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A New Breed of Farmers (Four Corners, 1971) Transcript and Commentary:

(This is a full transcript of the programme; the ellipses used are designed to signal short breaks and faltering in the dialogue.)

The purpose of this transcript and my commentary is firstly to analyse the content from a historical perspective, regarding organic farming communities in NSW; and secondly to more clearly observe the film-makers style and point-of-view, particularly the empathetic content and tone of the Narrator, along with the open, almost too innocent representation of the interviewees, which included Fred Robinson (as a leader/prophet) and me as a practitioner in the bio-dynamic movement of the time.
Narrator: Many farmers in Australia today are leaving the land because they cant make ends meet. But a new and different breed of farmer is emerging. They believe in a community life centred round the farm, in a way of living that insures no great financial burden. They also oppose the use of pesticides and chemical fertilisers, which they say increase their costs and ruin the soil. They feel that unless a whole new concept of farming is developed, a country even as rich in resources as Australia will be unable to feed its population by the end of this decade. One of them is Fred Robinson who lives in Western Australia. He is currently visiting communal farms around Australia, hoping to share his knowledge about natural and organic farming.

It is quite possible that Fred Robinson was the only one who actually had the end of the decade in mind. All of us were concerned, but did not have the same timeline urgency which Fred projected. He often spoke for a much larger group of people than he actually represented. The narrator presents Fred here as a travelling lecturer on organic farming, speaking to an almost organised group of communal farms whereas he was actually seen as a cool, cosmic consultant who delivered raves to a disorganised gaggle of groups.
Fred Robinson: Yes I have been farming for a considerable time. It must be 40 years or more before I first started farming. I was ruined completely 40 years ago in the last Depression, as most farmers were, and as most farmers are being ruined today. The answer is very, very simple; there is

2 really no world problem at all; there is simply a lack of information. Narrator: Another man with a lot of information is Jim Leacock Jim Leacock: I have been living at Glenfield for 52 years just on 52 years. Narrator: Jim is 92 years old Jim Leacock: It is an old historic farm in NSW and was quite suitable for the purpose I wanted: to supply milk raw milk to the city of Sydney. Narrator: Glenfield is about 20 miles from Sydney. It has a number of buildings and its 14 acres is divided into a number of areas, for agriculture, pasture and recreation. Jim Leacock: I gave up daily farming a few years ago, having had over 60 odd years of it, I thought it was time to make a break. I converted the whole property into a cooperative community settlement.

As recorded in my autohistory chapter, Jim Leacock had been to visit me a number of times. I had also been to Glenfield, and some of the members had made return visits to Pine Grove. I had introduced Jim Leacock and the members of Glenfield Community to the film-makers, believing they would make good subjects for the film. Charlie Bowers turned out to be an excellent subject:
Narration: At Present there are 14 people living at Glenfield Farm; each of them have different reasons for living there. Charlie Bowers is in charge of Agriculture: Charlie Bowers: I come from Sydney and this is my area. I came back here to do the thing I wanted to do. I am living on this farm as an experiment in a way; but an experiment I think is very important. Narrator: Jan Hooft is a young man who left Adelaide only 8 weeks ago. Hes just started on the farm. All his life he has lived in the city. Jan Hooft: I prefer living on the farm because its closer to the reality of life. I mean you learn more about the people you live with, you have a closer relationship ... well with anybody that comes to visit. Narrator: Another communal enterprise in NSW is called Werona. Edward Stanton, Evelyn Spenser and her 4 year old adopted daughter, Rachael, live there as tenants. In separate households on one hundred acres of farm and native bushland

3 they cooperatively farm the land and act as caretakers for the property. Evelyn Spenser: The word Werona is an Aboriginal word meaning place of peace. Edward Stanton: The property was acquired about 2 years ago by the Society of Friends who were mainly drawn together at the request of myself and a few others who were interested in communal living. Narration: Evelyn, like many people who have lived their entire life in the cities and longed for a more peaceful way of life was initially fearful of country living: Evelyn Spenser: Yes. I was born in London and lived all my life in the Greater London area. When I came to Australia I came straight to Sydney and continued the sort of work I have always done in an office, and in fact, if I ever did go through the country and saw an isolated house here or there I used to wonder how anyone could possibly live there What they do there? Charlie Bowers: Some of the reasons Ive gone back to farming are that I experienced the terribly enclosed and confining life that life in a city urban society holds. I was in the professional world and involved with professional people and I saw here people who were, by Australian and world standards, very well off financially, but they were so incredibly unhappy because they were so confined; and what they were doing was not natural to them. They had so little freedom that their whole way of life was designed for them beforehand by the system that they were working in. Jan Hooft: Get up and go to work and go home and go to bed to get up and go to work etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I mean this makes people neurotic and all sorts of funny things. Charlie Bowers: I think we have seen too much of people being packaged and put in a position where theyre working in a factory and never see where their food comes from and never see the results of their work and its destroying them. They are becoming unthinking automatons.

