Me with event co-host James Lush

I want to say a huge thank you to everybody who came along to the UWA Boat Shed for our fundraising event last night, and contributed to a very successful and memorable evening. We raised about $2,000, and had a tremendous time to boot. It was fantastic to see so many people there, and thanks also to those who joined us for an afterglow event at The Greenhouse in Perth.

I’d like to say a few special thank yous -

James Lush, of course, for donating his time and lending his support to my cause – and asking some real humdingers of questions

A good crowd - in every sense

Rob McSporran and Natalie Joachim of Sea To Summit, for kindly donating of all kinds of essential items for my voyage (freeze dried meals, Smartwool apparel, Jetboil stove, drybags galore etc etc), and for providing the drybags that James gave out as prizes last night

Jeanette Meakins and the UWA staff, for supplying the logistics and a gorgeous venue

Michael Haluwana from The Apple Store Perth Business Team for videoing the event (Part 1 now available online)

The event was videoed and is now available online

Colin Leonhardt, who took these fantastic photos of the proceedings

June Barnard, for organizing the whole shebang and laying on the yummy nibbles (and carrying the whole lot from the bus stop!)

And of course to all of you who spread the word, came along and supported and donated. I really couldn’t do what I do without the support of countless people, both here in Western Australia and around the world. I will probably never know how many thousands of hours of human effort have gone into helping me along my way, but I do know that when I am out on the ocean and the going gets tough, it is the thought of all that love and support that keeps me going.

Thank you.

An audience-eye view

And just so you know, some news hot off the press. This morning I spoke with Lee Bruce, my weatherman in the US, and he has advised against a Wednesday morning departure. Not much point heading out into a westerly wind that is trying to push me back to shore. So we are now looking much more likely for sunrise on Friday 8th April.

I know it is meant to be unlucky to leave port on a Friday, but I reckon it would also be unlucky to leave port straight into a headwind. I’ll check it out with Poseidon and see if he’ll let me get away with it…

This Thursday I will be speaking at the University of Western Australia Boat Shed on Hackett Drive in Crawley. 6pm. In fact, you kind of get two for the price of one, because I will be “in conversation with” James Lush from ABC Perth. More information here.

Completely random pic of me on top of a mountain, because I'd rather be in my "happy place" than battling with technology!

So if you happen to find yourself in Perth, join us, or if you know somebody who lives here, please pass the word along. The more the merrier!

And if you happen to know a friendly neighbourhood geek in Perth who knows about Macbooks and satphones, let me know. Due to circumstances beyond my control, my tech setup is still not working, with just one week to go before launch. I have spent my afternoon battling with technology, mostly from the middle of the car park so the satphone could get a clear view of the sky. But to no avail. Anybody with experience of OCENS (aka XGate) would be especially welcome.

So if you’d like me to be able to post blogs from the ocean, and know someone who can help, please give me a shout!

Last night I returned from the 5th International Marine Debris Conference. The conference isn’t over yet, but I have an ocean to row (12 days and counting!) so I had to get back to Fremantle in Australia for final preparations. The conference was eye-opening, in the same uncomfortable and disillusioning way that Copenhagen/COP15 was.

Kamilo Beach, Hawaii

I had thought that plastic pollution was much less contentious than, say, climate change, but it seems that there is no limit to humankind’s ability to find grounds for division rather than cooperation. I was shocked to witness a hostile encounter between two individuals partaking in the conference, culminating in a rather personal attack on academic credentials. Come on, people, let’s focus on the issues!

“Disposable” plastics were also much in evidence at the conference, despite a statement that the use of such items had been minimised. I guess I have a different definition of “minimal”.

And the three main sponsors of the conference were Coca Cola, the American Chemistry Council, and the Ocean Conservancy. This made me raise my eyebrows, and a few questions too.

I don’t know what the final outcome will be, but the draft strategy was not a promising start. It focused mostly on cleanups and recycling, rather than reducing the supply of plastic at source. I had hoped that it would make some bold policy recommendations, but it looks like it will still be down to us, the average consumers, to show the way. If industry and government won’t do it, we will.

If you are interested to know the scale of the problem, here are some interesting figures (mostly gleaned from the Plastic Oceans website):

Chris Jordan states that 1.1 million kgs (2.4 million pounds) of plastic enter our worlds oceans every hour of every day. (This could be a conservative estimate. The Plastic Oceans site suggests that the figure could be closer to 5 million kgs.) In terms of sheer weight, that ends up equal to 3-5 times the hourly flow rate of the Deep Water Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico. (Thanks to Doug McLean of WWF-Australia for his calculations.)

