About Dr John Wilson
Qualified in agricultural science, medicine, surgery and psychiatry, Dr John Wilson, practised for thirty-seven years, specialising as a consultant psychiatrist. In Sydney, London, California and Melbourne, he used body-oriented therapies including breath-awareness, re-birthing, and Clinical Theology. He promoted the ‘Recovery Model of Mental Health’ and healing in general.
At Sydney University, John taught in the Department of Preventive and Social Medicine, within the School of Public Health. He has worked as Technical Manager of a venture-capital project, producing health foods in conjunction with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).
Dissenting from colonial values, he saw our ecological crisis as more urgent than attending urban distress. Almost thirty years ago, instead of returning to the academy, he went bush, learning personal downsizing and voluntary simplicity from Aboriginal people.
Following his deepening love of the wild through diverse ecologies, he turned eco-activist, opposing cyanide gold mining in New South Wales and nuclear testing in the Pacific.
Spending decades in the Australian outback, reading and writing for popular appreciation, he now fingers Plato, drawing on history, the classics, art, literature, philosophy and science for this book about the psychology of ecology – eco-psychology – about the very soul of our ecocidal folly.
Writings by Dr John Wilson
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Singing Truth to Power for David McBride
Last Sunday evening, 2nd March, 2025, I met John Shipton, the good father, whose fourteen-year international campaign, secured the release from Britain’s highest security prison at Belmarsh, and the return home to Australia of his son, Julian Assange of Wikileaks. In Canberra’s Central Business District, we met in the Dissent Café & Bar, for Singing…
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Entheogens, ancient and modern
From schooldays, we all recall that the very foundation of our Western culture is ancient Athens, a pinnacle of cultural achievement, pre-eminent in all the arts and sciences, including astronomy, medicine, architecture, sculpture, literature, music, statecraft and warfare, and inventing, history, theatre, philosophy, and democracy. Particularly since the eighteenth-century Classical Revival it inspired the West.…
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Saving Wallum
Wallum is precious for its own sake. It has intrinsic value. It is one of the richest plant communities in the world, and supports birds, mammals, reptiles, frogs, insects, and marsupials, including our endangered, iconic Koala.
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Ecocide
Our emerging ecological crisis is neither carbon dioxide, nor climate, but human psychology.
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Five in hand
With the wind on my face, and sixteen aboard a heavy wooden coach, five-in-hand, all galloping in harness, with chains in their tack tinkling and jingling, and twenty steel-shod hooves striking the road in a cacophony of syncopated clatter, was well worth driving a thousand miles to experience!
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Banjo and Matilda
Out of Townsville, over a low ridge, I enter the Lake Eyre Basin of our vast interior. For thousands of miles, I follow smooth clay wheel ruts on old stock routes along the Torrens Creek, the Barcoo, Thompson, Bulloo, Condamine, Paroo and Diamantina Rivers. Travelling slowly, I memorise for grandchildren ‘The Man from Snowy River’.…
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Mail run to Urisino
Open-handed, Pete offered me the chance of driving his regular mail run, out west beyond Wanaaring, towards Tibooburra, and the South Australian border, then north west up towards the Hamilton gate through the dog fence into Queensland.
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The old telegraph line
Already past the point of no return on another adventure, I woke alert at 2:00 am, wondering under the stars what better preparations I might have made for six hundred kilometres along beaches and cliff tops of The Great Australian Bight, following the old telegraph line northeast from Esperance, the name of d’Entrecasteaux’s ship anchoring…
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Osprey
Walking cliff tops facing the Indian Ocean north of Broome, I halt in wonder at fireworks in the sky, an osprey going ballistic in my face. Bright sunlight on white underparts flashes alarm! And lo, on a jagged buttress jutting out across the beach from red cliffs, is her nest of many seasons piled high…
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Timbarra
Michael Balderstone of the Nimbin Museum explained that ATSIC, (Aboriginal and Torres Straits Islanders Commission) was too mean to allow Aboriginal people petrol money to visit the Timbarra Plateau. They would show Ross Mining the sacred site to be spared by their proposed open cut cyanide gold mine, on wetlands, sourcing the Clarence River! Delighted,…
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Mine Closure
I left Melbourne abruptly to join David Heilpern, a dedicated young lawyer whose advocacy during the Timbarra campaign had been invaluable. Despite facing threats, David’s unwavering commitment to justice set groundbreaking legal precedents and embodied resilience amid adversity.
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Moruroa – For Her Own Sake
Challenging French nuclear testing in the Pacific 1995 – 1996. Free PDF download.
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Kailas
Mythical axis of the universe, citadel of the anti-orthodox, Kailas is the abode of old dark gods and Earth Goddesses.