"Do one thing a day that scares you" is Lululemon's motto, positioning yoga practitioners as risk-takers, which, of course, we are when we take on full backbends, handstands, and headstands. At a certain age just looking in the mirror does more than scare you. It’s terrifying!
Photo: Dive Centre Manly. (L-R) Christabel, Pep, instructor, Mackenzie, Lilly, and me.
Denial is a dead-end strategy. Distraction, on the other hand, holds promise. Diving (note the word) into learning something new is regarded widely as an antidote to retirement, boredom, dementia and other conditions associated with ageing.
Diving (that word again) into my bucket list, as my time on the surface starts running out, is short for 'I've always wanted to / been meaning to'. My most recent dive into lifelong learning was learning to dive by doing the Dive Centre Manly's 3 day PADI open water scuba diving course.
My arrival at this point is a story in itself. Chapter 1. Synopsis - My deep involvement in nurturing an eight-year-old granddaughter’s love of books from when she was a baby.
At the age of two standing at the end of my bed at first light, book in hand, she said rhetorically, "I'm offering for you to read me a book."
Several months ago she invited me to the Saturday movie afternoon she usually shares with her brother, two years younger. However, on this occasion, it was just her and her mum. She has always loved turtles and the sea.
At the time, amongst numerous other books, she was reading Blueback by Tim Winton. I hadn't read it but soon would. Her choice of movie for that Saturday afternoon was the movie version of Blueback.
Photo: Blueback movie, Roadshow Films 2023. Actress Ilsa Fogg as ‘teenage Abby’.
Blueback became my ticket to Cabbage Tree Bay Aquatic Reserve, Shelly Beach, with Josep 'Pep' Forteza, a charismatic and charming young Spanish diving instructor with movie-star looks, impeccable English (including Australian idiom) and a Degree in Marine Sciences, Marine Biology and Oceanography, from the University of Barcelona.
Together with my diving course classmates Christabel, nineteen, from the US, on gap year leave from impending university studies in a health organisation and accounting degree, and inseparable Year 8 friends Lilly and Mackenzie. Underwater, Pep was like an Orca, Christabel a seal, Lilly and Mackenzie otters, and me; a walrus.
On the first of our four open-ocean shore dives, we eyeballed a turtle grazing on seagrass, and encountered a characteristically friendly (and easily corrupted by inadvisable hand-feeding by humans) male Eastern Blue Groper (Achoerodus viridis).
Chapter 2. Synopsis – My deep involvement since 2012 in Headland Preservation Group (HPG) actions to protect the natural, Indigenous, military and community history and heritage of Sydney Harbour Trust sites, including Chowder Bay where SIMS (Sydney Institute of Marine Science) is based.
I know this area intimately. I spent a significant segment of my career there between 2008 and 2015 as a Co-Founder of Loves Data, a world-leading Google Certified digital analytics and digital advertising agency. Our Google-inspired walk-talks took place in the bushland surrounding the repurposed military heritage buildings in which our offices at Middle Head were located.
One particular walk-talk path, stepped down from Georges Heights to Chowder Bay. It was here that I met Jayne Jenkins briefly one Sunday. She was packing up her diving gear. I was packing up my foldable kayak after emptying it of plastic waste I collected from Chowder Bay during my paddle.
Photo: Michael Mangold, Chowder Bay, Mosman NSW.
Photo: Michael Mangold, Chowder Bay, Mosman NSW.
Jayne and her diver mates are constantly removing discarded fishing line, hooks and rigs endangering marine life, from beneath the pylons and netting of Clifton Gardens ocean swimming pool in Chowder Bay.
Chowder Bay is a marine environment where the world's biggest release of seahorses was completed by SIMS divers in 2023. A long overdue aquatic reserve like Cabbage Tree Bay beckons environmental sanity and political will.
Snorkelling at ten years of age in Dyarubbin (Hawkesbury River) near Windsor was my introduction to breathing continuously underwater. Exploring the cratered sandy bottom with freshwater prawns flicking by the glass of my face mask was fun and adventurous with my parents looking on.
