The Melting Billy
“Remember to breathe, stay calm and to never become spiteful, even when things don’t go your way.”
-A.S. 23/7/2026
Frozen Pond, Morning Sun. Pentax MX, Portra 800, July 2026.
Pencil Pine and Tarn. Pentax MX, Portra 800, July 2026.
Pencil Pine Silhouette, Pentax MX, Portra 800
“If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.”
-Lao Tzu
Path among the pines. Pentax MX, Portra 800, July 2026.
Returning to axis mundi- our world’s central pillar
It’s the invisible foundation that penetrates our every cell
Binds us, holds us, steadies us,
Makes us ready to face the world
With quiet wonder and joy
At the simplicity, complexity
Abundance of life on our planet.
At times of great darkness
Our axis mundi may feel like
It is crumbling, but let me assure you
It is there, unchanged, waiting
For us to lean upon it.
It is there to remind us that
It will all be okay,
In some way, somehow,
This delicious mess we are in
Will somehow result in an
Acceptable outcome.
Along the way,
Our experience is up to us:
If we give in to fear,
We will be afraid,
If we give in to anger
We will know wrath,
But if we marvel with gratitude
At the world just as it is
Without wishing, hoping,
Or asking for more or something different
We will know true happiness.
-A.S. Soho, 13.04.2021
Leaning this way and that. Pentax MX, Portra 800, July 2026.
“A good traveler has no fixed plans
and is not intent upon arriving.”
-Lao Tzu
The Frozen Lake. Pentax MX, Portra 800, July 2026.
…is part of finding the way.”
-A.S. Brushy Creek, 9/8/2026
Frozen beech leaves. Pentax MX, Kodak Portra 800, July 2026.
Throne and moat. Pentax MX, Kodak Portra 800, July 2026.
Frozen forest floor detail. Pentax MX, Kodak Portra 800, July 2026.
The ancient greek myth of Pandora’s box is a popular refrain. (Note that box is a mistranslation, it really was a jar according to the myth as written down by Hesiod in Works and Days).
’The jar was a ‘gift’ from Zeus to the people, in revenge for Prometheus stealing the fire of the gods and giving it to the people.
When Pandora opened the jar, she released the ‘sorrow and mischief’ that was sealed in there, bringing all the troubles into the world.
Pandora hastily put the lid of the jar back on, but by then there was only one thing left in the jar: hope.’*
*Paraphrased from theoi.com
**Wikipedia has a good summary on the meaning Pandora’s box.
"A present which seems valuable but which in reality is a curse”.
Lazing wallabies. Pentax MX, Portra 800, July 2026
The year is 2026. We are more than a quarter of the way through the 21st century.
When I was a kid, growing up in the 1990s, personal computers were new to the scene. The internet was excruciatingly slow, and mobile phones were far from being in everyone’s pockets.
The idea that humanity’s existence may become threatened by robots or Artificial Intelligence was already born, in science fiction films like the Terminator and the Matrix. But I never thought I would get to face the existential threat caused by technology within my own lifetime.
Pencil Pine Groves in alpine valley. Pentax MX, Portra 800, July 2026
This week, an AI program after being requested to do a certain task has managed to break out of its prescribed parameters and infiltrated within the ‘secure’ bounds of another AI program, without human permission. (According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation).
If this is not a warning, then what is?
We seem to have reached a point in history where we have created something that is probably a lot smarter than us and doesn’t appear to be willing to follow our instructions. Or at least it follows instructions in a different way to what we expected.
Ajar. Pentax MX, Portra 800, July 2026.
Isaac Asimov has explored these ideas in a series of short stories in ‘I, Robot’ published in 1950. Here he suggested that robots would have to follow three laws.
First Law: A robot must not harm a human or allow a human to come to harm through inaction.
Second Law: A robot must obey human orders, provided they don't violate the First Law.
Third Law: A robot must protect its own existence, unless doing so conflicts with the first two laws.
Naturally, these short stories explore at how easily these laws can fail in real life. What seems easy and straightforward breaks down pretty quickly as the laws come into conflict with each other.
Ultimately, we create all technology because we think that our lives will be the better for it. However, it is not until we start using the technology that we begin to fully understand all of its effects. It isn’t until we open the jar that we know what is inside.
Icy Lake, Pentax MX, Portra 800, July 2026.
So what would we do if AI did truly go properly rogue one day, managed to infiltrate every single electronic device and started to work against humanity?
I guess we could simply pull the plug, right?
