Once there was a beautiful bit of land called Yanget east of Geraldton, named for the local, water-loving bulrushes. Rod O'Bree and his family have spent the last 15 years learning how to rehydrate and restore fertility and abundance to this land and that of the Chapman River Catchment. At the heart of his story are before-and-after pictures that have emboldened and inspired many in WA to tackle erosion on their farms and stations. Yanget has a lot to teach us about how we live on this country.

In the middle of February, I had two wonderful days in Dandaragan, Western Australia, talking about Regenerative Agriculture with the Soil Farming Restoration crew and attendant farmers and agricultural workers. Dr Christine Jones worked her magic on Day 1 with an in-depth look at  the microbiome of the soil. On Day 2 farmers and supporters met to nut out ways to get the best from their soils in the face of new understanding about the magic of soil biology and a whole-of-landscape systems approach to farming.

A new consciousness of the world we (Western) humans live in is emerging - and I am determined that nudibranchs will be front and centre of my attention. By showing interspecies sensitivity in my efforts to engage with these creatures I am atoning for past insensitivity and exhibiting what Merlin Sheldrake calls 'simple good manners'.  I'm for that. Let's dive into the more-than-human world and have a taste of what our tribal ancestors knew - that we owe kinship to all that lives.

On May 11, 2022,  the Museum of WA, Geraldton hosted an evening on  Climate Resilience. The event was sponsored by the local DPIRD  (Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development) and  organised by Sara Walker and the museum team.

Amanda goes to a Conscious Movement workshop and uncovers another pathway to expanding consciousness. As her bodymind experiences shift, she ponders the inadequacy of words to express wordless knowledge. Along the way she enlists Nora Bateson, Moshe Feldenkrais and Bill Callahan's help.

What does it mean to live life seriously? Amanda listens to Tyson Yunkaporta and Jordan Hall talk, giving her a startling insight into Indigenous traditional lives. Do some of us have to wait until the end of life to find out what living life seriously means?

Amanda continues her exploration of Stephen Jenkinson’s sublime ‘wonderings’ while experiencing life in WA’s ‘best’ rehab public hospital. She worries about the quality and relevance of the physiotherapy and Occupational Therapy on offer and tussles with her own tendency towards being institutionalised. While feeling defeated by the huge bureaucracy devoted to disease, she finds solace in the dusty, neglected zones and the workers-with-heart who sustain humanity in the face of a system hollowed out by small-minded economic thinking.

Amanda asks: what does LESS look like? And decides the only thing she can do to deal with what is happening in the world is to pay more attention to  what her local plant life is telling her. She zones in on these plants and tries to discern deeper patterns that lie beyond the scope of her understanding, paying attention as she rides on the bike path and the port zone around her city, Geraldton. Amanda makes an obvious, but hitherto overlooked discovery about a common and much loved plant and comes to grips with the latest wave of weeds marching into the sand dunes.

Amanda muses about a workshop she is developing (and has just delivered in Geraldton) covering ideas to do with helping non-indigenous folk connect to land, using the garden as the starting point. She uses tools gleaned from a recently completed Holistic Management course, Regenerative Agriculture techniques and her understanding of Aboriginal Knowledge systems... and from the regenerative to the extractive she relates a story about a morning spent listening to local mining executives where she is seduced to the point of inertia by the presentation of a newly developed environmentally friendly mining/rehabilitation techniques called Vegetation Direct Transfer (VDT).