Thinking of a holiday abroad this year? Nicole Buckler recommends getting your gondola on and heading for Venice to enjoy it in all its shabby-chic glory. Because within our lifetime, it could be gone.
Shabby-Chic Glory
In the Italian novel Invisible Cities, Kublai Khan points out to Marco Polo that for all the beguiling cities he has described in great detail, Venice was not given a mention. To this, Marco Polo fictionally replies “Every time I describe a city, I am saying something about Venice.”
Venice is famous for a reason. It is absolutely, hopelessly, achingly gorgeous. And I am a touro-sceptic, being very dubious of any place that is so overrun by tourists that they outnumber the local population. This is certainly the case in Venice, the city of liquid boulevards. As cynical as I am, I was still monumentally impressed in spite of myself. You would not be human if you didn’t love the place hard.
Nothing could detract from the city’s charm and its intriguing similarity to postcard pictures that everyone has seen all their lives before arriving. No vile tourist behaviour or damp mouldy hotel or overpriced bland carbonara pasta dish could take away the feeling that Venice is the mythical Atlantis of Italy that never sank (until now). The only way to see how exquisite Venice really can be is to use your feet and a swanky pair of shoes.
Getting Around
The street names and general haphazard geography are derived from a system that was perfected in in Bizzaro World. However stumbling aimlessly amongst the antique pavements and frighteningly green canals is what you should be aiming for.
Try to shun the main drag for a while, and you’ll find that only just two streets away is the real Venice. It is a little bit shabby, a lot quieter, and peopled by genuine Venetians in the flesh, who walk by with an air of business-as-usual. These same Italians have no reservations whatsoever about hanging their underwear out of their windows over the narrow canals. This is for every tourist to be educated as to which style the ageing Venetians prefer (uniformly large and white in fact.) It is amongst these said alleys that you will stumble upon baroque backstreet churches and gorgeous food shops. The local fare is presented so delectably in the windows that it looks like a painting.
Piazza San Marco
Follow the sporadic signs and the general flow of the tourist river, and you will stumble upon the piece de resistance of Venice, the Piazza San Marco. St Mark’s Square has for centuries been inundated by human visitors and pigeons. The latter take the form of face-seeking missiles for most of daylight hours.
The square is bordered by the amazing San Marco Basilica, a spectacular place of worship. And, the Palazzo Ducale, a pink and white Venetian Gothic palace which is the political heart of Venice (also dubiously known for its now disused torture chambers). It is also flanked by the 15th Century Torre dell’Orologio. This a tower within which a huge bronze bell is chimes every hour. The square is lapped by one of the largest canals of the region, the Grand Canal. Gondolas line up along it so that even the most photographically challenged person in the world can take a supremely magnificent photograph.
It is business as usual for the cafes of St Mark’s Square, despite the never-ending floods.
Gumboots at the Ready
For an outrageously priced, bank-breaking cappuccino, you can sit in one of the two outdoor cafes in St Mark’s Square. Here, you can listen to the live orchestras that compete for airtime. Even if you have to remortgage your house to do it, it will be the most scenic coffee you will ever consume Italiano style.
St Mark’s is situated at one of the lowest parts of the city. So when high tides come to visit, the square is covered in water. Absolutely lovely in the moonlight, but for locals an increasingly damp annoyance. It’s a great irony that the element that made Venice so renowned is now threatening its very existence. The city can no longer hold back the rise of the surrounding tidal waters. I was told that the piazza is now almost fully immersed in seawater during autumn and high tides. Raised wooden walkways are placed around the square so that tourists can still mill about the piazza. But, expect wrecked shoes and being salted by the oncoming ocean.
Alas. Venice flooding is getting worse. Unfortunately the grand plan drawn up by the city to stop such flooding isn’t going to save it. Recent storms in 2018 put 70% of the city underwater. Without intervention, Venice will be gone by the year 2100.
Raised walkways are now a perpetual fixture in the sinking city.
St Mark’s Basilica
St Mark’s Basilica is the world’s most spectacular place to go about your worshipping business. It is living evidence of Venice’s maritime and commercial might in a previous era. The Basilica is famous for holding many treasures; most of them plundered from different places across Europe. In this department, Constantinople seems to have lost most booty to the plundering Venetians. It is said that the dodgy Venetian merchants even nabbed the bones of St Mark. They shipped them from Alexandria, and built the church specifically to house his remains, hence the name.
The interior is indeed dazzling, with marble and pure gold floors. It has sparkling mosaics made with centuries of concentration from skilled artisans. It is proof that 12th-Century Venetians must have experienced a disco era after all. The Basilica feels like a leaking spiritual phenomenon with its uneven sinking floors. You can’t help but wonder how many people have sat at its pews and prayed for the best over the many centuries of its existence.
St Mark’s Basilica is Italy’s most famous church outside of Rome. It’s opulent design, with gold ground mosaics, made it a symbol of Venetian wealth and power. From the 11th century onward, the building has been known by the nickname Chiesa d’Oro (Church of gold).
