the bush, if you never saw the bush you would think it's just a bush, but the australian's tend to underplay everything in language, and the bush is basically forest. it can range from deep green old growth in tasmania to the red desert desolation on the centre but the bush out where i live is lush sub tropical and vibrating with the energy of life. it can also kill you, swallow you up and eat you alive, suck the flesh from your bones and send every atom of your body into the cosmic recycling process. 

the aboriginal people off australia understand the bush, they know how to survive it, and they have a relationship with the land that is beyond any civilisation western man can comprehend, it's an ancient relationship that certain indigenous people seem to have developed as their culture, caretakers of the planet.

the dmt tradition in aboriginal and south and north american indian is obvious to anyone who has explored these brain changing plants. the idea that the earth and therefore the land encompasses one dimensional space can be left behind in the same way a snake may shed its skin, the bush is alive, the earth is alive and sustaining everything upon it, it's an intelligent being, and we are basically just neurones firing away, connecting electrical impulses, some driven by a desire to become more conscious, become more aware, evolve oneself, others driven to the opposite impulse. 

theres no value in this, a scientist type mind will reject the idea of consciousness and attempt to reduce the relationship into its components. perhaps he may feel constructing a guidance missile has more value. ultimately the relationship one has with the planet and by extension the universe is the relationship one has with ones self. 

people mock the aboriginals because they have no technology, no culture that the west can relate to. 

but they have something, spend anytime out here and you will have to face up to the truth of it, these people have suffered at the hands of the western man.

on my arrival to australia i was most upset by the fact i never saw any aboriginal people, where were they?

they were living in the inner cities, in run down council areas, or the red centre, stung out on petrol fumes, drinking white mans poison, trapped in a cycle of self destruction, self loathing and abuse. the year i arrived the government launched an enquiry, it was called, 'black deaths in custody' and investigated the reasons why so many aboriginal people seemed to suicide while in jail. 

to me, a new arrival, the answer was obvious and it lay within the collective unconscious. here was a race of people that had never in 40000 years known enclosure, let alone four walls, the bars of a cell in the basement of a small outback police station.

the commission led to nothing, no real change, the aboriginal people's misery is turned into an industry of suffering, money thrown their way. that's the west for you, money or war, the answers to every malaise.

the situation of a disenfranchised community is still very relevant, things have not changed that much but there is a larger understanding occurring, where the bush is being understood, where the western man is glimpsing elements of the aboriginal consciousness and its relationship with the bush and by extension, the earth.

in the last few months i've started to manage a little plot of land, in the bush, i get it now, i really get it, the bush needs a caretaker, a caretaker needs the bush, just like a neurone needs a brain and a brain needs a neurone, start pulling weeds out, start clearing old fallen debris, start shaping and caring for the bush, and the bush will speak to you, it will reveal it's secrets and you will be amazed.