WRITING

Let’s face it: COVID sucks. However you look at it, whatever side of the vax fence you may be on, whether little has changed or whether you have lost a job, a business or most tragically of all, a loved one, COVID can go bite the balls of a feral dog. Some people have benefitted, and I’m not talking Bezos and his lizard-faced brethren. Some normal folks have had their lives changed for the better, and I must confess, on many levels I am one of them. But even in my insanely fortunate circumstances, that shitty little virus has been a thorn in my side. From the incredibly minor hassle of mask-wearing to the shattering realisation that I can no longer freely wander the world to visit family in blood or spirit; I am staggeringly grateful for how lucky and unscathed I have been by this global tornado… but I’m still pretty pissed. Photo: @gerhardimages However, dwelling in all that we don’t have, all that we can’t do and all that has been stolen from us is to wrap blindfolds to all that surrounds us. It’s easy to get weighed down by the negatives. The rate of mental illness has been rising almost as steadily as the virus numbers of the World Health Organisation, and lock-downs, closed borders and disconnection are only exacerbating these figures. But by actively altering our perspective, silver linings can come into focus, we can begin to travel again, we can see the world once more and maybe, just maybe, we can see that even this shitstorm offers fertiliser for the radiant blossoms of life. Photo: @falkwyn “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” – Lao Tzu The world has gotten smaller. It’s become an oxymoronic phrase: on the one hand, modern travel has made distant destinations far more accessible, yet on the other, COVID has turned our own country, our own neighbourhood, sometimes even our own house into our entire world. Journeys have taken on gargantuan expectations. The further, the longer, the more exotic, the greater the journey, or so we had grown to believe. But even a single step can be a life-changing journey: stepping into a first kiss, inching five toes over the nose, or the shuffle to a cliff edge that sparks an unquenchable lust for life. To beckon in zen masters and spiritual gurus, the reality of a journey is that we never travel anywhere – we are always within ourselves. It is what we perceive that defines a journey, and in that sense, a journey need never be far from your front door. If you make the experience fresh, unique or inspiring, the destination is unimportant. Photo: @gerhardimages Photo: @tommyschultzphoto “Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail” – Ralph Waldo Emerson We walk the same path every day. We go to work or school, we visit the same places, we surf the same waves and we drink the same coffee. There’s usually good reason based in need or preference, but the path remains Groundhog Day-ishly familiar. If we break this mould every experience becomes a new one. Take the bus to work – you might see something new, make a new friend or read a life-changing story. Go somewhere new – it doesn’t have to be far, simply somewhere you have rarely been. Surf a new break – go left instead of right, surf a beach over a point, even if the conditions aren’t quite as good. Visit a different cafe – just because you can. Remarkable things can occur in unremarkable places. Be aware of the experience, not just the location, and a whole new path appears at your feet. Photo: @kimi_swimmy, Kimi Werner, by @cinematowski “There’s a sunrise and a sunset every single day, and they’re absolutely free. Don’t miss so many of them” – Jo Walton Whatever you’re doing, wherever you are, another world lies just beyond your periphery. Taking a camera through a city at dawn can offer a wealth of inspiration. Watching the sun rise, whatever the horizon, can fill you with its glow all day long. When we break schedule, our own and that of the society around us, we see a new world. Pre-dawn surf sessions lack crowds but there is far more benefit to the early call than a proliferation of waves. The ethereal experience of surfing through the night’s relinquishing of the dark for the sun’s first rays can transform your perspective on an otherwise familiar location, making it completely new once more. Photo: @gerhardimages “Travelling – it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller” – Ibn Battuta They say happiness shared is happiness doubled. When you share an experience, no matter how familiar it is to you, you gain new perspective. It’s like teaching a loved one to surf. You may have surfed your entire life, but to see your partner, your friend or your child get to their feet for the first time is to feel that thrill for yourself. You feed off their stoke, revel in their little victories and ride that first wave with them, even from the dry sand. Likewise, unified retrospect feeds the joy. Creating a new set of circumstances by sharing the experience is to breathe life into even the most familiar activity or location, and the stories shared will allow you to return to that place forever. Jake & Ziggy MacKenzie – Sri Lanka, 2017 “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes” – Marcel Proust There are so many ways we can rediscover the world beyond our doorstep. There’s a classic scene in the iconic movie Dead Poet’s Society when the inspirational English teacher, played by Robin Williams, gets his students to stand on a desk in the tired and oppressive classroom that has imprisoned them all term. That single shift in perspective creates a different world. Raise your gaze, see the tops of trees and buildings instead of a metre in front of your feet. Take time to see the world for the first time again. This concept isn’t confined to your visual perspectives. Anything can be new when we do it differently. Mix up your quiver, ride a singlefin, bodysurf the shore break, try ditching your fins on a small day and experience the thrill of the ancient la la slide. This COVID world has confined us, but too often it is our minds that form the bars of our own cage. Photos: Chris del Moro (top) & Joel Fitzgerald, Sumba. @gerhardimages “Oh the places you’ll go” – Dr. Seuss We may be restricted, but we are also so fortunate. Almost everyone reading this will be in good health. They will have access to proficient medical facilities, should they need them; they will have a secure income; they will be staring at a computer or phone screen in safe surroundings, with food in the refrigerator and water in the faucet. We have all suffered in some small way over the last 24 months, had our freedom stolen from us, been constricted, challenged and frustrated. But it’s almost guaranteed that, if you’re reading this, you, like me, are one of the lucky ones. So journey, travel, view the world through virgin eyes and see the adventures that lay at your feet. Oh, the places you’ll go when only you let go of preconceptions. *I would like to take this opportunity to express my deepest sympathies for all who have truly suffered. To our Bali family, the true locals who are struggling through illness, lack of income and more. To those who have lost more than civil liberties, who have lost health, careers, income or loved ones. And to those who have jeopardised their health and wellness, the front-line workers who act with utter selflessness for the benefit of others, from my heart, I thank you.

UNESCO is the last line of defence for the world’s most remarkable locations. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization – better known by its acronym, UNESCO – recently announced their latest collection of world heritage-listed sites. Spread throughout the world, the almost 1,200 locations hold significant cultural or natural significance, or as the official definition states: “UNESCO seeks to encourage the identification, protection and preservation of cultural and natural heritage around the world considered to be of outstanding value to humanity.” Since 1972, this international quorum has united countries and cultures across the world in recognition of these incredible destinations, seeking to preserve them as living testament to the wonders of mankind and nature alike. While almost 80 percent are of man-made cultural noteworthiness, such as England’s Stonehenge, the temples of Angkor in Cambodia and the Statue of Liberty, there are also many natural wonders, both literally and figuratively, that are protected by this internationally-recognized treaty. Some may be visited in the convenience of your own time and vehicle, no less spectacular but infinitely more accessible than the majority. For others, we are here to assist you in witnessing these natural and cultural marvels firsthand, preserved, as they are, by UNESCO’s enduring protection.  Here are five iconic UNESCO World Heritage-listed destinations attainable and accessible with Rothschild Safaris: 1. Tsodilo Hills, Botswana Heralded as ‘the Louvre of the Desert’, Tsodilo Hills, in Botswana’s north-western reaches, is the world’s highest concentration of rock art. These fragile art forms, as well as artefacts discovered in the area, are a documentation of life and culture spanning at least 20,000 years, exquisitely preserved by the arid climate of the Kalahari Desert. Declared a national monument in 1927, a unified alliance has long protected the site, not only for its historical significance but also its importance in the culture of the Hambukushu, San and other communities. The Tsodilo Hills contain some 4,500 immaculately-preserved artworks and have been revered with intense archaeological interest, having revealed artefacts which, at over 70,000 years old, comprise some of the world’s oldest evidence of human ritual. Remarkably, these illustrations in the heart of the African continent depict, among many other subjects, whales and dolphins and it is still uncertain how this came to be. Profoundly sacred to the San Bushmen, the hills are said to be the resting place of ancestors, who will bestow misfortune upon anyone killing anything within their watchful gaze. The Tsodilo Hills are situated near Botswana’s north-western border with Namibia, far from the country’s more renowned attractions such as the Okavango Delta, Chobe National Park or the Makgadikgadi Salt Pans. However, helicopter safaris frequently incorporate this fascinating UNESCO World Heritage site within their itineraries. 2. Rapa Nui National Park, Chile Despite being some 2,180 miles (3,500km) from the western coastlines of South America, Rapa Nui, often better recognized as Easter Island, is in fact a Chilean outpost. The mirky history of Rapa Nui is still fiercely debated, though more information is being unearthed every year – quite literally in fact. Up until recent years, the iconic ‘heads’ of Easter Island were thought to be just that: monolithic stone heads of unknown purpose. Recent excavations have revealed that many of the ‘heads’, or moai as they are locally known, actually possess bodies as well. Now we understand a little more, the spectacular carvings known to be hand-carved representations of ancestors, with approximately 900 erected across the island, all gazing stoically out towards some of the world’s cleanest and deepest ocean waters. Settled by ocean-going Polynesian travelers around the turn of the first millennium, the carvings themselves were created between the 11th and 17th centuries. Spiritual devotion, cultism and the impact of Western settlement all had a drastic effect on the indigenous peoples, who were almost entirely eradicated by the mid-19th century. Thankfully, they were spared extinction and many now work alongside operators to share their fascinating culture with visitors. 3. The Ancient City of Sigiriya, Sri Lanka Precariously perched atop the almost 600-foot (180-meter) tall Lion Rock, emerging like a vast, megalithic obelisk from the jungle floor, nestles the 1,500-year-old city of Sigiriya. Comprising hand-carved staircases, ponds, avenues and a regal palace, this astounding structure summits a far older cultural relevance. Settlers, likely Buddhist ascetics, were first thought to have inhabited the region many hundreds of years prior, but it was King Kashyapa (477 – 495 AD) who commissioned the city itself. Entering between the enormous paws of a lion, one must scale some 1,200 steps to reach the summit, but the view alone is worthy of the task. The name of Lion Rock is bestowed not for the paws alone. Many years ago, a mighty lion stood sentry over the entrance, but the majority of the immense sculpture was lost to the merciless hands of time. The fortress complex contains numerous architectural feats, stunning frescos and inscriptions well over one thousand years old. The frescoes depict many of the rituals and ceremonies performed within the clifftop fortress, immortalizing the culture, history and even daily activities of the residence some one and a half millennia ago. After the death of the king, Buddhist monks again took up residence and maintained a revered monastery in the lofty structures for several centuries. Sri Lanka is an incredible destination in its own right, hosting not just this, but numerous UNESCO World Heritage Sites, as well as stunning coastlines, rich jungles and the fascinating Galle Fort. Elephant, monkeys, water buffalo, a profusion of birdlife and, if particularly lucky, even an elusive Sri Lankan leopard can be spotted within the country’s national parks.  4. Machu Picchu, Peru The breathtaking Incan settlement of Machu Picchu, and Cusco, one of it’s closest neighboring towns, are both listed as UNESCO World Heritage destinations for their gravitational importance to the history of not only the Inca, but Peruvian and South American culture and history at large. Enveloped in the mists of the Cordillera de Vilcabamba of the Andes Mountains, Machu Picchu (translated as ‘Old Peak’) is perched above the Urubamba River valley at an elevation of 7,710 feet (2,350 meters) above sea level. Despite its grandeur and renown, this mountain citadel, established in the mid-1400s, was only inhabited for a little more than a century, abandoned at the impending advance of Spanish conquistadors, though the actual reason for the inhabitants’ departure is tentatively attributed to a lack of water. Still remarkably intact, the architecture is bafflingly precise, huge stone blocks so expertly hewn it is impossible to slide a credit card between them. While a train will whisk carefully monitored parties to the summit, the only true way to experience Machu Picchu is on foot. The imposing Inca Trail traverses some 25 miles (43 kilometers) of stone road hand-paved many centuries ago by the Inca. Though this four-day hike is challenging, it is still achievable by someone of average fitness and you certainly don’t have to be a world-class athlete. Preparation is required, however, both prior to the trip and to acclimatize. Cusco’s cobbled streets – brimming with ancient culture, vibrant handicrafts and wonderfully hospitable locals, many descendants of the Inca – are the most delightful location to endure your training and familiarization with the increased altitude. For the less enthusiastic, a single-day hike is also available, spanning a more accomplishable six miles (10 kilometers). There are so many UNESCO World Heritage sites across Africa, both cultural and natural, from the Serengeti and Kenya’s Lake Turkana to the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela, Ethiopia and quite literally to Timbuktu. 5. Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, Uganda  However, perhaps from personal experience, the inhabitants of Bwindi’s Impenetrable National Park assist in concluding my final Top Five of UNESCO’s protected destinations of the world. It is a tragic fact that no mountain gorilla has ever survived captivity, making Bwindi, along with neighboring Virunga and Volcanoes National Parks, their last natural stronghold. Poached almost to extinction and facing threats from disease and deforestation, the troupes are now well protected, not only by UNESCO but also by numerous world animal foundations and organizations. Witnessing mountain gorilla firsthand, watching them as they go about their daily lives, interacting, communicating and illuminating just how closely related we are, is beyond incredible; it is deeply emotional, utterly unforgettable and timelessly precious. Thankfully, tourism is having a significantly beneficial impact on mountain gorilla numbers. Strictly controlled and expertly managed, gorilla trekking is bringing much needed finance to the committed team of rangers, veterinarians and staff who dedicate their entire lives observing and protecting our closest living cousins. Nothing can prepare you for the absolute gravity of such an experience, and nothing can fade it from memory. These are only a handful of the numerous UNESCO World Heritage sites we proudly transport our clients to around the world. Many more lay out there for you to explore and discover for yourself, and your Travel Designer is your ticket to the most remarkable destinations on the planet. Explore the entire list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites HERE.  Article first published on Rothschild Safaris, August 17, 2021

We are all children of the earth. Whatever we do, whatever choice we make, whatever career we pursue and wherever we choose to lay our roots and call ‘home’, we are equally a part of this single organism called Earth. What defines us is how we interpret our place in the world. Photo: Our lost brother, @tommyschultzphoto feat. @belindabaggs That preamble might seem somewhat ironic when unfolding the tale of someone born and raised on the ocean. Perhaps it was this childhood unsullied by the fetters of terra firma that gave Christian Sea such an inherent appreciation of the natural world. Surrounded, as he was, by nature embedded his consciousness from an early age in the need to walk lightly, give back and nurture the land that gives us life. Born to sailing hippy parents as he freely admits, Christian’s life has always run the alternative route. Though ocean-bound, the Caribbean islands were his expansive home berth. In a story somewhat reflective of Dorian ‘Doc’ Paskowitz, Christian was home schooled up until the age of 12 with his siblings, frequently changing horizons as the family boat meandered throughout the Caribbean. When the number of children expanded beyond the capacity of their floating home, the family moved ashore to St Thomas in the US Virgin Islands. Several years on the California coast flowed into scholarship at the University of Hawaii, but it was Indonesia that held his interest from a young age. From high school the south-east Asian archipelago captivated his imagination, even learning bahasa Indonesia at high school. Relinquishing his educational ties, Christian spent the next decade migrating across the oceans from Hawaii to Indo and back.  When a friend mentioned he was developing a surf resort in the Mentwais, Christian was only too willing to spend six months in the atolls, helping to establish what would soon become one of the Ments’ most renowned land-based destinations for surfers – Kandui Resort. Returning to Hawaii for a short period of time, it wasn’t long before the ocean called once more, this time using his childhood sailing knowledge aboard a research vessel traversing the Pacific from New Zealand, through Tahiti and on to Hawaii. The trip, making several laps of this route, was to document the atoll ecosystems of the Tuamotu islands of French Polynesia. His transitory life came to a halt several years later. Having established a small farm of his own on the Big Island of Hawaii, Christian – having retained and nurtured many connections in Indo – received a call to go work at an eco resort on one of the country’s southernmost islands: Sumba. Photo: @tommyschultzphoto Nihiwatu Resort was a manifestation of Christian’s accumulative lifelong passions; it crested a hilltop overlooking the wide expanse of the Indian Ocean, it fostered an acute awareness of environmental harmony and its grounds were given to permaculture farming and sustainability. “We got a call to come work at Nihiwatu here on Sumba,” Christian recalls. “It was a small, family-run operation and an award-winning eco resort.” Christian had found a kindred spirit in his new wife Kaale and the pair had married in Hawaii before making their migration to Sumba. For nine years, life was idyllic. They grew their own food, learned to develop and cultivate a permaculture kitchen garden and flourished in all Indo offered them. Little Seas were created and the family thrived. Christain had found his calling – a symbiotic balance of his passions and his place in the world. He was walking gently, giving back and revelling in the impeccable waves of Sumba, all while raising an equally conscious young family. But while some people find their calling, others catch fleeting whispers of it on the wind… and some simply turn their backs on it. Photo: @tommyschultzphoto Photo: @tommyschultzphoto feat. @belindabaggs When a conglomerate invested in Nihiwatu, the sustainable, compassionate, family-run resort was given over to corporate mentality. With his family rapidly outgrowing the resort lifestyle and his disillusionment rapidly outgrowing the new, more commercial work ethic, Christian and Kaale decided the time had come to nurture their own investment, a small patch of land they had purchased down the coast. Ngalung Kalla (‘big wave’ in the local Sumbanese dialect) grew organically from the jungle, from Christian and Kaale’s passions and from the inspiration of their local surrounds. It began simply, with early life spent under canvas. The tents were soon elevated onto platforms, platforms became yoga shalas, shalas became joglos and, guided by the architecture of their local villages and by the Sumbanese craftsmen who helped them manifest it, Ngalung Kalla gradually took shape. Photo: @tommyschultzphoto Photo: @tommyschultzphoto Initially, the homestead was simply that: the family’s home away from the resort, to which Christian would still commute for work and where their two growing daughters could be schooled, outside of the disruption of life on a bustling resort. The disparity of Christian’s working life at Nihiwatu and his beliefs in a more ecological way of life soon became too much and the separation was complete – Ngalung Kalla was life. “We were living in tents for about a year,” recalls Christian. “We set up a decent camp kitchen, and guests would come and pitch their tents in the dirt with us. It’s an incredible spot, overlooking an immaculate bay and faultless, peeling wave, but it was pretty basic to begin with. “We built platforms to start with, but we slowly developed them into open-air bungalows, which is what we have now.” Now with five bungalows and ‘the Great House’ – a larger communal dwelling – Ngalung Kalla hosts 15 guests at a time and is a full time business for the family and their local staff. Yet while the notion of a surf retreat may edge towards a conventional enterprise, nothing about Ngalung Kalla reflects that. The natural bamboo structures seem to grow from the surrounding forest, enveloping guests in nature, the unwalled bungalows only enhancing this unity with the landscape. Photo: @tommyschultzphoto Photo: @tommyschultzphoto Photo: @tommyschultzphoto feat. @beauyoungsurfboards Sustainability is imperative. Much of the retreat’s minimal needs are provided by solar power, with a diesel generator providing backup for the more draining services such as laundry and construction. From Christian’s education on the land, he has developed a thriving permaculture farm, producing a majority of sustenance for his guests. Yoga enhances this almost spiritual connection to the planet and every consideration is taken, not only in the retreat’s impact upon the environment, but also its impact upon its guests. Meditation retreats, waterman courses, yoga immersions and lessons on permaculture disseminate not only Christian’s wisdom in permaculture and Kaale’s knowledge as a yoga teacher, they instil the same principles by which the Seas live: to walk lightly, give back and nurture the land that gives us life. Photo: @tommyschultzphoto feat. @belindabaggs Photo: @tommyschultzphoto Surfing gives us an inherent connection with the environment, but how often do we forget this union of pleasure and nature? So often, we fail to recognise our part in the paradigm, that the pure waves will only remain so if we do our part, that the ocean will only give us life if we respect its fragility, and that the land will only continue to feed us if we give more than we take. On paper, Christian and Kaale are business owners. In life, they are a truly remarkable and inspirational story of ecological harmony and respect. In reality, they are simply the greater reflection of the life we should all be striving for – a life in balance. Photo: @tommyschultzphoto feat. Tim & Jake Drifter Photo: @tommyschultzphoto feat. @chrisdelmoro111 Photo: @tommyschultzphoto feat. Christian Sea & @belindabaggs Photo: @tommyschultzphoto Photo: @tommyschultzphoto Photo: @tommyschultzphoto Photo: @tommyschultzphoto feat. @belindabaggs Photo: @tommyschultzphoto Article first published on Drifter Surf, Aug, 2021

On paper, Glen Casey could be misconstrued as your average surf industry suit. At the age of 20, after a particularly impressive wildcard performance at a Bells Beach event, he joined Rip Curl, first in retail, then taking to the road as a brand wholesaler. 20 years running his own surf distribution agency flowed into a role as founder and general manager of Patagonia Australia, before opening his own retail store in Byron Bay in 2015. All fairly business-minded and career-motivated. Yet under the surface lies the antithesis of the corporate drone, a soul that yearns to wander and a mind that has crafted a life that allows him to do just that. Drifter talks to Glen Casey about higher purpose, giving back and an exalted Saturn: When did you first find your love for the outdoors? Glen Casey: I was brought up in the city, so a fairly densely-populated western suburb of Melbourne. I guess I first found that feeling when I started skateboarding, in a minor sense, but when one of my mates got his driver’s license, we began exploring down the coast. I’d touched on surfing earlier in my life, though not much. I was a competitive swimmer, so I always felt fairly safe in the ocean, but once we got down there and we were hitting the Great Ocean Road, sleeping in the back of the car, camping out and finding perfect waves with no one around, that instilled a sense of freedom. I was talking to an astrologer a while back and asked: “why have I got this restless soul? Why am I always craving to get out there?” He told me, “it’s because of your Saturn. You have this exalted Saturn and you’ll never be comfortable where you are.” So it might be something deeply embedded in my destiny or in my make up. Photo: Johanna Beach, VIC, 2008 – Wayne Lynch single fin – Steve Ryan For me, when I have an adventure, it definitely pulls back the notion that I am a free spirit and that I’m here for a short time. It reminds me not to get too focussed on the things that are temporary, that aren’t going to last. You can’t take your million bucks into your six-foot box. Just get over all that stuff and keep building memories that are reinstating why we are here, which is to enjoy the planet, have fun doing it and, in the long run, reroute back into looking after it, and helping people and brands that look after it. Essentially, the restlessness comes from deep in my soul. Did you find that being outdoors, whether in the surf or simply in nature, gave you that sense of a greater purpose to life? GC: Yes, absolutely. You know, the Indians talk about prana, the Chinese talk about chi and we talk about the life-force, but as soon as you hit the ocean, you seem to get another 20,30, even 40 percent of an energetic blast. So in that space, your mind seems to get really chilled and in a very happy place. And so that sets up a little safe cave, where you go for a surf and when you come out of the water you’re in this really nice place – what I would call a soul connection – where you’re out of your head, you’re out of your thoughts. Surfing did that for me very early on. I have a great connection with the ocean. One of my great gods is Varuna, lord of the rain and the ocean so, going back to astrology, I get these huge amounts of prana, of energy, by dipping into the ocean. Not everyone feels that same effect, but I think it’s similar. Some people may get about 20 percent, I seem to get about 40; I starve, I die if I don’t get a hit in the ocean within at least 36 or 48 hours. I’m shriveling up, I’m drying out, I’m feeling really crazy, my head’s doing me in, I’m starting to feel depressed, anxious… Winki Pop, VIC, where Glen learned to surf at the age of 14. He is attributed with riding some of the biggest waves ever to be surfed here. So the ocean is very important to me to set up those adventure wheels and the reasons to be in places, to experience country, so I can find that safe place, that soul connection where I belong. Has that sense of connection, or primarily the ocean itself, ever helped you through challenging circumstances? GC: Totally. The greatest love of my life was a girl called Tutti Frankenberg. She came to work in the Rip Curl shop where I was working in 1981. I completely fell in love with her, but she ran off with some other dude within a couple of weeks of me hanging out with her! I was only 20 years of age, but it broke me in pieces in a way that I still haven’t ever recovered from.   Photo: Rip Curl Days… But I was getting up before light and going for a surf no matter what; howling onshore, shitty conditions. That was at the earliest beginning of what I would call ‘recovering from a great loss’. The ocean filled me, it got me through a month of wanting to kill this guy for ripping my girl out of my arms [laughs]. I diagnosed this sort of medicinal, oceanic therapy that saved me. Since then, in every part of my life, whenever I have had some sort of relationship drama, often I will head to the ocean and continue that therapy where I sit out there and turn my head off. The head is still the great mystery; it’s either full of shit or guiding you in some sort of special way. Most of the time it’s like a busy market with people trying to sell you stuff all the time. I find that, if I don’t get in the ocean and calm the mind, I’m not getting the true, intuitive information I need. The ocean has definitely been like a workshop for me, a place I can go to sit down, let go and sharpen the axe of life. You mentioned Rip Curl. Was that your first ocean-oriented job and did you pursue it specifically for that connection? GC: I first took an apprenticeship as a toolmaker in the Western suburbs of Melbourne. I was living in Torquay to surf and be near the ocean, but was driving back and forth to this job. One year I made it through the Quiksilver trials into the main event at Bells, surfed against Shane Horan in the main event and got 17th place. I got the job at Rip Curl after getting this little bit of semi-fame around Torquay which led into a year and a half in retail and almost nine years wholesale on the road as a salesman. That freedom behind the wheel probably set up a bit of the thirst for on-road adventure that I have now. I’m not scared to jump in the car and drive from Byron to Cactus or chase the swell back to Bells – I just get in the car and go. Maybe the sales repping days instilled that. Photo: On the road – Jeff Johnson Were you searching for a more meaningful role prior to starting work with Patagonia? GC: I went from Rip Curl to running my own distribution agency, with two showrooms and offices and about five brands. I did that for about 20 years, but I could see the surf industry drying up – there was all this greedy activity. Just like in Phil Jarratt’s book, Salts & Suits, I could really feel when the suits started to come in and build systems, and basically create this huge divide between human activity and a deep respect for your retailer. That relationship dwindled. Outside of seeing that crumbling, I’d bought land in the rainforests of the Otway Ranges and was fighting a logging coup that was going on and joined a little environmental team down there. I’d always had this activist mentality. I always wanted to butt the system; I hated school teachers that were really arrogant, I hated anything that was coming from the top down – I just wanted to take them on, I’ve always had that fighter in me. I always wanted to protect nature, to look after it. Photo: Glen’s Otway Rainforest sanctuary, built in 1990 when Glen fought and overturned a 5,000-hectare clearfell logging coup. Patagonia came into the picture via a few people, but in the end it was through Wayne Lynch [a close friend of Casey’s from the Rip Curl days in Torquay]. Patagonia were approaching Wayne to become an ambassador for Australia as they were looking to make a move over here. I wanted to get out of the industry, because I could just see it crumbling, and ended up talking to the Chouinards [Patagonia founder, Yvon, and his wife Malinda] and their general manager and put a team together. When I flew over to California for our first meeting, sat in on a few of their initiatives, went round and saw a few of their retail stores and all their products, and really began to understand the brand, I thought ‘this is it. This is the brand that is a soul brand.’ It had a completely different management style, everyone was so quiet and considerate and genuine. I fell in love with the Chouinards, the whole family, and that relationship just grew. Photo: early days of Patagonia Australia with (r-l) Fletcher Chouinard, Yvon Chouinard, Keith Malloy and Belinda Baggs It was like someone had just given me an energy pill. I just couldn’t believe that I had this brand and this was the work I was going to do, and for several years I was so happy. Did it give you a sense of liberation and purpose? GC: When I first saw the brand, I thought I could initiate it into surf, as well as it already being established in the outdoor market, but I knew that the environmental essence, the soul, the heartbeat of the brand was what was going to change the psyche of Australia; not just surfers, but whoever it touched, including how it touched me and changed me. Australia was really dumbed down in that department. There were a lot of unconscious people who were just hanging to be lifted up and to understand that we’re in nature so much that we should start protecting it, to the point where people like Heath Joske and Sean Doherty were instrumental in stopping oil drilling in the Great Australian Bight. That’s about 12 years after we started. The first $2,000 we gave away as a company, was to a little creek out the back of the Otways. Yvon Chouinard gave this guy $2,000 to buy a printer and paper, so he could fight the damming of the Barwon River, and he managed to stop it. All those little things are just meaningful ways to live your life, you know. You want to go out the back door, you want to leave the planet feeling as if you’ve done something for the children, and not left all this crap behind for them. Photo: Surf check with Yvon Chouinard (L), Dave Parmenter (R) and Wayne Lynch in the car That’s been my whole mission, both pre- and post-Patagonia. I’m still in that environmental space. I’m not too far left, not too far right – I sit somewhere in the middle where I have a conscious agreement with myself to continue to stand up and fight for tomorrow. I’m not fighting for a brand anymore – Patagonia is off doing its thing, there are a hundred other great brands doing their thing… I’m standing up as Glen Casey saying, “this doesn’t work for me”, and through social media and through films and marketing and other…

A footy-playing kid from the inland western suburbs of Sydney isn’t the most likely candidate for an expert surf filmmaker, especially one who so explicitly conveys the soul and emotion of a life spent in the brine. For Mick Waters, the captivation of the breaking wave is unrelenting, bewitching, intoxicating, and it is his fascination with the sea and those whose lives are irrevocably devoted to her that has inspired his library of surf movies, beginning with ‘Believe’ back in 2006, followed by ‘Little Black Wheels’ – a road trip journal – in 2009. Working with Andrew Kidman on 2013’s Spirit of Akasha, Mick has spent much time since on small freelance projects for the likes of Patagonia, Hugo Boss and ONCE. Based in the Northern Rivers of far north New South Wales, Australia, Mick – along with his family; wife Susan, and kids Ruby, Skye and Sunny – is a perpetual nomad, searching for new horizons, new connections and new experiences across Australia and beyond. At the conclusion of a three-year journey around Australia and the release of his latest movie, ‘Outdated Children’, we talk to Mick about wandering, ecology, Dr Seuss and the desire to grow old, but never grow up. • • • Your son mentions in your latest film, Outdated Children that, “I hope I can do the same as mum and dad when I grow up”; so how were you brought up? Mick Waters: I had a totally different upbringing. I was born in Blacktown, Western Sydney. My grandmother lived near the beach and my dad would take us up there on school holidays, but if it was the middle of the footy season, we wouldn’t go up. So my surfing was very limited to a block of one or two, sometimes up to six weeks, but it was very disjointed. Mick’s early days on the pitch In that way, it’s very different, but in other ways, it’s pretty similar because I’ve always liked to listen to my dad’s stories. He was a butcher by trade, so sometimes I would go to work with him. It was pretty hard work, but I was just like a sponge listening to his stories. My grandfather and grandmother were Polish and Russian. They met in a concentration camp, but after the war, they were sent to Australia and lived in the country in a tent in an immigrant camp for about five years – that’s where my mum and her siblings were born. Grandad built his own house and a chicken coop, and they grew all their own veggies and recycled their water. So all of those things that are in now, they were just doing it because they had to. I’ve got all of that side of things from him, but the notion of listening to people’s stories from my father. So I want to pass all of those things onto my kids. I want to teach them, but more teach them how to surf and how to light a fire – more everyday stuff, not like philosophy and chemistry. More life skills I guess. You’ve obviously got a love of nature and being outdoors – was that born purely of the ocean? MW: No, no it wasn’t. Even on our trip, while it was mostly concentrated on the coastal fringes and the characters we met there, we came down the East Coast of New South Wales, did Victoria, did South Australia and then my daughter broke her arm, so she had to be airlifted out. So instead of going anti-clockwise to Perth, we had to go up the centre because we needed to be in the hospital within two weeks. We went up to Alice Springs, then did Arnhem Land, Kakadu, and then around the top of Australia, down to Perth, South Australia again and then went to Tasmania. On the long trips my dad would take us on as kids, driving for four hours in his VW Beetle up the Central Coast to his parents’, he’d stop at this one place if the traffic was bad and have a couple of beers and my mum would have Devonshire tea while my brothers and I wrestled around. But dad bought us all these surfing mags for 10 cents each and just threw them in the back and told us to start reading because we were just going mental. I remember then looking at all the old ads for Dick van Straalen, Terry Fitzgerald shots, articles on Bali, and all this really simple design and imagery. The whole page looked like it had been designed, not just slapped together, and the imagery was really backlit and nice. I’d cut them all out and stick them on my wall and that was my inspiration for a couple of months until I next got to surf. Early surfing days Those times have always been an inspiration to me. I think that early imagery really steered me towards wanting to be in nature. I think I get more of a buzz seeing surfers in really wild places with not many people around. For me, it’s about the whole process of getting there. Sometimes you might not even get the waves, but it’s still beautiful anyway. You can be in three-foot waves, surrounded by cliffs with a beautiful sunset, and it just looks so much better than being in ten-foot waves with a hundred other guys around. It’s just the feeling; everyone’s stoked and it’s just really intimate. So, I function better when there is the surf, but nature is pretty humbling. It’s not really about us when we go to those kinds of places – I’m pretty in awe of it. Where we grew up, there was lots of farmland and I always liked that; instead of looking at your neighbour’s undies on the line. My wife can be away from the ocean for months, whereas I’m a surfer – I need to get to the ocean from time to time. Desert time I tried to show that humility of nature in Outdated Children – the people I visited in the context of their environment. For example, the Shipsterns piece, I tried to not show the jet skis and boats and all that business because I wanted to show how minuscule you feel in those places, so insignificant. When did you leave Sydney? MW: I bought a property with my wife on the central coast of New South Wales when I was 26. I couldn’t move there full time because I was studying graphic design and illustration at Uni. I was doing four days a week at Uni, just staying in my Kombi van in the car park and making sure I did all my work so I could have a long weekend. I moved up there full time when I was 28, but it started getting really crowded. When we got married and decided to have kids, we moved up to the North Coast. I was always the weird footy player. I remember going to art college when I was 17 and had to go to footy training afterwards with my folio. We were doing nude drawing at the time, and all the boys were asking me what work I was doing. “What were you drawing today, a bowl of fruit?” they asked. “No – naked women,” I said! They couldn’t believe it! They don’t realise that it’s totally not sexual – you’re trying to draw the human form and get all the proportions right, but they wanted to go through my portfolio and check out all my drawings! So I was always a bit different to all of the other footy players. Was ‘Believe’ somewhat of a preamble to Outdated Children? MW: I had just moved up this way and had been trying to get into filmmaking on the Central Coast and Sydney, but down there it was a lot more industry, pro and competition-based, and it’s much more of an urban environment. Just before I came up here, I was hanging out a bit with Andrew Kidman. I’d seen (Kidman’s first film) ‘Litmus’, but I never thought, I would be able to do that. I didn’t know many surfers, and on the Central Coast there were only ten good surfers you could film. They were all younger aspiring pros trying to get on the tour. I wasn’t really from that kind of background – I didn’t understand the comps. I’d much rather film something beautiful. I filmed some great surfing and I was stoked for the surfers and to be able to film it, but it wasn’t really until I spent some time with Kidman and met other people that I was then able to have the belief to do it – that’s why I called it ‘Believe’. Tube-dodger – photo: Paul Whibley The film was all about these different characters – Neal Purchase Jr, Kidman, Dave Rastovich, Harry Daily – who believed in themselves and were just doing their own thing. You might have a hit list of surfers or people you want to film, but then you meet them and it just doesn’t gel. But then you meet other people and get to know their stories and they’re way more interesting. Sometimes I also like to do pieces on people who possibly are doing things that I would like to do but can’t, or never could, or I’m too chicken to do, or simply that I don’t think they’re going to get the coverage I think they deserve. I haven’t really picked the people that would sell movies for me! It would be good sometimes to have a bit more of a budget, but I don’t know whether the movies would end up the same. I’ve even had people comment that I shouldn’t have put Mick Fanning in my latest film. I was working with Kidman on ‘Spirit of Akasha’ just before we left on our trip around Australia. Two weeks before we left, we were up at North Stradbroke Island filming with Mick. Two or three months later, I was down in Torquay doing some work with Patagonia. I went for a surf at Winkipop and Mick came racing down the line, did this big cutback right in front of me and I shouted out at the top of my lungs, “Up the Rabbitohs!”, because I support the South Sydney Rabbitohs in rugby league and Mick goes for the Penrith Panthers. I swear to God, he flinched and lost his rail, but just made it. On the way back out he saw me, and said, “I knew it was you!” I heard he was coming to Shipsterns Bluff when I was filming down there, so I wore my South Sydney jersey out on the boat. He was already in the water and was like, “oh my goodness, you just won’t give me a break!” I was already lined up to interview him about something else, but I changed it at the last minute and we talked about Shipsterns instead, because he was there on the day I was filming. People tell me I shouldn’t have included him, but he was ready and willing to talk about Shipsterns because that was the first time he’d ever been there. To have his input – somebody who surfs at his level but had never surfed there – and what he thought of it, really added so much more. It’s just such a heavy spot. Even when I’m filming, I think, “this wave’s going to be perfect”, but then it just crumbles. Then one that I think I won’t even film picks up and does its thing. It’s so unpredictable. You looked pretty close into the action – did you get into any dicey situations? MW: The last shot where Mick surfs passed, I actually got taken over the falls there. The water there is really thick; the foam on the water is really thick, it’s heavy, it’s black, so I didn’t know…

Meat-eaters seem to have an issue with soy. Tofu, tempeh, soy milk, soy ice cream — whatever form it comes in, they’ll have something to say about it. Latching onto tenuous facts, expounding upon disproven rumors and proliferating statistics to favor their own cause, carnivores continue to feed the belief that soy is bad. The multitude of reasons ranges from causing breast cancer to causing breasts in men, the destruction of the rainforests to the destruction of our bone density and many more. Barely dipping a toe on the ocean of proven research and study, meat-eaters cherry-pick information while remaining tragically myopic to the bigger picture. So, what is their beef with soy? Is it good or bad, and do any of these rumors actually stand up to the facts? Let’s take a look: Soy vs. the Rainforest FACT: Soy is in fact leading to the destruction of the Amazon Rainforest in Brazil. The process diminishes the carbon sponge of old-growth forests and releases more CO₂ into the atmosphere. TRUTH: Only six percent of soy grown is used in human food and beverage products, with 24 percent converted into soybean oil. And the remaining lion’s share? Over 70 percent of all soy grown, particularly in the Amazon, is used to feed livestock for the meat industry [1]. If anyone is to blame for fueling soy’s destruction of rainforests, it is meat-eaters. Soy vs. Boobs FACT: For women — and a far lesser percentage of men — hormone imbalance can lead to breast cancer. Isoflavone — an estrogen-like compound — can be readily found in soy-based products, leading many to believe that this can elevate human estrogen levels, thereby increasing breast cancer risk, or much less seriously, ‘man-boobs’. TRUTH: Raised estrogen levels can indeed have many negative effects, some of them potentially fatal, but isoflavones won’t cause this to happen. Though biologically similar, Isoflavones act very differently in our bodies, failing to bond to the estrogen receptor and negating any risk. Some studies have even shown soy to decrease the risk of some cancers [2]. Soy vs. Bones FACT: Reduced levels of calcium intake can lead to weaker bones, osteoporosis and other medical issues. TRUTH: Yes, this is true, but replacing dairy milk for soy is not going to cause it, actually quite the opposite. Without diving into the calcium debate — which you can find here — dairy milk is not a good way to build or maintain healthy, strong bones. Soy milk contains the same level of calcium as dairy milk, but can often be more assimilable. Aside from this, it is now being widely suggested that magnesium is similarly beneficial for healthy bones. The isoflavones, so feared for their fictitious effeminizing effects, actually bond to bone cells, leading to increased bone density. A study of women fed an equivalent amount of isoflavones from either soy or animal sources showed the study’s carnivores had significantly lower bone density by the end of the trial [3]. Soy vs. Babies FACT: From pregnancy to postpartum and breastfeeding ‘real’ milk is, in many ways, the best solution for babies. TRUTH: Breastfeeding is nature’s way of providing babies with essential nutrients for development. Colostrum, the thick, yellowy milk all mammal mothers produce in the first weeks after birth, is incredibly nutritious and beneficial in many ways, particularly in early development and immune defence. However, human babies aren’t going to get these benefits from processed, refined milk or formula. Not only does the processing dairy milk remove most of its beneficial properties but — surprise, surprise — human babies aren’t cows! Studies of adults between the ages of 20 and 34 who were fed soy formula as infants showed absolutely no effect whatsoever on their overall health and development [2]. Soy vs. GMOs FACT: Most soy is a GMO (genetically-modified organism). GMOs might be bad for your health. TRUTH: Yes, as much as 80 percent of soy crops are GMO [3]. Genetic modification allows for far better pest control, but it may also deplete the nutritional value of some foods. This doesn’t mean GMOs are bad, just that they aren’t as good as they could be and, as this is usually true of monocrops, can be detrimental to environmental health by association. However, while altering the genetic makeup of our food instills fear in us and may theoretically be assumed as harmful, no evidence has conclusively proven that GMOs are bad for our health [4]. So sure, GMO soy exists, and in the majority of production, and it may be less nutritious than organic, non-GMO soy, but that doesn’t make it bad. Added to this, many soy products are clearly labelled as non-GMO, and over 85% of all genetically modified soy products are used for animal feed, so any suspected detrimental effects are more likely to be displayed in the animals or, ironically, the people who eat them. Soy vs. Protein FACT: Soy has a different protein make-up so doesn’t benefit us in the same way as meat or dairy protein. Most plants aren’t ‘complete’ proteins. TRUTH: There are 20 different types of amino acid used for protein production, nine of which are deemed ‘essential’. When something contains all nine of these essential amino acids it is considered a ‘complete’ protein. Very few vegetables are complete proteins, but soy is one of the ones that is. With comparable protein levels to cow’s milk with none of the health risks associated with cholesterol and dairy, soy milk is a better alternative. Tofu has a higher level of protein per serve when compared to most meats. It is cleaner, healthier, cholesterol-free and more easily digested, making it more beneficial for the most part, certainly in terms of protein [5]. Soy’s Achilles Heel is its lack of vitamin B12, an essential nutrient almost exclusively found in meat, but very easily supplemented with tablets. (*note: it’s always worthwhile keeping an eye on your B12 levels. Ask your doctor for a general blood test — highlighting that you’re plant-based and wish to check iron and B12 — at least once a year). The Benefits of Soy Environmentally, less land use, less emissions and less water use are among the many benefits of replacing meat with soy. For the animals, well, let’s just say they’d thank you if they could! For your health, soy outweighs its animal peers in almost every comparison. Added to that, soy has been shown to possibly reduce heart disease, cholesterol, blood pressure, blood sugar and risk of cancer, while improving bone health and fertility in women. As with so many foods, there are good and bad soys. Most of the bad stuff is used in animal agriculture and, of the small remainder, the negatives are far outweighed by the positives and are almost categorically an improvement on the meat alternatives. Opting for organic, non-GMO soy with minimal additives such as salt and sugar is always best, and also incredibly easy, with so many options available. As always, avoid the highly-processed products to receive the greatest benefits from soy. With so many positives and so few downsides, it seems like the only beef with soy is that it’s so much better than meat that the animal agriculture industry is running scared! [1] https://www.onegreenplanet.org/environment/why-tofu-consumption-is-not-responsible-for-soy-related-deforestation/[2] https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/is-soy-bad-for-you#concerns[3] https://newtownnutrition.com.au/10-facts-soy-food/[4] https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2015/will-gmos-hurt-my-body/[5] https://www.livestrong.com/article/240951-soy-protein-vs-meat-protein/ Article first published on Real Men Eat Plants, May 15, 2021

The echoes of our past reverberate through our lives, shaping and moulding us, dictating our perspectives, defining our choices. The dry and dusty heartland of South Africa is almost as contrasting to the wave-soaked beaches of Bali as any two places could be. Yet for Mel Pretorius, a tenuous thread weaves through the two, a thread that has been intertwined with her journeys across the world; from Australia to India, Mexico to Indonesia. Growing up on the plains of South Africa, Mel’s early years were spent over six hours from the nearest salt water. Her father, a flight instructor, flew tourists over the veldt, teaching them to fly and sharing with them the landscapes and fauna of the African interior. But on holidays, it would always be to the coast that the family ventured. Mel fondly recalls days shared with her dad on these coastal vacations. She would stare for hours at images of him beneath the waves freediving and spearfishing, continually inspired to one day pursue this subaquatic freedom for herself. Even from this early age, with her salt-water sojourns so fleeting and infrequent, she was captivated. “I grew up in the bush in South Africa, probably six hours to the closest beach. My dad would take me flying, even allowing me sometimes to take the controls once airborne, so I think, watching my dad doing something that was pretty out there when you’re little, instilled in me this ‘you can do whatever you want’ attitude and maybe a desire for freedom and things that make me feel alive. “He followed his passions with no reserve, and that definitely inspired me to do the same for myself.” “We would go on holiday to the beach,” Mel reflects. “I was obsessed with the ocean even then. I would just sit by the ocean for hours and just watch it, completely mesmerised. But it wasn’t really a part of my life back then.” At the age of 12, and with a rising volatility in South Africa, the young family made the decision to move to Australia. Inland Caboolture in South East Queensland may not have been the perfect Aussie coastal town from which surfers’ dreams are born, but the one-hour commute to the shore provided Mel the accessibility to the ocean for which she had yearned. “When I was about 15, I realised I just had to learn how to surf. I found this dodgy old paddle-pop stick with flames down the side for $50 at a garage sale. I had to take a bus and then a train to get to the beach and just got smoked for about a year. I’d go out in the ocean and just lie on my belly with no idea what I was doing, but I loved it, I loved just being in the ocean and in the water. It was blissful.” Mel would beg for lifts from her dad, ride public transport, anything to sate her craving for the opportunity to dip her toes once more in the crystal clear warm waters of the Sunshine Coast. Simply being near the ocean was more than enough, but when she discovered surfing, an unquenchable passion rose within her. “I remember getting a lot of flack from the boys for surfing, saying ‘what are you doing out here, you shouldn’t be here’. Even at that stage, not many girls were surfing at all. But I think that, too, drove me to be even more committed.” The gauntlet was cast, and Mel more than rose to the challenge. Devoted to her newfound obsession, she immersed herself in the ocean at every possible opportunity, learning by watching, sheer persistence and determination her unwavering mentor. Her love of the ocean rose beyond riding waves and she found new ways to venture to the shore, becoming a surf instructor despite, by her own admittance, her own lack of proficiency as a surfer herself. Studying journalism and sustainability, Mel received a second-year scholarship to continue her education in Mexico, the gamut of readily-accessible waves affirming not only her love for the ocean, but also her oceanic aptitude. “It was incredible – the best thing I’ve ever done. My time there got me into some really beautiful waves and reaffirmed my love of surfing, but also my love of travel, different cultures and languages, exploration and living a different lifestyle.” But as with so many wanderings of our youth, Mel’s Mexican adventures were fleeting, and the chains of her education drew her back to Australia. Finishing her degree, she achieved what many would deem success. Straight out of university, she secured a position with media behemoth, Fairfax Media, working as a journalist, even venturing beyond print into television and radio. But the repetitive and persistent pressures of the media world took their toll, exacerbated by the fact that she was working in the crime department. The two-and-a-half year tenure was more than enough to throw new perspectives into Mel’s life. She had grown up inspired by adventure, nature and the pursuit of happiness – the farthest-flung disparity of where she now found herself: “I did investigative journalism, court reporting and so on”, she recalls, “but then I had a full-on meltdown. I looked at all my superiors and realised that, though I was incredibly grateful for the experience, this was not my path.” Sometimes our greatest life lessons, the ones that reverberate loudest throughout our lives are the ones that challenge us the most; our best teacher, they say, is our last mistake. Despite her gratitude for her education and the experience it provided her, Mel realised that this was a course upon which she wasn’t destined to travel. With meager savings and few prospects, she returned to Mexico, the place that had ignited her soul and induced true happiness. “That entire experience, leaving Fairfax and travelling throughout Central and South America, inspired me to figure out that I wanted to live a lifestyle that allowed me to do the things that I loved, whilst still making an impact on the world. That’s actually why I became a journalist; I wanted to help people – I wanted to empower people, and I thought the best way for me to do that was to write. And then I had a realisation: I thought that maybe helping people in different ways might enable me to have just as much of an impact.” In the frenetic, high-pressure lifestyle of journalism, Mel had discovered yoga as a way to cultivate peace, the yin to the fiery yang of the media world. Finding inspiration in a 60-year-old yogi in Costa Rica, she realised that the drive and pursuit of busy-ness that the western world inflicts upon us isn’t the only way to live. In fact, one could suggest it is even the best way not to live. Combining her altruistic passion for giving with her thirst to travel, Mel left the perfect waves of Mexico behind, embarking upon a yoga teacher training in India. Not only did this pilgrimage to the birthplace of yoga provide her with an education that aligned with her newfound passion, it also proffered a period of self-exploration, allowing her the ever-elusive opportunity for introspection, the chance to shed the burdens of the world and, in the serenity and peace of the Himalayas, listen to her heart. She found perfect alignment in her desires – the love of travel, the gnawing desire to surf and her yogic calling – as a surf and yoga instructor in the oceanic paradise of the Maldives. However, despite its seemingly perfect fit for her, the position only lasted a year before the whisper of Mexico and South America stirred once more. But this, too, would be simply a passing chapter in her life’s story. The global yoga family has an interconnectedness much like that of surfing, the metaphoric six degrees of separation whittled down to just one or two, and Mel’s network had grown exponentially since embarking on her yogic journey. A friend happened to be hosting a yoga event in Bali and called on Mel to assist her. As with so many Australian residents, she had visited Bali several times. A short and inexpensive hop from most international airports around the country, Bali is a default holiday destination, though for Mel, her initial impressions we somewhat disenchanting. Fun, of course, and with good waves, the Island of the Gods was only seen by her as a location for brief holidays, certainly not a migratory residence, no matter how semi-permanent. “I’d been to Bali on holiday when I was around 17 and, though I loved it, I thought it was a little cliched.” But as Bali has such a profoundly inexplicable habit of inciting, everything began falling into place. “Things just started to happen; a guy asked me to manage his retreats for him, at Goddess Retreats in Seminyak. I began just teaching, but soon became manager. After a while, I broke away from that and started working on teacher trainings, helping certified people to become yoga teachers.” This kaleidoscopic life has a way of rotating the pieces until they fit, and despite whatever preconceptions she may have had of a Bali relocation, she soon found her place. Through yoga, she connected with like-minded women, bringing them to both the mat and the ocean, combining her passions and sharing them with others in surf yoga retreats. The symbiosis of yoga and surfing is undeniable: awareness of breath, connection with body, grounding in your environment – these things are equally as present in both. This exquisitely enabled her to practice yoga and surf, of course, but also to give back, to help, support, even heal the women she shared these moments with. “The ocean has a way of absolutely letting all the other noise fade away,” she says. “You’re out there by yourself and nothing else matters; your job, your boyfriend, your children. It’s just you and the ocean.” In this place of surrender and peace, she found, and helped facilitate, incredible life-altering breakthroughs. Through laughter and tears, space and calm, and the natural energies of the sea, her guests rediscovered themselves, able – often for the first time in years – to quiet the world around them and discover their callings. Unbeknown to her, Mel was also in her own space of learning. A new chapter was about to begin – one one that, though vastly contrasting to those previous, would profoundly benefit from all she had learned of and for herself. Mel fell pregnant. Mila came into the world in 2017 and she returned to Australia for the birth and Mila’s first months. But two things remained clear to Mel; first, that she would, while raising her daughter to the very best of her abilities, refuse to allow motherhood to steal her life away, and second, that she would return to the island she now called home. Not to the island of Australia, but to Bali. “One of the biggest drawcards of living in Indonesia is a little bit of an addiction to the chaos, but also the simplicity and culture. One of the biggest gifts I would like to give my daughter is the opportunity to see the world from a different viewpoint. We live a pretty simple life and we get to spend a lot of time together – it’s simple, but it’s beautiful.” The contrast between the two locations is antithetical, Australia with its order, its convenience and cleanliness, Bali with its chaos, its trials and its place as a Third World society. But the beauty beneath the surface, in the lifestyle, the landscapes and the culture, sing to Mel, and she views the gratitude for simplicity in every aspect of life as one of the most illuminating educations she can provide her daughter. Of course, being able to afford a nanny, especially when the waves are up and the swell is on, is an engorged cherry on an already delicious cake. “I…

Discover More About Your African Adventure When you first begin contemplating your next African safari, especially if it is your first time, you would be forgiven for prescribing to numerous misnomers or misunderstandings. Even the term ‘safari’ can lead to misconceptions. Taken from the Swahili verb, kusafiri, to travel, it conjures images of endless voyaging, arduous hikes, rudimentary accommodation and remaining in one location long enough only to refresh and recuperate.  However, while some of our adventures do intentionally incorporate aspects of significant travel – be it by foot, horseback, four-wheel drive or air – the majority run on ‘Africa time’, allowing you the peace and relaxation you desire of your vacation. Here are our answers to six of our most commonly-asked questions, providing clarity and allowing you to better understand the opportunities available to you on your African safari: 1. A Tented Camp vs. a Safari Lodge Some believe that a safari is strictly a camping affair, but there are opportunities for luxurious permanent accommodation even in the most remote of locations. Tented or bush camps tend to offer far more intimacy. With minimal capacity, guest numbers are significantly limited, so if you are wishing to enjoy a more personalized experience, tented camps are likely your best option. I love encouraging couples or younger families to select a bush camp over lodges as they offer a more immersive, intimate vacation for parents and children alike. Interestingly, I have found that the sense of luxury is only expanded at a tented camp. With staff more present with each individual, your every need is catered to and those decadent creature comforts are provided, such as a freshly-drawn copper bath overlooking the plains or your favorite aperitif poured upon your return from a game drive. For me, one of the true beauties of a tented camp is in just how enveloped by nature you feel. With little but a sheet of fabric separating you from the expansive wilderness beyond*, the sights, sounds and even the smells of the bush are utterly immersive. In some regards, I feel that you have not fully experienced Africa without having spent at least a couple of nights under canvas. *don’t let this alarm you! Camps are carefully situated in safe locations and vigilant staff patrol the grounds throughout the night to ensure your safety at all times. Lodges are invariably less in price and are ideally suited to larger groups or the elderly, infirm or disabled. With modern amenities, established walkways, buildings and public areas, safari lodges can be far more appropriate for families of multiple generations to offer increased comfort and security to the more senior members of your group.  Often incorporating lounges, balconies, inside and outdoor dining and en suite amenities, if you are not quite ready or able to venture completely off-grid, safari lodges are an ideal compromise, placing you in the heart of Africa while accommodating a wider range of guests. Though there are many positives to a safari lodge, their increased capacity often means that you will be sharing the property with others, including facilities such as swimming pools, open dining areas and collaborative excursions, rather than enjoying a private game drive all of your own. Tented bush camps are frequently more of an investment, but I believe this more than pays for itself in the immersive depth of unforgettable experiences. 2. Tented Camp Facilities It is possible to enjoy a tented camp experience on a minimal budget, but doing so will feel very much like ‘camping’. If this is the experience for you, we can certainly help you find the ideal venue. However, many of the camps have little in common with the common conception of camping. There is no lowering to your knees to enter your tent, no sticks and stones jabbing into your back throughout the night and no having to dress yourself from a seated position under a low tent canopy! With exquisite décor, first-class service and amenities that, while adapted to the bush environment, leave little to be desired for all that you gain in a captivating African safari immersion. Guests sometimes feel a little intimidated by the prospect of a tented camp, imagining that they may be foregoing the comfort and luxury of a more established property. While this may be of valid concern for a small percentage of the bush camps we use, most are every bit as luxurious as their bricks-and-mortar counterparts, yet with the inimitable benefit of being utterly enveloped by the African wilderness. Staff, chefs, guides and drivers ensure that your every wish is catered to to exceptional standard, including drawing an indulgent bath at the end of a full-day game drive, serving your preferred pre-dinner aperitif or catering to any and all dietary requirements you may have. As with so much in life, you very much pay for what you get on an African safari, so indulging in a little extra will pay dividends in the comfort and enjoyment of your tented camp sojourn. 3. A Guide vs. a Driver At Rothschild Safaris we are adamant about working with only the best, top-quality guides in the industry. But what exactly is a guide, as opposed to a driver? On a fundamental level, a driver will collect you from the airport or your point of entry and deliver you to your accommodation. Camp and lodge drivers go beyond this, transporting you on excursions that may include seeing a wealth of wildlife in its natural habitat. However, this will likely adhere to a fixed route and itinerary and is far less likely to be a fruitful game drive, especially for more reclusive creatures, such as rhino and leopard. A guide, however, is the make or break of your African safari experience. Often highly trained in tracking, in regular contact with fellow guides and with an intimate knowledge of the daily habits of regional fauna, a guide will be able to lead you directly to the animals you wish to see and place you in the best position at the ideal time for that perfect photo opportunity. A driver is able to take you into the wilds of Africa; a guide will craft a bespoke African safari experience perfectly suited to your desires, the environment and the habits and whereabouts of the region’s inhabitants. By selecting only the most talented guides available, we ensure that your must-see list is all but guaranteed to be completed. 4. A Room is Just a Room The vast majority of your African safari will take place during the day, but that is not to suggest that your nocturnal vacation is inconsequential, even if you are fast asleep. An indulgent bed, good linen, quiet neighbors and, above all, a revitalizing night’s sleep can absolutely transform your vacation. A restless night can drastically deplete your enjoyment of the following day, so by selecting appropriate accommodations that will allow you to wake refreshed each day will increase your enjoyment of each and every day. This sentiment reaches beyond the four walls of your bedroom as well, as your fellow travelers and venue staff are also pivotal to your experience. At Rothschild Safaris we endeavor to find properties, facilities and yes, even fellow guests that will enhance your vacation, not hinder your enjoyment of it.  An African safari is simply spectacular, and likely to incorporate so many memories that will stay with you forever. By ensuring that or venue stays are as comfortable and enjoyable as possible, we will prevent those memories from being hindered, impaired or created through tired, sleep-deprived eyes. The time you spend at your accommodation, whether dining, relaxing, sleeping or mingling with other guests is every bit as integral to your vacation as the pride of lion stalking a herd of gazelle, the elephant mother protecting her adorable newborn or the lonely white rhino grazing stoically upon the plains. 5. The Value of a Travel Designer We are all different. What I may view as the most iconic, captivating African safari experience, you may consider secondary to another aspect of the continent’s diverse attractions.  When you invest in a vacation, you are invariably buying a package that someone else has created to be the stereotypical idea of an African safari and one that will appeal to the widest demographic possible. It may tick all the boxes, so to speak, but it is invariably little more than a diluted version of what is actually possible. Added to this, it is created, not for you, but for the anonymous majority, so will only ever be a universally-palatable interpretation of what you truly desire of your sojourn. By discussing these wishes with a Travel Designer, we won’t simply handcraft your dream African safari, we will exceed your expectations with our unparalleled knowledge of locations, venues, experiences and even the staff.  We know the best times of year to visit, the finest restaurants for your exact dietary wishes and not only the best hotel for you to visit, but the best room within that hotel to book just for you. You will receive our undivided guidance and attention, our resident local representative only ever a phone call away. When people ask us the value of a bespoke Travel Designer, we suggest that it is the difference between doing all the work yourself to achieve an average experience and barely lifting a finger to enjoy a fully-catered African safari that far exceeds expectation. 6. Crafting the Perfect Fit Not only are all of our guests different, from varied backgrounds and with equally differing wishes of their African safari experience, they are also all traveling for their own personal reasons. For some, it may be as simple as enjoying their annual vacation. Yet many of our guests choose to invest in such an exceptional escapade for personal reasons. Perhaps it is a family reunion across multiple generations or siblings; maybe it is a birthday; others join us for the pure romance of Africa, for honeymoons, anniversaries or renewals of vows. There are even those for whom an African safari is a lifelong dream, personal reward or rejuvenating catharsis. With such diversity, it is essential to provide an appropriate solution for every guest. Honeymooners are likely not wishing to share a venue with a horde of screaming children. Likewise, a newly-widowed photographer in his twilight years probably wouldn’t enjoy cohabiting with some loved-up newlyweds. Not only can your fellow guests either enhance or detract from your accommodation experience, they can also hinder your daily adventures. Children can be forgiven for their shorter attention spans and minimal resilience, but when you are hoping to spend from dawn until dusk tracking and photographing game, their presence will be significantly detrimental.  At Rothschild Safaris, we understand the requirements of our client dichotomy, uniting similar guests at accommodations that will best suit their circumstances and desires. The people you share your African safari with can ruin the entire experience, but with our acute attention to detail we find that many of our clients not only connect, they also become ongoing, even life-long friends beyond their African safari.  I hope these six points may provide a little insight and clarity into your next African safari, but we are always available to discuss your every wish in greater detail. Contact our Travel Designers today to begin crafting your once-in-a-lifetime. Article first published on Rothschild Safaris, Jun 12, 2021

