Semi-Nomadic Subsistence

A key characteristic of ferality is transience. The rejection of 'the parent culture' - especially 'the great Australian dream' of home-ownership - has sent these 'nomads of the '90s' (Woodford 1994:17) spiralling out from their domestic origins. Ferality, which approaches the transhumant resistance to a settled life so strongly endorsed by Chatwin (1987), is cognate with the earlier 'rucksack revolution' declared by Kerouac in Dharma Bums (1956). Indeed, their immediate solution to dissatisfaction with a settled urban life - mobility - corresponds with that of their Beat antecedents (Creswell 1993). Yet, also like Beats and, not to mention 'drifter tourists' (Cohen 1973) and new travellers (Earle et al. 1994), ferals seek stability and belonging with 'like-minded' others.

On the road, they reside in their station wagons, kombis, converted buses, trucks and tipis. Australia's sparsely populated interior deserts and coastal rainforest provide geomorphic contexts. Destinations (festivals, protests, communities, seasonal work) are often remote from cities, and travel duration protracted. Many have their 'home bases' in or near forests where they get 'grounded' (e.g. Northern Rivers NSW, East Gippsland Vic, Cairns hinterland Qld). Others are 'located' in the city, or oscillate between bush and city. There, they reside in low rent share housing and urban squats. Many are tertiary students (largely arts/humanities). The inner city feral is accustomed to a 'rootless cosmopolitanism' - often verging upon the destitute. They support independent artists, attend benefit concerts and Reclaim the Streets celebration/protests, are members of food co-ops, and are not out of place in Smith St (dividing Melbourne's Collingwood and Fitzroy).

Movement and residence are also patterned by subsistence strategies. The fact that most are Centrelink 'clients', and therefore State dependent, challenges a purist definition of 'feral' as uncontrolled. Though welfare dependency tends to curtail mobility - with the requirement to submit 'dole diaries' and the pre-1998 threat of Case Management - the dole is an accepted part of the lifestyle. Welfare payments are often supplemented or superseded by other informal, often temporary, sources of income. These include itinerant trading at small alternative markets or events like ConFest, seasonal fruit picking, small-scale illicit substance trade and busking.

The receipt of welfare, especially over the long term, is a circumstance around which conservative elements launch offensives: 'greenies' are 'bludgers', 'taxpayers liabilities'. However, insiders rally around the conviction that the work involved justifies taking 'the government scholarship'. This is the case for Quenda. People in receipt, she argues 'are working real hard ... I couldn't explain to the typical person what I do'. There are actually two means by which Quenda personally 'works for the greater'. First, she performs 'healing work' with Bohemia, a group of healers who, after forming at an All One Family gathering, combined their talents and travelled to festivals to heal people via massage (including didjeridu massage), drumming and chanting techniques. She revealed to me one source of her healing powers - Mt Warning in northeast NSW. There, 'at night time, I talk to the Kooris in my dreams and they teach me special songs. And because I heal with the song vibration, that's really sacred to me'.

However, doing her bit for the planet, 'environmental work', is Quenda's chief preoccupation. In 1996, this involved 'scouting' and laying 'traps' around the Timbarra Plateau, the site of a proposed gold mine.16 The 'traps', or hair tubes, are designed to seize hairs from endangered species like tiger quoll, which are then taken to a laboratory in Coffs Harbour for identification. She is resolute - 'I'm hoping to deter [Ross Mining] any way I can'. Since industries whose activities threaten already endangered species must possess expensive licenses to do so, the higher the number and frequency of endangered species known to exist in the region, the heavier is the burden placed on companies like Ross Mining. Though she has spent many weeks trapping to defend species diversity and Aboriginal heritage, it is not a livelihood: 'I'm working for Australia ... So I feel fine taking the dole'.

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