Jagera

Jagera, (pronounced jag-ee-ra) is named after the beautiful foam bark tree, an important local rainforest regeneration pioneer and traditional resource of the Yaegl people. 

Join Us

We are a diverse group of like hearted people co-creating a small community title ecovillage using permaculture principles and design within Maclean township, in the Yamba hinterland 20 minutes drive from the beach. In doing so we are modelling a resilient & sustainable way of living for the future.

Our vision is to live with a small ecological & resource use footprint by practising deep adaptation and regenerative lifestyles. We actively care for the Earth & contribute to our wider community & culture. Our community doesn’t end at the boundaries of our land; we are a hub for like-hearted folk in the Clarence Valley, running regular gatherings – movie nights, music, arts, and sustainability events.

My Journey to Jagera Ecocommunity

I arrived nearly a year ago, my tiny house and I, like a snail leaving a silver trail, weaving its way slowly up the gravel road towards Foresthaven. I’d been asking myself some hard questions in the 4 years before the move, since the Black Summer bushfires of 2019-2020 that devastated 19 million hectares over large swathes of southern and eastern Australian states. How do I want to live in these times of increasing climate chaos? What do I want to live for? Who do I want to become in order to live these values and this life I desire? And with whom? Jagera ecocommunity is a natural choice for me: small scale, lower entry costs and joining with wise elders, more experienced communitarians than I, at a grassroots level. So far, we number 6 people and I’ve arrived at a stage in its development where construction of the shared infrastructure for homesite lots and community buildings is imminent.

My tiny house is now happily nested into the forested hillside (with a fire buffer) as though it’s always been there, within cooee distance of 3 other homes and walking distance to the township of Maclean in the Yamba hinterland, Northern NSW. It is here in the little ecohamlet of Foresthaven we are co-creating the small urban ecocommunity called “Jagera” next door.

Jagera is a Community Title development of 11 home lots and shared community land which will include landscaped open space, community facilities and infrastructure, over a 5 acre area on a flood-free north facing hillside with views of Biirrinba, the mighty Clarence River.

Village Making as an Emergent Process

What stirs in me, and perhaps you too if you’re reading this, is that ecovillage-making is not just a logistical, linear “how to” endeavour.  At its core is an ongoing conversation with and daily practice of care; care for each other, the land, the wider community and the unknown, unexpected forces that shape its trajectory. It is an emergent, relational process.

We must mend what has been torn apart, make justice imaginable again in a world so obviously unjust, give happiness a meaning once more…Naturally, it is a superhuman task. But superhuman is the term for tasks [we] take a long time to accomplish, that’s all. 

—Albert Camus

We are participating in something larger than human design —a co-evolution with the land and the histories it carries. My question now that I’m living here is, “What if the village is also making us, just as we are making it?” Making us adaptive, humble, and open to being shaped by the land, its ancestral wisdom and the changing climate that dictates how we inhabit it.

Here in Foresthaven and next door in Jagera, the land is sentient, ancient and gestures to me in wild, wonderful ways; through the gushing waterways currently in full flow, pockets of rainforest, their leaves susurrating in the wind, and the wildlife that rustle and stomp, warble, trill, and sing through the cycles of the seasons. The earth’s crust is believed to be the thickest here and the songlines of the Yaegl matriarchs, who have given their blessing to Jagera in voice and smoking ceremonies, flow through this hidden valley.

If making an ecovillage is not simply about returning to a utopian ideal, perhaps it could be an act of repair in response to colonisation. Many projects, workshops and community events weave the wisdom, healing practices and stories of the Yaegl elders including the annual Power of Nature workshop and the Clarence River Guardians collaboration launching this month. Jagera is not just an ecocommunity being built on the land; it’s embedded within Yaegl stories and songlines.

Slowing & Deep Listening

Jagera is a brave, safe, welcoming place. Each day is an opportunity for me to live the “how, what, who” questions that brought me here. Each day, touching in with another – whether it is plant, animal, bird, tree or human – is an invitation to practise dadirri – an Indigenous word for deep listening. An invitation to bring my most present, vulnerable, authentic and compassionate self forward.

On some days, waking up to the idea of making an ecovillage I feel simultaneously exhilarated and terrified by the task ahead. It scares me, freaks me out, but equally, activates, replenishes, and awakens me to beauty.

Freaked out because as an idealistic optimist I have to ask myself whether the task is too big, too impossible for me. If not, then what? Where would I go? What would I do? It’s a moot point because I’ve come to understand that it’s about inhabiting my inner and outer landscapes. Perhaps idealism and its attendant inner emotional conflicts are an intelligent response to the groundlessness of our existence and maybe a necessary trait to create an ecocommunity?

Overwhelmed at times because I see the work it has taken the founders Pete Cuming, Eshana Bragg of Sustainable Futures Australia and Mike Lowe from Initiatives of Change, to get Jagera this far with a decade’s worth of blood, sweat and tears. They have been the underground mycelium largely invisible to the visitor’s eye, and the newcomers like me are emergent fungi bursting to break ground with the big exciting work of construction.

