According to the Garmin God’s I ran over 1,800kms last year. That included runs of 5km/10km/half marathon/30km/Marathon and 50km. I also turned 50. Up until my 30’s I hated running. Put a ball in front of me and I would run after it all day, but running for running’s sake? No thanks. That just evoked memories of being made to run on school camps, or on school sports days and always being with the group that finished last.
It’s now something I do every other day…and for a long session on a Sunday, and has fundamentally changed who I am. But it’s also getting harder every year, so while I know that world is full of people telling you to run, and telling you not to run, and telling you how to run, and telling you why you’re running wrong, I thought I would just write about why I run and how it’s changing as I get older.
Why I run
Mental health
As much as it’s a physical pursuit, for me the biggest benefit for running is to my mental health. In Year 10 we had to read a book called ‘The Chocolate War’ and it had a character called ‘The Goober’ who was in High School and at one stage talked about how chaotic his life was, but that when he was running, everything just fell into place. How he could remember complex football plays and other things he simply couldn’t do normally. I can remember thinking at the time ‘What sort of lunatic has time to think while they’re running?! The only thought I have is “Are we there yet?” on a permanent loop!’ But now I know exactly what he meant. There is something genuinely meditative for me when I run, and I feel I can think things through a lot better than I can normally. Maybe it’s something primal in that if we’re running, we must be in danger and therefore have to think at a higher level…or maybe it’s just that there’s nothing else to distract me, but my mind can definitely go places when I’m running that I can’t get it to go in day to day life.
It also just gets me outside. I see sunrises and snakes I would never have seen otherwise, hot air balloons and riverside trails, the best of people and the worst of weather. The things that remind you that you’re part of something much bigger.
I also get to ‘achieve’ something every time I run. Whether it’s a distance, or a time, or a hill, or just the fact that I did the run even though I was feeling tired, I think that cumulative feeling of achievement does wonders for my state of mind.
Physical health
20 years ago our first child was born, in that same year I took a job in the public service (repeatedly being made redundant in the film and TV industry was not the stability I was looking for with newfound family responsibilities) and I started running (nothing like having a baby in the house to really knock the stuffing out of those 6 hour bike rides you used to do!). I currently have over 194 days of sick leave available. I can’t prove it, but I would guess that the more I’ve run, the less I’ve got sick. In the last 10 years I’ve broken toes (gym incident) and sprained my ankles to such an extent that I can’t walk on them for weeks on end (basketball, ladder incident), and every time I’ve put on weight. But within four weeks of running I’ve been back to the weight I want to be.
On crutches for the first time…the novelty wore off REALLY quickly
Despite a family predilection for high-cholesterol, I’ve managed to keep mine at ‘doesn’t require medication’ levels, and if we’re ever out for a meal and someone has ordered a vegetarian meal, the person serving the food will assume it’s for me.
Running also gets me out of bed early, and leaves me tired enough at the end of the day to go to sleep quickly.
Peripheral benefits
Last year I rode the length of Tassie on a bike-packing adventure with Josh, and in November we did some hefty hikes as a family in New Zealand. I hadn’t trained for either of these…but the running fitness I had built up allowed me to do them.
Similarly I can jump in at training with the U16 basketball team I coach if we’re short of players (although this did lead to a fractured wrist this year after an embarrassing ‘old man encounters a slippery floor’ moment).
Plus, as a card-carrying introvert, having an hour or two to myself for a run is very welcome.
‘The dark place’
In any hard run, there is what I call ‘the dark place’. This is the point where your body says ‘it would be a lot more fun to just stop this…NOW!’, and your mind has to overpower it and say ‘Nah, we’re gonna push on’. In a 5km parkrun at Coburg it might be the false flat where you know you’ve got the hardest part of the run ahead of you. In a marathon it will probably be around the 35km mark, and will probably continue until the 41km mark…and in my recent 50km run, it was pretty much the entire last 10kms. While in the 5km run it might only last for 30 seconds, in a longer run you can be fighting the same battle every 5 minutes for an hour. You’re constantly fighting the urge to just stop, you’re constantly having to find new ways to trick yourself into continuing, and you’re constantly having to find new motivations. It sounds insanely unpleasant…and it is…but boy is it good training for life! Knowing that you have the fortitude to fight through the tough times, and the mental strategies at hand to deal with new challenges (or indeed the same challenge again and again and again) is invaluable.
Sweet relief and a distant stare.
How it’s changing around 50
I think this could be summarised down to ‘I’m tired’. I used to be able to get out of bed every morning at 6am for a run or the gym…but it feels like a real battle now. In previous training for a marathon I would reach a point where I just felt strong and fast (in the training for the Portland Marathon in 2024 I actually set a PB for 10kms), but this year I didn’t get to that point. I felt like I had the endurance to do the marathon, but that springiness in the legs just never arrived.
But on the positive side, not having young kids means I have more time available…and more sleep under my belt. Both of which make a world of difference!
I’m also very aware that the more weight I put on, the more strain I put my body under…so if I want to run more marathons, I need to keep my weight down…and in order to keep my weight down, I need to run more marathons. There will come a time when this circular economy fails, but until then, I’m not running for a time or a pace, I’m running for the experiences that come with it.
As a ‘late bloomer’ I never had the chance to dominate at sport as I was always smaller than the guys I was playing against, so perhaps my revenge will be still running strong in my 60s when they’re having hip replacements and gout.
I love that running only really requires a pair of shoes, rather than a small fortune’s worth of equipment (cycling), or the need to walk around in public in what is ostensibly underwear (swimming). I love the local paths I’ve discovered while out on a run, and the towns and cities I’ve explored while on a holiday run. I love the feeling at about 7kms into a longer run when my body just seems to slip into a rhythm and finds flow. I love the endorphin hit of a hard session finished, and slightly sore legs the next day as a badge of honour. I love the camaraderie of running with a group of people, and the beautiful isolation of being on a trail in the middle of nowhere with nothing but the sound of my own breathing for company.
It’s a ritual and a surprise, a sacrifice and a gift, a blessing and a curse, and something I hope I can do for a lot longer.
‘Are you able to take photos and video of Snoop Dogg tomorrow?’ As a public servant, this is a question I get asked a lot.
Snoop working on his words and verbs.
For context, some students at Warringa Park (a school for students with a disability) had recorded a song at their studio and invited Snoop Dogg to come to the studio and record a verse. In a move that I don’t think anyone expected, Snoop agreed and asked that the event not have any media, so that it could just be for the students and teachers. So, as the in-house creative team for the Department of Education, my team was asked to document the event. This was right up there with a request in 2011 to drive to Kerang to take photos of actual royalty, in the form of Prince William who was there to survey the flood damage.
Now admittedly, these requests are few and far between. But requests to ‘quickly grab a few shots at the launch’ or ‘get a photo of *insert senior person in organisation* at *insert event where person will be standing at lectern in front of very bright Powerpoint presentation*’ or the dreaded ‘Just grab a few photos for socials’ are everywhere now that we all have cameras that can also make phone calls in our pockets. So I thought it might be worth passing on some tips and tricks for taking photos at events like this…and yes, what to do if you get called up to take a photo of a legit superstar.
Clean that lens
I genuinely want to run a workshop called ‘How to take better photos with your phone’ and just say ‘Give the lens a quick wipe before you take a photo.’ Then thank everyone for their time and wish them well. It seems so simple, but if you’re ever wondering why your photos look ‘flat’ or ‘muddy’, have a quick look at the glass on the lens and see if there are any finger prints/sunscreen/sweat on them. If you’re anything like me, there will be…but they can be gone with a 2 second wipe. On the bikepacking trip I did earlier this year I made a conscious effort to wipe the lens each time I went to take a photo, and the results were glorious.
Tell a story
I know that this is tricky, especially if there isn’t a story that’s immediately apparent. But so many photos I see from events seem to say ‘A thing happened. Here’s proof’. This is great if your sole objective is ‘have proof we did something’. But if you’re looking to engage with an audience who has an entire social media feed of super interesting content. You’re going to have to work a little harder. If you’re taking photos at an annual event, you want something that makes people think ‘I have to go next year’. If it’s a one-off event, you want people to think ‘Wow, I wish I had been there!’, if it’s just to document something that happened (a visit by someone important/ a workshop/ a conference), then you want people to think ‘I wonder what it was like to be there’. It’s also worth remembering that 99% of your audience are people who would be attending your event, not presenting at it, so make sure you get photos of people enjoying/engaging with the event (no one at the events I’ve taken photos at has signed a consent form saying ‘it’s OK for Chris to use this on his own personal blog’, so I don’t have any examples to show…but rest assured, I take them at every event). In short, you want people to engage with the pictures and create a story in their minds.
Your Chief Financial Officer probably won’t be as good at posing as Snoop, so enjoy it while you can.Make sure you’re ready to capture moments like this.The lyrics to what Snoop was about to rap.The music teacher and Snoop’s entourage discuss production techniques, while he works on his flow.