When the shit hits the fan – or the virus hits the headlines, as today’s more relevant metaphor might be – it is our tendency to retreat to the security of home. Lost in the world, drifting foreign lands, we can feel the shift of the ground beneath our feet, every occurrence sending ripples through the soil that can reach us from the other side of the planet and threaten to bring us to our knees. Illness and loss, tragedy and catastrophe, they all have us diving for the shelter of our sanctuaries. So imagine, in these tempestuous times we now find ourselves, if those very sanctuaries are impermanent and that, when told to return home, you can only answer, ‘I don’t have one’. ‘Homeless’ is a funny term. Not funny, ha-ha; tragically, almost 50,000 Australians will find themselves on the streets this year with no place to call their home. No, there is nothing amusing about this shameful statistic. What is funny is that homelessness denotes a lack of bricks and mortar, of a permanent address, utility bills, a sticker on the back of your driver’s license and the burden of rent or mortgage. Free yourself of these oppressive weights and you become, by definition, homeless. But a home is so much more than this, or should I say, so much less. It’s true that a home should feel like a sanctuary, where you feel cocooned and loved, secure and at peace. ‘Home is where the heart is’, and for Marte Rovik and her family, their hearts are cradled in the cosy, bespoke interior of a reconditioned, impeccably-refurbished 1998 MAN bus named Lloyd. “We decided to buy a bus and make it into a home about two years ago,” Marte recalls of the family’s initial transition to nomadism. “We could fulfil our dreams of not being so stationary and to be moving around more, while at the same time not having a mortgage.” For just $40,000, Marte and husband Jed Harris bought Lloyd, gutted him and remodelled the interior, ready for life on the road, just as wanderers, campers and gap-year backpackers had done a million times before – but completely not. Bus life evokes connotations of travelling comfort, sure, but the relinquishing of domestic privileges. Winnebagos, RVs, campervans or converted buses – call them what you will, and pay a fortune for the biggest and the best, but you’ll always still kind of feel like you’re camping. Suggest that to Lloyd and he’ll rev aggressively before doing burn-outs in your petunias; Lloyd is not a means to comfort-camping – Lloyd is a fully-functioning, custom-crafted home for four, complete with wood burner, full kitchen, two bedrooms, office-living room, full-scale family fridge and even a bath for the kids. He just happens to also have wheels and an engine. [photo: @runningwld_mama] “We felt caught in the mundane trap of society,” Marte reflects. “Jed was working away so that we could afford to pay rent, and we began to think that we should buy a house, because that’s what you do, right?” With the banks in flux, their investment property, bought some years before, counted for nought. They had held onto their small house as a means of collateral, but rather than make them work themselves to the bone to afford their dream home, this abrupt slap in the face from the banks served as an awakening to the life they truly wanted. Around 15 years ago, a young Victorian bloke was wandering around the unfamiliar landscapes of Norway. Somewhere amongst the fjords and fiskeboller, he met an actress on the verge of a major career. Already successful, Marte turned her back on opportunity and moved with Jed to Australia and an English-speaking acting career. The pair moved frequently, relocating to different cities in part, at least, to explore Marte’s opportunities on stage and screen. But already the pair had a wanderlust. Loading into Jed’s faithful Toyota Troopy, they would spend months at a time between cities and rentals, living in the confined steel box on wheels, waking to new horizons, free to go wherever they pleased and not bound to any one location. “We lived in Broome for a while, Melbourne, Geelong, Manly, Sydney, then we went over to Perth and lived in Fremantle for a while. “I’d just come out of acting school in Norway and landed the role of my life. But I got really overwhelmed with it all and left to go to Australia in 2009. “After probably ten years in that industry, I was really ready for a change. I couldn’t figure out why I was doing it or what I was trying to prove, but I was really not enjoying myself. I finally landed my dream job at the Heath Ledger State Theatre in Perth, which for a performer – you’re on salary and have holiday pay – it’s absolutely ridiculous. “So when I landed a role like that and still wasn’t enjoying myself, I really needed to address what I was doing.” ‘Address’ – perhaps a Freudian slip. Now living in Margaret River, Jed worked FIFO, away from home for long stretches at a time in order to fund his growing family. But this was the antithesis of what he and Marte believed and cherished – that notion of working all hours you can to afford the house that you spend no time in. Jed had already missed a heartbreaking portion of those too-fleeting years of his first daughter, Ellida’s life. Now with their second child Embla fresh into the world, it was time for the paradigm shift that had been percolating within for so long. “We were stationary in Margaret River for about three years,” says Marte. “I think we just felt kind of caught in that mundane trap, you know, where you’re thinking to yourself, ‘it’s not supposed to be this way’. My family are all over in Norway, Jed had to work away and, by the time we had our second daughter it just didn’t feel right that he had to leave us to go to work to pay for rent – we weren’t even paying off our own house, even though Jed was making these huge sacrifices. “When electricity prices went up that same winter, we just started to feel screwed over by the system. We were constantly thinking about how we could make more money independently just so that Jed could be with us more, but then we landed on the decision that, if we have less, we would need less. We sold everything we owned, all our possessions, and moved into Lloyd.” Lloyd was a lifeline. Over 18 months, the pair spent all the time they could fixing up the bus. Bought from the owner of a fleet of buses, for whom Lloyd is named, the decommissioned vehicle remained at the yard where he had served for many years. Lloyd – the owner, not the bus – kindly allowed Marte and Jed to keep their new home on his property until the build was complete. There are numerous aspects of insanity in this story, at least when viewed with the indoctrinated eyes of conventional society. They were relinquishing their security, they were moving into a bus with two children under the age of four, they were throwing their compass out the window, blindly driving towards a never-ending horizon with no notion of what lay before them, and they were doing so, almost literally, on the smell of an oily rag. Lloyd was a $10,000 investment. With all their possessions sold, they had another $30,000 to spend on the fit-out and furnishing. With most similar projects costing little under five times that amount, one could assume that their aspirations were a little too high. Toddlers are, through no fault of their own, high maintenance. Parenting of one child is a full-time job, without adding in a newborn. And when you’re adults, you can’t just wander the country aimlessly…can you? “Jed has been a carpenter for many, many years, so that part was fine. But building a bus is very different and we went through a massive learning curve. Embla was a newborn, so I helped where I could, but my hands were pretty full with our two girls. “We wanted to be completely off-grid, so we would require solar, but solar is incredibly confusing and there are so many different ways of doing it. It was very intimidating trying to work out how we could use it like a domestic system to run everything off. People just laughed at us! They told us we’d never be able to do it, but we did; we just had to think outside the box.” The notion of life permanently on the road remained. Why would they forgo their creature comforts? To Marte and Jed, this – just like every other aspect of their unique metaphoric and literal journey – was irrelevant. Passionate about sustainability, living an off-grid lifestyle and minimising the cost of living in all its unnecessary aspects, this wasn’t about downgrading, affordability or even living to their means. This was about defying the system, about redefining their lives. This wasn’t a change – this was an escape. Marte was now a businesswoman. Studying infant sleep psychology, her online baby sleep consultancy business could be run from anywhere. She offers gentle, holistic solutions to families whose children struggle with eating, sleep and thriving healthily, advising them on methods to better manage their children’s characteristics and achieve a healthier balance and stable routine. Almost ironic for someone whose routine could be viewed as anything but stable. But stability in life, just like the stability of a home, is purely conceptual. The family now spends all their time together, Jed has taken on the role of full-time dad, their free-flowing lifestyle affords them the opportunity to go where they please, change horizons on a whim, make their day, make their entire world, revolve around them, rather than the other way round. Surely that is not less, but more stable than working your balls off just to adhere to socialist dogma? With vastly reduced overheads, Jed doesn’t need to work and Marte isn’t under any pressure to advance or apply herself to a gruelling career path just to make ends meet. They could be onto something here. Lloyd was never going to be a camping vehicle. He was a home from the get-go. “Is bus life for everyone?” reflects Marte. “Well, we have a lot of creature comforts. We have a full-sized fridge, a fully-furnished kitchen where we cook completely normally, we have separate bedrooms, our kids have bunk beds and a play space, we have a couch, a living room – we set it up so that it would work for us in the long run. You could go down the path where you live in a little bus with all your kids and have bucket baths outside, or you could do what we did and build a tiny home on wheels.” Setting off on their travels a year ago to this day, the family could go where they pleased, staying at free campsites on the west coast or paying nominal camping fees on the east and in Tasmania. Sometimes, if they found somewhere particularly appealing, they would post signs on notice boards asking locals if they might contribute a small piece of land for a little rent to a lovely and inspiring family. Tassie, in particular, was very welcoming, but when COVID hit, the game changed. Lockdowns swept the nation and campsites promptly closed. Some fellow bus dwellers invited Marte and her family to join them on some friend’s land to wait things out, but this was a less-than-ideal scenario from the outset. “We met a couple of families very similar to us in Tasmania who were also essential travellers [those who reside permanently on the road]. When they began closing campgrounds we didn’t know what to do. They told us to…

We all have a calling. Not some profound pilgrimage through distant landscapes or spending four years flat on your back and inducing RSI through devotedly muralling an Italian chapel ceiling. A calling can be anything. For some, it is as simple as creating a family, devoting themselves to the hood, be that mother or father. Some are swayed by the siren song of power, finding their niche, their passion and their gift in the austere halls of financial institutions. I once knew a girl whose deepest joy and lifelong mission were to be a tax agent for fuck’s sake – and she was bloody good at it. A calling can be a gift, but it can also simply be the thing that resonates with us and feels like home, the task that spawns contentment, that career or action or purpose that embodies what the French call votre raison d’être – your reason to be. Angus McDonald knew for a fact that economics wasn’t his calling. The homuncular timbre of inner reason was drowned out by the sensibilities of a stable career path, good income and parental persuasion. Though always supportive, Angus’ parents, particularly his father, were more inclined to encourage him towards the white-collar world. And so he studied hard, tossed his mortarboard and ventured forth from uni a graduate in economics. “I felt like I wanted to go to art school straight out of high school,” Angus recalls of his earliest forays into the big, wide world of adulthood. “I knew I’d eventually get into the creative realm, but none of my peers really were creatives, so I didn’t really get a lot of support [as an artist].” Though a passionate and adept artist from a young age, with a natural aptitude for illustrative creativity, he was unsure of which area of the art realm he wished to explore. Like a highway sign that alludes simply to ‘All Other Destinations’, the calling can be infuriatingly nonspecific. “I buckled,” says Angus. “My dad was from a conventional business background, so I kind of just went along with it.” The challenge we all face is to first hear the whispering voice within and then to act upon it. What it lacks in volume, it more than makes up in persistence and, like the falsetto drone of a mosquito at midnight, Angus’ passion for art nagged tenaciously at him until, at the age of 32, he returned to school. Established in 1890, the Julian Ashton Art School is like the Steiner of art education, built on an unconventional yet supremely creative premise, best surmised by former principal, Henry Cornwallis Gibbons: “Ashton used to say to me, Teach them to see, Gibbons, to see the beauty of the form, the tone and the colour of the world around them and represent it on paper and canvas. Individuality is to be fostered at all times, in the knowledge that technique is the vehicle of the creative spirit.” Though he was self-trained and as yet unaware of his preferred area of expertise, Angus was drawn to the libertarian philosophy of the atelier-style Ashton School. “After I got there, and for the first time in my life, I felt that I was in the right place. I took the leap, basically, and it was a good leap!” Despite painting and drawing from youth, Angus had had no mentor, no one to nurture or guide him, or means and benchmark to define himself as an artist. The Ashton School, to which he gained a scholarship in his final year, allowed him that unique combination of defined education and freedom to grow. For three years, Angus poured himself into his artistic discovery, studying the masters, investigating the movements and finding his persona in paint. The clarity and determination of this older-than-average student coalesced into a defined style, a synergy of Renaissance composition and the honouring of the subject and space with modern hyperrealism, gathering droplets of Magritte, the surrealists, and iconic still life artist Georgio Morandi, along the way. Despite having a library of books and a faculty of artists at his fingertips, it was not the visual creator who helped him find his style, but one of the literary world: “One of the authors I read a lot in that first year was [Ernest] Hemingway,” Angus recollects. “I think he was the key for me in unlocking my painting style. Not his subject matter, of course, or his personal characteristics – he was probably pretty objectionable! One of the things I found in Hemingway was that he had a very economical style of writing. He had this incredible innate ability to paint very emotive literary pictures with very economic use of language. “I took that as a cue to become that sort of painter. I decided I would use that similar approach in my work – trying to think about ideas of utility and effort and energy in trying to tell the story of the painting; only concentrating on the areas I needed to, trying to be understated, not trying to be flashy and just letting the picture speak for itself.” Emerging from education and emersed in his art, Angus undertook his own Grand Tour – the 18th-century rite of passage of budding artists and aristocrats through Europe – and, with paint and canvas, left Australia for the small Greek island of Leros. Inspired by his brother, this six-year sporadic summer sojourn was the immersion Angus required to shutter his distractions and define himself as an artist, and cheap enough to sustain himself for extended periods. The small fishing village in which he rented his humble, rustic studio apartment may have quickly lost its appeal to a landscape artist, but Angus concerned himself with the minutiae, finding random artefacts and nuanced nooks more than rich enough to nourish him. “It was such an amazing first summer that I had there, painting and living in this tiny fishermen’s village of only 900 people,” he smiles nostalgically. “I just kept going back. I absolutely fell in love with Greece. It was off the grid, my dilapidated studio was $20 a month, and when the fishermen would roll in after their day on the sea, they’d come up and check out my paintings and sit around and argue over my subjects and compositions! “Quite a lot of the older fishermen in the village had hardly ever been to school, but they were still very interested in aesthetics and beauty. I really liked how they would critique my work but there was never any pretension. “It was such a fantastic period for me to be able to stay out of that more pretentious dimension of the art world and just concentrate on my art.” This sensory deprivation of sorts allowed him to evolve of his own accord, not swayed by peers, mentors or the imposing weight of the hundreds of years of art history influencing his style. This priceless artistic adolescence soon took a radical shift in the most abundant way imaginable in 2000, a Mediterranean migration catapulting Angus from the inspirationally-rich yet artistically bereft Leros to the foundation of Renaissance art, Florence, Italy. 16th-century Florence suffered a widespread spate of talented wayward graffiti artists, all jostling for position to add their own frescos to the dusty facades of the already ancient city. Brunelleschi, Botticelli, Giotto, Dante and, of course, Florentine heavyweights, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo – all left their authoritative impressions upon the city. Today, you can barely take a leak without dribbling over some 500-year-old masterpiece. So prolific was the creativity of the Renaissance period that Florence still bows under its consequence. “It’s got a lot of history – it was the centre of the Renaissance – and when you walk around Florence, you feel like you’re wading through art history. You go into some little church in a tiny side street and there are all these incredible artworks, and there’s no one there. If you brought just one of those paintings to the Gallery of New South Wales, there would be a line around the corner to go and see it. “The other side of that is that it was such an important period in history and the shadow that it cast was so big that I don’t feel the city can escape from it either.” Spending his days advancing his own work and studying the great masters, Angus was able to literally walk down the street and see these paragons of art in the flesh. Angus’ initiation was complete. Though, by his own admittance, an artist never stops learning and developing, he had affirmed his place in the art world and established himself as a career artist. Returning to Australia in 2001, Angus already had six years of exhibitions under his belt and continued to embed himself over the coming five years in the artistic society. Numerous exhibitions followed, primarily in Brisbane and Sydney, commissions came and went and his reputation grew further until, in 2006, an offer came from left-of-centre that Angus simply couldn’t refuse. Sir Douglas Mawson was an early 20th-century Australian explorer responsible for much of the fundamental exploration and research of Antarctica. Establishing Australia’s integral part of the frozen continent, Mawson duct-taped his name into the annals of history. He and his team built timber huts to protect them from the bitter climate and from which to undertake their research. The Mawson Huts Foundation seeks to restore and preserve these fragile timber dwellings as living testament to Mawson and the hardy men who first ventured out into the white wilderness. The Foundation approached Angus in 2005 to join their next journey to the Australian Antarctic Territory as expedition artist, echoing the early explorers who documented their explorations far more in paint and pencil than on film. “In order to gain sponsorship and raise some funds, they invited me to go down to do some painting and photography in order to hold an exhibition when I got back. “When they sent me down there, I think they were interested in me really focussing on work I could do around the huts themselves, which are slowly being renovated. I found that really difficult because when you go to Antarctica, there’s only one thing you really notice, and that’s the landscape. “It’s the most amazing place I’ve ever been and very hard to describe the feeling of being there. The landscape, the nature, is so dynamic, so powerful, that you feel completely insignificant. The conditions, obviously, are really harsh as well, which only adds to that sense of dislocation from everything you know. It was a deeply affecting and very beautiful experience for me and gave me a new appreciation for the environment, just how small we really are, and how futile it is that we think we can control our environment. “It’s a particular breed of person that goes down there to work on these huts. The guys I went down with asked me why I was there. I told them I was the expedition artist. ‘What’s that?’ they said, and I explained how I was going to document the trip. ‘Okay – you can cook’ was their response!” The exhibition, which was taken to London, was a resounding success, bringing attention to the history of Antarctica and the need to preserve the unique history of this remote outpost of humanity. Shortly after his return from a second Antarctica trip in 2008, Angus submitted work, and was shortlisted for the Archibald Prize, arguably the most prestigious of Australia’s artistic awards. The portraiture competition was a curious decision for a somewhat vehement still life artist, but this would be the first of his finalist positions over the next decade. “The Archibald is a bit of a funny thing. A lot of people talk about how it is such an important prize to get into for your career, or if you win it, it can take your career to another level, but to be honest, I’m…

If there is one thing that challenges us in today’s bustling, frenetic, over-exposed society, it is our sense of purpose. The age-old question of “why am I here” has confounded and perplexed us since cognitive sentient thought began. It is that notion of belonging, of direction and reason that whispers when we wake and grows in a screaming crescendo as we shutter our eyes at the end of each day. We have searched for it in religion, given reason to it in relationships, justified it in procreation and, most detrimentally of all, looked to superficial, egocentric possessions and careers for a means of remunerating our lives. Yet still we ask the same questions, feel the same emptiness and strive for relinquishment from a hollow existence. Darwinian notions of evolution and the quest beyond self-preservation may well still apply to every other bound collection of living cells upon the planet, but for we humans, and we alone, passing on our DNA has become an optional objective. No longer are we committed to contributing our single drop to the ever-expanding gene pool as it bursts its banks and engulfs our planet. If, like the praying mantis, we were to risk our very existence to handball our cellular codes to the next generation, we’d be celibate for life. If we had to shed blood and battle the biggest of adversaries just for a quickie, most men would opt out and many women would be utterly turned off by the senseless, testosterone-fuelled bravado of it all. So is family truly a purpose of life? To suggest so would imply that those electing for a life without children or worse, those who crave offspring but are unable to conceive, have an entirely inconsequential and meaningless existence. And considering the likes of the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa, and many more inspirational humans who have changed the world without siring or birthing a child, or indeed, many who have expanded their bloodline but committed many evils, procreation does not equal justification. Perhaps religion does have the answers. For Buddhists, our life journey is one towards enlightenment; perhaps not in this lifetime, but by abiding by certain doctrines, meditating, reciting innumerable repetitions of mantras and prostrating ourselves from Dharamsala to Lhasa, we could learn humility, compassion and equanimity. Is this ‘reason’ to live? Perhaps, but then what of Christians, living by the creed, going to church and eating of body and blood – do they then become worthless in life? Or extremists, so convicted in their devotion to god and purpose that they would gladly flick the switch on a waistcoat of C4 for cause and purpose and 72 heavenly nubiles. Surely one of the great religions has it right…but what if they all have it wrong? Therefore status must, in this miasma of reason, be our purpose. Through sweat and toil, we can climb the corporate ladder, we can grow our wealth, engorge our bank accounts, and achieve such greatness of vindication. Yet the savagely truthful adage of the man spending all day driving in a fancy car to work all hours in a job he hates to afford the house and trappings he spends such little time enjoying begs to differ. What purpose is it to pursue the ephemeral? We become dissatisfied with objects, we choose to leave behind the homes we work so hard to attain, there is always a bigger, newer, shinier trinket to be envious or desirous of, and deep down we know, beyond the shiny exteriors, desirable labels and increasingly weighty price tags, that true happiness does not lie inside matte white boxes embossed with half-eaten silver fruit. It’s little wonder that one of the greatest diseases of our species is just that: dis-ease. Depression runs rampant, stress outscores the most virulent of viruses, anxiety grows like the walls of Babel, threatening to collapse and inter us at any moment. But without purpose, what choice do we have? What chance at affirmation of our existence remains? Purpose is given the grandiose gravity of a lifelong burden. It comes as little wonder that it feels such an insurmountable summit, placing even greater pressure upon us to fulfil it in any way we can find, and we search for rationale in religion, foundation in family and therapy in things. But we’re looking in the wrong places, and even more absurdly, in completely the wrong direction. Before I expound on the virtues of outward purpose, it must be said that the power of faith – true, deep and unindoctrinated faith – is profoundly beautiful and, at times, quite literally lifesaving. So too can family bring such purpose to our lives that we feel they are our reason; bringing them into the world, nurturing them through every first step, scuffed knee and broken heart to make them good and whole and safe. But again, this is like looking in a mirror and thinking it’s a window. Some people believe that salvation lies in God…but they left a letter out. Our reason, our justification, and the sanctuary of our sanity is not in God, but in Good. Religions are a wonderful invention but, though it might print, sign and stamp my one-way ticket to whichever destination of damnation you happen to believe, they are just that: an invention. They are a construct to control the people, or at least, at tool to control the voices inside our heads. Yet they almost all hold the same fundamental values that – beyond any belief or book – summarise our purpose, and Christianity said it best: love thy neighbour – just don’t love them beyond first base. This single phrase sums up one of the most profoundly purposeful, simple, justifying and healing reasons we have for our continued breath. But it falls short in its explanation. Our ‘neighbour’ is not only the person next door, or in the same city, or on the receiving end of your kindly donation. It isn’t even limited to a person at all. Our neighbour may be a tree, a dog, a tumbling stream or crashing tide. Our planet is a single, interdependent organism, the whole of which we are part, so our neighbour is every aspect of that vast organism outside of ourselves. To love, to give, to do good allows us to thrive. It gives us that reason without misinterpretation or conjecture. We are encouraged so much in these days of reconnection to give to ourselves and indeed, to once more reference religion, compassion towards ourselves first and foremost is paramount. For if we are disempowered, what have we left to give? Yet in the act of giving, pouring our energy forth rather than hoarding it all within, we find an emotional panacea. Giving can often be viewed as completely the opposite. We are predisposed in today’s society to be ubiquitously focussed inward, given to a life of what we want, what we need and what makes us thrive, so it can seem that to place others before ourselves, or even alongside, is to undermine our own contentedness. Yet in the act of giving, we send out ripples of positivity, cleansing waves in which we may then bathe. As astrally spiritual as this may sound, it is wonderfully simple and exquisitely tangible. Take the simple act of smiling. No matter what tempests of emotion may be swirling within us, we are so familiar with the concept of smiling that it is easy to tense our cheeks, curl our lips and convey a fairly convincing visage of happiness or kindness to all but those who know us the most. You need not smile emotionally or feel that positivity of emotion within, but if you smile with sincerity, those around you will smile with you, and their happiness is contagious, rapidly infecting and affecting us with that same emotion that we have projected and influenced. Give, and you shall receive. In some of my darkest moments, when despair has enshrouded me like a moonless night, when I have walked barefoot through the ruins of what my life has become, at least what I have perceived it to have become, solitude, meditation, yoga and surfing have been band aids at best, a Panadol for an unsalvageably broken soul. But to give – to give has ignited the tiniest of sparks that beckon the return to light. Doing good for the world wipes hopelessness from the heart, it gives you reason, and continuing to give fuels an unquenchable positivity. When struggling, especially through grief, depression or the many issues that deprive us of joy, we must return to the nature of compassion; that it is compassion towards self that must come first. So we begin with gentle gifts; a flower picked for a loved one, affection reciprocated for an adoring pet, something so nondescript as picking up a piece of garbage and taking it to the nearest bin. Even these slight, almost meaningless things breathe new life into the fading embers of our happiness. Fortunate to have lived on many of the world’s beautiful coasts, my primary therapy is to grab a bottle of water, a handful of trash bags and a phone full of good music and retreat to the shore. An hour scouring a beach for trash has given me greater healing than the many hours of psychology I have attempted. I am good, I have made a difference and, though I may not see a single other soul on my sandy-footed, sun-kissed, salty-faced wandering, I know that my simple act may have saved a hundred lives – lives of fish and birds and mammals. The effects of these therapy sessions I may never see, but even in the realms of the hypothetical, I know that my actions have done good. And it makes me happy. On several occasions, I have taken to stockpiling painkillers, with the most negative of intents. At one of these times, in the fourth or fifth shop I had entered that day for the sole-same purchase of purpose, I saw an middle-aged lady struggling, arms laden with groceries, at any moment poised to drop and bruise her apples, smash her jar of jam or otherwise unintentionally offload her unruly cargo. What possessed me, how the thought glimmered through the thick storm clouds whirling within me, I do not know, but I dashed three aisles down and returned to her with a basket. A simple gesture, for which she was so grateful, but the greatest gratitude was mine. Because unknown to her, on that day, with an act that I, not she, had proffered, on a day she will never remember and I will never forget, she saved my life…literally. We don’t need to devote our lives to charity or become entirely and selflessly altruistic. We simply need to alter our gaze to the exterior, beyond the cage of our own ego and into the world. The tiniest thought or gesture for a life other than your own, be it man or beast or plant or planet, can be supremely uplifting. We can gain so much from giving, we just misunderstand the concept of receiving, thinking of it as a one-way transaction. Giving won’t cure cancer. It won’t bring back a loved one or pay your overdue rent. There is so much in this world that giving can’t fix, but also so much that it can, especially within ourselves. By giving, by doing good in any small way we can imagine, we begin to cocoon ourselves in positivity. We flood our surroundings with endorphins and good vibes, and pretty soon, we’re saturated in them. That warm glow of satisfaction grows inside, filling us with its gratifying glow. In fact, giving with true intention can actually be incredibly self-serving! And when it becomes familiar enough, you will thirst for it, become greedy for that glow and find more and more ways to give each day in tiny ways that won’t impede your own life at all. Rather, they will make it all…

I’ve long recognised the issues with our plastic addiction. I have cleaned up enough beaches, recycled enough trash, opted paper over plastic enough times to have it firmly set in my mind that our obsession with plastic must end. We are fixated with it, blind to it, superfluously consuming it in our everyday lives without so much as a cursory thought. We lament at horrific images of sea life suffering suffocation, starvation and distress caused by our carelessly discarded waste, yet we don’t connect this with the next bag of chips or drinking straw or bread clip we cast into the trash. We might not litter directly, but in accepting plastic, we are indirectly prolonging the industry, and we can never be one hundred per cent certain where our waste will end up. Ours could be the garbage bin that gets knocked over, the bit of trash that falls from the truck or the plastic bag that gets caught in a puff of wind, cast adrift from the surface of the landfill, dancing as if with a life of its own on the eddies and currents of the breeze to end…who knows where? I have recognised these facts – and my own shortcomings in them – for many years, trying to do the right thing, but always in the familiar, Western, lacklustre mentality of ‘out of sight, out of mind’. Doing the best I can, but never really the best I can. So the chance to undertake a plastic-free month in a motivated, orchestrated and prescribed manner was my excuse to prove to myself that I actually could be as good as I always wished I could. And so I signed up to Plastic-Free July – t-shirt bought, bumper sticker applied. I was in it for the long haul. But, as with so much in this life, what sounds easy often ain’t what we think it is. And so I began, the perfect start. My usual morning smoothie, made with freshly homemade oat milk and bulk-bought muesli stored in a glass jar. The eco-hero had arrived. Bring it on, I thought, this will be a breeze. Plastic-free month? Shit, make it a year, make it forever. I’ve got this thing whipped. Brushing my teeth, I noticed the tube is a little on the emaciated side, its guts having been squeezed out a little too numerously. Those remaining dregs that secrete themselves along the edges, snug against the heat-sealed end and unsqueezably in the firm neck of the tube can be made to last a while, but a whole month…maybe not. I had had a homemade toothpaste recipe sitting on my computer desktop, stowed in the ‘Good Intentions’ folder, for quite some time and decided to give the simple, three-ingredient recipe a try. Coconut oil I had and bicarb soda was available from my local bulk store and handily proffered in paper. But peppermint oil would take a little searching out. Luckily, I live in a region of open minds, health food stores and even pharmacies with an all-natural section, so it wasn’t too hard to find. The twenty-dollar price tag set me palpitating a little, but this was for the planet, and at just seven drops a time, the little bottle would have me fresh-breathed until the next decade, so I dug deep and forked out. At home a smugly gathered my ingredients, ready for a hefty pat on the back at my first plastic-free DIY project. I poured the bicarb over the two tablespoons of coconut oil, opened the little cardboard box of the peppermint oil…and was confronted with a gleaming, white plastic lid on the tiny glass bottle. It was but ten and a half hours into day one. I’d been asleep for over half of that time, but somehow, with all my hope and planning and research, I had already screwed up. Maybe not such a breeze after all – I was going to have to pay attention and think my purchases through a little deeper. I went back to the bulk food store for lunch. My usual wraps and crackers and rice cakes were all wrapped in plastic and I had brazenly refused to stock up before time; “that would defeat the purpose”, I had proclaimed. With twenty paper bags cradled in my arms, I returned home, acutely aware that the petrol I was burning in my car is essentially unrefined, liquid plastic but conveniently choosing to ignore the fact. Lunch done, I made my habitual tea as I settled down to my afternoon’s work. The kettle is plastic, but I’d bought it a long time ago so, despite thinking about boiling the water in a metal pan, I let it slide. I reached for the box of tea…and noticed its plastic wrapper ‘to seal in freshness’. Man, was there no end to this plastic deluge? And so it went on. I waved farewell to the bulk store cashier for the third time that first day, with rice, quinoa, cous cous and other sundries that had just occurred to me I would need for plastic-free evening meals, and headed home once more to reassess my approach to the next thirty days. My partner and I have always sought out farmers’ markets wherever we have lain our hats and called home. Thailand, Bali and up and down the East Coast of Australia, we have sniffed them out like pigs on truffles. So produce, I thought, wouldn’t be a problem. I could stock up on the Saturday and it would last me through much of the week. I had my jute shopping bags in hand, and even my reusable coffee cup for my 7am liquid kick start, but as I walked up and down the aisles of fresh, organic and spray-free produce, I was amazed at the wealth of single-use plastic in use. Every other person held a take-away coffee, every segmented pumpkin was cling wrapped, every stall offered plastic bags with its cherry tomatoes or carrots or spuds. The markets are great, and everyone there is certainly more conscious than the average punter – in fact, in fairness, many of the plastic bags on offer were biodegradable – but when even the local farmers’ market is swathed in a shimmering sheen of fossil fuel by-product, you’ve got to wonder what’s happening and where it’s all going to end. That afternoon, I had to head to Brisbane. Again more conscious of the fuel I was burning, I added to my list of self-criticism the plastic dashboard, the plastic seat fabric, the plastic that colourfully wrapped the nub of my ignition key. The gross excess began to truly dawn on me. Even when plastic is completely unnecessary, we are using it anyway, without the slightest single thought of the repercussions. I had just moved into a new house and, sparse of furnishings, the obligatory trip to IKEA was in order. I had pre-planned my spree, selecting all-timber products and even going so far, in my ecological rampage, as to insure that the timber was sustainably forested. As I wheeled my ethically selected, recycled cardboard-wrapped goods to my car I congratulated myself at having navigated the labyrinthine plastic mine field of high consumerism and come out petroleum-free. I got home, peeled open the first box…and was confronted with – yup, I don’t even need to tell you, do I? The tools and screws were in a zip-lock plastic pack, sheets of spongy plastic formed protective layers between each timber jigsaw piece of my new furniture. It was comparably minimal, but I had yet again failed on my plastic-free mission. My partner arrived home and looked at me forlornly. She had been shopping, a twenty-minute round trip, and I wondered what in that time could have been a source of such sorrow. Stutteringly choking back tears, she looked at me, forehead furrowed, blue eyes glistening with emotion: “we can’t buy hummus”, she said. Dear God, was there no end to this inhumanity? It took just 48 hours for us to realise that, from the lids on our soy milk cartons, to our quarter-pumpkins, from our organic, palm oil free, Australian-made corn chips to our caffeine-free herbal tea, in fact, however hippy we tried our best to be, unless we were making everything ourselves, sourcing every ingredient in bulk, wrestling ourselves free of the clutches of commerce and going completely off-grid, we were almost inevitably going to be forced to use plastic in some form. We haven’t given up on Plastic-Free July and continue to struggle on regardless. We are on day 11 now, our cupboard filled with reused jam jars and a thousand brown paper bags filled with the rewards of our having funded our bulk store owner’s shining new Ferrari. We have bee’s wax food wraps, we have loose-leaf tea, we haven’t had corn chips or hummus or tofu in so long that we are starting to Google search images of them just to drool and fantasise over, but we now understand. The western world as it stands, in the model we are currently living, simply cannot be plastic free. We are slaves to it, junkies for it, our world is dependent upon it and, without breaking the mould, it is almost impossible to live a completely plastic-free life. But it is the excess that we must and can very easily address. Plastic-Free July has shown me that, even though I thought myself to be a conscious consumer, there was still so much plastic pouring into my life that was unnecessary. Leading into the month, my partner and I were open-minded. We knew some things would prove expensive to replace or replicate without involving plastic, but we wanted to test out what we could manage and what would be financially sustainable. We knew that we probably weren’t going to be able to maintain a completely plastic-free existence, though didn’t realise how hard even our humble efforts would be. Plastic-Free July, indeed, living a plastic-free lifestyle, comes down to dispensing with the superfluous, in taking small, manageable, inexpensive steps to use less plastic and, with a little bit of forward planning, it becomes second nature and incredibly easy to halve your usage. The obvious things – the coffee cups, water bottles, drinking straws and so on – go without saying, but reaching for a paper mushroom bag at the supermarket for your green beans, opting for a fruit snack over a muesli bar, buying your pumpkins whole… All of these little things we fail to see until they are forced upon us. It’s fair to say I failed Plastic-Free July, even within the first week, day or few hours. I feel like that fat kid tucking into a Mars bar one hour into a 40-hour sponsored famine, hanging my head in abject shame at my blatant ineptitude. But if the purpose of the month is to learn a lesson, then I have brought the shiny green apple for the teacher’s desk, I have taken notes, done the homework and passed the exam with flying colours, lesson learned. In this shrink-wrapped, hermetically-sealed consumerist culture that we live, we are sabotaged at every stage into using plastic. We cannot be without it, cannot avoid it, cannot evade it, but we can make a stand and drastically reduce it. We can shift the goal posts and speak out, the voice of reason in this plastic insanity, and only use that for which there is no other choice. We must open our eyes to the excess, we must reduce, reuse and recycle and we must learn that the plastic we use today will far outlive us and do untold damage in our wakes. Use it, just use it wisely. Visit: www.take3.org.au for more information on how you can help, the effects of plastic waste and ho you can go plastic-free.  

Custom bikes invariably have a story; previous owners, previous homes and previous lives that are rarely known, often untold, but ingrained indelibly in their personality. Deus ex Machina breathes life into old steel (many are new), whether it’s boring out the engine, handcrafting a custom alloy tank or even as simple as a fresh lick of paint. But the journey of the Bali Dog not only encompasses all of that, it also goes far beyond. In 2008, looking for a hobby to take his mind off of the high-pressure life of a fashion photographer, the soon-to-be director of Deus Indonesia Dustin Humphrey began tinkering in his garage. His passion for vehicles of the two-wheeled variety soon intoxicated his friends and, coming to him with a stock-built, plastic-dressed Yamaha Scorpio, his friend Steve Titus asked Dustin for a makeover worthy of a California princess. Coincidentally, around this time, Dustin joined forces with Dare Jennings and Carby Tuckwell and launched the Deus Temple of Enthusiasm in Canggu, Bali. What started as a personal project became the first bike to emerge from the bengkel of Deus Bali – and the Bali Dog was born. Based on the Deus Australia Drover’s Dog model, it stripped off the gaudy plastic and standard components replaced it with bespoke fenders, custom fittings and a bunch more class. The daily commuter became a sleek, custom bike built for the diverse Indonesian terrain and the mongrel roared to life. But, as with so many of Deus’ reinventions, this wasn’t the end of the Bali Dog’s story. Since those early days of Frankenstein creations, the Dog has been reimagined more times than can be counted, repurposed for long road trips across the archipelago, remodelled for off-road terrain and ridden in a hundred locations across the Indonesian island chain. Seats have been swapped out, bars have been replaced, tanks have been hand-built and redesigned and in each guise it has become unrecognisable from the beast it was before. But the heart of the Dog beats on. Though its disguise may have changed, it is one of the most publicised, documented and photographed creations of the international Deus stable. Short films, road trips, getting grubby on enduro or sliding a berm at the track have placed the throttle in the hands of myriad riders, each taming the Dog in their own ways, bringing their skills and styles to a bike that is anything but predictable. From Lombok to Java, the Bali Dog has marked its territory, lines in the dirt, not trickles on lamp posts, tracing its tale from north to south and featuring in the Deus cinematic library. When the fresh tyres roll from the grimy floor of the bengkel and feel tarmac beneath their treads, so a new chapter begins, a dog with nine lives and more. In its latest incarnation, the Bali Dog has adapted once more. Featured in the upcoming Deus film, Dust, the bike has been given yet another overhaul, allowing it to venture into new realms, as an off-roader for enduro and mountain trails, yet retaining road bike functionality for long days in the saddle. The Deus Temple bengkel taught the old dog new tricks, kitting it out with Duro nobbies, off-market plastic fender for durability, 21-by-1.6 rims, Suzuki TS bars and a vintage lamp and one-off seat and tank purpose built to complete the sleek and sexy, matt-black fit out. With Forrest Minchinton straddling the two-stroke, the horizons opened once more for this faithful hound, to the black-sand slopes of Batur, the diverse terrain of Lombok and innumerable spontaneous trips to Bali’s endless beaches. Faithful to its new temporary master, the Bali Dog was given another new lease on life, exploring virgin territories and tracing the words of a whole new story. The Bali Dog remains the property of its original owner, the sole stipulation for its continued use that it is ready with a purring motor and a full tank of gas whenever it returns to his hands. Until then, the Bali Dog will continue to evolve, different purposes, different riders and different adventures to pursue, but always with a canine heart. Photos: Keli Bow & Ram Matteo – This article first appeared on Deus ex Machina on May 11, 2016

Harry ‘the Hat’ Holiday is no stranger to Bali and the Deus Temple of Enthusiasm, a regular visiting place for this global gypsy. Harry’s stylised surf art, with its ethereal qualities and surf-saturated influences, is embraced all over the world, wherever his passport takes him, his beaten up travel suitcase unlatches and a rainbow of vibrant prints spills forth. Surf festivals, community markets or a dusty sidewalk where his footsteps often find him, his is an unpretentious artistic persona, not bound by the formal constrictions of gallery walls or high class gatherings. Harry grew up in San Diego, the abundant surf community and his artist mother’s influences imprinting themselves upon him indelibly. His passions orbited the golden sand, in and out of the water; the surfing, the people and the lifestyle his influences. Early doodlings on the kitchen table revealed a natural talent, “the first thing I was good at”, he humbly states. Growing up, art was his escapism, as was his surfing, and the two infused, creating an unmistakable style at a time when surf art was little heard of. He met Andy Davis, now himself known internationally as an aquatic artist, when Andy launched his surf company, Free. The pair developed a symbiotic relationship, Andy creating a line of surf apparel and Harry providing the artwork emblazoned across it. But when Free’s viability began to wane and the dollars dried up, Andy – who had already been experimenting with his own artwork – asked Harry for lessons, and Andy’s future as a surf artist was born. But that’s another story for a different time… Harry went his own way, meeting modern surfing’s first family, the Malloy Brothers, and exhibiting at their Moonshine Festivalsand Happenings. Commissions flowed in, and Harry’s work was soon seen on event posters from Portugal’s Grinding Barnaclesto Quiksilver’s Roxy Jam. Over the next few years, Harry’s passport took a beating, just like the suitcase stuffed with prints that travelled with him wherever the next plane ticket took him; across America, Europe, Asia and Australia. Diversifying his repertoire, he took on a new moniker, that of Harry the Hat, breaking away from the now increasingly commercial genre of surf art and into children’s books and images, inspired by the surrealism of Dr. Seuss – art for art’s sake, not as a commercial exercise. But his simplistic line drawings with their dreamlike washes of watercolour never lost their appeal, and his renown as a surf artist first and foremost remained. Exhibitions came and went, his recognition endured, and to this day, the majority of his time is still devoted to what he loves: peddling his prints out of his weathered, old suitcase, meeting people, immersing himself in surfing’s cultural world and sharing the visual representations of his oceanic experiences. – This article first appeared on Deus ex Machina on May 10, 2016

Life has a habit of going full circle, coming back around to give us what we gave it, echoes of the past rippling ever onwards. Forrest Minchinton was born to a surfer, shaper and traveller father in Huntington Beach, California, a global Mecca for the surfing community, but before he took his first cross-steps on water, his parents found their calling south of the border: “My parents relocated to Playa Tamarindo, Costa Rica in search of good, un-crowded waves and warm water,” Forrest, now 24 years old, explains. “I spent the first 5 years of my life in Costa Rica, caught my first wave at 3 years old and quit surfing by the age of 7 – the moment I rode my first motorcycle.” Breaking the mould, Forrest poured his passion into riding dirt, not water, and whether with his father, now back in California, or his mother in Costa Rica, it was the hills and the deserts that were his calling. Living next to the Robert August factory in Huntington Beach, his dad a shaper there for over 30 years, the young petrol-head swept foam, made coffee and filled the gaps to earn a few bucks to pour into his bikes and racing. “At age 12 I started racing in the National Hare and Hound series in California and won my first event,” he recalls. “I then went on to dabble in all different kinds of racing – National Hare and Hound, Grand Prix, Motocross – which took me all over the country including a Hare and Hound on the Hawaiian Island of Oahu.” But the infectious salts of the ocean had not left his veins, and the young teen ventured back into the realm of surfing, competing for the Huntington Beach High School surf team with some impressive results. It was around this time that Forrest’s path crossed the footsteps of Dustin Humphrey, then an enthusiastic longboarder and budding photographer, before becoming director of Deus Indonesia. Joining his father in the shaping bay, Forrest began building his own boards and funding his insatiable bike habit, developing a covert reputation in both fields. And so his life continued to turn. Forrest reached out to Dustin, on his way to Bali and keen to reconnect with the good friend of his old man. Forrest’s lifestyle reflected the Deus ethos in mirror-like perfection: surfer-shaper-meets motorcycle addict, and a symbiosis emerged. Filming the closing segments of the Deus project, South to Sian, Dustin invited Forrest along for the ride. The Deus team didn’t know what to expect of the young Californian, but he proceeded to blow their minds with his proficiency on a dirt bike on sand. His consummate talents were reiterated in the Deus Temple of Enthusiasm’s shaping bay, and with these two facets realised, an idea emerged. That idea became the Dust project. Returning to Bali in February of this year, Forrest immersed himself the dust of both of his passions, the foam dust of the shaping bay and the dust kicked up by the back wheel of his dirt bike. Dust follows Forrest’s return to the Deus Temple of Enthusiasm in Canggu, Bali, tracing his journey through the Indonesian archipelago, the shaping of a diverse quiver from 5’4” fish, through performance shortboards and mid lengths to 9’6” logs, and joining with newfound and long lost friends in an indulgence of passion for boards and bikes. Joining Harrison Roach, Agi Agassi, Matt Cuddihy and Zye Norris, Forrest collaborates on bikes and boards, surfs the innumerable breaks of Indo and lays tracks in the dust of Mount Bromo, Lombok and Batur. “As soon as I met Harry, Zye and the whole crew I knew we were in for a good time with good friends,” he says. “We got some amazing footage and did some amazing riding in one of the most unique places on earth to ride a motorcycle.” This is Dust – a union of friends and mindsets, kicking spray in dirt and water, a creation of dust in myriad form and a life come full circle. Photos: Tom Hawkins & Keli Bow Video: Andre Cricket & Ram Mateo – This article first appeared on Deus ex Machina on May 12, 2016

A little town with a small and rolling point break nestled into a corner of the West Javan coast isn’t the first place that springs to mind as the destination for epic Indonesian surf.It has its share of classic waves, tropical beaches and primo spots peppering its shoreline, the Indian Ocean grooming swells and unloading them on reefs sculpted over a thousand years by the lunar ebbs and flows. But, its fickle nature, the easily accessible Bali to the south, and the mind-melting perfection of the Mentawais just a hop, skip and boat trip to the north, it is often seen as a stop-off more than a final destination. A fly in and long, bumpy, eight-hour ride to the coast often deters many surfers, but with time and patience, can be worth the effort.This transient coast is the place Deni Firdaus – affectionately known as Deni Blackboys – calls home. Locally born and bred, Deni’s surfing started, as the majority of local kids, on shortboards. But with breaks getting more and more crowded, at least by his standards, he opted for something with a little more length a little over three years ago. He’s a man of few words, but his surfing already speaks volumes. Inspired by fellow local, Husni Ridhwan, and gifted a Thomas Bexon board by director of Deus’ Temple of Enthusiasm, Dustin Humphrey, he showed a natural affinity with the traditional style, and his surfing improved rapidly. “There are not so many longboarders here, most of them ride shortboards,” Deni says of his home breaks. But the handful there were, plus a trickle of visiting international surfers, provided more than enough visual stimulation and inspiration. “When Harrison [Roach] and Zye [Norris] came to Batu Karas, I learned from them by watching. The really showed me how to longboard.” Whether he kickstarted the trend or simply pre-empted it, his home breaks are now seeing a growth in longboarders. Its perfect waves trickling along an immaculate point setup make it the ideal spot for heavy-glassed, flat-rockered singlefins and Deni has found his calling. “I still remember really clearly the first time I saw him,” recalls Harrison. “We were just leaving and getting in the car to go home, and I remember turning round and looking out at the point and seeing this kid just ripping. We thought we’d seen everyone who could surf well in the area, but this tiny little kid was killing it. “I asked Husni who it was and he said, ‘that’s Deni – he’s only been longboarding for six months or something.’ He had good style, riding one of Thomas Bexon’s ten-foot boards and it was pretty obvious then that he was a pretty talented kid.” But this wasn’t a one-off, and return visits by Harrison have seen him witness the exponential advancement of the young surfer: “Going back there every year and watching him progress, his surfing is as good as almost any. He’s done stuff that I’ve been amazed by and he’s got such a smooth and casual style – it’s incredible.” “Longboarding, for me, is better than shortboarding,” Deni reflects. “I’ve met so many people through it and made so many new friends. Before, there were not so many longboarders, but now, more and more grommets are starting to longboard. It’s a really friendly place to surf.” Deus has helped support his growing talent, providing him with boards and gear, as well as assisting with his schooling, which he concluded just a few months ago. A humble young lad, ever-smiling and always quick to share a wave, Deni’s humility extends to his future. While some might grab their passport and never look back, traditional values remain close to his heart. His father, a single parent after Deni’s mum passed away just a few years ago, works at a local hotel and Deni is planning to take on his part at supporting his family. “I want to learn more English and find a job to help my family, giving surf lessons and doing ding repairs, but I do also want to travel with my surfing.” As more and more images emerge of him and his home breaks, the future is sure to be one of change for Deni Blackboys. Tourism is increasing, offering finance for the town and providing Deni with an income, and the small-town kid is fast becoming recognised around the world for his sublime talents. Returning to Canggu for this week’s Deus Nine Foot and Single, it’s clear to see the friends he has made through his surfing, high fives and smiling embraces amongst the host of locals and visiting competitors alike. It’s also clear to see that a year with the endless point waves of his home under his feet has provided the perfect extra-curricular classroom for his skills. His infectious passion and continually expanding talents are sure to take Deni far, whether on numerous worldy trips or on a more permanent basis but, for now at least, there’s no place like home. With thanks to Giang Alam Wardani for images.  – This article first appeared on Deus ex Machina on May 26, 2016

When surfers first came to Bali, the locals thought they were madmen. Not only did they appear to walk on water, dancing across the faces of waves with mystical grace and supernatural abilities, but they were actually foolhardy enough to venture into the spirit realm of the ocean, where demons lurked beneath the surface to steal them into the blackness. A lot has changed since those early days and Bali is witnessing an insurgence of local shredders. With consistent, world-class waves on their doorstep, Indonesian surfers are rapidly honing their skills, every lineup around the island’s coastline featuring a healthy handful of unknown stand outs. I Gede Arya Eka Wira Dharma – better, and far more conveniently known as Ayok –  is Canggu born and bred. He has seen the quiet times, the boom in tourism and the inception and expansion of Bali’s surfing community. 12 years ago, when Ayok first ventured into the breaks around Canggu, Westerners were a rarity. He could still find empty lineups, even on the good days at the popular breaks, and the number of white faces in the water could be counted on one hand. “I started surfing when I was nine years old,” he remembers. “Around that time there was still nothing here. We had to share one board between all of my friends. At that time, not so many grommets surfed. If you surfed, you were seen as lazy.” Reflecting the disreputable surfing community of the 1960s in Australia and the US, surfing was still frowned upon until just a few years ago by Bali locals, especially by the parents of kids bitten by the bug: “When we went surfing, we’d have to hide from our parents. One time, my dad came down to the beach with a bamboo stick and started beating me, screaming, ‘go back home!’ But surfing still made for a memorable childhood – it was good fun.” Bali is known for its perfect shortboarding conditions and a rash of formulaic, cookie-cutter thrusters plague the lineups at all the most popular spots. While locals and visitors to Canggu do still get airborne on their high performance equipment, this little corner of Bali has become a Mecca for logs, fishes and alternative craft. Batu Bolong is a black-sand Waikiki-meets-Windansea kind of deal, single fin longboards the weapon of choice, waves rolling in, rather than wedging up and hollowing out, and the crowds, though challenging at times, invoke the aloha, sharing rides and leaving the adrenalin-fuelled aggro out of the picture. “When I started it was all shortboards,” says Ayok. “I have seen people surfing longboards since I started, but only a few Westerners. About three years ago the locals started. Most of us are fishermen, so we wanted to get longboards so that we could put our lobster nets on the boards, so it started as a practical thing. I started longboarding about a year after that. “When Deus came to Canggu, everything became different. The vibe here is different now – much more chilled. That’s why I changed, because it’s something different and more chilled in the water too. “Longboarding – especially in the traditional style – just looks so much more graceful. The first time I tried longboarding was in Batu Karas [West Java). I borrowed a board from Deni [Blackboys]. That made me fall in love with longboarding. After that, I bought my own longboard. Also, I don’t really like big waves – I’m a super-chilled person, I don’t really like that aggressive style of surfing – so longboarding is perfect for me.” Batu Karas locals, Deni and his plus-nine collaborator Husni Ridhwan proffered an indelible impact on the latest single fin initiate, inspiring a smoother, more balletic approach to Ayok’s style. Bringing these traits back to the beaches of Canggu, he received further inspiration from the influx of foreign traditionalists, including Zye Norris, Matt Cuddihy, Harrison Roach and many more, a sponge to their influential form culminating in an approach that is as impressive as it is seemingly effortless, his sure-footed fluidity, linked turns and unswaying confidence resonating through the lineup. Ayok has remained at his home of Canggu, leading the charge and drawing the attention of camera lenses whenever he paddles out. “He has become a stand-out longboarder,” says Deus Bali director, Dustin Humphrey, who has watched his progression over the past half decade. “He has developed at such a rapid pace, with a beautiful style all of his own that makes him a stand-out amongst the locals and tourists surfing these beaches.” He has embraced the diversification, both in his longboard skills and on more diminutive rides, whether fishes and single fins or, when the tides and swells require thrusters and quads…and he has become adept at it all. “It just depends on the swell,” he says of his choices of board. “When the waves are really small, we come down with our longboards just for some fun. When it’s big, we still head to Echo Beach to get some barrels and more intense waves. We still manage to surf both, but the longboards mostly just for the fun of it.” Though the passion for plus-nine craft often wins out, Ayok is no one-trick pony. The more traditional genre of boards in all its miscellany offers him adaptation to location and conditions, and where a log may be out of its comfort zone, Ayok reaches for his single fins. On the follow beach breaks of Echo Beach and the neighbouring locale, he can be found buried deep, throwing spray, feet planted firmly on a six-footer, a flex fin whipping him out of turns and holding him high and tight under the lip. Despite his parents’ early reservations, surfing has given Ayok a life, not only in the peace and freedom in the water, but also financially. Ayok’s Stay & Surf is now open for business – a six-bedroom home stay where Ayok hosts predominantly surfing travellers from around the world, providing surf lessons and offering a lifelong stack of local knowledge. “My main job is as a surf teacher. I worked for some local surf schools about three years ago and then I decided to build my guest house. It’s open for everyone, but my main focus is to bring people to Canggu to stay and have surf lessons. My family also has a little business at Batu Bolong renting surfboards.” Canggu has developed around him, moving through different chapters, expanding in population and infrastructure, but Ayok has developed with it, taking advantage of the tourism boom and continuing to make a life for himself in this unique place he calls home. “It will get busier, but I hope it is just tourists, not the construction. I don’t want Canggu to become something like Kuta or Seminyak. It would be so disappointing. People come here to chill. They want to enjoy their holiday and they don’t want so many buildings. We are welcome to everyone.” Deus has welcomed Ayok to the fold, his individualism in a sea of conformity bringing him to the attention of Dustin and the team: “When I first saw him, it struck me how he was just doing his own thing, evoking the style seen so often in the longboarding waves of the world – California, Australia, Hawaii – but so rarely in Bali. I wanted to support him in his surfing to help him develop in a way that would otherwise be challenging in this environment.” Brought into the fold, with a brand new Harrison Roach model Thomas surfboard under his feet and an open invite to the Deus 9 Foot and Single, fresh experience opened to the Canggu surfer and his skills progressed exponentially. Now, on the cusp of the sixth annual 9 Foot and Single, Ayok embodies the role he has taken on so often in his working life, as genial and gracious host to an influx of travelling surfers in the breaks he has every right to call his own. Though his history has been sheltered, spanning little more than a scooter ride from his Canggu home, Ayok’s heart and spirit encompass the global surfing community, an ambassador for his home, his passion and the waves that have sculpted his life. For more information on Ayok’s Surf & Stay, visit his Facebook page: www.facebook.com/Ayokstayandsurf – This article first appeared on Deus ex Machina on May 25, 2016

I’m so fucking sick and tired of this thing called love. The empty promises and hollow dreams of its bullshit have Moltov Cocktailed the pages of my biography, sending countless years and endless tears up in petroleum-fuelled flames. A single word or action has been the match to ignite the inferno that has engulfed my heart, reducing it to a withered, charred husk too many times. I’ve swallowed its sweet almond poison again and again, pierced my veins with its ecstatic hypodermic, languished in its euphoric rush with no thought of coming down, and endured the bitter wrath and razor teeth of its savage withdrawl. And I have healed. I bare the scars of lost loves and broken hearts. I have nursed myself in the darkened halls of the sanatoriums of the soul, reinvented this life from ‘we’ to ‘me’ over and over until I can no longer even remember what it once was like when it was new and pure and whole. The concept of love destroys us all. Not a single one of us will walk this life from start to finish without succumbing to the bitter, acidic bite of lost love and heartache. Our ears are constantly pricked, senses alert, our heart’s ear strained for any subliminal nuance of love. But this thing we chase, this evasive prey that peels back our fingers to release our grasp as often as it relinquishes its innocence, is someone else’s dream, a Hollywood backdrop, the tinsel and baubles on a dry and brittle tree. I cannot be so callous as to suggest that love does not exist – far from it. But the realisation is that we have it all back to front. We go searching for this ethereal wish founded upon the words and emotions of others. From day dot, the second we peel back the labial curtains on this bright and terrifying world, we are told that love is our purpose, and handed the blueprints to a stranger’s house. Love is not what we are told it is, just as life is never the same twice over. Fairy tales are made with the mind and naivety thrives on those candy-coated myths. Perhaps, once or twice, true love was founded upon some random circumstance, a romantic’s wet dream of a perfect love, but it happened in spite of these things, not because of them. Love is like those mind-fucking magic eye pictures that were slapped up on every ‘90s teen’s bedroom wall. You can stand there ‘til you can’t feel your legs no more, eyes fucking throbbing, desperate to see that goddamn pony that all your friends saw in the first five seconds. But you may as well be looking for Elvis in the flesh, because the harder you look, the blinder you become. We don’t find love, love sneaks up behind us and clips our ankles, sending us face first toward the pavement and a pool of blood and broken teeth. If we try too hard, she’ll beat us down, leaving nothing but bruised shins and bruised hearts. The more we crave this notion of a perfect love, of that saccharine bullshit we see in the movies, of everything we believe will be our happily ever after, the more scars and ex’s we will collect. It’s a motherfucking lightning bolt out of blue skies. You have no idea when it will hit. There’s no way you can predict it and there’s nothing you can do about it when it does. It won’t look like the love you pictured, it won’t feel like your heart’s belief. It doesn’t follow formula and will not listen to reason. You will never find love if you keep looking – but the second you stop, she’ll find you. And you won’t be in for a gentle freefall – that bloodthirsty bitch will take you by the throat and drag you down, gasping for breath and clawing for the surface. But if you can let go your fear, hold on to hope and trust her intentions, she will gather you up, hold you tight and protect you in the darkness ‘til the bitter end. Love is not the place you thought it was. It is laugh and cry, it is pleasure and pain, it’s a deep and dark mysterious place. Let her swallow you down until you’re spitting blood from burning lungs, because it’s a precious place that few will find and nothing can replace. It’s nice down there.  

