Australia: The Farewell Tour?

What was the most important story in yesterday's news?  Some puerile political spat in Parliament? The latest media celebrity or sports hero to behave like a moron?  Well, for me it was this one:

The International Energy Agency reported that we had already hit the global annual carbon output that had been forecast for 2020. Thirty two gigatonnes went into an already battered atmosphere, a rise from 30 gigatonnes just two years ago, and barely impeded by the global recession -- indeed the recession, by slowing the process of technology changeover, may have exacerbated the process.
(Guy Rundle: Crikey.com)


This dire signal that we are locked in to, at the very least, 2 - 3 degrees of global warming by the end of the century, and probably much more, fills me with dread.  The report was hardly visible, swamped by more trivial and parochial concerns.  You had to look for it.  This fact increases my gloom exponentially.  The planet is sliding towards disaster and we think the sports results are more important.

I'm deeply pessimistic about the the state of the world I'm bequeathing to my grandchildren, and like many others I know, I feel helpless about it.  I've been actively involved in Green politics for some years now, but my ability to actually change anything seems pathetically insignificant.  So what am I going to do?  Get back on my bike!  My new bike, actually.  My 60th birthday present to myself.  I'm going to ride all over this continent that's been my home for 54 years, and say goodbye to many of the places I've known and loved - the Great Barrier Reef (may be gone in my lifetime or my children's), North Queensland's rainforests (ditto), Kakadu, Tasmania's South-West wilderness - and to some places I've never seen but have always wanted to - the South-West corner of Western Australia, Carnarvon Gorge in Central Queensland, Kangaroo Island off the coast of South Australia.

All of these places will be damaged, impoverished by catastrophic climate change: I have no doubt about that.  They'll lose plant and animal species; they'll suffer more extremes of drought, or flood, or storm, or all of the above.  So it's time to say goodbye to what was.  Yes; I'm pessimistic, but the question mark at the end of the title above gives away the fact that I haven't given up all hope.  I hope, through this blog and through other means of publicising my journeys, to send a wake-up call to people to read the real news, think about the real issues, and act now to mitigate the damage - to save what can be saved.  If you'd like to read more intelligent and informed works of "activist pessimism", I suggest Bill McKibben's Eaarth: Making a life on a tough new planet, and Clive Hamilton's Requiem for a Species.

Perhaps this sounds a bit arrogant.  Who am I to think I can change the world by writing about an extremely self-indulgent cycling trip around Australia?  Well, it's about doing what I can do, and also about having some fun while I'm at it.  You see, I LOVE cycle touring.  My two-wheeled adventures in Tasmania, New Zealand, Britain, Ireland and America have been some of the best times of my life.  I fully intend to enjoy this journey (which may take a couple of years, or the rest of my life) while sending out my serious message.

It's my intention that this blog will eventually migrate to its own website with useful links and more sophisticated presentation.  Rather than hold off until I've mastered all the technology though, I'm going to start pedalling and let things develop as I go.  Stage one is a relatively quick, fairly linear ride from Melbourne to Brisbane via the East coast - about two thousand kilometres - over a period of approximately four weeks.  I'm starting on the first official day of winter here in Melbourne, and it's a clear, frosty morning.  The weather will limit me in some respects: I'm unlikely to venture far from the coast because camping in temperatures of minus five degrees celsius (yesterday's minimum in Canberra) isn't my idea of fun.  Other stages of my journey will be more leisurely and less linear, perhaps based on the concept of cycling around a distinct bioregion, rather than travelling from point A to point B.

OK, I know it's pretty nerdy to start off with a picture of a bike, and I promise not to bore you with the technical specifications of my new toy (well, not all of them), but you must admit, it's a pretty sexy machine.

So, here I go on what could be described as a warm up leg of my all over Australia Farewell Tour.  I hope you enjoy it as much I know I will.  Stage One - navigate across the Melbourne Metropolitan Area through murderous traffic, and out into the relative calm of South Gippsland.