storytelling-to-save-the-reef-with-dr-paul-e-hardisty
Jess
Hello everyone, my name is Jess White and I'm co-editor of Science Write Now alongside Amanda Niehaus and Taylor Mitchell. And Science Write Now is a free magazine of creative writing and inspired by science. And today I'm going to be talking to Dr. Paul Hardisty about his nonfiction book In Hot Water which was recently released by Firm Press.
Paul comes from Canada, and he spent 30 years working all over the world as an engineer, hydrologist and environmental scientist. He co-founded the international environmental consultancy COMEX International which developed from a startup to a $50 million 1,000-a-year consultancy company with employees. That's quite impressive. And Paul is also the author of several peer-reviewed journal articles, two textbooks on environmental sustainability and seven novels. One of these, the Abrupt Physics of Dying, was named Telegraph Thriller of the Year in the UK and it was shortlisted for the CWA Creasey Prize. His latest novel, the Forcing and its prequel the Descent, imagine a near future affected by climate change. And the Forcing was shortlisted for the 2023 Crime Lovers Awards in the UK.
So, Paul was CEO of the Australian Institute of Marine Science or AIMS, from 2007 to 2023 and In Hot Water describes his experiences of trying to save the reef, not just using science, but also by engaging with farmers, politicians and government. So, Paul, it's really lovely to have you here on the podcast and to me this book picks up where Judith Wright's The Coral Battleground finished and that was republished in 2014, I think. But your book looks very closely in particular over the last 25 years and from what I gather, and just from reading generally, the prognosis for the reef is not too good. So, Bright's book finished with the first fight to save the reef and that ended with the creation of the Great Barrier Marine Park in 1975. And then the reef became this world heritage site in 1981. And the battles you've been facing seem to be much more multifaceted. So, I was wondering if you could describe to us what some of the threats to the reef currently are.
Paul
Yeah, well thank first, thank you for, for that introduction and yeah, thank you for having me on the program. I really appreciate being having a chance to talk.
Jess
Yeah.
Paul
I think the first thing I wanted to do with the book you mentioned, Judith Wright, is actually I wanted to pay homage to many of the heroes and heroines who a lot of people don't know that history.
It's interesting and I wanted to pay tribute to them because when I started the the CEO of AIMS job, what I realised coming in from the outside. I'm not a marine scientist, so I came in never having worked on the Great Barrier Reef. Well, I'm Canadian, for starters, so I was a bit of a clean skin if you see what I mean. I came in as almost an outsider. And what hit me really early on was that insofar as the reef was concerned, very few people knew much about that history. It's amazing. And so, one of the things that the book does, it does go back and sort of condense a condensed history, I think, if you of. Of those moments in the 50s and the 60s when the reef was really under threat and people had to stand up and fight for its protection. So, most people don't realise. Most people I talk to, even Queenslanders, don't realise that in the 1960s. In the 1960s, the Queensland. Queensland government had secretly gazetted the entire Great Barrier Reef for oil and gas exploration.
And. And the rigs were on their way. The drilling rigs were literally transiting the Pacific to come and drill when Judith Wright and a small group of activists, I guess you'd call them now. They weren't called that then. They were just people who cared about the reef and cared about the environment, found out and enlisted the support of the Australian newspaper.
Jess
That's right.
Paul
And together they changed the course of the reef's history. You know, there's all the things that happened, but one of the things that happened right around then, so the battle started to rage and then Torrey Canyon happened. I don't know if you recall the Torrey Canyon disaster.
Jess
I was probably too, too young, but I have read, had read about it.
Paul
Very young, but I do remember seeing images on TV. You know, I think I was or something, but. 1967, Torrey Canyon tanker.
Jess
Yep.
Paul
Hit rocks on the coast of Cornwall in the United Kingdom and dumped 100,000 tons of crude oil into the. Into the waters which fouled all of the Cornish beaches. It went all the way to Brittany in France and killed most of the puffin colony. But most of the puffins of the major puffin colonies there, the RAF ended up bombing the ship and napalming it to set it alight to try to burn off the oil. And they used a chemical dispersant which ended up being super toxic. Anything that came in touch with it died. So, the whole thing was a complete disaster. Played out on tv.
