Waterpeople Podcast
Stories about the aquatic experiences that shape us.
Listen with Lauren L. Hill and Dave Rastovich as they talk story with some of the most adept waterfolk on the planet.
Waterpeople is a gathering place for our global ocean community to dive into the themes of watery lives lived well: ecology, adventure, community, activism, science, egalitarianism, inclusivity, meaningful play, a sense of humour. And, surfing, of course.
Waterpeople Podcast
Peter Gash OAM: Custodian of Curiosity
Not long ago, Lady Elliot Island was basically unrecognisable. In the late 1800s, it was mined for guano used as agricultural fertiliser. The island was stripped bare.
This is a story about what happens when one person has a vision and refuses to let hard work, qualifications or accepted definitions of 'possible' get in the way of curiosity.
Regenerating the precious coral cay Lady Elliot Island is part of Peter Gash's legacy. He is the Custodian and Managing Director of Lady Elliot Island Eco Resort and CEO of Seair Pacific Aviation.
Peter is a licenced Pilot and has been flying tourists to the Great Barrier Reef for over 35 years. In the mid 90's, Peter took the floats off his seasplane and began flying guests to the coral cay of Lady Elliot Island on the southern end of the reef.
In 2005, Peter and his family took over the lease of the island.
In 2018, the island was selected as the first site for the Great Barrier Reef Foundation’s Reef Islands Initiative, a bold program focused on building climate resilience across key reef habitats.
In 2020, Peter was the recipient of an Order of Australia Medal (OAM) for his service to eco-tourism and aviation.
Peter talked us through the unexpected interconnections between reef systems and terrestrial ecosystems, the importance of being a ‘doer’ not a gunna, the compromise of flying airplanes, and how he’s embraced his role as an “injection of enthusiasm” for visiting world leaders, decision-makers, business folk and scientists alike – from King Charles to David Attenborough.
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Sound + Video Engineer: Ben J Alexander
Theme song: Shannon Sol Carroll
Additional music by Kai Mcgilvray + Ben J Alexander
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They love to see our wastewater management and our food scrap management. They love to see our revegetation. People get inspired by a success story in this world because we belong to nature. We're a part of nature. I don't think we came from Mars. We probably got a bit wayward for the last two or three hundred years. In this excitement of growing and developing and pulling ourselves out of poverty and pretty tough world two or three hundred years ago, people love to see that we're moving in the right direction, that we can exist with nature. We can have a really minimal footprint in a place like this. That really inspires people. That inspires me to keep doing it.
SPEAKER_04:Welcome to Water People, a podcast about the aquatic experiences that shape who we become back on land. I'm your host, Lauren Hill, joined by my partner Dave Rastevich. Here we get to talk story with some of the most interesting and adept water folk on the planet. We acknowledge the Bunjalong Nation, the traditional custodians of the land and waters where we work and play, who have cared for this sea country for tens of thousands of years. Respect and gratitude to all First Nations people, including elders, past, present, and emerging. This season is supported by Patagonia, whose purpose-driven mission is to use business to save our home planet. Today we're in conversation with Peter Gash, custodian and managing director of Lady Elliott Island Eco Resort and CEO of Sea Air Pacific Aviation. Peter is a licensed pilot and has been flying tourists to the Great Barrier Reef for 35 years. In the mid-90s, Pete took the floats off his seaplane and started flying guests to the coral K of Lady Elliott on the southern end of the reef. Not so long ago, Lady Elliott Island was basically unrecognizable. In the late 1800s, it was mined extensively for guano that was used as agricultural fertilizer. By the time mining ceased, the island had pretty much been stripped bare. With no topsoil and no native vegetation remaining, Lady Elliott Island was left exposed, dry, and inhospitable to wildlife. In 2005, Pete and his family took over the lease of the island. In addition to running a world-class ecoresort, they've been integral in the regeneration of Lady Elliott's unique ecosystems. In 2018, the island was selected as the first site for the Great Barrier Reef Foundation's Reef Islands Initiative, a bold program focused on building climate resilience across key reef habitats. In 2020, Peter was a recipient of an Order of Australia Medal, that's an OAM, in the General Division in the Australia Day Honors list for his service to ecotourism and aviation. We sat down in the midday shade of Thriving Canopy, and you'll hear lots of bird chatter around us and at least one reference to a bird's lucky strike. Peter talked us through the unexpected interconnections between reef systems and terrestrial ecosystems, the importance of being a doer, not a gunna, and how he's embraced his role as, quote, an injection of enthusiasm for visiting world leaders, business folk, and scientists alike, from King Charles to Sir David Attenborough. Pete, will you tell us about a time or experience after which you were never the same?
SPEAKER_00:It's been many of those in my life. I consider myself so fortunate to live and work in such a spectacularly beautiful part of the world. And so, yeah, there have been many, but it's a great question, and it makes me think back to a moment in time here on Lady Elite Island when I was out with some friends and a mother whale came along and she had a baby, like a little calf. And she just we were all just snorkeling, and she just pulled up near us. And we're in about 10 or 15 metres of water and she just stopped, and the little calf stopped, and they went to the bottom, and we just sat there and looked down. Mum can hold her breath for 20 or 30 minutes, the calf can only hold it for a couple of minutes. So the calf would come up and splash around with us and then go back down again. Then it would come back up and splash, and we couldn't believe it. And we had a couple of really great photographers with us, Cole Baker from Cannon, and actually had Robert Irwin with me on that day, and we couldn't believe this little calf's coming and going. Well, Mum's just decided this ain't good, I must go and have a look. So mum came up, and there was probably five of us by then that had joined the group because everyone could see we were having fun, it was just off the beach. And the mother came up and she came right up between us, and I kid you not, she turned and looked at us all. And Colin had his camera with a big glass lens, and she had her pectoral fins out, and she turned like this to look at us all. And her pectoral fin went within a couple of inches of his glass. And to this day, I swear she knew exactly where the dimension of that fin was. She went around and she's obviously thought these guys are cool. So down she went and sat on the bottom, and the little guy here kept going up. This went on for over an hour. Over an hour. And some of the vision, all of us that were there, looked back on it, and and Robert's photos have become quite famous. And Colin did worldwide interviews about that event because he posted that vision, like he had video of when she went whoosh and swam around. I just couldn't believe the presence of that animal and the intelligence of that animal. And then the little guy, you know, and she's checked us out and she's gone, yeah, they're okay. So she's gone back down again, and it went on, and then she came up and eventually they swam for a little bit and they stopped again. It was just like, you know, you have a whale experience now and again, and it goes for a couple of minutes, maybe. I've had a lot of those, but that one just went on and on, and it just never stopped being exciting. So I think that's probably one of the many, but instantly comes to my mind is possibly because there's so many photos of it. I've got some on my walls at home that a couple of the guys that were there took and the video and and the memory of it because it was it was it was I think the word is viral, it went viral in the social media world. So you heard about it and you saw it and you remembered it, you know, you relived it.
