My journey starts with a deep longing for change and the understanding that to radically reduce carbon emissions that are warming our planet and destroying ecosystems, humans must do things differently.
I learnt about global warming in the 1990’s after graduating from the Victorian College of the Arts. Then I performed in and produced several shows raising awareness about the growing destructive impact humans were having on the natural world. In 1997, I joined a performance action at the Kyoto Earth Summit (COP3) where the Kyoto Protocol was agreed to by world leaders. People there really believed that this was the beginning of the end of Global Warming.
Fast forward to 2024, there is growing panic and despair in communities at the lack of meaningful action on Climate Change, as resource wars, destructive weather events, mass extinction, and biodiversity loss accelerate.
Air travel is one of the most intensive uses of fossil fuels that Australians do without much thought. Traversing our vast continent quickly requires air travel and has become the only way to travel for many. While only 8% of global emissions come from transport, after doing a bunch of calculations, I figured out that travel tipped me from being a Climate Leader to a Climate waster.
I have many reasons to travel. I am a child of immigrants and shacked up with an English man, with extensive family and friends in the UK and Europe. My career is built into global cultural systems of intercultural exchange and touring. I am a board member of IETM and have committed to regularly attend board meetings and have other work opportunities that are not available to me in Australia. And I have loved travelling. Crisis is demanding a different course. I am compelled to drastically reduce my emissions, exploring alternatives and help create imagination and new pathways, hopefully inspiring others to rehearse change in their own contexts.
As I keep saying; The Climate Crisis is a cultural crisis. We have known for decades that our actions are driving destruction and yet choose to deny, deflect, and ignore the symptoms, and worse, make weak gestures that seem tio address it without really shifting the course. there is a lot more noise and emissions continue to rise. This green washing behaviour is led by big global Fossil Fuel corporations who have strategically and creatively lied, distracted us, shut down alternatives and shrouded their activities in secrecy since the 1970s. They have artfully built and supported societal infrastructure that keeps us hooked on their products to strategically grows their profits.
So contemporary culture is built within this context of social addictions that we are all chronically hooked on and they use social and cultural forces to make us believe these are desirable, necessary and vital; to the point where we cannot plan our lives without them. Fossil fuels account for 75% of global CO2e emissions. Fossil fuel companies continue to peddle life threatening lifestyles and we are their bitches, gagging for the next 'innovation'. And the very worst of it is that too many people cannot imagine alternative systems or behaviours.
In the last couple of years, I stopped flying in Australia and in 2023 flew in and out of Istanbul from Australia, travelling overland in Europe to save a tonne of carbon. That journey still burned more than 5+ tonnes of CO2e. The United Nations have calculated that everyone on the planet needs to spend less than 2 tonnes of CO2e each year to keep the planet from warming more than 1.5degrees. Australians individually spend an average of between 8 and 15 tonnes each a year, often more. You can read more about it in SAVING A TONNE. With growing plans to transition to renewable energy, the Paris Agreement targets seem to be slipping from our grasp. There is still time and we need to take bold decisive action.
So, this year I have decided to try and travel from Australia to Europe and back again, keeping my CO2e emissions as low as possible. This epic adventure is opportunity to honour people and countries I would otherwise fly over and reflect on all the complex ways we are tied to existing habits that are getting in the way of change. To get there it will take me three and a half weeks, include 3 short flights and a lot of train and bus travel.
For this trip I am attending IETM board and plenary meetings in Sofia,Bulgaria, then producing an event in London - From Creative Practice to Climate Justice Action and supporting Henrietta Baird in her Ngayu Bubu project - exploring family connections and colonial histories in Scotland, then taking a break to see family, all to make good use of the resources required to make this journey.
This is a creative experiment.
Setting off - Day 1-3
So, after weeks of preparation, research and booking buses, trains, hotels and visas, on Monday 13th May I waved goodbye to my beloved partner and Mum at Central station on Gadigal Land and boarded an overnight greyhound bus to Naarm (Melbourne) via Ngunnawal County (Canberra). Bizarrely, the quickest way to Darwn, the most northern Australian city, is to head south first, via Naarm and Adelaide. Its counterintuitive but the services through Brisbane require two nights in Mount Isa, a mining town in North East Queensland where two services don’t connect. So to save time I’m travelling an extra 1000 kilometers.
