About Us, Faculty and Venue
Permaculture College Australia Team
Permaculture College Australia FACILITATORS
The Permaculture College Australia faculty is a dynamic team of qualified and highly experienced permaculture practitioners representing a diverse range of experience and skills.
Lead by Robyn Francis, regarded internationally as one of permaculture’s leading educators and pioneers, the team is committed to quality training in a supportive community environment. The core team of trainers are supported by a bioregional network of local specialists, practitioners, projects, enterprises and organisations involved in all aspects of permaculture, organics, sustainability and community development. Read on for our educators bios and profiles.
MEET THE TEAM
Robyn Francis
Award-winning international permaculture pioneer, designer, educator, presenter and innovator, PCA’s principal tutor draws on four decades of permaculture work throughout Australia and overseas. Robyn was founding director Permaculture International Ltd (PIL) in 1987, Permaculture Education 1989, designer and creator of Djanbung Gardens permaculture education centre and living Learn-scape and founder of Permaculture College Australia Inc. Robyn was a member of the original National Reference Group which developed the Accredited Permaculture Training™ (APT) 2003-03 and continues to play an important role in the national APT committee and advisory group.
Since completing her PDC in 1983, Robyn Francis has worked as an educator and consultant throughout Australia and in New Zealand, India, Indonesia, Cuba, Malaysia, Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Iceland, Germany, France and USA on diverse projects including domestic and public edible landscapes, ecological restoration, landuse planning, urban & rural ecovillage design, regional & social planning, community development & facilitation, with government and corporate clients, NGO’s, community groups, indigenous communities and private clients.
Robyn has taught 160 PDC’s, over 100 advanced courses, and 14 years of accredited permaculture vocational training (Certificates III & IV and Diploma of Permaculture), plus countless workshops and masterclasses, making her one of permaculture’s most experienced educators and trainers.
Qualifications: Diploma of Permaculture (APT/AQF, Hortus Aus), Cert IV in Training and Assessment, Cert IV AWT, APT-ATR, Permaculture Institute Diploma of Permaculture Design.
Annaliese Hordern
Annaliese is an inspiring, passionate Permaculture educator, committed to evolving inclusive and interactive teaching styles, fostered by some of the great Permaculture pioneers. She is excited by curriculumm development and designing new learning tools! Annaliese has lived amongst numerous communities globally, many off the grid, contributing to edible gardens, food forests, wildlife corridors, building structures, composting toilets and water harvesting, ecovillage development and localising food initiatives.
“I look to pre-industrial cultural ways of being, to blend with today’s technologies, towards the vision of tomorrow”.
Qualifications: Bachelor of Applied Science (Environmental Resource Management), Cert IV in Training and Assessment, Permaculture Design Course (x3), Teacher Training with Rosemary Morrow (x2) and Robyn Francis, Dynamic Groups with Robin Clayfield, Advanced Permaculture Principles with David Holmgren, Sustainable Aid with Geoff Lawton and with Robyn Francis.
Annaliese joined the PCA (Permaculture College Australia) training team in 2012, teaching in PDCs and as support trainer for advanced courses with Robyn Francis.
Angela Skehan
Angela Skehan is a local organic farmer and market gardener sharing a lifetime of experience in vegetable gardening, 15 years as a commercial market gardener and has been Certified Organic since 2008. Her specialist crops include ginger, turmeric, garlic and salad greens. Angela lives on an intentional community in the Tuntable valley.
Angela is passionate about the environment and understanding and caring for the soil as the foundation for healthy food. Her enthusiasm, grounded in science and practical experience, is directed to empowering people to grow their own to achieve a healthy level of food self-reliance. Angela teaches soil, organic gardening, domestic and commercial food production for PCA in the PDC, internships and specialist courses at Djanbung Gardens. She is available to conduct workshops and short courses in the NSW Northern Rivers region.
Angela also works as a consultant for local landholders developing Whole Farm Plans integrating the best of sustainable agriculture, organic production techniques and permaculture design and blending time tested traditional and new technologies. Angela also consults on organic market gardening, soil testing and organic remediation.
Qualifications: PDC, Cert IV in Agriculture Organic Production, Associate Diploma of Applied Science.
Janelle Schafer
Permaculture teacher, designer & practitioner, with a background in fine arts and horticulture, Janelle has been teaching at Djanbung Gardens for 23 years. She completed her PDC in 1991 with Bill Mollison and Jude Fanton and has been developing her permaculture gardens at Tuntable Ck over the past 20 years. Rich in both teaching and practical experience, Janelle was a trainer/assessor in the APT Cert III and Cert IV in Permaculture courses with PCA for 11 years. Janelle has served as a director for Permaculture International Ltd and on the PermaFund Committee, and is currently the treasurer and administration manager for Permaculture College Australia Inc. Janelle worked on the National Review Committee for the Accredited Permaculture Training in 2007.
