180 degrees of inspiration

Every now and then a film comes along that changes you. I saw 180º South last night and felt different afterwards – not just satisfied by a great film full of incredible footage of natural places, and surfing and climbing, and interesting and inspirational people, and cool music, and a strong environmental message (yep, it ticked a lot of boxes). It was just, I don't know, honest, and raw. 

I've been feeling the winds of change blowing me around lately. I'm still not sure which way is up or forward but watching this helped. (Outside magazine said the movie will make you "quit your job" and I can vouch for that...)

I saw it at a screening to raise funds to send a bunch of surfboards to kids in the Solomon Islands, organised by Joel Coleman – a surf photog and all-round nice guy in Manly (Sydney) who runs Saltmotion gallery and sends daily surf-report emails to people like me. Joel got permission to use St Matthews church (also in Manly) to show the film and there we were: 250 surfers and ruffians sitting on (thankfully) cushioned pews looking up at a big, portable screen hanging over the altar, and local surfer/musician Dylan playing steel guitar riffs to warm up the crowd. Then the lights went down.

In a nutshell, 180º South is about an American surfer/climber, JeffJohnson, who follows the journey taken by two greats of the outdoor industry – Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia, and Doug Tompkins, founder of The North Face – in 1968. 

Chouinard and Tompkins drove their Ford Econoline van all the way from California to Patagonia, at a time when the Panamerican highway was nothing but a dirt road south of Mexico, in search of walls and waves. They found both, and a wild and open landscape that crept into their souls and stayed there. 

Johnson's journey is a little different: he sails to Patagonia, for one thing. But I loved that Chouinard and Tompkins are involved in Johnson's journey, hanging out in a rustic shingle house in Patagonia, ribbing each other as old friends do, talking about adventure ("The word ‘adventure’ has gotten overused,"  Chouinard says. "For me, when everything goes wrong, that’s when adventure starts") and the ethics of climbing. 

"The whole purpose of climbing something like Everest is to effect some sort of spiritual and physical gain. But if you compromise the process [by, say, paying $80,000 for someone to guide you up it], you're an asshole when you start out and an asshole when you get back." Again, honest.

Keith Malloy & Timmy O'Neill
on El Cap for 180 South

I loved the old footage of Chouinard, Tompkins and friends like Royal Robbins in Yosemite Valley in the 1960s, climbing the North American Wall on El Capitan and living for months at a time out of their cars, which they bought for $15 (!). Those were the days.

When the boat Johnson is on loses its mast, the crew stop for repairs at Rapa Nui (Easter Island), where he meets a beautiful surfer woman, Makohe, who goes with him when he leaves. It’s a little unbelievable – she’s almost too lovely, with hair down to her waist, she even sings and plays guitar – but Chouinard, Tompkins and climber Timmy O'Neill keep the whole thing grounded.

The environmental message runs throughout but focuses on what's happening in Chile, particularly pulp mills on the coast and massive hydro projects threatening wild rivers. Tomkins and his wife Kris live in Patagonia and talk a bit about buying land to protect it; their Conservacion Patagonica project has so far protected 890,000 hectares (2.2 million acres). Why Patagonia? Read why here.

Patagonia is of course the star: peaks, waves, people living simple lives with respect for the land and sea. Treat yourself, and your heart and soul, and find the DVD. You can watch the trailer here first, and read an interview Alpinist magazine did with Johnson and the film's director Chris Malloy, but see the movie too. You'll thank yourself for it. It might even change your life.

PS The name, from what I can deduce, comes from something else Chouinard said, that you sometimes have to turn 180 degrees from where you're facing to change your world view, to change the world too.

Look, up in the sky! It's carbon dioxide!

Just emerging now from under a heavy cold, but wanted to share some good and bad climate news I read in today's Sydney Morning Herald. 

Coal-fired power station anyone?

The bad news is, of course, that the climate is changing, and human beings are responsible for it – which is not exactly “news” unless you’ve been living under a large rock and/or listening to climate-change sceptics who pop up in the mainstream media in the name of "balance" now and then. This kind of balance is the kind that would make a journalist find someone who believes the earth is flat or that slavery should be reinstated, just to "balance" the views of the majority who believe otherwise.

The good news is that today the CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) and the Australian Bureau of Meteorology released their latest report on the state of the atmosphere and it’s more firm evidence that humans are changing the climate at an ever-faster rate.

The State of the Climate Report 2012, prepared by the CSIRO and the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, and released today (14 March 2012) states unequivocally that:

1. Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are, at 390 parts per million, the highest they have been in 800,000 years
2. Increases in carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are caused by the burning of fossil fuels - climate scientists used a form of carbon dating, testing isotopes of carbon in CO2 particles to find their source
3. Average daily and night-time temperatures in Australia are a degree higher now than a century ago
4. Sea levels are rising by about 5mm a year off Sydney and the NSW coast and by up to 1cm a year in the tropics, places such as Darwin, due to thermal expansion (warmer sea temps forcing water molecules to expand and take up more space)
5. Global sea levels are, on average, 21 centimetres higher today than they were in 1880, when reliable records began being kept.

But wait, there's more: CSIRO atmospheric scientist Dr Paul Fraser said the world is now on track to pass the 400 parts per million level for CO2 emissions in less than five years. You probably know that 350ppm is widely recognised as the tipping point for widespread, catastrophic climate change. So fasten your seatbelts everybody. 