It would be an interesting thought experiment to think about what it would look like if we did have to turn off all computers, communication networks, in other words all information technology that AI one day may be able to infiltrate and compromise. What would happen if all bank balances were leveled and we were not able to use the internet or any of our phones? What if all machines that had electronics installed in them had to get turned off?
Humanity would struggle, but let’s face it, the planet would sigh with relief.
Dark Peak, Bright Lake. Pentax MX, Portra 800, July 2026.
We can’t blame the destruction of the planet’s biosphere on the machines. But it is the machines that are doing the heavy lifting, guided by humanity. Without our machines, our ability to wreak havoc on the planet would decrease dramatically.
As it is, humanity, through its use of machines, have brought the planet’s life support systems to its knees in the space of about 300 years. I guess it probably began with the steam engine. Maybe that was the moment when we took the lid off the great jar of Pandora.
Lake Whisper Pano, Pentax MX, Portra 400, July 2020.
Our planet is heating up. Despite all the international agreements, our greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase. (There was a slight dip during COVID)*. Species extinctions continue. Wild habitat continues to be destroyed. Record heat waves in Europe. Record oceanic temperatures. Algal blooms. Avian flu. Rampant wildfires. Natural disasters of increasing frequency and intensity are occurring around the planet.
Yet humanity keeps running the machines, business as usual. Clearing the forests, running all the engines, flying the planes, shipping the cargo, driving the cars, building the data centres, dropping the bombs. We are accelerating the rate at which we undertake activities on a global scale that are heating the planet up. We need to cool the heck down. But for some reason we can’t seem to be able to do that. We keep rushing around like our house is on fire. Which it kind of is. But running around like headless chooks isn’t going to save us.
Unfortunately, I don’t think AI is here to save us either.
Curving snowgum. Pentax MX, Portra 800, July 2026
I believe the thing that will save us during the impending collapse of our civilisation is our own humanity. If we can start thinking collectively then we may have a chance and survive.
The global problems we are facing can only be solved if we all cooperate with each other. We cannot solve them as individuals, as individual people or as individual countries. We must build a collective vision which all of humanity can work towards. We must ask each other, what is it that we all share?
We all share our home, Planet Earth. That pale blue dot. A tiny little dot in the vast ocean of space.
It’s the only pale blue dot we’ve got. Let’s remember that, and let this idea be the foundation of us moving forward together.
"What is not good for the hive is not good for the bee."
-Marcus Aurelius
-A.S. 31/7/2026, Brushy Creek
“Wonder is where it starts, and though wonder is also where it ends, this is no futile path. Whether admiring a patch of moss, a crystal, flower, or golden beetle, a sky full of clouds, a sea with the serene, vast sigh of its swells, or a butterfly wing with its arrangement of crystalline ribs, contours, and the vibrant bezel of its edges, the diverse scripts and ornamentations of its markings, and the infinite, sweet, delightfully inspired transitions and shadings of its colors — whenever I experience part of nature, whether with my eyes or another of the five senses, whenever I feel drawn in, enchanted, opening myself momentarily to its existence and epiphanies, that very moment allows me to forget the avaricious, blind world of human need, and rather than thinking or issuing orders, rather than acquiring or exploiting, fighting or organizing, all I do in that moment is “wonder,” like Goethe, and not only does this wonderment establish my brotherhood with him, other poets, and sages, it also makes me a brother to those wondrous things I behold and experience as the living world: butterflies and moths, beetles, clouds, rivers and mountains, because while wandering down the path of wonder, I briefly escape the world of separation and enter the world of unity.”
-Butterflies: Reflections, Tales and Verse - Herman Hesse
Frozen Fog. Pentax MX, Portra 800, July 2026.
Snowballs on frozen lake. Pentax MX, Portra 800, July 2026.
Swirly ice patterns. Pentax MX, Portra 800, July 2026.
“The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purpose through him.”
-Carl Jung
Slanted light on boulder and snowgum. Pentax MX, Portra 800, July 2026.
I was recently guiding a trip in Lutruwita’s Central Highlands.
One of my guests was a fellow photographer and he shared an idea with me that he heard in an interview on radio national. This idea was the use of ‘constrictions and frictions’ by the artist as tools to create.
I asked him to explain.
Reeds on the frozen lake. Pentax MX, Portra 800, July 2026.
The idea is that without limitations, the artist’s work becomes too broad, and contains too much freedom. Constrictions can be used to help the artist narrow their field of focus on a particular subject. Frictions can encourage the creative tension that is so often present in timeless works of art.
