A winning weekend in Lombok

Newsflash: just back from lovely Lombok, Indonesia (so much less touristy than Bali), where the Australian Society of Travel Writers held its annual AGM and awards night, the latter a black-tie beach party on the sand and under the stars last Saturday night at the beautiful Novotel Lombok.

Tropical Lombok

I’m happy and honoured to announce that I picked up three awards, including the prestigious 2012 Travel Writer of the Year award, for a portfolio of three stories – about Madagascar (click to read), Mustang and Antarctica. 

It's the third time I've won the ASTW's top award, and I feel humbled to be respected by my peers and colleagues, for something I so love to do.

Baobab Alley, Madagascar

My other awards were Best Journey or Adventure, also for the Madagascar story, and the Jack Butters Memorial Award for Most Outstanding Contribution to the ASTW, for a year's worth of volunteer work on the new ASTW website. 

No Impact Girl even got a mention - my Christmas (Island) in April post was a finalist in the Best Online Innovation category. And a few of my pics (including the Madagascar one above) made me a finalist in the Travel Photographer of the Year award.

Self-portrait with Lynne Ireland (left),
PR for Virgin Limited Edition

Big congrats to Luke Wright of Good Globe Media, who took out the Best Responsible Tourism Story award for his story on the Solomon Islands. And to all the other winners, who are listed here, on the ASTW website.

And big thanks to all the award and event sponsors and organisers, particularly Virgin Limited Edition and South Africa Tourism for the big prize, and Accor Hotels and Novotel Lombok for such a beautiful place to stay and to celebrate. I can't wait to return...

A simple life

No travel for me lately, and that’s been just fine. Instead I’ve been embracing ordinariness. You know, hanging up the washing, doing the dishes, having lunch in the backyard with my feet on the grass and the neighbour’s cat by my side.

Flowers in the kitchen

All in the name of finding more writing time (tick) but I’m finding the simplicity quietly nourishing. Besides, there's plenty to explore, plenty of internal and vicarious travelling to do right here. 

Lately I've been riding the coat-tails of MarthaGellhorn (reading her clear and true war stories) and 52 Suburbs Around the World photographer Louise Hawson (she’s in New York now).

A window I know well

The other night I watched the first episode of a documentary about the Amish. Though they have some odd rules (buttons are forbidden but they can use a generator to power their primitive washing machine?), I admire their sincerity, simplicity and uncluttered lives. (To be honest I would have liked less on the British teenagers forced to spend a week without their various devices, and more about the Amish couple they were staying with; still, the clash of cultures was fascinating.) 

It’s television like this that makes us think outside our own lives and, at the same time, rethink our lives. What is enough? What is really essential for a rich life? (For me: the sea, contact with animals, including a few like-minded humans, nature, writing, play, freedom, learning, purpose...) I felt a kind of relief watching the Amish – they seemed utterly peaceful and happy, seeking happiness not through pleasure but hard work, community and faith.

Coming to a horizon near you

So I’ve been walking to the nearest little harbour beach for morning swims, sitting on the sand just looking at the sea, hanging out with kookaburras. Surfing with friends I haven’t arranged to meet (I love those spontaneous encounters that happen when everyone with the same idea has decided to get up early and paddle out at the same spot). Visiting friends for cups of tea. Watching the sun set. 

Nothing special. Like the title of a Buddhist book I once read by Ayya Khema: “Being nobody, Going nowhere.” That’s something to un-aspire to. Here's another thought: some people say you have to go out and get what you want to be happy. I think happiness is within our grasp all the time, if we stop hustling and let it come. Listen, pay attention, give thanks. Maybe I'm becoming a little bit Amish (some of my friends probably think that happened long ago).

What do you (really) need for a happy life?

