Keyline and Fertile Futures

This paper has been adapted from a book in progress called Fertile Futures

THE LAY OF THE LAND

This paper discusses Australian Dr Neville Yeomans[1] life experiences that guided and informed his evolving of the Fraser House therapeutic community psychiatric unit in 1959 in North Ryde, Sydney, NSW and his later outreach. The precursors of Yeomans’ way of thinking, processing and acting are traced firstly to the pioneering work of Neville’s father Percival A. Yeomans[2] who was described by the world famous English agriculturalist Lady Balfour in the 1970’s as the person making the greatest contribution to sustainable agriculture in the past 200 years (Mulligan and Hill 2001, p. 194). The chapter details the influence on Nevilles father’s evolving of Keyline, a set of processes and practices for harvesting water, generating new vibrant topsoil and creating sustainable agriculture. It also traces the influences on Neville Yeomans and his father of their relating with Australian Aboriginal and Islander people. As well Neville’s East Asia influences are discussed.

INSPIRING TRAUMA

Neville’s traumatic incidents discussed in Chapter One also had a profound, though different impact on his father P.A. Yeomans, (Mulligan and Hill 2001, p. 193). As mentioned in Chapter One, three-year-old Neville became lost in West Queensland desert country and was found by an Aboriginal tracker. At the time when Neville was lost Neville’s father was a mine assayer and a keen observer of landscapes and landforms. Neville’s father was deeply impressed by the Aboriginal tracker’s profound knowledge of the minutiae of his local land; in that harsh dry rocky climate with compacted soils, the tracker had such an intimacy with the landscape that he was not relying on following footprints. For example, he would notice minute traces left as evidence of the movements of a little boy that would not be made by other creatures or natural phenomena – such as the way soil grains were on a dead leaf contrary to the prevailing breeze.

The other thing was that upon finding little Neville, the tracker was so intimately connected to the local land and its form, he knew exactly where to go to find water. It was not that this tracker knew where a creek or a water hole was, as there was no surface water.

The tracker knew how to find water whenever he wanted it, and wherever he was in his homeland. He and his people ‘be long’ there (40,000 plus years). They were an integral part of the land. They were never apart from it. The tracker was ‘of the land’. He and his community saw the Earth as a loving Mother that provided well for them continually.[3] As soon as the tracker found Neville, he had to find the right kind of spot for a short easy dig. Because of Neville’s dehydration, the tracker needed water for Neville fast. He used his knowledge of his place and quickly had Neville sipping water. Mulligan and Hill report about the incident where Neville was lost:

According to Neville, it was probably this incident that gave his father his enduring interest in the movement of water through Australian landscapes, because he could see that an understanding of this would be a huge advantage for people living in the driest inhabited continent on Earth (2001, p. 193).

WATER TELLING US WHAT TO DO WITH IT

In the years after leaving mine assaying, P.A. Yeomans had moved on to having his own earth-moving company. P. A. had just purchased the Nevallan[4] and Yobarnie[5] properties in Richmond, NSW[6] with his brother-in-law Jim Barnes in 1943 - a year before the bushfire where Neville saw his uncle Jim Barnes burn to death.

P. A. emulated the Aboriginal tracker in becoming familiar with the landform of his two properties. P.A. wanted to store or use all of the water that landed on the properties. P.A. wanted to be able to water his two properties so they were so lush and green all year round, they would be virtually fireproof. When the families acquired the properties the soil was ‘low grade’. It was undulating hill country with plenty of ridges that were composed of low-fertility shale strewn with stones. The following photo taken at Nevallan, one of the Yeomans’ farms shows the original poor shale and rock ‘soil’ throughout the two properties when the properties were acquired.

