So, I'm having a change of scene for a little while. Can you believe it, someone is paying me to travel to the other side of Australia and talk to people (or rather listen to them) about social issues for three weeks. So here I am in the beautiful Dampier Peninsula in the far north of Western Australia, where I've never been before. Of course I'll have to work but since I've signed a confidentiality agreement I can't talk to you about that. Instead, I just thought I'd mention that Australia is an EXTREMELY BIG PLACE. In something like eight hours in the air we flew across over 5,000 km of territory. As I looked out of the window I saw huge swathes of bushland, mountains, desert, coastline, and very occasionally a little sign of human habitation - a long straight road, a town, a distant light. Of course we so rarely see Australia this way because we are, naturally, always at the places where humans live. For a city-dweller like me, I am nearly always at
'Contemplating the teeming life of the shore, we have an uneasy sense of the communication of some universal truth that lies just beyond our grasp.' - Rachel Carson