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The Sustainable Hour no. 578 | Transcript | Podcast notes
“Meaning doesn’t come from success, recognition or achievements. It emerges as a side effect of something else: Responsibility – to a task, to a person, to a situation that cannot be ignored.”
~ Viktor Frankl (1905–1997), Austrian psychologist, holocaust survivor, and author of ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’
This week on The Sustainable Hour, we step into a different rhythm – one that slows us down, asks us to listen more carefully, and invites us to reflect on what it really means to belong.
The 578th episode of The Sustainable Hour opens with a reflection inspired by Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, a book written in the shadow of war and human collapse. Frankl turns a familiar question upside down. Meaning, he argues, does not come from success or recognition pursued directly. It emerges quietly as a side effect of something else: responsibility. Responsibility to a task. Responsibility to a person. Responsibility to a situation that cannot be ignored.
That idea lands hard against the backdrop of contemporary Australia, where climate breakdown, democratic erosion and social fragmentation are no longer abstract concepts. They are lived realities – visible in bushfires, heatwaves, rallies, violence, arrests and growing unease.
The conversation connects Frankl’s thinking to community-based politics and the growing “Voices of” movement, which begins not with ambition or ideology, but with ordinary people recognising that waiting for someone else to act is no longer an option.
In Geelong, a Voices of Corio is having its inaugural meeting on Saturday 21 February at 10am. If you’d like to join, RSVP via an email.
“The dividing line in humanity is not between ideologies or classes. It runs through every society, every institution, every person: the line between decency and indecency – and whether, when under pressure, we choose responsibility.”
~ Viktor Frankl (1905–1997), Austrian psychologist, holocaust survivor, and author of ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’
. . .
From there, Colin Mockett OAM delivers his Global Outlook with a sobering focus on the United States – from renewed attacks on climate cooperation and clean energy, to rising emissions, weakened environmental protections, and the real-world costs of political denial. A reminder that decency alone is not always enough – sometimes action must follow.
. . .
The second part of the program brings us to Geelong’s Eastern Park, and to something quietly extraordinary. Mik reflects on the opening of Bats & Belonging – a community exhibition at Untethered Gallery that brings together art, science, nature and lived experience. At its heart is Geelong’s colony of grey-headed flying foxes – more than a thousand animals living in Eastern Park, often misunderstood, often feared, yet deeply social, intelligent and vulnerable.
Mik shares the story behind his audio artwork Bats and Being – a 23-minute sound piece blending music, field recordings, spoken word and moments of almost silence. Created during an extreme heatwave, the work responds to the reality that when temperatures rise above what bodies can tolerate, survival itself is at stake – for humans and for bats alike.
Through guided nature walks and close listening, the artwork opens up new ways of relating – not just to bats, but to place, to time, and to each other. As sustainability researcher Dr Belinda Christie explains in the piece, slowing down and paying attention can be a form of care – a way to meet climate anxiety with presence rather than paralysis.
→ More details about Mik’s bat audio artwork and about the art exhibtion here.
Nature meditation walk in March 2026
On Saturday 7 March at 9:00am, we will do a bat meditation walk again. Meet up here.
. . .
The episode closes with couple of gentle but insistent questions. If these bats are our neighbours – our fellow citizens – what does that ask of us? Knowing our time is limited, how will we choose to live? Will we examine whether Viktor Frankl got it right when he stated that responsibility is a requirement for finding meaning in our lives?
And yes – there’s a song too. Batty Tonight plays us out, playful on the surface, serious underneath. A reminder that sometimes, to find our way forward, we may need to be a little batty – and connected.
– A playful folk song that gently invites us to slow down, care, and rediscover belonging – with bats and with each other.
“These bats are part of our city now. They are our neighbours, our fellow citizens. Belonging begins when we recognise our shared vulnerability.”
~ Mik Aidt, Geelong resident, radio – and now also audio art – producer
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We at The Sustainable Hour would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we are broadcasting, the Wadawurrung People. We pay our respects to their elders – past, present, and emerging, and extend that respect to all First Nations people.
The traditional custodians lived in harmony with the land for millennia, nurturing it and thriving in often harsh conditions. Their connection to the land was deeply spiritual and sustainable. This land was invaded and stolen from them. It was never ceded. Today, it is increasingly clear that if we are to survive the climate emergency we face, we must learn from their land management practices and cultural wisdom.
True climate justice cannot be achieved until Australia’s First Nations people receive the justice they deserve. When we speak about the future, we must include respect for those yet to be born, the generations to come. As the old saying reminds us: “We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.” It is deeply unfair that decisions to ignore the climate emergency are being made by those who won’t live to face the worst impacts, leaving future generations to bear the burden of their inaction.
“The Indigenous worldview has been marginalised for generations because it was seen as antiquated and unscientific and its ethics of respect for Mother Earth were in conflict with the industrial worldview. But now, in this time of climate change and massive loss of biodiversity, we understand that the Indigenous worldview is neither unscientific nor antiquated, but is, in fact, a source of wisdom that we urgently need.”
~ Robin Wall Kimmerer, weallcanada.org
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The Exhibition Bats & Belonging runs from Thursday 5 February to Saturday 21 February 2026.
Opening hours: Thursday 11am–6pm; Friday & Saturday 11am–4pm.
Location: Untether Gallery, in the arcade across from Market Square, 5/132 Little Malop Street, Geelong.
→ More information on www.untethergallery.com.au
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Voices of Corio inaugural meeting on 21 February at 10am in Geelong
→ More information on www.voicesofcorio.org
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CLIMATE EMERGENCY BRIEFING
Impacts, risks and key actions in the age of climate-obstructive authoritarianism
Authoritarianism is undermining climate action – and time is running out as warming accelerates and tipping points draw near. But as globalisation fades, national governments must assert their role in leading a climate emergency response.