Photo 1. The low fertility shale strewn with stones on P.A.’s farm - from Plate 30 in P.A.’s book ‘Challenge of Landscape’ – used with permission (Yeomans 1958b; Yeomans 1958a)

Photo 2 shows a spade full of fertile soil after two years of the processes evolved by P.A. and his sons. To clearly show the difference in the soil, a clump of the fertile soil has been placed beside earth on the base of a tree stump that became exposed when the tree fell over. This lighter low-grade soil had not been involved in the processes the Yeoman’s evolved.

Photo 2. Fertile soil after two years compared to the original soil - a copy of Plate 30 in P.A.’s book ‘Challenge of Landscape’ - Used with permission

Within three years, Yeomans and his sons had energized what conventional wisdom said was impossible; they had altered the natural system so that the natural emergent properties of the farm, as ‘living system’, created ten centimetres (4 inches) of lush dark fertile soil over most of the property (Yeomans and Murray Valley Development League 1974). What is important is that the local natural ecosystem did the work. P.A. enabled emergent aspects in nature to self-organize towards increased fertility. With the interventions that P.A. introduced, the property became lush and green twelve months of the year. It was virtually fireproofed!

The balance of this chapter will specify the processes the Yeomans evolved and applied on their farms and the Indigenous precursors they drew upon. It then briefly introduces the ways Neville evolved in adapting his family’s farming processes relating to the natural life world to evolving change in the social life world.

Keyline Emerges

Over thousands of years, if this continent’s Aborigines wanted to spear fish in the shallow creeks and rivers, they would copy the behaviour of the wading birds that wade slowly, and then react extremely fast with their long beaks. The Aboriginal hunter with his spear mimics these waders. Resonant with the continent’s Indigenous ways, P.A. and his sons engaged in bio-mimicry - letting the water, the landforms, the soil biota, and the balance of the local eco-system tell them what to do. Neville told me (July 1998) that P.A. would take Neville and Neville’s younger brother Allan out onto the farms as they were growing up, whenever it rained, so they all could learn to see directly how the rain soaked in at different times, how long before run-off would occur on different land forms, and what paths down the slopes the run-off moved on different land shapes. Like the continent’s Aborigines, they were learning to have all of their senses focused in the here-and-now, attending to all that was happening in nature. As action researchers, they became connoisseurs of their land and all life on it (Eisner 1991, p. 176).

The Yeomans were being informed by landform and able to make very fine discriminations. Whatever action P.A. and his sons did, they always observed how nature responded. P. A. obtained contour line maps of his property with a useful scale to further aid his understanding of landform. According to Ken Yeomans (P.A.s third and youngest son) in an October 2003 phone discussion, the map scale was typically 1 in 25,000 with 5 metre contours. Neville said that his father constantly referred to the three primary landscape features - the main ridge (elevated from the horizontal), the primary ridge (lateral to the main ridge) and the primary valleys (lateral vertical cleavages). The farm was perceived by P.A. as a cleavered unity, a feature pervasive in nature. P. A. discovered where the best places were to store run-off water for maximum later distribution using the free energy of gravity feed. It was high in a special place in the primary valleys. Overflow from dams high in the primary valleys were linked by gravity-based over-flow channels to lower dams. Below is a succinct statement written by P.A. Yeomans about what he called ‘Keyline’. It is from P.A.’s speech at the UN Habitat ‘On Human Settlements’ Forum in Vancouver, Canada during 27th May to 11th June 1976. P.A.’s speech was entitled ‘The Australian Keyline Plan for the Enrichment of Human Settlements’ (1976, p. 5-6).

Keyline relates to a special feature of topography namely, the break of slope that occurs in any primary valley. Primary valleys are the highest series of valleys in every water catchment region and lie on either side of a main or water divide ridge. They are widely observed as the generally smooth or grassed over valleys of farming and grazing land but are often overlooked and disguised in the city. On either side of the primary valley is a primary ridge. Of the three basic shapes of land, namely, main ridge, primary valley and primary ridge, the primary valley shape occupies the smallest area of land and the primary ridge shape, the largest. In the rural situation irrigation is a matter of watering the large primary ridge shapes, even on land which appears flat.

