Yackandandah has been up and down, but now it's on the pace

The 2015 Uralla Lantern Parade. Uralla
is one of numerous communities
 addressing renewable energy directly. 

Yackandandah, like most Australian towns, has had its ups and its downs.

 One of its biggest ups was the north-east Victorian gold rush. By the 1890s our town was full of miners toiling to extract what was left of its alluvial gold. The only thing holding these folks back was an energy crisis. The miners were unable to source the power needed to sluice and dredge or crush the ore. The solution was a water race from high up on the West Kiewa river, which wasn’t the brainchild of government, or even the mines department – but rather a local man.

John Wallace, a Yackandandah resident, recognised a problem that needed immediate action and set about solving it.

Many people living outside of Australia’s cities are now observing a new energy crisis and, once again, it is from within these small communities that solutions are emerging. While policy makers dither and draft lifeless strategies, those outside of the political bubble have no time to waste as they already face the realities of climate change on a daily basis. With every hotter month, with every failing crop and with an ever increasing bushfire threat, those who live in rural and regional Australia are desperately looking within for climate change solutions – and acting.

Read The Guardian story - “Australia's regions already have an energy crisis – and a climate of investment is the answer.”