Hello from Nowhere

The Walk For Solar is a 328km, one hundred strong hike to raise support for renewable energy in Port Augusta, a small coal town at the tip of the Spencer Gulf in South Australia. We are walking from Port Augusta to South Australia's capital, Adelaide, over two weeks.

The hike has been compared to Mahatma Ghandi’s Salt March and the Franklin River Dam Protest. I was expecting a pilgrimage in support of a simpler and more beautiful world. I was expecting drum circles and traditional folk songs. The hike has not delivered on my expectations.

To be fair, some qualities have persisted from the environmental activism of old. My hair is tangled and matted, and my fingernails are black. My camping gear is minimalist and our camp-sites are furnished with mismatching fold out chairs and dusty tarpaulins. As a poor environmentalist I still can’t quite distinguish if I have a respectable scepticism of our culture or a pitiful refusal to grow up: The satisfaction of climbing in to my tent each night may be a subtle recognition that this may be the closest I’ll ever come to home ownership.

These similarities are betrayed by some striking differences, though. We’ve traded Bob Dylan’s Tangled up in Blue for hackneyed environmental covers of Call Me Maybe. At each camp-site, in one corner, a handful of people adopt a familiar hunch in front of glowing screens each night. Tangled power-boards criss-cross the tarpaulin to converge on a photo-voltaic panel. The whole walk is being blogged, tweeted, and facebooked, for a real-time audience. We’re not disconnecting from society – we’re more connected than ever. We’ve broken away from the mainstream only to turn around and yell “Look at me!” from the top of our lungs.

As I write you, I am one of these activists. I would not have considered myself amongst them a week ago. This hike has made me realise that there is no group of individuals more plugged in, uploaded, and connected than the modern activist. We’re totally and utterly dependent on the status quo: It’s how we get our message out, and it’s how we’ll get this ambitious campaign off the ground.