And of course, here where they were, Judith Wright and others, John Boost and others had started this campaign here. And the timing couldn't have been really, well, worse, I guess. You know, it's not good timing when something like that happens. But Australians started to realise, oh my God, right, this could happen here.
Jess
Yeah. I think there was a similar spill off the coast of California.
Paul
There was. Yeah. A couple years later, there was a big blowout and off Santa Barbara.
Jess
Yeah.
Paul
And then Ocean Endeavor and then there was a tanker or a ship that hit reefs up in the Torres Strait. And it wasn't a major oil spill like those were, but there was enough oil released that people really started to freak out. And it, that whole thing really ended up with the formation of the national, of the marine park, the Great Barrier Marine Park.
So, I guess it's the context for me that was really important and that really, that's what set me on writing this book because I, I wanted to put the current battle into a context. And that context is that the reef has faced many challenges over its existence from human beings. And it's been human beings who've done the courageous things that have protected it.
And so now, to answer your question in a long, in a long way, here we are in, you know, the, the early part of the 21st century and the reef is now facing undeniably its greatest challenge. And that's anthropogenic climate change. So, the warming of the oceans is causing mass coral bleaching around the world. And the Great Barrier Reef is no exception. We've now had five major mass bleaching’s in the last seven years. When I started at AIMS in 16-17, I came in and we were in the midst of the unprecedented back-to-back bleaching. So, 2016, major bleaching event. 2017, major bleaching event which led to serious coral mortality.
It doesn't always. Corals can bleach and the symbionts can return. But in both of these cases, they didn't. The elevated temperatures persisted enough so that the coral started to die and there was a huge loss of coral during that, that period. And so that, that's the context is that the reef has always faced challenges and it's facing its worst, its greatest challenge right now.
Jess
Yeah.
Paul
From Climate change.
Jess
Yeah. Would you, would you say that the response from the public is different this time around compared to the first battle in the '60s and '70s?
Paul
Well, of course, I wasn't there, so I'm relying on talk, having spoken to people who were there.
Jess
Yeah.
Paul
And reading their accounts and Judith's book. Fantastic, right? Coral Battleground. It's a great book. It's worth reading if your readers if your listeners care about the reef. It's a great account of that time. But I think the essential aspect of where we are now that's different is that this is, this is about, essentially about an issue that's bigger than the reef. So, it isn't. Back then it was the reef, and it was immediate, and people could see a really clear goal if they could raise enough angst in the public. And in the end, it was the blacklisting of the ports. The union stepped in and said, no, we're not going to let these rigs supply through union-controlled ports. And that was the nail in the coffin. It was just too hard for the, for, for the rigs, for the operators to, to, to do what they needed to do with that ban in place. But climate change is so much more complex, right? We all know it's a huge problem; it's a global problem.
An individual country can't solve it on their own. We're doing all we can to protect the resilience and enhance the resilience of the reef currently through managing water quality and trying to manage crown of thorns starfish and so on. But climate change is, is a huge global, very, very complicated issue. And the reef is sort of just, it's almost a collateral damage really in, in a much wider war. And that's the, the war, if you want to call you, you want to use those terms, right? Battleground battle war. It is, it's a, it's a mighty struggle for the future of the planet. And what's our vision for the future of the planet? Is it one where, where we're hell-bent on resource consumption in the old pattern to the point where we basically allow ecosystems, not only coral reefs by the way, but other very sensitive ecosystems, like alpine ecosystems around the world are under huge threat.
Are we going to let these things disappear in the name of economic growth or are we going to find the courage to change fundamentally what we're doing? And I think that's the big difference is that it's hard for people to emotionally and intellectually challenge themselves to make the changes that are required. And I think that manifests itself in this fairly small but very well-funded and very well-projected climate denialist movement if you want to call it that.
That is all about protecting the status quo. It's all about not changing. It's about maintaining the current systems, the current ways of producing energy and so on. Because let's face it, huge fortunes are being made in the way it is, right? A lot of money is being made, and a lot of capital is tied up in the systems that generated electricity and power and energy in the current way.
