Just Going Too Slow

Splashalot Blacklock thinks Doug and I are slow kayakers because "we are just used to going slow," which is at once, both hysterically funny and almost true. Now we aren't super slow; I can cruise at around 6 or 7 km/hour in reasonable conditions with a loaded boat over a full days paddle, but, compared to Splashalot who probably cruises at about 8 or 9 km/hour in the same conditions I am slow.

Splashalot speeding up on a wave

And, there is some truth to getting used to going slow which is why runners include tempo runs in their training even when they are mostly base building. But there is also death by threshold and no-one can go out hard all the time, every time. The #leaveitalloutthere hashtag is simply nonsense.

Eking out one last run at sunset

Speed at many, if not most, outdoor sports often comes down to efficiency. Simply speeding up transition points - switching leads on multi-pitch climbs, taking skins off and buckling boots for the ski down, efficient navigation and route-setting, all these things can shave hours off a day if you are a faffer. And by Dog there are a lot of faffers.

Swinging leads in the Valhallas

I am working on my paddle efficiency by trying to improve each stroke. Theoretically, at least Splashalot supports this contention, a better stroke will make a faster paddler. We'll see. On my 21 km cruise around the Bay area yesterday, I peaked at 10.2 km, but my average speed was only 6.3 km, which is clearly too slow.

Be Remarkable

Two of my younger relatives have started a new business. In many ways, it is a tough time to start a new business, particularly one which sells a highly discretionary service such as theirs. Astute political observers know that despite all the talk by the Federal LootNPillage Party currently in power, Australia has been in a per capita recession for years, and now, since the onset of the Covid pandemic and it's associated public health closures to business and borders, Australia is in a real recession too. Without the massive stimulus payments undoubtedly the recession would be a depression.

My young relatives however, are buoyantly confident, although whether or not that translates into business success is impossible to know. In truth, they are buoyantly confident about everything they do and think, a condition that to my jaded 57 year old eyes is somewhat of an anathema.

I often wonder whether such pervasive self-assurance is a characteristic of the Millennial generation where trophies for participation were commonplace, or whether this unfaltering self confidence is a character trait. Of course, it could be both, or one caused by the other. As with all things human nature, we will never know.

Very sporadically I send them emails, usually something I think is funny, like this video about Stravassholes, which is funny to everyone who is not a Stravasshole, but strangely not funny to my young relatives. Perhaps they are Stravassholes, although given they do not mountain bike, that is unlikely. I don't really know, because, they never reply to my emails and the possible reasons for that are too myriad to enumerate.

Well known marketing and business guru Seth Godin writes that to be a success in the modern and crowded market place, businesses need to be remarkable. Remarkable as in stunning, different, audacious, worthy of remark not by the business owner but by the public. Being remarkable is even more important in enterprises where the entry bar is low, because the marketplace is even more crowded with average.

I am not sure being remarkable is a thing that can be taught. Being remarkable requires such divergent thinking that by definition it will escape most people. I suspect being remarkable is much like many other sliding scale things in life, hard to describe but we know it when we see it.

One year update: "just not feeling it."

The Sunday Paddles Must Go On

It is spring, and with spring, and a La Nina, comes unsettled weather. Even in Australia, spring is unsettled: sunny and warm one day, rainy, windy and cold the next. The Sunday Paddles, however, must go on. Last Sunday, I was thinking it was time for an easier paddle as the number of attendees had been falling consistently until one Sunday, I was the only paddler.

But the weather was not conducive to getting out the fair weather crowd - a southerly flow with wind and rain. If we were going to get wet paddling - and kayaking is a wet sport - we may as well get really wet and go surfing, do some rolls and possibly even practice some rescues.

To my surprise, there was more than just Doug, Nick and I as Mark, or Talkalot as we have now come to call him, also turned up. We left from Sunshine Bay and paddled south. The big boys surfed at the appropriately named Surf Beach while I surfed on smaller waves at nearby Wimbie Beach. Conditions were actually pretty perfect with decent spilling waves. Most of us did a few rolls and I hauled out my short and long tows and, after much fuss, towed first Doug and then Nick, and, as Nick said "a few things need work."

