Community Land Stewardship: 53 Years of Regenerative Village Building with Elder Dudley

For more than five decades, Dudley has lived, built, and stewarded one of the world’s longest-running regenerative land-based communities — a 260-acre property where families grew their own food, generated their own power, created their own livelihoods, and raised children in freedom, nature, and self-reliance.

Beginning in 1972, his son grew up on the community farm with the freedom to explore, learn, and create. By age seven he was running his own market stall; by 11 he chose to attend the local school; and he later graduated from Melbourne University with a double degree in Science and Engineering before launching a successful engineering consultancy serving Australian state and federal governments.

This story reflects the deeper principles that shaped the community: empowerment, autonomy, integrity, and a living environment that supports human potential.

Over the past 53 years, the community has:

• Built its own homes, solar systems, and hydro-electric infrastructure
• Reforested large areas of land and farmed biodynamically
• Produced fruit, vegetables, dairy, and regenerative animal systems
• Influenced state regulations on rural settlement densities and building codes
• Served as a model for self-reliant, deeply sustainable village life

Dudley currently serves as:

• Director of the Sustainability Research Institute
• Trustee of the Natural Capital Protection Trust (which he founded)
• Advisor to emerging New Earth communities in Tennessee, Bacalar (Mexico), and Lombok (Indonesia)

On December 7th, Dudley will share the distilled learnings of a lifetime:

what truly works — and what does not — when creating regenerative, community-owned land settlements that endure across generations.

This session is an extraordinary opportunity to receive grounded, lived wisdom from someone who has successfully built what many in our movement are only beginning to imagine.