Scared because the day I begin writing this, Cyclone Alfred is due to hit Brisbane as a category 2 cyclone in just over 36 hours. Pete has re-dug stormwater trenches in the rain to direct flood waters, he has a pile of sandbags already deployed and he’s checking in with me and other folks regularly. If ever there was a refuge to live out a cyclone it would be in a disaster prepared community like Foresthaven ark at the top of the hill.

Afraid, because I have idyllic beliefs about community. My travels over 2 years researching and living for short periods in 6 different ecovillages as well as living for 6 years above a very large ecovillage, has taught me that community as well as being friendly and welcoming, can also be about managing conflict and difficult conversations. As a natural peacemaker, empath and nurturer, I want to run from conflict. I have found that Jagera stands out like a beacon of beauty in a world weighed down by conflict, war, separation and inequity. The founders are experienced compassionate communicators, facilitators and conflict navigators. Not just from the years of dogged determination in the face of endless challenges to receive all the council approvals and commencement, they are also wise elders in their professional and personal lives respected by their peers and the wider community.

I am learning conflict often reveals something we care about deeply, something that matters enough to fight for in ways that can connect and bring people together rather than flinging them apart. If we are willing to put the effort in, we can find a deeper attunement to our shared existence. Disagreement may not be a breakdown but an expression of care—an opportunity to clarify and affirm what truly matters. It is not a failure of community—it’s part of how it breathes.

What if ecovillages don’t “fix” anything but rather teach us how to sit with uncertainty, contradiction, and difference? Can we create space for another’s integrity and truth, seeing that opposing viewpoints can harmoniously coexist?  Are we being asked to step up to something bigger than our own self-interest and ways of doing things, to rise up to something more important than protecting ideas of right or wrong, black or white, good or bad? Community is the ultimate act of unselfing.

Activated and awakened to beauty because community is a constant source of enlivening energy for me. Living together and breathing in radical hope and the common goal of regenerating ourselves and the land whilst breathing out despair, fear, anger and overwhelm of climate destruction, seems to trigger faster than normal spiritual and emotional growth. It’s a rite of passage; shaking me awake out of complacency and handing me the weight of responsibility to create something meaningful. We traverse shifting edges into an unknown future together whilst being held steady in the loving arms of community.

Awakened to life because the only debt I have is the debt of gratitude. The gift economy, the constant flow of giving and receiving and random acts of kindness weave us more tightly into connection. The gift of community is the mirror that reflects back to me, that invites me to live into a bigger part of myself. In the spirit of regenerosity – giving back to the land and its people – we are building Jagera as an econeighbourhood that is both community-sufficient and therefore by nature self-sufficient. It is what humans have been doing for thousands of years. It makes ecological, economic and evolutionary sense. We evolved as communal animals and our brains and bodies are wired for connection and a sense of welcome and belonging.

Awakened because community calls me to recognise the shadow side of myself: the ways in which I can withdraw and shut down, be hard on myself, and project my wounded need to belong onto my new family. I draw on Christian again when she says “the crucible of community tends to magnify and reflect back to us our most destructive or alienating attitudes and behaviours.” Through this process of reflection I’ve learnt to treasure my longing to belong as a gift and a superpower, not as the deep wound I was ashamed of in my family of origin. Jagera has shown me that I am never alone; I belong. I have always belonged. Everywhere and nowhere.

Replenished because what I’ve shared so far are all the ingredients for care and love to thrive. Love flows when we are seen, heard, valued and empowered to bring our personal gifts forward. Showing up to weekly meetings, we stay accountable, listening deeply even when our own inherent blind spots and difficulties threaten to get in the way. This kind of authentic relating helps me become aware of another’s inner weather without judgement or blame that forms part of our community love mapping. We know when a member is in distress and can reach out to provide extra support and care.

Replenished because it fuels my creativity to spiral out to the wider Clarence Valley community through regular writing, organic networking and organising events – concerts, film nights, residential workshops and other get togethers – reaching out to and drawing community in.

It was at the Power of Nature deep ecology workshop in 2023 that I decided to take the leap to move to Jagera, feeling the land calling me, would catch me, and that these people would hold me in their orbit, their seismic gravity. The recent weekend workshop organised by the many voices of the Clarence River Guardians, weaving science, river stories, music and art was confirmation and visceral proof of all I had come here for. I have found my place in a shared story.

At the end of this year, Jagera will celebrate its 10 years of inception. With only 6 private residential lots left for sale before we start construction in the second half of the year, we are seeking community minded change makers to join us. If you feel afraid of what’s to come, freaked out by climate change, and equally activated, awakened and willing to be shaped and replenished by community, then what better time is there than now to change your life?

Living in an ecovillage is a privilege that needs to be extended to all humanity. It is a way of protecting Pacha Mama and building resilience, as catastrophic climate induced weather events, such as Cyclone Alfred, increase in severity.

For more information visit https://www.ecocommunity.org.au