Water is the major issue on every Australian farm. Water harvesting and storage earthworks need to be intelligently designed and well implemented in order to meet their primary objective - drought-proofing a property.

Starting December 18th, Milkwood Permaculture are hosting a ground-breaking course designed to enable Australian farmers, landholders and designers an insight into the acclaimed and un-disputed results that are possible with intelligent, sustainable hydrology design.

This three day intensive course will be taught by Geoff Lawton, and will give participants the knowledge to design, construct and understand earthworks that will act as an insurance policy against drought and increase the value of a property by four times.

Geoff Lawton is world renowned for designing effective water solutions in the ecological “badlands”. His practical experience is immense, designing and managing hundreds of complex community projects in such diverse places as Jordan, Mexico, Tanzania, Iraq, Morocco, Vietnam and Kiribati as well as large scale private works in the USA and Australia. His ground-breaking work in the Middle East has seen deserts become living food stores though effective hydrological design.

Geoff is founding director of the acclaimed Permaculture Research Institute, working in more countries and co-ordinating more projects on the ground than any other Permaculture Institute today.

Geoff Lawton's relaxed and informal teaching style ensures students aren't overwhelmed by the theory but his twenty years of experience teaching sustainable farming practice ensures students get the full picture. This 3-day intensive earthworks course will explain how to harvest, direct and retain water on any piece of land, no matter what the rainfall.

The course is hands on with dams and water harvesting elements being constructed on site during the course. Students will see the works at all stages of completion including newly surveyed and recently constructed dams of many types.

The course covers; * Site assessment * Water resource identification * Soil types for construction * Dam types, their strengths and weaknesses * Water harvesting systems, swales, check-dams and gabeons * Earthmoving equipment - bulldozers, scrapers, excavators etc * Surveying your site * Plans and drawings * Engaging contractors * Supervising works .....and much much more

This knowledge is crucial for all landholders who want high levels of water retention on their property, an incredible resource that flows on to improved pastures, better cropping, effective beneficial ecosystems and soil carbon sequestration.

The course will be held on Milkwood Permaculture's new demonstration site, south of Mudgee in the Central West of NSW.