Climate-hostile authoritarianism is stalking nations and global institutions, often allied with climate scepticism and denial. But as the globalisation cargo cult wanes, space opens up for nations to take greater control over their future and pursue higher-ambition, climate-focused mitigation, trade and security alliances.
Global heating is accelerating, with the past three years averaging above 1.5°C, driven by a reduction in sulfate aerosol emissions due to clean-air policies, and a related cloud feedback. The Earth’s climate could be more sensitive to greenhouse gases than the central estimates, and warming is currently tracking the highest-emissions scenario. This would bring 2°C well before 2050 and 3°C around 2070. On this path, 4°C by 2100 is feasible.
Many extreme events and their impacts have been underestimated in climate models. Risks include climate-driven inflation and big economic shocks, and mass displacement and death.
We are in the danger zone where multiple climate tipping points are being triggered, some of which accelerate warming and worsen impacts. Thus there is a point of no return, after which it may be impossible to stabilise the climate close to conditions in which human society can be maintained. This risk is now, and requires immediate action to avoid it.
The nature and the proximity of catastrophic impacts, tipping points and abrupt and cascading changes constitute the climate emergency. This requires governments to make actions to prevent climate breakdown the first priority of economics and politics.
Key climate emergency actions for safe climate conditions:
- Moving rapidly on material quick wins, including reducing methane and other short-lived climate forcers, and halting deforestation;
- Supercharging the transition with policies to activate positive economic tipping points, driving investment and jobs, and accelerating the rate of emissions reductions;
- Working with nature, protecting and restoring natural carbon sinks at scale; and
- Applying emergency brakes by researching/deploying technological solutions to rapidly reduce the energy imbalance and mitigate the risk of climate tipping points.
David Spratt, Research Director, Breakthrough
→ Pearls and Irritations – 9 February 2026:
Authoritarianism is undermining climate action – and time is running out
“The global rise of authoritarianism is weakening climate governance just as warming accelerates and tipping points draw near. This failure now poses a direct threat to our future.”
→ The Guardian – 5 February 2026:
Flawed economic models mean climate crisis could crash global economy, experts warn
“States and financial bodies using modelling that ignores shocks from extreme weather and climate tipping points.”
→ Yale – 28 January 2026:
Overshoot: The World Is Hitting Point of No Return on Climate
“With warming set to pass the critical 1.5-degree limit, scientists are warning that the world is on course to trigger tipping points that would lead to cascading consequences — from the melting of ice sheets to the death of the Amazon rainforest — that could not be reversed.” By Fred Pearce
→ Gregory Andrews – 8 February 2026:
If Epstein is Trending, Why Isn’t +1.7°C?
“We have to hold multiple truths at once: unfolding human atrocities, and something deeper accelerating quietly in the background – the rapid destabilisation of Earth’s climate system, the life-support system on which we all depend.”
→ Journal of Australian Political Economy – January 2026:
The rocky road to net zero: Conflict and contestation in creating a gas-free Victoria (PDF, 25 pages)
“How the Victorian State is intricately involved in fossil gas.” By Jim Crosthwaite, Elke Pirgmaier and Kate Bayliss
The climate emergency is accelerating, not evaporating
Much as conventional politics globally would wish it otherwise, the climate emergency is accelerating, driven by the short-termism those same politicians and business leaders revel in. Climate denial, notably driven by crass Trumpism, fossil fuel addiction by petro-states, including Australia, war-mongering and genocide, are contributing to make climate impacts far worse than expected even a few years ago.
Authoritarianism is gaining traction in previously democratic societies, most of which is not conducive to climate action. On the other hand, long-established authoritarian States with longer-term perspectives, such as China, are playing an absolutely vital role in solving the global climate challenge.
As the Western charade of the self-serving “rules-based international order” breaks up, new opportunities arise for nation-states to take the genuine emergency action which is now required for them to deliver their first priority, namely the real human security of their people – as David Spratt explains in Breakthrough’s latest update of it’s Climate Emergency Briefings.
For climate change, along with nuclear war, is and will remain, the greatest threat facing humanity. That requires decisive action now, which has been notably absent in Australia, in common with most Western countries.
~ Ian Dunlop
New Swedish court case on climate
A group of young climate activists has launched a high-stakes legal challenge against the Swedish government, arguing that the nation’s current climate targets are not only deeply inadequate but also in breach of international law and human rights obligations.
Filed on Friday by the youth-led organisation Aurora, the lawsuit argues that Sweden is failing to do its “fair share” to limit global warming to 1.5°C – a threshold climate science says is critical to avoiding the worst impacts of the climate crisis. Aurora says Sweden’s target of reaching net-zero emissions by 2045 is at least 15 years too late, given the country’s wealth and historical responsibility for emissions.
At the heart of the case is the gap between Sweden’s stated goals and what climate science and emerging legal standards now consider necessary. The activists argue that current policies leave out major sources of emissions and ignore the responsibility of high-emitting countries to decarbonise faster than the global average in order to ensure a just and safe future.
“Those who pollute the most have a duty to pull their weight in the global effort to fight climate change,” said Aurora spokesperson Ida Edling. “We still have a chance to get out of planetary crises and build a safe and just world, but only if rich and high-emitting states like Sweden stop breaking the law and start rapidly transforming their societies. We cannot let the state burn our chance.”