The Canals
Nothing flavours Venice better than the gondolas. Some boats (perhaps meant to attract honeymooners) feature bright red vinyl seats with fluffy heart-shaped cushions. They look like something stolen out of an Italian Iap-dancing club. The gondolas are expensive and embarrassing to be seen in, but they come with a singing Italian, bleating out all your Italian classical favourites. This is while trying to steer amongst all the other gondolas bobbing about with their stripe-shirted captains. You can’t help but get in one. You’ve come all this way, after all, so you must.
Another alternative is the water taxis which are as expensive as the gondolas but without the corny kinda feeling. However one of the best transport options is the waterbus or Vaporetto. It is a fast and relatively inexpensive method of getting yourself around the pretty city.
Food Delights
Venice, for all its historical splendour and former affluence, has had to come down a peg or two and morph its trading economy into a tourist economy. I was warned that Venetians relieve the frustrations of this decline on tourists by charging outrageous prices and by being a little indifferent. Away from the main tourist strip of bland fast-food pastas and cheap horrendous wines are the backstreet restaurants. On all counts they are reasonably priced and serve up damn tasty Italian food. They are also thronged with local patrons who are friendly and noisy.
Around the Venice International University, the bars are pumping and full of talkative Italian students. The drink of choice is Aperol, a scarily bright orange liqueur, mixed with soda, and at around €2 a pop I was a big fan.
While there are some hotels within the city, they are very expensive and can be difficult to access with a suitcase on wheels. A good alternative is to stay on the mainland in a town called Mestre, which is still considered a part of Venice. Prices are much more affordable, and public transport to the island of Venice is cheap and fast, taking around 10 minutes to cross the bridge to get you there.
Getting There
Most visitors flying into Venice land at Marco Polo airport, 12km from Venice. The budget flights will land at Treviso’s minuscule airport, north of the city. Venice in summer is jam-packed and sweltering. You’ll have to offer many sacrifices to the sun gods to get a patch of sand on one its very few beaches. The European Spring is a great time to go (March through to May). European Autumn is also a good time to go, starting in September after the European school holidays have finished. If you like waterlogged feet, be sure to visit in winter. Crowds will be smaller and lines shorter. Don those gum boots and you’ll do just fine.
Author bio
Nicole Buckler Editor-in-Chief
Nicole Buckler has been a journalist for over 20 years, working in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, London, Dublin and Taipei. She recently returned to the Gold Coast, saying she has seen the world but the best place on earth is right here, and she’s never leaving again. You can contact her at Nicole@sunkissmedia.com.au
Why leave all of the best Gold Coast dive sites and snorkel spots to the tourists? Marnie Diehl tells locals where all of the best underwater hideaways are!
The Gold Coast is home to some premier inshore diving sites, boasting year-round access and a fish diversity unequalled by any other city in Australia.
If you are into diving or snorkelling, you may know of many famous dive sites. But none are within the city limits of a major urban centre and enjoy the luxury of being primarily shore-based.
What’s particularly special about the Gold Coast is the abundance and diversity of fish life. Over the past few years, the Queensland Museum has recorded no less than 370 species of fish from the Gold Coast Seaway alone.
GOLD COAST SEAWAY
When we talk about Gold Coast dive sites and snorkel destinations, The Seaway always makes the list.
It is noted as the most reliable site in the region for Whitespotted Guitarfish, Pink Whiprays and Cownose Rays.
Groups of up to eight Queensland Gropers are not uncommon here. Large schools of Bigeye Trevally – rarely seen in such numbers in any other inshore locality – are a virtual fixture around the submerged pipelines.
There are five main dive site areas of the Gold Coast Seaway where the annual water temperature range is a mild 18-27 degrees Celsius. This makes it ideal for relaxed and pleasant diving.
Dive areas inside the seaway are not affected by sea conditions and may be dived all year round.
South Wall Dive Area
By far among the most popular year-round Gold Coast dive sites is the South Wall Dive Area, which encompasses the Short Pipe, Sand Pipe, and Eagle Ray Cleaning Station.
Maximum depth across the seaway at the Sand Pipe is 15 m. Fish species include colourful Butterflyfish, Wrasses, Surgeonfish, Bream, Tarwhine, Whiting, Flathead, Mangrovejack, Trevallies, Mulloway, Ghostpipefish, Seahorses, Waspfish, Anglerfish, Scorpionfish, Lionfish, Giant Queensland Groper, schools of Bigeye and Giant Trevally, Eagle Rays, Bull Rays and Guitarfish.
If you are a conservative diver and don’t like current, it is best to wait until the top of the tide. If you don’t mind current and like drift diving, hop in early.
The South West Wall Dive Area
The South West Wall Dive Area has less current flow and an easy sandy beach entry point, so is an ideal location for new divers.
Here you will find all that creeps and crawls, such as the Highcrown Seahorse, the Stick and Tiger Pipefishes, the Ornate and Robust Ghost pipefishes, the Dwarf and Zebra Lionfishes, plus many more fascinating creatures.
A small seagrass bed is located only metres from the shore. On night dives during the appropriate season, Tiger Prawns can be seen creeping around the seagrass. During the day, squid are observed hovering over their egg clutches.