The Kimberley coast, part 2 - the James Price Point story

When I was in the Kimberley recently, I finished reading Listening to country by Ros Moriarty, a beautifully honest book about her experiences in the culture of her husband John, a Yanyuwa man from Central Australia. Every chapter starts with a Yanyuwa quote, and I particularly like this one:

Kimberley sunset, Broome

"Purpose - listening to country, seeing how things are when the mind is freed up. When the stillness washes over my spirit, then I can see where to go."

Isn't that the best way to travel? To try to see things as they are and find inspiration in terms of how to live, be useful, and respect the land, the sea, all beings, each other. 

In the interests of being useful, and truth-seeking, this post is dedicated to the pristine Kimberley coast, in all its glory and vulnerability - because it's increasingly being threatened by mining interests, particularly the proposed $40 billion gas hub at James Price Point, 40km north of Broome. 

James Price Point, pic by
Jenita Enevoldsen

We saw the site on the first day of our Kimberley cruise (see my previous post); between our boat and the coastal cliffs, dozens of humpback whales and their calves breached, tail-slapped and generally frolicked. This area has the world's largest population of humpbacks, in fact. For now, at least.

What's being proposed?

The "gas hub", aka Woodside's Browse LNG Development, is a 30-square-kilometre refinery that will be the largest LNG (liquefied natural gas) precinct in Australia, the second largest in the world. It will process up to 50 million tonnes of LNG a year, extracted offshore at the Browse gas fields. Between 1500 and 6000 supertankers and refinery service vessels will ply the waters around the point every year. Up to 8000 workers will live in the area. 

Protestors atop drill rigs, Wilderness
Society pic by Damian Kelly

What’s the problem?

It's more than just the construction of a massive port and industrial site and seabed dredging in the middle of this humpback highway. And it's not because "all mining is bad" (we surely need some). 

Here are 10 reasons the JPP gas project mustn't go ahead, based on an 8000-page environmental impact assessment by the WA government and summarised by The Wilderness Society:

Land

1. More than 3000 hectares of land will be cleared - including 132 hectares of rare Monsoon vine thicket with a further 440 hectares at risk due to draw-down of groundwater aquifers by the project
2. “Permanent removal” of 1.5 kilometres of coastline at James Price Point, with a further one kilometre “disturbed” for pipeline corridors
3. Significant Goolarabooloo cultural sites within the construction zone

Sea

4. Up to 30 billion litres a year of industrial waste water and brine dumped into the ocean off James Price Point
5. A concrete and rock breakwater extending up to 7 kilometres out to sea and cutting across the ‘Kimberley humpback whale highway’
6. Creation of a 52 square kilometre ‘dead zone’(in a pristine marine environment) - from dredging, dredge ‘spoil’ dumps and other port works
7. Up to 14 pipelines (from gas field to gas hub and from hub to marine environment) which, along with other port infrastructure, will directly affect the newly heritage-listed dinosaur trackways
8. Up to 2,700 shipping movements per year – in an area of ‘critical habitat’ for calving humpback whales, four species of dolphins, turtles and dugong

Air

9. Up to 39 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions a year, five per cent of Australia's total emissions and a 50 per cent increase on WA’s current annual emissions

10. Up to 66,000 tonnes per annum of other noxious and carcinogenic gas emissions, e.g. volatile organic compounds and B-Tex (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes). 

The solution

Enjoying the glory

But the main reason environmentalists and locals are against the JPP gas hub is that there is an alternative. Rather than building a new industrial port and gas refinery on this precious site, gas sourced offshore can be piped to existing facilities in the Pilbara for processing. 

Federal Environment minister Tony Burke will have the final say, sometime in 2013. Until then, follow the campaign at Environs Kimberley, tweet it, facebook it, donate to it, talk about it. The Kimberley needs us.

Why you should go to the Kimberley

"Back to nothingness, like a week in the desert…" Crowded House’s lyrics always come to mind when I head west of the Great Dividing Range to that "other" Australia. Though more of Australia is like this than the lush coastal fringe most of us inhabit, it always takes a trip to the outback to remind me.