SPEAKER_05:Do you think that you felt different before and after that in some way?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. I I mean I've always felt close to nature, and I've always felt that we're a part of nature. I've always felt it's a bit like a drop of water in the ocean. We're just a drop of water, we're just a drop in in the natural environment, and we're a part of the environment. And I've always felt that way and seen that way, and you're here now and you're seeing what I mean. It's almost a Galapagos experience or a Lord Howe Island experience where the wildlife is not frightened of people. When we first came here, this fishing was available and spear fishing was available. It could do all those things. So the wildlife here was a bit more tense. It was, you know, maybe a bit more cautious of humans. But we got it declared a green zone. No take, no fishing, no spearing, no touching, no taking. And besides the odd person doing something they perhaps don't realise they shouldn't do, it doesn't happen much. So this place brings you close to nature, and it's kind of odd for a bloke who raced motorbikes for a living to all of a sudden appear to become a conservationist. But I think deep down inside, I was always that way, I was always a conservationist. But when you're young, you take a while to find your feet and find your direction and and and just feel who you are and where you are on this planet. I often say it's not about making a fortune. It's a busy little business. This is a business, but for us it's not about making a fortune, it's about making a difference. And what we've done here, with the resources that the tourists that come out here give us, the tourists spend a lot of money with us, so we use that money wisely to protect and preserve and conserve for our future generations. Because I often say to people, don't have your children come to you one day and say, Hey Dad, hey mum, why didn't you do more to protect the planet? And it's not just about climate change, it's not just about global warming, it's about ocean rubbish, land rubbish, all the things we're doing that we are starting to realize we shouldn't be. So.
SPEAKER_04:And what have you seen that makes a difference for people in connecting to the sort of sensitivities that you've developed?
SPEAKER_00:People really love to see success in the form of alternative energy. You know, you know, we we make all our own power here from solar, and then we use that power to desalinate all our water. People love that. They write you letters, they've been here from all around the world, and then they'll write you letters and say, wow, I loved what you do there. Then they'll send you something they might have seen up in Europe or up in the UK or you know, somewhere else. They love to see that. They love to see our wastewater management and our and our food scrap management, they love to see our re-vegetation. People get inspired by a success story in this world because we belong to nature. We're a part of nature. I don't think we came from Mars, you know, I don't think we appeared off another planet. I think we evolved here, but we've got this amazing brain. And our amazing brain, which is remarkable, and we've all got one, and I don't think any of us are better or worse, just some of learned how to use it. We probably got a bit wayward for the last two or three hundred years in this excitement of growing and developing and pulling ourselves out of poverty, and you know, because pretty tough world two or three hundred years ago. So those people were just struggling to survive. So they did a lot of stuff that we now look back on and go people love to see that we're moving in the right direction, that we can exist with nature, we can have a really minimal footprint in a place like this. That really inspires people, and that inspires me to keep doing it.
SPEAKER_04:What really inspires me about the story of Lady Elliot really comes back to you and the difference that one person can make. I mean, all of us think are susceptible to the overwhelm at a lot of the major issues going on in the planet, be they social, environmental, political. But Lady Elliot for me is just such a beacon of hope, and that comes back down to one person, you with a team, but you having a vision and taking action and not being daunted by something seeming unlikely or impossible. Can you talk us through your relationship with the island, when it started and and how it's evolved?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, oh. Well, as I said earlier, I was racing motorcycles for a living, motocross, you know, in the bush, brap rap, brap, and seems like a fairly wild thing to do. But I was a young fella and I just was fortunate. And I came out here on a holiday because it got too hot in the summer, so I came out with some friends on a couple of boats. I'd been to a couple of parts of the barrier reef, I'd been to Green Island, I'd been to Heron, so I'd seen some of the beauty, but I was only quite young, I was 21, I think, and I came here and there were two boats, and there was a young girl who I knew on the other boat, and I was on this boat, and we came ashore and was like, whoa. There was virtually no trees, virtually no birds, but we went snorkeling and it was stunning in the water, and we saw mantis. But this place was like a desert. It was barren, and there was all this coral rock that you see here now, and no vegetation. And so it was rough, so we decided to leave and we went to Lady Musgrave, which is the next island across, 20 miles away, and we stayed there, and it had this beautiful forest and beautiful coral and soil. So I've gone, why is that one so beautiful? And this one here has been so damaged. So I went back to my world and did my thing for a couple more years and did homework and discovered this place had been mined, strip mined for guano, bird pook. Took all the vegetation, two metres of guano they'd taken off it. So it was just this wild dream, I guess, or this almost impossible dream that I'd one day love to have a business going there. Just to improve the place, but to show it off, to share it, let other people experience it. So that went on over a period, and I quickly realized that to do it I needed to be able to fly airplanes. I didn't have a pilot's licence, but I'd always wanted to have one. So I quit racing, married that young girl. Still married now, 42 years later.
SPEAKER_04:Wow.
