1997 - Lyndall spoke to a group of woman in Cooma, NSW as an after dinner speaker – the topic ‘her dream’. Her secret desire was out!

1999 - At her 50^th birthday dinner Lyndall’s friends humoured her by allowing her to stand up with her flip chart and drawings and wax lyrical about the structure and activities of this virtual village in which she dreamed of living.

Nov 2003 - David and Lyndall completed the Certificate in Ecovillage Design held at Crystal Waters Permaculture Village, Queensland.

July 2004 - the village website was launched with cartoon drawings by Wendy Bishop and the vision was now set down

Nov 2004 - at the inaugural Ecovillage Designer’s Conference Heard at Crystal Waters, Lyndall heard Dominic and Vida Carlino give an account of the development of their ecovillage called Somerville outside Perth. The visions were almost identical.

Two bits of wisdom governed the future direction:
'don’t reinvent the wheel’ - Mick Boyce and ‘stand on the shoulder’s of others’ - Max Lindegger along with both domestic and overseas visits to numerous ecovillages, cohousing sites and intentional communities.

Oct 2005 - David and Lyndall met Paul Antonelli from Greenedge Projects Pty Ltd and decided they would take an ecovillage forward near the coast and Sydney using the developing Somerville systems and processes.

Nov 2005 - Lyndall left the workforce to work full time on the Sydney Coastal Ecovillage project

Sept 2006 – ‘let the games begin…..’
Our company, Utopeco signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Greenedge Pty Ltd, the company taking Somerville forward and made an initial payment to use their systems and processes. The first survey went out to gauge a level of interest and help determine some parameters and a three day planning weekend was held in Sydney to map out the way forward.

Nov 2006 - The Sydney Coastal Ecovillage Launch event was held at the Greenwich Community Centre with a sixty strong crowd gathering to hear about the survey results and the vision for the project.

Sept 2007 - Sydney Morning Herald Article
Read the story on the SMH web site or see the scanned version.
I guess this means that we have ‘gone public’ - so come on friends, help us get this project on the ground!

Nov 2007 - An Expression of Interest on some Council owned land near Berry was submitted to Shoalhaven City Council.

2007 - During 2007 we looked at approximately 60 sites, rating the land for ecovillage appropriateness.

Mar 2008 - An Expression of Interest on the Gosford Horticultural Research Institute at Narara was submitted.

Mar 2008 - Robina McCurdy from Aotearoa/New Zealand ran a workshop for us called 'Cultivating Sustainable Communities & Ecovillages'.

May 2008 - Tena Meadows O’Rear from Virginia, USA ran a workshop on a dynamic governance method called ‘Sociocracy’.