And so, the thought of those things changing, of that some of that capital being stranded is an affront and a financial. It's financially terrifying for those people.
Not many, but those people. And so, there's a huge impetus, a drive from that side to say, no, we don't, we don't want to change. And so, I call it sort of the message of false hope. And you hear that on the reef as well, right? This idea that don't worry, it's okay, right? Climate change isn't real, the reef is fine, and it makes people feel good. It's. I mean, there isn't a day that I don't wake up wishing that that were all true. Believe me, like my life would be so much happier and so much simpler and I would be feeling so much more secure for my kids because none of these problems that I'm talking about exist, of course, none of it’s backed up by any credible science whatsoever.
There's a lot of trying to nitpick the science that is being done that proves these things are happening. Do you see what I mean?
Jess
Yeah.
Paul
But there's no credible science on the other side that says here is, you know, a body of evidence and a body of information and fact that proves that these things are not happening. It's always trying to find holes in the work that others are doing, you see? So that's the fundamental difference. But unfortunately, and the reason that I think that communicating science in a, in a way that's accessible to more people than peer-reviewed journals are, is so important. And that's why I'm writing fiction and nonfiction about these issues. Same issues, yeah. One's the storytelling thing. Right. It's fun,
Paul
It's exciting, live with the characters, but scientifically credible and based in scientific fact. And the other one is nonfiction, but narrative, nonfiction, easy to read, easy to understand. The references are there if you want to get into the technical detail, but essentially, it's about trying to reach people so that they, they don't listen to the honeyed voices of false hope. There is hope, but. But the real hope is a harder hope. It's one that will require courage and sacrifice. And so, if you're just sitting there, which one would you rather listen to? Right?
Jess
Yeah.
Paul
Which one would you rather be? Real. I know which one I'd rather be real. But unfortunately, that's just not the case. Right. So, I like to talk about the fact that for me, this book was sort of my personal testament to the fact that I. And the people I love and the people I know and all the other people that I don't know, we all need to find courage now. Because Judith Wright and that generation, they stood up for the reef when. When it was needed. Now it's our turn.
Jess
Yeah, that's. Yeah, I. I really like what you're saying about storytelling, and I'm going to come back to that a little bit later on. I just wanted to return to this idea of the false hope because one of the most striking chapters of the book was the inquiry, the Senate inquiry into the farm practices on the reef water quality. and you were doing it by phone, which, which meant you couldn't read what was happening in the room. But there was one particular senator who just kept cutting people off and being really rude. And the water quality thing seemed like farmers are addressing it. It seemed like that the senator was just trying to use this moment to push through the idea that everything is okay without letting anyone articulate themselves or get their own message across.
And it seems like there's this wilful misinformation again, related to the fact that, you know, people don't want to change. But I'm wondering if the Internet and social media might also be amplifying that. Like you say, science is complex. We need to educate people about how to do that. And I'm just wondering, you've got fiction and nonfiction.
You're obviously doing it those ways, but do you have any suggestions for other ways to get people to read or understand the science about the reef? This senator wasn't interested in the science.
Paul
Well, the thing is, is that you know, I'm sure you and all your listeners understand that if, if you want to understand something, you first have to be receptive to it.
Jess
Yeah.
Paul
If you don't, if you're not interested in what the science is actually saying, and of course, you know, you're not going to absorb it. And in a way, there's not much that anybody can do, no matter how beautiful the video or how amazing the storytelling. People who are, you know, not interested in. In what's actually going on but are driven by other motives are not. Are not going to be receptive to the message. And frankly, that there's not much point really. The position I've come to is that when people are that motivated by other imperatives in their lives that they're not willing to listen and they're not actually interested.
Because that was the thing. Is any inquiry like that, any Senate inquiry, any parliamentary inquiry, it's understood if you're a technical person, that you're there in good faith to offer your best knowledge and advice to inform the lawmakers of this country so that they can make wise decisions that are best for the country. Right. So that's why when experts are called, they go willingly. It's not a cross-examination, right. You're not there as a witness in a murder trial. You know, you, you're not to be cross-examined. You're going in good faith and you’re; you're trying to offer the best information you can. And so, if the whole thing, you know, when you read in the book, all I did was to take the transcripts, right. I, I don't, I haven't done anything other than use the, the transcripts, right. That the heads are transcripts. But because I'm, you know, when I'm a fake, when you're writing fiction, you can, you, you know, I've, in one of my novels, I created a courtroom scene, like an inquiry scene, and you can have the to and fro and, and the tension builds and, and the conflict comes out.
