S03E05: Dark Sky Entrepreneurship with Chris Tugwell

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Thank you dark sky listeners. My
name is Marnie Ogg and today I'm conversing

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with Chris Talkall, who is a
South Australian man based in Adelaide, a

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film writer, a land care worker
and really a dark sky entrepreneur. His

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love and passion to make things happen
is completely evident in this conversation and it's

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his connections with local government, tourism
providers, technical and his assistance and the

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general community that have really made a
small patch of private land Herne from scrape

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Land to Australia's first dark sky reserve
on the Murray River, about ninety minutes

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out of the capital of South Australia
in Adelaide. So I love chatting with

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Chris because his conservation efforts have really
expanded this area and really made it a

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number one tourist destination for everyone to
get to and I think it's absolutely admirable.

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So join us as you may also
be inspired to create another dark sky

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space. They keep high. With
a flick of a switch, we turn

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night to day and day tonight we
can change seasons, actions and states of

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mind. Light is everywhere used endlessly
and very much a part of our modern

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world. But what is it,
how do we use it? And how

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is it changing our environment and our
behaviors? A starfield sky used to be

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our evening's entertainment. Now it's Netflix, iPads or even a podcast. When

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was the last time you looked at
the night sky? I'm Maniog and this

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is Dark Sky Conversations, the podcast
that brings people and science together to shared

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life. Good morning, good evening, good afternoon. Who knows what time

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of the day you're listening to this
podcast. Maybe it's give it it's Dark

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Sky Conversations. But today my guest
is Chris Tugwell. And I've always said

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that the best way to ask somebody
about what they do in life is to

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get them to do it themselves.
So Chris, tell me a little bit

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about yourself and how you got to
be involved in Dark Skies. It's a

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bit of a long journey, but
I'll give you the short version. I

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actually started. I trained as an
actor and dancer. So I worked in

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the theater for quite a long time. And because that the arts are always

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crazy, you can be in work
for quite a while and then suddenly it

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stops. And so I became a
teacher and I worked in Wayala, which

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is a regional city in South Australia. I loved teaching, it was fantastic,

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but I felt the call for the
acting part of my life. I

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didn't want to give it a miss
completely, and so I came back to

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Adelaide and worked in youth theater,
mostly performing in schools, doing our shows

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primary school kids, doing tours into
country towns all over the state. And

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that's how I got involved in writing. Eventually I started writing theater players and

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still on four young young performist,
poor young audiences fabulous and so that was

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sort of the writing journey. And
my partner and I, she's a psychiatric

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nurse, and we've always been interested
in the environment, and we decided back

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in the nineties to try and find
a block of land something to do some

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revegetation and regeneration of somewhere that really
needed it. And we were looking for

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ten acres and we somehow ended up
with three hundred and fifty and this was

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on the River Murray, on top
of the cliffs at a place called Big

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Bend, and it is a place
where the night sky is absolutely extraordinary.

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And so we've sat around bush fires, camp camp fires, looking at the

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stars there and just thinking this is
amazing. And then I heard about the

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Dark Sky movement, and because of
our regenerate revegetation work and so on,

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we got involved in vand care and
I got onto the committee of the Mid

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Maryland Care Committee and suggested to them
that we might be able to do something

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about creating some kind of dark sky
place in the region. And I thought

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they'd think I was crazy and just
saying, you know, forget about it,

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but they didn't. They said,
great idea, go off and see

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what you can do. And that's
actually rather about when you and I met,

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because I came to the conference in
Insiding Spring and which I found an

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incredibly inspiring event, and part of
that gave us the impetus to talk to

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a council get them motivated. They've
been absolutely amazing. Midcomary Council have been

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really extraordinary in supporting this, and
so what we've ended up with is a

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three and a half thousand square kilometer
Dark Sky Reserve, which is kind of

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bigger than I imagined in the beginning, but it's a combination of townships,

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conservation parks, private land, pastoral
land, all sorts of all sorts of

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different areas come under this Dark Sky
Reserve, and that involves, as you

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know, council adopting duck Stye policies, lighting management plans, and so on.

