I’ve survived the last 8 days in the harsh environment of the western Australian desert walking and camping alongside nearly 100 people from all around the world; I’ve come to call them, ‘The Anti-Uranium League of Superheroes’.  Here are some but by no means all of the superheros I’ve met.

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I’ve done a fair share of activism and been to many protests but the ‘Walkatjurra Walkabout’, was nothing like any protest I have ever participated in. At the beginning I thought the activists were overreacting. The government has indeed given a first approval for the uranium deposit in Yeelirrie to be mined but Toro, the company trying to develop it, still has to come up with hundreds of millions of dollars and get a whole lot of other approvals before anything can go forward.

Proposed Site of Uranium mine. No one was there to protest against!

I also didn’t understand how walking 250 km in the desert and camping in the wilderness could be an effective method of protest. But by my last night there I had realized the organizers ingeniousness and the foresight they had. As Kato, a Wongatha elder, had explained, they were using the strength of their community, bringing people into their space, where they were strongest, allowing them to influence even cynics like myself by connecting them to the land and the culture. Unlike all the protests I’ve been to, they aren’t waiting until the problem comes knocking at their door, they are using the time that they have to create an international network that will be ready to act in their favor if the time comes.

In the next few days I’ll try to share with you the story my Journey and what I learned. The walk is still happening as I write these world and will go on until the 29^th of May so if you are keen to join try contacting the organizers.

Imagine two days in this bus!

The Swarm

It started with a bus drive, a two days bus drive! Gemma (Aka Ultrabus) was our driver in a bus we nicknamed ‘Patches’ or ‘bardi’- an aboriginal word for worm, as it had seen better days, maybe sometime in the 70’s. We had so much stuff with us I doubted it would all fit, but luckily we had David (Aka Packman) who managed to get everything in place.

Pekka with laced underwear, me with a shoe bag and alex with an orange bag, all to keep the flies away!

Finally after setting up camp in Yeelirrie I awoke the next morning and exited my tent. Suddenly I was attacked by a swarm of flies, thousands of them everywhere assaulting all of my senses. After trying the Zen approach of becoming ‘one with the flies’, as many of the League suggested, I ran back to my tent and tried to think of something more practical. I was inspired by MacGyver, and used a pillowcase and my climbing shoe bag to create the ‘Desert Walker’ suit! Finally I could go back out and explore camp life.

Coming up next: Camp life

The walk as featured on the news in Australia.