Coming back to Broome in anticipation of walking the Lurujarri songline with Goolarabooloo, all conversations lead in someway to the No Gas campaign. This year preparations for the Trail (the yearly walk along the songline) seem less tenuous than last year. People have a bit more certainty that we wont get shut out of country by development proponents. So much energy is being invested in defending this country, protecting future generations’ right to maintain connections. Court cases, community actions, meetings, whale monitoring, merging conversations… there is a big groundswell of action to land in. I haven’t really had any role to play in the campaign apart from being a supporter and spreading the message of Goolarabooloo and Broome families that they love their country/place and want to keep it free from industrialisation. Sitting here on Goolarabooloo country now, I feel a sense of guilt, a voice from within telling me I should be ‘doing more’.
Last year I was here for such a short time, I tried to focus my energies on just being fully present here and on loving this place. Is that enough? Does that make any difference? Are there legitimate and illegitimate ways of loving and caring for place/country? I guess that this spin into the dualism of right and wrong comes from a place of comparing.
One thing I am sure of is that walking the songline and action to protect the songline and connections with country are inseparable…
Being with Country 