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So it's been an extraordinarily complicated journey. I've learned things I never thought

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I needed to know. But I
think one of the things going back to

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the arts is I think what I've
found is the way that people argue about

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or discuss art projects is always to
see the positives in it and to say

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this is going to be fantastic,
you'll love it. And the dark Sky

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people that I talk to at the
beginning were always saying, all light pollution

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is really bad. You've got to
do something about it. And most people

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you've talked to haven't even heard about
light pollution, so you've got to start.

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But they have heard of the night
sky. Oh yes, that's right.

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See they don't see the two that
they haven't given that any thought.

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There is an impact between what they
do and the darkness. Yeah. So

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yeah, so let's pull that that
that that prices apart a little bit.

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So you got your block of you're
looking for your block of ten acres and

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then got three hundred and fifty um
and so were you already involved with land

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Care then it was afterwards that you
got involved. We we were looking for

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a way to actually do some re
vegetation, and we first got involved with

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Trees for Life and we started planting
seedlings and so on. But when you're

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dealing with the property that size,
planting seedlings by hand is really hard work.

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Especially the property that we ended up
with has sheet limestone across it and

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that makes digging holes incredibly difficult.
So we heard about some funding that was

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available through land Care to do direct
seeding, so we did. We applied

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for some funding for that. We
got money to do ten kilometers worth of

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direct seeding, which sounds like a
lot um and that was done in one

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year. And then we went back
and said can we have some mold and

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they said yes, and for eight
years in a row they gave us money.

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So we've done eighty kilometers worth of
direct seeding on our property. So

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that's and that was when When when
did you start doing that? Was what

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early approximately two thousand was five,
I think maybe so most seed So you

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were developing this relationship with with a
few different parties. You were sort of

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re revegetating and what had degenerated the
land. Was it graz It was a

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sheep station, it had been it
had had sheep on it for over a

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hundred years, so it was there
was We called the property three Trees because

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we have three magnificent five hundred year
old mallee trees on the property and that

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was about all there was. Everything
else was below an cale height. It

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was really terribly abused, so we
felt it needed a bit of rubbing care

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and a bit of a bit of
help because there wasn't any And how far

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away is that from sorry? Go
yep, sorry, there's a bit of

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a lag here yet how far I
was going to ask, how far away

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is this from town from Adelaide if
I wanted to go out and see two

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hours? Yeah, it's about one
hundred and twenty kilometers only, Yeah,

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it's so far. And that's been
one of the extraordinary things that in talking

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about this Dark Sky Reserve is we've
been able to say this is nineteen minutes.

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The middle of the reserve is ninety
minutes from an international airport. You

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can get to somewhere that's one of
the darkest places in the world in no

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time at all, and magnificent experience. So that's something. And so who

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have you been, Who have you
been selling this too? Who have you've

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been Have you had international gifts?
Have you been able to appeal to us?

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Well, the local tourism people are
doing exactly that we've had. I

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mean, we got the international recognition
in November twenty nineteen and then of course

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COVID hit two months later, and
so we kind of ground to a halt.

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But in another way it gave us
an advantage because we could prepare for

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when visitors started to come back again. Um, So tour operators and council

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people have been able to sort of
get their heads around this as a as

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a concept. They love the idea, they can see the advantages of it.

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They can understand that you know too, and to see the Nights guy,

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you have to stay at least one
night, so that means you've got

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to have, you know, a
meal or accommodation and all of those other

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things that come with it. And
so there are a tour of people who've

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set up some fantastic experiences for people. And one of the nicest things is

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that we have inside the reserve a
conservation park called nort which is an Aboriginal

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site that has been occupied for more
than six thousand years, and it has

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it's right on the banks of the
river, and it has carvings in the

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in the cliffs which show the phases
of the moon. And so this is

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a place where you can say,
you know, the people have been observing

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the stars for six thousand years,
which is pretty impression. It is,

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yes, and I think one of
the things it is absolutely amazing. I

