Wide Open Road

I want to jam the Overton window wide open. This is my David Livingstone moment. I’m searching for the source of something better than settling for an enshitifying world. Is there one out there?

Canning Stock Route: Image: Diamantina Tour Company 2025

I have just finished stoking up the fire on the Canning Stock Route. It’s crisp and frosty this morning. My breath’s vapour trail is being cinematically backlit by the rising sun. And even at this low angle its power is promising another warm day in the desert. I strategically place the cast iron frying pan on the coals. The olive oil heat shimmers almost instantly. I quickly shift the pan towards the edge of the fire and slide 500 grams of thickly cut bacon in. Perfect. The bacon rashers flinch slightly and sizzle immediately, releasing an aroma that is one of my life-long addictions and guilty pleasures.

It was bacon butty time this morning and I was going to pile the bacon so high it would fall out the sides of my artisanal, lightly toasted, sourdough bread. A perfect flat-white coffee from the baby Bezzera espresso machine was also imminent. Smile, wide. Emotion, happy. Glass, full. Belinda was right, heaven is definitely a place on earth.

Then I woke up. Damn, it was just a dream. It felt so incredibly real. I promised myself there and then, it would be. The fuse to my 2026 challenge and my future had been lit.

Leonard Cohen once said, “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in. Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash. I’ve always been attracted to the gap between what people think is going on and what’s really going on.” As an aside, Bob Dylan thought Leonard Cohen was a genius and so do I.

I’ll start by trying to measure my life’s ash. Yep, Houston, I think I’ve got a problem, my life isn’t burning as well as I hoped it would. It’s not turning out quite like I dreamed it might or planned it would….should…could! And that is partly down to the gap between what people think is going on and what’s really going on. By that I mean people around me mostly think and act like everything is pretty much normal, whereas I can’t stop hearing five-fire alarm bells.

I feel like I’ve been imbued with too much empathy, because I genuinely feel others pain, particularly the pain of the underdog, those on struggle street, and the battlers. I have an inbuilt sense of fair play. It used to be a deeply held, and widely dispersed Australian and New Zealand belief. It was a core value. Alas, those egalitarian days of looking after one another are long gone. In stark contrast, the Neoliberal world we’re all trying to survive in today, champions an operating system that encourages individualism and competition. Success is defined by balance sheet prowess and demonstrated with endless, meaningless, consumerism.

My ability to successfully enjoy living in this world is fraying at the seams, because I am a person who thinks deeply. Too deeply it appears. I am an observer of people and watching what’s going on in our world is driving me to activism…and never in my wildest dreams did I think that would happen. Of course, I have to balance diving into that bottomless pit of futility by extracting as much joy out of life as I can. Creative-life-balance, we’re here once, and all that.

To my way of thinking, it has also become beyond blindingly obvious that our planetary transgressions are destroying our biosphere, which is made up of the parts of Earth where life exists. Where we exist. The biosphere extends from the deepest root systems of trees, to the dark environment of ocean trenches, to lush rainforests and high mountaintops. Why would we even think about damaging the systems that sustain our own survival?

Of course, there are many answers offered to that question, and it is a theme that will reoccur many times throughout my future narratives, because the uncertainly it creates is hazing over the lens I use to look at the future.

Creating, developing, and implementing ideas in a societal, financial,economic,and natural landscape that is enshitifying at every level - at light speed - is becoming more challenging than ever before. This combined with my life-long aversion to being a), told what to do and b), acting like a sheep has to a degree entrenched my life’s trajectory and worldview. From the very beginning of my life my parents encouraged me to think for myself (so I do), to ask questions (so I do), and to stand my ground (so I do).

Unfortunately, independent thought comes at a cost in a society that rewards conformity and intellectual mediocrity, but hey, you make your bed, and you lie in it. I’m not making excuses here, but Leonard is right, if your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash. But what if the poetry isn’t there to turn into ash, and what do you do if the light isn’t getting through the cracks? My frontal cortex is consumed with trying to understand why the human race is so lazer-focused on wiping itself out.

