Interview with Julia Bell

63 Patsy Hallen interviewing Julia Bell Patsy Hallen: You have quite an extraordinary life because you live in the company of animals and I would just like you to describe where you live and who you live with. Julia Bell: Thanks Patsy. I live in a little place called Ravensthorpe which is about two hours drive from Esperence and three hours from Albany in Western Australia. It is very, very dry and it is an old farming and mining community. There are about two hundred people in the town. It's very parochial, very sexist, very racist and very speciesist. I have lived there for three years with many companions: seven camels, five dogs, numerous joeys who unfortunately have died in various accidents, and a very spectacular carpet snake who lives in my bedroom with me. I have two old galahs who I rehabilitated many years ago. They have been with me for about fifteen years and I have numerous chickens, geese, turkeys, three very sweet pet pigs, a goat called Cindy who I milk and a ram called Minstrel because he is black and white and he still has his tail. My son, Byron who is 23 now, comes and goes. Patsy Hallen: It would be interesting for readers to hear why you choose this companionship and what you learn from these animal people with whom you live? Julia Bell: To answer that I will have to give some background of my life and how I have come to be in Ravensthorpe. I studied philosophy for many years completing an honours degree in moral philosophy with Freya Mathews at Murdoch University in Western Australia. Then I took off up to the Pilbura and spent some time with the Anunga Marda people in the Great Sandy Desert. I still had a hankering to get back to philosophy. I joined the bioethics program at Monash University working with Peter Singer and Justin Oakley. This greatly inspired me as I had read about Peter Singer for years and wanted to meet him and to spend time working with him. I completed my course work and came to Perth to complete my thesis as an external student. I returned to Perth and worked with my camels while continuing with my thesis. It was on vulnerability and what it means to be human. It concerned psychological 64 vulnerability as well as physical vulnerability. I was fortunate to have Justin Oakley as my supervisor who encouraged me in this area. When I came back I realized I couldn't really contemplate the vastness of what the thesis meant without putting myself in a physical position of doing it. So I thought that I would start a camel trek. I started walking from Spencer's Brook and ended up out on the Nullarbor Plain about five months later. I was walking through very cold weather to start with and rain and hail and then as the months wore on, I ended up in a very warm climate, too warm in fact, and I had to come back. I came back to Perth and felt claustrophobic and I related to a comment on the radio 'I'm laying on my bed about to turn 40 and I'm going mad'. I was about a week off turning 40. I suddenly realized what this meant, jumped up, found the house for sale in Ravensthorpe and approached my neighbour to buy my property. It literally happened overnight. He bought my property and I headed off to Ravensthorpe and got my camels back. My main reason was that I had to get back to space. I had to get back with my camels after spending five months with them. I guess it did change my life in very profound ways which I cannot even express at this stage. I bought an old property in Ravensthorpe which was very dilapidated. In fact it was a rubbish tip. The thing that inspired me was that there was a small part of the property which was the only piece of land in Ravensthorpe that aboriginals had lived on for many years. They had left fifteen years ago. That is where I built my camel yards, in that very spot. The property is sixty three acres and for last three years I have tried to rebuild it making fences, planting trees and making the house decent. As you can imagine the rainfall here is very low, so to keep things is alive is difficult. I live there with my companions in a very small house. I have encouraged the local frog population by creating two ponds. I have a whole variety of different frogs there now. I have also encouraged the reptile population which includes tiger snakes. I am trying to work out a way for us to live comfortably together without having to kill every second tiger snake I see which has been very difficult. That was the reason I had to get back to that gold fields country. But when I arrived there I realized it was probably a foolish thing as there was no university and I had separated myself from my close circle of 65 female friends who I lived with very closely in Perth. To get to university was a six hour drive. I felt very isolated. I felt very much a minority. I felt I was fighting for my self preservation and identity because of battles with shire officials, e.g. to get camel signs on my road, to stop them using herbicides around my property. It was incredibly tough but I managed to do it. From there I started thinking how could I constructively create a philosophical life using my background and living with animals as I had chosen to live and working with the earth. I created a very viable vegetable garden which I basically live out of. I have tried killing my chickens for meat with no success. I really found it difficult wringing the chickens necks or chopping their heads off, so I stopped that. What I am trying to do now is to set up some ecological niche whereby I can live with the introduced animals which I have for educational purposes. I have children coming out from the schools and families bring their children. What I am trying to do in a very basic way is talk to the children, read them a narrative such as 'Charlotte's Web' and express to them very simply the ideas of intrinsic and instrumental value. I use that philosophical narrative in a simple way hopefully to show the children that there are other ways of looking at sheep and pigs than purely as a resource for either meat or whatever. That seems to have been quite successful. The other thing which I am aiming at is to get a sanctuary going for the wildlife endemic to the area. I have had no success with all the avenues I've tapped into: conservation-wise, government departments and departments which are meant to be helping women in rural communities. I've just come up against a brick wall and the story that I've been told runs: you can set it all up, but there is no funding. So to keep the place sustained I've had to go back nursing part-time. The other thing I thought of doing is running philosophy groups for children, which I have done elsewhere. I have approached the local schools but the principals are not familiar with philosophy and they tell me that there is no funding even though I've offered my services on a voluntary basis. I hope this answers why I am here. 66 Patsy Hallen: So Julia, it was really camels that galvanized you back (...truncated)