Kath Walker in China: Interfacing Nature and the Nature-Lover

Oodgeroo went to China on 12 September 1984 as a part of a delegation organized by Australia-China
Council (ACC) in response to the invitation from the Sanghai People’s Association for Friendship with
Foreign Countries. During this tour, Oodgeroo was relating her own ancient culture with the Chinese one
and at the same time discovering the difference between the two in respect of achievement. This trip to
China in September and October, 1984 had a great influence on Oodgeroo. Within forty-eight hours of her
arrival in Sanghai, she began to feel the spark. The trip inspired her to write poetry again after a gap of six
years. And the fruit of this tour was Kath Walker in China. The poems included within this collection reveal
Oodgeroo’s love for the natural world, her anxiety about the rapid loss of biodiversity, concern for the
increasing pollution of different kinds accelerating the degradation of environmental health etc. this paper
is only an attempt to find out these aspects hidden within the poems of this collection.