SPEAKER_00:And talked about this place. Everyone laughed at me. I said, I'm gonna run a business up there, man. You're gonna do that, you know. So we had to work real hard. I had a goal, two days work a day, seven days a week, because I had to pay for my first airplane and then pay for, you know, it was just we had to make money to get started. So to us, money was a tool to do what we wanted to do. And so we started initially to Musgrave because it was someone else here with a tiny little resort, but they didn't even understand the word eco. And I was still trying to understand, and you're talking the late 1980s, early 1990s, climate change was hardly a word. You know, coral bleaching was hardly a word, hardly anybody knew about it. But I first saw coral bleaching in the early 90s from the air as I came into land at Musgrave and wondered about it. And this place was chipping away in my mind, but someone else owned it. So how was I gonna get it? This kid with bugger all, really. We had an airplane, but the debt was bigger than the airplane. We had a business where we worked from, but we had we had massive debt. We were very brave in that we took on debt because we knew that was the only way we were gonna get to where we wanted to go. You couldn't do what we do without expensive assets, expensive equipment. Because you'd say, why don't you bring people here in boats? Well, it's such a long way, you've just come here in a boat. It's so it precludes a lot of people from coming here. It's still as expensive, and when you look at the fuel burn per nautical mile, but those airplanes that we've got now, they're very economical things. So we pushed towards airplanes, we came here, and we got to know the guy who owned it while we were flying elsewhere. And he was an old fella, and he was a tough old fella. And I was a young fella, I was in my by then I was in my early 30s, and I'd gone to one of the things I flew you up in a Cessna Caravan, and it was the first one in the country, and it was one and a half million dollars. Every airplane I'd bought up to then was like a hundred thousand dollars. So I just jumped off the cliff, put everything we had on the line. I knew I needed a good aeroplane, so we bought one up to here in debt. Massive risk because if we didn't keep it busy, we're gonna lose it, we're gonna lose our house and everything we'd worked for. But I knew that if I didn't get that decent piece of equipment, I could never do it. So we did. And the old guy took to me because he said, his words were, you got sting in your tail, son. You remind me of me, he said. When I was your age, I used to do that. And he started an airline called Sun State Airlines and he sold it to Australian Airlines and it became Cornislink. So the guy who I bought this off, he started Cornislink. And he was a bit similar. Neither of us finished school, but we're both workers and both just had a go. So he he sort of dropped his guard a bit for me and he helped me. And so he had aeroplanes, but he his engineers couldn't keep them going. Well, then I'd become an engineer as well, an aircraft engineer. So I said, I'll buy your airplanes, but you have to finance me because I can't borrow any more money. The bank just laughs at me. So he financed me and I would fix them and keep them going. And over the next 10 years we worked together, and in 2005 we bought the lease and away we went, and that was 20 years ago. It's now 2025. And so now we're looking forward to the next 25 or 30 years up to 2050, and we just want to do more of the same, is looking after this beautiful place. So we fell in love with it. We saw this impossible dream. So many people said you'll never do that. Just wasting your time, you'll never do that. And people who were close to you who you wouldn't have thought would say that to you. Because it Australia is a funny country, and people generally they probably care for you when they're saying, Don't do that, you you'll go broke or you're this or you're that. Some of them will encourage you. But what really happened that I didn't see early was an enormous amount of people did encourage us and supported us, and we didn't even know. They were behind the scenes helping us, like even the old fella, they were helping us, they wanted us to succeed. So it's wonderful, and thank you for saying one person at the pointy end to make it happen, but that one person can't do it without his team. And that team is bigger than you realise. You know, you've got people that know you that are supporting you, and you don't even necessarily know they're doing it. Because some people don't ask for thanks. But you know, going in that direction when you said vision, so many people say to me, Oh, you must have had great vision. I go, Well, yeah, I did, probably. But so many people have great vision. We all have great vision. To me, in my mind, what I think was different between me and the others with the vision, I went bang and put the rubber on the road and I just made it happen. Like you, I've watched you in the short time I've got to know you. You just make things happen. You just do it. And that's a real key in my mind is don't be a gunner, be a doer. And I try and teach that to young people. And as you know, we employ a lot of young people here, and half the enjoyment to me is seeing these young people evolve, and they'll come and they'll start with this, they're 18 or 19. I've got so many young pilots that start with me, and they come and they do three or four years, and they go off to an airline, then they come back, oh, it was the best job I ever had. And you've you've you've enthused them, you inspired them to be a doer. I think that's so important.
SPEAKER_04:Another part of your story that I love, Pete, is, and you alluded to it a little bit before, was that you you didn't go to university, you didn't finish school, you didn't study environmental science, you didn't have a master's degree in conservation biology, but you had and have a deep curiosity and a willingness to ask questions, difficult questions, and to seek out answers. Can you talk about how that curiosity has shaped this place over the years?
SPEAKER_00:Thank you. That's a great question. And you're right, there was a time when people would say, Well, you don't have a degree, you didn't go to uni, so you don't know anything. People are starting to realize that's not necessarily so. And then interestingly, citizen science, we see that sometimes scientists are critical of citizen science. But I read a great article recently, two of our most well-known citizen scientists. One was Joseph Banks, who came out here with Captain Cook, he had no science degree. He's one of our most famous scientists, but he was a citizen scientist. But the other one who's even more well-known is a guy called Charles Darwin. He had no science degree. So you keyed the word, it's curiosity. I walk around and I'm just not looking, I'm thinking and I'm asking questions. And you've already picked up on that. You know, how did that work? Why is it like that? What's happening? And I'm always challenging the scientists, and so we love it because they see me, he's a bit of a bushy, but he asks lots of questions. So I've made them ask questions. When we came here, science told me that nutrient killed coral. Nutrient kills coral. Nitrogen, phosphorus, which was bird put, kills coral. So that's all what we all know. And yes, it does in high concentrations. But what we've discovered here is through asking questions and through research, that the nitrogen and phosphorus, the bird put, when the rain soaks down through it, soaks down through this calcium carbonate base. It's really like a big sponge. The tide is under there all the time and it moves up and down about 300 mil every tide. And the fresh water with nutrient and it sits on the top. Every time the tide goes out, it takes a small concentration of this nutrient out, which is what has grown this reef so healthily and the wildlife around it. So, from thinking nutrient was bad for coral and saying to the scientists, I think something's going on. Why is the reef getting better? Because we're planting the trees. We're planting these trees, we've got more birds, we've got more poop, things are improving out there. What's going on? So the scientists started to do research. We drilled bores and we discovered. That it's actually improving. So that curiosity is so important.
SPEAKER_04:And it's relevant to everything in our lives.
SPEAKER_00:And it's it's almost like a childlike curiosity. We should never grow old.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, this is this is so great, Pete. This reminds me of a live podcast we did earlier this year with Bob McTavish, who is a famous surfboard shaper. He's 82.
SPEAKER_00:I've heard his name, yeah.
SPEAKER_05:Incredibly enthusiastic man. Yeah. And he's still like every day he can, he's surfing and designing new ways to ride surfboards, new surfboard designs, endlessly curious. And we asked him specifically, how do you keep that enthusiasm alive, Bob? And he said he wakes up with awe and wonder and curiosity. I wonder what the surf's going to be like today with this swell and that swell, and oh, there's these new birds in town, and I wonder, oh, I should go check them out, or how can I make my wife happy today? We've been together 50 years. Maybe I can do something new for her, and and that was his his gift to everyone is that. That's how he does it. And I I have to think that you have that similar trait of keeping that spark alive, keeping that curiosity going. How can the rest of us do that? What do you say when you get one of those young people who come to the island and they're looking for a bit of guidance and and they're obviously looking to you for that? How do you respond to that?
