Sat 17th | 11:00am - 12:00pm
Feel tent
hosted by | Bendigo Bank
Adventure in remote and inhospitable yet beautiful parts of this earth challenges our assumptions about what can be taken for granted. When Linda Beilharz returned from her trip to the South Pole she wrote “We see our world with different eyes. We have a new appreciation for life and perhaps a heightened awareness of the fragility of our ecosystems. We have been to a place with no life and have experienced the yearning for a glimpse of a bird, an insect, a green leaf, running water. The significance of global warming is a lot greater and the need to tread lightly on this earth seems all the more urgent.”
Linda has now teamed up with Roger Chao and Rob Rigato to undertake another ice cap journey in order to raise awareness about climate change.
Rogers travels around australia and the world have led to him some of the most remote and untouched areas. Once someone sees such areas they are changed forever, just seeing the beauty and wonder in nature and mans insignificance in the whole scheme of things. To lose these areas and their flora and fauna due to global warming would be at the very least catastrophic. Hiking, skiing, mountaineering, kayaking and climbing thse wilderness areas has allowed Roger to see first hand the beauty and value of preserving such resources.
The Bendigo Bank Greenland Expedition will journey 540 kms across Greenland Icecap beginning in early April - taking between 30 and 35 days. The team can expect strong winds of up to 150 kms/hour and minus 30 C temperatures plus windchill. The team will haul their heavy sleds from the eastern coast, climbing to 2600m at the highest point of the icecap, to their journey’s end on the western coast of Greenland.
This presentation by Roger and Linda will explore insights gained during expeditions – giving the audience a taste of cold Antarctic beauty, blizzarding Tasmanian winter mountain tops, a glimpse of what is to come on Greenland and a discussion about the teams journey in preparing for a carbon neutral expedition.
Linda Beilharz, Roger Chao
Linda Beilharz is the first Australian woman to ski from the edge of Antarctica to the South Pole. During her epic 56 day quest, she endured treacherous conditions, including blinding snowstorms and minus 50 degree temperatures. Linda’s extraordinary triumph is testament not only to her physical strength and courage, but to her dogged determination that pushed her inch by inch, across that vast white landscape. Linda is also a recognised leader in her professional career. She works as a senior manager for St Luke’s Anglicare, an organisation which has pioneered strengths based approaches to working with vulnerable families and communities. Linda has supported communities, trained workers and undertaken consultancy services based on her extensive experience in building stronger communities. Linda has published a book entitled “Building Communities; the Shared Action experience”. Linda’s experiences in remote, inhospitable places, plus her work with rural communities has enhanced her appreciation of the impacts of drought and the implications of climate change. She belongs to Fairwater, a local Bendigo group advocating for sensible and fair water management. She supports several ‘Climate Saving School’ projects in the Bendigo region. With these interests it was only logical that the next ice cap expedition would be carbon neutral. Roger Chao is the current 2006 Australian Geographic Young Adventurer of the Year which was awarded in recognition of a 5 week winter traverse of the Eastern and Western Arthurs in Tasmania. Roger and his trip partner carried all their food for the five weeks and endured snow, cold and storms. Roger’s extensive outdoor experience includes leading groups, experience as a volunteer with Bushwalking Search and Rescue and a term of President of the Monash Outdoors Club. He has qualifications in Swift Water Rescue, Vertical Rescue and Wilderness First Aid, techincal mountaineering. Roger has paddled, skiied climbed and mountaineered around the world and extensively throughout Australia. At 21 years of age Roger will be the youngest person to do an unassisted Greenland crossing from sea to sea. Roger intends to follow the Greenland Expedition up with a solo, unassisted expedition in the Antarctic. He plans to cross the continent starting in November 2008. He currently works doing environmental/waste audits for various organisations as part of a "green office program" and also as a campaigner for the wilderness society focusing on the logging of old growth forests and their impacts on global warming.