All of the structures, processes and practices that P. A. Yeomans evolved he also called Keyline (Yeomans, P. A. 1971b; Yeomans, P. A. 1971a). Yeomans first outlined his ideas about water movement and how to detect Keypoints in a book entitled, ‘The Keyline Plan’ (1954). The books, ‘Challenge of Landscape’ (Yeomans 1958a), ‘Water for Every Farm’ (Yeomans, P. A. 1965), and ‘The City Forest : The Keyline Plan for the Human Environment Revolution’ (Yeomans, P. A. 1971a) followed. Three of P.A. Yeomans’ books, ‘The Challenge of Landscape’ (Yeomans 1958b), ‘The Keyline Plan’ (Yeomans, P. A. 1955), and the ‘City Forest’ (Yeomans, P. A. 1971b), including all of their diagrams and photos, are now on-line on the Internet through the Soil and Health Organization. In 1993, Ken Yeomans, Neville’s younger brother published his book, ‘Water for Every Farm: Yeoman’s Keyline Plan’ (Yeomans and Yeomans 1993). This book clarified some aspects of Keyline.

Diagram 1 below shows the main ridge (the dotted line along the left), two primary ridges and two primary valleys. A Keyline and a Keypoint only occur in primary valleys and each primary valley has only one Keyline and Keypoint. One Keypoint is shown in the diagram. The other Keypoint is on the Keyline towards the top of the diagram (where it crosses the flow line shown as a dotted line). Note that the Keypoint is on the primary valley flow line on the contour above the first wider gap between the contours.

The flow line is marked on Diagram 1 below as the dotted line through the Keypoint. This wider space between contours indicates less steepness on the slope. The dotted line along the primary ridges in the diagram below is the water divide line which, other things being equal divides the flow of water into one or other of the primary valleys on each side of the primary ridge. The dotted line along the main ridge is also a water divide line.

Allan (Dec 2005) pointed out that the diagram below shows that the contours above the Keyline are closer together at the valley flow line above the Keypoint and get wider apart as these contours go around the ridges on both sides of the valley. The reverse is the case below the Keypoint. The contours are wider apart on the flow line below the Keypoint and come closer together towards the ridges on both sides of the valley. The point where the contours are closest is the boundary between valley and ridge.

Diagram 1. The Three Keyline Features – Photo from P.A.’s UN Habitat Speech (1976, p. 9)

Above the Keypoint is typically an armchair-shaped land form that directs the water run-off so that most of it ends up arriving in an area that may be as small as a square metre (the Keypoint) – sometimes the very start of the typical creek as creek. P.A. found that the optimal locations for dams were at the Keypoint on the Keyline in the respective Primary Valleys on his properties.

P.A.’s ‘On Human Settlements’ Forum speech contains another description of Keyline:

It will be observed that in the primary valleys the first slope falling from the ridge above is short and steep – usually the steepest slope in the immediate environs[7] – while the second slope is flatter, much longer and extends to the watercourse below. The point at which the change occurs between these two slopes is named the Keypoint; the Keyline extends on the same level on either side of this Keypoint and partly encloses a concave shape on the land. Only primary valleys have Keylines (see contour diagram above) (Yeomans, P. A. 1971b; Yeomans, P. A. 1971a; 1976, p. 7-8).

Ken Yeomans in a December 2005 email referred to the above quote:

I question the technical accuracy of saying it ‘partially’ encloses a concave shape on the land. Actually the Keyline occupies all of the concave shape of the contour line curve.

The change of direction of the contour from concave through the valley to the convex curve of the ridge defines the end of the Keyline on either side of each primary valley.

