To first meet her, Belinda Baggs comes across as demure, horribly polite, in her own words, “slightly geeky”. The glasses and the graceful longboard style all add to the image. But stand between her kids and a liveable future and she transforms into a warrior, ready to battle global petro-goons with plans to drill holes all around the Australian coast. ‘Bad Bindy’ as we like to refer to her alter-ego.
In recent years she’s become a central figure in coastal activism both here in Australia and right around the world. She co-founded the group Surfers For Climate and has used it to bang the drum with surfers about the dangers to the coast of climate change, and the need to add a little activism to their surfing lives.
For episode two of Notes From the End of The World we drive out through the canefields along the Clarence River and catch up with Bindy, who has had her hands full in recent months with daughter Naia, who was born in April. Sitting down with Swellian ringmaster, Vaughan Blakey and Surfrider’s Sean Doherty, Bindy talks about a changing climate, climate denial, and how surfers have become a potent force in the battle for cleaner oceans and cleaner air.
You can listen to it here, or watch it below.
This episode was recorded on Yaegl Country. Patagonia acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of this land and sea Country. We pay our respect to their elders, past, present and future.