SPEAKER_00:There's a lot of things that I think shape us, and one of them really importantly, I say to young people, we're a part of nature, so we belong here. Don't believe we don't. So look after the planet as good as you can. But remember that the more you give, the more you receive. And it's not like if I give to you, you're going to give back to me. It's like I do something special for you, and over here, something special comes back to me. It's not necessarily like that, you know. So Lady Elliot has proven it to me, the more I look after Lady Elliot, the more we do for this island, the more it does for us as a family, as a group, as an island, it's almost like it's racing. It's almost this place is almost racing, like you heard Andy say, Whoa, I can't believe how much greener it's got. It's like it's racing to get back where it was to say, hey, thanks, you know. So I try and get young people to understand that it's not a one-way street, it's not about how much can I get in a relationship, it's how much can I give. Because if I give, you get an enormous amount just by giving. Nothing more than that. Just giving is an amazing thing. But then there's other things that happen then in your life because of that, you know. So that's one of the things I try to inspire young people to see. But the other one is I talk about a thing which kind of goes back to what we talked about with vision or making things happen, rubber on the road. And that is, for want of another word, someone, it's I think I'm plagiarizing someone else's words, but I've heard the words personal power, okay? And I've talked about it only yesterday. I've got this young lady who's been with me for years. She started here when she was 16. She'd just become my executive assistant back on the golf show. She's 25 now. And she'd been with me and away and with me around. She's back, and we're talking, and I said, there's a thing called personal power. And what that means is if you say you're going to do something, do it. Don't let yourself down and don't let other people down. If you want to do something, do it. It's personal power. It's too easy to say, oh, I'll do that tomorrow. Oh, I'll do that next week. Oh, that's a bit hard. No, no, no. I want to do it. I want to build the magpie, I want to sail up to the barrier reef, do it. And that's personal power to me. And I'm not sure if it's something that some have and some don't. I I tend to feel we're all equal, but some of us for some reason rather develop these skills or these driving moments a bit more than others. So you owe it to the others to try and enthuse them to get into it and you do better.
SPEAKER_04:Can you talk us through one of the times when you exercised your personal power and I'm thinking specifically about compost and dragon fruit?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Like that's a really specific example.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. Well, this place, when we took it over, it was covered in introduced species. But this is a coral cave, a magnificent coral K. Really special piece of real estate on the planet, unique with its own unique vegetation. But it had all been strip mined and taken away, and then they left goats, so they ate it. There was very little natural vegetation here. What was here was introduced. The lighthouse keepers, God bless their souls, they came out, they'd probably think most of them would come from England, so they brought old English plants to make them feel at home, which you'd get, you'd understand that. It would have been a windy, barren place. So they planted a lot of different stuff: lantana, plumeria, what do you call it, frangipani, and dragon fruit. We call it midnight cactus. Beautiful plant, lovely flower that flowers at night, and some people eat it. We had three big crops, if you want to call that, or outgrowths of dragon fruit. Looked pretty, but it didn't belong here. And when we first started, no one believed we would ever get it back to its natural state. It was like, you're joking, man, you know, it's just not gonna happen. Yeah, it's gonna happen. It might take us a while, but we'll make it happen. So this dragon fruit was massive. And so we brought quite a few of the experts out to help us. It was like, what are we gonna do with this stuff? Oh, well, you'll need to pull it down and you need to put it into bins, we'll need to take it off the island because it's it's rabid, you know, it'll keep growing and you won't, and you're or you can dig holes and bury it. No, no, no, no, that's sounding too hard to me. Nature is. Nature looks after itself, you know. There's no in my mind, there's no such thing as weeds. It's just a plant that's not in its place at that time. But weeds recover. So this dragon fruit, we decided we're gonna give it a go. So we pulled it down out of the trees and we crushed it down, and there was a bit of criticism that this isn't gonna work, and we thought, well, what have we got to lose? So we pushed it into piles, and then Bo, who's been with me 25 years and lives in my house, because we've got one of the houses up, he lives in my house when he's here on the island. We talked about it and he said, I'm gonna drive over it with the loader, I'm gonna squash all the juice out of it, and keep going. What are you on to, Bo? So he's drove over it and drove over it, and all this juice came running out, and about a week later he's drove over it again, and it slowly crushed down, became magnificent compost. So we just planted all these personias and different vegetation in it. There's no dragon fruit anymore, but there's magnificent compost for the vegetation that belongs here. So we turned a negative into a positive. And I think that's nature in so many ways. Nature's providing for us. We've just got to listen and look, and that's that curiosity thing that we talked about.
SPEAKER_04:And paying attention, right? There was no guidebook, there was no, there was no plan. Plant this here on this side, plant that here, and then it's all gonna work. You had to.
SPEAKER_00:And some people are going like this. There's no book, mate. There's no book on this, no one's done this before. We're gonna give it a go. And the way I saw it, what was the worst thing that could happen? Yeah, we'd end up with a big pile of stuff we had to put in the buckets and take away anyway. So, yes, it costs a bit of money to do that, but the outcome was fantastic. Yeah, so now we share that knowledge, and as you've already seen, we've got a nursery over there with over 6,000 plants in it. We've got an island here with over 16,000 plants we've planted. So the nursery's brimming with stock. So now there are other islands that are saying, wow, how can we do that? And as I say, the door's open, my nursery's open, our minds are open. If you want it, come and talk to us. Anything we can share, we will. It's about collaborating and partnerships and sharing. Any plants you want out of the nursery, tell us what you want. We just share because it'll go away and it'll come back. Because other people come and learn off us. Next thing they're your friend, and then they're checking and then you're learning off them. You know what I mean? And then it's just like this. You just we all get better.
