2046 VISION OF THE FUTURE
Wurundjeri Country, Healesville, Victoria, Australia
BY YIN P
I’m an Wakaya man living on the intentional community of Anam Cara, on Wurundjeri Country, near Woo-rite (Healesville). I awake with the sunrise to the sound of birds chirping and arise to see the rolling hills extending into the distance from atop a high paddock. I say good morning to the cows as I pass them on my way to the community house, giving thanks for the milk they provide.
With gratitude to the spirit ancestors, I eat a breakfast of food grown in the community permaculture garden. The rapid reforestation, and broader recovery of the natural world, that occurred after the insanity of infinite growth was set aside has largely reversed global warming. Although, without the wonders of fire stick techniques, bushfires would still be a danger during summer.
I greet humans, trees, animals and Country on my way to some gardening world alongside about a dozen others who live on my community. After a shared lunch, I facilitate an Aboriginal knowledges study circle by the warmth of the fire inside the community house. Later today, I will ride my horse to visit a community gift-sharing gathering, and stay overnight with my adult children who live in a nearby community.
Of course, as you know, due to the global radical re-localisation movement we are all now so much closer to each other, more-than-human life and the land; living as we do in self-sufficient small-scale communities, nestled within wider landscapes that we carefully curate. Some have even started to adopt the more primal nomadic and sem-nomadic lifeways of our wise ancestors. We are re-vitalising traditional knowledges in everything from the arts to aquaculture, while eschewing the dangers that stem from industrial technology.
Thankfully, money, debt, private property and cities are things of the past, along with the institutions and nation-states that went with them. Politicians are long gone, as are the corrupt colonial governments they were part of. It is truly a wonder to live on a planet now brimming with the profound gift-giving, cooperation, communalism, egalitarianism and embodied kinship with all life, that has emerged in their wake.
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Image generated with Leonardo AI, 2026
PROMPT: Dawn breaks on Wurundjeri Country, near Anam Cara Homestead and Woo-rite, with a breathtaking view from a high paddock, overlooking rolling hills of regenerated mountain ash, manna gum, and silver wattle that stretch to the misty Yarra Ranges horizon. A cow in the morning dew grazes peacefully, their warm breath visible in gentle plumes of golden steam. Low timber buildings of an intentional community nestled into the hillside below, smoke drifting lazily from a chimney. A distant fire stick burn leaves a thin haze on a ridge, set against a deep pre-dawn blue sky that gradates from golden hues at the horizon to deep indigo above, with a few morning stars still twinkling. The scene is bathed in warm, cinematic sunlight, with hazy dappled bokeh and ultra-realistic detail.