Over the last 10 years we have produced more plastic than during the whole of the last century.

Plastic production uses 8% of the world’s oil.  4% of this is actually used in energy consumption to make the plastic.

More than one million plastic bags are used, worldwide, every minute.

We are currently producing 300 million tonnes of plastic per year – about half of this will be used just once and thrown away.

To read about the tragic impact this is having on marine wildlife, see this article by Dr Wallace J Nicholls. Or if turtles aren’t your thing, how about the impact it is having on us?

So that’s the bad news. Here’s the good news. With ever more plastic flowing into the oceans every day, we all have the opportunity to step up and take responsibility. For starters, I would take it as a huge personal favour if you would please never again use a “disposable” plastic item. I now have quite an arsenal of non-plastic items in my bag that enable me to avoid most “disposable” plastics:

Stainless Steel Drinking Straw

Water bottle

Grocery bag

Coffee mug

Tell your friends, tell your family, tell your colleagues. Write to your supermarket and your city mayor and your state governor. Support city bans on plastic bags. If we all pull together, we can make a world of difference!

And if, after all of this, you need a smile, I highly recommend this short video on recycling – Flashmob style. You might not get this kind of reaction every time you do the right thing, but on the inside you’ll know you have done your bit to help save our planet.

Other Stuff:

Another smile: check out the Wipe Out Waste song.

Tomorrow it’s Earth Hour – please turn off your lights at 8pm for an hour, enjoy a candlelit dinner of organic yumminess, and thank your lucky stars that we live on such an amazing planet. You can see my Earth Hour video message here.

Fancy an adventure combined with an eco mission? You don’t have to spend 4 months alone in a rowboat. There are still a couple of crew spots available on OceansWatch sailing expeditions to Melanesia. Contact [email protected] to find out more details. I sailed with them in Papua New Guinea last year. Highly recommended!

I am presently in Hawaii for the 5th International Marine Debris Conference. Last night I keynoted at the opening reception at the Marriott in Waikiki. I thought you might be interested to hear what I said – or rather, what I intended to say. I don’t speak from notes, so it always comes out a bit differently from what I drafted, but hopefully bears some resemblance!

It sums up a few themes that are going on in my head right now at this interesting point in time. Personally, I am trying to make sense of everything that has been happening so far this year – in terms of the political and physical upheavals around the world. And I am now less than 2 weeks away from the launch of my next row. I wonder how different the world will be by the time I get back to dry land.

Okay, over to that speech….

With Marcus Eriksen on board the JUNK Raft

“On 13^th August, 2008, I attended one of the world’s more unusual dinner parties. A few hundred miles east of here, in the middle of the ocean, I boarded the JUNK Raft, a vessel made out of 15,000 empty water bottles, crewed by Joel Paschal and Marcus Erikesn of the Algalita Foundation. Like me, they were on the ocean to raise awareness of the North Pacific Garbage Patch.

We had spoken briefly before we set out on our respective voyages, me from San Francisco and them from Long Beach, and agreed that we really should collaborate with our campaigns. But life had got busy and we hadn’t got around to coming up with a strategy. Fortunately fate intervened.

My watermaker had broken and I was running out of reserves. Their voyage was taking much longer than expected and they were running out of food. Suddenly a mid-ocean rendezvous became more than a nice-to-have. It became a matter of life and death.

We met at around sunset that day, and they showed me a sample that they had collected. Even here, on the edge of the North Pacific Garbage Patch, they were finding that plastic outweighed plankton by a ratio of six to one.

A fish full of plastic - the mahi mahi caught by Joel

Then Joel the navigator harpooned a lovely big mahi-mahi for our dinner. Luckily it was in better shape than one he had caught a couple of weeks earlier. When they opened that one, they found that its stomach was full of bits of plastic. They knew enough to realize that this fish would not be good for eating, because of all the hormone disruptors and toxins that come out of plastic. So it went back in the ocean.

This is a story that I often tell in my presentations. It has a bit of everything – a bit of drama in real life, ocean adventure, alas no romance with the hunks on the junk, no time for that – and it also has a message. It illustrates that plastic pollution is not just an issue out there on the ocean. It is a problem right here on our dinner plates.

