August 17th 2008

I visited Nancy again today, with Janet, and I believe it pleased her. Having visitors must be a good change from the same old of life between bedroom, bathroom and common room. And of course, it was great to see Janet again.

It was a beautiful day for recreating, and many were doing just that beside the lake as Sabbath and I encountered when I rode to the National Library for coffee with Hilary and Wendy. The patio is great, with the choice of sun or shade, and the food has always been good, the service delightful. Wendy and Hilary had driven over the lake to catch up.

I was pleased to hear that it is raining a bit down at Caba and there will be a spring. There were a few Sydney visitors in the log cabin last night. And a frost I hear, so that would have been a rude shock. And the goats will be kidding in a few weeks, the cow has calved and the place will run over with milk.

Only one official event this weekend, as the campaign absorbs most of the other MLAs and all the candidates. It was a Sudanese event in memory of Dr John Garang de Maboir who was the first Vice President of the Government of South Sudan and the Chairman of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement – there was real hope in the room, not least because some of the people there were very much involved in the struggle to bring democracy to South Sudan, with the intention of spreading it northwards.

Sitting for the next two weeks, late at night too, since there are many bills the government wants adopted before caretaker government begins. It will be ‘interesting’, as committees report, Libs and Labor jostle for control (the Libs rely upon censure and no-confidence motions to get attention) and no doubt, the insults will fly thick and fast. Both parties have done their polling no doubt, so have a pretty good idea of their relative standing. I suppose I will feel a bit detached from all that, but always a fascinating display of human political behaviour, always something to learn.

August 15th 2008

Watching Hercule Poirot on ABC; another murder mystery in an upper class English family with enough members so that a few can get knocked off while enough survive to be suspects.

I reckon the murderer is the genteel lady’s companion who really wants a tea-shop and independence.

Lady’s companion; someone who relies on her good manners, domestic accomplishments and benign disposition to provide her with a living.

Only women with a secure living could afford to express their mind, if their opinion was different to the conventional one.

Well we have moved on.

And yes, she did it.

Meanwhile, out in the world, the one we live in …. The drought continues and spring looks like being a brief flush of green, which thereafter will be restricted to the green lawns and gardens of Floriade, and the sportsfields blessed by recycled water. Not good for the soul.

Winter politics is this year enlivened by the forthcoming election. The ALP is using the offices of government to produce a series of plans and strategies in glossy booklets and brochures – Canberra Plan – let’s start a conversation; integrated transport – let’s build some more roads; education – we are investing in schools, some of the one’s left; waiting for the new proposals for waste, perhaps electronic, maybe green wastes; there are two months to go, so plenty more goodies to come (and a surprise surplus to do it with).

Today a spray of taunting media releases about the Libs: where are they? Stanhope reckons they are hiding. I think they are writing policy. The two big parties are doing polling, I hear. Malcolm Mackerras reckons it will be 8 Libs, 8 ALP and 1 Green (Shane). This seems to be based on a gut feeling and things his friends are saying. I suspect the polls are saying something different.

Two more sitting weeks and then I am moving over for the new candidates, since they – I hope it’s they – will be taking the battles into the next Assembly. Of course, perhaps informed by their polling, Labor has to show that Greens are unnecessary because it has the environment covered. With paper, apparently.

This gives me a chance to seriously tidy the office, go through the files and make more room in some of them, set up some archives and make things easily findable. This is such a large project that it doesn’t get done in normal busy-ness – not in my time anyway and not any time in the last few years by the dates on things.

This week in our national conversation, we aren’t talking about climate change, we are talking about the Murray Darling. The two are connected but the state of the rivers can’t be blamed on climate change – we did it all by ourselves. Oh yes, the Olympic Games are on and we are counting Gold! and Russia is occupying Georgia in the hope that the world is watching the swimmers and East Timor is setting aside land for biofuels when they need food. (I only know about this because I tuned into The Asia Pacific report yesterday morning on early waking.)

July 28th 2008

July is the cruellest month… In Canberra, that is, when the winds blow off the mountain snows; rain turns to frozen drops, gentler than summer hail; people button up and only the very enthusiastic turn up to meetings.

There were a few of those today – first, to the tree-plantings all over the place; one was on Mt Majura, which I was set to get to but weekend tasks were compressed by personal life events, of which more later. The washing, the marketing, the cleaning, the cooking; but many people made light work and I believe they had run out of trees long before the allotted time. Hoooray! People making a difference.

As they are in the Woden Eco-Challenge, exactly the right sort of recipient of an ACT environment grant. Should they be called community sustainability grants? A committed group of 12 or so people have been meeting and planning since a public meeting late last year and a goodly crowd of fifty or so people turned out today, arriving at exactly the same time as the hail. Ideas aplenty.  

So Canberra is abuzz with ecological awareness and the strong desire to get moving. Planting trees and reducing the ecological footprint by 20% in a year: the eco-challenge.

At the governmental level, it is all very slow, moving slower than the melting glaciers. With an Opposition trying to drag weak measures down, the transition to sustainability will be led by communities.

Generations have fought the particular battles of their time – all kinds – and ours includes the big one – for the health of the planet and ultimately, ourselves.

A quiet feminist, and fierce fighter for social justice and peace, died last week. My ex-mother-in-law and good friend, Cecily May McIlroy, died last week, a sleep that turned into death. Cec was, along with my mother and Aunt Ethel Thompson, a really important role model, and probably the only one of them who publicly identified as feminist. She lived up the hill from us in the Bonang days and helped with the children – she lived in a house with mains power, and it meant we could all get together on Saturday nights, each bringing a dish, to her house.

I was pleased to see, from an interview that her grand-daughter Katrina conducted with her just a couple of weeks before she died, that she called those years the best - because she was independent. After years of wife- and mother- hood and she lived a life of integrity all the years that I knew her, but in her house on the hill she could create her space. And there she read, wrote, drew wild-flowers previously collected and pressed, and named them. Went to pottery classes (with me and Edna, learning from Peggy at Ando) and went on to make pots. We prize them. Spun wool and knitted and crocheted it. We had coloured sheep for a while, among the larger crossbred flock, and there was quite a bit of experimental dying with various lichen, leaves and onion skins.

Cec wrote under the name of May Morris, and was published in Womenspeak and Vashti’s Voice and other progressive journals.

When the physical demands of bush living got too much, Cec moved down to Tuross Head into a little cottage and created a garden paradise. It was all clear-felled by the next owner, but family gatherings were redefined by the seaside. Later she moved into Banksia Village at Broulee where she was very well looked after.

She was buried at Moruya, on a sunny afternoon, where we all had a wonderful view of hills and valleys, looking away from the sea. Family and friends were there, stories were told and everyone learned something they didn’t know about Cec. We sojourned for a while at the Riverside Hotel, where more stories were told and little Eleanor fell off a couch and hit her head on the corner of the coffee table – to be taken to hospital where perhaps the doctor observed her as he hurried backwards and forwards – but she didn’t go to sleep or seem otherwise affected, so that little drama ended well.

There wasn’t as much poetry read as expected, but here is something by Cec from our Warm Corners poetry collection, written about my daughter, so very special to me:

To Eleni – almost three 

Eleni’s kneeling on her chair,

Spoon at the ready, waving.

I’m ‘ungry, she cries, I’m ‘ungry.

It’s breakfast; she’s slurping up her cornflakes,

She’s waving her spoon;

Her flag’s flying, she’s moving,

Moving on

Moving….

And this clever one:

Pink Slip

So – what if there is a rattle or two,

maybe a weakness in the chassis;

gaps in the upholstery, stuffing leaking out?

Isn’t that only a little rust,

not a sign of fatal decay?

Shall I speak of the fading spark,

or the chug, chug of the starter

when there’s a frost about, and a westerly

blows icy from the mountains?

In short, can I keep the old heap

going for one more trip,

and will I try to qualify

once more for my pink slip?

In the last years of ageing Cec was able to slip away from the news and the continually awful news, about Indigenous people, about the war (whichever one), the weather, the politicians, which had hitherto made her angry or irritable – so gained some contentment, enjoying her friends and family which gained a new member in the last year, young Kaia. What a wonderfully loving family it was/is, ensuring there was someone to visit Cec at least every weekend. I’m lucky that I went down three times this year and saw more of her than I have for many years.

She was indeed of the generation that pushed at the barriers: the right to study and work was not yet fully won; the men were away at war in the years of her courting. My older daughter Sam said that she saw Cec as a thoroughly modern woman and said that she had learned from her independence, integrity and inspiration.

 

July 15th 2008

I am still holidaying, with just a few hours to go. Now I am lying in a bed in a friend’s house in Tathra, listening to another friend who has to leave for work before 7.30 (am) make her first preparations. Judy says this is now a commuter’s town, with the 5 minute peak hour of departure of Bega leaving the town bereft of community, its development the responsibility of the wives of the retired district farmers who traditionally spend their last years here, fittingly organising fundraisers for the Bega hospital.

