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Walkabout - a different kind of pilgrimage

Wokabaut_Meri

somewhere along the Way
Time of past OR future Camino
Camino Francés 2015
Pilgrims Way 2018
Via Francigena #1 Canterbury-Dover 2018
Without getting too much into the politics and reasons for this amazing journey (and begging the moderator's indulgence), Clinton Pryor a Wajuk, Balardung, Kija and a Yulparitja man from the west is walking across Australia. To date he has walked 1943.4 km from Perth and is in the spiritual centre of Australia at Uluru.

Check out some amazing pictures of remote country that many people would have great difficulty accessing on his website: Clinton's Walk or more up-to-date daily posts on Twitter @Clintonswalk.

On the Forum we have often discussed our reasons for walking. I loved Clinton's response to this:
Have local elders given you any specific messages to take to Canberra? They said that I will know what to say after I walk across community and the country.
 
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Thank you, @Wokabaut_Meri! Clinton's journey is humbling and inspiring both--and a whole lot harder than what most of us do in Spain.

They said that I will know what to say after I walk across community and the country.
Love it! (I think I need to walk more, to connect with the silence under all the words that's the source of the kind of wisdom that Clayton's talking about.)
 
Very much in awe of Clinton and why he walks. I've travelled Australia extensively and developed a healthy respect for people who are able to survive the arid interior. And to walk across it, strewth mate! The pictures alone give you an idea of just how hard this must be.
On another note, I at least gained some insight (knowledge sounds too presumptuous) on the songlines of the indigenous Australians by reading Bruce Chatwin's The Songlines. And Bruce also puts forward some original ideas on "why we walk". Recommended reading.
 
The one from Galicia (the round) and the one from Castilla & Leon. Individually numbered and made by the same people that make the ones you see on your walk.
Dedication. Reminds me a bit of a great Aussie movie/documentary, Rabbit Proof Fence, from about 15 years ago. Children following the rabbit-control fence line to freedom .....
 
Yes, I'm in awe of Clinton and the songline he is creating as he walks across the ancient lands of his ancestors.

Thanks @Purky for reminding me of Bruce Chatwin's book The Songlines - such echoes of the Camino which serve to show how pilgrimage is universal though it takes such different forms.

In this extraordinary book, Bruce Chatwin has adapted a literary form common until the eighteenth century though rare in ours; a story of ideas in which two companions, traveling and talking together, explore the hopes and dreams that animate both them and the people they encounter. Set in almost uninhabitable regions of Central Australia, The Songlines asks and tries to answer these questions: Why is man the most restless, dissatisfied of animals? Why do wandering people conceive the world as perfect whereas sedentary ones always try to change it? Why have the great teachers—Christ or the Buddha—recommended the Road as the way to salvation? Do we agree with Pascal that all man's troubles stem from his inability to sit quietly in a room?
We do not often ask these questions today for we commonly assume that living in a house is normal and that the wandering life is aberrant. But for more than twenty years Chatwin has mulled over the possibility that the reverse might be the case.

goodreads review

Most of human history was conducted through contacts, made at walking pace…the pilgrimages to Compostela in Spain…to the source of the Ganges, and wandering dervishes, sadhus, and friars, who approached God on foot. The Buddha meditated by walking, and Wordsworth composed sonnets while striding beside the Lakes. Bruce Chatwin concluded from all these things that we would think and live better, and be closer to our purpose as humans, if we moved continually on foot across the surface of the earth.

Rory Stewart: Walking with Chatwin

Several years ago I had the privilege of working for some months in a remote aboriginal community in Western Australia that Clinton has just walked through. It was an intense time and had a huge impact on me. One that resonates strongly still. I ran the office and soon discovered that my job description was an evolutionary document adapting to need and circumstance. I cannot post any of the fabulous images of community members due to cultural sensitivities but here are some photos of the country and the wildlife that delighted my daily commute:
devil_email.jpg Blackstone 093.jpg Blackstone 089.jpg Blackstone 071.jpg B 017ja.jpg
 
The one from Galicia (the round) and the one from Castilla & Leon. Individually numbered and made by the same people that make the ones you see on your walk.

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