PermEco Inc. has a long history of developing strong relationships with partners to help fill gaps in services and bring expertise to the programs we run. Local not for profit organisations Country Noosa and Permaculture Noosa assist with marketing, advertising, awareness and promoting our services and the local store, cafe and catering business provides catering for events. Founders and long term volunteers Tom Kendall and Zaia Kendall look after the day to day running of the Kendall Permaculture Farm and the not for profit organisation, teach and train volunteers and students, look after the website and reporting and have the capability and knowledge to provide advisory services. We rely on volunteers at the Kendall Permaculture Farm to look after animal systems, gardens and food forests and implementing new systems on the Farm under the guidance of longer term volunteers.

We have a close association with the Permaculture Research Institute Australia and its founders Geoff and Nadia Lawton, who are held in high esteem in their field and regularly provide us with advice and support. Tom Kendall is an accredited Permaculture teacher through the Permaculture Research Institute Australia, enabling us to give our students certificates that are recognised world wide. 

Advisory board

Our advisory board consists of but is not limited to:

Geoff Lawton
Geoff Lawton is a world renowned permaculture consultant, designer and teacher. He first took his Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) Course in 1983 with Bill Mollison, widely considered the “father of permaculture.” Geoff has undertaken thousands of jobs teaching, consulting, designing, administering and implementing, in 6 continents and over 50 countries around the world. Clients have included private individuals, groups, communities, governments, aid organizations, non-government organisations and multinational companies, including:

• consultancy in the environmentally green, Masdar City in the United Arab Emirates
• development work from the Greening the Desert projects in Jordan
• rehydration strategies in the deserts of Hadramaut, Yemen
• housing projects for the Kurds in Iraq after the war, rebuilding an entire village with 53 straw bale houses

In 1996 he was accredited with the Permaculture Community Services Award by the permaculture movement for services in Australia and around the world.

He has currently educated over 15,000 students in Permaculture worldwide. These include graduates of the Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) Course and courses focused on the practical design of sustainable soil, water, plant, animal, energy, structures, legal and economic systems.

Geoff has established permaculture demonstration sites that function as education centres in all the world’s major climates — information on the success of these systems is networked through www.permacultureglobal.org. Geoff established the Permaculture Research Institute and the www.permaculturenews.org website to network mainframe information worldwide.

Dr. Daniela Ceccarelli
Dr. Daniela Ceccarelli is an independent marine ecology consultant with extensive training and experience in tropical marine ecosystems. She completed a PhD in coral reef ecology at James Cook University in 2004, and since then, her fieldwork has taken her to the Great Barrier Reef, Papua New Guinea, Tuvalu, Tonga and the Marshall Islands, and to remote reefs of northwest WA and the Coral Sea. For the last decade she has worked as a consultant for government, non-governmental organisations, industry, education and research institutions on diverse projects requiring field surveys, monitoring programs, data analysis, reporting, teaching, literature reviews and management recommendations. Her research and review projects have included studies on coral reef fish and invertebrates, seagrass beds and mangroves, and have required a good understanding of a wide range of topics. More recently, she has been contributing to the spatial planning efforts in the Pacific through the IUCN’s MACBIO program. She also continues to collaborate with colleagues in academic institutions to further her research interests on coral reefs.

Nadia Lawton
Nadia Lawton was born in the Dead Sea Valley in Jordan where she learnt traditional ways of land use from her father, an expert farmer and herbal healer. After completing her PDC in the Dead Sea Valley in 1999 she proceeded to work on the “Greening the Desert” project, established permaculture women’s groups and school projects. Nadia has a Permaculture Diploma in design, education and site development and is a registered permaculture teacher in the English and Arabic languages. Nadia dedicates much of here time to the Permaculture movement as an international permaculture teacher, consultant and aid worker.