When annual Noosa Festival of Surfing is in full swing every March and five feet of near-perfect ground swell grace its numerous breaks, the local points are inundated with a healthy array of the world’s best longboarders. Taylor Jensen, Harley Ingleby, Joel Tudor, Alex Knost, C.J. Nelson – this just the tip of the tantalising iceberg of a veritable who’s who of modern surfing. It should be to this gamut of surfing celebrities that I find myself drawn, iPhone in hand, to capture their words of wisdom and comments on wins or losses. But my attention is pointed away from the hubbub of the festival, honed on a humble, cramped and dusty shaping bay on the town’s outskirts. I feel like a wise man journeying to a stable in anticipation of witnessing living history, meek in reverence. I follow the sounds of the gentle rasping of sandpaper on foam and nervously rap on the room’s dilapidated blue door. A sonorous ‘yup’ emanates from within and I enter. The diminutive character inside seems unassuming enough, his neatly combed, snow white hair falling across his foam-dusted, deeply tanned brow and his modest rapport giving no reflection of his stature within the surfing world. He has arguably done more for the development of big wave equipment over the years than any other. He has advanced the gun and tow boards in ways thought abstract at the time, working alongside Laird Hamilton and others in the discipline’s formative days. He applied three fins to boards almost a decade before Simon Anderson’s thruster was born and was playing around with quad fins before three were de rigueur. His name is Richard Brewer. Richard ‘Dick’ Brewer was born land-locked, his engineer father, a tool and die maker, having started his family in Minnesota. But in 1939, at the age of three, Brewer and his kin were uprooted and transposed to the vastly contrasting social climate of California. “We moved to California just before World War Two, so I was really raised in California. In California, when you turn 16, you get your driving license, drive the two miles to the beach and get a board, and that’s what happened.” This matter-of-fact occurrence marked the beginning of a new era in surfing and Brewer’s life would, from that moment forth, be governed by the ocean. An early friend of Brewer’s had a job for Dale Velzy, transporting boards up and down the coast, so it was only natural that one of his earliest boards was a Velzy. But, as with all surfers, he would have many more boards than just one. “I had also shaped myself a ten-foot board in my garage in Surfside, California, when I was 12, right down the road from where I was going to college. Another board I had was a wooden Dick Barrymore nine-footer that was a really light board. It only weighed about 28 pounds (13kg), which would be considered light for a wood board to this day. I rode almost everything in California with that nine-footer, so riding big waves on a nine-footer wasn’t too strange to me later on.” As with the majority of West Coast surfers of the time, Brewer’s focus was soon to swing to the Islands of Hawaii. “My parents wanted me to go to college, and so I did. I was in my last year of engineering and flew over that summer to Hawaii and never went back. I took a few classes at the University of Hawaii and that was the end of that. I started Surfboards Hawaii in 1961. “I had a good friend, Walt Phillips, who I’d been surfing with. He and I rented an apartment near Ala Moana. Right next door, Donald Takayama, had a surf shop and he shaped downstairs. “I’d already shaped myself a few boards before I moved to Hawaii. I got together five unemployment cheques and rented a store in Haleiwa. My dad bought me an air compressor and Dewey Weber fronted me 20 surfboards to sell, because I was riding his boards at the time, before I moved there. So I started off selling Dewey Weber boards and filling scuba tanks there in Haleiwa.” The move was exactly was Brewer needed to give his life a creative direction. His old nine-foot Barrymore may have been sufficient for Californian waves, but Hawaii was the bedrock of big wave surfing and the proving ground for man and craft alike. The winter swells allowed Brewer to put his shapes through their paces and the talents of the local test pilots were essential in refining his designs. While surfing in the modern, Western sense, was very much established in the Islands, the indigenous community still maintained a very significant presence in the water and none more so than the Waikiki beach boys. This was the collection of individuals that had spawned Duke Kahanamoku, Rabbit Kekai and the Keaulana clan, so to have their kudos was a Hawaiian shaper’s raison d’être. And fairly soon Brewer would accomplish that recognition. “I built an eleven-foot board for one of the great big beachboys. Buzzy Trent got me to go down to Waikiki on a big day. He told me it was twenty feet and I said, ‘come on Buzzy, it’s a south swell – I don’t think so.’ “But I went down there and it was. We surfed Castles, which breaks off the point, where Duke Kahanamoku got his mile-long ride. After we surfed, we were standing there on the beach with Buffalo [Keaulana] and [George] Watanabe and we saw this beachboy ride right past Phil Edwards. When he came in everyone was excited and congratulated him on a great ride and Buffalo looked at his board and he goes, ‘ey Brewer, I like board.’ Well, you don’t refuse Buffalo! So I built him a board and about two months later, he won the 1962 Makaha championships on that board. From then on, everybody wanted Dick Brewer Surfboards Hawaii. So I was up and running, building and shaping boards, and that’s how I really got started.” It wasn’t long after this that Brewer would carve his niche in the industry. Although a consummate craftsman across the board, it is for big wave guns that Brewer remains synonymous. Spending a great deal of his time on the North Shore, he saw the equipment of the day foundering on the massive walls of water, sliding out, failing their passenger and being too slow to outrun the rolling peaks stampeding shoreward. Buzzy Trent would again play roll in Weber’s evolution as a shaper, asking his friend to shape a board more tailored for the challenging conditions. “Buzzy had been talking about how [Bob] Simmons had built him a concave and how much faster they were. So I built Buzzy a concave gun. He took it out at big Makaha and everybody saw how well it went. So, all of a sudden, everybody wanted Dick Brewer, Surfboards Hawaii concave boards. I used the knowledge of the day to really get everything in order, but I did do a lot of development.” This was the commencement of Brewer’s heyday. With more and more people witnessing the efficiency of his boards in such conditions, his client list expanded exponentially and soon up to 80 percent of Waimea’s lineup was riding Dick Brewer guns. In 1965, Brewer ventured back to the mainland, coaxed by a job offer from Hobie Alter. Keen to harvest the success of Brewer’s reputation, Hobie presented the prospect of making a Dick Brewer model. But this was to be a short-lived partnership. Brewer had brought with him one of his team riders, Jeff Hakman, a surfer whose opinion Brewer valued greatly and who, to a small extent, was integral to Brewer’s design process. Despite Hakman winning the first Duke meet on a Dick Brewer Hobie model, Hobie wasn’t happy to pay two wages and Brewer’s allegiance to his team member wouldn’t allow him to remain at Hobie without Hakman. The disagreement ended the partnership and Brewer and his charge soon departed for Hawaii. The return to the Islands was a chance for Brewer to start over, recreating himself and his business back in his home of choice. He set up a shop in Honolulu, creating the very successful Pipeliner model. “The Pipeliner actually came from a 1962 template ridden by Butch Van Artsdalen at Banzai Pipeline and it worked really good. I made twenty-five of them, some with concave noses, some with concave tails and I called it the Summer Semi. When I went to work for Bing I used the same template and called it the Pipeliner.” But Brewer was happiest working alone, free to develop his own boards, straining the envelope of design and working more on his favourite shapes: the guns. “I really wanted to get into designing and building smaller guns. So, in 1967, I moved to Maui. Two of the young surfers, Gerry Lopez and Reno Abellira, came over. There were some lodgings above the old cannery in Lahaina and I borrowed $5,000 from the local gambling syndicate and we started a surf shop. We gave that money back in three months. That 5,000 bought us a lot of fibreglass and resin and foam, and that was all we needed to get going. “Honolua was still a big wave but it wasn’t as big as Waimea or Sunset. It was a more perfect wave, which is what I wanted. I wanted to develop a more manoeuvrable gun – that was my objective. I stayed there for a year, in business with Buddy Boy [Kaohi], until the pineapple company evicted us for whatever reason, I don’t know.” While at the Lahaina factory, working closely with Abillera and Lopez, Brewer went about taking foot after foot off his boards. Abillera was of pint-sized stature, enabling him to ride much smaller boards than thought adequate for the conditions. This inspired Lopez to also go shorter, pushing the boundaries of the period’s board design. “Gerry came and visited me and brought a blank with him. He wanted me to shape him a nine-six big wave board. The year before, Gary Chapman had got me to build him an eight-six. Barry Kanaiaupuni rode it at big Velzyland and had ripped on it. Right after that, Barry said to me, ‘hey Dick, I could ride a seven-six just like this on the same kind of waves.” Later that year, Brewer took his team, including Hakman, Lopez and Abillera, Gary Chapman and Jock Sutherland, back to California, to the Bing factory in Hermosa Beach. But the trip was fraught with conflict. With so many excellent surfers each bringing their own ideas into the shaping bay, friction was always just a tiptoe away. David Nuuhiwa, an integral part of Bing at the time, decided to take Jock Sutherland’s brand new, unridden board out for a test run without permission. Preferring a looser feel, Nuuhiwa snapped an inch off the fin and insisted it went considerably better. But Sutherland wasn’t impressed. In the days of glassed-in fins, it wasn’t an easy task to replace one, so Sutherland’s virgin board was now, as far as he was concerned, ruined. But the final straw was yet to come. “One Monday morning, Bing walked in and we all had a box of reject blanks and were making mini guns. In the process, I designed the Lotus and the Pintail models for Bing, which he wasn’t really ready for. He was pissed off because he wanted me shaping Pipeliners. “He fired me and the whole team picked up our reject blanks and went back to Maui.” This wasn’t the first time and certainly wouldn’t be the last that a Brewer creation was too advanced for its time. His designs always seemed to precede public trends by half a decade, missing the bandwagon by being too early. In a time where guns were over nine feet long, Brewer was producing boards of seven feet…

The world isn’t perfect. It rains when we camp, we need to work so we can play, groundswells come and go. We can choose to wallow in negativity, pining over how much better things would be if only this or that intangible element were to only play our game. But wasted hours and wasted days are cast to the winds on empty hopes and ‘what if’s. At times, things aren’t ideal, at times things don’t go our way, but in these moments, if we can rise up and see the sunshine through the rain, the silver linings to the less-than-perfect, the world is our oyster and the fun never ends. ‘At Times’, a new film by Mitch Surman and Warwick Gow, embraces the average, casting out preconceptions like yesterday’s garbage to revel in the ordinary. TRAILER : At Times from Rubbed The Lamp on Vimeo. “We did a short series of films called ‘Shatter’, for Glass Coffee House (Mitch’s side project),” says Warwick of the film’s inception. “It was sort of a test run. We did about five before deciding to do a feature.” While Noosa Heads may boast one of the most perfect collections of logging waves anywhere on the planet, Mitch, Warwick and the surfers featured in ‘At Times’ reside further south, the beach breaks of Maroochydore and the small point wave of Alexandra Headland their local. Although they have their days, these waves are less consistent, less groomed and far less suitable for the heavily glassed, rolled bottom singlefins shaped by Mitch. ‘At Times’ showcases not only the stable of teamriders on Mitch’s Ms. Surfboards label but also their abilities in and acceptance of waves that do not lend themselves to this genre of surfing. “Because the waves are inconsistent here, it’s hard to get epic, barrelling waves,” reflects Warwick of the film’s premise. “I guess the angle that we went towards, and where the title came from, was in seeing the good in an area. “If you visit a place enough, you get to learn the good in it, as well as the bad, and you’re going to adjust how you are surfing based around that. That’s where the idea of ‘At Times’ comes in, because, at times, things will be perfect but, when they’re not, you need to adjust for that and embrace it, not just the good times.” In the early ‘90s, now legendary surf filmmaker, Taylor Steele had a similar vision. Releasing ‘Momentum’, his inaugural major movie, Steele made the top level of surfing, with the likes of Kelly Slater, Rob Machado and Shane Dorian riding average waves to an exceptional level. This connected the dots for many young grommets, making surfing more accessible, allowing them to see that they didn’t need perfect waves to get good or to have fun. Similarly, ‘At Times’ proves that you don’t need a two-minute, lefthander at Chicama to have plenty of fun on a log. Big waves, little ripples, onshore or glassy, ‘At Times’ embraces it all, the exceptional standard of surfing not wavering for a second in a diversity of conditions. “It’s not realistic to watch these perfect, uncrowded waves, which they filmed for a year to capture,” suggests Warwick. “Hopefully, ‘At Times’ is a more honest portrayal of that.” Shot in a raw, unfettered style, ‘At Times’ becomes more relatable, invoking a realism as if witnessing in first person. It doesn’t serenade us with dreamy boat trips in the Maldives or uncrowded, unattainable secret spots that few of us have visited and fewer still could frequent. Although shot across the region during and post this year’s Noosa Festival of Surfing and taking in some of the sensational waves of the region, much of the action takes place in nothing more grandiose than crappy, wind-shaken beach breaks straight out the front of Maroochydore’s urban sprawl. “A lot of the singlefin footage I’ve ever seen has been Michael Peterson at perfect Kirra or Malibu or Noosa – -that’s sort of what you see and what you get with singlefin footage. But, in conditions that many would deem barely worthy of a paddle-out, the cast of ‘At Times’ unleash a swathe of manoeuvres and a skill level usually reserved for the good days. ‘At Times’ reignites the grommet stoke, those times of youth when you would wait patiently, watching videos and frothing for a surf, until dad could drive you down to the beach on the weekend. It could be four-foot and pumping or six inches of scratching windswell, but you’d waited seven days and you were paddling out come what may. This is due in no short amount to the cast. Mitch, hardly a veteran himself, has made it his mission to support and mentor the junior ranks, and they in turn have inspired in him an appreciation of all that surfing is, the boundless stoke that becomes trimmed and cropped and cynical with age. “They’re really inspiring,” enthuses Warwick of the younger team members, including Jordan Spee, Kai Annetts and Cale Coulter, all stand-outs in the junior divisions of this years Noosa Festival. “They make you froth out a bit more too, because I’ll go to check the surf and it’ll be crap and I’ll just go home again, but you’ll go to check the surf with them and [in their eyes] it’s never crap! “It helps with filming as well, because you need to film a lot to get even ten seconds of footage and you can be filming for days on end to get it. So it helps having their stoke, for lack of a better word. They’re just frothing to surf, and that pushed the film and made it such a fast-paced thing, even though it’s a logging film. It has that energy because they have that energy being kids. It’s awesome to see them innovate. You can see them pulling inspiration from Mitch and the logging community at large but then make it a style of their own.” As with so many trends and pastimes, singlefin longboarding has fallen into a niche. There are sensational exponents of the genre who have created a style of their own, but they have also branded a formula. The upcoming generations emulate this style, personalising it certainly, but with all the hallmarks of their forebears. It is when we are thrown into unexpected circumstances that innovation occurs. Without the long point waves so integral to the logging style, one must think outside the box, as this pod of urban beach break rad cats have done. “When they [the younger surfers] didn’t know I was filming them, they were surfing so much weirder and way less controlled, because they’re not trying to get a part or impress, they’re just surfing and creating on the spot. It was crazy to see…how much they experiment day to day.” ‘At Times’ is not your usual, cookie cutter surf flick so don’t expect it. It is a hand-moulded, unsymmetrical, burnt at the corners cookie with a bucketload of choc chips and an icing sugar dusting. It is honest, it is real, it is a genuine reflection of a surfing life we can relate to proving that, whatever we think a good day is, there’s still plenty of good to be had in the bad times. That frothing grommet still lives on in us all, we’ve just gagged and blindfolded him (or her) with preconceptions and prejudice. “I wanted that diversity and that fun,” says Warwick. “These kids are going to be sponsored in a few years, but at the moment they’re still just having fun and there’s no pressure on them. We wanted to capture that but also, with guys like Mike Lay and Mitch, who have a lot more pressure on them and more invested on how they surf, to show that they still go and have fun and be stupid. The groms are pushing them to do new shit because they see the younger guys doing something just as good, if not crazier, and they’re constantly pushing each other in this fun but competitive way. “Diversity comes from that, because they’re all trying to do different stuff and think outside the box.” Preconceptions kill inspiration. While there are many exceptionally good and innovative surfers out there, there are very few who’s surfing isn’t an emulation of what has come before. Aspiring to our peers and idols can be a fantastic education, mimicking the manoeuvres of others to learn and grow. But if we cross-step that path for too long, we walk away from individuality. At times, we are our own worst enemies, at times we take ourselves just a little too seriously. At times, the best way to learn is by forgetting all that you know. – This article first appeared on Slow Drive on Aug 31 & Drift Surfing on Sep 10, 2015

You know what it’s like; you’ve been there, admit it: The claps and cheers are still rattling your brain after a face-melting set by Art Vs. Science. Your mates are craving some downtime with Alpine but you want to keep the buzz rolling. You look at the schedule and have no clue who the scattering of bands up next are, let alone which will keep your diaphragm pulsing and which will slip you gracefully and gently into a pleasant, post-rock coma. As every clued up festivalgoer should, but so rarely does, we’ve done the research for you. We’ve dived deep into the SoundCloud, got barrelled in the YouTube and squeezed the pulsing zits of Spotify to give you the inside line when the race to the next mosh pit is on. Here are six of your new favourite bands playing Falls Festival 2015: The Maccabees The Maccabees have been shining for longer than an energy efficient 20-watt globe on a low dimmer setting but about a thousand times brighter. Fingertips sliced bare and bleeding on razor wire guitar strings, what their smooth cockney vocals lay down in velvet softness their unfiltered riffs rip off again like a band-aid from a hairy inner thigh. They’ll throw beer in your face and sweet-talk your mum all in the same afternoon and you’ll love them for it. Best For: Bouncing like you forgot your pogo stick. Oh Wonder Hype, they once said, is a cruel mistress, ‘they’ being me and ‘once’ being when I typed it just then. The point of that blatant lie is that Oh Wonder are hype’s pimp and they’re making that girl work. Releasing one track a month over the course of a year, Oh Wonder elevated the hype around their sound to rabid proportions, and for good reason. Evoking hints of The XX, Oh Wonder proffer a rich and sticky lyric syrup that is like a dropped Fan Tail to a swarm of hungry ants. Smooth, dreamy and deeper than the Marianas Trench. Best For: Passing out on a grassy knoll wrapped in the arms of your darlin’. The Avener Remember those crusty old dudes from the Buena Vista Social Club? Yeah, well their grandkids found some decks and a sampler, went loco and called themselves The Avener. I’m lying again, but The Avener are what would happen if Cuba spontaneously developed a kick-ass dance scene. The French producer has blended deep bass lines with a Euro-Hispanic vibe and a vat of Nivea Visage to create dance beats that just will not leave your involuntary reflexes alone. Best For: Dancing in the sunshine when your tank’s running on empty Gary Clark Jr If the Black Keys were a toey stray boy dog and they met Ben Harper’s girly dog dark side down a dark alley one cold and rainy night in Brooklyn, the sweet, soggy love they would make amongst the discarded Pizza Hut boxes and broken Budweiser bottles would spawn just one streetwise, blues-rock-howling, C-chord growling, lop-eared mongrel hound dog and that ever-faithful, clever as all hell mutt would go by the name of Gary Clark Jr. Best For: Sucking on beers and Marlboro Reds Soak Bridie Monds-Watson isn’t nearly as catchy a name as Soak or the beautiful tunes this 18-year-old creates. Like a chilled out acoustic set by HighAsAKite, her curiously Scandinavian voice (despite being Irish) will have you weeping on the inside and yearning to take her home for cocoa and marshmallows. She’s the new incarnation of ethereal female singer-songwriters, grappling the mantle from the likes of Sarah Blasko, Hope Sandoval and Lisa Mitchell. Best For: Playing all the way home on repeat Toro Y Moi You know that smile that starts somewhere near your gall bladder and eases its way to your lips, slow and smooth like treacle running uphill? Toro Y Moi found the recipe and bottled that tasty elixir. Obscure disco-funk as much Studio 54 as it is Calvin Harris headlining a full-moon party on Koh Pha Ngan, Toro Y Moi is the smile that you just can’t hold back. Best For: Unbuttoning your silk shirt to your navel and lathering yourself in hot funk sauce For more information on these and all acts, and to book tickets, visit: byron.fallsfestival.com.au Cover Photo: Tao Jones / Falls Festival The Maccabees: Jordan Hughes via Falls Festival – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Sep 3, 2015

Adversity is relative. When we are toddlers a soggy nappy is Armageddon, in high school double-homework on the Friday afternoon is a catastrophe. In adult life, hardship mans up, expands exponentially and kicks into fifth gear, but still, when compared to almost anyone else on the planet, we get it easy. When Mark ‘Mono’ Stewart was fifteen and he was told he had osteosarcoma, (bone cancer to you and I) he could have crumbled; during the year and a half of chemotherapy he could have wallowed in self-pity; when the doctors removed his right leg above the knee, he could have given up. But to this day, Mark has not for one moment thought himself unfortunate, a victim or a martyr. Hell, he hasn’t even got a disabled parking permit. And suddenly, the hardships of the average citizen, those things that draw tears from our eyes and steal sleep from our nights, dwindle to distant horizons. Mark Stewart has an infectious positivity, inspiring to say the least and more than a little humbling. My world ends with a bad migraine, but Mark has laughed and surfed his way through more than I could possibly imagine, all with an unwavering smile. “I used to surf on weekends,” Mark recalls of his bipedal youth. “Dad would drive us down from the farm. Then I lost my leg when I was fifteen and spent eighteen months having chemotherapy in Sydney. Whenever I was out of hospital I’d be straight back into the surf. I’d be in there for three weeks and then they’d let me out, I’d come home and after about six months I started working out how I could surf again.” Born on a dairy farm behind Mullumbimby and raised in a Nimbin fish and chip shop, where Old Man Stewart grew potatoes to accompany the fish caught on the Brunswick River, Mark is a dyed in the wool local. From a young age, surfing was in his blood and, he admits today, this passion was his strength and inspiration. “One of the hardest parts was coming home from Sydney. It would take me a few days to get over the illness and then I’d feel good for a couple of days and surf, but then, a couple of days before I went back, I’d be physically sick knowing I was about to get the treatment again. I was in what they called a special unit and there were about ten people on the ward. I was in there with them for three weeks at a time and they became really good friends. Each time I went back, somebody would be missing – they’d died while I was away. That was one of the hardest bits, especially doing it for eighteen months. “I never once thought I was going to die. It wasn’t until about ten years later, when I was on a trip to Hawaii, that my mum pulled me aside and told me that the doctors had given me two years to live. I couldn’t speak to her for twelve months after that, I was so pissed off. And then I realised that it was probably the best thing that had ever happen because, had I known that I was going to die, I don’t know where I would have been mentally. Even though I was sick, all I wanted to do was surf again. That’s what kept me going, just wanting to get out and surf.” It hadn’t occurred to Mark that perhaps his surfing days were over, and his love of the ocean combined with the support and camaraderie of the local surfing community got him back onto his foot. He didn’t view himself as disabled, and never has, but he did need to reassess the way he did things, especially in the waves. “I got on a boogie board and surfed Main Beach and the Pass for a few years. In about 1977, I wrote a letter to Tracks Magazine asking if there was anyone on the North Coast who could help me out or suggest how I could surf again. A chap called Ronnie Fiddler – an amputee from Cronulla – gave me a shout. He surfed and had developed a knee well in one side of his board. I went around and met him and it all started from there.” Starting out on the boogie board, he soon progressed to a kneeboard, getting the shaper to hollow out a shallow well for the remainder of his right leg. Always finding the bright side of every situation, he soon found that his lack of limb allowed him to pull in far further and deeper to the North Coast’s barrelling right-hand point breaks than his upright counterparts. Nothing had changed. Sure, he was surfing three feet lower than he had been used to, but he was throwing himself over the ledge, tearing it up and charging just as hard as ever. He didn’t see himself as different and nothing was going to hold him back. Five years after Mark’s right leg hopped it, Peter Ware, co-founder of Friar Tuck Kneeboards, migrated north from his factory in Brookvale, Sydney. The move could not have been more fortuitous for Mark and the longstanding partnership began. Bought out by David Parkes in 1983, Friar Tuck and Parkes Kneeboards have not only been employing Mark as sprayer and airbrusher but also custom shaping his boards for the last twenty years. “Parkesy knows exactly what I want. My boards nowadays, every one goes better than the last. Dave shapes the board and then I shape the knee well in – that way, if it’s wrong it’s my fault! We’ve got it down to a fine art now… they’re certainly a lot different to what they were in the late ‘70s.” Mark began competing in the mid-1980s against regular, four-limbed, able-bodied surfers, some of whom even had the gall to suggest that Mark’s lack of leg and necessary board refinements gave him an unfair advantage in competition. About seven years ago, Mark tried snow skiing for the first time and took to the sport immediately. Somewhat of a natural, he was invited to try out for the development squad for the Australian Paralympics team. Flying to Canada for the training, he met a large array of individuals just like him from all over the world – disabled in body, perhaps, but every bit as capable, athletic and talented as any able-bodied sportsperson. This sparked something of an awakening in Mark. He had never thought of himself as physically incapable, never begged sympathy or special treatment for his hindrance and never allowed his loss of limb to shape the way he lived. But the trip to Canada showed him something different, a whole world of positive motivation, accepting of his disability and empowering him to make even more of his talents. “That [going to Canada] just opened my eyes right up. I was in this international camp over there with people from all over the world that had all sorts of disabilities and it made me realise that, compared to these amazing people – unbelievable, strong-willed – losing a leg is nothing. It made me really want to help people.” This brought a new perspective to Mark’s life. While he still refused to pigeonhole himself as ‘disabled’, he realised that his handicap could be the start of something great. His years of surfing in able-bodied events had given him the competitive spirit, but now he realised that he could compete at an equally high level against surfers more akin to his situation. When the International Surfing Association’s (ISA) World Adaptive Surfing Championship was suggested to him by a friend, Mark leapt at the opportunity. The championship caters to anyone of any disability, from missing fingers to multiple amputations, and features three divisions: stand-up, upright and prone. Mark’s abilities and technique place him into the middle category and, although in the upper age range of competitors, his chances look good. But it nearly wasn’t to be: “I only found out about the event through a friend in Canada,” he recalls. “They phoned me up and said, ‘are you going to the World Titles?’ ‘What World Titles’, I said! I did some research, sent them some photos and info and went and did a trial. I got into the Australian team, but when they sent my entry over, it was after the cut-off date and there were no spots left. “I was panicking and ringing people and try to get in. The ASA (Surfing Australia, formerly the Australian Surfing Association) pushed really hard and finally the ISA expanded the contest to fit both me and other surfers in.” Taking place at the end of this month, the ISA World Adaptive Surfing Championship hosts over 65 entrants from 17 countries across the various divisions. It is the holy grail of his surfing career and Mark hopes what could be, in some regards, his last hurrah in the contest arena pays out. But entering the event and his hope of a win are only stepping stones in a bigger picture. Mark has always done it alone. He has had some generous support and helpful advice, but essentially he has been a solitary pioneer. Inspired by the trip to Canada and discovering more about what the rest of the world offers its disabled athletes in terms of coaching and mentoring, Mark, along with his team mate, Jade ‘Red’ Wheatley, is hoping to develop a disabled surfing high performance centre, enabling Australian surfers to develop their skills under Mark’s expert tutelage. He is already anticipating helping disabled surfers from around the world at the ISA Championship, sharing openly with his adversaries the techniques, designs and skills he has had to learn for himself. Mark’s life hasn’t been easy, but you’d never know that talking to him. Tenacious, filled with positivity and eagre to help anyone less fortunate than himself, without the obvious omission in the lower leg department, you’d never know he had had to relearn his way of life at the age of 15. Pity and sympathy have never been applicable to Mark, he’s always been too busy living life to the fullest. But regardless of his lost limb and two-year battle with cancer, Mark is an inspiration; not for what he has overcome, but for how he lives so completely, filled with a boundless optimism and compassion – a humbling lesson we could all do well to learn. Portrait Photos: Kirra Pendergast – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Sep 3, 2015

When you think of kayaking in Byron Bay, two things spring to mind: backpackers and the ocean. True, this is an enjoyable and quintessentially Byronian experience, bragging the money-back guarantee of spotting whales, dolphins or turtles, but it’s not really everyone’s idea of a good time. With crashing waves, dentally over-endowed sea life and a paddle out into the wide, blue yonder to contend with, up until now kayaking the Bay has bordered on an adrenaline sport. Not that it’s not worth venturing into the crystal clear ocean with its plethora of fauna and spectacular views, but Granma Mavis and Little Baby Archie may not be quite as willing as the more adventurous and able-bodied amongst us. Go Sea Kayak has been operating from the white sands of Main Beach for about forever, over thirty years’ business providing a vast and diverse wealth of knowledge and experience. “An awesome experience and a whole lot of fun”, as its website proclaims, it caters to everyone, but does suggest ‘a sense of adventure’ is required. In a departure from its ocean tours, Go Sea Kayak has recently launched a new tour, a more sedate but no less breath-taking paddle catering to an even wider demographic. “Our ocean tours can get adventurous in the waves, depending on the conditions,” says head guide, Dougie Meagher, “but the Brunswick River is so much more pleasant, with calmer conditions. We do the best tours we possibly can and want to offer different tours for different types of people.” Launching at Brunswick Heads with the tides, the Go Sea Kayak river tour takes guests on a leisurely paddle on the Brunswick River system, from the main river mouth to the several tributaries – Simpson’s and Marshall’s Creeks – giving participants a tranquil and unique water level perspective of the waterways too often missed from dry land. With the daily variance of tides, each tour takes place at any time from dawn to dusk, taking full advantage of the transparent, deep blue water of the high to offer the best chance of catching a glance of turtles, sting rays, birds and even the odd dolphin that call the estuary their home. But the magic of sunrise adds a dazzling dimension to the experience. Casting off from the chilly, dew-drenched beach onto the calm, still waters of the Brunswick, you are warmed immediately by the newborn rays of the rising sun, the world coming alive just a few feet away. Paddling is easy, the lazy current almost sedentary in its gentle meander between the abundant banks. While the ocean trips may be a little more physically challenging, guests paddling from Main Beach out to the distant cape beyond Watego’s, the Brunswick days are a more relaxed journey, frequent stops taken, both on the water and on the shoreline. “The river tours are intended to accommodate a wider diversity of people who might not get out into the ocean,” says Dougie, “from the under five-year-olds to the elders. It’s an opportunity to get out on the river and back to nature.” As with all the head guides, Dougie is a goldmine of information, both on the regional plants and wildlife and on the indigenous history of the Shire. He informs his groups, for example, that the sweeping rock wall that lies on the inlet to Marshall’s Creek is not a modern fabrication but built over centuries and generations of Bundjalung. The womenfolk would herd fish into the catchment, laying a specific tree bark into the river, de-oxygenating the water and making the fish drowsy – easy pickings for their waiting husbands, brothers and sons. It is these little gems – coupled with the idyllic surroundings and genial staff – that set the Go Sea Kayak river tour apart. Whether you are alone or part of a group, getting out on the water is a tranquil and sublime experience, but the Go Sea tour provides a deeper appreciation, both historically and environmentally. Pelicans cautiously follow you with their eyes from their rock perches, scampering across the water into graceful flight, skeletal cormorants dry their wings in the gentle morning breeze, turtles emerge nonchalantly through the glassy surface and elusive kingfishers flash streaks of iridescent blue along the banks of the river. It is a time-out from the daily grind, the world around you put on hold, forgotten for just a few short hours adrift. There are many tourist attractions in Byron Bay and we take for granted so many aspects that draw people to our little corner of paradise from all over the world. Many of these excursions are for visitors only, businesses directed at and focussed upon our healthy tourism industry. Go Sea Kayak has the visitors to thank for much of its three decades of success, but the river tours are a little different. Sometimes, like that tear-jerking ‘oh Captain, my Captain’ scene in the movie, Dead Poet’s Society, we need to climb up onto that desk, viewing the world we know so well from a different perspective to gain a greater appreciation of the place we call home. We spend our days skirting around the periphery of this magical region, too busy with careers and routines to delve deeper into our surroundings. Go Sea Kayaks’ Brunswick River tour allows us that break from the norm, as rewarding for residents and locals as it is for visitors. “I believe a lot of people are just too busy,” reflects Dougie. “We need to slow down, and the river is a great place for that. I like to say, ‘look after nature so it can look after you’.” Go Sea Kayak offers a selection of Brunswick River tours for groups of two or more. Tours take place on the high tide, so times vary daily. To book ahead and for more information, go to www.goseakayakbrunswickriver.com.au. You can also follow Go Sea Kayak on Instagram at: @goseakayakbyronbay          All words & Photos: Thomas Leitch / Subcutanea – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Sep 2, 2015

You can’t always get what you want. So said a bunch of London larrikins back in late 1968, but, their lavish-lipped frontman crooned, if you try sometimes, you get what you need. This isn’t some lame anecdote or animal rights sermon. We all have our dietary choices and requirements, from veganism to coeliac, Paleo to pescatarian, and it can be challenging to find a dining establishment to suit our needs. As a vegan, I have all but given up on getting what I want when dining out, invariably falling back to the good old faithful of sushi or making do with a consortium of side dishes while my friends tuck into steaks and seafood. It’s my choice and I stand by it, but it does get a little bit frustrating. So when I received an invite from the renowned and much decorated Fins Seafood Restaurant, it could be said that I was a touch hesitant and perhaps a little sceptical. Fins founder, manager and head chef, Steven ‘Snowy’ Snow, is a longstanding local, establishing the first incarnation of Fins on the banks of the Brunswick River. Rapidly gaining repute, the restaurant gained not one, but two coveted Chef’s Hats, the Australian Good Food Guide’s mark of dining distinction and every self-respecting chef’s ambition. Moving into Byron Bay, under the right arm of the Beach Hotel, Snowy and Fins maintained their status, holding onto their Hats every year to date from 1996. But, with the sale of the Beach Hotel, Snowy felt it was an apt opportunity for a change of scene and the plush and lavish surrounds of the newly developed Salt Village at Casuarina offered the ideal location. Their impeccable calibre didn’t falter one iota and Fins at Salt continues to be one of the most awarded and celebrated restaurants on the Coast from Brisbane to Sydney and beyond. Ten years have passed since Snowy doffed his hat and bid adieu to Byron Bay and, although remaining entwined in the community, both socially and for the abundant wealth of produce he sources locally, he has never looked back. Despite this profusion of distinction and recognition, I could be excused for feeling a little trepidation venturing into the foreign territories of a seafood restaurant. I envisioned sea bass with smashed chat potatoes and red capsicum jus, sans sea bass and a linguine marinara of plain pasta, not that I should expect this of Snowy and his talented team, but these are the usual offerings when my request for a vegan dish meets the befuddled kitchen staff. “Bloody vegans – why don’t they go to a vegan restaurant?” I know, I’ve worked front and back of house and I am the first to admit what an absolute pain in the arse my inconvenient dietary choices can be. I utter the ‘V’ word with downcast eyes, humility oozing from my pores, apologies and beseeching gratitude falling from my mouth. But in these days of culinary complications, a good chef should be able to think on his or her toes, taking requests in their stride and concocting something adequate on spec. Exceeding every possible hope, testament to the boundless imagination and talents of Snowy and his team, what I experienced across seven courses of vegan degustation was nothing short of faultless, far beyond the creations of a dedicated vegan restaurant and not cobbled together from the ingredients or elements of other dishes, but created with the care and attention of an artist, flavours married in romantic perfection that make Romeo and Juliet look like a kindergarten kiss, mushrooms smoked, zucchini flowers stuffed and asparagus poached just for little old me. Despite my ghast being absolutely flabbered, this catering to my inconvenience was not what struck me the most. Fins is not like other restaurants. I have been lucky enough to dine well above my bankroll on more occasions than I deserve and every time has been impressive, but Fins is, as ineloquently as this may sound, something else. Everything, from the diversity of the globally collected crockery that perfectly compliments each dish to the French ceiling fans, Indonesian timbers and sumptuous, handmade upholstery of their recent refurbishment, screams attention to detail. Dining has become a complete experience once more. As you sink into the rich interior that belies the modern Salt Village just beyond the timber shutters, you are transported to Morocco or Marrakesh, brass fittings alluding to the lulling motion of Mediterranean waves. You eavesdrop fellow diners, convinced that Bogart must be in here somewhere, not giving a damn about his dear. A modern fusion of flavours offsets classical nuances, harking back to a time when service mattered, the little things were yet to be forgotten and the customer really was always right. Snowy’s 2 I.C. and head sommelier, Florent Elineau, is the definition of subtle attentiveness, making you feel as if your every whim is catered to without feeling suffocated by the attention. He is, as all wine waiters truly should be, authentically and unapologetically French, to his absolute credit, his lilting accent infusing the classical surroundings with a Continental air. Florent brings what can only be described as a je ne c’est quoi (I don’t know what) to the Fins experience, both in his impeccable service, as it is with all staff, and by his very presence. Perhaps his rolling ‘R’s and sibilant annunciation draw long absent memories back to the surface, childhood holidays of prolonged, twilight dinners on centuries old timber tables in rustic French villages enhancing the ‘experience’ part of the dining experience. I cannot speak for the other customers, those slurping on the delicately balanced king prawn and saffron bisque or sampling the Arroz de Marisco risotto poised on the outstretched fork of their partner but, even to a vegan like me, every dish is as delicious to the eyes as it is to the palate. Snowy is meticulous in his sourcing of ingredients. Everything is as local as possible, the fish he personally selects from Brunswick Heads, the exotic fruits garnishing desserts from the Tweed Coast’s Tropical Fruit World, even the astoundingly fresh and flavoursome wakame is Tasmanian, as local as can be for such a fickle crop. Through relationships built over decades, he receives the very best, freshest produce possible, ingredients only available after extensive time and effort spent with his suppliers. A pride that lacks all conceitedness and an unbridled passion for his craft exudes through both every dish and Snowy’s ever-genial, ever-smiling persona. I had questioned the validity of a vegan’s perspective on possibly the country’s finest seafood restaurant, I had wondered what my opinion could count for. But, while my menu was lovingly and meticulously crafted for my specific requirements (as it would be for anyone offering advance notice of their desires), the smiles on the faces around me and the eyes rolled back in decadent and hedonistic pleasure spoke volumes. Food is not something to be rushed, meals are not a time-consuming necessity, getting in the way of our daily chores and pleasures. What Fins brings to its clientele is more than some of the finest food crafted by the hand of man. If you visit Fins for an exquisite meal, you will not be disappointed, but you will be missing the point. From the extensive, 30-page wine menu offering history and pedigree of every bottle, to the hand-picked crockery from Japan and France and Spain and the lavish yet comfortable Tardis of the dining room that transports you far away to different times and different places, the food is only one divinely created aspects of the experience. We need to regress. We must slow down, take time, sample once more all that makes a true dining experience. With time constraints and social disconnect, we have forgotten what it is to enjoy a meal, as much for the temporary vacation in our days as for the food we consume. Fins is Atlantis, Petra, Pompeii, a place lost in time, beyond our contemporary concepts. Fins is everything we have forgotten dining should be. For bookings: Phone – 02 6674 4833 Email – [email protected] Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/FinsRestaurant Instagram – @finsrestaurant Photos: Kirra Pendergast – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Aug 31, 2015

It could be said that, for the greater part, this year’s Splendour in the Grass was blessed with fine weather and the best a Byron winter can offer – clear, blue skies, warm days and mostly dry nights. But a wet preceding week and a couple of heavy, though short-lived downpours swiftly turned the high-traffic avenues of Byron Parklands into a slick and sticky mudfest. The tragedy of this climatic quagmire was that about three people among the 30,000-strong crowd actually gave a shit. Splendour always cops it. It should almost be written into the small print that, yes, it will be muddy, yes, it probably will rain, but everybody always knows this, they come prepared with knee-high rubber and waterproof cladding, and they get on with enjoying a three-day celebration of some of the finest contemporary music the planet has to offer. The bands embrace the elements, whipping crowds into a frothing, churning frenzy through downpours and belting out tunes to wash away the less than favourable conditions. The irony is, there is something about the challenge, the mud and the rain that makes Splendour thrive. We are all thrown into a Devil-may-care camaraderie, in it together, smiling through the tribulations and having the best weekend of the year, come hell or high water. Whether it was the absolutely pumping set from Peking Duk, the elements-defying spirit lifting of Of Monsters and Men or the ethereal grace of Florence and the Machine, the lineup of this year’s Splendour in the Grass took one look at clouded skies, felt the raindrops upon its collective cheeks and screamed to the heavens: “bring it on!” From the outside – the haven of a warm, dry home and the live streams of Triple J keeping you up to date on the musical merriments – you can cast your complacent, conceited opinions. You may think we are all suffering, you may think you are the lucky ones, mud-free, comfortable and only a flick of the switch away from a hot shower, but we defy you. We defy you to say, when you are standing in the Amphitheatre with 10,000 of your new best friends, mud slowly creeping its way up your inner thighs towards your gusset, a deluge cascading down upon your head and Mark Ronson ripping the roof clean off with the most mind-blowing audio assault your eardrums have ever laid witness to, that there is any creature comfort in the whole wide world that you wouldn’t give up for this experience. The throwback psychedelia of Pond and Tame Impala induced to Woodstock imaginings, Royal Blood and Earl Sweatshirt infused urbanisms into the melee and Xavier Rudd and his United Nations connected us on a deeper level with the spectacular surrounds of Byron Parklands. We didn’t care about the weather; it could have haled for all we cared. We were being transported to other places, beyond temporary discomfort and minor inconvenience. That’s the reality that can’t be captured in photos, that gets overlooked by countless YouTube clips, that cannot be translated through social media feeds. Sure, a bone-dry, rain-free weekend would have been preferable, but then what would happen to the camaraderie, the spirit of strength in adversity and the crotch-clutching, naked mud diver? The truth is, whether you can believe us or not, there is something we liked about the muck and the mire. We wore the mud smudges across our cheeks like badges of honour, our stained jeans and wrecked shoes as much testament to our weekend revelries as the official wristbands and Splendour selfies. Rain, shine or trench foot, we wouldn’t change a single thing. So thank you to the amazing Splendour crew, thank you to the custodians of the Eden that is North Byron Parklands, thank you to the bands who brought their magic and blew the doors off, and thank you to the elements, for making Splendour unexpected, unique and unforgettable. And to all the naysayers and cynics who smirk in the sanctuary of their cosy homes and think how ‘lucky’ they were not to have endured the boggy chaos and discomfort, screw you – because we’ve just had the best damn weekend of our lives. All photos by David Andreas – www.davidandreas.com.au – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Jul 30, 2015

Since it first fell into Western hands, surfing has existed in a state of flux. It is in our nature to want newer, better, faster of our frivolous possessions. We upgrade our technology, succumb to the whim of fashion and expand our material wealth as if these are the makings of a better life. We have inflicted these ideals upon surfing, advancements in manufacturing and design whittling away at boards until they have become almost completely disconnected from their hand-hewn timber forebears. But, as a certain musical poet once warbled, the times, they are a-changing – the lifelong mantra of the sport of kings. It’s tricky to pinpoint the moment it occurred, or by whose hand it was instigated, but over the past decade, there has developed within the oceanic community a return to creativity. In its many guises, it has manifested in a reconnection with local shapers, in myriad art forms and in the salt stained garments in which we clothe ourselves. In fact, for a growing subculture, it has permeated every waking hour of our existence. Perhaps it is a metamorphosis of the greater social conscience, but surf culture is most certainly leading the charge. “Surfers don’t just surf in general,” reflects French surfer-filmmaker, Romain Juchereau. “They associate a lifestyle with it; living by the sea, breathing a purer air, embracing the nature that surrounds them, and some of them need to express their feelings of what the sea and the surf give them. That is when the magic happens. If you are a surfer and you are even minimally creative, you would definitely give it a go at expressing yourself in one way or another and getting involved in the surf culture because that is what we live for. “Nowadays,” he continues, “people have more opportunities and options to show their creativity and express themselves. When cameras and video cameras appeared many years ago, a new window opened onto the surf culture for creative people. I guess only for the people who could afford it at first, but then cameras became more affordable and the surf photography was born. “Of course, technology has made surf culture evolve too, in its own way, the internet and social media helping to spread the word much more quickly than ever before.” This is the premise of Romain’s recent film, Behind The Tide, an introspection on a global tribe, interwoven, hermitic, but all following the same path. For some, the creative outlet of a brackish existence is as literal as shaping their own boards, planing away in their folks’ garage with the simple reward of riding something borne of their own two hands, functional or not. But for others, a weekend project is not enough. It is these individuals who are subject to Romain’s lens, those who not only reflect their love of the ocean on terra firma but who have made it their entire lives. Noosa’s Thomas Bexon and Jake Bowrey drew Romain’s attention on a visit to Australia in 2013. In many respects, they are a shaper and a glasser, respectively, much like any other, but the philosophy behind their business is distinctly different. Of course, sustaining themselves financially is a focus, but never at the expense of their moral perspectives. They shape the boards they believe in, the craft they’d choose, not catering to the surfing public at large, but fulfilling the niche that inspires them and, in so doing, creating boards that exude the passion with which they are made. From the southwestern corner of England, James Otter crafts boards from timber, using traditional techniques in shaping and joinery to create boards as much functional as they are masterpieces. Recognising the need for sustainability in a toxic industry and pursuing his ardor for creativity, his career has been moulded by the ocean he loves and realised in the simplicity of traditional craftsmanship. Gone are any delusions of wealth or fame, his drive instead comes from the heart, finding a way to sustain his family within the distinct boundaries of his ethics. Pauline Beugniot was born to a surfing father on France’s south coast, finding her love for the sea both in and out of the water. Her artwork is an embodiment of the joy she feels in riding waves, capturing the experiences that none but a surfer could reflect. Each piece gives the impression as much of an artist telling a story as an overwhelming outpouring in pen and ink of her love of the ocean, its power and its pleasures. “I think each of these people’s mindsets is interesting because they don’t come from a corporate or competition surfing background,” suggests Romain. “They are people who live near the coast and in nature, and have found themselves an interest and a passion for surfing growing up near the sea – real people who started from scratch using their knowledge, their hands and their love for the sea and worked really hard to be where they are now. “[In Behind the Tide] I wanted to show these talents, focusing on the people working independently, out of the mainstream, and also to show the surfing nostalgia in the renaissance of longboarding, single fin, alaia, tandem surfing and handplaning.” Perhaps it could be seen that this diversity in equipment has given to a greater expansiveness in mindset on land as well as in the water. Surfboards no longer have to be by a particular shaper or bear brands and logos. They don’t have to be a certain shape or colour, fin set-up or material. Gone are the prejudices of even five years ago, and in their place have come a respect, a unity and an acceptance. If you’re in the water, enjoying the waves and showing common etiquette, you are welcome. This has brought a recognition to the craftsmen and women and, as with Thomas Surfboards, a niche within which to greater express themselves. Through the 1960s and ‘70s, surfers would do anything they could to sustain their wave-hungry existence. Beg, borrow, scrimp and steal, they were social drop-outs with one sole, soul purpose: to surf. Through the corporatisation of surfing, this was lost. Yes, you could be a professional surfer – if you were one of the 0.0000006 percent of the world’s population lucky and talented enough – but for the masses, surfing was a trend or a hobby, something you did on the weekends or outside your daily existence. Over the last decade, it has become so much more, the complete lifestyle choice exhibited in Morning of the Earth, Crystal Voyager and movies of their ilk and era. To be a surfer today is as much about the food you eat, the beer you drink, the clothes you wear, the car you drive and the career you choose as it is about your weekly wave count and encyclopaedia of manoeuvres. “I think our generation is understanding something about the corruption and how some corporations are leading the world in some ways,” Romain hypothesises. “Nowadays, I think people are giving more trust to the local businesses and independent brands and, as surfers, I think people like to meet and talk with the person who’s going to shape your board, glass it or paint a piece of art. For me, it’s important to know the background of the person or the company selling the thing I want to buy, because it makes such a difference in the process and this is something that businesses can’t really fake – such as experience and knowledge. So I hope that we’ll stay in this mindset and perspective of the surf culture.” Although it is being reflected across generations, cultures and borders, this way of life is not being embodied anywhere in such proliferation as within the surfing community. Patagonia, the ecologically and ethically-minded business behind original modern-day surf hermits, the brothers Malloy, has coined the phrase, ‘Live Simply’, and is the first major corporation to tell its customers to not buy its products, but instead reflect upon what they actually need over what they simply desire. Perhaps this is nothing more than an effective marketing exercise but, whether cunningly crafted to improve sales or encourage an ethos, they stand by their words. Upcycling has become an integral element of this lifestyle, repurposing the waste of others for new means. From creating furniture from shipping palates to using timber offcuts for handplanes, this artistry in reuse and frugality has become less the way of impoverished art students and more about artisan creativity. The sustainability in timber boards, from the most rudimentary alaias to hollow toothpicks and James Otter’s beautifully hand-crafted fishes and longboards, has shed the guise of ‘hippy bullshit’ and become instead a defining way of life. Karl Mackie has brought numerous creative elements together to exemplify this lifestyle more than almost anyone else. Graphic designer, photographer, shaper and craftsman, his life facilitates his passion in defiance of the vice versa. In Behind the Tide, Romain captures a particularly unique project, beginning with Mackie’s simple timber handplanes. Although a superb shaper of conventional surfboards, Mackie embraces the most basic of surfing forms in bodysurfing, shaping handplanes from a sheet of marine ply which, while perhaps not the fanciest of surf craft, are the definition of functionality. These are then sent across the world to surfer artists, adorned with exquisite imagery, exhibited and finally finding their way into the hands of, among others, renowned photographer and filmmaker, Nathan Oldfield. “I think, nowadays, the surfing world has become so vast,” says Oldfield as the movie rolls. “There’s people all around the world surfing in so many different ways for so many different reasons and riding all kinds of craft. But, on the other hand, I think that surfing can still be small and intimate and connected. I guess this handplane is the perfect example of that.” We have come to a place in our collective mentality as surfers – through the inception of foam, the addition of numerous fins, the exploration of the past and the commercialisation of this most natural of sports – that can no longer be packaged or branded, marketed or copyrighted. We have risen above the prescribed notions of what a surfer must be, holding the value of this precious lifestyle above any fashion or advertising campaign. “I think it’s important to take note of these perspectives because it makes you think and understand why we are doing what we do, ” says Romain, “what joy it brings us when we make something from an interaction with our passion, the joy of creating something unique, and the pleasure to share it with others with the same mindset. “This is what I wanted to show with the little handplane story in the film; starting with a Cornish shaper bringing this wooden handplane to life using basic tools in his back garden shed, then getting painted by a local artist in a fisherman’s village in Cornwall using brushes and paint to finally end up in Australia, in the hands of Nathan Oldfield, surf filmmaker, photographer, and surfer, who is bodysurfing with that little handplane on the other side of the planet. To me, it was just fantastic.” Behind the Tide stands as visual testament to this change of tide, the becoming of a more organic future, absent of materialistic consumerism and a journey towards sustainability in all that we do. Finally, we have become more than our bank accounts and possessions, finally, we measure wealth in our joys, our passions and our joie de vivre and no longer by our servitude to social dogma and monetary growth. Long live the revolution. – This article first appeared in the June 2015 issue of Foam Symmetry Magazine Photos: All kindly courtesy of ©Romain Juchereau  

Let’s be the onesLooking the other way,Laughing in gridlock,Racing up the down escalator To break the mundane commute.Let’s be the onesPlaying in the rain,Slow-dancing to silence,Finding joy in those momentsWhen others wear a frown.Let’s be the onesRunning in the hallways,Walking barefoot in the cities,Seeing masterpieces in the structuresOf a grey and lifeless world.Let’s be the onesChasing beetles in the park,Finding wonder in minutiae,Standing on tables to find a placeThat no one else has seen.Let’s be the ones Migrating North,Defying convention,Resolute in every step that takes us awayFrom what is right or normal.Let’s be the onesDefining love,Protecting life,Deleting from vocabularyThe can’ts and won’ts and maybes.Let’s be the onesSwimming naked in the moonlight,Saving honey bees from the tide,Beach combing for trash amongst the jewelsOf shells and pebbles and driftwood.Let’s be the onesKeeping hope alive,Breaking soul-cages,Reminding everyone we touch that good enoughIs never good enough.Let’s be the onesTo live.

You have broken my world,Razed my walls, fractured the illusionsSo carefully crafted for just such moments.Disarmed and naked, you have stolen My sanctuary in solitude.For so long, I have run away,Run inside, run deep into the shadowsThat no light could penetrate,Into the safety of anonymity,Into the safety of alone.My cocoon is gone,That hermitage of growth and pain,Of life and death,A complete and perfect shellAnd a mask to so much hurt.The lies I have told myself,The fabrications of my life,Fall from my lips, redundant,Like dried and lifeless leaves,The useless litter of Autumnal skeletons.What could this life beIf not for you?You, for whom rainbows weep their spectral radianceInto the world;You, who took my hand, placed it upon my heartSo that I might hear the lyrics of its song;You, who whispered to meThe secrets of horizons,Who placed galaxies in dew dropsAnd infinity in the dawn;You, who did not release my from these chainsBut taught me how to pick their locksThat they might fall to my feet,Constrain me no more,Vanquished by this newfound disbelief.You have eroded all that life once wasBy showing meAll that Life can be.

Hidden beneath the masquerade Of 13,000 days,I threw endless fractured heartbeats Into the abyss of time. Forgotten and neglected,Rusted and unused,My soul dripped thirsty petalsInto every hollow footprint. Every breath a final death rattle repeated,Lost and empty, purposeless in its futility.And then you. You do not see the masksI cower from the world behind.You count each single beat.You gather every petal, collect them in your armsAs you walk beside me,Matching every step.You name each breath, give it meaning,The first inhale of newborn lungs. You are my mother, lover,Sister, child,Giving me life,And every dayA purpose.

Take her hand,Trust.Promise her your faith,For she will be your guideIn distant lands,You lighthouseThrough the storms,She holds the keyTo a thousand doors,The answerTo a thousand secrets.She will give youEndless gifts,The sweetest fruitYour tongue may ever touch,The purest waterTo grace your parched and aching throat.But you must see.Give her your eyesAnd your earsIn darkness and silence,Give her your open heart Through ire and sorrow,Give her your days and weeks,For every oneShe will return to you tenfold.Do not crush her silken wings,Do not steal her hope.Do not let her colours fadeAs you clutch her in your hungry arms.Let go, trust.She will return,And with her she carries the giftsOf a million iridescent moments.

We feed these nauseous torments, These kindred foes,Indian givers all,Who proffer shiny trinketsWith sleight of hand trickeries.We buy their lies and craft our lives On their snake oil promisesAnd empty dreams.We pay with our souls, our breath and time For maybes of tomorrow’s dawningAnd wishes that playIn our fingertips.They give hope for the hopelessBut abrupt awakeningsFrom the dreamer’s sleep.They are love, they are hate,They are the fate we cannot make.They are greed, they are guilt, Destroying all we have built.They steal back the faith they give us, And give reason to irrationalities. These emotions, how they burn and writhe,Blindfold us to our truthFor better or for worse.Feel them, guide them,Claim them for your own,But do not listen to their lies, Seek your emancipation,Because, in the end,Now is all we’ve got.

A photo essay collaboration with Romain Juchereau for Slow Drive Magazine.

Everything.   Every aspect of the world we see, From dawn’s first light To the unquenchable blackness of night, Every gift, every treasure, Everything.   Every moment that exists, From love’s gentle kiss To the rain of sorrow cascading across The dunes of your cheek, Every smile, every ache, Everything.   Every trophy of greed and desire, From the shiny car To the fabric of status that wears away To threadbare worthlessness, Every trinket, every hoarded possession, Everything.   Everything will be lost, Dissolved like shadows by the sun. You can’t take it with you, Not sight, not breath, not the beat of your heart, Not jewellery, not house, not the ones that you love.   We do not have a life, It does not exist, In this illusion of time and space. There is no tomorrow, There was no yesterday, there is no hope, no future.   There is nothing But this finite shard of light, This thing we call Now.   This Is Everything.

I once believed I knew myself, That I had mapped The farthest flung corners of my life, Its valleys masked by shadows, Its fields awash with sunlight. I thought I knew the depths of its jungles, Prepared against its hidden dangers. I believed I had gazed to its endless horizons, Had bathed in azure waters Of its farthest distant shores. But life is not of calculable dimensions. She will not reveal her secrets To the searching explorations Or the prying intrusions Of cartographical investigations. She presents an endless artichoke heart, Each leaf a lesson, a gift of love or pain. A sea of petals scattered at my feet, Surrounding me like a thousand frozen teardrops, Only now do I see, I have only Just Begun.

We view the world in polarities. We see them and we see us. We see those that can and those that can’t, the lucky and the unlucky, the privileged few and the deprived masses. At times, we view the simply unattainable with envy, changes that no amount of work or time or fortune may bestow upon us. But too often the focuses of our “I wish” have only one gaping chasm between us and possibility: ourselves. With the utmost respect to him, there is nothing particularly special about JP Afflick. He doesn’t conjure swathes of adoring fans when stepping into the public eye, he doesn’t possess a bank balance to outclass a small European nation, he has no superhuman ability or innate talent that sets him peculiarly apart from you or I. But hidden beneath the genial and humble exterior is a story that drops jaws faster than JP drops clutches. JP and his brother, Mitch, are proof to us all that dreams are attainable, that the impossible is often anything but – JP is an Australian Champion, just half a mile an hour short of a world record holder, Mitch is just two mph slower and both are just nine weeks away from making even that bold claim a thing of the past. JP and his younger brother were born into a fuel-injected life, with the smell of burned rubber and high-octane fuel as familiar as talcum powder and Napisan. Their father was into drag, but not the make-up and suspenders kind. Spending their childhood by the track, watching the old man tear up and down, the sound of the growling engines echoing through their little minds, the Afflick kids were instilled with a sense of speed and the thrill of its pursuit. “My dad used to be the Australian drag racing champion in the ’70s, so we grew up around race tracks,” JP recounts of his early years. “Because dad raced bikes, we were always interested in them. I was riding a pushbike at three or four and had dirt bikes from the age of eight or nine. But I had a big pause until I was about 20. I had a road bike for a while when I lived on the Gold Coast, but there’s just that much traffic that you can’t make a mistake. You could be the best rider ever but then someone cleans you up. So I pretty much stayed away from road bikes – until now.” The two-wheeled, turbo-charged passion was genetic and, despite leaving the racing track behind many years before, a few years ago JP’s father took his two sons to Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah – the global Mecca of land speed racing. Drag racing, like many forms of motorsports, had become standardised. The bikes had to fit such a strict criterium that there was little scope for innovation and creativity and, just like the V8 or Formula 1 Supercars, there were only hairline differences from one bike to the next. But at Bonneville, anything was possible. People were making bikes in their back sheds, machining their own parts, adapting their bikes in shape, form and mechanics and letting their imaginations run wild. This was what motorbike racing was all about, and the Afflick clan was inspired. It wasn’t until their return to Bonneville in 2012 that the trio decided it was time to join the tribe on the Salt Flats, not as spectators as they had been previously, but as competitors, those gladiators braving the expansive glare of the unforgiving plains to go faster than anyone else. At this point, it is worth pausing to recognise exactly what it means to break a land speed record. There are those that reach for and surpass the sound barrier, travelling upwards of 760 miles per hour (1,223kph) in multi-million dollar rocketships crafted in wind tunnels by mad scientists and mathematicians. But the land speed record is as diverse as the vehicles used to achieve it. Cars, motorbikes, human-powered, wind-powered – the categories of competition are numerous. For JP and his family, their preferences dwell in the realms of sanity and, in December 2012, they bought a 100cc bike, their sights set firmly on reaching speeds at the uppermost limits of the engine’s capacity. To give the less mechanically-minded some perspective, the average 100cc bike tops out at around 60mph (100kph), so to hand-craft, tweak, refine and stretch the diminutive little engine to exceed the 100mph barrier is a spectacular feat of engineering. JP and Mitch are chasing different titles on the one bike and both are a favourable gust of wind short of making that dream come true. “We were over at Bonneville and one night, after a dodgy microwave burrito and many beers, we thought, ‘we’ve got to get back over here and run a bike,’” remembers JP of their first steps. “But we fell back into life and it didn’t happen. In 2012, we went again as spectators, still having not done anything, and came back home and bought a little bike that Christmas. We started work on it from then – that was December 2012. It was a little dirt bike, a Honda CRF. For the class we wanted to go in, the 100cc, the world record is 110mph – you’re going fast, but you’re not going 400. The same bike we started with, we’ve just updated over the last few years. The first year was all about building a land speed bike, last year it was all about the power.” Tinkering away on weekends, reconnecting that family bond usually reserved for weddings, funerals and Christmases, in the mire of engine grease and iron filings, the three Afflicks created bespoke engine parts, machined and turned in their own garage, formed the cowling that would provide the aerodynamic cocoon into which they would fold themselves and eked every wisp of power they could out of the machinery. A little to the south of Woop Woop, just behind the Back of Beyond and over six hours north of Adelaide lies Lake Gairdner. It is the Australian equivalent of Bonneville and a proving ground for Australia’s speed junkies. It was here, in the endless desolation of the salt-encrusted lake bed, that JP would set the Australian record at 109.5mph (176kph). Lake Gairdner is a test site. It serves well to familiarise themselves with the processes and methods of achieving a record, as well as the refinements needed to their equipment. Class records have been challenged and those attending the annual meets are very proud to be a part of the gathering. But Bonneville is where the glory lies, where the world of speed focuses its attention each year and where JP, his father and his brother will once again make the pilgrimage, but this time, with their bike.   “Bonneville has just celebrated a ‘Century of Speed’,” says JP, “so it’s been going for a hundred years now, whereas Lake Gairdner is only 25 years old. We have 200 competitors, whereas they have two and a half thousand. We’ve just shipped our bike to Bonneville and we head over in nine weeks. And yeah, it’s the Mecca, it’s the Monaco of Formula 1.” So much in the land speed community is different. There are the big shots going for the big numbers, but there are the back yard hobbyists, guys just like JP and his family, who have built bikes up from nothing on the smell of an oily rag. Because of this, there is a unity and camaraderie rarely seen in any other sport. Competition exists only against the speedo, secrets are divulged, friends are made and even parts are donated by ‘opposing’ teams to help attain the miracle figures. “It’s a big family,” says JP of his experiences. “The first year we went to Lake Gairdner and got scrutineered (ensuring their bike complies with regulations), we thought we’d done everything to specification but we had to change our fuel line. We were in the middle of the desert and had no way of getting a new fuel line. But some guy just came out of nowhere and gave us five metres of fuel line and said, ‘just pay me back later.’ “Everyone has worked hard just to get to the salt, so everyone looks out for each other.” The bikes, unsurprisingly, aren’t road legal and are so loud that they can’t even be so much as started in residential areas, so often, the only moments a bike will ever be ridden is on the salt. JP has run his bike on a private Gold Coast runway on occasion, but it is nowhere near long enough to replicate a world record attempt or test the bike to its full capacity. But he and his team have proved themselves. They have shown that they are a whisper short of the record and that they are every bit deserving of their chance to run at Bonneville. With the help of sponsorship from national and local business, JP, Mitch and their dad are on their way. The bike is in a crate somewhere on the Pacific, the tickets are booked and a fellow salt addict (who they have never met, yet connected with through their passion) has promised to collect the bike and lend them the use of his truck to get to Bonneville. In just nine weeks’ time, a new world champion may be heading back home. We may not be gifted or blessed in the life we are born into, we may be, for all intents and purposes, ‘normal’ – if there even is such a thing. But however unremarkable we may be, our potential will only ever be hindered by the choking grasp of our own two hands. If you aim for the horizon, you just might get there fastest. JP Afflick would like to thank the generous support of all his sponsors, including local businesses: Brookfarm Bay Seafood Danny Wills Quiksilver, Byron Bay East Point Signs You can follow the pursuits of JP and team AAA Racing on their road to Bonneville at – www.facebook.com/AAALandSpeedRacing – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Jun 4, 2015  

According to a recent study conducted by the mighty Microsoft Corporation, the human attention span has dropped from 12 seconds to eight seconds. We live in a fast-paced world of soundbites, vox pops and sensationalism, a world that devours, masticates and regurgitates a truth misconstrued to the point of fabrication in order to make each one of those eight fleeting seconds count. We cast our eyes across the alarming bold type, carefully crafted to draw maximum attention, and assume that the black and white message conveyed to us by that fountain of truth, the public media, is, well, black and white. For a man who has been witness to more newsworthy experiences in many a single weekend as most of us will attest to in a lifetime, it is a gross understatement to say that, to be publicly remembered for a falsified account of a single December day in 1969 is a little myopic. Sam Cutler began life with a bang – literally. Born in London at the height of World War II, he exited the womb right into the aftermath of the blitz. By 1945, both parents would have their lives stolen by the travesty of war and the orphaned Cutler would be ensconced in a new home and a new family almost before he could even walk. “I was adopted in 1946, when I was a three-year-old, by a very good family, loved and raised by them. They were communists, so I was raised in a very left-wing environment. Basically, I left my home in England when I was 15 to wander the world.” The next five years alone could account for a biography, the swathe of anecdotes and adventures he doubtlessly encountered and accumulated through his late teens enough to make any paranoid parent’s head spin. But it was on his return to the homeland that his life’s path ventured into tales of cinematic proportions. Now 1966, London was swinging more than a boomer’s family jewels, and Cutler dived headlong into the thick of it. Enamoured of the music scene during this pivotal era, Sam found any way he could to participate. While most envisioned themselves through their rose-tinted love heart glasses, as the next Lennon, Hendrix, Joplin or Morrison, Sam saw his role in the industry a little differently. “I just loved music, so I used to hang out in clubs and work out how and where I could play a part. So I helped getting the shows together and slowly kind of moved up the ladder until I was in charge of shows – first small, then larger and so on. “There was a difference in those days. Now everyone wants to do it, so you’d be competing with thousands of people. At the time that I wanted to do it, everyone wanted to be rock n’ roll stars, they didn’t want to be tour managers or equipment guys or sound men or lighting people. In fact, those roles barely existed. In a way, I was involved at a time when the music business was deciding for itself what kind of business it was actually going to be.” This formative era opened itself to Cutler, affording him the ability to carve his own niche and present the artists of the time with a skill set and enthusiasm that was, for the greater part, unique. From the smoky, dingy clubs of London, the only way was up. The Beetles, The Who and the Rolling Stones had all crawled their way out of the basements and into the limelight and Cutler was right by their side, through the trenches and onto the world stage. “It was the birth of the contemporary music industry. The early ‘60s was a time in England of great creativity in terms of how we were going to make it happen. Everybody was young, and when you’re in your twenties you think you can rule the world.” The pen of history’s writing was firmly in Cutler’s grasp. Every day was a new awakening, another step in musical evolution, and every gig raised the bench mark once more for everything that would come after it. Pioneers in much that they did, Cutler, the roadies and management and of course the bands themselves were forging new ground continually. This was the right place, this was the right time and Cutler had had the foresight and passion to be perfectly poised to utilise the opportunity. Event and band management were still a far cry from the professionalism of today’s standards. Cutler recognised this and forged his career from the chaos. Alexis Korner, ‘the Founding Father of British Blues’, was his first major client, a pivotal and inspirational figure in England’s music scene, and the blues was where it was at. Everyone, from Elvis to the Doors, Pink Floyd to the Stones, was reaching out to the black blues musicians of the US for inspiration and Cutler was on the pulse. “The hubris of people singing, ‘We Built this City on Rock n’ Roll’…no you didn’t – what a load of bo$%&cks, you know what I mean,” he smirks through his still robust London accent. “The baton was passed well before Elvis and white rock n’ roll and it was actually passed by black artists. One of the things the Rolling Stones did was recognise the roll of black artists and pay tribute to it and copy it in effect. I was into all of that – Big Bill Broonzy and Josh White – all kinds of black, acoustic blues artists. And then the blues moved into Chicago and got electrified and the rest is history.” Cutler balks at the notion of having a ‘proper’ career, but his association with Korner, producing shows and so on, lead to the management of events in London’s Hyde Park – for Korner and Pink Floyd amongst many of the world’s biggest names in music, before eventually connecting with the Rolling Stones. “The ‘Stones came to the first Blind Faith show in Hyde Park and they loved it. Mick [Jagger] came with Marianne [Faithful] and asked me how it worked and wanted to know all about it and then decided that they wanted me to do a show in Hyde Park to launch Mick Taylor as the replacement of Brian Jones. Then four days before the show, Brian died, so it turned into a memorial for Brian.” As if his breaks had not been big enough to that point, this meeting was pivotal in Cutler’s story and, with the ‘Stones in their heyday, he became the band’s manager, both at home in the UK and across the water in America. “Everybody in the music business in London wanted to go to America, whether it was ‘Floyd, The Who, Mick Fleetwood, whoever. America was the Mecca. It was a different world then and America was where it was at. I took the ‘Stones on the ’69 tour of America. Some of their greatest music was played around that period. When I worked with the ‘Stones, they made Beggar’s Banquet, Let It Bleed and Get Your Ya Yas Out – in my opinion, three of the greatest albums ever made.” Nothing like it had come before and nothing could equal it after. It was as dynamic, exciting, electric and volatile as the music industry would ever be. But with the highs, there came the lows, and the free concert of Altamont in California was certainly one of rock n’ roll’s darkest moments. The media says that a black festival-goer was murdered, the media says the Hell’s Angels were responsible, the media says the gig was mismanaged and, in a feast of sensationalism, here-say and conjecture verging on libel, the headlines grossly overlooked the facts. The reality, so rarely spoken by media lips, was that the reveler had pulled a gun, fire two shots at an unknown target and the threat was neutralised before any more harm could be done, by members and associates of the Hell’s Angels who happened to be in attendance, but had not, in stark contrast to media accusations, been hired. This echo in Cutler’s past simply won’t stop ringing in his ears, and it is with some very understandable contention that he addresses any mention of Altamont. And here, in the mispublicised miasma of falsity, is point-perfect of the 8-second attention span of society at large. This misplaced scandal is dragged up from the gutter time and again in the questioning of a man who has accomplished so much more, given so much to the development of the music industry and is now, over 45 years later, fighting a far bigger battle, a battle for his health. Surely this single, miniscule shadow on an iridescent career can be outshined. He forged the way for live concerts the world over, dropped acid on tour with the Grateful Dead, founded a business that represented The Band, The Allman Brothers and more and, in his 72 years, has lived and become so very much more than the 30 tragic and falsely reported seconds that have plagued him ever since. Cutler could have the expanded ego of a self-aggrandising rock star, the pseudo-superciliousness of wannabe celebrity, and it would be justified by the part he has played. But his unwavering humility is resonant. He was just a London kid who digged the scene. Looking at the industry now and festivals such as Byron’s Bluesfest – the organiser of which, Peter Noble, is a close friend – Cutler is full of praise and admiration, for the management, the event and the musicians. He could lay claim to any number of features that assist in the smooth running of a festival, but to him, it’s still all about the music. The London lad is now a Byron Shire local, quick to voice his adoration of Australia, and has no desire to return to the UK: “I sold it to an American for ten bucks – they can ‘ave it! My mother used to say to me, ‘oh you must miss England,’ and I go, ‘no. Second hand book shops –that’s the only thing I miss about England.” Living a far more humble life, sipping coffees with his wife and friends rather than sculling vodkas with any number of groupies, Cutler remains connected to the friends he made back in the swinging 60s; Mick, Keith and Charlie. “I took my kids to see them [The Rolling Stones] in Brisbane and we met up with the band last year. It was lovely and it was a great show. But you can’t pretend you’re twenty anymore, coz you’re not! Personally, I just wish Mick would stand still and sing! But what can you do – he does what he does and he’s still very good at it, that’s for sure. He’s a great frontman.” I finish my talk with Sam Cutler feeling embarrassed, ashamed to have even suggested the ‘A’ word and wishing to have explored so much more of his fascinating life in lieu of his understandable frustration at the mention of Altamont. His life has been so much more and I hang up, grateful that, though time had lapsed for me to question him further, I could discover his astounding journey in print, hoping that this glimmer into an exceptional life might urge you to do the same. ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want: My Life with The Rolling Stones, The Grateful Dead and Other Reprobates’ by Sam Cutler is a biographical voyeurism into the rock n’ roll hey day and available now from  www.samcutler.org. – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Jun 1, 2015  