We have been having a feast of Italian food, with the recipe books saying make me, make me, and she does. Watching television with other people is much more fun, and we watched and critiqued the film of Henry James’ Golden Bowl, and last night despaired to the latest clandestine film from Tibet where the iron hand of the Chinese government is tightened through increased militarism. We topped this off with Ralph de Heer’s The Old Man who Read Love Stories, set in the wet messy jungle of French Guinea, a different wry take on life altogether. (Although the underlying subtext of colonialism, the irrationality of the state and the absurdity of human behaviour and its consequences told underlying darker stories.) Julie says that the moral of the film was that if you read lots of love stories you will find love itself. Hmmmmm. We women, single for various reasons and living diverse lives, have to look for love where we can find it, since we do not enjoy the steamy romantic tales and would find the men very boring if they stepped from the pages. (I tried to write a love story when I was home from school sick at the age of eleven, but abandoned it when I had to write what happened after they met; even my theoretical knowledge was woefully scanty.)

Yesterday we walked and walked. First Judy and I went from one end of Tathra beach to the other, sheltering from the scuds of rain under the coastal tea tree and just getting wet. The southern sky was inky but the northern sky was clear. As we returned we walked towards a perfect rainbow but of course, it disappeared before we got to where it should have been, in typical rainbow fashion.

We drove along the now sealed road to Bermagui (the inevitability of which many of the greener locals fought for years and years, concerned that it would encourage more tourists) and had lunch with Julie, who had finished her morning’s work of showering and dressing the people along the road who needed that help. We ate home (cafe) cooked pies and I had a very large coffee, and we set off for Camel Rock from whence we walked to beautiful Wallega Lake. Stunning views of craggy coastline, rocky arches and seething seas could be viewed from the white light of coastal tea tree forests – but the lake itself gleamed calmly, failing to yield fish to the recreational anglers on the boardwalk (no wonder; Julie said that there are 15 commercial licences for fishing on the lake). On our side, the substantial holiday houses of the wealthy; on the other, the broken dwellings of the Aboriginal community, another of those missions where people were shunted from all over the region. Here the disaffection of a dislocated population continues.

Different coasts for different people.

Today I drive back up the mountain and pick up the threads again, tonight attend the ACT Greens campaign launch and hand on the baton, so to speak.

Tuesday night: in fact, I handed on the baton, literally. Roland had made a beauty, a green felt one, rather like a diploma, and all the lead candidates took hold of it. Let’s hope they all three take it to the finishing post. Canberra needs them!

July 11thish 2008

Walking today through the paddocks, with the fringe of mountains, still not snow-tinged, around 280 degrees of my view, I realised that I have been walking this route for thirty-five years. So much has happened on this land in just that time and it had 100 years of white history before that and from the number of stone axe-heads and other tools, it has a millennia of human history. Of course, before that, there was the ancient history of ancient mountains, once a seabed, pushed out of the landscape by the collision of land masses that we know as Gondwanaland. Or that’s how I remember the story being told, my mythological inheritance.

Over that time, I have seen the moist temperate forest of the Wabsico area become dry temperate forest, on its way to woodlands I suspect. Although there were three floods last year, the billabongs didn’t hang around as they used to. Perhaps this is positive in terms of pests: the blackberries were flattened by the floods and then the dry season discouraged their growth.

A sociable thrush is courting us, wrens skip through the bare fruit tree branches and a kookaburra warns of the rising of the sun. A lyre bird thrills in the distance but the dawn chorus is wintry thin. Ominously, there appear to be pig diggings between the cabin and the river, indicating that this feral has entered our world.

But in the paddocks, the bare earth of the sheep camp where only sorrel and marshmallow and horehound, lovers of hard acid soil thrived when we first took over, is now vegetated more healthily. The sheep are long gone, there have been horses, donkey, cattle and goats, but now its pretty much all kangaroos. Sustainable management, of a kind.

The good news is that since we repaired the fence, and Garry drove out the neighbour’s cattle out, they haven’t been back. The fence works! I have a draft of a letter to send to the neighbour which we will discuss at dinner tonight. Has to have the right tone.

To come here midwinter is a bit mad. Especially to the log cabin, where it is exactly whatever temperature it is outside, except by the fire, without the wind (mostly). We are cooking and boiling our kettles on the fire. The weather forecast at Garry’s last night (he now has free-to-air television due to a digital set-top box and always has the radio on) said wild weather would be sweeping through Victoria, and it did stop for a moment as it went past. No rain touched the ground. Today the clouds menaced excitingly and a little fell, but the tourists were blessed with sparkling sunshine. We spend our time getting wood, burning it and preparing food. Got to do it in daylight.

And walking, walking, walking, having cups of tea, reading last month’s Spectrums and Panoramas, putting distance between the Canberra world and the Cabanandra world, contemplating putting a salad together for tonight’s dinner, appreciating my new thermolactyl leggings.

July 6, 2008 

Nancy Shelley 

When someone who has been an oracle for our age begins to herself suffer the erosion of old age, how should we regard her? When that person no longer is able to find the words for her thoughts, and her sentences often end up in a different place to where they started, how does one respond? When that person was Nancy Shelley who sat so firmly, knitting, at Canberra Program for Peace meetings, and generally had something wise to say; who camped at Pine Gap with 700 other women to call for it to be closed down; who sternly brought the officials to task over child soldiers at DFAT consultations on human rights where she represented Quakers for Peace? That’s the Nancy I knew, and today I visited her at  Morling Lodge where she abides with nearly 200 people who need the comprehensive care of an aged care hostel.  

I visited with our mutual friend Roderic, who has kept in touch with her all the way through the time when Nancy began getting confused and it became obvious that she could not stay alone in her house. Fortunately there is a niece who came to the rescue when the move was made: finding a place, packing up the house of many decades, assisting in relocation when she needed to move to a place with a higher level of care. 

Morling Lodge looks very ordinary from the outside, but inside it is clean, cosy and has a nice orderly jumble of highly coloured things. From conversation with Nancy I realised that colours are very important to her. She preferred the coloured bobs balls, she remarked on my blue eyes, she judged books by the colour of their covers. She smiles and laughs a lot, she is very clever and witty, and I believe that this woman who lived alone for as long as I knew her really enjoys being in the big room with lots of people. There aren’t a lot of conversations to be had when many of the people are sleeping or sunk away into their bodies; visitors are very important as a marker of status (something I observed at Banksia Village, when picking up Cec) as well as people who are there specifically to talk to you. And Nancy likes to talk. The staff are wonderful, Nancy likes them, and there is the sense of plenty of time. 

Nancy always wears a hat, and today it was a very wonderful felt number new I think, so someone is thinking of her. Her clothes were shades of purple and her face is the picture of health. I think she looks better than I have ever seen her; is it because the anxiety of worrying about the planet and the people in it has lifted? 

I just googled Nancy and got several other Shelleys but not this one; I suppose it is apt, because Nancy kept out of cyberspace, always wanted documents to be sent in hard copies; and that might have meant that she fell off lists as organizations focused more and more on email and internet communication. Yet I believe she kept busy and involved in peace politics until the next meal, the colours in a room took precedence.  

In Nancy’s hospital-like room a piece of her own furniture stands out, a handpainted narrow chest of drawers about waist height with each small drawer stuffed with some of Nancy’s publications. I borrowed one with a blue cover and one with an orange cover, the latter giving the history to the Tamil conflict in Sri Lanka – something I need to understand – the former posing the questions: Where are we going? Is it where we want to go?  

I first met Nancy – or didn’t really meet her because she was a keynote speaker (along with Patrick White) at a peace and disarmament conference I came to in Canberra from the bush in 1983. I found her awesome, and her words were more optimistic than Patrick’s. Later, when I moved here, I found myself working alongside her at Canberra Program for Peace meetings, peace rallies and everything else we did (Hiroshima events: drawing the chalk shadows on pavements and walls) and later, we were fellow NGO representatives at DFAT consultations on human rights and trade.  

Roderic has just co-authored a book called Global Citizens: Australia Activists for Change which has a chapter – written by Roderic – on Nancy. Nancy was a Mathematics teacher who retired in 1980 to work full-time for peace – do people still do that kind of thing? She was a Quaker and Quakers believe in ‘speaking truth to power’ which expresses the personal courage and non-violence expected of those who see the way power is expressed in our society as the key problem to be tackled.  

Best I finish by quoting from it: 

Shelley’s key message (1983a: 51) today is to ‘cast fear out’, since it denies life. Her perspective of non-violence remains an empowering vision of an alternative framework for global peace-making. Her influence as a global citizen has extended beyond Quaker circles, and the peace movement. When Shelley was nominated and received an Order of Australia Medal in 1989, it was by someone who had watched her peace work from outside the movement. Shelly’s core values are shared by many Australians, and by many other advocates of non-violence. … She has shown [global] citizens that their task is to replace insecurity and fear with the growth of responsibility, trust, fearlessness, and respect for the rights of all humanity.

Stokes, Geoffrey, Roderic Pitty & Gary Smith 2008: Global Citizens – Australia Activists for Change, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne (97) 

So how does one talk to people who used to do things like this and now observes the room as a jumble of coloured shapes and friends? One listens to what she says, and enjoys it, and recognises the logic behind the ordering of the words through the delight in her eyes. And quietly resolves to visit again.  