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have to admit I haven't been there
yet, so I'm going to have to

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get my way down there. But
one thing we haven't sort of mentioned to

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people who might be listening to this
from other places around the world is this

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is on the Murray River, which
is a really famous, really important part

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of Australian culture for tens of thousands
of years. And yeah, and to

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sort of preserve that part of Australia
not just during the day but during the

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night as well is a fabulous feat. The interesting thing I've noticed is that

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the people haven't really ever thought about
the night sky as an asset. They

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haven't actually seen it as part of
the environment. Even so when you can

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talk about it as in that way, people begin to sort of switch on.

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They understand they get and that's been
a wonderful thing. The community support

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has been extraordinary. We got about
eighty support methods for our application to the

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Sky Association, and that included just
general public progress, Association, schools UM.

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We got even a letter from Professor
Bryan Schmidt, the Nobel Prize winner,

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so we had a massive range of
support. It was a just astronomers,

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it was the community as well.
That's amazing. And so you talk

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about the impact while the actions that
the council went through and helped you,

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and and they've been supportive. So
what what did you do to engage them

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into that? You know, because
you could easily often they you know,

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you talk about reducing light and they
immediately turned around as our safety concerns and

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blah blah blah blah. Why do
you think they embraced it? And was

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it a long process to get them
on board? It wasn't. Actually the

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first meeting I had with a costle
person, before I'd even sat down in

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the room, they said, before
we start, I just want you to

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know I think this is a fantastic
idea. So that was our starting point

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and so I think they could already
see the way they were looking at it

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is that there are a number of
communities across this area, a dozen very

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small towns that have basically no tourism
infrastructure at all. And what they could

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see, the castle could see that
we've got all of these little towns that

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do really well along the river.
You know, they get the easter New

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Year, you know, the fantastic
water sports, all of that sort of

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stuff, canoeing, you name,
but the townships away from the river don't

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get any of that. And they
could see that the Dark Sky Reserve could

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bring that into these tiny towns,
which are really dark. It's one of

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those things because they're naturally small places. And so they could see a big

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opportunity for those townships. And as
you say, extend the people stay who

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are staying it, they're all going
to the river and doing all those things.

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You know. It's one of the
biggest things that I talk about when

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I try and pitch to different places
around a strata to become Dark Skys that

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you know you do you have,
as you said, you've immediately got an

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extra night and you've got longer,
longer stays because people probably are sleeping in,

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they want to have breakfast and all
the rest of it, so exactly,

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Yeah, that's right. And also
it gives people another it's another market

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for people to promote. If they're
running US tourism business, they add this

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arm to I think one of the
things that's been really quite exciting. You

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wouldn't expect this that real estate agents
are now advertising that this property is inside

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the Dark Sky Reserve and so it's
got that sort of cue us now for

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even that's absolutely fabulous. I'm so
proud of you. I just think it's

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amazing what you've done down there and
manyways. You know, I'll definitely take

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my hat off to you because I
don't know how you've done it, but

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there's such a buzz down there where
people are really getting involved in you know,

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I've seen things like limousine Dark Sky
transfer, so you know, you

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but you can look at the sit
in the back of the car and a

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couple of the stars as you go
through, and I just think, you

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know, this is great. There's
a real entrepreneurial spirit there. There's an

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interest in engaging with it. And
yeah, yeah, I think of all

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the Dark Sky places in Australia,
which is only three, you're definitely the

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group that have taken it and run
with it and really made it a destiny.

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Very excited by the response. I
mean, for example, the Tourism

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Commission here decided to promote the reserve
by painting a tram in Adelaide running through

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the city center and had Dark Sky
images all over the tram and that was

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running along around Adelaide streets for six
months last year. And our local school,

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which is Sony, I don't know, forty students, perhaps the senior

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students decided when Elizabeth died they wanted
to go down to Adelaide to write in

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the memorial book. That was at
Government House. Government House in Adelaide is

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on North Terrace. The tram goes
along North Terrace and they they were going

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to catch a tram and which one
should show up but the Dark Sky tram.

