NATURE


Our connection with nature


Our indigenous people and nature itself have much to teach us. Alex explores ways of being in tune with the land, and letting nature inspire our expression in home garden design.


by Alex Hawthorne


CONNECTION AND BELONGING ‘Welcome to country’ has become a regular fixture at the beginning of speeches, art exhibition openings, conferences, and gatherings of all shapes and sizes in Australia in recent years. The acknowledgement of the traditional and continuing custodians of the land has I believe, facilitated a tentative bridging of the gap between our different cultures. Developing a passionate connection to the land, as is conveyed by Indigenous Australians with their characteristic warmth and humour, may be seen as part of our healing process, as it is precisely this feeling of belonging, not only to the land, but also to our tribe, that many Westerners yearn for. The following quote from Indigenous


Australian, S. Knight, sums up this connection to land well: “We don’t own the land, the land owns


36 MARCH | APRIL 2018


us. The land is my mother, my mother is the land. Land is the starting point where it all began. It’s like picking up a piece of dirt and saying this is where I started and this is where I’ll go. The land is our food, our culture, our spirit and identity.” Uncle Graham Paulson gives an even


broader overview: “In an animistic world every thing is


interconnected – people, plants, and animals, landforms, and celestial bodies are part of a larger reality. In this world, nothing is inanimate, everything is alive; animals, plants, and natural forces, all are energised by a spirit. In this world, the invisible and the visible pulse with the same life and the sacred is not separated from the secular; they are interconnected and interactive.” This description of unity is


breathtaking in its scope, embracing all life; so there is truely nothing that a person could be separate from. For


many people in today’s society, feelings of disconnection with others can fuel fears – whether that fear takes the form of loneliness, depression, anxiety, or any other guise. It’s my belief that we benefit


significantly when we feel more connected to the nature around us and even to our own spirit than we currently do. Our seemingly boundless individualism, which has been centuries in the making, has helped us know who we are and define our differences from others, but the accompanying feelings of separation from others and nature have wreaked havoc on our primordial need for kinship and connection.


THE SPIRIT OF COUNTRY As a landscape architect I often ponder how we connect with the land, endeavouring to understand nature’s mysterious ways from ecological, cultural, psychological, and spiritual


IMAGE: JUDY NAPANGARDI WATSON, MINA-MINA COURTESY OF WARLUKURLANGU - ARTISTS OF YUENDUMU


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