(Now if you google Nancy Shelley, you should find this blog – so the cyber generation can know about her too)

 

June 29, 2008

I am having a lovely Sunday, some of it at home, cleaning and doing bits and pieces in the garden. Cooking an actual meal. Digging potatoes.

Cleaning up the computer desktop. Writing this. Watching the dog watch the cat. Seeing a blue wren in the yard instead of minahs and pewits.

Bringing in the washing and folding it and putting it away. Listening to Sibelius at present, a recent op-shop purchase.

This morning a surprise drop-in visit, too rare to turn away and rush off to an optional meeting. So we had a coffee, the kids wet each other, and Persia took nearly all the old jumpers I was taking to the op shop (and put some on the kids). Then we went to see her friend Amanda's exhibition at Manuka - note on door said back in 5 minutes, but it was longer of course. We walked around and looked in the clothes and shoe shops and didn't like very much, which was lucky.

The work was a pack of life-size wild dogs - kelpie looking animals made on bamboo and wire frames draped in tanned cotton strips, very lifelike, Sab sniffed the bum of one. The artist has been asked to bronze them for a gallery, they would be great outdoors, particularly in a rural gallery garden in the high country. She has the main pack in a hunting line on a simulated shearing shed floor, with bits of dung – the smell is right.

We sat in the Assembly from Wednesday morning until Saturday morning at 2.15 am. First, the no confidence motion was debated. It was lost as it would be, but a debate was had, although nothing new was learned. I tried to amend the motion by turning it into a censure, but naturally that lost on the numbers (2 for, 15 against). The No Confidence is for truly heinous demeanours in my opinion, and this slipshod process was not that, since there are still changes to the project afoot.

That was most of Wednesday. We sat later than usual but not more than an inconvenience. On Thursday night we left at 11.30 – after each Lib had talked in the Adjournment debate, mostly about the power plant. But Friday was the budget, and that had to be passed as the Chief Minister is going off to COAG meetings next week (an extra week scheduled because The Liberals No Confidence motion meant a week lost). And it was passed, of course.

Long and tedious though it is, it is much better to sit out these long hours of speeches than to have them guillotined, as happened last year – just because Labor could, with majority government. It wasn’t a bad budget; buoyed by land sales and an election. The Labor Federal Government has actually only been bad for Canberra so far. It funded a number of good initiatives, no inspiring projects but there is an election and such announcements must be timely. I hope the mid-term budget isn’t going to follow the pattern of the 2006 one, where half the innovative programs, some begun as promises in 2004, got slashed.

The weekend has to be a recuperative time for the next bout of late nights, as we go through the Chid and Youth Protection legislation. Its very big but generally pretty good. Not that legislation alone can deal with neglect and wrongful treatment of children, some of which continues to shock and appal.

Friday’s news had me reflecting on a pace called Pericoe and the people who lived at the Two Creeks property. Described in the newspapers (a syndicated article) as a former hippie commune, I thought about the people I knew there and what they did and were trying to do. Because they were neighbours, in a sense, of ours, though a hundred and sixty kilometres away. There weren’t many people in between, but a lot of forest. That word hippie is very unhelpful to describe the people who went out in that wave of ‘alternative lifestyle’ of the early seventies.

I think we were utopians, and just about all of us young and inexperienced in survival-level living. But we learned how to do it and we did it well, most of us, for a time.

At Pericoe, we knew Frances and Stephen, who built a wonderful mud-brick and timber house, and had a child there. They tried to establish a wonderful garden, but water was always scarce in summer. There were also the Andersons with their 3? 4? boys, all so healthy and active. No doubt there were others, but that lot of people moved away. All had great talents and wanted to take their lessons out into the world. Mary was an architect; John a musician; Frances became a well-known Permaculture advocate and teacher and Stephen wrote a novel and runs a bookshop at Maleny (last heard).

So what has happened at Pericoe, where a man and his three – three – very young children were found dead in his car on the entrance road to the property? I rack my brain for memories of similar incidents among our seventies lot. I can’t think of any. We did of course have interesting relationships with each other but no-one died. By anyone else’s hand.

I wonder if the current lot of people went there with a utopian vision and a sense of permanence (which we had, even though most of us went off to the city for our kids’ schools, our education, work)? Or are they there because they can afford to live there; no work, but if the rent is cheap, the dole covers most of the basic needs. Not transport though, especially with petrol going up, and it is possible to become stir-crazy if there is no way of getting into town, visiting neighbours.

There is a very human story behind this tragedy, and perhaps a story of our times. When people move to the bush not because they love it and want to explore their ingenuity and dreams but because they can't afford to live in the cities and towns, then it can very easily become depressing, but rarely catastrophic. There I go, writing a novel in my head.

June 17, 2008

Trevor Kaine's condolence motion. In the background, tension - will the Libs move a No Confidence motion (they will). Will the ALP argue against the suspension of sitting next Wednesday (no they didn't) and what will I say to this?

The Libs were humiliated by the smooth performance of the Stanhope team yesterday. It was frustrating and reminded me of the words of a Macarthur resident on Sunday, at ActewAGL's public information day. "Where are the checks and balances? Everywhere you look is an ALP member or supporter". Are they as well, people watching their backs?

Did officials lie? Did the Chief Minister lie? One assumes this is at the heart of the No Confidence motion, one hopes that the Libs see their role as ensuring accountable governance and not just as creating a stir for the media, at the last such opportunity before the election.

I wonder what Trevor would think. As we evoke the man I have no sense of how he would judge this occasion. "One for the substance not for the fizz", said Wayne who knew him longest.

June 15, 2008

At last, time to spend in the garden. A sunny day, the soil damp, the old pumpkin vines and tomato plants easily pulled out. They made a vey large pile which I will enjoy watching shrink.

In their place went peas of three kinds: sugar peas, snow peas and ordinary peas. Broad beans. Ah good, now I have seeds to watch grow.

Storm, our cat, has just rolled over and reveals a strange bare patch on his belly and side. It this related to the cancer? He has seemed reasonably content since his visit to the vet, eating with a very normal appetite as though that is his greatest pleasure in life. Eleni wants him to be here when she returns in September. You can't go away and make time stand still in the place you have left.

Sab and I had a walk late this afternoon and I saw that this suburb was designed for easy walking to shops and school - radially they are never more than 15 minutes from most homes. Whereas a car must be taken indirectly, do a partial circuit to arrive at the shops.

Today I drove to Tuggeranong to catch up with the latest iteration of the gas-powered plant and data centre proposal. It all looks very nice, in the air-brushed computer-generated photographs pinned to the display boards. Even if it is totally benign there is a sense of rushing it, in case the contract passes the ACT by. The people of Macarthur and Farrer are wondering if there is another agenda - still no EIS or any sense that the concerns of nearby residents are anything but a nuisance.

Tomorrow Jon Stanhope comes back to Estimates and the Libs will try to corner him and he will filibuster and accuse the Libs of being anti-progress. We are unlikely to be any the wiser.

Yesterday, another glorious day, Wendy drove Persia and the two kids Cas and Deesa to Tidbinbilla. What a gem this place is, rebuilt after the bushfire and looking beautiful with its regeneration, loved by the people who work there. Astutely placed volunteers keep a watchful eye on the people who walk the wetlands and answer their questions. It will be great to watch the reeds and other plants grow in spring and thereafter.

Good thing we did the wetlands walk first because once they'd visited the play-ground the kids were very hard to pull away. It is full of adventuresome things, but they preferred the pump because water is the most fascinating substance of all.

June 10, 2008

Queens Birthday weekend has come to an end. Whether or not its the queen's real birthday (and its not) or whether we should holiday on it if it was, its a good time to have a holiday. The Warm Corners Cooperative annual general meeting is timed around it. The 12th is Bran's birthday, and it is great to have that time to think about him and be with family. Perhaps Children's Day is a better name for it in our case.

We had a working bee before our meeting, we fixed a fence over Wabisco Creek, where the neighbour's cattle blunder through from his bare paddocks and graze on the Coop's grass. Now the fence we share with him is intact, and he has no excuse to let them graze on our land. They already have entry through his place into national park - and eventually back to our place. This neighbour is well known as a spokesman on sustainable agriculture - first coming into public notice as an opponent of converting farmland into pine plantations. However, his cattle management skills leave a lot to be desired.

The country is dry and my neighbours have many kangaroos grazing on the kangaroo grass which provides sustenance through winter. A kangaroo management plan is in order here, clearly. Scientists report that the kangaroo - the eastern grey - will do well under climate change scenarios. More Lawsons loom. We don't even know the names of species that live in our Cabanandra grasslands - time to invite some scientists to have a look?

Last Friday I went to inspect the site of the new gas-fired power plant.

Currently horse paddocks, they are well-managed and visited a lot by the various horse owners. I was interested to discover that it is a link in the Kosciusko Horse trail which winds through to Victoria. It is also an example of red gum-yellow box grassy woodlands. And then to read in the newspaper on Saturday that the preferred site was where it should be, if anywhere: the industrial estate of Hume near Tralee Road, where we were originally told it would be. But the greed of the government - the desire not to reduce its saleable industrial land - led to this very inappropriate choice.

