I am sure some thought my recent post on Facebook was a cry of total despair and some even worried about me and tried to cheeer me up. Now I did not require that “support”. Indeed, a cnfession, it was a call to arms for others. For myself, there is renewal close at hand and today I want to share that renewal, a short walk within my local national park, eyes wide, mind open to the world out there. How could I not but be renewed, ready for the struggles ahead. Download it and click play. The music in the background is from that marvellous jazz pianist, Hiromi. She can lift anyone’s spirits. The photos are mine. The plants within are the work of Nature! You are welcome to give it any other name you wish. But it is there and it heals.

Over this holiday period, search for your own renewal but if this small offering provides you with inspiration I have achieved something today.

For the record, I wrote the following:

A Xmas Message ….. perhaps
As I rush towards the end of this year and as everyone expects good cheer and lots of merriment, I feel somewhat despondent. Forgive me for beginning in such a way. I am usually ebullient, of good cheer and positive but somehow I think 2023 has been a year of foreboding.

No, it’s not anything in my own life. Even though I shall 72 in January, even though my knee limits my ability to do my beloved bushwalks, and even though I still grieve for the large library I jettisoned in July 2022 as we downsized, all is perfectly OK for me personally. I am still drug-free (except for a vitamin supplement and the odd glass of Shiraz), still sleep soundly and, yes, still get out walking in nature at least once a week.
No, the despondency arises from more general causes, causes that may not mean much to most but that truly matter to me, a political animal who wrote his first letter of protest to a politician at the age of 15 and who has been active ever since. That’s a long, long innings. But, as a friend writes at the end of every email, the battle can be won but the war goes on.
And so, as I write this, I am faced by one more sad reality, that COP28 has once more not delivered, that the oil barons and their political backers, would once more prefer that the earth in which we live slowly boils to death so long as they can take out more profits. It is obscene. It angers me.
My involvement in attempting to protect our environment, our earth, our home, has been ongoing now for close to 60 years, longer by far than my time as a teacher. From those early letters about Lake Pedder, through the fights to protect the Great Barrier Reef, the early days of establishing a NSW Branch of the ACF into my long association with the National Parks Association of NSW, it has driven me on. I am now tired, tired of the stupidity of government, of the disappointments and have decided that this year will see me step back, provide space for a new generation and hope they have success. I am, however, proud of the achievements along the way, proud of the additions to the national park estate to which I contributed, proud of my role in making the planning process more robust, proud of the organisational support I have helped foster. But there is more to do, more for those with energy. At least I shall continue in certain niche areas. Let me hope that in 2024 new, more robust laws to protect our natural environment are brought to fruition and not scuppered by interest groups whose vision is limited to the profits that might be squeezed out of our home.
Even before I started my life in campaigning for the environment, I was actively working to help indigenous Australians (what they call themselves has changed over that time) achieve some dignity, some control over their lives, some recognition that they were the First Peoples, dispossessed by the lie of Terra Nullius and the subsequent horrendous treatment that is the colonial project. You can imagine, therefore, that the referendum result came, not as a shock, as a bitter pill. What was such a modest request, an almost polite plea to let us have a voice, was rejected in the most cynical way by people who should know better. Beyond its betrayal of the Uluṟu Statement, it is also a bitter attack on the fabric of our society. It will take many years before I can forgive, if ever, this betrayal.
I now live on Dharawal land, have worked closely with many First Nation peoples, feel for them all: but a special word here for the Country from which I came, the Biripi people, the Saltwater mob around Taree/Purfleet. In my childhood it was you who brought me on this journey. I am with you still.
2023 has given me more for which to be despondent. My old piece of “jewellery”, a piece I often slip on under my shirt, out of sight but close to my heart, is a peace chain. I have had it since 1967. It was worn during the political struggle over the Vietnam War, worn as a result of the Soviet 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, worn during the invasion of Iraq, worn in countless needless interventions by the Great Powers (how Great they are is questionable) and is being worn once more after the horrendous attack by Hamas on civilians and the even more horrendous retaliation by the IDF on the Palestinian civilians. There are war crimes being carried out every day, horrifying ones, and our governments remain partially complicit, both through acts of omission and acts of commission.
Forgive this cry of despair as I look ahead to what is meant to be a happy time, a time of good cheer and merriment, be it in worship of a good and caring God (hard to believe that) or the even more powerful god of consumerism. Xmas 2023 will see me in retreat, quietly nourishing the inner self within nature, a nature that however battered, somehow fights on and provides me with the energy to do so again.
Yes, I know I usually create a pictorial, a cheerful celebration of wildlife in all is manifestations, a hymn of praise, as inspired by the likes of G M Hopkins, and I confess that I have taken thousands of images in 2023 that could be mined for such a task. At this moment, it does not feel appropriate.
No doubt, after this cry of despair, I shall be back in 2024, trying to turn the tide, reaching out, living in hope. I need you to be there with me. We, humans, individuals, are also part of that natural world, and we need each other.