E6: Nellie and the Builders Too Small to See

Nellie and the Builders Too Small to See
Lobster Bob's Scenic Tours | Where in the World?

NARRATOR: Somewhere on Earth, a volcano is smoking. A market smells of a hundred spices. A little plane is climbing higher than the clouds. You can see it. You can learn about it. Every place is real... and it is all out there. Lobster Bob has been everywhere. Now he is taking you. Passport ready?

NARRATOR: Where in the World? Five clues. One place on Earth. When you know it, you do not keep it to yourself, you shout it at the speaker. Passports ready? Clue One.

NARRATOR: Clue One is the journey. Lobster Bob did not drive to this place, and he did not fly. He went by water, on a boat named after somebody's grandmother, a boat that treats every sea exactly the same. The water here was warm, and clear, and the colour of a jewel. And under the boat, stretching further than Nellie could travel in a day, was something ALIVE.

LOBSTER BOB: The anchor never touched it. Not once in three visits, and it never will.

NARRATOR: Shout your guess... now.

NARRATOR: Hold that guess. Clue Two. The continent.

NARRATOR: This place belongs to OCEANIA: the continent of islands, thousands and thousands of them, scattered across the biggest ocean on Earth. And Oceania has animals that exist nowhere else: animals with pouches, animals that hop instead of run. Getting warmer?

NARRATOR: Shout your guess... now.

NARRATOR: Clue Three. What happened there, straight from the Fleet log.

NARRATOR: Lobster Bob put on a mask and a snorkel and swam face-down for one entire hour, over something that has been building itself for twenty thousand years. And here is the strange part: the builders are smaller than your fingernail. Millions and millions of tiny builders, each one adding its tiny piece. When he climbed back aboard, he wrote four words in the log.

LOBSTER BOB: The hour was not enough. Four words in my language, five in yours, all of them true.

NARRATOR: Shout your guess... now.

NARRATOR: Clue Four. The country. This is AUSTRALIA: the country of kangaroos and koalas, of the famous white Opera House that looks like sails in a harbour, of beaches and deserts and cities that hug the coast. And off its north-east corner, under that jewel-coloured water, is our answer.

NARRATOR: Shout your guess... now.

NARRATOR: Clue Five. The giveaway. It is the largest structure on Earth built by living things, it is two thousand three hundred kilometres long, and astronauts can see it from SPACE.

NARRATOR: Three. Two. One.

NARRATOR: The GREAT BARRIER REEF! If you had it back on Clue One, you did not need the map today, you ARE the map. If you got it on Clue Five, you got it, and that is the whole point. And if you guessed somewhere else, you still travelled, and the reef will wait for you.

NARRATOR: Get your pencil. Stamp number one goes into your passport right now: a piece of coral, drawn in your best jewel-water blue. No passport yet? Yours is waiting, free, at lobster bobs podcast dot com. Print it, and you are officially collecting the world.

NARRATOR: Now, the prize. Every stamp comes with something Lobster Bob learned there.

LOBSTER BOB: The greatest things are built by the smallest builders, one tiny piece at a time. Nobody claps for a coral, and the reef gets built anyway.

NARRATOR: The Map Moment. Tonight, find Australia on a map or a globe: bottom right of the world map, the big island sitting on its own, and the reef runs down its top right shoulder. Put your finger right on it and say: I know what happened there. Because now, you do.

NARRATOR: And tonight's explorer's task, before bedtime: tell somebody that the reef is really nearly three thousand smaller reefs and nine hundred islands, all holding hands underwater. Explorers carry treasure in their heads. Go and hand some over.

NARRATOR: Next Saturday, a new place, and Clue One arrives right now. Listen carefully: next week's place has no water at all... and from the sky, it looks soft. It is not soft. Bring your guess.

NARRATOR: Lobster Bob has been everywhere. Now he is taking you.

LOBSTER BOB: You are the missing passenger, mijo. Passport ready? The world is not going to wait forever.

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