David Bellamy: the luckiest man on God’s earth
David Bellamy is well known as a botanist, environmentalist and TV presenter. A big, boisterous personality, he nonetheless has a deeply spiritual side which he shared with the Wesley Perth congregation and other listeners during a recent visit to WA.
As a child, David lived in a strict Baptist home and attended church three times each Sunday, although he got out of it when he could by “granny sitting”.
“We used to sit at home and we used to sing hymns” he recalls. Granny’s favourite was “Dare to be a Daniel” while David’s was, “Light upon the Mountain.”
“We were awful singers. Mrs Spong, who lived next door, didn’t like us because she could hear us through the wall. Probably she went to church more to get away from our singing.”
He has written in his autobiography of coming home from school as a teenager and seeing his granny, “dressed as she always was dressed in Sunday black” standing across the road from him. Knowing it couldn’t possibly have been her, he continued home and as he entered the house realised his granny was dead — and he had already said goodbye.
From an early age, David started to notice things about his church he didn’t like.
“There was a hierarchy in the Baptist Church: if you were rich you were a deacon,” he said. “My mother, was lame but helped run the children’s church. When we had a big baptism we had to take bath towels home on the bus, and all the deacons went back in their Rolls Royces, that really got up my nose.
“I slowly moved away from going to church, and tried all the different things…
“I studied the Koran. There was a lot more about the environment in the Talmud and quite a lot in the Koran but not a lot in the Bible. We left it out for some reason,” he says.
He had what he calls his Damascus experience while he was still young, having left war ravaged London to spend time in the countryside.
“I cycled through Britain when it was probably the most biodiverse. There were small and large farms, there were small and large estates.”
David remembers he had found a large adder (snake) and was distressed when the local game keeper cut its head off.
“I told him he shouldn’t have done that, and I walked down into a bit of coppiced woodland full of flowers. Coppiced woodland is the most beautiful thing that humankind has ever made, because it’s a sustainable woodland…
“I went there and I sat down surrounded by orchids and bullheads — little tiny fish that swim up — and I picked them up and I said, ‘God made this.’”
It was this simple appreciation of the marvel of God’s creation that led to David’s long career as an environmentalist and campaigner in Britain and around the world.
Among other highlights, he co-founded the UK Conservation Foundation and spent his 50th birthday in a Hobart jail after protesting against the Franklin River dam. He has also spoken out in support of the Save Ningaloo Reef campaign.
David’s commitment to biodiversity has been lived out in his personal life too. After their first child, Rufus, was born prematurely they lost five babies through miscarriage.
“We’d always hoped we’d have two and adopt two, and we didn’t. God didn’t mean us to have so many genetically similar children to me perhaps,” he jokes.
“We have one European daughter (Henriett), one daughter from Guyanan (Brighid), one son from Kashmir (Eoghain), one daughter from the West Indies (Karen). And aren’t we lucky!
David and wife Rosemary will soon celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary surrounded by their children and 18 grandchildren.
David Bellamy hasn’t presented a TV show in years, which he says is because he’s no longer considered politically correct. This may be true, particularly since he has publicly questioned the scientific evidence for climate change caused by humans. Nonetheless, he says the end of his presenting career has given him many opportunities he wouldn’t otherwise have had.
”I have been around the world 200 times. I have seen all the problems and I could put my hand on my heart and say that science and good social engineering can solve all these problems very very quickly. At this moment in time, every three minutes a child dies in a road accident somewhere around the world, but every three seconds a child dies of malaria in Africa. And we could stop that in 24 hours.
“Why haven’t we been doing these things?”
David remains enchanted by creation and optimistic for the future.
“Wherever I go, I meet people who are fed up, sick and tired that the values that their parents and grandparents took for granted are disappearing. And they are not sitting back and doing nothing. They are beginning to stitch their patch back into biodiverse ways.
“Once you’ve done that you’re heading back to sustainability.”