Let me just throw up a balancing disclaimer here. This narrative may not be promoting me in this way so far, but I am inherently an optimist, and I deeply believe there is hope, I genuinely believe that…but…it comes with a very big caveat. And that is we-the-people need to start seriously holding some of these great pretenders to account. Eh, another rabbit hole, moving on…

I’m just going to come straight out and say this. New Zealand is not the country I once knew and neither is my home country of Australia, and I could name many others that are largely unrecognisable from the nations they were just a short time ago. I mean pick a country. The UK, USA, France, Germany, Italy. Liberal democracies are falling apart. It’s a gigantic, global, real-time display of metastasising Enshitification. And I don’t write this for effect or impact or for sensationalism. I write it because it’s true. The facts are the facts.

The complexities behind ‘the why’ are being, have been, and will be discussed in perpetuity. Meanwhile, politicians who could-should-would take remedial action, cogitate and obfuscate. After a self-interested political examination of any situation ‘they’ engage ‘PR’ in performative spin. It’s something weak-minded individuals have been doing since Adam was a boy.

In fact, that saying is so old it was probably translated from Aramaic. In other words, humans don’t appear to learn. Rather, they proactively repeat their mistakes over and over again. And unfortunately for all of us, that includes some very bad bastards repeating some of our most dangerous and dire mistakes, such as starting wars and killing one another.

“When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.” Edmund Burke (1770).

Many of today’s politicians could be in the running for an Academy Award, given their poetic license, histrionics, and artistic interpretation of events. I just call it what it is, spin, bullshit, po-tay-to, po-tah-to and my god, I wish we could call the whole thing off. Watching highly paid politicians (puppets) apply the wishes of their donors while societal bulkheads are being ripped apart from their collision with capital, is beyond heartbreaking. And whilst history might not repeat exactly, it certainly rhymes.

The Robber Barons of the Gilded Age are back and this time it isn’t oil and railroads, it’s BIG tech and fossil fuel giants. Their playbook is remarkably similar though. These companies and their founders engage in monopolistic and predatory practices, apply immense lobbying to gain governmental influence, and exploit workers while accumulating immense wealth and power concentration. Oh, and they have an appetite for the protective embrace of fascism no matter how unfaithful a mistress she might ultimately prove to be.

Into this maelstrom of endless disappointment my life heads on its current trajectory of subliminal servitude to a political design I have absolutely no time for whatsoever. Democracy is hanging by a thread. Inequality soars. And the rich get richer while the poor get poorer. Me, I’m caught in the middle somewhere. I think I used to be middle-class, but that is now debatable. Sadly, none of this is imaginary. It’s happening in real time all over the world.

Something in the universe has fractured and snapped taking out humanity, which now appears to be optional in many jurisdictions. In my view, whilst the preconditions for unrest have been around for decades, the catalyst and ignition source was the global pandemic. In the new abnormal and immiserated universe, capital reigns supreme, and it’s killing us. In response, my anger is incandescent. That doesn’t mean I walk around yelling and screaming at the moon.

What it means is: I’m awake. I can see reality. I’m fully aware and engaged. My bullshit radar has been dyno-tested and fine-tuned. My Ampullae of Lorenzini can detect political blood in the water from infinity. My personal challenge is to create an alternative universe, to innovate a system off-ramp or face being slowly turned into one of the millions of faceless, mindless, consuming automatons being ‘consumption mined’ from cradle-to-grave.

I will admit though, engineering a portal to escape through is very tricky and requires a degree of ‘crazy’. You’re not going to find an offramp if you’re umbilically connected to the status quo. And I would also argue the alternative to my way of thinking - normality - might prove to be even crazier.

Diversity in nature is normal, so why do we humans invest so much of our time and effort into homogenising and commoditising everything? Yeah…that would be capitalism, which wants you controlalble, the same, anaesthetised. Another rabbit hole, another story. Next time.

“We all live deeply inside a billionaire-operated communications system where every little and big thing that ever happens is part of an ongoing struggle to shape what we think and how we act and most of the time we don’t realise the extent to which we are being played.” Tim Dunlop

If the politicians leading us had been able to elude Neoliberal capture - looking at you Anthony Albanese and you too Christopher Luxon - political discourse would be centred on the betterment of society, responding proactively to climate change, and championing the protection of our environment and ecological systems. The air we breathe and the water we drink would be sacrosanct. Hunger would have been banished. Housing would be plentiful, and human rights would be revered and respected. The world’s leaders with few exceptions demonstrate none of these traits consistently.