Ad hocery in decision-making. Canberra Plan; Energy Plan; these are either so broad-brushed as to offer no guidance or are yet in the making. An Energy Plan would seem de riguer for good governance in this time of rising oil prices, imminent shortages and climate change - but all the governments are being caught unprepared. Having lied to us for so long, in their support for further expansion of road transport and energy inefficient building, they are leaving communities in the lurch.

It will be up to communities to organise their way out of the mess, to find a way to reduce their greenhouse emissions and to share - when all our acculturisation has been leading us in the opposite direction of individualisation.

The way this government makes decisions, many of them far-reaching as in the case of the gas-fired power station, rarely holds up to scrutiny.

Freedom of Information is subject to censorship and public servants fall on their swords - forced to lie it looks in this case. In a small town of intelligent people, it doesn't work; and it is a foolish head in the sand approach that assumes that public opinion cannot be harnessed to better outcomes. Will we hear truth or more spin in response?

June 1, 2008

Its out there, and that is a good thing. I have told the Canberra community that I will not be standing for the Assembly again as a candidate, and that is a very hard thing to do. It has been occupying me for quite a few weeks, as I weighed everything up. It is big. I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't think it was the right thing, the Greens will go on doing well and I will move on.

The worst aspect of it is that the Canberra community may think I am deserting them. Members of the Greens who haven't been coming to meetings and who learned of this through an email on Friday will wonder what is going on. Anyone who knows me well know that 'dutiful' is my middle name; they know I have been working for Canberra and the Greens long before I was elected. And with good will, am likely to do so long after.

I haven't been in a position of such choice ever - much of my life seems to be made up of doorways opening, and me walking through, sometimes they took me into wonderful experiences, sometimes they didn't. But in this I have a Real Choice.

Being in the Assembly is a privileged and particular kind of political action, but there are other ways to work, and most of my politics has been as catalyst: setting things up, getting them established and going on to the next major project. But within the constraints of the parameters set by my family circumstances.

The truth is that when you are a parent, which I am and have been for the last thirty-six years, your life is not entirely your own. Not until those children have reached the age, 18 in our society, when they are deemed to be adults in their own right. There is a comfort factor in that, no matter how difficult those years are - and as a single parent for the last 17 years I know how difficult - your choices are circumscribed. I have been very serious in my parenting: I wanted to give my children choices and ensure they stepped into the world as empowered and knowledgeable as they could be. To do fine without me, or anyone else, if that was how their life went.

I am very proud of my daughters, they are amazing women, succeeding in bringing their own dreams and hopes into reality and able to laugh tolerantly at me, as it seems women must about their mothers, if they are going to be able to move past the internalised mother that sits within us all.

But now I am in the world as myself, the only encumbrances a cat with cancer and a dog that likes to walk a lot. Eleni is currently returning to Cusco from Machu Pichu, on her way to Lake Titicaca, to be followed by rainforest trek and a horse-ride across some salt plains, in her month of 'vacation' between her placements as a volunteer with children, Ecuador next, I think. I know that she will return to Canberra as a very different person to the one who left it.

And I too will be different, coming to the end of my term as an MLA, perhaps with my future mapped out, perhaps not. So many futures seem to be available to me right now, so many ways I could take the next stage of my life. Let's list some of them:
 

• going back to my Ph D work, bringing it up to date from 2002 and perhaps turning it into a book, as I was going to four years ago;
• learning Portuguese and doing follow-up work on participatory budgeting, looking at ways that elements of it could be brought into Australian budgeting;
• working in Canberra to help communities become socially and ecologically sustainable;
• teaching environmental politics at tertiary level and also facilitating a course on how to change the world (probably have to fund that one myself!);
• getting a job working with women in the two-thirds world to secure their rights and increase political participation (but who pays for work such as this)?
• going to Melbourne and doing any of the above;
• going to East Gippsland and doing any of the above;
• staying in Canberra and writing a book that brings it to life, for people who live here and those who don't (Canberra: People, Place and Politics);
• going anywhere in this huge world and doing any of the above or something completely different.

That's a few isn't it? And I haven't even mentioned all the things I have done already both paid and unpaid, the work poor women do everywhere: Cleaning, childcare, home help, all the necessary undervalued work in our society.

Speaking of which, I saw that this sector is experiencing such a shortage of workers in Canberra that they are recruiting in the Philippines. I wonder if this is now the country with the most wide spread diaspora in the world? A country unable or unwilling to educate its children to take up lucrative jobs at home, and enforcing the Catholic extreme position against contraception and abortion, Filipino women are supporting their children any way and anywhere they can, leaving grandmothers with the children and sending home remittances which far outweigh any other financial flow into their country.

I am at Guerilla Bay, with a cold now, coughing and snorting, but appreciating the warmth, the bush, the birds, the sea, the sand, the comfortable veranda, the friends, and very grateful for technology which enables me to type this far from home.

This morning I saw a whale as I stood on the cliff, hoping for a sunrise which somehow slipped palely past me. Later we went for a walk along the beach and through the spotted gum forest - very kind to walk through - to Rosedale South and its beaches, a sweet little one called Sanctuary Beach, where my friend once saw a shark and dolphin cavorting together.
 

May 25, 2008

The Sunday evening of an exquisite autumn day; sunny, windless, the final leaves still clinging until a wind dislodges them. Such a day could be spent entirely at the outside table reading Saturday’s papers, but it wasn’t.

Friends I met my first year at university in Melbourne were visiting Canberra (the Turner to Monet exhibition in particular) and we lunched at the National Library restaurant. I hadn’t been there since they extended tables on to a new deck – its fantastic, the first national institution on the south side of the lake to do make something of its aspect. Dog friendly too, I noted, so a place to visit with canine friends.

After seeing them on their way back to Melbourne, I picked up Persia and Cas and we visited the Caretakers Cottage, home of Jenny and Peter Farrell, tucked under Mt Stromlo and slated for destruction perhaps, and the Farrells for eviction. It is a lovely house – small, old (for Canberra), and absolutely the home of arty people who love it and care for it. Jenny does wonderful work with felt and a sunny corner of the house is her workroom. The house was built for the caretaker of the sewerage plant nearby, but it got too smelly.

They have added value to it, whereas empty it would be a wreck. This is clearly a situation where letting the Farrells stay in their home would be the best outcome on every level – and fine people to welcome new residents into the new let us hope highly sustainable, socially and ecologically, township of Molonglo. Development for the twenty-first century into the future.

Instead, the Farrells have been told they will be evicted probably tomorrow week. Nowhere to go, leaving an empty house, with perhaps a ranger required to stay there to protect it! When s/he would rather be at their own home… No it doesn’t make sense, even standing on my head.

In the Assembly, Estimates has been underway for a week. This is the first year I have not been on the committee, which has advantages and disadvantages, that one doesn’t have to sit there all day, but that one doesn’t get to ask as many questions. Nonetheless, it is the closest we non Executive Members get to understanding what is going on in the departments and government. Its where to get the detail beyond the figures because sums of money don’t really say much. Who will deliver the services at the new prison, and how? How will ACTEW roll out smart metres when only part of the needed funding was granted? Why isn’t a triple bottom line framework applied to the budget when it was promised several years ago?

These are questions that must be asked, but if the Greens didn’t, no-one would.

Environment this week. Planning. Housing. Community services.

May 11, 2008

You may think I am still in Curitiba riding the buses, if I don’t bring the blog up to date. In fact I am back on my own brown couch in front of the TV with a computer on my lap, as different from the Brazil experience as imaginable.

Canberra looked extraordinarily dry after the lush green of Brazil, where the skies opened twice during our visit. This does, however, mean sunny lovely days. There has been a frost or two and all the succulents are shrivelled and brown in my garden. There are still tomatoes to be picked though and the shrivelled leaves revealed a dozen or so pumpkins.

In Australia in my absence, there has been a 2020 summit (of which one view in The Monthly), the Olympic torch, an announcement about the location of a gas-fired power plant, and a reversion to El Nino. Heaps more which may have to stay under my radar, with budgets left right and centre.

For me, the storm surge and subsequent drenching of much of Burma accompanied by the incompetent and immoral behaviour of the junta is the ultimate horror story. Not only unable and unwilling to help its own people (but insistent on a rotten referendum going ahead) but unwilling to let anyone else do so and paranoid that communities might be able to help themselves. How is a regime like that going to guide its people through climate change and the further surges and other impacts which will occur? Democracy is a prerequisite to sustainable development as well as human rights and social justice.

Some excellent local news is that the land swap for the Narrabundah Long Stay Park got on settled deadline. That is great. Another serendipitous coincidence is that Street Stories did a program on the Park last night, and there were some of my favourite voices: Debbie, Gabby, Pam, Peter and others.

