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Willis's Walkabouts Newsletter 60, June 2012

2012 — a year to remember. I'll remember this year for many reasons, some good, some bad and some simply memorable. I am reminded of the old Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times." We do.

If you read this newsletter very closely, you might get a free book.

Willis's Walkabouts logo

In this issue

Farewell

In my April newsletter, I mentioned John Easton's passing. John was one of my best guides in the 1990s. Since then, I've received some additional material for John's memorial page.

Sadly, John has been joined by another former guide, Rodger Hall. Rodger was a friend and client who became a guide. Although he didn't lead many trips, he remained someone I had hoped would be able to lead more. His wife Meryl said, "All my family went down to the river, we had a lovely afternoon. Roger rode his bike down, and I took the car. Rodger rode home and I was 5 minutes behind him. When I got home he was sitting in a chair and was gone, he had a massive heart attack."

Roger was only a year older then I am and reasonably fit. Things like that give you pause to reflect. It's not for us to know when our time is going to be up so all we can do is make the most of the time we have. That's what I'm doing this year. See Russell's 2012 in the final section of this newsletter to see what I mean.

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2012 Trips

Trips Past

The weather is one of several factors which can force us to change a scheduled trip. It's happened before. I seem to recall there was one year we had to change two. This year it was four, all for different reasons.

Trips to Come

Hopefully I won't have to change any other trip which has bookings. But, for this year, given that I'm going to be away for so much of the time between now and late October, I've given up and cancelled all of the trips between now and September which didn't have bookings. Any trip departing before 10 October will be cancelled if we do not have the bookings to guarantee departure by 7 July. The following trips have both bookings and space available. These are the only trips available before September.

As mentioned above, the NT run parks are all moving to joint management with the Aboriginal traditional owners. At this point, the only NT run parks where I have managed to negotiate a valid agreement are Nitmiluk and Watarrka. The others may or may not follow so I will be doing a major revision of the program toward the end of the year. If there is any trip you'd particularly like to do in 2013, let me know sooner rather than later and I'll try and keep it in the program.

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The Flight From Conversation

Our world is changing. Something is lost and something is gained. but at what price the gain?

"Human relationships are rich; they’re messy and demanding. We have learned the habit of cleaning them up with technology. And the move from conversation to connection is part of this. But it’s a process in which we shortchange ourselves. Worse, it seems that over time we stop caring, we forget that there is a difference.

"Human relationships are rich; they’re messy and demanding. We have learned the habit of cleaning them up with technology. And the move from conversation to connection is part of this. But it’s a process in which we shortchange ourselves. Worse, it seems that over time we stop caring, we forget that there is a difference."

These two quotes are part of an article The Flight From Conversation in the NY Times. I'm relatively unwired but it made me stop and think. What kind of a world is is in which a 16-year-old boy who relies on texting for almost everything says almost wistfully, "Someday, someday, but certainly not now, I’d like to learn how to have a conversation."?

If you click only one link from this newsletter, make it The Flight From Conversation.

Our trips take place in an unwired world, a world in which you actually do have conversations. Maybe that's part of why why we get so few young people. And maybe that's part of what makes them so special.

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The Younger Generations

Young People and Bushwalking

Back in April, a 24 year old came on one of my trips. While she enjoyed the trip herself, her post trip comments suggest the kind of problems I face if I am ever to attract the next generation.

"When I spoke about my holiday in Kakadu with friends, most recoiled at the thought of bushwalking in 30°C heat, battling mozzies and green ants. I know very few people my age who go hiking and sadly I think it suffers from the stigma that it's an older person's hobby. And, I do think that the young people who do go hiking in the Top End like their autonomy too much to join a group tour. However, they won't get access to the areas you took us to."

How times change. When I began my bushwalking career, the Darwin Bushwalking Club had far more under 30's than over 40's. Now, they, and most other Bushwalking Clubs around the country, are an aging group. Maybe we'll have to wait for another generation. Or maybe bushwalking will slowly die out.

