People
|
Raymond Hawkins Director
|
Raymond owns and operates Into the Blue Creative Walks to which he brings a range of creative and organizational skills from his past life in the entertainment & theatre industry. Life on the road with some of Australia's top rock and roll bands and later stints with Opera Australia and the Sydney Theatre Company was a strange and challenging preparation to lead writers, artists and meditators into wilderness. But it has also helped forge an entirely new concept in walking programs. His personal adventures include a solo walk from Melbourne to Sydney along the Great Dividing Range, which was the subject of an ABC Radio National documentary. Raymond has great legs even if he does say so himself. |
|
Jelena Popovic Deputy Chief Magistrate of Victoria
|
Deputy Chief Magistrate Jelena Popovic has been a Victorian Magistrate for 20 years. She is one of the pioneers of Therapeutic Jurisprudence and Problem-Solving Courts examining processes in which appropriate court intervention can reduce recidivism. Jelena has been involved in the setting up of court based programs to address the multiple issues with which court users present in our increasingly complex society: issues such as homelessness, drug and alcohol dependency and mental impairment. She is the Co-ordinator of the Koori Courts in Victoria, a position she has held since 2006, has been a member of the Adult Parole Board since 1997 and maintains an active role in Judicial Professional Development |
|
Carol Ruff Profesional Artist
|
Carol Ruff is an established artist who has returned to the Alice Springs region annually for over twenty years to paint en plein air. Trained in Fine Art Painting at the South Australian School of Art, she is currently represented by Australian Galleries in Sydney, where she exhibited her recent paintings about the central desert in Desert Air in 2007, and Love Creek Bitter Springs in 2009. A previous exhibition Site Seeing, focused on the sacred and significant Arrernte sites in the town of Alice Springs. Her work is represented in a number of public collections. She is a prolific mural artist, with two collaborations with Indigenous Arrernte artists. Carol's film 50 Years of Silence won eight awards including a Logie. To find out more go to www.carolruff.com |
|
Greg Weight Professional Photographer
|
Your facilitator Greg Weight is an award winning photographer and is represented in major public and private collections throughout Australia. Greg won the inaugural Australian Photographic Portrait Prize at the AGNSW in 2003 and Head On Alternative Photographic Portrait Prize in 2006. His book Australian Artists, Portraits by Greg Weight was published in 2004. Greg has had extensive experience working with indigenous communities, producing the photography for the The Hermannsburg Potters by Jennifer Isaac in 1999 and The Life and Art of Wenten Rubuntja by Jenny Green and Tim Rowse in 2002. In 2008 Greg completed more than sixty portraits of western desert artists for future publication. His central desert landscape photographs were shown in the 2007 exhibition Desert Air and the 2009 exhibition Love Creek Bitter Springs at Australian Galleries in Sydney. For more about Greg go to www.gregweightphoto.com.au |
|
Paul Wilson Meditation Teacher/author
|
Paul Wilson is known throughout the world as “the guru of calm”. His simple approach to meditation and finding inner peace – skills that he developed as a child in the Outback – has encouraged Buddhists, Christian, Hindus, atheists, and all kinds of spiritual and secular groups to embrace his methods and, frequently, to employ him as a teacher. One enterprising journalist estimated that he has taught over 1 million people to meditate. “His mixture of traditional meditation, alternative therapy, positive thinking and commonsense has persuaded millions to buy into his philosophy." The Times |
|
Professor Peter Terry Performance Psychologist
|
Peter Terry is Professor of Psychology at the University of Southern Queensland and was formerly Psychology Coordinator at the Queensland Academy of Sport. Peter is one of the most experienced performance psychologists in the world. Over the past 25 years he has provided support to a host of international and professional performers, including Olympic medallists in nine sports. Peter has been team psychologist at eight Olympic Games and more than 50 other major international events. Author of over 150 publications, he is a Fellow of the British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences and past-President of the Australian Psychological Society’s College of SportPsychologists. |
|
Jan Cornall Writing & Meditation teacher
|
Jan facilitated the DESERT WRITERS program in 06 with brilliant success. Jan is a highly regarded writer, performer and facilitator who runs popular writing workshops and retreats in Australia and the Asia Pacific. Combining practical, theoretical and experiential knowledge gained in over 25 years in the Australian theatre and film industry, and 20 year’s experience in meditation, Jan has developed a technique called Meditative Writing. Visit www.jancornall.com for more information. |
|
Tony Backhouse Legendary Choirmaster
|
Singer, composer, vocal arranger, musical director, workshop leader and author Tony Backhouse, is one of the leaders in the Sydney a cappella movement. He currently directs the Café of the Gate of Salvation gospel choir and male trio the Heavenly Lights. His CV is far too long to mention here. So to find out more about the man who shall be leading our DESERT CHOIR IN 2008 after the outrageously wonderful SINGING UP THE OUTBACK go to www.tonybackhouse.com.au.
|
|
David Hall Feldenkrais/Alexander
|
David Hall has been a practitioner of the Alexander Technique and Feldenkrais Method for over twenty years. He originally trained as an actor and voice teacher and has been working with a variety of somatic practices over the past 30 years. He is the author of ‘The Heavenly Gait & other Earthly Pleasures’, an 8CD set of Feldenkrais Awareness Through movement lessons, and ‘The Directions’, an audio on the Alexander Technique. For more visit www.bodylogic.net.au
|
|
Professor Liz Ashburn O.A. Artist & Teacher
|
Liz Ashburn is a highly regarded teacher and artist who has forty years experience teaching workshops to artists in the areas of drawing, sculpture, painting and photography. Her workshops combine traditional teaching techniques with alternative and stimulating approaches to art practice. These offer unique ways to experience vision, extend memory and develop each persons creative capacity. Her teaching at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales was recognised by an award for teaching excellence and innovation and in 2007 she received the Order of Australia Medal for her service to the visual arts, contemporary Australian art, education and the community. She is an Emeritus Professor at the University of New South Wales and a Conjoint Professor at the University of Newcastle. Her work is exhibited in important regional and university galleries and has been collected by prestigious museums. |
|
Larry Gray Explorer, film maker, kayaker extrordinairre
|
He’s rubbed noses with Inuit, danced barefoot through fire in Papua New Guinea and paddled a kayak 4,500 kilometres up the Australian coast on a whim. Just don’t call kayaker and filmmaker Larry Gray the new Crocodile Dundee. Larry is an acclaimed documentary-maker (he has an Emmy Award to his credit) whose most singular quality is his almost naïve reverence for the natural world. In his films, he paddles through remote wilderness areas like an excited kid in an adventure playground, befriending Inuit and Aborigines as if they were next-door neighbours. |