This is Aurora’s second attempt to sue the state. In February 2025, Sweden’s Supreme Court dismissed an earlier lawsuit brought by hundreds of young Swedes on procedural grounds. Since then, activists point to recent international court rulings that clarify governments’ legal obligations to protect people from the harms of climate breakdown – strengthening the case for judicial intervention.
The lawsuit asks the Stockholm District Court to recognise that Sweden must cut emissions much faster, including emissions linked to consumption and sectors currently excluded from national climate plans. The case reflects a growing global wave of climate litigation, as citizens increasingly turn to courts to hold governments accountable for inaction that threatens lives, rights and future generations.
→ Read more on www.thelocal.se
UK government predicts ecosystem collapse and wars
“The UK government predicts ecosystem collapse and wars over scarce resources within official national security assessments. This is a psychological emergency as much as a geopolitical one.
If ecosystems are collapsing, then the stories that underpin economic growth, national resilience, and political competence begin to unravel. The government’s attempt to hide the information reinforces the fantasy that collapse is something to be managed by experts behind closed doors, rather than a shared reality that requires collective adaptation.
The gap between what is known and what is emotionally metabolised generates a form of collective dissociation. People sense that something is wrong, but lack coherent narratives, relational spaces, and psychological support to stay present with the scale of what is being named.
Under conditions of perceived threat, people default to survival responses. When activated at scale, and left unrecognised, they become profoundly dangerous.
Scarcity does not only reduce material options; it narrows imagination, erodes empathy, and amplifies us-and-them thinking. Without conscious psychological support, populations under stress are more easily mobilised by authoritarian narratives, more vulnerable to disinformation, and less able to tolerate complexity, uncertainty, or shared sacrifice. In this sense, ecosystem collapse does not only threaten food systems and borders, but the conditions required for democracy, solidarity, and collective restraint.
What is striking, and deeply concerning, is how little investment is being made in this dimension of adaptation. Governments model future conflicts, migration flows, and supply-chain disruptions in exquisite detail, yet allocate almost no resources to helping people develop the emotional and relational capacities needed to live through these realities without turning on one another.
This is neither inevitable nor acceptable. People can be resourced to recognise their own reactivity, to stay present rather than collapse into panic or dominance, and to respond from something other than their most threatened survival instincts. But this does not happen by accident, and it does not happen through information alone. It requires deliberate, collective investment in psychological literacy, emotional regulation, grief integration, and relational trust.
Without this, even the most sophisticated security strategies risk accelerating the very conflicts they are designed to prevent.”
~ Steffi Bednarek, Director, Centre for Climate Psychology
The UK government’s National Security Assessment on Global Biodiversity Loss, Ecosystem Collapse and National Security was published in January 2026 by the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra). It assesses how degradation and collapse of key global ecosystems could affect UK national security, including food and water security, supply chains, geopolitical stability, migration and conflict. It identifies critical ecosystems (like the Amazon, Congo and boreal forests, Himalayan water systems, coral reefs and mangroves) and warns that if degradation continues, impacts could cascade into wider economic and social disruption, with heightened competition over scarce resources. The assessment uses intelligence frameworks and expert judgement to articulate these “reasonable worst case” risks.
→ Here’s the official published report
→ The Guardian – 21 January 2026:
Biodiversity collapse threatens UK security, intelligence chiefs warn
“Ecosystem destruction will increase food shortages, disorder and mass migration, with effects already being felt.”
→ The Guardian – 28 January 2026:
The UK government didn’t want you to see this report on ecosystem collapse. I’m not surprised
“It took a Freedom Of Information Request to bring this national security assessment to light. For ‘doomsayers’ like us, it is the ultimate vindication.” By George Monbiot
EPA to ax landmark climate finding Thursday The polluted Donald Trump regime plans to repeal the landmark 2009 legal finding that climate change poses a threat to the public this week, Trump mouthpiece Karoline Leavitt blared Tuesday.
— context776.bsky.social (@context776.bsky.social) February 11, 2026 at 11:30 AM
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Transcript of The Sustainable Hour no. 578
Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary General:
Cooperation over chaos. We are all this together.
Jingle:
The Sustainable Hour. For a green, clean, sustainable Geelong: The Sustainable Hour.
Quote from Robin Wall Kimmerer, weallcanada.org:
The indigenous worldview has been marginalised for generations because it was seen as antiquated and unscientific and its ethics of respect for Mother Earth were in conflict with the industrial worldview. But now, in this time of climate change and massive loss of biodiversity, we understand that the Indigenous worldview is neither unscientific nor antiquated, but is in fact a source of wisdom that we urgently need.
Tony Gleeson:
Welcome to the Sustainable Hour. We’d to acknowledge that we’re broadcasting from the land of the Wadawurrung people. We pay tribute to their elders – past, present and those that earn that great honour in the future. We’re broadcasting on stolen land, land that was never ceded. We also acknowledge the incredible depth of ancient wisdom that they have accumulated by nurturing their land and their community for millennia before their land was stolen.
Mik Aidt: (01:34)
A friend of mine showed me an old book and told me this book means a lot to me. It’s called ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ and it was written in 1946 in the shadow of the concentration camps and the second world war by psychiatrist Viktor Frankl from Vienna. And it’s not a political book but yet when reading it now it feels very relevant to this moment we’re living in, both politically, culturally and morally.
Viktor Frankl turns the question of meaning upside down. Instead of asking, ‘What do I want from life?’ He says we should ask: ‘What is life asking of me?’
Meaning, he argues, doesn’t come from success, happiness, recognition, or any achievement that you pursue directly. Those things, yes, may come, or they may not, but they are always secondary. Meaning emerges as a side effect of something else. And what’s that something else? Responsibility.
Responsibility either to a task or to a person. Responsibility to a situation that cannot be ignored.