It’s not the best omen when – before even hearing the first chords and beats of music waft their way to your ear on the cool, Autumnal breeze – not one, but two of your party’s cars get bogged in the waterlogged, spongy turf of the 2015 Byron Bay Bluesfest car park. This didn’t bode well. But, in that heart-sinking, gut-dropping moment of despair, this minor catastrophe also bore the beauty of the festival, the spirit and sentiment that draws people back year after year after 26th year. No sooner had we relinquished to our plight than numerous pairs of hands were offered in support. Festival-goers ventured far away from their beeline to the event to give help. A push here, a suggestion there, someone had rallied a tractor, and before too long our troubles were over. This little preamble is the perfect anecdotal metaphor of the Bluesfest; yes, there may invariably be mud and downpours, yes, several of the headline acts – the big names that some had bought tickets specifically to see – had regrettably been forced to pull out, but for the 105,000 attendees, these little imperfections made little, if any, difference. Bound together by the quagmire and camaraderie, the crowds make the Bluesfest experience every bit as much as the sublime lineup and talents of globally renowned and sourced artists. Wandering past chai tents, clothing stalls, merchandise outlets, bars and an international smorgasbord of eateries, you feel a part of something larger, one of the family. It’s like going to your favourite bar of café, to be warmly welcomed by staff and presented with nods of acknowledgement by familiar yet unknown regulars. This sets the Byron Bluesfest distinctly apart from other festivals. The punters aren’t fixated by their own, single-minded agenda, no one gets wasted-drunk (although many get happily and gently inebriated), and you get the sense that everyone is altogether more conscious and considerate of their part in the sea of people. Under canvas, this expands and envelops you, every elbow-nudge or toe-trip greeted with smiles, apologies, forgiveness and laughter. There is no shoulder-barging cram for the front of stage and crowds make way like the Red Sea for Moses for their fellow music appreciators. The noticeably few offer around their funny-smelling cigarettes in kinship and kindness, but not a single soul succumbs too much or ventures to more antisocial chemical enhancement. With such warmth and friendliness seeping from the rippling mass at their feet, artists too evoke a similar spirit. Alabama Shakes front woman, Brittany Howard, gushed with humility at the response from the Bluesfest audience during both of the band’s two appearances on stage. Xavier Rudd was overwhelmed with smiles and thanks, Ben Harper regaled fans with a mass of old favourites and Angus and Julia Stone chatted with their fans as long lost friends. This permeates every aspect of the festival, from the smaller stages with diminished crowds to the sardine-can melee of headline acts. On stage and off, the atmosphere percolates, bringing with it friendships and handshakes between perfect strangers and smiles as bright as the near-full moon beaming down across the venue. Returning to the Bluesfest once again, Michael Franti brought with him something just a little bit special, embodying the festival vibe with more than a hint of ‘Byron-ness’ thrown in. Michael Franti’s Soulshine brought the 2015 Bluesfest to a close in spectacular style. Braving the swamp of the Crossroads stage, 5,000 yogis brought their mats and smiles for yoga and an acoustic jam, mixing asanas with songs in a practice as much fun as it was the seriously spiritual side to yoga. Sahara Beck, Rebelution and SOJA followed, preceding Franti’s finale. Whether you enjoy his music or not, Franti’s performance will always get you frenetic. A true showman, Franti has a oneness with the crowd, embracing them in the show, uniting with them and, rather than singing to them or for them, making each and every one of them feel a part of something bigger. The clouds gave way to sunshine, the smiles never faded, the mud dried and the cars were un-bogged, and each one of the 105,000-strong crowd wended their way home carrying that message all the way; that they too had been a part of something bigger. – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Apr 12, 2015 All Photos: ©Kirra Pendergast

There is something a little voyeuristic in watching movies. We gain an insight into the lives of others, empathise with strangers, peek through the curtains of our closeted lives into a world that is not ours. Whether it is dreaming of gaining superpowers, finding that one, true love or simply travelling the world vicariously through the lens of a travel documentary, the power of film allows us to expand our lives in ways we could never physically accomplish. The ninth Byron Bay Film Festival brings together over 220 feature and short films, documentaries, animation and music videos in a celebration of the silver screen and the artists that make it come alive. But, with such a myriad collection of cinematic offerings, it’s a challenging and abundant smorgasbord to try and pick the tastiest morsels from. Not suggesting that they are the best, nor that they will be everyone’s cup of chai, here are four movies from the collection that we particularly enjoyed: OCEANIC GIFTS: WHAT THE SEA GIVES ME The big blue is many things to many people. It provides sustenance, income and pleasure to those that live at its shores, gives food, water and an ecological balance to even the most land-locked pockets of the planet. It is a precious gift and an essential part of global sustainability. What The Sea Gives Me tells the tales of those whose lives have become intrinsically entwined in the ocean’s ebb and flow; surfers, artists, ecologists and fishermen whose every waking moment is steeped in the spume and brine. Chris Burkard travels the globe photographing landscapes, surfers and the sea, producing breathtaking images of the ocean’s raw power, grace and beauty. Commissioned to travel, Burkard explores tropical paradises and icy extremes, for exhibitions, advertising and editorials. Crystal Thornburg-Homcy and Dave Homcy have built careers on the crest of a wave as a pro surfer and filmmaker respectively. Living on Hawaii’s North Shore, the ocean is their back yard, their playground, their office and their lifeblood rolled into one. Brett McBride is a fisherman-turned-ecologist, building his life on the fruits of the ocean, but in doing so, witnessing its demise through overfishing and pollution. He now catches sharks, wrangles them onto submersible platforms and tags and releases them for scientific research, giving back to the ocean that has provided so much. These are just a handful of individuals portrayed, all with salt water in their veins and a deep and profound connection to the sea. FUEL INJECTED: OUT OF NOTHING The high octane world of motorcycles has never really raced my heart. Some love the Easy Rider, wind-in-hair, bugs-in-teeth thrill of a throbbing engine between your legs, but bikes just didn’t rev my engine – until now. Four friends, four bikes, one dream and five miles doesn’t sound like an amazing bike trip, but for Mark and Carl Bjorklund, Jason Omer and Bill Woods, it was the journey of a lifetime. Their dream was to race the 5-mile salt track of Bonneville, home of numerous land speed records, barren lunar wasteland and the destination for hundreds of speed freaks every year, intent on breaking a record or their necks in the process. Hand-building their bikes in their collective workshops, the quartet pooled resources and skills to create a collection of hogs that would make Dr Frankenstein envious. Cobbled together from vintage parts and hand-beaten sheet metal, the bikes received as many quizzical expressions as they did looks of admiration. Out of Nothing follows the foursome through their preparation, telling the story of the workaday Americans as they prepare for the greatest thrill of their lives – gunning the five miles of Bonneville as fast as their choppers will carry them. Through break downs of bikes and minds, the long trek across four US states and finally to victory (at least, victory for one of their party), Out of Nothing is a non-stop thrill ride that will have you trading in your suit for a set of leathers before the credits roll. PLENITUDE IN SOLITUDE: CABRAS – WHERE FABLES ARE BORN There is something about isolation that reinvents the human soul. The disconnection of confinement can crush us completely, the journey of the lost can bring us back to life. The solitude of Sardinia is the catalyst for the wonderful story woven by Cabras: Where Fables Are Born. Off the west coast of Italy, half way between Europe and Africa, Sardinia has had a patchwork history of multicultural influence. Very much Italian, nuances of Turkey, Spain, France, even Morocco, permeate its people. From an island, a different perspective is observed, one that cannot be emulated or predicted, cannot be formed into words that fall upon a foreign ear with any sense of comprehension. But, through art, music, poetry and film, it can be alluded to, empathised with, and this is what Cabras achieves so well. Portraying the people and culture of Sardinia, Cabras not only exquisitely documents this unique island and those that call it home, it also unveils a social commentary about the necessities of life. This is what is subliminally conveyed by Cabras, and it is this that is taken with the viewer beyond the screen. Shown an existence so simple, so pure and raw, at the mercy of the elements, forced to connect with nature rather than try to overpower it, one can only question the importance of the ephemeral miasma we call ‘life’. The people of Sardinia gorge themselves on the beauty in simplicity; the poetry of the wind, the art of the rocks, the song of the ocean and the sculpture of the land. With the fast-paced, materialistic world we have wrapped around ourselves, one can’t help but question, ‘what is truly important?’ ANOTHER LOVE STORY: CUT SNAKE When you’re in love, you want nothing to change. The sun dawns brighter, your cheeks ache with smiles and the future sparkles in incandescence. Your life turns a page, leaving the past behind and writing a new chapter of joy and happiness. But what if that past could not let go? Cut Snake reflects a life of polar opposites; a young man with a beautiful wife-to-be, steady job and ever-brightening future. But when his hidden past life of crime and prison sentences brings forgotten shadows back from the grave, his world is turned upside down. Australian movies have a realism about them. Whether because we better connect with the culture or perhaps that something intangible lies within our filmmaking industry, a deeper level of empathy exists, a recollection and a familiarity as if we are watching some distant deja vu. Cut Snake lifts you up, drops you down, makes you switch loyalties a dozen times – and then turns everything on it’s head. Simple, understated, brilliant, dark – it brings back the art of screenplay and cinematography that has been lost to the miasma of CGI and special effects. For more information, visit the website at: www.bbff.com.au – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Mar 1, 2015

We all wear masks. Our daily lives consist of a masquerade ball, a series of pseudo-personae that we adopt to fulfill society’s prescriptions. Some hide only our deepest truths, while others offer absolute protection, suits of armour as far removed from our real selves as possible, a sanctuary for the souls that we closet away in fear of judgment or pain. For most, this is nothing more than a metaphor. While flesh and bone may be exposed to the core, the truth remains buried deep. But for some, these alter egos have taken on a life of their own. Ilona Harker answers my telephone call with a bubbly joie de vivre, the confident familiarity borne of a career in the public eye. “I’ve just been doing a mad house clean,” she confesses. “I’ve just got a new puppy and she’s been messing the place up.” The Ilona Harker I meet on the other end of this digital umbilical cord is not the person I thought it would be. A down-to-earth working mum, cleaning up puppy poop and juggling daily chores, the image belies the flip side of her life. “I’ve perfected my withering look,” she says of her week-old puppy training techniques. “I just have to look at her and she’s like, ‘oh shit, now I’m in trouble!’ She understands who the big bitch of the house is!” Ilona grew up in the Northern Territory. Born in Darwin and growing up in Armidale, her childhood was a far cry from the stage and spotlight life she lives today. “I had a bit of a wild childhood,” she recalls, “but although I was wild, I was also very sensible. I’d watch a lot of people doing quite nutty stuff and I think my inner snob held me back from doing those things. It saved me from some quite hairy situations.” An activist from a young age, Ilona quickly discovered that performance was the perfect vehicle for her message. Taking to the streets and performing acts such as stilt walking, fire breathing and street art. But, at the age of 19, Ilona’s life took a very different turn. When her uncle was diagnosed with cancer, Ilona moved to Sydney. In a drastically contrasting environment, she nurtured her uncle through his ailing health. Completing a degree in business management, she entered the corporate world, remaining in Sydney for a year and a half while dividing her time between a business career and nursing her uncle. Life, as it so often tends to do, then dealt Ilona a wildcard. Falling pregnant, she had to swiftly re-evaluate. Added to this, her mother too, fell sick and Ilona had to once again uproot her life and head north to Brisbane. Always holding a dream to perform within her, Ilona’s personal life was put on hold, placing others before herself but keeping those dreams dormant, rather than ever discarding them completely. From tragedy comes new life and, though it shattered her, the devastating passing of her mother allowed Ilona to live the life that had for so long been placed on hiatus. “I always had this great vision to get into the music industry, not to perform but more on the management side, because I was ‘too old’ to perform. When my mum passed away when I was 27, I just picked up a guitar and taught myself to play. I just jumped in – I didn’t want anyone else to know I’d started writing songs. I put a couple of bands together but it was tricky because there were a lot of things that I couldn’t do; I couldn’t really go out and socialise – and that’s how you meet a lot of people [in the music industry], so I found myself writing a lot of stuff and performing on my own.” Glimmers of success, as a fleeting member of Butterfingers before her mother’s passing and as a solo and band performer in Brisbane, were never forthcoming, or accommodating enough, for Ilona to achieve a level of success. Unable to tour due to her parental commitments, struggling to keep her head above water in a schizophrenic life of music and single-parenthood, she reached a crossroads; to continue to pursue the dwindling spark of a music career in the Big Smoke, or to step off the treadmill, get out of the rat race and move to Brunswick Heads. And it was the latter that won out. “When I was with Butterfingers, we were nominated for an Aria, and because I couldn’t go on tour with them I had to leave the band. It was really hard. People would say, ‘why did you leave the band? That was pretty stupid – you must be really disappointed.’ But I just had to bite the bullet. There was a slight amount of disappointment, of course, but there’s no way I would have given any of my life up for a small amount of fame.” With this mindset, she re-evaluated, recognising the important aspects of her life that money, fame or glory could never replace. But once a performer, always a performer and, with a newfound outlook on both her personal life and her musical career, she marched out onto the stage once more. “When I was caring for my mother, I was wound up like a Jack-in-the-Box. All the ideas were there, but I couldn’t do anything with them. It was frustrating. But now that I have the ability to express all of those things, it’s like a constant deluge. Working with Butterfingers, I saw how much fun it was to work a crowd, how easy it was and how much I enjoyed it. That’s when I invented my first character, Lady Mumma – a bad-ass single mum who was, like, ‘f**k you, I’m here – don’t question me.’” The rollercoaster of Ilona’s life had always been ridden for others; her uncle, her son and her mum. In many respects, though she would never change anything, she had to shut up and deal with the bitter pills life served her. Through love and disappointment, joy and loss, Ilona’s characters manifested, always kept tucked away, companions in her rare solitary moments and finally they could break free and see the light of day. Mae Wilde leapt onto the stage to renown and acclaim. Ilona’s ultra-sexual, superpowered alter ego was the inner self that she could never express in her day to day life. She was brash, she was coarse, she said wildly inappropriate things, and she didn’t give a damn. Ilona had awakened a beautiful, sexy monster, a shield for her vulnerability and a big ‘f**k you’ to all the prejudice and social pigeon holing she had suffered in her years as a single mum, forced into meekness by circumstance. “I can acknowledge that Mae is an element of me. She’s a very strong character, she’s very strongly sexual, she is very demanding – all these things, that I’d love to behave like in real life. I love the idea of flipping something on it’s head and exposing another side. May is an overly-sexualised woman who asks for what she wants and demands whatever she likes, and that’s what I really like about Mae. It’s definitely a reaction to judgment of being a single mother and carer.” From Mae sprang more characters, Emmy-Lou Amethyst, the new-age country singer, Poppy Seed Loaf – demented elf and purveyor of fine MDMA, Coco Dada the existential critic and Foxy Bold (feminist alien). Each character that Ilona has moulded is another aspect of her inner-self or a conduit for her observations on life. It’s a challenging thing to stand up, to strip yourself bare to the soul and embody your wildest side or most confrontational perspective, but as an act, it becomes achievable. Just as with her activist street performances, Ilona can speak to the world, put voice to her every thought, be brash, arrogant, rude, sexual – whatever she chooses. Ilona’s shows can be confronting. They can awaken thoughts, shine a beaming spotlight on insecurities, expose metaphorical private parts, and that’s speaking for Ilona. But it is comfortably confronting, a prescribed, socially acceptable rattling of our cages. In these personae, Ilona finds catharsis. She can be bigger, wilder, greater than she could possibly allow in her personal life, even to the point that the characters take over. “People sometimes tell me I said something really funny, but I’ve got no idea what I said. Sometimes I’ll get off stage and think, ‘where did that time go?’ I’m there to serve the music, my craft and my art. If you can do that, then you transport yourself and then you’ll transport your audience. That’s your job as a performer, and if you do it properly, then your audience will respond – if they’re not complete philistines!” With this multi-faceted, publicly displayed exploration of her inner-psyche, Ilona has found harmony. She can balance her parenting (of both puppy and son), her life as a single mum and her music-teaching career with her music writing, her yearning to perform and her larger-than-life alter egos. On the one hand, she is entirely content in her simple life, but that contentment wouldn’t exist without the life lived vicariously through her characters. For Ilona Harker, A mask has become something not to hide behind but to live beyond the constraints of her day-to-day. Each character has it’s own story, it’s own personality, but somewhere, deep down, they are all another page of her soul. – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Feb 27, 2015 All photos: ©Kirra Pendergast Photography

A man died recently. As I write this, a family is in mourning, his friends are in shock and the community is stunned by the news of a second local shark incident in two days. The details are not important, suffice it to say that Tadashi Nakahara, a 41-year-old Japanese man who has called Byron his home for the last year, lost his life, for which no words can express the loss and tragedy. But in the aftermath, the question remains: how can such shattering events be prevented from ever recurring? Over the last year, we have seen governmental pushes for culling and drum lines, a call for more shark nets and the implementation of early-warning systems and a public outcry against such moves. Through much of Australia’s, indeed, global history, an inherent fear has been bred in us, that sharks are out to get us, that these ferocious and blood-thirsty predators hell-bent on our demise. Kill, kill, kill has been the ‘solution’, the utter genocide of this mysterious and illusive creature about which Peter Benchley, Steven Spielberg and the global media-at-large has told us we must be terrified. And yes, while ten feet of pure muscle and steal-hard, razor-sharp teeth may be the ingredients of nocturnal cold sweats, the vast majority of this fear is unfounded. “It does sell papers,” says Sea Shepherd Shark Ambassador for East Coast Australia, Nicole McLauchlin. “Every time there is a shark incident, especially a fatal incident, it’s picked up by the media and, unfortunately for that reason, these animals have been completely targeted by people around the world as this creature who is lurking out there, waiting for their next victim.” But the reality, as is so often the case, is far from the truth. With no way of truly investigating an object, a shark is all but forced to bite first and ask questions later. It is incredibly rare that a shark will return to a human victim, biting only once before moving on. But, as has devastatingly been proven today, often that one bite is more than enough. “Unfortunately for sharks, they can’t actually process what something is until they have taken a curious bite,” says Nicole. “And even more unfortunately, it is often just that one, powerful bite that ends up in these tragedies that do happen.” None can deny that there has been a distinct increase in shark attacks over the last couple of years – the figures simply don’t lie. But, between media coverage, an ever-increasing population of water-users and the profound overfishing and depletion of fish stocks, it might be suggested that this recent shark problem is man-made. “We’re definitely changing the balance of the marine environment and the ecosystem, and that’s causing sharks to behave differently,” Nicole reflects. “It is their environment and we are visitors. It’s not vital for us to swim and recreationally use the ocean, however it is vital for them to have the ocean as their home. It’s the same with any wild environment – you take a risk every time you step into it.” But, like a 1960s parent telling his child to check under the bed for Commies, our fear for sharks has, for the greater part, been bred into us. Literally hundreds of facts exist to suggest that our excessive fear of sharks is grossly irrational. Horses, for example, kill four times more people annually, cows almost five times, but these furry, benign creatures seem to breed no cause for concern. And all of these figures pale into insignificance when compared to what we do to ourselves. So is it that education, rather than intervention, or even eradication, could be the answer? “In the days of Moby Dick, whales and orcas were seen as these ferocious monsters of the deep,” Nicole highlights. “But now we have a greater understanding and the realization that they just do what naturally comes to them. It is important to keep it in perspective, but unfortunately that irrational fear has lead to shark nets and drum lines. As well as the public perspective, I think it is something that the media really needs to be addressing.” Fortunately, the tide is turning, and not just in the sharks’ favour. In a survey of Western Australians conducted at the time of last year’s shark cull, over 80 percent didn’t want the cull to go ahead. That’s well and good for the sharks, one might argue, but what happens when their numbers explode and more and more shark incidents occur? In some regards, this could be called a valid argument, but it has been proven time and again that shark culls are ineffective in reducing the numbers of incidents. Instead, we should be looking towards something man has excelled in above all other living creatures: technology. “Speaking for Sea Shepherd Australia,” says Nicole, “it’s really important to push these new technologies and alternatives that are available to us now, which have been proven to protect sharks, humans and other marine life.” Eco shark barriers, video surveillance, shark towers and projects such as the OCEARCH Global Shark Tracker iPhone app have all been shown to be an effective means of reducing the threat to humans. In South Africa, a region particularly rife in shark activity, surfers have united to create early warning systems, using flags, spotting towers and other methods to alert water-goers to the presence of sharks before it’s too late – preventative steps that save lives. Education, too, plays a key role in prevention. Rallies and talks create a greater awareness within oceanside communities that these creatures are present, they do make mistakes, but ultimately it is up to us to remove ourselves from the danger, and not remove the danger from us. “Sharks are keeping our oceans healthy, which in turn keeps life on land healthy, so really, we owe our very existence to a lot of these animals, the level of negative media they get is very concerning.” It seems ironic that we have so many far greater threats that we have created, but that have become socially acceptable; cigarettes and alcohol, weapons and firearms, even driving your car, place you in infinitely more danger than entering the territory of these beautiful and misunderstood creatures. “The very same people who are calling for the culling of sharks would be more than happy to jump into their car and drive to work every day,” reflects Nicole, “not acknowledging that it’s about one and a half thousand times more likely that they would die on their way to work than out in the water with a shark right next to them.” We cannot blame a dog for barking, we cannot blame a wasp for stinging. Sharks do not bite out of malice or spite, they bite because they are curious and because that is what they naturally do. It is not up to the sharks to leave their home, through nets or lines or culls. It is up to us to respect these creatures and the wild environment in which they live and that we are blessed to share. Our hearts go out to Tadashi’s friends and family. Photos: Matt Shepherd / Aquaseen (unless otherwise stated) – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Feb 17, 2015

All too often we inherit our life choices, sometimes they are thrust upon us or prescribed to us by society and family, sometimes we follow the dogma of education. To pursue those choices and passions of our own volition is a rare gift, but when we find that calling and are able to call it a career, we should chase it to the horizons. Warwick Gow has grown up on the Sunshine Coast, but for a short stint in Mackay, and salt water runs in his veins. His father, a keen amateur diver, had horded his old gear away with the onset of family life, but the treasure trove was rediscovered by Warwick just a few years ago: “I didn’t really start taking photos until 2010 when I found Dad’s old Nikonos-V in the shed. He had it to document his time in the ocean and it seemed fitting that I’d do the same when I found it so I started driving to the beach every chance I got to take photos.” But unlike his old man, it was the surface of the water, not its hidden depths, that attracted Warwick and he avidly began shooting surfers and the ocean’s movements. “Even before I surfed or had any intention to surf I used to buy Tracks just for the photos of all those coastlines and to hear the stories of the people who had ventured to them.  I started to shoot surfing because I was curious about everything involved in the pursuit and still really am. I’m pretty fortunate for all the people I’ve met and have become friends with along the way.” Although much of his photography has been confined to the Sunshine Coast, this certainly hasn’t dampened his enthusiasm or the growth of his talent. Explorations close to home have still given a wealth of material, and a few tales of adventure in the mix: “Unfortunately I haven’t travelled anywhere too exotic yet other than frequent trips up and down the east coast. Shooting at home’s been good to me though, regardless of how infrequent good swells are here. “One impromptu trip double island to shoot and surf left us stranded in the middle of a storm with only one photo being taken all day. We kooked it; a heavy southerly turned what could have a been fun surf into small slop as the offshore took the top off any piece of swell. We made the most of it, waiting for the tide to drop so we could head home, but the tide never went out. Our little 4×4 did its best in trying to get us back but was swamped going through a crossing, stalling the engine just as a little ripple swept underneath, sinking the car to its doors and forcing us to wait in the pouring rain under a cheap sun shelter tent listening to the Beatles as we rationed our last beer over the four-hour wait to be rescued.” Surfing is his first love, but a feisty and passionate mistress has surfaced in fashion photography and Warwick’s portfolio is expanding exponentially. Aiming to complete his degree in journalism this year, Warwick’s photography has been asked to take a back seat, though it is demanding to ride shotgun. Published in Foam Symmetry magazine and achieving runner-up place in the Student category of the 2013 Monster Children Photo competition, Warwick’s passion, it seems, is heavily pregnant with his future career. For more of Warwick’s images, visit his website at www.rubbedthelamp.com or on Facebook at /rubbedthelampvisuals. Warwick’s work is regularly on exhibition at Glass Coffee House & Surf Gallery, 80-82, Sixth Ave, Maroochydore. – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Jan 28, 2015 and also on Drift Surfing All Photos: ©Warwick Gow  |  Rubbed The Lamp

I was sitting, as I so often am, staring blankly at my computer screen. Words flittered through my mind like fireflies on the wind, beyond reach and teasing me. I wasn’t looking to create the great Australian novel or anything – just a simple press release – but the small amount of creativity and inspiration I was searching for remained achingly elusive. But things were about to change. An email arrived, two abstract words as its subject, a bold blue hyperlink begging to be clicked stared back at me and, with the slightest depression of my index finger and the ensuing ignition of a Youtube clip, my writer’s block dissipated. I was more verbose than Shakespeare playing Scrabble, I was inspired, enriched, and words cascaded from my mind in torrents. All this from a single song. Hiatus Kaiyote have that effect on people, and it’s not without intention. The Melbourne four-piece sprang to life just a few years ago but already are emanating concentric ripples through the musical world. Unfairly pigeon-holed into the genre of R&B, their sound incorporates a staggering array of influence, from acid jazz to blues, funk to electronica. It’s as if they’ve tossed Otis Redding, Erykah Badu and Björk into a blender, smeared the puree on hip-hop toast, layered on a healthy dose of post-production and poured a gallon of smooth treacle over the entire concoction. “Nature is a massive thing in our writing and creative process,” highlights front woman, lyricist and lead guitarist Nai Palm. “But sonically, I guess J Dilla would probably be the most prominent influence because of the way he approached production, coming from a background of hip hop and production but then trying to recreate that live.” Introducing Hiatus Kaiyote is like trying to explain flavour without synonyms, colour without sight… or true love. Words jumble, contradicting, overlapping and always falling short. “Here,” you must say, “listen, experience, feel, immerse.” Emotion and invocation are defining elements of their music, separating them from musicians who merely perform. Hypnotic and alluring, the experience is almost tribal and spiritual, Nai noting the traditional music of Mali among their myriad influences. Stripped apart, laid bare, instrument by instrument, or in Nai’s lilting vocals, parallels can be drawn from around the world, spanning genres or highlighting specific artists, but accumulatively, Hiatus Kaiyote are, thankfully, nothing but themselves. “The origins for a lot of our songs are something that I come up with vocally,” Nai reflects, her lyrics frequently following their own rhythms, in harmony with all the other elements, but not dependent upon them. “People often ask me ‘how do you sing over these changes?’ But actually, we create around the changes. We all write together and listen to each other and there’s no real feature to speak of – everything has its own character that stands out. “It’s kind of like a TV show with four superheroes and they’re, like, all super-awesome, but none of them are the main ones, they’re all amazing at different things.” Their debut album, Tawk Tomahawk, set the music world abuzz. Bypassing mainstream media, it reached the ears the industry’s A-List, Pharrell Williams, Prince and Erykah Badu – an artist they now call a close friend – all extolling the band’s talents and sound. Stepping away from convention, they have created songs as if some divine chemical formula or exotic culinary recipe, each element essential to the finished product but rich and abundant in its own right. “Instead of sampling the way I want my voice to sound or altering it digitally, I try to emulate my own voice in how it might sound if it were chopped up,” says Nai when discussing their preference for producing their tracks in a more live-style environment. “There’s an energy that gets lost through production. It’s the difference between playing a song together live versus us multi-tracking it. Even though we’re still playing the same sounds respectively, there’s something in that interaction, that energy.” That energy emanates from the band, whether listening to them through headphones on your bus ride to work or fully immersed in a live performance. They are artists in the truest sense, creating through emotion, with echoes of influence, but from their own foundation and with their own passion, discarding a music-by-numbers approach in favour of something so definitively theirs. It’s like they’ve been given all the essential components to make a car and with them they’ve created a helicopter. You know that it’s music, you recognise its influence, you delight in the familiar blanket it throws around your shoulders and the pulses of energy that surge through you, you really, really like it but it eludes description. How the band view their music and its creation is also an antithesis, an alternative perspective upon an underlying message. “We want to stimulate people’s imagination and enhance their emotional state, whatever that may be. There are messages, there are many layers of intention in the writing, but at the end of the day, it’s about whether it reaches people on an empathic level while also lifting them up by stimulating the their imagination. It’s like The Neverending Story or something,” Nai analogises. “It evokes imagination but there’s so much depth. I know so many people who were scarred for life when Atreyu the horse died! You find that a lot in children’s film. They’re not just the light, happy, magical worlds – there’s content, but it’s subconscious. There’s magic, but there’s also depth. We try to make our music as multi-layered as possible so that people can resonate with it for whatever reason.” Hiatus Kaiyote are fast becoming a band of renown, a renown the precedes them across continents and tours, press and the public. Nominees for The Best R&B Performance at this year’s Grammy Awards, there is no doubt that the music world is taking notice. But the band remain humble, thankful to shed the burdens of life on the road and press junkets to return to their simple, Melbourne lives, their friends and family, to the familiarity of home. The band is fast gaining a name for themselves, but it is through their simple passion of creating, in producing music through integrity. “The hard work goes entirely into making sure that what we produce is beautiful,” says Nai, “that we are sincere with it and proud of what we release – that’s where all the hard work goes. The rest has just kind of unfolded. When I perform, it’s not like a performance, it’s like ‘this is who I am.’ It can be really full-on and it can damage people, but I’m really blessed to have met the people I have at this stage because it has really solidified who I want to be. The thing about artists is that, if you’re making ‘real’ music, you have to be so human to create something that people can relate to. If you don’t, you’re not doing your job as a sonic healer anymore, you’re just an entertainer. And that’s so different; there’s entertainment and then there’s therapy, and art is always therapeutic.” For more information or to check out their tunes, visit their website: hiatuskaiyote.com – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Dec 2, 2014

When I finished high school, I walked blindly into the wide world. Vague notions rattled around my pubescent brain of career aspirations, next steps or long term goals, but mostly my thoughts were consumed with beer, weed and skateboarding. For Louie Swain and Patrick Hetherington, life after Year 12 is about as different as llamas and lettuces. The duo, still just 18 and 17 years old respectively, have already supported Bob Evans, Husky, and Donavon Frankenreiter among others, had tracks on loop on national radio and had bookings for numerous gigs and festivals, as well as having not one but a collection of bands on the go. The pair make up fifty percent of Potato Potato, an upbeat folk-pop outfit featured on Triple J Unearthed and contender for the Unearthed High awards. Spawned, as with so much of Byron Shire’s musical talent, from the Rudolph Steiner school, they have been given a superb start, by their own admittance, but that’s not to suggest there isn’t more than a teaspoon of natural talent, hard work and dedication in their recipe for success. “We’re pretty inspired ourselves,” says Louie, “but pragmatically, it [Byron Steiner school] has definitely pushed us in the right direction. The music teacher, Tom Whittaker, has been such a great help in getting us gigs and promotion and the business side of things. He’s been so supportive.” Perhaps Louie and Patrick have been lucky to have found kindred musos in each other and in such a musically encouraging region as Byron Bay, as they happily admit themselves, but there’s no denying, given their unwavering passion and superb talent, that they would have made an impression wherever they were. Louie was born in the Blue Mountains, moving to Byron at a young age, Patrick coming to the area from Armidale at the start of high school, and Byron has given them a continual venue for their music. “We’ve never struggled to get gigs in Byron,” says Patrick. “There’s always so much going on and everyone’s so supportive. There’s such a huge range of people and, through that, a huge variety of music here, so everyone is so open, musically.” It is as a two-piece that this latter part of 2014 is really seeing them shine. Louie and Patrick the band is somewhat of an indulgence. The pair are no less dedicated to their first child, in Potato Potato, but their passion for music in all its diversity is unable to be sated by one band alone. Stripped back, laid bare and opulent in its simplicity, Louie and Patrick is another face to the boys’ talents. “Louie and Patrick is something we like to do on the side,” muses Louie. “It’s just as a little refresher, because we’ve got heaps of different bands going at the moment.” “We’ve been working on a new project called Parcels,” adds Patrick. “It’s more sort of electronica, so we’ve been really getting into that. We try to do a bit of everything – we like a wide range of music so it’s great to play different genres.” Some have said there are flavours of Simon and Garfunkel in the band’s styling. Sure they have harmonies, but so did the Bee Gees and the Geneva Boys’ Choir, but there are no parallels there. No, Louie and Patrick are significantly different from Paul and Art, acoustic harmony in modern times, far more akin to The Whitest Boy Alive – slash – Kings of Convenience or a band they love to cover, Alt-J. A long way from campfire-strumming and teen tinklings, there is a very significant maturity to Louie and Patrick, the gamut of their musical education culminating in a sound that is as polished and multi-layered as it is laid bare; two voices, twelve strings and harmonies so deep you can bathe in them. Their Parcels side project has also helped them in their acoustic guise, the computer-based music making assisting in the production and post-production of Louie and Patrick tracks. “Because we make all the electronic stuff on the computer, we get our heads around that side of things way more,” reflects Patrick. “It has definitely helped with recording the Louie and Patrick tracks.” “We’ve found a great love for doing the producing and recording ourselves,” adds Louie. “It just gives us so much more freedom and control over the end result.” Despite a certain familiarity to their sound, Louie and Patrick have definitely put their own stamp on their sound. They unquestionably fit an acoustic-folk genre, but they do it their way. This professionalism and uniqueness has got them noticed, and not least when busking on Byron’s high street or at one of the more musically inclined cafes. Warming the Byron Community Centre stage for Bob Evans, playing at Byron Bay’s Film and Surf Festivals and jamming with Jinja Safari, Husky, The Black Sorrows and Donavon Frankenreiter, Louie and Patrick are wrapping up ’14 with back-to-back festivals. Showcasing the release of their second album, We Are Not Convinced There Has Been Any Significant Improvement, the Woodford Folk Festival will be stop one for the duo, playing four gigs across three venues and four days at the expansive event. Certainly indicative of their style, Woodford is the perfect venue for the duo. Less than a day after their final Woodford performance, Louie and Patrick will be back home in Byron, taking to the stage for the Falls Festival on New Year’s Day. “We’re so excited to play Woodford again,” says Louie. “We played there a few years ago with another band and it was the best fun.” “We had such a good response,” Patrick interjects. “It’s one of our favourite festivals, even just to hang out at, so it will be great to play again. We’re playing at Woodford on New Year’s Eve at six o’ clock and then driving straight back down to Byron to play a gig in the morning at Falls. It’s going to be so damn heavy but heaps of fun!” Louie and Patrick have teamed up with numerous other Byron musicians, working with Kyle Lionhart and assisting Ziggy Alberts on his newly released album, and this is something the pair would like to pursue, connecting and uniting the local music scene in collaboration. “For our next album, we’re thinking of doing some collaborations,” Patrick alludes. “There are a whole lot of Byron artists we’d like to have on the album with us. We really want to showcase the range of local artists.” Despite the end of this year focussing primarily on the Louie and Patrick partnership, looking to the future it is little more than a side project, an indulgence of the stripped bare acoustics of the two piece, and intentionally so. As a downsized band, it allows them to maintain the simplicity so inherent and so vital to their sound. “It’s nice to keep Louie and Patrick small,” says Louie. “It’s good to come back to every now and then.” “We do want to keep playing and maybe touring around and stuff like that,” adds Patrick, “but it’s nice to keep it really raw and play the simple kind of songs we want to play.” Whether it’s with Potato Potato, in their electronic alter ego of Parcels or as Louie and Patrick, post high school life is set to be as busy as it is exciting for the duo, and it’s clear that, whichever direction they choose, their enthusiasm and talents will be taking these two Byron kids to great heights. Follow them on Facebook: www.facebook.com/louieandpatrickbandbyronbay Or stream their album, We Are Not Convinced There Has Been Any Significant Improvement, on BandCamp: louieandpatrick.bandcamp.com – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Nov 26, 2014

When David Kennedy opened a gourmet French patisserie in Sydney, it was far from his liking that the establishment soon came to be known amongst his friends as ’the sticky bun shop’. He wasn’t selling production line pastries from some chain bakery, these were the finest creations in puff and choux pastry, lovingly hand crafted by highly qualified patissiers to the highest standards. ’Sticky buns’ indeed – how dare they! But the name stuck. And, of course, the Sticky Bun Shop was run by the Sticky Bun Man. The mouthful of a nickname was soon trimmed to Sticky Bun and eventually, in his circle of friends and family, David became simply ’Bun’. So now you know how Bun Coffee came to be – at least in name. Bun Coffee has become somewhat of a Byron Bay success story. David had been in the coffee game in Sydney for many years, first as a cafe owner, then as head roaster for a family-owned roastery, Gourmet Gold, before his northern migration. David had originally connected with Gourmet Gold to create his own, unique blend for his cafe. Venturing into the roastery, he was immediately struck by the exotic locations printed on the hessian sacks of beans, the rich aromas and the entire process of blending and roasting, formulating recipes for that perfect flavour. When he sold his cafe, the logical next step in his career was to join Gourmet Gold. “When we sold that cafe,” recalls David, “they [Gourmet Gold] asked if I’d like to join their company, in sales initially, but because I was so interested in the roasting side of it, I kept hanging around the roastery. Eventually the head roaster handed in his notice and they asked me if I’d like to take over.” David still tips his hat to the small, family business, without whom he may never have learned the intricate skills required. Bun Coffee officially opened its doors in 2005, David finally managing to make the move north from his life in Sydney. However, his initial plans for a small, boutique cafe-roastery in Bangalow were soon quashed by council, entwined in the tangles of red tape. “We arrived here in the early part of 2005,” David remembers, “and had a premises in Bangalow – the old Reading stores building – which I’d seen a few years previously as a completely run-down, boarded-up property. I thought to myself, ‘what a great place to put a coffee roastery,’ and approached the owner. I actually had the roaster in storage in Bangalow, the tables and chairs in the shop, refrigeration, the whole lot, but it wouldn’t go through council.” Back to the drawing board and with the blessing of hindsight, David and Jenny realised that perhaps their original game plan had been a little hasty. What would have been a small, retail cafe was almost forced into becoming the ever-expanding wholesale coffee roasting business it is today. Looking now at Bun Coffee‘s gamut of blends and roasts, its gourmet hot chocolate and its tea range, it’s hard to believe that there was never a grand plan for creating their extensive collection of products. David says the original concept was to have three simple products: “I wanted to do a 100 percent Australian coffee – and I had already been selling one at markets back in Sydney – I wanted to have a Rainforest Alliance blend and I wanted to have a 100 percent organic blend.” Each of these roasts reflects David’s inherent desire for creating an ethical product. The Australian blend supports the local growers and business, as well as reducing food miles and the carbon footprint, the Rainforest Alliance blend ensures the overseas beans are farmed sustainably, and the 100 percent organic removes the usage of chemicals and pesticides. These three roasts remain some of Bun Coffee‘s best sellers to this day, almost a decade later, and remain the foundation of the business ethos. “If I had the choice of sustainably or unsustainably grown beans, why would I choose the latter,” says David of his ethical perspectives. “So we started off with the Rainforest Alliance and the organic and we’ve now gone to Fair Trade organic as well. Organic is a ‘why wouldn’t you’ scenario. If all our coffee could be organic and Rainforest Alliance, that would be great. However, for some of my established recipes, the beans are only available as one or the other.” David’s exemplary business principles are not confined only to the beans he sources. He is continually exploring ways to improve the company’s footprint, from organic teas to sustainable packaging. The packaging is a particular bugbear, a thorn in David’s side that he is struggling to extricate. The nature of the vented, breathable bags makes them very hard to manufacture in sustainable or recyclable materials. As well as their continued and ongoing support of Rainforest Alliance, Fair Trade, organic and choosing sustainable, recyclable packaging wherever possible – such as with their teas and hot chocolates – David and Jenny were recently made aware of So They Can. So They Can‘s mission, as they state so eloquently on their website, ‘is to work together with communities in Africa to educate and empower, so they can break the poverty cycle, realise their own potential and meet their own needs.’ Bun Coffee now produces a Kenya AA, single origin roast, all profits of which go directly to helping this exceptional cause. “We’ve partnered with So They Can,” David explains, “which is a small, not-for-profit organisation in Kenya. 100 percent of profits from that particular bean that we sell goes to them every month. We don’t make anything out of it. They put that money directly into great things. They have a feed mill that produces really high-quality chicken feed and they cover the delivery fees to get the feed to the people who need it. They have orphanages, build schools – educating the people is the most important thing for them.” It is this and the many continued, altruistic efforts that really set Bun Coffee apart, as well as the exceptional quality and flavour of their coffee, and the world is taking notice. Already, Bun Coffee is distributed, both for retail and wholesale, across the country and is fast becoming a recognised and respected roastery in the cafe industry. They have also recently established distribution in California and have just helped launch a ‘Bun Coffee Byron Bay’ cafe and retail outlet in Tokyo. “Developing products for the Japanese scene will be a big thing because it is a very different market to us,” says David of this new venture. “The Japanese market is the biggest market for high-end, single-origin coffees in the world, so we’ve brought out a range of 100 gram packs of rare, single origin coffees to cater just for that.” The expansion of Bun Coffee has been exceptional, beyond David’s early aspirations and certainly outshining David’s ever-present humility. He roasts because he loves to roast. Bun Coffee is not a business, it is a passion. He maintains a very personal connection with all his stockists and consumers, visiting every cafe personally, training staff in the nuances of baristaship and ensuring they are using his product to its fullest potential, for the reputations of both Bun Coffee and the outlet, and ultimately for customer satisfaction. Within Australia, every product is distributed directly, no middleman or wholesaler is used, to maintain that personal connection. David is quick to admit that he is very lucky. He lives in a beautiful part of the world, earns his crust doing what he loves and has been blessed by a business growth surpassing expectation. It’s not a bad outcome for the ‘Sticky Bun Man.’ Bun Coffee is located at Unit 15-17/ 1A Banksia Drive in Byron’s Arts and Industry Estate. Visit their espresso bar and retail store, join them on Facebook or keep an eye out for the Bun Coffee logo at your local coffee merchant. – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Nov 4, 2014 Photos: ©SubCutanea

There is something about jumping on a pushbike that takes us back to childhood. The two-wheeled transportation is inherently fun, smile-inducing and, whether commuting to work or out for a Sunday jaunt, you can’t help but enjoy yourself. Unless you’re battling your way through driving rain and howling winds, relegated to your rusty old pushy because your car broke down, cycling is a wonderful way to de-stress, unwind and get fit. Although we in Byron Bay love our outdoor lifestyles and fitness-fanatical pastimes, we haven’t adopted the faithful old bike as our preferred mode of transport. Partly, this is because of over-congested, pothole-perforated, un-cyclepathed roads, and in this we could do well to look towards the Dutch, or even Melbourne, for inspiration in our council. But a good bike is a pricey investment and, though it would reduce traffic, pollution, commute times and even, possibly, the need for a bypass, most of us are reluctant to take the step to peddle-power. But be prepared – Yo’ Bicycles are about to change the way you see the humble bike. Sammy Kaveney and Shaylah Griffith founded Yo’ Bicycles just a year ago, as much out of personal necessity as any grand business design. “I’ve lived here for five years and had many bikes stolen,” explains Sammy. “I was having huge trouble finding a quality bike for a reasonable price.” Working as a chef, Sammy grew tired, to say the least, of finishing an exhausting evening shift only to find a vacant spot where his ride home had been. Replacing his old bike with even a pre-loved rust bucket was growing more costly as the irrational inflation of supply and demand pushed even the second-hand market prices ever higher. So Sammy took a punt. He’d been riding, and enjoying, fixed-gear bikes for some time and recognised their appeal, but also Byron’s need for a quality, affordable bike that put the ‘fun’ in functional and was pretty damn stylish.   “I was into ‘fixies’ for a little while, but found that the ones that we were interested in were so expensive, so I wanted to see if we could start making them. We found it really hard to get a good quality bike locally for under five hundred dollars, but everyone in this town needs a bike – the traffic in the summer is diabolical!” With this concept as their guiding force, the pair researched and developed Yo’ Bicycles – a single model, unisex bike, available in a range of colours, as fast or as fun as you want them to be and all for just three hundred bucks. When you’re in the market for a new bike, you’re faced with a bewildering array of choice – off-road or racer, style or functionality, one gear or a hundred – when all your really want is a bicycle, plain and simple. Sammy and Shaylah have avoided all this with the fixie – a one-size-fits-all bike, perfect for cruising the streets, working up a sweat, getting to work or doing impressions of that scene in E.T. Their inspiration is multifold. Of course, there is the simple pleasure gained from pushing pedals, but Sammy and Shaylah are also driven by the numerous benefits they see in the lifestyle. Better for the environment, better for the body, dodging the permanent queue of traffic along Shirley Street – these are just a few of the substantial perks. “Health and lifestyle is the number one growth market in the world,” Shaylah interjects, “and what better place to promote this than Byron Bay? We want to bring the fun aspect into cycling.” “Biking in Europe is huge,” adds Sammy. “It’s a social, fun thing to do. We want to start doing Le Tour of Byron or something, where we can meet at a certain spot on a Saturday for coffee then ride out to somewhere else for lunch. We live in the most beautiful town in the world. We’ve got Watego’s that we can go have a barbecue at and then ride back over the hill…we really want to see a cycling community develop.” The pair’s enthusiasm is infectious. The simplicity, affordability and, let’s face it, damn coolness, of their creations brings a spark of excitement and an itching to get back in the saddle. Nothing quite beats that wind-in-your-hair feeling and the inherent enjoyment pedaling your way round town, but there’s a very functional side to Yo’ Bicycles as well. “We’d really like to get as many people as we can away from driving,” says Shaylah. “We get on a bike and go for a ride into town and it’s amazing how much it changes your attitude for the whole day and we want to extend that out to other people who may not necessarily be into biking or fitness.” There is also a growing trend in cycling, and it has nothing to do with lycra. ‘Hipster’ may be an impertinent and clichéd term, but is very much a part of the suburban social scene. Single-geared fixies are the vehicle of choice for the macchiato-sipping fashionistas and Yo’ Bicycles are the perfect match. The duo is developing a range of accessories, including a wine rack, a six-pack sling and a ‘Beski’ – and Eski that fits neatly in the a-frame of the bike – to further enhance the cycling experience. But Yo’ Bicycles are for everyone and the pair are quick to dismiss pigeonholes and stereotypes. “One of the reasons we went with the fixie is that it’s not singling out any kind of person,” enthuses Shaylah. “We’re trying to open up and expand cycling to a larger demographic – older people that might not be so into biking or younger kids who are just starting out. As a female it may seem a little bit daunting starting out on a fixie because you’ve always ridden girls bikes, but getting on one and riding it has completely changed my whole perception and I’d love to be able to share that with as many people as possible.” The bikes come ninety percent assembled and with all the tools needed to complete the very simple construction. An average frame height but with long seat stem accommodates a huge range of riders – girls, guys, tall, short, Sammy and Shaylah have carefully designed the fixie to suit as wide a variety of people as possible in the one single model. Made with resilient, treated metals, Yo’ Bicycles are also built to withstand our salt-air climates For a couple of twenty-somethings with a bright idea, building bikes in their living room in the spare time, Sammy and Shaylah have thought of everything. But their dream for their business extends beyond a single product, or even the several new models currently bathing in their think-tank. Sammy and Shaylah see cycling as a culture, one perfectly assimilated to the more environmental, health-conscious, outdoorsy lifestyle so prevalent in this and many coastal towns and cities. Plans for a retail outlet and ‘bike station’ where the public can pop in, be provided tools and education and maintain their bikes are just the beginning. Sammy’s chef background has conjured notions of a Yo’ Bicycles degustation, farm-to-table cookery days, picnics and more, connecting the region’s culinary dots by bike. The pair envisage an online community, sharing healthy recipes, photos of their customers’ Yo’ Bicycles experiences and customisations and all manner of inspiration to turn people on to the joys of peddle power. “We’re not just another bike shop,” they share, “we want to incorporate the culture as much as the bikes.” Three hundred dollars doesn’t buy you a bike. It buys you a lifestyle, a new perspective, health, happiness and a clear conscience that you’re not contributing to gridlock and emissions. Yo’ Bicycles will be exhibiting at the Byron Bay Surf Festival Beach Market on Saturday, October 25th. Find out more at yobicycles.com.au or follow them on Facebook – www.facebook.com/yobicycle – and Instagram – @yobicycles – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Oct 14, 2014 Photos: ©SubCutanea  |  ©Yo’ Bicycles

A collection of magazines and newspapers graces the weatherboard wall, thumbed casually by customers awaiting their take-out cappuccinos. A bustle of clientele and unobtrusive staff swirl in orchestrated efficiency like a choreographed flight of starlings. Natural light and the warmth of a morning sun cascade through open doorways into the interior from panoramic balconies. The restaurant is swathed in a delicate and subtle cacophony of flavours – rich Allpress coffee, freshly toasted bruschetta and olive oil mingling on the gentle early summer breeze. For the breakfast diners filling almost every seat at Newrybar’s renowned and ever-popular Harvest Café, this is a slice of heaven with an exquisitely presented garnish of rural paradise. For the staff, this is business as usual – usual, that is, except for one small thing: a hat. In the world of restaurateurs, having a hat isn’t about keeping the rain off or covering up a folically-challenged crown. A Hat, referring to the Australian Good Food & Travel Guide‘s Chef Hat Award, is the most prestigious accolade for any eatery, the be-all-and-end-all, the raison d’être, the defining acknowledgement in the food world. And Harvest has just been awarded its first. Eight years ago, Tristan Grier took the reins of the small, rural eatery and, from the very outset, he had big plans. “It started off as a little, country café,” he recalls. “It was not doing nights, the bakery was derelict, there was no deli, no growing and no real connection to local producers. Over the last seven and a half years we’ve been turning it up one day at a time.” The Hat has been a driving force behind the business, the golden prize towards which Tristan and his team have been striving. There is a sense, as a customer of the rustic yet chic restaurant, that every member of the highly professional team takes the utmost pride in their work, that it is an absolute pleasure to serve you with utter confidence in the product. From a simple latte to a twelve-hour braised shoulder of lamb, every item served is of the finest quality borne of an accumulative and mutual passion. “We’ve always looked at those places who have achieved a Hat with esteem,” Tristan expresses. “We always wondered how we could get there and it’s been a long road. Now that we have achieved it, it’s all about maintaining it – and now the hard work begins!” Australian society is renowned for its liberal smiting of tall poppies and, now that Harvest has this elevated distinction, it has laid itself on the chopping board. “Before the Hat, we could under-promise and over-deliver,” says Tristan. “We could exceed expectations all the time. But now people arrive with these massive expectations.” Not that fulfilling these preconceptions should prove the slightest issue to the highly proficient team. Tristan is quick to state that there is no boss, that no one, from the head chef to the lowly dishy, works for anyone else – they each work together toward the same goal: the impeccable service of an exceptional product. Harvest‘s recent success and source of pride is twofold. Whilst the Hat proffers national renown in the culinary kingdom, the café has also been presented an honour of a more personal acclaim and one more aligned to a café born and raised in the Byron Shire: The Good Food Guide State Top 10 for sustainability. Tristan and his team have gone to what might appear to be excessive lengths in an industry that is not often recognised for its sustainability. Each of the three Harvest buildings – the restaurant, the deli next door and the century old reclaimed bakery – are adorned with a gleaming blanket of solar panels, all grey water is treated onsite, green waste is composted for the profusion of raised vegetable beds scattered across the property and every effort is made to reduce the amount of plastic received from suppliers. “The sustainable angle has been a massive push for Harvest from day one,” Tristan reminisces. “The national recognition we have recently received has proven to us that we are doing the right thing and we’ll keep trying to get better every day. It has also allowed us to grow organically – if you’ll pardon the pun – to grow sustainably. We’re in the country, it’s called Harvest, we’re in Byron Bay – everything about this site says that, ultimately, it should be one of Australia’s most sustainable restaurants.” The end goal for Harvest would be to become a one hundred percent no-waste restaurant. While this takes a vast amount of time, effort and finance to establish such practices, Tristan and his team have already come a great distance to fulfilling this challenge and are continually finding new ways to trim down their carbon and waste footprints. The Deli, for example, offers numerous cuts of beef. To maintain stock, many delis would order a range of products, each individually wrapped in plastic, comprising several deliveries over a fortnight or month. Tristan’s solution: to order a whole cow. This not only means that just one delivery is needed and the amount of packaging is significantly reduced, but also that they then can create their own unique, high quality range of smoked, cured, dried or sliced meats. And this is just one win-win scenario created by a more sustainable practice. Working closely with Bangalow Organics just a short distance from the restaurant, Tristan and his chefs receive produce in reusable crates, can visit the farm and hand-pick vegetables and can even coordinate a planting calendar with the farmers to ensure fresh, local produce is always available for upcoming menus. Harvest is now in the fortunate position to be able to make requests of their suppliers, influencing them positively to make better ecological decisions. “These days, we are doing big enough numbers to make requests of out suppliers,” Tristan states. “The fishmongers, both in Byron and Ballina, have been really good. We won’t accept Styrofoam anymore, so we’ll either return it immediately or stack it and return it in bulk. The farmers are great – everything either arrives in cardboard, which we then recycle, or in plastic tubs, which we wash and return. Ultimately, it’s not that hard, it’s just slightly changing their practices and making a small investment in the reusable tubs.” While Tristan is quick to admit that the business still has a way to go, he is continually scrutinising every aspect in the pursuit of sustainability. Plastic drinking straws were given the heave-ho in favour of paper, the always de rigueur San Pellegrino – a staple restaurant favourite – was replaced by local Mount Warning spring water when Tristan made the realisation that it takes 100 mililitres of oil through food-miles to deliver a single, one litre bottle. All waste is fastidiously separated and recycled, individual bins for green waste, glass and paper taking their efforts well above and beyond council requirements. Along with the plethora of other efforts he is voluntarily undertaking, Tristan is also currently looking for a supplier to provide milk in bulk, fifty-litre bladders, rather than the environmental disaster that is the conventional two-litre bottle. Like every aspect of Harvest, the entire staff goes the extra mile to keep things green and finally, Tristan is beginning to see some sense of fruition in his creation. “The vision from the start has been what you see here now; it is the café, the one hundred and three year old bakery, the gardens, the deli and so on. Harvest is a destination restaurant, so we need to have a whole product.” Harvest is a place of no compromise. The food must be impeccable, the service exceptional, the produce must be fresh and organic, the experience faultless and this must all be achieved environmentally, ethically and sustainably. For the average patron, the delectable dishes, warm and attentive staff and the ambiance are more than worthy of a tip of the Hat, but for Tristan this is just the beginning. “Ultimately, we want this place to be around for forty or fifty years – we are just the custodians. With close to a hundred and fifteen years of history, this isn’t ‘our’ place as such. So if we can make sure that this organism of a living, breathing business is healthy, then that is financial success to us – if the staff are paid, the producers are paid, we’re doing something good for the world and our local economy and the place is breaking even, that is success, far beyond growth and profit. “As Australians, we are starting to work out what our food culture is. Harvest isn’t a trendy restaurant, but it is on trend, because it is old world and old world never falls apart. As Byron Bay ebbs and flows around us, we’ll always just stay true to who we are.” Harvest is open seven days a week from 8:00am for breakfast and lunch, serving dinner on Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings. Visit www.harvestcafe.com.au for more information and join them on Facebook: @harvest-café and instagram, @harvestnewrybar. – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Oct 12, 2014 All Photos: ©SubCutanea

Angus and Julia – two artists so renowned that they now lack all need for a last name. That is, until they went solo. The brother and sister Stone entered the Australian music scene with fanfares, applause and an instant following in 2007 and since then have inspired a generation or two with their emotion-saturated, beautifully poetic acoustic sounds. Despite their superb renown as a duo, four years ago they decided to take a breather, a musical sabbatical into the world of solo careers. “It was an adventure that we always knew we would take at some point,” says Julia from the road, the pair in the midst of a global tour. “It was a necessary step to part so we could discover new things. It felt like there wasn’t the room we needed to grow when we finished touring Down The Way – we both wanted to see what our sound was like without the other person.” It was, in retrospect, inevitable. Listening to earlier albums and EPs, such as A Book Like This or Chocolates & Cigarettes, there was always a distinction between the tracks, either an ‘Angus’ song or a ‘Julia’ song, despite the creation and performance being a combined effort. Now each with a couple of solo albums under their belts, they have reunited, bringing a swathe of experience, fresh inspiration and evolved sounds into the recording studio for their self-titled fourth collaborative album, Angus & Julia Stone. “We started talking about it as a far away idea,” reflects Julia of their reunion for the album. “Slowly, as we started having more consistent communication, we found ourselves really enjoying the idea. We’re also really enjoying being back in each other’s lives. It felt really relaxed and easy to be around each other.” As individuals, they evolved as artists, independent of each others’ influence. Julia explored a deeper, more cinematic feel than the stripped back acoustics of her former self, while Angus diversifyed, maintaining a singer-songwriter vibe but dabbling with new sounds, even going as far as some heavier, retro-rock tracks for his Lady of the Sunshine collaboration. The experiences gained from individual pursuits have engorged their sound. Die-hard A&J fans definitely could not be disappointed with the latest offering from the siblings, but there are marked differences. A maturity perhaps, a more expansive sound absolutely, but one thing that is very noticeable, certainly with early track releases such as Get Home and A Heartbreak is a far more united approach to the performances. There is still an aspect of certain tunes being predominantly lead by one or the other, but the influence comes in even doses. “Time is an effective tool for reflection in a relationship,” Julia philosophises. “Time gave us the space away to get more of a clear picture of what it was we saw in each other. “The first time I saw Angus sing after having that time apart, I watched him differently. My perspective on him had changed and I could really appreciate how brilliant he is. The space away brought with it a newfound respect and love for what he brings to my music and to me in general.” It is still a sound that they very much own, as individuals and as a duo, but what is noticeable now is that, even if the vocals come from just one of them, the other is ever-present instrumentally and lyrically. But it wasn’t they alone who were responsible for this evolution. Legendary producer, Rick Rubin, whose previous clients have included such disparate A-List musos as The Beastie Boys, Kanye West and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, was instrumental in bringing the Stones back into the studio together and more than a little responsible for expanding on all that had gone before. “I find all good collaborations work if you can be yourself with each other,” says Julia of the experience. “The less you are ‘trying’ to be something, the more you can just relax and do what you do. Rick allows for that to happen by being really accepting and open as a person. We both felt happy at [Ruben’s recording studio] Shangri La and in a place where music was the main focus.” The new album has already received massive acclaim worldwide, many reviewers noting similarly that, while different, though not better or worse than previous offerings, Angus & Julia Stone is more ‘complete’ as an album, the sound more polished, the production more advanced. There is no denying that it is still very much the work of the same two kids that meekly mounted the stage eight years ago, but there is also no denying that they have come a long, long way. Officially launching the new album to an Australian audience, Angus and Julia chose Splendour in the Grass as their showcase. The festival has seen many of their musical chapters, from the early days together and through solo careers, so it is only fitting that Splendour should also host their return as a duo. “It feels familiar to be back in the area,” Julia reflects. “We’ve had so many experiences over the years at Splendour so it felt like a landmark festival for us. Playing the songs from this new record in Australia for the first time, it had a similar kind of feeling to when we first played it years ago.” The question on many a fan’s lips is, ‘is Angus and Julia Stone the duo back for good?’ But the answer is far more convoluted than a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’. They work well as a team, there can be no disputing that,  but likewise, their collection of solo albums makes it abundantly clear that they have much to offer independently. “It’s hard to say,” says Julia, when quizzed about future prospects. “We change directions pretty rapidly but then, when something feels good we will stick by it with all our hearts. I know that we will always make music together. How often and when are an absolute mystery to me.” Angus and Julia Stone’s new album, Angus & Julia Stone, is available now from their website, iTunes and all the usual sources. – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Sep 24, 2014 All photos: Jennifer Stenglein – instagram.com/jenniferstenglein