Fast forward to my PADI course open ocean dives in Cabbage Tree Bay Aquatic Reserve, and it has to be said carrying a 16kg scuba diving tank on your back across the sand of Shelly Beach, Manly, was a challenge in itself.
My successful completion of the course and PADI certification to dive to a depth of 18 metres in open water gave rise to accolades from family and friends. My granddaughter's best friend’s mother, herself a PADI certified diver, was particularly effusive in her praise of my achievement.
"I went to see The Ocean at the Cremorne Orpheum, David Attenborough made me think of you," my granddaughter's best friend’s mother said bursting with enthusiasm. "He's 99 years old!" A role model indeed!
Seizing opportunities to introduce my granddaughter to women role models was an important aspect of my modus operandi when she was in my care. Wherever I wheeled her in her stroller and later walking with her hand-in-hand, we introduced ourselves to women gardeners, firefighters, paramedics, pharmacists, doctors, police, politicians, jewellers, artists, curators, traffic wardens, telcom cablers, soccer players …. and a Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) pilot, Mardy Frey (pictured below), at the RAAF Base Richmond Open Day, 26 October 2024.
My granddaughter keeps me afloat and bubbling along. She was delighted to learn I'd met a forensics student recently, and keen to know what ‘forensics’ meant. My mention of crime scenes sent her off in a rush to find her brother. "Michael knows someone with the coolest job!" she expounded. "She's a detective!"
The eight year old's voracious reading, especially graphic novels, feeds her love of illustration and storytelling. She has already authored, designed, illustrated and produced a multiple-page magazine of extraordinary quality. She uses language precisely. When she said "detective" to her brother, she was focusing on the end as well as the means in order to crystallise his interest.
Andrea, a final year student in the Bachelor of Science (Forensic Science) degree at Western Sydney University like Mardy the pilot, is for me next level metaphoric in terms of my efforts to introduce the eight-year-old to women role models.
Photo: Michael Mangold. Flying Officer Frey, pilot of C-17A Globemaster III, in the cargo bay of her aircraft welcoming visitors of all ages.
Andrea personifies curiosity, research, dedication, deduction, logic, dreaming, learning, ambition, education, knowledge, equity, equality, justice and communication in an arena where the most prominent people in the supply and demand chain are almost universally masculine.
Andrea, like Mardy, is a woman whose time has come and she doesn't waste a moment of it, "We (forensic scientists) don't have the liberty of swanning around. We have to collect evidence before it degrades or the weather compromises it. Time is a gift."
Chapter 3. Synopsis – A Western Blue Groper (Achoerodus gouldii) on Ningaloo Reef inspired Tim Winton's book and the eponymous movie, and ignited his conservation campaigning to protect the Reef from developer greed. Coincidentally 'Pep' my PADI instructor has dived with whale sharks (Rhincodon typus) on Ningaloo Reef. He ranks it amongst his top scuba diving experiences.
Meanwhile on the Australian coast opposite ‘Basil’, an Eastern Blue Groper, (Achoerodus viridis), well known to Cabbage Tree Bay Aquatic Reserve snorkellers and scuba divers, popped up on Instagram in a post by SIMS to promote their collaborative marine-themed drawing workshops for adults and children by illustrator Sue Liu, aka Wilcard Sue, a marine conservationist with with more than 23 years scuba diving experience.
Photo: Dive Centre Manly. 'Basil' the Eastern Blue Groper, Cabbage Tree Bay, Manly NSW.
Needless to say the eight-year-old, her six-year-old brother, and I, signed up for the workshop. Despite protestations by adult attendees, such as me and Alison, a young marine research scientist specialising in turtles, that 'we're no good at drawing', Sue got us through! She also taught us a great deal about blue gropers as part and parcel of her process.
My Eastern Blue Groper (Achoerodus viridis) sketch from Wildcard Sue’s workshop.