Twitchers on the kibbutz

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This was published 13 years ago

Twitchers on the kibbutz

At a desert pit stop for a billion birds, Deborah Stone discovers an eco-village of geodesic domes and recycled art.

Millions of visitors come to Kibbutz Lotan each spring and autumn but most of them have wings and feathers. The village in southern Israel is a natural rest stop for between 500 million and 1 billion birds that pass through on their migrations between Africa, Asia and Europe.

The human tourists are a less common species, waylaid somewhere between Jerusalem's ancient holy sites and Tel Aviv's golden beaches. But it is not only dedicated birdwatchers who follow the ''global flyway'' to touch down in the desert oasis built by environmental pioneers.

Accommodating ecotourists in mudbrick houses and environmental students in geodesic domes with composting toilets has won the kibbutz international awards as a case study of a modern eco-village. Travellers looking for an insight into an alternative lifestyle provide a small but constant trickle of tourists and volunteers.

Lotan is a remarkable place to stay: a window on what happened to hippies who grew up. It is one of the few remaining kibbutzes still running on a traditional socialist model with no private property. It is also one of only two kibbutzes with a progressive religious philosophy; the others are either secular or orthodox.

Leah Zigmond, who runs the eco-centre, sees the environmental and spiritual elements as inseparable, noting the original biblical purpose of creating humans was to tend the Garden of Eden. ''Our first job title was gardener,'' she says. ''Caring for the Earth is surely holy work.''

The kibbutz has few luxuries, though it does have a beautiful swimming pool, which is perhaps not a luxury in a climate in which summer temperatures exceed 40 degrees. The birds are not the only reason spring and autumn are the times to come.

The simple living conditions are balanced by art everywhere you turn: mosaics on house walls, murals on clay, a sculpture park made of found objects. A recycling-art workshop stands on a rainbow of painted old tyres, its walls decorated with birds, flowers and faces. On Saturday, their one rest day, kibbutz members sometimes gather to pray under the kooky clay shapes of a geodesic dome or sip mint tea on the purple cushions of their oriental tea house.

In Israeli terms, the Arava desert region is an outpost. But in a country one-third the size of Tasmania, it takes only four hours to drive from the airport on the outskirts of Tel Aviv to the kibbutz.

The dry country is punctuated by unlikely patches of well-irrigated date palms, their green tops so discordant in the yellow landscape they appear to have been added digitally. The barren surface is a problem for migratory birds who need to find somewhere to pause and feed during twice-yearly migrations. Genetically predisposed to follow a route that has been carved out since before Moses, they funnel through the Syrian-African rift in search of warmer weather.

Eilat, a resort city on the southern tip of Israel, was the natural rest stop for the birds after crossing the Sahara from their wintering areas in Africa. Today, Eilat is Israel's answer to Las Vegas, a city of hotels and bars where tourists scuba-dive by day and party by night.

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So environmentalists at Lotan, 50 kilometres north of Eilat, developed an avian resort: artificial environments built entirely from recycled materials to provide R&R for the 275 bird species that pass over the desert. Called biotopes, these environments include a stony desert area with a large drinking pool for open-landscape birds; a shady, reedy pool for the shyer types; tall trees for raptors; and 2000 square metres of lucerne to regenerate the soil and encourage insect life for food.

For the human visitors, there are bird hides made of old tyres stuffed with waste and encased in mud plaster. The kibbutz is a dumping ground for the entire city of Eilat's tyres, all of which are recycled in buildings.

With so many birds, you don't have to be an experienced ''twitcher'' to find something interesting, though a pair of binoculars helps. A couple from New Zealand are indignant when we report that we have seen a small, pink songbird with a gentle piping cry. ''You saw a Sinai rose finch? We were looking for one all morning.''

Common migrants range from the huge grey heron, with a wingspan of almost two metres, to the tiny little ringed plover. The sustainable architecture of the eco-village gives the kibbutz a distinctive appearance, somewhere between an ancient adobe settlement and a science-fiction set. Retaining walls and playgrounds are built from tyres stuffed with rubbish and houses are made from straw bales and mud. Most striking are the geodesic domes, which are light, stable structures of irrigation pipes used to connect date-palm branches in a pattern of 136 triangles. Some domes are mud-covered and others drip with vines as shade cover.

Students from North and South America, Europe and Australia come to Lotan for green apprenticeships in which they live on the eco-campus, a collection of a dozen domes that form a model for sustainable living. The dried clay is yellow-pink, baked hard in the heat, but the politics is seriously green.

