John Bartlett: Country Is Self

“Author Luke Stegman makes an honest and startling observation in calling Australia “unknowable” (Stegman, L, 2021, p. 262). As recent descendants of the settler generation, we are still strangers in these landscapes, still kindergarten students, reliant on the ancient knowledge of First Nations and required to be humble in our limitations.

We must take time, as slow as those lessons are, to become custodians of the lands on which we live, to nurture this wild, wonderful “skin” in which we exist and without which everything will be lost and fall apart.”