People love stories, and our brains love finding connections, so try to take a few photos that tell a story and that allow people to make connections between.
In this picture you can see; Snoop Dogg is there, he’s at a school, and the kids are excited he’s there. Also, the number of people who made reference to what’s written on the board when they saw the photo was staggering. Why did they like it? Because they were able to make the connection between ‘teachers writing a message for students on a white board’ and that message including ‘fo shizzle’ which is something that Snoop would say. You let their mind make the connection, and they got a little dopamine hit for doing it. Everyone wins!!
Three’s a crowd
We’re all susceptible to a bit of FOMO. So when you’re taking a photo of something you want to make people say ‘Oh, I wish I was there!’, then frame the photo between people who are there. On a purely liminal level, it puts the viewer into a situation as if they were actually there (unless you’re right at the front in the VIP seats, you’re probably going to have people in front of you) and it makes for a more interesting shot. On a subliminal level it says ‘there were so many people at this thing, the photographer had to take the shot through a crowd of people. Why weren’t you there?!’ Best of all, if there aren’t heaps of people at the event, you only need 2 people to make it look like there were!
Unfortunately I don’t have consent forms to cover me using the photos I take at work events, so can’t show you an actual example…but it works just as well at music gigs.
Get to the part about Snoop Dogg!!
Ok, I’ve buried the lede long enough. What do you do if the stars align, the Gods smile upon you, and you’re suddenly called upon to take photos of someone BIG?
Have a plan
I am genuinely amazed at the number of times people assume that because you have a camera in your hands you know what should be happening. And believe me, if you say something like ‘I don’t know…just…you know…act natural’, you are in for a selection of the most awkward photos you’ve ever taken. So with Snoop, I had a series of questions I was ready to ask if the students got too nervous to talk, or if Snoop was looking like he needed some direction. I also had five shots in mind that I wanted to get, so I knew I could ask people to do those if there were any awkward lulls. For the record, both he and the students were so good, I needn’t have worried.
Snoop with the list of artists the students had on their ‘wishlist’.
Take a LOT of photos
We are not shooting on film, with just 12 exposures…and you have the rest of your life to delete the photos you don’t want. So take a lot of photos. I know professional photographers will sneer and call this a ‘spray and pray’ approach. But at the Prince William event I mentioned at the start of this blog, I missed a photo of one of our key staff shaking hands with the Prince. It still haunts me, and I would have happily deleted photos for hours rather than have to send him the email admitting I’d missed the shot.
At the Snoop shoot, I took over 500 photos in under an hour. I reckon there will be about 20 that I’m really happy with, and probably 3 that I’m stoked with. But every person there got a photo with Snoop where they both look good, and that’s worth its weight in gold.
Be confident…or at least fake it convincingly
If you look like you know what you’re doing and you’re happy to be there, you will get great responses from the people you’re taking photos of. If you look stressed or overwhelmed, people will ‘tighten up’ in front of the camera. Now this truly sucks, because internally you ARE going to be freaking out, and your mind will be running at 1,000 thoughts per second, and it would be GREAT if people knew that and all said ‘Oh you poor thing, this must be so stressful for you.’ But you know what doesn’t make a great photo…people looking at you with an ‘Oh you poor thing’ expression on their face. So take a deep breath, put on a big smile and get used to saying ‘That looks awesome! OK, just one more, looking here. Perfect!’
At the Snoop shoot I think I was a picture of positivity, but at the end I helpfully got a message from my watch saying ‘This has been a stressful period, make sure you balance this with some relaxation or meditation’. Not now, watch…not now.
But stress aside, this was a genuinely amazing experience. There was an amazing sense of joy and excitement in the room, and I like to think I captured some of that. So if you’re not afraid to take a photo, then put your hand up to take some photos for your work events…and if the opportunity to work with Snoop Dogg presents itself, then I highly recommend you take it!
I didn’t set a whole lot of KPI’s when I started my parenting journey, but I think it’s fair to say that if you’d told me back then that in the same year I turned 50, my 19yo son would want to go on a 7 day bike-packing trip across Tassie, and that what’s more, I’d still be physically capable of doing it, I reckon I would have been pretty happy. So I’m very happy to report that I have smashed those non-existent KPIs by riding the 480km Tasmanian Trail from Devonport to Dover. I’m probably more happy that I’m not still doing the ride, as it was genuinely one of the toughest things I’ve done, and instead of providing a travelogue of the journey, I think I’ll focus on what I learnt while I was doing it.
Plans are awesome, as you watch them fly out the window
I had never gone bikepacking before. So I had no idea how much of a difference carrying sleeping bags, a tent, clothes, a camping stove, etc. would make to how fast we would ride. I also failed to realize how steep some of the climbs were going to be, or that some of them would be up rocky hills that were impossible to ride up. So as we planned the trip, I was thinking, ‘Well, I can normally average 30 kph, so if we assume with all the gear we’re carrying we can only average 20 kph, we should be able to comfortably do 80 kms per day. So if we get on the road by 8 am, we can be at our next stop by just after lunch… then we can swan around whatever town we’re in, and I can take photos. What an amazing and relaxing way to see Tasmania!’ Cut to a scene where Josh and I are riding in the cold and dark on day one, with only one decent front light, hoping to make it to our accommodation before their kitchen closes for the night.
If I take a few steps back, we had started later than 8 am because our flight didn’t land until 10 am.
By the time we had taken the bikes out of their boxes and assembled them (or more accurately, Josh assembled them and I found places to put the packing materials), it was 11:30 am, then it was a 10 km ride from the airport to the start of the trail.
So by the time we’d had something to eat, it was already 1 PM. But using the patented ‘Chris Riordan travel estimator,’ we would still be arriving around 6 PM, which was fine. In fact, everything was so fine that we found time to stop and take photos. This was exactly how I had hoped this trip would be: lunch in little country towns, pleasant riding through beautiful countryside, stopping for photos… what a time to be alive!
But then the country roads and pleasant paths gave way to gravel roads and stony trails, the midday sun turned to early dusk, and we were taking off our shoes in order to push our bikes across a river.
By the time we got to our second river crossing, the light had almost gone, and so we had to push on through windy single-track trails with only a few meters in front of us illuminated by our lights.
Then we came to a serious climb. It was so serious I had to get off and walk for some of it. By the time I got to the top, we were still at least 10 km from Deloraine, it was cold, it was dark, we were hungry, and suddenly this did not feel like such a great time.
Thankfully we had mobile reception, and so we were able to use Maps to plot a course that kept us off the highway as much as possible, and cut a few km off our trip. But seeing as I had the brightest light, I had to sit in front of Josh for the rest of the trip…which is a bit like putting a Clydesdale in front of a racehorse.
We pulled into our Deloraine accommodation just before 8:30 pm…our ‘4 hr ride’ had taken over 8 hours, we were cooked…and it was only day 1.
Plans are great!
Serendipity
As I came to discover, one of the cool things about the Tassie Trail is that you will encounter climbs where you wonder, ‘Should I have bought a smaller chainring at the front… or just some rock-climbing gear?’
Enjoy that climb at the 45 minute mark.
Our second day had two of these climbs. The first one was non-negotiable, but the second one could be avoided if you took a longer route through a town called Poatina. The trail guidebook said that the steeper climb ‘was not advised for horses or bikers’, but Josh was very keen for the adventure, and I just figured that if I had to walk the bike up some of the climb, then so be it.
We stopped just before the start of the climb to have a banana and some lollies to fuel up for the push up the hill and then onwards to a campsite about 20 km after the top the climb. You access the climb via the driveway on someone’s property, and as we were standing there, a lady drove out of the driveway. We got chatting, and she explained that her parents owned the property, and that while it would be really difficult to ride up the trail, it was really great…and that also, there was a cave about 2/3 of the way up that we could camp in if we wanted. We thanked her for the info, but knew that we were aiming to camp on the other side of the climb…things would have to be going pretty badly for us to be camping 2/3 of the way up this climb.
We started the climb, and after about 200m things started to go pretty badly. It was really steep, but more importantly, it was pretty much just rocks, and so some pretty impressive mountain bike skills were required just to ride over them…skills I did not possess. So I had to start walking pretty much straight away. Of course, it’s not just walking; it’s walking while pushing a 30kg bike, and sometimes that meant pushing the bike in front of you, locking the brakes to hold it in place, then taking a few steps, then pushing the bike in front of you, locking the brakes, taking a few steps, then repeating this for half an hour.
Once again, the light was starting to fade, and we weren’t even halfway up. There was no way we were going to make it to the top, then ride for another 2 hours to get to our campsite. But we could make it to the cave. I was able to text Josh to wait for me at the cave, and by the time I got there, we had just enough time to set up the tent and get a fire going before darkness descended like a weight.
It was incredible. Just the two of us, in the middle of nowhere, two-thirds of the way up a mountain and completely protected from the elements. It was exactly the sort of adventure I had hoped we would find on this ride, and it would never have happened if we hadn’t bumped into that lady at the base of the climb. One of the beauties of being willing to take on a challenge like this is that serendipity tends to follow you.