At the joint press conference that the Junk guys and I did at the Waikiki Aquarium after I arrived here, we issued a plea that people should stop and think before using a “disposable” plastic item. It makes no sense to make a disposable object out of an indestructible substance.

Preparing for the Indian Ocean

I am currently based in Australia, preparing to row solo across the Indian Ocean, to complete my trilogy of Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans. Down there, in particular, 2011 so far has been a hell of a year. With the emphasis on hell. Australia has been clobbered every which way by flood and fire. Then there was the earthquake in New Zealand. Then, on a whole higher level of disaster, Japan. More earthquakes. Tsunamis. Nuclear meltdowns.

We live in interesting times. From conversations that I’ve had, it seems that there is a rising consciousness that we have not been good stewards of this planet, and that it is starting to rebound on us.

This is a good time to be talking about marine pollution. It is not necessarily the biggest issue facing our world today, but it is one of the most visible. It is difficult for many people to get their heads around climate change, or ocean acidification, or collapsing fish stocks.

Bring your own bottle!

But ask them to picture how many plastic bottles, or bags, or coffee cup lids they personally generate in a year, and get them to multiply it by a lifetime, and by every member of their family, or by everybody in their city, or by everybody in the world, and you can see them start to wonder where it all goes. How come we’re not all up to our eyes in plastic?

And this is how we can start to drive home this concept that on a finite Earth, there is no “away”. What goes around, comes around. I find it abhorrent that something that is in use for 20 minutes will be around for a hundred years or more.

For me, personally, it has to do with the way that I came to environmental awareness. 7 years ago, in February 2004, I had my environmental awakening. Reading about the Hopi tribe of North America, I finally had my eyes opened to the blindingly obvious truth that we have to look after this planet if we want it to look after us. They believe that if we lose touch with our spirituality, with our connection to Nature, then we are flirting with disaster. Or more than flirting, we’re a dead cert.

When I had this epiphany, I was shocked and horrified that I had been so oblivious. And so I took to ocean rowing as a rather extreme way to get a platform, to raise awareness, to inspire action and wake people up to the fact that if we don’t start recognizing the interconnectedness of everything, our complete and utter reliance on the Earth and all its systems, then we are, not to put too fine a point on it, completely up the creek.

During my long spells on the ocean, I have grown to understand a few things about this planet.

One of the trawls I will be taking with me this year to collect samples from the Indian Ocean

First, it is not as big as we think it is. What goes around, comes around. Since I had my epiphany, the US alone has generated 700 billion plastic bags, 150 billion plastic bottles, and lord only knows how much plastic silverware or coffee cup lids or bleach bottles. On my boat I am very aware of my inputs and outputs.

Second, mother nature rules. There is nothing like facing 20 foot waves in a 23 foot boat to remind you who is in charge. We can flout laws of nature for a while, but ultimately, she runs the show.

Third, we have to take responsibility. Every action counts. Every time we buy something, use something, or throw something away, we are casting a vote for the kind of future that we want.

We’ve all been doing what we can, in our small ways. Personally, I’ve been involved in a campaign to make the 2012 Olympics plastic bag free. This year I’ll be gathering samples in the Indian Ocean to assess the amount of pollution. At this conference we have the opportunity to take that up a level, and to spread the ripples of change much further. We have a chance to influence policy, and set an agenda for the world.

This is more than a quest to end the plastic peril. This is a spiritual quest. We have an opportunity to decide what kind of future do we want. This comes down to what we believe about the kind of future that we deserve. Are we amazing creatures, evolving towards our highest selves? We have been blessed with this thing called free will. Are we going to use it to save ourselves?

And it’s about more than just plastic. We are going to face a multitude of such challenges. Plastic is a useful testing ground for a new, more collaborative approach, which we will need in order to tackle the bigger issues.

A plastic pollution publicity shot taken in Britain last year

Plastic has become a symbol of our throwaway society. Let’s move away from our emphasis on materialism, and instead place the emphasis on happiness. I wouldn’t mind so much if trashing the Earth even made us happy, but it doesn’t. Let’s return to simpler, more authentic values, the things that really make us happy, like good relationships, a sense of self-worth, a sense of peace.

In these turbulent times we have an opportunity for change. Let’s seize that opportunity, and change course for a better future. We could be at a tipping point, as people see that the old paradigm isn’t working. A few tiny actions on our part could make all the difference.

