Stories of Place, Community & Environment Walk
A downloadable PDF about the walk is available at the bottom of the page.
At a time of rapid change across Regional Australia, the Stories of Place, Community and Environment (SPACE) Walk invites different knowledge holders and community changemakers to come together to creatively explore the local landscape and consider future possibilities for farming, the environment, the community, and the wider region.
The SPACE Walk is designed to use the act of walking together through the landscape to acknowledge each of us as knowledge holders in our own right, to share stories, and listen attentively to each other and the environment we’re moving through.
Using a series of pre-prepared provocations and organic conversation centred on observations of the landscape being traversed slowly on foot, stories are shared, and information is exchanged. Pausing to gather in a circle, deeper questions are asked—inviting a range of views, experiences and opinions, but steering clear of seeking solutions. For those who have walked across this land many times, the walk is a chance to open the mind and senses to a new way of experiencing, thinking and understanding the connection we might have with the places that nourish us. For those new to this place, it’s a way of learning about it by immersion, storytelling, and questioning.
The framework for the walk was a set of guidelines: Listening with respect, intent, and understanding; being generous with each other and with what is shared; to ask why. They sound simple, but the dynamics of the group will determine how well they are practised.
The first SPACE Walk
The pilot SPACE Walk was held on 21 September 2024—a warm, clear day in spring, on a 1.3km route around the farm of fourth-generation farmer Bruce Maynard and his family, between Narromine and Trangie in Central West New South Wales (southeast Australia). This is Wongaibon/ Wiradjuri land.
On this day, walkers came together with experiences in farming, natural resource management, First Nations knowledge of Country, other forms of specialist knowledge such as native plants and ecology, and the experience of life across an age spread of about 50 years. The 11 participants were respectful and generous in their earnest considerations of what connection to each other and the landscape means, imagination, missing voices, the importance of diversity, purpose and intent, and what actions we need to take to be Good Ancestors.
Following the small talk that comes when a group of people come together, formal introductions were made and everyone was welcomed, including an Acknowledgement of Country from Trangie Local Aboriginal Land Council Cultural and Heritage Committee chair, Wongaibon/ Wayilwan man, Tony Lees. After running through the walk guidelines, instructions were given on how to do a walking drawing to map each walker’s path around the farm, and what to do with the provocation palm card given to each walker—each with a different question on it, we set off.
Our first stop came early after noticing a snake in the grass beside the road, thanks to a raucous family of alarmed Apostle birds in a tree by the road. It prompted a discussion about how much we notice and understand cues within our landscapes and how disconnection with the environment potentially means many people miss these cues. Another of these cues came later in the walk as we observed a flock of ibis swooping in circles above the paddock we were approaching. They were on the hunt for locusts and grasshoppers that can devastate crops and pastures on farms.
We followed the farm roads around the house paddocks, exchanging memories and stories with each other in pairs or small groups, all the while trying not to be too conscious of what the charcoal pencil in our hand was doing. Stopping every few hundred metres in the shade of a tree, we yarned in a circle about some of the big questions we had been asked to consider. One of those was: What do we need to do to increase connections with humans and non-humans? The response from Tony Lees was: This. More of this. Yarning together on Country. For the most part, the conversation was organic, flowing from our observations and the quiet mulling of ideas while walking.
The last stop on the walk was a listening station set up earlier in soil on the drip line of a big Kurrajong tree in a paddock near the farmhouse. These are an iconic farm tree in the Central West. Hearing abilities aside, everyone had an opportunity to listen to the rustling, crackling and vibrating movements in the soil as the tree’s canopy was tossed around in a gusty south-westerly wind.
Dear future kin
After standing in the shade of the Kurrajong discussing the importance of sound and listening, and our ability to imagine this landscape in 100 years, we returned to the house for a share-plate lunch in the garden, and to consider the biggest question of the day: What does being a Good Ancestor mean to me?
The SPACE Walk provocations weren’t meant to be easy questions to answer. Comfort zones were tested. For some that included the mapping of their experience of the walk as a walking drawing on blank postcards, before writing a message to future kin on the back. Some enjoyed it and some found it challenging.
Evaluating the experience
For some, the struggle may have been listening without judgment. In the informal verbal evaluation session at the end of the day, one participant commented: I’m not a good listener.
The test is always how long people linger after the formalities are over. On this day, no one rushed home. Everyone stayed another hour after lunch to continue teasing out the questions we’d already spent three and a half hours talking about.
Thoughts about the day:
💎 Interaction. For me, that’s the most important thing. To get to sit with people that probably share 90 per cent of my views but have 90 per cent more information than I currently hold.
💎 Sitting with people who care, on Country.
💎 Sometimes, when someone else is saying something, I’m thinking about what my response is going to be rather than listening to those words. Generally, we’re not good listeners.
💎 It was the setting aside of time and freedom to have those conversations.
💎 I’d absolutely recommend this walk to others. I liked the format—it was loose and people were comfortable speaking. There was a lot of trust.
💎 It’s very easy to attract the converted. The challenge is getting to that next group of people that we all struggle with.
💎 Today the focus was on communication, a different way of thinking and sound, but one thing that’s developing is chemical communication between plants and soils. It’s so complicated that I think people would be interested if there was some level of detail presented as something like a video. It might attract a more diverse audience.
💎 Pictures with sounds can inspire people, and also the art in it. It is really quite attractive. People who are in an urban environment can be inspired and they can really get it.
A river of change
A SPACE Walk is like dropping a handful of stones into a river. Change comes conversation by conversation, experience by experience, rippling downstream to build into a bigger stream of consciousness of what we can do not only as individuals but what we must do as a community intimately connected to and part of our environment.
The challenge to each of us is to write our own message to those who will come long after us. In your message, respond to the following questions: How are you feeling about the world your future kin will inherit? How might you feel more empowered to make a difference to that future? What might you do right now—individually and collectively? If you’d like to share your message to the future on social media (Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn), use the hashtag #SPACEFutures
The pilot SPACE Walk was supported by a Country Arts Support Program grant from Create NSW through Orana Arts. It was also supported by Bruce Maynard, the Trangie Local Aboriginal Land Council and Wungunja Cultural Centre, Landcare and Aunty Ruth Carney. The pilot SPACE Walk was an event of SOIL+AiR creative future landscapes project. This project is currently self-funded by lead artist, Kim V. Goldsmith.
Photographs by Sally Pittman.
walk · listen · create blog post – A thousand generations have led you to this point, published 14 December 2024 READ
The Narromine/Trangie area where the pilot SPACE Walk was held is on the traditional country of the Wongaibon and Wiradjuri people, traditional custodians of the land. In walking through this landscape and considering its future, we pay our respects to Elders past and present.
If you are interested in having a SPACE Walk facilitated in your community, please contact Kim via email.