This sign was at the end of the trail for people coming the other way…good to know.
Highway from the comfort zone
I am a great believer that true growth comes when you’re out of your comfort zone, and this trip really showed me that while I may believe this, I’m not so great at putting it into action. That’s not to say that I don’t do a lot of things that I tell myself are putting myself out of my comfort zone. For example, every Sunday I have my long run. Up until this trip, I would have said ‘I’m pushing myself for 1.5-2 hrs, so I’m really getting out of my comfort zone!’ But, at best, I’m pushing myself a little out of my physical comfort zone. Mentally, I’m super comfortable. I know how far I’m running, I know where I’m going, I know when the hard bits are, and if everything goes to hell in a handbasket, I can call someone to give me a lift home. In fact, I think my comfort zone probably is where I can maintain an impression of discomfort while maintaining complete control. This trip pushed me to my mental limits, often for hours at a time. I haven’t had to push my bike up a hill since I was about 16…but I was having to do this on a daily basis. I HATED not knowing how hard the next climb was going to be. I was furious every time we climbed up a hill for an hour, only to find there was a short descent before the next hour-long climb. I took it very personally every time a descent was so technical that I couldn’t enjoy it, and probably had to expend more mental energy on the way down than up. I. HATED. NOT. HAVING. CONTROL. But you can’t control everything, and acknowledging that but still continuing was the comfort zone I had to get myself out of.
On day 6 we had our last big day, 80kms from New Norfolk to Geeveston. The day started with 4 hours of climbing, and much like descending into the ‘9 circles of hell’, this climb presented multiple levels of torture. Really rocky paths gave way to a 4wd track that was full of enormous puddles and tyre-width wide ridges between them that you were meant to somehow balance your fully laden bike across without losing momentum… then the ridges disappeared and you just had to work out how to get your bike across 6ft puddles of indeterminate depth… then the path just became large rocks and boulders you had to push/carry your bike over. It’s fair to say I got a little bit ‘sweary’ at this point, not the least because I knew that if the descent was the same as the climb, I was going to have to walk that as well, and it was going to be a loooooong day.
For better or worse, the descent was not as bad. It was still full of decently sized rocks or slippery clay or some winning combo of both…but with enough patience and forearm strength (as you pumped the brakes to try and keep yourself from flying down the hill) it was doable. My whole rationale was ‘If I just fly down the hill, I may save myself 10 minutes, but if I come off, I will ruin the whole trip. So just grip those brakes and play it safe.’ But then we came to a section (you can see it looks like a vertical drop on the profile) that was insanely steep. It was so steep that I had to stop because my forearms were getting exhausted from holding the brakes so tight. It was so steep that when I started again, I almost went over the handlebars trying to clip my feet into the pedals. It was so steep (and the trail was just tennis ball-sized rocks) that I realized that even with my brakes on full lock, I was still hurtling down the hill; it’s just that with the brakes on full lock, I was much more likely to wipe out on a section of deeper rocks. I could see the end of the section, and I could see Josh waiting for me, and so I just let go of the brakes. It’s three weeks later and I can still remember the feeling. I was flying. I was bouncing over the rocks. If I came off, it was hospital for sure. There was no sound, just the bike bucking wildly underneath me, just trying desperately to keep it upright, and knowing that I was completely out of control, it was down to luck and my reflexes, and I had never been so far from my comfort zone.
Then it was done, and I was slowing down on a slight ascent; then I was chatting to Josh about how much he had loved it. The memory is so visceral that I know my mind has had to do a lot to process it, and hopefully, it’s grown because of it—new pathways, new possibilities. But if you asked me to do it again…I’d probably say ‘no’…there’s no way I could get that lucky twice.
Capitulation or perserverance
I have always enjoyed sports, but never excelled. From about my 30s onwards, I discovered that while I could never win a race, I could always grind out a decent finish. Capitulation was never an option.
On one of the days when I was walking the bike up a muddy cliff-face somewhere, I had to come to two knee-high boulders that I had to squeeze the bike through. The only way to do it was to put the bike on its back wheel and push it through vertically. It worked, and to celebrate my logistical prowess, I promptly walked my knee straight into one of the rocks. It hurt at the time, but over the next few days it got worse and worse.
On day 5, we were riding 80kms from Ouse to New Norfolk. We had decided to stop in the town of Ellendale to get an early lunch, but when we arrived there, the one shop in town was closed. It had been a tough day already, and my knee was really hurting, to the point where I was basically free-wheeling any slight downhill (and I think I was driving Josh insane with how slow we were going). So to arrive at what we had hoped would be our lunch spot, where we could get something warm to eat and ideally a coffee… and instead be eating the cold packet of beans and rice we had intended to have for dinner that night, and to know that we were about to embark on some hefty climbs on very rough tracks. Well, it was rough, and my mindset was not good. I had a look at Maps on my phone and realized that there was a roadhouse about 12kms away that served food; I also realized that the trail took a 20km detour through the hills before arriving at the same roadhouse. So I decided that I would just ride along the road for this section and meet Josh at the roadhouse after he had enjoyed the highs and lows of the trail.
I had expected to feel guilt and regret as I rode along by myself. But suddenly, being able to ride at my own pace, I found my mindset getting better. After a short climb, I found myself on a long sweeping descent. The sort of descent where you can just stop pedaling and enjoy the ride, the sort of descent I’d been praying for after each climb over the last few days. I knew that at the bottom I would need to start climbing again… but instead, like some wonderful apparition, at the bottom of the hill was a raspberry farm that had a coffee machine and homemade ice cream. While in Melbourne it can be hard to walk for more than 5 minutes in any direction without tripping over a barista… it’s fair to say that if you spend 90% of your time riding on fire trails and weird horse-tracks through the hills, you very rarely stumble across anyone offering a decent coffee. So I asked if they could make an affogato, and they happily poured a shot of coffee over a scoop of homemade ice cream… I think I may have been the happiest I had been in days. So happy, I took a photo of it to show Josh later.
Then I pushed on to the roadhouse, ordered myself some food and was about to text the photo to Josh, but decided to just see how far away he was first. His response came back that he had noticed a puncture about 5 mins after we separated (this was our only puncture for the whole trip!), and while trying to fix that, his pump had broken, and when it had broken, it had cut his hand. So he was still out in the middle of nowhere, on a tire that wasn’t properly inflated and with a cut hand. I decided that now was not the time to send the photo of the affogato.
With some judicious use of Panadol, my knee was fine for the rest of the ride. I have no idea what would have happened if I’d just decided to be a ‘completist’ and stuck to the trail… but I think that the simple act of kindness I had offered myself to take the easier option got me across the line. If nothing else, it gave me the first ‘non-sachet’ coffee I’d had in days!
The end of the trail
When talking about the US Space program, JFK famously said, ‘We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.’ Unfortunately, I lack both JFK’s brevity and work ethic, because I think mine is more along the lines of ‘I do these things not because they’re easy, but because I thought they would be easy, but then they proved to be a lot harder than expected. At the same time, I’d already committed a lot of time and effort to them, and so I guess I may as well finish them.’
So on day 7, we rode triumphantly into Dover. In a true metaphor for the ride as a whole, we rode up a really long and punishing hill before descending on some sketchy trails that became shingly paths that became a dirt road, before finally becoming a paved road that descended all the way down to the beach. As we rolled down the hill, we had our arms out wide, soaking up the feeling of accomplishment and feeling like we were flying. Then at the bottom of the hill, we realized that it wasn’t the actual end of the ride, and that we had to turn left and ride up one last super steep hill on a double-lined road with an impatient truck behind us. So we did.
Will I ever go bikepacking again? Absolutely.
Will I travel with Josh again? If he’ll have me, without a doubt. He was the perfect travel companion.
Are there things I would do differently? Most definitely, but that’s for another blog.
Is one of those things not carrying a camera in a backpack the entire way? Nah… ’cause it let me get this photo… and you can see all of the other photos from the trip here
It’s been 3 months since we moved from an Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) to an EV, so I thought I’d step out the good, the bad, and the ugly of the experience so far, in case you’re thinking about making the change too.
Road trips
We’re a family of five, who tends to drive to most of our holidays. So clearly one of the biggest fears I had was the dreaded ‘range anxiety’. Would we be able to load the family into the EV and still head out for a trip down the coast without having to stop to charge? The short answer is a resounding ‘yes’. We did multiple trips to Sandy Point (150kms), with varying numbers of people, and with and without a cargo pod on the roof without a problem (in fact just over 50% battery left on some trips). We also did from Warnambool to Melbourne (about 230kms) with 5 people and the pod on the roof and had over 50kms of range left. Portland is about another 80kms, so it will be very interesting to see if we can get there with one charge if the car is in ‘eco’ mode, rather than ‘sport’.