Pancakes are cooking under glass against the bright reflective metal of a solar oven. The shower water is solar, the laundry water grey and the waterless composting toilet spotlessly clean and sweet-smelling. The domes are not necessarily so sweet-smelling but because the one we visit is occupied by a couple of teenage boys, this is not a definitive indictment of the design.

The domes have thick walls of straw and earth and small windows are positioned for maximum insulation. The students record all their power usage and a volunteer tells us proudly: ''Temperatures were well over 40 degrees this summer but we only had to use the aircon once.''

The eco-campus also provides opportunities to improve relationships with surrounding communities. Lotan runs permaculture workshops for local Bedouin villagers and worked with people from the Wadi al-Na'am village to build a clinic using their straw bale and earthen plaster technique. It also hosts environmental awareness seminars for Jewish and Arab Israeli teenagers, providing an opportunity for the young people to work on common issues.

Michael Livni is the unofficial guide for the eco-tourists who want to watch birds or learn about permaculture. Born in Canada and a medical doctor by training, he is of the age when others are retiring to the golf course. He moved to a kibbutz 43 years ago and has been at Lotan since it was founded in 1983.

His face and mind are those of an academic but his lithe limbs and tanned bald dome belong to a man who rises at 5am to track fox prints and note the first signs of dogged saplings pushing through inhospitable clay.

His conversation ranges from bird migration patterns to water tables, community philosophy to religious text. ''Taste this,'' he commands, thrusting the grey leaves of a desert plant at us. We obey and the salt tingles harshly on our tongues. ''Tamarisk, adapted for the desert.'' He touches a calloused finger to the white crystals sweating out of the leaves. ''That's the tree Abraham planted,'' he says, moving from botany to biblical quotation.

Eco-villages are communities designed for low environmental impact. Because the Arava is so inhospitable - it averages only 2.5 centimetres of rain a year - Lotan has made a virtue out of a necessity, recycling every drop of water and reusing every item possible. However, making a living remains a challenge. The kibbutz needs to irrigate its dates and provide water for its cows and goats. A compromise allows some members to work away from the kibbutz but donate their salaries to the communal pool.

Spreading the word is not only ideologically appealing but also a chance for Lotan to augment its income. Tourists come for the desert isolation, the birdwatching and the Holistic Health Centre, including massages, herbal treatments and ''watsu'' - water shiatsu. Now, there's a service the Children of Israel could have used after 40 years in the desert.

Road to Solomon's pillars

THE cliffs that loom as we drive into Timnah are deep red, moulded into mushrooms, spirals and spires.

When the prophet Zechariah called them mountains of brass he was not just being poetic. The ancient copper mines in Timnah provided the fuel to begin the Bronze Age 6000 years ago. Timnah was the source of the copper for the head brasses of the pharaohs and for the candelabra of Solomon's Temple.

The mines were active until about 20 years ago but today Timnah is a national park, accessible south of Kibbutz Lotan or north of Eilat, in southern Israel.

The park combines stunning geography and deep history. Hiking tracks criss-cross the 42 square kilometres of reserve, where a lucky traveller might spot gazelles and ibex.

We jump out of the car at the first of the gorgeous formations (pictured) and scale the spiral hill despite the heat. Later we wish we'd saved a little energy to walk the steep track up to the rock art or take a better look at King Solomon's pillars. The rippling curtain of pink pillars is Timnah's best-known site and forms a stunning backdrop for summer concerts.

Its name is romantic rather than historically accurate. Copper mining here pre-dated King Solomon and certainly continued long after him.

It was the Egyptians who brought most of the technology to Timnah and whose efforts are still visible in the remaining shrines to the goddess Hathor, hieroglyphics and mining tools. They were also responsible for the strikingly detailed rock art, featuring Egyptian warriors.

The park offers a host of modern tourism additives: a multimedia show on the area's history, a place to pack those colourful sands into your own souvenir bottles and even an artificial lake.

But it's easy to avoid all that and find yourself alone beneath an ancient sky, hearing the ghosts of hammers chipping into those magnificent rocks.

FAST FACTS

Getting there

Royal Jordanian has a low-season fare to Tel Aviv for about $2180 return from Sydney, including tax. Fly Qantas from Sydney to Bangkok (9hr), then Royal Jordanian to Amman (10hr) and on to Tel Aviv (45min). Melbourne passengers pay the same and fly to Sydney to connect. Australians are issued with a 90-day visa on arrival.

Staying there

A double room in the kibbutz with breakfast is $95 a night, with a $20 surcharge on weekends. See kibbutzlotan.com/tourism/index.htm or email tourism@lotan.ardom.co.il.

When to go

For the bird migrations, go in March-April or October-November. Temperatures can exceed 40 degrees in July and August but the winter months are mild.

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