What are the foundations on which this country is built?

Damaging technics, greed and narrow self-interest, inducing policies of abuse and genocide that are still in effect?

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Buckley and me

During my doctoral research I got to know William Buckley pretty well. As I was scouring material on him a friend, Maya Ward, recommended I read Strandloper, which is an excellent novel based on his life. I have called Buckley the first Australian permaculturalist (cheekily, in front of David Holmgren). Last year Southerly published my Portrait of the escaped convict who slowly nativised into a Wathaurong man over 32 years before Batman and co discovered him. The poem features in my thesis alongside this photograph painted by an unknown artist and undated. The painting hangs in the State Library of Victoria.

Today I was rifling through some images and I came across this photograph taken of me reading at the Victorian Writers' Centre (next door to the SLV) in 2011. I'm standing in front of my poem Step by step, which also features in my thesis.

An uncanny resemblance between permaculture poets? Buckley is important to me because he is a rare European who listened to and learnt from Indigenous land spirit and intelligence.

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