Let’s go back to Curitiba, or more accurately, leaving it. Our in-country travel was done on buses and the Curitiba to Sao Paulo trip was the most challenging trip of all. I had booked us by time of departure, not by type of bus, and we discovered that it wasn’t a luxury coach by a long shot, so sitting up front (where I placed us) meant no leg room and no place for our bits and pieces (mine crashed on the floor several times) not the panoramic views of the cruising buses. The bus was full, it was raining and we spent the trip psychologically and silently helping the driver steer the bus over the highway. We spent an hour inching past roadworks compounded by an accident (truck on its side) and passed another accident later. Seven hours we could have spent in a more relaxed way, but we experienced Brazil as many Brazilians experience it.

Sao Paulo is big and big and huge. Twenty million and growing. As with every city we visited, the roads and cars dominate the landscape. In Sao Paulo, there were ten lane roads in some parts. There were buses flying around but we never made sense of them. It is such a big and challenging city that we stuck with taxis, catching the metro once.

We completed our Participatory Budgeting briefings in Sao Paulo with a visit to the Polis Institute. Here an inspiring group of people are working on all levels of democracy. They told us about the Sao Paulo experience where four years of the Workers Party wasn’t long enough to entrench OP and the Mayor’s attempts at decentralisation – because building up the regions is an important prerequisite to OP – were reversed when the current conservative mob came in. Liza and Pedro showed us around their building, where the Portuguese version of Le Monde Diplomatique is produced weekly, a democracy and local government unit works, and lots of progressive thinking and networking gets done.

An important campaign they have begun is for electoral reform: proportional representation, transparency, and removal of corruption. A big ask.

Fortunately, they were able to talk to us in English, so we were inspired and enriched by their enthusiasm for their work. I don’t believe we have anything like their organisation in Australia.

I walked away from there reminded of the crucial role played by progressive community groups in the development of green politics and disappointed that the Brazilian Greens have no contact whatsoever with Polis and a number of the other community organisations we had talked with.

Of course, we were in town for the global greens conference, and so were Greens from 87 countries all up. Not all are parties yet: many came from electoral systems where parties are hard to form and the road to winning seats will be hard, such as Indonesia and China, though the representative from there claimed he had a party up and running. The Conference was held at the Latin American Memorial, designed by Oscar Neimeyer (we visited the museum gallery he designed for Curitiba) and enormous and not the right scale for a conference of the greens type, in my opinion. Fine for plenaries, and a good auditorium for mingling but workshops were held far away and rooms were difficult to find, so this important aspect of the conference was awkward and poorly attended.

Small group gatherings are important for enabling everyone to participate and connect in some way with the conference.

The Aussies were busy little bees, all 20 of us – one of the European delegates commented to me ‘You Australians kick arse’ – which I took as a compliment. There were a number of declarations and resolutions to cover, and we had our own proposal to lobby for: That a Global Greens secretariat be set up, funded b a small tithe from elected Greens and offered Australia as a location. This was the real business end of the conference, as the declarations an most resolutions are aspirational.

The secretariat is just plain practical, and acknowledges the important role Australia has had in getting GG and its conferences up and running (this one would have been in dire straits if a couple of Aussies hadn’t gone over early to help). It would also, with adequate funding and the right people, strengthen the network and increase communication. The proposal which emerged from the conference was watered down considerably, with all the decision-making put in the hands of the Global Green Coordination.

And then it was on the plane for the nightmare journey home. Embarked on Saturday afternoon, arrived in Canberra Monday at 5 pm. The delay was due to crossing the date line and the diversion of our flight from Santiago to Easter Island due to a medical crisis, the poor guy was met by an ambulance on the runway in the middle of the night, hope there was a hospital somewhere in the blackness. It took hours to refill the plane due to primitive equipment – I think the petrol was being syphoned our of the tanker. We stayed on the plane but didn't go mad.

Fortunately, as it was a sitting week and budget at that, the jet lag did not persist and I was able to catch up with some of the key events of the weeks I was away, and speeches were written and delivered. Big week for the Greens: Container Deposit Legislation tabled, budget replies written, motion for better consultation and assessment for the gas fired power plant not to mention electoral reform and same sex partnerships.

Soon the Brazil experience will fade into the past although I will continue to work on OP, and am determined to learn Portuguese so I can get more out of subsequent research.

Its been such a blur since returning that I haven't had a chance to think too much about it. I have some writing to do about it all and thinking about how OP might have some relevance to Canberra. The Brazilian culture is in your face - so is poverty, but there is enough of a middle class to feed a huge retail sector and the poor live on their rubbish. Literally. Pulling trailers piled high with cardboard, plastics, whatever they can find - one night in Curitiba the skies opened and rain pelted down. Most people pulled umbrellas out of their bags or purchased bits of plastic or huddled under verandas and in shop doorways. The rubbish collectors were more worried about keeping their rubbish dry. Some had children with them, what else could they do, and most had a dog or two asleep somewhere. I knew that their favella must be far away from City Central unlike our comfortable hotel which was located on the Rua des Flores, the pedestrian street of Curitiba..

The contrasts of Brazilian cities; but its not totally foreign; Alice Springs wasn't unlike this when I went there in 2006, with the parallel lives being lived by many Aboriginal and the mostly more privileged white people in that place.

 

April 28, 2008

Buses in Curitiba

Janet, Eleni and I have just spent a day riding the buses in Curitiba. This city is famous for its integration of planning and its rapid transit bus system, and it well deserves to be. Buses operate according to their colour, with red articulated buses driving on their dedicated bus lanes at speed, although they still have to stop for traffic lights, while orange, red, white, yellow and grey ones serve different and complementary roles. The transit corridors are being developed with high density high rise buildings - and in a city approaching two million and growing, there is a pressing need for more housing.  However, Janet, who is very clued up on matters pertaining to sustainable transport systems, planning for higher density around transport nodes would strengthen the system.
 
Today we had a meeting with Debora from the Institute for Research on Urban Planning in Curitiba who was able to put the bus system in the planning and demographic context. Curitiba is growing at a rate that is difficult to keep up with sustainably as people move from the region into the city for work and life. Two million people use the buses daily, and yet there are many cars on the road. Buses are overcrowded, especially at peak hours, and queues are long. Clearly, either a new system is needed - an underground rail system is being considered - or more buses and an upgraded system.
 
The bus shelters are an engineering and organisational feat alone. I will have photographs available after I return just to show that it can be done in a city and country with less wealth than ours.

 

April 24, 2008

Porto Alegre

I know how to pronounce Porto Alegre now! Not how it looks, which is true of almost every Portuguese word. Tricky language, and I will buy a phrase book today. The most useful word of all is 'obrigata' - it covers nearly every situation and means thanks.
 
We stayed at a hotel called City Hotel, which at first encounter looked extremely challenging. And it was, in the sense that we never found an attendant who could speak any English. How they beamed as we gradually acquired phrases. As luck would have it (and luck is playing a major role in this incredibly well organised journey) our interpreter was on the phone trying to contact me as we arrived. This was Aline, an angel arranged before we left, through the good offices of the Australian Embassy for the three 12 hour days that we spent learning about participatory budgeting. The funny thing is that I thought the desk officer at City Hotel was talking about Eleni my daughter as he said Aline's name (pronounced very similarly). Aline smoothed out the rough edges at the hotel as she smoothed out many other little glitches: a plug for the basin, so we could avoid the large laundry charges, an extra pillow, how to buy bus tickets to Florianopolis. She also helped build excellent relationships between us and every person that we met with - and that was many.
 
Julio Pugot at City Hall organised our schedule. It took him the two months he told Aline. We met with officials assisting the participatory budget (OP) process, we met with people involved in a new process which is meant to complement OP but in fact seems to establish different priorities altogether, being the child of business people in community and government partnerships. The great thing about OP, which one has to come to PA to see since this is the place of its birth, is that it is aimed at the poor, to involve them in decisions about their futures. It is a child of the Marxist Workers Party which came to power in the late 1980s here and was voted out in 2004. It was aimed at giving the proletariat a voice, and what is true democracy if financial decisions are excluded from the consultations?
 
However, as I asked one of the initiators last night (and now the primary academic expert on OP) they forgot about Paulo Freire's work with the poor and disempowered, which has so much to teach. Thus, OP's annual cycle remains fixed on short term gains, so necessary to the poor. Various processes have been added over time to provide context, a more long term view and cross regional cooperation. This isn't the place to go into detail, but it is clear that the impacts are profound.
 
The current right wing government could not dispense with OP as it might have preferred, so popular is it; it has had to live with it, and fortunately has officers like Julio who are committed to its continued success. However, the solidarity governance program, which is more like Tony Blair's Third Way, is its attempt to satisfy its own constituents; and indeed, it is doing good things. (Such as an anti-graffiti program we saw, based on graffiti resistant paint, and the thematic approach to commercial streets: furniture, fashion, electronics focus.)
 
But OP is successful in a broader, deeper way. Yesterday we visited the Vila Dos Papeleiros which OP has helped transform. The people there are the poorest of the poor. They live by collecting rubbish, primarily plastic and paper (hence the name) and previously they had to store it in their shacks, leading to many dangerous fires. Now they live in new small but very liveable purpose built houses and have access to a shed a few metres away (across a busy road unfortunately) where they can sort their rubbish. There are two such sheds: the one we saw, led by the charismatic and practical Antonio, has individuals' stores; another with a woman as its head works cooperatively. The people have dignity and work together now for facilities such as childcare and health centres.
 