The boot capacity of the Ioniq 5 is on par with other EV’s, but I was surprised at how little it held compared to the Skoda Superb. To be fair, I was always amazed at how much the Skoda could hold, so this is more a case of our older car being ‘great’ rather than the new car being ‘bad’. But the luggage pod on the roof has been sensational.
An EV with a Thule cargo pod and a bike mount…we’re pretty much Northern suburbs royalty.
Additional costs
If you’ve ever decided to reduce the amount meat in your family meals, or you’ve gone gluten free, or you’ve decided to make more salads from the Yotam Ottolenghi book you were given for Christmas, then you’ll know that feeling of ‘Oh for crying out loud, now I have to buy a whole lot of new things that I’ve never needed before, and learn how to cook them’…I call it ‘the chickpea conundrum’. Of course you’ve always had to buy pasta, or eggs or plain flour…it just somehow feels unfair that now you have to buy new things. Similarly, we bought a home charger (so that we could charge it any time…particularly when the solar panels were working), and got a roof-rack fitted, and bought a luggage pod to go on the roof-rack. So that is about $2,800 for the charger, $500 for the roof rack, and $1,500 for the luggage pod. It could be argued that this is a pretty poor exchange for not having to go to a service station and fill up with petrol for 3 months…but in the long-term…I think it will make an for an amazing Cauliflower, pomegranate and pistachio salad.
The driving experience
Forced induction is a very interesting way of delivering more power, regardless of the number of cylinders…Ok…I think we’ve lost all of the people who don’t have an interest in cars or driving…hopefully they’ve just skipped down to the ‘technology’ section. The experience of driving an EV is pretty different to driving an ICE car. The power is immediate and linear (which can be great when you need to overtake…but can also feel like you’re driving a dodgem car). Our car is wider and heavier than any other car I’ve driven, and it has a longer wheel-base (so a wider turning circle). So I would never describe the car as ‘fun’ to drive. In fact, every time I hop in our eldest child’s 2001 Subaru Liberty wagon, with its manual transmission and no form of Apple Play, I’m reminded of how much ‘fun’ it can be when you really have to listen to the car and work with it. But with more and more driving being little more than a series of 200m bursts between one lot of traffic and the next, the ‘joy of driving’ and ‘fun’ may be things of the past, and so a comfortable, quiet, sturdy car that can make Punt Rd a pleasant catch-up with your ‘podcast friends’ may not be such a bad thing.
Technology
Now I realise that a lot of this technology is available in any new car, so this is not necessarily EV specific…but it has been pretty awesome for the first three months, so I’m going to talk about it. On stinking hot Australian days, I can press a button on my phone 10m minutes before we leave and it will start cooling down the car, so that when everyone piles into the car, it’s not a sauna. I am WELL aware of how gauche and unnecessary this sounds…but there have been enough moments in the last three months when this has been an absolute God-send, that I will not be listening to anyone bad-mouthing this feature. As someone who regularly parks the car, then 5 minutes later thinks ‘Wait…did I lock the car?!’ the fact that I can now lock the car from my phone any time and anywhere, will hopefully mean a lot fewer grey hairs for me…and a lot less of everyone else having to hear ‘You just keep walking, I’m just going to race back to the car and check something’. There is also wireless phone connection, multiple USB-C chargers for phones, a display on the windscreen of how fast I’m going, and a parking camera that shows me an overhead view of the car, which is great for showing how straight I haven’t parked the car.
But also…the technology
In my lifetime, car manufacturers have gone from ‘Here’s a V8 with no ABS…good luck!’ to ‘here’s a car with so many alerts and noises, that it feel less like driving a car and more like living in an Aphex Twin track’. If you’re in a driveway with any plants, the car will throw more ‘beeps’ at you than the ‘radio safe’ version of an NWA song in the 90s. If you’re travelling towards an intersection with a speed camera, it will turn down your music to let you know about it. If you disable this feature, it will still turn down your music…it just won’t tell you anything. If you travel more than 2kms over the speed limit it will beep at you…which on the face of it is a good thing…but it also believes that every school zone is perpetually 40kms/h (even at 10pm at night) and so freaks out at your speed, even though it’s perfectly legal. As you drive past the tram depot on St George’s Rd, it’s convinced that you should be travelling at the 10km/h speed of the tram depot rather than the 70km/h speedl limit of the road you’re on…and is not backward in coming forward to tell you about it. If you’re driving somewhere there are roadworks, the lane-assist will quite happily steer you to where it thinks the lane should be, rather than where it temporarily is. I realise that car companies now have to design their safety features assuming that drivers are on their phone and angry…but for those of us who are neither, it feels pretty patronising.
Overall thoughts
I definitely feel that we’ve had to pay more money to get a car that pollutes less…and that sucks. I also haven’t filled up my tyres at a service station, as I’m suddenly not sure if that’s ‘OK’ with an EV. And I really don’t know how well the car will hold its value with how quickly new technology is being developed. But I love this car, and our next car will be an EV as well.
I love the word ‘anthropomorphisation’. It’s big enough to sound impressive, but easy enough to break into smaller parts to make sense of it. Like a Scottish accent, it’s something I can do in my head, but struggle when I have to actually say it out loud. But most of all, the fact that it exists is like someone calmly saying ‘Hey, you know that weird thing you do where you give human characteristics to non-human things? Well, it’s actually so common that we felt the need to create a word for it!’ Like so many things we do in our own heads, it’s nice to know that you’re not the only one doing it.
I’m an anthropomorphisationator from way back. In my school years cricket bats and skateboards were spoken to like they were people, successes and failures were shared between us. Every bike I’ve owned has had its own personality that I have worked with and around, and I have a vivid memory of thanking my Cannondale 6 for all its help as I finished the bike leg of the Ironman. After all, it was the bike’s dedication through long training rides, early starts and endless hours on the cycling trainer that got us through…I was, in every sense, just a passenger. That bike is still in our bike shed because I feel like I would be letting the bike down by selling it…but I feel equally guilty about letting it fall into disrepair. It really deserves better.
Pretty sure I’m smiling because as I head off on my second lap, Luke Bell is about to finish his second.
When the Crepe Myrtle tree that we bought when Josh was born started to look like it was going to die a few years ago, I had many conversations with it. As if what it somehow needed was a Tony Robbins style inspirational speech and some reassurance….as opposed to more water, and less shade from those gum trees. I still have the red ‘Have a Coke and smile’ t-shirt I was wearing the first time I kissed Katie, and take it out of the drawer occasionally to use its talismanic powers to reconnect with the 21 yo who wore it as he embarked on the best part of his life.
But my guiltiest secret is how much I talk to the cars I’ve owned, as if they were supportive friends. I have quite literally sat in every car and thanked it for all that it’s done to help me when it’s come time to sell or trade in. Which is, of course, completely insane. The car is not choosing to work or not work, it’s not choosing to take me on adventures, it doesn’t see us a team, and it certainly isn’t going to be sad that we’re breaking up. It quite literally can’t give a shit. But I can…and do.
All of this is top of mind, because in the next day or so I will be saying goodbye to our Skoda Superb. I will say to anyone listening, that this is the best car I’ve ever owned. It’s not living and breathing, but it’s been the conduit to so many moments that make living and breathing so great! It’s taken us on roadtrips through Tasmania and NSW. It’s been up in the snow, and down at the beach in the heat of summer. On cold dark nights out taking photos, it’s been the warmth and comfort to return to. On family trips to Sandy Point it’s been the TARDIS that can fit more stuff in the boot than should be possible. It’s taken us to birthdays, weddings and funerals. It’s taught Josh how to drive, and at the end of every mid-winter bike ride, or trail run it has started on cue, played the tunes I wanted to listen to, and its seat warmers have gently warmed our frozen butts.
A very muddy day on the trails at Westerfolds Park
The only reason we’re selling it, is so that we can get an EV, and when the EV arrived, after 6 years of never missing a mechanical beat, the Skoda suddenly needed new front suspension…then yesterday, it just wouldn’t start and needed a new battery. It’s very hard not to see the Skoda as a spurned lover, looking at the car who replaced it and screaming ‘HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME?!!’ But on the bright side, I’ve sold the car to my Dad, because the best thing you can do when you break up with someone, is manufacture a situation where you continue to see them at every family function!
As advances in AI blur the line further between animate and inanimate objects, perhaps anthropomorphism will become a thing of the past. But in the next few days I’ll be taking the time to have a chat with the Skoda and thank it for everything it’s done for me…and I’ll be secretly glad that it can’t talk back.
There were quite a few times in my early 20s when I left a dance party while I was still having a really good time, just to head off the risk of it getting a bit shit, and that being my final memory of it. So I definitely have a personality that errs on the side of ‘bad things are probably coming, so let’s get out while the going is good’. Which brings me to our current car, a 2018 Skoda Superb wagon. It is without a doubt the best car I have ever owned. We’ve had it for 6 years and it has not missed a beat. It has taken us on roadtrips to Tassie, NSW and Nhill. In the summer months it’s transported the family, plus surfboards, plus dog to many a beach destination, and it has been the haven of warmth at the end of winter trail runs and taboganning trips to Mt Donna Buang. And yet…and yet, I fear that the longer we keep it, the greater the risk of it having an issue that costs a fair amount of cash to fix. As someone who would like to play a part in not destroying the planet, I also like the idea of taking any opportunity to move towards having a smaller carbon footprint, and so maybe now is the perfect time to get an EV?
