A Japanese Experience of Australian NV Training We went to Australia on August 21, 1991 for ten days to attend a Melbourne nonviolence workshop. We met two people from the group in our city, Kanazawa, last year, but otherwise had little previous knowledge of Australia. How do we Japanese imagine Australia? We imagine a vast land with herds of sheep and cattle, with kangaroos and koalas. We think of a nation of immigrants from many countries living in small cities over a huge continent. With such images in mind, it's difficult to imagine that Australia would have environmental problems. What struck me most during the trip were people's attitudes towards environmental problems, especially their understanding of the need to change our lifestyles. While my friend Brendan Condon was in Japan, he asked why all the cars there looked so new. When I saw how much longer people keep their cars in Melbourne, I finally understood why he was so surprised. Not only cars, but buildings and streets seem to have longer lifetimes in Melbourne and the activists we met all wore 'old' clothes and had 'old' things. In Japan, we have come to love newness, people want each season's new fashion. They want a new house in a new neighbourhood with a new traffic network. It makes me wonder when and how we got this way. This new Japanese affluence comes at the expense of the earth's resources and environment. Our tendency to pounce on anything new before recycling or reusing what we have makes me think that we have a real problem in our hearts. Vegetarianism was also a new experience for us. We didn't eat any meat or fish during our stay, but with the wealth of delicious fruit and vegetables, we didn't miss it at all. What the vegetarians we met had in common was their refusal to support the clearing of forest for pasture, and a desire to create a lifestyle which doesn't destroy nature. In Melbourne's Art Museum we saw old landscape paintings depicting a vast Australian forest. But now most has been destroyed, and erosion, desertification, and salination are spreading. Even more shocking were the stories we heard when we visited an Aboriginal community. In 200 years since the Europeans arrived, 2-3 million Aboriginal people have been killed, their lands seized and their cultures destroyed. However, we also heard that some environmental groups are beginning to 'pay rent' to the Aboriginal people for their use of lands. We spent our four days of nonviolence training at Commonground, a community of seven adults and four children on a large plot of land 100 kilometres north of Melbourne. They had saved their money together for many years to buy the land, then built a seminar house, several cottages and their own house. This has taken a long time and they are still building today. Their long-term goal is to return the area to its original state. This project is funded in part by trust movements and by renting the space out for workshops and seminars like the nonviolence workshop we took part in. In the evening the residents serve the guests a delicious vegetarian dinner. The facilities run on solar power (falling back on a propane generator when necessary) and use rain water. The toilet uses a bucket which is changed occasionally and deodorised with eucalyptus oil. The heater and water heater for showers burn wood. We were impressed by their energy use, but were most surprised by the fact that everything was made from materials collected from garbage. Their lifestyle seemed nearly self-sufficient. Every morning and evening, kangaroos and wallabies came close to the site! Though I won't go into every detail of the training, what left the deepest impression on me was the idea that to save the environment, we cannot let ourselves be apathetic or irresponsible. We must all empower ourselves with feelings and thoughts, and in the same way share the power of trust with each other so we can work together to achieve our goals. Finally, the word 'community' which we heard so often during our stay is the best word to describe what 'commonground' and its people meant to us. Chiaki Mikuni