A Taste of the International Exchange and Conference Program for International participants

Size: px

Start display at page:

Download "A Taste of the International Exchange and Conference Program for International participants"

Elizabeth Lynne Stafford
5 years ago
Views:

1 Getting of Wisdom Sunday 12 Feb 2017 to Sat 18 Feb, Australia & New Zealand A Taste of the International Exchange and Conference Program for International participants Notes by Barry Golding as Exchange Facilitator b.golding@federation.edu.au accurate as of 21 Sept 2016 Inviting policy makers, practitioners and researchers interested in learning in later life: from ELOA (Education and Learning of Older Adults Network) of ESREA (in Europe), Australia and New Zealand and other countries. Hosted by Adult Learning Australia, Federation University Australia, & ACE Aotearoa, with support from the Brotherhood of St Laurence. With generous support and collaboration from many people, organisations, local communities and sponsors across Australia and New Zealand. The purpose of these notes These notes are mainly to help inform potential and registered international participants for the full Exchange program, but also to inform all other potential participants. They may help you to get an idea of what to expect if you register for the full Exchange Program (and take all the recommended flight connections): from arrival in Melbourne, Australia (if from Europe, arriving via Dubai at 6.30am Sunday morning 12 Feb, to departure out of Wellington for Melbourne at 5pm Sat 18 Feb). All of what follows are confirmed plans covered by the full Exchange registration cost (except for the flights). You may instead register just for the Australian or New Zealand programs, or just one of the three Conferences. Note that some fine details may change slightly closer to the event. Why is our Exchange program deliberately different? We figure that you may have been to big and expensive conferences where all you see and hear are the same people for many days, with similarly presented expensive meals in the same huge and impersonal hotels. Such conferences can give you a very narrow perspective, and you can come away with a good knowledge of a hotel and wondering why you attended. This conference is deliberately different. While it is naïve to believe that you will soak up the wisdom of two different and ancient peoples, lands and modern nations in just one week, our aim is to give you new, diverse and challenging perspectives on later life learning policy, research and practice, truly down under in the world. While full Exchange participants get to see and experience the lot, the places, participants, landscapes, themes and presenters change each day. Those that register only for parts of the full Exchange program are still in for a treat. We will try and use local and public transport and buses, relatively inexpensive local venues, catering and accommodation wherever feasible to keep the registration cost as reasonable, green and accessible as possible. Most of our 1

2 presenters and organisers are community members giving freely of their time and expertise. Wherever possible we make critically important Indigenous connections. We will try and neatly weave in nature, culture and community and provide unique opportunities to talk, eat, travel and walk in the landscape, and for those that want to fully enjoy the summer in Australia, also to swim. The Australian part of the Exchange For European participants, the final leg of the flight connection onward from Dubai takes you over thousands of kilometers of outback, mainly desert Australia in mid-summer as the sun rises. It will be warm to hot for much of your stay in Australia, but it is usually and thankfully a dry heat. Ballarat being at a higher altitude is typically a few degrees cooler than Melbourne. European participants on the recommended early morning Sunday arrival flight will be greeted on exit from customs and driven to Ballarat as soon as is feasible to the Federation University Australia Camp Street accommodation in central Ballarat, via a registration desk outside Building S. Registrants on other flight connections from New Zealand and elsewhere in Australia are advised to pre-book and take the Ballarat Airport Shuttle directly to the Ballarat Railway Station. Camp Street is then only five minutes walk away just off Ballarat s main (Sturt) Street. If you are coming via central Melbourne, the trains run approximately hourly. The Federation University rooms you will stay in Ballarat are very comfortable and modern and have shared common areas. Most have private en suite bathrooms, but note there is no air conditioning. Ballarat, with 100,000 people is the largest inland city in Australia besides the national capital, Canberra. It is the site of a major gold rush from the 1850s and preserves much of the Victorian colonial era architecture in its central streetscape. Once you are rested, a bus will pick you up at 1.30pm and take you for an Aboriginal Welcome to Country and a sit down lunch of Australian bush produce from Saltbush Kitchen at MADE: the Museum of Australian Democracy, Eureka. Eureka Stockade where MADE is located was the site of a nationally significant miner s rebellion and brief, deadly battle between the gold miners and the British Colonial forces on 3 December While the miners lost the battle it led eventually to the development of Australian parliamentary democracy. Australia is not yet a republic, Indigenous Australians are missing from the national constitution, gay marriage is still being debated, and unlike in New Zealand there was no early Indigenous treaty. We still have a lot to learn, at least in Australia. We plan after Sunday lunch to take you by bus for a walk (or optional swim) at picturesque St Georges Lake, Creswick, a former mining reservoir, then drive across the volcanic plains through the forest to verdant Daylesford Botanical Gardens on nearby Wombat Hill and also to taste the waters at local Hepburn Springs Spa (modeled on the European invention). By now we are in Djadjawurrung country, one of over 300 distinct and different Indigenous Nations that comprised Australia at the time of mainly European discovery, invasion and colonization from the 17 th Century onwards. A 20 minute drive will take us for dinner from the wood fired oven at the rural Captains Creek organic 2