*cut to montage of Chris falling down rabbit-hole of EV car reviews and way, way, waaaay too much information*
I won’t lie, if there is a perfect time to get an EV for a family, it certainly isn’t now unless you are someone who has a lot of cash, and a deep, abiding love of SUVs. I’m not sure if EV manufacturers heard Scott Morrison say as PM that ‘converting to EV’s would mean the end of the Aussie weekend and we would no longer be able to spend our weekends driving SUVs’ and said ‘No worries, we’ll only make cars in sedan or SUV variants…best of luck station-wagon lovers!!’, but I can tell you, brands like VW are actively not releasing the station wagon/estate/tourer versions of their EV cars here in Australia. So, as someone who views SUV’s as one of the 4 horsemen of the modern apocalypse (the other three are; screen addiction, polarised political opinion, and NFTs), I am having to do a LOT of mental and moral gymnastics convincing myself that this is a good idea.
Also, I’m someone who has always had an interest in cars…but that means very little in this brave new world of terms and features to get used to, not to mention new brands like Tesla, Polestar and Cupra…throw in Kia and you’re suddenly one of those people who finishes every sentence on an upward inflection. Plus, whereas in the past if you bought a car and the new version came out the next year, it was probably going to have slightly different coloured side view mirrors or better cup holders…now a new version may come up with a 100kms of additional battery range, or brand-new ‘everything’ inside, or now it doubles as an aeroplane. The tech in the cars is evolving faster than the tech in my cameras, and it makes it VERY hard to commit to something!!
The other problem is that there just isn’t the range of cars that exists in the petrol/diesel world. In petrol/diesel world, you have a price range, and then a range of cars in the price range. In EV world, everything starts more expensive, and there limited options in each price band. The EV equivalent of our Skoda Superb (albeit not in station-wagon form) probably costs about $85K, which is *checks down the back of the couch, and in pockets of jeans he wore last summer* a fair bit more than I have to spend. So…problem solved! Don’t buy an EV! After all, it would be insane to sell a perfectly good petrol car in order to buy an EV that I can’t afford. I can just show the world that I’m a great person by talking about how much I would like to buy and EV…without actually having to commit any money to it, because I can’t afford it. Virtue signalled…cost of living crisis adhered to.
Except…except, novated leasing. Now I realise that if I haven’t lost you with discussions of ‘preferred body shapes for cars’, then I almost certainly will with ‘discussions of tax-based financing of car purchases’. But here goes anyway…maybe you should imagine Margot Robbie explaining this in a bath. A novated lease is basically where you lease a car through your work, and the repayments for it come out of your pay. The cool thing is that a portion of this comes out of your income before tax, so you pay less tax because your taxable income is less. If this feels like the sort of thing that really benefits rich people…then yes it is. After all, if you go and buy a $200K car and can then claim the repayments as a tax deduction, that’s a pretty sweet deal that is only available to people who can afford a $200K car. So one way around this for the tax department, is to charge a ‘Luxury car tax’ for cars worth over about $80K. Cool story so far, I know. But the Govt is keen for you to buy and EV, and so they have made it so if you buy an EV then the full amount of the repayment comes out before tax (remember earlier how I said that part of the payment usually comes out before tax…well for EV’s it is now ALL of the repayment, which saves even more on tax), AND the luxury car tax doesn’t kick in on EV’s until just over $91K. In short this means that you can get a $10K nicer EV car, and you’re going to pay less in tax. Plus, the repayment amount includes things like rego, servicing, tyres, insurance etc, so instead of those things hitting like a kick in the proverbials each year…they’re spread over the full year, like a firm massage. It is a pretty good deal, provided you and your employer are keen to continue your current practice of you giving them the majority of your waking hours…and them wanting to continue to pay you for it.
We’re currently on a holiday in the Northern Rivers region of NSW, where it has rained so much, we’ve actually had the time to sit down as a family and discuss the options. It was such a relief after having all of this info bouncing around in my head for a few months, to be able to explain that I really didn’t want to sell the Skoda, but if we did, our best options were the Polestar 4, and the Kia ev6. So let’s make a choice. After about an hour of discussion, and debate we finally made a decision…we really don’t want to sell the Skoda, but if we do, our best options are the Polestar 4, the Kia ev6, and the Hyundai Ioniq 5. So…yeah…somehow I’m now actually further away from a decision than I was when we started. But we have hired a Polestar 2 for our holiday, and it has been great! It took us everywhere we wanted to go, it handled like it was on rails, and there is something quite awesome about not having pay for petrol on a holiday! So who knows, having already said good-bye to a manual gearbox on my last two cars…maybe it’s time to fully embrace middle-aged comfort, and get an EV.
If you can hold a new year’s resolution until March then I reckon you can say you’ve stuck the landing, and you’re now the proud owner of a new behaviour. Over the Christmas/New Year’s break I read ‘Stolen Focus‘ by Johann Hari. The overarching theme of the book is that modern life has taken away our ability to focus and think deeply on things. As if to prove this, when I say ‘I read’, I should actually say ‘I listened to the audiobook…at 1.5 speed…while I did a variety of other things’, but that just feels too sad to put in writing.
Now clearly you only really read/listen to a self-help book if you’re actually struggling with the problem yourself, the audiobooks for ‘My pecs are too big’ and ‘What do I do with all this spare money?’ have remained undownloaded by my Audible app. But in truth, I hadn’t realised just how little ‘deep thinking’ I was doing. I did have a sense of ending each day pretty much at exactly the point I had started it, but at the same time, I had ticked off my ‘to-do’ list and got lots of little things done. The simple truth is that ‘I got a whole lot of small things done today that kept people happy’ is a LOT more popular in the workplace and at home than ‘I didn’t get around to doing that thing you asked me to do…but boy did I have a deep think about an issue!’
But I kept thinking back to train trips as a teenager when I had nothing to do but let my mind wander as the stations on the Hurstbridge line flashed by. I could distinctly remember weird tangents that opened up new thoughts…weird tangents that no longer happen, because I have a purpose built tangent-killer in the form of a phone within arms length every waking minute of the day.
So I made a new year’s resolution to try two things to improve my focus, one for my home life and one for my work-life and I thought I’d take you through how it’s been going with the two of them.
Chris and his podcasts
I think it’s fair to say I was an early adopter of podcasts. Where you can now mention podcasts and have people tell you their own personal favourites, I was into them when if you said ‘Podcast’ people would stare at you and say ‘What’s a podcast?’…and when you tried to explain that it was like a radio show without the music…or a movie without the pictures, somehow YOU looked like the crazy one. Anyway, pretty soon I was listening to audio books as well as podcasts on long runs, and then I was listening to them at 1.5 speed because listening to them at normal speed took too long, and then every time I was doing any sort of boring housework, or going for a walk, the headphones would go in…and then over the COVID lockdowns I listened to my headphones so much that I developed Tinnitus. This did not make me think I should listen to them less…I should just turn the sound down.
Putting my headphones in any time something boring presented itself became second-nature. At the same time our youngest was having an issue with automatically watching a screen any time he was bored. So I decided that instead of just saying ‘don’t do that’, I would committ to giving up my habit as well. So I decided to stop listening to my headphones on my walks.
The results
Ability to stick to it: 95% Challenge: On longer walks with the dog it was easier, as I think I knew that 30 – 40 minutes of letting my mind work through things was going to be a benefit. But on short trips (from our house to the supermarket/market, or from the office to get a coffee) it was a lot harder to convince myself that there was going to be any benefit. Has it made a difference?: Most definitely. It has been amazing to see how much more my mind can come up with ideas and solutions once I give it the space, especially after about 15-20 minutes thinking about the same problem, suddenly alternative ideas would present themselves, or links I hadn’t seen before would become apparent. In particular I had one issue at work that I was able to see from another perspective and find a solution…with my photography, I was able to think ideas through from ‘idea’ to ‘how to actually make it work’. Even on the shorter walks, while I certainly didn’t have any moments of clarity, I did feel as though I was a lot more aware of the world around me.
Getting ‘on the balcony’ at work
I was lucky enough to do a 3-day course with Leadership Victoria last month, and one of the key takeaways was the importance of getting ‘on the balcony’ so that you can see the whole picture, rather than getting caught up in the hustle and bustle below. The idea is clear, once you’re in management your role is not just the ‘on the tools’ work, but also the higher level, more strategic work. Of course at the same time we now have more ways than ever for people to contact us. On any given day I will receive work requests via email, text message, phone call, Microsoft Teams and Monday.com. If I’m in the office then people will drop past for a chat, and if I’m working from home the Teams chat will be a constant series of notifications. Worst of all are the people who wait for the split second your availability ‘turns green’ to call you. These people know that the most important thing is to make their problem, your problem and will happily spend 20 minutes waiting like a predatory spider for your current meeting or call to finish so that they can unburden themselves.
