Moving pictures

Last night I had 11 adventures - and I wasn't even asleep - thanks to the Banff Mountain Film Festival world tour, which is in Australia until late June (see dates), presented by my favourite adventure tour operator, World Expeditions.

I go every year, but this year’s selection of 11 short films, ranging in length from 2 minutes to 44 minutes, are the best I can remember. Here's the trailer:

Some are epics, like the one about disabled climbing team The Gimp Monkeys – three climbers with four legs and five arms between them – tackling El Capitan in Yosemite.

There's Scottish trials rider Danny Macaskill’s incredible balletic bike skills in an old ironworks, in Industrial Revolutions. Some are exploratory - about whitewater kayaking in NZ, and first descents of slot canyons in the Grand Canyon.

Coming out of the Cremorne Orpheum (where it was a full house, I might add), I felt like running all the way home (which would have taken a while) and was still buzzing this morning. So I thought I'd revisit three of the films still whirring around in my head...

Pic by Cas and Jonesy

1. Crossing the Ice, which won three awards at the Banff Mountain Film Festival in November. "Epic" doesn't even come close. This sequel to Crossing the Ditch, in which best mates Cas and Jonesy kayaked from Australia to New Zealand, is about their 89-day, world-first, unsupported trek 2275km from the edge of Antarctica to the South Pole – and back. It’s honest, raw, funny and moving; there’s even a crazy Norwegian, Aleksander Gamme, providing some narrative tension to rival Scott and Amundsen 's race for the pole 100 years ago.

2. Honnold 3.0 is about uber-free-climber Alex Honnold’s latest big “objective”: climbing the three biggest walls in Yosemite - Mt Watkins, El Capitan and Half Dome - within 24 hours. A-ma-zing.

3. Lily Shreds Trailside – about a Jack Russell terrier who loves to chase mountain bikes – on single track. She runs so fast, she flies through the air on jumps and even banks on turns. Click the link to watch Lily fly. So cool.

If ever there was a celebration of being alive on Earth, this digital record of people doing astounding things in wild and spectacular natural places is it. The only thing missing is water - unless you count the clip of another crazy Norwegian diving into some while ice-skating. Those Norwegians...

Planet bicycle and the Grand Tours Project

For those of you arriving here from the Grand Tours Project (more on this in a moment) welcome to No Impact land. Please, make yourselves at home. For No Impact Girl followers, meet the Grand Tours Project - which is not the name of a steampunk band but the brainchild of Keith Tuffley, an Australian now living in Switzerland and embracing the European obsession with all things two-wheeled. 

A couple of years ago, Keith rode in the Tour de France - not as a competitor, just for fun. Apparently keen cyclists can ride the Tour de France course, doing each "stage" the very same day as the professionals, on one condition: you have to start and finish before they come through. Last year, he did the same with the second biggest European road race, the Giro d'Italia. 

Gratuitous bike shot:
mountain biking (not road racing)
 in Tasmania (not Europe) 

Doing just one race a year is a big deal. Each one is a three-week, 3000-odd kilometre odyssey across Europe - up and down mountains, past excited spectators, through pretty villages. 

This year, Keith plans to ride in both of these plus the third "grand tour": the Vuelta a Espana (in Spain). Hence the "Grand Tours Project". You can read more about why he's doing it on his website, but one important reason is to raise awareness of sustainability and environmental issues.

That's where I come in. 

Every day of this first race, the Giro d'Italia, which started on Saturday (4 May) and ends on 26 May, there'll be a fresh new Eco Story - written by me - on the Grand Tours website, covering everything from the best eco-movies and most beautiful eco-lodges, to the latest electric cars and sustainable living ideas. 

Here are the links to my first two Eco Stories, which are now live:

It is about the bike

Why the planet needs more cyclists + 10 more reasons to ride

Welcome to the Grand Tours Project’s daily eco-blog. While Keith has his pedals to the, er, asphalt of Europe’s roads, you can swing by here to read up on environmental issues. Every morning there’ll be a fresh new post here full of inspiration, innovation, information, eco-travel ideas, sustainable living tips – all with the intention of motivating us all to do our bit towards a cleaner, healthier planet. Read the full post here

We're all going on an eco-holiday

10 back-to-nature European vacations

Sure, you could ride a bike 3,524 kilometres around Italy. But (sorry, Keith) there are plenty of other ways to have an environmentally conscious holiday. Here are 10 eco-holiday ideas in and around continental Europe. Walk, paddle or climb this way… Read the full post here

Come along for the ride? You can sign up for email updates at Grand Tours Project. 

How to do good in Cambodia - without really trying

When I was in Cambodia a couple of months ago, I noticed two things: the country wears its dark past on its sleeve, and there's an incredible array of ways to help. So many ways, in fact, that I wondered if it would be possible to NGO-hop across the country, helping as any tourist might just by visiting certain shops, restaurants and such.

That became the guiding principle for my 10-day trip there, and it made me love Cambodia even more than I already did.

My latest piece for the Sydney Morning Herald, the cover story in this weekend's travel section, is about the rise of charitable tourism in Cambodia. Here's an excerpt:

S-21 survivor Bou Meng

Assisted development

Every country has a dark side. Cambodia's is just more visible than most, and more recent - decades of civil war, genocide and foreign occupation that ended only in 1993 - but that's part of its appeal. The country's uniqueness lies in its stories and the spirit of its people. And, increasingly, tourism is playing a part in its recovery ...