Wave Break Island Dive Area
Another area similar to the South West Wall is the Wave Break Island Dive Area.
Wait until high tide before entering. Conditions remain pleasant for diving for up to four hours after the high tide.
Wave Break Island is strictly a boat access area. For those without boats, two local dive operators run daily dive tours from Marina Mirage.
Diving here is ideal for first-timers and snorkelling – being more protected from boat traffic and having an easy beach start and a gentle drop to 11 m.
South-East Wall Dive Area
For big critter action, the South-East Wall Dive Area and North East Wall Dive Area have more turtles, big pelagic fish and rays.
Sea conditions very much dictate any diving here. But when it is calm, there is a hive of activity on the walls towards the entrance.
This is an area restricted to experienced divers, and diving should be carefully planned according to tides and prevailing currents.
The South-East Wall Dive Area may be accessed from the shore, but it is more sensible from a boat. Visibility here is generally the clearest in the seaway, and you can observe lots of Surgeonfish and other schooling fish towards the entrance.
Larger rocks here produce ideal habitat for resting turtles and Wobbegongs.
North-East Wall Dive Area
The North-East Wall Dive Area reaches a depth of about 10 m on the northern side of the tip but drops to 20 m on the southern side.
This location has the most pelagic fish activity, and the cleaning stations host huge Bull Rays and Eagle Rays.
You can see Pickhandle Barracuda, Mangrove Jack and Mulloway here, as well as encounter seasonally large Queensland Gropers. Luderick gather here in their thousands at spawning time.
Visibility is generally less at the wall on this side of the seaway.
The Gold Coast Seaway caters for entry-level through to extreme diving. It provides easy access to the most diverse fish life in any Australian city. And the only relatively safe year-round mainland shore diving in Queensland.
Local knowledge is important, and daily dive tours are available from several local dive shops.
In addition to the Gold Coast Seaway dive areas, there are a handful of special spots down the other end of the coast, including Palm Beach, Kirra, and Cook Island.
The Wreck of the Scottish Prince
After sinking in 1887, the Scottish Prince wreck lies on the sand 800 metres from the beach near the Southport Spit.
Only the hull remains and is covered with soft corals and sponges. It has become a haven for crayfish, Shovelnose rays, as well as Leopard and wobbegong sharks.
You can find unusual tropical fish such as the leafy scorpionfish among the broken decking.
Palm Beach Reef
Palm Beach Reef on the Gold Coast is a large reef with sections of rocky outcrops. It also boasts of several large bommies with a variety of soft corals and sponges.
The top of the reef rises to just five metres below the surface.
Marine life is abundant with stingrays and the odd bronze whaler or hammerhead. In summer, you can find Wobbegongs and leopard sharks as well.
Blue wrasse, parrotfish, painted wrasse, and a variety of reef fish with large schools are the norm.
Kirra Reef
Kirra Reef is right at the southern end of the Gold Coast and consists of scattered rocky outcrops that are covered in kelp fronds. After being buried beneath a blanket of sand during a sand-pumping project, Kirra Reef is back better than ever!
It’s over 100 metres in length and home to soft corals, anemones, and an abundance of fish species.
Drift from rock to rock and investigate every nook and cranny, with morays hiding in the most unexpected places.
The beauty of this site is in watching the smaller species. Porcupine fish abound here, and wobbegongs and macro life inhabit the reef.
What makes Kirra Reef unique is the location. It’s just a few hundred metres off the shore, so divers can walk down on the sand, put on their tanks and swim out.
It’s also protected on three sides by land, which means it’s great for diving most of the year.
Narrowneck Artificial Reef
A hundred metres from the shore, directly in front of the lifeguard tower at Narrowneck Beach, is an artificial reef made from geotextile containers.
It was originally designed for beach erosion protection and as a surfing break. Yet it has proved an ideal surface for seagrass to grow, as well as soft coral, ascidians and crinoids in some sections.
Close to shore, you’ll find crayfish, wobbegong sharks, nurse sharks, pineapple fish, lionfish, and cardinal fish. Nudibranchs, shrimp and octopus are also found in this area.
Further out from shore, you can commonly observe shovel nose rays, cow tail rays, bull rays and turtles in the sand beside the containers. Schools of bait fish constantly pass by, as well as the occasional eagle ray.
Cook Island
While the places mentioned in this article are all Gold Coast dive sites, this next one is not technically on the Gold Coast. But there are many local operators that depart from Coolangatta and head out to Cook Island for dive and snorkel tours.
From Coolangatta, it takes 10 minutes to get to Cook Island by boat. And it’s certainly worth the trip!
Cook Island is a formal marine reserve and home to a permanent colony of green and loggerhead turtles. It plays host to an amazing array of marine life, offering spectacular temperate, subtropical, and tropical species of fish, rays, eels, and octopus. ■
Skellig Islands. This nothing less than one of the most special places on the entire earth, says Nicole Buckler.
