Page 2291 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 9 May 2012
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The drivers behind introducing parkrun to Canberra were Russ and Jessica Jefferys, who moved to Canberra from the UK this year. I commend and thank them for their initiative and for bringing the great concept and philosophy to our city. As reported in the Canberra Times, Russ Jefferys commended Canberra as being a “phenomenal place to run”, a sentiment I fully agree with.
One aspect of the parkrun concept is the streamlined event management and participant statistics. After registering on the website, each athlete can print off their own barcode which is scanned at the completion of a run. That process is used to collate and publish event and competitor information on the parkrun website. As of this week, 143 events have taken place in Australia, with 3,634 participants running 66,445 kilometres over 13,289 runs. Around the world there have been 10,018 events with 172,377 runs over an aggregate of 63 years, 263 days, four hours, 23 minutes and 47 seconds. Many runners love capturing data of their efforts, and parkrun certainly meets that desire.
I would like to acknowledge Tim Obery and Tim Gordon for their leadership of parkrun in Australia. Whilst the events are free, there are sponsors that make parkrun possible and I would like to thank Adidas for their global partnership. Other businesses keen to partner with parkrun should visit their website. For more information about how to participate in parkrun or to find out more, I encourage members to visit www.parkrun.com.au.
International Permaculture Day
International Composting Awareness Week
MS LE COUTEUR (Molonglo) (6.19): I rise today to talk about two very important things. Last Sunday, 6 May, was International Permaculture Day and this week I believe is International Composting Awareness Week.
I must admit I had not heard of international compost week before it was brought to my attention, but both of these things are very important because we all need food; without food, no people. Compost and permaculture of course are relevant to not only urban agriculture but all agriculture.
Since last century I am actually the proud holder of a permaculture design certificate. This was from a week-long course on designing permaculture gardens, farms or whatever. There is a whole heap of principles. Permaculture stands for permanent agriculture. It is about having agriculture in a way that it can work permanently, not for just one year or five years, but looking to 50 years, 100 years, 1,000 years, for ways that will be sustainable in the long term. We talked about sustainability economically, environmentally and socially.
This is the first year of International Permaculture Day. It had previously been an Australian day but now has become an international day and there were events held in 20 countries including the US, Chile, Turkey, Cameroon, Spain, the UK and Morocco.
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