Black Cockatoo Camp #1

Peter Yencken and I today returned from taking 8 homeschoolers out into the bush for the first of what we hope will be many Black Cockatoo Camps. As a small tribe we made fire with a bow-saw, ate a lean and very local diet, made new friends (including one injured and feathered), mentally challenged and physically exhausted ourselves and began to tune into and interact with our best possible teacher – the land that supports us.

We made shelter with found materials.

We moved in and for four days we made it home.

At night mosquitos let themselves in and ate us alive.

Each morning we foraged along the creek before returning to our fire,

around which we honed our whittling skills. 

We made simple tools with the litter of the forest floor.

We foraged yabbies, blackberries, apples, plums, wild herbs and vegetables,

which we added to the local produce we brought to the camp.

Then in the afternoons we played mind and body games

and headed to the lake

to do what kids love.

Read more...

Greenwash #25 in Trouble - Locavore Intimacy

Click for bigger, then click again for better resolution.

Please note, my critique of agriculture in this piece is not an attack on farmers per se. We are agricultural consumers, farmers are agriculture providers. Urban-centric attacks on farmers for being ecological destroyers are misguided and simplistic. We grow the demand, desire and populations that necessitate ecological crisis. We're all participants, or as Gary Snyder puts it: "No one today can afford to be innocent, or indulge himself in ignorance of the nature of contemporary governments, politics and social orders." (Earth House Hold, 1957)

If only the following table read: "The Main Types of Damage Anthropocenes Inadvertently Cause to Wildlife," and unpacked all the different ways in which we dwell on Earth and the consequences for each. When white people began farming in Australia, Aborigines were rounded up and killed as 'cattle stealers'. I find the same continued hypocrisy in this table:

Click for bigger.

Read more...