Poll after poll shows that Australians do care about nature. For me it's about translating that into actually having a government that is going to do what it takes to look after nature. I think part of the issue is around reporting of nature and climate change. You go to the home page of any of our major news providers and there's not too many environment buttons … it just doesn’t really feature … I think if people actually knew the truth, then there would be a lot more pressure on government to actually deliver. Because we do care. (Full Story, 2023)
These are the words of David Pocock, the renowned former professional rugby union player and captain of Australia's national men's team, the Wallabies. Now in his post-rugby career, Pocock is speaking as a nationally prominent politician after having been elected as an independent Senator representing the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) in Australia's Federal Parliament in 2022. His comments stress the lack of coverage of environmental and climate issues in Australian news media and a lamentable record of historical inaction by the nation's major political parties on climate change, biodiversity loss and environmental degradation. Such inaction contrasts with polls indicating that Australian citizens want increased action to address the impacts of climate change (Australian Conservation Foundation, 2022: 5; Deshpande et al., 2023: 6).
Pocock's successful professional sporting career affords him a ‘platform’ for the public promotion of environmental protection and climate action (Hutchins et al., 2021: 371). This article analyses Pocock's evolving representation as a media figure during his gradual and overlapping transitions from outstanding elite athlete to environmental activist, and from activist to politician. We argue that, through documentaries, Pocock is accessing and articulating a mode of representation capable of escaping the boundaries and limitations of sporting achievement as a cultural frame, while also never devaluing or disowning it. Instead, his celebrated achievements as an athlete are leveraged to complicate and exceed these limitations, which enable Pocock's standing as an environmental activist and politician to take shape through the accumulation of layers of meaning, prominence and legitimacy over time. This case is supported by analysis of two widely available documentaries that feature him as a subject and coincide chronologically with the latter period of his sporting career, including his retirement from rugby union in 2020 and followed by the 2022 federal election campaign. The first is a popular two-part episode of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's (ABC) nationally broadcast biographical profile series, Australian Story (2016). The second is an online video produced by the Australian arm of the multinational photography company Canon, An Unlikely Union (2019), about photography and conservation in takayna/the Tarkine, which is a rainforest area in Tasmania important to both the extractive industries and environmentalists.
Each section below details an iterative representation of Pocock as a media figure and a documentary subject who is building a compelling voice and carving a sense of agency. This is achieved during his transition from playing to political career through the representation and embodiment of a set of shifting concerns connected to sport and environmental issues as they manifest in Australian culture and politics. Such concerns are evident across a range of national and international sports, including association football, cricket, motor-racing, surfing, swimming, the Olympics and Paralympics, and more (Bingaman and Moses, 2024; Hutchins et al., 2023; Miller, 2018; Orr, 2024). In the case of Pocock, each iteration of his representation also signals and/or resonates with broader issues of nationhood and sporting masculinity. From sport to activism to politics, Pocock's mediated image dynamically activates these issues and appeals to Australian publics who, like much of the world, are increasingly alert to the dangers and consequences of the climate crisis. Aided by his evolving representation and the increasing agency offered to him as a subject by the productions analysed below, we contend that Pocock develops a remarkable capacity to exert influence in national realms of environmental activism, advocacy and politics that is comparable to the control he once exerted over the flow of a rugby match.
Front running on the environment: athlete activism and ecocritical analysis
Pocock gained significant media attention in relation to environmental issues in 2014 when, at the height of his athletic powers, he was arrested for locking himself to an excavator in protest against the expansion of the Maules Creek coal mine in northern New South Wales (Farrell, 2014; Pocock, 2020). Following this, his presence across news media and social media, including his advocacy work and political campaigning, saw him become a prominent figure around whom environmental issues gained a uniquely powerful representational force.
