'What would we hear if place could speak?
'What would we hear if we listened to our ancestral stories for wisdom in navigating current circumstances, even while recognizing that we now inhabit entirely new circumstances requiring up-to-date science and inventiveness, as well as ancient insight into the human experience?' (Geoff Berry Introduction)
Contents indexed selectively.
'Attention has been caught by the mythic performance events that I have helped facilitate and perform over the past 30 years. This is a brief history and rationale for the making of such events.' (Introduction)
'I was born with big curious eyes and am often caught staring at people. I have come to see that my intense gaze is a fascination with what I see and feel around me and inside me. My gaze lives in relationship to my environment influencing the way I relate to the world, how I internalise my experiences and what is born as a result. The Greek Philosopher and writer Nikos Kazantzakis refers to the authentic gaze that moves between the outer and inner world. This is captured in the subtitle above and reflects my own experience in pursuit of an authentic gaze. It raises a personal question for me: how to give form to the life force deep within me as I gaze outward and inward. My gaze takes me beyond what can be seen with the naked eye and allows beauty to take shape within me and around me.' (Introduction)
'It is as though a mouth in the rockface has been prised open and stomach contents disgorged, teeth too. This is the deepest of the scars left by the quarrying of stone from the range rising along the southern side of Ilparpa Valley. The disgorgement settles on a flattened turnaround for trucks and machinery, high above the valley; a second smaller turnaround has been carved out below. The road leading up to it has eroded into a deep gully; just a goat track at the side holds on, buttressed by buffel grass and rock. Up this track we go, for a picnic of promise.' (Introduction)
'The intricate and inscrutable workings of Central Desert Law and mythopoesis continue to hold sway over the Australian settler imagination. We are moved to vertigo by the vibrating fields of dot paintings, and the brutal exploits of Dreaming heroes suggest enigmatic codes for social behaviour and care of country. Those of us who feel affronted and sorrowed by the ongoing colonial suppressions of Indigenous sovereignty, such as the Northern Territory Intervention, may wish to deepen our understanding or be an ally. Our anger is fueled by our imperfect intuition of the deep knowledge of the land held by Central Desert peoples. However, navigating the ethical and political space between settler, or kardiya, and Central Desert Aboriginal, or yapa, remains fraught. One of the under-sung guides to working in this intercultural space is the psychoanalyst, scholar, and poet Crag San Roque. San Roque's intercultural work might help kardiya understand how an inherited cultural framework can obscure our capacity to fully understand the Aboriginal lifeworld. Reflexive in philosophy, exploratory in intention, and privileging the imagination above all, San Roque's work is unique among those working in, and with, Central Desert communities.' (Introduction)
'From that respectful acknowledgement of country Aeschylus opens the drama in which he shows people how they might retrieve their relationship with Earth from a perilous tipping point. Many of his concerns resemble ours in 2017 CE, but the year is 458 BCE.3 It is the last time the 67-year-old father of Greek tragedy will invoke the forces of prophetic imagination in the service of his country. He hopes the audience of 17,000 citizens will deliver his 13th victory in Athens' annual theatre festival. But his optimism did not extend to the future of his beloved city-state when he embarked on The Oresteian Trilogy.' (Introduction)
'In this paper we reflect on land, language and law in Wiilman Noongar Boodjar (Country), which has recently become known as the Upper Blackwood River Catchment in the South West of Western Australia. By intertwining historical perspectives with Western science and Noongar katitjiny (knowledge and understandings, or rationality) we argue that this region is alive, that it does have a language and that there is a message to be heard. History shows that the voice of the land might be diminishing, but signs of a transformation are evident, where a conciliation of these voices enables real listening to ancient insights and deep participation with place.' (Introduction)
'In July 2015 I sat with a senior Yanyuwa woman named Dinah Norman a-Marrngawi, who has been my teacher of Yanyuwa language and of Yanyuwa ways of knowing the land and sea she calls home, and of her family both human and non-human, for the last 35 years. On this particular day we were proofing a very long text for inclusion into the soon to be published encyclopedia of her language. We were resting, and in the silence she asked in Yanyuwa "Can my country hear English?" To which I responded, "What do you think?" Dinah sat for a while and then quietly said, "I do not think it does, it can only hear Yanyuwa". She left the conversation there and yet it stayed with me, there was in this conversation a deeper understanding of an existential crisis for Dinah. At 85 she is the oldest speaker of her language; there are two other women speakers, who are 76 and 65.' (Introduction)
I' first met Craig San Roque at a gathering in 1996 on a property called Glastonbell in the Blue Mountains outside of Sydney. Glastonbell had been set up a decade earlier as an eco-spiritual retreat by an eclectic, much loved mystic and devotee of deep ecology, Philip Simpfendorfer. The 1996 event was the first in a series of Sense of Place colloquia organized by John Cameron of the legendary Social Ecology program at UWS. Although most of the participants were academics, John's plan was to depart as far as possible from standard academic protocols and draw participants into a deep shared experience of place. Glastonbell was a rocky wonderland of cliffs, caverns, winding paths and hidden nooks, all with Middle Earth-type names like Dargan's Garden, The Cathedral, Valley of Continents and The Portals. Over a period of 3 - 4 days, our group met at various of these chthonic sites to discuss the conference papers which had been circulated prior to our meeting.' (Introduction)
