Peter was far more than just a performer; he was president of the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF), one of the largest environmental groups in the country, and he had run unsuccessfully for the Australian Senate in 1984 for the Nuclear Disarmament Party, a predecessor of the Greens. His fans were my kind of people. When I first heard their signature song, “Beds Are Burning,” demanding that Australians confront the fact that the land belongs to the Aboriginal people, I was blown away.
The song had the same impact on me as had another in 1988. First I had received a call from a Bernie Finkelstein in Toronto. “Who are you?” I asked. “I'm Bruce Cockburn's manager,” he answered, “and Bruce asked if you would listen to a song he has just recorded.” Kind of a weird request, but I did know Bruce Cockburn was a successful Canadian singer, and Bernie's office was close enough to the CBC for me to drop in. So I did, and Bernie put on a CD to play a brand-new Cockburn song, “If a Tree Falls.” I cried when I heard it. It was powerful, and later, with the video, I knew it would be a hit. When Paiakan stayed with us, he loved Bruce's video of that song, even though he didn't understand the words.
Peter Garrett is an impressive sight. He must be six and a half feet tall, and he is lean and bald. When he performs, he's like a scarecrow puppet being manipulated by someone high above, arms and legs flailing about. I saw him onstage for the first time in Anaheim, California, and his rapturous reception by the audience showed me how badly Patrick and I had erred, but by then Peter and I had become good friends.
When he came to Canada in 1993 as the long battle over logging in the Clayoquot Sound rain forest on the west coast of Vancouver Island was heating up again, Midnight Oil volunteered to perform in the protest area. I was delighted to have the opportunity to introduce the band, and it was a marvelous concert, marred only by the nastiness of loggers who were there harassing the protesters and who screamed epithets and threatened the band as they left. (Eventually, more than nine hundred people were arrested before the Nuu-chah-nulth First Nation signed a resource management agreement with the British Columbia government.)
Because of the Australian public's tremendous response to my message of environmental stewardship, I had been urged by a number of people to start a David Suzuki Foundation Australia modeled on my Canadian foundation, but I resisted because I don't want to form a multinational organization. If our approach is useful and can be copied in Australia, there should be an autonomous Australian-created group based on similar principles.
On one of those early visits to Australia, I was told that a program called The Couchman Show, hosted by Paul Couchman, had asked that I appear as a guest. The Allen & Unwin publicist, Monica Joyce, was worried because she thought the show tended to be confrontational, and she suggested I talk to Couchman before deciding yes or no. I called and told Couchman that I was interested in dialogue, not in confrontational diatribes. “Oh no,” he assured me, “we're not that kind of show. We like to have everyone offer their positions so we can have open discussion.” I accepted the invitation.
Couchman had not leveled with me. The audience was stacked with businesspeople and economists, with a sprinkling of environmentalists, and the entire format was set up for confrontation. Because I had received assurance from the man himself, I was completely relaxed. An eminent economist shared the stage with me, and I presented my case that economics was fundamentally flawed because it excluded nature as a central part of its underpinnings (economists call it an “externality”). I probably said it a bit more forcefully than that.
Well, the economist launched into an attack on my position, egged on by Couchman. As the audience generously applauded the economist, I finally realized I had been set up. A few environmentalists in the audience tried to defend me, but we were overwhelmed by the onslaught against us.
In the end, the economist told me I didn't know what I was talking about, that the air and water were cleaner today than they had ever been. I exploded, “If you believe that, you are a fool!” I shouldn't have been so rude, but I had been under steady assault, and his statement revealed how ignorant he was. When it was over, I stomped over to Couchman and said, “You lied to me.” He didn't care; he had generated his fireworks.
A year later, I met the Australian filmmaker Paul Cox at his home, and the first thing he told me was that he had watched me on The Couchman Show and had been infuriated by the nonsense the economist spouted. He apologized over and over on behalf of Australians. I had long since overcome my anger, but I was glad there was support for my position among the viewers.
On another of those early visits to Australia, I received a request that I meet Green Party politician Bob Brown of the state of Tasmania. As an elected senator in the federal government, he has played an indispensable role in raising the profile of environmental and human-rights issues. We met in Melbourne, and as we strolled along the Yarra River at dusk, Bob suddenly stopped talking, looked intently along the riverbank, and pointed at something. It was a platypus. Thus my first sighting of a wild platypus occurred in a most unlikely environment, but I was delighted to think there was still room for the animals even in the middle of a city.
Bob wanted to know whether Lake Pedder, a pristine glacial lake in Tasmania's southwest wilderness that had been flooded in the 1970s to generate hydroelectric power, could be restored. Was it feasible? Did Tasmania need the energy the inundated lake supplied, and would the original values of that ecosystem be able to recover if the dam in the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area was removed? To study such matters, he needed money, and I offered him enough for someone to do the work. It was the early days of the David Suzuki Foundation, and I was pleased to be able to support an international project under our name.
The study showed that the energy supplied by the dam that had caused the flooding of Lake Pedder was a small part of the state's needs and could easily be given up without any economic disruption. The findings also suggested there existed sufficient residual vegetation and animal species around the lake to restore the original ecosystem if the water was permanently allowed to return to its natural flow. The study was released to the public, but, as with so many things in Tasmania, tearing down a dam seemed a regressive step to the powers that be and the idea was rejected with hardly a thought.
One of our most memorable visits to Australia occurred in 1991, when my father had recovered from my mother's death in 1984 and had regained some of his great zest for life. Dad adored our children, and we invited him to join us on a trip to Australia. He was thrilled to go, and with his genuine curiosity and his skills as a raconteur, he captivated all those he met down under. He was enchanted with the trees, the flowers, the birds, and the people — a whole world to fill his insatiable appetite for new experiences and knowledge.
With Georgina and Phil in tow, we made our way to Port Douglas. There Tara bought an inflatable vest for Dad, and we took the family out to the Great Barrier Reef on the Quicksilver. Dad's arthritis had gnarled his limbs and digits, so he looked like a twisted gnome, but he didn't let it slow him as he hobbled onto the float. We fitted him with mask, fins, and snorkel to go along with his protective vest, and in he jumped, hand in hand with Sarika. There was Dad at eighty-one, holding onto eight-year-old Sarika, paddling over to one of the “bommies,” a column of coral rising to the surface and easily encircled. I watched them swimming off and listened to their muffled exclamations through the snorkels: “Look at that!” “Over there!” “Grampa, Grampa, what is that?” It is one of my happiest memories.