you must have been about three years old, we stayed in a hotel whose name you probably still remember, we walked down that big road in the tropical rain, you swam around in a pool showing me how to eat honey ants, we took the quicksilver boat out with my folks, mum loved all the seafood. we jumped in and stayed underwater, i took that photograph of you with your goggles diving down in a wash of bubbles. the colours blew our minds, the coral structures, the architecture of nature, the magnificent fish, the strange plants and the way it all made sense, it was like being on another planet, totally alien yet perfect for you and i.

christ how i remember the absolute frustration at the fact you needed to surface, grab another lungful of air, get back down there. the water was warm, the sky blue, electric and i hovered around you, protective dad, slightly bewildered by your magnetic attraction to this environment, the way you and that reef just were like old friends, i was witnessing, it was like when you were born, i witnessed it. 

we spend four hours out there, in the water, missed lunch, didn't even get out of the water until the last minute and when we did we knew we had seen something very special, something that would stay with us forever.

now the heartbreaking news coming down the line, the barrier reef is under imminent threat of being destroyed by the terrible over development of the north queensland coast and bad fertiliser used in agriculture on a vast scale. this is terrible news, really awful, not just because the next generation will never get to experience this incredible ecosystem, but because it is an ecosystem, it's part of our habitat, it's connected to us in the most obvious ways.

i can only hope that the people running australia, all parties, all sides of the political fence can just get together on this one point and save the reef at any cost. turn back the entropy, it will be an incredible act of unselfishness and bipartisan humility. it will be something that we can feel happy about telling our children, more important than getting on the un board of hot air, more important than high speed broadband, skool halls, pink bats, carbon tax and sporty parades through the city. please save the reef.

it's ironic that google have just finished mapping the reef, you can take a google maps virtual tour through them, it was in the papers on monday, it's tuesday night now as the news spills in.