The film-maker, by using the impassioned plea of a participant, is building the case of those participants honouring their motivations and their involvement in the documentary. It is clear that this documentary is recording the participants stories, rather than being a vehicle for the story of the film-makers. To that extent the film is a piece of social history. While allowing the humorous proposition made by Hooft, the young long haired hippie participant, the content is taken seriously. The participants idea of a treadmill existence is fairly represented. The joke is with him rather than against him.

4 Evelyn Spenser: I think that Rachael is very lucky to be brought up on a farm. She can see how we work and how things grow. She learnt for the first time where milk comes from; that eggs are laid and they dont grow in the boxes. Narrator: Like the sophisticated city dweller, the new breed of farmer is very aware of the many problems in the world around us. But, unlike the majority of city dwellers, they are making a concerted effort to correct them. They believe, for instance, that they must begin by correcting the way man misuses his resources. Charlie Bowers: And we are as much as the United States destroying our environment; are destroying and using our resources at such a rapid rate that within a very few years there will be nothing left to support even the number of people we have here and this is why we have got to find alternatives. I have no easy solutions. No one has any easy solutions to this problem. But it is a problem and this is what I think people have got to realise ... they have got to realise that we are living on the edge. Fred Robinson: If we do not take constructive action in this direction then the obvious collapse of the whole world system is becoming evident even to the man in the street, let alone to the ecological experts. Barry Commoner, one of the leading ecological scientists in the world, has said that if we continue in the way we are going this planet will be uninhabitable by the end of this decade.

Fred had always kept abreast of the ecological news and read most of the new books about environmental degradation. He would often quote from an article by Barry Commoner or read a section of Paul R. Ehrlichs The Population Bomb (1968). This selective quoting added to his credibility, and spoke of his genuine engagement with these issues.
Charlie Bowers: I dont think we should be pessimistic about this. I think that all we can do is strive and find solutions.

Here the filmmaker has simply presented another largely supportive view. Freds more dramatic and final radical view is set against Charlies but not in an antagonistic manner.
Narrator: Rachael Carson in her book The Silent Spring tells of how the pesticide industry developed out of the chemical laboratories of World War II, and were found to be effective killers of insects but no one had investigated their effects on soil, water or wildlife or even on man himself.

This sort of information reflects material Fred often supplied to his interviewees for use in their programmes. While I cant be sure that Fred supplied them with information on the

Carson book, it is highly likely he drew their attention to it. Fred actively promoted conspiratorial themesespecially when they came from reputable sources like Carson. He usually had Gestetner copies of pages of books which he could hand out when appropriate or inappropriate.
Fred Robinson: If we do not throw the Chemicalised Society to one side and realise what the alternative society has to offer, well then we must just flounder along and flounder along as the world is doing at the present moment. You have only got to ask in the right quarters today where organic farming is concerned and you will quickly get all the information necessary to go back to nature and start from scratch. Narrator: One of the suggested answers all of these people have in common to the use of chemicals is organic farming. Fred Robinson: The man that decides to go in for organic farming immediately comes into a different vibration or a different concept of life all together. Edward Stanton: I used to look at organic farming magazines that came my way and I felt that this was something that really deserved a practical application or at least a trial; and so I visited a number of farms where organic farming was actually practised and I was certainly impressed by some of the results I saw. We use a system of biodynamic farming which is somewhat akin to organic farming it goes a few stages further. Stephen Carthew: Its a type of gardening that takes into account the bio meaning soil and dynamic meaning cosmos. So they use the forces of the soil (the dialogue fades underneath narration) Narrator: Stephen Carthew is a biodynamic gardener who uses the principle of biodynamic farming to produce all of his own food needs.

The hyperbole in this programme favours the intentions of the participants. I was not producing all my food needs but most of them.
Stephen Carthew: Organic gardening so often just concentrates on the soil. They dont take into account the forces of the cosmos: the elements in the air the leaf takes in; the importance of warmth and sun; the importance of the different plants in their relationship to each other within the garden. There is such a thing as companion planting, where you have a plant growing next to another plant, making that plant grow more luxuriantly and it will keep away pests. If I grow sage next to my cabbages, my cabbages will not suffer from the white cabbage butterfly. I am not interested in monoculture. If one has monoculture; if one has an acre of cabbages, then

6 one has an acre of white cabbage butterfly its so obvious. In the bushland we have our leguminous plants growing next to another plant and there is a balance. But as soon as we cut that down and dont introduce another ecological system another balance well then we are open to all sorts of problems because we havent got a balance.

