This Fight Is Making Us Sick by Lucy Lawless

This Fight Is Making Us Sick by Lucy Lawless

By Lucy Lawless
21 July 2017

The boat is rocking and rolling inexorably towards its destination high in the Arctic Circle.

I wake from deepest slumber at 7.01am, exactly the same time as yesterday.

Breakfast is meager on a GP boat, which is exactly right, judging by some of the green faces. I am feeling annoyingly perky, glad to not be in hell with them. I was seasick once and pray it stays away.

After muesli I go up to the bridge where Nacho points out where a whale spouted a minute ago. I sit and wait but it is a full five minutes later that we catch it happening again. I am hoping the pod is heading in the same direction as us. I'd love to see them up close. I was on a dolphin watch experience in Whakatane once and a pod of pilot whales swam right underneath us. It was a mystical experience.

I am aware that I'm close to shirking cleanup duty so I sneak off and have a quick shower.

As I exit I see someone in rubber gloves cleaning the lav nextdoor. Wait, he's on his knees retching. Could that be my friend, Andrew from the Auckland office? He was wearing a blue T-shirt before and now he's wearing a red one. Andrew works comms and is communicating nicely with that toilet -roaring, he is. Poor devil. I wonder if when he signed up for bathroom duty, he knew how convenient it would be.

Unlike on land, the coolest chicks on boats are invariably the dirtiest. Miriam is a deckhand who is also in charge of garbage and recycling. Like all of them, she's wiry, fit and able. Her pants look like they've weathered many, many campaigns.

I help her carry the trash to the poop deck which is (naturally) located in the rear. Most of the sorting has already been done by the crew who deposit paper/organics/cans in the proper bins. Not to be shipshape would offend the hive.

When I come out, Andrew has moved on to the downstairs loos, toilet brush in hand. He tries to look chipper but he's green about the gills. There's a splatter of cack on his shoulder like the father of a newborn. Hey, Andrew, you missed a spot! It's a three-tshirt kind of morning.

At 10am we are getting fitted for drysuits which are designed to handle full immersion in Arctic waters. We are going out on the inflatables. The drysuits are heavy duty neoprene and devilish hard to get into. I put mine on and immediately regret it because suddenly I want to go to the loo "just in case".
But the briefing has begun in the bowels of the ship. As Nacho (Argentina) instructs us about safety protocols, Desiree (campaigner, Philippines) emits a wee splash of puke on the floor between the attendees. "Sorry!" She mutters preemptively and then showers them in a magnificent arc of breakfast. It was quite something.

Waiting for the inflatables to be launched, I'm staring down into the Arctic waters thinking how would one describe that colour? I imagine the paint swatch. Blueblack? Igneus rock? It's a scary color. It might roll over on its side and regard you with one whale eye. And it occurs to you that there's so much more below it that above and how you would not like to die inside of it.

Training goes on all day. It's all about transferring boats in different conditions. I want to protest that I'm just an actress, just here for the photo ops, but it's too late. Our little boat is momentarily deep in a trough and the massive Arctic Sunrise is high on the swell, just metres away. Beneath the waterline, the bottom of the hull is rose-coloured and for an instant, she is thrust so high out in front of the wave, you can see a gash of red like a ferocious smile. Then she chomps down hard on the Barents Sea. And we are drenched by spray.

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For more about Lucy's role as an eco-warrior go to AUSXIP Lucy Lawless Eco-Warrior Subsite

Joining The Club To End The Oil Age by Lucy Lawless

Lucy NZ Herald Column: Beware The Vampires Deep In The Gorge 7 January 2015

Lucy’s January 2015 column was posted 7 January 2015

You read of Lucy's articles by going to the AUSXIP Lucy Lawless Columnist subsite

Beware The Vampires Deep In The Gorge 7 January 2015

Dad had us eating out of the palm of his hand on the long holiday road trip up north to Grandma's.

By Lucy Lawless

I am sitting between my Dad and big brother on the wide leather bench seat of our big car. Mum is in the back holding the baby.

My Irish twin, Davey, complains that he wants to sit in the front. He is 11 months older than me but I am proud that everyone thinks he looks younger than me. Plus, he can't say "fish". He pronounces it "thish", which I also lord over him.

I bags my turn to pay the tolls at the Auckland Harbour Bridge. To me it is a lovely old brontosaurus and it is thrilling to come flying over its back and down the tail. My ears pop a bit. Terrifyingly, the oncoming cars are corralled by nothing more than a streak of white paint but I know my Dad will hold the mighty Falcon steady.

We are waylaid by an extra-long queue for the toll booths. It is an irritation for grown-ups but Davey and I still fight over who gets to throw the florin to the man. I win because I am a brat and soon we are on our way.

