CHARLES WOOLEY
The new regime has “rung in the changes” with the Premier assuming the position of Tasmania’s first Minister for Climate Change. Whether the portfolio achieves much in the short term, it is the symbolism that is so striking. Peter Gutwein has triumphed over the climate sceptics on his right wing, people, like the unsuccessful leadership aspirant Michael Ferguson. The liberal right was deeply influenced by a man not even in the state parliament. Yes, you know who.
Even as the new Premier was framing his climate portfolio announcement, that old influencer, Senator Eric Abetz, was thumping out an opinion piece for the Mercury. You can’t blame this paper for printing it. Eric is avidly read, especially by the legions who dislike him.
The PC crowd of course rage about Abetz getting his say, but Left or Right surely it is better we know what the extremes are thinking rather than have their doctrines fester in the dark, one day to surprise us.
The good Senator was a cross that former premier Will Hodgman often quietly admitted he just had to bear. It is one that Peter Gutwein might now wish to discard.
While the effects of climate change and global warming are abundantly clear around the world, still Eric thundered that the fires here were all the fault of the Greens. He continued to pursue political sinners, heathens and apostates with the intensity of a medieval witch-hunter.
Normally you should be wary of opinion pieces putatively written by politicians because they are usually the work of exjournalists who have decamped to “the dark side”. In the guise of advisers and presssecretaries these ghosts considerably outnumber Tasmania’s real journalists who work in print, television and radio.
Gallingly for real journos, those who have gone across are usually much better paid.
But Eric’s piece with its implacable and forensic prosecution of his hated enemies is clearly all his own work. Terse and staccato, its creator’s fingerprints are all over it. Even as you read, you will hear the familiarly distinctive and oddly mechanical voice.
“Figures on the Green Left have taken faux exception to the valid identification of the role played by environmental activists, often with ties to the Greens Party, in obstructing fuel reduction burns. They say that because the Greens do not control majorities at any level of government, they cannot bear any responsibility for preventing fire mitigation.”
Unless there is a brilliant satirist employed in his office this is the fair-dinkum voice of the Senator whom Tasmanians have come to love or loathe. But the truth is, wouldn’t we all miss him?
is also sweeping through No 10 Downing Street and great changes have been promised.
Normally a government in its first months seeks out consultants and advisers who are most often just like the folk who informed the previous administration. It is said the strength of the Westminster system, which we share with the British, is that no matter what loonies are elected to government, in the end the wiser and cautious heads of the permanent public service will prevail. Radical ideas for change are dampened down by the world-weary advice of mandarins whose brief is above politics and is to ensure the safe continuity of government.
Perhaps not this time.
There may be no better proof that Boris Johnson is a loose cannon at Number 10 than the PM’s appointment of Dominic
Cummings as his right-hand man. Cummings was an architect of the victorious Brexit campaign. He was responsible for the winning slogan “Take Back Control” which he developed, not by talking to experts and the elite but by hanging out in pubs and talking to punters. He listened to the voice of the people, not to the great and the good nor to the shrill, ill-spelt and intemperate echo chamber of social media but to the voice of real people.
Having a quiet one in the local is a great learning experience. In Australia we call it “the pub test”. While Cummings was doing his research in the amber zone, he learned that while the Brits hated their life being run by foreign public servants from the EC, they didn’t much like their own career public servants either.
Ordinary Brits believe their civil servants are neither civil nor do they serve anyone but themselves. The higher echelon who run the country are largely drawn from the upper classes, all went to the same schools, are members of the same clubs and are dedicated to the status quo.
Privately their motto is “ne quem stabam navem”. Don’t rock the boat.
With Johnson’s approval, his chief adviser Cummings is plotting to capsize the civil service elite and to replace them.
Cummings placed a nationwide employment advertisement, not in the Financial Times but on his own blog site calling for the CVs of “weirdos and misfits with odd skills ... oddballs ... wildcards, artists, people who never went to university ... an unusual set of people with different skills and backgrounds”.
Sir Humphrey Appleby would be horrified.