I didn't have to do any of that. It was all there. All I did was take the transcripts and take out chunks and put them in the book and people could read for themselves, you know, how it went down. And so, yeah, it was pretty shocking. And, and that sort of grandstanding and using that kind of forum where people are showing up, trying to do their best, trying to offer good advice and the, and, and certain, and certain people want to treat it as if it's a, an opportunity to discredit science.
That's what it's about. Right. I mean, the playbook essentially is that if climate change is the major threat to the reef right now and to reefs around the world right now, and we're seeing that. I mean, this latest bleaching event is global mass bleaching event coincided with an El Nino. Yes. Which is a natural phenomenon. But we also know that global temperatures this year have been higher than ever before and significantly higher. There's a big, big jump. Ocean heat content higher than it's ever been this year. So, we're really seeing, you know, a major event happening which is, you know, related, directly related to the increase in greenhouse gases and anthropogenic climate change.
But with that all happening, it's, it's more important than ever that those, that science is listened to and that those decision-makers have access to experts in the field and that that isn't tarnished with stunts and grandstanding and, and that kind of thing. And yeah, so I try to relate it in a book, in a way, in. In just telling people what happened. I'm not passing. I don't try to tell people what to think. And I'm not, you know, I'm just saying, here's what happened. You know, you can make your own mind up about it.
Jess
Yeah, it was very. It was very effective. I felt my heart rate rising. My heart. Yeah, my pulse was getting faster because I was just getting so frustrated. And I imagine the people, the scientists must have been really frustrated as well. And I wonder. And I. Yeah, I think about this quite a lot. How, how do scientists maintain their mental health when this, this stuff is happening?
Paul
That's a big issue. Believe it. I mean, you know, you. You know this, right? You're in the same field. But when I arrived at AIMS, there were literally scientists who, having watched this reef that they'd worked on their whole careers, you know, 20, 30 years, dying in front of their eyes. It was like their best friend dying.
Yeah, these people had serious PTSD. There. There are. There are, you know, reef scientists around the world who are anything along a spectrum from really tired of fighting the same battles against misinformation to having become very cynical about the political process and about the motivations of some of the people who are in the media talking about these issues to downright depressed and giving up.
Jess
Yeah.
Paul
And it's. It's a real challenge. And I love. You know, there's a. Some of your author, your readers might know, or listeners might know of a. Who I consider a really great Australian author called Jacques Sarong.
Jess
Oh, yeah, I know.
Paul
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Have you. Have you talked to him on your show? He's great guy.
Jess
Yeah, he's lovely guy. Yeah.
Paul
Yeah, he's really good. And he and I become mates. We like the same kind of thing. We kind of write. I like to think I write in a similar way as him. I'd love to be compared to him. But he did a review of the. You know, he read the book and gave me a jacket quote, and I loved it because, you know, he, he called it an antidote to despair.
Jess
Oh, that's nice. Yeah, that's good.
Paul
Yeah. And. And, you know, that's on the front cover now. Yeah, I'm really grateful to him. I think he's a fantastic writer. Yeah. I kind of aspire to be like him, kind of. Anyway, we've become buddies, and we hang out sometimes and we. We've done some stuff together. But I liked how he turned that because that's what I want. I want to show the, the reality. Right. I'm not offering false hope, that everything's fine, don't worry about it. No, there is hope. But it, as I said before, it. It's the kind of hope that requires action, courage, commitment.
Jess
Yes.
Paul
And I think that there is hope in that. And I think that that's the salve for people who are suffering anguish, mental health issues, etc, is that we have to understand that it's that kind of hope. It's that it's easy to be cynical and it's easy to give up. And that's essentially what a lot of these people want from us. They want us to give up. They want the average person to just throw their hands in the air and go, oh, it's all too hard. And I'm just gonna shut up and I'm gonna be a consumer and I'm gonna buy products, whatever's put in front of me. And, and, and I. It's just all too hard. Right. Beer, pizza, Netflix. And I'm just going to switch off and let the world happen, rather than being a force for changing the world.