Janelle also works as a permaculture design consultant for urban and rural properties, and conducts workshops and accredited training in the NSW northern rivers area . Her specialist areas include Organic Integrated Pest & Weed Management, food forests and orchards, bushfoods and native forest regeneration, permaculture water systems, design for fire and natural disaster and Occupational Health and Safety (OH&S). Janelle is also passionate about natural dyeing and conducts workshops in this traditional art.
Qualifications: PDC, Certificate IV in Permaculture (APT-PCA),Certificate IV in Assessment and Workplace Training, Diploma of Management, Diploma of Conservation and Land Management, APT-ATR, St John’s Cross First Aid Certificate, Certificate of Horticulture, Bachelor of Science.
Fionn Quinlan
Fionn has been actively involved in permaculture for over a decade. Along with his partner Laura Whitley, he has designed and implemented landscapes in France, Wales, England and Australia. His work as a sociological and environmental educator has taken him to Ghana, India, Cambodia, throughout the UK and all around Australia.
He and Laura now live in The Channon where they steward 25 acres of land on Terania Creek, run courses on regenerative living and raise a family. Fionn and Laura run their own consultancy and design business, have co-facilitated many Permaculture Design Certificates (PDCs), and run a fantastically irregular ‘home-bush-school’. Other teachers Fionn has worked with on PDCs with include Geoff Lawton, Graham Bell, Tom Kendall and David ‘Doc’ Spicer. Fionn is employed by the NSW department of education as an environmental educator at the Dorroughby Environmental Education Centre and Tuntable Falls Community School.
Qualifications: PDC, Masters of Sociology (International Development), Graduate Diploma of Education, Certificate IV in Permaculture, Advanced Principles with David Holmgren, Reading Landscapes with David Holmgren, Forestry in Practice with Darren Doherty, Syntropic Agriculture with Namaste Messerschmidt (x 2), The eight-way framework of Aboriginal Pedagogy.
Mark Pickard
Mark Pickard lives with his wife on a rural property in the Gold Coast hinterland where he is developing a small horticultural enterprise based on permaculture philosophy and practices. He gained his PDC and Cert IV Permaculture at Djanbung Gardens under Robyn Francis in 2011.
Since then he has been committed to raising permaculture’s profile across a range of mainstream Australian industries and local government bodies by highlighting the business opportunities permaculture can enable.
He holds Cert IV TAE in training and assessment and is very experienced in developing and delivering training in the adult learning environment. Mark has a deep interest in sustainable water systems and appropriate technologies.
Sarah Boulle
Sarah is an educator, and permaculturalist based in Bundjalung country on the East Coast of Australia. She spent many years living and working abroad in International Disaster Recovery, and engaging in Permaculture projects. She coordinated the children’s program for the International Permaculture Convergence in India (2017), and for the Thailand Permaculture Convergence (2016).
Sarah has a Certificate IV in Permaculture, and is a course facilitator for Rosemary Morrow’s Permaculture Teacher Training. She combines her international aid and teaching experience, with her permaculture passion to work as a course facilitator for Permaculture for Refugees.
Cerise Acacia
Since completing her first permaculture course with PCA at the age of 17, Cerise has had over 10 years experience managing organic market gardens, orchards and food forests in both commercial and domestic settings. Her work as a farmer, consultant and permaculture educator has taken her around Australia, working in a broad range of contexts to strengthen local food sovereignty, from remote indigenous communities to urban farms, before settling in the Nimbin Valley.
Cerise and her family now care for 300 acres of land in this beautiful valley, regenerating native ecology and managing forests for food, timber and fuel production. Cerise and her partner manage a one-acre food forest plot where they employ syntropic agroforestry techniques to grow their families food using minimal inputs. A passionate homesteader, Cerise uses the abundance to make flours, ferments, preserves, pastas, icecreams and more, all whilst homeschooling her young children. She regularly teaches courses and workshops, sharing her knowledge and skills in resilient food growing and subsistence homesteading.
Qualifications: Cert III in Permaculture, Cert IV in Training and Assessment, Living Agroecology, Natural Sequence Farming
Linda Woodrow
Linda is an Permaculture icon in Australia and internationally. Her 1996 book “The Permaculture Home Garden” introduced Permaculture to innumerable homes, and her recent novel “470” has offered an extraordinarily prescient analysis of the impacts of climate change.
Her blog, the Witches Kitchen, reflects her decades of experience as a fully engaged, practicing permie. Linda is a guest teacher for PCA on urban permaculture.