By Virginia Winder

As a teenager, Jack Elphick used to cycle past giant factories studded with chimneys that exhaled foul smoke into a post-war Birmingham sky.

"I remember thinking, 'this is wrong, this can't go on forever'," he says. "At that age you tend to have a blind faith in the system and you think 'the powers that be wouldn't allow that to happen', but through life you learn otherwise."

Those lessons have inspired Jack to take on the world.

If ever there was a global citizen, it's Jack Elphick. As well as English, Jack can speak Spanish and Arabic. He has worked in Central America to protect people and save the rainforests in Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua. He has been arrested by French commandoes on a Greenpeace protest boat heading to Moruroa. He has hung out in a tree during a campaign to stop the logging of native forests on the West Coast of New Zealand's South Island. Personal accounts of these missions are captured in his book, Walking the Talk, published in 2003.

Mobile protester

These days Jack lives on the move.

While he has strong Taranaki links, with an ex-wife and a daughter based in Eltham, Jack has condensed his belongings into a cargo van that he has transformed into his Rollin' Home.

This allows him the freedom to travel New Zealand in search of a cause, or leave his minimal home behind to help those in need overseas.

His biggest Taranaki campaign happened on the rebound.

In 1985, he had signed up to go to Moruroa. "At the last minute I was overlooked," Jack says. "Probably because I wasn't 'Johnny on the Spot'. I was disappointed of course."

He had expected to sail on the Rainbow Warrior, but on 10 July that year the Greenpeace mothership was bombed in the Auckland Harbour. He missed out on joining another protest boat.

Protecting the Stony River

"Although I was disappointed in not going to Moruroa, I had been to Tahiti before. Probably, when I look back, I was able to contribute more environmentally than if I was on one of the boats because I did quite a bit of the leg work to get the Stony (Hangatahua) River protected."

Jack and fellow environmentalist Peter Winter walked the length of the river, which flows from Mt Taranaki to the pounding surf at Okato.

On the way, the men took photographic evidence of the waterway's pristine state to back up their submissions to a tribunal discussing the fate of the Stony River.

"The power authorities made submissions not to tie it up, but to leave it open to put power schemes on the river if necessary at a later date."

Triumph - this time

In this case, the environmentalists were victorious.

That means it's against the law to:

• Dam or divert the Stony River
• Discharge contaminants into the water
• Introduce planting or plants
• Drill, excavate or tunnel into the riverbed
• Deposit any substance in or under the bed
• Drain or reclaim the bed

While the Taranaki waterway was saved from future pollutants, the protest in the South Pacific failed.

The French completed their 1985 programme of testing atomic bombs beneath the South Pacific atoll and repeated the performance a decade later.

Support for Taranaki anti-nuke group

Jack and four other Taranaki people were among the 1995 protesters.

Thanks to the generosity of Taranaki folk, who made donations towards the voyage, Jack, along with Faye Whittaker, John Lawrence, John Paul and Marianne Hasselerharm joined a Tauranga skipper heading for Moruroa.

But their anti-nuke stance was cut short because the skipper changed his plans. Instead of sailing for the atoll, he stopped at Tahiti.

While all were desperate to sail to the testing zone, only Jack was successful in gaining passage on another protest boat. Even now he feels humble that his fellow Taranaki crewmates agreed he should be the one to fulfill the mission they began together.

Aboard the chartered Greenpeace mothership, the SS Manutea, Jack found himself on the frontline.

Let's relive the moment.

Out of the darkness...

In the wee hours of 1 October 1995, somewhere in the South Pacific Ocean between Tahiti and Moruroa Atoll, a French warship looms out of the darkness. It crosses the path of the Manutea, but only two men are awake on the anti-nuke protest boat to see the violation.

They are a radio operator named Alex and a white-bearded engineer called Jack Elphick.

"At 0510 hours, a warship approached us at what appeared to be full speed, and cut across our bow within a distance of no more than a few metres," Jack says.

"The radio operator called them up and told them they were breaking maritime law. There was no response - silence, silence, silence."

A few minutes later, a French accent curled over the radio like a whip.

"They told us they were about to board us and seize us. I remember thinking 'I should be scared now', but I wasn't, I was just excited. I thought, 'I'm a crucial part of the protest'. I was a bit apprehensive because previous boardings had not been gentle," Jack says.

After the warning, Jack ran below deck to wake skipper Brad Ives. "He sent me down to the engine room to start the engines."

French take over

Within minutes, the Manutea was motor-sailing at full speed towards Moruroa Atoll, where the French were carrying out underground nuclear tests.

"But we were no match for the French Foreign Legion Commandoes," Jack says.

They were flying towards the 120-foot-long Greenpeace ship in high-speed inflatable boats. As they drew alongside, the commandoes threw grapples attached to ropes on to the Manutea. Then, like spiders scrabbling up silk, they swarmed aboard.

"They came up on two sides," Jack says. "There was no way we could push them off."

When the French boarded, Brad Ives stayed at the wheel while the Greenpeace crew members gathered on the saloon deck.

Jack loses a lot

"Then they took over the boat. They went through and looted the boat and took personal things," Jack says. "All the cameras, the films were taken out."

A French naval officer came aboard and told the protesters they would be transferred to patrol boats, taken to Moruroa and flown back to Tahiti. He told them to leave their personal gear on the Manutea as it would be safer there.

Jack believed him and lost about $1000 worth of items, including two navigation books he had borrowed from the former New Plymouth public library (now Puke Ariki). "I got special permission to take books on a long-term loan and I felt pretty bad when I came back and had to say I had lost them. They charged me for them."

