What happened to the Great Outdoors?
Contrary to modern belief systems, dancing and playing outdoors is not the act of a completely insane, possibly substance affected, person. It has been practiced in all cultures for as long as humans have ever existed. Many health experts report that exercise, camping and time spent with nature increases longevity. Many more health and youth experts report that Australian youth don't get outdoors often enough.
Likewise listening to music, in all its wonderful colours and magical incantations, also has the potential to increase longevity, not to mention its numerous mental health benefits. Yet, knowing all the benefits of music and recreation as well as we do, healthy activities such as camping, climbing, hiking, swimming and dancing are still being severely restricted in the social landscape that we call Australia.
What some see as the perfect opportunity to engage young people in outdoor social settings, gently luring them away from electronic devices using their own interests (such as music and dancing), is seen by most others as potentially dangerous. However, outdoor activities are no more hazardous or dangerous today than they were in the 80s when Paul Hogan coined the term "The Great Outdoors" as an expression which described the essence of Australian culture to international tourists.
Australian adults all grew up getting together on the weekends, making cubby-houses from the bush to play in and later, as teens, swimming in dams and creeks and camping out. It was once the Australian way.
Today, the same adults impose expensive development applications for the erection of demount-able shades and use the environment courts to prevent forests, swimming holes and dams from being enjoyed, thus robbing young people of the Australian experience. So perfected is the practice we now have young people arriving in the Australian wilderness asking where the toilets and rubbish bins are installed.
Wrapping them in cotton wool and restricting them to commercial indoor activities only has created a generation of youth who are deprived of national identity, causing them to become disconnected from the Australian way of life.
Councils are beginning to realise, youth will colonise anyway - not because they're evil or selfish - but because that is what humans do. They colonise. Australia is the result of colonisation. And, while the general preference seems to be against them colonising 'secretly', the actions being implemented, as discussed in this paper, are counter-productive to that end.
Also note, the spaces referred to are not central city park-lands or even suburbia. They're thousands of acres on private properties way out in the bush and well out of earshot of any suburban communities. The intention is not secrecy, but common sense since the activities undertaken are camping and dancing.
Logic suggests giving young people somewhere safe to go would instantly resolve both the 'secrecy' and 'safety' issues raised by councils and police. Rodeo grounds, four wheel drive parks, market grounds, cattle stations and camping grounds are also fit for purpose solutions, but out of bounds to youth.
When safety, land and environment concerns don't create the desired level of moral panic within the community, the drug card is played next. Everything from a backyard BBQ to a private gathering is being labeled a "drug-rave party", being the most effective tool in the entire arsenal to remove the voices of young people and anyone who represents them.
Councils and police launch frequent media campaigns because they are seeking more power to shut young people out. The public rhetoric is designed to ensure nobody likes youth or their music and nobody wants either in their communities.
Thus is the potentially harmful and perpetually problematic nature of relations between establishment and young people within the ever-evolving competition for community spaces.