It took me 2.5 million oarstrokes to row the Pacific Ocean. Each stroke only took me a few feet, but added all together, they added up to something truly significant. Every action counts. Let’s pull together, and together, we can save the world.

Thank you.”

There is a fantastic TED talk by Daniel Kahneman on the two kinds of happiness:

1. Remembered happiness: so that when you look at your life, you feel good about how you lived it

2. Experienced happiness: feeling happy in the moment

As I understood his ideas, neither kind of happiness is better than the other. Ideally, you get a balance of the two. I’m pretty good at the remembered kind – stepping outside my life and feeling happy about the way that I’m living it. But I’m not so good at just relaxing and enjoying the moment. And sometimes that’s important. Life recently has been a bit stressful – on top of all the usual pressures of organizing a major expedition, waking up at 3am thinking about pirates of the non-Johnny-Depp kind had started to take its toll.

Happiness: thanks to Marian, our hostess with the mostest

So it was too good an opportunity to refuse when a kind friend (actually the aunt of the husband of Daisy who does my newsletter) offered us the use of her house in Denmark. Not Denmark in Europe, where I went for the COP15 conference in December 2009, but Denmark, Western Australia. Much closer. The idea was that this would be a final chance to savour the pleasures of Australia before the hectic days of the final countdown to launch day on April 5th.

Marian picked us up after my presentation at the University of Western Australia on Thursday night, and we drove the 5 hours south to Denmark, arriving just after midnight. We awoke the next morning to find ourselves in a little piece of Aussie paradise. Over the course of the next 3 days, Marian ensured that we got the chance to enjoy the best of Oz.

Koala fur is surprisingly fuzzy and wiry. Like a nylon carpet.

Koalas – check.

Kangaroos – check.

Gum trees – check.

Beaches – check.

Barbecue – check.

June with kangaroo

And Australian wines galore – check.

Thanks, Marian, and to Debbie and Stevie at the Pentland Alpaca Stud and Animal Farm, and to Daniel at the Valley of the Giants Treetop Walk, for a spectacular weekend. I get to enjoy it twice over. It was fantastic at the time, and I can also store up these happy times so that I can think back on them from the ocean, when I can barely remember what a tree even looks like. This one will live long in my memory as a “happy place” to return to when the going gets tough.

Other stuff:

Exchanging bows with a camel

We didn’t quite step off the world over the weekend. Like many others, no doubt, I was shocked at the news from Japan. Following hot on the heels of floods, fires and earthquakes in Australasia, 2011 has already had more than its fair share of catastrophe. Is it just me, or does this feel significant? What next? Locusts?

Earthquake at the top of the line. Fremantle at the bottom of the line, over 5,000 miles away.

Some geographically-challenged people have been asking if I have been affected by the Japanese tsunami. No, I’m a long way away from it – see map. But thank you for your concern. And thanks to UncaDoug for the Google Earth graphic.

I will be doing a public presentation at the University of Western Australia on March 31st. Details available on the UWA website.

Yesterday was the 5th anniversary of my arrival in Antigua, after rowing my first ocean, the Atlantic. Oh happy day!

Up a gum tree on the treetop walkway in the Valley of the Giants

June at Williams Bay

You want me to row across THAT?!

A super-quick update on a super-green day yesterday.

A volunteer with some recovered objects: a wine glass (unchipped), a rubber snake, and a fish plate

I was up early to catch the ferry over to Manly for Clean Up Australia Day. I was on underwater cleanup duties, and joined a small group of divers to kit up in scuba gear. I’m used to diving in tropical waters surrounded by colourful corals and vivid fishies, so it was rather different to walk in off the beach into Sydney Harbour. The water was rather murky, and initially I thought there wouldn’t be much to see. Not that I was there to sight-see anyway, but it would be a bonus.

In fact, we saw loads. Three cuttlefish, a ray, an octopus, and a wobbagong shark. And unfortunately loads of trash as well. The divers patrol this area regularly, so we weren’t expected to find much, but still came back with a haul of plastic bags, beer cans, jars, a baseball cap, an apron, and a fish-shaped plate.

4,000 cigarette butts

The beach-combers had been busy too. Altogether, the stats for the day were:

40 volunteers

95 kgs (210 pounds) general rubbish, of which….

83 kgs (183 pounds) was recyclable

and loads of fishing line, including some that was wrapped around a poor seagull, with the hook through its leg. The seagull was taken to the vet for medical attention.