One of my younger guides would love to take over the business when I retire. There won't be a business to take over if we can't attract a few more relatively young people. Have any of you got any suggestions?

Young People's Priorities

When young adults are asked to choose what's most important in pairings of issues, the answers are sometimes surprising. The following study is from America, but I suspect the results in Australia would be similar.

Young People's Priorities. Jobs! While Australia's official unemployment rate is only a bit over 5%, the youth unemployment rate is 22.5%. That statistic may be available somewhere on the Australian Bureau of Statistics website but I couldn't find it. Maybe it's so bad that it needs to be hidden. It's unfortunate when the only information about Australian youth unemployment which I can find easily is on a political website. But, as bad as our youth unemployment may be, it's far better than countries like Spain where youth unemployment is about 50%. We are creating a generation of have nots. I suspect that at some point, they will rise up and refuse to support their elders in the style to which we've become accustomed.

Here's a possible solution. Lets Be Less Productive. "Ever-increasing productivity means that if our economies don’t continue to expand, we risk putting people out of work. If more is possible each passing year with each working hour, then either output has to increase or else there is less work to go around. Like it or not, we find ourselves hooked on growth." Maybe, as the author suggests. there are things which matter more than increasing productivity at whatever cost. The article is worth a read. If nothing else, it should make you think.

Changing Behaviour

Young people are watching less TV than their elders. Prime-Time Ratings Bring Speculation of a Shift in Habits. "Across the television landscape, viewing for all sorts of prime-time shows is down — chiefly among 18- to 49-year olds, the most important audience for the business."

The Go-Nowhere Generation talks about young people not even getting driver's licenses and being less adventurous than their elders. Driving less might be a positive, but I'm not sure about some of the rest, nor am I sure about where Australia stands on things like this. I'd be interested to hear comments, especially from the younger readers of this newsletter.

A Generational Analysis

After writing the above, I found the following. Then I remembered something I read back in 2009 and dug deeper. This is worth a read and is worth thinking about. I'd be interested to hear what others think. It's a very different take compared to the two links above.

From John Mauldin's 29 May newsletter. "It is the season when students all over the country are graduating and listening to graduation speeches. I have heard more than my share over the years. But never one like this week’s Outside the Box essay, from my friend and world-class demographer Neil Howe. Neil was co-author of The Fourth Turning, which way back in 1997 absolutely nailed the coming generational changes we are now living through, giving us a fascinating and eerily accurate guide to our future. The premise is that a generation is a 20-year period and that generational social tendencies repeat roughly every 80 years and have done so in the Anglo-Saxon world for hundreds of years. And now the Millennial generation is coming of age in a world dominated by Boomers, and we are seeing another cycle change. And, encouragingly, Neil is rather upbeat about this generation. But for different reasons than most of us might think. This is not a long read, but I strongly suggest you do peruse it."

To the Class of 2012

When I read the above, I remembered having read something by Neil Howe in another Mauldin newsletter. This too is well worth a read. If you want to understand some of the differences between generations, it is a must.

Into the Fourth Turning

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Daddy, What Were Compact Discs?

Technology is changing so fast that it's easy to forget how much has changed. "It was not that long ago that a home-stereo system was a black-and-brown tower of components: an amplifier, a receiver, a cassette deck, a CD player, a phonograph, perhaps an equalizer. All that can be cast aside. Our music is now stored digitally on a computer, or sent over the Internet from a streaming service like Spotify or Pandora. To hear it in the home, all that’s required is a speaker to receive the necessary data. One of the simplest ways to do this is with a wireless speaker that uses Bluetooth wireless technology to connect to a smartphone or computer."

The full article is well worth a read. It made me think about just how far behind the times I am. The 4WD vehicles I use on my trips don't do a lot of kilometres as they sit put during the walks. They are all in good condition but are so old they still have tape players!

Sudden thought — can anyone suggest a simple way of recording a tape onto a CD?

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Imminent Extinction of Leadbeater’s Possum — Symbol of Victorian Tall forests

One of my guides, Don Butcher, has been heavily involved in the battle to protect some of Victoria's remaining forest. He sent me the following.

