Environment
Blog 1. 30th December
Hi I am Gary and Environment Group convenor. I got this position because I was interested and turned up at three meetings in a row when others didn’t. How’s that for political skill? But I am inspired by an Ideas Meeting we had on November 14th with some members to set up the directions for our environment group.
We decided we would put out the kind of information that will cause people to act—and feel that this is their habitat, their place of living.
This is something ecologists call “inhabitation” that is, a sense of being in touch with and knowing about where you live. Indigenous peopes have knowledge of their own terrain but also cultures that go with that terrain—the music, stories, songs, perhaps even the religion, being related to the habitat.
Our suburb is very different. We celebrate Easter and Christmas in the opposite seasons to where they are supposed to be. We are glued to nature programs but know more about narwhals, aardvarks and otters than we do about the lizard by the back doorstep. We are politically active and march for human rights, against war or to protect trees that are a hundred kilometres away while Neigbourhood Watch or Landcare groups sometimes fail to get a quorum.
In short we are poorly connected with our own landscape and our culture focussed on the cosmopolitan rather than the local. Not entirely though. Every time you garden or go for a walk by the creek you are connecting. If you read a local history, join a landcare group, stop to admire a water course then you are making a connection. There are lots of positives out there (the existence of Lenah Links is one) but I single one out. That is the Anglican Church’s wonderful custom of holding harvest festivals and harvest services. Great! Building some spiritual inhabitation in the process. We are all for harvest festivals!
So I am going to surprise you all by starting my blog with the announcement of a letter to our Anglican minister. I want to know how any plans for a 2010 harvest service are going, how we can help and how ecumenical can we make it?
I will let you know how I go.
Blog 2 31st December
Ralph Rollins has pointed out that the New Town Rivulet Catchment more or less coincides with the 7008 postcode regions. There are some exception, the important northern bank of the creek east of Main road is in fact in Moonah (7009) and Cornelian Bay—a part of New Town for sure—but technically speaking is a different catchment. I was interested the other night to hear some discussion of how many micro-climates there are in 7008. There, you see how handy Ralph’s observation and term can be—much better than a mouthful like the Lenah Vally and New Town biological region. Though it is all the same.