Here I stand, on the brink of the abyss, staring deep, deep into its gaping maw, my eyes and intuition desperately searching for any glimmer of light. A safe descent or soft landing I seek, an avoidance of the leap of faith I yearn to take though my conservative inner self cannot release the sanctuary of the mundane. One step, and before me lies the infinite. Here I stand, gazing upon the faces of Sufis, devotional love radiating from within. Eyes closed, they utter words beyond my vocabulary that I may only ever feel. Their impassioned song embraces my heart, unnerving it and, like my feet upon the lip of that yawning crevasse, it promises wonders I could never envisage if only I just… let… go. Their harmonious voices evoke an unsettling in my soul, a confrontation of conservatism bred of the conflict between heart and mind. “Listen to your soul,” they seem to sing through words I have never heard, while conscious ego clings to the safety of conformity. Here I stand as the dawn heats foreign lands under my bare soles. What might welcome me into this day of the unknown? Danger? Fear? Hope? Adventure? The endless love lost to a world of nine-to-fives, dollars and cents, one foot in front of the other on a beeline for the grave? A sigh escapes me, drawing me deep into the terracotta earth beneath my feet. This place, so far from my life, has released time, recognized it for nothing more than a concept. No driving force or governing power is held by each sweeping tick, the incessant circumnavigation of the clock’s unstoppable march. Day — night. These are the only etchings upon the face of this land’s timepiece. No hand relentlessly pushes us through every action in this place beyond hours and minutes and seconds. Here I stand as myriad fragrances waft on gentle breeze, their breath the whisper of flowers and creatures, of tradition and cuisines that have never touched my lips. I journey the world beyond sight, visions of aroma engorging my imagination in wonderment. What could this be, this foreign scent? How has something so radiantly sweet remained a stranger to me for these many years? I want to gather it up, place it in an ornate vial of green glass and silver, a home worthy enough in beauty to encapsulate its vibrancy, and present it to the world, saying, “Take, smell. This is the perfume of peace, the scent of an innocence that only nature understands.“ Here I stand, on a prow of timber as it severs the azure waters of oceans beyond the compass. Tranquil seas holding my escape unfurl like the crisp cotton sheets of a fresh-made bed. Silken they offer themselves, promising the embrace of perfect relaxation, a weightlessness known only to the stars in their nocturnal linen of obsidian. In every direction lies my fate, the gift of love or loss, of terror or boundless joy. I may clasp at the gunwales as emerald atolls pass, a panic reaching into my core, squeezing tight, asking, “Is that my home? Is that my destiny? What will I miss? What dangers lay in wait? We must stop, for here we are, and here is safe.“ But my ship’s course stays true and in it I place my faith, through fear, through storms, through the tumbling fury of waves like snow-capped mountains, a thousand hands of salt water clutching at me, desperately endeavoring to claw me from the deck. My body is tested, strained to the brink of succumbing, pushed beyond my comprehension of limitations. But beyond lies paradise and for that my grip will never fail. Here I stand in the light of a fire, respite from the chilling kiss of the snow that blankets this world. In these elemental contradictions lies the wisdom of balance. At my back, the winter beckons, frozen diamonds scattered across mountains and trees. Like Narcissus I could stare at its beauty, my life ebbing away, consumed in adoration as it steals my warmth and heartbeat. Before me, acid tongues of amber, gold and crimson yearn to taste my flesh, straining at their tether of glowing embers. They are my guard dogs, protecting me from the icy intruders that threaten this sanctuary of light. But never must I forget that, but for the constraints I have placed upon them, they too may pierce my skin with razor teeth, engulf me in their anger and thirst for the wanton destruction of all they touch. Here I stand in the silence of a forest, canopies of leaves offering protection from all that may be cast down upon me; tormenting rain, relentless sun, judgmental eyes or punishing words. Here I may rest my head on soft moss, still my mind, release my heart and drift upon the wind, carefree, until I choose to return. But in this place all sound is stolen from me, shadows conjure unseen foreboding and a patchwork of shadow is striated by the gnarled torsos of a thousand trees. The unknown lurks in these places and, good or bad, the disquietude it evokes steals too the peace from my soul. Here I stand in the presence of these places, blessed with the endless gifts they present, denied only by my own fears. Wildest dreams and endless fantasies are only reached by the journey through the unknown. In that we despair. In that we relinquish our potential, for success, for joy, for love. But here I stand embracing the unknown, poised to dive into its depths, to play with its fires, and melt its snows, to illuminate its shadows and explore its secrets. I do not know what lies there, but I know its value and its miracle. Here I stand… lost in distant worlds, lost in her eyes. – This article first appeared on Rebelle Society on Oct 11, 2014

I, like so many others in this area, even in this country, got bitten by the surfing bug, and that little sucker has left teeth marks that will scar for life. I’ve surfed up and down the Coast, on shortboards and longboards, in winter and summer, on hair-raising swells that towered over my head and little ripples that barely wet my shins. I have immersed myself in the culture on so many levels and my life has, at times, revolved around the ocean’s ebb and flow exclusively. But for the last two years, I haven’t set foot on a board. My father taught me how to bodysurf before I could walk. Growing up in the UK wasn’t the most favourable breeding ground for my love of it, but trips abroad and the two days of English summer annually were enough to fuel a lifelong love. This was articulated through surfing, but after every session I’d leave my board on the beach and jump in for a couple of double-overhead, shore break barrels – it’s always overhead when you’re lying down. Over the last ten years, there’s always been a pair of fins and a handplane in my car, never an opportunity missed to slide into a couple. But surfing always took precedent and, while I often dived in for a few, my head stayed mostly well above water level. Like its stand-up counterpart, bodysurfing can be attributed to the Hawaiians and fellow Polynesians. ‘Kaha Nalu’ or ‘He’e Umauma’, sliding with the chest, has been practiced by islanders since before documentation began, good ol’ Cap’n Cook bringing the locals’ oceanic antics to the attention of the ‘civilised’ world. Where warm surf laps a coastline, there have been bodysurfers. Hawaii still has it’s nucleic pod of human porpoises, Southern California’s Newport Beach has a local crew of deranged hellmen who take on the mighty, bone-crunching Wedge, and even the south western corner of England has a tight knit bodysurfing community. Although it’s gaining a bit more of a following here, Australia has always looked upon it as a bit cooky, something the budgie-smugglered clubbies do and more of a functional practice than a sport in and of itself. Heads buried face down in the spume of a broken wave, one arm madly digging at the water for extra speed, they drive shoreward, more intent on achieving the sanctuary of the dry sand than enjoying the ride. It is, for all its practicality and motivation, an entirely different sport. But bodysurfing proper is exactly that: traversing the wave, positioning yourself in the curl, gliding out onto the clean face of the wave, getting barrelled. It is, lack of board notwithstanding, surfing. Surfers tend to frown upon anything outside their genre. Shortboarders hate longboarders, longboarders get irksome at bodyboarders and everyone cracks it at goat-boaters. But bodysurfers are different. No one knows what to think. Bodyboarders give sideways glances, unsure whether an affinity exists. Surfers lack any collaborative experience in the lineup to make an early assessment. Are they going to get in the way? Are they a liability to themselves and others? But a bodysurfer of any significant ability will also have a solid appreciation of surf etiquette. And pretty soon, everyone gets stoked. The utter simplicity of bodysurfing, it’s intrinsic part in any oceanic pursuit and it’s passive, uncompetitive nature make it the least offensive wave-based pastime in the water. Bodysurfers tend to be a humble bunch, no fashion, bravado or arrogance involved in the simple act of swimming in a wave. But when you give it a go yourself, you begin to realise that, not only is it a massive amount of fun, but it is also incredibly tricky to get good at. It’s a minute-to-learn, lifetime-to-master kind of skill and for the best of the best it has indeed been a lifetime love affair. Former pro surfer and filmmaker, Keith Malloy, created an entire film around the ancient but underground activity titled ‘Come Hell or High Water‘, highlighting the depth of commitment and level of skill of some of the planet’s best, venturing to the North Shore of Hawaii, Southern California’s sand-dredging wave, the Wedge, and even to the bone-crunching Tahitian break of Teahupo’o. This movie did two things: it showed bodysurfers as athletes, as committed and passionate about their sport, if not more, than your average surfer or bodyboarder, and it made bodysurfing just one pair of Speedos short of actually being pretty damn cool. There is an insurgence of handplanes and swim fins flooding surf shops worldwide and a pair of DaFins and a handplane are fast becoming a staple element in every surfer’s quiver. It will never gain the fame and fortune of its board-based counterpart and, when the waves are pumping, those reaching for flippers over fibreglass will be in the vast minority. But bodysurfing has become a part of the surfing mindset. It doesn’t take forward planning, heaps of equipment, roof racks on the car or even particularly good waves, but the thrill of sliding your way into a barrel on your belly, one arm thrust in front as your torso levitates above the water’s surface is unparalleled. In the past few years, I have discovered that bodysurfing is as much a valid sport as any of it’s more marketed counterparts. I trace swells, look at the maps, stare at the surf cams and select my breaks specifically for their bodysurfing potential. Surfing will always take precedent. It has the celebrities, the magazines, the movies. It’s sexy and cool and it looks so bloody stylish. The stoke you get kicking into a wave and sliding your way down the line, sans board, free as the day you were born, might not be everyone’s preferred method of waveriding, but it’s an incredible experience. I will never sell my boards, I’ll never pass up an offer to go get a few waves on my feet and I will never lose my love of surfing. But one thing has now become my reality: I am a bodysurfer. See more of Nathan’s fantastic work at: www.nathanoldfield.com – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Sep 15, 2014 Photos: All kindly courtesy of ©Nathan Oldfield / ©Mac Rae

Every day of our lives we open a new page. Invariably the story continues has it had the day before; we wake, follow routines, go to work, dinner, bed, repeat. Sprinklings of glitter scatter the pages – a new relationship, a holiday, a windfall – but often, save for a handful of typos, they follow the story of days and weeks gone by. But for Cameron and Jackie McNeilage, life has given them disparate stories, a loose theme binding them, the main characters intrinsic, but the wending tales leading a life of their own. Their tale began on opposite sides of the Pacific, Jackie in Australia, but Cameron born and raised in Montreal, Canada. But already, fate was weaving them together. “My father’s Canadian, but my mother is from Mackay in Queensland,” shares Cam of his heritage. “My parents met here in Australia, were married here and then my brother was born down in Melbourne. Then they moved to Canada and I lived there for 25 years.” Cam’s early adult life was successful. Establishing a painting and renovations business with his brother, he was never in any shortage of work and things looked good for the 20-something entrepreneur. But though this life was good, it was never the one he chose. Ten years ago, at the age of 24, Cam had had enough. Too many hours pushing brushes and picking paint and dust from his hair took their toll and, selling out his share of the business, he bought a one-way ticket to Australia and became a barman in Sydney. “I was just going on an adventure,”Cam reflects, “I wasn’t necessarily going to spend the rest of my life here. But I met my future wife in Sydney and we moved to Melbourne together.” Although qualifying herself as a Melbournian, Jackie’s past is as patchwork, if not more so, than Cam’s. Born in South Africa, raised in Melbourne, living in Far North Queensland, she moved to Sydney where she lived for several years before the couple met. In 2006, the couple were forced to leave Sydney when Jackie fell pregnant with the couple’s first child, Jasper. “I was bar tending – that’s my passion, that’s what I love to do. I managed the Anandale Pub down there, which is a wonderful, kick-ass, dirty rock n’ roll venue. Jackie looked at me one morning and said, ‘I can’t do this anymore – I can’t have you coming home at 7 o’clock in the morning all the time.’ So I got a job at a university café on Lygon Street. I’d never worked in a café before but I just enjoy serving people, so it was all good.” Despite still holding the dream of owning his own live music venue, Cam succumbed to more the family-favourable hours of the café scene. Investing in their own business, the duo made their mark on the cliquey Melbourne scene, establishing a humble but hugely popular café. Now with a second child, Cam and Jackie embraced their new career path with great success. But it wasn’t long before Cam’s itchy feet started tickling him once more. “We sold our café in Melbourne with the intentions of moving back to Canada – the grass is always greener. Before doing that, we decided to travel around Australia. We packed up our house in Melbourne, we had boxes labelled ‘Canada’, we put everything into storage, we bought an old pop-top van and were going to drive around Australia with our two kids. We made it about three or four weeks before Jackie was pregnant again and just a few weeks after that she said she didn’t want to travel anymore.” What could have been a bucket of water to the spark of Cam’s passion for travel became instead the punctuation to a whole new and wonderful chapter in their story. Having stopped temporarily in Brisbane, they visited Byron Bay on reconnoissance for their new home and potential place of business. Though appealing to many, the hustle and bustle and constant stream of tourists didn’t entice the couple, but, loving the region if not the town, they took a friend’s advice and ventured the stone’s throw north to Brunswick Heads. “We just came up one day and thought it was pretty cool,” Cam recalls. “We moved into the caravan park for about three weeks and just fell in love with the place. I’d never been in a place like this before. You can walk down the street and people look at you for half a second longer, or nod, or actually say good morning. “The café was for lease and I was looking at it every day when I walked past. One day we were sitting at the picnic tables in the park across the road and I just said, ‘you want to do it?’ And just like that, we called them up, rented the café, rented a house and it all started.” At the beginning of 2012, the Footbridge opened for business. Bringing with them the experience gained from their time in Melbourne, Cam and Jackie created something unique: warm, rustic, fun yet cultured, the Footbridge is a little bit beachy, a little but artisan, a perfect reflection of their own eclectic personae. As is so necessary in these days of café culture and coffee snobbery, their baristas are the cornerstone of their business. Cam’s watchful eye and kind yet professional guidance ensures that not a single broken crema or over-poured shot gets across the counter. This is the superb foundation on which they have built success. When other cafés in the area may only be filling a handful of tables, Footbridge will have a line out the door. But, while the coconut milk lattes, double-cappuccinos and rooibos chais may please the punters, this is only one facet of the Footbridge‘s appeal. “[Both the café in Melbourne and the Footbridge were] inspired some incredible people in the scene down there,” says Cam. “We wanted to create a family-friendly, community-oriented café to suit our lifestyle. We took the lessons we’d learned from the last one and put the same work ethic into it. To be honest, we didn’t really think too much about how to fit ourselves into the market or our exact identity, we were just going to do what we did. “It [a café] is wholly and completely a reflection of who you are. People associate it with you and, because you’re there so often, it’s almost one and the same. Because it’s so public you’re exposed the day you open that café. It’s like you walk out into the middle of the street, you take off all your clothes and you stand there for hours and hours and let everyone examine every last nook and cranny.” Cam views the business as an intertwined, inseparable aspect of his personal life, as if inviting the general public into his own living room, and as such wants to create the very best reflection of himself that he possibly can. And that’s exactly how the Footbridge feels – as if you have stepped into someone’s home, been welcomed with open arms by friends and family. Meals, though superbly presented, bare that rustic, home-cooked feel, mis-matched cutlery and furniture disband the sterility of other establishments. Every aspect, through Cam and Jackie’s simple, professional passion, combines perfectly to make you feel as if you belong. But Cam is not in business for the competition. He sees the town as united, with more than enough potential customers, between the locals and the steady stream of tourists, to go around. He knows his fellow café owners by first name, waves hello, talks shop and dispels all notion of opposition or threat. Keeping it local is incredibly important to Cam and Jackie, but it is carefully balanced with quality. Produce will be sourced from within the region as much as possible, but with an established menu, if, say, local tomatoes aren’t up to scratch, they will source further afield to meet their unwaveringly high standards. “It’s really hard to a certain degree,” Cam confesses. “If we need x amount of a certain product 365 days a year, it’s really hard to get it locally, especially things that are seasonal. And then there’s quality issues. A big storm came through a while ago – all of a sudden we couldn’t get our organic greens from Tyagarah – but they’re on our menu and I needed them, so I had to source elsewhere. Our coffee is all locally roasted and it’s grown up in Federal, our milk is all organic, we get all of our free-range meats locally, but it is very hard to get everything from around here all year round. “You have to work so hard to do the local thing, but it’s something that we really value and do as much as possible and we always try to do more.” From their Lamb Royale to their black sticky rice pudding, every dish the Footbridge serves feels like it was made for the first time, just for you, not churned out on a conveyor belt, a cookie cutter copy of the previous order. The Footbridge, though a culmination of influences, is unique. As you sit gazing east across Banner Park and on to the gently flowing Brunswick River, staff chat to you as if to a long-lost friend. You are left to your own devices but always aware that help is just a smile away. And even on its most packed-out popular days, you can still find your own little pocket of peace amongst the reclaimed timber furniture and bunches of gerberas. For Cam, the dream will always be to return to the bar, to own his own seedy rock n’ roll bar, pumping out live music by unsigned musos to an appreciative crowd. But for both Cam and Jackie, their passion and their hearts are bound to the Footbridge. Until the day (if or when) they close up shop, everything they do will be done the very best it possibly can be because, as Cam philosophises, “The worst thing in the world would be to be the café that used to be good.” The Footbridge is open seven days a week, 6:30 am – 4:00 pm Mon-Fri and 7:00 am – 4:00 pm Sat and Sun, located on The Terrace, Brunswick Heads. For more information visit their Facebook page: www.facebook.com/BrunswickHeadsFootbridge – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Sep 1, 2014 All Photos: ©SubCutanea

We’re in trouble. There’s no masking it anymore, there’s no candy-coating it or denying it. We are gobbling up the Earth’s resources faster than ever before and exponentially, we aren’t managing the production or repurposing of any of these resources and society continues to blindly march onwards, advocating single-use over-consumption in every facet of our lives. Even if we ‘do the right thing’ and dispose of our trash properly, we still nurture a blasé, out-of-sight-out-of-mind mentality. We’re proud to say we recycle, but what we should really take pride in is not creating the waste in the first place. Drew Rogers hasn’t always been an ecologist. Studying communications at university and continually bombarded with that baby-boomer mentality of an education-career-mortgage lifestyle, Drew moved to Sydney and took an internship with the extreme sports behemoth, the X-Games. Working in TV post-production for the organisation and DJing nights, his days were filled with bright lights and consumer marketing deep in the heart of the concrete jungle. “I realised sitting in front of a computer for eight hours a day wasn’t really where I wanted to be,” says Drew of his five-year tenure in the big smoke. “I came up here to visit a friend and fell in love with it. The next year was just a process of packing up my life in Sydney and getting up here.” DJing and the familiar stream of bit-part jobs sustained Drew’s North Coast induction. Despite growing up on the Coast, his time in Sydney had deprived him of his connection with the environment but, as Byron so proficiently does for so many, his new home provided him a long-awaited reunion with nature. The bay and it’s surrounding hinterland obviously had a very profound affect upon Drew. Not long after his northern migration eight years ago, having floated his way through numerous jobs to make ends meet, he returned to education, studying conservation at the local TAFE. This lead on to employment with the Gold Coast City Council and the North Coast National Parks and Wildlife chapter, regenerating bushland along the coastline. But life doesn’t always deal us cards in a predictable fashion. Working on the front line and seeing first hand the common disregard for nature and complacency towards littering, Drew was facing emotional challenges daily. Although he was working on ecologically valuable projects, the tangible difference being made was slight. Unfulfilled, and with the addition of tribulations in his personal life, Drew realised it was time for change – a paradigm shift. “Doing bush re-gen, is pretty hard work and you don’t get quick results,” says Drew, “you have to wait at least five years. And then seeing people chucking rubbish anywhere and everywhere, I was just getting really disillusioned, thinking I was fighting a losing battle, especially in public spaces and seeing how disconnected everyone is with their natural environment. I really wanted to do something environmental, but I couldn’t handle seeing all that stuff without doing anything about it. “I travelled to Sumatra and while I was there, we hiked a volcano – you start at 11 o’clock at night and get to the summit on sunrise. We hiked up through the rain forest and arrived at this little plateau, surrounded in mist and cloud, in complete darkness. Our guide said we’d stop there, have a little rest and light a fire before starting out for the summit. I was looking around for pieces of wood to make a fire, but it was all wet and I had no idea how we were going to get a fire going. I got back to the plateau where the guide was and he just had a pile of plastic bottles; ‘this is the fire’ he said! It was like a blue jet flame shooting up into the air! “We carried on up to the summit in the dark and watched this incredible sunrise. But then, as we started heading back down, we saw that the whole volcano around where we stopped was just plastic bottles everywhere, shimmering in the sunlight.” This was Drew’s moment of epiphany. He became aware that, while it is admirable to clean up the problems caused by others, to collect litter, to regenerate natural areas, the issue lies in the foundation, not in the outcome. It is easy to point fingers, to berate the ignorance of others, to walk the path of a martyr, bitterly, scornfully collecting the detritus of society as you curse the carelessness of the world under your breath. But this is not a solution. Naivety is not a choice. “Waste is really a psychological issue,” Drew reflects. “It’s got to be taught through community involvement and education. Not just, ‘don’t throw that away,’ or ‘recycle that,’ but actually addressing consumer decisions and their power to shape the world we live in.” Waste-Free Futures is the result of Drew’s experiences – not only through travels and experiences with waste through his bush regeneration work, but also from working alongside established NGOs such as Positive Change For Marine Life. Positive Change is superb in what it addresses and achieves. Regular beach clean-ups, events to educate the general public and fund raising to protect and nurture the marine environment all provide a much-needed service to the planet. But Drew’s vision is for a clean environment through better waste solutions, reducing its creation and improving its management. “The idea is about promoting sustainable ideologies,” he shares, “whether it’s recycling management or putting on movie nights and educating people. I just wanted to get it out there as an ideal so that people start thinking about it.” Closely affiliated with Santos, Drew was aware the business was providing soft plastic recycling, for it’s own waste, for it’s customers and also for Positive Change. Utilising this service, thanks to the help of Paul Crebar of Back Out Loud, Drew and Paul are now collecting the soft plastic waste of other local businesses, charging an insignificant fee to simply cover costs and tackling the problem before it enters the environment. Single-use plastic is suffocating the planet. It is evident in our towns and gutters, along our coastline, dancing on the unseen hands of inner-city wind currents. But it goes beyond the more obvious repercussions of garbage, as Drew explains: “For every 600ml water bottle, it takes quarter of a bottle of oil just to make that one bottle. People don’t realise that – they see a product and don’t think about how it’s made or what goes into it. We put everything in our yellow bins and then someone else sorts it all. You’ve got seven different types of recyclable plastics – low density, high density, polypropylene, polyethylene and more – and if you get one tiny bit of one mixed in with the other then that plastic is downgraded. Here in Australia, it’s not economically viable for someone to sort through it all so we have to send it to China.” This, of course, then produces transportation emissions. Added to that, China has now established the Green Fence Policy, demanding that plastics shipped to the country be 100 percent contaminant-free. If not, the entire container gets returned to the country of origin, often destined for landfill, costing the sender $18,000. So the viability of the entire process is on a knife-edge. Ideally, all recycling would take place within the producer’s country, creating jobs, sustainability and resources for such things as plastic furniture, fittings and other end products not requiring class-A plastics. While recycling may well be a superb management of waste, with plastics degrading in quality with almost every recycle their reuse life is finite – sooner or later, these too will be destined for landfill. “Plastic is evil,” says Drew. “Anything that is created for a single use, that takes so much energy is pure evil – we shouldn’t have it on the planet – it goes against every environmental law.” Every piece of plastic ever created still exists, all of them polymerised into existence within the last century and all of them existing for time eternal. We have become so dependent on plastics that to cease their use globally, certainly in any foreseeable future, is all but impossible. Waste-Free Futures dreams of such a day, but Drew rationalises that plastic won’t just go away. “At the end of the day, we don’t want people buying plastics – that’s what we want to teach people. When they stop buying plastics, the companies will have to adjust to the consumer market. Gordon Fraser-Quick, who heads up the waste technology course at Southern Cross Uni, says ‘waste is just a resource in the wrong place, at the wrong time, at the wrong price.’ The recycling market worldwide is the second largest and employs the second most amount of people only behind agriculture. Repurposing, reusing and ending the disposable culture we have is the future.” To find out more or connect your business with Waste-Free Futures, head over to their Facebook page: www.facebook.com/wastefreefutures. – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Aug 4, 2014

A story lies inside us all. One of love and miracles, sorrow and pain, wonder and joy. Every day is a new paragraph, every journey a chapter, and day by day the winds of time turn another page, ticking down our tale to its unpredictable conclusion. For many, it is a story that will never be told, synopses occasionally shared, but desperately incomplete and grammatically redundant. But for the tiniest few, their lives yearn for the limelight, or tales accumulated from imaginary fragments amount to more than daydreams and fantasies, seeking the printed page, fresh eyes and the expanse of new imaginations to play in. The 18th annual Byron Bay Writers’ Festival this year boasts a stunning array of over luminaries of the literary world across a wealth of genres. Crime writing, biography, environmental, factual and political, poetry, romance, travel, even children’s writing is represented in a fantastic and fascinating diversity of events. Hosted across four separate venues and multiple stages, the 2014 Byron Bay Writers’ Festival offers something for everyone, whether you’re an avid scribe or never intend to write another word in your life. Although workshops and hands-on skills development are a feature of the festival, it also incorporates the presentation of the written word, in conversation, oration and lyrics. A forum for writers to launch new publications and share some fond favourites, it allows us the opportunity to experience these works as their creators intended. A superb lineup of local, national and international literary celebrities will be present and activities offer a something-for-everyone program suitable for all ages and interests. Andy Griffiths, local TV star turned writer, Tristan Bancks and Mem Fox, creator of the exquisite Possum Magic (among dozens of other titles) will be joined by peers for the Kids Big Day Out, a festival within the festival for the young, and young at heart. If the darker underworld is more your scene, favouring nights curled in blankets in fear of what the turn of a page may bring, a collection of crime authors will share with you tales of murder and mystery, some of their own fabrication, others renditions of true life. These include Virginia Peters’ startling investigation into the Lismore murder in 2005 of German backpacker, Simone Strobel and John Safran‘s acclaimed live stage show in which he recounts the stunning revelations of a weekend spent with one of Mississippi’s most notorious white supremacists. Food, for the stomach and for thought, also feature significantly in this year’s calendar. Travel the Indian spice route with fêted chef Christine Manfield at her Literary Lunch at the Byron at Byron resort or enjoy a Saturday supper with national treasures Julian Burnside and Frank Moorhouse in conversation with Sian Prior. Senator Bob Brown and former Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser will plunge into the enviro-political world, offering an exploration of Australia’s environmental vision for the future and Austro-American relations among other convoluted conversation. If you ever thought there could be nothing rock n’ roll about writing festivals, grab some condiments and cutlery and prepare to eat your words. Liner Notes offers a poetic tribute to glam rock legend, David Bowie, or more specifically, his exuberant, extravagant alter ego, Ziggy Stardust. From Major Tom to Jean Genie, Diamond Dogs to Young Americans all are celebrated in this unique performance. Andrew Denton, Missy Higgins, Andy Griffiths and Benjamin Law will be among a host of wordsmiths waxing lyrical in homage, through stories, poetry and song. Writing isn’t only about nerdy, bespeckled scribblers, vitamin-D deficient and socially bereft or Gauloise-chaining pseudo Voltaires, beard-stroking and sculpting verse on the tribulations of life and love. It is about weaving the rich tapestry of life into the folds of a book, sharing ideas, presenting tales and nourishing the souls of those around you near and far. It is new experience, secret journeys, love affairs and awakenings. It is laughter and joy, pain and sorrow. It is adventures into the future and delvings into the past. It is as fact as it is fiction. It is me, it is you, it is us all – every imagining, every dream, every question or answer, every thrill, every step of our lives, poured onto paper in vicarious enjoyment of this blinking, waking, breathing wonderful gift called life. The Byron Bay Writers’ Festival information is available from the website: www.byronbaywritersfestival.com.au – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Jul 1, 2014

Fashion is a funny thing. For all that it is an expression of ourselves, it is equally as soulless and impersonal. We are dictated to, told what to wear, how we should sculpt our image to suit fads or genres. We are the servants of fashion when, in reality, it should be a reflection of our ethos and creativity. Enter Driftlab. A little under five years ago, Sam and Zane Grier had an itching to head north. Their first child already taking tentative first steps and a second on the way, they agreed that a North Coast sea change was in order, following in the footsteps of Zane’s parents and his brother, Tristan. “We travelled the world, following the snow for twelve years, before settling in New Zealand for three years,” says Driftlab‘s co-founder, Sam. “Zane was posted to New Zealand by Quiksilver, to run their retail division and open eight retail outlets, and our son, Ethan, was born over there as well. Things changed with Quiksilver so we decided to move up here. Tristan owns Harvest Restaurant, right next door to our Newrybar store, and Zane’s parents own a property in Knockrow. We weren’t sure what to do, looking at business back in Sydney and other places, but we just couldn’t leave Byron.” Byron Bay’s unique lifestyle and mindset drew the couple in. A peaceful, colourful, natural region to raise children but also feeding their creative interests, Zane and Sam settled, establishing Driftlab in the heart of Byron just a few months later. Although there have been the usual tides of change and adaptations so intrinsic to retail, the concept was clear from the outset: to create a platform to support up and coming artists and designers. Independent local and national fashion labels are juxtaposed with brands of more renown, jewellery and accessories from the region share shelf space with international designs and walls are adorned with a continually changing exhibition of work from Shire artists and photographers. From the first garment, Driftlab was about reflecting a lifestyle, rather than catering to the whims and winds of fashion. “Zane studied photography and we’ve both always loved art,” says Sam, “but we’ve also always loved independent brands. There are so many designers out there coming out with amazing products and they find it so hard to crack into the big retailers. We were never interested in being one of those – we never wanted to be mainstream. We will always have a mix of mainstream labels as well as indie ones, because you have to, but we want to be able to provide a home for them to grow their brand and become successful.” In shedding this subservience to convention, Driftlab has been able to develop its own persona; chic, high quality and couture, with a grounded, more rustic dimension, a little bit bohemian, a little bit street, all Byron. The very name Driftlab has sprung from exactly this mindset. Drift wood is happened upon, an environmental offering, worn smooth, clean and beautiful but pure and organic. The clinical precision of the laboratory reflects clean lines and quality, the reassurance that, for all its earthy simplicity it is every bit as well crafted and distinct. Raen Optics, Vans and Converse footwear, Deus Ex Machina apparel and Brixton head gear share rail space with local labels Tallow, Goddess of Babylon and Afends, diverse when viewed independently but seamlessly interwoven in Driftlab’s impeccably crafted context. Perhaps a reflection of the creators’ personal tastes, with more than a dash of local creativity, but exemplary tastes they are that speak to a wider audience. “This area does have it’s raw earthiness and artistic feel, but then it does mix in with the coolness and edginess of the city,” Sam explains. “that’s what we try to embody in our style.” Retail in Byron Bay speaks for itself. Quiet times occur, but for the greater part, the thriving tourist town provides a steady stream of foot traffic right to the door. But in Newrybar, a casual, passing clientele is far less readily available. This is where the symbiosis with Harvest Restaurant pays off. Sam and Zane have expanded their support of the region’s artisan community. In their position, it may well make good business sense to bring in local labels and develop direct relationships with designers and creators, but their creation has become far more bipartisan to include artists and photographers, as well as those creating retail items. Driftlab, in both it’s venues, is a working gallery, an exhibition space. From the art on the walls to the clothing and accessories, everything embodies creativity. Personal passions instigated the interest in local art and developing character and atmosphere within their stores inspired them further. But Sam and Zane’s desire to support regional talent goes beyond the bounds of their business. “We’ve got a whole wall in our Byron store that that we have dedicated to an artist’s space,” says Sam. “We’ve used it for a couple of our suppliers, Brixton and The Critical Slide Society, who have done installations. We love working with brands like that because they’ve got a vision like ours – they aren’t only about selling clothes, it’s about representing the lifestyle and the culture. “But our real vision was to use it for local artists. We’ve always had artists’ work on the walls and we rotate them every six weeks with openings and exhibition launches. We really want to develop that aspect of Driftlab further. But we also want to begin collecting together all the artists that contact us and launch a biannual event to exhibit and share all the wonderful artwork we have discovered.” The future holds humble growth for Driftlab with a more developed online store, but Sam and Zane’s enthusiasm radiates most when this subject of exhibitions and artists is discussed. Creativity is the underlying passion that has influenced Driftlab but it has inspired so much more. If you are an upcoming local artist, Driftlab wants you. The Driftlab team is continually looking for new creations to exhibit, including artwork and photography, but also leather goods, shoes, hats, knitting or giftware such as candles, sculptures and pottery. If you are interested in exhibiting your work at Driftlab Newrybar or Driftlab Byron Bay, you can contact the team, with examples and pricing of your work at: [email protected] Join Driftlab on Instagram and Facebook or visit their website at: www.driftlab.com.au – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Jun 30, 2014 Photos: Kirra Pendergast Featured Artwork: Kylie Bridges Featured Photography: Rusty Miller

Josh Pyke should be taking notes from the Arapaho Indians of North America or the sub-Saharan Bedouin clans. Whether he is a perpetual nomad, a slave to his music or just a sucker for punishment, it seems that, no sooner has he transferred his jocks from suitcase to washing machine than he’s stowing them again for his next period of gig-peppered meanderings. His latest album, ‘The Beginning And The End Of Everything‘, was punctuated by the obligatory major-cities tour, leaving a swathe of resounding reviews and fulfilled crowds in its wake. But Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane do not the greater public make and Josh’s fan base spreads far wider than CBDs and city limits. And so, barely unpacked from his last tour, he is tracing white lines and following black-top pathways once again, a 24-stop tour planned of regional outposts and less frequented venues. “I never quite get downtime,” Josh says of the preciously brief periods spent at home. “I’ve been rehearsing for this leg of the tour and I’m doing a live CD and DVD box set from the last leg of the tour, so I’ve been going through all the tracks and mixing them myself – basically compiling the best performances. It’s been pretty hectic actually, but it’s been good.” Whetting the appetites of loyal fans, Josh’s limited edition collector’s boxed set features a double CD/DVD, five exclusive postcards and, for the retro hipsters out there, a blast-from-the-past Viewmaster, complete with two slide discs filled with images from his shows. “It’s limited to a thousand copies and I wanted to make it something special, really catering to my core fan base. I really thought it was time to document some of these shows that have been so special from the last tour… And [The Viewmaster] was one of the best ideas I’ve ever had!” His ‘Lone Wolf’ tour, both the major city portion and the upcoming events, has been Josh’s first time solo on stage for some time, drawing not only on the new album for material but also his entire back catalogue. Now with a young family, he has bisected the tour, breaking it into a more manageable timetable, affording him some time at home but also allowing him a little more indulgence, making this, by his own admission, the best tour he has ever done. Being just a guy and a guitar, leaving the big production and extensive orchestra at home, has allowed Josh to explore the country far more than the logistics and expense of a more grandiose production would allow. “It’s been over two years since I got out to Darwin and places like that,” he says. “Doing a solo tour makes it a lot less prohibitive, cost wise, because it is expensive taking a whole band to some of these places. Part of the beauty of doing it solo is that it allows me to get to a lot of these places that I wouldn’t be able to take a band to because the population is a bit too small to support a larger production.” Working with Melbourne-based producer, John Castle on ‘The Beginning And The End…’ Josh has created a much richer sound than in previous albums. Sometimes, such as in the title track, it is through a fuller, multi-instrumental orchestration. But even when stripped back to the bare essentials, just Josh, six strings and a wooden box, there is a maturity that rings through the album. “I haven’t worked with [Castle] previously, so he definitely imparted a lot of his vibe onto it. But I also have a studio at home now. I’ve always had little set-ups here and there, but I’ve got a proper, dedicated studio now, which has allowed me to experiment with songs a lot more before taking to them to John. I think that’s had a big impact on the record.” ‘The Beginning And The End…’ is a step away from the conventions of the singer-songwriter mould. Simplicity still reigns through several of the tracks but, through lyrics and production, Josh has created an album that, instead of inducing goosebumps or that synonymous laid back atmosphere, allows you to wallow in its melodies, sink into its lyrics and be enveloped by its harmonies.   It is as if the genre has come of age, moved on from its awkward, pubescent years, shed its ill-fitting wardrobe and is returning in a fresh, tailored suit, manicured beard and Elvis Costello glasses. And indeed, Josh’s life reflects this gentle nudge into adulthood. “For me a the writer, it is definitely a cathartic, breath-of-relief kind of record because it was coming off the back of having two kids and looking at an uncertain future, as everybody is. Every time I do another record, I always think of it as kind of starting again. No matter how much success I’ve had in the past, I think you always have to think of each new record as trying to put your best foot forward again. “But when I finished this record, I was just so happy with it that I definitely had that ‘mission accomplished’, deeply satisfying feeling.” ‘The Beginning And The End…’ Isn’t the only album Josh will be presenting to Australian audiences this year though. Reprising his performances of 2009, Josh, alongside Chris Cheney of The Living End, Grinspoon’s Phil Jamieson, Tim Rogers from You Am I, will be touring one of the greatest and most influential records of all time: The Beatles‘ ‘White Album‘. The resounding success of the ’09 tour has brought the four very disparate musicians back together to play the album start to finish, from Back In The USSR to Good Night, for lucky crowds around the country.   Kicking off less than a week after his solo tour, Josh will barely have time to catch his breath before taking to the road again with his three fellow musos and a 17-piece orchestra. “I’m an absolutely massive Beatles fan and I’d definitely say that The Beatles have been a huge, seminal influence on both my music and imagination. I remember spending hours and hours listening to ‘Sgt. Pepper’s…’ when I was a kid, my dad had all the Beatles fan magazines, so they’ve been a huge part of my life. “When I was first approached to do it, and when I found out that Tim, Chris and Phil were already on board, of course I said yes. But then when it came to doing it the second time, I wondered if we should. The response for it has been so overwhelming that it’s made me realise that it appeals to Beatles fans but also fans of the four of us. But mostly, it’s testament to the amazing and current popularity of The Beatles still, because The Beatles never performed ‘The White Album‘, so it’s a chance for these huge Beatles fans to see it presented not by a tribute band but to see this experience in a way you wouldn’t normally get to see it. It’s a proper phenomenon, an unexplainable thing. There’s never going to be another band like The Beatles so it’s a real honour to be part of it.” Kids, parents, grandparents – they all were thrilled by the 2009 performances and the encore, though five years on, will no doubt be equally as, if not more popular than its predecessor. Five albums, numerous tours and countless hours spent calling a suitcase home, Josh Pyke doesn’t show any signs of letting up. Fatherhood has enriched his musical sound, matured his work and given him cause to reassess, even re-evaluate his career. But in no way has it slowed him down. ‘Lone Wolf’ he may be when he’s traversing the country for a string of shows from Woop-Woop to Whereversville, but it is the sanctuary of family that illuminates his music. For more details on his latest album, ‘The Beginning And The End Of Everything‘,visit his website at: joshpyke.com – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Jun 6, 2014

I know she is there. My eyes are closed, the sun still sleeps, no movement or breath may reach me, but I feel her touch from inches apart. Hearts entwined through space and time, cocooned in love we will never be apart, but even in this perfect unity we must be alone, together. When we fall in love, or even enter a new friendship, it is with an independent soul. We have little knowledge of the deeper they, we have not adapted our ways or views to compliment or compromise, our preferences and desires have yet to be projected upon this fresh connection. This two-way street comes later, when the niggling habits begin to surface, the quirks and traits, hidden through shame or insecurity, that arise through comfort and relaxation. But each of these, no matter their nature, from nose-picking to a hatred of jazz, have been nurtured over decades, drawn into the formula, an intrinsic part of the recipe that makes the creature we see before us. Whatever nuances our partner may present, even those we abhor, we must love them all. For without any one of this myriad list of ingredients, the one to whom we open our heart, the complete entity we have fallen in love with, would cease to exist. We may adapt ourselves, but to corrupt another is to destroy their truth. Whatever we may find to which we cannot relate, it is not our place to quash or alter. If your lover’s 5 am Yoga practice infuriates you, breathe in, relax. She does not ask you to join her on the mat. Close your eyes and snuggle down, you needn’t wake just yet. Walk the dog, go for a run, find your own morning practice, a space and place for your moments together alone, sharing time apart. Just as we mustn’t try to mold another to reflect our egocentric projections, we must also remain true to ourselves. Honor the vision others have of you, accept that it is not your future actions or the ways you change that have drawn them to you. Respect that they have come to you despite themselves. You were not influenced by their vision or desires when your paths first crossed and, but for your inner tides and changes, you were your purest self. Listen to that voice, the one that found you in the womb, that soothed you through heartbreak, that taunts you at times but remains your truest teacher, your closest confidant and the only one that will never, no matter what, through every breath you take, leave your side. But, just as you are you, they are them. Even the most perfect match has its differences. Though we may wish to share every moment in embrace, to immerse ourselves completely in our loved one’s presence, to do so is to deny our own needs and, ergo, diminish that person they fell in love with. It can be hard to accept or justify a time of selfishness, to follow your passions at the denial of others. But this is who we are. We are the person that likes to watch horror films or eat spicy food. We are the one who is allergic to horses or who panics in crowds. It is us who surfs or dances or chants or meditates. Just as it is us that they have accepted and fallen for, and just as their guilty pleasures, love them or loathe them, are as real to us as their blue eyes, their curly hair or their crooked teeth. If we are to truly love, at whatever level that may be, we must love consummately, warts and all. But we must also recognize that  neither we nor they need endure those warts. We do not have to like the habits of others to love everything about them. We can adore the way they walk the shoreline in silence, despite the pain of not being invited. We can cherish the way their eyes glisten from the ocean’s waters, but we fear the crashing waves. We might not want to Downward Dog or utter an Om, but the free spirit awakened through our loved one’s practice makes us fall more deeply than ever before. Respect is essential, in all of our relationships, and that respect extends to the respect of space and freedom, respecting time apart that we might reunite revitalized, stronger in ourselves and consequentially stronger for each other. So let go, be free, feed yourself and allow space. Nourish each other to nurture the ones you love. To love completely is to be alone, together. – This article first appeared on Rebelle Society on Sep 11, 2014

Let’s face it – you’ve got more chance of finding a leprechaun riding a unicorn while munching a four-leaf clover sandwich than hearing the words, “you know, I think Tony Abbott is pretty good for this country” uttered by anyone outside the mining industry. Nestled snuggly in the warm and squishy comfort of Gina Rinehart’s pocket, Abbott is fast turning Australia into little more than one great open cast mine for the rest of the world to plunder. It is our duty, as free-thinkers in a supposedly democratic country, as Australians, as sane human beings, to recognise unsustainable actions, to stand up for our health and welfare and to protect this country and this planet. It seems an impossible task to stem the tide of commerce and big industry and to stave off the advances of the mega-corporations. But small victories, such as we’ve seen just in the last week or so in Bentley and Tasmania, are possible. These offer hope and shine a light on the possibilities of a brighter future. Malia Rouillon is a torch-bearer of this movement. She is a first-on-the-scene, loudest-voice-on-the-front-line kind of girl, one who, from a young age, has recognised the need to stand up and, through education and activism in equal measures, make that difference. Growing up in the hinterland behind Coffs Harbour, Malia’s pre-teen toes were often either caked in mud or bathed in the waves lapping the Coffs Coast. “I grew up in the forest, in the hills of Coffs Harbour,” she reflects of her early years. “As soon as I finished school I had the mindset that I wanted to be a marine biologist so I went straight up to the Great Barrier Reef and worked. I was working as an Eco tour guide on one of the islands up there. I did that for a while and then decided to travel.” Malia connected with nature and felt a kinship with it, her journeys always with an environmental perspective and a building awareness of the need for a guardianship of the planet and it’s creatures. Her travels concluded in Margaret River and, while at first glance it may seem contradictory, she took a career as a fly-in-fly-out worker. But it was from a very different perspective. Malia’s work was in the environmental sector, taking her into the often challenging if not heartbreaking mining sites to assess their environmental viability. Or lack thereof. “I came to the environmental sector as basically an endless bank account to do more travelling. Coming from such a conservative childhood and respecting my immediate environment it was a bit of a hit in the face.” This offered Malia a unique insight into the very industry she was so against, illuminating the issue from the inside out. As with any situation, the mining industry is very different when seen from the inside. Malia very quickly realised that the information conveyed to or acquired by the general public was a long way from the reality; months, even years out of date, highly selective and a grossly biased reflection of the truth. After five years of testing soil samples, presenting reports and doing her very best to clean up a filthy industry, Malia realised something more needed to be done. What was really needed was a whistle-blower, a voice from inside to expose the truth. “Sirens for the Sea came about in September last year,” says Malia. “It was about us speaking out from an industry perspective about what is actually happening. What you’re hearing in the media is mostly false. By the time the industry complete all their assessments and statements, most of the information is totally irrelevant. “We started an Instagram account for the Reef because there wasn’t any social media outlet besides the huge conservation companies who stream Facebook with all sorts of issues. “We wanted to give people everyday, first-hand experience and feed you guys what you need to know, the basic facts about the Reef for the public to get their head around. It’s one of the largest ecosystems in the world and it’s pretty special for Australia in so many ways. So to lose something like that would be devastating.” Establishing the Instagram and Facebook pages and developing open channels of public information is just the beginning for Malia and the Sirens for the Sea. The diverse collective, without whom none of this work would be possible, is hosting events at various venues, it’s aim twofold. A recent night held at the Gold Coast’s Mandala vegetarian restaurant featured Medicine For The People’s Dustin Thomas among other musicians and a collection of auction and raffle items. Guest speakers shared knowledge on the plight of the Great Barrier Reef, the environment and the fragile oceanic ecosystem and funds raised during the evening went towards the grand plan: a collaborative documentary, featuring Dave Rastovich and. Lauren Hill, in association with Surfers For Cetaceans, to spread Malia’s accumulative wealth of knowledge further still. By connecting the dots, uniting communities across the country, informing the general public of the issues, their causes and the ways to defeat them, Malia aims to develop a far greater understanding nationwide, not least by visiting schools and educating the younger generations before they too become corrupted and blindfolded by big industry and the government. But already, this cloak and dagger divulgence of information is drawing unwanted attention. Malia has on several occasions had her social media accounts suspended and the ever watchful eye of Big Brother seems to be casting an ever less cursory glance in her direction. Where massive financial interest is at stake, the corporations will expend vast amounts of time and money to whitewash anything or anyone that may jeopardise their investments. Malia’s work has led her to producing toxicology reports on the impact of mining in the Kimberlies, on the Barrier Reef and in numerous other natural locations around the country. Her career and her self-proclaimed “take no sh*t” attitude have given her profound insight, the first-hand, cutting edge information that is invariably kept well clear of the media and the general public. It is this awareness, and how far the average Australian is for the truth, that brought about Sirens for the Sea, to level the playing field and create a unified mindset. “For us it’s about getting the word out there and educating people because I think threats definitely what it comes down to – education. “We’re about to start this third sequel to Minds In The Water and Transparentsea with Surfers For Cetaceans‘ Howie Cooke and Dave Rastovich, travelling from the Southern end of the Great Barrier Reef down to Byron Bay. We’ve got marine biologists, divers, surfers, musicians, and we want to use the trip and its movie to spread this relevant information to a far wider audience.” Malia Rouillon is the face of the new generation. The tide has drifted a long way from shore but she, and many admirable individuals like her, mark it’s return, building, swelling and surging towards a much brighter future. Please help support Sirens for the Sea. Join their Instagram and Facebook pages: www.facebook.com/sirensforthesea Instagram: @sirensforthesea …and help fund their superb work in protecting our natural land and sea by attending events and purchasing a copy of local band Velshur’s upcoming single, – 50% of all proceeds going to Sirens for the Sea. – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on May 30, 2014

When was the last time you saw global warming? We’ve all seen the charts and read the stats, but have you ever tripped over a pile of greenhouse emissions, got scalded by a drastically heated ocean, been sucker punched by rogue freons or needed to evict the unruly chlorofluorocarbons squatting in your garden shed? The answer, unless you have a penchant for handfuls of hallucinogens, is a resounding ‘no’ – and it is in this that our greatest climate problem exists. Veterinarian and ecologist, Dr. Gary Tabor, is intensely focussed upon this intangible crisis, all too aware of the impending threat it poses and the desperate and immediate need to address climate change at every level. Gary is from Bozeman, Montana, a small town of alternative thinkers which he says is much like Byron Bay’s mountainous, land-locked sibling. Recipient of the Fullbright Scholarship – an Australian-American commission “to promote mutual understanding through educational and cultural exchange between Australia and the United States” – his purpose, as staggering as it may seem to we Australians, was to learn from us, viewing this country as somewhat of a promised land for a sustainable future. But on arrival, a very different picture began to emerge. “The reason I came here is because I thought I was going to the future,” Gary admits, heavy-heartedly. “You had a Minister for Climate Change, every state had some kind of climate change program, you had this progressive policy in terms of carbon tax and renewable energy, which we don’t have nationally yet [in the US]…climate change is an in-your-face issue here. You had millennial drought then Biblical floods – extreme weather is Australia and there was some sense that everybody got it. “In the United States it has become a political issue to the degree that if you’re a republican, you’re a climate denier and if you’re a democrat you believe in it. So it has become a proxy for core values with nothing to do with science. “When I came to Australia, I thought I was going to go ahead, until I found out that there’s been a huge retreat in all ways. How could a country that was so enlightened go so far backwards? The rest of the world, including myself, saw Australia as hope. It really makes me sad to see this retreat because I think it takes the wind out of everyone’s sails. In America, we had this mythical belief that Australia’s got its act together on this issue.” Whatever other pros and cons they may have had, the Labour Government recognised the necessity to address climate change. Beyond what we may have suspected, this was a responsibility reflected on a global level. We were a role model for other nations…and look at us now. “One of the disturbing things I’ve learned since being in Australia,” says Gary, “is how the renewable energy policy here pitted cities and industry against each other. The cities embraced solar energy and it was so successful that the renewable energy cap was reached, the incentives were withdrawn and they [the government] took the credits away, leaving industry with no incentive to use renewable energy. Industry and residential were competing for a set limit. That creates a negative response, industry and residential feeling like they’re competing for a finite amount.” It is such a massive issue and, as Gary himself admits, anything we may do on an individual level, recycling, using energy efficient light globes and so on, is almost trivial. The hope is in the government’s hands and, as we’ve been shown time and again in recent months, those hands seem to be too busy clutching at dollars to concern themselves with holding onto the important issues. Despite this seemingly hopeless outlook, another project in which Gary is involved offers a brighter picture. Connecting with Patagonia founder, Yvon Chouinard, Gary has co-founded Patagonia‘s Freedom to Roam project, an ecological organisation that has established over 400 nature corridors ranging thousands of kilometres across the United States to connect reserves and national parks and allow wildlife migration routes. Freedom to Roam isn’t about buying up or protecting vast tracks of land directly. Instead, it draws together like-minded individual parties, including business, government and conservation groups, to create a united movement to protect these areas so vital to the natural ecosystem and it’s inhabitants. And herein lies the solution to climate change. Byron Bay, as we know so well, is hugely vocal in such matters, from government policies and the March in March to the tremendous support of the Bentley blockade. But Byron Bay can’t change the world and now more than ever, it is essential that we reach out to other communities and organisations to create a united front for change. Just like Freedom to Roam connecting the green dots across America to create a sustainable environment for its wildlife, we must connect the dots of activism to create a sustainable future for our children. “Every action is important,” says Gary, “but I believe that political action or policy action is needed now because the individual can only do so much. Society needs to be outraged by what’s going on. There was a time that Australia had that outrage – where did it go? We need that Aussie outrage now more than ever. “We can suffer on individually and we can create communities of hope, but we have to connect all those communities now. More of these bubbles need to connect, to coalesce, and that creates a new tide, affecting those bigger centres of power. We all believe in social networking and communication, we need to reverse it now. We have to aggregate those communities now and push back – that’s how it’s going to change.” Documentaries such as the wonderful film, 2 Degrees, by local filmmaker Jeff Canin show the staggering complacency of our leading politicians, highlight the need for change and share the stories of local communities standing and fighting. Now is the time to create one voice, to divest our wealth from the Big 4 banks investing in fossil fuels, to boycott government, to overturn policies and to unite as one. Only together can we be the change. To find out more about divesting your finances and withdrawing support for fossil fuel investments, go to: act.350.org For information on Freedom to Roam, visit: www.patagonia.com To learn more about Dr. Gary Tabor and his work, visit: largelandscapes.org – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on May 28, 2014 All Photos: ©Kirra Pendergast

Beads of salt water slowly form at the tips of Jessica’s still-wet hair, a mug of coffee steams gently, her shivering hands clutched tightly around it, desperately trying to leech what heat they can to regain their warmth. Fresh from the early Winter’s morning waves, she is cold but filled with that unmistakable vitality that only a surfer could know. It has been said by many, felt by a few but truly meant by a precious handful: surfing can change your life, and she is one of that handful. Jessica grew up in Cornwall – the very south-west tip of the UK – last footfall before the great Atlantic Ocean and, somewhere far distant, the Americas. Always motivated to surf, opportunity, rather than desire, is what held her from the waves. Some are too lazy, others geographically challenged, but for Jessica it was more personal, and more painful. “When I was a kid, I had a pretty hard upbringing,” recalls Jessica of her youth. “I started getting into a lot of trouble at school. I found surfing when I was pretty young, but I had lots of barriers; I was a girl, I came from a not-so-well-off family and I didn’t have any parental support.” Though looking at her today – positive, healthy and sparkly-eyed – you couldn’t imagine it, Jessica spent her younger years wandering far from the tracks of life. Derailed by challenging circumstances at home and at school, she was a bit of a wild one, directionless and careless. But somehow, against the will of these challenges, she got herself a board and a wetsuit and paddled out into a new life in the less than temperate waves off the Kernow coastline. “Because I’m a strong-willed person, I managed to get myself a board, set myself up and get out there and yeah, it changed my life. I was dyslexic, so I wasn’t able to learn very well by just sitting in class and I had all this energy and I needed to outlet it somewhere, but I was outletting it in the wrong places. You can express it through destruction or creativity. I think surfing is very creative, but not only that, it’s also challenging and I think I really needed that challenge.” Jessica fought hard, grit and determination bringing about a pivotal shift and, against the odds, she got herself back on track, strong, motivated and with an entirely new outlook on life. Her passion for the waves drew her to surf coaching through which she could spend time in her newfound sanctuary of the ocean and get paid for it. But in England, unlike here in Australia, surf coaching isn’t a full time position, let alone a year-round profession. Keen to help other underprivileged kids and help them through her own success story, Jessica also ventured into youth work and it wasn’t very long before the connections were made and her two jobs united. “When I was coaching surfing and in the youth working, the girls often orientated themselves around me and it felt like there needed to be a space for the two to work together. Teenage girls are often the hardest to reach – many of them have been through a lot. I put in a proposal, local organisations loved the idea and together we put in a funding bid.” This was the birth of Sirens Surf, a place where the troubles of terra firma can be left behind, all pretense and judgement washed away by the ocean’s waves to create a family and support network back on dry land for those struggling to find their place or make their mark on the world. But with such a short-lived Summer season in the UK, it was challenging for Jessica establish the charity. What she needed was somewhere that offered year-round waves and weather to allow Sirens Surf to flourish – and where better than Byron Bay. “It’s hard in England,” says Jessica. “It’s cold, it’s a short summer and so on. Here, it’s so much easier for the girls to just get in the ocean. I think people over here are just a lot more open to the idea of it.” Surfing is such a part of our culture. The vast majority of us are raised around the ocean, on regular holidays if not right on our front doorsteps, and we recognise the significant benefits of this connection upon both our physical and mental wellbeing. With organisations such as Disabled Surfers Association and the Surfrider Foundation paving the way, Sirens Surf holds great potential in an area of need that is sadly so overlooked. ‘Empowering and inspiring women and girls through the ocean and each other,’ Sirens Surf is the caring family some may never have known. “Having everyone linked in a network is so important. So even if Sirens isn’t there, they may have met another girl and they can go surfing together or make friends, catch up. It works online as well, so they can connect, share words of inspiration and never have to feel alone.” It is often the hardest times in our life that make us who we are. For Jessica Cox, those times were incredibly hard, but who she has become is beyond her former self’s wildest dreams – and an inspiration to us all. This weekend, Sunday 25th of May, Sirens Surf and Mojo Surf will be hosting a charity fundraiser event. Yoga, surf instruction, meditation, guest speakers and tasty treats are just some of the wonderful things on offer for girls of all ages at Byron’s Main Beach. A swathe of prizes and raffles and a very reasonable $15 donation for the day, running from 11am to 3pm, will be donated to the Assist A Sista Foundation, helping victims of domestic violence find a safe and secure home for themselves and their children. Join Sirens Surf’s Facebook page HERE to keep up to date on the day’s events and location, which may vary according to conditions. – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on May 21, 2014 and also on Drift Surfing All Photos: ©Ming Nomchong

When you think hip-hop certain unavoidable connotations arise. Stereotypes infiltrate your mind’s eye, and mind’s ear, with everything from gold chains and pristine Adidas sneakers to lyrics rich in poppin’ caps, intimate relations with the law enforcement and an over-healthy fascination with female dogs. It has become a lifestyle, a whole sub-species of humanity with its own language, fashion code and culture. But, lest we forget, hip hop is, first and foremost, a musical style, and it is with this perspective, fresh, pure and unfettered, that Illy started making music. Much of hip-hop’s influence has been bred of injustice, primarily to the Afro-American minorities, and has an inherent anger and negativity. But growing up on the ‘mean streets’ of Melbourne was hardly cause for Illy to scream about the unfairness readily dished out to him on a daily basis. “I don’t have that much wrong in my life,” Illy shares of his background. “I’ve had my hardships and I’ve gone through my share of struggles, but at the end of the day I’ve never had any real, insanely trying circumstances that I’ve had to rise above. I’m an Australian, I’m from a middle-class family, so I don’t want to make angry music that doesn’t reflect the way that I view life. “If I were to make really aggressive, angry hip-hop I don’t think it would be genuine because I don’t have that much to feel angry about.” Listening to his latest album, Cinematic, released at the tail end of last year, you’re faced with a collection of conundrums. Aggression, for one, is not on the agenda, there is no heavy, repetitive bass line and his vocals flow gently with a storytelling grace, rather than being venomously spat forth in vengeance or defiance. And yet the entire sound remains intrinsically hip-hop. Illy released his first album five years ago drifting gently on the same stream as Hilltop Hoods and Drapht, with whom he has numerously collaborated. But it has been with his own style. “I would say that my stuff is different to a lot of Australian hip-hop in that it’s more melodic, it sounds larger and the production is bigger and there’s not much anger through it. Some people want that anger, some people don’t, but as far as what I create, that’s where my grounding is coming from.” It’s been a struggle getting to today, but Illy is now in a place of wealth. Perhaps not in his bank manager’s eyes, and he’s the first to admit he hasn’t ‘made it’ into the limelight, but he is recognised and is now able to spread his wings just a little further. Cinematic has afforded him the opportunity to explore the depths of his music, bringing in numerous collaborators, including his mates the Hilltops and Drapht but also pop crooner Daniel Merriweather and The Amity Affliction’s Ahren Stringer, blending musical genres to create a rich, balanced sound testament to Illy’s evolution as an artist. He doesn’t have to say yes to every gig, can be selective in his commitments and it has afforded him the time to develop his work to a whole new level. “[Cinematic] is my fourth album and, over that time, there’s been a lot of experience gained and honing what I do,” he expresses. “With this one, I was a lot more confident in my abilities and because of that I was more able and willing to push the envelope and try different things. I think Cinematic is easily the most ambitious album I have ever done.” 2014 is gearing up for Illy. The release of Cinematic, as is the way in the music world, has instigated a national tour, beginning with the six-stop Groovin’ The Moo festival before visiting our corner of Australia for Splendour in the Grass. This year’s booked out, next is already filling up and Illy is a man in demand. But his feet remain firmly on the ground, never one to fall victim to stardom and retaining an admirable humility, however his career may be expanding. “I don’t feel like I’ve made it. As soon as you start feeling like that you tend to get a bit slack and complacency’s never a good thing, especially in something as competitive as the music industry. But I’m in a position now where I have got a lot of good, really talented people around and my profile is such that I don’t have to take every offer that comes. I’m not going to make any crazy demands but I’m now able to actually ask things of people.” Prior to the release of Cinematic, Illy’s recording contract expired. It was just one of those things; he wasn’t dropped from his label, there was no negativity, it simply ran out. He could possibly have re-signed or even looked to another label for support, but instead he embraced the opportunity and saw it not as a hindrance but as a way to pay it forward, to give support back to the industry that has provided him with so much. “I’ve always been interested in the business side of music and I was in a position where I was out of contract. I want to be involved in music beyond being an artist, so establishing my own label was a good way to do it. Helping the next generation is important to me because I was given a lot of help by people and if you want Australian hip-hop, or any genre for that matter, to keep improving, it has to keep regenerating. If the young kids aren’t getting help the same way that my generation were, then it’s not going to be as strong.” Setting up his own label, OneTwo, was a means to an end, enabling the production and distribution of his own music, but that motivation was the minority, a recognition of his own career and the help it was given providing the inspiration to return the favour. A total flipside to those first impressions of a hip-hop artist, Illy exudes positivity and compassion, through his lyrics, as an individual and now through his business and actions. He’s come a long way, but with his fourth album it seems like the struggle’s almost over now has come the time to grow. Illy’s latest album, Cinematic, is available on iTunes. – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Apr 28, 2014

