Alternatives! A Memoir

We can look back at our lives through a lot of themes I suppose. I had never felt that particularly. Until giving a talk on Sustainability and Protest in Tasmania when I had to think of my history in both those fields. Until the Gloucester talk I gave at their Sustainability Festival when I saw it in a broader way; it had been a life of involvement in Alternative Living projects. Until giving a Writer's Talk at Newcastle University when the Law Department ran a Narratives of Climate Change Symposium in 2018 when it became really clear that my life and the books I have written are a path looking at better ways. From the very early and extended backpacking travel from Australia, then overland from Ceylon through 26 countries to London. From living on probably the first commune of the modern era in Australia. Between the camping in the showground, as part of the protest against AGL mining wanting to mine coal, and the going back there to give a talk as part of their Sustainability Festival. My second husband and I studied a lot of conventional Medicine as well as Natural Therapies and we tried to grow food and herbs organically. By the 1980s I realised that you have to have healthy soil, air and water to grow food and medicine for people.