Australia was first settled, then colonised, by people who came here in boats. Our original plan had us travelling by boat to Singapore from Darwin, in time to catch a train on the 3rd of November. However it would appear that despite almost 3 months of attempting to organise this we will have to fly for this leg of the journey. We knew from the very beginning that finding a boat willing to take us would be difficult. The aviation industry continues to have a strangle hold over domestic and international travel in Australia. While this partially reflects the reality of living on such a vast island, it is essentially only possible due to the ignorance to the real carbon impact of flying and the absence of large scale effective surface transport networks.
In attempting to organise this leg of the trip we contacted yacht clubs, private charter operations and commercial shipping companies. We invested serious time and energy, including securing media coverage of our trip in the Northern Territory Times, and ABC Darwin Radio. While utlimately we were unsuccesful we now know that the getting to Singapore without flying is possible, but by a different route. Traveling the shorter distance over to Dili or Bali on a yacht or with the prawn trawlers (in exchange for work), will then allow you to essentially island hop up to Singapore. This however would have taken an extra 2 weeks, time we did not have with an already demanding schedule. Faced with a choice of returning home or flying, we reluctantly booked flights to Singapore.
What this incident highlights is the difficulty of making change as an individual, through consumption or lifestyle choices. An awareness of the damaging effects of flying is becoming pretty widespread but yet rarely translates into simple shifts of transport patterns. We could not have taken the money that we would have spent flying and redirected it to the creation of a passenger shipping between Darwin and Singapore. In a context where new alternatives do not exist, the idea of demand stimulating them is meaningless. This myth of consumer power is further undermined the selective approach to industry support taken by governments.
If people are interested in undertaking this journey they should certainly not be put off by our failure to secure a ride, it certainly is possible, and hopefully we can work with people to realise this dream for the trip to the Copenhagen UN meeting in late 2009.
