October 2000. The first encounter up north. En route for the desert, the Triple Alice body weather workshop initiated by Tess de Quincey. Hah! Me, ghost girl, no body, no organs. It’s 6am at the Kupa Piti roadhouse, 10 hours north of Adelaide by road. Temazapan shuffle from the bus to meet someone I’ve never met before, who’s also heading out to the McDonnell Ranges. It’s Sam. Hi, a bit shy, thanks for getting me this early.

Takes me to the dugout, home is a hole in the ground, the Irati Wanti (irati=poison, wanti=leave it!, in Antikarinya-Yankunytjatjara) campaign office. Sam introduces me to Lucy B and Nina B, two amazing chicks from Victoria and Western Australia who were invited to come and live here by the Kungka Tjuta (kungka=woman, tjuta=many), the senior cultural women living in Kupa Piti. The Kungkas have spent much time and energy fighting against the Federal Government's proposed nuclear waste dump on Kokatha land, near Woomera, a few hundred kilometres to the south, and put the call out in 1998 to greenies to come and participate in their struggle.

Protection of country and culture, relationship between Law and Lore, the immense responsibility for the land, the dreamings, sitting and talking together, living in harmony. It's only been in the past year or so that I've started being involved in some of the ecological and Indigenous campaigns in my home state, and already it has shifted the way I think about things, including the new forms that art must take on if it is to do more than merely represent the issues of our times, if it can fulfil its potential to be one of the agents for icreasing awareness and political will for the massive social changes which are needed on micro and macro levels.