Day 1: Tuesday 26th

Having audited my activities of yesterday, I have concluded a couple of weaknesses in my daily activities;

• Driving to the gym.  It made sense when dropping the kids at school, but now we're in school holidays, I can ride.
• My staple last-minute dinner cook-up: tuna & tomato pasta.  We try and eat tuna as rarely as possible to minimise our foot print on the ocean, and to reduce our heavy metals intake.  As for the tomato; we composted the last of our own tomatoes over the weekend, and are now using canned Italian tomatoes.  That'll have to change.
• Toilet paper.  Australian recycled.. It still doesn't feel right knowing how much old growth pulp leaves these shores. Hmm...
• Coffee.  This one could be difficult.  PNG and East Timor could be about as local as possible.  Might have to ration my intake.  Ouch!
• Alcoholic beverages.  Cascade Green all the way. 100% carbon offset, low carb., brewed locally, and damn delicious.  You beauty!

Being on Daddy-duty, one is often caught out by bored kids, whom seam to become instantly hungry from time to time.  So, needing to go to the post office, we suited up for unpredictable Autumn weather, and walked into our local village for a meal.  The Foodstore in South Hobart, whilst a little 'grungy', serves excellent food.  We opted for eggs, bacon and sourdough toast.  Sourdough ain't so flash if not served fresh, so I figured it must be local.  (I should check).  Using my local post-office is the supremo no-brainer.

Kids-1 Dad-0

My plan to take my kids to the local farmers 'warehouse' tanked, as, yet again, I underestimated the effect of hungry tummies.

I'd like to suggest this was what kiboshed my turn to cook too, which lead me to our local seafood restaurant for take away F&Cs, but I reckon it was probably more a factor of poor planing on my part.

Another element of poor planing became evident in my failed attempt to ride to the gym late in the afternoon.  Non-use of my bicycle left it with two flattish tyres, and do you think I could find my pump?

I'm going to attribute blame for the days failures upon my children, primarily because they can't defend themselves..  Sole parenting, even just eight hour shifts is a lot harder than one envisages, and extremely tiring.  This is best summed up in a quote from my cousin, whom has just commenced a stint of work in Baghdad;

"I bet Daddy duty is wearing you out!  I can certainly sympathise - I have been getting a lot more sleep with Apaches circling overhead than I ever have with two little girls! "

Day 3: Thursday

We finally made it to the All Organic Farm 'warehouse' this afternoon.  Quite saddened to find no Australian coffee for sale.  I even discovered coffee to have the highest carbon footprint of all non-essential goods.  I elected to not replenish our home supply, in order to perhaps order some from NSW.  (I'm not sure my beautiful wife will find the delay acceptable.) 

The extent of my culinary skills doesn't span much further than several variants of eggs on toast, and roast everything.  As my kids are getting a little tired of eggs, and would probably riot if I served that up for dinner, I elected to cook roast beef and veges tonight.

Now I am aware of the significant footprint our bovine friends have upon the planet, but we do love beef.  So, I found some grass fed eye fillet from Longford, Tasmania.

Most of the vegetables on offer at The Organic Farm are Tasmanian grown, sweet potato being one of the exceptions.  We did pickup a local pumpkin, some carrots, broccoli and garlic.

Very little Tasmanian fruit is available this time of year, with the exceptions being apples and and berries.

Amy was most helpful and quite proud of the quality of produce on offer.  Apparently there is a variety of avocado that will grow in Tassie, but is not commercially grown at this stage.  Amy was also kind enough to pin up a printout of the live local web page to entice others to share their stories.

Day 4: Friday

With Daddy-duty over, I had a chance to hunker down and catchup on work.  Predominately being a tele-worker, I reckon I have a minimal carbon footprint when it comes to my vocation.  From time to time I need to be in Sydney. I endeavor to keep this to a minimum and using video-conferencing technology as much as possible.

I am finding that the majority of my challenge week has been focused on food.  Whilst food is a large component of relocalising, there is so much more, and I intend to reach out to my community more.

That said, my wife and I went out for dinner with another couple, whom also moved from Sydney.  We choose Monty's on Montpelier, as the food is excellent, and importantly, they pride themselves on sourcing local seasonal produce.

For mains, I ate a;

navarin of 'Rivendale' (49 km) Boer Goat over braised vegetables in a light stock with crumbled 'Bruny Island' (81 km) feta and fresh herbs

We drank a fabulous sparkling white from the Freycinet Coast (192 km), the 2000 Radenti, to celebrate a pregnancy in the family, then a 2007 Velo Shiraz from the Tamar Valley (200 km).

Great food.

Tomorrow, in lieu of taking the kids to Disneyland, we're going to the South Hobart tip shop to scavenge parts for a billy cart.

Days 5 and 6 : Some several Saturdays later

My youngest and I traipsed up to the tip shop, with a bunch of cardboard and old batteries to be recycled, in search of components for a school holiday billy cart.

We found a children's scooter, and an old kindergarten chair.  These were to be coupled with a cut down hand trolley and a couple of timbre Ikea shelves.

The result was a fast, if somewhat unstable cart suitable for dad and child.

Day 7: Tuesday

It's no secret that I fell off the wagon.  I had presumed a school holiday would simplfiy matters, but quite to the contratry, it did not.  Were we perhaps to stay at home, we may have ventured into our local community a little more.  Unfortunately, for the experiment, we uplifted to our shack in the Huon to avoid the potential Influenza Pandemic, and consequently needed to make the 5-10km trip into town several times over the couple of weeks.

On a good note, as I have expressed previously, undertaking the challenge has focused my attention on my footprint, not in a carbon-guilt fashion, but in a distance-vulnerability sense.  

Indulge me to Segway momentarily;  There is a political correctness to hoisting up ones 'carbon footprint' flag, and in essence that is OK by me, as I believe we are truly amidst actual dangerous anthropomorphic atmospheric change.  But.. there is a confrontationalism that I reject.  I am an anomaly, no doubt about it.  I enjoy most of the fruits of technology and the internal combustion engine.  I imagine I am both an average sample of the Western citizen, and that of a troubled, informed human.  I find myself daily, to be in internal conflict over my footprint, truly regretting the need to cut back, whilst, resenting the movement's 'your either with us, or with the terrorists' attitude.  I rant..

In short, livelocal, and taking the challenge has only reiterated to me, the individual nature of our situation.  I'm no beacon of sustainability, yet I want my sacrifices, as meager as they may be, to make a difference (and possibly inspire others similarly).  The next dad who chooses to share their local experience, will inevitably be different still.  I look forward to reviewing their take on reducing their footprint, and enhancing the security of their family.

And this is the whole point; we're all so different, and so much the same.  We have shared goals, and varying interpretations on how to get there.  Luckily we still have 'calm time' in which to develop our knowledge and community responses.

This encourages me.