I’m still unemployed and one of the problems with been unemployed is that it is hard to feel very purposeful. I get to the end of each day and I wonder if I have contributed anything even slightly useful to the world. So you start digging. For example, today I cut up two very big pumpkins so that Sue could make pumpkin soup for the women’s retreat and I was like wow what a productive day I had. I have always believed that we are more than what we do. That our identity comes from something beyond what we do but in practice I am finding it hard to live that out.

However, yesterday I did something truly useful. I attended a protest against uranium mining. 23km out of Alice Springs a mining company called Cameco, begun exploring further for uranium. They have done this without consultation with the indigenous people of the land (despite saying that they had) and without the environmental impact statement been completed (not that I think that would be anything but crap, there is nothing environmental about mining). We did invite representatives to come and talk to us further about it and perhaps explain how but they refused (what a suprise). It is not good for the environment, it is not good for the indigenous people and it is not good for Alice Springs (we don’t even need the jobs).

Anyway, it was good to feel like I did one thing in my day that would have an impact. Well I hope so. It would be truly a tragedy if this mine went ahead.