Dennis's contributions
to the
Country Viewpoint segment
of ABC Radio National's
Bush Telegraph
Country Viewpoint is a 3 minute (400 words) segment at the end of the ABC Radio National program Bush Telegraph broadcast just before the midday news on weekdays.
Contributing to Country Viewpoint is a very interesting process of discovery (for a person who tends to write too much and speak in paragraphs) about how to shape something that people can listen to while doing something entirely different (while not listening)... which can deliver information and ideas and entertain. I am discovering that as with writing music perhaps (something I can't do), value is added when you change key and successfully shift focus if not topic at the right moment, drawing the listener along.
Here are links to my contributions.
1 September 2005: The Mernda markets and the Tomerong markets. Development north of Melbourne threatens to extinguish the Mernda markets. In my initial foray into Viewpoint, I drew attention to the key role a village market can have in sustaining community, surely a key need in new development.
21 September 2005: We are WWOOF hosts — 'Willing Workers on Organic Farms." Here is the WWOOF organisation website.
20 October 2005: The bowerbird, the cat, the antichinus and the peas. All human interventions in nature involve choices of what we favour and what we disfavour... There is a picture of the bowerbird here.
17 November 2005: 'Community' in the indigenous community of Ngukurr, southeast Arnmen Land. This Viewpoint was usefully run after this story about the totemic mosaic garden in Ngukurr. The link there leads you back to my pictures from our visit to Ngukurr.
21 February 2006: A Country Funeral... reflections arising from the funeral for Ev's mother Phyllis in November 2005.
4 April 2006: The impact of the internet on life in the bush, both for building local community and for connection to new communities in a wider world.
2 June 2006: The impact of new infrastructure on upspoilt beauty in rural areas – and here's a good question... do people mistake beauty for wisdom?
6 June 2006: Energy policy: focus on production or consumption?
6 July 2006: Infrastructure ... more on the issues raised on 2 June.
11 August 2006: My life as a tree-changer. Seek all sorts of things in the bush... Find yourself?
10 October 2006: Nowra now and Renaissance Florence, 1500. Similar populations, what's the difference.
15 March 2007: A 400 person indigenous community and China: Both 'Middle Countries.'
1 May 2007: Granite and Woodland Trail: discovering my fortune out in the wilds of Western Australia.
16 July 2007: A personal perspective on indigenous communities, health and education: What's the key?