Responsibility. How absent this value responsibility has become in contemporary Australian politics.
We hear endless talk of leadership and growth, opportunity, aspiration, innovation, but responsibility? Real and honest responsibility? Understood as answering the moment we’re in? Yet this is precisely what our time demands.
ABC News reader: (03:23)
Homes and farm buildings have been lost and Jellybrand residents have been left without power and without drinking water as fires continue to burn in Victoria’s southwest. The blaze has now covered 11,000 hectares in the otways and many locals are yet to return home. The emergency warning remains in place. The fire is expected to burn for weeks.
ABC News reader:
The scorching start to the year has seen temperature records tumble across three states and is one of the most significant heat events since records started. Experts are warning what was once a rare phenomenon is quickly becoming the new normal.
Mik:
Climate breakdown is not, as we can hear in the news every day, is not an abstract policy issue any longer. In the same way that the erosion of our democracy is no longer just a theoretical concern that people discuss in universities. No, again, it’s on our TV screens. Social fragmentation. These are problems that we are confronted with. This is why Viktor Frankl resonates with community-based politics and with this Australian invention, the Voices of Movement, the community independence movement.
Because ‘Voices of’-politics is not about winning for the sake of winning. It’s not driven by ideology or ambition of personal advancement. No, it begins somewhere quieter and yet much more ambitious. It begins when people in a community recognise that there’s something wrong and waiting for someone else to fix it is like you’re in a house, it’s getting filled with smoke and all we do is we sit and we wait for the fire brigade to arrive. No! What the voices of movement recognises is responsibility.
Frankel insists that the dividing line in humanity is not between different groups or classes or even ideologies. It’s between decency and indecency.
And he says that line runs through every society, every institution, even every person. Decency and indecency.
That’s an insight I think matters in a political culture as we have here in Australia. Community independent politics asks whether decency is still possible under pressure and whether people are willing to choose it. Taking responsibility. And acting accordingly.
If success follows, it will do so because we stopped aiming at it and focused instead on what needed to be done.
As Winston Churchill famously quoted, it’s not enough that we do our best. Sometimes we must do what is required. And that’s the deeper shift our politics is waiting for – where we begin to acknowledge the reality of the climate crisis, the carbon emissions crisis, and act responsibly by doing what is required.
And if that resonates with you and if you live in Geelong, you might be happy to know that there is now a Voices of Corio group being established. There’s an inaugural meeting on the 21st of February, Saturday the 21st, at 10 am in Geelong.
Following the success of the Voices of Corangamite group, which is now well established, there will now be a Voices of Corio group just as well for people who want stronger, local representation in the Corio electorate. Voices of Corio. You can find out more about that by simply going to www.VoicesofCorio.org. There’s a website there and a newsletter and also an email address where you can RSVP if you would like to join the meeting on the 21st of February.
Now for a bigger horizon, let’s hear what’s been happening out there in the world. Colin Mockett, OAM. You have been scanning the news telegrams. What do you have for us today?
Colin Mockett’s Global Outlook:
Yeah, thank you, Mik. That was very reflective. I enjoyed that. I have to say that it’s my opinion that our Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, is a decent man, but he’s misguided. He’s aware of the difficulties or he’s aware of the climate crisis, and yet he still allows us to do things like opening up new gas fields and the dragging the feet attitude that starts with the fossil fuel companies. So decency isn’t always everything. Sometimes you need people who are zealots in a field and I claim you as that. I would like to have somebody with your commitment as the member for the environment or somebody who is in charge of jeeing up our government, which is incredibly slow. But look, that’s not what I’m here to talk about now. I’m here to talk a roundabout on the world stage.
And it begins and continues in the US. It begins with an announcement from President Donald Trump that he would withdraw the United States from more than 60 international organisations and treaties, including the framework agreement for addressing climate change that his own party, the Republicans, helped to craft 33 years ago. Trump is even seeking to remove the United States from the process of assessing climate science, although it’s not clear that he has any power to block the 50 US scientists who are all from non-governmental institutions who currently do this. Opposing this, climate action advocates across America pledged that state and local governments would remain committed to reducing greenhouse gas pollution.
But the Trump administration is also engaged in a series of legal campaigns to stop that from happening. This week, they filed a suit against two Californian cities that have adopted ordinance to restrict national gas infrastructure and applicants in new construction. Leaving the reactions to Trump’s moves to exit the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Lauren McLean, who is mayor of Boyce in Idaho, and she’s the incoming chair of the US Mayor’s Assembly. That’s a powerful lobby group in the US. She said, ‘The American people will pay the price for this short-sighted decision that turns back the clock on more than three decades of US climate leadership. Families and communities across our country are already seeing the devastation of climate change,’ she said.
‘We see it in wildfires and floods wiping out forests and towns. We see it in farmers struggling with smaller yields. We see it in warmer winters followed by summer droughts. If the withdrawal goes through, the United States will stand alone as the only country in the world that is not part of the UNFCCC, we would be walking away from our seat at the table as decision makers on how trillions of dollars can be invested in solutions that create meaningful differences in people’s lives.’
So, still in the US, a new article claims that Trump’s policies have thrown the US electric vehicle industry into chaos, leaving car manufacturers facing massive write downs. Now here’s a quote from Bill Sant’Parito in New York Times on the news that Trump’s policies have cost the Detroit motor industry more than 25 billion US dollars. It’s a critical part of every chief executive’s job to anticipate the future, he said.
Failing to recognise and adapt to change can be the difference between thriving or disappearing. But it’s pretty difficult to future-proof your company against stupid. This is exactly what the American automobile industry is facing as a result of Donald Trump’s gratuitous war against electric vehicles.