There are pockets of hope, but they remain isolated, under-funded or repressed. Worse, many of the leaders responsible for the stewardship of our societies are deeply embedded in the politically, and often commercially, lucrative throes of selling out constituents in favour of donors and vested interests. Exhibit 1: United States Congress fails to restrain Trump. Exhibit 2: United Nations fails to prevent genocide in Gaza. Exhibit 3: Europe fails to restrain Russia. And so on.

Result: Bombs continue to rain down on Gaza. America now has stormtroopers. Pensioners supporting Palestinian rights in the UK are dragged away from their protesting by Police. New Zealand gets poorer. Australia gets divided. Europe prepares for war. Yes, a kinetic war, take that in. Russia gets bolshy. China’s navy expands at breakneck speed.

In short, a very big mess is being made, and it’s one with global bandwidth. Clear and present danger has entered into an osmotic process flowing from 80 years of post war prosperity and security into a situation where stability is being eroded rapidly. And just like the failing cooling system in a nuclear reactor, dangerous consequences are not a matter of if, but when.

Freedom in a system built for consumption and driven by capitalism is illusory. In stark contrast, consumerism (it’s forever mutating virus) has subliminally provided humans with the means to ensnare themselves in life-long anaesthesia, punctuated by sugar hits of retail therapy and delusions of progress. System servitude was always the goal and tools like Neoliberalism were created to fuel individualism and competition. These formed the outer guardrails of society and its rules were grafted onto each individual’s psyche from birth.

Higgs writes, “The notion of human beings as consumers first took shape before World War One, but became commonplace in America in the 1920s. Consumption is now frequently seen as our principal role in the world.”

Steve Jobs once said, “Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

The irony right, it actually hurts. Steve Jobs was in so many ways at the heart of consumerism, yet this short narrative provides a framework for becoming a crazy one. The story that follows is my plan for joining the ranks of the crazy and leaving the embrace of the captured. Will I change the world? Doubt it. Will I make people think? Only you can answer that but I promise you this. I will give it one hell of a try.

Ok then, here I go. My thinking is dedicated to a simple idea: fusing photography and writing to craft stories about people, planet, and places. A sort of hybridised photojournalism combined with deep narrative, and a big-hearted embrace of culture, nature, and diversity. Why? Because it can help inform and inspire all of us about destinations and sustainable ways of life.

It can contribute - in a small way - to shaping how we choose to respond to challenges and it can help bring us together. One thing I love about photography is humanity shines through an image like golden hour light, and in the speed of a shutter movement, the playing field is levelled. A still image studied reflectively can take the viewer on one hell of a journey and it can make you think like nothing else can. And getting people thinking is a start.

What will I call this idea, this pursuit, this escape module of mine? I’m going to call it Forward Scout. Those two words capture the very essence of what I’m setting out to do. I want to venture well beyond the safety of the conservative status quo and explore. I want to learn and share with my community what else is on offer. I want to jam the Overton window wide open. This is my David Livingstone moment. I’m searching for the source of something better than settling for an enshitifying world. Is there a fresh option out there?

I want to see and experience life closer to nature, further from concrete, and closer to humanity. And closer to who we really are anthropologically, focusing on our origins, development, cultures, societies, and behaviour across time and space. Why are we the way we are? Why do we do the things we do? How can we make things better? Clearly, I’m not a billionaire Tech Bro with fascist regime support, so I’ll start by taking images and writing stories. Simple, doable, plausible, possible. And I’ll gain purpose, meaning, and enjoyment from doing what I love.

Deep down, most of us know in our hearts, that the world as we know it cannot continue as it is. For one thing, there are simply not enough natural resources left. The current resource burn rate already exceeds finite limits. Humanity is using up nature 1.7 times faster than the planet’s biocapacity can regenerate. That means a couple of things. One, we humans are incredibly stupid. Two, we need 1.7 Earths. Clearly, we’ve only got one. The math ain’t mathin’.

A planet that is failing to regenerate must in theory be in decline. At least the liveable, breathable, ecological component of our planet that is. The rock hurtling through space at 1600 kph doesn’t give it a shit. It’s a rock. Humans on the other hand, are literally accelerating their own demise, spurred on by politicians, billionaires, and malfeasant actors that can’t see beyond their next toilet break.

And their collegiate ignorance of planetary boundaries has baked-in an ecological disaster that Godzilla would be proud of. Remember, Godzilla was originally conceived as a metaphor for nuclear weapons and what can I say, the human race is on track to go kinetic and paint the sky with fire. Shout out to Hades, get ready, incoming.

