Walking the Healing Walk sharing a desire for intimate engagement with the land

My grandfather thought the Aboriginal people had gone to Framlingham (an Aboriginal reserve near Warrnambool), and later in my own life when I did some research on this area, I found it belonged to the Tjapwurrung speaking people. Uncle Banjo Clarke and his family were some of the Aboriginal people I met there when I returned to this land in 1993. Banjo, as I came to call him, became a source of guidance for me, and it was his family I first spoke to about my idea of walking from the mouth of the Hopkins River upstream and inland to Lake Bolac.

But my quest to be with Aboriginal people actually began in 1978, when I made my first trip to the Northern Territory. My job in the western desert settlement of Papunya, was driving a store truck for the growing outstation movement. It was an exciting