The following Sunday, we had plans to run a "boat control" workshop but another wet weekend with a strong southerly flow and rain put a definite damper on that idea. Instead, Nick suggested a rousing paddle into the wind and so off we went again. Doug and I had been hoping that someone else might turn up because when it is just the three of us, Nick lets loose on all pistons and we paddle flat out until Doug and I pass out.

And so it was. A dash down the coast for 10 kilometres into the wind, but really not that bad, except for the pace. Pausing at Pretty Point I was a bit dismayed to hear Nick say "well, now that you are well warmed up we can pick up the speed." Yikes. Doug struggled on the way back. He was going too slow to pick up any runners which Nick and I were catching so we got way ahead. If you can't get going fast enough to get on the runners, the kayak just wallows in the troughs and it is slow and heavy work indeed. Plus it is hard to watch your partners speeding away.

By the time we got within three kilometres of our launch spot, I was too fatigued to put on enough speed to catch any waves either, so I just focused on the forward stroke drills Nick had given us last time. Within one kilometre of the beach, my brain shut down completely and I just wanted the effort over. So much for recovery week.

Mount Talaterang

I've got a bit of a thing about the Budawangs, as you can easily see if you peruse this blog. All up, I have done 12 trips into the area since 2012. That probably does not sound like many, but, most of the years between 2012 and 2018 I was living in a small caravan and travelling far from the area. Now that I live within a couple of hours drive, I am able to indulge my fascination with the region, and, as a mostly ex-peak-bagger, I am ineluctably drawn to the summits of the flat topped pagoda mesas that are separated by scrubby, deep canyons and steep sided creeks.

On the far eastern side of the Budawangs, is an elevated plateau that overlooks the heart of the Budawang Range and has probably the best views with the least effort of any spot in the region. Views are not in short supply in the Budawangs, but generally the effort level is much, much higher.

It is an easy stroll on a good track out to the Mount Bushwalker lookout, and the big vistas start within a kilometre and a half of leaving the car park as the track passes close by the northern end of the escarpment and views over the Clyde River gorge and the Tianjara Range open up.

We, however, were heading for Mount Talaterang, the highest point on the big mesa that lies between Pigeon House Creek and the Clyde River. Among the serious bushwalking crowd, it is a reasonably popular destination and, at times, a faint foot pad has been visible along the forested ridge line. Little of that remains now as the area has been closed since the 2020 bushfires and only recently opened up again. Travel, however, is easy, at least by Budawang standards, as the bushfires burnt out much of the notoriously thick Budawang scrub.

Near the end of the Bushwalker track, a large series of cairns on a rock slab mark the start of the footpad to Gadara Point. Even if you are not going all the way to Mount Talaterang, this is well worth a stroll as the track mostly sidles along the cliff edge with fantastic views. People who know their Budawang topology will be easily able to identify Folly Point, the peaks clustered around Monolith Valley, Pigeon House, The Castle and Byangee Mountain, as well as Hollands Gorge and the peaks further north in the range.

At Gadara Point, a narrow pass leads down to the wooded ridge that joins Gadara Point and Mount Talaterang. A little scrambling is involved but most competent bushwalkers will manage without any kind of hand-line. The 600 metre prominence on the ridge leading to Pallin Pass has a vague track skirting it on the west side, that emerges at the next saddle.

Pallin Pass is found just to the east side of the first sharp escarpment encountered as you walk uphill towards Mount Talaterang. This provides easy access to the remainder of the ridge walk to the second set of cliffs guarding the summit plateau. There is a 30 metre descent before you begin the final walk up to the summit plateau and at this point the way may be starting to feel long, but the top is only one kilometre away.

At the second and final set of cliffs, we had a vague footpad leading around the west side for a couple of hundred metres until we came upon a large cairn and an easy scramble up blocks to take the final steps to the top. The 779 metre high point is hidden, as is usual for these peaks, in dense scrub, but we made sure we touched that spot before retreating perhaps 10 metres to a large summit cairn and logbook for a late lunch.