The bus to Melbourne is an old friend. As a student I moved from Sydney to Melbourne to attend the Victorian College of the Arts and spent many a homesick weekend tripping back to Sydney on overnight buses. I stopped flying within Australia two years ago and have been recently working with Melbourne artists. I have a little routine, on arrival at 6am, still dark, I walk across the CBD and up to the Fitzroy swimming pool to stretch out my body and do some laps. Wandering back to town, lunch with my cousin, a violinist, on her lunch break from rehearsing Tosca for Opera Australia. Then I catch up with Jacob Boehme on the banks of Birrarung ( or known as the Yarra River) as we make further plans with his Elders for idja arts and culture, their new company.
Back on the bus to Kaurna Country, this time a different service because Greyhound, boasting to be the greenest way of travelling across Australia, don’t run Melbourne to Adelaide. These details are important because greyhound offer several great value passes, designed for tourists, to make the journey affordable and I can travel as far as I like for $337 in 7 days. This extra leg costs me a little more. In talking to a driver I learnt that COVID drastically reduced greyhound's services. No one runs to Perth anymore. Where is the public outcry?
On Kaurna Country (Adelaide), I walk to Unley pool and swim, chat to a lifeguard who is preparing to ride by motorbike through central Asia. I spend most of the day at the State library, a favourite haunt in Adelaide, quiet and serene. I catch up with my dear friend Ariella Helfgott and share a wonderful meal as I know food options will be limited on the bus stops up the centre of Australia. We ran into some of Ariella's colleagues (Adelaide is good for incidental connection), also intending to travel this year. In fact so many of my contacts are either travelling now or about to head somewhere overseas. Could it be unconscious 'extinction burst' behaviour, a term used to describe a common phenomena in therapeutic treatment. I learnt about this at drama school when we were becoming aware and trying to stop some of the unique quirks of our own physical habits. The theory goes that when you try to stop an unwanted behavior by no longer reinforcing it, that behavior will reassert itself for a time, and even increases in intensity before it goes away. Or perhaps my mission was tuning me to the problem. I thoughtfully boarded the bus to Arrente Country, Alice Springs, 20 hours away.
Straight to the heart - Day 4/5
Adelaide is a small city and we quickly hit the red dirt and scrub, key indicators of the outback worn by weather and time, stark reminders of the challenges of living remotely. This bus ride passes through some pretty remote towns including Nukunu country (Port Augusta) and Antakirinja Country (Coober Pedy). The food available at the regular stops is mostly processed junk wrapped in startling coloured plastic. Luckily I had eaten and brought healthier snacks.
Many people physically recoil at the idea of long-distance travel, especially on buses. And people travelling this way often don’t have much choice. Aboriginal families make up a large percentage of the travellers on this bus. I meet Lilyana and her neice Dilly, heading home from Adelaide hospital, 15 hours away. This is the reality for people in remote communities and, due to the ongoing impacts of colonisation, Aboriginal people are more likely to have complex health needs. But Lilyana doesn't dream of flying. She wishes there were more services in her community and when forced to travel likes being on Country, seeing it pass by, knowing it's keeping her safe.
The drivers changed in Coober Pedy, a mining town famous for opals and people living underground. It was 1am and a group of us venture off to the bathroom returning to find the bus has vanished. Dilly tells me the drivers are doing a delivery run and we walk a little up the road to find the bus offloading post. Letters have to travel somehow, right? There were some fuelling problems, and the bus runs two hours late. My time on Arrente Country in Alice Springs is cut short. I need to charge up my computer so visit the local library, adjacent to the unofficial bus stop. Getting and maintaining power for devices is an interesting challenge on the road. This is a relatively recent challenge as reliance on multiple devices requires more and more power. Greyhound have handy usb ports and much of the journey is out of range anyway. I reread Nardi Simpson’s book – Song of the Crocodile and the magical ancestoral spirits in the story resonate with the magical landscapes as we speed through red dust, scrubby hills and acres of cloudless blue sky.