The Star Wars Connection
With the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens in 2015, every man and his parrot heard about the island called Skellig Michael. It lies off the coast of Kerry, in Ireland. The haunting and beautiful rock was in the final dramatic scene of the movie, where Rey hands Luke Skywalker his lightsabre after his long rejection of Jedi life.
While this is one of the most emotional scenes in the movie, it’s hard to avoid being distracted by the background. The location is really something else, and it deserves to be discovered. The location is fascinating, beguiling, and mind boggling on a scale that is hard to put into words.
Rey making her climb upwards in Star Wars – The force Awakens
Skellig Location
The Skellig islands are two rocky peaks that jut savagely out of the ocean, lying isolated in the sea off County Kerry.
One of the rocky peaks (named Small Skellig in English) hosts so many birds that their droppings have made it look like a snow-covered peak in the Himalayas. It is a nature reserve, and boats are not allowed to land there. And none would… the seas around it are treacherous and whirlpoolish, like a drain to hell itself. So the seals and birds are left to their own devices, becoming fat and relaxed in the haven it provides them.
You can see the disembarkation point for boats at the bottom left
Sceilig Mhichíl
The other rocky outcrop, which also juts violently from the dark ocean, is a place worth seeing, if you are game. Sceilig Mhichíl in the Irish language, or just Skellig Michael for English speakers, is a place of mind-boggling historical significance. It was probably founded in the 7th Century as a monastic centre for Irish Christian Monks. But I don’t say “founded” very lightly. The settlement itself is perched nauseatingly on the summit of the pointed rock, 230 metres above sea level.
Here, at this height, the monks lived in stone beehive huts, which cling to the top of the rock. They are situated above vertical cliff walls which plunge dramatically into the sea. The only perimeter wall to the dwellings is an unbelievable vista and not much else.
The Skelligs
Because of its extreme isolation, the settlement, once it had been deserted, remained almost perfectly preserved, until it’s rediscovery and use much later as a place to build a lighthouse. It became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996. It is one of Europe’s most intriguing but least accessible sites. This makes it all the more attractive for the adventurers amongst us, when our YOLO is triggered.
The Journey There
Convincing the local fisherman to take you out to the Skelligs on your timescale is another story altogether. For most of them their primary income is fishing. Tourism is tidy second income but not their primary mode of operation. So it can take some effort to fling yourself out onto the jagged rocks. Also, there are serious restrictions on how many people can go to the island in any one day.
Even on a nice day, the waves crash against the rock with such ferocity that passengers trying to disembark are at risk of losing a limb or even their life.
We were the first tourists to go that year, the boats do not visit while the winter seas at the their most treacherous. So we had a problem: disuse. To scramble onto Skellig Michael, you must jump from the boat onto stone steps carved into the rock. The rock steps were covered in slime and ice from not being used for 9 months. With every downward motion of the boat we had to throw sand onto the steps. This was to give us some sort of traction as we hurled ourselves at Skellig Michael and hope that he would catch us and not throw us into a swirling sea.
The process was a little heart-grabbing. We managed to get on the rock after much boat-to-rock acrobatics. The sailor yelled at us, “See ye in two hours!” and took off. He said he couldn’t stay close to the rocks or his boat will get smashed up against them and sink like it did last year. Um what?
The Climb
Armed with sensible shoes and water, we set out for the treacherous climb up the rock to the monk’s settlement. The settlement was set up in the sixth century, when some monks thought it a good idea to “punish” themselves by living on the edge of existence in borderline starvation conditions. This was to show their God that they knew what sacrifice and poverty and discipline were. I personally think they were a bit bonkers. No actually they were a lot bonkers. Not only did they build a monastery out on a god forsaken rock in the middle of the sea, they built it at the top of the rock. To live at the jagged peak, they had to hand-build 1000 rock steps to the top.
The rock steps the monks used in their daily prostrating are still there today, all of these lifetimes later. The steps snake their way skinnily along sheer cliff drops. The trip is not for the faint-hearted or the even mildly uncoordinated.
The ancient Skellig Michael beehive huts.
The monks wanted to grow food up there – but there wasn’t any soil to grow anything. So they imported it from the mainland, a laborious process that someone who didn’t believe in God wouldn’t even attempt. Mainly the monks’ diet consisted of dried seagull (if they could catch any) and seal steaks (if they could spear any) and scurvy grass. It was a very lean diet in a cold and windy place. I hope getting into the afterlife afterwards was worth it.
Insanity
How anyone lived on this rock and made their life there was astounding. It was an exercise in insanity. A plaque at the pier on the mainland reads, “It is a damp, windy, sterile crag rising from the sea, so barren that the monks had to import soil to grow their food in, so gusty and bedevilled by storms that the monks could count the clear, calm sunny days of each year on two hands.
Getting there even across the relatively short distance from County Kerry, was never an easy proposition. Choppy seas, volatile weather, terrible anchorages and the sheer, slippery steepness of the place discouraged casual visits.”
The route up is a terrifying climb. By the time you reach the top, you fail to understand even further how living here could even remotely be close to God. No. This was a place of self-hatred, self-banishment and self-punishment. Once at the top, though, all is forgiven. Those views.
The ancient Skellig Michael graveyard.