This is perhaps my favourite Budawang day trip to date. Unlike The Castle and Byangee Mountain - similar day trips - this one feels somewhat more remote than trips in via Kalianna Ridge out of Long Gully. There are plenty of opportunities to make this an overnight trip but finding water, unless you go soon after rain, could be challenging.

A selection of previous Budawang trips can be seen here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

Flat Top Mountain and Castle Hill

This is a good quick trip from the Meangora access to the Budawangs. Start by riding your mountain bike about 6 kilometres up the Alum Fire Trail. There are good views to the south and the forest is very pretty.

Stash your bicycle near Flat Top Mountain (the little peak at GR370023) and walk uphill until you reach the cliffs surrounding the summit. Head south until you find a pass you fancy. We scrambled up a wide pass that required a few careful moves near the top, but there looked to be an easier narrower pass further towards the south. Enjoy the very flat topped summit!

After descending your chosen access gully, walk downhill to the west until you reach around the 700 metre contour or the saddle between Flat Top Mountain and the two little bumps to the west (this is the same place essentially). Easily, walk generally south and cross the headwaters of Running Creek, probably dry, and then hike uphill to the base of the cliffs on Castle Hill. A broad and easy pass is found on the northwest side. The top can be scrubby but you should find views on the sandstone slabs around the edges.

Return the way you came, jump on your bike and ride downhill (only one uphill) out to the parking area.

Good Enough

Sleek modern round design with matt black finish enhances enigmatic mystery. Barelli.

If you can tell me what that not-quite-a-sentence means, I salute you.  

This morning we paddled from our home beach up to North Head Beach. This is a great little run for us if a northeasterly wind is forecast. If we want to train paddling into the wind we leave after the wind comes up and paddle across to North Head and then up the Murramarang Coast. When it is time to come home, we get a quick and fun downwind run.

Previous to getting some tips from Nick, I could not catch runners without my sail up. Various people had tried to explain how to catch runners, but they all did this with their sails up and no-one seemed able to explain the concepts and technique in clear enough terms for me to grasp the skill and catch runners without cheating and using a sail. Most people told me to paddle hard as I felt the boat lift up which is actually way too late, and, after observing other people, I noted that many other paddlers were actually going too slow to catch runners anyway.

With summer coming on, it is time to get back into kayak training and, most particularly, I need to get back into the habit of improving my skill set. It is a common pattern with humans, whose default position is to minimise both mental and physical energy output, to get good enough at your chosen sport and then cruise along there without really becoming an expert. I am as guilty as anyone at settling for good enough, particularly as I always have so many sports I am trying to improve at.

There is a reward however, for continuing to push your skill set. In rock climbing, there are just so many more routes you can climb if you can push your grades up even a little bit. Similarly, in ocean kayaking, you can really start to have fun in more challenging conditions rather than just enduring, or, as many folk do, not going out at all.

The run home from North Head was fun. I am not sure how long it took us, but my tracking program clocked my top speed at 13 km, which is almost twice my normal paddle speed. Still, way under the speed fitter, more skilled ocean kayakers would hit on a downwind run, but about a doubling of my usual pace.

Junk Reps and Junk Miles

In deference to spring, I have been taking a half litre of water with me on my long runs these days. That probably does not seem much; and the over-prepared crowd who think you need the ten essentials every time you set foot in the woods would be horrified that I run up to 20 kilometres with half a litre of water, no food, and not having eaten since the night before. But, it works, and at least I know I have metabolic flexibility and am not a carbo crashing junkie.

Today my run did not go quite as planned but was, nevertheless, successful. What I often do is pick a spot on the map with some fire trails and just start running. Often times, I find some hidden single track, or a pretty creek, maybe some interesting boulders. It does not matter much to me if I am out alone in the woods.

But, this morning I kept running into signs that said "Danger, Shooting." That is actually pretty unequivocal, so every time I encountered one of these signs I turned back. Mostly, I found myself going up and down steep, loose, deeply eroded tracks under a power-line in the broiling sun. Not exactly what I was planning.

"This is good," I thought. For functional single leg strength training I am not sure there is much to beat going up steep hills, unless it is going up steep hills with a heavy pack on. The sun was good too. Summer is coming on, so training in the sun is good, because it is time to adapt to hotter weather.