The earnestness with which my almost scientifically skewed persona expounds on biodynamic gardening demonstrates the influence of my Bob Williams one of the founder of the biodynamic movement in Australia. My sincere-biodynamic-student-selfprior to the input of Fred Robinsonis in the ascendency in this interview.
Narrator: But it is not the ecological balance that these farmers worry about. Of equal importance to them is the balance between man and nature. Fred Robinson: It is entirely up to the young people of today to set the example of how they can get back to nature and help to restore the balance.

Freds insistence that only the next generation us young people were the ones to change the world, was probably the most telling and convincing of Freds propositions. The idea that if we didnt do something then no one else would pushed us towards this mammoth undertaking we knew our parents generation would not do it. Although Fred Robinson may have gone too far in many of his conclusions, ecologically speaking he was fifty years ahead of his time, providing answers that are today being more and more accepted. He had been warning the public about ecological issues since the early 1950s, after he left the Rosicrucian Order of the Aquarians.
Charlie Bowers: Our experiment on the farm here is interesting because in the few months I have been here out of a wilderness it was when I arrived we have ploughed up the land and have been growing things. I have had much help from outside groups in doing this. Mostly I have had groups of young people from the city the inner city mainly who have been coming down and staying the weekend, living out. For most of them it is the first time they have had their hands in the soil, planting corn and other things and seeing the results. The excitement and fulfilment they get from this is so delightful for me to see. I think that people have got to be shown these simple, natural things again.

Charlie Bowers discourse here is a precursor to that of Stephanie Alexanders movement in Australia in conjunction with schoolswhere growing vegetables and fruits is connected to the Slow Food movement.

7 Narrator: To them its a matter of how far the balance of nature has been upset when the simple and natural things appear complex. Edward Stanton: We have quite a lot of wood which is burnt in our fire in the cottage; and since the wood ash that is left is a very valuable source of potash, which is an essential ingredient in any type of farming, we like to use it almost immediately, before the wind blows it away. Fruits are particularly glad of it, and it also helps plants to resist disease. The manure we collect from the livestock is mixed with bracken and turned into compost heaps and allowed to decompose for several months. The complete heap is covered with a few inches of soil to maintain the goodness, without being washed away and without the sun exhausting the heap. Evelyn Spencer: When there is wet weather, we often take advantage of that time being unable to work out in the open of doing some of the chores that need to be done such as making the concrete. We need a number of concrete blocks to be used for the walls in the various structures we put up. So we work undercover in the tractor shed, and we use the local sand that comes naturally after rain, and make our own concrete. We have a little mould so that we can make the regular blocks; and today for example we mixed up some cement to level out the base for the beehives. Edward Stanton: Well I see bees as being quite a big part of Werona. On the agricultural side, there is quite a large variety of trees and vegetation which come out in flower over a wide period of the year. In fact I hardly know one week in the year when there isnt something out in flower. I think it is a shame not to make use of this. So last year we embarked on a colony of bees. We purchased three frames and a queen with worker bees; they have multiplied very quickly and produced a nice supply of honey during the first year. This coming spring we hope to get a further colony from the same supplier. We are very happy they were such a quite breed of bees. I think we have only received about 3 or 4 stings since we have had them, and these were probably due to our negligence or inexperience, rather than their badtemperedness.

The above section detailing the practical outworking of the philosophies espoused earlier, reveals how important praxis was at that time in the culture. Fred differed from most new age teachers because he insisted that knowledge needed to be used in practice in a communal setting Fred was no armchair preacher, philosopher or prophet. This was most appealing to the counter-culturalists of the time, who were super-conscious of hypocrisy.
Narrator: Drawing on the lessons of nature as they see them and the experiences of their daily life the communal farmer has applied his new found knowledge to his relationship with

8 people, and as a result has formulated a different outlook towards society: Fred Robinson: To work with nature is a great joy. Ive been organic farming and working my own society barter and such like for long enough to know the health and the joy of doing just that. It is a beautiful, simple alternative to the terrible complicated confusion of today, which is becoming worse almost day by day. Charlie Bowers: I feel that an experiment as we are running here in organic gardening, in growing food to support a small community is the sort of thing that all of us have got to be eventually doing.

