Phil Noyce (not the Aussie filmmaker of the same name) had been a science teacher who was recruited to the Commission for the Future because of his interest in communicating science to the public. He was young and keen and had encouraged the organization to invite me to give a series of talks in 1988. He would later become a close friend who convinced me of the importance of acting immediately to fight climate change. I had known humanity was affecting Earth's climate, but I felt it was a problem far in the future and that there were other, more pressing issues. Phil disagreed, and the evidence has piled up to show how prescient he was in believing action was urgent. (Tragically, he had an undetected congenital heart defect and died in the prime of his life, while playing tennis.)
I was delighted to receive the invitation and accepted. At last I would be going to Australia. What would I see? Because of the horrific discrimination endured by the Aboriginal people of Australia and the government's infamous “white Australia” policy of restricting immigration to maintain a Caucasian-dominated nation, I expected to have to search hard to see a person of color. In addition, the sexism of the country was well known, and perhaps that is why one of the most globally influential feminists of the time was an Australian, Germaine Greer. I was fully prepared to encounter bigotry, sexism, and anti-gay attitudes. I also thought there would be kangaroos and other marsupials jumping through fields and streets.
How ignorant I was. Like Americans arriving in Toronto to find a huge, modern city devoid of the expected igloos, I landed in Melbourne to discover a huge, sophisticated city of great diversity. I certainly did not expect to find vigorous Chinatowns in Melbourne and Sydney, as well as lots of Thai, Vietnamese, and Japanese restaurants. To my surprise, I discovered sophisticated, multicultural cities with plenty of ethnic diversity. There were no kangaroos in the cities, of course, but I did see them in the wild, where I learned they also gather in farmers' fields and graze openly. In the cities and in “the outback”—less inhabited, vast inland areas — there was an amazing profusion of birds in all shapes and colors — cockatoos, budgies, parrots. Even the “pest” birds like magpies are beautiful. And I'm not a great birder.
On one of my early visits to Australia, Phil took me to Phillip Island south of Melbourne, where fairy or little blue penguins (Eudyptula minor) still live in tunnels in the banks above the beach, and it is possible to listen to them making their gurgling songs in their nests. We can watch as they waddle down to the water's edge in the morning, hesitate, and then collectively plunge into the surf on their way to sea. In the evening they make their way back to their homes, walking past tourists without paying any attention. It's an impressive sight that reminded me of the way animals on the Galapagos Islands failed to recognize us as deadly predators and simply ignored us.
We had a similar experience in 2003 on Kangaroo Island off the southern coast of Australia. There we encountered an echidna; it and the platypus are the only members of that select order of egg-laying mammals, the monotremes. With a sharper beak, the echidna carries a layer of thick, protective quills and makes a living by rooting about for grubs. When we spotted one, we jumped out of our vehicle; the creature ignored us as it dug into the side of the road and we chalked up another amazing encounter.
I asked Phil if I could finally see a platypus, and I was rewarded at the zoo in Melbourne. I was taken behind the exhibits and shown an elaborate waterway constructed for the animals. I was able to watch them for as long as I wanted and saw them being fed their favorite food, a kind of crayfish called a yabbie. It was the realization of my childhood dream and one of the great thrills of my life.
The Commission for the Future was determined to get its pound of flesh out of me, so Phil had arranged a heavy schedule of publicity events in addition to several formal speeches. It was virgin territory for me and for my audience. No one there had heard of me or my ideas, so I could spout off about all of my favorite subjects and be as opinionated as I wanted. It was very gratifying that people were tremendously receptive to my words. It makes sense — Australia is a country whose climate and unique ecosystems encourage being in the outdoors, whether swimming, camping, or just firing up the barbie and chugging a few frosties from the Esky (translation: lighting the barbecue and drinking a few beers from the cooler). Water is a very real issue to everyone. I also suspect Australians were intrigued to hear a “Japanese” (me) who would slang the Japanese for their depredation of global resources like trees and fish. Whatever the reasons, there was a flurry of media interest in me wherever Phil had arranged interviews and news conferences.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is as important to Australians as the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) is to Canadians, but unlike Canadians, Australians fiercely support and defend the public broadcaster. After relatively small cuts were made to ABC's budget in the late 1990s, more than ten thousand people gathered at a demonstration in Sydney to protest the loss of funding. In contrast, when the federal government made draconian cuts in the CBC's budget, only a couple of hundred people gathered in Toronto to support the corporation.
In Australia I was extensively interviewed on several local and national programs on ABC, none more important than the long-running Science Show hosted on radio by Robyn Williams. Robyn is an expat from Britain whose abilities in science communication have made him widely recognized and admired by the public, a kind of Aussie version of the late American astronomer-broadcaster Carl Sagan. I have come to know Robyn very well, as we have crossed paths often in Australia and North America. He has been the only host since the Science Show began to broadcast in the spring of 1974, and his program was a wonderful opportunity to talk about my ideas in depth.
By the time I had finished my first visit, I had not had time to get outside Melbourne and Sydney and so had still not seen any of the fabled wildlife of the continent. Nevertheless, I had fallen head over heels for the country and its people. Back home, it seemed everything I looked at triggered a memory of Australia. “Gee, in Sydney. .” I'd say. Finally, Tara looked at me suspiciously and asked if I had a girlfriend back there.
As a result of that first visit, several groups invited me to return to give talks, and I was determined to go back with Tara. I was also approached by Patrick Gallagher, head of Allen & Unwin Publishers, an Australian company that had started out as a subsidiary of the English publishing house of the same name but in 1990 became independent. We have become good friends, and I have enjoyed a close relationship with the company. When I told Patrick I wanted to set aside some of my Australian book royalties to support Aboriginal and environmental groups in Australia, Patrick promptly offered to contribute 5 percent of the profits the company makes on my books to the fund.
Soon I was planning a return visit to Australia, this time to tour several cities to talk about my books Metamorphosis (my first autobiography) and Inventing the Future (a collection of columns I had written for newspapers). In 1989, Tara accompanied me to see for herself what had so impressed me with the country. We had a whirlwind tour through Melbourne, Sydney, and Canberra with lots of media interest. Sales of the books took off, and they became best-sellers.
Australia is as exotic as any place, yet people are familiar and speak English, so it is easy to get about and converse. Australians and Canadians share a colonial history and ties with Britain, and both are adamantly proud of not being American. In Australia, scores of young Canadians can be found working on farms or waiting on tables, and Australian accents can be heard all over the ski slopes of Whistler and Banff. People in both nations think of themselves (erroneously) as a country with a small population covering a vast area. In fact, much of Canada is covered in snow, ice, or rock, and that's why most Canadians snuggle along the southern border with the United States. Similarly, much of Australia is desert, so most of the population crowds into five major cities on the coasts. But nature and wilderness or the outback are a critical part of what people in the two countries value as part of our heritage and culture.