Connecting with Country🦶
Land and water are our Elders.
Dear earthlings,
Land and water are our Elders.
In this week’s story, we reflect on the relationship we share with these generous forms of being.
🗞️ In Climate News
⛈️ Storm Ciaran leaves five dead in Italy, Greece issues emergency weather warning.
🇪🇸 Spain evacuates 800 people as wildfire spreads amid strong winds.
🚢 Panama Canal drought hits new crisis level with nearly half of vessel traffic targeted for cuts.
🇮🇸 Sea-lice outbreak on Icelandic salmon farm a ‘welfare disaster’, footage shows.
🌫️ Superfog in Louisiana wreaks havoc, killing eight and injuring over 60 people.
🌡️ Report warns world will reach 1.5°C threshold this decade.
🇨🇦 Nova Scotia saw its most devastating wildfire season on record in 2023.
🔥 Southern California wildfire prompts evacuation order for thousands as Santa Ana winds fuel flames.
📈 Cool Trends
♾️ eco-stories
🌏 Connecting with Country
This past month, when I open Instagram each morning, I am met with story after story focused on the situation in Israel and Palestine. I engage, reading the different perspectives, occasionally reposting one that resonates with my own, before I close the app and continue on with my day, a privilege of being a spectator of conflict. As time passes, and this stream of videos, photos and captions accumulate in my subconscious, my thoughts have repeatedly circled back to the concept of land, to Country, and my relationship with it.
I was born in Narrm, in East Melbourne, on Wurundjeri Country, in the south east of mainland Australia. 10 years ago, if you had asked me about my relationship with my birthplace, I would have told you I grew up in Eltham, and maybe described the eucalyptus trees endemic to that place, but I could not speak of a connection to that landscape, I hadn’t considered that possibility.
My awareness of the tangible relationship we form with land was precipitated by my return to Australia, after living in the UK for two and a half years. I had lived in Manchester for six months, and then London for more than two years, and these densely populated concrete environments had become a familiar, normal reality. Upon my return to Narrm (Melbourne), I was struck by the space, by the wide view of the sky on every street. When I returned to the landscape of my childhood, to Eltham, it was the first time I truly appreciated the rare beauty of my home: the trees, the plants, the River. Depending on traffic, Eltham is a mere 30 minute drive from the centre of Melbourne, and I was shocked I could access an abundant natural environment in the same amount of time it took to travel from Bethnal Green to Soho.
🌏 The Culture Column
📺 What we’re watching: Gather
📸 Profile of the week:
📚 What we’re reading: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
🤯 Scary fact we learnt this week: our planet will cross the global warming threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius within 10 to 15 years.