Jess
Yeah.
Paul
And, and so I think, to me, that's the that's the way to combat that feeling, is to stand up, square your shoulders and recognise that you do have a voice and there are things you can do. And so, the last chapter of the book talks about the individual things we can do and more importantly, about the collective things that we can do.
Jess
Yeah. I was quite depressed by the, by the time I got to the end of it and then I read that chapter, I was like, oh, here's some solutions. Well, not, not, you know, not solutions to everything, but they're things you can do. And I'm a practical person. I was like, oh, okay, this is great.
Paul
I'm sorry to hear that you were depressed through the book because I tried to lace through the book some of the really important science that's going. You know, things like the Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program, which is the largest of its kind in the world, that is looking for ways to apply science to intervene on the reef, to help buy some time for the reef while we get our emissions act together globally.
Jess
Yeah. Yeah. And that's the work you're doing at AIMS. You were doing, overseeing at AIMS. It was making the resilient coral.
Paul
Yeah, look, and I'll hasten to add, it's not just AIMS. Right. It's a consortium of organisations. AIMS is playing a key role. It should. It's the National Marine Science Agency that's focused on the tropics. But there's James Cook University, there's CSIRO, there's QUT there's University of Queensland, there's a whole host of other people, other organisations, and brilliant scientists from all those organisations that are all working together on a common mission. Something to be really proud of because it's. That sense of common purpose has really driven some excellent work.
Jess
And it's a community, I think. It's. It's easy to feel as an individual. You can't do much, but when you're working with other people, there's a collective and common good. And it. It helps a lot, I think.
Paul
Exactly.
Jess
Yeah.
Paul
That's such a good point.
Jess
Yeah. Yeah. So, towards the end of the book, like before, the. the practical suggestions, you're standing in a bookstore, and you pick up this book, Paul Gribbin's the Breathing Planet, and it describes, among other things, the planets breathing in and exhaling carbon dioxide. And you say that you're standing there for so long, the salesperson comes up and says, do you want to buy the book? And you obviously do, because you say, I still have the book. It changed my life. A couple of weeks after reading it, I signed up to do a master's degree in environmental and water engineering at Imperial College in London, determined to spend the rest of my life working to help protect the world's environment.
And I really liked that passage because so often writers and artists are seen as redundant. But at this point, you should show us how critical they are because they compel people to do things. So, I'm wondering if you can talk some more. You talked about this previously, but if you could expand on your writing process and what writing means to you. Like, it's obviously another tool in the box, but you're also an extremely busy man and you've persisted with your writing during this time. You're very committed to it. So, can you talk some more about your processes, the whys and hows of writing?
Paul
I'm gonna. I'm gonna go all the way back. So, my mum was a French teacher, and my dad was a lawyer, but they were both completely enamoured with travel and books. Life was good if you were traveling, and you had a book with you. And I feel exactly the same way. Right. I'm. I'm traveling right now. I'm in Sydney. I'm actually going to be on Richard the Conversation with Richard Fiedler.
Jess
Oh, wonderful
Paul
Studio next week, which
Jess
That’s gonna be great.
Paul
Yeah, really, really happy about that. There's a quite a quite a significant vetting and interview process that you got to get through. So, I, I'm very grateful. So, I'm a bit nervous, but I'm looking forward to it. But you know that idea of the fact that it's a beautiful world out there and you can travel and you can see the world and you can enjoy nature and all its splendour and you can read as you go and I just became absolutely passionately committed to the idea of becoming a writer.
