First thing this morning I drove to DHL with my book of oaths, ready to send it to the Chief Justice. I had wrapped it carefully in paper that matched the clamshell box I had made, and I walked in feeling genuinely excited to finally send it to the Judge. When I stepped into reception, two young women were sitting at the desk. I asked whether they offered same-day delivery; they said they didn’t, but if I left it with them today, it would arrive tomorrow. That was fine with me.
Then one of them explained that she would need to unwrap both the gift and the card. Normally something like that would have really annoyed me—I had wanted everything to be perfect for the Judge—but instead I found myself almost amused by how inevitably imperfect it would now be.
The woman who unwrapped it did so with such care that my annoyance never arrived. You could tell she had done this a hundred times. She used a Stanley knife to lift the tape cleanly, and when she re-wrapped it, she had all these little techniques in her hands—neat folds, crisp edges, tiny adjustments that made it look intentional. She checked the card, placed everything inside a box, and sealed it as a ‘repack.’ I took a strange comfort in knowing that the staff at the Judge’s chambers would immediately recognise it had been opened, and that no longer felt like a failure. It was fine. It didn’t matter.
When I walked out, I realised I had probably left the price tag on the card. The old me would have taken the whole parcel home, bought a new card, rewrapped everything, and fussed over every last detail. But instead I just smiled. I realised I will never get everything perfect with judges or the law — and somehow that acceptance felt liberating. I walked away feeling as though I had finally completed my first piece of conceptual artwork, and that I was ready to step into the next chapter of my life.
In the letter I included, I explicitly asked the Chief Justice not to respond—neither to the artwork nor the note itself. I believe he is the type of man who will respect my wishes. And to be honest, there is something quietly beautiful about giving something intimate to a perfect stranger, knowing that the gesture doesn’t demand anything in return.
Back in 2022, I went on a little quest to find bioluminescence. First, I flew to Mount Gambier and spent time in the Glencoe Forest, about 16km away, to see the ghost mushrooms. They were absolutely magical — living light glowing out of the darkness.
After that, I flew to the Gold Coast and went on a couple of glow-worm tours, and once again I wasn’t disappointed.
While I was on the Gold Coast, I had some spare time during the day, so I decided to go to Sea World. I’m not a fan of zoos or places like Sea World — there’s something a little bit obscene about locking these beautiful creatures away so humans can gawk at them. But I went anyway, and before I arrived I booked a dolphin encounter. I wasn’t entirely sure what it involved, only that I’d be up close with a dolphin.
The other participants were all children, but I didn’t care. We stood in knee-deep water while a trainer guided a dolphin named Howie to swim between us. We fed him dead fish and we were allowed to pat him, but something about the whole thing felt wrong. I asked the trainer where Howie came from, and he told me he was a rescue.
I know I’ve said this before on my blog, but even if you can’t release a rescue dolphin into the open ocean, there are sanctuaries where they can still feel the natural movement of the tides and hunt live fish. I felt a bit disgusted with myself for taking part in the encounter.
After it ended, I caught the tail end of the big dolphin show in the arena. The dolphins were leaping and performing tricks for a mostly-child audience. Watching it made me feel dirty. When I got back to the hotel, I started researching Sea World and the realities of dolphins in captivity.
By the time I got back to Adelaide, I had watched a couple of documentaries about dolphins and orcas in captivity. One in particular stayed with me — the Academy Award–winning documentary The Cove.
The Cove is a powerful 2009 film directed by Louie Psihoyos that exposes the brutal annual dolphin hunts in the hidden bay of Taiji, Japan. The documentary follows former dolphin trainer–turned–activist Ric O’Barry and his team as they use covert filming techniques — underwater microphones, high-definition cameras disguised as rocks — to capture footage of the capture, confinement, and slaughter that the local authorities try desperately to conceal.
Beyond the horrific scenes themselves, the film reveals how some dolphins are sold to marine parks around the world while many others are killed for meat that can contain dangerously high mercury levels. The Cove won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2010, and it remains both a gripping expose and an urgent call to action for marine conservation.
