Making Links

presenting at Making Links



At Hope Vale primary school, Cape York.


Well I reckon the only reason I have not been blogging is because I have been talking too much. I have one occasion above where I co-presented about the Digital Story Telling (DST) project in Hope Vale with Samia Goudie. This was at the Making Links conference in
Melbourne (Link above). Before that I did my first ever international keynote at a Marine Educators conference (IPMEN).
And also presenting at Hope Vale school the DST project that the kids made, again with Samia.

And all this talking and sharing leads to more sharing and talking. And you always end up learning more and becoming more inspired to carry on.

Because sometimes it seems overwhelming the amount to do and learn, the current threats to the wellbeing of this groaning over- populated planet. All the personal issues of being in the middle of your life or maybe more and seeing a huge momentum developing and realising how finite our individual terms are.

So maybe I'll go back to having a bit of meandering time on my blog. Hope so.

Oh and good news. Just won a grant to help us develop curriculum from the Two Bays project that links the Old ways with the New. Linking traditional knowledge, understanding Sea Country with Science practices in a model of Ocean Literacy principles to create innovative curriculum for kids. Yay.

Tidal Ancestor

Tidal Ancestor

If the tides had an answer
to the unfathomable question
and the tides, toing and froing
conjured up the perfect shell;
would the heart be open to it?

Tidal pull, tugging at the heart's complexity
dark, somewhere trying to hear itself,
within sounds continuous, insistent motion.

Silence, is a streamlined space
garnished with shaker insects
and water flow.

Saltwater, transparently clear to crocodile murky in a couple of hours;
light today so clear you could see every tree on Cape Flattery.

So, we all emerged from the tides,
pulled shorewards by the desire to walk
on this land.

Connectivity and separation,
sunlight fusion,
the stranded starfish, found by the
children at low tide and left out
to die slowly in the sun.

Land and sea, land and sea, land and sea,
land and sea

Connies Beach,
Cape Flattery,
Cape York,
October, 2008

Packed and ready to go..

I have been in Queensland for a week now and hope to make our way to Cape Flattery tomorrow for a month long project with the Hope Vale Aboriginal Community
We have been getting ready in Cairns and I had planned to have a bit of down time beforehand. This was not to be, as my daughter Aurora was very ill with fevers, so we were in and out of emergency and doctors surgerys and had many nights of no sleep. But she is now much better and we are now in Cooktown. Ready for the big sand dune drive and our time in Guugu Yimithirr Country.

This year the program is very full and we have extended it by a couple of weeks. I am very involved in the digital story telling project and am working as one of the trainers as well as helping run overall program. The link in the title is worth following if you are interested in finding out in more depth the aims and also methodolgy of the DST component. There will be lots more about what is happening on our Pelican website.

I am looking forward to setting up my tent and getting my feet on country and being part of our once a year camp community on the beautiful coastline of Cape York.

A delicate triumph

Dare I celebrate with this gentle unfolding of a magnolia bloom? Dare I celebrate a Winter that is passing? Dare I celebrate this early warming of blossom and flower?
Dare I think that my time, my year of difficulty could result in something resembling a delicate unfolding of good possibility and certainly good intent?

Catchments to Coast - Triabunna

Pelican is heading for home. The East Coast of Tassie pictured above is now slipping under the horizon behind us as we motor sail across Bass Strait. We were escorted by dolphins as we sailed into Banks Strait towards Tasmania and this morning were shadowed into the vast sea paddock between Tasmania and the mainland by a big pod of squeaking, whistling Bottle-Nosed Dolphins.




Our stay in Tasmania was all too brief, particularly as we have sailed all the way down here. We did two events, one from Swansea and one from the port town of Triabunna (Aboriginal word for Native Hen). Both towns are part of the East Coast catchment of Glemorgan Spring Bay.
And it is with the Natural Resource Managers of that particular council that we may be setting up a new Two Bays kind of project. Triabunna sits in a wonderful deep harbour and we thouroughly enjoyed meeting the people from there and having a tiny bit of time to explore on land.
Below is a photo of a woodchip pile. This enterprise is situated just outside of Triabunna. Some people may be aware of the controversies surrounding the logging, woodchip, pulp mill industries in Tasmania. These industries are the mainstay of the economy and there has been a constant struggle between the green movement and the people who run and are employers in these industries. The Australian Greens party was formed in the 70s in response to the planned damming of Lake Peddar and the Franklin. A company called Gunns basically has the monopoly of the forestry industries and also many agricultural projects (wineries) and is a big player in Tasmania. In fact, the Premier of Tasmania, who resigned while we were there, left his position in the main due to his too obvious connection with these powerful industrialists.



For me the highlight was meetinig a local artist, Vita, pictured below with one of our crew, Julia and Aurora.
She is nearly 92 and going strong, painting very interesting abstracted landscapes with a joyous sense of colour. I hope to meet with her for longer if the planned project takes off in early 2009. She thought that our boat, Pelican, was the most beautiful boat she had ever seen. And she added that she hasd seen plenty of boats in her lifetime. We think so too!!

the crossing

It is pitch dark outside as Pelican gently rocks to the long slow swell of Bass Strait. The cook is reading, my daughter is making paper dolls with our new volunteer on Pelican; Julia, a young Marine Biologist from Germany. The skipper and first mate are in the wheel house, making sure that we don't hit a tanker or a whale . Estelle, another of the old Pelican crew is tidying up the galley. And I am blogging! I will put in my communal time after dinner and do the dishes!

We are sailing down to Tasmania to hopefully develop a Two Bays project on the East Coast. But it really is just a wonderful excuse to be out on the ocean , on a cold late Autumn night, sailing under a lop sided moon.

My personal life is still in a bit of freefall but being out here is slowly giving me a much needed feeling of peace. Sometimes I wonder about what I am doing and feel like I am floundering in a sea of good intentions.

Particularly now as I am crossing this stretch of water, created during sea level rises over 10,000 years ago, and traversing my own internal changes that are in their own way causing a complete change in the geography of my own life.

Ahh the grandeur and tininess of me, ahh, the joy of watching an albatross skim the surface of the wave - wing outstretched in graceful pleasure of motion and control.

A Fringe of Leaves

Probably my bad memory but I seem to recall a Patrick White novel of the same name about Eliza Fraser? And if that is so I would like to read it as I also seem to recall that the novel is based around the true story of a white woman who was shipwrecked near Fraser Island and ended up living for some time with the Gubbi Gubbi people of South East Queensland before being rescued. I may be completely wrong but that would not be new or novel either but ithe title set up a train of thought for this blog.
I have just come back from spending some time at Dangerbridge, which is the name of my Mum's farm in South East Queensland. A family holiday. And it was that, even though it was undertaken at a time of a lot of stress between my husband and I. This was the same area for those events described above.
But I don't want to dwell on the complexities of my marriage but rather at the level of unknowability which hovers in our lives and can make life even more of a mystery than it already is.
At a point in my own life which is demanding deep attention to the emotional life. I find myself drawn to the possibility of understanding these hidden currents and attempting to navigate the swirling waters in the truest possible way.
True to whom?
Is a good life one that is lived by being true only to the self or to the idenified good of others? Is the good of others also good for the self?
I know that I am happiest when acting and being in accord with a strong feeling of connection to others, often through sharing, working together, being together.
It is too late for me to go on with this muddled form of diaristic thinking so will just end on the note of meditation. Of looking out through this pagoda window, through a fringe of leaves, to the world beyond.