3 winery, before a 40 minute drive back (past my place in tiny rural Kingston) to Ballarat where most recently arrived Europeans will gladly try and sleep off the jet lag. Our first very full day on Monday is designed to immerse you in the diverse places and practices of Australian adult and community education, and in the process show you some very beautiful places on the breathtaking Great Ocean Road. A bus will leave from Camp St at 8am for breakfast with and informed by the shedders at the Buninyong Men s Shed. After breakfast we drive for an hour through a sparsely populated, very dry grassland, through a sea of wind turbines to rural Winchelsea, where the Winchelsea Community House and the wider local community will give us a morning cuppa (tea or coffee) and generously show us what they do best in the later learning space, very broadly defined. Another hour in the bus takes us south over the forested Otway Ranges to the lazy beach resort at Lorne and then further west, hugging the amazing coast for a welcome lunch at the Wye River General Store. Much of the tiny Wye River township (112 homes were destroyed, but no lives lost) was devastated a year and a half ago by the Christmas Day 2015 fires, but the Australian vegetation is custom designed to recover, and it is all slowly coming back. You will have the option of crossing the road to the beach for a quick walk or swim before we drive on along the magnificent coastal road, stopping briefly for the breathtaking view at Cape Patton, and on through Apollo Bay to Maits Rest. Here we take a truly beautiful walk through a cool, ancient rainforest of Mytle Beech (Lophozonia cunninghamii), tree ferns bordered by Mountain Ash (Eucalyptus regnans), the world s second tallest flowering tree. At 4pm we arrive back at the Apollo Bay Surf Club where the Marrar Woorn Neighborhood House has organized a comprehensive community immersion in learning in later life in a rural Australian coastal community. An opportunity for anther quick walk or swim at the nearby beach is possible before we drive back through the Otways and gathering sunset to Ballarat by 9pm. Tuesday is Conference Day 1 in central Ballarat with a chance for a sleep in and slow breakfast before assembling in the cosy Fed Uni Arts Academy theatre - only a minute from your accommodation, with an number of new day Conference participants. The theme today is Older Learning in Diverse Contexts, that will include, amongst many other themes, brief introductory keynotes by Alex Withnall from the UK, David Helmers - CEO of the Australian Men s Sheds Association, Professor Brian Findsen from New Zealand, and Eldership from an Aboriginal Perspective by Tony Dreise of the Guumilroi Aboriginal Nation - straddling the NSW-Queensland border. Our advance plans are for an evening Civic Reception hosted by the City of Ballarat, conditional on local Council elections in Nov 2016, and an early night. On Wednesday the focus (and we all) move on to Melbourne. Full Exchange participants will be on the 7.46am train from Ballarat to the large and world s most livable city of 4 million people, Melbourne, taking the last part by tram to the historic Royal Society of Victoria venue for Conference Day 2 by 9.30am. 3