An hour's drive from Melbourne, the Central Highlands are home to the world's tallest flowering forest tree — Mountain Ash. These trees are so quick growing our grand children could see them reclaim title of World’s Tallest Tree as Von Mueller species name suggests 'Eucalyptus regnans', from the coastal redwoods. Three trees growing together less than an hour's drive from Melbourne are 86m high, amazingly having germinated from a 1926 fire (If trees could speak, Bob Beale 2007).

Healesville based group MyEnvironment lost a Supreme Court bid to stop logging in parts of Victoria's central highlands, which it said was threatening the habitat of the state's endangered faunal emblem, Leadbeater's possum.

It seems Victorian state legislation the Flora & Fauna Guarantee Act doesn't have the teeth needed to protect endangered species. Leadbeater's possum lost around 45% of its habitat in the Black Saturday fires, plummeting the population to an estimated 1000 animals. However it's not over yet, MyEnvironment is challenging the March judgment in the Court of Appeal (the highest court in Victoria) as it engages in the appeal process.

World renowned forest scientist Professor David Lindenmayer has published extensively on these forests, and on the threats that clear fell and salvage logging (intensive logging following wildfire) pose to the future of these forests. In other research he predicts Leadbeater’s possum extinct with current logging practices in 25 years. See Melbourne Age article, Leadbeater's possum faces 'managed extinction' without action.

Around 80% of the timber from these forests goes into paper manufacture! Japanese owned Nippon paper, owner of Australian paper sources timber from these Victorian native forests to make Reflex paper at the Maryvale pulp mill in west Gippsland.

The township of Toolangi and Toolangi forest escaped the Black Saturday fires however VicForests continues to clear fell this unburnt refuge forest by starting a clearfell coupe on the flanks of Mt St Leonard, an iconic mountain backdrop for the Yarra Valley. This is forest with historic Leadbeater’s Possum habitat, and distressing for the local community still suffering from the 2009 fires.

What can you do?

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The Future of Books — Update

"In February, the Educational Development Corporation said it would remove its titles from Amazon, more evidence of the tumult over who gets to decide how much a book costs." Read the full story at Daring to Cut Off Amazon.

Books I've Enjoyed

You can't bushwalk off-track without a decent sense of balance. As we age, most people begin to lose their sense of balance. Balance — In search of the lost sense by Scott McCredie tells you everything you might want to know about your sense of balance. One of the most interesting findings is that, "There is almost no difference in the sway patterns of elders who have exercised all their lives and those who begin after retirement, indicating that it’s never too late to start a strength- and balance-training program." I was so taken with the book that I wrote a brief summary before passing the summary and book along to someone who had slowly been losing her sense of balance.

Stratfor, "a subscription-based provider of geopolitical analysis. Individual and corporate subscribers gain a thorough understanding of international affairs, including what’s happening, why it’s happening, and what will happen next." offers two free weekly newsletters as well as a subscription service. Their founder, George Friedman has written two books which I found very interesting.

Whether or not he's right, he seems to make a lot of sense, looking at issues from the point of view of the national interest of the different countries involved. The conclusions might surprise. I'll leave it at that and recommend them both.

Take a Walk

John and Lyn Daly have written a variety of Take a Walk bushwalking guides including Take a Walk in Northern Territory's National Parks. I've had ads in most of their guides for some years now. John kindly offered me a few copies of the NT book to give away. If you'd like a copy, send me an email with NT Book as the subject and tell me why you think you should receive the book. The winning entry or entries will be published in the next newsletter.

Kimberley Rock Art

If I'd heard about this a couple of hours later, it might not have made it into this newsletter. The Weekend Australian recently had an article Secrets of the Stones about a new book about Kimberley Rock art. The ABC mentions it in Kimberley rock art: from caves to three epic tomes. It looks like a great book, but it's far from cheap. I've seen it on different websites anywhere from $170 to $250. If this becomes an out of print classic like some of Graham Walsh's Kimberley books, it might even be a good investment. Here's a link to the order page for the book on the Art Gallery of NSW website.