And all this is against the background that America’s greenhouse gas emissions increased by 2.4 per cent in 2025. That’s after two years of decline. Now this happened because of a resurgence of coal power. The reversal wasn’t actually due to Trump’s attacks on climate rules. That impact is still yet to come.
The big difference in 2025 was the increased demand from data centers and colder winter temperatures in the US. Now, still in the US, for decades the US EPA has calculated the health benefits of reducing air pollution. It uses the cost estimates of avoiding asthma attacks and premature deaths to justify its clean air rules, but not anymore. Under Trump, the US EPA will now stop tallying the gains from the health benefits caused by curbing the most deadly air pollutants when regulating industry. According to internal emails and documents reviewed by the New York Times, it’s a seismic shift that runs counter to the EPA’s mission statement, and that’s to protect human health and the environment. That’s according to the report’s authors.
Now, incidentally, this is my very first ever world roundup that has only ever covered one country. But it happens that this week the three most dreadful articles all came from the US. So I’ll finish with the results from the UK and the world’s greenest sports team, Forest Green Rovers.
This is just for Tony. Sorry to say this, Tony, but the men’s team lost to York City 2-1. That drops them down to sixth in the table where the top three are promoted. Meanwhile, Forest Green Rover’s women’s beat Bishop Lyddiard’s ladies 5-1. Now that places them still joint top of the English South West region, Women’s Football League.
And that rare piece of good news this week finishes my roundup.
Jingle:
Listen to The Sustainable Hour – for the future
Mik:
Something quite extraordinary and really unusual in Geelong happened this Saturday, Saturday afternoon, and I was lucky to be part of it. It was the opening of an exhibition which combines not just art, but also science, nature, and talking about belonging in Geelong. ‘Bats and Belonging’ is the title of this exhibition. It runs at the Untethered Gallery in the centre of town in this little arcade that runs sort of between Market Square and up to Ryrie Street.
And it was amazing. I thought it was really amazing. Not only the art pieces on the walls and the fact that I sort of for the first time had a debut here in Geelong as an artist, contributing with an audio artwork, but also because of the people who came, wonderful people and some great conversation happening in that room. I think there must have been somewhere between 70-80 people in this tiny room, quite packed. The atmosphere there was extraordinary. There was that sort of excitement around that art can be so much more when it’s something that connects us, something that has to do with the reality around us. In this case, the flying foxes who live in the park, in Eastern Park, they have a colony there, a thousand bats live there.
And to some of us, this had been a longer journey because it started already in November when we went on a nature walk, about 30 people, were artists and scientists walking out to the bats on a rainy day and listening to these experts explain about the bats and learning in that way at the same time as being there and feeling and getting a closer relationship with the bats here in Geelong. that was really, I think, something to recommend.
If you have time, this exhibition runs the next two weeks. It ends on the 21st of February, and the gallery is open every day from 11 to 6, from 11am to 6pm, at the Untether Gallery.
Colin: (17:49)
Look, I have an inside knowledge of the Untether Gallery, believe it or not, Mik. First of all, I have to say that the little arcade that you talk about, if you want to find it, start with a place that everybody knows, and that’s Village Cinemas. Directly opposite to Village Cinemas in Ryrie Street is the entrance to what used to be known as the Centre Point Arcade, and if you walk in it that way then the very last place on the right hand side is the Untether Gallery. And the reason I know that is because it used to be the newsroom where I used to work with I think eight or nine people. And you got 80, you squeezed 80 people in there?! I’m quite surprised.
And I’m also… Look, one of the things that I wrote about in my time when I was writing for the Geelong News and the Echo, which were both newspapers that were centered there in that newsroom. I have to say that I worked on them in the 1990s when they were 40 pages twice a week, sometimes 60 pages twice a week and that doesn’t include page after page after page of Harvey Norman ads. But I was a general reporter there and I remember reporting when the bats first arrived in Geelong. They had been frightened out of Melbourne.
The Melbourne Botanic Gardens didn’t like them because they said that they were shredding their trees. And so they made loud noises every morning when the bats were returning from going looking for fruit everywhere. And they did their best to harass them out of the Melbourne Botanic Gardens and we accepted them with great pleasure because the scientists in what was then called the Animal Health Laboratory, it’s now called the Australian Virology Centre, something like that, they wanted to work on bats.
So I’m absolutely delighted that this exhibition is on. I’m not at all surprised that you were part of it with an audio artwork. But for the sake of our listeners, Mik, could you tell us just what an ‘audio artwork’ is?
Mik:
Good question! I think it is giving, like in my case, a musician and a journalist the freedom to mix what is normally defined as art, which is, for instance, music, with natural recordings of, for instance, the sound of the bats, but also with people speaking. For instance, in my art piece, I blended in a beautiful talk that Dr Belinda Christie from Deakin University gave when she was introducing us to this sort of meditation nature walk we did to go over to the bats.
And that’s of course not artwork, that’s documentary, you would say. But I could take freedom to tell a story as if I was an artist. When an artist is throwing paint up, it doesn’t necessarily have to just be paint.
You can also take a photograph and tear it little bit apart or do something. Art is a free space and a place where you can also express, for instance, worries, anxiety and other kinds of feelings. And in my case, that’s exactly what I tried to do with this art piece.
Excerpt from ‘Bats and Being’ – Dr Belinda Christie, Deakin University: (21:50)
I’m Belinda, I’m a lecturer in sustainability at Deakin and one of the things that we’ve been doing recently is looking into research on the use of mindfulness practice as a way to connect with nature, as a way to connect with other beings and also as a way to take care of our own worries about the planet and climate anxiety.