Of course the other good news is that human beings are intelligent, inventive creatures and we can do something about this, to at least slow the effects of what we've done already. You can do it, I can do it, governments and corporations can do it. And while we wait for the big, systemic changes to be made, we can all drive less, walk and ride bikes more, switch to green energy, use less electricity...You know the drill. 

Read the full story and see a clip of Dr Fraser explaining the findings here.

No-impact armchair travel

I love to travel. The further away, the better. By plane of course - sure, the journey is the destination but, I mean, you've got to get there. It goes without saying that there are carbon offsets involved. But who doesn't love a dose of armchair travel now and then? The kind where you see the world through someone else's eyes. Could there be sweeter union than the one between travelling while remaining firmly planted in one's armchair (or swivel chair in front of a laptop) and one's love of the environment? I think not.

All pics by Louise Hawson

On this note, today's post is an ode to Louise Hawson, travelling photographer. If you live in Sydney, you might know about her 52 Suburbs project a couple of years ago - every week she and her camera explored a different suburb of Australia's largest city, posting the results in a blog that became an exhibition that became a book. (Beware, name-dropping ahead: Louise and I were in the same year at school. Fancy that.)

Now she is far away, taking in the unsung suburbs of other cities around the world: she's been to Hong Kong, she's in Delhi now, and she'll be spending the next few months travelling through Istanbul, Paris, Berlin and New York - all with her 8-year-old (and highly photogenic) daughter Coco in tow. Sign up for her weekly updates at 52 Suburbs Around the World. Her images will brighten your day/week/year.

See what I mean? And it's not just the images that are wonderful, but her observations that accompany them.They really make your laptop/iPad into a window on the world. No carbon offsets required. Enjoy...

Wild things

Newsflash: The Sydney Morning Herald has just published my story on one of the wildest, most off-the-map places I've ever been - Madagascar. Read it here, and if you'd like pics with that, see the online photo gallery.

Pic by Cyril Ruoso

In other news, a few days ago I rode my bike to the Australian Museum, in the rain, to see the latest Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition.

I try to go every year, and every year I am inspired and usually moved to tears by the beauty and poignancy of what's called the Oscars of nature photography. It gets more than 40,000 entries, from 95 countries, and each year only about 100 are featured - so they're pretty special.

I like the quiet of the exhibition (notwithstanding a few un-quiet children this time) as people peruse the framed and spot-lit images, reading about how they were taken, and about the animals – their habits, where they live or migrate to, whether they are endangered.

pic by Daniel Beltra

Of course the photography is incredible. A swimming polar bear, a hummingbird mid-wingbeat, a rare white humpback whale. There are penguins on ice (where else?), a chimp asleep in its mother’s arms, a cheetah family in the branches of a long-dead African tree.

A hippo, a rhino, a fox, a snake (sounding like a children’s fable). A  photoessay of Louisiana pelicans, their feathers tarred with oil.

pic by Kah Kit Yoong 

There are landscapes too. A stone arch with a backdrop of stars, the green shimmer of the Northern Lights, a rocky coastscape studded with red starfish.

Most incredible of all are the pics by child photographers; the under 10s must surely be as precocious as child actors, using their parents’ Nikons and Canons (or their own?) and staking out the backyard to fixate on an owl or capture the compound eyes of a beetle. I’m in awe of them too.

It's on until Sunday 18 March. See it, be amazed...
(And if you want to enter the 2012 competition, you have until 23 February, entry details here.)

Flower power

You know the hit of bright colours and shapes and scents you get when you walk into a florist? Sydney Flower Market is not like that. 

It’s kinda like walking into an undercover carpark – one where flowers are sold, of course. There are flowers in buckets on the ground, unshaven men in leather aprons, Chinese women in plastic sandals hosing the live plants, a few frantic wedding planners. It doesn't even smell that flowery. 

When I went last weekend there were plenty of everyday people too, who had, like me, woken up in the dark to get there early (it's open 5am-11am but it’s all over by 8.30) just to browse, sniff, ogle and, of course, buy some blooms.

And boy, were there flowers. Hot pink frangipanis, luscious bromeliads, sleeping lilies (their buds all green, ready to open when you get them home), red, pink and yellow cacti. Natives like banksia. Lucky bamboo. Lazy bunches of lavender. 

There were old-favourite carnations, and cheery sunflowers. Banana flowers, for heaven's sake. There were boxes of rose petals, and parcels of leaves. I saw a monk with his arms wrapped around several bunches of gerberas (I bought three bunches, myself, for $10). And a man walking out with just a posy of red roses, for someone he likes. 

Of course I got to thinking: are cut flowers eco-friendly? The short answer is: not always. There are a few reasons for concern, particularly the use of pesticides and the working conditions of the growers and flower-farm workers, particularly in tropical countries. 

Did you know Ecuador is one of the top producers of roses in the world? A 90c rose can sell for $8-12 in Russia. Which brings up another issue: the emissions generated by flying refrigerated flowers around the world.

All good reasons to buy local and direct from the grower. All the sellers at Sydney Flower Market are growers from within a 2-3 hour radius of Sydney. Apparently there are also organic flowers, even FairTrade flowers. Flowers in pots are even more sustainable. I love picking up the fallen frangipanis on the footpath near my house and putting them in a bowl of water on the kitchen windowsill - free and simple beauty.

Let's hear it for flowers: pretty reminders that we're part of nature (or else why would we love them) and a way to say so much without words. I'm going to go and thank my vase of gerberas (above) right now.