SPEAKER_04:If you've enjoyed listening to the conversation so far, consider also subscribing to Water People on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. It'll help other people find the show. And if you're feeling inspired, leave us a review. We love hearing from you. And now a word from the folks who help make the podcast possible. Patagonia is in business to save our home planet. Founded by Yvonne Chinard in 1973, Patagonia is a surf and outdoor apparel company based in Ventura, California. As a certified B Corp and a founding member of 1% for the planet, the company is recognized internationally for its product quality and environmental activism, as well as its contributions of nearly$230 million to environmental organizations. Its unique ownership structure reflects that the Earth is its only shareholder. Profits not reinvested back into the business are paid as dividends to protect the planet. Learn more at patagonia.com.au. Many of us look to supplements and special diets to maintain our health, but ignore the obvious. We are water. It's what we're made of, and it's what supports every bodily function. Primal water, the water our ancestors thrived on, is energized, alkaline, and made for real hydration. It doesn't come from the industrialized, often contaminated water systems most of us rely on. For the last 25 years, Alcway has been researching and refining ways to mimic natural water systems. We invite you to learn more about primal water and support their charitable work with BirdLife Australia. Head to Alkaway.com to score a$50 discount using code WaterPeople. That's Alkaway.com. What do you do when your sunglass lenses inevitably get scuffed or scraped? The top drawer of our kitchen island was where scratched sunglasses went to die. Until we learned about the sunglass fix, they've been at the forefront of the repair revolution since 2006 and carry more than 600,000 lens options. So there's a solution for every frame. We found our Sennys on thesunglassfix.com and within a few days received brand new polarized lenses to easily install at home. A billion pairs of sunglasses are made each year, with hundreds of millions ending up in landfill. The Sunglass Fix offers free lens shipping in Australia and to 161 countries around the world, as well as subsidized express tracked shipping worldwide for less than$5 in any currency. They're a proud member of 1% for the planet and are ready to help make your favorite frames last longer. Use the code WaterPeople for 10% off your purchase today at thesunglassfix.com. The recurring theme that I'm feeling is like how powerful small things, bird shit, dragon fruit, how small things can have massive impacts. It also makes me think about the sand islands that we saw when we were flying up the coast this morning. Can you speak to some of the magnificence of that coastline and maybe the relationship with Lady Elliot?
SPEAKER_00:And that's so important, that interconnectedness. We humans can sometimes be a little bit tunnel vision. We just see Lady Elliot and that's what it's all about. No, no, no. Lady Elliot wouldn't exist without certain things that are happening around it or not happening around it. So yeah, we flew up over Ghari, Fraser Island, and it's stunning, the world's largest all-sand island, and you saw for yourself, it is spectacular from the air, magnificently beautiful, and a protected environment, a UNESCO World Heritage listed national park, as is this place. So just in that short flight, we actually flew over three UNESCO national parks. It's amazing, Noosaheads, and then Gari Fraser. But but Gari Fraser is all-sand, the world's largest all-sand island. It's had some remarkable history. Going back to our Aboriginal history, the the butchelor people who lived there for thousands of years, and they called it Gari, which in their language means paradise, because it would have been paradise, you know, not too hot, not too cold. Someone's trying to poop on us. You know, that's that's lucky what happened there. You know why it's lucky? It's lucky because it didn't go in your mouth. Anyway, yeah, but it's the interconnectedness of it is this too much agriculture without managing our agriculture, and don't get me wrong, I'm not against agriculture. I started in that world, and my family are in that world big time. But it's like what we do here. This was run without necessarily the curiosity and the and the management needed to make it last. Agriculture needs the same. As we get smarter, and our younger people are getting smarter, and some of the older people do, with our agriculture, we're now managing the runoff and the sediment because coral doesn't like sediment, doesn't like runoff. Hence the problems you find as you go further north, because there's been so much agriculture. Sadly, the sugar and the sugar cane, we've paid a big price for it. At the time we didn't, I mean I assume they wouldn't have known that, but they're starting to realise it now. But it's the interconnectedness, and that goes even further back. You know, these rivers that feed down here to the Great Bar Reef, they feed way out. So when you get big, heavy rainstorms and lots of rain, you get big flood plumes. The Fitzroy River at um Rocky, and then the Burdican River up in Mackay and Townsville and up through those areas, those flood plumes come out and that sediment settles on the coral and it kills it. So whether you talk climate change or not, coral's under a lot of stress. You know, it's got cyclones, heat, sedimentary damage, crown of thorn starfish, there's a lot of things threatening it. So we have to work together to manage those things. And it's great to see now the Marine Park Authority or Reef Authority and the Foundation are working with schools, teaching kids like Minnow at a young age to fall in love with these places, so they'll go away and they'll use their powerful minds, because they've all got a powerful mind, and they'll put it to good use and they'll come up with ideas we haven't thought of. And it's like, oh wow, and protect the place or come up with protection for it.
SPEAKER_05:I know you want to ask a question, but I really want to ask a question. So to just dive into what you were just describing, Pete, about where you travelled this morning to get to the island, going over these incredible locations like Noosa and Gari and up here to the island. We've just done that similar line, but from even further south, our home waters of the northern rivers of New South Wales, where our rivers are very unhealthy, very, very sick rivers. And we've been travelling this close-in track along the coast slowly by sailboat, coming in and sleeping on the edges of those rivers, and noticing as we come north, Noosa River, for example, is the first river that we crossed that was unstraightened. Yeah, it had a natural mouth. And then Double Island through to Inskip, Inskip, also unstraightened, and then we come through the Sandy Straits and then up through the inside of Gary to the island here.
SPEAKER_00:And the Mary River, too, as you came past. Really? Yeah, you came past the Mary River. It's unstraight. Unstradened. Magnificent river.
SPEAKER_05:It's so I'm kind of you know building a picture in my mind of this stretch via the sailing experience. You have built a picture of this stretch via your flying experience, and I would just like to know how you see those places further south connecting to this place right here at the very bottom of the Great Barrier Reef, one of the most celebrated loved places on the planet, but also kind of mysterious too. There's a lot of mysteries with the reef. We don't fully understand everything that's happening out here. Can you yeah, just paint a bit of a picture of your perspective? Because I just think it's so fascinating that you've spent so much time here, but also flying over this with a very observant mind.