Used as an example of what Fred had been talking about, Bowers complements Freds message, as the community did only a year or so later. Freds message without the prototype model was far less effective than it became during the fifteen years of the Brotherhoods functioning, when the theory and praxis matched each othereven with the relational challenges we experienced.
Narrator: While no one would claim that their methods are a successful alternative towards mass produced food, most members of the farms believe that their way of life offers the seeds to an alternative society and some have apparently already found it: Fred Robinson: The real mature young hippie that I have been encountering up in Northern Queensland and down the coast; they have awoken to this, and they are making strenuous efforts to form an alternative society that is really cooperating with and understanding nature; and working hand in glove with nature not continually upsetting the balance of nature. Charlie Bowers: The main thing that I feel I need to do is to show other people that it is possible to do their own thing to get back to producing their own requirements because I think in a very short time we are all going to need be to able to do this. I also feel that for the wholeness of a person for his completeness he has got to get back to this way of living. Evelyn Spenser: I find that the harder we work the more we enjoy the work. I know very often we have been flat out during the day, and this is just the time when I really feel that I am doing something satisfying and fulfilling; and its really good in the evening when I think over all the tasks I have got through and feel that I have accomplished something. Although my day here starts much earlier than it ever did in town, I really look forward to the start of the day. I really cant wait till the start of each day. Although I am working hard from dawn until the evening its such a wonderful way to spend

9 the day I cant think of any other existence that could give me so much satisfaction. Narrator: This way of for better living but live now will benefit they achieve now in a large way by nations. life holds for them not only solutions great expectations that the way they those who will live in the future. What small way may someday be achieved in a

Evelyn Spenser: Yes, I hope too that we will be joined by some other people, because everyone has something else to offer and new ways of looking at things. People who come can learn from the mistakes we have made here and from some of our successes. And I hope that people who will live here in the years to come will enjoy the trees we have planted and the places we have helped to create. I hope this will be a place of peace for many, many years to come.

The narration reflects the hopes of the participants and is a sympathetic and almost wholly positive depiction of the movement. The film has portrayed Fred Robinson as an enthusiastic elder statesman of a cultural movement, which he is simultaneously researching and encouraging rather than as a charlatan pied-piper, a representation that was to come in the mid 1970s. No mention of the word guru is made; and both he and his ideas are represented fairly, and without the irony or the ambivalence the media adopted after Jonestown.
Narrator: Organic farming and the concepts espoused by these people are not new. Rejecting organised society, they live an uncomplicated life. They plead the cause of simplicity and nature as mans only way to keep this earth habitable. In search of a new breed of farmer we discovered a new breed of people [Italics mine]. They didnt live behind locked doors. They had none of the comforts of people who live in the cities. They worked from dawn till dusk without ever seeming to tire. They preach a gospel of love and truth. Through getting people together they hope that our world will change for the better. All of them find hope in the youth of today. All of them think that the world has to change dramatically in order to survive the problems that it is facing.

There had been no connection between the Manson groups massacre (1969) and the alternative movement in Australia. Interestingly Fred used Charles Manson as an ongoing allegory in his speaking: If Charles Manson had been bought up from childhood by a loving family in a pure environment by a stream, you may have heard about him as a great reformer, instead of a deluded deranged murderer. Fred had become an advocate of nurture.

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The concept of the new breed of person is a dominant theme in the programme. The filmmakers unabashedly focus on the positive values and actions (theory and praxis) taken by the adherents to the movement. The narrator clearly appreciates the dedicated demonstration of this uncomplicated alternative. The filmmaker, looking to make an honest film, fairly represents the people in the communal movement of the time on their own terms. This filmmaker gives Fred Robinson, the first participant, the last words to conclude the programme:
Fred Robinson: The truth for the first time in the history of this planet is available to all who seek and ask, no matter what it is about; from pollution; the point-of-view of organic gardening; from the point-of-view of anything whereby man can make this a heaven upon earth instead of a hell upon earth.

While Fred had been edited to keep him on the track, his perspective had not been manipulated by the filmmakers. The organic gardening movement, and this new breed of farmers starting communities, were represented fairly. The word hippie is not used except by Fred, and then positively. A respectful tone is employed. While not an exciting or dramatic documentary, it does inform, and it does tell a story honestly. There is little emplotment of negative stereotyping or a pandering to the then largely sceptical views about either organic gardening or hippie communes that were receiving much press at the time. The film is transparent and ethically produced; but then it was 1971 and the ABC had not yet discovered docudramas.