4 Today the theme is Learning in Later Life and Social Inequalities joined by many new participants, another diverse and interesting program, and as with all three conferences, some papers presented in smaller breakout session. We need to finish up by 3pm to ensure those full Exchange participants catch their 6.20pm Wednesday flight out of Melbourne [this one you should book asap] into the evening sunset out over the Tasman Sea to Aotearoa (New Zealand) where an equally warm welcome awaits you in Wellington, the southernmost national capital in the world. Here you are half a day away and truly down under - from a Eurocentric perspective. The New Zealand part of the Exchange After a 3.5 hour flight (and a two hours New Zealand time difference) we arrive around midnight, being greeted by ACE Aotearoa and whisked into downtown Cuba Street to a welcome and very comfortable bed at the QC Hotel, your accommodation for the next three nights. The Thursday (Conference 3) theme in Wellington, again joined by many local registrants, is Learning, Empowerment and Identity in Later life. The venue is a local Maori (iwi owned and controlled) venue, Te Wharewaka o Poneke on the Wellington waterfront only 10 minutes walk from our hotel. ACE Aotearoa is an inspirational bicultural (Maori and Pakeha ( white non-maori ) organization also with Pasifika influences. You will see and experience the power and beauty of a Maori Powhiri (welcome) in language, and hear about how learning in later life manifests itself in New Zealand, including via keynote presentations from Pakeha and Maori presenters in the program. Brian Findsen has played an important part in shaping the Wellington program with the New Zealand committee. The modern day Indigenous Maori presence in New Zealand is qualitatively different and deeper to what you will have experienced in Ballarat and Melbourne in Australia, though there are places in central and northern Australia where this can be different. On Friday we again seek to immerse you in the diversity of New Zealand adult education - in practice and in place in the rural Wairarapa region north of Wellington. Here you will notice the country is greener and more fertile than in Australia. This time our field program has been generously shaped by Peter McNeur. We will travel from Wellington by country train through the Rimutaka Tunnel to the smallish city of Masterton (22,000 people) in the fertile and agriculturally productive rural Wairapapa region. On the final morning for those involved in the New Zealand Exchange there are plans to take you to the excellent, close by, Te Papa Museum on the picturesque Wellington waterfront, and also up the Wellington Botanical Gardens on the Cable Car for amazing views over the city. Those returning straight back to Australia (and some then on to Europe to connect to the long recommended evening flight back to Dubai and on to Europe) will fly back to Melbourne at 5pm on Saturday. Registration 4

5 If you plan to participate and are not already registered and booked flights, please do so as soon as possible as places and flights are limited. We strongly advise booking the recommended all connecting flights at the same time: details of these flights are available on the Conference registration page at Optional Pre-Conference Men s Shed Discovery Tour based out of Ballarat Anyone who has a particular professional, practical or research interest in Australian Men s Sheds (of which there are now around 1,000 right across Australia) is invited to join a pre-conference, three day Men s Shed Discovery tour organized by Barry Golding between Wed 8 Feb and Friday 10 Feb Barry is author of The Men s Shed Movement book in 2015, documenting the now international spread of the Movement and its associated success factors with mainly older men. The aim of the tour is to visit and explore a wide range of different Men s Sheds in very diverse contexts. We will hear from the shedders how and why they work for very diverse, mainly older men, families and communities. On Wednesday it will be rural Sheds in central Victoria. On Thursday it will be Melbourne Sheds. On Friday it will be Sheds in and around Ballarat. The expectation is for participants to share the cost of shared car transport. Apart from meals and coffees you pay for, there is no other cost and all you have to do is register for the days you wish to join it with Barry b.golding@federation.edu.au. It would be most convenient for intending participants to plan to stay overnight in Ballarat as this is where we will start and finish each day. 5

The Getting of Wisdom Learning In Later Life Exchange Full Exchange and Conference Programs 12 to18 February 2017

The Getting of Wisdom Learning In Later Life Exchange Full Exchange and Conference Programs 12 to18 February 2017 Accurate as of 16 January 2017, subject to change *** These flights should be booked ASAP. Friday 10 February and Saturday 11 February European delegates on recommended flights*** depart Europe Friday