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The power of this experience of place prompts reflection on the way in which young people who live in areas marked by multiple disadvantage relate to place. Many say they hate the areas in which they have grown up. This would be an understandable response to a world in which they have found neither opportunity nor beauty.
In addressing these issues as priorities, I would argue for not focusing on big ideological statements or on a one-size fits all climate policy, but rather invest in the resilience and adaptability of a capitalist/consumer system to meet our environmental concerns.
People are lacking inspiration and courage. So right now, what we need is a solution as big as the problem we're trying to solve, and the best idea on the table is a 'Green New Deal' that combines action on climate change with tackling inequality.
The women are not veiled, the men don't stop to look at the golden boys kicking footballs on giant screens ... Each one I pass is a person, held here by decree, by a boulder placed across the mouth. If I walk through a temple built by slaves, sending a pittance home to countries too poor for anyone to bother waging war over ... then, who am I?
At 4am on a cold morning, my brother phoned from the hospital. My final conversation with my mother, while harrowing, was not unexpected. My attempts to thank her for who she was and what she had given to me did not suffice. Mother Merle was in a hurry to leave this life, and the cancer that had drained her strength. She was over it.
One hundred and eighty years on, we walk the Myall Creek Memorial Way ... there's a quietness amidst our camaraderie ... murdering rage and gall are quieted, smell of gun powder spent, yet screams that cried that stark cold night still sigh amidst the sway ...
The work that's held my undivided heart now hangs upon the lip of the inane, a path I've struck, unwinding meaning's ball, or else a futile tangle, every day more lost to telos, purpose and design. No one else seems to have passed this way.
My social media feeds were awash with posts from my friends — many of whom are queer, disabled or on low incomes — worrying about their futures and the future of our earth. I saw countless posts with people saying 'That's it, I'm moving to NZ'. I completely understand the desire people had to give up — I felt it too.
'We are the joy, the sadness, the anger and the peace.' With these moving words, Elders Aunty Enice Marsh and Geraldine Anderson opened a significant gathering in Port Augusta, as people from the Flinders Ranges and the Kimba, still threatened by the federal government's plans to deposit the nation's radioactive waste, met again.
I asked Les then what he anticipated at the end of what was for him a very earthed life. Les was phlegmatic — he imagined a reunion with his parents (his mother died when he was 12) but was content to 'wait and see ... we are on certain post-mortem promises after all'.
The isolation is familiar — like the Mauritius I grew up in, but these swans also capture a different Australia to the one I have known until now. What appears spectacular to a tourist travelling in an air conditioned car remains brutal for the locals, as evidenced by the drought and near ghost towns forced to reinvent themselves through tourism.
We've witnessed this confluence of economic opportunity with aid and development in Indonesia, where our support of local eco-tourism has revived communities with self-sustaining employment opportunities while preserving local rainforests from being felled for wood.