AUSTRALIA ~ The Antipodes

AUSTRALIA ~ The Antipodes
I love a sunburnt country / A land of sweeping plains / Of ragged mountain ranges / Of droughts and flooding rains / I love her far horizons / I love her jewel-sea / Her beauty and her terror / The wide brown land for me / ~ Dorothea Mackellar (1885-1968)

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Friday, February 29, 2008

A healing place at Mount Annan Botanical Gardens


The path to the healing ~ Mount Annan Botanic Gardens ~ Photo by Peter Cuneo
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The ‘stolen generations’ issue has been a focus of Aboriginal reconciliation in Australia for many years.
To bring this issue to attention, plans for a Stolen Generations Memorial at Mount Annan Botanic Garden, located in south-west Sydney, were instigated in 2003 as a partnership between Link Up New South Wales, the NSW Stolen Generations Committee and Botanic Gardens Trust.
Located in beautiful natural woodland, visitors will experience the Memorial as a journey of healing and reflection, as they walk through the forest via a series of impressive boardwalks leading to a peaceful meeting place with water and a sculpture space.
Work on the project has progressed steadily in the past few years, and has involved Aboriginal trainees as part of their Certificate III in Land Conservation and Management.
Stage one of the path and boardwalk construction is now complete and provides access to the sculpture space.
The main structural timber for the boardwalk was generously donated through an arrangement with Forests NSW, NSW Forest Products Association and Merbein Sawmills.
The next phase of this significant reconciliation project will be to complete the southern section of the boardwalk and the sculptural centrepiece to be created by renowned Aboriginal artist, Badger Bates. http://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/
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Badger Bates, born in 1947 in Wilcannia, NSW, is the Senior Archaeological Officer for the National Parks and Wildlife Service in Broken Hill and is a sculptor. Several kilometres from the mining town of Broken Hill, rising from the arid red plain, a circle of 12 sandstone sculptures crown the peak of Sundown Hill. Together they are known as the Living Desert Sculptures. Carved by artists from Georgia, Mexico, Syria, Bathurst Island and Australia in 1993, these sculptures have become a new cultural icon in a town already well recognised for its art, particularly painting.Badger Bates, a Sites Officer with National Parks and Wildlife, is the only Broken Hill local to have carved one of these sculptures. His piece, entitled Nhatji, or Rainbow Serpent, depicts two rainbow serpents travelling north with a pool of water between them. The hand stencils on the sculpture represent three generations of his family. www.australians.com.au
He illustrated a book called "Nourishing Terrains" ~ Australian Aboriginal Views of Landscape and Wilderness ~ by Deborah Bird Rose pub. 1996.
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Somehow, there is an Autumn mystique in this healing place. Now that Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has offered a formal apology to indigenous Australians in January 2008, it is more than time to tread the boardwalk of healing. Finding shapes of substance in water has a liberating cleansing feel, like the mystical whispers of autumn colours and breezes. The winds of change scurry round the deep corridoors of yesterday's dust, brushing breathing space into congested lungs.

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  • A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing, and the lawn mower is broken. ~James Dent
  • Autumn is an introspective season when stray thoughts of the mind dive into the mystique of the soul - Gemma Wiseman
  • Autumn is the bridesmaid of Summer and the flowergirl of Winter ~ Gemma Wiseman
  • Autumn whispers the tones of yesterday in a minor key ~ Gemma Wiseman
  • Love is born / With a dark and troubled face, / When hope is dead / And in the most unlikely place; / Love is born, / Love is always born. - Michael Leunig's Christmas Song Cycle "Southern Star"
  • Spring paints the stars of heaven in Earth colours ~ Gemma Wiseman
  • Summer sizzles with a sibilant hush / Broken by dreams of / Clinking ice ~ Gemma Wiseman
  • The object of a new year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul. - G.K. Chesterton
  • Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting and autumn a mosaic of them all. - Stanley Horowitz
  • Winter is the fire, simmering lonely in the soul ~ Gemma Wiseman
  • Winter is the shadow, the etching of the seasons in the mist ~ Gemma Wiseman

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