The Journey

I’ve taken the laptop away from its plug in the wall for two reasons. One is to save energy. The other is so I have only an hour to write the last journal entry on the MyPOWER Tour. Without such a time restraint I am afraid I would write forever. Only now in these last few days am I experiencing the most bizarre of all mental phenomenons. The ability to be completely speechless whilst having too much to say.

You’d assume after such an adventure you would be filled with an uncontrollable urge to reflect and reminisce on the most vivid of memories. Strangely I don’t feel like doing this at all. The MyPOWER journey ceased becoming a travel story for the grandkids and quickly became our life. That brown leather bike seat, so soft from thousands of hours of constant use, was my office chair. We were waking up, mixing powdered milk on our muesli, and heading off to work. It was just our life. Cycling wasn’t a sport, it ceased to be physically demanding. It was simply our mode of transport. To reflect now on the MyPOWER journey is impossible. Instead I feel the urge to look to the future.

I’m confident I’ll never forget the smiles on our faces as we lay around the scattered arm chairs, soaking wet from the rain in the warmth of the Bakers Dozen bakery in Tasmania’s Deloraine. Or the cheeky smile on Mereki’s face as he filmed me struggling to fix a broken wheel rim in the middle of the Kimberleys near Kununurra. I don’t remember these things as Kodak moments or travel stories for the dinner table. They are simply events that occurred in my slightly more interesting 2008.

I’m going to miss writing. Sometimes these journal entries would haunt us. Most of the time however, it was a chance to spill our thoughts onto a page. Every sentence uncensored. Every sentence meant something to me. I truly hope everyone reading got a good idea of what it was like to be MyPOWER. I truly hope that people felt inspired to live their life to the potential that we four boys see. It was never about preaching or teaching. We don’t know it all. We never have. It was about motivating those who would listen. Don’t forget that we will continue to write, albeit a little less frequently, through our online newsletter, which if you haven’t signed up for yet do so! It’s not going to flood your inbox, trust me we are too busy to annoy you. It will be a fortnightly update on what’s been happening, is happening and will be happening.

With that out of the way I can use these final 23 minutes to tell you briefly about a day that had been planned more intensely than anything else we’ve ever been involved in.

Let me Tarantino this thing one last time. . .

I walked out the back door of Sails Restaurant Toyota, my heart still racing and my throat dry. My head was spinning and I struggled to focus on anything. Rob Gooch was eagerly waving us over to the terraced greenery in front of us. Myself and the other three boys were absolutely speechless. In front of us was the healthiest looking vegetable garden I have seen in Australia, and that’s saying a lot. Toyota Motor Corporation Australia has their very own Permaculture garden on site that is completely open to all employees. A lot of the food served in catering merely metres away comes from this garden. A lot of the food we ate tonight at the ‘Final Kilometre’ MyPOWER Sponsors Function came from this garden.

 Employees are encouraged to take what they like from the garden provided they spend a few minutes watering the plants. It not only educates people on where their food is coming from, it is a hub for social sustainability in the workplace. People meet here. School children come here and learn about the importance of growing your own food and reducing unnecessary food miles. It is amazing to the point of ridiculous. One of the world’s largest corporations integrating Permaculture principles into their vision for their company.

To say it is inspiring is so gross an understatement I feel embarrassed my vocabulary isn’t up to scratch. Talk about corporate responsibility! To move into a more sustainable future we are going to need action from all levels. The single most important being individual action, however we need the support of larger corporations and government bodies to be truly and holistically effective. The garden, evidently, is being named after MyPOWER, an honour none of us know quite how to bear.

I am in awe of how well Matt, Mereki and Anthony spoke tonight. Hundreds of days practise with lips against radio mics, eyes staring into camera lenses, mouths spitting confidence to the ears of thousands of grey nomads might have had something to do with their poise, self-belief and ultimate cool. I don’t remember much about my speech. Only that I couldn’t read my handwriting and chose to look down at my page the entire time. Over the next few days we will post these speeches for those who were not with us tonight. To say the least it was one of the most emotionally charged nights of my life. Someone was cutting onions somewhere.

Tonight is the first night anyone has ever camped on Toyota grounds and I see it as a symbolic act for the future. MyPOWER is small. In an energy uncertain future there will be no big or small. Our actions will unite as one and there will be no more preconceptions or ‘kosher’. The act of setting up our humble tents facing the headquarters of a large corporation says it all. We are all in this together. Without Felicity Foreshaw, a good friend and keystone behind the MyPOWER journey none of this would have happened. We can’t thankyou enough Fliss.

As we sit around in a circle tonight with our close friends and family under the lights of the building we feel a weight lifting gently off our shoulders. One kilometre from home. One last time to pack our compact, spacious Kathmandu tents. One last time to strap on the boots, paint on the zink, put a aniseed ball in the back pouch. One more time to yell goodnights through the thin nylon of our mobile homes. One last chance to reflect. One more chance to look forward. One future, one oxygen, one planet. One ...... us.

I forgot to mention how Mereki rode almost 18,000kms around Australia without falling off bike and decided to eat gravel four metres before the sign to the Sutherland Shire. Good one pal.

My 60minutes is up . .

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