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And so these kids from the Dark
Sky Reserve got to travel on the

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Dark Sky tram. And I just
think that's so dunning. They can see

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that they live somewhere special and it's
right there, it's in the streets of

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Adelaide. It's a really, really
something celebrated. So my next project is

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to create an arts festival. The
Dark Sky Arts Festival is my next,

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because of course that's where I comes. Yes, well that would and I

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think that's the thing. Is it
that we need to find different ways to

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speak to different audiences, you know, I think it's there's there's definitely we

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talk very well between each other about
how we create dark sky places and the

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benefits of it, et cetera.
But we're all singing from the same so,

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you know, say pages, and
what we actually need to do is

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get out and then talk to different
people and get other people involved and things

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like the arts would be fabulous.
Have you seen Have you seen that festival?

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And I think it's somewhere. It
must be somewhere in the center of

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America because it's in the desert and
they have all these night installations which are

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basically there's nothing let up, of
course, but you're actually using the starlight

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to look through the installation up to
the night sky and getting the silhouette of

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it. I can't remember where it
is. And that's the idea. We're

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going to do a test run this
year. Well, I hope if we

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get the funding that is going to
try Music in the Dark event, which

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is based on the anti Cithera mechanism, which I don't know if you know

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about which as well, Yes,
that you could explain it to our audience.

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Ancient device which predicts the movement of
the Sun and the planets. It

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was it was made more than two
thousand years ago, which is absolutely a

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sound ship and was found in a
shipwreck off the coast of the small island

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of Anti Cithera in the Greek Islands. And there's a two musicians in South

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Australia at the Elder Conservatorium who've created
a work that is based on the sort

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of randomness of the mechanism, so
that if, for example, Jupiter is

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rising on the particular night of the
performance, then the Jupiter part of the

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music will play and so on.
So each night the music will be different

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each night depending on what's in the
sky. It will get a totally different

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experience. So something like that,
Wow, it would be really really stunning.

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And we've already got out work.
I'm sorry to interrupt. No,

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No, there's a very boring thing
in Adelaide called the Manum to Adelaide Pipeline.

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It's a it's a concrete pipeline that
goes all the way from the river

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to Adelaide and it's been supplying water
for I don't know sixty years, and

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for about sixty years people have been
saying we should really paint that thing.

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It's really ugly. And last year
we managed to get some funding through the

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through Essay Water and also do Lux
providing the paint. We got to get

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the first Dark Sky mural painted on
the on the pipeline. So we've down

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about five hundred meters, but there's
still a lot to go. How much

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how many tensive kilometers? Oh,
you've got to start somewhere. That's amazing.

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You're listening to Dark Sky Conversations with
Marnie. We'll be right back after

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these messages from our sponsors. Yeah. All I was going to say before

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is tell me when you get when
you have the anti Kithera playing, and

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I'll bring a group down. Oh
yes, well, yes, we're hoping

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later this year and okay, we
you will. We're hoping to actually have

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a replica of the antigether mechanism on
display as well. Her great, So

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it's it's exciting. Yeah it is. And And would you say you're the

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main driver behind these or are they? Now? We know little groups of

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you doing all sorts of amazing projects. Well, I when I started this,

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I didn't know I didn't even know
you could measure the darkness that I

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didn't didn't know anything about the scientific
side of dark sky stuff. I just

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thought it was a neat idea and
I thought, you know, it was

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pretty dark. But I've managed to
over this time be introduced and worked with

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a bunch of astronomers and scientists who
have been doing all of this a very

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long time and proved that, you
know, this is really astoundingly dark.