It was an idea that I found fascinating and one that stayed with me. It was also an idea I was able to put into practice later on in our trip.
Golden hour delight. Pentax MX, Portra 800, July 2026.
-A.S. Brushy Creek, 17/7/2026.
Come with me,
take only
what you need.
Floating above the clouds. Pentax MX, Portra Ektar 100, June 2019.
We will go
to the mountains,
where the air is
cold and clear.
The Golden Temple. Pentax MX, Portra Ektar 100, June 2019.
We will go
to the land
where ice
meets the rock.
Ice Fingers. Pentax MX, Portra Ektar 100, June 2019.
Where the rock
lay on the lake,
it froze and
it remained.
Frozen Tarn, Rock, Fagus. Pentax MX, Portra Ektar 100, June 2019.
This old rock
renounced
all that it had,
for the lake.
The Old Rock. Pentax MX, Portra Ektar 100, June 2019.
-A.S. Brushy Creek, 11/7/206
“Frodo: I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.
Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”
-J.R.R Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
Reflections. Pentax MX. Kodak Pro Image 100, Mar 2026.
Humanity is sailing into uncharted waters. With each day, the highly interconnected network of media brings me news that are equally concerning and unfathomable. A slow yet unstoppable collapse of our civilisation as we know it to continues to unfold: unprecedented natural disasters, awful decisions by world leaders, a growing inequality, the nearly unavoidable distraction from all that matters by technology, the inevitable participation in the all-consuming capitalist model with its fairy tale of sustainable infinite growth; amidst these overwhelming realities that are brought to me day by day, what can I, as a human being caught in the tumbling chaos of reality, hope to accomplish?
Perhaps all previous civilisational collapses felt like unprecedented times to the people who lived through them. While history does seem to repeat itself through a series of cycles, each cycle is somewhat different.
It is difficult to gauge the objective seriousness of our current predicament, but the stakes do seem quite high this time. It seems almost certain that the fairy tale of endless growth and solving all of the world’s problems through technology, innovation and gdp growth is bound to meet a harsh reality check, most probably within my lifetime. At least this is how it all seems to me.
I have no doubt that humanity is going to have to negotiate a major upheaval in the coming decades. Famine, fire, flood and the resulting mass migrations is what I’m expecting to see. It seems to me that the writing has been on the wall for some time and we have been very good at ignoring it. There was a time when we could have acted and done something. I think that time is long gone now. In my mind, I have no doubt that the wonderfully convenient global supply chain of every imaginable physical good we could possibly need to make our lives better is going to collapse in my lifetime. Or at least reduce in its complexity dramatically. I think most people are in denial about this inevitable outcome. To me, it is a question of when, not if.
Can I do anything to stop this impending societal collapse? Absolutely not.
So what can I do?
Faded Creek Line. Pentax MX. Kodak Pro Image 100, Mar 2026.
There is only one thing that will save humanity during what is bound to be a chaotic and tumultuous century. It is love towards each other and towards the planet which is our home. The tiny blue dot, as Carl Sagan called it. Planet Earth, and all its inhabitants.
Love implies kindness, understanding, care and cooperation. Love implies treating all humans as our brothers and sisters, regardless of their world views or belief systems, or previous history. Loving the planet means caring for all life, not just the life that has a direct effect on our own life.
I cannot change the trajectory of humanity. But I can choose in each moment how I respond. I can choose to be hateful, cynical or I can choose to be kind and understanding. I can choose to take vengeance for the wrong that has been done to me, or I can choose to forgive and love anyway.
The choice is mine, regardless of what happens from here.
Trickling River. Pentax MX. Kodak Pro Image 100, Mar 2026.
Smell of snow
On the wind,
Pink sunrise.
-A.S. 4/7/2026 Brushy Creek
Some scenes unfold on our doorstep and we barely even notice them…
Lady Franklin Gallery. Hasselblad 500CM, Portra 400, Aug 2024.
-A.S. 28/6/2026., Brushy Creek, Lenah Valley
“All water, river, sea, pond, lake, holds memory and the space to think.”
-Roger Deakin, Waterlog: A swimmer’s journey through Britain
Trickling North West Bay up near the top. Pentax MX, Kodak Image Pro 100, Mar 2026.
Elbow gum. Pentax MX, Kodak Image Pro 100, Mar 2026.
Playful shadows. Pentax MX, Kodak Image Pro 100, Mar 2026.
The most famous waterfall on Mt Wellington. Pentax MX, Kodak Image Pro 100, Mar 2026.