The other problem with all of these small requests is that they’re usually 15-20 minute jobs, so there is a sense of satisfaction that comes with getting them done and ticking them off. So much so that if given the choice between a 15 minute quick fix Teams request, and a trickier 40 minute piece of HR paperwork…I will invariably go with the Teams request with the red exclamation mark over the email with ‘URGENT’ in the subject. We also have Teams chats with my fellow Managers, my team, the video team within my team, that ebb and flow over the course of the day…but never fall silent. Quite often these chats present the opportunity to post the perfect GIF of Will Ferrell saying ‘That escalated quickly’ or John Oliver saying ‘Cool’, or pretty much any line from ‘Schitt’s Creek’…and I’ll be damned if I miss that opportunity!
So at the start of this year I turned off my notifications on Teams, and told my team that for the first 45 minutes of every hour I wouldn’t respond to Teams messages, and would reply where necessary for that last 15 minutes. If I’m honest, I rarely focus my attention on one thing for more than 45 minutes at a time, so that 15 minutes of quickfire responses at the end of the hour is the reward for the sustained and focussed thinking I’ve done for the remainder.
The Results
Ability to stick to it: About 50% Challenge: Whereas the challenge to not take headphones on a walk put all of the pressure on me to stick to it…this one is a bit different, as there are plenty of people outside of my team who don’t know my ‘you have to wait until the last part of the hour for me to reply to you’ approach. So there are still always requests and conversations coming through…and some of them you can’t ignore. Also, the allure of the quick job that will make someone happy straight away, over the boring work that may yeild a result in 6 months…is still too hard for me to resist. Has it made a difference?: If the measurement of success is the amount of high level thinking and planning I’ve done since January, then it has made absolutely no difference. If the measurement of success is an awareness of how little high level thinking and planning I’m doing…then it has been painfully successful. A big reason I love my job is that I still get to do the ‘hands-on’ work, and I think that having someone who genuinely loves creativity is still a rarity in a bureaucracy…so perhaps keeping my hands in the creative work, rather than the policies and procedures that guide the work is actually the harder and more beneficial option. Or perhaps that’s exactly what a creative person says when faced with the pressure to just sit down and do some damned spreadsheets and Standard Operating Procedures. Either way, I’m going to stick with it. If nothing else, just to show my team the importance I place on bringing your whole self to a task and thinking deeply, rather than spreading yourself over a whole lot of smaller tasks, chasing that ‘quick win’….and that real change takes time, effort and the occasional failure.
‘I just don’t get the whole Taylor Swift thing’ is a sentiment I’ve heard a bit in the lead-up to her concerts at the MCG. Which is totally understandable, after all, there are plenty of things I just don’t get, Eurovision for example. I love that so many love it, and get so passionate about it…but it’s just never done it for me. Horror movies are another thing that has passed me by…and quadratic equations have 100% been beyond my ken since forever. So I would never say that anyone is wrong for not ‘getting the whole Taylor Swift thing’, but after spending an evening with 96,000 people sharing a communal experience of art and positivity, I do think they’re missing out. So from someone who came to Taylor Swift in the Folklore/Evermore era, and after at least 35 years of going to gigs thinks they may have seen one of their best gigs ever, here is what I love about Taylor Swift.
The music
Back in 2014 when I was training for the Ironman (for those of you playing the ‘When will Chris mention that he has done an Ironman’ drinking game…please drink now) I was watching a YouTube series about a non-athlete training for the Kona Ironman. On the morning of the race she was talking about how she couldn’t sleep and so had just blasted ‘Shake it off’ in her headphones for an hour to get herself ready for the race. I was genuinely dumbfounded. How could someone who was about to attempt something so massive, be listening to something so disposable?! I had never listened to the song in its entirety, but it very much fell into the ‘teeny bopper’ music category in my mind. It was basically ‘musical cordial’ in that it was sickly sweet, and designed for kids. But out of interest, I gave the song a listen. As I suspected, it was pop-crap. But I gave it another listen…out of fairness. Ok, that horn sound is pretty cool…and I did kinda sing along to a bit of it…but it was still crap. To prove this I listened to it again…then watched a behind the scenes video about making the video clip…then listened to it again. I decided that maybe even pop songs can be ok at times, but that true musical genius came in the form of little known Belgian guitar bands, or people with ‘Chemical’ or ‘Shadow’ in their band names. So I went back to what I knew.
But then in 2020 what I knew (The National) intersected with Taylor Swift. Aaron Dessner from The National had worked with Taylor on the ‘Folkore’ album…and I was genuinely baffled. This was like Jamie Oliver saying he had taken a job at McDonalds. But the world was locked down with COVID, so I gave the album a listen. I was about 1/3 of the way through the opening track ‘The one’ when she said the line ‘In my defence, I have none’, and I suddenly thought ‘Oh man…that’s GOOD!’ It’s such a little line, but it really landed with me…then two songs later she hit me with ‘I knew you’d linger like a tattoo kiss, I knew you’d haunt all of my what-ifs’…and I was hooked. That night while making dinner I played it on the speaker and asked Holly what she thought, and asked Katie if she could believe this was Taylor Swift? We played the whole album through…then again…pretty soon it was on regular rotation. Then Evermore came out, and it was all over. I was well and truly sold…and Holly went into a level of fandom that exposed me to all of Taylor’s previous work. As a middle-aged white guy, the less autobiographical lyrics of Folklore and Evermore are my faves…but I can see how the lyrics in her other songs connect with Holly and Katie and have to realise that I’m really not the target audience, but no matter what era you’re listening to, her ability to write an evocative and catchy melody is phenomenal.
The vibe
Normally when a man has as much charisma as Taylor Swift, within a few years they’re insisting they have a direct line to God, and that he’s saying everyone should be wearing orange tunics and marrying him…before eventually everything ends in a hail of gunfire, or poisoned drinks, or massive embezzlement. Instead of this, I sat in an audience of 96,000 people with a focus of pure positivity. In a world that has us increasingly divided into online factions, where differences are what define us, over three nights Taylor Swift was bringing nearly 300,000 people together to show what it’s like when we unite behind something that makes us feel good.
That was all off-stage. But onstage I couldn’t help but notice that every one of the dancers and musicians on stage looked to be having the time of their life. Now I realise that they’re being paid to look happy, but I do think that you can tell the difference between a stage smile, and genuine happiness (it’s usually in the eyes), and every person on stage at the show I saw looked genuinely happy. That can only happen when the person at the top puts genuine effort into making sure her whole team feels comfortable and confident to be who they are. I find it hard doing that managing a team of 7 people, so how she does it with a team of hundreds (and a personal worth in the billions) is amazing. I wonder how many Tesla employees feel the same level of support from Elon.
The show
There was a part of me that thought that the songs I particularly liked were probably the ones that were the least appropriate to a big stadium show, so I was just excited to experience ‘the show’. But nothing could have prepared me for ‘the show’. The lights, the visuals on the screen, the use of effects on the live cameras, the motion graphics on the the stage floor, the choreography of a 3.5 hour show, the sheer energy that’s required to sing and dance for that long, and the ability to feed and ride the energy of the crowd. It was all brilliant. I looked over at Xavier at one point and thought ‘How is he ever going to enjoy a live show again?’
The moments
Sometimes there are just people or places that are a catalyst to greater things. Like watching a train to the MCG slowly fill up with more and more people wearing smiles and sequins. Or young people going to craft shops so that they can make friendship bracelets. Or hundreds of thousands of women and girls getting to see someone who not onlys says that they can be whatever they want…but also shows that they can be. Or a city that prides itself on being a city of arts, treating an artist with the same level of respect it usually reserves for footy, cricket or a horse race. There are a lot of things we’re going to have to come together as a planet to fix. We’re going to have to see what we can do as a large collective, rather than a whole lot of individuals. The ‘whole Taylor Swift thing’, leaves me thinking that we’re still capable of doing it.
It’s that time of the year when I’m on leave and archiving off all of my photos from last year onto external hard-drives, so it’s time to dive into my favourite 23 photos from last year. These are in no particular order, as I’m far too lazy to rank them.
The smiling assassin
I was out for an early evening stroll at Wilson’s Prom when I rounded a corner to see this handsome devil on the path ahead. Instead of heading towards them (and potentially scaring them off), I took a punt on where they were heading next and got myself set up. Lo and behold, they headed in my direction, and came up so close that they briefly looked like they were going to take a chomp out of my lens. Did I ask for the shy smile? No. Am I taking full credit for it? Yes…yes I am.
