Richard Kendall pic, from HERE
Vincent Hayes spends his summers fighting Japanese whalers aboard the Sea Shepherd
When you’re manning ships in 12-metre seas, crossing the Antarctic Ocean, and preventing the slaughter of the world’s most majestic creatures, the mundane world of supermarket shopping and retirement planning seems almost surreal.
For Williamstown violin maker Vincent Hayes, 60, working as second officer aboard a Sea Shepherd vessel makes him question everyday priorities. “When you come back and see people throwing plastic on the ground, it just makes no sense,” he says.
“Back home people haven’t got their priorities right about pollution. It separates you a little bit watching people demanding resources from places that can’t be sustained. Things like that start to get you down when you come back initially, but you can’t start lecturing people.”
Hayes, who has been involved in conservation for 35 years, says he wishes he didn’t have to spend his summers travelling on the high seas. “But it has to be done, because the idea of a ship killing 100 whales is unacceptable. You have no choice, you have to be there.”
Hayes says his partner doesn’t worry too much about him at sea during harpooning season. “We’re concerned about each other all the time, and she’s probably quietly concerned, but she could die in a car crash tomorrow,” he says. “You don’t possess somebody; you love somebody and their spirit. I have a partner who realises you’ve got to do things, and you’ll die if you don’t.”
After spending so long fighting to save whales, Hayes finds ordinary concerns petty. “You think about the more important things. I have no time for trivial game playing or people who snivel,” he says.
“I avoid people who talk about finances. I’ve got friends I grew up with who talk about superannuation. I say, ‘Your coffin is going to have to be big to fit all of those gold bullions. Mine’s going to be filled with memories’.”
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Benjamin Morrison-Jack and James Weight are the first and only people to kiteboard across Bass Strait
While most people are safely snuggled in bed at 5am on a Sunday, these best mates are travelling around Victoria trying to find the biggest waves, the roughest conditions and the most treacherous surf. In 2009, they became the first people to kiteboard across Bass Strait, from Cape Grim in Tasmania to Apollo Bay in Victoria, sparking a flurry of media attention.
The duo first met as students at Brighton Grammar. When they aren’t setting world records, they live far more ordinary lives – Morrison-Jack works as a yoga retreat co-ordinator and Weight is a property developer for Woolworths.
After the ordeal, the pair became mini-celebrities, whisked away for media interviews almost as soon as they hit shore in Victoria. The phones ran hot. They met their surfing heroes and sponsors went wild with the attention.
But eventually, regular, everyday life set in. “The main thing people kept saying was, ‘What are you doing next?’. Each week we’d go to find something fun to challenge ourselves, but it was hard to put together something of that scale,” Weight says.
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Jan Smith is a grandmother who climbed Mount Everest
Jan Smith, 67, is not the kind of grandma you’ll see baking cookies or cooing over babies. This high-achieving clinical psychologist from Albert Park, with a PhD in children’s stress resilience, has already climbed Mount Everest twice (she made her first attempt, age 65, in 2010). Now she’s planning a third ascent in April.
She has been climbing mountains for six years since discovering her natural aptitude for withstanding altitude. Last May, a storm prevented her from reaching Everest’s summit, on the same day a Japanese man died attempting to do so.
She’s hoping nothing will prevent her reaching the top, this time. “If you [climb the] summit, it’s the biggest high.”
While Smith is planning her next ascent, her family have varying levels of comfort about her mountaineering. “My children’s father died suddenly two years ago from leukaemia and I think they’re aware I’m their only surviving parent,” she says. “The third child – it really worries her. She tries to interest me in other environmental projects, and it’s fine, I can do those as well, but, well …”
In contrast, Smith’s husband, former Democrat candidate Fred Carter, never entertains fears about his wife’s safety. “My husband has been my strongest supporter the whole time. He never doubts it,” she says. “Yes, we’ve talked about funerals. I find all the climbers who go for 8000-metre peaks, into the death zone, have tended to their wills and had those discussions.”
She says the death of the Japanese adventurer on Everest last year caused her to stop and think about the importance of her family and her own life. “It’s the highest I’ve been and slept in the death zone. I had an epiphany then about what really mattered.”
And if she does reach the world’s highest peak in April, she’s uncertain about her next challenge. “Nothing beats the summit. I don’t know what to step down to.”
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Simon Moyle is a Baptist minister who visited Afghanistan in the name of peace
Coburg minister Simon Moyle practises what he preaches. Rather than sermonising within the safety of his Melbourne parish, the 34-year-old spends his days trying to embody Jesus’ message of love and peace.
Last year he visited war-torn Afghanistan on the invitation of the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers, a group of young people actively trying to promote anti-violence in their homeland, the world’s most militarised region.
Moyle is well-known in Melbourne for acts of civil disobedience in the name of anti-violence …
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Read the rest of Amber Wilson’s story in the Melbourne Weekly, HERE