So, I was thinking that some of the time, when training, doing more stuff that is harder is good, but not all the time. There are "junk reps," just as there are "junk miles." Coaches and athletes alike all too often focus on getting tired and sweaty and calling that a good workout than having a planned approach that improves performance. If you want to see a coach whose workouts are great for getting tired and sweaty but are really poor for skill or even strength development, go here.

Climbers, however, are a bit different to the average weekend athlete or endurance junkie. Climbing is not purely an endurance sport, nor solely a strength or power sport. It demands strength, flexibility, power, endurance, muscular endurance, and massive amounts of skill.

Training for climbing has really only been a big thing in the last decade or two and there are very few empirical studies comparing different training regimens. Therefore, climbers, being generally creative people, have taken techniques and principles from multiple different sports and tested them out as training for climbing. If they work, the ideas stick around, if not, they are rapidly binned.

Climbers are performance oriented: no-one, but no-one wants to climb a grade or two worse than they did the year before, and none of us needed a study to convince us that continuing to practice a skill sport when fatigue has caused a massive degradation in movement simply engrams poor movement skills.¹

So when should an athlete quit? I would say whenever movement has debased to the point where form is compromised. Unless, of course, the athlete has no interest in performance and simply wants to get tired, sweaty and crush it on Strava.

1Apparently such studies exist. Go here to listen to Steve Bechtel discuss this concept.

The Sunday Paddles: Narrawallee Inlet to Basin View

Conditions make the trip when ocean kayaking and the conditions on this trip were about as different as they could be from last time we paddled this section of coast. Back in the early part of 2020, not long after I started the "Sunday paddles" while scouring the map for new and interesting trips to do, I had come up with a plan to paddle from Ulladulla Harbour to Basin View. This trip appealed for a number of reasons, not least the distance (over 40 kilometres). However, I royally stuffed up the planning and we ended up having to finish the paddle at Sussex Inlet missing out on the last 12 kilometres of paddling. We did, however, have an adventure: two capsizes, one with a long swim and some challenging paddling (read about it here.)

Armed with information gleaned on that trip, and all the things I have learnt since running the Sunday paddles almost every Sunday for many months on end, I planned to repeat the trip with one minor change. This time, we would launch from Narrawallee, shortening the paddle by 7 or 8 kilometres but adding a potential surf launch at the beginning of the trip.

Not surprisingly, right up until the night before the trip, there were only three of us going. Doug, myself, and Adrian who is a keen new member of our group. Enough to run a car shuttle and, in many ways, smaller groups are easier to manage. However, as often happens, there were three more late additions to the group so we ended up being a party of six. A couple of people brought sails, but Doug and I left ours behind as we are belatedly starting to train for a longer kayak trip.

I hoped to be on the water by about 10 am which, at an average paddle speed, would have us reaching the bar at Sussex Inlet well (at least three hours) after the tide change so we could be guaranteed of an inflowing current. And, that is exactly how it worked out. We convened at Narrawallee at 8 am, did the car shuttle and were paddling out of Narrawallee Inlet right on 10 am.

Exiting Narrawallee Inlet was very easy. There is a fairly consistent channel that runs along the southern rocks and there were not even any breaking waves. Surf launch one, a non-event.

Conditions were very benign with a light easterly wind. The sailors sailed, and the paddlers had no trouble keeping up. We had a few minute on the water break at Green Island. I was somewhat concerned that our fast pace might be too fast for some people to keep up all day. So many groups and individuals go out of the gate too fast and burn out long before the day is over.

We arrived at Bendelong after about 1.5 hours. The main beach was fairly busy, so we paddled west and landed at tiny Flat Rock Beach for lunch. The only other time I have paddled this stretch of coast we have had to be well off-shore as the entire large bay between Bendalong and St Georges Head is shallow with many reefs running parallel to shore. Often these reefs are breaking a long way out. With an insignificant swell, we were able to paddle close in and look for potential landing sites. Most of the beaches along this section of coast would be challenging landing and launch sites unless conditions are quite benign.

