MATTHEW Nott was just 12-years-old when he travelled across the Nullabor Plain on a family holiday.
Perched in the back seat of the Kingswood with his dog, he remembers reading three books on renewable energy while the hours passed.
“I can’t remember what the titles were exactly, or why I got them from the library,” he says.
“But I do know there was something really thrilling about getting energy from the wind and the sun.”
However, he forgot about it until about two years ago when the seeds sown on that trip sprouted into the climate change activist who is openly passionate about the danger facing the world.
Canberra born and bred, Matthew says if he had gone back to his home town as a doctor he would have been the first third-generation medico there.
His now retired father was a cardio-thoracic surgeon and his mother a medical artist who illustrated anatomy textbooks: “That’s how they met - in the anatomy lab.”
Matthew did a five-year medical degree at Sydney University before working as a junior doctor for two years.
He then went to New Zealand for a year to work as a junior orthopaedic doctor and gained a place on the country’s training scheme – the first time anyone outside New Zealand had been offered the position.
Matthew recalls coming back from the interview to the house where he was living with his girlfriend Kylie.
“She opened the door with the security chain across it and said ‘right if we’re going to stay here you have got to propose to me and we are going to get married otherwise we are going home’.”
Matthew laughs: “So I proposed to her through the gap in a security –chained door and she let me in.”
Matthew then worked for six months in Edinburgh before heading back to Australia and the south coast.
“I’d always wanted to work in this area,” he says.
“It was difficult at first but after being here for eight years, things have worked out well.”
Then two or three years ago, after 32 years lying dormant, the environmental message came up again.
In many people’s minds, environmental activists conjure up visions of long dreadlocks, multi-coloured hats, kaftans and being chained to big machinery.
But the 44-year-old Matthew Nott is certainly not your everyday activist, which, he says, helps to get the message out.
“There’s a perception that some of the ‘usual types’ aren’t listened to very much,” he says.
“But if an orthopaedic surgeon’s voice can be heard and give a bit of perceived credibility to mainstream Australians then that’s good.”
Matthew says he had heard about climate change but it was “yeah, yeah, a bit like the hole in the ozone layer - everybody was talking about it but nothing happened”.
“Then, when a mate told me about an ice shelf in Antarctica breaking up and disappearing, I started reading voraciously about it and listening to politicians and what they said,” he says.
“They were basically ignoring it so I knew I had to be involved and that was the start of it all.”
Matthew says there is a fundamental problem with humans – they don’t understand or want to know about what they can’t see.
“We put our personal survival ahead of the survival of the species,” he says.
“That’s understandable to an extent, but we need to look further.”
Matthew says he encourages anyone who is a sceptic or who doesn’t believe in climate change to “read about it - don’t make your mind up until you have read about it – especially the obvious changes in levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere”.
“We are pumping huge amounts into the air and cutting down trees at the same time,” he says.
“That can’t continue.”
Matthew says he loves where he lives and loves his job: “I see someone come into my surgery in a wheelchair and then which six months later they can walk gives me enormous satisfaction, but I am also burningly worried about climate chan-ge”.
“I’m doing this for my kids,” he says.
“I’m worried about their future and everyone else’s, as we all should be.”
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