A couple of weeks ago, I went further than I’ve ever been, and about as far away from wintry Sydney as I could get without needing my passport: to north-west Western Australia, the Kimberley.

The sublime Raft Point

It was my first time up there, but I’ve always wanted to go to the Kimberley, to see its big landscapes and all that untamed coastline stretching north of Broome. Now I'm convinced every Australian should go, at least once. Why?

Let me explain by describing my 9-day World Expeditions trip aboard a 24-metre catamaran called Odyssey, which was home-away-from-home for 16 of us for a week and a bit.

Croc-free Croc Creek

Was it really just a week (and a bit)? It felt like a month, in a good way, the days languidly long and gloriously outdoorsy. We went barefoot all day, except when we went ashore (in our tender, called Homer) to hike to waterfall-fed pools where we swam in water fresh enough to drink (and happily free of saltwater crocodiles, though we saw plenty elsewhere).

We had all our meals on the back deck – looking up from lunch to watch whales (we even saw dugongs one day, with their walrus faces and little whale tails) and pausing mid-dinner to look at the stars. Lovely though our cabins were, the only time I was in mine was to change into my togs and to sleep.

A nameless perfect beach

If all this sounds busy, it’s not meant to – because this was one of the most spacious trips I’ve ever done, geographically and psychologically. Not only were there wide horizons in every direction, there was time to just be with our surroundings.

Wandjina art at Raft Point

We ticked off must-see Kimberley sights: Horizontal Falls, Montgomery Reef and a place that will forever be synonymous with the Kimberley coast for me, Raft Point (and its alien-like Wandjina rock art).

But what really made the trip special was being able to experience the Kimberley with all our senses – because it was a small group and our skipper, Dylan, was switched on enough to make the most of the 10-metre tides, which threw curve-balls at us daily in terms of what we could and couldn’t do.

Breakfast is served

One morning we had a well-timed breakfast on a sandbar – complete with tablecloths that flapped in the sea breeze – before the tide came in. We had impromptu saltwater swims at some of the most perfect beaches I've ever seen – white sand, turquoise water, orange sandstone, turtle tracks. We clambered up riverside rocks to commune with some mysterious Bradshaw art, aka Gwion Gwion, estimated to be 70,000 years old.

Tapalinga Reef, at very low tide

Day 5, my favourite day of the trip, started with a walk on Tapalinga Reef, which is exposed only at the lowest of low tides; when it was time to leave, the tide rushed in around our ankles, then our knees, and a couple of reef sharks swam at my heels. That evening we had a beach bonfire, where we feasted on mud crabs we’d caught the day before. It felt as if we were on an expedition, not a tour.

Chopper pilot James, I mean Phil

The trip ended with a James Bond moment: two helicopters landed on a nearby beach, on a small island, and we zoomed in on Homer to meet them.

I can barely describe the thrill of rising above the beach, the Odyssey and the waving crew, to the throb of the chopper blades, suddenly able to look over the tops of the coastal cliffs we’d seen from sea level all week, at the vastness of the Kimberley.

We flew to Mitchell Falls, where we walked three paces and climbed into a waiting Cessna – for a 2-hour scenic flight back to Broome, retracing our steps over the landmarks we’d seen: Raft Point, Montgomery Reef, Horizontal Falls. I think I had my mouth open the whole way, it was so spectacular.

Porosus Creek and croc at sunrise

And I haven’t even mentioned the Kimberley light: glory-inspiring sunrises, blazing blue-sky days, headlands of King Leopold sandstone aglow at sunset.

You can look at pictures of the Kimberley and see how beautiful it is, but physical beauty is only part of it; what takes this place to another level is its remoteness, its ancientness. To experience that, well, you really have to be there. I rest my case.

(Coming soon: part 2 of this post, about the environmental challenges facing the Kimberley.)