There is much more to say about PA but not the time. Next stop Florianopolis to see how Walter d'Oliviera works with the marginalised.
 
From here I will take home the view from my hotel window at 7 am, as a long queue waiting for taxis snakes along the footpath; of people sleeping under bits of old carpet in the city centre; of dignified public buildings dedicated to art, literature and film and sound; of the first bus lanes anywhere in the world; of terrifying driving where red lights are taken or left as the moment demands; of passionate Assemblies of people arguing for better housing, education, health and roads; of NGOs dedicated to raising the dignity of the poor; and on it goes. I love this place and want to see how OP could be applied in our more affluent cultures. Perhaps Indigenous communities could benefit?
 
All to be explored.

http://bancodeimagens.procempa.com.br/default.php?v=40&p=15#

April 21, 2008

Rio & Porto Alegre

Emailing from our room in Porto Alegre (PA) on Janet's computer. We have had a challenging evening trying to order dinner from a Portuguese menu with a lovely waiter who couldn't understand a word we said. We ended up with salad and chips as the only vegetarian items we could recognise. Carne is in everything. Janet had a difficult day, arriving here earlier than we did, PA like the rest of Brazil is in public holiday mode and she found it quite threatening on the streets. City hotel is baroque and beautiful but doesn't have tea or a kettle in the rooms. Nor is the water hot, hopefully it will be in the morning.

However, tomorrow we will be connecting with the city in a big way with the first of our appointments on participatory budgeting (OP from now on, not sure what the Portuguese words they stand for are).

But to finish the Rio story. We arose to the usual sumptuous breakfast at Marta's, then joined the rest of the city on the beach of Copacabana. On Sundays and public holidays the three-laned street along the esplanade is closed to vehicles (they turn the other side of the road into two way traffic; like every other city, streets are one way). So everyone was out on bikes, roller blades and on foot, walking dogs, greeting people, having a fun day out.  What is really impressive is the way that everyone shows as much of their bodies as possible, regardless of shape or body type. I don't think the gleaming skin was sunscreen, more likely oil. People swam and played in the waves. Glorious sand sculptures lined the beach, and coconut milk was available from countless kiosks.

Driving to the airport with Fabiana, I saw what I have noticed in every city so far (including Curitiba when the plane landed there this afternoon en route to PA, in Santiago and PA) that alongside the airports are pockets of favelas. Is this the fate of Canberra International Airport? Are the poor the only people who will tolerate, through necessity, the constant sound of landings and take-offs?

Janet had really loved Buenos Aires where she inter-journeyed. Friendly people speaking Spanish which we are all a little more familiar with. However, problems caused by smoke from bushfires nearby hampered with landing and take-off. Some South American countries have more in common with Australia than we might have imagined.

PA has a totally different feel to Rio, but we did arrive at night. El and I opted for the train which is connected to the airport by a free minibus. It was fairly full (can't imagine how full on an actual working day) and we stood all the way. Due to our luggage and the time of day we took a taxi from the station, and arrived at this baroque and beautiful and almost empty hotel to struggle with language at the reception desk. As luck would have it, our interpreter for tomorrow was on the phone to reception as we arrived, and interpreted by phone with the person there, while arranging to meet with us at 9 am tomorrow to prepare for our meeting. Is this city of several million people that small or are we just blessed by fortunate coincidences?

On the station I noted three bins: one for compost, one for recycling and one for rubbish. All had the name of a multinational on them, why waste a blank advertising space?

Reading over the shoulder of the man in front of us on the plane, El and I deciphered a headline which we believe said that the Mayor of Rio is so impressed by Curitiba that he plans to follow its example. I borrowed the paper but my limited Portuguese did not allow me to decipher more than that it looks as  though he plans to discourage car travel and make Rio more walkable. PA seems to be following Curitiba's footsteps too, but I will know more about this by next Tuesday.

Language really does matter; while we derive our models from English speaking countries, primarily the United States and Britain, we will be stuck in our models (we seem to ignore the example of Livingstone, Mayor of London, in favour of the car-led city, too timid to challenge the freedom to drive). My study trip is the first from the Assembly that has required an interpreter and lo and behold, in the so-called third world some governments are trying different approaches.

A reminder of the need to start language learning from the earliest possible age: the Australian couple we met at Marta's said their daughter (not yet two) was able to tell them the Portuguese words that they could not remember, or pronounce.
 

April 20, 2008

Rio De Janeiro

The name Copacabana evokes what everyone thinks about Rio de Janeiro. Hence I chose the Rio Guesthouse as accommodation for our two nights here from the Lonely Planet guide because its patio overlooks the bay. The beach is beautiful, but far from pristine. George, our taxi-driver guide of today, told us that all the sand was brought in from an island, and the real sand is covered by bitumen and other stuff to create the trappings of the grand place this has been.
 
We arrived last night after dark, which was a little disorienting. Marta and John (her Australian partner) have done well with the top two floors of this condominium, where they make guests feel like part of the family. There were some Australians who were holidaying from Dubai, and a Frenchman who wants to set up an osteopathic practice with orphans so that children are more likely to be adopted. He has done so in India where he said that 9 of 10 children he worked with were later adopted. Today we met an American woman who has just emerged from a week's long yoga retreat. Breakfast was a family affair, with fruit, cake, omelette and even rolls and vegemite.
 
The lift here is rather daunting at first, but it works every time. Why trust something less because you can see its workings (the question mark doesn't work on Marta's keyboard).
 
The humidity has me sweating constantly, and my hair is curly again. Most Brazilians have straight hair, but there are blondes, brunettes and redheads, people of every race. Most look healthy.
 
As George said today, you can be poor, but you don't need to be hungry in Rio, as there are fish to catch, as we saw people doing - and certainly if the remains of the large portions of food served in restaurants are distributed, there is plenty of food. Can't vouch for the accuracy of that statement though.
 
After breakfast, Marta rang George and arranged for him to take us on a tour of Rio in his taxi. This made our day. George has some English - not enough for unambiguous communication but we managed. He took us on a tour of his city. We spent a lot of time in Centro observing the elegant old buildings of neo-colonial times. Now there are preservation orders and at least the facades must be retained, leading to some strange postmodern concoctions - skyscrapers of glass with classical protuberances. We visited rich neighbourhoods cheek to jowl with favelos, where hundreds of thousands of people fit into the footprint of a few mansions. They have services, water, electricity and rudimentary sewerage, they pay no taxes, and they generally live cooperatively, although George said that there is currently a tendency to gang warfare in some places, drug-related. He has every respect for the poor, and a sense of social justice, which was refreshing, as yesterday I heard someone indicate that moves made by President Lula to assist them was just a vote-buying exercise.
 
By the way we saw shanty towns in Santiago as well, next to the airport. I suppose we will see them everywhere. While the governments do not so far see the need to provide public housing, they do feel obliged to service the ingeniously put together shacks.
 
George also took us to the place where Carnivale occurs each year. There we put on costumes for a fee and posed for photographs, Eleni's highlight I think. The site of Carnivale is a bit like our conception of a drag-way, and empty as it awaits next year's event.
 
Our eventual destination was the remarkable statue of Cristo Redentor, which stands atop Corcovado in blessing of the whole city. The views are amazing, this city looks great from every angle. The entire mountain and surrounds are protected in a national park (Tijuca) which is also a UNESCO biosphere, providing habitat to monkeys (we saw some) birds and plants - and safeguarding the city's precious water. Indeed, it was in response to the sudden drying up of the waterways that the area was replanted (50+%) and it receives hundreds of visitors every day. Cars are left three quarters of the way up, tickets are purchased (an ecological tax) and very smart Mercedes buses take people close to the top, from whence they can climb many stairs or take an escalator to the very top where they can gaze in awe at the statue.
 
We leave tomorrow for Porto Alegre, the holiday over. We have three full days of meetings there, going into the night and clearly Janet Rice and I will be experts on participatory budgeting when we return. Then its Curitiba and Florianopolis, and finally Sao Paulo, one of the world's biggest cities.
 
Being a tourist in Chile and Rio has taught me that the Greens have a very big job ahead of them here, as elsewhere. I really appreciate the opportunity to gain this insight before meeting with the global greens in less than a fortnight.

 

April 18, 2008

El's Santiago Blog

With El and I both doing the same things, it seemed to me it would be economical to use hers and give a young person's take on our travels. And easier for me!!
So from now on all the words are hers....

I have decided that Santiago must be the city of free love. Amar Libre.

Wow, today was really great.
 
Mum and I went on a tour bus around Santiago, the kind that does a loop and you hop on and hop off and there is another one in half an hour, so you can do that at different sites on the loop all day, and then get back to where you started. And there is a map (and an English speaking guide on each bus so they are very friendly and a lot of help when planning the stops).
 