Diagram 1 above shows Ken Yeomans point mentioned above - that the Keyline extends either side of the Keypoint for a particular distance along the contour line running through the Keypoint. P.A then goes on in his On Human Settlements Forum Speech to give a key point summary (1976, p. 9):

The Keyline is significant because:

1. It is the first place in any valley where rain run-off water, concentrated from the higher slopes, can form a stream.

2. It is also the first place where run-off water disappears when the rain stops unless the water is contained.

3. It is the highest possible storage site in any valley of the land.

4. It is often the highest point at which good construction material for earth dams is available (higher up the earth may be less decomposed and less suitable for dam building).

5. It is the essential starting point for a water control system in any landscape that produces run-off; and

6. It is the line of change when the three shapes of the land merge and readily disclose the geometry of land contours and the behaviour of surface flowing waters.

The Keyline is thus of major significance to any concept that aims to enrich the environment by controlling and using all available water. Note point six above - the Keypoint in nature is saturated with information carrying capacity. On this typically square metre of land is the junction of all three land forms. Information distributed through each landform is present at the Keypoint. The Keypoint, for those with eyes to see, is the place that reveals the interaction of water with land. There is a confluence at the Keypoint of the water runoff from the main ridge above the primary valley and adjacent primary ridges down the curved slope at the head of the primary valley.

Lincoln and Guba made a similar point about distribution of information within a system (quoted in Chapter Four):

Information is distributed throughout the system rather than concentrated at specific points. At each point information about the whole is contained in the part. Not only can the entire reality be found in the part, but also the part can be found in the whole. What is detected in any part must also characterize the whole. Everything is interconnected (1985, p. 59).

The Yeomans’ genius was that they spotted the information distributed throughout the three landform systems and saw how the distributed information inter-connects and interacts at the Keypoint. Keypoints are saturated with information that is distributed in the system. Sensing and observing the Keypoint may reveal insights as to how the whole complex dynamic system works.

Resonant with the above, as discussed in Chapter Three, Neuman also makes the same observation that at each point in a living system, information about the whole is contained in the part (1997, p. 433). Not only can the entire reality be found in the part, but also the part can be found in the whole. What is detected in any part must also characterize the whole. Everything is interconnected, inter-dependent, inter-related and inter-woven. Also resonant with Yeomans and Neuman, Joseph Jaworski (1998, p. 80) writes of a conversation with theoretical physicist Dr. David Bohm:

We were talking about a radical, disorientating new view of reality which we couldn’t ignore. We were talking about the awareness of the essential inter-relatedness of all phenomena – physiological, social, and cultural. We were talking about a systems view of life and a systems view of the universe. Nothing could be understood in isolation, everything had to be seen as a part of the unified whole.

Jaworski writes of Bohm saying that it’s an abstraction to talk of nonliving matter:

Different people are not separate, they are all enfolded into the whole, and they are all a manifestation of the whole. It is only through an abstraction that they look separate. Everything is included in everything else.

Yourself is actually the whole of mankind. That’s the idea of implicate order – that everything is enfolded in everything.

While Jaworski and Bohm were talking about a ‘radical, disorientating new view of reality’, this view has been the natural view of Australian Aborigines since antiquity, and it was this view that the Yeoman’s used to perceive inter-related things that Western farmers had never seen before. Barabasi (2003) in his book ‘Linked - How Everything is Linked to Everything and What it Means’ also explores the same theme.

Consistent with the foregoing, for the Yeomans, the farm was a living system made up of interconnected, inter-related, inter-dependent and interwoven living systems and associated inorganics. I have been referring to this as ‘connexity’; Neville or the other Yeomans did not use this term, although it connotes their understanding of system linkages well.

Where the context around a Keypoint made it possible P.A. placed a dam wall some way below the Keypoint so that the dam could fill to that Keypoint when it was full. He designed his farms Nevallan and Yobarnie to fit nature. All of the dams were placed so as to simultaneously get water run-off, pass overflow to a dam below by gravity, and by gravity-based irrigation, pass on the water to the soil when desired. Neville (August 1998) and Allan (May 2002) both confirmed that they were with their father at the moment when they recognized what he called the Keypoint and the Keyline in landform – the central concepts in Keyline (Yeomans 1955a, p. 118).

