May 2001

Rehabilitation of Landscape

• To use legal means, including the placing of a covenant on the land, to protect the environmental and cultural integrity of the land for perpetuity.
• To give back to the land rather than taking from it.
• To pay back the land, rather than expecting to be paid; the land has already paid.
• To contribute to the preservation, maintenance and creation of vegetation corridors.
• To address serious environmental issues, such as salinity, erosion, deforestation.
• To take inspiration and wisdom from local landscapes.

Indigenous Custodians and Recognition

• To acknowledge that Aboriginal people are the original owners of this country and have cared for it from the beginning of Aboriginal time and from before the creation of the landscape as we now know it.
• To acknowledge the wrongs done to Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander peoples and the destruction of country since invasion.
• To acknowledge the strength and wealth of indigenous cultures and seek to learn from and work with the indigenous custodians of the land.
• To extend our own cultural relationship with the land.

Community

• To work together as a group in a spirit of cooperation.
• To build a community that welcomes the participation of like-minded and local communities.
• To value equally, the different contributions that people make to the project, whether financial, physical or intellectual.
• To have fun and be creative.

Access

• To promote free, open, respectful access to the land.
• To explore and develop concepts of land ownership that involve a relationship with and responsibility for the land to be mutual custodians of land rather than owners.
• To promote freedom of access and mutual custodianship by constructing only a simple building on the land to be used as a communal shelter and meeting place –there will be no permanent residential dwelling on the land.

Non-Financial Investment 

• To invest in land and relationships with no expectation of a financial return.
• To work towards giving the land back to local communities in a manner that empowers the communities and respects and protects the landscape

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