The Reward
At the end of the treacherous climb, the sky cleared and it was sunny for about two hours. According to the fisherman, this only happens about 5 times a year at the Skelligs. When the sun touches it, it is an amazing place. It’s right up there with the best of the crazy-amazing human achievements that were just a bit too extra.
Preservation
The monastery itself is remarkably preserved from when it started its life in the dark ages. To think that monks lived here writing manuscripts, on a survival knife’s edge, seems like a fantasy weaved for the sake of tourism. But no, it really happened. Not only was it hard to even survive here, but it was also a place that was being constantly attacked by pirates, who were raiding for food (like scurvy grass) that kept disease at bay. And, the pirates stole manuscripts that were lovingly produced by the monks. It was an attack from all sides.
Those views though
To modern eyes, the place is absolutely haunting, and I can’t imagine these monks being anything other than lonely, isolated and bloody cold. They really must have believed in Paradise, and that they were going there on a direct ticket. There was no other reason you’d voluntarily make any kind of life in such an obnoxiously uncomfortable place.
If you think you’d be scared climbing up the stairs, climbing down is ten times worse. This is because when you go down you are looking right over the cliff, and vertigo takes a hold of you and offers to show you your God at any given time. If I was one of the monks, I would never come down. I would stay up there forever eating dried seagull and seal steaks and scurvy grass and other dead monks, probably.
The stone beehive huts were the only protection from the high winds
The Take Away
Ireland is known as the land of scholars. Even in its most desperate and poor times, of famine and of war, the Irish people sought to be educated. They had a thirst for the spiritual and the intellectual. And Skellig Michael is testament to the fact that this type of Irishness: Irish people are intellectuals above all else, even above starvation and weather and winds and pirates and dried seagulls. Skellig Michael is one of the most remarkable remnants of ancient Ireland and the dark ages. It is completely intact after all of this time…which is incredible. It’s is a testament to both intense religious worship, and deep, dark, human insanity. ■
Getting There
First, get yourself to Dublin, then to Kerry, via internal flight or hire car. To get to the Skellig Islands, first you must station yourself at the tiny town on the coast called Port Magee. The boats go out from the pier here, in the warmer months.
Now you can buy FarmBot, a robot gardener that will fill your garden with gorgeous fresh organic produce, without having to go outside and doing anything! It’s the lazy gardener’s dream come true!
Say hello to the FarmBot. If you love growing your own vegetables but don’t really have it in you to keep it up properly, then this farmer robot is exactly what you need.
You can order this magnificent robotic beast for your garden. Set it up and grow gorgeous veges without breaking a sweat.
Your FarmBot will email you when your crop is ready.
A Brief History of the FarmBot
The FarmBot project was started in 2011 when Rory Aronson – a mechanical engineering student at California Polytechnic State University – attended an elective course in organic agriculture.
There he learned about a tractor that used machine vision to detect and cover weeds. This removed the need for herbicides to kill the weeds, or manual labour to pull them out. It was genius…but the tractor cost over one million dollars.
The cost of such a great farming breakthrough put Rory in a spin. The world’s population is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050. No one is sure we have enough food for everyone. So, growing our own stuff in our own gardens will go a long way in aiding this mission. But we are lazy, and our attention to detail wanes quickly. We get distracted and go do something else, and our crop dies.
But having accessible tech do the work for us makes it easy for the lazy gardeners amongst us to stay the course in growing their own produce.
Rory and some pals came up with the idea of the FarmBot and got some funding to manufacture it.
How FarmBot Works
The FarmBot works just like a dot matrix printer. It sows seeds in rows and knows exactly where every plant is from the start, so it can detect any interloper weeds quickly.
Pretty much anything that isn’t the official plant is pushed back into the soil by the robotic arm.
This farming robot is able to plant over 30 different crops, including potatoes, peas, squash, artichokes and chard in an area of 2.9 meters × 1.4 meters.
It can cultivate a variety of crops within same area at the same time and is able to operate indoors, outdoors and in covered areas.
A polytunnel is a great idea in times of storms and hail.
FarmBot can give us food sovereignty. Growing vegetables can be done on a raised bed, on an urban rooftop, or in a greenhouse.
The FarmBot keeps working hard for you at night. The equipment is also built to withstand being outdoors for many years.
The FarmBot will precision-water your plants with the gentle shower of this nozzle.
Why You Should Get One
It is estimated that the FarmBot produces 25% fewer carbon dioxide emissions than standard food production.
But because it’s a robot, it requires electricity, an internet connection, and water supply. These all can be provided using off-grid solutions.
A water barrel can collect rain. And a solar panel and battery can provide electricity. The FarmBot then uses the web to gather data about local weather conditions, among other things.
You, as an owner of FarmBot, can control your robot gardener slave on just about any internet enabled device. The app that goes with the FarmBot is like playing a game, such as Farmville, but with real-life results.
Your home farm can be run completely off-grid. A water barrel can collect rain. And, a solar panel and battery can provide electricity.
You can design your farm by dragging and dropping plants into the map. The game-like interface is learned in just a few minutes so you will be growing in no time.
