Walking for Food

Artist as Family plan to walk for five days to Melbourne from our home in Central Victoria and we wish to do this respectfully acknowledging the elders and traditional communities of the country through which we travel.

We are a carless family and understand how ecological knowledges are foregrounded when technologies are backgrounded. This is our first walk to Melbourne which takes only an hour and a half by car.

We aim to leave Daylesford on March 31 and be at Point Cook or thereabouts on April 5. We aim to walk out from our home in Daylesford in Jaara country through the Wombat Forest, across the Lerderderg State Park, dropping down East of Bacchus Marsh before heading on to Port Phillip Bay.

We will take as little food and equipment as possible and put our foraging/walking/camping knowledges to the test.

Artist as Family proposed walk April 2013

The walk is also to celebrate the completion of Patrick’s manuscript, ‘Walking for Food: Regaining Permapoesis’. His book and our walk to Melbourne both attempt to raise issues around food and energy sustainability and environmental ethics. The book heavily quotes Aboriginal voices and sensibilities relating to the respectful treatment of country. This book is the result of three and a half years doctoral research based on our family and community’s transition to local food and energy resources. Patrick has conducted the research in our home community of Daylesford and through the University of Western Sydney.

On the afternoon of April 5 Patrick will give a talk at The Real Through Line poetry symposium at RMIT, a free event open to the public.