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Politics — And You thought You Knew It All

While all of the above are about America or are from an American viewpoint, I think that, to a greater or lesser degree, they all apply here. They are all worth a read but, if you are going to read only one of the above, make it the second one about why politicians don't like testing their ideas.

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Western Civilisation: Decline – or Fall?

"Everywhere we turn, it seems, we find the forces of polarization and dissolution gnawing at our social fabric, and Yeats’ fateful line about the center not holding starts to feel uncomfortably prophetic. Maybe it’s about time we all thought bigger and worked harder at getting along, while we still can."

A recent John Mauldin "Outside the Box" column, Western Civilisation: Decline – or Fall?. Ferguson's book, Civilization: The West and the Rest talked about six "killer applications" which gave the west an overwhelming advantage.

  1. Competition. Europe was politically fragmented into multiple monarchies and republics, which were in turn internally divided into competing corporate entities, among them the ancestors of modern business corporations.
  2. The Scientific Revolution. All the major 17th-century breakthroughs in mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, and biology happened in Western Europe.
  3. The Rule of Law and Representative Government. An optimal system of social and political order emerged in the English-speaking world, based on private-property rights and the representation of property owners in elected legislatures.
  4. Modern Medicine. Nearly all the major 19th- and 20th-century breakthroughs in health care were made by Western Europeans and North Americans.
  5. The Consumer Society. The Industrial Revolution took place where there was both a supply of productivity-enhancing technologies and a demand for more, better, and cheaper goods, beginning with cotton garments.
  6. The Work Ethic. Westerners were the first people in the world to combine more extensive and intensive labour with higher savings rates, permitting sustained capital accumulation.

"Beginning with Japan, however, one non-Western society after another has worked out that these apps can be downloaded and installed in non-Western operating systems. That explains about half the catching up that we have witnessed in our lifetimes, especially since the onset of economic reforms in China in 1978."

"What we need to do is to delete the viruses that have crept into our system: the anticompetitive quasi monopolies that blight everything from banking to public education; the politically correct pseudosciences and soft subjects that deflect good students away from hard science; the lobbyists who subvert the rule of law for the sake of the special interests they represent—to say nothing of our crazily dysfunctional system of health care, our overleveraged personal finances, and our newfound unemployment ethic."

The full article is well worth a read.

Earlier this year, SBS put on a six part series hosted by the author Civilisation: Is the West History?. If they bring it back, it's well worth watching.

"With funding harder to come by in many Western countries, China’s impressive investment in research and development is proving a draw for many Western researchers." Not many years ago, few western researchers would have dreamed of working at Chinese Universities. Times have changed. Now Chinese Universities Send Big Signals to Foreigners.

Australia tends to follow America in many ways. "In America, it seems as though anything and everything can be bought and sold. But can we put a price tag on human dignity?" Markets and Morals shows just how far it's gone in America. Will we go the same way?

Our relatively free society gives us some advantages that the Chinese and others can't match but if we continue to move in the direction we seem to be going, maybe it's a matter of time before countries like Australia really are nothing more than quarries for the new elites of the world.

Quarry? Did you know that there is "a significant negative relationship between the money countries extract from national resources and the knowledge and skills of their high school population." Some day our easily extracted minerals will run out. People will still be here. If China catches cold, our minerals boom will come crashing down. We ought to be planning now. Pass the Books. Hold the Oil explains this in some detail. We're still doing relatively well, but I can't help but wonder how long this will last.

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Innovation

If the last section seemed a bit negative, here are some positive stories.

Did Someone Order an Instant Bridge?

Massachusetts officials once figured it would take two years to replace a dilapidated bridge. With new construction techniques, they got the job done over a long weekend. Read about it at Instant Bridge and watch the video A Bridge in a Day. We could use some of that on our roads here in Australia.

Hard of Hearing?

Now there is a hearing aid that cuts out all the clatter.