You can “plant” seeds via a drag-and-drop action. You can also control the water, fertiliser, pesticide, and seed spacing via the app. The app can even email you when your crops are ready.
There could come a day when this type of robot farmer could replace actual farm workers. FarmBots are also more precise with water and fertilisers.
Without the need for tractors, farmers would not have to plant produce in wide rows to make way for tractor wheels. Crops could be grown closer together, resulting in a higher yield.
How to Get One
The idea of having a robot farmer slave is totally awesome. This does mean that our relationship to the land becomes very distant, though.
But let’s face it; most of us don’t have a good relationship with the land anyway. Unless you are already a farmer.
Sound expensive? It actually isn’t – you can get a return on investment in a year or two. And after that, it’s all free veges!
You do not need a lot of space to grow a large amount of your own vegetables. Here, a small yard doubles as a home farm.
You don’t even have to buy a FarmBot app. The blueprints are opensource, meaning that the instructions on how to build it yourself are free for anyone to download.
So if you are handy with a spanner, then you can save yourself a lot of money. If not, prices start at around $2600, and bigger models are around $5800.
If you do buy one, the FarmBot gets sent to you in bits, so you’ll have to put it together. Don’t worry, you don’t need to be an engineer to assemble it. Initial reviews suggest that construction of the FarmBot is easier than your standard Ikea item.
Just think, we could all have our own robot farmer with just a click of the mouse. Next? We dearly hope for a laundry robot.
Halloween is a celebration for kids who dress up in wild costumes and go lolly-hunting around the neighbourhood. It’s a great event that helps both adults and kids meet other people in their neighbourhood. But do you know where the tradition came from and why we celebrate it here in Australia?
Nicole Buckler fills us in.
The original Halloween has fascinating origins. Most people in Australia think that Halloween is an American tradition. But they are wrong! It is actually a Celtic, Irish tradition.
The Irish Connection
Halloween is the modern form of the Irish festival of Samhain. The name is derived from Old Irish, it means ‘summer’s end.’ It is the time of the final harvest. All crops must be brought in before they get annihilated by the approaching cold.
In old Irish culture, there are two halves of the year – the light half, and the dark half. The light half has long, warmer days, the sun doesn’t set until 11pm. The dark half is cold and the sun disappears at 4:30pm. Samhain, on October 31, is the original marker of the end of the light half, and the transition into the dark half. It is also regarded as the Celtic New Year.
On Samhain night, the border between this world and the Otherworld (where the dead reside) is at its thinnest. The dead can reach back through the veil that separates them from the living. Dead relatives are close to us at Samhain. You can invite your dead loved ones into your life on this night. It is an old Irish tradition to set a place at the table on Samhain night for anyone passed over who you may want to honour. Some Irish people still to this day set a place for relatives who have passed on.
Some set a place for pets. It is not unheard of to refill the dog’s bowl on Samhain night, long after a pet had passed. Honouring the dead is a great thing to do on Halloween night. It is a really meaningful way to talk to children about loved ones who have passed away.
Halloween is becoming a big deal on the Gold Coast!
All Hallows
Celtic Ireland has had many ideological invaders, but the most influential was the Catholic Church. Once the church got a foothold in Ireland, they made deliberate efforts to take local Celtic rituals, and Catholicise them. Worried about the popularity of pagan Samhain, the church declared that a day of honouring of the dead would be put into the Christian calendar. This would take place on All Saints day, or All Hallows – on November the first. The Eve of All Hallows – Hallow Eve – soon became ‘Halloween.’
The church successfully transposed themselves over many Celtic traditions. But they didn’t win them all. Some Irish celebrations remained doggedly Celtic, and Samhain is one of them. These days in Ireland, there is a revival of Celtic traditions as the church falls out of favour. Halloween is being called Samhain once again.
Halloween is such a fun night for kids, it is now a global event.
America and Australia
During the Irish famine, many Irish people fled to foreign shores, and brought their traditions with them. North America took in many Irish people during this time, and the Irish also ended up in Australia in large numbers. Americans go large with all of their celebrations, so Halloween got way, way extra in the hands of Americans. But that’s what we like about those crazy compadres of ours over the Pacific.
Why We Dress Up
In Ireland, Samhain can be a scary time. As the gateway between worlds becoming thinner, we can reconnect with our dead loved ones, but the veil isn’t perfect. Bad spirits who want to make trouble in your life can also enter at this time. Bad faeries, leprechauns, pixies, elves and even one-eyed monsters can freely enter our world on Samhain night. In fact, the entire spectrum of non-human forces could roam the earth on October 31.
Coincidentally, magic mushrooms come into season at Samhain. There are two magic mushrooms that grow in Ireland – the liberty cap and the fly agaric. They look really different to each other, but both produce visions of faeries and leprechauns, plus a variety of Otherworld creatures that appear in old Samhain legend. In just about every vintage picture of faeries or elves, there is a picture of a mushroom in it.
Visions of faeries are so strongly associated with mushrooms that the Irish Gaelic slang words for faeries and mushrooms is the same: pookies. A magic mushroom trip has always been said to make the user “go away with the faeries.” Or someone could be “off with the pixies.” And now you know why.
