We share a story about a katitjin bidi, a learning journey in a bioregion with a multimillennial Aboriginal history. As part of this katitjin bidi, three environmental educators implemented a place-based pedagogy called ‘becoming family with place’, while a fourth participated in the preplanning and final reflective stages. Our story includes cycles of ways of knowing, resulting in an enriched practice of being-with our place. Our story is underpinned by Aboriginal epistemologies to reimagine regenerative futures linked with those of ‘the long now’ — the past, present and future here now. Ours is a particular story that lives in a particular southwest place. There are layers of meanings that live right across the landscapes in the southwest of Australia — and many of them are hiding in full view. You might like to try this pedagogy in school learning, teacher education, and community education contexts.

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This paper reports the outcomes of the second action cycle of an ongoing project at Edith Cowan University (ECU) called Transition to Sustainability: ECU South West which is located in a small, single faculty regional university campus. The overall project has comprised three action research cycles, the first of which was the planning cycle which established the importance of building a community of practice with a learning stance for sustainability transition. It also highlighted the issue of a common definition of the term sustainability; of including cross-disciplinary perspectives; and of working with the local community. The second action cycle which was the first implementation phase, is the subject of this report.In this phase, we found that by not foreclosing on the meaning of sustainability, important aspects of sustainability were included. Although research participants initially expressed some concern about using an open understanding of sustainability, the problem of the meaning functioned to foster involvement in dialogue. In fact, these ongoing discussions around sustainability and the notion of a sustainable future formed the heart of this action cycle. However there were constraints associated with the subject of dialogue. These included problems of site communication, the maintenance of effective networks and issues around power and authorisation. We observed that each of these elements could work together in ways that enrich and/or obstruct a transition to sustainability. Finally, we found that lack of time hinders participation in sustainability transition projects because of its effect on authentic dialogue, thereby impacting upon the development of collaborative ways of working within the university.Our project is distinctively Australian in that it reflects an emerging movement in Australia to create social frameworks for embedding sustainability education activities. In our project, the transition process by which learning and change has been facilitated comprises the action research itself.

Contributors to this special edition have agreed that we want a future of ecojustice and ecological sustainability. Our paper unpacks experiences of oppression within the context of middle class academic privilege, undertaking resistances and working, in relationship, learning to live more sustainably in the Year of Living Sustainably. In this writing we argue the case for activism in the academy and collaboratively build resilience towards more sustainable ways of being. By co-writing and analysing fictionalised stories we demonstrate how contemporary universities contribute to the unsustainability of social and ecological systems. This paper presents a love story grounded in poststructural ecofeminist epistemology using collaborative autoethnography. Rather than representing a heroic masculinist narrative of transcendence and success, we describe how our loving relationships support our activism.

The objective of this study was to compare differences in reasons for encounters, diagnosis and treatment between men and women patients presenting with psychosocial problems as recognised by their general practitioners. The research design was a survey based on structured questionnaires completed by the general practitioners on patients consulting with mental health problems in Bunbury in the rural South West region of Western Australia. The data collection took place for a period of 5 weeks. Twenty two general practitioners, from 5 surgeries, collected information on 428 patients, pertaining to socio‐demographic characteristics, reasons for encounter, diagnoses, social problems, chronicity, counselling, medication and use of referral services. The gender differences in the illness profile was quite pronounced. Men patients were older, were more likely to be diagnosed with psychosis or character disorders, to have employment or unknown problems. On the other hand, female patients were younger and more likely not to be given a definite diagnosis, to report more social isolation, dependent/difficult relatives and problems resulting from assault. Men were more likely to be on medication and to be referred to psychiatrists, while women received more counselling from their GPs or were referred to counselling services. On the basis of the findings, it is pointed out that men and women differ in terms of the recognition that they are suffering from a problem, that outside help is needed and making the decision to consult. They also differ in terms of the social factors influencing gender differences in recognition of the illness by the GP and the decision to treat and/or refer.