ABSTRACT
In 1979 the author stopped teaching, and became a worker in a feminist women's shelter. He was having friendships with lesbian women, and in his feminist life mixing with women-only circles. The refuge had decided that they were losing touch with their feminist politics and they were looking for someone with a strong feminist commitment. Without ever making a conscious decision to be a separatist, the author moved into a way of being that looked separatist to everyone else. At the end of 1982, he moved to Alice Springs, in the middle of Australia, a very long way from any large feminist centre, inside a whole world of Aboriginal concerns and desert. He was centrally involved in organizing the big women's peace camp at Pine Gap in November 1983, all his first year in Alice Springs was obsessed with this project. It was a very hard to be a feminist or a lesbian or both in Alice Springs.
