The Human Spirit News

On May 2nd 2019, Forever Wild came together with Mareeba Community Housing Company and Mulungu Aboriginal Health Corporation to create an incredible day for the women of the community living around the Tropical Wetlands Shared Earth Reserve. Our goal is to enable diverse emotional connections with our Shared Earth Reserves, and this day created some wonderful memories for us all. To watch a short video please click here.

Please join us for a free concert at the Tropical Wetlands Shared Earth Reserve. Featuring ‘The Southside Project’ and renowned musician and didgeridoo player Warren Clements, this concert supports local artists and the local community. Blending the arts with the natural world, this annual event is on the banks of Clancy’s lagoon on the Tropical Wetlands reserve, Mareeba. Gates open at 3.30pm. Music starts around 5pm. No booking required, limited seating available but lots of space to relax inside and out. Alcohol free event. Food available but feel free to bring a picnic. This event is fully funded by Forever Wild for the benefit of the community. Donations at the door are welcome.

Despite the fact we have not yet formalized our engagement committee in the communities around the Tropical Wetlands Reserve, the community is showing incredible support for the Forever Wild Tropical Wetlands reserve. Forever Wild programs empower social investment in wilderness by society at all levels, and in turn that society drives a lot of how that looks. In this case, at the local level the theatre Group in the small town of Mareeba, one of the communities close to the reserve, ran their opening night as a fundraiser for the reserve. They raised $2200, an astounding amount for a small amateur acting group in remote Australia. This is outstanding example of how […]

As part of Forever Wild’s ongoing push to connect the Earth’s natural landscapes and our societies, we worked with local partners to host an event against domestic violence on Tuesday 20th of November 2018. With Mareeba Community Housing Company and Mulungu Aboriginal Corporation Health Center the day brought together over 30 men from the community around the Tropical Wetlands, with the purpose of directly talking about the need to protect the women in our lives from violence – be they wives, sisters, mothers, aunts or simply friends. The day was geared towards direct talk as well as healing, connecting with oneself, others and the land. Sitting under the trees talking about our […]

We’ll bring you updates as we work to map the ancient and contemporary history of the Tropical Wetlands reserve. Fortunately, since the inception of the reserve under the Mareeba Wetlands Foundation a good deal of historical documents were compiled, particularly around early settler history but also early agricultural surveys. Now we are mapping those documents against physical locations on the reserve to ensure we make it as tangible as possible. Alongside the early European settler and more recent history, we are talking to the local Muluridji people to develop a program for them to search for sites of cultural significance. Some of the work and locations are sensitive so care is being […]

Photographer Tobias Baumgaertner has been capturing some remarkable images on our Tropical Wetlands reserve. This one of the Milky Way over Clancy’s lagoon is definitely one to stir the imagination. We have nights like this regularly on the reserve and it is a powerful draw for people wanting to experience the majesty of an unpolluted night sky, just as humans walked under for more than a million years.

There are many ways for a natural landscape to touch people’s emotions, many ways these wild places are bound to our society. Our Human Spirit program is absolutely unique to any conservation organisation, and specifically aims to capture all those values. In June 2018 we held our first ever community concert, a magnificent blend of spectacular natural beauty, bird life and human creatively. On the banks of Clancy’s lagoon where emus forage and freshwater crocodiles bask, Woyaya, a cappella choir, were the perfect accompaniment to the Tropical Wetlands reserve at sunset. They were preceded by a local band of high-school children playing classical music. We had over 300 people attend the concert […]