Right leg kick-through
There is nothing better than discovering a subculture. Last year I started doing ‘Animal Flow’, which is basically a series of moves based on different animals. If you imagine a group of gymnasts, and a group of Cross-fit types meeting at a zoo and trying to torture each other…then you’re not far off. On this day, Alisha Smith was down in Melbourne to test some instructors and run some classes. Given the choice between doing the class…and taking photos of people doing the class, I chose taking photos. One of the upsides to having done some of the classes was knowing when the best moments were going to be to take a shot…and then having someone with such perfect technique to make it look easy.
Cycling in Vietnam
In what I think will be a bit of theme in this year’s photos…we went to Vietnam! As part of it we rode for 4 days through rice paddies and rocky outcrops. We also rode through about 3.98 days of rain, so I love that this photo captures both the beautiful vistas we were travelling through, as well as the constant spray of mud up the back our jackets! Shooting on a GoPro while riding does involve a degree of taking a photo and hoping for the best…and with the lens so wide, you really need to be pedalling hard to keep the person in front of you as the focus, but this sort of scenery can make up for a what you’ve missed in the foreground.
The Bridal Waltz
The Bridal waltz
Going to a wedding of your friends in your 20’s can be a slightly tense experience. There is a LOT of pressure to not screw anything up (this is the BEST day of their lives after all), and so people are often too nervous to actually be themselves. But weddings of people in their 40’s are usually a lot more relaxed. It’s often a second go at a wedding for those involved…and so they’re there to have fun. This may mean that what looked liked a speech, devolves into the bridal party swarming onto the dancefloor to recreate the zombie dance sequence from ‘Thriller’, and then whisking the bride away. A good photographer will be able to capture that moment (and may even be brave enough to drag the shutter to capture the movement as well). A bad photographer won’t know what’s happening as the Bridal party swarms towards them and very nearly gets in the way of a choreographed dance sequence. I will do both.
On the buses
We were on a bus in Vietnam driving over a mountain range. The fog outside was so heavy that we could hardly see more the 5 metres in front of us…but it did make for some amzing diffused light. Just as I was taking a photo of the bus, Xav turned around in front of me, and I snapped this pic. I know that if I had tried to pose this, it would never have worked, but sometimes the photography gods smile on you.
The farmer is strong in him
Every year we head to my Uncle Pat’s farm for an early Christmas get together. We’ve been there in drought and in windy heat, but this year everything was green and growing. On the traditional post-lunch walk I snapped this pic of one of my cousin’s sons. His dad is a farmer…and the stance, and look of wary concern is clearly genetic.
Hanoi streets
I know what you’re thinking…’Chris, it’s been an entire photo since you’ve shown-off about being in Vietnam!’ Well fear not…we’re back. I think I really like this photo because it shows me that I’m learning. This street corner in Hanoi was definitely photogenic. But I chose to wait until some people walked into the shot (to give it an extra element of interest), I got down low to change the perspective, and when I did that I remembered not cut off that light in the top left of the image (that’s the sort of thing I would have missed in the past, and been furious with myself later).
On the way to Fairy Cove
While I may have had my nice Fuji for the photo of the wombat…I definitely wasn’t lugging it along for this hike to Fairy Cove. Which I thought I was going to regret, as the early morning light revealed this vista of the Derby River. Thankfully, the iPhone is a pretty impressive beast, and this was the result.
Post race
Many moons ago there was a photographer taking super-shallow, close up portraits of cyclists after the big 1-day races in Europe. I really liked them as there was invariably one happy person…and a LOT of very broken and exhausted people. This photo was taken after a loooong morning of riding in a combination of the rain and the Vietnamese countryside. We had just arrived at the spot where a bus was picking us up to drive to the next location…and the bus driver was making it clear that our filth was not a great addition to his clean bus. So while negotiations raged between him and our tour guide, I snapped this photo of Josh. As a complete aside, our guide had told us the night before our first day of riding that he was preparing some special ‘lamb juice’ for us. He insisted that this was always very popular with cycling tours, and had a lot of salt and other minerals added to it. It’s fair to say that up until that point I had not seen a single sheep in Vietnam…and was certainly not sure how ‘lamb juice’ was going to help our cycling. But maybe it was some form of ‘bone broth’? Either way, it’s a testament to Aussie politeness, that at our first drink stop when he showed us a water cooler full of ‘lamb juice’, quite a few of us were willing to give it a shot. It turned out to be ‘lime juice’…and was indeed delicious.
Street portrait
As the negotiations between the tour guide and the bus driver continued loudly in a tiny town on the way to Ninh Binh, this guy arrived on his scooter. The sight of a group of mud-spattered Australians standing around a bus was clearly the best thing he’d seen all day. I did my best to ask if I could take his photo in Vietnamese, but his laughter implied that I had not done this. Through a lot of laughs he said 3-4 words in English, and I think one of them was ‘lunch’…so I realised that charades was going to be the winner again. I pointed at my camera and then pointed at him with my face doing it’s best to convey that this was a question. He laughed again and nodded, and so I snapped a few shots. The colours, especially with the flag in the background, were great, but the black and white was my fave. I won’t lie, my first instict was to just snap off a few surreptitious shots without him noticing. But I think a really important part of taking photos is connecting with people, and you won’t do that snapping off photos of people when they’re unaware. Plus, watching each other destroy the other person’s language was a great bonding experience for the two of us.
Early evening swim
As a family we have always had a pretty clear beach schedule; the mornings hold an optional walk or surf (if the waves are good), then lunch, then an early arvo beach session, then a cup of tea, then dinner, then the News and eventually bed. At no stage was a post-dinner dip in the ocean an option. Then my wildcard wife Katie threw it in as an option, and it is now a family favourite. Now clearly, after hours swimming means you’re there without any lifeguards, so there is a presumption that you only swim when it’s safe to do so. But the rewards are pretty epic. The wind has normally died down, so the waves are clean. Any warmth from the day is still in the water, and the setting sun looks amazing through the cresting waves. All you need now is a GoPro to capture a few shots!
Vietnamese landscapes
I imagine that if I had grown up in Vietnam and I saw someone get off their bike (and therefore consign themselves to at least 20 minutes of furious pedalling to catch back up to the group) to take a photo of the landscape, I may well have said ‘What on earth are you doing? It’s just a misty mountain range, with some rice paddies in the mid-ground and a yellow road winding towards them in the foreground!! Why are you wasting your time, when you’ve grown up with the majesty of Bell Street in your life? How can this even compare?!’ But that’s just the joy of being a tourist, everything is new and interesting. Either way, I’m really glad I did jump off the bike to take this photo. Interestingly I took this photo and then thought ‘I bet the composition would be even better if the road was in the centre leading away from the viewer’…it was not.
Fiddler in the spotlight
My daughter had a role in a local theatre production of Fiddler on the Roof. As part of the show, Tevye was walking through the audience behind the fiddler with just a single spotlight on them. I would love to say I planned this composition, and the downcast look from Tevye, but I really just got lucky.
Ha Long Bay
As part of our trip in Vietnam we spent a night on a ship in Ha Long Bay and did some activities out there. For some reason, I thought this activity was going to involve us going somewhere in kayaks, so I just packed the GoPro. But it turns out we were going for a hike through some incredible caves, and then emerging to this stunning view of the bay. ‘Oh excellent!’ I thought ‘I’m absolutely delighted that I’ve brought the camera that is pretty much designed to be strapped to the chest of someone hurtling down a mountain on a bike, or skiis, or Grizzly Bear. Instead of…say…the camera back on the boat with all of the lenses.’ But sometimes you just have to play the hand you’ve dealt yourself, and so I took this photo on the GoPro, and it’s actually a LOT wider than I would have taken normally, but works really well.
Black and white and prog-rock all over
I really love photography, and I really love live music, and I really love teaching people about photography. So last year I did a photo workshop where I talked about the fundamentals of live music photography, and then headed to a gig where Psi-Phi were playing to put the theory into practice. This is one shot that I took that I was super happy with. I love the glow being cast by the overhead lights, and the way it looks like it’s those lights that are illuminating Ryan’s face. Pretty sure that’s a can of Heaps Normal in the centre of the frame…so I’m also very happy for this to be used in some form of advertising campaign.
I’m on the nightrain.
In a beautiful homage to 1980’s era Guns n Roses, we caught the nightrain from Hanoi to Da Nang. This photo was taken on the morning we were arriving at Da Nang. We were snaking our way through green forests, with sea visible down below. I was trying to replicate photos I’ve seen where outside is a blur while inside is a still-life. But you had to hold the windows down as they were springloaded to close, so trying to co-ordinate a long exposure while also holding down the window, while also making sure you didn’t fall victim to some sort of errant pole or sign or tunnel as you stuck your elbow out of the train and looked in the opposite direction, was tricky. So I got Xav to hold down the window and act as my ‘here comes a tunnel’ warning system, and snapped this shot. On an unrelated note, every now and then a cascade of water would come off the roof of the train and down into the open windows. It wasn’t raining…and we were close to the toilets…I really hope the dots I joined were incorrect.
Let there be Rock!