Very early on, five or six, when I was 18, I really, I knew, you know, I wanted to be Hemingway, basically. Right, well, good luck. No, life never turns out exactly like the way you think, but sometimes it can turn out better. So, I, about 18, I sort of took some time out from trying to be an engineer in Uni and, and sort of said, right, I'm going to be a writer, right? And I started writing, but it was a total disaster because I realised really quickly that I didn't know anything. I had nothing to write about, I had nothing to say, right. I lived. And so, I took Hemingway and Mark Twain, two fantastic writers, advice, right? Twain said, write what you know. Well, I didn't know anything. And Hemingway said, write what you know and what you really care about. And I didn't know either. And so, I just decided to get my engineering degree. I'm going to put my hand up to go all the crazy places, I'm going to just travel, I'm going to live, I'm going to, I'm going to find out what I really care about.
And it was pretty quickly the environment. Yeah, right. That's that book that happened shortly after that, picking up that book and I just knew, I knew, and it all came together, and it just took, you know, it took me a long time, but I kept at it. I kept writing secretly throughout my engineering career in my 20s and my 30s, you know, raising a family and was lucky enough to travel the world.
And those that became the what do you know for my writing. And so, my fiction is all based on things that I've seen or done or that. That novel, you mentioned it in, in my intro, Abrupt Physics of Dying, the one that was shortlisted for the Creasey Prize, that's set in Yemen in 94, 1994.
I was there working on a variety of water-related projects when the civil war broke out. And you know, I saw some really, really terrible things and it took me 10 years to synthesise and come to terms with those and they ended up being, being that novel, I think fiction's an incredibly powerful thing.
We're talking about a nonfiction book today. But fiction is the only device that I know of where you can. A reader can actually become somebody else for a few hours. The writing is good and convincing. You, you live with the characters, you're there. If the writing's good, you can live, breathe, feel and understand and get inside somebody else. You can't do that with movies or Netflix or tv, can you? Or. But it. That's the only place you can really do it because you're bringing yourself, you're creating. Your brain is creating everything around that story, filling in all the holes that the writer necessarily has to leave. And so, it feels like it's your experience, your lived experience.
And that's really struck me is that when I write peer-reviewed journal articles or textbooks or even nonfiction, like, like In Hot Water, I'm presenting facts, but people. I think people's truth is, is. Is different than facts. It's some sort of lived experience. So, in the In Hot Water book, I'm trying to write in sort of a narrative, nonfiction.
So, there's a story there. It's a story about me, my experience. A story about Judith. Right. It's a story about other people and their journeys through this. Through this amazing thing that is the reef. Part of them. They're part of it. It's part of them.
Jess
Yeah.
Paul
They find the connection. It's more than just a scientific and technical and factual connection with the reef. Yeah, it's an emotional one.
Jess
Definitely. Yeah. Yeah, definitely.
Paul
So that's a long way of trying to answer the question. But my process is I'm an engineer, so my writing process is I. I build the. The whole bridge and then I write it. You know, I set it out. I need to plan everything.
Jess
Oh, you're a plotter. I'm a pantser.
Paul
Are you?
Jess
Do you know that distinction? I just work it out. I work it out as I go.
Paul
do it, drives me nuts. I'll create the plan and then the plan deviates as things develop and change. Right. But then I replan and then I know. So, I need to know where I'm going because I want to put it all together and really make it tight. I can't do that. What you do?
Jess
Yeah, I write the whole thing and then I know where I am. Yeah.
Paul
I still have to do tons of revising. That's just me, right? That's my brain. That's the way I was trained.
Jess
Yeah, exactly. Wow. So, what are you up to now you finished at AIMS. You talked about in your book about going to Ukraine. I mean, because your wife has Ukrainian Canadian ancestry. That sounds like a whole other book like you've got more writing, more writing plans.
Paul
Absolutely. So, I've just spent, I spent all of April in the UK touring to promote The Descent, which is the prequel-sequel to The Forcing. The climate thrillers near future affected by climate change thrillers which have done really well and had really good reception. I mean, to show up in a little village in Scotland of 30, 000 people north of Kilmarnock. This is the last thing I did on that month-long trip in this tiny village and go to this little bookstore and have 65 people crammed to the rafters and everybody writes, you know, everybody wants to read it and, and everybody bought the book. Many had already read it, and I'd come to, you know, talk about all these issues and, and meet me. It was just so humbling, and it was so awesome. And that gives me great hope as well because, you know, those people, a lot of them, you know, they've not really heard much about climate change.