Unfortunately there are not many great tourist sites in Santiago, and those that exist are not properly sold, the voice over on the bus only talks in depth about the shopping centres and the business places, and the big new buildings. I don't know about other tourists, but I didn't have the money to shop, and frankly was not interested anyway. I wanted the famous colonial Churches, museums and  places of information on the country, not its economics. So we went to the Palacio de la real audencia y museo historico nacional. A museum that was very hard to find (mostly because the mark is slightly off and we didn't look closely enough at the sign on the building. Unfortunately it was a bit boring and old news. A natural history museum about Chiles flora and fauna would have been more appreciated with us, and stuff about the indigenous people. But the colonial-type museum sure had a lot of artefacts from the conquistadors just not enough indigenous history or enough of the politics with the guy who was assassinated and replaced with a military government (see I honestly did not learn anything about the most interesting thing!)
 
La Plaza de Armas was right near the museum (in fact the museum was on the side of the plaza square. We had heard about it, but it was just another place to sit with trees. Only in the very centre of the city 'downtown'. Here we had lunch (yes, we managed to order, eat and pay for a good lunch all  by ourselves in Spanish, even tipped them! It was 7750 pesos, so by my calculations about AU$22 for two vegetarian sandwiches, a coffee and two freshly squeezed juices). It was yummier because of the feat!!
 
Then we accidentally visited the catedral de santiago (this is out of order, we accidentally visited the catedral because we were looking for the museo). It was massive, with amazing statues and windows and ceilings and people praying and confessionals down each side, that you walked right past, and you could see the people kneeling at the windows crying and paying penance etc. It was weird, so un-private. You could literally walk along and sit down at one, and hear what people where saying if you were rude and listen, because they were that close. The priests sat in a box with a window that the confessor kneeled at, but there was no screen between them and the rest of the church and the window was permanently opened and unblocked. Sorry, obviously I am shocked, but I guess being seen at confession is good for the reputation and therefore made easy. But whoa. No privacy. There was a guy crying about his ¨stuff¨ right next to tourists looking around! I don't know...but it was a very cool kind of place, being all stone and dark. (hahaha)
 
We even blessed ourselves with holy water in a smaller church a few blocks away. My real religious experience!
 
Then we went to the Correo Chile Central and bought some postcards from a guy out the front and some stamps from the actual post office and posted some postcards. While choosing these postcards we came across this one of a hill with lots of steps etc. I was against buying it because we had not been there, but mum liked it, so we did. And on the way back on the bus we passed it (as I said, the tour voice over does not sell the really touristy things, only the shops etc.) So we saw it, thought wow, jumped out and had to go all the way back to it. It was great, really beautiful, colonial but like a fort built up this hill only with fountains and parks and statues and carvings. We think it was called santa lucia, and was in a suburb called Santa Lucia. But basically it wound on and on up this hill in sections with something new to see after every staircase, and with lots of alternate routes and on top was a 360 view of the city. It was muy muy muy muy muy bonita. There are always couples in the parks hugging and kissing, because they are lovely clean places, and green and leafy and very romantic, naturally. Always a lot of couples having quality time. But this was off the scale, lovers hill or something, it had a great atmosphere so I understand it but it must have a reputation, everyone was in love and showing it! It was a great place. With rocks on the top, and walls, covered in love declarations. cute cute cute. Sigh.

Then we walked around a lovely quaint market with a lot of local products and sellers, fresh juices are big in South America, I believe, so we bought another one each and meandered home.

Ok, we didn't meander.

We got off the bus at our stop and got lost, because the map that came with the tour bus had a information box exactly over the area we are staying in, and we knew the general direction but not street names etc. and we were lost for a while, fought a little, knowing we were REALLY close but not knowing in which direction we were close. SO we asked some locals, and I mean asked in my very limited and badly worded Spanish and got answers we (I) only half understood, but we got home. Honestly, we were so close it was ridiculous, but from a direction we had never seen the place from. SO then we were home, phew, a big full day that was definitely worth it. Especially the last stop, which I highly recommend to travellers, and Spanish speakers, GET OVER HERE and have some fun, non-Spanish speakers, get over here and learn some fun!

Having FUN, Eleni

April 17, 2008

Chile #2

I am attaching a photo where the ghost of a mountain, the first rim of the Cordilleras, is vaguely outlined in the polluted air outside Jumbo's, the first monster supermarket built in South America. For contrast, I also attach a photo of the Plaza opposite this flat; two sides of Santiago.
 
Since in Chile, I thought it would be good to see if there was a Greens party (See link below). A trip on the internet led me to an article which indicated that indeed there is. And there was a phone number and address on the party's home page. Apparently not so far away either, and Andrew obligingly offered to drive us there. After a tour of the one way streets which is how Santiago deals with its growing traffic volume, we found ourselves outside the address on the web. An ecological college, some of the major party activists work there. Sara Larrain met us for half an hour or so and told us the story of the high bar the party had to jump for registration, due to changes introduced by Pinochet; for instance, the party has to be set up in three adjoining regions. The process took several years.
 
Nonetheless, it has been functioning as part of the Federation of the Americas and Sara was at the Global Greens conference in 2001 in Canberra. "You have a wonderful Senator," she said. "Soon we will have five," I said.
 
That's a way off for them, but in October the party will for the first time participate in local government elections, beginning the long but surely successful journey of electoral success.
 
I can expect to meet Manuel Baquedauo and Felix Gonzales in Sao Paulo.
 
I have been reading about Allende again, and remembering the last time that Chile had a truly progressive government. I don't know much about the electoral system here, but look forward to a time when a progressive alliance will again take charge of the country's future. Will the environment be considered in the mix? According to Sara, 40% of its GNP comes from mining, and it, along with the creation of more dams for hydroelectricity are killing the environment and stealing the livelihoods of Indigenous peoples.
 
How does the global threat of climate change figure in the Greens parties of developing countries when the problems seem much closer to hand?

http://patagonia-under-siege.blogspot.com/2008/01/new-green-party-forms-in-chile-promises.html

Chile #1

Eleni and I are embarked on our great journey. She is being my partner on this amazing study tour, which is part funded through my study allowance and part funded by me, as it is a mix of Greens work, holiday and researching grass roots democracy that may be applicable to ACT budget development. It certainly fits into Greens principles, anyway. More later, as I learn more. We are going to Brazil and will spend most of our time there. The journey had to be broken either in Argentina or Chile, so I chose Chile, since I know and love so many Chilean people in Canberra and I am really glad.
 
We have really fallen on our feet. This first part of the study tour is a holiday - sort of - if you are a Green, the lens is always on as you will see, reading further. We arrived in Santiago yesterday having missed much of a night when we crossed the international dateline. The plane trip was good and had a South American flavour: friendly, well organised but relaxed. Although the longest trip I have ever taken in my life, it was also the smoothest and least terrifying.
 
El is still groggy and jetlagged. I am an intermittent sleeper at the best of times so I (seem to) have made a better recovery. Then again, I am at the end of my cold while she is at the beginning of hers. Actually I like to attribute the homeopathic No Jet Lag that Julia told me about with marvellous preventative qualities. International flying is like childbirth: people load you up with all sorts of information that they learned, so you don't have to.
 
Apart from losing all my liquids and creams, stuffed into the daypack at the last minute, such as toothpaste, rose water, waterless hand-wash, sunscreen, at the security checkpoint at Auckland airport, because they weren't in the requisite clear plastic bag with zip-top (I produced one, but it was no good - it was blue). "I don't know how they let these through in Sydney", the young officer said to his mate. It seemed to me that they could have sold me the right kind of plastic bag, and we could have been happy, all of us, but especially me. But no, into the bin they all went. Maybe Sydney can be less thorough because they know that New Zealand is all set up to be the tough cop of the Pacific.
 
"You could make bombs from this," he said, pointing at the toothpaste, "if it was the right stuff."
 
Santiago sits at the foot of the most inhospitable mountains I have yet seen, benefitting from the soil washed from them. Active volcanoes abound, apparently, and we are looking forward to our first ever proper earthquake, when the ground will shake and everything will rattle.
 
Our friends are in a third floor flat in Providencia, a nicely treed area with a grassy Plaza across the road. Here nannies meet while children play; families wander over with their children after work; and dogs also gather. Apartment living around such a pleasant community space would be a different kettle of fish to the boxed living we see developing in Canberra. The best apartment in the world can be a very lonely place if there is nowhere to go for the chance encounter.
 
The air is clouded with smog, a mix of vehicle pollutants and drifting dust exacerbated by west coast inversion. I was impressed by the transport system; at the airport, there was a desk where taxi and minibus rides could be purchased, and a vehicle allotted. We chose the cheaper minibus, and shared that with about five other people all headed for different parts of the city. Our driver remembered each without prompting and as the second last drop-off, we got to see a lot of the city as well. A fellow traveller on the plane, a young Uraguayan woman who is based in New Zealand and sells electrical equipment all over South America, said that Santiago is a well-disciplined city - "not like Brazil, you'll love it over there". It is a dry city; any area not watered was dusty and hard looking, much like Canberra. However, the hand held hoses were out in abundance in the green areas (although it was the middle of the day). My host does not know where the water comes from, but thinks it might be the big river nearby.
 