Ok, calm down now Jimmy boy, calm the f..k down, big breath in…and out….and in…and slooooowly out. Eat, pray, love. I will be mindful - sound of meditation - Right, I’m back. From my small single human perspective such thoughts are daunting. Simplistically, current disdain for the environment and our ecological systems means we’re all losing spectacular flora and fauna. My aim is to capture as much of our incredible world as I can before human ignorance and greed consign our natural world and its treasures to actual history.

I won’t digress and list endless examples of endangered species, please just do your own research, but be warned, it’s incredibly sad and very depressing. Imagine sitting opposite the last orangutan. What would you say? How would you feel? Would you say sorry? These beautiful animals have been passengers with us from the very beginning, and they’ve done everything they could do to stay in their lane. What a horrible ride we’ve given them.

So, what are the stories that matter out there? Where do I go to find them? Great questions if I say so myself, particularly when you’re the last of the baby boomers who has been locked into consumerism for his entire life. Now, don’t get me wrong here. I’ve had an incredibly fortunate life.

Denzil Washington refers to my stage of life as the last chapter. I’m an Aussie brought up playing Australian rules football, so I’ll go with the last quarter. And my inspiration is taken straight from Dylan Thomas who wrote, “Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” That to me means I’ve got time, but I’m burning daylight.

That also brings me to 2026, which has begun as a complete shit show just eight days in. This week the US begun the week by illegally invading Venezuela, and threatening to invade Cuba, Mexico, Greenland, and Canada. It is rounding out the week by executing one of its own citizens on American soil in broad daylight. Of course, there is Iran and Israel, Nigeria and Burkina Faso, political turmoil everywhere, growing populism, posturing politicians. Australians are having their Christmas holidays alongside record floods, record temperatures and catastrophic fire warnings.

Some areas of Victoria are already burning out of control. Meanwhile, genocide continues, the climate warms, ice melts, oceans acidify, crops fail, forests die. And it sucks to be a polar bear. I will write much, much, more on all of this, it is a rich vein for both photography and storytelling. As I said previously, I am incredibly, incandescently angry, but let’s leave that there for now. I’ll have a stiff drink and reframe my thoughts around some half cohesive context.

“The Prime Minister has caved to the fossil fuel industry, setting a target that puts the interests of big coal and gas over the safety of communities throughout Australia and the Pacific.” Greenpeace.

Now, back to it. If I’m going to rage, rage, against the dying of the light, things have to change, and things have to get real. At the same time, I can’t just live in the future. This then is my story, anchored to the present. The imagining of how this journey might play out started in my head years ago, but for the sake of our collective sanity, let’s call 2026 the beginning of the beginning.

Like Leonard Cohan, I too in my humble way, have always been attracted to trying to understand the gap between what people think is going on and what is really going on. In that gap lies hard core truths and opportunities to explore and learn. Thinking this way also creates a window of opportunity to question the system. And frankly, embracing a nomadic lifestyle with purpose beats hanging around in my final quarter watching feckless politicians fail miserably, feigning progress when really, they’re just failing at managing economic decline. They can’t even maintain the status quo. And yes, that is what I really think.

If you want to follow along with my escape from Alcatraz mission this is the place. I will be featuring in-depth exploration, expeditions, and an exposé of that gap between what people think is going on and reality. Stick with me as I explore the wide open road through a wide open lens in partnership with my conscience and my amazing partner. Of course, I’ll be compelled to write about what I really see and there won’t be any fluff or spin, just pure, AI free narrative and images showcasing real stories about real people and the real world we live in. And there you have it, my clear and present objective for an alternative future. And my eyes grew heavy….

…sliding back into my dream I turned the key, the 20 year old classic Cayenne’s starter motor gears rotated, the twin high pressure fuel pumps pressurised 98 octane, the ignition coils went live, and 8 cylinders started controlled explosions. The engine quickly settled into its Germanic rhythm. Precise, mechanical, old school. With the fire now doused and my t-shirt scented with mulga wood smoke, I set off to conquer the 1850 kilometre Canning Stock Route. There would be 900 sand dunes to cross and 51 wells to mark my progress. The history here was deep, the imagery unique. It was a story tellers dream (literally) and the road was wide open.

Ends.