Minke magic

This time last week I was swimming with dwarf minke whales in far north Queensland. I've swum with marine mammals before: 300 dolphins off one of my favourite eco-towns, Kaikoura on New Zealand's South Island, and with sea lions in the Galapagos. This was different, incredible in a different way, partly because for a while it looked as if it wasn't going to happen at all...

Lovely Lizard

Not much is known about dwarf minkes - first seen from dive boats in the 1980s, they were recognised as a new sub-species only in 1985 and the first permits to swim with them were issued in 2003. This year only two operators offered live-aboard trips to see them; I went with Eye to Eye Marine Encounters, out of Lizard Island, an hour's flight north of Cairns.

From Lizard, we cruised for a couple of hours to the northern end of the Great Barrier Reef, specifically Ribbon Reef 10, one of the spots minkes gather every June and July. No one knows why they come, or where they spend the rest of the year. What is known is that they seem as curious about us as we are about them.

Spot the minke

Before we could swim with them, of course, we had to find them. As fate would have it, my trip was one of the roughest Eye to Eye has ever had; for three of our four days, gale-force winds whipped the sea into a lamington of white-caps (and I popped Travacalm pills like Tic tacs) which made it even harder than usual to spot minkes.

They can be up to 7 metres long, but their dorsal fins are the size of bottlenose dolphin fins, they don't linger on the surface when they come up to breathe and they don't raise their tail flukes (like other whales) when they dive.

Swimming with potato cod

That's nature, and part of the experience of spending time with wild animals. It also enhanced the "expedition" feel of our trip.

We sat on deck watching for whales (fortified by cinnamon shortbread, thanks Chef). Went "extreme snorkelling" in waves big enough to bodysurf and currents that swept us about like flotsam. Swam with other creatures: green turtles, potato cod, sea snakes, reef sharks, Nemo-like anemonefish, spinner dolphins.

A beautiful dwarf minke

We also learned about minkes. Each Eye to Eye Marine Encounters trip has at least one researcher on board who studies not only the whales but our interactions with them; this is the only place in the world you can swim with minkes and there's a strict code of practice to ensure all interactions are on the whales' terms. Our resident researcher was Dr Alastair Birtles from James Cook University (in Townsville), whose affection for these "beautiful but enigmatic little whales" as he calls them, was infectious.

Swimming with minkes!

It was day 4, our last day, when someone shouted from the upper deck, "Minke!" We pulled on our wetsuits, put on masks and snorkels, slipped into the water and gazed into the blue.

They came one by one at first, then in groups, getting closer the longer they spent with us. One did a tail-stand a few metres from us, and a slow, mid-ocean pirouette. Another (see pic below) surfaced near me. At one time I counted eight minkes around and below us.

It felt surreal to be so close to these gentle giants. Unlike more boisterous dolphins and sea lions, the minkes were stately and serene as they glided slowly by, looking at us with large, brown eyes. "There's no other large animal on Earth that keeps going around for hours and hours, looking at you," said Alastair later.

Eye to eye with a wild minke

Our "in-water encounter" lasted almost nine hours (from about 9am to almost 5pm; we climbed back onto the boat only to scoff lunch and rehydrate) and featured as many as 16 minkes.

To cap it off, Alastair made us all honorary Friends of the Minke Whale Project that night, for our perseverence. Actually I think the three days of anticipation before we saw the whales made it all the more special. Well played, minkes.

PS: For a virtual "swimming with minkes" experience, watch Dr Dean Miller's 15-minute doco A Whale of a Time (Dean was on our boat too).

Newsflash: While we were swimming with minkes last week, South Korea announced plans to resume "scientific" whaling of them. I'm happy to report that they've now reversed that decision, in the face of strong international opposition.

Thanks: To Maui Jim for the polarised sunnies they gave me a few weeks ago (for my Kauai trip) - they're ideal for minke-spotting, as the crew of our boat well know: they all wear Maui Jims, as Maui Jim sponsors the Minke Whale Project. Way to go....