But here in Tasmania I reckon our mob would love it. Throw in a few forgers, a couple of horse thieves, chancers, rebels and miscellaneous villains and Mr Cummings might be drawing from a very Tasmanian gene pool.
Cummings’s prospective team of government advisers, whether loopy or just outside of the loop, will be most unlike Sir Humphrey from the evergreen British television series Yes Minister. While Sir Humphrey cautioned against reform and change because, “you never know where these things might end up”, Cummings believes things can’t get any worse.
Cummings won applause from the influential Times’ columnist Clare Foges. A former No 10 insider and speech writer, she earned the title of “the prime minister’s larynx”. From her experience in the system, Foges in her column, deep-throated her personal frustration with “the slow pace of change” and “the tolerance of mediocrity”.
She recalls in her time at No 10 how she was frustrated by meetings that “went nowhere” and that the place seemed “stuck in second gear” and how “beyond six o’clock, it was the Mary Celeste”.
All of which goes to show, at heart, how very British is Tasmania.
The idea of changing the guard at No 10 has got the whole UK talking and other democracies watching.
Whether so much change can really happen in a system of government so hidebound by archaic tradition depends on how much the new advisers can get in Johnson’s brain. If they do, it would certainly lead to what Sir Humphrey might ironically call, “A courageous decision, Prime Minister.”
Here in Tasmania our new innovative Premier Gutwein might be tempted to look at what Boris and Cummings are thinking. But Premier, google it yourself. Don’t ask an adviser.
Milly Clark is little. Even by the typically lean standards of marathon runners, at 164cm tall, the Launceston Olympian presents a diminutive but undeniably tough figure, like steel cables under skin. And she says her size is actually a significant advantage in her chosen discipline. “Because I’m so small, I don’t overheat as easily and I don’t sweat a lot,” she says. “Which works in my favour, the bigger girls tend to overheat quicker and need to drink more, but I don’t need to drink as much while I’m running.”
That combination of small stature and years of hard work have certainly paid off for 30-year-old Clark, who was the first Australian across the line in an impressive 18th, in the Rio Olympics in 2016 , less than a year after running her first official marathon in Amsterdam, finishing third in her debut.
And in the countdown to the Tokyo Olympics, in July, Clark is pushing herself to make the cut for this year’s squad. The top three marathon runners in the country will be selected for the women’s team and Clark is currently sitting in that numberthree spot, so she is working hard to stay there.
The trick now is to ensure she doesn’t get bumped out by someone else with a faster time, while trying not to do her last pre-Olympics marathon too close to Tokyo, so she has time for her body to recover.
“I’ll probably do the Run The Bridge, in Hobart in February, that’s a 10km run, then after that my main focus will be doing the half marathon in New York in March, then I’ll aim to do the Rotterdam Marathon, in early April, to try and get a personal best on the board before Tokyo.
“Realistically, you can only really run two marathons a year, so you need to pick the right times to do them. You don’t want to run too early because someone could take the spot after you, but you don’t want to run too late because if you screw it up it’s too late to try again!”
So far so good, though. In July last year Clark finished second in the women’s Gold Coast Marathon, with a time of 2:28:08, within Olympic qualifying time. And in January she won the Cadbury Marathon half-marathon in Hobart with a record-breaking time of one hour, 13 minutes.
But with the Olympic squad not being confirmed until April, Clark will keep pushing herself every day until then.
“I run daily, most of the time twice a day, with a bit of gym work in there as well. I’m doing some very heavy mileage at the moment, building up to a marathon you need to get those Ks into your legs.”
Those legs first started running at the age of four, when Clark first started doing Little Athletics in Launceston with the Youngtown Little Athletics Club. She started out like most kids at Little Aths, doing a mix of both track and field events, trying a bit of everything.
But she soon realised she was not good at everything. “I was a terrible javelin thrower,” she mutters with a smile. “But I just had a lot of success with the running so I started doing it a bit more, made some good friends, and soon I fell in love with it.”
Her mum, Margaret, was a Commonwealth Games gymnast in 1978 and her aunt Elizabeth Jack was an Olympic diver, so it is fair to say there was plenty of encouragement for Clark to pursue her sporting passion, but Clark says she also felt no pressure from her parents to do so.
