Mail, Kittens, Alive, Food Inc and Tim Flannery

 

MAIL

   

Thanks to everyone emailing stories, sending photographs (to acebourke@hotmail.com), and drawing my attention to many different causes and events. It’s how I’d love the blog to be…
Thanks to Francois for sending me these first 2 images.

Recently Tracey sent me a link to the Huffington Post which showed the most incredibly tender reunion between a gorilla and Damian Aspinall (of the Aspinall Foundation, son of John Aspinall who was keeping  exotic animals in England, especially tigers, around  Christian’s time). Kwibi the gorilla was returned to the jungles of Gabon, and Damian returned to see him five years later.”This must be the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen…well, at least since Christian the Lion”. I immediately left a comment! (Misspelled). It is especially beautiful footage.

Jade drew to my attention to The Nature Conservancy Australia Nature Writing Prize. Worth $5,000, the deadline is 30^th September. The Nature Conservancy describes itself as the world’s largest conservation organization and operates in over 32 countries. The Conservancy’s Australia Program was established in 2000 and since then it has invested $32 million to conserve 3.6 million hectares of land through 27 land acquisitions of areas rich in biodiversity. Learn more here.

Scott sent me these photographs of the Gulf of Mexico oil slick that is turning out to be much more catastrophic than even first imagined. Apparently there is a lot of oil in layers deep in the water, and the chemical dispersants being used must themselves be toxic. And the hurricane season is beginning.

Shrimp boats are used to collect oil with booms in the waters of Chandeleur Sound, La., (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

An oil soaked bird struggles against the side of the HOS an Iron Horse supply vessel at the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Oil from the leaking Deep Horizon oil rig is seen swirling through the currents in the Gulf of Mexico. (AP Photo/Dave Martin)

 

FOOD, INC., etc

I must go and see the documentaries Food, Inc., and The End of the Line that have recently opened here and been very well and seriously reviewed.  Political documentaries are now mainstream, and other examples include An Inconvenient Truth, and The Cove, about the annual culling of dolphins in Japan.

Both Food, Inc., and The End of the Line are about sustainable food production and the degradation of our food chain on both land and in the water. The many worrying implications of our modern industrial food production include obesity and diabetes, and Food, Inc., highlights the enormous corporate power  of the agricultural company Monsanto (investigated by the US Justice Department for alleged anti-competitive practices), and their treatment of US farmers not using its patented soya bean.

Many species are on the verge of extinction – like the bluefin tuna. We have to remember that every species has a role to play and any extinctions lead to often disastrous imbalances.

What are we advised to do? Be more aware. Check the fish on menus, and choose food carefully. Cut back on consumption. Read labels carefully, and avoid food with pesticides, and junk food. Support tight quotas of fishing and their enforcement, and the establishment of a global network of marine reserves. Act against the Japanese and other whaling nations. There will be much debate about whaling shortly, with Australia finally taking Japan to the International Court of Justice, and an International Whaling Commission meeting  in Morocco from June 18th.

The organisation Voiceless campaigns against industrialised food consumption, and do check their latest e-update.

TIM FLANNERY

It was a relief to read that the well respected and very busy multi-tasker Tim Flannery no longer thinks carbon capture and storage is feasible. He thinks the government should commit funds towards geothermal energy and solar photovoltaic energy, and he includes “possibly even nuclear”, which I don’t. In our recent Federal Budget sport attracted much more funding than renewable energy research and development, which tells you a lot about Australia, and our Government priorities.

CITY OF SYDNEY PHOTOGRAPHY PRIZE

I was a judge of the City of Sydney Photography Prize recently with Sandy Edwards and Robert MacFarlane, both highly respected in the field, and well known photographers themselves. Robert, a fellow blogger, took this photograph of me. We had to choose 22 images from over 500 entries, and many good photographs were sacrificed. This annual exhibition will open in Hyde Park after 22 September, and the winner will be announced. I’ll upload some of the marvellous images then.

Image by Robert MacFarlane

PAPERBACK

I recently addressed the Bowral Supper Book Club at the superb Centennial Vineyard. The book is now in 18 territories and Christian’s story is in 16 languages!

December 2009

My head is still spinning from the successful international launch of our revised A Lion Called Christian book, now selling well in, I believe, 8 languages and 14 countries.

In 2008 we were the first e-book for Random House, and it is fascinating to see how quickly people are adopting the kindle or other e-book readers, and the changes this signifies for the publishing industry. With Google planning to digitise millions of books, writers and publishers seem divided over the implications of this. It is exciting new territory which hopefully attracts new readers AND is not at the expense of people who still love holding and having printed books. Where does this leave “coffee table books” – like the handsome and for me irresistible “Trade Edition” (Taschen Publishers) I have just bought by photographer Peter Beard who has spent a lot of time in Africa. (See www.peterbeard.com/publications.htm)    

This image of Peter Beard writing his diary is from the book Eyelids of the Morning by Alistair Graham and Peter Beard first published in 1973. Image courtesy of http://www.peterbeard.com.

