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Christopher Le Breton with Bike the Earth takes the Symposium with him as he bikes around the world aiming to connect and inspire individuals to participate in local initiatives to create a thriving, just, and sustainable human presence on this planet. Starting the journey in Melbourne last year Bike the Earth will end up at the Rio Summit in May of 2012. Le Breton shares with us a short story about what he is learning and who is meeting along the way.
I am now in Bali, working to extricate my bicycle and trailer from customs so that I can head westwards into Java and onto Jakarta and over to Singapore.
I arrived in Ubud, Bali after spending ten days with Uncle Bob Randall, Yakunytjatjara elder, and indigenous custodian of Uluru/Ayers Rock in central Australia. Uncle Bob appears in the Symposium saying, "We are the caretakers."
Organizing a Training with Uncle Bob Randall
I learned about the continuing racism and intolerance - indeed, "cultural genocide" - happening in Australia against its first peoples. I was able to help Bob and his family organize a training for Melbourne-based students from the Oases Centre, who came up to live on the land and learn about Kanyini, the wisdom of unconditional love and inter-connectedness with all things.
Biking the Earth Continues
I may be joined in Bali by an additional rider from the Netherlands, a compost toilet and solar panel fitter (a Green Collar man on a bike, Van Jones!).
Initial impressions of Bali are that it is rapidly becoming unsustainable with over development. Its traditional philosophy of living in partnership between God, humans and nature is being ditched in the race to build ever more 3-storey buildings on rice paddies and jump into the tourism boom.