The Irish Celts consumed magic mushrooms at the end of the light half, and they started seeing scary, otherworldly beings. This made the Irish fearful of bad spirits, and they started wearing creepy outfits to scare them away. So there you have it. This is why we dress up when the veil between worlds becomes thin.
In medieval Ireland, Samhain was the principal festival, celebrated with a great assembly at the royal court in Tara, lasting for three days. A bonfire was set alight on the Hill of Tara, which served as a beacon, signalling to people gathered atop hills all across Ireland to light their ritual bonfires. The custom has survived to some extent, and in recent years, some of the old traditions have come back to life.
The Pumpkin Tradition
During Samhain, large turnips were hollowed out, carved with scary faces and placed in windows to ward off evil spirits. As the Irish emigrated into America, their traditions were transmitted to the established population, and blended with American traditions. In North America pumpkins were both readily available and much larger – and easier to carve than turnips. So pumpkins became the star of the show, and the turnips were ditched.
So next time Halloween comes around, you’ll know where the traditions came from. Now it is a worldwide festival, so it must be worth celebrating! Happy Halloween, Gold Coasters!
Lab food: how do we feel about it? Well, soon, there will be 9 billion humans crawling all over this little planet. All of them will want food every day. In fact they will want food three times today. And we are not going to be able to produce enough food for everyone using current methods. So we need to come up with solutions, and fast.
Scientists are making unbelievable headway in trying to feed everyone across the globe. The main thrust of the research is to make food in a lab, rather than in field like we are now. And they are coming up with some wildly promising ideas. While lab food might be treated with suspicion by consumers, with overpopulation and famine looming, we might not get the choice to be such picky eaters. And the good thing about lab food is that animals are not used in the mass-production of our protein needs, which is kinder to the animals, and planet.
Lab Milk
As scientists master making milk in the lab, dairy farms could be scaled down. The land could then be used for other food items that have not yet been conquered by biotech. And that is exactly what is happening. Lab foods are a thing,.
A start-up company called Perfect Day wants to use biotechnology in the lab to make cow’s milk…without using any cows at all. So how do they do it? Instead of having cows do all the work, they make milk with a process similar to craft brewing.
Using yeast and age-old fermentation techniques, Perfect Day can manufacture the very same milk proteins that cows make naturally. Like cows, the yeast needs to graze to make milk proteins. Instead of grass, they feed their yeast sugar from renewable sources. Then they leave it to ferment.
A start-up company called “Perfect Day” uses biotechnology to make cow’s milk…without needing any cows at all.
Like the Real Thing
This age-old process (used to brew beer, leaven bread, and make pickles) transforms sugar into real milk proteins. The result, they say, is a perfect taste, texture, and mouthfeel – with none of the cholesterol or lactose found in cow’s milk.
It has the vitamins and minerals found in cow’s milk, like calcium and vitamin D, plus other powerhouses like omega-3s. And, thanks to the yeast, the “milk” contains the very same protein found in cow’s milk. Then they add a mix of plant-based sugars, fats, and minerals to make a totally new kind of dairy milk without chemicals, hormones, lactose, or other additives.
Think this is far off? You can actually buy the stuff now! Their first batch of lab ice-cream went on sale just this summer, and it sold out! But they are making more, so keep an eyeball on the website for updates!
No Cows
The company says, “Animal-free dairy milk is just like cow’s milk because it’s crafted with real milk proteins – casein and whey – but is made without a single cow. Perfect Day is the first of its kind, and delivers the same delicious taste and texture as cow’s milk, but without the harmful side effects or allergens present in dairy milk. Our process is more humane, eco-friendly, and sustainable than industrial dairy production. We were hungry for a solution that empowers people to help make the world a kinder, greener place without giving up the delicious dairy foods they love.”
The company say that their products are cleaner, greener, and kinder than dairy produced by factory farming. “At scale, crafting Perfect Day could use up to 98% less water, 91% less land, 84% less greenhouse gas emissions, and 65% less energy than typical industrial dairy production. We completely control our process from end to end, which ensures our products are free of the food safety and bacterial contamination risks that come with dairy products. They also have a longer shelf life. But because we use real milk proteins to craft our products, we’re able to achieve the same delicious taste, texture, and versatility of cow’s milk, while being nutritionally superior in every way. All of these ingredients are familiar to your body.”
Moo
The good news is that the milk won’t need pasteurisation, since it is produced in super-clean lab conditions. But there’s more. By changing the recipe a little, they can create milk from other animals, like goats. And, just like normal cows’ milk from dairy farms, the lab milk can be made into cheese and other products. Just like humans had to domesticate cows (from wild aurochs) before we could farm them, this lab-milk process is possible because humans have developed a dairy yeast that can produce milk proteins. If this milk is accepted by consumers, then we really are in the next age of farming.
