TRANSCRIPT
"There's a yacht ahead. You can see it through there. He's a grandfather, maybe with his son, and they had a big wave before. So I think it's probably a lot of guys have been coming around to say hello, and I think he's, he's turning around so he can stop and have a bit of a gentle chat, which is what it's all about. Might cruise up and say hello. Alrighty. Bye-bye."
Almost nine months ago, Samuel McLennan set off a unique mission.
Starting in Tasmania, he's travelling to Sydney on a boat made entirely of rubbish.
"So a bit of a jackpot. Found some, some nice rope here, and there's this bit of carpety rug thing, which could be nice, and this beautiful bit of pipe, that's a bit of a jackpot I think. I was wondering whether I start making another raft. I'm starting to build up a bit of stuff here, actually."
On a mission to raise awareness about marine rubbish, Sam McLennan has built a boat made from marine plastic and items he's found washed up on the beaches around the Tasman Peninsula.
"I find it quite interesting going out there searching for rubbish and seeing what does show up. In some places, we found rubbish where we didn't expect to find rubbish."
Since leaving Hobart in April, the conditions for Sam have ranged from idyllic ...
"So nice just being able to just cruise slowly and just look at this magnificent scenery. I've been past it before quite fast, but I find that when I slow down, things just become so much better. It's much more beautiful."
... to intense.
The mission is called 'Project Interrupt', and has seen the boat stop at towns along the east coast of Tasmania, cleaning the coastline and talking to communities about rubbish.
Now stationed at Flinders Island off the north coast of Tasmania, Sam is preparing to make the dangerous voyage across the Bass Strait.
While preparing for the crossing, he enlisted the help of John McGee who's spent much of his working life crossing Bass Strait with shipping companies.
"Bass Strait's one of those places that can be so, so beautiful that it's just inspiring, or it can be so damn deadly, and it can change very quick."
While waiting for the perfect conditions to make the crossing, some of the leftover rubbish Sam's collected has been sent back to Hobart, where jeweller Chris Hood is finding another way to make treasure out of trash.
"This is actually a piece of pipe, but the material is thermoplastic, so you can heat it and bend it. In this case, we've made it flat, then we can take this flat material, load it onto our lathe and make beautiful objects. It almost gets a texture like a record, like a beautiful old vinyl record. So you can lathe it and manufacture it, and then we use that to move on to making it into pieces of jewellery like that."
Chris Hood, an old friend of Sam’s, says turning the found objects into jewellery has helped fund Project Interrupt.
"Sam's not someone who engages in things financially particularly, but there's a financial cost to funding Project Interrupt. One of the ways that Sam wanted to do that was using some of the plastics so building this craft that is built, has left him with lots of leftover bits and pieces of plastic. This is a piece of Tasmanian salmon farm marine debris. We thank that Tasmanian salmon industry for this, because it's durable. It can make something beautiful. And then we can sell that something beautiful and help fund Sam. "
He says the jewellery isn't difficult to sell, with customers appreciating that their purchase is not only sustainable, but also funds a worthy cause.
"It's really good because it's, it's jewellery with a story, and people like to help. There's, I’d say my customer base has a very high understanding of how important our oceans are. In Tasmania, we live on the ocean. Almost all of us. We eat the food from the ocean. We swim in the ocean, and anything we can do to make sure this stuff is not washing up on our beaches and poisoning our marine landscapes is really important. So, yeah, it's easy to sell it, particularly when people become aware of where their money's going to directly."
