Visiting Danthonia community

As we were on our way to Inverell to visit Melissa's family, I saw the sign to Danthonia community on the highway.

It is one of the Bruderhof communities throughout the world and the only one in Australia. I was intrigued to visit and meet with people there as I had read about them during my studies. They are part of a group of Christian communities founded in 1920. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruderhof_Communities] For more info.

After a email introduction there was a warm welcome invitation. We had a two day window in our travels and arranged to visit.

Immediately upon arriving and hello with our host Johannes (who was the farm manager) we were invited to a community meal... with the whole community. Their midday shared meal is one of the important moments central to the community.

A community of 200 or so people living, sharing land, working together in multiple enterprises, living from a shared purse among other things is a remarkable achievement. More so that it has occurred this way for decades and in my learned view of communities, very successful in many aspects. The central core is the Faith in Jesus as part of every aspect of community life.

My view on spirituality is inclusive and expansive of all religions and belief systems. The community are founded upon the central faith of Jesus as being whole. I respect that and felt respected in our view too. I could imagine that people who were not familiar with religious life may be challenged to understand the dedication that a living in a religious community requires.

We worked in the very fertile vegetable garden picking cabbages that supplies nearly all of the horticultural produce for the community (and at times excess is able to be sold on road side stall). They are practicing regenerative agriculture practices across their vegetable, vineyard, fruit orchards, cattle and pig pastures. All done without agricultural chemicals and generating income as well. Inspiring to say the least. This is a wonderful boost to my interest in regenerative agriculture studies.

We were invited to evening meals and breakfast with families and hosted in a warm comfy bed within the family houses. Here we are in front of one of the houses (there are multiple families and generations living in harmony in each - a bit different to the average Aussie family living in large separated dwellings and hardly seeing their relatives).

After many discussions I offered to give a presentation about the communities that I researched during PhD studies to community members. It was good to be in the saddle of presenting again and 25 interested people shared their questions of other communities and networks.

While only a short visit, it was very inspiring about what works when a community of people commit to a central philosophy over the long term. Perhaps many families, other communities and organisations could learn a lot from them.

We'll stay in touch and likely that we'll visit again in the future during the big circle around Australia.

If you are interested to visit, make contact and see where it goes. I know that you will learn a lot, be inspired and also meet some very loving people.