Manufactured Flesh
A company called Modern Meadow are dabbling in food tech – they are well on their way to producing a printed steak. As far as lab food goes, this must be the holy grail. The concept has been backed by investor and Paypal founder Peter Theil. His philanthropic foundation has coughed up $350,000 to fund the development of a 3D bioprinting process which aims to create an “edible prototype” of a steak. And let’s face it, a steak is a steak, you know it is going to be good, no matter where it comes from.
Manufactured steak is on the way. There’s no such thing as a bad steak, right?
While this is still experimental and a printed steak is still some time away, the possibilities are exciting. Here’s a new spin on that idea that is launching right now. Modern Meadow is working hard to produce leather in the lab. They will do this by 3D-printing it. Sort of. If they pull it off, the process will make leather that is cheaper, safer and more humane than conventional leather.
Leather is being re-imagined to create revolutionary new features without harming animals or the environment.
Leather is being re-imagined to create revolutionary new features without harming animals or the environment.
How to Make Lab Leather
Modern Meadow call themselves a “biofabrication company.” Already their prototypes are hitting the news. The leather they are making is blemish-free, hair-free and fat-free. There are benefits to leather printing other than a more humane world. The land that is now being used to run cattle could be repurposed, or repopulated with native wildlife once again. This could mean the return of creatures on the brink of extinction.
So how does Modern Meadow make this “real” leather in a lab? It uses collagen, protein and other essential building blocks found in animal skin to recreate aspects of traditional leather, including suppleness and breathability, while enabling new properties not possible from animal hide, such as improved strength-to-weight ratio.
“Modern Meadow harnesses the combined power of design, biology and engineering to change the way we think about materials, unlocking the capabilities of nature,” said Andras Forgacs, CEO of Modern Meadow. “Leather, which represents a $100-billion raw material market, has always been prized for its beauty, functionality and enduring status. Today, as a co-product of the meat industry, it is subject to fluctuations in availability, quality, price and growing demand. At Modern Meadow, we’re reimagining this millennia-old material to create revolutionary new features without harming animals or the environment.”
No Waste
Modern Meadow’s biofabricated leather also reduces waste by up to 80% compared to traditional leather. Since leather is the tanned skin of an animal – such as cow, sheep or alligator – biofabricated leather, unlike animal hide, can be produced according to the size and shape required, minimising waste. Moreover, a biofabricated material involves reduced tanning and lower inputs of land, water, energy and chemicals.
Mike Harden is a senior partner at ARTIS Ventures, a company who has invested in the idea. “We take a longterm view, supporting ambitious companies that use science to solve challenging problems. Modern Meadow has exactly what we look for in a company: a talented team tackling a difficult problem with a differentiated approach.”
Lab-Grown Eggs
Eggs are everywhere, and in everything. But a company called Clara Foods say they want to manufacture egg whites in the lab (mostly for baking products) to help take the pressure off the factory farming system of egg production. The company already has had a pile of venture capital thrown at it on the understanding that it will create the world’s first animal-free egg white. They say they are “working towards a disruptive advance in food technology.”
Egg whites will soon be manufactured in the lab, without the need to bother a single chicken.
Clara Foods join a new generation of entrepreneurs, activists and scientists who recognise that the decades old factory farm model cannot sustain the dietary needs of 7 billion people and counting. According to Clara Foods, growing demand for eggs is exerting pressure on hatcheries to improve their efficiencies and outputs. “There is also growing public distaste for the environmental, animal welfare, and health compromises of industrial-scale egg production.”
Clara Foods aims to take the chicken out of the equation. “We’re bringing an egg white to the table that is produced completely animal-free, uses less land and water inputs, while matching the taste, nutritional value, and unique culinary properties of hen-borne egg whites.”
Clara Whites
The product – called Clara Whites – will replace egg whites in more applications than any other egg white substitute. Unlike other replacements on the market, the Clara Whites product works in even the most sensitive products such as angel food cakes, meringues, and macaroons. They say that their baking and binding applications team uses a type pf protein matrix that delivers improved volume, foaming, texture, and tensile strength.
Many companies produce artificial egg whites for baking. Such products can’t be used to make tricky dishes like meringues. But the Clara Whites product can be used just like normal egg whites.
Founders
The company’s founding team are Arturo Elizondo, Dr. David Anchel and Isha Datar. “We were brought together by a shared desire to find a better way. At Clara Foods, we’re re-imagining food – starting with the egg white. Egg whites are a rich source of lean protein. They have no cholesterol, no fat, and practically no carbs. It’s no wonder prices of egg whites have tripled in the last two years. But meeting the growing demand means egg production also becomes more and more wasteful, unethical, and unsustainable. Clara Foods wants to change that.
“Our strategy is to recreate the egg, the same egg we know and love, from the bottom up. By starting at the level of the protein, rather than the chicken, we can make a better egg white for everyone, free of allergens and salmonella, and more sustainable and affordable.”
We are in a new age of food production, and if we are willing to accept that this stuff has been made in a lab, we may just be doing the planet a big favour. Bon Appétit. ■
“Our strategy is to recreate the egg, the same egg we know and love, from the bottom up. By starting at the level of the protein, rather than the chicken, we can make a better egg white for everyone, free of allergens and salmonella, and more sustainable and affordable.”