Finally we reach the Brynderwyns on our six-hour journey to see Grandma for the Christmas holidays. The Brynderwyn Hills are pretty unremarkable. I'm just a kid but frankly they hardly seem worthy of being given a name. No offence.

Anyway, the Brynderwyns are where I have to give up the prized spot in front. When the coast is clear, Dad gives us the okay to switch places en route. He slows to 60km/h to make the transition safer, though somehow Davey still manages to give me a kick in the armpit on the way through. Now he has to put on the seatbelt because he's in the front but no one bothers in the back, despite Mum's protestations. We are bulletproof. All the same, we slow to gawk at the spot where a busload of 15 souls plummeted to their deaths 10 years earlier.

In the back of the car I slump low and let the thrum of the engine own me. The power poles whiz by and the wires do barrel-rolls in mesmeric patterns. They roll one way, reverse, reverse then vanish altogether. I hold my breath willing them to resume. It's a battle of wills.

By and by they do and I doze off. The car slows. I instinctively sense we have arrived. I lurch up from deepest child slumber, with seat buckle imprinted on my sweaty cheek, and find myself eye to eye with a Hereford bobby calf. Dad's car swims like a salmon through a stream of bovine anguish. They seem to know they're headed for the abattoir at Moerewa.

As we get closer to the Mangamuka Gorge, Dad grows confident enough to make the ultimate offer, to tell a vampire story. The climax of any scary story has to occur in the gorge. It's dark and twisty and Dad makes helpless pleas to the sky that our car not break down for who knows what could happen in this inhospitable land?

If he makes the offer too early, his voice may not last the distance. We are overjoyed to have the bejeezus scared out of us. There is always a priest, a good guy and a couple of ne'er-do-wells. Only one will live to tell the tale, which is exactly what Dracula wants. He knows that after a feast he can hibernate in his cellar till the next brood of treasure hunters comes a knockin'.

We learned some rules about life on a Dracula hunt.

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You read of Lucy's articles by going to the AUSXIP Lucy Lawless Columnist subsite

Lucy December NZ Herald Column: Face To Face With Society’s Dark Side 03 December 2014

Lucy’s column for the NZ Herald for December is a chilling one. Face To Face With Society’s Dark Side. Click on the thumbnail or read it online.

Counties Manukau special squad keeps in touch with recidivist child sex offenders, to everyone’s advantage.

Last week I followed Detectives George Grove and Kim Matthews as they did their rounds, visiting some of the 80 medium and high-risk child sex offenders living in South Auckland.

It's part of an initiative called Operation Guardian designed to help the Corrections Department who manage parolees - and for police to monitor and manage the offenders longer term.

Click on the thumbnail to read or read it online

You can read more of Lucy’s writing for the NZ Herald at the AUSXIP Lucy Lawless Writer Subsite

Lucy Lawless NZ Herald Column: When The Star Becomes Fan of a Fan 12 November 2014

This month’s Lucy’s column is devoted to the Xenaverse and why fans do what they do. The online version should be up soon.

for more of Lucy’s articles, check out the AUSXIP Lucy Lawless Columnist subpage

NZ Herald Lucy Column for 09 October 2014: Simple Act Shows A Cultural Chasm

In today’s NZ Herald, Lucy looks at the plight of the Australian Aborigine. Lucy was introduced to the problems the indigenous community faces when she went to Broken Hill to film “The Code”.  More news and multimedia of Lucy in The Code can be found on the AUSXIP Lucy Lawless The Code Subsite

Lucy writes a very good article about the problems confronted by the Indigenous people of Australia.

Click on the article for the full scan. For more of Lucy’s column in the NZ Herald, go to the Lucy Writer subsite

NZ Herald Column - Lucy Lawless: Hungry children - the hidden toll

Lucy Lawless: Hungry children - the hidden toll

Written by: Lucy Lawless

NZ Herald 12 September 2014

If you don’t want your taxes to help feed poor kids, think again — we’re all already paying a big price

Social scientists and doctors from the Child Poverty Action Group are up in arms because more than a quarter of a million Kiwi children are living beneath the breadline.

Who are these kids? I can't see them from my suburb. And why the hell should my family's tax dollars be spent on people who can't or won't look after their own?

The concept of being my brother's keeper is totally out of fashion. When I was a kid we were always raising money for the "pagan babies", but we are now hardened to the plight of people we can't see or don't understand.

But here's the truth: we are already paying for the offspring of poverty.

Hungry children are sick children. Sick children make poor students who struggle to become productive members of society. Feeding children in schools is a smart strategy. More accomplished students will profit all New Zealand in the long run.

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