Connections and country

Sarah asked about Songlines and Darren talked about 8 ways of learning. A decade ago I would not even know these terms. Since living in Central Australia I have learnt more about the ways we connect with where we live and the way we seek to understand our places.

I think there are many ways to try and understand the country we are in. Different ways of sharing this with others. For example there is the graphic novel called The Long Weekend in Alice Springs which looks at life in this town where I live through the lens of a single weekend. Then there are other that look through the eyes of explorers like the Scottish bloke John McDouall Stuart who has a large bronze statue guarding a patch of green grass on the edge of town. Or women explorers (think Robyn David who wrote Tracks after her desert trek) or the one by the lawyer that sees everything through the eyes of the law or the many travel journals of people deeply touched by their once in a lifetime trip. Right up to the modern day vloggers that worry more about camera batteries, free wifi and good stories than anything else. 

Songlines are another way of understanding this land. Who am I to say whether they exist or not? I’ve never had the privilege of  having them explained or shown to me. This book (more bravely using the Arrente name for Alice Springs) A Town Like Mparntwe talks about the travel of the ancestral beings as they mapped the world. At this point there is a juncture of spirituality and the belief about the physical world as we see it. Each culture comes with its own belief system about these things. At some point in our development we need to chose our own belief system and this may or may not match the one we are brought up with. Even writing this I reveal my own upbringing and the belief that you could separate the 'bringing up' with anything else.

  

We possibly undervalue our ability to connect with the place where we live. Learning about another culture does not necessarily mean we can connect in the same way or have the ability to see things that others see. As I write this, the wind blow across this vast land and I sense the space around me. Yet I can't sense the space that this blog will travel as soon as I hit publish. The digital landscape is mysterious and has its own connections, criss-crossing the globe.