In Issue 4 we ran a story on the Baglady’s trip to Stormont to highlight her
environmental awareness campaign. Shirley Lewis has been enthusiastically preaching her message since arriving in Northern Ireland, from Australia around 1999. Shirley grew up in Ballymena, her father was the well known Dr Bill Laird who died recently at the age of 92, but has spent most of her life in Australia. She is now heading back down there as I write this, but Shirley is not your normal every day traveller. She has calculated that the environmental impact of flying off on a jet plane to the far side of the planet is an environmental price too high to pay. She began her journey to Australia on November 1st by catching a ferry from Belfast to Liverpool. Not too sure how she got to Belfast, but knowing Shirley she probably went on her push-bike. From there it was down through England to catch the Eurostar from London to Rome. From Italy, on November15th she gotonboard a boat bound for Freemantle, Western Australia, via the Suez Canal. She expects to arrive th ere just before Christmas and then travel overland to the Blue Mountains to arrive at her destination early January. That’s right, a two month journey in total.
Now this is obviously a more expensive way to travel to Australia considering the cost of food and accommodation for a two month period. Not too many of us would calculate that we had the time or the money for such a venture, and that is indeed unfortunate. There can be no doubt that it is, by far, the most environmentally friendly way to go. Then I got to thinking, as occasionally I do. Shirley Lewis just might be on to something here; her experience just might kick-start some sort of revolutionary outside-of-the-box approach to global travel. What if people planned ahead and planned to work on a project during the monotonous parts of the journey? In this age of the global market so much can be developed on computers and information passed on when internet access is available. Books could be written, artistic masterpieces created and you never know there might even be opportunities for live musicians. If shipping companies, entrepreneurs and governments got together they could encourage groups to synchronise their trips, self-catering accommodations could be developed and there could even be educational programmes designed for such a journey. Failing al that at least sweaters and woolly hats could be knitted. Nobody knits pullovers or even mittens anymore. I bet you, anything knitted on such a remarkable voyage could no doubt fetch a pretty penny on shore. Ok, this might all seem a bit far-fetched and fanciful – but this time last century people would have roared their heads off at the suggestion of travelling to the moon in a space ship; but we’re not talking about travelling to the moon, we’re only talking about a journey within our tiny wee planet [Mind you on page 14 we are talking about a journey to Orion]. If anyone ever hears of such ideas being developed please let me know. I’ve been on my way to Australia since 1982 but keep getting distracted and something like this just might be the impetus I need. In the next issue of The Ulster Folk we will update you on the Baglady’s voyage of discovery. She may be getting as far away from Ulster as she can but in these days of easy global communication you can be sure we haven’t heard the last of Shirley Lewis. She is working on a new environmental film; no doubt as I write she is working on it from somewhere out on the Atlantic Ocean – see what I mean? That film will no doubt have much relevance for us in Ulster where we have to take as much responsibility for the survival of our wee planet as the USA or China or anybody
else. No planet, no Ulster. Follow Shirley on twitter or www.Bagladyproductions.org