A recent new venture for me, I want to drive more Australian art into my brain and I figured the best way to do this is to travel the country for an extended period of time. Obviously it won’t happen now for a while until Covid 19 has all ended but one day……….
As such, I bought an empty Ford Transit and we converted it ourselves into an off grid camper with full solar set up. I have done a van tour with my wife Gaynor which you can find on this YouTube link
I’m a regular bush walker and this weekend I had one of those moments that will live with me forever.
It was a stinking hot day in an area that generally gets a lot of walkers but because of the temperature there was no one else at all. I saw this wild koala at the base of a tree and when it heard me it scampered up the trunk until it was out of any danger that it may think I could cause. I took a few photos, below is one of them…
I left the area to finish the first part of my walk and when I got back about an hour later the same koala was back at the bottom of the tree. This time I approached very slowly and it climbed only to my waist level and stopped. I stopped too, sat down and waited a while. I also talked reassuringly. It looked very hot and parched so I took my water bottle out and gingerly advanced a few more steps, sat down, waited some more, advanced a bit more again until I was eventually within arm’s reach. I held out the water bottle and poured a few drops onto the ground so the koala could see what it was. I then leaned in and poured some water onto its nose and straight away it started to drink. It eventually drank about half my remaining water and at one time it even took the bottle off me but then dropped it. I was a wonderful experience and it even let me pet it a little. I shouldn’t have but simply couldn’t resist it. It’s great when an animal trusts you enough to allow you this close and to hopefully even help it. I’ve seen this koala up the same tree once before so it’ll be interesting to see what happens if I ever see it again. Check out the following photos.
On October 4th 2014 people from over 130 cities around the world marched to raise awareness for elephants and rhinos. Some horrifying statistics – over 35,000 elephants and over 1,000 rhinos are slaughtered each year for their ivory and horns. This is a tragic state of affairs. I took part in the Adelaide walk which, despite the topic, was a good natured walk where like minded people got together to do something. When we are asked why elephants and rhinos (and other species) should be protected we try to justify things by placing an economic value on them – such as the revenue they bring in through tourism and the iconic status they give host countries, but how about these three reasons?
They have as much right to be here as us!
They are magnificent!
They are large animals, and that means if we protect them in parks, they need large tracts of land and this in turn protects huge numbers of other species!
We adopted the slogan “Not on our watch” meaning we are going to be part of the change that needs to occur in the mentality of this greedy world.
There were a few hundred of us and here are a few photos from the march in Adelaide.
I’m the guy in the lower left of this photo with my arms crossed. As I said, despite the seriousness of the subject, we had a fun day
We posed by the iconic Adelaide Mall’s Balls
And here I am reflecting in the balls. Talking of balls (and not trying to be too crude), for some reason some very stupid people in some countries think that rhino horn taken in powdered form increases one’s sexual prowess. I could cut my fingernails and sell that to them – it’s basically the same stuff! That way I could live and get rich and the rhinos could also live.
Here I am with Emma Still who has organised art exhibitions which I have supported for a few years, proceeds going to painted dogs in Africa. Emma’s an awesome person!!
And finally, here’s my latest piece of art, a scratchboard of a zebra done at a demo I did for the Pastel Association of South Australia.
In a future blog I’ll be giving a rundown on my trip to West Africa, especially when I have created some art from it. However, since West Africa isn’t exactly blessed with wildlife, being so full of people, I had to get my animal fix on the way back home at Frankfurt Zoo. Yes, I flew the long way home with a very complicated business class ticket created out of cheap points (just to make you jealous, flying business class all the way from Adelaide to Accra in Ghana (and back) and using the flash lounges in the various airports, cost less than an economy airfare by playing the game of using Star Alliance points and matching up the various airlines in the network. More of that another time).
In the Frankfurt Zoo I saw this orangutan and coupled with West Africa’s lack of wildlife (displaced, destroyed or eaten) and the orangutan’s own Indonesian issues with homeland being decimated to make way for our insatiable urge to produce palm oil, I created this protest piece.
Sometimes you come to a point where you say “enough is enough”. That point came for me when all I saw of wildlife in West Africa were goats and lizards. I guess you can’t eat lizards and they are not going to hurt you, so they stay safe. Snakes and other reptiles are pretty much gone and goats are everywhere, destroying the soil. We did get to a national park but it was the end of the rainy season and the elephant grass was so tall that we didn’t see much. Having said that, it was still a great feeling to be there.
I have one funny story from that park. A river runs through it and with the recent rains, this river was impassable up until the day we tried. When we got to it, the level had dropped but the driver was still unsure of whether he could get through. He asked us to get out and wade across and he would follow in the Jeep. We told him “NO”!! So we drove across in the Jeep – fairly easily.
When we went to leave the park in the afternoon we arrived back at the river, and there, exactly where we were told to walk across – by a professional no less – was this! (You can see our old tyre tracks just beyond it). So there you go – trust your own instincts!
Long time no blog. I’ve been putting too many hours in at the office and haven’t blogged for a while so it’s time to remedy that. I’m writing this from the Singapore Airlines business class lounge – very swish – in Bangkok airport. I have a new trip planned to gather reference material for my art and, as I simply have to every now and then, I’m off back to Africa. This time it’s West Africa. I grew up in Africa and have re-visited many many times but I’ve never been to the west, so here’s to a new adventure. It’s a complicated route to get there; Adelaide – Singapore (one night) – Bangkok – Frankfurt (one night) – Accra in Ghana (and the same route back). The long trip is made all the more bearable because it’s business class all the way – I came across many Star Alliance points when special offers where being dished out and the dollar was in my favour so my luxury ticket has cost less than an economy fare. Don’t I feel clever (for once!).
I’m spending 21 days going through Ghana, Togo and Benin and I know I’ve got some very cool places to go to such as a village of 10,000 people who live in the middle of a lake on stilt houses, and another village of two story mud huts. Of course, wild animals are in my itinerary too and my camera is going to get a serious workout.
I’ll be back with a vengeance on this blog with new art and experiences, but for a while, I will definitely lose wi-fi. That’s the way an adventure should be!
Patrick Hedges 