Denis lives in the port city of Fremantle, which he moved to in 1981. It was a few months after returning from a year traveling North America with Dr Bill Mollison, co-originator of Permaculture. Denis discovered Bill while a Reference Librarian at Murdoch University in 1977.
He invited Bill to the Down To Earth Association’s Cambray & Nanga Confests on Alternative | Wholistic Lifestyles in January 1978 & 1979, arranged his lecture tour of SW of WA in September 1978 which led to the formation of the Permaculture Association of WA and Denis’s founding-director role in the Permaculture Institute of WA, which ran the first few PC Designer Diploma courses in WA. Denis visited Bill shortly after his stroke in March, 2008. He died 24 September 2016, aged 88.
In 1980 Denis attended the Omega Institute’s Summer School and spent time with Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan at the Omega Institute. He later arranged Pir Vilayat’s first visit to Australia in 1988, his public lecture and workshops at the Beacon Yoga Centre attended by around 450 people. The teachings of Universal Sufism remain a core element of Denis’s approach to life.
In 1982 Denis began Whole Life Times free tabloid magazine which he still publishes today as a free e-magazine – see wholelifetimes.org/current-issue/ . Its last printed version was in 1989, the year he began a Master of Applied Psychology degree after which he returned to his clinical practice that commenced in 1987.
In the 90s Denis also carried on with a few small business ventures from the 80s, the main one being a wholesale distribution service called New Age Media and later NAM Distribution, which began with Tagari Publications (permaculture books), adding more publishers, music labels, audio & video recordings, including Dr Emmett Miller’s “self-health” mp3 audios, which Denis still markets via wellemart.com and wholeliferesources.org
Denis recalls Bill Mollison sitting on his back doorstep in 1981 looking into the yard and saying “Denis, Plant it!” Although that vision had already been sown, it was lovely to have Bill fertilize the idea. Denis’s love of vegetable gardening stems from his father, but Denis’s version is more of an urban permaculture in a constant state of flux and flow. Like Bill, Denis has a passion to write books that will make a difference and now semi-retired he has more time and books to write, publish and promote, as well as emagazines, podcasts and webinars to manage, such as the upcoming Gaiarcadia Summit 2024 (20 & 21 April), while living a balanced, healthy, whole life.
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