At the north end of Cudmirrah Beach, we rounded the big reef point and easily paddled between the small rock island and the reef and cruised across the bar to land just inside Sussex Inlet. There was barely a riffle and certainly conditions could not have been more different from last time. We had another short leg stretch before starting off again on the final 13 kilometres across St Georges Basin.

I had come equipped with a bearing (roughly 314 degrees true) to the boat ramp at Basin View calculated from Kangaroo Point. Nick also had a bearing - slightly different to mine as his was more roughly calculated - but close enough to be a reasonable check on my bearing. This seemed a fairly critical point to me, as, once you exit the waterway that leads into St Georges Basin, you encounter a large body of water with multiple boat ramps, none of which are visible from a kayak and, in effect, no clear idea of where to go.

Everyone on the trip knew that I had a bearing from Kangaroo Point to follow, or at least I assumed everyone knew as I had stated this multiple times. It was therefore, somewhat confronting or at least confusing to arrive at Kangaroo Point to find that R had streaked off ahead heading vaguely 45 degrees off the course of our bearing. N and A were following. Nick, Doug and I, fairly sensibly I thought, paused at Kangaroo Point to check my bearing and find a distinctive area on land that we could aim for as we paddled the final five kilometres to our cars. Although we had a good prominent land mark to aim for, I actually got out my map and retook my bearing to check as the direction that half the group was going in was making me wonder if I had somehow got our bearing completely wrong. I had not.

We paddled off, watching the other three get further and further away. Doug and Nick were of the mind that I had done my due diligence and I should just let them go, but I pictured us all having to wait at the boat ramp late in the day when we still had a long drive to get home as they discovered their error and paddled back to the boat ramp. Even though I consider myself an organiser not a leader, I would not be comfortable leaving some of the group behind while we drove home. Accordingly, Nick blew his whistle and we managed to eventually attract A's attention and he paddled over to join us. N was pretty much committed to following R who by now was at the far the western edge of St Georges Basin. As a last ditch effort, I got my mobile telephone out and called R and left a message.

With all our dithering around, checking bearings and making telephone calls, we actually all arrived at the boat ramp at around the same time as R and N had sail assist from a good tailwind, and, in actuality, a fact I did not realise at the time, it is only about a kilometre further if you paddle over to the western side of St Georges Basin instead of taking a direct line.

Ironically, as we drove out of Basin View, R and N took two consecutive wrong turns and were last seen heading towards St Georges Basin. They would have eventually reached the highway.

I forgot to take a camera on this trip so the photos are repeats from our last trip along this coast.  If that is not poor form enough, all the photos came out smeared as the continual ocean splash meant the camera, even mounted on my head, was dripping water all day.  

Paddling South

 It's not the men in my life that count, it's the life in my men. Mae West.

We are paddling south from Eden to camp in a secluded bay for a couple of nights and hoping to do some paddling and see some Humpback Whales as they pass by on their annual migration to the Southern Ocean to feed. Every October, someone in my kayak circle organises a trip to the Eden area where the Humpback Whales seem to move in close to shore and are easily seen. Most often it is Winkie, of crocodile wrestling fame, but this year it is Wildey. There are only 8 of us, and, I am only half-surprised to find I am the only female.

Wildey heads out to sea,
PC Nick Blacklock

There was a time, many years ago now, when I really yearned for more women to climb, ski and adventure with. I had a couple of strong female partners, but mostly, almost exclusively, found myself out with all male groups. Truthfully, it got a little wearying. In the backcountry ski and climbing world, testosterone poisoning is a thing, and even into their 70's, some of these guys were all about proving who had the biggest cojones by jumping onto the most avalanche prone slopes they could find.

Fred stands below a slab triggered by one of the men

When I occasionally managed to pull together an all women trip it was amazing how much more cohesive and less competitive the group was. Leading all women climbing and skiing trips was so much easier and less stressful than dealing with a bunch of men who wanted to prove their hardman status. Sadly, however, it also meant much easier trips than I wanted to do, and, after a few forays into all women trips I gave it up and just tried to find solid partners.