And this on a popular beach that is cleaned on a regular basis. What a load of rubbish – in every sense.

The Greenhouse

Last night I rounded off a good green day with dinner at the greenest restaurant I have ever been to, called, appropriately, the Greenhouse. It is a temporary restaurant in a prime location between Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House, made out of recycled and recyclable stud partitions and shipping containers. The chairs are made out of irrigation pipes and leather offcuts. We drank wine out of jam jars. Plates were flat wooden boards. The floor was made out of discarded conveyor belts.

The food was as spectacular as the views. After sundowner cocktails on the roof garden, we went downstairs to order our dinner: five-spiced cauliflower, crushed baby peas with ortiz anchovy and mint, a salad of quinoa, radish and avocado, sweetcorn on the cob with cumin and coriander, and a daily special of spicy lamb. Delicious.

The owner, Joost Bakker, came over and showed us the hand-cranked mill they use to make their oatmeal. They also mill their own flour on the premises, and bake it into bread and pizza bases. He is as passionate about the freshness of their food as he is about recyclable architecture.

The Greenhouse amply demonstrates that it’s possible to be hip and green at the same time. As the sun went down the restaurant was lit by beeswax tealight candles, and the contemporary music was exactly the right volume to be heard while not drowning out conversation.

Sundowners on the roof. Wearing Sydney Opera House on my head.

If I’m sounding like a drooling restaurant critic, it’s because I was impressed – with the food, the ambience, and most of all the philosophy. There is already a permanent Greenhouse in Perth (hurrah!). But if you want to get to the Sydney branch, you’ll have to get there soon – it’s due to be dismantled on March 28. I hope that Greenhouse becomes a global phenomenon. A branch floating in mid-Indian Ocean would be especially much appreciated, please, Joost?

Other Stuff:

Thanks to Joost, Harriet and Will for a great evening at Greenhouse.

Thanks to Dave Thomas and Eco Divers for a very special eco dive.

Thanks also to my trusty volunteers who are doing such a great job on the blog archive organization. Many hands are making light work. Much appreciated!

It is a little surreal that my overriding worry for the upcoming Eat-Pray-Row should be pirates. The idea seems so sixteenth century. They should long ago have been relegated to history, along with lacy ruffs and codpieces. But piracy is alive and kicking and dominating the Arabian Sea. The issue even merits its own entry in Wikipedia.

The escalation in pirate activity in the Arabian Sea

I started my investigations last week, after hearing about the tragic shooting of four Americans on board the yacht Quest, and the subsequent cancellation of this year’s Blue Water Rally. Since then there have been further incidents involving a Dutch couple and a Danish family.

So what to do? My challenge is to ensure that I respond appropriately to the threat. Not over-react, but at the same time not to tempt fate.

I’ve been exchanging emails with various experts in the field. I was surprised to find out how many piracy consultants there are, both in independent consultancies and in departments associated with big companies like Shell Oil and Maersk Shipping. I was also surprised, and horrified, to find out the scale of the problem. It is estimated that over 700 people are currently being held hostage by pirates. I had already been aware of pirate activity in the Indian Ocean, but the situation seems to be escalating rapidly.

Hurrah! An excuse to include a picture of Johnny Depp in my blog!

You might think that pirates would not be interested in a tiny ocean rowboat. But they might form the mistaken impression that I might be worth a ransom. You and I know otherwise, but they might not. And unfortunately these pirates are not Johnny Depp, aka Captain Jack Sparrow. They are ruthless and desperate.

The most extreme advice I received suggested that I abandon my plans for the Indian Ocean altogether, or at least postpone indefinitely. My feeling is that the situation is unlikely to improve over the coming few years, and may worsen, so if I am to do the Indian Ocean it should be sooner rather than later.

I don't want to meet this dude.

But my original destination of Mumbai is now out of the question. In order to line myself up for that port, I would have to loop a long way west to make allowance for the westerly winds in the Arabian Sea. That would take me within a few hundred miles of the Somali coast, right through the centre of pirate territory. Not a good idea.

There are a number of alternative destinations, but I don’t want to list them here. And this brings me to my intended strategy. Stealth mode.

Stealth has two aspects: actual and virtual.