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So I think we've sort of played
off each other really well. I think

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the Astronomic or Society has been promoting
the reserve now to its members, and

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they've been saying it's one of the
best places to see the stars that they

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know of, So, you know, from that sort of scientific side,

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it's nice to have it confirmed.
You know. It was just an instinct

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in my mind. And I I
remember talking to one of the people at

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the council, one of the people
at the just at the front desk,

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and she said, I thought people
could see the Milky Way. I see

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it out of my back door every
night, doesn't everyone, And you know

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when you say no, they can't. And Jase, she said, well,

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those poor people. So you know, we have is special. And

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it's going back to the comment that
you made before that, and I think

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you commented that we don't see the
night sky as an asset. And I

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think that that's partly because most of
the Stralia, you know, even in

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Sydney, you probably only have to
drive a couple of hours out of see

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need to see a fairly good dark
sky, you know, compare comparatively,

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particularly with any of the Northern Hemisphere
countries, etc. But we've taken it

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for granted and we just can't.
We can't let it disappear. You know,

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it's a natural resource that we are
very very fortunate to have and hopefully,

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yeah, we can preserve most of
it and even turn some of the

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bad sites backwards and like it.
Well, I've been very fortunate to visit

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Taiwan, I said earlier. My
partner's a psychiatric nurse, but she's also

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a textile artist and she's been teaching
workshops in various places, including Japan and

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more recently Taiwan. And because I
was talking to our Taiwanese friends about the

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Dark Sky Reserve, because that's what
they do whenever I go anywhere. Yeah,

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they took us to the mountains in
Taiwan. They took us to an

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open air restaurant called Gateway to the
Galaxy, and that was on the top

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of a mountain, very good,
low lighting, wonderful place, and we

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saw four stars. It was a
clear night, there was no moon.

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And then when our friends came from
Taiwan here, we took them up to

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our place on the river and they
were literally speechless. One of them said,

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I thought you could only see this
many stars from space. So that's

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the thing. We've got this massive
opportunity to teach people in the you know,

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in China and in Asia, Japan, all of those people can fly

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direct to Adelaide, and you know, in ninety minutes they can have of

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the most extraordinary experience. I spoken
to one of the tour operators who does

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tours just literally down the road from
our property, and he does spotlighting for

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you know, native animals, wombats, kangaroos and so on, and he

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makes a point every time of stopping
and turning the lights off so that people

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conceive the stars. And some people
burst into tears because they've never seen it.

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They it's so completely beyond what they
expect. So It really is a

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very very special experience. It is
or inspiring, and it is that I

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was very fortunate to hear a beautiful
piece of music the other night, and

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the acoustics were so fabulous, and
we were completely immersed in this sound,

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and it was probably the first time
in my life that I literally had goosebumps,

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and you know, here's my next
standing up, and I had tears

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running down my face, and I
was thinking, this is how I've seen

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people react to the night sky.
It's just a it's a completely body sensation

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of something over overtaking, overwhelming,
and yeah, yeah, yeah, so

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that kind of explains that, you
know, it has taken over my life,

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that wasn't Are you still writing scripts
and things groups or are you doing

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any movie stuff the youth work?
Yeah, all right, okay, yeah,

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I'm attempting to write a novel at
the moment. Yeah. So it

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has that elements in its surprise surprise. Yeah, I think it's right.

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It once it's a bit like taking
the blue peel when the matrix isn't it

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all the red pit. Once you've
done it, you can't you just can't

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turn back from you know, you
want to talk to people about dark skies

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and the benefits and because they're so
wide reach, I've had such fantastic I've

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made so many wonderful connections because of
it and learned so much. I mean,

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for example, one of the first
people I was introduced to was Andrew

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Cool, who has been measuring the
darkness in this region and for thirty years.

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He happens to have for brother in
law. He's got a property not

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far from where we are and he's
been going there and measuring with artness all

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that time. I contacted the Victorian
Dark Sky Association. Originally, this is

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the first thing I did when I
started, because I didn't know anyone else

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to contact. And they said,
the two people you should talk to.