One of my best female ski partners overlooking Pontiac Basin

These days, I don't think about it much any more. I am just happy to be out, still healthy and strong enough to enjoy challenging myself in the outdoors. If there happen to be a lot more men on the trip than women, I mostly don't even notice.

Rocky reefs near camp

The forecast is for strong northerlies and interesting sea conditions - two completely opposite swells and a significant wind driven sea. I don't feel optimistic of seeing many whales. The rougher the ocean, the harder it is to see the whales. I am, however, happy to be out adventuring, even if there are seven men and me, the lone female.

The pod near Red Point

We paddle out of Twofold Bay into a light headwind. I have done this paddle many times on trips going south and north. Once you leave Twofold Bay, the swell gets bigger and we are paddling south, past a series of rock filled, exposed bays. I am working on my paddle technique and I think I am getting faster, certainly I am feeling fast enough to be able to paddle away from the main group to explore bits of coast and then back to meet them. Not as fast as Nick, but, I will never be as fast as Nick. The beach where we land and camp always has a bit of a shore dump and a sucking wave that pulls the boat back out if you are not quick enough jumping out between waves and pulling your boat up the beach. The challenge is to make the landing as glamorous as possible and not get swamped as a couple of people do.

Wombat bay

Doug and I find a really nice campsite with grass mown short by the resident wombats, sheltered from the northerly wind, and shaded from the sun. The only problem, which we discover when we return home is that wombats apparently have fleas and now so do we.

Wombatus Fleabagus

The wind gradually builds through the afternoon and it is a windy and cool evening, great for keeping mosquitoes and wombat fleas away.

On Sunday, those of us paddling, are up early and into our boats before 7 am, hoping to paddle south and get back before the wind builds too strongly. There is a confronting shore dump to launch into, but, with empty boats and some careful timing, everyone gets out okay and mostly dry.

Huw, PC Nick Blacklock

We paddle south down to a nearby point. It is not that far but the sea is rough, really rough. Big steep waves coming at us from all directions. Every so often, a haystack sends a spurt of sea water shooting a few metres into the air. Our boats rise and fall, we lose sight of each other. I have to concentrate to avoid "air strokes" which are disconcerting as well as destabilising. Away from reefs, the waves don't actually break, but they rise steeply and curl over at the top and frequently look as if they are about to collapse.

Bird Island

It will be almost impossible to see whales today, and, although I feel fine, I do wonder how this sea will feel with a 15 knot wind pushing the waves up even steeper. We spend a while out bobbing around in our boats but eventually we decide to go back in. Looking back over the trips I have done at this time of year on the far south coast and we often have very windy conditions, but this is certainly the roughest sea I have seen down here.

Surf launch

The rest of the day is spent walking. I follow the trail all the way north to Boyd Tower in an increasingly thirsty march to find water. I forgot to get my water bottle out of my kayak, and, by the time I walk a couple of hours to the north, I am parched dry. There is a rain water tank attached to the outhouse at the parking area at Boyd Tower with a sign saying "Do Not Drink." I ignore this completely and clamp my lips over the faucet and gulp great swigs of water. The tourists look at me suspiciously.

Looking north to Boyd Tower

Next day we head back to Twofold Bay. I am looking forward to the challenge of some rough water but it does not feel as bouncy as the day before. Launching has its challenges, with a couple of people getting spun around and struggling a bit to get out through the breakers. I just put my head down and paddle like stink, reaching over the back of breaking waves and, although I get drenched by a wave breaking over my head, I make it out beyond the surf break quickly.

Keep paddling!

Nick has been teaching me to catch runners and encouraging me to do some interval training and, once we pass by Red Point into the more sheltered waters of Twofold Bay, the waves are regular enough to catch some runners and I alternate sprinting - and gasping - with catching waves.

My boat disappears into the surf

No whales seen on the way back, but we did have the company of a pod of dolphins for a while. There is a very short video here.

The Abject Failure of Dietetics

With the click of a mouse, I just muted the last conventional dietician I was following on Twitter. In a strange way, this was troubling, as social media has created all kinds of micro-bubbles where we go to have our own views reinforced and opposing views derided. Not only is this bad for society, where we must learn to co-exist with people who see the world differently to us, but, on a personal level, we are now locked into a box from which we never learn anything new or confront any challenging ideas.