The leg from Arrente Counrtry, fondly known as 'Alice' to Larrakia Country (Darwin) goes via Warumungu country (Tennant Creek) gets warmer as we climbed further north. I got a fright when a frog jumped out of the toilet I’d just flushed on the main street of Katharine with fond memories of the Women of the World (WOW) event I’d programmed there in 2016. Katherine marks the point where the traditional lands of the Jawoyn, Dagoman, and Wardaman Aboriginal peoples meet. Like many colonial settled towns in remote Australia, the buildings are a brutal reminder of the instruments of power in the town – police, law courts and shopping malls protected by security. When I was working for WOW I had the honour of working with Jawoyn Elder Lisa Mumbin and learnt a lot about the proud struggle for recognition of Indigenous people in the area. Katherine is about 500km (close by local standards) from the site of the Wave Hill Walk Off – a critical moment in Australian history when on 23 August 1966, 200 Gurindji stockmen, domestic workers and their families initiated strike action at Wave Hill station. Negotiations with the station owners, the international food company Vestey Brothers, broke down, leading to a long dispute. The following year the Australian public voted to give aboriginal and Torres strait island people the same rights as other Australian citizens. Eventually a portion of their homelands were returned to the Gurindji people in 1974 and passing of the first legislation that allowed for First Nations peoples to claim land title if they could prove a traditional relationship to the country. This is critical in the recognition of Land Rights for First Nations people. Care for Country is a core protocol of their culture.
In 2016 the largest consensus of First Nations people gathered at Uluru, the Unesco recognised sacred Rock, on the lands of the Yankunytjatjara and Pitjantjatjara people. There they created the Uluru Statement from the Heart which called for a Voice to Parliament. In November 2023 another referendum in Australia campaigned to give Aboriginal people this Voice to parliament but it was not successful and a devastating result for Indigenous communities. Australia is still grappling with the impacts of this decision, especially when Indigenous knowledges of country are so needed to combat the Climate Crisis. Australia leads the world in Mammal extinction and is forth in overall species extinction. 80% of these species are unique to our bio region. Supporting First Nations people is critical to Climate Action and I am proud to be working with First Nations artists.
Top End - Day 6
I landed in Darwin at 3pm, and had to juggle a zoom call for the IETM Environmental Working Group with colleagues in Denmark while the gorgeous Arts and Climate worker Anna Weeks picked me up and took me to her home on a solar farm in Humpty Doo, about 50km outside Darwin. The regenerated bush, rescued wallaby Ralph and her fabulous family made me feel instantly at home and connected to that wondrous place. Not far from their house is a flood plain, knee deep in water during the intense wet season (November-April), but now its dry and being prepared for a party that I would miss. Damn.
Ann and I talked into the night about what how to transition the arts sector towards Climate Action. She is part of the team leading Darwin Community Arts with equally inspiring Bong Ramilo. Anna led action in 2023 for Fossil Free Arts NT and they successfully won a campaign for Darwin Festival to divest its funding from gas giant Santos. This helped inspire Perth Festival and World Fringe (Perth) to also divest away from fossil fuels. Funding the arts is always a major challenge so these are momentous decisions. We spent time together last year on Creative Australia's Creative Climate Leaders training program, led by Julie's Bicycle. I really admire Anna's passion and commitment.
Next morning I head to Darwin, do some last minute printing of tickets and visas in the cool calm of their state library and head to the harbour for a quick swim before my flight to Bali. Who should I meet there but the very famously fabulous Indigenous performers Elaine Crombie and Guy Simon, up on Larrakia Country to shoot Top End Bub, sequel to the award winning film, Top End Wedding. They wished me well and that felt like a good omen as I launch myself overseas.
My journey across this vast country of so many First Nations nations, known as the colony Australia, was 4640km and took 5 days. I’ll do some more exact calculations about the carbon spent and saved later in the story but in the meantime, if you want to know more about emissions and transport, I recommend our world in data.
And I am doing daily updates on Instagram @pipsterb1999
Next stop Indonesia...
SPOILER ALERT - Final Stats
I used 2 different models to calculate carbon emissions as this is an inexact science.
The Carbon emissions of trip by plane Sydney>Sofia>Budapest>London>Dublin>Sydney (35,564km) = between 5.4tonnes - 6.1 tonnes
Carbon emmissions of 2024 (mostly) overland trip (54,867km) = between 2.8 - 3.4 tonnes.
Emissions reduction is between 38% and 47% of equivalent flight emissions.
Australia has commited to reduce carbon emissions by 43% by 2030 - I am near that target.
I travelled 35% further in kilometres that I would have done by plane.
Time spent - Sydney to Sofia = 25 days, activity in Europe/UK, Dublin to Sydney = 22days.
COST DIFFERENCE
Estimated economy flights costs $3845
Slow travel cost $6207 (including all modes of transport and hotels), a 37% increase.
(NB - Business flights for same journey estimated at $11,702)
This is effort taken to lead change. There are so many benefits!