Japan’s then Commissioner to the International Whaling Commission (IWC), Joji Morishita, features in The Cove offering the counter-argument that dolphin hunts are not harmful. He attempts to justify them, and his passion for the issue drew me deeper into researching dolphin hunts and whaling more broadly. On YouTube I found the 2018 International Whaling Commission meeting held in Brazil. The full proceedings run for around 20 hours, and Morishita chaired the meeting. It was fascinating watching him preside over a room where the overwhelming majority of countries oppose commercial whaling.
Commercial whaling has been banned under the IWC moratorium since 1986. However, Norway formally objected and legally ignores the ban, Iceland filed a reservation and permits itself to whale, and Japan, having left the IWC in 2019, is no longer bound by the moratorium at all.
Japan was trying to get a particular motion through which allowed some commercial whaling and the arguments of why it should be permitted by Norway, Iceland and Japan made me think a lot.
Then there is the issue of Aboriginal subsistence whaling. Aboriginal Subsistence Whaling is permitted under the International Whaling Commission for food-security and cultural reasons, with strict quotas. I remember listening to a member of an Indigenous community speak about how distressing it was to have to repeatedly present their case to the IWC, simply to justify a practice essential to their survival. The continual scrutiny caused genuine anxiety within his community.
Watching the 2018 IWC meeting raised two major issues for me. First, I absolutely understand why commercial whaling should remain banned for species that have not recovered in number since the original moratorium in 1986. And just to be clear: I am a strict vegetarian, and I think very much like a vegan. But it is precisely the vegan part of me that says this: if a species is abundant, I do not see why commercial whaling should be illegal. If you think about it, eating whale meat is no more morally culpable than eating beef. What makes a whale more sacred than livestock or game? As far as I’m concerned, all lives are equal.
If humanity has decided that we are going to kill animals for whatever reason, then our moral reasoning must be consistent. Whales are beautiful, intelligent, enormous, mysterious. I sometimes listen to whale songs on Apple Music, where their voices blend with music, and it is astonishingly moving. They are creatures that make you pause — beings whose beauty feels ancient and almost sacred, the kind that remind you how small you really are in the world. But just because they are beautiful does not make them superior.
The second issue the 2018 IWC meeting raised for me was Aboriginal subsistence whaling. On one hand, the Commission is unequivocal in saying that all commercial whaling is banned. You cannot kill whales. But then, in the next breath, they say you can kill whales — as long as it is for food security or cultural reasons. So approval is granted, but only on strict conditions.
Why can’t it be one way or the other? Either you can kill whales or you can’t. Instead, it feels as though the IWC is saying: we give you permission to kill them, but we also tell you exactly what you must do with the meat.
I also can’t help but see an irony in the policy. The IWC allows Aboriginal subsistence whaling, yet in many of the communities where it occurs, the method of killing is far less humane — and often significantly more distressing to the whale— than modern commercial techniques.
I think about humans’ relationship with animals a lot, because I believe it reflects the relationship we have with ourselves. I understand why the IWC was created to protect whales. But if you look closely at a cow or a sheep, they are just as beautiful as a humpback whale. They feel, they fear, they bond, and they should have equal moral consideration. Whaling in the past decimated entire species, and it makes sense that we are now trying to repair that harm.
But at the same time, I am not entirely sure humans should be killing animals at all. Without tools, we could barely kill a small animal — and who decided that our use of tools to kill was ever meant to be part of our destiny? Yet, if we are going to kill animals, then our ethics must be consistent. There are whale species — like the humpback, the common minke, and the short-finned pilot whale — that now live in abundance. And while I admit I am a complete hypocrite because I would probably stand on a Greenpeace ship between a harpoon and a whale, I still believe that if we continue to kill livestock and game, then morally there is nothing that makes a whale fundamentally different.
Whales are enormous, intelligent, and breathtakingly beautiful, yes. I could even light-heartedly suggest that I wish humans placed the same value on big humans — given that I am fat — but the point remains: beauty or intelligence does not make one species more deserving of protection than another.
