It has been a powerful weekend with a Full Moon and Australia’s 2020 Summit in Canberra. Lots of good ideas have emerged with issues of Sustainability, the need for a unified approach to Economy and Governance, and improved collaboration between community and Government/ regulatory bodies. These are issues that have arisen with our concern for this Dredging project. We are part of a huge wave of awakening consciousness. Fantastic idea of Australia leading the world in becoming a Green Nation. Victoria’s Premier, John Brumby, is inspired. Hope, folks – the Light dawneth.
The Dredging of the Yarra’s polluting contaminants begins today. Nature seems to be co-operating with mild weather sustaining a calm environment.
Precarious project …
The Age: Dredging project
The Australian Conservation Foundation begins its monitoring project tomorrow.
The Orca sails out into the Bay with students on board to do their own measuring and assessment of the Bay.
I have donated to this project – I like the objectivity. The Orca needs assistance financially. You can also opt to sail out with the team on their trips. Could be an interesting and inspiring experience!
Australian Conservation Foundation.
Cheers !
Hilary
Ocean walk …
Honouring the Feminine at Boonatallung
Sunday 13th April 2008
Boonatallung (Point Nepean) is a traditional women’s birthing place, a dolphin nursery and a place of spectacular beauty and wild feminine energy. Forming one side of the entrance to Port Phillip Bay, she stands as a proud guardian for the fertility of Melbourne. Boonatallung is now under attack from the aggressive ignorance of a large-scale dredging operation in her waters.
With deepest respect for the BoonWurrung women of this land, we are called to gather together at Boonatallung to honour the feminine and bear witness to the suffering of the land, her people and her waters. As women, as children, and as men protecting the feminine, we are all called to stand strong and offer our love and compassion, for the healing of the waters and the sacred feminine, inside and outside.
Plan of the Day:
11am Meet at Gunners Carpark
11.15- 12.40pm Sacred Walk along the beach to the Point
12.40-1pm Lunch at the Point
1.00-3.30pm Gathering at the Point: Honouring the Bay and the Feminine through Music, Song, Story, Dance and Poetry; Healing Meditation; Deep Ecology and Sustaining Our Spirit; Sharing Circle…
3.30-4.45pm Return journey by walk or train.
Logistics: Meet at Gunners carpark by 11am to join the Sacred Walk of 3.5km along the beach and up to the very tip of the Point. If you prefer not to walk, you can catch a tourist train from the Visitor Centre and meet us at the tip of the Point by 1pm (train departs 12.30pm Visitor Centre).
Please Bring: Walking shoes, sun, wind and rain protection, lunch and drinking water, musical instruments, prayers, poems, dances, stories and songs. Wear white or pink.
Entrance Fees: National Park entrance fees are $7.50 adult; $3.70 child and concession. Train fees extra. Please pay at Visitor Centre.
* This is a private gathering and an invitation to you, your family and friends. You have been invited by the Wild Women of the Waters: Sophie, Rose and Meenakshi.
Contact: 040 0 846 012 or 0405 379 223
Flier for printing: boonatallung-gathering.doc
For those who think it is only the feminine that is sensitive to nature:
the-whale.doc
This is a pic of Port Phillip Bay taken from the Helicopter pad at Sorrento Park.
It shows a beautiful Bay, the happy little boats, the curves of shoreline and softened aged mountain ranges in the distance.
Our forefathers knew it was Bay, with a small opening to the sea and enclosed all around by land. An ideal site for a settlement and a small city.
It was never thought of as a port. Portland is a port and was created for that purpose. Westernport is a port and was created for that purpose.
Somewhere along the line of time and generations, competitive thinking wore away at the visions for this part of Australia. Somehow, sometime, the patriarchs in charge dismissed what IS for what could BE.
In many places of the world, the pristine beauty of nature has been , and is being, devastated by the lure of possibility beyond the simplicity of the natural. In time, everything comes full circle for there is very little in nature that forms right angles or straight lines. The Universe prefers to run on curves and cycles.
The care of our Bay is now up to all of us: the people in charge of Crown land and Sea; the organisations committed to conservation and protection; the community awareness raising groups; the users of the Bay; those who have come to love its calm joy and marine beauty.
It (the Bay) embraces and encloses us all providing a sanctuary, a shelter from the wildness of the raw Antarctic just beyond the Southern horizon. The marine life that has made this Bay their home are sensible. The people who have purchased land and developed homes and shops, businesses and yes, a City of Melbourne, know this.