Every festival has it’s niche. For some, such as Soundwave, it is an adrenalin-fuelled, whiplash-inducing headbang-fest. Woodford is about a more spiritual appreciation of music and ecology. Splendour in the Grass, Falls Festival, Big Day Out, all about the big names, international contemporaries, but each festival a unique experience in its own right. For the Byron Bay Bluesfest, it is about the music. That may seem like a pretty stupid thing to say about a music festival; the answer’s in the name – it’s a MUSIC festival. But allow me to run with this just a little. Despite risking pigeon-holing by calling itself a Blues festival, the Byron Bluesfest is fairly genre non-specific. The connection though, that unites artists and crowd and permeates every aspect of this five-day event is a deeper love of music and an exceptional exhibition of some of the most talented artists in the world. Take for example an artist familiar to the Northern Rivers, John Butler. With his band, the Trio create great songs, catchy as a fish hook and sure to please any crowd. But sit JB alone with acoustic guitar in hand and he illuminates. Butler’s solo, vocals-free track, Ocean, is one of those stop-you-in-your-tracks songs, the culmination of years of experience, a burning passion and an all-consuming devotion that sets Butler and artists of his ilk apart. It is like being privy to a love affair between man and music, a couple entwined in utter devotion, lost completely in each other despite the thousands of eyes gazing at them in stunned silence. English belle, Joss Stone, is another showcase of this. Growing up where she did, there was certainly a folk element to the musical scene, a bit of punk rock, but nothing of the roots soul she embodies. I should know – it’s my home town too. It was her pure passion that drove her heart, a contradiction to her surroundings but such an unquestionable yearning that she is now internationally renowned as a breathtakingly powerful soul singer beyond her years, the new Aretha, Billie or Nina, despite her cute, Englishgirl next door image. It is a musician’s job to get on stage and play their songs for an audience. They love what they do and, if they’re standing in front of a crowd of 10,000 punters, one would hope that they’re pretty good at it. But for a Bluesfest artist it is so much more, an almost self-indulgent act and a gratuitous public display of affection for their paramour, their music. Buddy Guy is a man who, to the Bluesfest crowd, needs no introduction, not least because he’s a regular guest at the annual event. The living legend sweats the blues as he riffs and licks his way through each tune, tortured expressions contorting his face, his music such a natural extension of his emotional expression. In some regards, it’s comical to watch an artist grimace and gurn over the curved waist of a guitar, their fingers caressing the plucked and bended strings. But this is ‘it’, the ‘it’ of Kerouac quotes and backwater bayous, the ‘it’ that burns within, unleashed and manifested through whatever tool can be mastered, the ‘it’ that drives the musician on relentlessly, through rain or shine, poverty or stardom, that empassioned expression of emotion that only music can provide. Michael Franti proves a bit of a spin on this perspective. Like John Butler, his tunes are catchy and you can’t stop your body from moving when he gets warmed up but, with the utmost respect to him, he isn’t in the upper echelons of supernaturally talented musicians. What Franti excels at is connection. Every syllable that passes his lips is given specifically and dedicated to his audience – and they reciprocate. It is emotion formed into lyrics and sound, it reaches out and embraces the crowd, lifting them upon its shoulders and carrying them on its journey. Nahko and Medicine For The People are also purveyors of an emotional experience. Bluesfest crowds were blessed with a guest appearance by Xavier Rudd, the stage taking on the power of a pulpit, musical sermons of love, compassion, unity and peace filling every heart with hope. Music has the power to move us, to evoke tears of joy or sorrow, to unite or divide us, to make us rise up in rebellion, to fight injustice, to make us fall in love and this is the energy with which the 25th Annual Byron Bluesfest was infused. With such variety of music, it is almost certain that there were some acts not to everyone’s liking, but usual personal preferences are cast aside in unbiased appreciation of talent. Listeners may not have been fans of, say, bluegrass, but defy anyone to suggest they didn’t marvel at that old boy going to town on the banjo. The Bluesfest line-up is filled with hidden gems, people you’ve never heard of or who you thought put their guitar to pasture or lost their last pick many years ago, and you are continually surprised, as you walk around the expansive venue with all its eateries and shopperies, by the exotic and dumbfounding sounds emanating from every covering of canvas. Elvis Costello is a world-renowned artist, recognised on stage and screen – a legend. But he came to the Bluesfest with humility and the simple desire to share his work. Byron Bay Bluesfest isn’t about celebrity, the biggest acts or the most renowned songs – it is, quite simply, a showcase of talent. The Dave Matthews Band, another name holding significant weight, hosted incredible, two-and-a-half-hour long sets, overflowing with sing-along songs and crowd-pleasers. Although Matthews himself gave his audience all their favourite songs and a lot of laughs in between, his band stole the thunder with the depth of their talent. Boyd Tinsley on violin, drummer Carter Beauford, Jeff Coffin and Rashawn Ross on brass, all amazing in their realms. And then there was Tim Reynolds. Long, straggly hair obscuring his face, dark sunglasses averting the glaring spotlights, the unassuming lead guitarist could easily have an ego to fill any arena. But he doesn’t – he just plays, fingers running across the fretboard faster than eyes can capture, hand a blur of strums and plucks and an eruption of appreciation from the slack-jawed crowd, but no great claims, no arms raised or limelight grasped. As with so many of the musicians, Reynolds and his fellow band members seem only to be thrilled that what they love they can share with so many and those many hang on every single perfectly-struck note. There are big names, there are headline acts, there are so many musicians you could rush to see, but Byron Bay Bluesfest holds so many surprises. From the insane live presence and performance of an artist you’ve heard a thousand times to the Johnny Who on the smallest stage whose skills defy physics, as I said to begin, it’s about the music. All photos: Kirra Pendergast   – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Apr 23, 2014 All Photos: ©Kirra Pendergast  

At this very moment, in a small town called Bentley, bulldozers are poised on the brink of destruction. Destruction of clean, safe drinking water, destruction of the local flora, fauna and ecosystem, destruction of the health and well being of the local residents and the destruction of the civil rights of all Australians. This quiet, little community, just twelve kilometres outside Lismore, is facing the end of civilisation as they know it. This may seem melodramatic; no holocaust will ensue, no army waits on their doorstep, no blood will be shed. But picture for a moment a life in which your eyes constantly burn, you and your family develop severe asthma, your skin reddens and rashes, you cannot bathe in, let alone drink, the water from your taps, your land and livestock whither and die. Controversial symptoms, and ones that global corporations and governments, all with significant vested interests, deny emphatically, but these have become the devastating truth the world over for people living with CSG. And we could be next. I, like many others, have seen Gaslands, the footage of tap water being set alight, the spiderwebs of roads and infrastructure perforating the diseased landscape and toxic water systems and river ways littered with the corpses of their former aquatic residents. It broke my heart of course, seeing such needless pollution and destruction. I felt for the citizens dealing with Coal Seam Gas wells in their back yards. I’ve signed petitions, joined marches and spoken out against CSG and, complacently, I thought we’d got somewhere. But sh*t just got real – CSG is here. Despite an overwhelming majority opposing CSG drilling in the region and across Australia, our ‘democratic’ government has decided to turn a deaf ear to our cries. Thousands of people have rallied, Bentley residents, regional citizens and activists from around the country are camping out on the front line and an unwavering human blockade is defying the advancement of the heavy machinery. We question what we can do, we ask where we should send letters of opposition, we wave the flags, sport the bumper stickers and add our signatures to the lists of the tens of thousands opposing CSG. But, it would seem, that all counts for nothing. Fifty years on, we are back to the 1960s – people power, standing, fighting, laying our bodies on the line for what is just and right and sane, these are our only remaining weapons. Our voices have been silenced, but our spirit will never die. Local musician Ash Grunwald has been an outspoken activist against the onslaught of Coal Seam Gas mining for several years, using his voice through music and the captive audiences of his gigs to raise awareness and opposition to this toxic industry. He has visited communities in central Australia, seen the bubbling, toxic ponds and spoken to people whose health and livelihoods have been wrecked by CSG. “To me, it’s so uncomplicated, so obviously f***ed.” Ash candidly expresses. “When I went up to Tara (four hours inland from Brisbane) to interview people and do some filming to show at my gig I was so shell-shocked, I just couldn’t believe it. “When you see these poor people who can’t move away, they paid twenty grand for their block of land ten years ago, they built their family home, they don’t have any money to do anything else, they’ve got six kids, all with health defects, they can’t go outside, their eyes burn…how can that be true? We’ve become so apathetic.” This is a reality that we all face and no amount of petition-signing or Facebook ‘liking’ is going to change it. With a government about as democratic and conservative as a certain little Eastern European country in around 1939, we cannot trust that our leaders will listen to the voice of their people or of reason. “You wonder with the current government whether you’re just fighting a losing battle,” he admits. “It’s an important message, but what can we do about it now?” Making ourselves heard no longer seems to work. It is time to make ourselves seen, to stand as an impenetrable wall of opposition and defiance. This is no longer about personal views, differences of opinion or conflicts of interest. This is our future, our health, our lives and those of generations to come. “Sometimes I’ve thought to myself, ‘people don’t want to know my view’”, muses Ash, “but I wish I had done more earlier, because you’ve got a special platform there [as a musician] to connect with people. You’ve just got to trust your judgement that your view is a worthy one. I guess that’s why I am so full-on about the Coal Seam Gas mining thing, because I just can’t believe that it’s happening. I feel that this message goes beyond whether people want to hear my opinion or not. I actually started to feel, for the first time, that if someone told me to shut up I would actually stand up and tell them to get out of my gig.” When even the mayor of Lismore, Jenny Dowell, is vehemently against the impending threat of CSG – as well as many local and regional councillors – but still this travesty of justice ensues, it is abundantly evident that the corruption runs deep. So, whoever you may be, this is your call, this is the reason, this is the message you have been waiting for. F*** your politeness, your complacency, your trust in the government or the belief that ‘this couldn’t possibly happen in my back yard’. It IS happening in our back yard, and it must be stopped. We are being killed by a government whose only language exists in $$$. Stop whispering, start shouting. March, scream, beat down the doors of Parliament House and demand, ‘we will not suffer to line your pockets.’ Pack a picnic, a tent, and the kids into the car and spend as long as you can at Bentley – a couple of hours or a couple of weeks, it all counts. “Maybe we can stop things. The direct actions of people protesting seem to hold off the progress. When the people get something done, that’s true democracy.” The time is now. WHAT CAN YOU DO? Will you show up? To be on the red alert list, text your number to 0447 399 535 Visit csgfreenorthernrivers.org for up-to-date info and to help fight CSG Like and share www.facebook.com/CsgFreeNorthernRivers Spread the word. Tell everyone you meet that the entire Northern Rivers region is under threat. If they get into Bentley there will be no stopping them. Visit Bentley. Pre-prepared food, ice, toilet paper, frozen milk, water and constant vigil are needed. But if you take nothing and stay for an hour your support will be greatly appreciated. Even the smallest things can make a difference. All photos: Kirra Pendergast – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Apr 7, 2014 All Photos: ©Kirra Pendergast

There is little question that ‘Morning of the Earth‘ is one of the most profoundly influential surf films of all time. ‘The Endless Summer’, ‘The Hot Generation’, Albe Falzon’s magnum opus is in very distinguished, and very minimal, company. When Tony Harlow became managing director of Warner Music Australia, he was, of course, tasked with improving sales. Research of the past became a focus for the future, looking through the archives at the best sellers of previous decades to formulate a strategy for developing ongoing and enduring sales. It’s inevitable that the likes of Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Talking Heads and Radiohead’s past releases would have made the shortlist. But one title caught Harlow’s attention that mystified him. Brian Cadd, Peter Howe, Tim Gaze and a bunch of hippies called Taman Shud had put together the soundtrack to a film called ‘Morning of the Earth‘, a film about surfing and an album that just kept selling, through the generations, again and again and again. Well, thought Harlow, if it was that successful then, we can remake a success of the future. After some research, he found the movie’s director, a reclusive surfer living on the mid North Coast named Albert Falzon. But Falzon isn’t an easy man to contact, even for his friends, and Harlow’s attention defaulted to Andrew Kidman, friend and collaborator of the hermitic filmmaker. Of course, as someone who had grown up in the surf industry, been inspired by Falzon’s film making and elevating ‘Morning of the Earth‘ to the lofty reverence it deserves, Kidman immediately baulked at the idea: remake ‘Morning of the Earth‘? That would be like rewriting the Bible! But Harlow wasn’t easy to deter. “Tony called Chris Moss, who used to run Warner,” says Kidman of the project’s dawning, “and he said ‘do you think we could make a modern version of this thing?’ Chris just laughed at him! But Tony was persistent and called Chris again, asking him to speak to Albe about the possibilities. Albe said the same thing – ‘no way, I don’t think it’s possible,’ – suggesting to Chris that he call me.” Andrew reflects on those first phone calls: “I said I didn’t want to do it either, but they kept calling and calling. The main thing I was worried about was them trying to control it, but Tony Harlow was smart enough to know the best way to do something like this is to let people who know what they’re doing do it. That’s exactly what he did. He didn’t get in the way, all he did was to help facilitate everything we needed to do to make it. That’s pretty rare, I’m told, it was a really good experience having someone believe in what you do and help facilitate it in every way possible, there were so many layers to the project.” Kidman finally agreed to helm the project, but only on the proviso that he made the movie his way and that, ultimately, Albe Falzon had the final say on everything. Kidman’s previous movies, ‘Litmus‘ and ‘Glass Love‘, unintentionally evoke certain similarities to ‘Morning of the Earth‘. Not that he was trying to emulate the ’70s classic, but simply that it’s influence was unavoidable. It could never be said that either movie was an attempt to replicate or even emulate Falzon’s work, but the harmony of film, music and surfing places them in the same genre, making Kidman, in many regards, the perfect, if not the only, man for the job. Music is as much a part of the project as the imagery, as it was for ‘Morning of the Earth‘. The viewer can never be sure if they are watching a beautifully shot surf film with a cracking soundtrack or a music video with lots of surfing in it, the precedence on sound and visual always equal, always ambiguous. The end product too is, in that sense, incongruous. ‘Spirit of Akasha‘ is a stunning film in its own right but, independent of the movie, the soundtrack is a stand-alone work. One could become familiar with either element without the slightest knowledge of its sibling. “We wanted to do a modern celebration of ‘Morning of the Earth‘, and mainly through the music,” Kidman recalls. “The idea was to cover the original songs in a modern way and then we wanted to write a new soundtrack. Out of that grew the question of what tack to take on the new movie, because you simply couldn’t remake ‘Morning of the Earth‘ I said, ‘why don’t we try to see if that spirit that was in ‘Morning of the Earth‘ is still alive?” Drawing on personal connections and the extensive library of Warner-signed artists, Kidman compiled a twofold musical score. On the one hand, the ‘Spirit of Akasha‘ soundtrack draws only an influence from its predecessor, a modern reflection but very much of it’s own design. On the other, Kidman has carefully selected artists to replicate the original, sometimes verbatim, at others a modern interpretation, a cover version for today. But always, Falzon has been the one with the power, the yes or no on the final cut. To Be Young – Andrew Kidman & The Windy Hills from Andrew Kidman on Vimeo. “There was one day when Mick Turner, guitarist from Dirty Three, sent his version of the title track to me,” says Kidman. “The first one he sent through was just a sketch, with Oliver Mann singing the vocals, I was worried about it as it didn’t seem to hit the mark. I was really nervous, but I called Mick up and asked him if he could do something more with it. Mick was unsure that we really wanted him to cover the title track. I replied, telling him, we really wanted him to do it, we were honoured that he’d asked to do it and if he and Oliver could really bring it to life that would really be great, as I could hear something was there. They re-did the vocals, added new layers of sound and sent it back up to me when Albe [Falzon] happened to be here. I put my headphones on, had a listen to it and was blown away – it was so good. I called Albe and played it for him. He had his eyes closed the whole time, he didn’t say a word. But when it was finished, he opened his eyes and just said, ‘that’s art.’ Seeing that was enough, it was one of those moments that made me realise that this whole project is worth it.” But of course, ‘Spirit of Akasha‘ is ultimately a surf film, and every surf film needs surfers. Kidman’s career has been spent immersed in surfing. This, along with the gravity of the project, enabled him to score the cream of the crop; Beau Young, Kye and Joel Fitzgerald, Mick Fanning, Ellis Ericson, Sam Yoon, Steph Gilmore, Tom Curren, even Kelly Slater, doyens among the elite cast. But many of these figures weren’t even alive at the time of ‘Morning of the Earth‘s release. Why would some of the finest contemporary surfers offer their minimal free time to such a project? “When I told Mick [Fanning] about it he just said, ‘I’ll be a part of it – whatever you want to do.’ He didn’t have a lot of time either – he won the World Title the same year that we did that, so I don’t think he really had time to shift focus and be riding single fins to be honest! But he still did it. He’s like any Australian surfer; if you grow up surfing in this country, you know about that movie and you revere it. And it was the same with all the musos.” The result is a rare, if not unique contrast, the old and the new coming together, the influence of a 42-year-old movie reimagined by some of the best surfers on today’s planet, the finest board shapers in the industry and a collection of exceptionally talented contemporary musicians. There is one sequence in ‘Morning of the Earth‘ that, from a surfing point of view, stands alone, from which frame grabs adorn posters, murals and t-shirts the world over. Michael Peterson and Kirra came together in balletic synchronicity in a performance that to this day, stands as one of the finest showcases of single-fin surfing ever to be displayed. In unavoidable homage to this iconic section, Kidman asked Stephanie Gilmore, if she’d be interested in riding a modern single fin on the points where both she and Peterson grew up. Kidman reasoned that Stephanie was a similar height and weight to the 1972 Peterson, and he wanted to see if it was possible to retrace Peterson’s lines. Kidman elaborates: “Stephanie on a Dave Parmenter-shaped modern single fin – I wanted to see if it was possible to mimic Michael Peterson’s lines from the ’70s. I really wanted to have a female surfer in the new film, as there were no female surfers in ‘Morning of the Earth’. When Albe was making ‘Morning of the Earth‘ he was basically just filming what was going on, it wasn’t that he didn’t want to film female surfers, there were just very few around. I thought this was one way we could show how things had changed. Also to see if Michael’s lines are still relevant and whether those boards still have a place… Seeing Stephanie ride the board was incredible to watch. She’ such an phenomenal surfer.” ‘Spirit of Akasha‘ could never compare to ‘Morning of the Earth‘ – nothing could. But, from the outset, it was never trying to. It was simply attempting to explore in the modern surfing world the spirit it’s predecessor, to this day, continues to evoke and reflect. And in that, through the talents of the surfers, musicians and Kidman himself, it is a resounding success. “When people hear the soundtrack, they’re just blown away. When we played the movie at the Opera House, everybody said, ‘how’s the soundtrack!’. I think with film, it takes time to work it out. ‘Morning of the Earth‘ is a bit the same – you can watch it a hundred times and you still miss stuff. That’s how it is with ‘Spirit of Akasha‘ – your interest might be perked by it, but what everyone is left with is the music. For me, that was what I was most happy about. Out of everything we did with the project, I just wanted the music to be perfect.” Andrew Kidman And The Windy Hills “Fall of Planet Esoteria” & Spirit of Akasha soundtrack out now. Spirit of Akasha screens at Byron Community centre on Saturday, 12th April at 7pm and 9pm with live performances by Andrew Kidman And The Windy Hills. All photos: Andrew Kidman / Patrick Trefz – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Mar 31, 2014

As I have recently written, Bali, in the sense of a picture-postcard, tropical paradise, has had its time. Murky waters, trash like confetti on streets and beaches and more traffic year-round than Byron Bay on Boxing Day has left the little island a less-than-idyllic holiday haven. But, where one reason dies, another is born. The Bali Spirit Festival began in 2008 and, in its six-year history has spawned offspring in Byron and Sydney. Away from the coast and the lure of surf, in the bustling town of Ubud, amongst rice paddies, banana plantations and sacred monkey forests, the Bali Spirit Festival creates an oasis of calm and serenity. The festival is, for the greater part, yoga-based, or at least inspired, and from it has arisen a yoga-infused industry in Ubud. Clothing, studios, accessories, jewellery, even restaurant menus reflecting the clean lifestyle of raw veganism and organic superfoods have flooded the town. Ohm symbols, Namaste and Sanskrit texts outweigh the native language and every other person, even a small proportion of the locals, have yoga mats slung over one shoulder from dawn to dusk. There is an unfortunate aspect of yoga that carries with it a pretentiousness, students bragging at how many asanas they can recite and perform and sneering smugly at how flexible I’m not. Ubud is packed with proficient yogis, sevenfold during the Spirit Festival. In some respects, being far from a regular or well-experienced visitor to the mat, this was my worst nightmare and mild panic took hold on my first morning in town. But arriving at the festival site, a short shuttle bus ride from the CBD, my fears could not have been proven more unfounded. One of the true gifts of the Bali Spirit Festival is that it is for everyone. This may be the tag line on flyers or proffered in local advertising for festivals or classes across the world, but the reality is usually very different. Ubud’s festival actually embodies this statement. Guests from the States, Korea, Japan, throughout Europe and Australia, even a local contingent file through the festival gates each morning, all ages, all abilities and, if ego or pretentiousness exist in any visitor, they are immediately discarded. Although this may be credited in part to an open-mindedness of participants, the festival’s stature and program hold much responsibility. Workshops on ecstatic dance, capoeira, meditation and traditional Indonesian dance are interspersed with a myriad of yoga practices, from beginner to rubber man or woman. You can take a single class on the nuances of head stands, target specific areas of your body or practice or explore a myriad of ways to unite your physical, mental and spiritual self. Even that phrase takes on a new meaning. Some might cringe at the hippy BS it exudes, but the Bali Spirit Festival really isn’t like that at all. These concepts, which often segregate, do completely the opposite, bringing together people of all walks of life, levels of ability and cultural diversity in very practical classes. While they may be spiritual and fluffy at the core, a very grounded and functional application is conveyed. There are your way-south-of-centre alternative types, of course. As I lunched on a beautiful, fresh, vegan salad from the local Alchemy Restaurant’s stall, an overweight American lady with blue hair was having a gargantuan lotus flower painted across her almost-bare breasts. Such extroverted freedom of expression is allowed, even encouraged, but it is definitely the exception, not the norm. For the most part, every attendee is, dare I say it, ‘normal’. The daytime activities take place in a small collection of wooded glades, some devoted to teaching pavilions, some hosting a collection of wonderfully healthy and delicious eateries and a retail area, purveying everything from functional yoga gear and clothing to mala beads, prayer flags and spiritual literature. You can do an early morning class, chill for a few hours, get some goodness in your belly and have some solid retail therapy and wile away your entire day in an area that wouldn’t take more than 15 minutes to circumnavigate. But even yogis let their tightly braided ponytails down occasionally and the festival offers an extensive and diverse evening program to entertain the night owls. Sufi and Kirtan devotional music connect the day’s activities with the night time events, but artists such as Dustin Thomas and Xavier Rudd also offer a more contemporary edge for a post-practice party. Set in the stunning grounds of ARMA, with it’s swimming pools and ornamental ponds, patios and pavilions interconnected by extensive stairways and weaving pathways and a breathtaking collection of ornate architecture, one is able to take in some music, dine on delicious cuisine or get lost in the sprawling, manicured gardens. The Bali Spirit Festival is a place of familiar faces, one stop on a continually spiralling circuit on the global yoga network. Many shire residents participate, whether partaking in classes or teaching and performing. Byron local musos Mel Dobra and Kevin James, as well as Xavier Rudd, are on this year’s timetable, and many mutual smiles are shared, recognition of faces known though not introduced. But never more true is it than at the Bali Spirit Festival that a stranger is just a friend you haven’t met. Happiness is unavoidable, contentment comes with a free slice of joy, and even the young girl suffering from an excruciating migraine in the medical tent was wearing an unsheddable smile. The kindness and happiness of the locals, the healthy break from our toxic lives and the profound lack of arrogance and self-righteousness – we can all learn from the Spirit Festival experience. It makes Bali a better place to be. – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Mar 31, 2014 All Photos: ©SubCutanea

As I write this, I am surrounded by palm fronds and broad, green banana leaves. I sit at a rough hewn timber table, a thatched roof sheltering me from the tropical sun, my love sitting across the table from me, a raw coconut, decapitated to allow her to sip it’s contents, by her side. The sounds of birds, running water and the playful chatterings of a hundred Balinese school children grace our ears and our bellies are full of exotic fresh fruits and organic muesli. This, apparently, is paradise. I’m lucky and I’m grateful. Why wouldn’t I be? But this little spark of heaven is shining through a miasma of disillusionment and heartbreak. Despite its location and warm waters, it’s beautiful locals with their never-waning warm smiles, the freedom and luxury we receive at so little cost, I will never return to Bali. I was in two minds, or hearts, about coming here. A cheap trip, work opportunities and the chance to break away from daily life lured me, but tales of pollution, airborne and trash, thousands of stray dogs and the wrong kind of tourist filled me with anxiety. It is devastating what has happened to this small island nation, for a significant part at our hands, and it’s only getting worse. I have bought into a tourist trap and I am guilty. We Westerners think we are doing the country a favour. We bring our dollars and commerce, ex-pats validate their residence by strengthening the economy and employing maids, we see ourselves as the lifeblood of the country, but we are the strangler fig on a dying palm, choking Bali with our presence for nothing but personal gain. Many will leap to the tourists’ defence, speaking of how there is little or no infrastructure to process trash or reduce pollution, that Indonesians don’t possess the awareness or education to properly recognise the garbage problem. But here’s the thing: would the trash even be here without us? I don’t mean that it is us creating the trash, nor am I implying that the locals don’t create it themselves. But, if we could go back to a time pre-tourism, before the self-benefiting impact of western visitors or influence, would there actually be an issue? It’s like the lost tribes of the Amazon. So fixated by our own superiority, we journeyed deep into uncharted territories, intent on ‘helping’ the indigenous peoples, educating them with our western values and giving them the gift of civilised society. But what we brought was destruction, disease and corruption, wiping out entire tribes with the common cold, destroying a culture that had sustained itself in absolute harmony, with itself and it’s environment, for thousands, if not millions of years. In Bali, we have created a need for employment, a demand for plastics, an overburdened infrastructure and a total disharmony. It has been stated that one of the reasons the litter is so bad is because the Balinese used to eat from banana leaves, casting the biodegradable crockery to one side when finished. But now their dish is made of plastic and will not break down, remaining forever in great rainbow coloured drifts along streets and beaches. The truth in this is questionable, but it does highlight the drastic, rapid and significant change western influence has had upon the Indonesian island. Self-importance and arrogance may not cause global warming or the suffocating or starvation of marine life, but it is no less a crime and no less detrimental. We strut down the street, nouveau-riche with our multi-million rupia bank balances, throwing pittance to locals for goods and services that are beyond our financial reach back wherever home may be. The Balinese are so accommodating, giving endlessly, smiling continually, speaking near-perfect English for our convenience. And we the conceited accept it all without so much as a selamat pagi (good morning) or terima kasih (thank you). There is an insurgence, for this is a war, of ex patriates, bringing wealth and commerce to Bali. Many are doing good, establishing organisations such as BAWA to protect and take care of the ever-growing stray dog population, or sustainable ventures to lessen the garbage issue. It is an almost impossible battle to win, but they pour their hearts and energies into it regardless. Many though, while they may contribute in some ways, do little but create an ever-widening disparity, a chasm of classes and cultures, not racism as such, but fuelling a ‘them and us’ mentality. This influx has rendered the now western priced real estate market, be it for building or land, well beyond the reach of the average indigene. It has become a chicken-and-egg scenario from which there can be no return. Without tourism, perhaps Bali would still be an exquisite paradise, but if tourism were to end tomorrow, the economy would crumble. Visitors caused the problem that they too are the solution to. Despite the negatives we create, we have made ourselves indispensable. The challenge now, and one that is a metaphor for so many parts of the world, is not to attempt to revert to a Bali pre-tourism, but to make a new future of sustainability, equanimity and harmony. Organisations are beginning to emerge that provide scholarships for the children of poor families to gain an education. But, rather than to educate them on our terms, creating a generation of little Indonesian westerners, they are only eligible for the grant if they maintain their cultural way of life, working alongside their families as their parents did before them but offering more expansive opportunities. Bali has come too far. It will never be the idyll it once was. It is easy for us to fall into a state of arrogance, consuming at a level beyond the average Indonesian thanks to favourable exchange rates and bulging bank accounts, be we tourist or temporary resident. But we must resist. As with any travel, we are guests in their home. Respect is paramount, observing culture and tradition and, while we may have a good time, realising that it existed long before we arrived and will do so long after we have departed, and never solely for our enjoyment. Practice humility – these places were not created for us. The boat is ready to set sail on the changing tide, one of positive futures, environmental awareness and global equality. Now we’ve just all got to get on board. Leave only footprints, take only memories. – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Mar 28, 2014 All Photos: ©SubCutanea

There was a time when tattoos were for sailors and criminals. Ink in the skin meant travels to far-off lands, an anti-establishment attitude or gang memberships. A beautifully ornate sleeve of koi carp, dragons and abstract swirls struck fear into the hearts of many, a signature of the Yakuza, the Japanese mafia, and a warning of trouble at best. Even today, there are certain tattoos that bare criminal connotations. Tears on the cheek supposedly symbolise the number of people the barer has killed and Latino groups and bikie gangs sport the colours of their clans. But this is the 21st Century – minds have been opened, culture has expanded and lines have been blurred, if not entirely erased. A tattoo today has no more relevance than our choice of underwear or our hair style. And yet needle-wielding artists and those baring their subcutaneous sketchings are still being victimised and tarred with that same, centuries-old brush. Camilla Zavattaro was born into an artistic family. Her grandfather and his father before him were painters and she was immersed in the art world from a very young age. “From my childhood I watched my grandfather paint with great interest, and he watched his father paint,” Camilla recalls of her youth. “Art was celebrated in my mothers family. They immigrated from France after WW2 with these incredible art pieces, centuries old, that I had connected with. This is when I knew I would be an artist of some sort.” But, as Camilla entered her teens, a chain of events would transform her perspective of art dramatically. When she was 13 years old, her older brother arrived home with a fresh tattoo covering his entire back and the introduction into the art form was made. Several years later, living in Brisbane, she began tattooing friends just for kicks. Her heart still very much in the art world, she enrolled in college, studying art and refining her natural talents, and it was here that her ‘serious’ tattooing would begin. In a self-confessed “right place at the right time” situation, Camilla befriended a tattooist and her transformation was complete – Camilla Zavattaro was no more, Milly Loveknuckles was born. “It was always definitely something I was always going to do.”   Camilla, Milly, began her professional career in Brisbane, completing her apprenticeship, finding her niche and continually advancing her skills. But five years ago, with the wellbeing of her then five-year-old son at heart, she decided it was time for a change of scene. “After 10 years of tattooing I decided I didn’t want to raise my son in a city,” she reasons. “I was visiting Lennox Head frequently, it was the right thing to do.” Milly established Rock of Ages Tattoo Parlour five years ago, launching the business as a solo venture, but expanding rapidly, now with a family of six artists. “It’s an incredible work environment where everyone is really a part of an individual art movement and the professionalism of the studio,” Milly says of her business. “Our happy place is in the chair, machines in hands!” Each artist has their own distinct style, favouring particular techniques inspiration and imagery for their individual work. Milly’s personal speciality is in highly illustrative work incorporating flora and fauna. This creates a more proficient studio offering a diverse range of styles, whether they be chosen from a catalogue or brought in by the client. In Rock of Ages, Milly’s dream and her journey are complete. But outdated prejudice and archaic opinion are continual, and strengthening, adversaries. In 2012, the Tattoo Parlours Act was updated. The licensing policy now required each individual to be scrutinised, with background checks, criminal records and even the personal opinion of the police commissioner coming into play to grant the $700, three-year license. And this was just for an individual to practice in an already registered, and similarly scrutinised, parlour. These laws are in place for good reason. They aim to ensure hygienic, high quality services and restrict criminal activity, known to have been associated with tattoo studios in years gone by. But are these policies squeezing way too tight on an industry that caters just as much to lawyers, bank managers, respectable mums and doctors as it does to bikies and bank robbers? I have known of chefs, builders and other tradespeople involved in criminal activities and using the business as a gateway to those exploits, but there’s no such licensing required in those industries. “The government are directly taking Australian citizens human rights away, through the disguise of misnamed laws such as the ‘anti- biker’ laws,” States Milly. “It has given the police the power to incriminate or incarcerate people as they choose, be it for protesting, misguided actions, having an organised group (of any kind they see unfit), or recently incarcerating a librarian, mother and community worker for wearing her boyfriend’s bike vest in public. She was jailed, not realising the implications of simply wearing a piece of clothing.” Tattooing is an industry in which laws are required, that could not be disputed. But the levels to which tattooists need to comply, the false implications they receive simply because of their choice in career and a ‘guilty until proven innocent, and even then carefully watched with suspicion’ mentality are making it harder and harder to ink someone’s skin. “Tattooists were recently ostracised by similar ‘anti biker’ misguided laws,” says Milly. “New South Wales and Queensland have new laws of licensing to weed out the gang related tattoo shops by incriminating every single tattooist. It is a licensing which YES we need, I completely agree, but to fingerprint myself, a positively active person in the community, member of the business Chamber of Commerce, who has never worked in a criminals shop is a farce.” With the individual tattooing licenses and over $2,000 paid out every three years by each and every studio, one has to wonder where funds from this governmental cash-cow are going. But, however the collected license fees are being collected, it is near impossible to see how they are benefiting the industry they are trying to ‘protect’. It would seem, at least at first glance, that these policies are victimising an industry that, yes, has had a less-than-rosy history, but has come a long way since shady, port side parlours and mementos from time served in ‘the Big House’. Surely this implementation of laws and regulations should be benefiting this now widely accepted industry. But, as Milly shares, the reality is far from a business protected and supported by governmental policy: “Where is the NSW work, health and safety courses that come with the millions of dollars we are paying for our license?, where is the the policing of home tattooing thats spreads hepatitis, mutalation of under aged people and so on?” The injustice and imbalance doesn’t even end at the point of a needle. The individual, the business, even the family members of a legally sanctioned artist. With a total disregard to human rights, personal history or, it would seem plain common sense, these laws are indiscriminately placing black marks against the names of entirely innocent citizens. This extends beyond the bounds of rationality, even Milly’s 10-year-old son having his name recorded as, quote-unquote, a potential criminal or gang member, simply for being a trustee in his (also entirely innocent) mum’s business. “This is devastating,” admits Milly. “My son doesn’t even get the chance to make a mistake in life, being already recorded as a potential criminal.” Not that deviant behaviour is likely to come to Milly’s progeny, but even the virtually innocent act of accidental speeding, a crime of which, grandmothers, charity workers or nuns may fall prey to, will result in significantly more severe repercussions, simply because his mum is an artist. Public opinion of tattooing, for all but those backward-thinking conservative types, has totally changed. There is no longer anything disrespectful or underclass, let alone criminal about permanently adorning your skin. It is often a beautiful personal expression of love, spirituality and creativity. But, as is a familiar story, the government refuses to change with the times. “This fear mongering in the media is 10 years too late,” Milly iterates. “Tattoo studios have been a place of creativity and personal connections for a long time – it is intimate and an honouring of our bodies, now more than ever. The outcome needs to be a union of the people of this entire country to dissolve our government’s ‘smoke and mirrors.’ “Times are changing. We need to unite to make sure we are are honoured individually as people of Australia.” You can find out more about Rock of Ages Tattoo Parlour or contact Milly and her team through their website, www.rockofagestattooparlour.com. – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Mar 25, 2014

Meat is as ingrained in Australian culture as VB, thongs and kangaroos. Ask any foreigner to utter an Aussie phrase and chances are it’ll have something to do with throwing a meat-based product on the ‘baahh-bee’. So when this devout vegan starts touting the idea of removing meat from your diet, you could be understandably forgiven for flicking the off switch. But please keep reading – I assure you, this isn’t one of those articles. Many believe that humans are carnivores, that meat is an essential part of a healthy diet and vegans are emaciated, malnourished hippies. But the reality to which so many people are coming to is that animal products at large are unhealthy – to our bodies to the planet and, hmmm, just a little bit to the animals slaughtered. That’s not to say we must all become quinoa-munching, kale-crunching vegans tomorrow, but it is vital for us all to become more aware of the significant environmental and health impacts of this industry and of a diet high in meat and dairy. Melissa Dixon migrated northwards from Sydney and the fast-paced world of media. The fashion industry, celebrities, the glitz and glamour and the unethical lifestyles of that scene can induce a certain blasé ignorance, an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ mentality that overlooks the reality of a given issue. “Working in publishing, there’s a lot of leather,” Melissa recalls. “It’s just written off as a by-product. As a vegan, it was the first time that I thought, ‘what are the consequences of the choices I’m making?’ I was really outraged. “I began ranting and raving and carrying on. My husband, Larry, said, ‘you’re not going to convince anyone carrying on like this, you need a different approach.’” Melissa’s initial thoughts were to lobby restaurants in her newly adopted home of the Byron Shire to develop more vegan options on their menus. Working with friends Sheri Hutchings and Lainie Bracher, she developed a business plan and proposal for the concept. But the idea would unravel before it had even got off the ground. “I was having dinner with a friend of mine who happens to be editor-in-chief of Delicious and Masterchef magazines,” Melissa remembers, “and she said to me, ‘no one cares about you (as a vegan). You’re one percent of the population, these are business people – it’s just not going to fly.” A different tack was called for. But how could Melissa and her team convince the meat-addicted population of Australia that what they were doing was wrong? When Melissa first launched Meat Free Week, with a grant from Voiceless, the Animal Protection Institute, it was from a personal perspective. A vegetarian herself, she was keen to advocate an end to animal cruelty and this was her impetus. But for this, only the second year of Meat Free Week, she realised that, to connect with a wider audience, she would have to put her own scruples on hold. Meat Free Week isn’t about converting people or preaching animal rights. Yes, cruel, industrialised farming, battery hens and so on are taken into account, but this is only part of the three-fold message. “What Lainie always says, that I love, is that, ‘it’s our job to start people on their journey.’ Different people will hear different things. Some people will hear a more extreme message, without a doubt, but others will begin to investigate for themselves. So if Meat Free Week can start people on that journey we’ve been successful. If you’re going to drink dairy, eat meat or wear leather, do it – that’s fine – but do it knowing the full ramifications of what’s involved.” More and more scientific research is proving beyond question that a diet high in meat and dairy is unhealthy, leading to obesity, heart disease, cancer and many more health problems. Added to this, the environmental impacts of this grossly over-commercialised industry are horrific; toxic runoff from pig farms destroys aquatic ecosystems, massive tracts of old-growth and rain forests are clear cut for livestock and their food and greenhouse emissions from factories, transport and over-gaseous cattle are higher than in any other single industry worldwide. We eat three times as much meat today as we did less than a century ago – and it’s killing us. “I just received a beautiful email from a personal trainer. She’s going to sign up her and her clients to do the challenge. She said, ‘my father died of bowel cancer 35 years ago, just before I was born.’ This year, we were questioning whether we made the right decision in broadening the message, but when we receive emails like that we realise that we’re reaching people we never would have before.” There is another dimension to Meat Free Week, and that is as a fundraiser. Those signing up to the Meat Free Week campaign are asked to raise sponsorship from colleagues, friends and family to donate to their choice of three worthy causes that embrace the three aspects of the event: Voiceless, for the animals, the Australian Conservation Foundation, for the planet, and Bowel Cancer Australia for the health issue. This is a very strong and poignant aspect of the event, bringing much-needed funds to these upstanding organisations, but there is an ulterior motive, as Melissa explains: “The reason we have fundraising is that if people sign up, it’s not really about the money. It is that, if they are just doing a Meat Free Week for themselves, then do they need to talk to anyone about it? Probably not. But if they’re having to ask people to donate their money to a cause, they’ve got to tell them why. One of those messages, whether it’s the environment, health, the animals or all three, has got to have resonated with them, they’ll be passionate about it and will want to talk to people about it.” The two-girl team of Melissa and Lainie has poured countless volunteer hours, gallons of stress and gigabytes of thought into Meat Free Week, and it’s paying dividends. With the support of celebrity chefs, TV stars and media figures, Meat Free Week is expanding, rising through print and social media to reach the greater Australian public, not to make them give anything up, but simply to make them think. As for next year, they have global domination in their sights and Britain will roll out it’s own Meat Free Week. For our own sakes, we need to become more conscientious of our food sources. Meat Free Week endeavours to be that trigger, to give the public access to information, education, alternatives and reasons to reduce our consumption, take a breather for a week and, if they haven’t embraced a vegan diet, to return to meat eating with a far greater awareness of the effects on themselves, the animals and the earth. Meat Free Week runs from 24th – 30th March, 2014. Go to meatfreeweek.org to sign up or for further information. You can also follow them on Facebook here >> – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Mar 16, 2014

Mel Dobra is calm – uncannily calm, given that she is just about to embark on an East Coast album launch tour, her first album nonetheless, and also the first time she has undertaken more than the odd one-off show in her solo career. But that’s Mel – the utter embodiment of the blissful sacred world folk melodies she creates, silken audio harmonies that lull the listener from the tempestuous seas of life toward the tranquil shores of serenity. Listening to Mel’s debut album, ‘Sacred Tides‘, is to be taken on a journey, through life, through experience and deep into your own soul. This is not in small part caused by an empathy, Mel’s personal experience and life-path frequently the inspiration for the songs she creates. “I feel like there are some really deep, spiritual themes in the album, but there are also some real personal growth themes,” shares Mel, as we sit in her peacefully serene garden, quietly sipping tea. “The first song on the album is about me facing some really big fears to do something like this project and really choosing the path of not letting fear get in my way, not letting it stop me, or anyone, from living our dreams. “And I think through that song, it has really helped me articulate what it is I have to offer people, apart from the music. It’s the story of when you choose to follow your heart and your path and not let anything, such as fear, stop you, you can really achieve anything.” Unlike many musicians, Mel has not had a history rich in music, piano lessons at three years old or cello-playing parents performing at the Philharmonic. Her musical career began just five years ago with her now ex-partner, Kevin James. Kevin and Mel performed across the world together at festivals and yoga retreats, bringing deeply spiritual Kirtan music to a distinct audience, Kevin leading the somewhat meditative, call-and-response style of chanting with Mel accompanying with hypnotic harmonium melodies. Just 18 months ago, after the pair had parted ways both romantically and musically, Mel realised that, where one door had closed, another had opened, and through it lay the path of her solo career. “I started with sacred music with Kevin,” she recalls. “I have really delved into sacred music – I love that and it is my background, but I realised that, if I wanted to reach a wider audience, I had to branch outside of just the yoga community. So I started to blend the sacred music with world and folk influences.” This seemingly brief life in music mustn’t be allowed to shape judgement. Mel is a highly proficient musician, writing or co-writing all of her own music with her guitarist, Joshua Arent. But more than that, and what is so profound in her songs, is her ability to convey emotion, a message and to connect with her audience beyond rhythm and lyrics, evoking personal recognition through her music. Her yoga practice, to which she is devoted, her time playing exclusively Kirtan and the cards life has dealt her have given Mel some exceptional lessons. Discovering her own voice, educating herself in her solo music career and stepping forward into the limelight as an independent lead musician have all been incredibly confronting for Mel. But she has embraced these challenges to such an extent that they have actually become the fuel for her songs. “I think the album tells the story of my own spiritual journey. There’s a track on there called ‘Waking Up’ – it’s such a simple song and it’s the first song I ever wrote – and it’s just about this desire or wanting for humanity to wake up and for me to wake up myself. I think the underlying message to the album is for everyone, if there’s something that you really want then you should go for it, you should face those fears and really step into that part of yourself. Don’t be limited by the mind – wake up from this crazy reality we are living in and tap into the heart rather than the mind.” While the Kirtan influence remains in her lyrics, Mel’s music is more gentle folk with international undertones, a lustrous blend of guitar, piano, violin, flute and of course, Mel’s graceful vocals, that washes over you like the last rays of the setting sun. Like the culmination of the yoga practice so integral to Mel’s lifestyle, her songs evoke a heartfelt calm; you exhale, you relax, you bring yourself back down to earth and you melt, just a little. Mel Dobra begins her album tour this evening at Mullumbimby Civic Hall. – visit her website for bookings and information. You can discover more about Mel Dobra, find information on her tour dates, listen to select tracks and purchase her new album, ‘Sacred Tides‘ from her website, meldobra.com – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Feb 21, 2014

The phrase ‘film festival’ usually conjures one of two images; there is the picnics-in-the-park, champagne in plastic cups, big screen under falling night scenario on the one side, and on the other, the Palm d’Or, Hollywood, red carpet and celebrities gracefully melting under too much pristine makeup and a barrage of flash bulbs scenario. The Byron Bay Film Festival defies these stereotypes and, like so many things that bless the Byron Shire, walks it’s own thankfully unique path. In this, its eighth year, the Byron Bay Film Festival hosts over 200 films from all over the world, encompassing a diverse variety of genres, from short film to feature length, and traversing a myriad of topics. Surfing, of course, plays a part in the lineup, but it is a small proportion of the subject matter, alien artefacts, roller derby, social struggles, spiritual journeys and drag racing just a handful of the far-flung sources of inspiration for the international collective of independent filmmakers. But there is an underlying theme through all of these films that unites them, and it is this theme that makes the film festival so wonderfully and quintessentially Byron. These films make you think. “There are a lot of very conscious thinkers in this area,” says festival director, J’aimee Skippon-Volke, “and we program our films accordingly. One of the things that interested me about the film festival in the very beginning was the idea of creating an event that really celebrated Byron’s ethos and ethics and what people really care about and want to be involved in.” This isn’t to say that every film is about Byron Bay, or even some of our cherished clichés – whales, hippies, fire jugglers et al. The Byron mentality is of sustainability, spiritual growth, free thinking, an anti-establishment mindset that defies the dogmatic prescriptions of society at large and it is shared, in isolated pockets, globally. ‘Open Your Aperture’, as the festival’s tagline proclaims, the aperture of your eyes, your mind, and your heart. “Because we have very little funding from government bodies or big corporations, and because as a team we hold a core integrity, we very much get to beat our own drum,” reflects J’aimee. “Other regional film festivals and events in Australia are being funded by mining corporations, but we’ve got the Australian premiere of Gasland 2, telling the other side of the story. One of the reasons we got that film was because Josh Fox, the director, recognised that we need the support of having a film of that level coming to the festival, as well as recognising the community here and how active they have been on the CSG issue.” Through both their hard work and a dedication to their beliefs, J’aimee and her team find little need to source films, having developed a reputation indicative of the Shire’s mindset, attracting almost a thousand submissions this year alone. With only a finite number of places available, J’aimee is faced each year with the challenging task of picking one world-class film over another for inclusion in the festival program. “The main thing I’m seeing is an increase, not only in the number of films submitted, but in the quality of those films,” says J’aimee of this year’s batch of submissions. “There were many films I had to reject that I would have screened if only we had a larger audience base or more time and space in our program. That’s a really good sign, that we’re rejecting films that are just great and there’s no reason whatsoever to reject them other than that we’ve exhausted the program.” Despite limited financing and being an event built on volunteer hours and community generosity, the Byron Bay Film Festival is world-renowned. This isn’t amateur hour at the local village hall, the calibre of films and documentaries second to none and many directors choosing Byron Bay as the destination of their Australian premiere, alongside the upper echelon of global events. “We’ve done so well with the filmmakers really loving their Byron Bay experience and what it means to them that we have directors who are on the top tier of the film circuit, doing Berlin, doing Venice, doing South By South West (in Austin, Texas), who want to give us their Australian premieres,” says J’aimee. Having been born into film and television, her father being an integral part of Reg Grundy’s Grundy Network and working in the industry directly for many years, both here and in London, there is a hint of bitter-sweet in J’aimee’s role as event director. But, despite an inkling desire burning within her to create her own films, she has a selflessly motivated outlook upon the festival. “I could make one film that might possibly be really good,” she muses, “or we could be a platform for all these filmmakers who I know are really good. That’s probably a more important way to use our skills base and our talents at this time.” Her open-mindedness is a gift to the both the Byron and the international film communities, allowing a forum to present a wonderfully creative range of movies and documentaries that induce self-examination and reflection in their audiences. Films can be pure escapism, from ourselves, from the world around us, from reality itself, or they can be a nudge in the ribs, a call to action, a method of education that is a joy to receive. The Byron Bay Film Festival is as much about enlightenment as it is about entertainment and, let’s be honest, isn’t that exactly as a Byron Bay film festival should be? – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Feb 12, 2014

I awake—the diminutive weight of her delicate frame rocking me gently as she perches lightly on the edge of the bed—and I know she has come to say goodbye. I summon as much energy as these pre-dawn moments will allow; sometimes, barely enough to draw my weary eyelids open; at others, with a vivacity that startles even me. Every morning, before natural light creeps across our slumbering bodies, she rises, showers and—like a lonely swallow—wanders into the wide world alone. I do not ask where she will go or what she will do. I do not try to entice her back into the sanctuary of warm blankets and loving embraces because I know these things will not serve her. And the morning breeze will take her soul before she can snatch it back. She must be alone. And I love her. She feels guilt in her absence. Always departing before I muster my day’s motivation; never a morning shared in the utter devotion that consumes us for the rest of our day. But the guilt is mine. Just once, I wish my lethargy would abate, allowing me to rise before her to offer her warm chai and an open hand; leading her into her day in compassion and gentleness. But hers is a different schedule, shedding the coma of sleep even before her dawn alarm awakens her. She has been cocooned all night long, in my arms and in our bed, asphyxiated by these imaginary constraints, and now I know she must spread her wings and fly. I do not need to know the actions in the twilight of the morning. I do not need to go with her or share in these times. Infinitely more intrinsic than her love of tahini or her desire to travel beyond the compass, I know that these sunrise sojourns are bred of desperate necessity; a breath held the night long that must return for her survival. And I trust implicitly. Begrudgement, resentment; these things could never enter my heart. My love for her grows in the rumpled sheets and vacant spaces she leaves behind. I want for her freedom as much as she, and never am I lonely or sad; instead returning to the darkened meanderings of sleep with her love still embracing me, with dreams of the day’s reunion or future adventures drifting through my mind and nourishing my heart. She has not left me behind. She has gone to find herself and I know that if she were to be denied these moments, she would be incomplete until the following daybreak allows her to once more retrieve the pieces of her soul. She wanders, in heart and mind and body, across every footprint of her life’s journey. I have read ‘Don’t Date a Girl Who Travels’  and—through faltering breath and raindrop eyes—have recognised the truth in those words; I have seen in my beautiful guardian angel the similarities that beg me to set her free. I have not fallen in love, because that is to imply an end to the falling. Every time my eyes glance across her form—from cheek to finger to breast to leg—I see her for the first time once again and I fall a little further. Every thought that creeps into my mind pushes me over another cliff, plunging me deeper still. She in solitude is as much the girl I love as the vibrant She, scattering kisses across my face, curling into my arms through candlelit moments, reflecting to me all the emotions and devotions I feel for her. She could never be caged; she will never be mine. I pray we will be unified forever in us and to do so, I know I must let her go. Her morning yearnings and global wanderings are as much her as the iridescent pools of her eyes that I have plunged into and swam in so many times; as necessary as every beat of her hummingbird heart. It bruises my soul thinking that one foot will always be pointed away from me, that she has lists on the walls of her mind of destinations and explorations. But to deny her these integral traits would be to wish the death of the girl I love; the subservient, ever-present reincarnation of herself a poor substitute, a hollow shell masquerading as the migratory girl beyond my dreams. And so I collect these bruises—knowing they will fade, recognising that it is my ego alone that manifests the pain they incur—and embrace them in the knowledge that within the rainbow of emotional blues and purples and greys these bruises form, lies the continuance of all that I live for; all that I adore. She is torn between her love for me and her desperate need for solitude. Apologies crease her forehead as she reaches her arms out towards me in a begging for forgiveness. But this is to whom I have dedicated my life. I have signed up voluntarily to mornings and weeks and months alone, which I know will cause my heart to crack and my eyes to leak, but without which, the beautiful spirit I have found in her will cease to be. And it is a small price to pay. So I will throw my arms open, allowing her flight, and will await her return. I have been to the places she travels to daily: the introverted cravings to find yourself, lost and anonymous. I will find the benefits in my own solitude and wile away the hours and days and weeks until she returns. “Life” is the time that passes between the dreams I share with her. I will let her go, devoted forever. For wherever she wanders, she carries my heart. – This article first appeared on Elephant Journal on Feb 11, 2014

I heard a quote recently that has buried its way deep inside my mind and heart and, like some wonderful and beneficial parasite, has been steadily growing within me, overcoming me and permeating every aspect of my existence. It comprises just four concise words: “Live an examined life.” When I first heard this simple yet profound phrase I shrugged it off with egotistical arrogance; “I live a life in consciousness – I recycle, I pick up garbage, I’m vegan, I give to charities, do volunteer work, don’t judge, hold no prejudice,” and on it went. Pretty soon, I had large welts on across my shoulders from all the ego-driven back-patting I was doing. But then I realised, this is not what the quote meant. I feel justified in saying I can be proud of a small percentage of how I have chosen to live my life, although I am the first to admit my own shortcomings and hypocrisy. But let’s look at those words again: “Live an examined life.” It’s not about ditching your creature comforts, running barefoot into the forest, throwing two fingers to The Man and making like a caveman. What Patagonia founder and economic activist Yvon Chouinard was driving at with this simple phrase was to live your life however you want but examine every aspect of it to ensure that, whatever it may entail, it is done in the most ethical, sustainable way possible…and my ego cowered in shame. Chouinard is the founder of a multi-billion dollar, international apparel company, so for him to suggest this of us seems a little condescending at best, hypocritical clap-trap from someone whose swollen bank account affords him the comfort to declare such things. But he leads by example, and always has, since the below-breadline days of Patagonia’s formative years and every step of the way through the company’s phenomenal success. And he is quick to admit that his is far from a perfect business. “No human economic activity is yet sustainable”, Chouinard openly states. This made me begin to look, to delve, to examine my life and, in no time at all, I realised there was so much more we could all be doing in our daily existence. I began to see that much of what may look environmentally sound on the surface is actually nothing more than cosmetic sustainability. Let’s take the example of bamboo. We all think of bamboo as the eco-saviour of our clothing industry. After all, bamboo grows incredibly quickly, it’s readily available, will grow pretty much anywhere and isn’t at all toxic. Bamboo fabrics are wonderfully soft and excellently durable, but let’s start digging. Obviously we can’t just weave bamboo. It needs to be broken down into cellulose fibre that can then be used to create yarn and fabric. To do this, for the vast majority, manufacturers employ solvents and toxins to dissolve the bamboo and extract the cellulose – known as the viscose process. Without getting too technical, sodium hydroxide and sulphuric acid are among the nasties used, an estimated 50 percent of which seeps into the environment. Not so eco after all. So, what is the solution? Unfortunately, certainly within the clothing industry, there really isn’t one – the best we can do is our best. Investigating the possibility of closing the loop on their polyester products, Patagonia discovered a company in Japan that can take polyester garments, chop them up, melt them down and recreate polyester yarn without any deterioration in the material. Patagonia began recycling garments in earnest as part of their Common Threads scheme, but they soon found that having to ship these items to Japan, process them, remanufacture them and ship them back was actually more environmentally detrimental than using virgin polyester. So should we all buy hemp products? Well, this too holds its problems. It is a wonderful fabric, organic, degradable, natural. But then you need to examine whether it has been created in the most environmentally and ethically beneficial way possible. Who are the farmers? Do they use pesticides? How much irrigation is used and does this leach pollutants into riverways and nutrition from the soil? Does it serve your requirements and how long will it last? If you purchase a 100% recycled or organic product, it’s wonderful for the environment. But if that garment has half or even a third of the lifespan of something that is only 50% recycled then you are, in effect creating just as much garbage and manufacturing pollution and waste and negating all the benefits you thought you were creating. This is reflected in a material incorporated into Patagonia’s range, Yulex – a plant-based neoprene now being used in certain lines of their wetsuits. Through their research, they have found it to not have the flexibility, comfort or longevity required to warrant its use exclusively. And so they have blended it, using conventional neoprene and other fabrics to subsidise the Yulex and develop a suit with a significantly environmental percentage without forfeiting the quality and sustainability of the product itself. It isn’t just the fabrics – the organic cotton, the recycled polyester, the Yulex or the organic, cruelty-free wool – that Patagonia uses that is scrutinised. No sweat shops, minimal transportation and manufacturing pollution, ethical suppliers, renewable energy, recycling, supporting charities and on and on it goes. Not just the retailer or manufacturer is accountable in living an examined life. As consumers, we should continually ask ourselves do we really need this product, do we know where it came from, do we know if any suffering or unethical practice was involved in it coming to our hands? There are so many stages to every product arriving on the shelf that many we will never know, but we need to dig, and we need to demand. In his book, “The Responsible Company”, Chouinard divulges some stunning facts: – Just one t-shirt, made of organic cotton, uses enough water in its manufacture for the minimum daily allowance (three glasses) of 900 people. – That cotton industry creates over 165 million tons of greenhouse emissions annually. – A single, gold wedding band creates over 20 tons of mining waste. The facts and figures are mind blogging and endless. So what can we really do? We must examine. We must think about every stage of our consumerism. Buy local, refuse plastic, use sustainable products, reduce chemical use, give to op-shops or friends or relatives and conversely, shop second-hand, go to garage sales and, to utilise another Patagonian mantra, “Reduce – Repair – Reuse – Reinstate – Reimagine – Recycle”. Do we really need everything that we buy – our clothes, our comforts, our food, our homes? We don’t have to change our lives very much at all, we just need to start seeing the bigger picture. We only have one little planet and a finite amount of resources – we can’t keep taking and giving nothing back. It’s time to start the examination. – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Feb 3, 2014

I love gadgets. Okay, maybe I’m a geek, perhaps I’m a sucker to consumerism or is it just that I’ve fallen victim to the hipster marketing of the almighty Apple Corporation? Whatever the reason, I’ve got every iGimmick on the market and an iAccessory to match – Steve Jobs got me hook, line and sinker. And you know what? I hate it. I hate that I break into a cold sweat without my iPhone, I hate that a take an iPad instead of a notebook to a meeting, I hate that I am writing this now not by hammering the ink-laden keys of a weathered old Remington Deluxe 5 but by noiselessly arranging pixels on the screen of my MacBook Pro. I’m a film-over-digital kind of guy, but damn, when I see those shiny trinkets of technology I get sucked right back in. One of the things I dislike most is the fact that everything is wrapped in plastic, from the packaging it arrives in to the protective case it must forever be housed in. But I have found a saviour to my excessive consumption of all things plastic, an ecological archangel to curb my polluting ways: iBark saved my conscience. Toby Webber was working as a cabinet maker when he saw an idea that would ignite the first sparks of his own innovative business. Toby discovered a company in the US making wooden iPhone cases. A little bit bulky, not quite as finished as he would like and perhaps not as aesthetic as the beautiful, natural timber warranted, Toby saw the potential and so he began tinkering. “It was a great idea,” he recalls of his first impression, “but I knew it could done better. It ticked a lot of boxes for me; it’s a sustainable product, it incorporates art and design and so on, and I just grabbed it from that day forward and went for it.” Bamboo is a fast-growing, highly sustainable and incredibly durable material and Toby managed to source a company that could laminate and machine-cut any shape he asked for. Already familiar with the characteristics of wood, he crafted his first prototype, sent it away for testing and just like that, a business was born. The very organic, ecological nature of iBark aligns it perfectly with the greater Byron mindset, not denying us our pleasures, our gadgets or our connectivity with the technological world, but embracing it in a conscious and sustainable way – a fusion of nature and future. and, while the raw materials are obviously ecologically sourced, Toby examines every aspect of his business for ways to do things better, cleaner and more environmentally. “I’ve always had some kind of earthly attachment,” he says. “I’m not the biggest hippie on earth, but I try to adapt as many aspects of my business as possible, from the cases to the packaging. I’m a part of One Percent For The Planet and a bit of a fan of Patagonia – I love their processes – they’re a very inspirational company.” It hasn’t been an easy process bringing iBark to where it is now, on numerous levels. The support of loved ones has enabled Toby to develop and expand the business, ranges of Android covers have proven less popular than had been anticipated and the ability to create a product that is ecologically sound from process to packaging has been a gradual journey to fruition. “The creative side, for me, is never a problem because I love creating – I don’t’ care how long it takes. The hardest thing at the start of a business is always money. Luckily I have a mum who’s got a little bit of money and my fiancée has helped me out a lot as well. Without them I wouldn’t exist. “Right now, I’ve just redeveloped my packaging because, at the start, I did have plastic shells. That made me irate for so long, but I knew that sometimes you have to take a bit of a knock to grow further, that your future initiatives outweigh your starting point. I might start small and I might use a little bit of plastic at the start, but I know that the bigger I get the more I’ll be able to adapt and create a better business in the long run. I’m so happy that the case is sustainable and now the packaging is one hundred percent sustainable too.” Toby creates the digital templates, tinkering away into the small hours on new designs and ways to spread the iBark technology into other areas. The iPhone cases are far and away the most popular, but the iPad cover is also drawing lots of attention. He has begun to incorporate leather, creating somewhere between his bamboo cases and a fully functioning wallet, and he has even begun experimenting with other materials, always of a sustainable nature, to bring his ecological products to a wider demographic. “I have just developed a iPad Mini cover. I did do a Samsung one as well, but i’m just sticking with the Apple products. Apple consumers are definitely more savvy when it comes to buying. Samsung users seem to be more functional rather than artistic and creative. But I hope to break that mould soon – I don’t want to be a one trick pony. There’s a company that produce plastic from a corn byproduct, so I’m trying to get that in the works as well to offer a compliment but still sustainable product. “I’m looking at doing some jewelry, still made of wood and using the C&C and engraving machines, but as three-dimensional, interlocking pieces.” iBark is expanding exponentially, Toby is continuing to explore new avenues of development, a self-professed mad scientist of design. A wedding to plan with his jeweler fiancée in May, a continual stream of markets and trade shows to attend, a swathe of outlets to stock and the usual daily tribulations of running your own company – life’s not a peaceful place for Toby Webber. But there’s nowhere he’d rather endure the maelstrom than Byron Bay. “The one thing I’ve found with Byron Bay, with both mine and my fiancée’s businesses, is that, when you interact with people and you’re selling your product and you say you’re form Byron Bay, it’s almost like they all of a sudden get it. I feel that it’s definitely a nice compliment to your business to have Byron Bay behind you.” You can view Toby’s range and discover more about iBark at: ibarkcases.com.au. Or keep up to date on iBark‘s market appearances and goings on by liking them on Facebook. – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Jan 13, 2014