SPEAKER_00:This is deep, but it but it's important. Australia, to the best of my understanding, is the only continent that doesn't have a mountain range on the western side. It's on the eastern side. So the wind travels around the planet west to east. So South America, Africa, North America, as it comes and hits those mountain ranges, it rises and cools and rains across the continent or snows across the continent, not in Australia, it comes straight across Western Australia, there's nothing. So it comes across, heats up, dries out, we have this big, dry central continent. What happens is these massive big trade winds come around the southern part of Australia, around the southern component, and they turn, and because it's hot out in the middle, we get these big high pressures, anti-cyclones. So the the wind's turning that way, so it drives this big southeasterly breeze up that east coast that you just sailed up, and a big swell comes up that east coast. And then these massive currents, we've got you know we've got that beautiful EAC, the East Australian current that runs down, but then you've got other currents inshore that run up. You're a surfer, you know this really well. So we've got this big surf that's driving up, which as Lauren saw today, some of those little creeks and rivers they're silted up until it rains, then boof, and they open up and they flow and then they silt up again. It's a natural cycle. But man, is we're funny buggers, us humans. I want to be able to take my boat out there every day. Well, you can't, because it's silted up for the next three months. So they dredge it, and that's what you talked about when you said these straight rivers, they dredge it and they put rock walls so that we can get in and out of the river. Well, sometimes we've got to accept that we can't always get out of the river. And and so you worked hard to get into the Noosa River and you worked hard to get in through Inskip Point, but it's a natural entrance. So you used your skill and the right boat to do that safely. So what I'm saying is where there's a big population, there's a lot of pressure on government, a lot of pressure on authority to make it simple, make it easy. You get away from society, you get away from big numbers, and people are more accepting of oh that didn't quite work, but that's okay, or that's a bit rough, I've got to be a bit more careful. So those big population centres bring a lot of pressure onto our planet. And I think that's probably, in my view, the biggest problem we face. Yes, we face climate change, we global warming, whatever you want to use to, it's definitely something's happening. But I think more concerningly to me is population. There's a lot of us, eight plus billion of us. So that puts pressure, as it's put pressure down in southeast Queensland, northern rivers. You know, you you talk about those northern rivers, the reason they're so sick, they cut those beautiful forests down. It was magnificent forests, a big timber country. There's some great books written about that area that you're talking about. You know, Lismore Casino, down there to Whippery and down near to Grafton, those rivers, magnificent rivers, but they're very sick because they're surrounded by sugar cane. Yeah, yeah. Sadly, but it is what we've done. But we humans are slow to change. But we will. I I'm a big believer that we will, whether it's Minnow that does it or Minnow's kids that do it, we'll slowly, and we're setting the we're setting the base mark now. We're saying we've got to change. That's why you're doing what you're doing, that's why I'm doing. We're trying to lead by example. You know, you said it again, one person can make a difference. One person does make a difference. A lot of us don't believe that. We feel oh it's hopeless, I can't make a difference. Yes, you can. Everyone can. Yeah, I've been lucky with this place. I've had the ability to have this amazing platform. But I I saw it, I reached for it, I didn't know if I'd get it, I got it. So it's incumbent on me to make sure I do the best I can for myself and my family and our team to inspire the young people of the world.
SPEAKER_05:So, how do people do that, Pete? So, how how can people learn from what you have co-created here? How do we access your story in order to not have to reinvent the wheel down the coast on another sandy island or another spot that may have similarities? How can we get a hold of your story?
SPEAKER_00:Curiosity, inspire our own internal curiosity. Go walk around and looking. When I first walked around here, there wasn't much to see because it was a mess. But I looked and I listened and I thought, and what do we need? And then I went to some of the other coral caves. It's the same thing. If you're up in the big river country, which is where you are, that means that back of that country is that big river country. Go and have a look. And what can you do? And it might only be a small thing in your mind, but it's every step. I have this saying, you're gonna love this. 300 years ago, the planet was at this level. Let's use that as a really good, healthy level. But 300 years later, it's down here. So what made that happen? Was it one thing? Or two things? Or three things? It was millions of things. Millions of little tiny actions got us to here. I'm excited to say I think we're somewhere in the bottom of the pit. I believe we're coming back up. So we want to get back to here, don't we? So how are we going to do it? Is it going to be one thing or two things or three? I mean millions of tiny actions. Every little action that each and every one of us does, whether it's using a bit less power, whether it's riding a bike rather than a car, whatever it might be, planting a few extra cheese, enthusing your neighbours or your friends, helping, volunteering, whatever it might be, it's one of those little actions. And we just can't go from here to here overnight. It's not realistic. It took us quite a while to get ourselves in the pickle we're in. It's going to take us a while to get out of it.
SPEAKER_05:Wonderfully said.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. We were sitting with Andy Ridley, he's CEO of Citizens for the Reef, and he was speaking so lovingly about Lady Elliott Island and the beautiful work you've done here, and he really considers the island as an ambassador for the reef. When I think about the Great Barrier Reef and the predominant global narrative around the reef right now, it's very doom and gloom based. It's heading in a what seems like a very scary decision. How do you hold both that story and your lived experience of hope and regeneration and sort of unexpected adaptation at the same time?
SPEAKER_00:So that's a great example, isn't it? Like Andy came to Australia, his battery was flat from his earth hour thing, but he wanted to make a difference. Back in the early 2000s, there was a whole lot of negative about the Barrier Reef. There was a lot of agendas about coal and so on. And Andy came out here and we met and he got inspired. He was inspired anyway, but he got more inspired. And look at what the difference that Andy's making with citizens, and now with their census. He came back here a couple of times, almost in cheers. I could see it in him. He was almost a flood. I've got to give up, don't give up, Andy, keep going. And now he's going and he's on fire, and that citizens is on fire, and it'll make a difference. So I think that's just so important to keep encouraging each other and making sure that we don't give up. We do encourage each other, we do believe that we can make a difference, because we can and we are, and that's just so important. Our children are everything. I can see it in you guys how much you love young Minnow, and it's obvious you've been great parents. You can see it in the way the young fella is. That says, speaks volumes to me. And I'm so proud of my children. And I was a hard-working guy, so it was hard for me to mix work, and but I would just stop and go to their things that they were doing, whether it was gymnastics or whatever it might be, you just made the time. So your children are everything. And there's a few sayings, and one of them is really good, is that we don't we don't inherit the earth from our parents. We actually borrow it from our children. So we're borrowing this planet from our children. We're not inheriting it from our parents. So if we don't look after it, what are we leaving our children? We have to believe the hope of human beings is enormously powerful. I mean, you sadly she's just passed away, but Jane Goodall, one of my heroes, she talks about that the four reasons for hope. And one of them she talks about is the enthusiasm and the energy and the spirit of our young people. You know, they uh they wake up, they're alive, wow, I'm five, I'm ten, I'm fifteen, it's my turn. What am I going to do with the planet? We have to make sure we give them something that they can do things with. Because the other thing she talks about is the brilliance of the human mind. We all have this brilliant mind, we've touched on it before. So that hope into our children is critical. And we we're humans, so we all have moods. And we'll all go in a bit of a hole. I have it, we all do it, you know, don't fool ourselves, I don't think. It's like, oh, something this and that. Oh. You just gotta trust yourself to get through it and try not to show it too much because you don't want to pull others down. You've got to try and get yourself out of that hole and be back and be positive. We've we've survived hundreds of thousands of years as a species, and I think we'll survive for a long time, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:What do you see here on the island that gives you hope?