Stealth Purple

Actual stealth is eminently possible. My boat is very small, and can easily be hidden amongst the waves. The waves also help with radar stealth – they create interference on the radar screen that can effectively shield me from detection. When the Royal Navy tried to deliver a card to me on Valentine’s Day, 2006, they were unable to see me (see my blog entry on “Stealth Sedna”). Despite having been notified of my last known position, and having a boat bristling with antennae, I was concealed by the waves, and in fact I spotted them (the old fashioned way, with eyeballs) before they saw me.

As to virtual stealth, this is a new area for me. In past years I have been keen to maximise my online presence, all the better to spread the good green word that we have to take better care of our planet. This year things will need to be different.

I am sorry to say this, but for safety reasons I will not be broadcasting my position online this year. For safety reasons, I will still have a GPS transponder relaying my coordinates, but the information will be available only to my mother and my weatherman, and possibly a maritime monitoring organisation.

I will, however, be posting daily blogs, and will keep you updated on how things are going in general terms. As veterans of this website will know, most of my ocean blogs are not really about the rowing anyway, so I’ll have plenty to talk about without giving away my location.

One way that you can obtain more information as to my progress would be to sponsor a mile. I will still be giving shout-outs and thank yous to people as I row the mile that they have sponsored. This is safe, because only they, my mother and I know which miles they have sponsored. So if you want some insider knowledge as to how I am progressing, you could, say, sponsor miles 1000, 2000, 3000 and 4000. Then, when you get your first thank-you-by-blog, you’ll know that I am 1000 miles from Fremantle. And also, of course, I will be extremely grateful for the sponsorship.

This is all a bit of a pain, and I rather resent having my freedom restricted in this way. But it seems better than the alternative. The ocean itself is challenging enough, but I’d take my chances with Mother Nature any day rather than face a AK47-toting pirate.

Kayaking in Sydney Harbour this morning. Sydney Harbour Bridge in the background.

Other Stuff:

Thanks for the amazing response to my request for volunteers to help organise my blog archive. Within 24 hours I had 10 volunteers, and another 9 names on my reserves list. The instructions and work allocations have been sent out, and my amazing team are hard at work tagging and categorising. You’ll see that the tag cloud is already looking much more interesting than it used to. Huge thanks to my trusty volunteer workforce!

A special shout-out to the Surfrider chapter of Sydney’s Northern Beaches. It was great to meet you all on Wednesday night, and hope to see a few of you again at tomorrow’s Clean Up Australia Day in Manly.

I started drafting a blog about the pirate issue that has been so much on my mind (and on my Twitter) over the last few weeks. But I need to consult with a couple more experts before I am ready to go public with my revised plan.

Sedna in her new "stealth purple"

Meanwhile, I have an important request to make. Newcomers to the website would find it extremely difficult to unearth my oceanic blogs from the Atlantic and Pacific. They would need to know exactly when I did those rows, and go to the relevant dates in the blog archive. Not very user-friendly.

So my plan is to tag and categorise the archive so that people can more easily find the blogs they want. Somehow my oldest blogs, which date back to 2003, have dropped off the bottom somewhere along the way, but this is still a substantial task, with blogs going back to November 2005 (the start of the Atlantic row). I need help. Many hands make light work, so the more volunteers that come forward, the more widely we can share the workload.

The work would involve going into each blog entry individually, checking a box to allocate it to a category, and picking out a few key words to use as tags. These will then appear in the tag cloud, which along with the categories will provide another way to access the archive.

Ideally you would have:

- ability to spare about 24 hours total working time

- a good internet connection

- a methodical approach

- ideally, but not necessarily, some familiarity with WordPress.

I will give you detailed step-by-step instructions on what needs to be done, so no particular expertise is required.

If you are interested in helping me out (pretty please!) then please contact me via the form on this website. I’m afraid I can’t afford to pay you, but you would earn my eternal gratitude and major karma points.

Thank you!

At the launch of the Garage Sale Trail yesterday

Other Stuff:

My love and sympathy go out to UncaDoug, whose father passed away last week at the age of 94. I never had the privilege of meeting Mr Grandt Sr, but I am sorry to lose my oldest fan. He must have been a very special man, because he raised a very special son.

Yesterday I helped launch the Garage Sale Trail here in Sydney. One person’s junk is another person’s treasure, so garage sales are a fantastic way to reallocate resources and keep stuff out of landfill – and out of the oceans.

Then I went on to say a few words at the Sydney Rotary lunch, then in the evening a few more words at Greenups. Networking, green people and adult beverages – all my favourite things under one roof!

Happy birthday to June for yesterday!