Consumer Innovation

Innovation Far Removed From the Lab tells how ""the traditional division of labour between innovators and customers is breaking down."

For Space Mess, Scientists Seek Celestial Broom

In 2009, a Russian satellite hit and destroyed an Iridium communications satellite. these are the satellites we depend on for our satellite phone coverage. If something isn't done, and done sooner rather than later, we could see more important satellites destroyed — GPS, sat phones, weather and more. The Celestial Broom story tells how the Swiss are planning to tidy up after themselves in space and hints as to what other countries can do.

32 Innovations That Will change Your Tomorrow

I bet you didn't know that the electric light was a failure. It took nearly a hundred years for it to catch on. "The fairy-tale view of history implies that innovation has an end. It doesn't. What we want and what we need keeps changing. The incandescent light was a 19th-century failure and a 20th- century success. Now it's a failure again, edged out by new technologies, like LEDs, that were, themselves, failures for many years." 32 Innovations That Will change Your Tomorrow explains 32 things that are likely to happen in the next few years. Some will happen, some may not but they are all interesting. For my Hash House harrier friends, how about a permanent end to hangovers?

True Innovation

A study of Bell Labs offers a number of lessons about how America's technology companies — and that country's longstanding innovative edge — actually came about. Yet Bell Labs also presents a more encompassing and ambitious approach to innovation than what prevails today. Its staff worked on the incremental improvements necessary for a complex national communications network while simultaneously thinking far ahead, toward the most revolutionary inventions imaginable." True Innovation tells a bit of this story and explains why the long term view they once took would be very unlikely to be permitted in any western business today.

The Idea Factory by Jon Gertner tells the full story. Some research, by its very nature, requires years to complete. Neither government nor private business seems to have the patience for this any more. If we don't, some other countries will and they will be the ones to reap the benefits.

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Climate Change — Update

Extreme Weather

"A large majority of Americans believe that this year's unusually warm winter and last year's blistering summer were likely made worse by global warming, according to a survey."

Clouds

"At any moment, about 60 percent of the earth is covered by clouds, which have a huge influence on the climate." One Year of Clouds Covering the Earth is a graphic showing global cloud cover for a year. Click play to se the changes. Central Australia is one of the most cloud free areas in the world.

"In recent years, climate change skeptics have seized on one last argument that cannot be so readily dismissed. Their theory is that clouds will save us." Clouds' Effect on Climate Change Is Last Bastion for Dissenters tells that story.

Understanding the Atmosphere is a short slide show about cloud climate research.

What we don't know about the weather may be about to get a whole lot bigger. Clouded Forecast tells us that the US "National Research Council concluded that the nation’s system of Earth-observing satellites is in a state of 'precipitous decline' and warned of a 'slowing or even reversal of the steady gains in weather forecast accuracy over many years.'" Australia doesn't have its own weather satellites. This is a worry for us as well.

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More on Mobile Phones, Social Networks and Internet Chat Security

Pay Phones

"The term pay phone has a new meaning today. For consumers who wish to ditch their wallets, paying through a mobile phone can be awfully convenient. Those same consumers can also, often unwittingly, give up valuable information about themselves to merchants that want to sell them things." What information would you want your mobile to automatically disclose if you used it to go shopping. The New Pay Phone and What It Knows About You explains some of the issues and the unease some people feel.

Social Networks

We don't use Twitter (at least not yet), but we do have a Facebook page. I don't use it as much as I should but I do put new things up every so often. It's worth a look. having said that, did you know that "Many companies pay Facebook to generate ads when users click to 'like' their brands or reference them in some other way." This was new to me. Read about it at On Facebook, 'Likes' Become Ads.

There are a number of interesting alternatives to Facebook. On Path, FamilyLeaf and Pair, users can post information without fear of sharing with the wrong people.

Internet Chat Security

Sometimes it's about more than money. Using His Software Skills With Freedom, Not a Big Payout, in Mind tells how a young Lebanese programmer and hacker has no desire to make loads of money from his secure chat program, Cryptocat. It should be a boon to free speech around the world.