SPEAKER_00:It's just the speed with which it wants to recover. It's it's screaming at me, saying thank you. It's screaming at me, it's saying thanks, you know. Did you ever read Lord of the Rings?
unknown:No.
SPEAKER_02:No.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, it's awesome. It's a great book with great lessons and messages in it. I probably read it eight or nine times. I probably read it when I was ten my first time. There's so many lessons in life. Professor Tolkien was a genius and he wrote some amazing things in it. But this place reminds you of that. They came back from their journey to their home, and their home was destroyed. All the forest had been cut down. But along the way, this elven queen had given this little tiny thing of magic sand. And what are we going to do with this magic sand? Can we put it there and make one tree grow? And they talked about it, and one of them said, no, we're going to put one little drop of sand at the base of every tree in their forest that had been so destroyed while they were away by the bad forces. So they put this little drop of sand around all the bases of all these trees. The forest went crazy. Every time I look at this, I think of that, and I think, this forest is saying thank you. You're putting us back. And it inspires me to keep going when I have my down days, like we all do, you know. Like life is tough. No one gets an easy ride. No one gets an easy ride. We all battle with our own internal demons as well as external demons. But I think we have to believe in ourselves. I think that's possibly one of my advantages, I suppose. Because I had a fairly turbulent childhood, I don't know why, but I came out of it just believing in myself. I can do that. Don't tell me I can't do that. Don't ever tell me I can't. I have a saying, there's no such word as can't in my life. I can. Don't tell me I can't. So I just believe if I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it. And if I hit a wall and I can't, it's okay. No, hang on. How can I? How are we gonna find a way? Or maybe my goal is too high, maybe we just have to reset the bar. And I think we need to all see that is that we all have this amazing power to do things. And believe in yourself is so important, I think. Self-belief. You want to build a boat, you want to sail to the reef, you did it.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, yeah, you know? Oh, it's beautiful, mate. I'm so grateful that you are so eloquent and open to sharing. Because I feel like for us as people who just live, you know, down the coast and envision the barrier reef, but wonder how we're connected. You know, we live in different ecosystems, but actually interestingly, where we dive, Nuthlung Alley, the island Julian Rocks off Byron Bay, is this line where we have coral species coming down, fish coming down and temperate species coming up, and it's this mixing point, yeah. And we're right on that edge, that subtropical edge. So we know we're connected to up here in this country, yeah, but there's a difference between knowing it and feeling it and experiencing it, and that's what this trip's really been about. And so to be able to sit with you and have the birds shit on my shoulder and listen to your laugh and look in your eyes and hear your words and feel your spirit, it's really such a blessing. And I'm so grateful that we've had this moment because I know you're a gung-ho fellow and you've got lots going on, and yeah, it's just really an honour for us to do this and to share this with water people, people, coastal people all over the world, and hope that we yeah, skill share and learn from each other and learn from someone who's who's walked the talk, man. Like you really have, and that's super inspiring for us.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you, and and and it's likewise, it's it's for me, it's inspiring to see there are people that think the same. But we did share those values, share you know that that eloquent caring for each other, that spirit, it it encourages you because sometimes you feel like you're the Lone Ranger, you know, and because not everyone sees the world that way, and I and I feel sad for people who don't. You try and inspire them to say, hey, it doesn't need to be like that, it can be like this. And a lot of people do get it, but occasionally people don't get it. So it's fantastic to meet wonderful people and share some time together out here. We had a wonderful flight up this morning, Lauren and and and and Andy and Lil Minnow.
SPEAKER_02:It's just crazy.
SPEAKER_00:But you know, one of the things we do with our airplanes, this is diverging a little bit because you talk about connectedness. We talked about this mountain range on the east coast of Australia. So the wind comes around the east side, comes up, climbs up those mountains and rains and runs back down those rivers, those big rivers you were talking about. So we have our high rainfall on this east coast. So those big rivers run from that, whereas on other continents it's on the west coast. So Australia's unique. The Great Dividing Range, it's quite unique. So all our weather is here where our population is. But go on the other side of it and you go out to the most amazing rivers, the Diamantina River and Cooper Creek and the Paru and the Bulu. And so I take people out there with my airplanes to inspire them about the centre of Australia. So different to here. But it's connected, man, because the air's coming past and it's coming to here and it's raining, and then the rain that falls up there is going into the Great Artesian Basin and travelling right underneath the continent and bubbling up out there near Alice Springs. It's so connected, it's just so exciting, and then it's bubbling and they, you know, wow.
SPEAKER_05:Man, I want to get my pilot's license if I can get that perspective right there.
SPEAKER_04:That would be unbelievable. Another story that I was really struck by today, Pete, was you were talking about how this island is rising. Can you share that story?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Because I feel like that is something beyond our imagination in a way that the planet is adapting in ways that we can't even fathom.