He later wrote to the French Ambassador in New Zealand complaining about his lost belongings, but never heard back.

Doing the splits

The passionate protester nearly lost far more than material things during that campaign.

When the anti-nuke activists were being transferred to the patrol boats, everybody got safely across - until it was Jack's turn.

"We were still under way at full pace heading towards the atoll," he says, explaining how the patrol boats were roaring alongside the Manutea, with just a metre between the moving crafts.

"One by one we stepped across the gap. When it came to my turn, I had one foot on one boat and one on the other and I was just about to swing myself on the French patrol boat and the gap widened - it was more than I could span. The sailors on the patrol boat thought I was going to fall, so grabbed me by my clothes. The people on the Manutea also grabbed my clothing."

In Walking The Talk, Jack explains what happened next. "I became helplessly suspended in mid-air. If I was to fall between the two boats, I would have either been sucked into a propeller, or crushed when the boats moved together again - now I was scared."

Eventually, Jack was able to get a grip on the patrol boat's rail, convince those on the Manutea to let him go and then swing aboard the French vessel.

A telling 'thumbs up'

Once they arrived at the atoll, the protesters were put on a bus, driven to an airstrip and loaded on a cargo plane with 140 French Foreign Legionnaires. "They were four abreast, lined up in military fashion. They had automatic rifles with long bayonets.

"During our flight to Papeete, one of the legionnaire officers came off the flight deck, pointed to his watch and put his thumb up to another one (officer) standing right by me," Jack says. "Afterwards, I found out they had just detonated a bomb."

In Tahiti, the peace campaigners were finger-printed and released.

The capture of the Manutea signalled the end of that main protest campaign against French testing in the South Pacific. While it didn't force France to stop its underground trials, it did put the European nation under the world spotlight.

Jack's anti-nuke, anti-war journey began just across the water from France.

Chaotic childhood

He was born in Cricklewood, London, on 20 October 1929. His family then moved from the British capital to Birmingham, where he did his schooling. The chaotic effects of World War II interrupted six of his formative years, as German bombers constantly hammered the industrial Midlands city.

Jack was too young to fight in WWII, instead doing his military duty as the dust settled. For five years he donned the Royal Air Force (RAF) uniform and did mop-up duty - of people.

"I finished up in a peace-keeping force in the Middle East during the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict. The term peacekeeper wasn't used in those days, but that was what I was supposed to be. The other option was to be a conscientious objector, but at 16 you don't think of things like that - I didn't anyway," he says.

"I wasn't in a combatant unit. I was in a mountain rescue unit to start with and the (aeroplane) crash rescue unit."

Not one of the herd

After he was demobilised from the RAF, the young man returned to England. "I didn't fit into civilian life after coming out of the airforce. I think I have always been a little different to the herd..."

"I went along and I was active there for a very while. It seemed so wrong - the damage and suffering that that was caused by atomic bombs," he says, referring to those dropped on Japan at the end of World War II.

On 6 August 1945, the city of Hiroshima was the target of the first atomic bomb used against a civilian population. Three days later, the United States dropped a second atomic bomb over the city of Nagasaki. Together, the two bombs killed about 250,000 people.

Looking for a campaign

Human destruction such as this has turned Jack into an all-round demonstrator, forever on the lookout for a campaign. Some may call him a professional protester, world watchdog, veteran campaigner or, unkindly, a man who jumps from bandwagon to bandwagon.

He may be all of these, but it's difficult to pin him down - especially in one place.

In 1953, Jack immigrated to Australia. "I met up with some other guys and we hitch-hiked around Australia to start with. They dropped out in Sydney.

"I rode a motorcycle from Darwin to Adelaide through Alice Springs - right through the centre. The roads were pretty well underdeveloped in those days."

On the way, Jack picked up work on sheep stations, doing a variety work. He also spent two years in Darwin, working as an ambulance driver, fireman and then in engineering, finally learning a trade.

In Australia, Jack was aware of environmental and racial issues, but did not begin making stands until he came to New Zealand.

Both sides of 'Think Big'

Jack crossed the Tasman Sea in 1958 and the following year got a job building the now-decommissioned Meremere Power Station.

He moved to Taranaki in 1974, living in towns around the mountain and working. He has renovated houses, plus worked on shutdowns at big factory and energy projects.

The engineer has helped build the latter and also fought against them.

Years before the Stony River campaign, Jack teamed up with fellow conservationist Peter Winter to make submissions against granting water rights for the Motunui plant. But the "Think Big" project won that battle, so Jack embracing the old adage, "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em", ended up working at the plant.

"A few jobs I have worked on, I had to do quite a bit of soul searching," he says.

Other times, Jack has been compelled to down tools and take up protest banners.

Taking on Timberlands

That happened in 1997, when he learnt about the logging of native forests on public land in the South Island. Having newly acquired rope-climbing techniques, Jack thought he could be of use in the occupation of the Charleston Forest, so joined the fray.

The long, drawn-out campaign put heat on logging company Timberlands and also gained the attention of national media.

Eventually, the Government made a stance and in May 2001, Prime Minister Helen Clark wrote: "I am pleased to announce the Government's decision to transfer all the publicly-owned West Coast indigenous forest managed by Timberlands West Coast to the Department of Conservation. Protection will now be extended to 130,000 hectares of land formerly set aside for logging."

Her announcement ended: "In these forests the future now belongs to the kereru, the kiwi and the kaka."

To Jack, all the forests of the world are precious and worth fighting for. He has put himself in the firing line in Central America as well as New Zealand.

And this man of conscience will keep doing what he does best - Walking the Talk.