THE COMMON WAYS - How restoring the network of the world's ancient trade routes with eco-cultural tourism can unite humanity, enhance biodiversity and bring about lasting peace

This is my entry in the Sydney Writers Competition:   The Competition - If you were writing a book, what would you call the book and what would be the first sentence for the book?

(Posted 12.00pm 27.4.14)

Thank you for entering the Sydney Writers' Festival competition. Successful applicants will be notified by the email address and/or phone number supplied.

THE COMMON WAYS - How restoring the network of the world's ancient trade routes with eco-cultural tourism can unite humanity, enhance biodiversity and bring about lasting peace.

If I told you that it would take just one small step upon an ancestor’s pathway for mankind to make one giant leap, transform Western civilisation and achieve enduring peace and harmony with each other and all living things;  that identifying, protecting, buffering and augmenting every last remnant of native vegetation then linking them up with wildlife corridors in a continental web, provides the best hope for us and the rest of biodiversity to survive climate change and extreme weather events;  that simply by realigning political boundaries to harmonise with Aboriginal tribal boundaries, Australians could establish a legal (after signing a Treaty with each Sovereign First Nation) two-tier government system, composed of a federal administration and Autonomous Regional Councils based on the major water catchments;  that we could have ‘stopped the boats’ not by spending billions of dollars on further punishing already anxiety-ridden and often traumatised people, but by setting up well-resourced regional processing centres for asylum seekers in strategic places in South East Asia to determine those in greatest need of protection, then offering family groups resettlement in CERES-based permaculture villages of around 1000 situated near volunteer host towns that they will eventually integrate into, thus invigorating our society as well;  that if governments stopped telling Aborigines what to do and started asking them what they want and need to address their social problems then resourcing them, not with money but with the goods and services they need, be it supplying homeland communities with the latest renewable energy technologies, practical and inexpensive earth building programs, or anything else that will help with their reconstruction efforts, they could very quickly restore health and harmony in their communities, as they were before ‘we’ decimated their cultures, social structures and skilfully managed diversity of bush foods and medicines with assimilationist policies and extensive habitat destruction;  that if governments actually VALUED the priceless legacy of humanity's longest, most sophisticated comprehensive continuum of environmental scientific and metaphysical knowledge, instead of demeaning ‘welfare’, they could pay all Indigenous people who wished to restore these 80,000+ year knowledge streams a fair living wage for this work and the consequent eco-restoration of their homelands that would follow,  including re-establishment of their network of Songlines, trade routes and migration trails that are mostly still extant within the stock route system which overlaid them (the most ancient trade routes in the world, thus taking us back to the beginning of homo sapiens and this sentence) then the horrific escalation of Aboriginal youth suicide could be halted or even stopped completely, as in the Native American experience, would you believe me? 

[Maureen Brannan 905 Wilsons Road CLOYNA via MURGON Q 4605 ph: 0427710523]

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Pictures: 1. ‘First Footprints’ map that shows the Dreaming Tracks 


2. ‘Tracker’ magazine map of an existing eco-cultural tourism enterprise called The Bundian Way that could be replicated across Australia, and in fact across the world; 3. Internet sourced  map of the ancient opium routes across Asia 

This is a real book by the way that I’ve been wanting to write since I began Indigenous Studies at SCU a few years ago – it is going to be my thesis - I will try and enlist famous walkers such as Robert Macfarlane, author of many exceptional nature books such as The Old Ways, and the global Travellers Network, to make this a reality.

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ONE SMALL STEP - Tony Abbott's polar opposite

ABC Insiders - Talking Pictures 04/05/2014

It seems like the Prime Minister is trying to channel JFK, and AJA is no JFK let's say: "Ask not what your budget can do for you, but what you can do for your budget." 

CATHY WILCOX: Look he likes to borrow ideas that may or may not have worked in the past, and I think he sends them out kind of randomly, saying people will remember that quote.

I’ve got a great example of Abbott paraphrasing (and misquoting) another famous saying, Neil Armstrong’s “one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind”, which also suggested that I must be AJA’s polar opposite - just at the very moment he was standing on a podium in a press conference announcing his new war planes acquisition costing $12 billion, and saying: TONY ABBOTT (during press conference): One small step for me, a giant step for mankind   …and talking about how the world is a dangerous place and we need to be prepared for war, I was writing the same well-known phrase, except the giant leap I envisaged was not towards inevitable conflict, but towards ecological restoration and social harmony …. $12 billion in fact would probably pay for all of the suggestions below and eco-social restoration back to resilience, health and optimum biodiversity over the entire continent.

[Maureen Brannan 905 Wilsons Road CLOYNA via MURGON Q 4605 ph: 0427710523]