SPEAKER_00:So I think that's one of the things that really triggered my enthusiasm was how did this island get here? You know, like how did it get here? So 10,000 years ago, sea level was approximately 30 meters lower. 30 metres a long way. So did the island stick up 30 metres? No. The island didn't even exist. The island did not exist. So the Tarabalang Bunda people and the Baelis and the Aboriginal people that lived through this area, they walked around out there because sea level was off the edge of the continental shelf and dropped off there, and this was dry land, only 30, 20 to 30 metres down. So we had this big interglacial period, this ice age, and the sea level rose, but on the edge of the shelf was some corals, but it wasn't ideal, so they were corals, but they weren't the Great Barrier Reef. So the sea level came up and over the top, and it and it pushed the Aboriginal people back to where the coastline now is. So they left this area and the sea level rose, but what became was this perfect environment for coral reef. So coral loves lots of sunlight, warm water, shallow water, and no sediment, no runoff. So all of a sudden, bam, we're 80 kilometers from the coast, it's shallow, it's sunny, it's warm, and so these corals migrated up onto the top, and they made the reef 2,000 kilometres, it's crazy, all along that edge. But some places, as the reef was further out, because it had no sediment, no runoff, some of the places, just because that same thing we talked about, the connectedness of that big continent and these big winds coming around, these big swells coming up, crashed down on this living coral, broke the coral into the pieces that you see around us. So on the living coral sitting in the shallow water, as because the sea level didn't just go up one night, it went up about three millimetres a year, roughly, corals got thrown on the top. Dead corals got thrown on the top, and living corals were around the outside. So, what do you think happened? Oh, the birds came along. Oh, that's a good spot, I'll land here. So the birds pooped, the birds brought seeds in their feathers, in their bellies, they died, their bodies became seed pods, so they started to create a layer of fertilizer. And then the sea level kept rising and more coral got thrown up and more birds. So, guess what happened? About three millimetres a year, some places just stayed underwater, most of the reef is underwater, but these randomly stunningly beautiful places like Lady Elliot and Lady Musgrave and Fairfax and Heron, the reasons that we still don't yet understand why this one get a K but another one didn't, is K formed. K, C-A-Y, coral K. And so the bird pup mixed with the crushed up coral, because crushed up coral is calcium carbonate, so bird pup is nitrogen, phosphorus, calcium carbonate is the coral, three elements of cement. Rain, waves, stirred it all up, went hard. Created a thing called beach rock or K rock or coral rock, same stuff. Went really hard. So when cyclones came, it didn't wash away. But then it might have been over 10,000 years, this little island grew and grew and grew. So here she sat, here's this beautiful little island. And if you go out there and dive out on the blowhole, and I think you heard me say it, there's the old island down there. We dive, and hopefully you might be able to do it while you're here. We dive on a place called the blowhole, where the old island is about 15 metres down. Because sea level, it wasn't a linear rise, it kind of went up and down and up and down, and you can find places here where it was over the top and it's gone down again. Because that's what sea level does. And so the island formed, created blowholes, stabilized for a while, then all of a sudden up she came again, and then it's stabilized, and it's stabilised now for about 3,000 years. So over that approximately 3,000 years, this K has stabilized. So all that vegetation, all that bird porp, all those dead bodies have created this layer of mulch. That lay of mulch grew to the point it was about two metres deep. And that was the guano or the fertilizer that the first guano miners came looking for back in 1860 when the European settlement happened in Australia, they were looking for fertiliser, they dug it all off this place. They took the trees off it, which basically doomed the island to die. Because there's another one just like this on the northern end called Rain Island. So we're on the southern end, it's on the northern end. Rain has been stripped, but it didn't have the fortunate benefit of tourism. Because tourism, tourists coming here spending their money and giving people like me the ability to make the change, re-vegetated it. So now the island's actually growing again because the vegetation's regrowing. So the island will rise with rising sea level. How crazy is that? I mean, how crazy is that? That's it's a dynamic, organic environment. You can smell it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah, and you can feel it.
SPEAKER_00:And it's pooping on you, and it's growing at one poop at a time.
SPEAKER_05:That's good shit.
SPEAKER_00:It's good shit, eh? No shit. But that's that's the story of a coral cave. Yeah. And to me, they are such unique environments. There's not many of them. There's only three coral caves on the whole reef that have a resort. So it's Green Island up off Cairns, Heron Island off Gladstone, and Lady Elliott Island here. But there's only one of them that has an airstrip. And you're like, oh, what's good about the estuary? The air strip makes it easy for us to get here and enables us to have the resources to get stuff and people and Sir David Attenborough, Prince Charles, now King Charles, these people have been here because they could get here in a short period of time. Eric Solheim, the Director General of the United Nations Environmental Department. So many of these people have been here because they can fly here. Inspires them, enthusiasm. They go off to their home country and they talk about Lady Elliot or the things that have been achieved here. Not so much about me, it's about what we've done. The aeroplanes, yeah, I'd love to not use aeroplanes because yes, I get the fact that there's a greenhouse gas emission from it, but I use the best ones I can, the most economical ones I can. I've invested heavily in electric engines for them. We've now got electric engines. We can't yet get a fuel source that will give us more than 30 minutes. As you know, it's more than 30 minutes here. I don't want to go swimming halfway. So until, because we've supported people that are building, we went through batteries, we just couldn't get more than 35 to 40 minutes out of batteries. So now they're doing hydrogen, hydrogen electric. I keep hoping that I'm going to fly at all electric aircraft here before I'm too old to fly. I thought it was going to be 65, that's gone a year ago. So now I'm saying 70. And I keep inspiring all my friends that are scientists to do that stuff. Hurry up, man. We need an electric airplane. But if we don't keep inspiring those bikes, and they're coming out in the next couple of weeks with their whole team, they're spending millions on developing hydrogen and coming out. I'm going to give them a, I call it a needle, give them an injection of enthusiasm to get that stuff going.
SPEAKER_05:I love it. I think it's fascinating that so much has come from flying.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:I just I've thought for a long time that like our greatest form of activism is our greatest loves. Yeah. Like even if it's obscure, like you're a surfer. Like we're surfers, what can that what use does that have in the world? But it's what we have, it's what we love, it's how we connect with people and we use it the way we can. And for you, it just seems like that flying thread is through the whole thing and that bigger picture perspective. And then you land on the ground and you're right there on the ground.
SPEAKER_00:And you've seen it from the air.
SPEAKER_05:Oh, fascinating.
SPEAKER_00:And you know, those two rivers I mentioned, the Cooper Creek and the Diamond Tina, they're the last two rivers on the planet that are have have not been dammed, not been filled with. Wow. They are magnificent rivers. They drain the whole central Queensland basin and down, they end up in Lake Air. Magnificent rivers. So I take a lot of people every year. We do about 25 to 30 trips here in the wintertime, and we take them out and we show them from the air, and use the same enthusiasm. I'll land in Birdsville and I'll get them all pumped up, and I'll go to William Creek and Lake Air and then show them these places. So they go back and it's the same thing. They're putting pressure on their government or their people. Stop thinking about mining those rivers or damming those rivers. Now that's not the reef, but it's it's interconnected, you know, it's interconnected so closely.
SPEAKER_04:Time is precious. Thanks for spending some of yours listening with us today. Our editor this season is the multi-talented Ben Jake Alexander. The soundtrack was composed by Shannon Soul Carroll, with additional tunes by Dave and Ben. We'll be continuing today's conversation on Instagram, where we're at Water People Podcast. And you can subscribe to our very frequent newsletter to get book recommendations, questions for pondering, behind the scenes glimpses into recording the podcast, and more via our website, waterpeoplepodcast.com.