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One is Andrew Cool and the other
is Martin Loiki. Martin runs the planetarium

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more some lakes in Adelaide, and
both of them agreed amounts themselves. Well,

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firstly, they had this discussion saying, who is this guy? Anybody

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ever heard of him? Is he
an astronomer? They are going no,

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should we trust him? Oh?
Well, so they gave me the benefit

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of the doubt, and I'm really
glad they did. And then Andrew said

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to me, well, I've got
this mate, Don, he's just taken

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up astronomy. He's got a place
on the router. He might be able

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to help. And I thought that
doesn't sound very promising. You know,

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I'm a beginner. Do we need
another beginner? Well? Don turned out

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to be Don Bursall, who is
the Chief Scientist of South Australia. I'm

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a former chief scientist. He's retired
now, but his access and his knowledge

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in getting into government departments and so
on and who to approach and when and

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all of that sort of stuff that's
been really invaluable. And so, you

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know, getting that sort of side, the trust that people have given me

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to to say okay, well you
write that, you write all the stuff,

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will take all the measurements and stuff, and too well that it sounds

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00:31:15.400 --> 00:31:18.799
like the perfect collaboration, isn't it. Really. You know, you've got

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the way with the words, you've
you've you know, you've got someone in

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there who knows government. You've got
someone there that knows your side. And

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we had the complete backing of the
council as well. Um, I've spoken

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to councilors and they've said to me, you know, when the dark sky

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00:31:33.400 --> 00:31:38.000
thing comes up, it's the only
thing we all agree on. Yeah,

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so that's fabulous. Yeah, that
complete support and trust has been absolutely wonderful

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Um and it's still going on.
You know. One of the things that's

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happened is because we have the Space
Agency based in adelaide Um, there are

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00:31:57.680 --> 00:32:05.359
space industries, space businesses setting up
and looking for locations for their equipment,

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00:32:06.480 --> 00:32:10.559
and they need dark places, they
need radio silent places, and we had

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00:32:10.839 --> 00:32:20.160
one one facility has already been built
just on the boundary of the reserve and

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00:32:20.279 --> 00:32:24.839
it's a five million dollar facility,
and that is going to bring in work.

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It's going to bring in opportunities for
local people. And that's one of

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the things I think. You know, young people at the local area school

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00:32:37.319 --> 00:32:40.279
can think of a career that's going
to keep them in the area. You

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00:32:40.319 --> 00:32:45.519
know, they can have a scientific
career if that's what they want and stay,

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you know, stay on the river. They don't have to leave.

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And it might not be science.
It might be tourism, it might be

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00:32:52.319 --> 00:32:58.279
cultural connection, it could be all
those other benefits exactly, and so those

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00:32:58.279 --> 00:33:06.200
opportunities are are growing all the time. It's very exciting. Yeah, well,

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I think on that note, I'm
gonna I'm gonna finish it up.

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00:33:09.079 --> 00:33:14.200
But I have to say, you
know, well, kudos to you and

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00:33:14.400 --> 00:33:19.480
your team of supporters, because not
only have you created a future for you

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00:33:19.480 --> 00:33:22.960
know, the next generation to star
watches about that out there, but you

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00:33:22.000 --> 00:33:28.720
know, you created Australia's first dark
sky reserve in an area that was you

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00:33:28.720 --> 00:33:32.319
know, denuded land that needed you
know, bid of TLC and you've brought

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part and salt back to it.
And thank you, Mary, thank you

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for all your hard work. It's
a lot. Yeah, I am very

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00:33:40.720 --> 00:33:46.440
proud of it. But um,
I think seeing your example, knowing it

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was possible, that was something that
helped a lock to um say how we

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could go about it, you know
the things that we still need to do

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00:34:00.400 --> 00:34:07.920
m and make a really good case, and I think we've managed. And

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00:34:07.280 --> 00:34:10.440
I just can't wait for the day
that we've got this network of dark sky

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places all around the country and that
we can well my long term plans or

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00:34:16.119 --> 00:34:23.119
a dark sky state. Sounds like
you'll have it done next week, Chris.

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00:34:27.000 --> 00:34:31.440
I have to finish the novel first. Yeah, yeah, Oll,

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good luck to you. I don't
doubt in any way, shape or form

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that you'll have that under your belt
too. Good to see you again.

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Thanks again for your time,