Re-Growth?

Abstract

<p>There has never been a time when the human species has been forced to interrogate its recalcitrant attitudes and behaviours towards the environment on such a global scale. Extreme drought, lack of water, deliberately lit fires, air degradation, famine, floods, tornados, and virulent pandemics, have been unusually precocious and persistent in the New England region since 2019, threatening the human species to the core. It's not over. How do we reset? Are we capable of caring for and sharing country as the first nations have shown us? </p><p> Re-Growth? investigates the four vital elements needed for life here on earth, sunlight (fire), water, air, land (earth). In 4 movements we delve below and above the surfaces seeking a "re-tuning" of man/ nature relationships to reset the ecological balance we are destroying through stupidity, greed, and lack of action. From the chords derived from the Narrabri radio telescopes to the aeolian harps played by the wind at Moonbi, we plunge into the almost silent waters of the fracked Artesian basin, ruined for ever at Cohuna Bore. We listen to the dialogues of freshwater species in Dumaresq Dam and hear the playing in country by recorder player Alana Blackburn at Anderson's Creek, Death Valley, one of the slowest places to recover in the region. She calls us to action to care and share in interspecies dialogues with underwater creatures, and threatened koalas, finally taking hope and resilience from the world's oldest songbird, the lyrebird, as we gasp for breath from air pollution and Covid.</p>