A curious multi-hyphenate, recovering philosopher, and commercial pilot lying fallow.
Currently working at the Australian Bureau of Statistics supporting the Australian Climate Service as a geospatial analyst.
Why climate analytics?
Well, you stick a philosopher in the front-seat of an aircraft for hundreds of hours, and they’ll begin to think. My experience flying allowed me to see Australia’s environment from a rare perspective, and to question our continued relationship with climate. And with that, it made me want to work to protect it, to enjoy it, to study it, and to celebrate it.
A brief history.
The summer of my commercial flight test was one I will truly never forget. Of course, I won’t forget it because of all of the reasons that go along with a life-changing test: an hours long oral examination, equally long practical demonstrations, all trying to prove to the tester that you’re capable, competent, and confident to begin flying fee-paying passengers.
But, that summer, it wasn’t the flight test that changed my life. It was the bushfires.
Growing up in fire affected areas in country Victoria, they were something that I had experienced before: Some of my earliest memories were standing on the front grass—garden hose in hand—watering anything and everything on the property, in an attempt to waterlog it and slow down incoming fires. I’d do it to our property as neighbours would do to theirs—an avenue of ordinary hose-holders (often the least useful person, with all others frantically packing valuables, memories, and pets into cages and boxes).
But this summer and these fires felt different. Perhaps it was being a little older, and a little more understanding of their capability for devastation and destruction. Or, perhaps it was that I had since moved into the city, where I had expected to be safe from these natural disasters. But I wasn’t safe. And there was something unnatural about them. My flight test was cancelled for weeks on end because of such intense smoke haze that we couldn’t leave the house without a mask (and this was pre-COVID-19!). To me, this climate disaster just seemed different. It was my own tipping point.
Well, I went on to pass my flight test after weeks of anxious waiting. And that day, I stopped dreaming of flying. I dreamed instead of fighting the changes that threaten life as I know it. I stopped working in aviation—stopped pursuing the future pilot program of which I was the university’s ambassador—and instead studied the climate emergency, got a job with the ABS supporting the Climate Service, and kept studying for a Masters of Climate Change at the ANU. I’m currently working on a paper that explores the relationship between regional Australia’s voting preferences and climate impacts. In my work, I’m working to refine vulnerability indices that can be used to proactively support vulnerable members of community from the climate emergency. I hope to make an impact.