Long grassy strips beside the road are well inhabited by lovers, groups of young people, workmen eating lunch, the ubiquitous dogs. The buses trundle past with great frequency, in their variety: minibuses, small buses, articulated buses, in varying degrees of dilapidation. These are privately owned with a complex array of concessions. All highly patronised. Andrew tells me that there is also an underground Metro which is expanding at a great rate - government owned, as is the great railway travelling south.
 
Chilé has a woman President right now, but a neoliberal like most of them (in this way there is little difference between left and right in South and Central America and Australia too come to that). Thus water and electricity are privately owned.  
 
Urban development is unregulated, I am told. While there are regulations, they are not enforced, and down come the old buildings, the individual old-style homes, and up go the high rise apartments. Why are high rise apartments acceptable for the private sector but somehow a problem for the public? All must be earthquake proof, but I am not sure how that is policed.
 
At traffic lights, instead of the windscreen cleaners Canberrans are used to, are the vendors, trying to sell whatever they could get their hands on. At one, it was a plastic expanding file and some plastic document sheets.
 
Today we will explore with Andrew, after El awakes from her jetlagged sleep. So more of this Chilean adventure tomorrow.

 

April 06, 2008

ACT's 2020 Summit

Tis the season for summits. With the national one happening in a week or two, the Chief Minister jumped onto the vanguard yesterday with a home-grown version to feed into the larger event (which is also happening in Canberra). I was invited and joined around 300 people in the National Convention Centre, where Lynne Glendinning orchestrated our contribution. Quite an impressive feat, assisted by everyone's self-discipline and desire to make the thing work.

I attended workshops on education and the sustainable city, and was pleased at the quality of the contributions. In the education group the passion for equity was felt by everyone in the group, along with resources and support for teachers and a global approach. I think that covers most things one would want from education, although I think the local provides a good start to understanding the world.

In the city workshop, there was a strong understanding of the region in which Canberra sits, and that was good, since nothing stops at the border except political cooperation. Increased patronage of public transport to 50% by 2020 and a carbon neutral (and beyond) future were strong emphases, as was connectivity of biodiversity corridors.

With so little time, and with a requirement for neat little capsules of information, lots got missed out and consensus doesn't lead to radical outcomes, but the general understanding and articulate nature of Canberra people assured a progressive, thoughtful focus. I was proud to be there and be part of it.

March 31, 2008

Monday night

As we head into a fortnight of sitting, I must capture an experience at the opposite extreme of any spectrum which has the Legislative Assembly Chamber, with its 17 Members and attendants and clerks, at one end. What could be its exact opposite?

Imagine driving down a long narrow dirt road. If you meet someone coming you may have to back a fair way to find room to let the other vehicle pass. You park it three quarters of the way in, just before the dry sclerophyll forest becomes moist, and walk the last couple of kilometres, watching the soil change from granite to basalt; the ferns proliferate and the leaves deepening in their green. There are a number of you, and all are carrying food in backpacks or baskets. You greet old friends and encounter people you did not expect to see.

The road widens into a grassy clearing. There is smoke arising from somewhere and the colour of clothes, shirts, jackets and scarves. There is a great deal of grey hair. And quite a few dreadlocks; crewcuts; flowing manes of every hue and sensible boots. The billy is on; there are plenty of cups and teabags and tables laden with every sort of food, some of it from the garden around us. Nearby, the hexagonal stone house built by the owner and inhabitant of the forest you are surrounded by and the creator of the garden you are enjoying. The sun is shining; yet the air is moist so the sun's rays are palpable, enlivening every surface they touch.

Nearby, is one of the most stunning views you will ever see; 100 metes behind the house is a natural lookout, where a dozen people can sit comfortably. You look east over the escarpment on a long vista of forested mountains - never mind that much of it is regrowth, it all has the same blue-green-grey tinge as the mountains recede towards the ocean, which glimmers bluely on the horizon. And then the sky goes on forever. Its all there. You are being put in your place by the universe.

At the centre of the party is the host. Her voice is in the air, but she is silent. This is the last time she will be physically present in her own home. It is the second most important occasion in her life, and you are there for it. None of the guests were present at the first.

But then, she is not going away entirely. She plans to stay there forever and she will. This event has her hand upon it, although she is the seemingly oblivious guest of honour.

That was the scene yesterday. Today, the host is there, but the people are gone. The fire is out, the house is in darkness. Is anyone there to reap the continually renewed solar energy? Perhaps, because someone must keep the wombat company. Yesterday many of Val Plumwood's friends gathered on Plumwood Mountain to say farewell to her physical form, some to decorate the cardboard coffin which I was proud to silently see was being used by Tobin Brothers. There was the hearse - and there was the corpse. I stood near the coffin and smelt that familiar and unmistakable scent of formaldehyde as Val's friends spoke of her.

Then we followed the pallbearers up a short narrow path to the grave dug just a few metres from the house. I don't know how they did it; the rock was hard and extensive. Even so, it needed a few more scrapes of the shovel before the coffin would descend.

Val wanted to be buried standing up; I don't think she wanted to be so deep, where the worms wouldn't find her. There must be a law against it, the six feet under rule perhaps.

She died of 'natural' causes, by the way, not the snake bite at first reported. She died on February the 29th; an anniversary that can only be authentically celebrated every four years.

As people spoke, and cried, and the fiddle played (the tin whistle silent) a butterfly appeared from the garden and hovered round the group. It dipped and glided, occasionally alighting on a shoulder. Once the coffin was interred, it disappeared.

That was when we ate, fine food it was, and chatted, and put pieces of peoples' stories about Val together. We only ever know a few facets of any person, and usually over a limited period of their lives. When they die, the funeral is a chance to erect a more complex picture. There are some things that must be said, more for the teller's sake than the subject's.

I learned this. Val grew up in rural Australia, born in 1939. A brilliant young thing, she went to Sydney University to study philosophy in the 1950s. Her two best friends and she were the top students of their year; she married one, and then she married the other. She gave birth to two children she was not encouraged to keep and she gave at least one of them up to adoption.

'If she had been born even ten years later, Val's life would have been much easier' said the half-sister of the daughter who died - murdered by her adoptive father in Gundagai - who came and told us that story. Women like Val fought the battles we all benefitted from. She battled the patriarchy of the universities, the crude destructiveness of the foresters and loggers. She was a woman with a great mind, a sensuous woman nonetheless, two supposedly mutually exclusive qualities in those days. She and her friends built that house and it is beautiful; not the work of a sissy, as living there never was either. Cosy. And hard, hard work.

This land is my best friend, she said.

I expect I will always hear her voice when I visit Plumwood again. When she named herself after the mountain, did she envisage herself becoming part of it?

As it happened, some worms were buried with her, so it has already begun.

March 25, 2008

Easter

That little oasis in the year, Easter, has come to an end. When I was a child, I believe it included Tuesday too; but back then there seemed to be more of everything, including holidays.

The deep religious significance of Easter gives it a seriousness Christmas loses in consumption, food and festivity. It goes quiet at Easter; in Narrabundah, one notices this, as the heavy trucks don’t grind to a halt at the Canberra Avenue lights all night and the aeroplanes don’t take off continually from 6 am onwards.

Before it was coopted by Christians, I imagine Easter was a different kind of festival, coming as it does from northern parts where it was connected to the fertility of spring: the plantings of crops and vegetable gardens, the farmyard births. From what I have read, it was definitely a time for partying.

The partying theme is taken up by the organisers and participants of the National Folk Festival. The word ‘national’ is often applied to events and institutions in Canberra and it isn’t always quite apt (for instance, our national drama festival of a few years ago didn’t draw crowds from interstate, despite Robyn Archer’s best efforts. Canberra people appreciated it though). But the folk festival does; from NSW and Victoria, anyway, and performers from everywhere. Something like 30% of festival-goers come from Canberra, a proportion the organisers would like to grow, but it cannot compete with that window of coastal opportunity provided by four days. 

The director wants the festival to expand into Civic. I am not sure how this would look; stalls and street musicians. Theatres and halls. Buses to-ing and fro-ing. Giving shoppers and office workers a taste of the delights to be had up the Federal Highway a kilometre or two.

As we wandered around the site, trying to get to venues before every seat was taken, waving our highlighted programs, queuing for our coffee, some of us might have thought the festival has stopped being a friendly gathering of folk and wondered if we want it to grow any more. Numbers were up 10% on last year; festival programs ran out on Sunday. There are the gatherings within the festival of camping groups who make it accessible that way, with their billies on the campfire and the seats constantly occupied by strummers and singers around them.

So there are as many folk festival experiences as there are people. I had a good one this year, attending three days, the most ever. My attempt at camping never came off, but I stayed late each night; the sort of thing you can do when your child/ren are grown up and having late nights themselves. The venues are variable, some with better acoustics than others; its amazing, the quality of the sound in tin sheds and glorified tents.

Who did I love? Everyone I saw and heard: Genticorum; Devilish Mary; Eddi Reader; Marcia Howard; Spooky Brothers Chorale; Trouble in the Kitchen; Eleanor McEvoy; the Duhks; Jim Conway’s Big Wheel Band; Pacific Curls. And then there were all the ones I didn’t see who I would have enjoyed as well. See what I mean by too big?

While many of us wandering around, viewing t