The dredging of the heads will widen the opening to this Bay. We do not know what effects this will have. Time will show us as nature adapts to the swelling tides and deeper channels.
The reasons for doing this at this stage of the planetary mood swings have not perhaps, taken much into account other than vested interests in human civilisation.
This kind of dismissive insensitivity and perhaps ignorance and naivety, invariable bring the need for adjustment in thinking and planning. We humans do this, we learn and grow through experience.
Patience is needed and understanding. Planners and developers are often secular and self interested. True visionaries are rare.
For those with more wholistic scopes of knowledge and perception – it is painful to watch the stupidity of half baked ideas bulldozing through nature which will take decades to resettle and grow again.
We have such short lives. Those who want to leave a legacy of building and creating are in a hurry to achieve their own dreams. Those who are agonising over the destruction mourn that they will not see the healing take place.
It is life.
Eric Idle explores the Meaning of Life and expresses what he discovers better than I. With the help of NASA and modern micro technologies - in visuals and sound …
Enjoy!
The fury of the storm that wreaked havoc across Melbourne is well matched by the passionate fury expressed by so many at the bull headed devastation of our Bay.
The pic here is of the Bay just after the worst of the storm. The clouds were about to spit muddy rain onto our created world.
I went to the local Blairgowrie beach yesterday (3rd April). As I watched, the dreaded dredger was quietly making its way towards the heads. To think of continuing with this massive project in the wake of such a storm is mind boggling – such stupidity and arrogance plus.
I watched and wept inside myself. A seagull with a fish hook in its mouth sat next to me. Two gulls covered in oil kept shaking their feathers and another was gagging and vomiting nearby.
As if that is not enough, today, the same day the widening of the heads begins, Victorian Government is holding a Climate Change summit. Here, the Premier boasts that Victoria is on cue :
” For nearly nine years the Victorian Government has shown national and international leadership on policy and actions to reduce emissions.” Victoria’s Climate Summit
This is stated with confidence despite all the evidence to the contrary: the Government’s new fleet of expensive petrol-guzzling cars, the decisions on the Goulburn water fiasco, the introduction of GM crops, the dredging of the Bay … and so on. These people seem to truly believe in the their own mythologies. In mental health terms – this is referred to as ‘delusional’. Kenneth Davidson in the Age is kind with his words: he refers to this Victorian Government as “the main residents in La La Land.” Oh dear! Somewhere along the Way, common sense has been swamped by a plethora of pigs at the trough and self promoting experts.
There are the intrepid who truly care.
Today, Judy O’Donnell is out on the Bay with Judy Muir and a group of Bay lovers, on Polperro , showering the dolphins with warnings, protection and love.
Operation Quarantine has organised a protest at the heads for tomorrow.
You can gather at Sorrento to encourage the intrepid warriors, at Point Nepean, and at Point Lonsdale.
Saturday 5th of April
On- Land supporters Meet at:
Point Nepean National Park Carpark at 11 am
Point Lonsdale Pier at 11.30 am
Boats meet at Sorrento Pier at 10 am or at the dredge at 12 noon
Distress signals from land and water 12.30 pm onwards.
The Blue Wedges and Operation Quarantine sites will keep you up to date with activities.
The monitoring of the Bay will be carried out by the POMc team PLUS, the EPA will continue to monitor all beaches all year throught the two year project PLUS the Australian Conservation Foundation will be conducting their own in depth monitoring and reporting.
Whatever damage occurs to our Bay through this arrogant bullying behaviour – will not go unnoticed for long. Continue to campaign in whatever way you can.
The Friends of the Earth petition is awakening global awareness; local petitions and mandates coninue to put the official guardians on notice.
The earth will recover, the Bay will recover, and we shall not forget!
Melbourne and its disinterested folk and insensitive developers, will learn. Minister Garrett will learn. Premier Brumby and POMc will learn.
The Bay hurts and needs our love.
This is a planet of learning, of ‘whoops’ and ‘ouch’ and bumbling errors and patch ups, cover ups and avoidances of responsibility – until we learn. On it goes, generation after generation. There will continue be challenges to be met and problems to be solved. With our creativity, our expressive natures, through innovation and by initiating, we learn.
*pic by Jewelz Bould. [after the storm]
