metres of a hub. Everyone lives within a three-minute walk of the centre. Beyond 300 metres, patronage of shops and parks drops away sharply and people stop walking. A minimum of around 200 adults makes an infill neighbourhood viable. The ideal form is a node: densest at the centre above the hub, cascading down to free-standing homes at the perimeter, ringed by a green commons that produces food, or at minimum a village green connected to the hub. Density is what creates the “feel” people love in European villages; it is the feature, not the compromise.

Principle 3. A hub with, at minimum, a café. Eating together is the social glue. Around it: marketplace, workshop barn, library, serviced apartments, workspaces, storage, carpool, and a village trading system. The hub is run by a not-for-profit village entity (like councils before they became corporations) whose surplus flows back to residents as reduced rates and levies. Casual, frequent, unforced contact at the hub is the mechanism that turns neighbours into a safety net. Nodding to someone on a garden path is enough to start.

Part 4. The Wider Design Catalogue

Settlement and Land

• The node pattern for new development: high rise over the hub with mass parking and one fast public transport link underneath, cascading to low density at the 300 metre perimeter, replacing buses that wind through empty suburbs.

• Carrying capacity set by formula, like rural stock rates: the land’s closed water cycle determines how many people a node can hold.

• Perimeter commons leased to farmers and gardeners with lifelong land access and a ready-made market. 200 people spending $50 a week on food is $10,000 a week, enough to support full-time growers. Farmers start in a studio and expand as their family grows.

• Orchards and wood lots belong to the node; residents help harvest for yin or yang payment; profits flow to the village entity.

• Suburbs can be retrofitted by defining a 300 metre neighbourhood around an existing shopping centre; old homestead sites, motels, hotels, boarding houses, warehouses, theatres and schools can all be converted to the model.

• Site selection tests (Garry’s list): end value re leasing return, redevelopment resources, a reasonable council, local work and education, transport, soil and climate for food, low-cost water.

Water, Energy, Materials

• Closed water cycle: catchment, greywater and blackwater recycling matched to soil transpiration capacity, eliminating the “big pipe in, big pipe out”. No new dams, no river pollution, waste treated as a resource, compost building the node’s soil.

• Local energy generation: solar, wind, co-generation at village scale; bulk metering behind one connection.

• Proven record: the existing 74 dwellings are 8-star; Garry’s double glazing and eco features cost nothing net because design savings cancelled them out; class A water reuse has been delivered at up to 265-apartment scale.

• Stage 1 specification: non-toxic materials, hard-wired internet, built to last generations, a higher standard than the first 74 homes.

Social Design Details

• The pedestrian street (already built at Crestwood), garden paths and shared outdoor rooms as everyday collision space.

• The workshop barn with a mezzanine so children can watch adults work without being in the way: watch-and-imitate education. The barn also screens the village garden from overlooking apartments.

• Multi-generational mixing by design: children get role models, teenagers get caring review from elders, elders get company and purpose.

• Care organised at village scale: child minding, care of the sick and elderly, and pooled live-in carers as the alternative to $2,000-a-week nursing homes. “Caring begets caring.”

• Views that cannot be built out (the disused rail corridor at Young Street) and outlook to countryside as permanent amenity.

The Village Economy (LETS)

• The SUN unit (1 SUN = 1 AUD) on a zero-sum mutual credit ledger, per the LETS Console work: village trading, work-for-equity, river regeneration programs, tax-ready exports.

• Work in the village (café shifts, gardening, maintenance, care, renting space for a hairdresser or therapist or classes) earns units that offset lease fees. “With available work and a village trading system there’s no excuse for non-payment of lease.”

• The blocked gutter example: a $300 strata job becomes $100 inside the village, paid same day to a resident, and the credits circulate on.

• Hard-won LETS rules from 30 years of Qbees: a walkable market is essential, about 20 people minimum, about 200 active accounts maximum, accounts should hover near zero, and someone has to broker actively. Wörgl 1932 is the flagship precedent (scrip circulated 416 times, 12 to 14 times the employment).

Governance Architecture (as designed)

• Company owns everything and never borrows; the not-for-profit village entity leases the whole building at the initial maximum 6 per cent and runs all facilities; residents deal with the landlord entity, not the company.

• Constitution hard-codes the primary business purpose (environmentally sustainable, socially affordable accommodation plus a reasonable long-term return), changeable only by 75 per cent special resolution.

• Dividend direction clause: a resident’s dividends are automatically applied to rent owing. A and B class shares (24,000 and 4,500) exist for founders with deferred surplus rights.

• Hardship rules: rent can be reduced, suspended or the resident moved to cheaper premises, but the company can never lend money (consistent with zero debt).

• Financial hardship, complaints (14-day acknowledgement, 45-day decision), pets, parking and conduct all covered in the Rules.

This is the culmination of over 40 years of experience in property investment, building, and development by both Stina and Garry Kerans, which has brought them around the world to understand the foundations and fractures of property, finance, and community development, eco-villages, pattern language, permaculture design, including this very site as Queanbeyan’s original thinking as the Permaculture Institute with Bill Mollison

…they have come a long way

Next Steps…

I m starting to get a sneaky suspicion, rereading my own words back here, that this building design might not need a DA modification

that Ive been too focused on structural design and forgot about investment vehicle and tenancy design

…whole of project design and entity design

…whole living Being design

Funny how quickly we can get buried under all the bullshit constraints and social programming of this modern economic system…