And what we thought we’d start with today would be a walking meditation as we walk up to the Bat colony. And hopefully it’ll be a lovely way for you to just calm down off your week, to take some of the busyness away from you. But it’s also a really great way to notice what the environment’s like, to hear the sounds, to also be quiet as we approach the bat colony too. So the plan is is that we’ll start here and we’re going to walk silently so make sure your phones are off and not buzzing at you and you’re not going to disturb yourself or the bats. We’re going to walk silently up towards the bat colony. We’re going to walk at a pace that is a little bit slower than normal and it might feel a bit weird if you’re used to rushing.
Walking slowly can feel a little bit odd. Yeah. That feeling of, I need to go quicker. If you notice that coming up, just go, that’s interesting. It’s okay, you can slow down. Walking meditation is a practice that is in almost every religious, spiritual, and indigenous tradition across the planet. So it’s something that has been used for millennia by humans to really pay attention and connect with ourselves and with nature. And the way we walk is you’ll just walk, you normally do but just slightly slower. As you step you might like to draw your attention to how it feels to walk on the ground. So as you bring your heel to the earth how does that feel as you move your feet? does that feel?
You might notice little undulations in the ground. It’ll feel different walking on a path as it does walking on the grass. As we walk with that spirit, we’re remembering that we are walking on, but within country. We are walking as nature, not separate from her.
Colin:
Yeah, it’s… I’ve seen what’s known as performance art, which is quite bizarre sometimes. But you’re best known in Geelong for radio and writing and climate communication, but this exhibition marks your debut here as an audio artist. How did you arrive at sound as the art form that you chose? And why did you do it now?
Mik:
Well, as you know, Colin, last year was quite a special year for me, but also for the sustainable hour in the sense that, you know, I’ve been, you know, for more than a decade campaigning for climate action through radio and writing and, and, know, also meetings, speaking in public and so on. And when we entered 2025, I made this conscious decision, like a new year’s resolution that this year, I’m going to take music more seriously as another way of communicating about climate and sustainability. So I set myself this sort of slightly mad challenge to be creating a song every week, a new song every week. And I succeeded after 2025 ran out. We had 52 songs all produced with the inspiration from the Sustainable Hours guests, because I took the interviews that we had done and then turned them into poetry, you could say, to lyrics for songs and created these sort of different interpretations of what they had been telling us. So I think this year gave me something that was profound. The experience of when you move away from facts and figures and trying to persuade people with words and instead you work with sound, you work with emotion, rhythm, art.
And people suddenly receive messages differently. I would say more openly. Because sound and art has a way of sort of bypassing the usual way that we stand and have our opinions and argue. And instead it opens up, we can touch something that is more attentive. So when I saw this call out that there was going to be a sort of a community exhibition called ‘Bats & Belonging’ where everyone could come with an art piece and see if it would be admitted. That clicked something inside me. You know, I felt that’s something I just have to do. It fits perfectly with this path I’ve been on, creating music, using art as a way of communicating and as a way of creating relationships and being vulnerable rather than being like an instructor.
Colin:
Does your sound sculpture actually include a song or songs about bats?
Mik:
It is not a song, but I have put a very simple piece of music there for a reason. And that is to create that sort of atmosphere of something that is peaceful, something that is circular, and something that goes on, not just for years and years, but for millions of years, because the history of bats actually goes back millions of years, much longer than humanity.
And I wanted the music to be giving that sort of tranquility, you could say. So when you hear the sound of the bats and that music in the background, it makes you relax and think, this is something that is stable. This is something that goes on and on and on. And then in the art piece, something happens.
Excerpt from ‘Bats and Being’
Mik:
I had decided I was going to come with an artwork, contribution to this exhibition. But what should it be about? Should it just be this sort of nice thing where you hear the bat and then maybe a bit of documentary where you hear an expert talk about the bats? Would that be it? But then just before I was about to submit this piece, and I hadn’t done it yet, it was like two days before deadline, a heat wave hit Geelong. It was 41°C degrees.
And that’s the moment when I realised, okay, this is the topic. You know, I live close to the park where these bats live. And I’m used to seeing them flying over my garden at dusk time. But here, when the heat set in, I knew that these bats were in trouble because they can’t transpire. know, they can’t cope with, when it gets more than 40°C degrees, we know it as human beings as well: We have a body heat of 37 degrees. If it gets higher than that and you stay in more than 40 degrees for a longer time, it’s lethal. You can die from it and the bats do.
Colin:
They are trying to sleep at the top of a tree.
Mik:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And they’re very exposed to the sun as well. So on that particular hot day, I really felt the stress that comes from knowing that there are people and in this case animals dying. So that became the story for my piece. And it was very real. It was really felt. sat there, know, sweat was, of sweat were falling. You know, I had taken my shirt off, just sitting there in that heat, working with the computer, trying to get this artwork, this audio work to become a piece.
You do know there’s an Australian expression which describes people as bat crazy, don’t you? When did you first notice the bats then? I mean, I do know that you live close to Eastern Park, but you haven’t lived there very long. When did you first notice Geelong’s particular clan of bats?
Mik: (31:29)
I think I have seen them and sort of just taken them for granted in a way for a long time. I’ve lived in East Geelong for about five years. It’s like that, isn’t it? When you live near, for instance, a river, there’s certain kinds of birds that you get used to. If you live near the sea, you get used to the sound of the seagulls and so on. So I was kind of used to them as part of the picture. There’s so many of them. It’s not just a few. They come in hundreds and they fly quite low. So when you’re sitting in your garden at dosh time, you really sense their presence.