Behind the welcoming smiles of the Cambodians you meet there, however, it's impossible to ignore the signs that all is still not well. 

You see people with limbs stolen by landmines. Anyone over about 40 - a tuk-tuk driver, a vendor at Phnom Penh's Russian Market - remembers the Khmer Rouge's brutal regime (1975-1979). There is widespread poverty, child abuse and HIV infection (Cambodia has the highest incidence of HIV in south-east Asia). 

Then there are places such as the Killing Fields, just outside Phnom Penh, that break your heart and inspire you to help in some way. Read the full story here.

I've also just finished reading Survival in the Killing Fields by Haing S. Ngor, the Cambodian doctor who lived through the Khmer Rouge years, just, before being forced to flee over the border to Thailand with hundreds of thousands of other Cambodian refugees. 

He eventually moved to the US, to Los Angeles, and by chance happened to land the role of Cambodian translator Dith Pran in The Killing Fields (1984), for which he won an Academy Award. (A classic movie, by the way, winner of three Academy Awards and directed by Roland Joffe.)

It's a compelling book, beautifully co-written by journalist and historian Roger Warner, and has been called "the best book on Cambodia that has ever been published". 

If you haven't yet been to Cambodia, go. And before you do, see The Killing Fields and read Ngor's book. It'll give you a greater understanding of this beautiful little country and the humanity of its people.

You can learn more about Dr Ngor through the Dr Haing S. Ngor Foundation website.

Have you been to Cambodia? How did it affect you?

"Road" testing Australia's newest coastal walk

Australia has more than its fair share of multi-day walks – not all of them in Tasmania. Sure there’s the Overland Track, the Bay of Fires walk and the Maria Island Walk (all in Tassie). But there’s also the Jatbula Trail in the Northern Territory, the Arkaba Walk in South Australia, the Great Ocean Walk in Victoria and the Royal National Park Coast Track just south of Sydney. (Links go to my stories about these walks.)

Follow that emu

Now there's a new one to add to the list: Yuraygir Coastal Walk, a 65-kilometre odyssey along the longest stretch of undeveloped coastline in New South Wales. 

Follow the emu-print track markers south from Angourie Surfing Reserve, near Yamba in northern NSW, and four days later you'll reach Red Rock, just north of Coffs Harbour - without ever leaving Yuraygir National Park.

It opened in 2010 and it’s not a new track as such, joining up previously unconnected walking and 4WD tracks, but it's just now finding its stride. A couple of weeks ago I got to road-test it, so to speak.*

Life really is a beach

What was it like? Except for a sprinkling of rain on our first night (and a double rainbow!) we walked under cobalt-blue skies. Mostly on long beaches where we swapped boots and walking shoes for sandals, then took those off to go barefoot. Day 2, the longest day, consists almost entirely of beach-walking, on just two beaches, both about 10km long. 

Headland-bashing at high tide

There were grassy headlands where eastern grey kangaroos stopped grazing to watch us and hopped, like Qantas logos in motion, along the cliff edge. 

We clambered around rocky sea cliffs, careful to stay out of reach of the sea's wildness. We leaped over tea-stained creeks that ran across the beach to the surf. Sometimes, a local (invariably named Bob) with a tinnie was on hand to ferry us across a deep river. On day 4, we stripped down to our togs (swimmers) and waded across a stream, carrying our packs on our heads.

National park with a view

Recent flooding rains had left their marks on the beaches, which only made them more interesting. Washed-up bottles (with no messages). Logs and sticks swept downriver into natural obstacle courses. Bluebottles tangled up like last year’s Christmas lights. Even tiny pumice stones – where had they blown in from? 

It's an odd national park in that the coastline it's protecting, beautiful as it is, isn't entirely unspoiled. There was sand mining here until the 1970s, then non-native plants such as bitou bush were introduced to stabilise the dunes (they're now being controlled as a feral species). And we walked through fishing villages with rustic names like Brooms Head and Diggers Camp. 

Kayaking Wooli's waters

We saw a goanna. And birds galore - particularly when we kicked off our walking shoes to go kayaking on Wooli (that's wool-eye) River one afternoon. There were eastern ospreys diving for their dinner, three kinds of cormorant (pied, great and little black, spotted by our Patagonia-based bird expert, Marcus Loane). Royal spoonbills! A jabiru! A whimbrel! (A new one for me.)

It wasn’t all walking. We swam in the surf every day. Did our bit for feral species control by cane-toading late one night (filling a hessian sack with more than 100 toads, which humanely met their ends in a freezer later); this is the southernmost limit of cane toads on the east coast, for now. 

We went beach-fishing with two locals, Bruce and another Bob. And “surf rafting” at Minnie Waters (which involves paddling an inflatable raft headlong into waves before turning around and surfing to shore like shipwreck survivors). And camped in grassy NPWS campgrounds along the way.

Another magnificent NSW beach

The verdict: the scenery might not be as dazzling as it is in coastal Tasmania, and it doesn't vary much in four days, but I loved exploring a little known part of New South Wales, my home state. And isn't it amazing that we have so much undisturbed coastline at places like Yuraygir, in Australia's most populous state? 

Most of all I loved walking beside the sea for four whole days, seeing it wild and wind-tossed, breathing in the salt air and blowing away the cobwebs of city-living. Those are my three cheers for Yuraygir.

*This was another carbon neutral trip. Not only did my companions and I travel 65km on foot, I offset my flights to Ballina and back from Coffs Harbour with Climate Friendly.