I think I can pretty much divide my selections for this year into two categories; Vietnam, and Live Music…and to be honest, I’m pretty comfortable with that. This shot was taken at Doggerell’s album launch at Shotkickers in Thornbury. Now live music photography can be tricky, but if you’ve got someone with the stage presence of Keir (on the Dobro here) and the lighting of Rosie at Shotkickers, then you’re job is pretty much just waiting for the moment to happen and then capturing it. As part of my ‘Yeah, but how did photographers with just 12 shots on a roll of film ever actually survive’ series, I can assure you that the 5 photos before this, and the 6 after were magnificent examples of me ‘not capturing it’…but it doesn’t matter, because I got this one!
Self portrait…of someone else.
In our last night in Hoi An, Josh and I went out to take some photos. Outside where we were staying there was a bus-stop style illuminated ad that was throwing out a lot of light. So Josh and I took turns standing in front of it and using it to illuminate ourselves, without losing the lights of the town behind. I love the colours in this, and look of metal on the camera…I also love that it looks like some modern version of a Vivian Maier self-portrait in a mirror or shop window.
He’s not terrifying, he’s my son.
We were spending a family weekend at Point Lonsdale, and I dragged our youngest out to take some photos of the lighthouse there. Lighthouses (or ‘Lightheese’, as I believe is the correct way to say the plural), can look bloody amazing…or they can look ‘kinda fine…I guess’, and this photoshoot was falling very much into the second category, so we headed down onto a nearby pier. While we were there, there was another photographer taking photos looking out to sea. I looked out there, but couldn’t for the life of me see what he was taking photos of. Then he said ‘Have you seen the Aurora?’ and showed me the screen on his camera. Lo and behold, there it was, the Aurora Australis! It wasn’t visible to the naked eye, but with a few seconds of exposure it suddenly appeared. I took a number of photos, and they were all pretty good…then I took this photo of Xavier looking like something that was going to haunt my dreams…and I preferred it to all of the photos of the Aurora. Photography is a funny game sometimes.
Beer goggles
I’ve had the pleasure of taking photos of Danny Ross on numerous occasions. One of the many upsides to this is that I’m now pretty comfortable trying new things when I take photos of him performing. This shot was taken with an empty beer glass being held in front of the lens to distort the image. I know that this could have just as easily been done in Photoshop, and I could probably have done it in AI and never even left my house…but I got to see a great gig, drink a beer, and then take this photo. So I reckon I won this one.
Quintessence
Any time you take a portrait of a person, you ultimately want to capture an image that conveys the essence of that person. When you give them posing suggestions, it can usually go one of two ways; you make them do something that is so disengenous that you lose any chance of getting a natural shot, or the very act of trying something different unlocks a moment where they forget they’re being photographed. I love this shot, because it’s how I see Holly; happy, confident and enigmatic.
Give the drummer some more
There have been numerous occasions where I’ve had to explain to a drummer after a gig, that while I got some great shots of the singer and guitarist, my photos of them pretty much suck. This isn’t entirely my fault. Drummers invariably hang out at the back of the stage where the lighting is crap, and they surround themselves with things that make it super tricky to get a clean shot. So when I got the chance to take photos for ZOJ at their Melbourne Recital Centre gig, I was super pumped to take photos during their rehearsal, where I had free-rein to get as close to Brian (the drummer) as I wanted, without becoming a distraction to him or the audience. It’s worth noting that I don’t even know what he’s using as a drumstick in his right hand, but his left hand is playing some bells on a string. In another shot he has a singing bowl in one hand and is moving a marble inside to get a resonating ring…and he’s only half the band!
The Prom
I won’t lie. When I decided to do 23 photos for this post…I kinda forgot that I was going to have write about each one. So this has taken a LOT LONGER than I was anticipating. With that in mind, I chose this one because I think that if someone else had shown it to me I would have said ‘I wish I’d taken that shot, it’s really atmospheric’. But I did take it, so now we can all stop reading and writing and get back to whatever it was that we were meant to be doing before I embarked on a 23 photojournalism saga. See you again for 2024!
For those of you not living somewhere the English colonised, or without an interest in Cricket…it’s pretty important for you to know what a ‘nightwatchman’ is in Cricket. So brace yourself for a paragraph of Cricket talk…but I promise it will get interesting after that.
In Test Cricket, the 4 or 5 day version of the game (sadly yes…there is a sport that goes for 5 days. And yes, even more sadly, it can sometimes end in a draw after 5 days), if a batting team loses a wicket with not much time left in the day’s play, they will often send in a ‘nightwatchman’. This is someone who is further down the list in terms of batting skills than the person who was meant to be coming in to bat. The logic is, it’s better to save the person with the good batting skills for the next day when they can start fresh, than run the risk of exposing them to a few overs at the end of the day. So the role of the nightwatchman is basically to not lose their wicket. If they want to score some runs, great! But ultimately, they will be seen to be doing their job, if they just occupy the crease until the end of the day.
So why am I giving you a fascinating insight into the nomenclature of a Cricketing term? Becuase there is a workplace equivalent…and it happens over the Christmas/New Year’s period, when senior people in an organisation take a holiday and someone needs to fill their position while they’re gone. Now clearly ‘backfilling a role’ is something that happens through-out the year, so why is the Christmas/New Year’s break different? Well, becuase it’s a rare time of the year when a lot of people go on holiday, so the usual demands and stresses are alleviated…and the talent pool available to act in roles is greatly diminished. Or as I like to see it, ‘Chris’s time to shine!’
For as long as I’ve worked in the public service, I’ve tried to help out by backfilling these roles, and being a nightwatchman…so I thought I’d talk about some of the reasons why.
Altruism
Speaking as someone who usually exhausts their annual leave balance by the end of the year, and who took long-service leave as soon I could, I think it’s fair to say that I think that time away from work is a really good thing. You’re not an ’employee’ you’re a ‘person’, and time away from work helps you remember that. Best of all, a good holiday will usually see you return to work invigorated and with a new perspective you can bring to projects. Sadly, quite often, the further up the ‘org chart’ your job resides, the harder it is to take a proper break. Meaning that people who really need invigoration and new perspectives, often find excuses as to why they ‘just can’t take a holiday right now…not with *insert name of project that seems important right now to a few people, but really isn’t that important in the grand scheme of things…and will most likely still be there when you get back from any holiday you take* so close to rolling out’. But the two weeks after Christmas are a time when everyone expects people to go on leave…all your boss, or boss’s boss, needs is a safe pair of hands to hold the fort while they’re away. They don’t need someone to make ground-breaking decisions, or try to do their job better than them…they just need someone to be there if needed. And I’m very happy to be that person.
Purely selfish
If you like people starting emails with ‘Thanks for getting back to me’, then you’re going to love the way people treat any form of email that you send when you’ve updated your email signature to ‘A/Important Person’. You will also get to work and talk with people who have decision making power within your organisation, and that can be great for future prospects. You will also most likely be paid more while you’re acting in the role. You can update your LinkedIn profile with the new job title, and that will trigger notifications being sent to your network suggesting people congratulate you on the new job. Although, rest assured, if you’re filling in that role for anything less than 6 months and updating your job title on LinkedIn…I am judging you.
Perspective
If you’re the ambitious type, who is always looking at the next step on the career ladder, then acting in your boss’s role can you give you an insight into what’s required if you want to move into the role when the opportunity presents itself. Alternatively, if like me, you’ve come to realise that each step up the career ladder leads to a reduction in hands-on creativity, and more importantly, less time in your day to do things you actually want to do (spend time with your family, exercise, not spend time in meetings that clearly could have been emails, etc). Then acting in a role above you for a few weeks, can be a wonderful reminder of exactly why you don’t want to take the next step up the org chart.
Challenge
You only grow by challenging yourself…but you also don’t want to bite off more than you can chew. So taking on a new job can be like signing up for a half-marathon, whereas acting in a role over Christmas/New Years is more like doing a Parkrun, it’s a challenge, but you’re never more than 5km away from the finish.
The downside
Of course, there are times when the proverbial hits the fan…and suddenly you’re in the hot-seat (or at least a seat closer to the heat than you would normally be). While acting in other roles I’ve had to deal with everything from bushfires, floods, & COVID restrictions, to Premiers wanting to send an email to all staff on New Year’s Eve (I’d booked a table at a restuarant for the whole family at 7pm and was still desperately trying to co-ordinate things from my mobile as the food arrived) and a change of name for our Department that required every document, template and webpage to be updated with the new logo (good times…good times). You will also have to make the choice between heading in to the office and facing the appalling coffee offerings available when the baristas of the world are on holiday, or staying at home and being the sad person sitting on their computer all day while the rest of the household is on holiday.
So if you’re up for a bit of a challenge, or if you want to help your boss out, or even if you want to see if you can survive on Nescafe Blend 43 for a few weeks. Then I highly recommend taking up the option of acting in a role over the Christmas/New Year’s period…I’d go into more detail, but I’m on holiday now while the rest of you suckers are back at work, which is of course the other massive upside to working over Christmas / New Years!
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