Local Otherness: Rendering at the borders of Australia's agri/urban creep

One consideration of Australia's historic agri/urban boundaries is the proximity they had to the otherness of 'the bush' and the subsequent influence bushland otherness had on the national psyche. The ongoing creep of agri/urban imperatives is causing a decline of bushland, hence affecting the opportunities to be informed (creatively and philosophically) by such more-than-human places.This paper considers the challenges to such socio-ecological insights now that access to bushland otherness is less ready-to-hand. In arguing that the bush is a creative gateway of national and Global significance, the paper acknowledges that such otherness informed the continent's original inhabitants. The paper makes no claim to traditional knowing. Rather, the standpoint of the paper results from twenty years of calling a hut in a bush hamlet, home. There, the sights, sounds and textures of the encroaching, the remnant and the endangered continue to influence my storytelling.In telling this story, I draw on my regular trips to two rural cities (Albury and Wagga Wagga) and compare the current more-than-human influences available in those cities with those surrounding my bushland hamlet.