John Davis
November 9, 2010
This is about veg*ism in Australia and New Zealand, but should be useful to activists elsewhere as we can all learn a lot from what is happening in other countries.
Before my recent visit to Australia (entirely self-funded, NOT paid for by IVU!) I was looking through some stats for the IVU website, which showed an unexpectedly high number of visitors from Australia.
When I broke it down into the cities that were sending the most visitors to ivu.org it showed that four of the top ten were in Australia. So there were clearly a lot of people down under finding something useful on the website, but we seemed to have little direct contact with them, and clearly that needed to improve.
My general impression, as an outsider, was of several vegetarian societies around Australia which had been operating for many years, but some were now just 'ticking over'. The more dynamic action seemed to be coming from the vegans, both groups and individuals, and I wanted to find out more about them.
I couldn't visit everywhere in such a big country, but had a week of meeting veg groups in Sydney and Canberra, and gave a talk to local groups in each city, but first I was invited to a vegan party, over a pub, in Sydney. I went with Mark Berriman, president of the Australian Vegetarian Society (www.veg-soc.org), who had kindly provided me with accommodation during my stay, and I met up with a lot of other great people.
These included Greg McFarlane, president of the NSW Vegan Society (www.vegansocietynsw.com) - the two societies have frequent joint gatherings which is great to see happening as we're all on the same path. Also Katrina Fox, vegan journalist (www.katrinafox.com), Aaron Scheibner, vegan film-maker (www.adelicatebalance.com.au), and so many more that it's difficult to remember them all. One common link is the excellent Vegan Voice magazine edited by Sienna Blake in Nimbin, who I didn't get to meet in person but we did make contact while I was there, and I was able to read a couple of recent issues.
The next evening I gave a talk, followed by some lively discussion, organised by Greg in a yoga centre with most people sitting on the floor. This was the one about how the first people to call themselves 'vegetarian' were actually completely vegan:
At the vegan party I briefly met Sundara DeSilva, but we met up again a few days later in Canberra where he was setting up the projector for my talk on 'Veg*ism from a World Perspective' for the ACT vegsoc (=Australian Capital Territory, Canberra -www.vegetariansociety.org.au) - this one in a co-operative food store, they do seem to like unusual venues in Australia. I was staying there with Claire Ede, secretary of the ACT vegsoc, and her husband Steve, both 3rd generation life veg*ns.
That gave Sundara and me more time to get to know each other, and I realised that he could be just the guy we needed to help IVU keep in touch with what was happening in the region.
A couple of days later we met again, with Claire, Steve, and several others, at the AuLac Chinese vegan restaurant in Canberra, and were well on the way to Sundara joining the IVU team (that's him on the right, with some friends).
Canberra has something of a track record in helping IVU - our first facebook group was set up by Edgar Crook, author of the the History of Vegetarianism in Australia (www.ivu.org/history/australia); and we were put on Twitter by long-time IVU Patron, Andrew Freeman (twitter.com/andrewrfreeman/ivu). I had the pleasure of meeting them both face-to-face for the first time in Canberra, and of learning a lot more from Edgar about the history.
Sundara is, in my experience, unusual among Oz veg*ns in taking an equal interest in veg events all over the country. It is difficult for others as the big cities are separated by vast expanses of emptiness, and it's just as easy these days for someone in Melbourne to communicate with London or New York as it is with Sydney.
But in Sundara we have someone who travels around the country a lot on his IT business interests, and has made a point of getting to know veg activists everywhere he goes, and especially making a lot of use of meetup.com to bring people together in many places (see more at: www.meetup.com/Canberra-Veg-Events/members/11695707/ ).
In January he will also start visiting New Zealand and meeting veg*ns there too. So after discussions with Susianto, the IVU Regional Coordinator for Asia-Pacific, based in Indonesia, we proposed that Sundara join the the IVU International Council as 'IVU Liaison Officer for Australasia', and this has now been agreed by the full council.
We hope that veg groups and activists across Oz/NZ will welcome Sundara when he's in your area, and make the most his help in improving connections with veg*ns worldwide.
