Kailas

April 1, 1994

As half expected Chinese police block our route. We make a 1,000 kilometre detour around their checkpoint, but in military areas along our way to the south-west garrison post of Lae we must still hide like children under rugs, amongst baggage to avoid arrest.

Lae is a trap. Stealing out each night we stamp for cold on a bridge with moonlight bright on the Indus; pale on Himal beyond. With no lift we return each dawn to hide, but eat well and shower in an unlit bunker, with water heated on exhausts from generator diesels.

But we’re spotted. Soldiers with guns up burst in on our nakedness. My mate, a wrestling champ, fearsome in the raw, rushes at them fists up. They wait outside, but take us to the police, where false papers forged in Lhasa satisfy slack officials, who let us go free again.

Heading south we enter the Trans-Himalayan Ranges (parallel to the main Himal) named in days of heroic geography by Sven Hedin, the ruthless hardy Swede who in 1900 strode on regardless to claim the Ganges’ source, forsaking his men who died in their tracks.

Writings by John Wilson

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…
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.…
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.
Ecocide

Our emerging ecological crisis is neither carbon dioxide, nor climate, but human psychology.
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!
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’.…
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.
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…
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…
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,…
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.
Moruroa – For Her Own Sake

Challenging French nuclear testing in the Pacific 1995 – 1996. Free PDF download.
Kailas

Mythical axis of the universe, citadel of the anti-orthodox, Kailas is the abode of old dark gods and Earth Goddesses.