Peter Beard has been a subliminal artistic influence on me since I first saw his books on Africa in the 1970s  which combined his own photography, diaries, collages and a unique mix of historical, contemporary, glamorous and grotesque material. He also visited George Adamson at Kora while Christian was around, and commented on how truly happy George was there, and that presumably unlike Joy, he was “refreshingly uncommitted to the sentimentalism of the whole Elsa story”. I have also very much admired the photographs in Mirella Ricciardi’s classic Vanishing Africa. Another beautiful photography book is Nick Brandt’s recent book As The Sun Sets, unfortunately documenting a disappearing Africa. Nick’s beautiful images can be seen on his website www.nickbrandt.com.

While getting to No 2 on the New York Times best seller list, No 1 on the Sunday Telegraph in London,  No 1 in Australia and No 2 in New Zealand, and appearing on The Oprah Winfrey Show, was of course amazing, humbling and sometimes nerve wracking, what I really enjoyed when we travelled around the USA, UK, Australia and later in the year, China, was meeting so many very nice, interested and like-minded people, who loved Christian’s story. Many are making, or wanting to make, valuable contributions to wildlife conservation, and what could we all achieve if we work in concert?  

In the 1970s we were lucky to meet some of the influential people who founded the modern conservation movement, like Joy Adamson. She was one of the first to draw attention to the vulnerability of the environmental balance, and she and George Adamson became committed conservationists as they witnessed declining numbers in animal species. David Attenborough began publishing his books then and now at 80 is still making his incredibly popular nature documentaries. Jane Goodall published her book In the Shadow of Man, about her research with chimpanzees. Last year I heard her speak in Sydney, and she described so succinctly the interrelationship of everything, the competition for resources between people and animals – for food, habitats and water, and that people have to have better lives before we can expect them to conserve the surrounding wildlife. Her Roots and Shoots program for schools imaginatively encouraging the participation of children is especially important (www.janegoodall.org.au). Particularly heartening is Jane Goodall’s recent book with Thane Maynard and Gail Hudson Hope for Animals and Their World which documents formerly endangered species whose populations are now recovering. Some good news!   

 I returned to Australia in 1973 after our adventure with Christian, and have had a career as an art curator in Australia and been primarily interested in Aboriginal art. This has been one of the major art movements in the world in the latter 20^th century. It has been a privilege to witness and work with so many varied and extraordinary artists, and Aboriginal culture is the face Australia now presents to the world. This is of course ironic given the lingering, sometimes even overt racism that still exists! More recently I have been researching and staging exhibitions about Australia’s foundational narratives through my own colonial family history and the interweaving of Aboriginal perspectives.   

 It has been an odd disconnect speaking about events that happened more than 40 years ago, with no reference at all to my actual intervening career work which is so important to me. “Get over it!” my agent says. I finally worked out how to link both. With our growing alienation from nature, and the parlous condition of the physical world, we need to look to, respect and involve indigenous people. They are undoubtedly still much more connected to nature (indeed many believe they are part of or emerged from the landscape), and they can advise us how to heal the damage to the environment, and co-exist more sustainably with the natural world.   

My busy 2009 included graduating with a Masters of Arts for my thesis Family Footprints; Tracing the Past in the Present through Curatorial Autobiographical Practice. (Yes I know an academic mouthful! It is online should anyone be interested and if you can follow all the links – at www.library.uow.edu.au). Also online are photographs of colonial and contemporary artworks and material from the exhibition component, Lines in the Sand: Botany Bay Stories from 1770, which look primarily at the first contact between Aboriginal people and the new arrivals starting with Captain Cook and Joseph Banks followed by the First Fleet in 1788. You can see the photos of the exhibition on the Hazelhurst Regional Gallery Facebook page.   

Also this year I was Exhibition Coordinator for Martin Sharp Sydney Artist at the Museum of Sydney. Martin was very much a part of the creative world of “Swinging London” in the 1960s and apart from many other artworks, created album covers or posters for Eric Clapton, Dylan and Jimi Hendrix. Again, should you be interested read John McDonald’s review in Spectrum, online.   

Many people have been so responsive, supportive and helpful this year, but I’d like to particularly thank Katie Turner, Cheryl Bath, Heulwen Renshaw for trying to trace Christian’s best friend Unity Bevis-Jones, and Joanne Hamilton.   

I’m travelling to Cambodia to see Angkor Wat for the first time. This year I also saw the Great Wall of China and the Forbidden City so I feel very fortunate.   

Merry Christmas!