Our trip objectivesOur goal is to communicate and interview local residents all along our journey to dress a colourful and diverse portrait of the outback communities with whom we are going to meet.
We also want to visit and explore all places of cultural and historical interest along our trek but also all natural parks and reserves. Considering this trip is geographically and culturally quite extensive, different themes will be developed.
Burke and Wills opened the path to colonization. Since the 1860’s, the different generations of settlers exploited the available natural resources; water, petrol, minerals, etc.
As much as Burke and Wills didn’t manage to survive because of their misunderstanding of the bush and their lack of adaptation to the available resources, Australians are now being challenged by nature. In fact, the accumulation of issues linked to the overexploitation of available water resources and the persistent drought for the last 7 years together with the climate change partly caused by pollution is in the way to totally change the country’s landscape and economy.
We are going to visit and study places and buildings of historical significance along our way to illustrate how this colony has developed, in relation with the Burke and Wills expedition and the subsequent pioneer movement that colonized Australia’s interior, This will include multiple aspect of the Outback life such as the development of;
- Transportation, from the Afghans cameleers to the road trains,
- Communications, from the first telephone to Internet,
- Education, from the one-room schools to the school of the air,
- Health care and the Royal Flying Doctors Service,
- Industries such as mining, agriculture and fishing,
- Commercial activities such as the pubs and stores,
- Administration, justice and religious activities,
- Water management.
We are also going to traverse and stay in numerous natural areas, including National Parks, reserves and World Heritage Areas. These untouched places are going to allow us to understand better what Burke and Wills have discovered before the landscape was transformed by colonization.
We want to understand the different challenges to this precious natural heritage conservation by meeting with both park management and local Aborigines. We believe we can learn a lot from Aboriginal local knowledge and nature management customs.
A large part of our trip will be spent on pastoral and agriculture land. Australia is heavily affected by climate change and global warming and is now living its worst drought in white men memory.
Due to the lack of water, major river systems such as the Darling-Murray valley, which is the agricultural heart of Australia, cannot be fully exploited. In some areas, agriculture completely stopped and livestock were removed. The situation is now so critical that in some areas, desertification might be irreversible. This situation is affecting dramatically the Australian economy as well as people physical and mental health.
We want to meet with the people who are living and working this land and share views about where the problem is coming from and people’s attitude facing this profound change.
Some experts believe today’s Australian resources can only answer to the sustainable needs of 10 millions peoples while the current population is reaching 21 millions. Australia was the first continent to be declared overpopulated by scientists.
Aborigines managed to live in total harmony with mother earth for many thousands of years. We can surely learn a lot from their management practice and wisdom.
Burke and Wills expedition should not only be interpreted as a colonisation success story, but their fate should always remind us that only knowledge and respect for Nature can ensure our human specie survival.
What is going to be the output?
Along our way, we are planning to write, take photos, draw sketches and shoot video footage to produce a very comprehensive documented diary of this trip. This logbook will primarily record our own travel experiences and impressions, but will also be a collection of different opinions, depending on our various encounters.
We do not wish to treat each subject independently, but instead we aim to encompass and share our global experience with our readers and spectators all along our trip timeline. We believe this approach will allow us to reflect this continent diversity, but also to create a story with rhythm, full of bouncing, where each reader and spectator will be in turned surprised, entertained, interested and impacted.
This diary made of travels, discoveries, and adventures will be articulated around the successive encounter with many Australians who will share their knowledge, experiences and opinions. Using this technique, we want each stage of our trip to compose a sequence or a chapter which could tell about local and ancestral stories, aboriginal culture, environmental issues and the local solutions or the different elements of the landscape such as fauna, flora, geology, architecture, etc. of course without skipping our more personal impressions and experiences, our emotions of joy, happiness, despair or worries according to the different situations we will encounter.
We hope our texts, photographs and drawings will be published as a book. Also, we would like our video footage to be edited as short TV stories of 26 minutes, as a 52 minutes documentary or possibly a full-length feature documentary film.
We are currently searching for edition and production opportunities.