Colin:
It’s not infrequent for me to walk in my garden and hear what sounds like somebody shaking a leather jacket. And that’s, I’ve startled one of the bats who’s helping themselves to some of our figs or apricot or no. Yeah, figs is something that mostly they come for. They are actually gray headed flying foxes. And as such, they frighten many people.
I know that because I show the colony of bats to tourists in buses that come from elsewhere. And I try very hard to dispel the fear that people have of bats. I think it’s probably out of Hollywood, but how do you find other people react to when you’re talking bats?
Mik:
Well, I think you’re right, you know, we associate bats with something scary. Also, we see the bats, you know, in scary films about vampires and, you know, something dark and it’s about death and so on. But I think what really changed my impression of our bats, the flying foxes here in Geelong, was this guided nature walk that was organised. It was a collaboration from universities, Deakin University, from science, from even Council and this artist group that was behind getting this exhibition up and running. They all came together and organised this nature walk. And I think we would have been 20, 25 people maybe on a rainy day who gathered in the morning and did this walk where we were listening first to some people speaking, then to nature, then to the bats.
Dr Belinda Christie:
As you walk you might pay attention to the feeling of your feet on the earth. You could also pay attention to your breath. You might notice it takes you three, maybe four steps to complete the now breath. That’s another thing you could choose to play with noticing. One more option which I’ll give you is of course just relax and walk. Notice the trees, the colors, the lights, the shadows, the rain, the smells, the sounds.
Natural sounds, human made sounds. We’re just walking with a sense of awareness. And by the time we reach the top, if you have walked with that sense of awareness, even for a second, you have practiced walking meditation. Meditation means to be aware with compassion. So that’s all we’re doing today, being aware with compassion. Compassion for each other, compassion for the bats, and all other beings that are here too.
So we’ll walk as we say as a river so we won’t have one person vaulting up ahead and we’re not gonna leave anyone behind. One way of doing that really easily is just to match the pace of the footsteps of the person in front of you. We will walk silently.
As we arrive, we’ll invite you to sit on the picnic blankets or stand if you like, if that’s better for you. And we’re just gonna stay silent and just look towards the bats. And be with the bats for a few minutes, just notice without talking. Just really pay attention to the bats.
So we will start by inviting the sound of the bell and we do this as a way just to bring ourselves back to the present moment. We listen to the full sound of the bell. listen to the invitation of the bell. You hear it quite loudly and then it will sink down into nothingness. We listen to that full sound three times.
Mik: (37:51)
We walked very slowly without talking for about a kilometer – or half a kilometre – from the car park where we met and then up to the roosting site where all these bats are hanging upside down in a small number of trees like in a colony.
And I kept my phone recording as we were walking and when we approached the bats. So in that way it would become a way of sharing the experience that we had for people who couldn’t be there at that time. And that’s also why the piece is slow, because that’s how our nature walk was. It was slow. You’ll hear a car passing in the distance, there’s other birds and insects. There were lots of mosquitoes there, very present on that day. And you can hear some raindrops on my umbrella. And my intention with blending all these different things, the music, the sound, the walk, is to create a sort of a different state of mind. By the time we reached the bats, we were really in a different state of mind. We had slowed down, our ears were open, and we were listening. We were being with the bats.
What I learned from the experts talking there was, for instance, some incredible things like the fact that each mother bat has a very distinct call for her baby. And they actually recognise, you know, they have a language. Each small baby has a name that is different from all the other bats, which is a big discovery there. They have discovered that by using modern technology, including AI, that the bats are speaking to one another in a language that’s very specific and relational. And that to me was, wow! that reminds me of something… because they are called flying foxes here in Australia, but in Danish, if you translate directly what we call them in Danish, we call them ‘flying dogs’. And that reminded me of my own dog. You know, I have a dog and we share that sort of non-verbal communication. I can hear the difference between a bark that means, ‘Okay, I’m happy, I want to go to the park’, or a bark that says, ‘There’s somebody coming, be aware!’, and so on. I can understand the language of my dog, and the dog certainly understands my language. And by the way, my dog speaks Danish, even though he lives in Australia.
Colin:
You know how many bats are Defligge-males, aren’t they? They’re all over the world. Now, many animals communicate with each other, but are you saying that bats have got a more precise way of communicating than, say, dolphins?
Mik: (41:27)
I wouldn’t compare and I don’t have enough knowledge to answer that question. I think what we’re learning is that there’s a lot more going on out there in nature, both between bats, also, you know, other animals than we have thought. And that’s, I think, what we need to recognise. Because that moves them away from, you know, being part of horror films and associated with death and darkness to that these are actually gentle social beings who care for one another.
Colin:
I have a good friend who’s a virologist and he worked for many years at the animal health laboratory and I know for a fact that during that time they were studying bats because for some reason bats are immune from the virus that causes. Just like we humans do. …What’s the thing that everybody gets when they go to a hospital? The thing that everybody watches out for, the virus that beats all antibiotics. It’s multiple staf. That’s the thing that everybody suffers from in hospitals. And it’s a virus that defeats all antibiotics. Apparently bats are immune to it. And that’s where they were trying to isolate why bats are immune from multiple staf. I’m not sure, I haven’t caught up with the research lately, but I’m sure it’s still going on. Or, no, it’s not been fixed, otherwise we’d know it would be in the media. But that’s where research is going, and it’s going on our group of Geelong bats, our own little tribe of bats. How is your audio artwork different to the normal nature audio programs?
