A poorly written article with bad grammar and racist stereotypes.

The following sentence has three glaring errors.

“A prominent Brisbane businessman and visionary, once engaged my wife and I to take he and his wife into the wilderness for a few days.”

It should be: “A prominent Brisbane businessman and visionary, once engaged my wife and me to take his wife and him into the wilderness for a few days.”

Where was the editor?

The author romanticises the Aborigines: “Australian indigenous communities have spent 50,000 years finding a sense of place in the wild, living and surviving in physical and spiritual harmony with the Australian landscape in a self-sustaining way.”

It is quite possible that macrofauna could have been obliterated by the indigenous communities. Their extinction was coincident with the arrival of humans in Australia.

The author is absolutely wrong when he states: “For instance, in an Asian culture, wilderness poses a sense of discomfort or risk, not to be experienced by an individual but within the security of a group.”

What Asian culture was he talking about? The tradition of the hermit in Taoism along with landscape painting in China and the worship of nature in Shintoism are some of the many manifestations of connection to nature in Asian culture.

The author wrote: “Nature grows in silence.”

I live in the bush. I hear the wind in the trees, the chirping of the crickets, the trilling of the magpies, the grunts of the frogs and all the other noises that tells of the life and movement in nature. Nature does not grow in silence. Possibly the author is deaf to the sounds of nature.

I agree with what I think the author is trying to say. However, the subject deserves better. Silence is better than babble.

good article in some ways but it does contain a few errors.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12752#220274

david f, your correct the aboriginals almost certainly killed off all the mega fauna & desertified Australia, but then realising their past mistakes developed a religious mythology which allowed them to survive in the deserts they created, without worsening them.

Yes Asians & indeed almost all of the worlds religious systems include some kind of "commune with nature" tradition including Christianity BTW (Noah did save all the animals).

The truly crazy part is that the loony left, bleeding hearts who CLAIM to be conservationists also want to bring in MORE migrants & simultaineously promote "RED/green left" ANTIenvironment policies.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/at-last-a-thorough-probe-into-what-drives-the-greens-machine/story-fn59niix-1226095160826 obtain a copy of this book, read it & if you care about our "wide brown land" never vote for, or support the RED/greens again in any way.

The RED/green, getup, GAYLP/alp, Socialist Alliance has been setting aside land for "national parks" at breakneck speed for decades but then not having enough money to "husband" that land adequately. EG, feral animals are often out of control on crown land, state forests, national parks, etc.

Ironically some of our best managed publicly owned land is ADF training facilities like Canungra or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoalwater_Bay.

Also ironically the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_feral_camel is equally as well suited as Kangaroos & Wallabies to our delicate soils, would make an excellent replacement for the mega fauna grazing animals in all of our environments, especially for the purpose of decreasing fuel loads which lead to MEGA fires.

Furthermore "building a wall around our emotions" is the exact opposite of the real problem which has been giving IN to the emotional outbursts of the "noisy minority" or "getting in touch with our feminine side".

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8630135369495797236# this is the REAL problem.

Australian indigenous communities have spent 50,000 years finding a sense of place in the wild, living and surviving in physical and spiritual harmony with the Australian landscape in a self-sustaining way. They indeed, were and are in touch with the rhythms of the natural world.

This description is fanciful & misleading for the benefit of his business..

Also, such fairytales do in fact continue to do damage to the indigenous. Their lives were harsh & far from the nirvana academia is trying to portray. The indigenous would not have lived like this for so long had they been aware of better ways. To infer that theirs was a lifestyle of choice just shows the same ignorance which has ultimately led to & caused many to live the way they do now.

Does anyone else remember Brainspace, with the wonderful Tim and Debbie? As played by Mary Keneally and Stephen Blackburn, Debbie was an enthusiastic New Age airhead and Tim was her keen but dim acolyte. One episode I remember in particular starts like this:

DEBBIE: We have a friend with a great business, right? He picks up people and drives them out in to the wilderness, right? And then he -- leaves them there?

TIM: And it only costs four hundred dollars!

I've adjusted the prices for inflation, but Debbie was doing the rising 'questioning' inflection in her sentences well before anyone else picked it up.

What more needs to be said?

Although I agree with the author's general thesis about the value of exposure to the wilderness, and the regrettable decline in interest in and knowledge of the Outback, it is a pity that the article was so poorly edited, with numerous distracting errors in grammar, spelling and punctuation.