“I used to do gymnastics when I was a kid and I think I put that expectation on myself because mum was a gymnast, but there was never any pressure from her,” Clark says. “I guess I thought it’s what she might want me to do, but one day she said ‘you don’t need to do it, only do it if you really love it.’ So I immediately pulled the pin and focused on running because I did love running and I still do. My aunt used to wear an Olympic games ring and I used to play with it all the time and always wanted one of my own. Now I have one.”
Born in Launceston, Clark lived there until she was 11, when her parents moved them to Germany, where they taught English in an international school. After two years they moved to Indonesia to teach and Clark lived there for six years, finishing high school there. But it was also during high school that she started taking her running more seriously and competitively,
At the time she was a sprinter, not a distance runner, and she wanted to use her talents to win a scholarship to study at a college in the US.
“That was when I thought I needed to really put my head down and train to get some good times. When I was 16 I started getting up early, going to the track and doing some extra running before school every day.
“When I graduated I got a scholarship to go to Drake University [in Iowa]. It was such a good opportunity, I got school paid for, got to live there for three years, got my college degree in psychology, met some cool people, travelled around.”
Her scholarship was for 400m hurdles but while in the US she switched to longer distances.
“That was when I knew I loved it and that was what I wanted to do, I wanted to take it as far as I could. I got a bit sick of the snow, though. For six months of the year it was knee-deep. So in the winter I had to run on a treadmill or a 200m indoor track and it drove me nuts. I just wanna get outside!”
Finishing at Drake she returned to Australia and lived in Sydney, where she did a degree in exercise and sports science followed by a Masters Degree in nutrition, becoming a dietitian.
Then, about two years ago, she decided the Sydney lifestyle was getting to be too draining.
“Sydney was just too much. Between work and traffic I found my life was getting kinda unhealthy. I like a good balance of work, seeing friends, going out, running, but in Sydney I was getting up at 4am to go for a run just in order to be out the door by 6am to battle through an hour and a half of traffic.
“It was tiring. Then had a running injury and I decided yeah, for my own health and sanity I needed a change. My dad retired about two years ago and he and my mum moved home to Launceston. My brother and his partner were in Launceston as well and had just had a new baby and I really wanted to be an aunty, I really wanted to be around my family again and so I moved back.
“I love it here, it’s all so much easier now.”
Now she works two days a week as a dietitian with Physio Tas in Launceston, where she finds her own experience in competitive sport comes in handy, especially with sportspeople.
“It’s helpful because I have some insights into what to eat and not eat, what energy gels to have and not to have, it means I really know what I’m prescribing for people because I use them myself, and I love working with athletes, whether they’re recreational through to elite, the concepts are the same.
“During the academic year I also work at the University of Tasmania, lecturing two days a week. Add in running and training around that and it’s pretty busy. Fridays are my day off work, though, I love my Fridays.”
When Clark talks about a day off, though, she only means from work. Not running. She still runs every day. Her “days off” are simply an opportunity to do an extra long run.
Sometimes she gets her mum to drive her to a nearby town like Evandale or Nile, and then jogs home to Riverside.
She laughs: “It’s an addiction. If I don’t run every day I get a headache and get cranky, and people ask me ‘have you been for a run today?’ and I’m like ‘NO I HAVEN’T!’
“When I get off a long haul flight after being trapped in a metal tube for 15 hours I feel like I’m going to die if I don’t get moving somehow.
“I’d like to say it’s because you’re addicted to the endorphins, everyone hears about that runner’s high. But really, I just feel better when I finish.
“Sometimes I hate it when I’m running, everything hurts, but when I finish, everything is better.”
More than anything, Clark wants to do her best running while she is still young, in a discipline where athletes tend to leave marathon running until later in their careers, when their bodies have toughened, but sprinting is no longer a forte.
