Cirrus@Austlit

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)