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Willis's Walkabouts — Things You May Not Have Known

The Walkabouts Website

The young woman who made the comment about young people and bushwalking quoted earlier in this newsletter also suggested that I "streamline the website and improve its searchability." I',m too close to the site to be a good judge of what might be necessary. I am also a fast reader who likes lots of words so I find cutting things down a real effort. I need a bit of help on these.

Searchability. I thought this was pretty good. There is a search button in the top menu. Click that and type in what you are looking for. It seems to work well to me. Maybe the search button needs to be made more prominent. Maybe it needs to be changed in some way. Suggestions?

Streamlining. My goal has always been to make the website as informative as possible. For an example of a recent addition, have a look at the Buladjang page. That's the kind of thing I want to include more of. On the other hand, I don't want that kind of information to get in the way for people who simply want more information about the tours. Suggestions?

Walkabouts and Social Media

As mentioned earlier in this newsletter, we have a Facebook page. It contains a number of photo galleries which may be of interest. As well as posting on the main website, I'll add more here over time.

We even have our own YouTube channel where you can see a few videos from our trips. (Many thanks to Tracey Dixon for setting this up.) If Tracey and I can ever manage to find some time, we'll get a bit more out there.

The Walkabouts Office

Willis's Walkabouts is too small for me to be able to hire a dedicated office person. When I'm in town, I do it all — man the phone, do the accounts, answer correspondence, update the website, and dry the veg. When my main supplier of dried veg closed down last year, I managed to buy enough to cover the rest of 2011. This year I've spent many extra hours chopping and drying. At least it gives me a break from sitting in front of the computer.

When I'm away, Jo Pagel, my former office manager, steps in for about an hour a day to cover the urgent things like bookings. She's got another full time job, so she can't do more than that. It doesn't always work as well as we'd like but we manage. Sadly, given the size of the business, it's the best we can do.

Russell's 2012

Last year, I had to spend as much time in town as possible so that I could be available in the early stages of the Kakadu bushwalking review. This year, there were a number of trips I particularly wanted to do. If things continue to plan, this will be the second most time I've been away in a single year since beginning the business in 1986. I don't expect there will be another year like this again. If you're curious....

That's almost half the year. And that's why someone may not have got back to you as son as they should have if you sent in a query.

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News About This Newsletter

Contents

Before I finish one newsletter, I'm already working on the next. I often find that I've got too many interesting things for a single newsletter. I'm also always looking for other interesting items I can add. I'm particularly interested in environmental issues, especially those which might affect bushwalking and in the technology which is shaping our lives. As I said in the last newsletter, Suggestions welcome.

Sending the newsletter

The program I use to send the newsletters is hosted on the same server that hosts our website. The newsletters are sent from walkabout@bushwalkingholidays.com.au. This is the contact address on our website. If you would like to continue to receive these newsletters, please include this address in your "friends list" so that it isn't blocked.

For some reason, some servers block the newsletters no matter what you try and do. I send these in small groups from my normal email. It's not a simple problem. If anyone thinks they might have an idea how to overcome the problem, I'd love to hear from you.

Emails sent to walkabout@bushwalkingholidays.com.au are currently automatically forwarded to rrwillis at internode.on.net. If you want to send an email to that address, replace the word "at" with the symbol @. I am trying not to put that address any place where it can be harvested by spam bots.

We don't want to add to the mass of email spam. If you don't want our newsletter, please send us an email and let us know. We'll then delete your name from our newsletter list.

Our email address is walkabout@bushwalkingholidays.com.au.

Note. The program we use to send this newsletter has an automatic delete at the bottom. Clicking that link will delete you from the mailing list on the server but it will not delete you from our main database. My newsletter mailing program will not allow the auto delete to send me an email notifying me that a deletion has been made. If you want to be removed from all further mailings, please send an email to walkabout@bushwalkingholidays.com.au

If you know someone you think would enjoy this newsletter, please forward it to them. The more people who get it, the more likely it is that I'll be able to run the trips which might interest you.

Best wishes to all,
Russell Willis

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