Linsey Pollak
Linsey is well known all around Australia as a musician, instrument maker, composer, musical director and community music facilitator. He has toured his solo shows extensively in Europe, Nth America and Asia since 1996 (now just in Australia as he wants to minimise his carbon footprint – no more long haul flights). He has designed many new wind instruments with a reputation for making and playing instruments made from found objects such as rubber gloves, carrots, watering cans, chairs, brooms and garden hose.

He established The Multicultural Arts Centre of WA and has co-ordinated five Cross-cultural Music Ensembles in three different States. He has also performed at most major Festivals around Australia and recorded 35 albums (solo & with various groups). He has devised many large Festival pieces such as “BimBamBoo!! (Woodford and Brisbane Festivals) “Sound Forest” (Qld Music Festival) and “The Dream of Zedkat Nabu” (APRA Performance of the Year – Qld 2013).

He has worked as a musical instrument maker for 45 years and has designed many new wind instruments as well as specialising in woodwind instruments from Eastern Europe (having studied Macedonian bagpipes in Macedonia).

Linsey has a reputation for making and playing instruments made from found objects such as rubber gloves, carrots, watering cans, chairs, brooms and bins. First developed in his solo show “Bang it with a Fork” and further in the acclaimed children’s show “Out of the Frying Pan”, this line of musical inventiveness has ultimately led him to spearhead Live Looping and develop his solo shows.

Linsey aims to de-commodify the art of music and dreams of a society that doesn’t have a word for musician, because everyone plays music (just as we don’t use the word “breather” because we all breathe). He believes that music can build a more creative society that enjoys and respects the contributions of many cultures, empowering the marginalised and bringing disparate people together.

Shenzo Gregorio
Shenton Gregory a.k.a. Shenzo Gregorio has been freelancing as a professional musician for 22 years. He’s one of only a handful of musicians in Australia that make a living from performing and composing instrumental music across Australia and Overseas. He’s main instruments are Violin and Viola. Piano, Mandolin, Bass, Guitar and Percussion are he’s secondary instruments. He also freelances as a musical director, composer and recording artist.

in 2019 Shenzo continued his marathon fundraising efforts with his third production of the 40 hour jammin. As Artistic Director and producer Shenzo collaborated with Musicians from around Australia and locals on Magnetic Island to collectively raise $62 000 for Motor Neurone Disease support and research.

In 2017 Shenzo was commissioned to compose and perform the music to the acrobatic show ‘Backbone’ (by Adelaide based circus company Gravity and other Myths) which has toured parts of Europe, Asia, South America, USA Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

Awards for his work include Aria award for Best world music group with Sydney band Monsieur Camembert. Best of the fringe award from the Adelaide Fringe – ‘The Secret death of Salvador Dali. Golden Fiddle award for best band -‘ Fourplay String Quartet’ and Best community Event ‘Yarrabah the Musical’, produced by Opera Australia.

Shenzo is a full time member of Fourplay String Quartet. Since 2004 they have recorded 4 studio Albums and collaborated with English author Neil Gaiman. They’ve performed at the Sydney Opera house, London’s Barbican centre, and New Yorks Carnegie Hall.

Shenzo has written 5 musicals and 13 mini Operas, performed as a featured soloist with Camarata of st John Chamber orchestra and freelanced with every major Flamenco company in Australia. He’s also freelanced with Gypsy Jazz ensembles Australia wide and continues to be at the top of his field in this particular style. He also toured India, the Uk and Brazil with an ensemble called “The Orchestra of the underground”, which consisted of players from the top of the jazz and percussion scene in Australia.

In 2003 Shenzo became known for his high wire act, ‘Shenzo’s Electric Stunt Orchestra’ a world first group that went on to tour extensively throughout Australia, Asia and Europe. The group concluded in 2015.

Tom Kendall
Tom 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 teaches 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 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 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 practice he still continues today and teaches to his students.

Zaia Kendall
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 development, design and maintenance, writes articles, records and edits videos, organises events and also organises the cooking and the kitchen on site. She assists Tom in running the Kendall Permaculture Farm, feeding animals, looking after the nursery, kitchen garden and the Syntropic Market Garden and supervises other volunteers. 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, 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!