Ok, so you are going to offer 5 tours in the next month and a half, in 5 different locations.
This is nothing new to your practice, as you have been using this ‘delivery’ concept as far back as 2002, when you first produced Weedkiller/Pestcotroller in an abandoned Drive In at Kingswood, Western Sydney.
Since then you have employed all sort of strategies in an attempt to provide an alternative reading of the environment, see the tab above for an incomplete list of them.
In the past you have offered this tours in conjunction with Weedbuster week, a national campaign subsidised by the various primary industries agencies of the States and Territories of Australia.
Weedbuster week goes from the 6 to the 12th of September, but activities get enlisted on their website for up to 8 weeks after that.
The aim of the campaign is to rise awareness on the damage weeds bring to the Australian environment, presenting and promoting weeding days, educational activities, festivals, displays, ‘swap a native for a bag of weeds’ initiatives and so forth.
So in the years you have been ‘weeding’ Weedbuster week with your own activities too, offering weed talk and weed identification workshops while presenting a more complex scenario.
You have the bad habit of having problems with dualities and hypocrisy, as we all know a ‘weed’ is just a plant growing where we human would rather have it not. Anthropocentric views of the environment are dangerous, they brought us were we stand now, on the brink of ecological collapse, so rhetoric that a plant would ‘invade the natural bushland’ is just denying the fact that the bushland has been damaged by our practice more than any plant could ever do.
So here you are, still at it, presenting your argument in forums that would probably rather not have you saying it, willing to discuss and find common grounds, as we all love the environment, we all love to do good, and we all understand ‘crusade style’ attempts at ‘doing good’ are actually dangerous as they simplify the complexity of it all.
There is no single solutions, and wordings in the style of ‘war against bush invaders’, ‘garden escapes’, ‘noxious weeds’, ‘threat to the environment’ are just far too evangelistic and blindfolded..
uhmff
You’re open for discussion, eager to listen to arguments that would convince you that a piece of land which is trying to diversify its own biota with plants that might not necessarily look good in a mono-cultural crop (or have any immediate economic return) is guilty, to the point that the plant themselves become ‘illegal’.
To the point that farmers, gardeners, ground and park managers are legally obliged to kill species in an attempt to coerce nature into something obviously isn’t.
This tours are going to be a light stroll into various locations, and along the way we will see and name a number of local plants. They are the one who season after season resist dominance, placement, delimitation.
This are also the plants best adapted to us, the one have been following humans along since immeasurable time.
Yes there is a fantastic indigenous flora in Australia, there is also a fantastic non-indigenous one, all of which live on the same soil.
Acknowledge, respect, be humble
The tours are FREE, bring hat and suitable shoes
Limited numbers, please book via education@mca.com.au or 9245 2484
Saturday 4 September, 2>4pm
Tour of The Domain looking at the local weeds and what they mean to us all.
Saturday 18 September, 2>4pm
Tour of Harold Park looking at the local weeds and what they mean to us all.
Saturday 2 October, 2>4pm
Tour of Centennial Park looking at the local weeds and what they mean to us all.
Saturday 16 October, 2>4pm
Tour of Sydney Park looking at the local weeds and what they mean to us all.
Saturday 23 October, 2>4pm
Tour of Casula Golf Course looking at the local weeds and what they mean to us all.
