Eric Maddern was born in 1950 in Whyalla, South Australia, where his father was working in the iron mines. The family came to Britain, where his mother died from polio when he was 6. After graduating in social psychology he made a 10-year journey around the world culminating in community arts work with the Aborigines in Central Australia. Since 1986 he has lived on a 5-acre site in Snowdonia on which he has built a Celtic roundhouse and has pioneered storytelling at historic sites, men's rites of passage and telling the Universe Story.
"The elders told us their concern that their young men didn't want to go through the initiations into the Dreaming any more. They were more interested in town and cars and alcohol. This meant that the whole of their 40,000 year old culture was threatened with annihilation within a generation. It was as if they were standing on the edge of an abyss."
"Soulfulness is to do with small experiences in the day. It's to do with the relationship with the heron, with that tree, between you and me. It's to do with the song I'm learning, with what happens when I go into the Round-house, stir the fire, sit back, take a deep breath and begin to speak, not quite knowing what I'm going to say...."