A legend for a father, a brace of world titles, a diverse music career and enough travel time under his belt for his passport collection to put the Encyclopaedia Brittanica to shame. Beau Young is proof-perfect that history maketh not the man. Born the son of one of the greatest surfers of all time, Nat Young, Beau’s future seemed to be predictable. A fanatical passion for surfing was, of course, bred into him from a young age and sure enough, at the age of 26, he won his first of two ASP World Longboarding Championship titles. And so the whirlwind began, sponsorships, signature board models, media saturation et al. Championships over the next few years were close-fought, but it wasn’t until 2003 that Beau made the double-up. A superb feat, but it created an aspect of disillusionment in him. “When I was doing the tour, with the whole celebrity thing, the only option I was given was to compete,” he reflects of his pro surfing days. “I definitely found it a little bit irksome and, with that, I didn’t want to compete. The last couple of years [of my career] I made that clear to my sponsors and they were cool with that. A couple of years after that I even dropped the ball on my sponsorship commitments – wearing the clothes and so on – and I guess that was a knee jerk reaction to the years and years and years of it.” Although surfing was, and will forever be, intrinsic to Beau’s life, on a career-based, commercial level he found himself withdrawing completely, embracing and immersing himself in his other love: music. Beau’s first album, ‘Waves of Change’, was released in 2005 and the oceanic influence that permeated the sound, style and lyrics of almost every song was undeniable. But in making the album, it gave him the opportunity to retreat, from the limelight, the commitments and the commercialism. He reconnected with himself, the ocean and nature, breathing a sigh of relief and a newfound passion into his life. There is a beautiful gentleness in Beau, in his surfing, his music and his mannerisms, an underlying compassion for all that is around him, from the people he meets in his simple, verging on reclusive, life, to the nature that surrounds him every day in the ocean and on his farm north of Byron Bay. His years of travelling and this compassion and acute awareness of the environment gave rise to a curious shift in Beau’s musical direction. Surrounded by kookaburras, kangaroos and the abundant flora and fauna of his home, he became inspired to share a message of ecology through his music, not to his existing fan base but with the next generation. “I wanted to make children happy,” he says of this paradigm shift in his musical career, “to educate them on the natural world through song and to understand the animals and their habitat.” He began visiting and performing at local schools, conveying his message through simple melodies and fun lyrics that called for his diminutive audience’s participation and was elated at the response, both in his listeners and within himself. “If you’re in a room with 50 two-to-five year olds and they’re all singing ‘we love animals,’ it’s amazing. I try to learn from them, I try to live my life happy and care-free. If I can live with a child-like innocence like my dad has I’ll be a happy man.” Of course, with all of your music inspired by the creatures of the world, it would be impossible to not infuse songs with an ethical message reflecting some of their plight. With pre-schoolers this is no easy task, but Beau sees them as the future of the planet that they truly are and hopes for his songs to provide influence for a better tomorrow. “At the time of writing the songs, I wasn’t fully aware of where I was heading. I’ve always loved animals, but it really only occurred to me when I’d written maybe 30 songs that I realised…lot of these animals are in serious shit. The songs are all happy and fun but there’s definitely a line or two in there. With my orang-utan song for example, there’s a line in there saying, ‘they’re cutting down our forests and taking our babies too’, and the kids will realise that too.” But, just like the ebb and flow of the tide, the draw of the ocean is omnipresent in Beau’s life and a need to return to surfing, beyond his daily sessions, has arisen. “The underlying reason for establishing Beau Young Surfboards in all honesty is just to stay in touch with surfing I guess. I’ve always been relatively hermit-like, living on a farm, just me and my dog. But even when I was doing surfing competitions or travelling, as soon as it was over I’d go back to the farm. “There are so many amazing shapers out there. I think, through my time and knowledge, I’ve just developed boards for what I like out of a particular style of board.” Beau’s education in surfboard design has been exceptional. His father, Nat, was instrumental in the development of board shapes at the most evolutionary period of the sport. Beau has made a point of exploring and scrutinising this mid-’60s to mid-’70s period, revisiting the designs and redeveloping them with personal preference and modern knowledge and techniques. Beau Young Surfboards isn’t about recreating the boards of yesteryear, it is no bandwagon jumper of the retro movement and his shapes are as modern and functional as any. But the past is a fundamental aspect of his design approach, and it is his father’s influence that has facilitated this so abundantly. “I like what my dad has given to surfing. He’s always been about the environment, and yes, there’s that side that people don’t like, which I have been firsthand witness to as well. But I tell you, he has always been there for the planet and his done incredible things for surfing. Design-wise, he has been ahead of the fray for sure. “He and Wayne [Lynch] are always quick to shit can all the things they did in the past, but I think it’s pretty special for people like you and I. I’ve never really wanted to study my dad’s evolution phases as much as I have now and try to learn. I want to create boards like that!” Beau makes what he likes, what he has found through his surf-saturated life that other people like and what designs truly work. He isn’t following fads or fashions, he isn’t dogmatically recreating the same thing in a different colour. His boards allow the rider to explore a myriad of styles, inspired and influenced by the past but given the contemporary treatment, utilising all that has been learned over the past four or five decades of surfboard progression. It’s also a primo excuse to spend time on his farm, crafting boards in solitude, and to paddle out for a little spot of research and development. You can view Beau’s quiver of designs, as well as some fantastic imagery, at: www.beauyoungsurfboards.com – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Jan 31, 2014

Kieran Weston used to be a suit-wearing corporate monkey earning six figures – now he spends his days covered in dirt, scratched and bruised, muddy, sunburned…and smiling with a happiness he has only ever dreamed of. Owner / founder of One Organic, Kieran lost everything from his Asia-based manufacturing company – the big house, the fancy car, the hefty bankroll and all the stresses and strains that went with them. Only then did he realise that no amount of wealth could ever buy true contentedness. “When my multi-million dollar business in China went belly-up, I ended up pushing a broom in the dunnies in Byron and doing a lawnmower run,” Kieran recalls. “My first nursery was half of a tennis court in Brunswick Heads from a tiny little house – about as small as you can get. We built our way up, getting up to 150 or 200 markets a year and then we spent two years trying to find a property that would let us do what we were doing.” From these humble, residential beginnings, Kieran finds himself now living on the land, tucked away in Byron’s hinterland with panoramic views out towards the bay over lush forests and rolling hills. An acre of land stretches from the back of his house, meticulously tilled, ruler-straight lines of lush vegetables gently swaying in the easterly breeze. Vibrant green and deep purple leaves corrugate the rich, brown soil that has been carefully mulched and worked to provide optimal nutrition for Kieran’s babies, all of which have been hand-reared and lovingly transplanted from his nearby nursery. Just as chance stripped him of the small fortune he had accumulated, it was chance that brought him to the land. “We were lucky,” Kieran recounts. “We got this place from the farmer who used to own it bought it 60 or 70 years ago. He sadly passed away and his four boys had all moved on to different lives, architects and electricians and so on. So they were happy to take us on. We’ve now leased this place for the next five years and, hopefully, they’ll let us stay here forever. The boys come out here every now and then and I ask them what their dad would think of it all. They say he’d be absolutely dancing.” One Organic isn’t your run-of-the-mill farm. Kieran hasn’t just stuck a bunch of seedlings in the ground and hoped for the best. Every plant, every harvest and every inch of topsoil has been thought out carefully, creating the perfect, nutritionally abundant foundation from which to grow his spray-free, organic crop. He came to farming knowing nothing about it, but Kieran has made an exceptional business. Taken from the revolutionary organic farming methods of Paul Gautschi’s Back to Eden project, Kieran’s farm is a precisely constructed balance of soil, compost and woodchip creating a fertile bed similar to the leaf litter of a healthy forest. “I never wanted to do farming conventionally because I felt that it’s too destructive. A fantastic customer of mine came in one day and said, ‘you must have a look at this’. I had a look, gave it a go but it didn’t really work out because what he (Gautschi) shows is a patch about ten years down the track. So I came up with a technique of creating some space between the soil and the woodchip with a biodynamic compost that we create, and then we plant straight into that. “Pretty much where we’re at now,” says Kieran, casting an eye across his bounteous crop, “is about as bad as the vegetables will ever be.” So, time for a little science: Did you know that the average supermarket fruit and veg is a week old. That means it has been picked a week prior to being put on display and has been slowly dying since that time. The result of this is that these plants have as little as 40 percent of the nutrition they naturally produce. Add to this pesticides, preservatives and pollutants from their transportation across, on average, 1,500 kilometres, and what you thought was good, healthy produce really isn’t so great after all. Kieran’s produce is day-fresh, sold within 24 hours of picking, and usually a lot less. This, combined with Kieran’s natural, innovative, chemical-free farming methods, makes his produce verging on superfood-healthy, absolutely packed with the vital vitamins and minerals that our bodies crave and, in today’s society, are often so desperately deprived of. Kieran’s methods are also astoundingly efficient. His property uses a tenth of the water of conventional methods, produces far more prolifically and, due to the layered soil and mulch, not only never dries out but also never floods. He sees our food not as the filler that many of us view it as, but as medicine. We are constantly relying upon expensive supplements, multivitamins and a rainbow of pills to provide the nutrition that our food should supply. But in this age of force-grown over-consumerism, we demand processed foods, crops year-round and a diet that is unsustainable both for the environment and for our health. Local businesses, including Naked Treaties and The Roadhouse, are taking advantage of this ready supply of incredible vegetables, passing on their wonderful benefits, both in the dishes they produce and the knowledge they share. Tested for nutrient content, Kieran’s One Organic vegetables are already well above average and, by winter, he estimates those levels rising to unprecedented levels. Kieran has noticed significant health benefits within himself from consuming his own crops and, with fantastic films such as Food Matters now coming to light, it is clear why he views food as medicine. But Kieran isn’t satisfied to leave the healing to his salad vegetables. Aspirations for a medicinal garden beckon, echinacea, gingko biloba and chamomile just the beginning of this living apothecary. “We’ll grow anything thats medicinal and powerful for the immune system and so on. What I’m trying to do now is get people to make their own medicine, to look at their own back yard as a medicine chest.” The rise of awareness in marijuana and its derivatives as a medicine, for arthritis, cancer, cerebral palsy and so much more, has sparked Kieran’s interest. Of course, as yet he is legally unable to grow the crop, even in it’s benign hemp form, but he educates people as to how they can use hemp seeds and leaves, as well as other plants, for their medicinal properties, supplementing alternative, legal herbs in his demonstrations. He also provides education for individuals and even other farmers on how to emulate his farming processes, acutely aware of the paramount necessity to begin protecting our organic plant life and helping ourselves to heal and remain healthy through superior nutrition. If you just can’t wait to watch your crop grow from seed, Kieran’s One Organic tent can be found at many of our local farmers’ markets, absolutely chock full of seedlings, from tomatoes to herbs to a myriad of leaf vegetables. With proper nutrition, we greatly reduce the need for drug and chemical-based medicine. After all, if we’re healthy, we won’t need fixing. But even when we do get sick, we are seeing increasingly that a diet comprising up to 80 percent of raw, organic fruits and vegetables cannot only diminish but even eradicate some of our most virulent diseases. For more information on the nutritional and healing benefits of a plant-rich diet, you can visit: www.foodmatters.tv www.doctoryourself.com www.superchargedfood.com www.mindbodygreen.com www.onegreenplanet.org All Photos: ©Kirra Pendergast – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Jan 27, 2014

Music is more than a collection of melodies strung together and spliced with a collection of lyrical ramblings. It takes a unique and talented mind to think up a tune, play the instruments, know the notes, compile the lyrics and put it all together in a seamless performance. But more than that, music has the ability to transport you, take you to a distant memory, evoke imagery of wonderlands and magic, make you laugh or cry, even heal us. MT WARNING grew from unconventional seeds. Where most bands come from a collaboration of individual artists, a gathering of like-minds or from the garages of suburbia borne on the wings of youthful enthusiasm and friendships, MT WARNING’s roots, essentially, lay in film. Band co-founder, Mikey ‘M. Jack’ Bee has had an independent music career of his own for many years. Bashing out tunes since forever, it was under the moniker of M. Jack Bee that he really taking a hold on the local and national music scene. Layering and looping vocals, drums and guitars, Mikey wove a rich tapestry, creating a sound steeped in emotion and profoundly deeper than you would expect of a single musician. It was at a hometown gig that a chance meeting with Taylor Steele, a Californian surf filmmaker who had freshly emigrated to the Shire, would lay the foundations of the MT WARNING collaboration. Taylor heard his set and struck up conversation after the show. Over a few beers, the pair discussed the possibilities of the creation of music through visuals. “I was playing a show and Taylor had just moved to town,” Mikey recalls of their first meeting. “I was just rambling away as I do and we just started drinking beers after the show. He’s a super-inquisitive person and was asking me about how I create. He asked me, ‘if I gave you a visual, could you create a song to it?’ Not like a soundtrack, but a visual idea.” A man is drowning, his boat is wrecked beyond all hope, his life is ebbing away but still he fights his impending and inevitable fate. This was the visual premise of the pair’s first collaboration. Musicians create soundtracks to film, audibly reflecting the imagery onscreen, but what Mikey and Taylor embarked on was something very different. Taylor has no musical background, he doesn’t play and instrument and he certainly can’t read or write music. What he does instead is convey his musical ideas through visuals – an argument here, a dancing girl there, perhaps the crescendo of a dawn sunrise, and Mikey interprets these images through his instruments. “Instead of the song forming a nice arc,” says Mikey, “Taylor will say, ‘no, we need a car crash here’, and boom! The guitars go crazy, the drums will kick in – more in a film editing way, I guess. I’ve found it an incredible way to bring more emotion into my songs. “I’ve spent a lot of time traveling the world but never take cameras – I just hear places. There’s always a melody or something that connects me back to Asia or Africa or wherever. I don’t need photos, it’e either a song I’ve written or a melody I hear and that’s how I see the world – I hear the world. So when me and Taylor started working together, it was like, ‘wow, this is what I do!’ I didn’t realise it until that point, so it solidified that process for me.” What has transpired is more akin to story telling than music – Mikey’s rich and raw guitar and vocals married with Taylor’s filmmaking screenplay to produce what Mikey describes as cinematic rock. Many songs tell stories or convey messages through the inspiration of their creation, but with MT WARNING it is the story that actually creates the music, guiding every nuance, every rise and fall, every snare and strum, to produce the sense of living through the story, invoking the entire experience in the listener through sound alone. In the recording studio, this can all be created by Mikey alone, layering guitar, vocals, piano and drums to produce the finished piece. But one man can only do so much, and this process can’t be replicated in a live act. MT WARNING live brings other musicians to the stage, including Tori Lee on vocals and drummer Grant Gerathy to fill in the parts that Mikey cannot accomplish alone. But there is another trick up his sleeve to complete the songs’ numerous elements. “We can play dingy pubs as a three-piece with the sound bouncing off the walls and have a killer night, but we also have a video show for certain gigs. I get my friend who’s an AV DJ to play live images of me. If we’re bringing in other samples from the record, he’ll project a video of me playing the other parts, whether its piano or another keyline that comes in or some second drums or something and jam with us in realtime. This 20-foot version of me comes up on screen playing it. So the audience is like, ‘no-one’s playing that,’ and then they look up and you see the recording of me playing it. It’s kind of an exercise in visual narcissism!” Narcissistic or not, this allows the possibility of a far richer performance, multi-layered and much larger than just the three musicians alone can provide and it further unifies the very visual aspect of MT WARNING’s songwriting. MT WARNING’s first full album, to be released later this year, tells a story. The album has a beginning, a middle and an end, each song a new chapter in the tale being woven. This inaugural release, although supported by film clips that reflect the songs’ themes, will be, for want of a better word, conventional, the songs released for digital download or on vinyl. But already a plan is being formulated for a second album. “For the next one, we’ve devised a pretty cool plan,” explains Mikey. “We’re trying to figure out how the hell we’re going to do it, but it will be some sort of filmic audio package. We know how we’re going to make it – we just don’t know how we’re going to release it. We want to keep building this concept  until we clearly define how we marry film and music in the most ‘consumable’ form I guess.” Whatever may transpire from this fusion of sound and imagery, given Mikey’s strong, blues-rock style and Taylor’s superb lensmanship, will be exciting to say the least. But where this partnership may take them is anyone’s guess, including their own. For info on gig dates, album releases and videos, visit mtwarningmusic.com – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Jan 22, 2014

Life’s true lessons come in its curve balls, and for Republic of You founder Nicoletta Revis, life saw her coming and had a barrage of ammunition waiting for her. Over a six-week period, Nicoletta suffered the loss of her job and her house, the breakdown of her three-year relationship, the deaths of her grandmother, two close friends and her beloved dog, and then the clincher: a 120km/h car crash, breaking her neck and back and leaving her entirely incapacitated and bed-ridden. But, to indulge in another gratuitous aphorism, what doesn’t kill you will only make you stronger and, like a phoenix from the ashes, she gradually emerged, empowered, confident and far wiser than ever before. “I remember lying in bed and saying to myself, ‘the injuries won’t kill me, but my mind will.’ And so I made a pact with myself that every single night, when I turned the light off, I had to count ten things in my day that I was grateful for. That’s really hard, but I slowly started pulling the threads of gold out of my life. I think that was the point that everything changed.” Barely able to move, certainly unable to leave her bed, the internet became her lifeline. A self-confessed obsessively compulsive collector, she began scouring websites for vintage nicknacks. Her initial idea, being a dog-lover herself, was to collect antique suitcases, line them with vintage fabrics and travel stickers from around the world and create quirky, artistic dog beds of them. Almost seventy large, bulky suitcases in, it suddenly dawned on her that she could barely lift a cup of coffee to her lips, let alone be able to manhandle such large objects. And so a change of tack was called for. In her searches, she had found antique dog medallions from the 1920s and from these grew the idea of creating dog necklaces, featuring the medallions alongside other trinkets and beads. She made one for her own dog and proudly presented her mum with another for her little canine companion. But the cautionary pessimism of her mother deterred her from that path as well, fearing the little trinkets would pose a potential puppy choking hazard. A little disheartened by her second return drawing board, she dismantled the dog necklaces, gathered some old jewellery of her own and created an entirely new necklace, this time simply for herself. “I foraged around the house for old keys and jewellery and, with the bits and bobs I’d collected for the dog necklaces, I made up two new pieces. I’d never made a necklace before in my life and I had no idea how to put it together. One day I was hobbling around town window shopping and I went into Island Luxe (in Byron Bay) and the owner came up to me and said, ‘oh my God that necklace is amazing – where did you get it?’ When I told her I’d made it she said she’d love to see more. So I went home and I made up eighteen new pieces. I went back and she bought twelve of them outright.” Within five days, she was demanding more and Nicoletta hastily created another five. By week’s end, they were all gone and Nicoletta’s calling was abundantly clear. “That was the point at which I realised I was doing something different,” she recalls, “and it gave me the confidence to keep going. That was the starting point of it all.” Republic of You is a vintage rebirth. For Nicoletta, each piece she creates is about telling a story, capturing a piece of history that would otherwise become lost in the sands of time. From ostrich eggshell beads from the Baule tribe of West Africa to brass Bornean protective figurines and air raid whistles from World War 2, every element has a tale to tell, and she includes this information with every piece. “I love things that tell a story” she says. “I wanted them to be higher priced items but with a story that has been handed down from generation to generation, to create a piece with the feature being, say a whistle, and being able to say, ‘this is from the 1940s, from the Second World War’ and so on…it’s about reconnecting to the past and not losing these amazing little bits of history.” The exclusive, one-off pieces in the Republic of You collection are an intricately woven story of folklore and history, each beautifully presented in a nest of century-old newspaper, housed in a humbly branded minimalistic black box. But the message of the story permeates even the lesser priced, non-exclusive pieces. Each one is still laboriously hand crafted in the Byron Bay studio and, although not specifically limited edition, every element is carefully thought out and documented. Take, for example, the Wild & Free necklace. A brass-coated chain is adorned with a tiny key and an intricately carved buffalo skull. Etched from naturally shed deer antler, it pays respect to the ancient totem of the American Indians, a symbol of wisdom, prosperity, gratitude and abundance. The tips of the deer antler are retained and used in other pieces, homage to the American Indians’ belief in giving thanks for and using every part of the animal. Then there’s a piece entitled Gypsy Spells & Wishing Wells, a simple, solid brass wishbone. But even this has a story. As her website informs us, the pendant is “cast in solid brass directly from a wishbone Mum gave me after one of her famous Sunday roasts. This piece honours the age-old superstitious tradition my sister and I would partake in as kids.” The site then goes on to share the history of that tradition in great detail. The style of Republic of You refuses to be pigeon-holed. A little bit tribal, a shade of the Americas, a hint of India and a dash of Asia are all brought into a contemporary piece that is simple, understated and unique. Nicoletta’s creations aren’t about jewellery and bling and glamour; they are about becoming Indiana Jones, delving deep into the mists of time, bringing tales and hidden treasures back to life and recreating them exquisitely. Discover Republic of You: www.republicofyou.com.au Portrait: ©Kirra Pendergast | All other images: ©SubCutanea – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Jan 22, 2014

The world is broken. We are polluting, consuming, dredging, deforesting, poisoning and suffocating our poor little planet faster than it can cope with, giving it no chance to regenerate or recuperate. But, dispite this doom-laden introduction, there is hope. Environmental groups are rallying for almost every cause there is and the general public is slowly but surely entering a period of paradigm shifts, awakening to the need for a global consciousness and the knowledge that the ability for change lies in our own two hands. As individuals, we can each do our part, recycling, purchasing reusable cups and cutlery, signing petitions and making little changes within our daily lives so insignificant yet accumulatively so profound. But there are some who go above and beyond. They want to make a difference, to do their part, but they also want to do my part, your part and everyone else’s part as well. Enter Tim Silverwood. In 2009, Tim Silverwood had had enough. As a surfer, he had seen jetsam, the man-made debris cast adrift on ocean currents and washed up on coastlines the world over, he had witnessed the post-holiday influx of trash left behind by tourists and he had observed people walk past the trash strewn across our beaches as if it didn’t even exist, completely blind to its presence. Something had to be done. With an insightful perspective and first-hand experience, Tim knew that demanding people clean up the garbage in one fell swoop would never work. The despondency of the masses invariably results in complete apathy when faced with an almost insurmountable challenge. What Tim realised was that, if he wanted to make a global change in perception, if he wanted Average Joe to lend a hand, he needed to make his target accomplishable, simple and easy. And so he founded Take 3. “We’re not asking people to go out and chain themselves to a bulldozer and fix the planet,” he shares, “we’re just asking them to go out there and do something small, and I think that has really good resonance.” Take 3 asks exactly that: for each of us to take three pieces of trash with us every time we leave the beach. This simple gesture may not seem like much – a bottle top here, a cigarette butt there and perhaps a chip packet and you’re done – but if every single beach goer were to adopt this mentality, our beaches would be immaculate in a week – and our marine life a whole bunch safer because of it. In 2011 Take 3 was awarded the inaugural Taronga Conservation Society Green Grant. A $50,000 purse and the assistance of the team at Taronga Zoo allowed Tim to significantly expand his cause, enabling it to become a viable initiative and his full time occupation. Since then, Tim has travelled the world, given TEDx talks, appeared on national television numerous times and visited a swathe of schools nationwide to educate our next generation of the problems and dangers of trash. Take 3 has grown exponentially, causing Tim to look outside the initiative, at recycling, refundable deposits on drink containers and reusable products to replace single-use takeaway products. “We live on a planet with finite resources,” says Tim. “Whether we like it or not, it can’t go on the way it is.” From his days picking up a handful of trash after a surf at his home beaches of Ourimbah, on New South Wales’ Central Coast, Tim has expanded his vision globally, looking at not only taking three and cleaning up after ourselves but trying to negate or lessen the garbage initially and recycle it efficiently, ‘post-consumer’. Now based in Bondi, Tim has worked tirelessly in every aspect of this issue, spreading awareness and pro-actively going into communities to make a change. In September last year, Tim was approached by Adrian Midwood, an American adventurer who had seen the trash problem first hand in the now well-documented oceanic gyres such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. With his yacht in Brisbane but needing to be in Sydney, Adrian connected with Tim, who then proposed an East Coast voyage, visiting 15 towns along with way, to clean up, talk trash and educate people of this problem. “Over the last three years, I’ve done a huge amount of outreach and it’s one of the reasons for the success of our organisation, so I’m always keen to go out and talk trash, so to speak. In 2012, Adrian sailed his vessel from Tonga to Australia. Well, his vessel sailed – he actually kitesurfed and stand-up paddled the whole distance. This was as publicity and a fundraiser for his new clothing label, Leisure Activist Group, which uses waste plastic to produce clothing.” Setting off at the beginning of January, the pair trash-talked their way through Brisbane and the Gold Coast before arriving in Byron Bay on their way South. On a scorching Saturday afternoon, on a jam-packed Main Beach, Tim presented Take 3 to a crowd of eager locals before dispatching them to the hot sand for a beach clean-up. Four wheelie bins of garbage later, all neatly separated into waste and recyclables, Byron’s pride was restored to much of its former glory and a handful of minds were opened to the Take 3 message. “When I hear people saying, ‘I actually took three for the first time today,’ it’s amazing, because I know they’ve gone through a process of walking over rubbish, walking over rubbish, walking over rubbish and thinking about picking it up, thinking about that for a little while and then, boom, they suddenly do it. If we can get people taking that first step it becomes inevitable that they’ll take another step and another step, because once your eyes are opened up to it that’s when the wonderful journey begins.” But this wasn’t Tim and Adrian’s only reason for being in town. Mooring their boat, The S.V. Moana, in Ballina, the duo visited Australian Seabird Rescue, giving a presentation, sharing their message and joining the volunteers as they released one of their successfully rehabilitated green sea turtles into the ocean. A strong crowd gathered on the beach at Flat Rock to bid adieu to Cruise, the day’s four-finned celebrity. With the salt spray cooling his face, the turtle could taste his home. But, just as he was about to regain his freedom, a shout was heard. “Wait!” it cried, “there are more people who want to say goodbye!” As if scripted by a Hollywood screenwriter, a wave of a hundred more people surged around the corner, some running, some under umbrellas, others still wet and in their boardshorts and bikinis, all wanting to wave a found farewell to the little, shelled trooper. Tim was overwhelmed. The Gold Coast had been a surprise success, Brisbane had gained excellent recognition, but this staggering display of awareness and support was breathtaking. It is these actions that begin the ripples, small events to show people that one person can make a difference and united we can accomplish anything. In 2012, Tim visited the Gold Coast to screen the documentary Bag It. In just over a year, he was astounded at the response. “The Gold Coast Council said to me, ‘you have no idea. Since you came here and did that in 2012, it has gone off. There are so many groups working on so many projects geared towards plastic reduction – we just can’t believe it.’ He reported back to his supervisors saying that it was best investment they’ve ever seen. That makes me feel so great. We’re not getting reports from every single area, so we don’t know what’s going on. But just to hear that and to know that good things came from the things I’ve been trying to do is so rewarding.” We are all capable. It is a cliche thrown around so frequently, particularly in the Byron Shire, but the truth remains: we can all be the change we want to see in the world. For More information on Take 3, visit their website at: www.take3.org.au, or go to Tim’s personal environmentalism site, timsilverwood.com. To learn about Adrian Midwood’s Leisure Activist Group, go to: leisureactivistgroup.com. – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Jan 15, 2014

So the idea for Chinese electro-punk outfit Nova Heart was to take a scenic tour of Australia’s East Coast, enjoy all it has to offer, from kangaroos to kayaking, sunshine to surfing, throw on a couple of gigs and enjoy a warm retreat from the Northern Hemisphere winter. Great plan – until a busted ankle threw a spanner in the schedule. Nova Heart lead singer, Helen Feng, is bandaged up and waiting for surgery. Not really the best Australian holiday experience, but she brushes it off with a laugh and a blasé shrug. Wanting to make the most of the band’s visit to Byron Bay on their way south down the Legendary Pacific Coast, the obligatory surf lesson, taking in the town and kayaking on the bay had all been on the cards – but the planning fell to pieces at stage one. A fun little surf outing ended in a broken ankle and a trip to Tweed Heads for a minor operation. But this is just another snap to add to the collection for the boisterous songstress. “I was playing a gig back home and wanted to do a stage dive – I LOVE crowd surfing,” Helen enthuses. “But there was a big pit between the audience and the stage. A security guard was trying to stop me, but I’d done it a few times and thought I was Superman or something.  I was trying to clear the guard and I jumped sort of sideways. There was a whole bunch of grass everywhere, but I hit this one, tiny little patch of cement in the whole place and boom – it tore the ligament clean off my knee.” But despite this little mishap, Helen, bassist, Bo Xuan, lead guitarist Wang Hui and their pint-sized drummer Shi ‘Atom’ Lu, are loving Australia. The band came together three years ago. An accumulation of various bands, international connections and multiple world tours, Nova Heart manifested into a pop-punk infused electro collective. Hints of Blondie merge with La Roux and Daft Punk before being sideswiped by a lashing of Joy Division, all ironed, starched, pressed and packaged by Italian producer, Rodion, Helen’s ethereal locals cascading over a concrete synth-drumline, stripped bass and simple yet contagious guitar riffs. Nova Heart defies any preconception of what may be produced by the subjugated Chinese music scene. All of the band members have toughed it out on the oppressed Beijing music circuit, Helen also working as a VJ on Chinese television – unofficially one of the first presenters to air a punk rock band in the highly staid communist country. Although the members of the band have visited Australia individually before, this is their first time as Nova Heart. Triple J has picked them up and the response and recognition from the Australian public has been unprecedented. “We actually have quite a following – that’s been a big surprise. We got on rotation on Triple J and, through a festival in Reunion Island, got signed to Indica Records (who also have Canadian flavour-of-the-month, Half Moon Run also on their books) and asked us to come out here for a tour.” As well as a great response from their audience, the band are relishing the opportunity to explore the country further. Taking one step to the left of the usual tour scenario of hopping from one anonymous hotel room to another, they are taking a more leisurely jaunt along the Legendary Pacific Coast. “Other than the obvious, I’m loving it here in Australia,” says Helen. “I like the vibe here a lot. People seem to be really open and really caring of the land, especially the young people. It’s such a big luxury you guys have. There’s not that much beach in China, so this is beautiful, and I think a lot of people in China are looking for this lifestyle. People there are really shifting their values. How they’re perceiving culture is still a little materialistic, but it’s slowly trickling in that maybe we need a new set of values because the old ones are not helping us have a happy life and they’re not helping the world around us.” With our cultural and environmental diversity, appealing climate and more laid back, sea-change lifestyle, Australia has proven to be a very refreshing change for the quartet of Nova Heart, and, from a quick browse of their Facebook page and a cursory glance through the doors of their gigs, it looks like they weren’t the only ones who enjoyed their visit. Happy band – happy audience…even if it did cost one of them a month in a cast. Join Nova Heart on Facebook, or visit their website for further info at: nova-heart.com – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Jan 13, 2014

It’s hard, in this world of hidden agendas, sweatshop labour and high street fashion, to be ethical in our choices. We are lucky here in Byron Bay to have access to wonderfully natural and organic foods and a host of locally manufactured craftwares and apparel, but there are many items in our list of life requirements that can’t readily be sourced locally, sustainably or ethically. Take rucksacks for example. Most of us will own one or have need for one at some stage, but how often have you thought about the materials used, the manufacturer’s factory conditions or the sustainability of that bag? To varying degrees – and through no fault of our own – we all have our heads buried in the sand. Glen Casey has seen this issue from the inside out. Born and raised in Victoria, Casey grew up in the heart of the Australian surf industry. “My family lived in the western suburbs of Melbourne,” he recalls of his youth. “I started surfing with a family of doctors who had a mansion down at Anglesea. I became really good friends with their son and they would throw me in the car when I was about eight or nine and take me with them.” His parents saw and encouraged his passion for surfing, purchasing a caravan in Torquay, loading up the family and making the trip to the coast on most weekends of the summer months. Little did they know it, but these family sojourns would create the foundation of the rest of Casey’s life. Two thirds of Australia’s – if not the world’s – leading surf brands was founded in Torquay. Both Rip Curl and Quiksilver were spawned in 1969 in the small, sleepy, seaside town, 90 kilometres to the southwest of Melbourne and it was here, and through this industry, that Casey would pursue a career. “I ended up living in Torquay and working for Rip Curl when I was 20. I guess you could say I was born in the industry. That was in about 1981 and all through the ’80s the industry really started to find its legs. The companies started to branch out from a cottage industry into menswear and into the malls and shopping centres. So I was really at the forefront of making that happen and pushing Rip Curl’s clothing into the outer reaches of the market.” This became the focus of the next ten years of Casey’s life, an unrelinquishing drive to expand the brand and increase revenue. This was a formative time for Casey. In 1983, when the Rip Curl Pro surfing contest was held, right on his doorstep at Bells Beach, he entered the trials, battled his way through the heats and qualified for the main event. The entire town turned out in support of their local hero who, although beaten in the first round by World Number 2, Shane Horan, gained much media attention. But, despite his close friends, Tony Ray and John Darby, pursuing a professional career, it was the quiet life that appealed to Casey. “I kept my sales job at Rip Curl and went surfing in south west Victoria, which is where I ended up spending pretty much 30 years of my life, at quiet little beaches with no one around.” But one person was around, a person who would instigate a paradigm shift in Casey that would change his life. Wayne Lynch has always been a man of freedom. Never able to conform to the restrictions of society at large, much less the media-saturated commitments of a major, sponsored surfer, Lynch has always sought solitude. For much of his early career, Lynch was sponsored by Rip Curl, through which he and Casey formed their friendship, but this friendship was also the cause of Casey’s separation from the brand. The pair, along with renowned surfer and yogi Simon Buttonshaw, explored the coast, following the waves and connecting with the land and their inner selves. Separating from Rip Curl, Casey founded a sales agency, taking on numerous brands and establishing a business that accounted for the next 20 years of his life. But Casey eventually drifted away from this consumer culture and a constant drive to increase sales and meet targets, recognising the importance in a life of integrity. “I had one of those moments where I understood what it was like to feel as if you have done something good with your life, something that had meaning. Those philosophies really started to sink in deep.” Through Lynch, Casey became aware of Patagonia, another clothing brand, yes, but one with the same ideals that he was cultivating and seeing the importance of in an otherwise money-driven industry. In 2008, Casey launched Patagonia Australia. Still based in Torquay, he followed a similar career path, promoting a business, looking for sales and so on, but with many very distinct differences that were far more aligned to his beliefs. The products were recycled, ethically sourced, organic and sweatshop free, the company didn’t force sales increase, expansion or new contracts and it looked after it’s staff, the environment and the communities surrounding its retail stores in any way it could. One percent of annual profit was given directly to environmental causes and each and every supplier was scrutinised to ensure each stage of the manufacturing process aligned with the company’s stringent guidelines. If it didn’t, Patagonia either found a different source or, even better, worked with the supplier, investing in them and turning their business around to make it environmentally and ethically sound. Finally, Casey could commit the same knowledge, skills and energy to a business that held integrity above wealth, ethics above commerce and the environment above margins. It has been over six years since Casey first joined the Patagonia family. He has been building the brand tirelessly nationwide, bringing in ambassadors to represent Patagonia from all over the country and expanding awareness of what Patagonia stands for, all from the head office in his hometown of Torquay. But times and needs change, and with Casey’s young daughter, Willow, growing up fast, he realised the time had come to head north. “There were two main reasons, on a business level, that I brought Patagonia to Byron Bay. We saw Byron as a very important place for surfing and the people we associated with here are very natural and have a similar alignment to Patagonia. So we naturally chose here above any other surf location in Australia, because there are so many enivronmental-thinking people, they live off the land, and that is what is important to us. We choose our ambassadors because of their inner values, not their celebrity. Johnny Abegg and Taylor and Rusty Miller are all ambassadors for Patagonia and their beliefs and values make them perfect people in the area to align with. “Secondly, it was the quality of the marketplace that brought us here. We make sure, when we open a store in a new location, that people will understand what we’re doing. There is a quality of person here in Byron that we knew would understand what we are as a brand. We could have gone to Margaret River or to Noosa, but we saw the people here in the Shire to be on that higher level, a higher plane of thinking, appreciative of environmental choices and looking after nature. We saw that quality of person far more here than in any other place in Australia.” Casey and his wife, Cathy, have made the decision to call Byron Bay home and to commit one hundred percent to the town. They recognise the value of the community, its ethos and the benefits these would have upon their children. Patagonia has facilitated this move, but it has also allowed Casey to share his beliefs with our town. For him, just as for Patagonia founder, Yvon Chouinard, business isn’t about muscling your way in, take-take-taking and making a quick dollar. It is about providing a service to a community, giving only what is needed, and doing so ethically, sustainably and with awareness. – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Jan 11, 2014

While Byron locals were tearing their hair out, hindered in their daily tasks by an influx of both Christmas and Falls Festival visitors, unable to buy a simple loaf of bread without a 45-minute wait and spending the greater part of their mornings in traffic queues that stretched up to ten kilometres up the highway, a small valley to the north was enjoying peace, happiness, superb music and a very different festival vibe. That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with the Falls Festival atmosphere, or any other event of its kind. Big names, pulsating crowds and basslines loud and deep enough to eradicate cellulite are thrilling and dynamic. But some of us prefer an altogether more soothing cup of tea. The Woodford Folk Festival is, as most of its attendees will attest, unlike any other music festival in the world. Each year, a small town fills the valley of Woodfordia, comprising stalls, stages, eateries and workshops all carefully selected by the organisers to fit with their stringent and ethical guidelines. It’s definitely not your average festival. Woodford’s unique ethos makes it celebrated worldwide. Anything goes – you can let your hair down, be your most extroverted self, dress outrageously…and be totally accepted. Drugs and excess alcohol are frowned upon, families are not only welcomed but adamantly encouraged and an open-minded perspective is held by all. You can start the day with dawn yoga, drop the kids off at the children’s festival, go to a talk on permaculture, lunch on anything from steak to raw vegan pizza, ease into the afternoon with kirtan chanting, be thrilled, stunned and disgusted by an early evening freak show and then dance the evening away to world class acts such as Clare Bowditch, The Basics, Julian Marley or Brendan Maclean. ‘Something for everyone’ somehow falls short in describing it. 2013 marked the 20th anniversary of the festival locale, the little enclave nestled amongst the wooded hills providing everything you could wish for of a venue. Camp sites are well organised and appointed, shower blocks offer creature comforts rarely akin to camping, a general store supplies campers with almost everything they could require. It’s no shabby set-up and it enables the vast majority of people to attend regardless of their needs. This year’s schedule comprised a small novella, the fold-out timetable doubling as a tent for those arriving ill-equipped. 21 separate venues followed a well-orchestrated itinerary, the incumbent iPhone app allowing punters to create their very own schedule from the profusion of events. Spanning seven days, the festival village is already well established beforehand, many arriving early, leaving late and taking up semi-permanent residency in the valley of Woodfordia. The event-proper began on the 27th December to clear skies and scorching sun. Mercury reached for the 40s as attendees hopped from shaded pocket to cool tent, hydrating with coconut water, shielding themselves from harsh rays with parasols, a discernible plague of lethargy sweeping the event. But none could be shaken from the festival spirit. Crowds still packed the various marquees for the likes of Jordie Lane and Busby Marou, the amphitheatre-like hills bereft of punters in all but the umbral castings of the few trees present. But, as they say – whoever these sage-like ‘they’ are – what goes up must come down and, with a resonant crack of thunder, the temperature, like the rain that followed it, fell. The iconic Holy Cow chai tent, an institution in itself, played refuge, first from the scorching sun and then the tumultuous rain. The masses crowded and cowered like rabbits in headlights as the strobe-like storm illuminated the skies. Poor Clare Bowditch must have drawn some Nostradmean sort straw – her set scheduled just as the lightning arrived, cutting power and plunging the entire venue into darkness for several minutes…twice. Previous years have seen gum boots and rain coats the essential modus operandi of festival goers but this year, save a few light mistings, the rain abated, that single outburst the entirety of the storm’s temper-tantrum. Each evening, the transient little village would come alive. Parades of lanterns, carefully crafted in workshops throughout the day, wended their way through the laneways, buskers would set up shop in vacant pockets between stalls, eateries would fill with families and friends to swap stories of the day’s activities and plan for the night ahead and of course, the stages would resonate with the myriad sounds of international performers. Of those performers, the Woodford festival evokes a certain camaraderie which is, like so many other aspects of the event, unique. “This festival is such a blessing to be invited to and attend,” said Jordie Lane, the festival the latter bookend of his Festival of Small Halls tour. On the hottest day of the week, Jordie packed out the Bluestown tent, crowds hiding from the heat in its steamy interior and huddling in the shade of the few trees on the hillside overlooking the stage. Be burned or be damned seemed to be the mentality. Woodfordians have a tough mindset – whatever the week may throw at them, they are prepared and will enjoy themselves regardless of flash floods, heat waves or acts of God. The cool of the evening definitely made music-watching far more enjoyable. Taking the long stroll out to the Amphi stage, passing through a breath-taking, enormous woven bamboo structure by Chinese artist, Wang Wen-Chih, crowds gathered for Beth Orton’s single Australian gig, the English muso making the trip exclusively for Woodford. A couple of covers, all the classics and a handful of new tunes fulfilled their hopes, but Orton is more than just a cute guitar-strummer. Between each and every song, she regales her audience with tales of travel, her love of her new, yellow raincoat or the disturbing amount of other people’s pubic hair she found on herself after a dip in Woodford’s water hole. To watch Beth Orton is to fall in love just a little. Brendan Maclean’s inclusion in this year’s lineup was intriguing, even to the artist himself. A self-confessed pop act, he would seem to be an odd choice for a folk festival. But the resounding success of his performance was unquestionable. “Did we shock Woodford? Well, we did the splits, metaphorically and physically! It was nerve-wracking bringing pop to the festival. It’s high energy, it’s cabaret, and I think that can intimidate a folk crowd. But then they let themselves go and realise that their shoulders are bopping or their head is nodding along to it and they release! It may take you performing from midnight to one A.M. but you come outside and people are laughing and having fun, and that’s really all I hope for. I don’t know if that’s shocking, but it certainly changed people’s perspective of pop music.” This open-mindedness is blindingly evident in every aspect of the Woodford Folk Festival. Environmental and ecological talks, spiritual guidance, obviously a huge variety of music, and even the attendees’ clothing choices make this a festival radiant with all colours of the rainbow. Pirates, elves, fairies, secret agents, freaks, aliens, monsters, dreadlocked hippy cliches and coiffed hipsters share space under a single canvas awning. It is a gathering of acceptance, whatever your life outside the valley. “At first, Lee, my drummer, was terrified I was going to run home on my first day,” says Brendan Maclean, usually more akin to the cleanliness and all mod-cons of a Sydney-based lifestyle. “I wasn’t sinking in, I wasn’t letting myself get dirty or muddy. On the second day, Sarah, my keyboard player, was worried that I wasn’t going to get into the gig because I was terrified that the folk crowd wouldn’t love it. Then Nicko, my violin player, was nervous for me personally when I got broken up with. But then, once we got on stage, every single time, I just looked at the audience and found one person that was smiling and I went there with them. “And finally, today, I got up at 6 A.M., I did the Love Walk, I went and had a chai tea, my shoes are all covered in mud, my eyes are full of dust and I couldn’t love this festival any more. I stood amongst the tents and the other artists and they were a real family. I didn’t expect to meet all the international artists and have them watch my show and I watch all their shows. That was really cool, that was really special. Woodford is a big family and it’s lovely to be a part of it, even if I am just a detached cousin or something!”   And that is what Woodford is – a happy gathering of freaks and family, of weirdos and oddballs and straight-laced grandparents. But, to paraphrase Apple Computers: “Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward. Maybe they have to be crazy. How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written? … Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.” All Photos: ©SubCutanea – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Jan 6, 2014

The almighty, indomitable force of nature is all too evident. A casual waft through the broadsheets will usually uncover at least one tale of flooding, earthquakes, storms, forest fires or some other so-called act of God, a Damoclean sword swipe at our complacency. We sit in our cocoon of safety here in the Byron Shire, for the most part sheltered from all mother nature can rain down upon us. The occasional bit of flooding, sure, a bit of a blow out of the east every now and again granted, but we aren’t talking monsoons of Bangladeshi proportions or hurricane Katrina-like decimation. We pity the world, view the media with sadness and compassion and whisper a little something to the man upstairs, safe and grateful in the knowledge that it could never happen to us. …or could it? Cyclones are usually thought to hit up north and do little more than strip a couple of trees or peel away some roofing by the time the reach us. Damage is done, and there is nothing meek about their presence, but it would be hard, even of the worst-case scenarios of the past three decades, to call them natural disasters. But this wasn’t always and will not always be the case. Max Pendergast is a Byron local. He didn’t move up from Sydney as a teenager and take a job at the old Norco plant, he didn’t unstrap his longboard from the roof of a kombi some time in the early ’70s and decide to call Byron home. He, like his mother and grandmother before him and his children after him, is born, bred, raised and reared Byronian – a truly rare breed. He has seen it all: the end of whaling, the scars of mineral mining, the overwhelming influx of tourism…and the cyclones. “We’ve had East Coast lows with 135km/h gusts,” recalls Max, “but that’s absolutely nothing. Cyclone Althea, that hit Townsville in 1971, had enough power to peel the ceramic tiles off the walls of the bank. My dad used to have a 75-foot high steel TV antenna in the back yard. It was a big, triangular thing with stay-wires. We came outside after one big cyclone and it was just tied in a knot.” They may be few and far between and they may be an accumulation of extreme conditions, but those conditions do occur and the ten-year cycle is well overdue. Byron’s explosion in commerce and population over recent decades has been without consideration of these maelstroms. Mineral mining has debilitated much of the bay’s natural, geological foundations and its primary defense against any significant onslaught. Until the early ’70s, the coastline from Belongil right through to Clarke’s Beach was significantly different, with high, stable dunes, reaching as much as 12 metres above sea level, defying the ocean’s challenges. “Before they mined Main Beach, we used to play in those sand hills and they were massive,” recounts Max. “Now they’d be lucky if they were four metres above sea level. In the middle of the hills was a fresh water lake, crystal clear, like at Fraser Island. After one cyclone in 1954, I went over the sand hills to have a look at the lake (roughly where the YAC now stands), and there were parts of fishing trawlers, which had been moored to the jetty at Childe Street, in the lake. The only way they could have got there is if one big wave had taken them up and over those 12-metre dunes.” What the sea wants, she will have, and there is very little we can do to stave off such an assault. Max recounts tales of giant, defensive boulders being tumbled along the beach like marbles, vast areas of sand being wiped from the map overnight and fishing trawlers being left high and dry in the tops of trees. And on more than one occasion, he has been lucky to have received the ocean’s mercy, twice spared his life by Mother Nature’s wrath. “There used to be a road in front of all the houses right down to Belongil,” he shares of his first near-death experience, though the humble gentleman would likely deny this grandiose claim. “But when we had a big cyclone one year, that all went. We were staying down there with friends in around 1964 or ’65. Yvonne (Max’s wife) got up the next morning to check the surf and it was under the house and the concrete stairs were about six metres down on the beach. About 20 metres of dunes had disappeared overnight.” Five more metres and Max, Yvonne, the building and all its occupants would have been erased from the shoreline. Then, in late February of 1973, Cyclone Kirsty struck. With the old surf club, which was located at the southern end of Main Beach car park, under threat from the pounding waves, Max and the local copper rushed in to try and save as much paraphernalia as possible. With a thunderous roar, water started seeping in through the weatherboards high above Max’s head before the double doors at the front of the building blew open and a six-foot cube of ocean burst through, crashing against the back wall and very nearly washing Max out to sea. Man’s impact has been devastating to the coastline, and subsequent attempts to reclaim or reinforce the land have been futile. “When they mined the Belongil (circa 1970), all the coffee rock that’s there, which had been the base of the old sand hills for millions of years maybe, went. After that, they built a tea tree fence and dumped a bunch of car bodies in there (to try and stabilise the dunes), but it was just pissing in the wind. If you get a cyclone to the north and a big, easterly swell coming in, the amount of sand that will move is amazing. During one cyclone, we thought we’d reclaim some pipeline. It was buried six metres down under sand hills that stretched for 60 metres, and we got three six-metre lengths of that pipe out in an hour – 18 metres of dunes were just washed away. We watched the whole landscape of the place change within that single hour.” As well as this, there has been no acknowledgement of such possibilities in much of the town’s planning. Shirley Street and Ewingsdale Road would be gone, the town cut off from its one major exit route, the Beach Hotel would be immediately flooded, serving as a funnel, channeling the ocean straight down Jonson Street and engulfing the town’s CBD, and nowhere, from Fish Heads on the beachfront to Mitre 10 at the far end of Jonson Street would remain unscathed. It is not common knowledge, though takes little to recognise, that Byron’s town centre is actually below sea level. Like the walls of a castle, the shoreline from Belongil to the Cape serve as a barricade, keeping the waves at bay, a tenuous rampart against the ocean’s might. But, if that were to be breached, nothing would stand in the way. Synoptic charts of Jan. 1967 Cyclone Dinah “At the moment, any sense of defense infrastructure is totally unfeasible,” Max hypothesises. “If we were to get a storm surge, like they have just suffered in the Philippines, the town would be gone. Years ago, there was an article in the Byron News of an old report of whitewater coming all the way back to what is now the RSL club. I don’t think any of the current town council has ever seen a cyclone like that – they just don’t know. They’ve just got no concept of what a big cyclone can do. Most people don’t even realise that the town is actually built below sea level.” So is this a tale of impending armageddon, a “the end is nigh”, Four-Horsemen-of-the-Apocalypse pessimistic perspective of Byron’s future? Who can say. We don’t know when or even if the next big cyclone will arrive. Perhaps, with the world’s changing climate, the ever-developing coastline and a little blind luck, the dangerous days are over. Maybe this is a nice little history lesson and nothing more. Maybe…but then again…maybe not… All Photos: ©Max Pendergast – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Dec 20, 2013

Are you going to the Falls Festival? Are you, like so many others, in a total quandary over which bands to see, which to flag and which to not miss come hell, high water or Judgement Day itself? With every festival lineup there are three primary categories of acts: the headliners, the secondaries and the who-the-hell-are-theys – those acts that speak for themselves, the ones who are options if nothing better is on and the ones you’ve just never even heard of. Pros and cons are thrown out by every lineup. Those empty spaces in your timetable can sometimes see you finding the best acts of the festival that you never knew existed, sometimes you’ll swing punches and camp out early to get a place for a big name only to find that they serve you a bitter slice of disappointment pie and don’t even play that one track of theirs that you love oh-so-much. Going in with a rough idea, rather than a fixed schedule, is always the most productive way to wing it and so, as a public service and a little bit of education and enlightenment for all of you Falling your way through the holidays, here are eight acts that may well give you some sweet surprises: Best Potential Movie Soundtrack – Big Scary Big Scary are – big, though thankfully they aren’t in the least bit scary. They have that sound that evokes images of full-moon road trips, stormy seas viewed from cliff top sanctuary and trailing hands through the long grass of sunlit pastures. Their earlier material is simple-fun-folk, rich but delicate, confident but naive. With their latest album, Not Art, Big Scary have busted the budget on production. More rounded, more mature, they’ve prewritten the soundtrack for the next Crash, Magnolia or Vanilla Sky. Prepare to be moved. Your first little movement > BIG SCARY – “Twin Rivers” Best Disco Big Beats – Hermitude Big festivals mean big days, big nights and all too often big, big hangovers. Hermitude is the pep in your step, the spice in your life and the groove that you get on. Hermitude‘s jumped up, pumped up kicks will give you muscular tourette’s, beats to which you couldn’t stand still to if you stapled your pinkies to the floor. Even if you’re an electronic non-believer, their infectious tunes will seep through your pores, penetrate into your soul and get snuggly with your urge to boogie. Go on, let go, give in and who knows? You might actually enjoy yourself. A taste of things to come > HERMITUDE – “Speak Of The Devil” Best Goosebump Inducer – James Vincent McMorrow Although his songs don’t actually sound too similar, there’s something Bon Iver-ish about James Vincent McMorrow. Middle America trickles through whispy vocals that will put the hairs on your arms on end. But don’t be lulled into a false state of comatose tranquility. Although many of his melodies are best served seated and shared with lovers, there’s a bit of fire in this young man’s belly that pulls you back to your feet with a short, sharp, very pleasant tug. James Vincent McMorrow is like chili chocolate ice cream – think that out for a while… Licks with kicks > James Vincent McMorrow – “From The Woods!!” Best Ethereal Chillout – London Grammar London Grammar make time stand still. Their music is minimalistic instrumentally, looped beats and repeated melodies serving only as a cohesive framework for lead singer Hannah Reid to take you on a haunting journey through your inner psyche. Well that all sounds like a bunch of pretentious bullshit! The music’s gorgeous, so is Hannah and both are well worth staring at for an hour and a half. Think The XX spliced with Florence & The Machine with a light dusting of Kate Bush and you’ll be in the ballpark. A return ticket into yourself > LONDON GRAMMAR – “Wasting My Young Years” Best Summer Day Soul Sista – Solange  Solange is sass on steroids. She’s like Beyoncé’s funked up, souled out sista, a glimmer of pop scattered through a gospel-soul dance feel – girl’s got class. Although she might be all just a bit too popped for some, she’s got a presence that’ll keep you transfixed and she’s sure to throw down a killer performance that’ll be the talk of the Falls. More likely appealing to a younger crowd of the feminine kind – hideously biased stereotyping noted – Solange is definitely worth a quick peek to all but the most die-hard rocksters. Your nice, hot cup of funk tea, sir > SOLANGE – “Lovers in the Parking Lot” Best Funk Soul Rock Throwback Mashup – The Preatures I’m sure The Preatures have fit into a musical mould at some stage, but then they kind of swelled, expanded and oozed gently over the sides to create something that, while you can see some of the original shape, has become a form all of its own. The Kings of Leon would have to be The Preatures‘ closest living relative, but that’s a little like comparing a chihuahua to a rottweiler and saying they’re siblings. The Preatures‘ vibrant, ’70s-esque chilled-rock sound will have your cheek muscles aching through endless smiles and your feet itching to twitch. Get your groove on > THE PREATURES – “Take A Card” Best Act To Steal Your Girlfriend – Tom Odell Tom Odell scares the hell out of me. He’s talented, cute, charismatic and famous. With a man like this running around the world being popular and crooning to the masses, we mere male mortals don’t stand a single chance at getting a date or keeping a girlfriend ever again. A Coldplay influence comes through the solid, piano-rich tunes, Tom Odell‘s excellent voice conveying the lyrical stories buried in his songs with power and passion. There’s not much to fault about Tom Odell, from his shiver-inducing songs to his perfect, floppy, blond fringe – yeah guys, we’re screwed. Don’t show your girlfriend this video > TOM ODELL – “I Know” Best Way to Contract a Scorching Case of Disco Fever – Touch Sensitive Touch Sensitive‘s synth-pop vibe warrants a glitter ball so big it has it’s own weather system and gravitational field. On that multi-faceted, shiny orb lives a race of beings clad in silver jumpsuits and platform shoes who naturally walk to the beat, strut with big steps wherever they go and throw down Saturday Night Fever moves in the Post Office queue. These people never buy their own food, just cheekily steel french fries from each other before pointing skyward and pirouetting. And they all have afros. I hope you’ve had your fever shots > TOUCH SENSITIVE – “Body Stop” – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Dec 19, 2013

It must be hard growing up in the shadow of one of the most legendary musicians of all time, but for Julian Marley, son of the late, great Bob Marley, the path into a musical career has been all his own. Born in London, he spent his childhood between England and Jamaica, steeped in the music and culture so personified by his father. He was only six years old when he lost his dad, but those six years were more than enough to help instill in him the spirit of reggae and Rastafari. But despite his father being one of the most influential musicians of the 20th Century, Julian Marley’s sound, like his musical career, is all his own.  “Reggae is in the blood from day one,” he states. “It’s there already so I can just open the door to other sounds and try new ideas. The influence is there anyway because what’s in the blood is in the blood, but it’s about creating your own sound.” And that is precisely what he has done. Julian Marley’s sound is undeniably pure, Jamaican-born roots reggae…with a twist. Although maintaining a very strong core of the very classic style, he has brought a certain modernity into the sound. Perhaps it is a more complete production or, as he readily admits, the influence of every form of music that he happens to hear, but beneath the evocative deep reggae sound is a myriad of piano, percussion and electronic layering that creates a more complete final product. It is still a very pure interpretation of the classic reggae sound, but polished, spruced up and given a fresh lick of paint for the new millennium. “There’s no barriers in music. It depends what aroma awakens your taste buds, what sound awakens that sensation in the mind and in the soul.” Although he has visited Australia several times before, this year will see Marley’s first time on the lineup for the Woodford Folk Festival. As part of a two-week mini-tour of Australia and New Zealand, he will bring many of his existing tunes as well as a small selection of new material he is currently compiling for his next album. “People in Australia really accept and love the music,” he says of previous tour experiences. “Being so far from where we are, on the other side of the earth in Jamaica, coming to Australia is great – there’s a lot of love out there!” The Woodford Festival will be a new forum for Marley’s music, but one that couldn’t be more apty suited. The diversity of the Woodford Festival brings a rich and diverse melting pot of cultures, genres and performers together, devoid of specific musical styles or social status. “We’re all one people,” he reflects, “so wherever you go, there’s always that spirit and connection with the people. Being so far from where we are, on the other side of the earth in Jamaica, coming to Australia is great. People really accept and love the music – there’s a lot of love out there.” Reggae has always been a music for the people. Part cultural, part activistic, it oozes passion and is steeped in subtext. There is something within the music that is primal and, whether you are a dreadlocked Rastafari or cosmopolitan suit, even if you don’t particularly like reggae, there is an element that speaks to our inner self. Surrounded by nature, secluded from the commerce and chaos of the day-to-day and bathed in the creative rainbow that Woodford throws up, radiant and replete, every year, Julian Marley‘s music is sure to reverberate at a higher frequency, sending ripples through the festival and creating that “only at Woodford” atmosphere that is so unique to the festival. Reggae is entering a new era. Still with its roots buried deep into its foundations, it is evolving to become a global voice, standing against oppression, celebrating unity and the one family of mankind and doing so in a gamut of languages. Chilean reggae artist, Quique Neira, Uzume and Mighty Crown in Japan, Dub Inc from France – the list of international reggae acts is endless, as is the the language into which the traditionally Jamaican sound has been interpreted. “Reggae is being rebirthed right now – a new seed has been planted,” says Marley. “Right now I see a new uprising in the music and everyone is getting back into this roots feel and to me that is awesome – I love that.” The son of one of reggae’s founding fathers and certainly its most recognisable name and face he may be, but Julian Marley is forging his own path, borne of his intrinsic love of the vibe as much as any lineage. In his sound, in his perspective and in his future, Julian Marley is his own man. Visit Julian Marley’s website at: www.julianmarley.com – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Dec 16, 2013

