Tom Kendall is a permaculture farmer with over 40 years farming experience and a broad acre agriculture background. He is co-founder of the PRI Sunshine Coast Inc (now renamed PermEco Inc.) and PRI Luganville, Vanuatu and runs PDC courses and Permaculture training for the PermEco Inc. at Kendall Permaculture Farm Education and Training Site. Tom regularly co-teaches Permaculture Design Certificate courses with Geoff Lawton and has taught Permaculture courses in Australia and overseas. Tom has over 1000 hours of PDC teaching experience and has been training people in practical permaculture skills on his site since 2006. He has taught Permaculture Design Certificate courses in Jordan and Vanuatu as well as Australia and has experience in tropical, sub tropical, temperate and dry land climates. He became a PRI accredited teacher in 2012 and has taught 3 – 5 PDC courses per year since then.

Tom is part of our advisory team and Geoff Lawton’s Permaculture Sustainable Consulting team and does regular consultations for personal land holders as well as not for profit organisations and government departments in Australia and overseas. He has worked and consulted in sub-tropical and tropical climates (Pacific and Caribbean islands, north east Australia etc) and dry land climates (Iran, Jordan, Western Australia etc). Tom has an amazing ability to read  hydration and fertility issues on large scale as well as smaller scale landscapes. With his farming background, Tom is a very hands on and practical man and is solution focused. He has extensive travel experience and integrates easily with local cultures and people as he comes from a humble and honest position. Tom enjoys studying landscapes, buildings and the effects of climate and culture on structures, flora and fauna.

Tom has a talent to identify and repair damaged and eroded landscapes, focusing on soil health and transforming damaged land to highly productive land. He repaired 7000 acres of dry land farm which had been conventionally farmed for many years and which was experiencing loss of top soil and erosion, by converting it to organic / bio-dynamic practices and making it profitable again. He also repaired around 10 acres of degraded, low fertility, sub tropical ex-banana farm land, which is now a lush, flourishing Permaculture Demonstration and Education site.

All land improvement was done on a low budget with minimum outside inputs, and was designed to derive an income from the land. Being brought up in a remote area of Western Australia, he was taught from very young to be inventive, innovative and self reliant, a practise he still continues today and teaches to his students.

View videos with Tom: http://www.youtube.com/permacultureSC

Zaia grew up in a family of musicians in Holland, and has a background in top sport (snow skiing) and web development and design. She co-founded the PRI Luganville and PRI Sunshine Coast Inc (now PermEco Inc.) with Tom, and runs the “invisible structures”, like finances, business administration, website design and maintenance, writes articles, records and edits videos and also organises the cooking and the kitchen on site. She also specialises in consulting and advice for smaller scale properties (up to 5 acres). She has researched and studied nutrition and health for 20+ years, has a certificate in Nutrition and continues to study by research, reading and daily observation.
She is an active member of several musical projects and bands, involved in community music and runs percussion and marimba workshops. She is the percussion leader for the Woodford Folk Festival People’s Orchestra and composes as well as plays music. She is passionate about community music and loves seeing people discover that they can play! Click here for her full music history & bio.

You can contact the team at:
email: info (at) permeco.org
(Please replace (at) with @ for the email address.)

Or submit the contact form below: