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Matt Waters: Hey there dive buddies and welcome to the show.

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As Scuba divers we all know that it is inherently important that

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we look after the environment in which we live and venture to

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explore whether that be on land or at sea and indeed beneath its

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surface. I would further suggest that tourism is possibly the

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world leading industry when it comes to recognising that

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importance, and is a front runner for reducing any impact

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we have as humans, even more so in bio sensitive locations.

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Today, I'm elated to be talking with a man who is not only in

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the tourism industry, he is the custodian of one of the most

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beautiful locations on Australia's Great Barrier Reef.

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Lady Elliot Island is a 100 acre coral Kate at the southernmost

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point of the GBR and 120 kilometres offshore from Harvey

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Bay. Needless to say, it's pretty special. Peter gash has

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devoted over 30 years of his life to servicing and protecting

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the island. He has received many awards for his commitment to eco

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tourism, and his objectives are to preserve the GBS beauty,

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whilst making it accessible to as many people as possible and

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an eco savvy way. So, Peter, Lady Elliot Island, I think, in

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our previous discussions, and I've mentioned it a few times

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now on the podcast to regular listeners will remember that

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when I first came to Australia, albeit I knew there was a lot of

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diving over here wasn't really too sure, on the variety of

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various locations where you can dive effectively, you can dive

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absolutely anywhere over here. But there are so many special

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locations that it's it's hard to understand and grab a real

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concept of what you can really do in Australia. And I think

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your little spot is right up there, isn't it?

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Peter Gash: Yeah, mate, we very, very fortunate lady lead because

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it's really its geographic location, stands it out. And the

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Great Barrier Reef is a big lagoon. It's a big platform, you

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know that if you go and look at it, David Attenborough did a

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fantastic three part series on it. And it's got a really good

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computer generated image showing you how the the the platform was

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exposed. And about 10 years ago, the sea level rose came up

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over the top of the lagoon over the edge of the continental

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shelf and then flooded it. So this massive area of 340 Odd

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square kilometres is about 30 metres deep. What's that about,

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you know, 3035 yards deep, I guess in in the other language.

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And so it lends itself tremendously to snorkelling and

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diving, but ladylucks specifically, so because it's so

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far south, that's right out on the outer edge of that platform,

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so it's not far from the drop off where it drops to over 1000

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metres. So therefore, we get these magnificent ocean currents

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coming up off the bottom of Pacific Ocean. And then they've

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wrapping around Lady alette. And they're bringing all these

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nutrients and all the upwellings bringing all this this food up,

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I guess you'd call it and that it attracts such a biodiversity

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so much from tiny little fish run up to magnificent whales,

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mentors, you know, from one side of the scale to the other. And

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you know, as that upwelling compresses around the island, it

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compresses those plankton into tight lines. And so, you know,

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whether you just want to walk off the beach with a snorkel

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when you're 70 or 80 years of age, and we've got a bloke who

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just sent me a message the other day, he's 95 and he's promising

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me this is his last trip. And he wants me to come and see him and

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he walks off the beach and snorkels that boat is amazing.

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Or whether you're three years old, and you want to do the same

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thing. You can just walk off the beach and a metre of water. You

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know, it lends itself to that. And an any boat ride anywhere

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where you go out with by boat to snow to snorkel or dive is never

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more than five minutes. It's all very handy. It's all very close.

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So it's it's extraordinary. The place is extraordinary and needs

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to be protected and preserved. And that's that's our whole

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purpose

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Matt Waters: right and you had the place since was it 2005?

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Peter Gash: Yeah, we took the lease on in 2005, my family and

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a couple of good friends. But prior to that we serviced it

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with our aircraft fleet, initially from the Gold Coast,

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which is about 250 miles 400 kilometres away. But also from

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Harvey Bay and Bundy. We serviced it for about 10 years

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prior to that. So we've been looking after Lady Elliot in in

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one shape or form since around about 1995. So yeah, you know,

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in excess of that 30 odd years. And prior to that, for 10 years

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from the mid 1980s. We service lady Musgrave Island, which is

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our nearest neighbour just 20 miles away, but we did it with

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aeroplanes that had floats, always aeroplanes, because lady

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Musgrave and Lady Elliot Island are so far out at sea that

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Geographic special location makes them a bit far to go by

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boat. They're a long way in a boat ride. You fly out there and

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here you are just the most amazing don't

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Matt Waters: imagine what the flight out and the flight back

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is like as well. Because what well crafted using it like

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Cessna sighs

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Peter Gash: Yeah, we use Cessna caravans, the latest, the new

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Cessna Caravan. So they're 14 cedars, and they're very fast.

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They do about 180 knots, roughly 200 Odd miles per hour, but we

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also still have a couple of the Havilland twin otters which are

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20 cedars. Because the island is small and short. The runway is

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short 650 metres. So you've got to have a special aeroplane that

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can land on short runway, and it's a coral runway because it's

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the island is a coral, okay, it's all organic. It's not a

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Rock Island. A lot of people imagine, you know, a barrier

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reef island you know, with palm trees swaying over the beach.

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That's Hamilton Island or Hayman Island or Daydream Island, this

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spectacularly beautiful islands even great Keppel island there's

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plenty of them that people would have heard of Lizard Island dunk

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Island, these beautiful places, and they're all specifically

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magnificent gems, but they're continental arms, meaning

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they're Rock Islands. And they're they're attached they're

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a part of the continental shelf with what Australia is and sits

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upon. Whereas Lady Elliot Island is a coral Kay it's a dynamic

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organism it's it's it's it's been created by living

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organisms, coral polyps, Zoes intelli LB and birds and the

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bird port Believe it or not, to be blunt about it. It's the

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coral, the coral Polit it excreta its waste. It's put

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whatever word you want to choose creates an exoskeleton that

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lives in a symbiotic relationship with an lb causes

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those intelli they create the Great Barrier. They are the

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building block of that 2000 kilometre long living thing that

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can be seen from space, the only living thing on the planet seen

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from space, they create that, but but like all living things,

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they live and they die. And that's a natural process, and

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big wave action. And that's what we get right out on the outer

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edge, which wherever it is big wave action smashes the living

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coral, and it breaks regularly as it gets too long. After so

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many years, it leaks it'll break and then it'll wash up on top of

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its other living coral. And then it washes up and sits up out of

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the water at low tide. So then the birds go, wow, there's a

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parking spot. So they parked there. And they fish from there.

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And of course, as if they're sitting there, you know what

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else they're doing. They're popping there. They're bringing

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seeds. And so they start the cycle. And the bird port, which

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is basically nitrogen and phosphorus mixes with the

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calcium carbonate of the of the coral polyp, the other three

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elements of cement, you get a bit of rain, you give it a wave

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action, you've made a big hard concrete bass. And basically

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that's how Lady Elliot and all these other amazing coral K's

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have formed. So if you get to fly there, you get to see it

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from the air, you get to smell it because it's covered in

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birds. And it's just extraordinary. And and to see

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the reef from the air. I mean, all the photos you see, I

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predominantly refer to as sorry, aerial photos because it is so

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beautiful. The colours this the texture that

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Matt Waters: yeah, noticed on the website there, you've got

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cracking image from 1975. And then the more recent image I

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can't remember the year now was in the last 510 years, something

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like that.

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Peter Gash: Yeah, then in the last five or six years, I think

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so.

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Matt Waters: So it's got that slide in real interest to

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explain to people who are listening, there's got that

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thing, you can click on and slide left and right. And it

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shows you the difference between that the 1970s. And now and you

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can see how much amazing growth has occurred. It just looks

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absolutely marvellous.

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Peter Gash: So to fill in why that has happened that way. Pre

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European settlement for the for the because remember what we

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said that that 10 years ago, the island didn't exist because

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the water was down over the edge of the shelf. We've had a couple

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of glacial periods or interglacial periods where

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there's been certain ice ages temp changes melting. The sea

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level has risen not in linear fashion but it's live risen and

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then stabilised and risen and stabilised. So during those

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periods, as it's risen, because of the living coral crashing and

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dying, the birds and so on, it's created an island and it's gone

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up with sea level rise. And it can only happen with that that

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what comes from the animals what comes from the organisms, that

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organic substance but also from the vegetation that grows the

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plants. So it grows and grows and climbs and the island has

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climbed and over that 10 odd years it's risen on average

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three millimetres a year, then the corals have grown around it

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and the vegetation is grown and then it stabilised about 3000

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years ago, roughly three or three and a half 1000 years ago.

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It's stabilised and developed a beautiful forest persona, do Zia

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Pendennis all the natural vegetation that's developed out

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on that southern end way out at sea, where we're about 80

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kilometres better what's at about 50 miles from the

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mainland. So it's right on that drop off edge and had this

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beautiful forest untouched forest and it was untouched in

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many ways, including by our First Nations native people

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because it was so far away. It was unaccessible so known and

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have gone there, but in the in the 1880s In 1018 20, was first

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discovered, seen by Europeans as they sailed past and as Wow,

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look at that place. Then then the first industry started to

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form not long after that there was a bitch to meal or the sea

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cucumber sea slug. People came from Asia and they took them

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away. And that was unsustainable, lasted a matter

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of weeks and they picked them up. But then as agriculture

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happened in Australia, and the Australian continent didn't lend

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itself to agriculture the way Europe has. And so our farming

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techniques very quickly struggled and needed to have

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fertiliser. So they went looking for forms of fertiliser, and

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they found it on Lady Elliot. And so for 10 years from the

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1860s, I didn't 62 through until 1930 to 1870 they had teams of

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people out there with wheelbarrows, shovels and bags

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and they cut the trees down and they shovelled all the guano and

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there was up to two metres two yards roughly, of this beautiful

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rich soil that was made out of bird poop and tree mulch, and

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they shovelled it all away over 10 years strip that dropped the

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island, the island shrunk by about 15 metres in height, and

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all the trees were gone and all the guano was gone. And then

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just before they left, they thought we'll we better think

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about the ship like sailors of the future. Let's leave some

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guns here for you just shake your head when you're thinking

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about some things that have been done in the past. But look, it's

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easy for us to laugh and be wise now but at the time, that's what

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they thought was smart. So they put the goats there. And of

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course the poor our goats had to eat something, didn't they? So

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anytime anything green popped up, the goats ate it. So lady

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elite stayed a windswept barren rock for almost 100 years. And

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so, route 1969 1970 A young man came out there had an aeroplane,

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a lot of passion and a lot of enthusiasm. His name was Don

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Adams, and he wanted to create a tourist resort there of sorts.

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And he could see that it needed trees to be planted because it

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had been blowing away. The goats had just been shot out in the

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last five to 10 years there was a lighthouse there and

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lighthouse keepers. They've gotten rid of the goats, but

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there was very little vegetation. So Don started a

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revegetation programme. And God bless him he picked the right

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trees he picked casuarinas. And and they were the only thing

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that would grow because it was was almost like growing in

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concrete. There was very little loose soil. And of course that

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attracted the birds back. And so that process has gone on from

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Don, there was John French and his family then there was Bevan

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Whitaker. And then there was ourselves. So since 1970, with

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that slide picture you're talking about to now there's

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been these tourist operators and this is where tourism has been

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such an amazing help for a place like Lady Elliot. We couldn't

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none of us could have done it without the tourists coming out

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there spending their money as taking them snorkelling and

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diving and showing them the island. And then having some

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money left hopefully, and some time and energy to start

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planting trees and revegetating it and just basically taking a

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windswept barren rock, a degraded and denuded Mindsight

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and putting it back to what's now considered one of the jewels

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in the crown of the Great Barrier Reef. And it's our

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mission, it's our life's mission to leave it better than we found

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it. And we've certainly done that, we've got a long way to

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go, because we want to make it as as close to what nature

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intended it to be 200 years ago as we can

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Matt Waters: it's a it's a marvellous story, and you're

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right in the middle of it. And as soon as you're right in the

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middle of it, we've got to bear in mind that, you know, you've

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not always been in this industry, you just mentioned

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that you were servicing the island with aircraft. What's

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that? What's that background? Yes. Is your ex military or

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something

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Peter Gash: like that? No, that's a great question. And no,

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look, I had my first flight in an aeroplane when I was only

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seven years old, my dad had a flying lesson and, and I got out

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of aeroplane and I knew at seven that I was gonna be a pilot one

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day, I had no idea and no opportunity for the resource to

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do it. So never learned to fly for a long time. And I was

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involved in a lot of different things, including agriculture

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and farming. And I tried all different methods of farming

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worked for different people, including machinery, driving,

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tractors, trucks, horses, all sorts of stuff did a lot of

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different things. And what I saw, as I travelled around

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Australia and worked in different places was, I was

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starting to get fearful for what was happening to our

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environment, believe it or not, and we're talking because I'm in

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my 60s now. And we're talking in my early teens and my late

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teens, I could see that things were happening that shouldn't be

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happening. Climate change wasn't even a word that I heard of

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maybe others did. And I had the good fortune of talking to

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Prince Charles recently prior to him becoming now king. And he

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and I both had a similar realisation that there was

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something wrong. His his honesty to me and it was amazing. He

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said, Pete, the advantage I had was, I was able to talk to all

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of these people that you wouldn't have had the chance to,

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and he saw and he put that in his amazing book called Harmony

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and if any of your listeners ever get a chance, it's a book

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well worth reading. amazing individual. He's teased out King

00:14:53
Charles. Anyhow, I saw that things were wrong that think

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well, things went terribly wrong, but things weren't going

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the right way we were we were heading on a trajectory that was

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was gonna get us into trouble. And we're intelligent as human

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beings as a species. There's no doubt about that. So I thought,

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well, we've all been gifted with with, with the ability to think

00:15:13
things out and I'm going to go and find a way to do better. And

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so anyway, as I went through that process, I, I surprisingly,

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found myself on a motorcycle a motocross bike, a dirt bike, and

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I was able to do it and long story short, I ended up being

00:15:27
fully sponsored by Team Yamaha and I raced motocross for

00:15:30
several years, can you believe before I before I even had a

00:15:35
ticket to fly an aeroplane? I was doing that. And again, it to

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me this is, this is why every one of us should, should,

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should, I guess, celebrate our history, because it was those

00:15:46
things that kept teaching me lessons. And there's some things

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I learnt there about efficiency, time and motion study, like if

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you can't get to the next corner fast and the guy beside ya,

00:15:54
you're not going to stay sponsored long. So I had to be

00:15:56
efficient, had to be you know, had to work out how to do things

00:15:59
well and quickly with minimum waste. And so I learned a lot of

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stuff in that six years. But the best thing I learned was, my

00:16:07
sponsor took me on a trip in a boat. I ended up at Lady Elliot

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Island, and I ended up at lady Moscato and I went snorkelling

00:16:13
there and it's like, wow, how lucky is this? How beautiful is

00:16:16
this place. But what's happened to it? It's been stripped, it's

00:16:19
been mined. And and it took my breath away. And I just knew,

00:16:24
and I just knew that I had a calling. I had something I had

00:16:27
to do there. And it wasn't far from finishing. In my mind. I

00:16:30
knew I wasn't going to race forever. And I had a young lady

00:16:33
with me at the time. Well, she wasn't actually with me. She was

00:16:36
on another boat. But we were hanging out a bit and saying

00:16:38
G'day, we were friends. And she had a diet. She was a Scuba

00:16:42
diver at the age of 15. Whereas I was at that time 20 And wasn't

00:16:46
a Scuba diver, but I'd snuck out of it. And she we went down,

00:16:52
diving and snug but she went down diving and I went

00:16:54
snorkelling at Lady Elliot and I saw her on the bottom and I went

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down and she flashed the thing in we're talking 1980 Things

00:17:00
were different then you didn't have Aki rigs and stuff, put the

00:17:03
rig in my mouth and had a little bit of a blow at it and thought,

00:17:05
wow, this is amazing. I got to do this. But it also enabled me

00:17:09
to learn about the place and give me a different perspective.

00:17:12
Anyway, that young lady and I have been married for 39 years.

00:17:15
Matt Waters: I was gonna say this is lead into the story of

00:17:17
fallen in love with your dive instructor, isn't it?

00:17:20
Peter Gash: Well, I fell in love with the place and the lady. And

00:17:23
yeah, my dive instructing ladies, my beautiful wife, the

00:17:26
mother of Amy and Chloe, who you've never met both of and

00:17:30
they're both qualified Divers also. So we be you know, driven.

00:17:33
I became dive dive TRAGICS passionate about our diving but

00:17:38
also Scuba diving, because I sorry, snorkelling should I say

00:17:41
because Lady Elliot doesn't you don't need a tank on your back

00:17:44
to go and enjoy it, you can just enjoy it, as I said, at the age

00:17:47
of 95, and two metres of water, or even a litre of water. So

00:17:51
anyway, Julia and I, we fell in love with it. And each other,

00:17:54
I'm proud to say, and but we went away, and I was still fully

00:17:59
contracted with Yamaha at the time. But a year went passed.

00:18:03
And we decided two things. One is we're gonna get married. And

00:18:07
two is I was going to quit racing. And I was going to work

00:18:10
out where we were going to go. And so we were looking at

00:18:13
aeroplanes and the environment and the island. But I mean, who

00:18:16
could have thought at such a tender young age that we would

00:18:18
never have got to where we got and certainly we didn't expect

00:18:21
it. We certainly never thought we'd ever been leaseholders, or

00:18:24
anywhere in where we were making major decisions. What we thought

00:18:28
was, we'll just work hard. And we'll throw ourselves at this

00:18:31
and we'll do the best we can for ourselves, for our future, and

00:18:35
for the location because the location needed help. And we

00:18:37
could see that, so I went, I learned how to fly. And I flew

00:18:41
around the country in different places, mostly in sea planes,

00:18:44
because at the time, Lady Elliot had a previous lease holder. He

00:18:48
had a resort. He had his own aeroplanes and an airstrip. So I

00:18:51
wasn't at that point in time, we're going to be likely to be

00:18:53
welcomed. So we went to Lady Musgrave Island, I did my first

00:18:57
10 year apprenticeship, I call it flying seaplanes into there

00:19:01
and learning about in those days, snorkelling only because

00:19:03
you couldn't dive and then fly easily. We did it and we had

00:19:07
approval, but it had to be specific. So it was mostly we

00:19:10
take guests internationals, we take them up there and show them

00:19:13
lady Musgrave. And I kept flying over Elliott and looking out the

00:19:17
window and thinking I got a I got to do something with that

00:19:19
place because the guy that had it lovely bloke, real hard

00:19:22
working amazing individual, but again, from that old school,

00:19:26
that you can't change things, son, we run generators. We do

00:19:29
this way. We do it that way. And I'm thinking we got to do it

00:19:32
another way. And I'm seeing this island, as a platform as a place

00:19:37
that we can use to educate ourselves and educate others in

00:19:41
how we humans can minimise our footprint, still live in harmony

00:19:45
with nature, and leave it better than we found it so I persisted

00:19:49
with that man and by 9596 He finally relented and allowed me

00:19:54
to bring my aeroplanes there. We literally shook hands on an

00:19:57
agreement that in 2005 He would be 80. And I would be 45. And we

00:20:03
would buy the lease off him. And basically, in a short circle,

00:20:06
that's what happened. We did our second tenure apprenticeship

00:20:10
with Lady Elliot. And then we, my wife and I and our family and

00:20:14
friends took on the lease of Lady Elliot Island. So it was a

00:20:18
long, long road. And a lot of long sleepless nights, a lot of

00:20:21
debt, a lot of fear, which is what you get when you start

00:20:25
playing with a capital intensive equipment like aeroplanes,

00:20:28
you've got to be bold, you've got to walk into the bank, and

00:20:30
you got to be prepared to have it, you know, put your put your

00:20:33
self on the line, you know, and so we did that. But you've also

00:20:36
got to be prepared to work. And now in my mid 60s, people say,

00:20:40
Pete, when are you gonna stop doing 90 hour weeks? And I say,

00:20:42
Well, maybe one day, but I still got too much to do. And I still

00:20:45
got the energy. So while it's there, and the fires burning,

00:20:48
I'm gonna keep throwing a

00:20:51
Matt Waters: remarkable story. And like you say, you're just

00:20:54
not popular

00:20:56
Peter Gash: right now and absolutely. And why would ya,

00:20:59
you know, when you're as blessed as we are as lucky as we are to

00:21:02
have such a beautiful place. And you can see the fruits of your

00:21:05
labour, you can see we've planted a whole bunch of trees,

00:21:07
even when Christmas time when when Donnie Adams built the

00:21:10
airstrip he built to build a like main runway, and he built a

00:21:13
cross runway. And when everyone started to plant the trees, and

00:21:16
we've continued with this process, we didn't plan

00:21:19
obviously on the main running runway. But neither do we

00:21:21
planned on the cross runway. But when the new lighthouse got

00:21:24
built, and there's a nice new solar powered one there now it

00:21:27
it's sort of precluded easy use of the short cross grandmas, so

00:21:30
we'll stop using it, but it was still kept as a mowed grass

00:21:34
area. So just before Christmas, Amy and I, my eldest daughter,

00:21:37
we were just walking along and she said, and this is what I

00:21:39
love about you young people, they just keep prodding you in

00:21:42
prison, and she said, Dad, what were planted 10 trees here.

00:21:46
Why haven't we planted them on the old grammar? We don't use it

00:21:49
as rubble anymore. And I looked and I thought God was pretty

00:21:52
simple one that I don't know why we haven't. I don't know why we

00:21:55
haven't. Let's do it. So I went and I saw Jim, who's out. He who

00:21:58
runs a revegetation programme. And Chelsea, who's our

00:22:01
environmental manager. And I said, Amy has got this idea. Why

00:22:04
don't we plant the old runway out? What a great idea. Okay,

00:22:07
what do we need for it, we just need access for the vehicles to

00:22:09
come through. Let's plan it. So we did. And then we had to

00:22:13
advise the authority, you know, the reef authority who we work

00:22:16
with, because we have a revenge programme. And this was a new

00:22:18
idea. And all I could say was really Europe, commercial,

00:22:23
private enterprise tourists, often you want to plant out

00:22:25
grass and put trees in. I said, Well, that's what we do. That's

00:22:28
what we're here for is to make it better. And they said, We

00:22:30
love it. We love it so much. We're going to help you to fund

00:22:33
really, so. Yeah, so the more you give, this is one of our

00:22:37
sayings. The more you give, particularly to the environment,

00:22:39
when you're doing the right thing no you give, the more you

00:22:41
receive more comes back. And so yeah, I'm really proud of Amy,

00:22:45
she saw it, I just couldn't believe it all these years, I

00:22:47
hadn't thought of planning it out. And so it's now we put

00:22:52
those trees in just before Christmas, and we've had great

00:22:54
rains. So they're going really good. And it's so rewarding that

00:22:57
to walk along and see what was just an idea to being you know,

00:23:02
because we've got lots of patchwork of new trees getting

00:23:04
planted all around the island as we revegetate this old

00:23:08
recovering mine site and to see him at their various levels of

00:23:10
development and growth. And after four or five months, you

00:23:13
no longer have to irrigate them. They just go and and it's almost

00:23:17
like nature's racing to try and reward us to say, hey, look,

00:23:20
look at what you guys are creating. We you love what

00:23:22
you've done here. And I want to say thanks, and it's just

00:23:25
awesome. And people come just to see that progress.

00:23:28
Matt Waters: It's a mile another marvellous story. What's it

00:23:33
what's it like for? You know, we're talking about the

00:23:36
vegetation and the growth and reintroduction, Arkansas was

00:23:40
what's the the environment like as in? Is it 12 months a year

00:23:45
you're getting sunshine? Or do you have, you know, big storms

00:23:48
come through that can be a bit of an issue

00:23:54
Peter Gash: from the Queensland coastline, latitude 24, which is

00:23:56
basically the Tropic of Capricorn. So it's, it's a

00:24:00
tropical environment. It's a long way out at sea. And it's on

00:24:04
the east coast of Australia right out there poking out into

00:24:06
the Coral Sea or which is a part of the Pacific Ocean. So we get

00:24:09
a lot of wind and a lot of big swells. And think about it. We

00:24:12
said earlier that corals get crushed by waves and wind and

00:24:15
they get thrown up on top of the living corals and that creates

00:24:17
an island. So without wind and waves, you don't get a coral KR

00:24:21
Island. That's what's unique about these, you need the big

00:24:24
energy to do it. So we do get a lot of big wind a lot of big

00:24:26
swells. But we got sunshine 300 plus days of the year and hence

00:24:32
we run on solar power, which is one of our first major steps. We

00:24:36
have, you know average our average temperature would be

00:24:40
between 22 and 24 degrees Celsius all year round. In the

00:24:43
middle of winter, it will cool down to maybe 10 or 12 at night,

00:24:47
but it'll still get up close to 18 or 20 in the daytime but in

00:24:51
summer we can get it up around 3435 Occasionally a little bit

00:24:55
more 36 degrees during the day. We do get funded storms Yeah,

00:25:00
that's typical Queensland tropical weather, we see

00:25:02
thunderstorms and generally, the summer season, you know, from

00:25:05
sort of December, January through until March, April is

00:25:09
our wet season. Our big advantages were at the southern

00:25:12
end of the reef, so we have a lot less Cyclone Impact. We have

00:25:16
had cyclones over the years, but Touchwood, we've never had any

00:25:21
major cyclone damage of note. And they've been keeping wind

00:25:25
records for over 80 years. And the strongest wind speed so far

00:25:29
recorded has been 72 knots. So we're hopeful that that's we'll

00:25:32
never see more than that. But we still get impacts from cyclones,

00:25:35
big swells will get six or eight metre swells out there, and they

00:25:38
just smash up the beach, and they can sometimes do waterfront

00:25:43
damage to the vegetation. But when the island had been

00:25:46
stripped, nothing stopped the wave. So the waves actually came

00:25:49
up and over onto the island. But now nature is back in balance.

00:25:53
And so the waves generally lose any energy and so they do no

00:25:56
harm to the island if we ever have that. So and we have quick

00:26:01
access with aeroplanes, we can get in and out. If we're

00:26:03
uncomfortable about the weather that really makes a difference.

00:26:06
You don't have to deal with a swell because you will have

00:26:08
obviously get to swell a long time before a long time after a

00:26:11
cyclone. So the aeroplanes only have to deal with the wind. So

00:26:15
yeah, really, from a weather perspective, we're very blessed.

00:26:18
We're on the southern end and way out at sea water

00:26:20
temperatures board, we have no impact from what we call marine

00:26:24
stingers. Marine stingers or you know the era Kainji or the box

00:26:28
jellyfish that people have heard about, that predominantly a

00:26:31
creature that breeds up in the freshwater creeks on the

00:26:35
mainland, and then they flush out with the rain so they're

00:26:38
closer to the coastline. So you know, generally anything up to

00:26:41
about 10 or 12, maybe 15 miles offshore, you rarely see them

00:26:45
beyond that we're 50 miles offshore. So we're very blessed.

00:26:48
We don't see them at all out there. And because we're south,

00:26:52
we haven't had any major impact from water warming. We've had

00:26:56
some bleaching but I think bleaching has always been a

00:26:58
natural part of the cycle. Just I think in recent years that

00:27:02
bleaching has has worsened for various reasons. So lady

00:27:06
Elliot's just been a very, very blessed geographical location

00:27:11
and position. That's rewarding us for the efforts we're putting.

00:27:15
Matt Waters: Referring back to that aerial photo. It looks like

00:27:17
there's a good bit of protection from that coral reef structure

00:27:21
that's around you go there's quite a extends quite a way off

00:27:24
the beach, doesn't it for the full. Yeah,

00:27:26
Peter Gash: that's right. And it tapers down. So from a diverse

00:27:29
perspective, it's really easy. When you dive you can tell how

00:27:32
far off the shore you are by the depth you're at. If you're going

00:27:35
down, then you're going away from the island. If you're

00:27:37
getting into shallow What are you coming back up? It's very

00:27:39
easy to orient yourself from that perspective. And yeah, so

00:27:44
it's just a diverse Mecca, diverse paradise. And the other

00:27:47
thing that the diver is good at lady LEDs. We talked about a

00:27:50
couple of sea level change movements, right. So Lady Elliot

00:27:54
started to form about 10 years ago and about 6000 years

00:27:57
ago it stabilised sea level stabilised so the island created

00:28:01
itself and formed and so it had trees and it had this hard

00:28:04
concrete base and then these big waves and eventually they

00:28:07
created a big blowhole a big cave and a series of shelfs

00:28:11
along the edge and so the waves would have got boof up through

00:28:13
the blowhole and down and then up came the sea level. So up

00:28:17
went the island again. So the blowhole went underwater. So the

00:28:20
blowhole is now a mindlessly beautiful diving cave that

00:28:24
starts at the top at about 50 metres because sea level rose

00:28:27
again in the last 3000 odd years and finished about 3000 years

00:28:32
ago and stabilised so the islands now sitting there, and

00:28:34
the blowhole which is out on the eastern side, which is obviously

00:28:37
where our biggest weather comes from. And that's what gave it

00:28:39
the energy to create the Bible is you're just diving along with

00:28:42
sudden here's this hole it's about as maybe about eight

00:28:46
metres round. It goes from 15 metres deep down to 25 then it

00:28:50
makes a 90 degree turn and it goes straight out and it exits

00:28:53
you on this face in about 28 metres of water. And there's

00:28:57
always big sharks and things just plough and up and down that

00:29:00
face. And it's just awesome to come out through that blowhole.

00:29:04
It's one of our prime dogs.

00:29:06
Matt Waters: So it's vertical now that it looks like a chimney.

00:29:09
Peter Gash: Like a chimney, it goes straight down and then it

00:29:11
turns 90 degrees and then it comes horizontally out on a

00:29:15
face. And of course as you know, freediving is really becoming a

00:29:19
popular thing these days and so now we're seeing free divers go

00:29:22
out there and they'll put a line into the blowhole now go down

00:29:25
the good ones can go down and out of it blows me away how they

00:29:29
do it like I don't mind

00:29:31
Matt Waters: you me both buddy. I think he's barking mad but

00:29:36
Peter Gash: I think it is two and 1012 metres I'm happy but

00:29:39
going down to 25 and then go on 20 odd metres along and then

00:29:42
coming back up I do have a bloke in there or a person it

00:29:50
obviously word is a bloke. I guess you know that you're

00:29:52
living in Australia but they do have a person. And for those

00:29:54
listeners, you know what I'm talking about it in Ozzy we call

00:29:57
a person or male a bloke. They have a bloke they And then we're

00:30:00
a person down there with a with a tank and a spare rig. So

00:30:03
someone's doing that as a free diver and gets into trouble,

00:30:06
they can jump on a Railgun. And so they they do they do a lot of

00:30:10
risk management when they do that. But yeah, that's, it's an

00:30:12
amazing, amazing dice. I love it, I go down there. And

00:30:15
actually, it's given away my secret. In the in the roof of

00:30:19
the cave, there's a couple little places that are sort of

00:30:21
indented, so you can go up in there and you can take your rag

00:30:24
out a mountain, and you can fill it with air, you can just get

00:30:28
just your head in there. With your mask off. You just got your

00:30:31
head in there and up and down at 20 Odd metres and you've got

00:30:34
your mask off and you're facing this little cave which is big

00:30:37
enough the head. I'm not too sure if Mr. pattied be happy

00:30:40
seeing me do a

00:30:43
Matt Waters: bloody big end and oh for someone with a noggin my

00:30:45
size.

00:30:48
Peter Gash: Just be careful you don't want to scratch the top of

00:30:51
it though when you go in and so.

00:30:54
Matt Waters: So would that be your favourite little dive spot

00:30:57
by any chance?

00:30:59
Peter Gash: Look, you know what lady lady's got so many

00:31:02
beautiful places people ask me this all the time. Where's your

00:31:04
favourite dive site. And yeah, I love the boy hole and the tubes

00:31:07
and heroes cave because it runs along this cliff face all along,

00:31:11
they're special. But you know, when we've got big weather, you

00:31:13
can't get near it. So we might not dive the blowhole for a

00:31:16
month. And no one's disappointed because whether you dive out at

00:31:19
the lighthouse balmy, which is a Manta cleaning station. So

00:31:23
almost always there's mentors down there, you know, you know,

00:31:25
what I'm after is three or four metres across and just swimming

00:31:28
around and getting cleaned or coming over and, and they're so

00:31:31
intelligent, so inquisitive, that we're diving there on the

00:31:35
lighthouse bombing. And that's our, probably our most popular

00:31:37
dive site. Because it's open all the time. It's rare that you

00:31:40
can't dive it or up on the severance wreck, we had a Ferro

00:31:44
cement concrete sailing sloop sink out there in the early

00:31:47
1990s. We don't quite know what the guys had on board the sloop

00:31:52
but they were pretty keen not to abandon until they got out of it

00:31:54
what was in there anyway, that's another story. But it's, it's

00:31:57
out on the western side as well. And it's a beautiful dive. And

00:32:00
it's home for a massive big moray eel, and a massive big

00:32:04
groper you got to be careful poking your head into holes,

00:32:07
because you never know what's going to come out looking at

00:32:08
you. But even just a snorkel, I get a real buzz out of just

00:32:13
putting a snorkel on my back early in the morning. And going

00:32:16
out into lagoon returning a metre and a half deep or less,

00:32:20
depending on the tide. And swimming with little little

00:32:23
turtles that are you know, six or 700 mil round, or finding

00:32:26
octopus in there, or tiny little fish, just off the beach, come

00:32:30
back, have a hot shower and go and have breakfast. Made it you

00:32:33
just can't make

00:32:34
Matt Waters: the pie. So yeah, as and when we do visit the

00:32:37
missus, you'll see me but he won't see the message. She's

00:32:40
just gonna be out there snorkelling all the time. And

00:32:42
then and then back to

00:32:44
Peter Gash: me, I'll take her and share all the good spots,

00:32:47
there's plenty of them, you just never get sick of it, you know

00:32:49
that you never get sick of it. And, and you just never see the

00:32:53
same thing twice. Because it's little lady LEDs a bit. I use

00:32:57
this example. It's a bit like a small example of the reef. And

00:33:01
it's like a small example of the planet. It's, it's all

00:33:04
different, you know, it's this place is different to that

00:33:06
place, but all has its own beauty. And if you've got your

00:33:08
eyes open, and you see it, you know, it's remarkable in its

00:33:11
biodiversity. That's remarkable in its differences. So you're

00:33:15
swimming here, and you're seeing this and think, wow, gorgeous,

00:33:18
and then you go 100 metres up the track, or, you know, and

00:33:21
you're seeing something totally differently. Wow, is this the

00:33:23
same place? And might have none of the things you saw back

00:33:26
there, but it's got a whole bunch of other stuff that you

00:33:28
didn't expect to see. So that's why we've got people that people

00:33:33
won't come to me all the time. They know who we are, and we're

00:33:35
all just we're all friends out there. We see it as a big family

00:33:38
and they'll compensate Pete This is my 25th Did you know that to

00:33:42
have I got the record and I said well actually made this another

00:33:44
bloke reckons he's getting close to 30 visits, they just come and

00:33:48
come and come and they see it like their beach home you know

00:33:51
we feed them we give them hot water a good warm bed you know,

00:33:53
hot shower and, and a diver a snorkel and, and they just love

00:33:57
it and it's just so popular. Our repeat visitation is awesome.

00:34:02
It's up in in well about 30% of our visitors are repeaters as we

00:34:06
call them people who just come back

00:34:07
Matt Waters: and bail. I've had so many people talk about Lady

00:34:09
earlier. I mean, there's there's been a few on the show and Jane

00:34:11
Jenkins she was blabbering on about it for for quite some

00:34:15
time. Don's been there. Lisa? Lisa reback she has been up

00:34:20
there a few times. And as she said it's her number one

00:34:23
location on Earth and she's been a fair few places now diving she

00:34:27
loves it.

00:34:29
Peter Gash: Wow. Yeah, normally we are very blessed and very

00:34:32
lucky that we have such a beautiful place. And we'd love

00:34:36
to show it off. But you know, a big part of it is I guess

00:34:39
sharing it and being open and sharing because there's nothing

00:34:42
like sharing and seeing the smiles on people's faces. I'm I

00:34:45
love it. And one of the other things we see a lot of it lady

00:34:48
let because because we're so far away. There's very little

00:34:51
internet out there. We've we've got a satellite system, and

00:34:54
we've controlled it because our young staff and our young crew

00:34:58
really need internet they live in out there In this day and

00:35:00
age, you're just not going to keep them if they haven't got

00:35:02
that link. So we have minimal managed internet. So a business

00:35:06
person can say, Okay, I just need to check my emails once a

00:35:09
day. Yep, no problem. This is how I can do it. So. So the

00:35:13
point I'm getting to is, basically, when you're sitting

00:35:15
in the dining room or in your room, there's no internet. So

00:35:19
it's a digital detox. So we see enormous support from three

00:35:23
generations get grandma and grandpa bringing out their

00:35:26
children and bringing out the grandkids that three generations

00:35:29
will come out. And they just love it because the grandkids

00:35:32
instead of sitting there playing with their devices at

00:35:33
dinnertime, they're talking Gran and Gramps, they're telling

00:35:36
stories and the kids are actually going well. This is

00:35:38
pretty good fun. Actually. I wasn't even and only minimally

00:35:40
device for a week and I've been fun. I've been chasing around

00:35:43
after turtles and snails and mentors and sharks and fish that

00:35:47
run around and just being kids having fun running around on the

00:35:50
island seeing all the birds in the nest because where do you

00:35:52
live it's as I said, it's a bird rookery, in the SR, a couple of

00:35:56
100 birds and they just live on the ground. Totally fearless

00:35:59
of people, because people don't hurt them. People that come

00:36:02
they're not there to hurt wildlife. So the wildlife is

00:36:05
completely fearless. So the kids are walking up to birds in their

00:36:08
nests, and seeing little babies like inches from their eyes and

00:36:11
blows them away. And it does exactly what we want. And it

00:36:14
turns them into wildlife warriors. It turns them into

00:36:17
passionate environmentalist conservationists and they go

00:36:20
home with an ability and a renewed energy and an ability to

00:36:23
make a difference. And we tell them every one of us can make a

00:36:26
difference. Every single one of us whether our circle of

00:36:29
influence, it's just me and the kid next to me, or someone who's

00:36:32
fortunate, like myself with an island to influence a lot of

00:36:35
people or some unfortunate like you who has a podcast of, of

00:36:38
passionate listeners, we try to influence as many people as we

00:36:42
can to look after this planet. Because if we don't worry our

00:36:45
kids and our grandkids and our future generations gonna have we

00:36:48
got to get smarter. We are smarter. I know we can do it. I

00:36:51
know there's tonnes and tonnes of reasons for hope. We just got

00:36:54
to keep reminding ourselves. Yeah.

00:36:56
Matt Waters: And the beauty of that analogy there with the

00:36:57
grandkids running around on the beach. You've only said like 20

00:37:02
minutes ago, at one point when you were seven years old. You

00:37:05
got your eyes on Lady Elliot, I bet there's a number of those

00:37:08
grandkids that have been running around on Lady Elliot have done

00:37:10
exactly the same thing and striving for that right now.

00:37:14
Peter Gash: You're exactly right, that Absolutely. That's

00:37:16
what happened. And I love it. When people come and say that to

00:37:18
me, they'll come and say to me, I came here when I was a kid.

00:37:21
And now I'm bringing my kids back. And I'm so proud that we

00:37:23
can do it. And thanks for what you're doing with the place. And

00:37:26
that inspires me. That's what inspires me to keep going. When

00:37:29
I hear people, they thank you for your efforts. And so because

00:37:33
it's not about money, you know, one of our sayings is, this is

00:37:35
not about making a fortune, this is about making a difference.

00:37:39
Now we have to leave the place better than we found it and

00:37:41
we're working your hardest to do that. When you see the looks on

00:37:45
people's faces. No amount of money can buy that mean,

00:37:48
obviously we have to be financially sustainable. Because

00:37:51
if we're not financially sustainable, we won't have a

00:37:53
business for long, we won't be business sustainable, and we

00:37:55
won't look after the environment. Now that's pretty

00:37:57
obvious. You know, we'd love it to be idealistic, but the

00:38:00
world's a realistic place. And you've got to live that way. But

00:38:03
we run it as a business that pays its way. And we're really

00:38:07
proud of seeing that, you know, we were there accommodation,

00:38:10
we've only got 44 rooms. 150 beds are allowed over 150 guests

00:38:15
in the house at night. We never go near that number, we usually

00:38:18
sit around 90 or 100. Because that's a good number. We're

00:38:20
comfortable at that. And we're highly in demand. We just say no

00:38:25
a lot. And I hate saying no. But I can only cope with so many

00:38:28
people. And I can only make sure that so many people have a good

00:38:31
time. It's no good having too many people and people going

00:38:33
home unhappy. So we often get sent to us by other business

00:38:38
people, why don't you put your prices up? Because you could

00:38:40
charge a lot more because the demand is there. And oh yeah, we

00:38:43
probably could. However, I think back to this little kid that was

00:38:47
seven years old, that fell in love with the things that have

00:38:50
now inspired me to be where I am and think if if I couldn't have

00:38:55
afforded to get to do these things, if I make it too

00:38:57
expensive that the average mom and dad can't bring their kids

00:39:01
out there and enjoy it and fall in love with it. That's been

00:39:03
unfair, I'm then being too specific and allowing the

00:39:06
wealthy people to come there. This to me is not the right

00:39:08
thing to do. So we work really hard at trying to keep a price

00:39:13
point that mum and dad from wherever they might be can come

00:39:17
can bring the kids at least once a year and inspire them. But

00:39:20
also for those who want to spend a bit more money then we've also

00:39:23
got a little bit a little bit upmarket, not flashy, it's

00:39:26
definitely not the Sheraton never going to be no got a

00:39:29
couple of rooms with an air conditioner, for example, just

00:39:31
little bits and pieces to make a little bit more comfortable. And

00:39:34
if you're prepared to pay a bit more than Yeah, we're happy but

00:39:36
we're never going to go away from remaining accessible to

00:39:39
what I call the ordinary bloke, the ordinary family mum and dad

00:39:43
and the kids need to be able to come out there and of course,

00:39:46
the school groups, the college groups, uni groups, we see so

00:39:49
many of them come out. And so I try my best to get up there when

00:39:53
I can and talk to them and inspire them on a team does it

00:39:56
inspire them into making a difference in

00:39:58
Matt Waters: them? And I think that As soon as we're talking

00:40:00
about money's there, I think the cost is important. Because what

00:40:04
you're doing there has to, like you say, Be self sustainable.

00:40:08
And the key part of that being self sustainable is having your

00:40:11
visitors there, which, which funds what you want to do. And

00:40:17
those people that are coming, you know, they, they're there to

00:40:19
see the beauty that that is the island itself. So there is a

00:40:24
cost, there's no way around that.

00:40:28
Peter Gash: But you come and buy it.

00:40:30
Matt Waters: Yeah. And I've worked on it. I've worked in

00:40:34
remote locations before that, you know, the price point goes

00:40:38
up because of that, you know, having a fly and all that kind

00:40:40
of stuff. However, when you do get to that point of being too

00:40:44
expensive, it becomes counterproductive. You end up,

00:40:48
you know, you're aiming at the rich people. But if the rich

00:40:50
people don't want to come, then, you know, you start to struggle.

00:40:54
So I think what you're doing and, and what you've just said

00:40:57
is bang on the money.

00:41:00
Peter Gash: Thank you. Yeah, well, we were certainly being

00:41:03
rewarded for our efforts by our guests coming in and said, we're

00:41:06
not getting rich out of it. But we're paying our bills, we got

00:41:08
120 crew, they all get paid every Friday, they're all well

00:41:11
paid. We look after our team, we pay all our bills on time. I'm

00:41:16
not going to retire wealthy, but I don't care what my wealth is

00:41:19
in the legacy that I'm leaving today, the things I'm doing,

00:41:22
hopefully, showing other people how you can do it differently.

00:41:25
And of course, what I hope to leave behind which is a place

00:41:28
that's that's somewhat improved from what we found, you know,

00:41:31
and showing people mentoring other young people we employ a

00:41:34
lot of young people mentoring them into, Hey, get out and have

00:41:37
a go do do something different. Make a difference. Don't follow

00:41:41
the beaten path. Have a goal of making a difference, because you

00:41:44
can make it's

00:41:45
Matt Waters: worth it. I mean, we are talking because of one of

00:41:48
your ex employees. What's his ash? Smith? Yeah, yeah, he

00:41:54
messaged me out of nowhere. Yeah, you need to speak to

00:41:57
Peter. You need him on your podcast, you know, and wow. And

00:42:00
ashes. Ash, good call brother.

00:42:04
Peter Gash: Got on. Yes, thanks, mate. When you come back, we

00:42:06
need you to drive the boat. He's a diver driver. And he's a diet

00:42:11
guy with a whole bunch of energy too. And he's just a real

00:42:14
Dynamo. And that's what guys like Ash, exactly what attracts

00:42:18
are attracted to Lady, excuse me. Amazing people, passionate

00:42:22
people, people that care about beautiful places. And that's an

00:42:27
example Ash is rewarding us that Lady Elliot, because of what

00:42:30
he's seen us do. If he didn't believe in what we're doing, he

00:42:32
wouldn't have told you about us, he wouldn't have recommended us,

00:42:35
you know,

00:42:35
Matt Waters: this marvellous 120 staff, I've just got to pick up

00:42:39
on that. That's that's a lot of people to look after him feed

00:42:42
Mike.

00:42:44
Peter Gash: It is made it is. And when the pandemic broke, at

00:42:47
the time that the pandemic broke, we had 110. And so you

00:42:51
didn't have quick math. So to that our payroll every Friday

00:42:54
was pretty big. And we don't have a rich mom and dad. So it

00:42:57
has to come in each week and get back out again on Friday. So

00:43:01
when it stopped coming in, it was oh, this is not going to

00:43:03
last very long. And we're going to do this and you start selling

00:43:06
your house or whatever else that even that's not going to last

00:43:08
too long with those sort of numbers. So we sat down with the

00:43:12
team pretty quickly. And we said okay, how are we going to work

00:43:14
this. And they will pull their you know, they pulled their

00:43:17
belts in, as we all did and did our best looked at ways and then

00:43:21
of course, thankfully, the government came up with job

00:43:23
keeper, we worked hard at that. We then realised we didn't need

00:43:26
as many aeroplanes as we had at the time. So we're fortunate, we

00:43:29
managed to move a couple of those out, which are big

00:43:31
expenses, which then freed up some capital, which we boldly

00:43:35
poured straight back into keeping them all busy doing

00:43:37
seven on seven off doing work on the place, trusting praying that

00:43:41
within a couple of months, we're going to be back open. So we do

00:43:43
all the jobs we needed to do while it was closed that we

00:43:46
could normally not do reroof the dining room modifies the

00:43:49
kitchen, and the crew were just all pleased. And so when we

00:43:53
restarted again in June, July, we still had our 100 million

00:43:56
people, then we're sitting at around 120 at the moment. So

00:43:59
we've had an amazing support by our team. And now it's people

00:44:03
are not all on the island. Matt, you know, you've got to see it's

00:44:06
a complex operation. That's why we've got to have got to be read

00:44:15
maybe. Anyhow, so they become me. You've got pilots, you've

00:44:19
got aircraft engineers, you've got reservations, people, ladies

00:44:22
and gentlemen on the phones making bookings. You've got

00:44:25
sales and marketing people. You've got the team on the

00:44:28
island here, whether you've got boat drivers, dive instructors,

00:44:30
you've got maintenance crew keeping the solar power, the

00:44:33
desalination, the wastewater working in the kitchen, you got

00:44:37
chef's kitchen, hands, you've got housekeepers, bar

00:44:40
attendants, administration, you've got the revegetation

00:44:44
team, you know, it's a massively complex operation. And it just

00:44:51
ticks along because every single one of them is committed and

00:44:54
passionate like Ash, that sort of person that care. And they're

00:44:58
proud to be a part of it and proud to be playing in their

00:45:00
path, whether they're with us for three months or three years,

00:45:02
or in some cases, 20 years, we've got a lot of people that

00:45:06
have been with us for over 10, sometimes 15 or 20 years, and

00:45:09
print, just proud to be a part of it. Because as we say, they

00:45:12
don't work for us. They work with us. We all work together on

00:45:15
this.

00:45:15
Matt Waters: I can't imagine why anybody would want to work for

00:45:18
1015 20 years on a beautiful location like that.

00:45:24
Peter Gash: I must be crazy. In some of them, I can think of

00:45:28
Claude, one of our chefs, he's French, and he's most amazing

00:45:32
patriots. Pastry Chef. Anyway, Claude will tell me every day

00:45:34
I'll go up and say G'day, Claude, whatever you cooked us

00:45:36
today, oh, pizza, I had the most amazing snorkel this morning, I

00:45:39
saw this and this and this or I had it. I was on Morning shifts.

00:45:42
I'm having a snorkel this afternoon. And that's the sort

00:45:45
of people they want to go snorkelling every day. They want

00:45:47
to see what they're going to see. And they just think

00:45:50
themselves lucky to be living and working in such a

00:45:53
spectacular location night and I think we're all very apt to do

00:45:56
Matt Waters: it. For sure. Hey, thinking back to way back when

00:46:01
you when you took over? What kind of I'm trying to get a

00:46:05
picture in my head of what it was kind of like that. I mean,

00:46:08
the infrastructure and did he did he go hammer and Tonga

00:46:11
building new outbuildings? Or was it a slow process? Did you

00:46:16
do take the bull by the horns and start legging it?

00:46:21
Peter Gash: Well, the infrastructure had evolved very

00:46:23
slowly from that 6970 When Don Adams built the first resort, he

00:46:27
built an iframe. And he lived in the iframe. And he cooked in the

00:46:30
iframe. And if you came to visit and you stayed in a tent, and

00:46:33
slowly he put a few tents up, then he put up a dive shop. And

00:46:36
it was all very rustic, rough, pretty, pretty poor quality, but

00:46:42
did the job he had a generator, he had this and then they got a

00:46:44
better generator, then I'm slightly better this and a

00:46:47
slightly better that and then Don sold on. And the French

00:46:52
family came along. And they did a really good job of putting

00:46:55
together quite a decent resort. They put a bunch of

00:46:58
accommodation in there. They went I think they put in, they

00:47:00
put they had 12 tents and 27 units that were an old

00:47:05
secondhand mine site that they got off a coal mine out in, in

00:47:09
Blackwater. And they brought it out and they assembled it. So

00:47:11
that gave them decent accommodation. Then they put

00:47:15
together, they'd had a kitchen, they made the kitchen bigger,

00:47:18
they build an education centre, this all evolved, you can see it

00:47:20
sort of evolved over time. And then when Devin Whitaker came

00:47:23
along, he just kept it in good shape, improve some of the

00:47:26
machinery he's a machinery guy, he improved the generators, the

00:47:30
diesel generators, that sort of stuff. But it was still a real

00:47:33
basic place and very rustic for one of a word. And, and because

00:47:40
the lease holder that was there before us had a lease that was

00:47:43
terminating an O five and had no guarantee of a renewal they were

00:47:47
limited with what they were prepared to and wisely weren't

00:47:50
going to spend any more than they needed to. So we took over

00:47:53
it was in really really poor condition. And I had rooms that

00:47:56
were rotted out because you imagine a metal roof covered in

00:48:00
birds and in the summertime it'll get up to three or four

00:48:02
inches of bird poop on it and freshwater rain and salt and so

00:48:06
the the place was in really poor condition. And we knew our first

00:48:09
job was to make it safe and usable. So for the first 10

00:48:13
years, all we did was threw money at putting new roofs

00:48:17
windows doors, fixing painting, repairing the you know, the

00:48:21
timber stumps have a metal strap that goes up to hold the

00:48:24
building to the stump cyclone, bolt rotted out gone, we had to

00:48:28
drill them out, put new stump tiedowns in, there was massive

00:48:31
the work. And it was just catching up with you know, with

00:48:35
respect the previous day, we were fortunate in that we got in

00:48:38
when things have changed, maybe it was because of what we did.

00:48:41
But prior to us the resort wasn't popular wasn't well

00:48:44
known, was a beautiful place. But they didn't have the numbers

00:48:48
when we took over they were you know, eight or 10 people a night

00:48:50
in a place you know, as I said we sit at 90 now, so it's

00:48:54
changed a lot. So we spent a lot of money on it just initially

00:48:57
bringing it up to what I considered safe putting safety

00:49:01
switches on all electrical circuits because none of

00:49:03
electrical circuits had electrical safety switches, all

00:49:05
that type of stuff which is easy when you say it quickly but it

00:49:08
takes a lot of time and money and effort way out there to do

00:49:11
it and bring the carpenters in the tradesmen the electricians

00:49:14
or plumbers. So 10 years was spent doing that but in that

00:49:17
first 10 years our goal was to make a difference and to change

00:49:23
from dirt generators, diesel burning generators to solar

00:49:26
power because a the generators were burning 550 to 600 litres

00:49:31
of diesel every day, which when you add that up was about

00:49:35
$300 of fuel a year. And we had to bring it over on the

00:49:39
barge from Gladstone which is 18 hours by then we had to store it

00:49:42
in tanks and none of the tanks were abundant at that time when

00:49:46
we took over. So we had some serious challenges and we knew

00:49:49
that so we we started fixing the buildings at the same time we

00:49:54
went hell for leather to find a way to get a solar power station

00:49:57
we tried to get the two major power suppliers in Queensland to

00:50:00
do it and sell us solar power. Because it was cost us about

00:50:03
$1.20 a kilowatt hour to make our power with diesel

00:50:06
generators. And so we were prepared to pay for solar power.

00:50:10
And but no one wanted to they laughed at me and said, You

00:50:13
can't do that. So we did it. And at our expense, and very

00:50:18
quickly, we got it down to 50 cents a kilowatt hour, which

00:50:21
helped us enormously. And so now we're down around 20 cents a

00:50:25
kilowatt hour, because they're making it out of solar. So with

00:50:29
resources,

00:50:30
Matt Waters: I'm an engineer geekier as well. Have you done

00:50:33
it? Have you done it? Because it because the solar solar

00:50:36
batteries and gels are two main companies have said no, you

00:50:39
can't do it. But you've gone and done it.

00:50:42
Peter Gash: Yeah. And because they saw it that islands live on

00:50:45
diesel generators, you're talking 2005 2006. Nowadays,

00:50:49
they wouldn't say that to you. They'd say, yeah, no problem. We

00:50:51
can put a solar system in there. But all those years ago, and

00:50:56
it's not that many years, really but but so much has changed in

00:50:59
the Solar World. You look at and go, Oh, of course you do that.

00:51:02
But back then it wasn't Of course you do that no one had

00:51:04
ever really done it quite like we did. But one of the things I

00:51:08
learned when I became a pilot was I realised I had to become

00:51:11
an engineer to keep my aircraft fleet going. So I'm also a craft

00:51:14
engineer, just one of the things I studied late at night, for a

00:51:17
lot of years, to entoma, 60 or 80, or 90 hours a week,

00:51:20
whatever, I might have been doing that. So I understood

00:51:22
engineering. And I looked and thought, of course we can do it.

00:51:24
There's plenty of sunlight out here. Well, how are we going to

00:51:26
store it, so we're using batteries to store it, and we

00:51:29
store it up all day, and then we use it all night. And yeah, it's

00:51:32
been a process. And we've had a lot of two steps forward one

00:51:35
step back stuff. But that's the only way you go forward, you

00:51:38
just got to keep hammering at it. So. So we built the solar

00:51:41
power station in that first 10 years that we're also renovating

00:51:44
the resort and bringing it into what I consider was a semi safe,

00:51:48
semi usable place, got rid of the diesel burners. So we saved

00:51:52
300 a year. And we saved about 200, because it was

00:51:56
costing us about 100 a year then, for our powers that we

00:51:58
slowly got it cheaper and cheaper. So we just reinvested

00:52:01
that 200 that we weren't gonna spend on fuel back into more

00:52:05
solar panels. So we went from 96 panels to 1100 panels now. So

00:52:09
now our fuel costs three or $4 a month we burned so

00:52:13
little. And it's a long way from what it was. And so the first 10

00:52:17
years was fix the whole place up, fix it, fix it, fix it, make

00:52:21
it and obviously the key word is safety. People's Safety is

00:52:24
paramount because you cannot have a situation where people

00:52:28
are feeling that they're not safe, comfortable either in the

00:52:30
building or in the water. So we had to work on the boats, the

00:52:32
provision of the service, that sort of thing. That place was in

00:52:36
a different time, what I call a different time zone, it was just

00:52:39
still existing in the 1960s. And we were trying to bring it into

00:52:43
the 21st century. So we did that for 10 years. And that was when

00:52:48
we started to get noticed people said wow, look at what these

00:52:51
people have done. So we after 10 years of doing that and planting

00:52:55
trees all about our own expense. We spent nearly a million of our

00:52:59
own funds, which came out of trading, we didn't have a

00:53:01
million sitting in the bank. It was whatever was spare in the

00:53:03
bank we planted and we did a lot of voluntary stuff a lot of

00:53:06
volunteers helped us by 2015 Suddenly, people were saying

00:53:10
look at what these people are doing. We got to help them. So a

00:53:14
group called the Great Berrie Foundation came out there and

00:53:16
saw us and said we were going to raise some funds we're gonna

00:53:19
help you What do you need? And how are you what you're doing

00:53:22
with this vegetation is remarkable. What you do with

00:53:24
this whole place is remarkably want to support you lady called

00:53:27
Anna mazdan and her team, the great berry foundation, so John

00:53:30
Schubert and and they just they backed us. And because we put

00:53:35
our money where our mouth was we'd done it first we didn't ask

00:53:37
for help. We just did it. And then slowly we got help offered

00:53:41
to us, which is what led to our visit in 2018 of Prince Charles

00:53:45
the king he came in in April 2018 when he was out here in

00:53:49
Australia for the opening of the Commonwealth Games. And he came

00:53:55
to Australia and his his brief was I want to go to the reef I

00:53:57
want to see the place on the reef that takes the most care of

00:54:01
and he's looking after the environment and everyone he

00:54:03
spoke to his words to me were everyone we spoke to my team

00:54:06
spoke to said you blokes on Lady Elliot don't go anywhere else.

00:54:10
So he did he came and that really that was when people

00:54:13
really went whoa, this is what he's where this little place,

00:54:18
you know, tiny little island with 35 staff on there at any

00:54:20
given day and you maybe 80 or 90 guests and weigh at it, see what

00:54:25
he mean. But he he saw our nursery we had over 10

00:54:29
plants in there. He saw the trees and the vegetation we'd

00:54:32
already planted. He saw our commitment to the environment is

00:54:35
our commitment to our people. And he he's you know he gave us

00:54:40
support by virtue of his his presence being there. And his

00:54:44
presence. And of course it was more than us and what I wanted

00:54:50
and what we saw happen was he supported the whole roof. We

00:54:53
were already heading in the right direction we turn the

00:54:56
corner and we were heading in the right direction with our

00:54:58
revegetation with our attorney Round of the challenges that the

00:55:01
resort was in good shape, the reef was recovering. The island

00:55:05
was recovering and had this magnificent forest coming back.

00:55:08
It was, I believe he had because it was only four days after he

00:55:12
left Lady Elliot that the largest amount of government

00:55:16
funding ever was given to the Great Barrier Reef. And that was

00:55:19
in the form of a $440 million deposit into the great Barry

00:55:23
foundations account to look after the reef. There was four

00:55:26
or five days after Prince Charles left late eel it now I

00:55:29
don't know about you, but I believe in miracles I also

00:55:33
believe timing, you know, I think let's just say

00:55:37
Matt Waters: I think something an invite a comeback now that

00:55:40
he's stepped up a gear as well.

00:55:43
Peter Gash: Because he did he invite the the meeting, he had

00:55:46
it laid out it wasn't just him and I he brought 28 of

00:55:49
Australia's most influential CEOs of the largest companies,

00:55:53
you name it, they were there, we had bhp stock, casinos,

00:55:57
Microsoft, Virgin Chronos, we had all these senior people, we

00:56:01
had the Federal Environment Minister, the state Environment

00:56:04
Minister, the head of LendLease, the Fitzgerald family, all these

00:56:11
people were really passionate, and they came out and he

00:56:13
challenged me said, look at what this family are doing here. What

00:56:16
are you people doing? What have you you guys control the biggest

00:56:19
companies in this country? What have you done for the reef. And

00:56:22
it was it was polite, but it was reality. And most of those

00:56:26
people have already been doing amazing things. But it inspired

00:56:29
them to want to do a bit more, you know, so we felt pretty dang

00:56:32
chuffed about that, that we played a little part in this

00:56:35
whole big thing about not just Lady Elliot, but the whole reef.

00:56:39
And obviously, ultimately, the bloody planet, you know, that's

00:56:42
what we're here for. Because without without an atmosphere

00:56:44
without a planet, none of us are going to be guests.

00:56:47
Matt Waters: And you've just found a perfect example. Because

00:56:51
I think in this day and age, we've got so many people that

00:56:54
are totally focused on their income, not only for themselves,

00:56:59
but for corporations and looking towards corporations that are

00:57:02
bringing in all those billions and billions of dollars. They

00:57:06
want to be put in, or they want to be seen to be doing the right

00:57:09
thing for for the globe and for the environment. Well have a

00:57:13
look at Lady Elliot have a look at what can be done in a 25 year

00:57:17
period. Everyone keeps banging on about, we're going to do this

00:57:20
by 2050, we're going to do that by 2050. We'll stop talking

00:57:24
about it and just fucking do it. Lady Elia is the perfect example

00:57:28
of what happens when you do do it.

00:57:31
Peter Gash: You now that made and I get a bit frustrated. But

00:57:33
I also accept that it was a lot easier for me than it is for a

00:57:37
government or a big city because you've got varying competing

00:57:41
interests, different things are we really, you've probably got

00:57:43
plenty of politicians that want to do this. But then they've got

00:57:46
others with various levels of influence that are trying to

00:57:49
hold them back for whatever the reason is a lot of agendas. As

00:57:51
you know, our agenda was really clear at Lady Elliot, this is

00:57:55
the race we're running. This is where we're going. So I mean, I

00:57:58
learned that from riding my bike, I know I'm going from here

00:58:00
to there, and I'm getting there as quick as I can get there. And

00:58:03
nothing's gonna get in my way. And and that's what we've done.

00:58:07
And so you're we're proud of the fact that within 10 years, we

00:58:09
went from burning 600 litres of diesel a day to burning zero.

00:58:14
We're 100% renewable. Yeah, sure we have our days when we got to

00:58:18
burn a bit because it's been overcast, we're not, it's hard

00:58:21
to say it's hard to say you're totally renewable. But we will

00:58:24
eventually be to the point where we don't need the diesels. We'll

00:58:27
keep them until we're 100% sure of that. But the point is what

00:58:31
you said, Yeah, we did it in 10 or 11 years can be done. So if

00:58:35
we can do it, even if the other guys take 20 or 30, they just

00:58:39
you know, they've got their battles like we all do, but they

00:58:41
got to keep fighting it and, and we got to keep supporting them

00:58:44
to remember governments are only us, you know, people get the

00:58:48
government they deserve. You got to back the GM and you got to

00:58:50
support them. We've always worked closely with whatever

00:58:53
government whatever colour shirt they're wearing, and supporting

00:58:56
them. And they've always supported us. And we have an

00:58:58
amazingly good relationship with all government authorities,

00:59:01
because we see it that we're a partnership. I can't do what I

00:59:03
do without their support. And they want to be involved with us

00:59:06
because they genuinely have not yet met a politician or a

00:59:10
bureaucrat that doesn't love what they see us doing. So

00:59:14
they're humans, they're their mums and dads, they got kids and

00:59:16
they got grandkids. So when they see that it lights up their

00:59:19
eyes. So that's another level of our influence is when we drive

00:59:22
in politicians and say, Hey, come on, come on. Let's all get

00:59:25
on. This will give you a hand you give his hand when the

00:59:27
UNESCO issue was on back in 16. And there was this talk of

00:59:31
whether the Great Barrier Reef would be listed or not. The

00:59:33
Australian Government had these delegates come out to Australia

00:59:36
and every single one of them came with me for the day to Lady

00:59:39
Elliot and I just gave it to him black and white. These are the

00:59:42
good things that have happened on the reef. These are the not

00:59:44
so good things that have happened on the reef. Have a

00:59:46
look at yourself. You're looking at a beautiful part of the

00:59:48
world. But I flew them there from Brisbane so I showed them

00:59:51
the positives and negatives of that and I showed them around

00:59:54
the southern end of the reef. And they loved it and they loved

00:59:58
the frankness it yeah the reef suffers from heat, it suffers

01:00:01
from wave action, it suffers from crown of thorns starfish

01:00:03
itself suffers from runoff. But it's not one of those things.

01:00:07
It's a combination of all of those things that have caused

01:00:10
it, I call it the death of a million cuts, millions of tiny

01:00:14
actions have led the reef and the planet to where we are

01:00:17
today, just going to take millions and tiny action to get

01:00:20
us back. And we all just have to work together on it.

01:00:22
Matt Waters: Well said, Well, next time you get a load of

01:00:24
politicians out there, just telling you to focus on getting

01:00:27
the nets out as well. It's getting right under my skin that

01:00:33
I keep tagging the relevant politicians to come into the

01:00:36
studio and talk about it. None of them do. I've been blocked by

01:00:41
a couple of them just for tagging them and asking the cut

01:00:44
asking the single question. That's crazy. Yeah,

01:00:46
Peter Gash: question. Yeah, and probably most of those people

01:00:49
that haven't come probably believe, like you do. But again,

01:00:52
they're caught between the agenda of lots of different

01:00:57
people with different thoughts and their responsibility to

01:01:00
safety for the people. And, and also, let's be honest, I'm a

01:01:03
politician, and I've just made the call, and I'm going to pull

01:01:06
that out. And then all sudden, little Freddie goes down the

01:01:09
beach, and he gets eaten by a shark. So Mum and Dad, and now

01:01:12
got a lawyer sitting in their pockets. And we're gonna sue him

01:01:14
because he made that. So our whole system,

01:01:18
Matt Waters: this is why I wanted to come in, let's have an

01:01:20
open and frank conversation here in, you know, somewhere that

01:01:24
you're not going to get barraged and victimised, and chest poked,

01:01:28
and just just see both sides of the story. You know, I think

01:01:32
that's a very important role. In a discussion, we've got to have

01:01:37
both sides of the story. And at the moment, we've only got one.

01:01:41
Peter Gash: Yeah, we see, we see the mess and we look at it from

01:01:44
the air, we fly up there in the morning, we see the boats coming

01:01:46
out clearing up those sharks up the East Coast. And it's like,

01:01:49
if you want to be sick, you know, what's going on down

01:01:52
there. And you see these magnificent animals that we swim

01:01:54
with all the time. And we know that, you know, within reason,

01:01:58
you know, unless something's out of balance somewhere, they're

01:02:01
generally quite safe to swim with, and quite safe to be

01:02:04
involved with. But now and again, something happens, but I

01:02:07
don't think the the response warrants what's happening.

01:02:11
That's my opinion. But you know, I don't know all of the facts,

01:02:13
but certainly on with you. I'd like to see on those those net

01:02:17
Matt Waters: talks. Yeah, I mean, I could go on about it for

01:02:19
hours, but we won't will detract away from Lady Elliot. We,

01:02:22
let's, in fact, we can move from net to humpbacks, you get the

01:02:26
humpbacks grand pasture.

01:02:30
Peter Gash: And the east. That's, that's, to me, that's

01:02:32
just a really great story of hope. You know, like 200 years

01:02:37
ago, we didn't have much oil and coal. So we as when I say we,

01:02:42
the collective us, you know, society. We didn't have that. So

01:02:44
we use Whale oil and blah, blah, you know what we did? You know,

01:02:47
whalebone, we used all that stuff. It was a great product,

01:02:49
and we, so we hunted them. And we at the time, thought that was

01:02:53
an endless supply. And we hunted him and hunted him and hunted

01:02:56
him. And by the 1960s, they were pretty much gone. And here on

01:02:59
the east coast of Australia, this is East Coast herd, it had

01:03:02
gone from something like 40 animals down to potentially less

01:03:06
than 1000 by close to tangling the station in 1965. And there

01:03:10
was less than 1000. When I started flying in the mid 1980s.

01:03:13
You rarely saw a Whale. But thankfully, nature was hanging

01:03:18
on by the skin of its teeth, and they'll growing at about 10% a

01:03:21
year. So from 65 to 85. And that 20 years, they got up to two or

01:03:26
3000, maybe 4000 We started to see him from the air. So we

01:03:30
started taking people to see him and we said you bring in your

01:03:32
cannon to shoot the whales, but you're not bringing a harpoon

01:03:36
cannon, you're bringing a Canon camera and you're gonna start to

01:03:38
change opinion. And we we did. This was long before I actually

01:03:42
had Lady Elliot it was when we were still a tourist operator to

01:03:45
Lady Musgrave and other things. And we'd fly people to Harvey

01:03:47
Bay and let them go and take photos of whales. And take that

01:03:51
back and say show your friends and family what you did, how

01:03:54
much enjoyment you get out of seeing these whales. try and

01:03:57
convince your politicians good news. A lot of Japanese people

01:04:00
came and saw us at that time. And now as you know, I don't

01:04:04
have to tell you that the numbers now are up well in

01:04:06
excess of 30 animals. So they come up to the Great

01:04:10
Barrier Reef every winter. They come up, you're around they're

01:04:15
either mating or they're reproducing. Now they're having

01:04:17
a car for their mating. And so the males are doing that bit and

01:04:20
the females are doing the other bit either reproducing. Mating

01:04:24
or they're having a calf. And so we seem they're in great numbers

01:04:27
but the whole reef is this the joy of it doesn't matter whether

01:04:30
your cell phone Lady Elliot are up in the Whitsundays right up

01:04:33
there in Cannes, on the northern end of the reef, you get

01:04:36
enormously exciting wild experiences. They love it. They

01:04:39
come into those nice quiet lagoons because that's what the

01:04:41
reef is. It's a big lagoon member we started talking about

01:04:44
up to 20 or 30 metres deep. The whales love it. They feel

01:04:47
protected up there. They feel sheltered they have their

01:04:49
calves, they frolic they play, you get out on a boat. There's

01:04:53
it's hard to put words to the to the emotional experience that

01:04:57
people get when they get close to an Amazing holodeck while 40

01:05:02
tonnes 45 tonnes in weight and 40 Odd metres long.

01:05:07
Matt Waters: Even just the noise of them under the water. I mean,

01:05:10
I experienced it in South Africa, you know on a dive and

01:05:14
the South African visibility is crap. So I couldn't see them.

01:05:18
But just just hearing them in the distance and I kind of

01:05:21
reminisced on that a couple of days ago as a mate of mine, John

01:05:24
Kennedy's he's up on the, on the GBR as part of the crown of

01:05:28
thorns team. And he's, he's doing it. Do you do it? I

01:05:33
Peter Gash: think I do. I'm pretty sure I've met him around

01:05:36
with the crown and so on. Super, super

01:05:38
Matt Waters: nice guy. Yeah, lovely fella. But he was on the,

01:05:41
you know, those boards that they're using to pull divers

01:05:44
through the water and get the coral checks. And the just the,

01:05:48
the noise were just spectacular. Absolutely stunning.

01:05:53
Peter Gash: Well, you know, on that subject, you know, why do

01:05:56
we say to people in the Whale season, which is sort of May

01:05:58
June, through until October, on the southern end of the reef

01:06:02
where we are, that's about when you'll see them either going

01:06:05
north or playing around or heading back south. You'll

01:06:08
certainly hear them when you go snorkelling almost every time

01:06:10
you go snorkelling or diving, you're gonna hear whales

01:06:13
singing, it's crazy. And you'll almost certainly see them from

01:06:16
the beach. And if you're on the boat, you'll see them from the

01:06:19
boat and now and again, and it's more and more because the

01:06:21
population is growing up in the water, snorkelling and a Whale

01:06:24
will come over and do some people watching come over. And

01:06:27
people when they're in their diving have got whales gone

01:06:29
right over their head or come up and then just go on our website

01:06:32
or on our social media, our Facebook or Instagram. Have a

01:06:35
look at some of the photos of the experiences are diverse in

01:06:38
our snowballs have had there. And it's just crazy. But we're

01:06:42
I'm getting to is the other day. I was in your house because we

01:06:44
didn't have the Lady Elliot has an old historic lighthouse that

01:06:48
was put there. 100 years ago, 150 years ago now actually, the

01:06:51
houses are 100 the building for White. So 150 I was in the

01:06:54
house, which is about 50 metres from the beach. Really loud

01:06:59
noise. I don't know how that's gonna go with your podcasts made

01:07:02
anyway, it sound like a bloody elephant. I'd been in Africa and

01:07:04
I love everything. Let's hit him off. That's a bloody elephant

01:07:07
can't be it's got to be a Whale. So I bolted over to the beach.

01:07:11
And if you know whales, you know what I mean? When I talk about

01:07:14
heat run, it was a it was a pot of males on a heat run. And they

01:07:17
were grunting and snorting. And when they're really active,

01:07:20
they're up a lot because they're trying to get oxygen because

01:07:22
they're being in our power. And they were grunting it was just

01:07:25
crazy how loud it was. And all these people were standing the

01:07:28
victim What is this? And they're 50 metres from the shore and

01:07:31
they have no heat. I mean, it just, I just thought I thought

01:07:35
I've seen everything and now I'm watching on my Whale heat run.

01:07:38
And I could hear it from my house. What's going on?

01:07:43
Matt Waters: You're not gonna get that in, in naremburn and

01:07:45
Sydney.

01:07:48
Peter Gash: It's just one of the rewards for all my years and

01:07:50
long nights.

01:07:52
Matt Waters: Those days, those kind of things that just stick

01:07:54
with you for life, though. You're never gonna forget that.

01:07:56
And neither of those people on the beat.

01:07:59
Peter Gash: I know Amanda and my wife came running over behind me

01:08:02
Julie's and she said, Wow, I've never heard that. We've heard

01:08:06
it. We were in Tonga and we saw heat runs a lot and we've seen

01:08:09
it from boats, but never thought I would see it from the beach

01:08:12
and hear it from the house. It was like wow. And so just tells

01:08:15
me the you know, the reasons for hope. And there's another one

01:08:18
wild populations up around 40 And they're just living

01:08:21
their normal life again, they're just doing what whales do and

01:08:24
we're just interacting and seeing and observing and I get

01:08:27
excited thinking about all the other species that if we give

01:08:30
them a chance.

01:08:32
Matt Waters: Now you nice little lead in there. You do get mantas

01:08:36
a lot and who mentioned the cleaning station earlier on. And

01:08:40
forgive me I forgotten the name of it. But you've got to some

01:08:44
some form of Manta project there as well.

01:08:47
Peter Gash: You just now that you got the name it's called

01:08:48
Project Manta at spearheaded by a beautiful lady called Patty

01:08:51
Townsend. Dr. Cathy Townsend. She started when she was with

01:08:55
the University of Queensland back in 2005. Just remarkable

01:09:00
lady and remarkable team of people she surrounded herself

01:09:02
with. And she like me now is now trying to train the younger

01:09:08
people to look after it. So project Manta, to put it in

01:09:11
simple terms is a project that started back in the mid 2000s,

01:09:16
just after we took over calf came and asked me Would we

01:09:19
support them because like most of these uni projects that

01:09:21
didn't have a whole lot of funding. So we thought, wow, we

01:09:25
can't really afford this. But I think the words I use was we

01:09:29
can't afford not to because the whales at that time weren't

01:09:32
protected. We knew very little about them. And me looking at

01:09:35
them from a Scuba tank or snorkel was only going to give

01:09:38
them really limited help, like limited help. But some

01:09:41
scientists getting involved. We're going to take a whole lot

01:09:43
of difference. And we thought there was maybe 50 or 60

01:09:46
managers hung around Lady Elliot. So Kathy and her team

01:09:49
set set forth on the project Manta and they started to

01:09:53
document how many or the kids take a photo under their belly

01:09:56
you see that what they call their fingerprint on their

01:09:58
footprint, the shape the patents, The belly is different

01:10:00
every animal and I know cats up over 1000 animals they filmed on

01:10:05
lady plant now they've taken photos off, including inspected

01:10:08
clue. So he's the most rare Manta on the planet because he's

01:10:11
to the best of our knowledge. He's the only one that's on his

01:10:14
belly. Yeah. melanistic pink I believe is the word she uses

01:10:18
black on the top pink on the bottom most men is a black on

01:10:21
the top, white on the bottom. Just another one of those

01:10:24
rewards, I think for looking after men. And so what Kathy and

01:10:26
her team have done is every year they've studied them, they've

01:10:28
learned about them. They've been on the science door. They've

01:10:31
been on the council's door that the government's door looking

01:10:34
for funding, they created a film about it. And that won an award

01:10:38
or some I think it might have just correct me here. But

01:10:40
capital tell me I was wrong here. But it was I think it was

01:10:42
the Cannes Film Festival there was a film festival of sorts.

01:10:45
And cat had this amazing movie about what they'd been doing.

01:10:49
And it got really great publicity, which publicity

01:10:51
breeds more publicity breeds more success brings more

01:10:54
support. So she's had enormous support with that. And we're

01:10:57
looking like we're just getting some more support to renew the

01:11:00
project for another three years, which we're excited about

01:11:03
because now she's trying to find out a really key thing is, where

01:11:06
are these animals popping? Where are they having their little

01:11:09
baby mantis? And to the best of our knowledge, no one's ever

01:11:11
filmed that.

01:11:13
Matt Waters: Yeah, the birth is not being filmed, but I did

01:11:16
notice maybe two or three years ago now. For the first time ever

01:11:20
it was a meeting was caught on on film. I think that might have

01:11:25
been Indonesia, neutropenia, or something like that.

01:11:30
Peter Gash: So mentors are amazing, amazing, innately

01:11:33
intelligent animals. And through the process of project Manta

01:11:37
Patty dive put out a four or five best places in the world to

01:11:44
swim and see mentors. And the first one they mentioned. So I

01:11:48
assume that means we were number one was Lady Elliot. So we were

01:11:51
pretty chuffed about that. And that came as a result of the

01:11:54
project Manta highlighting the strength of what was there. If

01:11:58
they had just asked me I said, I think that's 50 Maybe 100 men

01:12:01
are you getting the girl take yet for snorkel or dive, we'll

01:12:03
see if we can show you one. But when the science got involved

01:12:06
and did it in a scientific manner, then we're able to get

01:12:09
facts and with facts, we can make a difference. And so you

01:12:12
know, that's the key thing that that I've learned off Kathy and

01:12:15
her team is, you know, science may are hand in hand with, with

01:12:19
an entrepreneur like me, a conservationist like me, I'm not

01:12:23
a scientist, but I'm a driver, I want to make stuff happen. But

01:12:26
also, we need cat skills. We all need each other's different

01:12:30
skills, to work collaboratively to make a difference. And we

01:12:33
couldn't have done what we've done without people like her and

01:12:36
her team and so many other amazing teams, you know, our

01:12:39
revenge team, Jim and John and Annie, those people that really

01:12:42
make a difference with what's going on.

01:12:43
Matt Waters: I love that word, use Collaborate collaboration in

01:12:46
my book is number one in everything that we need to do.

01:12:50
Peter Gash: Couldn't agree more, man, it's such a key word. And

01:12:53
look, I'll be honest, like all young people, when I was a young

01:12:55
bloke, I didn't probably understand that and see it. And

01:12:58
I'm still I still consider myself a young bloke, because I

01:13:00
must be. So I'm still learning. And that's the key thing I'm

01:13:02
learning is that the more you collaborate, the more you work

01:13:05
together, the more you will achieve. And you support each

01:13:08
other and you see each other's differences. And you recognise

01:13:10
that we're not always going to see eye to eye, I'm going to see

01:13:13
it a bit differently. We can all be level headed and sit down and

01:13:15
talk about it will generally find the solution to how do we

01:13:19
fix this problem? Or how's it best dealt with? And, and you

01:13:22
know, and then we go and then we look at it and go wow, look at

01:13:24
together what

01:13:25
Matt Waters: we've achieved. Yeah. Ecotourism? Obviously, a

01:13:34
lot of our subjects here is about how and how you as Would

01:13:42
you would you say, your location? Would you call

01:13:44
yourself a company as well?

01:13:49
Peter Gash: Yeah, we're a proprietary.

01:13:50
Matt Waters: So how, how else are you reducing your carbon

01:13:54
footprint I'm trying to think about, because another arm of me

01:13:58
is that I've got a travel company, as you know, for

01:14:02
diving, and more and more over the last few years, apart from

01:14:05
COVID times, more and more people that that want to book,

01:14:09
one of the main questions they ask is about how the operator

01:14:14
that they're looking at going and staying with is reducing

01:14:17
their impact on the local environment. And we've already

01:14:21
alluded to the fact or pointed out that that you guys are you

01:14:24
know, bloody good at what you do. But there's a I think

01:14:28
there's still a number of elements there that we're

01:14:30
probably not touched on, which are vitally important in how you

01:14:35
go about your everyday routines

01:14:38
Peter Gash: are yet there's so much and I mean, we haven't got

01:14:41
enough time on this podcast, to be honest with you, but I'll try

01:14:44
and touch on it quickly. You've heard me talk about our solar

01:14:46
power, that reduced our use of diesel, which has reduced our

01:14:51
risk of having it stored out there, greenhouse gas emissions

01:14:54
Weigh Down, you know, 98% down, storage has reduced the risk of

01:14:58
bringing it out there in the back. arches is reduced, as well

01:15:01
as the cost. Obviously, that's a really big one saving us a lot

01:15:03
of money, but it's saving our environment. But that then

01:15:06
enables us, because we're in an a UNESCO listed World Heritage

01:15:11
National Park on ladywell. It's a green total Green Zone, no

01:15:13
fishing, no spirit, no taking, can't do anything that's not

01:15:16
approved. We can't drink water off the roof because roofs

01:15:19
covered bird poop. We can't drill a hole in the island and

01:15:22
take the water out of there because that's a very, very

01:15:25
delicately balanced ecosystem. And it's got a fine layer of

01:15:29
water that feeds the tree. So what are we going to water from?

01:15:32
We have to desalinate, it's too far to bring it. So we

01:15:34
desalinated and desalination, as you know, is a very power hungry

01:15:38
method. Well, we get it from the sun for free, because our solar

01:15:44
power drives out the cell, you make about 30 litres of

01:15:48
fresh water from the sun direct every day. 30 a day Love it.

01:15:53
Love the day a day, yeah, we hold about 400 litres, we've

01:15:57
got about 12 or 14 days of spare to have the system breaks, we

01:16:01
got that much time to fix it, or else we're sending everyone home

01:16:04
because without water, you're not doing anything else. But

01:16:06
then the water goes into the shower and the toilet and the

01:16:10
cooking and the washing. And then it's got to be treated. You

01:16:13
can't just we're going to send it you just don't flush it down

01:16:15
the plug. It's got to go into a wastewater treatment plant. And

01:16:18
it has to be treated to an A standard. So it can be used and

01:16:22
and managed in a UNESCO listed World Heritage marine park. So

01:16:26
we treat it through a wastewater treatment plant. When we took

01:16:29
over the water was at a C standard. Not very good. But it

01:16:32
was approved. And that's what I mean about the old resort and

01:16:35
the old way of doing things. And the new one we wanted a we

01:16:37
actually wanted a plus. And the difference between a and a plus

01:16:40
is UV sterilisation, you're going to love this in a minute.

01:16:42
I'll get to it. But so to get to our a standard, we had to build

01:16:46
a new system. And we looked and looked and they were all a

01:16:48
million dollars. We didn't have a minion and we talked and we

01:16:51
asked, and we found a bloke and we collaborated and we built a

01:16:54
system that cost us about 300 and put our water out of

01:16:58
a stand and we thought we were pretty chuffed. We couldn't get

01:17:00
a plus we didn't have enough spare power using our DSL to run

01:17:04
the UV. And then it was so simple. We're sitting there

01:17:08
having a cup of tea, a few of the blokes will talk and someone

01:17:10
said, UV Doesn't it come from the sun? Isn't there a way we

01:17:14
can get it for free from the sun. So down the refuse Centre,

01:17:17
we went and found an old big roll water tank. And so after

01:17:20
the war had finished all its other treatment, we put it into

01:17:23
there. And then we cut the top out of the tank and we let the

01:17:26
sun shine in order that the standard improved. We thought,

01:17:29
how can we make it better. So then we put a solar panel and a

01:17:32
solar powered pump in the bottom of it. And then a heap of that

01:17:35
Elson like plastic like Corrugated Roofing plastic. And

01:17:39
when the sun's out, the pump runs and the water cycles up and

01:17:43
it gets really closely UV sterilised and oxygenates it and

01:17:48
water goes out a plus, that's considered some of the best

01:17:51
treated water on the reef, cost me about a third of what I was

01:17:54
getting quoted, and I'm making the best water I could possibly

01:17:56
make. So then we just irrigate it irrigated out of the airstrip

01:17:59
and into our revegetation programme. And we monitor it, we

01:18:02
test it every day, we send it away for an external test every

01:18:05
month, we have to report it and the condition and the quality of

01:18:08
the water. Just and we've got teams of in our maintenance

01:18:12
team, a couple of the guys have been to school and learn about

01:18:15
running a wastewater treatment plant. And they love it. They

01:18:18
specialise in because it's it's a living organism and wastewater

01:18:21
treatment plant has all these little bugs doing their job, you

01:18:23
know. And when you study it, it's crazy. Learn that.

01:18:26
Matt Waters: So are they when they take all the rubbish out

01:18:28
and the crap and all that malarkey? Are you reusing that

01:18:33
again? Is it being turned into fertiliser? Or are you getting

01:18:36
rid of it offshore?

01:18:38
Peter Gash: With the new system? There's very little we just when

01:18:42
we had the old system every three months, we had to dig the

01:18:45
malarkey out as you call it. And let me tell you, no one was

01:18:48
fighting to beat the malarkey out. And then we would put it in

01:18:51
a hole and burn it. That was what had been done for years.

01:18:54
And we didn't like that one little bit for a whole host of

01:18:56
reasons. And Lisa witches were burning it smoke all the dramas,

01:19:00
the new system, we've just emptied one of the tanks and we

01:19:03
didn't have to use shovels because it was such a small

01:19:05
volume of it just using the sludge pump after 10 years. And

01:19:09
so we just send it off, we just put it into IBCs and send it

01:19:12
off. It wasn't hard to deal with it. And we think now we've

01:19:15
worked out because the guy who helped us design it said you'll

01:19:19
never have to dig malarkey out. And we were hoping that was the

01:19:22
case we did. So we said okay, this is where I mean about what

01:19:25
we just got to keep adjusting and getting better. So we we've

01:19:28
now put another pre tank in, which means we've got even more

01:19:31
process at that point. So we should hopefully never have to

01:19:34
well the volume of it is so small as to you know, just to be

01:19:37
not really relevant to the question. So that's power water

01:19:41
waste, but then our food scraps on an all our waste food because

01:19:45
we needed soil to plant our new trees and new vegetation and the

01:19:49
island was a windswept barren rock where you're gonna get soil

01:19:51
from if you bring it in you've got a quarantine issue who knows

01:19:54
what bugs and beetles are gonna bring in? Metal this food scrap

01:19:59
so Pretty simple collaboration was let's put it through and

01:20:02
composter we had all this cardboard we they had initially

01:20:06
when we took over, they were burning, we stopped burning and

01:20:08
started flying it off, we're still a cost and was okay, well,

01:20:10
why don't we just mulch it up, put it with the food scrap and

01:20:13
compost it. Long story short, that's what we do. We have a big

01:20:16
eight metre long composter all our food every day. And all that

01:20:19
cardboard gets mashed up goes into this thing. But every two

01:20:22
weeks it comes out at the back end, it just continues

01:20:24
continually coming out all the time, then it goes into a

01:20:27
windrow where it's turned, its temperature goes up to about 75

01:20:31
degrees. That turns we then slowly put wood chip in from

01:20:35
some of the old dead trees and green mulch and stuff and turn

01:20:38
it and after about six months, it's the most magnificent black

01:20:42
soil that we use to our trees and to nature given it to us

01:20:45
from our food scraps. So no longer because of food scraps

01:20:48
product were buried in a pit in the ground and covered in lime.

01:20:51
Can you imagine in a spectacularly beautiful thing

01:20:54
like the island was, so we don't do that anymore. So that's just

01:20:58
another one. And I could keep going on and we do

01:21:02
Matt Waters: you go on for as long as you want me.

01:21:05
Peter Gash: Sorry, a glass bottles, you know our glass

01:21:07
bottles used to all go off and, and get recycled. And and that

01:21:15
was quite a big effort because we went from 12 barges a year to

01:21:18
four barges. So you're collecting it up and you had big

01:21:21
amounts of it. So we got a thing called an O presser and Glasgow

01:21:24
presser, it's like a crusher only better, it turns the glass

01:21:28
back in the sand crushes it right down to the sand it came

01:21:30
from. And if you're on a continental Island or a Rock

01:21:33
Island, you can then just spread it on the beach. We don't

01:21:36
because when a coral K, but as it goes off, but you can get

01:21:39
about 120 bottles in a 20 litre container. So you shrink it and

01:21:44
then it gets sent off and it gets melted down and recycled

01:21:47
very easily. That type of thing is what we do. We we we have, as

01:21:55
I said de sel water for washing and showering. And now we've got

01:21:58
these things called Source hydro panels. And they're they're

01:22:01
about a metre and a half wide by about a metre high. And they've

01:22:05
got a photovoltaic PV panel in the middle of fresh air comes

01:22:09
through them. And fresh air has a relative humidity it has an

01:22:14
element of moisture in it. And with this panel heating in the

01:22:17
sun, and then there's fresh air coming in cooling, you get

01:22:20
condensation. So the condensation dribbles down, the

01:22:23
system speeds up condensation process up, little PV panel then

01:22:27
pumps it up to a tap. And you get the most beautiful, clear,

01:22:31
fresh drinking water. It's like rainwater, and we get about six

01:22:35
litres of water per day out of each of these panels, we've got

01:22:37
eight of them. And that's what our crew drink. And that was

01:22:40
given to us by source hydro panels in Arizona, when they saw

01:22:43
our solar power station and saw some of the media that we'd been

01:22:46
given over that. And they said, Can we give you these Can you

01:22:49
have a look at them. And we'll try them. And we did and then

01:22:52
one of my friends came out and saw these things went Wow, man,

01:22:55
they are really good for my brothers and sisters. He is in

01:22:58
now indigenous community or Aboriginal community and, and he

01:23:01
went and told the people that matter about we could put these

01:23:04
things on the roofs of their houses out in the west where

01:23:06
it's really dry. And they have and they sold a whole bunch of

01:23:09
these things. So we keep getting rewards. And people keep

01:23:14
learning and collaborating. Because of some of the things

01:23:17
we're doing,

01:23:17
Matt Waters: get get the girls to some of the links to all this

01:23:20
kind of stuff, mate, because I'd love to check it on the podcast

01:23:22
as well put it in the show notes. There's bound to be

01:23:24
people that are keen on them.

01:23:27
Peter Gash: They're awesome. And they're about 3000 Australian

01:23:29
dollars, you're born on the roof of your house, and just sits up

01:23:32
on the roof little cap comes down your sink, and you get this

01:23:34
magnificent, clean, fresh rainwater drinking water six or

01:23:38
eight litres a day, you don't have to have a tank, it's not

01:23:40
using it's not plugged into the grid. It's just free. It's run

01:23:43
and power and water out of the sky. It's crazy. And of course,

01:23:47
I see that and think this is, you know, first or second

01:23:50
generation of this stuff, what's it going to be like in 20 or 30

01:23:52
years when they really refined it and really got it going. So

01:23:55
the more of us use that stuff. In the early days, the better it

01:23:58
will get and the cheaper it will get.

01:24:01
Matt Waters: So if I end up if I end up buying the place in the

01:24:04
dive shop in Indonesia, I'll have a couple of those things on

01:24:07
the roof because that would be fantastic. Rather than going

01:24:10
down to the seven elevens and having to buy big containers of

01:24:12
water all the time.

01:24:15
Peter Gash: And that was one of the things we did while I'm

01:24:16
sitting here in this very desk back in about oh six or seven

01:24:21
and we sold water in plastic bottles like everyone did, you

01:24:25
know 600 million bottles and we sold them we take them out in

01:24:28
the aeroplane it was heavy. And we flew them out and then of

01:24:30
course people would drink it and then they had this throwaway

01:24:32
plastic bottle. And one of my staff came to me derange and she

01:24:36
said to me, Pete, I got an idea. We've got to stop selling water

01:24:40
in plastic bottles. We're gonna know how are we going to do

01:24:42
that? Said I found this company we can buy these stainless steel

01:24:46
ones for $10 Are these reusable. They were a form of plastic with

01:24:50
a we can put our logo on them and people can keep reusing them

01:24:53
and they're about $3 And so people are buying a bottle of

01:24:56
water for about three or $4 and then they throw it away they can

01:24:59
buy this and they can fill them up with the DSL. And now of

01:25:01
course, they fill him up with our source. So I can buy, he was

01:25:05
talking about $2 worth not gonna we didn't have a spare

01:25:08
2000. But I couldn't. I couldn't have his offer enthusiasms

01:25:11
there, right, I might go and get him. And let's give it a go. So

01:25:15
she stripped all the plastic bottles out of the fridge.

01:25:17
There's none of those. There's only this stuff. And if you want

01:25:19
to drink more that lady, you buy one of these, and you can go and

01:25:22
fill it up at the D cell. And people loved it. And all sudden,

01:25:25
I've got the media on the phone me. Are you the first blog in

01:25:27
Australia to stop selling plastic? On the Great Barrier

01:25:30
Reef? Yeah, actually, I was. There told the story, I got

01:25:35
1000s of dollars worth of publicity. We paid two and a

01:25:38
half grand for the bottles, which we probably sold for five

01:25:40
grand, you know how it is with retail. So we got our money

01:25:42
back. And the bottle that they bought had lady elite on it. So

01:25:46
they took it home very proudly, and they're telling their

01:25:47
friends I've been to Lady elite, and they don't sell plastic

01:25:50
bottles and, and the ones who had a bit more money, they

01:25:52
bought a stainless steel one. And people still got those

01:25:54
bottles they bought all those years ago. And so now that's all

01:25:58
we sell. And that's and so now you can go and fill your bottle

01:26:01
on the source hydro panel, which is even better than the

01:26:03
distilled water to drink. And we don't have to fly water out

01:26:06
there. So we don't have to carry it. You know how to get that.

01:26:11
And that was someone else's idea that came to me and I've gone

01:26:13
yeah, that'll do. Collaboration? Yeah, give it a crack. Let's try

01:26:19
it. And it just made sense. Yeah, that's the sorts of things

01:26:25
that you'll see happening all the time. And, you know, even in

01:26:29
our food, like, we used to get little jams, you know, silly

01:26:33
little plastic jam things, and batters in those silly little

01:26:36
butter things. And my team were always on the back. Now we got

01:26:40
to stop this because of course, what was happening is those

01:26:42
little plastic and silver metal things were ending up in our

01:26:47
food scraps, which is ending up in your composter, which was

01:26:49
ending up in our dirt, okay, it's not the end of the world,

01:26:51
but we were finding them. And we have stopped, how are we going

01:26:55
to stop it. So we found these squeezed things and you could

01:26:58
get the jam in bulk and put it in and then you could squeeze

01:27:01
the jam out, then we found a way to just cut the butter and put

01:27:04
it in, in a little fridge. And then people could just take a

01:27:07
banner with the knife, which was great. And we were just proud of

01:27:10
ourselves till COVID hit then we weren't allowed to do that. So

01:27:12
we had to go backwards to those old plastic single use things.

01:27:15
Again, it was like, Oh, we just felt like dinosaurs again. And

01:27:19
now we're out of COVID. And now we're just getting back to where

01:27:21
we were with different ways. And you got to experiment. I just

01:27:26
say that people are trying your place is different than my place

01:27:29
because we do try and encourage other resorts other islands.

01:27:32
Other operators don't don't have to be on the reef you can be out

01:27:35
in the bush, you know, we do a lot with Outback Queensland and

01:27:37
outback Australia. Look at what you do, and look at how you do

01:27:41
it. And just ask yourself the question, how is this going to

01:27:44
affect me financially? But how is this gonna affect the

01:27:47
environment? And when you weigh those two up, nearly always the

01:27:51
environment wins. Nearly always the environment wins. And then

01:27:55
quite often, it's actually cheaper. And almost certainly

01:27:58
you're going to get all this what I call intangible publicity

01:28:01
for what you've done. And so it pays back in spades.

01:28:04
Matt Waters: Yeah, for sure. What about the you must have an

01:28:07
element of waste that has to be shipped off. I mean, you know,

01:28:12
your packaging, your containers, you up bean tins, those kinds of

01:28:15
things. There's going to be those elements that you can't

01:28:17
get around really isn't.

01:28:20
Peter Gash: Yeah, yeah, we sold out of cardboard goes into our

01:28:24
food scraps. As I've said, our food scraps goes into our dirt.

01:28:26
So that's all managed to this, that's that's a major portion of

01:28:29
it. No plastic bottles. So that's another one glass goes

01:28:33
into crushed down or I press down to sand, which goes back

01:28:38
and gets melted. So really, the last one is what you said what

01:28:41
we call the heavy materials, heavy building materials, and

01:28:44
then heavy stuff. So we store those into big bins. And every

01:28:49
three months, they go back to be recycled in some and we recycle

01:28:53
as best as we can. But obviously we can't keep all that stuff in

01:28:56
the tiny little 100 acre island. So it goes off and has to be

01:28:59
dealt with on the mainland as best as possible. And, and and

01:29:03
that's what we do there. Yeah, I think that probably means is

01:29:09
that one is it's every three months, you guys was going to

01:29:11
Matt Waters: be able to get around and you can't make Heinz

01:29:15
baked beans come in something that's not in unfortunately, not

01:29:18
yet.

01:29:19
Peter Gash: No, you can't.

01:29:20
Matt Waters: No, you

01:29:21
Peter Gash: can't. Well, we do crush the cans, we have a look

01:29:24
crushed and we crushed and so they fit and then you'll send

01:29:26
them off and they'll get recycled, you get paid a small

01:29:28
amount of money for him but it's all contributing to the cause,

01:29:31
you know, so again, that's a balanced way up between how much

01:29:35
does it cost for a person to be squeezing him how much per hour

01:29:38
compared to what you're getting in the space that they take up

01:29:41
on the barge there's not really a space issue so there's,

01:29:43
there's you're always doing what I said why not? How much is this

01:29:46
gonna cost me how much what to do and for the environment? Is

01:29:49
it worth spending my time and money here my better spend it

01:29:52
here. I call it the low hanging fruit. Look at what you're doing

01:29:55
and go what can I do now and quickly to get a result that's a

01:29:58
low hanging fruit. Let's grab that one and do that, like even

01:30:02
if it's light bulbs, get ahold of that 100 watt bulb and get

01:30:06
rid of that or that 500 watt bulb rather than that little 20

01:30:08
Watt one, you know, that's the one you really need to deal with

01:30:11
first

01:30:12
Matt Waters: What's with all this like mini industry that

01:30:15
you've got going on on the island? What's the light for

01:30:16
noise? How do you have you got to try and control the noise

01:30:20
pollution as it were, in any way.

01:30:24
Peter Gash: My, I'm really proud to say that the noise, the

01:30:28
biggest noise was generators, and I could hear them when I was

01:30:31
out snorkelling or diving, I could, I could tell when the

01:30:33
generators stopped, I'd come to the surface and have hundreds of

01:30:37
metres wide, bloody generators stop what's going on. But now

01:30:40
the generator is run. So really, there's no noise from and that

01:30:44
was the noisemaker was the power supply. That was a noise, my

01:30:48
gear can put them in a little tight shed and quiet them down,

01:30:50
but it was still noisy. The only other thing for us that makes

01:30:53
noises are de sel, but it's it's not really noisy. You can stand

01:30:58
near it. It's not too bad. And of course, our dive compressors,

01:31:02
so we run Bower, Mariner 320s. We've got two of those little

01:31:06
little darlings and they work beautifully. And we're we're

01:31:08
looking into the 320 E which is a nitrox compressor. Because

01:31:12
we've got an older style of nitrox compressor that runs with

01:31:16
a diesel motor. And we want to be rid of that so we're looking

01:31:19
at a 320 so we'll have three Bowers. You know that I'm sure

01:31:24
it's you know what I'm talking about? A little bit noisy when

01:31:27
they're working. But they're in the shed we run them. When

01:31:29
there's sun we call it no sun, no power. No, no, no, no sun, no

01:31:33
water, no sun, nowhere when the sun's out, bang, that's when

01:31:35
we're running and making stuff. And we bank and we've got it all

01:31:38
into banks. So they're not happening at night. So guests

01:31:42
aren't hearing generators, diesel generators, diver

01:31:45
compressors at night. It's all happening during the day when

01:31:47
they're out snorkelling or diving anyway, but that's not a

01:31:50
lot of noise. We had a, here's again, just more things we had a

01:31:55
gator. One of those John Deere gators that run around and pick

01:31:58
up people's bags and drive around their little diesel

01:32:01
motor, great little thing, but noisy, and burning diesel. So

01:32:06
someone did some research one of the team and said to me, we need

01:32:09
a new data that was 25 or something we've just discovered

01:32:13
Polaris have now got an all electric thing that's like the

01:32:15
gator and it was 22 So we'll decision what to do for the

01:32:19
environment what to do financially. That was really

01:32:21
easy decision. So we bought this Polaris and best thing we ever

01:32:24
bought got big suspension. It's comfy. It's quite, you don't

01:32:27
even hear coming. People say What do you mean the Polaris. So

01:32:32
now we're headed because we've got two diesel powered loaders,

01:32:37
big loaders that turn the soil and do the things we need to do

01:32:40
and digging the holes through got a net. They're quite

01:32:43
powerful machines and quite heavy machines and they run on

01:32:46
diesel and Volvo now make an electric or battery powered

01:32:51
loader. So I've been pounding at Volvo trying to get them to sit,

01:32:55
assist us to buy what we hope will be the first or one of the

01:32:59
first battery powered Volvo loaders in the country. And then

01:33:03
we conventional car diesels and get rid of them you know and

01:33:06
then in the load is quiet because it's not noisy but it's

01:33:09
not quiet either. You know what I mean? Like it's a machine and

01:33:11
we use it sensibly as much as we can but but me I don't think

01:33:16
noises would be considered a factor out there. I think it's

01:33:19
generally pretty quiet and when it's windy isn't always have the

01:33:22
wind in the trees.

01:33:24
Matt Waters: So it sounds like you got it all nailed, but does

01:33:26
that I can tell there's just those little itches with you.

01:33:29
Every now and then you just mentioned a little louder there.

01:33:31
You can see it when you're talking about it. Little itch,

01:33:33
little itch I've got to get rid of that I've got to do that.

01:33:37
Peter Gash: Never stops aeroplanes. I mean, I'm really

01:33:40
proud of this one. We a couple of blokes came and saw me about

01:33:43
seven or eight years ago, they were just setting up a company

01:33:45
that had been supported by a philanthropist that cared about

01:33:48
the environment and wanted to make money and he had a lot of

01:33:51
money and he was investing in an electric aeroplane. And they

01:33:54
made a decision that the first aeroplane they're going to put

01:33:57
this electric motor in was a Cessna Caravan. And we just

01:34:00
happen to have Cessna caravans we have currently we have five

01:34:03
of them. And there's a big reason we have caravans besides

01:34:05
the fact they're a fantastic aeroplane, and they're very

01:34:08
reliable. They're also very capital intensive, they're

01:34:10
expensive machine, but they are a single engine turboprop. So

01:34:14
very reliable engine, very easy engine to operate. But one

01:34:18
engine 14 seats means that my fuel burn per passenger seat

01:34:22
mile is unbeatable. There's no other aeroplane that can do what

01:34:25
we do, and land on that little short Island and burn the least

01:34:28
amount of fuel per passenger seat mile. So we offset our

01:34:32
carbon offset all our passengers we we contribute a couple of

01:34:35
dollars per seat per trip for that. And that goes to Green

01:34:39
Fleet and they plant trees with it. But we want to stop burning

01:34:42
bloody jet fuel. We want to stop burning fuel in any way we can.

01:34:46
So when these guys came and said, Oh, we want to do this.

01:34:49
Can you support us like yep, you came to the right place. Because

01:34:53
I said by the time I'm 65 I want to fly an all electric aeroplane

01:34:57
from Harvey beta lady elite and we're all going to work together

01:34:59
on it. So We threw ourselves at it. And my engineers here my

01:35:02
aircraft engineers loved it. And they supported it. And we worked

01:35:05
with them for about five years for companies called Magne. X,

01:35:08
you want to Google them and have a look ma G and AI slash x Magne

01:35:11
X. And they started here at a Rundle on the Gold Coast. And

01:35:16
they designed and built what was initially a 375 horsepower

01:35:20
engine, they got it working, put it in the big iron bird, which

01:35:23
we assisted them to build an iron bird is just a dummy you're

01:35:25
applying when you just run the engine, and you run it for hours

01:35:28
and hours and hours and make sure it's gonna last and then

01:35:31
they doubled it and made it 750 Because that's what we need it

01:35:33
for the caravan. They ran 1000s of hours. And we supported him

01:35:37
as much as we could not financially if we didn't have

01:35:39
that money, with knowledge and collaboration with ideas where

01:35:42
the aeroplane people there, the engineers and the designers

01:35:45
there the clever guys with that stuff. So we helped magnetics.

01:35:48
And I kept saying to Roy and Bob and the team. In this country,

01:35:53
we're pretty heavily regulated with bureaucracy, you what you

01:35:57
don't want is to have what I used. The example is you don't

01:35:59
want to have a Hindenburg situation, with your first

01:36:02
electric aeroplane, you want it to be a success. And you want to

01:36:06
you want to have a bit of in the back sleeve. So you want to put

01:36:08
this engine in a float plane and fly it for a while off the water

01:36:12
so that if there's a problem, and there shouldn't be, but if

01:36:14
they're easy to put back on the water, and there's no problem,

01:36:17
there's no media, there's no headache. That's happened. And

01:36:20
of course, they couldn't get support in Australia for that.

01:36:23
So sadly, they took the whole project over to the USA to

01:36:26
Seattle, the land of what I call the land of can do here in

01:36:30
Australia with that sort of projects land of can't do, they

01:36:32
just wouldn't help them. So magnetics went to Seattle. And

01:36:36
if you do your history, you'll see that the first engine went

01:36:38
into a float plane with Greg McDougal from harbour air in

01:36:41
Vancouver, and he flew it off the river. And he flew it and he

01:36:44
landed it and that was a first electric passenger sized

01:36:47
aeroplane it was an old Havilland Beaver, and eight seed

01:36:50
aeroplane. And Greg threw a lot of time and effort into it, the

01:36:53
harbour air family put that together. And then of course,

01:36:59
that then went, the engine was good enough, they put it into a

01:37:02
Cessna Caravan, which is where they wanted it to be. And then

01:37:05
they fly that out of Moses Lake, over there in in, in Seattle, or

01:37:10
sorry, in Washington State should I say. And that caravan

01:37:13
is now doing up to 40 minutes in the sky and going up to 10

01:37:16
feet, which is great. And it's running on batteries. But the

01:37:20
problem is in all these years, we've gone from 30 to 35 minutes

01:37:23
pizza or maybe 35 to 40 minutes panels, well, that's not enough

01:37:26
to get to Lady Elliot, I need a bit more than that, from the

01:37:29
point of view of I want to have enough to get back home if we

01:37:31
can't land. So the batteries hold them up. But the machine is

01:37:35
flying the engine is working. They're now in the USA, they've

01:37:37
got some tremendous support. They're putting that very engine

01:37:40
into a lot of different types. There's so much money going into

01:37:43
that. But they've gravitated away from the battery power,

01:37:47
because it's just struggling to give us enough time. And now

01:37:50
they're pushing. And Bob and the guys here strawless In Cannes,

01:37:54
and the guys down in Sydney. And they are working on hydrogen

01:37:58
power to drive the same engine hydrogen and electric. And I

01:38:01
think that's where it's gonna go. And I'm still hopeful that

01:38:05
before I'm 65, there's going to be one that's going to have that

01:38:07
much range on a flight across the island, but it's probably

01:38:10
going to be hydrogen powered initially. And of course, that

01:38:13
means we're not burning,

01:38:14
Matt Waters: well maybe not make sense to have something that's

01:38:18
hybrid, I mean, if gonna rely purely on batteries, you're

01:38:21
probably gonna have a battery failure. And that's it, you're

01:38:23
back on the water on you.

01:38:26
Peter Gash: So the hydrogen is the long term answer. I think

01:38:30
for the time being, unless you said hybrid, you know, you go

01:38:33
and look at what Airbus are doing. They're working with

01:38:35
hydrogen and hybrid. So I think what Airbus and those big

01:38:39
airlines will do because it's in their best interest to to look

01:38:42
after the environment is they will have jet fuel and jet

01:38:46
engines here. And then next to it will be an electric engine,

01:38:49
they'll use the diesel, the jet fuel to get them up to altitude,

01:38:54
then not close that throw, push that one up, and then they'll

01:38:57
run on their hydrogen or their battery or their solar power for

01:39:01
the cruise and the descent, which will rapidly like what

01:39:03
happened to me with my power session rapidly dropped their

01:39:06
fuel use over the sector. And then of course, then we'll learn

01:39:10
there'll be mistakes, there'll be good things bad things will

01:39:12
get better. So over the next 10 years, we're in for some really

01:39:14
exciting times. Because aviation we love to travel we humans have

01:39:18
always loved to travel. Haven't been ever since we walked out of

01:39:21
Africa, that Great Rift Valley, we've been travelling and

01:39:24
finding ways to do it. And hey, without aeroplanes, Africa

01:39:27
wouldn't have that last great animal migration in the Maasai.

01:39:30
You know, it's the people coming over there with the cameras that

01:39:32
have saved those animals from poachers. So aeroplanes play a

01:39:35
part in so do better and

01:39:39
Matt Waters: as you know, I'm just thinking to that kind of

01:39:43
description with the aircraft taking off on fuel and then

01:39:47
moving over to hydrogen back on the fuel for the London Can you

01:39:50
just imagine the amount of fuel or damage to the environment is

01:39:55
going to be minimised just just because of not having to dump

01:40:00
fuel coming into land. For those for those people who are

01:40:04
listening, that don't know about aircraft, passenger aircraft, if

01:40:08
they're if they've got excess fuel, when they're going to

01:40:10
land, they're effectively going to be heavily weighted on on

01:40:13
London. So it is pretty commonplace for for fuel to be

01:40:17
dumped before coming into land.

01:40:21
Peter Gash: Airlines are pretty good. They do try hard, and

01:40:24
they're trying, you know, with these new sustainable aviation

01:40:26
fuels, because aviation has led us for 110 or more years,

01:40:31
they've led us enormously in development. And so, you know,

01:40:35
Richard Branson, those sort of guys, they're entrepreneurs,

01:40:38
those forward visionary thinkers, they're out there, and

01:40:40
there's lots of them out there trying to make this

01:40:43
breakthrough. And we've played our tiny part and others are

01:40:46
playing it, because that's the other part of my business is our

01:40:48
aviation business that, that we really working hard on finding

01:40:53
ways and supporting whomever we can, in whatever way we can to

01:40:57
come up with a better way. And that becomes the culture in my

01:41:01
whole organisation, all my people, all our people. In our

01:41:04
DNA, we say it's about saving the environment in any way we

01:41:07
can minimising waste. You know, I have this get a bit

01:41:11
passionate, but I'd say waste is the enemy. I learned that when I

01:41:13
was racing motorbikes. I can't waste a second or an hour of

01:41:16
energy or time and waste, you know, we think of waste we think

01:41:19
rubbish. Yep, rubbish is the enemy. But so too, is waste of

01:41:23
resources. And time. And I say this, I'll say this to people

01:41:27
who don't believe in climate change, okay? You don't believe

01:41:30
in climate change? I'm gonna argue with you. Because pretty

01:41:32
hard for me to prove otherwise. So. So why burn coal? When we

01:41:37
don't need to? I'm getting all my power out on the island from

01:41:40
the sun for free. So why not leave the coal in the ground?

01:41:42
Forget the climate change question, just leave it there.

01:41:45
Get your power from the sun for free if you can, because our

01:41:47
kids or their kids in 50s, I might need the coal for

01:41:50
something we haven't even thought of yet. So why waste it?

01:41:53
If we don't need to waste it? No matter what your opinion is? Why

01:41:57
not? I look and go, why wouldn't I do this, that saving money

01:42:01
leaving the coal or the fuel in the ground if I can, and nothing

01:42:06
is going to happen overnight. You know, we were if we were

01:42:10
here, burn and all this coal, fuel gas, we want to be here,

01:42:14
burning nothing. But financially, we've got to get

01:42:17
there. It's a transition. It's a transitionary period. And

01:42:20
whether we like it or not, whether it's five years or 50

01:42:23
years, it's a period and we got to get there. And the quicker we

01:42:25
can do it, the better. But we have to also be financially

01:42:28
sustainable while we're doing it. I say,

01:42:30
Matt Waters: I mean, it's fair to say that we've come up with

01:42:31
an awful long way since the, I mean, I'm just thinking back to

01:42:35
the 70s and 80s, where, you know, we just burn the shit out

01:42:39
of everything. You know, just just 40 years, there's been a

01:42:43
huge benefit to to the earth. So I can only imagine what's gonna

01:42:48
be like event years from now.

01:42:50
Peter Gash: You know, read that lady, the most amazing Lady Jane

01:42:53
Goodall, she talks about the four reasons for hope. And then

01:42:57
if you haven't heard of majesty, amazing, and she's such an

01:43:00
inspirational lady, I had the great fortune of meeting with

01:43:03
her and good friends with the Oakland family. And she came out

01:43:05
and presented at Australia zoo, she talks about an hour just

01:43:10
coming out of my head here. But one of them is, of course, the

01:43:13
brilliance of young people, young people's brilliant minds,

01:43:17
the the ambition of young people looking forward to what they

01:43:21
want to do and be in their life, the resilience, remarkable

01:43:24
resilience of nature, and the brilliance of the human mind.

01:43:28
I'm pretty sure that's the for the brilliance of the human

01:43:30
mind. We've all got one, you've got one, we've all got this

01:43:32
mind, but let's use it let's not sit there fat, dumb and happy.

01:43:36
Let's use it and use it to the best of our ability. And that

01:43:39
lady is an inspiration check. She's thrown a fifth one in and,

01:43:43
and she now says there's a fifth reason for hope. So that's the

01:43:46
power of social media. And when she first said it, I was 100

01:43:50
mile an hour behind it. But I've seen some terrible things

01:43:52
happening on social media in recent times of people running

01:43:55
each other down and I sometimes wonder, but ultimately, she's

01:43:57
right. The power of social media is fantastic. Because it gives

01:44:01
everybody a voice and gives everybody the ability to learn

01:44:03
and hear. It's a lot harder to bullshit to us now. You know,

01:44:07
corrupt governments and corrupt people. It's a lot harder than

01:44:10
bullshit to us. When you've got this amazing tool called social

01:44:13
media you can get out your story and it's been a big advantage

01:44:16
for us on Lady Elliot because we were just a little place didn't

01:44:19
have much money and when we put our social media in and my

01:44:22
daughter's started putting up our just genuine photos of what

01:44:25
people this is what that's normal with today. This is what

01:44:28
Arnie Jenny's not with yesterday people are what is that all go

01:44:32
on there and it cost us nothing to do it. So social media was a

01:44:35
tremendous help for us because only Jenny's in London and she's

01:44:38
just seeing what I'm doing two hours ago and I see that on

01:44:42
social media now gone Wow. How powerful is that? A fair income

01:44:45
photo shown and what we really are not dressed up with all

01:44:49
colour What do you call it? colour matching, you know that

01:44:52
you know what I mean photo shopping and stuff. We you know,

01:44:56
we just show photos as they are ideally warts and all in colour.

01:45:00
In great white sharks, which we see now, and we'll post them,

01:45:02
because we say, these are the animals you'd likely to see

01:45:05
here. And we try not to hide it. There's no secrets. This the

01:45:08
animal was someone's yesterday of soaring of water. And so

01:45:12
Matt Waters: it's got to be done, it's got to the education

01:45:16
that comes from. Well, I'm not massively brilliant when it

01:45:23
comes to reading. In fact, I can quite easily say that I hate

01:45:26
reading, I find it boring. But if you give me an image or a

01:45:30
video, and it's in for interest, then it has my undivided

01:45:35
attention. And as a chap down in Bondi that flies his drone all

01:45:39
the time, and I think the education that's coming out of

01:45:43
him sitting out there with his deck chair, talking about the

01:45:46
water and showing some sharks and so in showing the

01:45:48
interaction of sharks with surfers is just the education

01:45:53
element to it is fantastic. You know, you bring in all these

01:45:57
people who've got that access to information online now, like you

01:46:00
say, social media, they see that. And that fear that we had

01:46:05
in the, in the 80s and 90s. From sharp movies like Jaws, it kind

01:46:09
of gets diluted somewhat, when you see the reality of, of

01:46:14
what's been displayed on social media now.

01:46:18
Peter Gash: Yeah, and that was the power of Steve Oh, and and

01:46:20
I'm really proud to say he and I were good friends and amazing

01:46:23
individual, and he could tell a story, he could get in there and

01:46:25
tell the story and he reached millions of people, millions of

01:46:29
young people, like kids today still tell Steve story and still

01:46:32
and he reached them and made them into wildlife warriors, he

01:46:35
was able to tell us to his son, Robert, amazing young man, he's

01:46:38
doing the same thing. As you're talking about with his camera,

01:46:40
he tells a story with his camera. And I'm gonna go out on

01:46:44
a bit of a limit, I'm gonna tell you what I think about a bit of

01:46:46
a story, the oldest living society, the oldest living

01:46:51
culture on this planet today, unbroken culture is here in

01:46:56
Australia, and it's the Australian Aboriginal, they've

01:46:58
been on this planet for something like 50 years,

01:47:01
maybe even 60 years long time, unbroken, right? They go

01:47:05
and show me their books, they don't have any they don't write,

01:47:08
or they didn't. In those days, they didn't have the written

01:47:10
word, what they had was storytelling. And they carried

01:47:14
their stories so well. And then at work, they would paint

01:47:18
pictures, visual, and storytelling. And this is an

01:47:21
amazing thing, because we Europeans went down this

01:47:25
bureaucratic road of writing. And that worked for some, but

01:47:29
others it didn't work for. And mostly young boys aren't really

01:47:33
big on that stuff. They want to be out there touching and

01:47:35
feeling and telling stories and spinning yarns and drawn

01:47:38
pictures, which is where the Aboriginal people were. So we've

01:47:42
got a lot to learn from our brothers and sisters that have

01:47:44
been here for 50 or 60 years. And I think we slowly are

01:47:47
learning that and I'm proud to think that we are because as

01:47:51
they can learn some things off us, we can learn some things off

01:47:53
them. And that written word did a lot of good for us. But it

01:47:57
created a lot of lawyers and challenges. That was like our

01:48:01
main, you know, how far do we go with this bureaucratic stuff?

01:48:05
You know, so anyway, that's my little bit of a

01:48:08
Matt Waters: we're on a sidebar, I'm more than happy for hearing

01:48:12
and seeing rather than bloody reading, you can shove that

01:48:16
right out the window.

01:48:19
Peter Gash: And I don't mind reading I actually do enjoy

01:48:22
reading in fact, but I can, I'm probably very fortunate like

01:48:26
that, but I can see so many good mates that just don't don't get

01:48:30
it. And I'm a visual, I got to see a picture. Someone will sit

01:48:33
there and start telling me something like, stop, stop,

01:48:35
stop. Get the paper draw me a picture, right? Yep, we're gonna

01:48:38
that's how we're gonna do it. Yep, that's the engineering bit

01:48:41
of my brain. I've got that done. No plans in here and we're off.

01:48:45
You know, drawing that picture. I just had an aeroplane come I

01:48:51
might just come back.

01:48:53
Matt Waters: Right? Well, I'll tell you what, we can sign off

01:48:54
on that note. Yeah, what do you reckon we've been going for

01:48:58
nearly two hours mate.

01:49:00
Peter Gash: By the crikey we have to close by four o'clock.

01:49:04
Mate, you're you're you're a good you're a good interviewer.

01:49:07
You're a good bloke to be doing a podcast I've really enjoyed

01:49:10
this. I hope I've given you

01:49:11
Matt Waters: another two hours easily but my bladder won't let

01:49:13
me

01:49:18
Peter Gash: do what I need to get me some water it's funny.

01:49:24
Just don't do it.

01:49:26
Matt Waters: Well, at least rinse it out afterwards.

01:49:30
Peter Gash: We've gone too far now. We're off the edge.

01:49:33
Matt Waters: Happy days. Right it's been an absolute absolute

01:49:36
pleasure and I'm I'm in awe of what you're doing up there. So

01:49:40
you know I look forward to the day of meet him in person having

01:49:42
a beer and just having a wander around the place and seeing that

01:49:45
we may have an eyes get that picture.

01:49:47
Peter Gash: Thanks, mate. Thanks, Matt. I really am

01:49:49
looking forward to sharing it with you. And I mean, I mean all

01:49:51
of what you do, and and people like you because this is

01:49:55
collaboration. I can't get my message out without guys like

01:49:57
yourself that have gone out there on a limb and bust To

01:50:00
depart and you're getting that story told you sharing these

01:50:03
stories of different people out there all having a go at making

01:50:07
a difference. Great fun for diving. We all love our diving,

01:50:10
but we're going into the natural environment and that's why it's

01:50:13
so thrilling about our diving that's why we love putting a

01:50:15
tank on our back getting down there. Have a look at the fish

01:50:17
face to face feeling it and you will tell on that story, man,

01:50:21
you'll get it out there. For for for Fred and Bill and Joan and

01:50:24
Jack to come and enjoy. It doesn't matter whether it's Lady

01:50:26
Elliot or wherever it might be, you know, it's getting it out.

01:50:30
So thanks for your help. I really enjoy

01:50:31
Matt Waters: it. And yeah, on that note, let's go and empty

01:50:35
our bladders in different toilets. Good on your naked

01:50:39
eyes. Here's Matt and thanks for listening guys. The podcast for

01:50:51
the inquisitive diver

eco-tourism

Peter Gash - Lady Elliot Island