Brendan Maclean is a showman. Listening cold turkey to his music, it’s easy to pigeonhole the artist: pop-synth melodies and chirpy riffs saturate his music and, if you’re not really paying attention, you could almost be forgiven for drawing false conclusions of stereotype and genralisation. But dabbling pinkies into tepid waters will never give you a consummate experience, and Brendan Maclean is a deep pool of aquamarine sparkles that you have to dive right into before you let the book cover lay judgement. Brendan is ridiculously talented, one of those prodigious characters who can illuminate any situation with their mere presence and entertain an audience with a pair of spoons and a cheeky smile. As a songwriter, he has distinctly chosen a pop-influenced pathway, but his music reaches so much deeper than the homogenised sounds of conventional teen-pop tunes. “I came from a folk, story-writing background,” he reflects, “so what I try to do is make a pop song that has a purposeful story to it that means something. None of my songs are like, ‘at the clu-u-ub, dancing dru-u-unk…’ If I am at the club dancing drunk, I’m also having my heart broken at the same time and trying to dance it off. So it’s pop music with a folk heart.” Brendan’s heart and influence lay in the cabaret of performance. This serves as inspiration and compliment to his music but also presents a lavish, exuberant live experience for his audience. Many artists can play a live show, play it exceptionally well, but essentially offer only their music. But with Brendan Maclean, you’d better be prepared to leave your inhibitions at home and brace yourself for sensory extravagance. “I come from a theatrical career path. I started as a dancer first, and then went into acting, so by the time I figured out that I liked making music and singing I already had a lot of theatre in me. You can get stuck  in the cabaret, but when you think about it, big pop shows are really just cabaret on a giant budget, with money and pounding beats. I think, in Australia, everyone seems to be ashamed of doing cabaret pieces. We need to lose that shame and shoe-gazing mentality and embrace the cabaret. I want to be the vanguard of bringing campness into mainstream performance!” Perhaps a little of a contradiction to the more reserved observer, Brendan is one of this year’s headlining acts at the Woodford Folk Festival. But, with just a quick peak outside the box of conformity, his inclusion on the lineup makes perfect sense. His music may fall, in a very generalised sense, into the mainstream and bare little in common to Bob Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel or even some of his fellow Woodfordians, such as Tim Finn, Matt Corby or Clare Bowditch. But the storytelling of his lyrics and the vaudevillian opulence of his performances make him as much a relevant inclusion as any straw-chewing, banjo-strumming folkster out there. “The organisers of Woodford have just been fantastic,” he says. “I asked, ‘just how fabulous should my performance be?’ and they replied, ‘bring all the fabulousness you can!’ They asked what five things I would bring to Woodford, and I answered a unicorn shooting laser beams out of its butt or something like that. They replied, ‘there is certainly no illusion as to what you’ll be bringing to Woodford”! Having toured with Kate Miller-Heidke and Amanda Palmer, Brendan has had some very rich influence in creating his on-stage persona. Costume changes, backing dancers and vibrant light shows are all in a day’s work for the born showman, but an expansion, perhaps a maturity in his performance has come about through his collaborations. “What I learned from Amanda Palmer is to give the audience permission to fully immerse themselves in the experience, to get up there on stage and say, ‘come with me – this is your invitation to have the best night of your life.’” Brendan’s naturally flamboyant style, coupled with his exceptional talent as both a songwriter and artist, has lead to more than a few incredible experiences, but when the casting agent for Baz Lhurman’s recent on-screen over-indulgence, The Great Gatsby, came calling, things reached a whole new dimension. “I wasn’t even in the running to audition for the role,” he recalls. “But an intern in Baz Luhrman’s office found a video of mine called ‘Practically Wasted‘, sent it along to Baz and said, ‘what about this guy?’. So then I got called in, I did a few auditions, I played the organ and showed off as much as I could and snagged the part! So, whoever that intern is, I love you forever!” A defining moment in his career perhaps, but certainly not the one and only trick of this little pony. Woodford is going to be receiving an incredible Christmas present in Brendan Maclean, his shows promising to be a breathtaking melange of cabaret, pop, jazz and unreserved lavishness. But his performances won’t be limited to just his more recognised stylings. On tour with Kate Miller-Heidke when offered the Woodford gig, he asked the festival veteran how he should approach the event. “Do as much as you can” were her poignant words that have inspired Brendan to bring all the grandeur he can possibly muster, as well as taking on storytelling and other performances less familiar to the artist. But it is the vaudeville that holds is passion: “I really get in to my shows. I do dance and I do really try to engage with the audience. I’m so excited to see how the Woodford audience will react to that – hopefully they’ll dive into the shows and really enjoy them. I don’t want to give anything away, but there will definitely be a few Great Gatsby moments in the set as well.” Go to Brendan’s Triple J page for some sample tuneage. – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Nov 29, 2013

Coffee culture is here to stay. There’s no denying it, no ignoring it and certainly no dissuading arabica junkies from their favourite roast or brew or barista. But why? It’s just a bunch of burned beans. A hipsteresque snobbery has developed around this single little berry. People will ditch their favourite, closest or most convenient drinkery on a whim based on a change of barista or brand, following the flock to the ends of the earth like the Pied Piper’s children in allegiance to their pedlar of the percolated. Starry-eyed, they gaze dreamily at their dealer, total idolatry overwhelming them as they take the first sip of their creamy latté – contract signed, mortgage paid, soul sold. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not bitterly opposed to the black nectar. I’m a three-cups-a-day kinda guy and have been on both sides of the counter. I’m trained and educated in the hallowed art of the pour – though admittedly have never quite nailed it – and I know my stuff. Caffeine cravings flood my pores as slumber’s blanket falls from my eyes and weary limbs yearn for a kickstart. I know my Arabica from my Robusta, know that the second crack isn’t a chiropractic term, understand that anything over 25 seconds is a sackable offense and I get why coffee vendors cringe when people ask for “extra-hot” in total disregard of scalded milk – if you can’t touch it, don’t serve it. And yet, despite all of this, despite being the potential prima persona for coffee arrogance, I am absolutely dumbfounded as to why it’s such a big deal. Tea, for example, can vary drastically, in flavour, in caffeine content and in levels of tannins, depending exclusively on when and where it was picked and how much shade it received when grown. It can be a precise and delicate blend of spices, leaves and genii to create that finite balance. But you don’t see people spraying mouthfuls of chai from lips curled in disgust at the skerrick too much Oolong in the breakfast blend. Back in the day, tea drew far more attention and financial accreditation than its caffeinated counterpart, the East India Trading Company, the Boston Tea Party and tea taxes testament to the beverage’s renown and power. If you were to be approached on the street and asked which cafe in town was the finest brewer of Earl Grey, you’d look around for the hidden cameras before guffawing in the face of the inquisitor and questioning whether they were up to date on their meds. But “where can I get a good coffee” is as common a phrase as “where’s the post office”. Just what is it about this black seepage that makes it so alluring? Perhaps it’s just drug addiction, plain and simple. But if that’s the case, again we can question why tea doesn’t evoke the same reverence, and why serving a mug of Joe from a four-hour-old percolator jar would be looked upon with such scorn and distaste. And why not colas? They contain caffeine too, as do cacao, guarana, pain killers and even weight loss tablets, but you don’t hear of people appalled at the poor quality of their hot chocolate or paracetamol! And the thing that really baffles me is this: I LIKE the taste of coffee – I actually enjoy its nutty bitterness and deep undertones. So why, when I ask for a decaf, am I laughed at? Decaffeinated coffee is a bit of a hit-and-miss affair, I admit, but when you find a good one, it is barely discernible from its drug-infused alter-ego. If I don’t want the nausea, agitation and anxiety caused by the real McCoy, but I do actually want the flavour, why should I be mocked and why should my beverage of choice be jokingly referred to as a “Why Bother”? There is a respectable art to making a good coffee, and I commend all purveyors on a job well done, but I’ve yet to hear of a barista curing cancer, solving the world’s hunger problems or ending animal cruelty through their trade. So please tell me why they deserve our reverence. How about bakers? It takes them years of education, experience and apprenticeship to get to the Tip Top, they work ungodly hours in the stinking heat, but not for one second would they gain such adoration from their consumers. Coffee isn’t an enduring art form. It last’s 20 minutes, max, before making its way slowly and progressively into your toilet bowl. You don’t hang it on the wall, it doesn’t get better with age, you can’t trade it or write it into your will as a financially appreciating family heirloom. I can’t for the life of me fathom why this obsidian elixir is so pretentiously praised. Fashion. This is all I can assume must be the reason for this perplexing phenomenon. Baristas are great, and I am grateful for every decent mug of the brown stuff I have ever and will ever sup. I know how much work has gone into the sourcing, the blend, the roast, the grind, the pour and the froth. Perhaps I’m risking a lovingly regurgitated wad of phlegm in the creamy crown of my next cappuccino, but come on, it’s just coffee. Seriously, get over it. There are no exceptional philanthropists, lifesavers, world changers or chariteers in the industry. They are not akin to the doctors, lifeguards, volunteers, carers and nurses of our society. And so, as an exercise in realism for society at large, I’d like to propose the following ad campaign for the entire coffee industry, from roasters to blenders to baristas to consumers… Coffee: Drink it – it turns to pee. – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Nov 30, 2013

In this town of ours, eateries are a dime a dozen – there’s just no denying it. You could dine out at a different spot every day for a month without exhausting your choices, and new spots are popping up all the time. To make a difference, to become a favourite, to last more than your first year, you need, as a restauranteur, to strike a chord with the locals – strike it loud, make it count and be playing the right tune. If I am to flog that musical metaphor for all it’s worth, I guess you’d have to proclaim the Roadhouse‘s founders, Adam Coates and Ruby Thomas, as nothing less than contemporary virtuosos in their field. Adam, a Sunshine Coast boy, met Ruby in her home town of Sydney, the hospitality industry playing matchmaker for the couple, and they set up shop in Bondi. Popular, successful, the business was doing well – but something was missing. Integrity is a highly personal perspective, multi-dimensional in its application and an exceedingly difficult master to remain true to. But it was integrity that brought Adam and Ruby to Byron Bay, and it was with that integrity that they established the Roadhouse. “We wanted to create something that we loved and where we wanted to hang,” says Ruby of their initial game plan. “We just wanted to share our kitchen with everyone else. We started coming up here [from Sydney] quite a bit and we always thought we’d love to live up here. But we didn’t want to just nudge our way in straight away. We didn’t want to be one of these people from other cities who come in, start a business and think they can take over. We rented a room, started coming up once a month and just got to know everyone and what everyone wanted here. We did a lot of research on the area and what it needed – it was a gradual transition.” Forming a business partnership with existing Byron residents Liam Flannigan, Duane Edgar and Dan Woolley, Adam and Ruby began actualising their dream, creating for the people of Byron everything they wanted to see in their own kitchen: good coffee, organic food, healthy, nutritional menus and, yes, alcohol. “We believe in ‘everything in moderation’. It’s all about balance – if you can live a happy, healthy life, that’s the main thing. We are very selective. We don’t serve any sugary mixers – we don’t serve coke, we don’t serve lemonade. We do have a homemade, cold-pressed lemonade if someone does want a mixer, and that’s how we serve things. We have organic milk, organic coffee, we make our own organic almond milk, so there’s an option for everyone. I think it can be quite confronting for people if it’s all organic, so we do it in a way that pleases everyone, but it’s still healthy.” This healthy balance pervades all aspects of the business, an acute awareness of health and quality instilled in everything, but without ostracising any specific demographic – a holistic approach to hospitality. You can get your caffeine fix, your shot of Dutch courage, a glass of wine or a steak dinner, but you can be assured that the finest produce has been sourced and combined with numerous nutritional and beneficial ingredients. And it is in this aspect of the business that Adam excels. Adam is, for want of a better word, adamant in sourcing the very best he can find, in everything. From vintage whiskies to Italian olive oils, the freshest, locally grown vegetables and pasture-to-plate meats. Working with local producer Kieran Weston and his business, One Organic, Adam pre-plans his menu, not by holidays or festivities, but by growing seasons, requesting seasonal crops be planted for specific dishes. “We come up with a working menu with our chef ,” he says, “and then pass it on to Keiran and he seeds it. We are changing to incorporate into our dishes those plants and vegetables that he can grow. Right now, for example, he can grow heaps of kale because it has been dry, but he can’t grow any rocket, so we are adapting our menu to accommodate that. Kale’s really good for some people, but for others it’s not because it’s so hard, so we’re blanching it, or combining it with apple cider vinegar to help with digestion.” The pair’s personal ideals in food and drink and their strong awareness in the need to step away from mass-produced, imported, genetically modified ingredients, from both an ecological and health perspective, has created something quite unique. “Food has become a commodity. People don’t believe in paying for good produce anymore, but we are trying to turn that around. Although we’re not making much profit, we’re consuming it every day so we’re healthy and our friends and family are. To me, that’s success.” Although he recognises the necessity to import in order to maintain his high standards, Adam does all he can to utilise and support local producers. The result is a culinary cellar door, a farmhouse kitchen for the public, representing the best produce Byron can offer in an establishment where you won’t feel out of place or frowned upon for ordering a double espresso with a whisky chaser to wash down your roast pork. Giving back for all he receives, Adam is also keen to support the local community in any way he can. At the moment, Adam is asking all customers to tip and tip well, not to line the pockets of he and his staff, but to raise money for a tractor to be donated to Kieran and the One Organic farm. Whatever tips are raised, he will match personally, aiming loosely for a figure of $10,000 for the machinery. In turn, Kieran will be able to produce and harvest more produce, increasing supply to the Roadhouse, and so the circle continues. True to their word, Adam, Ruby and their business partners have created exactly what they set out to do: a cafe-restaurant that feels like a mate’s place, its warm interior familiar, the staff welcoming and the food rustic and nourishing, although deliciously balanced and perfectly presented. – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Nov 26, 2013 All Photos: ©Kirra Pendergast facebook.com/TheRoadhouseByronBay instagram.com/roadhousebyronbay

The Mullum Music Festival is an anomaly. It is, fundamentally, a music festival, bringing together a myriad of musicians from around the world to play in close proximity, under a single schedule and banner, on the same weekend. But where it eschews the conventional paradigm, forging its own tangential path, is in its location. The 6th Annual Mullum Music Festival, as with its five predecessors, doesn’t take place in a field or a show ground – it encompasses the entire town. Mullumbimby’s quiet streets often ring with the sound of music. Buskers jostle for sound waves and melodies pour forth, like the waft of stale beer from a host of pubs and venues. But when the festival hits, every stage, every act and every punter is united into three days of music encompassing the entire town. From the high school at the southern end all the way to the Civic Centre in the north, the town rings with the sound of music and cheers, swathed in smiles and colour down every side road and alleyway, along the network of streets and in and out of every door and window in the whole of Mullum. “I think it’s amazing that there’s a festival that a whole town can get involved in,” said visiting Canadian singer-songwriter, Rose Cousins. Joining Melbourne artist Jordie Lane for the Festival of Small Halls, the Mullum Music Festival is the first event of her tour and her first visit to Australia. “I like the idea that because the town is so small, it’s so manageable. and that people get to see music and we get to play music in varying venues. It’s a no-brainer! Businesses benefit, everyone benefits.” Though lightning lacerated the evening skies and thunder interrupted the diverse performances, the weekend’s festivities were resoundingly successful. The iconic Magic Bus, so indicative of the festival’s vibrancy, transported happy revelers from venue to venue, keeping the atmosphere alive between gigs. The Memorial Park offered soft grass, international cuisine and respite for weary feet, cafes and restaurants, doors flung wide open to the warm summer breezes, offered sustenance to all and the assortment of halls presented superb acts and an eclectic array of experiences. Rose Cousins featured as only one of numerous international performers from as diverse locations as Germany, Italy, Slovenia, USA, New Zealand and Gambia. The extraordinary rhythms of North Africa cast silence and awe over the crowd with the beautiful stringwork and indigenous dialect of Gambia’s Jaaleekaay, Australians Tinpan Orange filled the Civic Hall with their blend of folk-uke and the crowd spilled from the Drill Hall doors as the smoky voice of Lucie Thorne wafted from the cool interior. Every moment of each day could be filled completely with superbly talented entertainment. One could bounce from gig to gig, floating across the sound waves and following the melodies to the next venue. You could run yourself absolutely ragged trying to cram in every act you meticulously ticked on your dog-eared festival program. But the beauty of the Mullum Music Fest is that you just don’t have to. Not only do artists often perform multiple times, but the atmosphere is so relaxed and the talent so abundant that, if you were to miss one particular act, it really wouldn’t matter, the time equally well spent in the presence of an alternative muso our simply taking in the sights, sounds and smells of the festivity-filled Mullum streets. Even when not squeezed into one of the nine music venues, there was more than enough entertainment on offer. The hilarious Pitts Family Circus presented their own brand of slapstick gymnastics for a much-amused Memorial Park crowd, The Back Packers brought colour and hilarity to anyone who cared to listen (and anyone who didn’t!) and throughout the town a warm feeling of camaraderie brought everyone together, a few thousand friends yet to be made. Each year, the final day of the festival has commenced with a street parade, a chance for locals to celebrate and present their own show to the congregation. Fancy dress, dance, drumming, guitars and brass gathered at the Council Chambers, a feast of sound and vision, a celebratory caravan of all the town and the festival alike bring to this annual occasion. The thing that sets the Mullum Music Festival apart is not that it incorporates the people, the buildings and the infrastructure of an entire township. It isn’t that each independent venue features its own fantastic lineup all day long under one roof, totally self-sufficient yet completely united with each other. What strikes you as completely unique is that nothing matters; not the next act or the crowds, not the need for transport or accommodation, not the over-priced hawkers of usual venues, blissfully absent at Mullum. Befitting its surroundings, the Mullum Music Festival is as hassle-free as any three-day, lineup-packed, multiple-staged, abundantly attended festival could ever be. Excellent music all weekend long with no queues, no toxic toilet facilities, no camping, no mud, no drunken revelers waking you at 3am…only at the Mullum Music Fest. – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Nov 23, 2013

Perhaps it’s my childhood love of the movie Stand By Me but there is something about train tracks that has always fascinated me. Their gossamer lines trail of into the distance, glistening in the sunshine and leading through land rarely seen to endless destinations. The Casino to Murwillumbah rail line closed down almost a decade ago now, and since that time I have had an overwhelming desire to trace it’s forgotten path on foot. A couple of futile attempts – from my home in Ocean Shores through to Mullumbimby – ended in lacerated shins and a prolific and impassable entanglement of lantana. But, undeterred, I continued my quest, and found accomplishment in the track joining Mullum with Byron Bay and with it an epiphany of possibilities and potential. The Casino – Murwillumbah rail link closure has always been steeped in controversy. Trains On Our Tracks (TOOT) was established soon after the cessation of service in 2004 in an attempt to bring back the trains, despite it’s financial unviability. It’s use, in part, for a Byron road bypass has been considered and various projects have incorporated the existing infrastructure into their planning. But nothing yet has been ratified. The concept of converting all or part of the route into a cycle path seems to be one of the most viable options and is gaining an undercurrent of momentum and popularity. With one car already deposited at the Byron end, we parked up in Mullumbimby and set out. Walking the line is like returning to the scene of a crime. Stations lay derelict, the echoes of rattling trolleys and bustling commuters still stained in their peeling paint. Junction levers dissolve into rust, too frail and corroded to divert the paths of spectral trains. The rivets and plates of repairs lay dormant in a permanent state of hibernation, cast aside by workmen in years past. One day, the rumbling rattle of passing coaches could be heard in the many towns along the route, the next, only silence. Indicative of the Mary Celeste or the Bermuda Triangle, the track now serves only as a thoroughfare for animals, animated only by passing cattle, snakes and kangaroos and the slow and steady onslaught of vines and weeds. Tracing it’s own path, a more direct route between towns, the track veers away from roads, traversing farmland, bush and wooded corners of the Shire rarely seen. On this trail, you can lose yourself, removed from civilization, departed from the noises of traffic and commerce. It can be challenging, nature’s relentless assault occasionally forming impenetrable barriers that need circumnavigating, but the route is, on the whole, still fairly clear. Sturdy shoes, plenty of water, sunscreen and an acute awareness of potential reptilian ambush are essential, as well as a spare four or five hours to traverse the 15 kilometres between Mullum and Byron, but it is well worth the effort, if only for the pure escapism. With the development of roads and the constriction of the static tracks, rail transport is becoming redundant, an archaic system falling into decrepitude the world over. But globally, more and more of these forgotten corridors are being reclaimed, turned into cycle and footpaths and reconnecting the destinations along their course through more ecological journeying. Villages, all but forgotten when the last train passed, are now thriving, thanks an influx of ecotourism, cyclists steadily streaming silently along the redeveloped lines. And why not? The infrastructure is there, the bridges are still in place, the tracks themselves serve as convenient containment for bitumen or gravel and the routes are gloriously traffic-free. Minister for the North Coast, Don Page, recently stated that funding is available for a feasibility study in the development of the rail corridor, but this has split the community. On the one hand, TOOT is still holding onto the hope of the rail service recommencing in the future, on the other, the Northern Rivers Rail Trail Inc (NRRT Inc) welcoming the prospect of the existing infrastructure being utilised for a rail trail and cycle path. “The rail trail would act as the spine that links a network of communities, regional towns and villages,” stated NRRT Inc chairperson, Pat Grier in a recent interview with the Byron Shire Echo. “It would provide the platform for economic development, new businesses and jobs for the region.”* It certainly opens the possibility of rail museums, cafes, camping grounds and other attractions along its route to cater to tourists and travellers. Which is to be the most viable and successful solution is yet to be seen. Walking the line is fun, affording you some peace and solitude and opening an area of Byron Shire that is so accessible yet so isolated from daily traffic, be it pedal, foot or motor. But it is impossible to not recognize the undeniable potential. From Casino to Murwillumbah, passing through, or in stone’s throw of Lismore, Bangalow, Byron, Mullum, Uki and Ocean Shores, the trail offers pollution-free, family friendly, peaceful conveyance, a convenient commute or a pleasant pastime. So maybe, rather than rallying to get trains back on our tracks, at significant cost to tax payers, the environment and the community, the answer is to look to pedal power for the future of our railway lines. A very significant rise in tourism has been proven globally by such projects, so maybe we should swap TOOTing for BOOTing and get Bikes On Our Tracks. *source: http://www.echo.net.au/2013/08/rail-trail-funding-announced/ – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Nov 20, 2013

For over 50 years, Yvon Chouinard has been preaching to the choir. The only problem is, the choir wasn’t in earshot…until now. Chouinard is founder and owner of Patagonia clothing company, now proudly sporting it’s very latest outlet in Jonson Street, Byron Bay. So who is the choir and what has he been preaching? Well, dear fellow Byronians, we are that choir and his message is one intrinsic to our town’s ethos. Patagonia, despite being a multinational company turning over hundreds of millions of dollars every single year, is just about as ethical a business as you are ever likely to find. Originally, the company was in the market of climbing gear. Chouinard, an avid climber himself, saw the unsustainable damage done to cliff faces by equipment and sought to find an alternative. Find it he did and, once this started taking off, he expanded into clothing, always with acute environmental and ethical consciousness. Now, half a century on, Chouinard is the proud papa of over 50 independent stores and a legacy to be proud of: one of, if not the, first major business to incorporate childcare facilities onsite, one of the first to implement paid maternity leave, a head office – in Ventura, California – made of 95% recycled materials, an organic cafeteria, clothing that is both recycled and recyclable, indeed, an actual incentive program to encourage customers to bring in their old clothing for recycling, organic cotton, advanced wetsuits that incorporate marino wool and plant-based neoprene substitutes, absolute dedication to fair trade and ethical manufacture at every single level of business and co-founder of 1% For The Planet – a foundation enabling major businesses to donate 1% of their gross annual earnings to environmental causes. And all this, amazing and admirable though it is, is just the tip of the iceberg. Since launching in Australia, Patagonia has ventured into the surfing industry and, given the nature of both the environmental mentality of the company and Australia’s highly ocean-oriented marketplace, it has been a fruitful evolution. Patagonia ambassador and long time reluctant surf industry spokesperson, Wayne Lynch, reflects: “Back in the late 60s, one thing that we as surfers started talking about was looking after the environment and making clothing that was organic or recyclable and we always thought that’s where surfing should have gone. It’s always amazed me that the industry grew in completely the opposite direction. It really upset me and, consequently, I got fired – endlessly!” But, he hastens to add, Patagonia has never allowed itself to slip into this formula. “People kept saying that you can’t make money out of it, it’s too hard, but Yvon has showed that it’s possible and the breadth of what can be done.” Surf Mecca as it is, Byron Bay will always attract surf brands, but what makes this new connection so significant is Patagonia‘s alignment to the more spiritual side of the Bay, that profound awareness of nature and our duty to protect it at every level of our lives. Californian Keith Malloy, another of Patagonia‘s ambassadors was present for the Byron Bay store’s launch last week: “I think the store is just perfect for the area. I think there’s a lot of like-minded people here in Byron Bay who think a lot about environmental issues. It’s pretty neat because Patagonia has based their company around doing smart business environmentally for so many years – they haven’t just jumped on the bandwagon in the last few years. And I bet a lot of the Byron locals are like that too – they’ve been doing it for a lot longer than the latest fad. They’ve been thinking and caring about the environment for a long time. So it really makes a lot of sense for Patagonia to be here.” Lynch concurs: “I think there’s a certain awareness in Byron, generally speaking, that you don’t really get in a lot of places in Australia, environmental, social and so on – they see a bigger picture, and I think Patagonia really fits into that because the product is so heavily based around responsibility, both environmentally and socially.” More than just a surf store though, Patagonia offers men’s and women’s clothing for a wider range of tastes and applications. No garish colours are on display, no latest trends pursued. Patagonia has always walked it’s own path, often through the availability or ethics of fabrics and designs, and through this has developed it’s own style; subtle, functional, simple, and all with a fundamental awareness of the planet and its many creatures. As Patagonia Byron Bay store manager and former Patagonia Australia distribution licensee and brand manager, Glenn Casey says, “We [Patagonia] have, for many years, aimed to inspire and create a different thinking in a lot of people’s minds about what we can do as a company and what we can give back to people. I think Byron is a beautiful place, I find all of the people here beautiful, I’ve tried to create something beautiful and I hope you come in and enjoy it.” Patagonia Byron Bay is now open at 58, Jonson Street, between Commonwealth Bank and the Byronian. Go take a peak… – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Nov 6, 2013 All Photos (except Yvon Chouinard portrait): ©SubCutanea

Surf festivals celebrate the very best of the sport’s exponents, allowing the general public a unique, first-hand perspective of the phenomenal levels of skill to which surfing has been taken. All eyes strain to the ocean, distinguishing competitors by their fluorescent rashies and marveling at their superhuman talent. Businesses pour sponsorship dollars into self-promotion, prize money and raising the profiles of their stable of athletes while groupies clamour like hungry gulls for signatures and snapshots. This is the formula that was so vehemently stricken from the drawing board when Mike Jahn, Vanessa Thompson and James McMillan first began planning of the Byron Bay Surf Festival. The first glaringly obvious factor when you browse through the extensive list of the festival’s schedule is its almost complete lack of contests. In fact, waterborne activities are almost entirely absent, certainly in the vast minority, and are interspersed with art shows, music events, craft markets and workshops ranging from handplane making to pilates and yoga classes. ‘Surf Culture Now’ proclaims the festival’s colourful poster, and that is precisely what Byron Bay Surf Festival is all about. It isn’t ripping waves, point-scores, heats and buzzers. It’s about the life that we, the global tribe of surfers, immerse ourselves in no less fervently than in the ocean that brings us such pleasure. Jahn, Thompson and McMillan have put a great deal of thought, not to mention countless hours of effort, energy and stress, into creating a consummate celebration of the diverse paradigm of surf culture. Bringing artists, craftsmen and women, surfers, musicians, educators, filmmakers and many more individuals together for the three-day event, the Byron Bay Surf Festival illuminates the town, from Watego’s Beach to Belongil, leaving barely a single venue unattended. Many local businesses are welcomed onto the band wagon, organising their own independent events to coincide with the festivities and the variety of activities, markets and crafts are such that even the most unsurfy types become caught up in the weekend’s stoke. It would almost be more appropriate to call it Byron Bay Festival of Oceanic Influence and Enjoyment. The third annual Byron Bay Surf Festival has, as with its 2012 counterpart, swollen four-fold. That expansion has come in size and scale, the number of visitors and events, the renown and reputation, but most noticeably, it has come in its awareness and maturity. This was evident on many levels, from giving thanks and celebration to the local Arakwal people to talks on gender quality in surfing. “I’ve been wanting to include the Arakwal and Bundjalung people for the last few of years but it never really happened,” says Jahn. “We are all passing through the land of the aboriginal people, so it is very important to acknowledge the ones who have looked after the lands and the ocean for a very long time. Newer generations have managed to destroy the environment very quickly, so it’s very important to bring people back to that sense of caretaking.” A blustery and overcast Friday evening kept raindrops at bay long enough for the festival’s opening ceremony and presentation of the latest surf movie by Californian, Jason Baffa, Bella Vita, introduced by the film’s co stars, Lauren Hill and Dave Rastovich. Adelaide’s psychadelic rocksters, Wolf & Cub, blew the doors off the Beach Hotel, leaving none in any doubt that the festival had landed. But this wasn’t a weekend directed to specific demographics. Jumping the gun by a day, local legend and linchpin in the evolution of surfing, Bob McTavish, proudly presented his latest literary documentation of surfing’s past, More Stoked. Incorporating art, craft and food market the length of Byron’s Main Beach, locals and visitors alike flooded the tipis, tents and stalls in the thousands, absorbing the history, diversity and camaraderie shared by all. “We wanted to create more of a festival vibe and pull together the elements that were perhaps a little spread out in previous years,” says Jahn. “On Saturday, the aim at Main Beach was to create something very unique that Byron hasn’t seen before, to really convey the idea surf culture to people in one spot.” As if to highlight the disparity between this and a more conventional surf festival, event co-founder James McMillan hosted a discussion at the Byron Community Centre entitled ‘State Of The Art’. Based on an essay in his 2005 book, Blue Yonder, McMillan invited Rusty Miller, Beau Young and Derek Hynde to reflect upon the oxymoron that is the commercialism of surfing, a subtle two-fingered salute to preconceptions and peers. “Byron has always been a really good place [for such an event]” says long-time Byron resident, Rusty Miller. “We don’t have a Quiksilver Pro here, or anything similar, and we won’t.” Affirming the strength of the festival’s independence of the more commercial genre, Derek Hynde reflected that “with a complete embrace of what people experience in this weekend, they can carry that message forth. If it’s just something to do for three days before returning to normality, then perhaps not so much, but if they are doing it for themselves and applying themselves – that’s what I’d like to think can happen from this.” One of the largest celebrities of this year’s festival was Californian ex-pro surfer Keith Malloy, though his admirable humility would beg to differ. All too familiar with the circus of the professional competition scene, Malloy could be forgiven for showcasing a new-release, high performance shortboard film, complete with exorbitant budget through excessive sponsorship and a high-octane soundtrack to compliment. But, befitting the festival’s ethos, he brought with him instead Come Hell Or High Water, and its accompanying photo-book, Plight Of The Torpedo People. This duet of visual indulgence is completely surfboard-free, focussing on the entirely non-commercial discipline of bodysurfing. “I came here to talk about bodysurfing and my book and I feel that fits right along with the festival because it offers so many alternative boards and crafts – it just seems like a real healthy take on surfing – and that goes hand in hand with bodysurfing. A lot of times, you go to festivals and things and all you want to do is get out of there, but for me, I’ve loved every aspect of this festival.” The final day of the festival brought clear skies, the gentlest breath of an offshore wind and, unlike almost every single day of the two months leading up to the festival, perfect little sliders at the day’s venue of Watego’s Beach. It were as if some greater power had been listening, staving off the advancing weather systems, embracing the bay in protection for the event. Bodysurfers abound, tandem surfers impressed, Corona enhanced the ethos of camaraderie for the $1,000 Party Wave Invitational and Dave Rastovich embodied absolute stoke on the mighty board of kings, the 16-foot, solid timber, finless olo. Live music graced the airwaves, while all were invited into the ocean’s waves. This was not an elitist display of surfing prowess, there was no right or wrong craft or style or ability. This was the very definition of the aloha spirit, a union of all ages, genders and preferences, bound solely by a love of the ocean and the culture it inspires. “This has probably been the best two days of my entire life” frothed eternal grommet, Tom Wegener. “Yesterday we were helping people make wooden bellyboards and today we’ve come down to the beach and I see all the boards that we made yesterday in the water. “This not being a contest, the pressure’s off – you don’t need good surf – and I find that to be a really relaxing. It’s nice to not have to worry about showing up for a heat – I don’t want to surf in a heat, I want to share a beer with 200 of my best friends!” And that is it in a nutshell: sharing a beer – or a wave – with friends. After all, isn’t that really what surfing’s about? Not heat scores or wave counts, who can get the biggest or best or most. It’s not about localism or surf rage – these things were never a part of why we first paddled out. “The Byron Bay Surf Festival is definitely pointing the way for surfing to go,” says Wegener, “non-competition, all sorts of craft in the water and a lot of intellectual ability. A contest is a contest, with very nominal intellectual stimulation, but the Byron festival is full of it. We’re all talking about ideas, different projects, different board shapes, different events – there’s so much to it. There’s even an ecological side to it, using the wooden surfboards made from locally grown paulownia – it’s dynamic and exciting.” While this aspect of surfing, this underlying richness to the global surf community, has always been and will always endure, to illuminate this within the parameters of a festival is an incredible feat, testament to the hard work, passion and love flooded upon the project by Jahn, Thompson and McMillan. “Jack McCoy gave me some incredible feedback,” reports Jahn. “He said, ‘you guys have achieved something that’s very, very special and unique – you have given the aloha that you hold in your heart back to the community.’ He gave me a hug on Sunday and said, ‘this was the most amazing festival I’ve ever been to, don’t let them take it away from you.’” – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Nov 3, 2013 All Photos: ©SubCutanea

There is a certain air of magic surrounding the Woodford Folk Festival. It doesn’t boast the A-Grade international acts of other music festivals, it isn’t conveniently located in any of our major cities (or any minor ones, for that matter), and the usual ‘ get loose and party’ mentality of festival revelers is noticeably frowned upon. But Woodford is, by each and everyone lucky enough to have witnessed one of the 27 years it has celebrated, one of the most memorable festival experiences around. Established back in 1987, having evolved from the Maleny Folk Festival, Woodford is nestled in a wooded valley that evokes images of Tolkien-esque adventures and fairytale characters. Indeed, the ecologically-minded event directors and founders have encouraged this, respecting the land of the Jinibara People on which it takes place every year and planting over 100,000 trees on the site. Fairy lights and Chinese lanterns festoon the arboreal dell, illuminating the winding pathways as they snake through the evanescent village, crossing bamboo bridges, passing evolving artworks, connecting the network of stages and stalls in a miasma of sights, sounds and smells. “There weren’t many festivals around in 1987,” recalls festival director and co-founder, Bill Hauritz, “particularly the type of event that we did (isolated and focused upon experience as much as music). The festivals at the time seemed to be held in townships or cities at individual venues.” Folk music, as Hauritz points out, has always been at the forefront of protest movements and alternative thinking. From inception, the festival has held a standpoint of activism. “There was always a strong sense of responsibility towards the environment and the ongoing message, even as early as the ‘80s, of climate change. When we bought the land at Woodford, we became more conscious that we were now caretakers of a block of land and could therefore now get our hands dirty, rather than just sing about it.” The event organisers go to great lengths to ensure the underlying message of the festival is one of harmony: with the landscape, the environment, the planet and each other. Local spring water is sold throughout the venue but, unlike the majority of such events, one is encouraged to refill sustainable bottles, rather than purchasing plastic. Food is presented on bamboo or recycled paper products, to be eaten with wooden cutlery and stallholders are required to fulfill specific criteria of ethics and conditions, including a focus on locally made products, stall decoration and refusal of ‘offensive’ items, which, distinctively, include plastic toys and glow products. Having so many people in a remote location is always going to raise environmental issues. But Bill and his team are pro-active in this far above and beyond the conventional festival mindset: “I think the little issues that we first had have turned into big issues with the expansion of the festival. We have worked hard to reduce and recycle. We have got a very high recycle rate and we’re very careful about what plastic bottles our stallholders use so that they can be recycled. But, you know, that’s still a lot of plastic bottles. We’d love to move to a non-plastic world, but it’s so difficult because we keep hearing such things as the inefficiency and damage caused by glass recycling and so on.” Continually expanding, Woodford retains the feeling of a family reunion or, at the very least, a gathering of like-minded people. Charities, NGO’s and alternative living are integral to the event and patrons are able to share ideas, unite and become educated in a lifestyle that isn’t necessarily socially accepted or available. “We’ve always had an incredibly responsible and wonderful patronage,” gushes Bill proudly, yet humbly. “I think there’s a whole stack of people out there in the world who are well educated, they want an experience and they want to go out and have a good time in an atmosphere that’s friendly, that’s clean and wholesome without it being militaristic in that sense. I don’t think we’ve scratched the surface in that respect. I think there’s a lot of people at home who really want to get away from the television but are not quite sure where to go or how to do it.” For those people, Woodfordia is the place and it is the way. For one week of the year, they are able to live the life they wish for the world: sustainable, harmonious, compassionate and conscientious, all seamlessly interwoven with the performers’ exceptional talent and entertainment. And, as more and more people connect with the Woodford philosophy, Bill is holding true to his original concept, maintaining the magic of the festival. “The success [of this event] has been a shock to us. We’ve always been a little bit scared of success and have had to face up to the growth. We’ve concentrated all of our energy into creating a festival experience and I think the overall view we have of culture is that it doesn’t just belong to traditional folkies, but it’s across the arts and the music and culture of all people. So we developed a festival in which music is as much a part of the relevance as artists, poets, writers…literally anyone who is expressing the views and the feelings of us all, as ordinary people. That philosophy has underpinned the success of the festival and created an experience in the festival.” There is a moment in the seven-day event that occurs each and every year that perfectly encapsulates its ideologies. Of the 160-odd hours it spans, three short minutes are so profound as to be the core of a Woodford experience. On December 31st, half an hour before midnight, bells sound across the venue. Candles have already been distributed to every patron and, as the resonant chimes reverberate through the enclave, they are asked to share the light of hope, change and positivity and take three minutes to reflect on their past year and visualize their future. As one body, shoulder to shoulder, they take a moment alone, of introspection, compassion and unity, manifesting positivity for themselves, their loved ones and this beautiful world in which we live. This is Woodford. – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Nov 3, 2013

Imagine, if you will, kissing your loved ones goodbye and taking to the high seas. Now imagine that the wide blue yonder that lays before you isn’t the Tasman or a coast-hugging jaunt from Byron to Sydney but the planet’s largest expanse of water, the mighty Pacific. Add to this the fact that your quest is not a two-week sojourn but a massive 178 days of being tossed and turned, and not on a modern yacht with GPS, working toilet, comfortable bunks and a fully equipped galley, but on nine huge balsa logs bound together only by wooden pegs and sisal ropes and offering nothing but the most rudimentary of comforts and equipment. And, to cap it all off, if this unfathomable feat of imagination has not already put your brain into meltdown, imagine, as the final kick to the groin, that your basic food supplies run out a little over half way through your voyage but finally, after this superhuman feat of endurance, you arrive in – wait for it – Ballina. In 1973, this was the prospect that faced the 12-strong crew of Las Balsas, three 50-foot craft – recreations of early 16th century vessels – that set off on an 8,600 mile voyage from Ecuador to Australia, the only trans Pacific journey of its kind in recent history. Mirroring, in many ways, the similar expedition by Thor Heyerdahl and the crew of Kon Tiki, the Las Balsas mission was, despite taking place two decades later and not gaining anywhere near as much notoriety, far more impressive. Close to twice as long in both time and distance, the epic odyssey defies logic, common sense and any sense of self-preservation. So why would anyone in their right minds consider such a life-threatening quest? Expedition leader, Vital Alsar, wanted to prove that ancient civilizations had a profound understanding of ocean currents, enough to navigate on a global scale between islands and countries. But in addition to this mildly suicidal pursuit of scientific research, he wanted to prove that his single-craft journey of three years previous had not been simply a lucky break. That’s right, this guy was so tenacious, so set on his idea, so downright loco that he actually made the voyage twice! Alsar was a Spaniard, but his crew consisted of Americans and Canadians, Mexicans, Chileans, an Ecuadorian and a Frenchman. While their phenomenal story is quite spectacular, its makings of a Hollywood script do not end here. Alsar, by way of funding and insurance for his trip approached an artist and fellow Spaniard to paint a canvas sail and, should times get hard, a means of barter for the crew. That artist’s name: Salvador Dali. Obligingly, Dali painted the canvas, the same cloth which then was opened to the winds of both climate and fate and propelled one of the three craft throughout the near-9,000 mile journey. Arriving in Ballina, starving, bereft and clothed in nothing but rags, the crew elected to use the five-foot by six-foot canvas for its intended purpose, trading it in for room and board with Laurie Wood, then owner of the town’s Suntori Motel. A fascinating little sideline to the tale, but here’s the twist: since that time, neither Laurie Wood nor the potentially priceless Dali canvas have ever been seen again. On arrival, one of the craft had almost completely disintegrated, but the other two remain to this day, amalgamated into a single vessel, and are on display at Ballina’s Naval and Maritime Museum, built specifically for the purpose by local council. In conjunction with the inaugural Ballina Prawn Festival, the town will be celebrating the 40th anniversary of this astounding feat, a story intwined in our community yet all but unrecognised locally, nationally or internationally. Paying homage to the crafts, their incredible story and the twelve brave souls who took to the ocean knowing only too well that they may never return, the Ballina Prawn Festival will be holding DIY raft building competitions and races, a model raft show and arts exhibition, free screenings of the Las Balsas documentary and, in testament to the starting point of the voyage, Ecuadorian-inspired dance classes. The remaining Las Balsas raft is housed at: Ballina Naval and Maritime Museum, Regatta Avenue, Ballina – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Nov 2, 2013

If you’re reading this, I can almost guarantee you are at the very pinnacle of living.

Music festivals bring together people from all walks of life, a fusion of cultures, backgrounds and personal nuances bound by a love for the rhythm. Some address specific genres or music, others, such as Splendour In The Grass, diversify, with a more eclectic array of musical methodologies in their lineups. But to even allude to these events in reference to the Boomerang Festival would be to miss all but the most superficial aspects of this extraordinary experience. It had the draw cards, names of renown such as Thelma Plumb, Busby Marou, Casey Donovan and The Medics. It had the stalls, the crowds and location of a more conventional event. But where Boomerang differed was not in the tangible aspects, the attractions daubed on flyers, the renown of the artists or, especially given its inaugural status, the festival’s repute. In fact, Boomerang’s most notable and redeeming idiosyncrasy was beyond the planning, the vision, even the expectations of the event’s organisers. Boomerang’s uniqueness lay in its unspoken message, shared in a language so foreign to many but understood by all. For the festival’s invitees, such as Gurrumul Yunupingu and Archie Roach, as well as the dance performers from The Torres Strait Islands, Far North Queensland and the local Arakwal people, it was a message passed on through generations, intrinsic to their beliefs and perspectives. But to the regular ticket holder it was something entirely new. The average Australian, indeed the average human, is aware of other cultures. Australians have been taught about the country’s first people, their ways, their stories and their history, but never have they been connected to it, immersed in it and so enveloped by it as to actually begin to understand it. “The level of ignorance in non-indigenous Australians of indigenous culture is just astounding,” reflects Boomerang guest speaker and stalwart indigenous rights activist, George Negus. “To come and have a weekend like this where there’s music, there’s dance, there’s art – it’s the mixing of people. It’s what Dr Yunupingu called two-way. If we’re going to improve relations with our indigenous brothers, it has got to be a two way process. We have got so much to learn from them it’s ridiculous, but we’re so patronising to them on occasion, thinking that we can teach them things and they can’t teach us anything. But that’s ridiculous – they’ve been around a lot longer than us.” Our often conceited nature views indigenous culture from around the world as interesting. We may watch the dances of tribes and nations with curiosity and the utmost respect, but it is always from behind the barrier, the other side of the glass or even via that conduit of ignorance and disassociation, the television. An energy flowed throughout the long weekend of unity. It wasn’t that any could be naive enough to think that this was a landmark event of repatriation – the apology so desperately needed for our nation’s healing – but, with the acceptance and sharing of the indigenous cultures represented and the humility with which it was witnessed, the slightest glimmer of hope began to shine through the cracks of society. “It’s a beautiful opportunity to share our traditional culture with everybody,” observes Malu Kiai Mura Buai Dance Troupe matriarch, Aunty Trish. “We first established our family dance team at World Expo ’88 and so our children have all grown up within the team and the culture is passed on from generation to generation. We teach them the respect for other cultures as well as our own and themselves. Meeting other cultures and getting to know their ways as well, it’s just a two-way street really. It’s really good for our children and, being a multi-cultural country now, it’s beautiful to know one another’s traditions.” Local celebrated musician Xavier Rudd has long been recognised for his outspoken stance on the need for respect and reunification of our people and the acknowledgement of this two-way dialogue. He has connected far deeper than most with Australia’s indigenous family and has been a beacon of light for the cause. Joined on the Boomerang Festival’s main stage by Shellie Morris, Jeff McMullen and clan leader of North East Arnhem Land’s Dhurrili Nation, Dr Dijiniyini Gondarra, he helped share the vision of One Love, a country and a planet with a singular bond. Through song, he illuminated this message, every single member of the audience, regardless of wealth, creed or genetic predisposition was overwhelmed, rising to its feet as one mob to share this vision of hope, that we must not let our past dictate our future, that we are one people across the world and that discrimination must be eradicated from our society. This permeated every dimension of the festival, from Ernie Dingo’s hilarious quips between musical acts to the exquisite lyrics in native dialect of Gurrumul, from the TV celebrity of the Move It Mob Style crew to the littlest member of the Torres Strait Island’s Malu Kiai Mura Buai Dance Troupe who captured the hearts of everyone lucky enough to witness his amazing talent. This little man, at the tender age of 5, did more alone for the recognition of Torres Strait Islanders in one weekend than our politicians have done in the last 50 years. “I think we’ve got a long way to go,” says Negus. “There’s a lot of things about the attitude of governments towards indigenous people in this country that are undemocratic, almost racist on occasion. When I hear politicians talking about the development that needs to be done for indigenous Australians I keep hearing about economic development and independence. I don’t hear much about preserving their culture and I don’t think my indigenous friends would be very pleased about that because you have to know these people to know how much country and culture means to them. A lot of things that Tony Abbott says I know are well-meaning, but I think he completely misses the point.” This wasn’t a Glastonbury, a Woodstock or a Big Day Out. Boomerang could be likened more to the anti-Vietnam or bra burning demonstrations of the mid ’60s or the swathe of Occupy events that have recently been taking over our global centres of power. Admittedly, Boomerang accomplished this on a far less grandiose scale, not amounting to the profundity of these memorable events, but every moment of the long weekend spent on the site that is home to the Bluesfest gave a sense of witnessing the first minute sparks of the dawn of a new future. “It’s been fantastic and I hope it goes ahead for a few years to come,” said Ernie Dingo. “We’ve got the Bluesfest, now I hope this is going to become the Blacksfest! Bugger the politics – if you get a whole bunch of people together to experience an event like this, that’s the main thing.” Festival producer, Peter Noble, has become a philanthropist. Producer of the annual Byron Bay Bluesfest, Noble’s interest and focus has been in musical events. But, by his own admission, Boomerang was something entirely different, something worth fighting for and something, he was thrilled to announce, that will continue for years to come. We all have a voice, we all have our own cultures and beliefs and we all have our own histories. But it’s time to realise that, whoever we are, wherever we came from, all of our blood is red – we are one family the world over. Photo’s Kirra Pendergast & Tommy Leitch – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Oct 10, 2013 All Photos: ©Kirra Pendergast / SubCutanea

Whether you are a Byron resident or have just passed through our little town, chances are you’ve seen Adam Shostak. The problem, with which Adam battles every single working day, is that, though you might have seen him, you haven’t really seen him. Adam is a tin-rattler, a change collector, an asker of funds and, whether we care to admit it or not, we are all guilty at turning blind eyes to such admirable citizens. Adam Shostak is the fundraising co-ordinator of Byron Shire’s chapter of Sea Shepherd. He spends his entirely voluntary days collecting money on street corners and at markets and peddling the distinct, black and white, Jolly Roger-adorned Sea Shepherd merchandise. Not a single cent goes into his pocket and rarely an ounce of praise comes his way. Nevertheless, Adam is at it from sun up to sun down, rain or shine, gleaning funds for the charity for which he is so passionate. The son of Polish parents, Adam emigrated to Australia in the late 1940s. Working hard to gain a foothold in Australia’s economy, Mr and Mrs Shostak established a chain of milk bars, a modest empire which Adam was to inherit. But it wasn’t the life he had chosen. Selling up and semi retiring on the small profits, he migrated north to the Shire and developed a passion for activism. “I got into the environmental movement, rain forests at first, then sand mining and that sort of stuff,” Adam reflects. “I tried to do other things, like Coal Seam Gas, state forest conservation…there’s so many issues going on around here that I found my energies were dissipated too much. I decided that I’d stick to one thing. Then the whales called me and I’ve been working for Sea Shepherd ever since, protecting the defenceless whales from the harpoons. This is about the tenth year now and this will be my sixth year on the streets in direct action, fund raising to keep the ships fuelled, fed, equipped and so on.” Working in this area has obviously given him a close connection with the ocean and an attachment to the wealth of marine life, including humpback whales and dolphins, that we are so blessed with. But Adam has also found the people to be exceptional in assisting his work: “I think the Byron Bubble is unique to Australia, with so many alternative-thinking people living around here, and they support us with their hard-earned cash, which is amazing. Hopefully it will spread from here, become infectious, viral, and people will start standing up for the ocean and understanding the plight of the oceans and the need for every single person to do a little bit. There’s still the people who live in denial and they don’t understand what’s happening in the oceans. But, generally speaking, one out of ten people are open and support us. “Unlike some other organizations who take your money and you hardly see any work for it, you can see Sea Shepherd actually going out and interfering with the whole process of killing these defenceless, voiceless beings.” But despite Byron being ‘easy pickings’ and, by his own admission, one of the easiest places to raise funds and awareness through its conscientious population and steady stream of holiday makers, Adam’s job is hard yakka. Three or four eight-hour days a week on the streets or at the regional markets, two or three counting stock, placing orders, counting, bagging and banking the masses of change he receives and catching up on emails and Facebook posts leave very little downtime for Adam. It’s no wonder his hair’s gone grey! Although Adam has helped resupplying Sea Shepherd’s humble fleet, he is, at 74 years young, beyond weeks and months afloat: “I’ve supplied ships and helped with this and that, but I’m too old to be a sea person and I don’t want to get in the way. So it’s much better for young people to take my place there, which I’m quite happy about. I do get onboard whenever I can and it’s always amazing meeting the crew. They’re the most wonderful people you could ever meet. They give up their lives, they’re prepared to die for their cause – they’re extraordinary people to be amongst and I always come out really enlightened and uplifted from their presence.” With three children and seven grandchildren, Adam has plenty of family to represent him and carry the mantle where his aging, yet sprightly, limbs may not carry him. But with the expansion of Sea Shepherd ever increasing, it’s possible that he may not be needed on his street corners and market stalls for too many more years. “Hopefully in the next couple of years, we won’t need to be out begging people for money. We’re trying to get a direct-action campaign established where people sign up and donate monthly, so hopefully that will take care of the money situation. “But, until that happens, I’ll be here until the day I die…” The next time you hear a ringing in your ears, reach into your pocket. It might not be the unwelcome return of your tinnitus problem, but Adam and his amazing troupe of volunteers offering you a chance to make a change with your change. For more information on the fantastic work done by Sea Shepherd, visit www.seashepherd.org.au – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Sep 25, 2013 Opening Portrait: ©Kirra Pendergast

So apparently I’m insane. Well, insane is maybe a little too strong a term, but definitely drastically eccentric. Funny – I thought I was a pretty grounded individual running my own journalism-slash-media business, not bumming off taxpayers, thinking globally, acting locally and generally being a pretty good citizen. Some people have even begun to abuse me, aggressively questioning my motives before discovering the actual purpose of my day’s outing and becoming somewhat perplexed, if not entirely flabbergasted. So where’s this ramble going? For as long as I can remember, I’ve been environmentally and compassionately aware, far beyond what my nonetheless wonderful parents taught me. When I was 15 I got a part time job solely so that I could buy my own groceries and become vegetarian (my mum’s argument was that she couldn’t afford the extra cost and didn’t want to cook two meals). I would boycott the family tradition of betting on the Melbourne Cup, citing animal rights and the gross abuse and negligence displayed by the industry. I all but ostracised myself from friends and family in protest of what I saw as their unethical ways. And I guess it all became a bit of a habit. Litter has always frustrated me, the shear arrogance and ignorance of those people who discard litter seemingly with the opinion that it vaporises the instant it leaves their hand. I have never been able to understand their mentality. I have run after ‘tossers’, their trash in my hand, and eagerly and excitedly proclaimed, “I’m so glad I caught you, you dropped this. I’d hate for you to lose it!” So a couple of years ago I rescued a dog. Okay, I didn’t run into a burning building after him or plunge into shark-infested waters to haul his bedraggled body back to dry land, but I did my bit for lessening the problem of strays. So now I had a beach buddy – my first step on the road to insanity. Our good council are kind and thoughtful enough to provide rolls of biodegradable doggie bags with which to collect our canines’ land mines and pretty soon I expanded my collecting from my dog’s faecal offerings to the swathe of trash that littered the surrounding beaches, accelerating my journey to the looney bin. But this wasn’t enough. The pocket-sized packages weren’t nearly capacious enough to contain the wealth of trash I was collecting, so I began taking first shopping bags with me and then extra large bin bags. Unfortunately for my little pooch, this was the demise of the puppy walks. With my focus on garbage I could no longer throw balls, play chase or spare time and attention on my canine companion. I was already getting odd looks, but the final stitch in the straight-jacket came when I realised I had to separate the two outings: pup would get a walk in the morning, litter would be my quarry in the afternoon. So now, at least once a fortnight, I target a different stretch of beach and go completely loco. A few weekends ago it was Wategos. This happened to coincide with a big clean-up on Byron’s Main Beach. Friends told me they’d see me there because, of course, this litter-picking fanatic was going to be at such an orchestrated event. But this was my response: if everyone’s focussing on Main Beach, who’s going to look after the other beaches? So, bags in hand, I tackled the ‘pristine’ little bay of the nouveau riche and glitterati on my lonesome. Eight bags – plus three loads of oversized garbage that wouldn’t fit. Eight bags – from shower block to cape. Eight extra large, industrial-sized garbage bags from this exquisite little cove. There was so much trash, in fact, that I ran out of bags and had to go and see a very lovely, very obliging waitress at Rays Restaurant to ask if she could provide me with more. And this isn’t a unique haul: Brunswick, Ocean Shores, Belongil, Main Beach, the lighthouse walk, Tallows – all I have trawled and all have provided an equally voluminous plunder. Our beaches, of which we are so proud, are disgusting! But here’s the thing that really perplexes me: it’s not the dropping of litter in the first place – this can be accounted for by socially indoctrinated blindness. It’s not the accumulation – much is jetsam, washed in from some far shore or vessel by the ocean’s ebb and flow. It is that people look upon me as an eccentric nut job, a screw-loose weirdo doing something so unfathomably strange that they just can’t comprehend it. People ask me what I’m doing, fair enough, but then they ask me why I am doing it. Why would I clean up our environment? Why would I prevent the suffocation of turtles, the strangulation of seabirds and the pollution of marine life? Why would I do my little part in this wonderful world to stop man’s continual impact on nature’s beauty? Hmmm…well, gosh, I just don’t know. Some have even approached me, fired up and ready to fly, thinking I-have-no-idea-what and questioned me accusingly as to what the hell I’m up to. I have teeth marks permanently embedded in my lower lip from a bid to not retaliate. I guess they believe I’m stealing sand, hoarding sea shells or filling my bin bag with – ummm – something illegal? But, for all their arrogance and self-righteousness, they have not one single fragment of garbage in their empty, finger-pointing hands. Is it Clean Up Australia Day? Hey, how about Clean Up Planet Life… Most of us are blessed with two working eyes, two functioning hands and the ability to make them communicate. Unfortunately, many of us lack a conscience. But this isn’t an accusatory rant and, if you have read this far, I offer my sincerest gratitude. When I’m on my little litter missions and people strike up conversation I always say the same thing: “Thank you, with all my heart, for noticing what I am doing.” It is not that people need to be berated for their bad actions or negligence – abuse is rarely a good means of persuasion – it is that we need to remove our blinkers, reverse the blindness that society has created and recognise litter as ours, all of ours, no matter what it is or where it came from. I guess that’s a metaphor for many a planetary problem… A great guy by the name of Tim set up an organisation called Take 3 and I urge you to check it out (www.take3.org.au). His method is not to tell people to pick up everything – in our western mentality, that’s not our responsibility and far too much like hard work. It is to take three pieces of trash with you whenever you leave the beach or any natural environment. Just three little pieces, no more – it’s a small ask, so easily accomplishable, but it changes our awareness, opens our eyes to the problem and admits our responsibility, as an entire species, to the planet’s cleanliness. So, if this little tale is an admission of insanity then call me cuckoo and check me in – I’m an absolute fruit-loop. I just hope it’s contagious. NB: If you have seen me doing my crazy thing on the beach, thank you. Thank you for noticing, for actually seeing. If you have said something to me, stopped and found out why I do what I do, you have my utter and endless gratitude – YOU are making the difference. Thank you. This story has been submitted by someone who cares, and wishes to remain anonymous – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Sep 10, 2013

Through a crackly line from somewhere in the depths of the bustling Chilean capital, Quique Neira’s smooth, Hispanic voice emerges from my telephone. He is in the grips of a whirlwind, he declares, briefly returning to his hometown of Santiago after a north-to-south tour of Mexico, a host of gigs in Peru and several stops in his homeland. And it’s not stopping there. Album promotions, interviews, a constant and steady stream of performance dates, all punctuated by his first ever trip to Australia for the inaugural Boomerang Festival are all adding to an exciting and dynamic latter-2013. “When I was a kid, just starting out in music, I would never have imagined that I’d be travelling to Australia to perform”, Quique informs me. “I’m so excited!” Quique Neira was born in the poorer districts of Santiago. His youth was spent with a heavy influence of traditional music and culture in the oppressive environment of a dictatorship. “I started making music in a generation that had just emerged from some incredibly tough political times, so it was very difficult,” he reflects of his early steps in the industry. “But, although this was very hard, a real struggle living under this dictatorship, I came out of this reality and it made up my state of consciousness and my beliefs.” Unlike the Latin American folk stylings of traditional Chilean music, Quique chose reggae as his modus operandi, his genre of choice. Introduced to Bob Marley in the mid‘80s, he recognized immediately the parallels between the theme of Marley’s lyrics and his own life. “I discovered reggae right at the time of a lot of protests against our government. Back in those days, I was listening to many Chilean musicians who sang about this unfair situation. I remember, in 1987, I listened to Bob Marley’s ‘Get Up, Stand Up’ and at that moment, I realized that Bob Marley was in exactly the same situation. The only difference was that he was in the Caribbean and my reality was South America. It made me realize that I could take this style of music, and make reggae in Spanish.” Despite not being an immediate representation of his nation’s cultural music heritage, Quique’s Jamaican influence lends itself perfectly to a reflection of Chile’s people and their problems. And although taking his primary inspiration from the Caribbean, he recognizes that, without a childhood steeped in the sounds of his country’s leading musical icons, his would be a very different style. “In some ways, all musicians are the conclusions of all the things we hear in our entire life. We synthesise everything that we hear, and from that platform we make new music. I do have a lot of Chilean influence in my music, unconsciously maybe, but you can hear it. But my music has everything. You can hear a lot of rock n’ roll, a lot of blues. “It’s so important to keep that consciousness alive [with events such as the Boomerang Festival].” As with many indigenous musicians around the world, Quique Neira has based his style very much on a contemporary genre. But, also just like his peers, he is very proud of his heritage and quick to admit its profound influence upon his musical career. “In the last ten years, I think that Latin reggae has found it’s own goal. It has become its own poetry.” The Boomerang Festival brings together the more traditional sounds and perspectives of this culture – this is its fundamental intention. But beyond that, and just as strongly, it will unify the traditional and the contemporary, showcasing indigenous artists with a more mainstream slant on their work. Music is organic, continually evolving and finding inspiration through culture, heritage and mass media alike. To preserve the music of the past is to make the music of the future. – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Sep 7, 2013

Thelma Plum is the new girl on the Australian music scene. Beautiful, fresh-faced, a devastatingly talented songwriter and guitarist and with a delicate voice that makes your most desperate woes simply ebb away, she is what showbiz pundits would classify ‘a complete package’. She also happens to be Aboriginal. Winner of this year’s National Indigenous Music Awards (NIMA) and the indigenous category of the Queensland Music Awards (QMA), Thelma Plum is definitely on a roll. But is it because she is both exceptionally talented and Aboriginal? Listening to her music, knowing that she is barely shy of her 18th birthday and seeing this impressive brace of awards already gracing her resume, it takes little to see that her heritage, while cherished and proudly proclaimed, has little to do with her success. “I think the media and the public think, ‘she’s an indigenous artist, she’s aboriginal so she must have clapsticks and play tribal music’” she reflects. “Well, no – I’m just a songwriter. I’m also Aboriginal but, just because my music isn’t traditional, it doesn’t make it any less indigenous. I think it’s just a perception and it’s not at all like that. We have beautiful music made by indigenous people, like Busby Marou, and you could almost mistake them for being from Nashville or somewhere, but it’s still indigenous music. “It’s about the perception of what people think Aboriginal music ‘should’ sound like, but it shouldn’t really sound like anything other than whatever you want it to sound like because you’re a songwriter, just like any other songwriter.” It is a curious concept to address. After all, nobody pays the slightest attention to the heritage of artists such as Julia Stone, Missy Higgins or Sarah Blasko. Traditional music has, however, always played a large part in Plum’s life, her parents were avid music lovers and her brother is a traditional Aboriginal dancer. But she sees her place in the stratosphere of musical influence as one of uniting cultures. Not bringing traditional indigenous music to a contemporary listener – after all, why should an Austrian musician try to break onto the music scene by emulating the work of Mozart – but to show both sides as part of the same whole. She writes the songs and plays the music she chooses to with little direct influence from her heritage. She has received superb acclaim from the national music community, based purely on her skills, but has also been recognised for her part in bringing indigenous talent to mainstream culture. “A lot of people have been really amazingly supportive,”she says. “I think it’s exciting that there is indigenous music that is gaining a lot of attention not for just being indigenous music.” As part of this year’s Boomerang Festival, Plum has been given the unique opportunity to share her music across that great divide. Incorporating some highly traditional music, dance and performance, as well as a wealth of contemporary entertainment, the Boomerang Festival unites indigenous culture from a host of nations with a more mainstream influence and audience. “I think it’s great that we have something [such as the Boomerang Festival] that can showcase so much indigenous talent at one time, so I think it’s pretty special. It’s also a really great way to expose more Aboriginal and Torres Strait artists and bringing it more to mainstream attention, instead of just being in a separate indigenous music world.” Thelma Plum is, without a doubt, a perfect poster girl for this cross-culture movement. She is still a teenager. She is soon to be releasing her second EP, is continuing to gain awards and acclaim across all aspects of the music industry and has a dazzlingly bright future ahead of her and none of this has come about because of her cultural heritage. But, if her genetics mean that she will be performing at this year’s Boomerang Festival alongside a gamut of renowned indigenous talent, such as Gurrumul, Archie Roach, Busby Marou and Shellie Morris, I for one am wrapped she’s a real Australian. The Boomerang Festival takes place on the long weekend of October 4th -6th at Tyagarah Tea Tree Farm. Visit www.boomerangfestival.com.au for further information and bookings. – This article first appeared on Common Ground Australia on Sep 5, 2013