Mik:
There’s a lot of recordings, nature recordings out there that are about, you know, that people listen to them to calm down, to relax, maybe at night to fall asleep and so on. And this piece here is not meant to be like that. You will not fall asleep or you will be woken up because I’m not trying to please the listener. I’m trying to tell a story. And in this case, it’s the story about heat – and heat that kills. So I tried actually to find an expression for that, that feeling. How do you feel when you are in that moment of not being able to breathe, know, or feeling that the heat is getting too much. So my ambition with the piece was to invite to some reflection maybe, some conversation about and compassion for the bats. So that’s how it differs from other nature audio.
Colin:
Right, and look, you said that it lasts for 23 minutes, that’s a long time to ask for a listener. Who exactly have you aimed it at? And the title of the exhibition, ‘Bats & Belongings’, where does the belonging part apply to your artwork?
Mik: (45:11)
Yeah, sure. 23 minutes is a long time in a way, if it was a pop song. But hey, this is not pop! This is audio art. And listening doesn’t have to mean that you have to sit there still and listen. No, can be doing things while you listen. And if you are in transport, if you’re driving or if you’re walking or sitting in a bus or a train, well, 23 minutes is not a long time. So I think my hope is that if you listen to these 23 minutes, maybe something unexpected would happen to you. There would be a shift in your attention. Maybe there would be an afterthought or some curiosity about these bats or of course about the exhibition that makes you interested in going to see the exhibition or a thought about this place, Geelong, where we live, where we have these bats as our neighbors.
And I think that’s the word ‘belonging’ is beautiful. It comes in right there because it comes from our connection with the bats, but also with each other and with the place that we live, with the weather, the heat waves, and you could say the living systems around us. Because these bats are not just visitors here, even though you told us that they came actually quite recently to Geelong. But they are part of our city now. And I sense that in a very real sense that they are our fellow citizens. And I think, and that’s the beauty of this Bats & Belonging project. It’s given me a deep, warm sense about Geelong as a place where I feel I belong more here after I have sort of discovered this relationship. Recognising that these amazing animals live here as our neighbors and, you know, just standing there quietly near them, not talking with them, not sharing a language, but sharing the presence is something that I really treasure now.
I go there with my dog and we just stand there and we listen.
And you know, Colin, this is why I called the piece ‘Bats and Being’. To me that’s about being, it’s about vulnerability, both theirs, but also ours. We all get a limited time on this planet. So I think the question is how we choose to live while we are here. Whether we act with care, with decency and responsibility towards the life around us – or not? And that to me is what belonging really means.
Colin: (48:27)
Now, you’re not the only person there exhibiting at the Batch and Belongings exhibition. I’ll still call it the Centrepoint Arcade. How long is it going for and have you any idea how many artists are exhibiting their works?
Mik: (48:56)
There’s more than 60 artists exhibiting. So yeah, it’s quite impressive. the variety and the diversity there is amazing. It’s really amazing. It’s surprising. And a lot of these artworks are being sold. I noticed that there was quite a few that had a price, but then they would also have a little sticker that said, ‘Sold’.
So that’s, I think, interesting because I think part of that money when people buy an artwork there goes to support the survival of the bats because the bats are in trouble. There’s some real problems for their survival. And there’s some very good people who also spoke at this exhibition who are helping, trying to help the bats so that they can continue existing there for centuries and many, many, hopefully millions of years ahead as they have a long, long history. Can I just say, Colin, that I have put out some articles and the in-depth stories of what these grey-headed flying foxes are all about at the climatsafety.info website. if you go to the website www.climatsafety.info, you will find information there not just about our podcast and about climate, but also now about bats.
Colin:
Good. Look, after the two weeks are up, and that doesn’t last very long, will your 23-minute art work, oral artwork, be available online for people outside of Geelong to access?
Mik:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Actually on the day when the exhibition opened, I also opened up that you can find it on the www.climatesafety.info website. So you simply have to look for, if you go by pictures, you can look for a picture of a bat. Click on that and then you’ll be able to listen to the audio artwork from there.
Jingle
Mik: (50:59)
Thank you! That was a special hour dedicated to our neighbors, our fellow citizens, the bats!
Colin:
And you can go batty over bats. I do love them, I like them too. I mean, they’re such an unusual thing. I don’t even know what species they’re part of. They look like mice or rodents, but they’re not. They sleep upside down. Yeah, perhaps I need to look more into them. They’re quite an amazing animal. How many of them are there again, Mik?
Mik: (51:39)
There’s more than a thousand. Be connected.
Colin: (51:44)
Yeah, and be a little batty at times.
SONG
‘Batty Tonight’ – mp3 audio
Verse 1:
At dusk they rise from park’s pine trees
Leather wings in the evening breeze
I slow my steps, I soften my voice
Follow the wings of a flying fox
Chorus:
I’m gonna be a little batty tonight
I’m gonna turn your questions upside down
I’m gonna be a little batty, that’s right!
I’m gonna be and belong – in Geelong
Verse 2:
One thousand hearts beating fast
Fellow citizens, facing the heat
We don’t speak with words
but we share that we care and belong
Chorus:
I’m gonna be a little batty tonight
I’m gonna turn your questions upside down
I’m gonna be a little batty, that’s right!
I’m gonna be and belong – in Geelong
Bridge:
None of us own the sky
We don’t own even this ground
but I can still choose how I will live
just as long as I’m still around
Meaning doesn’t knock on the front door
It slips in at the back when we care
about a task, or a person
Responsibility comes quietly
Chorus:
I’m gonna be a little batty tonight
I’m gonna turn your questions upside down
I’m gonna be a little batty, that’s right!
I’m gonna sing we belong in this town of Geelong
Voice recording:
Adam Cardilini:
It’s about what does our relationships with those others that we live with in our cities tell us about care, connection and responsibility.
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