Allan Yeomans in a phone conversation (December 2005) noted that the Keypoint and Keyline in successive primary valleys along a main ridge have an ascending (or descending) elevation as occurs in Diagram 1 above. Allan spoke of regular patterns in nature; as an example, the Yeomans’ experience was that often the height of the bottom of a dam wall below a Keypoint in a primary valley being above the height of the top of the dam wall in the adjacent primary valley (refer Diagram 1 above). This has implications for linking the two dams by over-flow channel along a contour.

Photo 3. A Photo I took in July 2001 showing the dam’s overflow channel

The above photo shows the gentle slope on the overflow channel of the dam shown in photo 4 below. There was no sign of erosion on this channel even though this dam and the other Keyline structures on the property had had no maintenance by the current landowner for over twenty years. A noteworthy aspect of the farm is that before PA Yeomans commenced his work there in the 1950s, the soil was regarded by agricultural experts who visited the farm as being low-grade shale strewn with small rocks (as can be seen on both sides of the Keyline channel). Some of the area where Keyline processes were implemented is shown in the background ridge in the photo and the processes have produced staggering increases in biomass – what conventional wisdom says takes 800 years to produce. One researcher who had travelled the world extensively, commented that after 3 years of Keyline process the new earth generated was on a par with what he had seen in the fertile Nile Delta.

P.A. wrote:

Once the eye becomes trained to see these simple land shapes, and the mind has selected and classified one or two, there is a fascination in the continuous broadening of one’s understanding and appreciation of the landscape (1958, p. 56).

The Social Ecologist, Stuart Hill and I visited Nevallan for the first time in 2001 and I took Photo 4 below showing the place where P.A. and Neville first spotted the Keypoint and Keyline. The very spot where they realised the significance of the Keypoint is where the closest water is in the closest dam in photo 3 below; the primary ridges are on the left and right of the primary valley.

Like all Keypoints, the one in the photo is on the drainage line. Photo 4 shows one of the primary ridges on the left near the top of the primary valley. The Chapter One Photo 3 was taken looking up towards where the photo below was taken. Stuart Hill, in Chapter Eight of his book on Australia’s Ecological Pioneers, outlines some aspects of the process P. A. and his sons used (Mulligan and Hill 2001, p. 193):

What Yeomans senior discovered through such patient observation was that there is a line across the slope of a hillside where the water table is closest to the surface. The ground along this line looks wettest and is reflective when it rains heavily.

It is the line along which it makes most sense to locate the highest irrigation dams within the landscape, because this is where the run-off water from above can most effectively be collected and subsequently used at the most appropriate time to irrigate the more gently sloping land below. Yeomans called this line the Keyline.

Photo 4. Photo I took during July 2001- looking down towards the Keypoint at the top of the dam.

Keyline Ploughing

A key aspect of Keyline was how the Yeomans changed the natural self-organizing surface flow of water and the flow of water underground through the soil via Keyline ploughing. Keyline ploughing in the valley involves ploughing parallel to the Keyline both above and below the Keyline. There is a different pattern of ploughing on the ridges, discussed below.

This pattern in the valleys stops an eroding rush of surface water down to the valley floor, slows the flow, spreads the soaking, and allows for a massive increase in the moisture levels in the soil without water-logging. Consequently, water is ‘stored’ as it slowly filters through the soil, as well as being kept in all the interlinked dams. Recognizing the above properties of landform and their implications for water flow was a key reason why Lady Balfour held PA Yeomans in such high esteem. It involved a very particular kind of close relating to nature in its myriad complexities to perceive the things that the Yeomans family perceived and to recognise the implications and the possibilities that flow from this perceiving and reflecting.

PA Yeomans developed a chisel plough for Keyline ploughing that was called the Bunyip Slipper Imp with Shakaerator (that is it shakes and aerates). This shaking action reduces soil compaction.