So, I've had readers contact me. I don't, I don't know them from around the world saying, I read the Forcing. I, I never really knew anything about climate change. It's completely changed my life in terms of how I look at this issue, because it, because I don't want that future that you described to happen. I know it's plausible. I know it's plausible because we're already seeing some of those signs happening now. Yes, we are. So, so that makes me feel so good that, you know, it's funny because a lot of people ask me when they found a writer, oh, how many books do you sell? How much money do you make? I kind of say, well, you know, the way I, I've worked my whole life, you know, I sold my business.
Paul
I'm not motivated by money at all. I'm not writing for what I can get from people in terms of their money through book sales. I'm writing hope to, in the hope that I can put something, give something to the reader. It's. For me, it's about giving, not getting.
Jess
Yeah, yeah, I think that's.
Paul
So, what am I doing? I'm writing the third novel in that series. Now. The Descent isn't in bookstores in, in Australia yet. It will be later on, later this year, I think, but you can get it online.
Jess
Great.
Paul
and through, you know, Amazon and stuff. Yeah, I'm writing the third one, the third and final in that trilogy called The Hope.
Jess
Okay, I'm gonna look him up. That sounds really good.
Paul
The Descent and the Hope. And so, I'm working on that. And yeah, I was. I spent November of 2022 in the seventh month of the war, the eighth month of the war in Ukraine. In the Ukraine. I got a press pass from the Ukrainian armed forces. I went there by myself. I didn't really tell anyone except my wife where I was going for security reasons.
And I travelled the whole country talking to people and interviewing people. Not generals and politicians, but average normal people. Soldiers, aid workers, hospital workers. I visited military hospitals and aid stations. So, I spent some time with Médecins Sans Frontières. I talked with internally displaced people, refugee families because I wanted to do something.
I hate bullies and I hate what's going on there. And I'm too old to fight. My wife told me I was too old to fight. She said being a backstop for a Russian round, Russian bullet so that it doesn't hit a piece of clay is not a very good use of all your experience, your writer, go and write about it. Pen is mightier than the sword. I said, okay. It was a great privilege. I came face to face with things that were very confronting for me. I saw evil, real evil, and I saw great courage and great love. And it was incredibly inspiring and devastating. And it changed my life. And I'm going to go back shortly to basically bookend the first year of the war with the very difficult third year of the war where so many have died.
And yeah, I'm gonna make a book out of it. I've got a publisher for it and.
Jess
Great.
Paul
It'll be. It'll be a nonfiction book, similar, I think, hopefully in approach to. In hot water. But one of the things that really struck me when I was there was that even though I was, you know, I was alone, everywhere I went, people were so hospitable. They wanted. They were so grateful that somebody was wanting to tell their story, wanting to listen and tell their story because that everyone had a story. Everyone had an amazing story. Incredible stuff. Anyway, so I'm hoping that I can get that done.
Jess
Yeah.
Paul
If I come back in one piece, it's just a reality really over there. Seriously?
Jess
Yeah.
Paul
Seriously screwed up.
Jess
Yeah. Yeah. Incredible. Yeah. You got to be very busy, which is good.
Paul
Yeah. That's how I like it.
Jess
Yeah.
Paul
Yeah. I don't think I can be any other way. Everyone says, oh, now that you've retired. I said, are you kidding me? Retired? Hey, I'm never gonna retire. When I retire, I'll be underground. I'll retire underground. And the other thing is, is that I've never been busier, really working for myself. Oh, my gosh, it's. It's really, really busy. I'm still doing a little bit of consulting on the side just to keep a little bit of money coming in. Because you don't make much money writing at all.
Jess
No, you don't? No, no, that's one of it. I'm an academic.
Paul
Stephen King or somebody like that, right?
Jess
Oh, yeah, yeah. It's really rough. Oh, yeah. Well, thank you so much for spending time talking to each other.
Paul
Oh, hey, thank you for having me.
Jess
Yeah. Science Write Now is sponsored by the Australia Council for the Arts, hosted by Amanda Niehaus and Jessica White, and produced by Taylor Mitchell. Thanks so much for listening.