By any metric, however, it is clear that dietetics is a failed discipline. Australians are fatter and sicker than ever before and have become a human version of Pottengers cats, subsisting on a diet of almost exclusively highly processed food and, in the process, developing a broad cohort of the diseases of modern civilisation - diabetes, heart disease, autoimmune conditions, infertility (to name but a few).

We are surrounded by the big bad three of Big Food - sugar, grain and industrial seed oil. Virtually every processed or packaged food in Australia contains these ingredients and the average cafe meal - and Aussies eat a lot of cafe meals - consists almost entirely of sugar, grain and industrial seed oil prepared in a variety of different forms but essentially the same. Processed food is too prevalent, too cheap, too heavily marketed and too addictive regardless of what dieticians posit.

Human evolutionary biology has been hijacked by big food. Our modern DNA is little if at all changed from that of hunter-gatherers, and if you were a hunter-gatherer, the best thing you could do to ensure your survival and ability to produce off-spring was overeat and gain fat while food was plentiful. This was required to see people through lean times. Enter the modern world where there is never a lean time and "food" is engineered to NOT meet our dietary needs while producing the release of hormones and neuroreceptors which cause us to eat more and more of those "foods."

Conventional dieticians, however, have some kind of magic screen around them whereby they ignore these facts and preach the concept of moderation denying that food addiction exists. If moderation worked, we would not be getting fatter and sicker, and Big Food would not be raking in billions of dollars in profit.

Avoiding junk food (anything made from sugar, grain and industrial seed oil) is exceedingly difficult in the current Australian environment. In practice, this means never eating in a cafe or restaurant, cooking every meal at home, scrutinising every food label (did you know that vegetable stock in Australia has added sugar) and being subjected to a barrage of advertisement meant to send you scurrying for the newest flavour of Tim Tam. In some small towns, it is virtually impossible to buy unprocessed food in the local grocery store.

Instead of giving people permission to eat sugar, grains and industrial seed oils in moderation, dieticians need to be empowering people to say NO to all of the above; to recognise that, for many humans, it is exceedingly difficult to moderate our intake of highly processed foods and abstinence is a better, and ultimately more successful concept. After all, no-one ever developed a nutritional deficiency from eating a real food diet.

Big Food has rigged the system to produce failure at every turn for those who try to abstain from processed foods. Dieticians who decry food addiction, preach moderation and claim that "all foods can fit" are simply spouting industry nonsense and failing the people they are supposed to be helping. But then again, what should we expect from a discipline that has spent literally decades failing so egregiously and spectacularly?

Full Moon On The Moruya River

A few days ago I deleted my Instagram account. Like, I suspect, most people I have had a love hate relationship with the Gramme since I deleted my Facebook account and switched to the Gramme. I tried suspending my account but, the enticing little icon was still on my mobile phone and all too easy to click on when I was supposed to be doing something else, so, finally, I just deleted my account.

What's interesting about deleting your account is that you get this little dialogue message that asks if you are really sure you want to do this, like "really, really, really, this is irrevocable shit you are doing here, are you really sure?" kind of dialogue. Strangely, when I signed up to this stupid app I didn't get any kind of dialogue informing me that my attention span would shorten incrementally and I would be in danger of falling into that endless comparison trap that snares almost all humans.

At the same time I gave up my subscription to the Sydney Morning Herald. I don't believe in burying your head in the sand and ignoring politics or world events. That is, quite simply, how we have ended up in the situation we are currently in with a government that is as corrupt as any in the world. But, the news coverage in the SMH was way too parochial and I felt like I did not know what was going on outside of Australia. Until I settle on another news source, I am reading the ABC - a shadow of its former self since being gutted by the LNP - and, for international news, Al Jazeera.

Finally, I have illustrated this post with a couple of sunset pictures from a full moon paddle up the Moruya River last week. Turns out, we only saw the full moon for a few short periods as it was cloudy, but the evening light over the hills was gorgeous and it was incredibly peaceful paddling up the river at night. Only the sound of frogs, cicadas and night birds.