In fact, that first marathon she ran back in 2015, right before making the Rio Olympics team, was a big jump out of her comfort zone as a 26-year-old athlete. “My coach just said to me ‘you should try a marathon’ and the furthest I’d done at that point was about 20km, or a half marathon. I wasn’t really sure about it but he said ‘yeah give it a go’ and I thought well, okay. At the time I just wasn’t getting any faster. I could go for a run and had one speed I’d evolved into. So I thought OK, it can’t hurt.
“I felt like everyone leaves marathons until the end of their careers and I thought, but what if you’re a really good marathon runner and you’ve burnt out in those last ten years when you could have been doing marathons?
“So I ran the Amsterdam Marathon and I had a good experience doing that first one, which helped seal the deal I think. If I’d hated it, things might have been different. I mean, it really hurt, but I really loved it. And the location was great, I got to see heaps of the city while I was there.”
She says she always tries to see marathons as fun and part of her process is to try and recreate that sense of fun and excitement she got in that first race. She usually makes a point of staying for a week after each race so she can take time to enjoy exploring wherever she is in the world.
And having the support of her fellow athletes is a powerful motivator as well.
In Rio, after crossing the line ahead of her teammates, Clark famously stayed at the finish line and waited for them to finish as well – considering most competitors are struggling just to stay on their feet by that point, it was no small gesture.
“It was all so weird for me, I remember watching Jess Trengove and Lisa Weightman on TV during the 2012 Olympics, in London, and aspired to be them, and then suddenly there I was at the start of the Rio marathon alongside them.
“They were both so supportive of me when we got to Rio, they shared their experience of London to help me know what to expect. So there was no way I would not wait for them. It was important to me.”
That sense of being part of a team is a little harder for Clark to experience these days. Her coach, Philo Saunders, is based in Canberra and Clark essentially trains by correspondence. She visits Canberra for a week every six weeks to do some work in person but the rest of the time she trains alone in Launceston, reporting in to Saunders regularly.
She says it can be hard to know how she’s really doing until she physically hits the track with her coach but generally it works quite well.
“I miss having my group to train with when I’m at home but when I go up there and I’m with all those people again, supporting each other, it’s great.”
Obviously, Tokyo is the goal that looms largest in Clark’s
sights right now but she says she is trying hard not to stress about it.
“I try not to think too much about it, it’s still so far away. By March I’ll start getting a bit antsy, though, I think. After then, there’s not a lot of marathons left, most are run from January to March overseas, so if anyone is going to do one and beat my time it will likely be before March.
“So when I do my last one in April, I should have a good idea if someone has run faster than me or if I need to run faster.
“But you know, if it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be. If it doesn’t happen, I can try again in 2024, I’m only 30, so realistically I could do another two. I’d love to do another Olympics, obviously, but it’s not like I’ll dive into a deep dark depression if I don’t get selected.”
In what spare time she has, Clark tries to have as much fun as she can, determined to not let her athletic career become all that defines her.
“I love going out for dinner, I will stretch out a meal from 5pm-10pm, I just love it! And going to vineyards is something I really love to do.
“It’s important to know you don’t have to put your life on hold just because you run. All things in balance. I don’t want to get to 40 and feel I’ve missed out on doing all the fun things in my 30s because I’ve just been running.
“And if I need to lie down and rest my legs after a long run, it’s always a good excuse for a Netflix binge. I think I’ve watched everything on Netflix. On Sundays I do a long 30km-40km run and afterwards I lie there, eating lunch, start watching TV at 11am, then at 4pm it’s like oh, where’d the day go?”
Clark is certainly a star on the rise and is has a strong chance of carrying Australia’s marathon hopes to the Tokyo Olympics but she admits to having one terrible weakness.
“I hate hills,” she says ruefully, shaking her head. “I am NOT designed for hills at all. People have asked me if I’m going to do the Point to Pinnacle in Hobart. Hell no! You wouldn’t catch me dead doing that. As if I’d wanna run 21km up a hill! No thanks.
“I live at Riverside at the moment, on top of this giant hill. And – this is really sad – I will get in the car, drive 200m down the hill, park at the bottom, and then go on my run from there just so I don’t have to run up the hill at the end.”
But she does wear an Olympics ring just like her Aunt Elizabeth now, though.