Pocock's media persona and environmentalism have proven attractive to documentary makers. Documentary has an ‘expressive power’ that allows it to ‘embody’ and ‘give visual and audible form’ to concepts that otherwise may remain abstract (Nichols, 2017: 73). The two documentary-related productions analysed below distil myriad media representations, discourses and narratives associated with Pocock into aesthetically and narratively concise representations of his politics and the social movements from which they emerge. Our approach to analysing them is informed by an emergent and evolving paradigm of environmental media studies; that is, an ‘explosion of new scholarship’ that is interdisciplinary in nature and includes ‘qualitative analysis of the visual aesthetics associated with a particular environmental campaign’ (Shriver-Rice and Vaughan 2020: 5). Within this paradigm, an ecocritical approach to analysing films deploys ‘ecological thinking’ (Rust et al., 2023: 4) to explore ‘where films come from and where they are going, as physical objects and as cultural forms, together with a series of cultural, economic, and ecological considerations’ (Rust et al., 2023: 6). We focus our attention on ‘“hyper-signaletic” or “resonant moments”’ wherein, as Adrian Ivakhiv posits, ‘spectacle, narrative, and meaning are brought together’ (2013: 64). Such moments are not consistently defined (perhaps being a scene or sequence or a certain visual motif) but are nonetheless ‘retained most powerfully in viewers’ affective memory’ because they distil the ‘essence’ of a film (Ivakhiv 2013: 65). Such high-impact moments connect a film to the social and ecological contexts they are produced within and for. Accordingly, we analyse the high-impact moments of the documentaries under examination in this study, locating them within the wider media and political contexts of Pocock's work as an athlete and an activist, including multiple environmental campaigns.
Recent years have seen increased energy directed towards professional athletes’ willingness to speak publicly on cultural, social, and political issues (Magrath, 2022: 1). Police violence and oppression of Black citizens in the United States have been a major focus of these voices, triggering what activist sports journalist Dave Zirin (2022) terms the ‘the Kaepernick Effect’. This ‘effect’ follows from the protest of former National Football League quarterback, Colin Kaepernick, who steadfastly refused to stand during the playing of the pre-game national anthem in 2016. Kaepernick's protest has been a major focus for scholars and triggered a ‘marked increase’ in scholarly publications (O’Neill et al., 2023: 5, 9) that analyse the mediatised activism, discursive power and political positionality of athletes such as basketball's Lebron James (Coombs and Cassilo, 2017; Galily, 2019) and tennis’ Naomi Osaka (Calow, 2022; Leppard, 2022). Offering an overview of this research, O’Neill et al. (2023) discuss athletes’ participation in political activism, advocacy and protest as three ‘highly complementary … strategies for promoting social or political change’ (p. 2). These three categories are distinct, interchangeable and overlapping depending on the circumstance or context (O’Neill et al., 2023: 2). As we outline below, Pocock has taken part in all three at different moments during and after his sporting career: from his 2014 civil disobedience protest, through to change-driven activism via FrontRunners (see below), and advocacy for environmentalist causes in media appearances. O’Neill et al. (2023) highlight ‘media coverage’ as a ‘common theme’ across all this activity, which is mostly communicated by ‘online and print media outlets’ that frame elite athletes’ activism, advocacy and protest (p. 15). This article offers a distinct contribution to this research by focussing on Pocock's representation in documentaries and their production contexts, which overlap with such media, but also reflects a higher level of resource allocation and/or institutional investment compared to many online or print articles. As time-based media, documentaries allow for a sustained and considered examination of the interplay between the construction of Pocock's representation in documentary texts, his self-representation and environmental politics.
Pocock is a compelling exemplar of a national and international athlete who has used his platform to promote social and political change for over a decade, and most pointedly on climate and environmental issues where his positionality is deemed radically progressive. This makes him a uniquely complex documentary subject. Key to his representational power is the way he consistently exceeds the diverse contexts in which he is represented and his capacity to subsequently reshape them in the public sphere. Appraising the significance of Pocock's 2014 coalmine protest, Graeme Turner notes that ‘such a strong commitment to a political cause was not something routinely identified with elite Australian sportsmen’ (2016: 812). Indeed, Pocock has proven himself to be no ordinary athlete. Launched in 2020, he co-founded FrontRunners with Emma Pocock, a CEO, political advisor and conservation campaigner (Emma and David are also partners). FrontRunners is an organisation that supports Australian professional athletes and sporting organisations to engage with climate and environmental issues. In adopting an activist stance, FrontRunners (2023) ‘go[es] from sideline to centre court on climate action’ and seeks to reshape public perceptions of elite athletes and their political efficacy.
David Pocock also represents a break from the norm as a national politician. Named ‘Athlete of the Year’ at the 2022 BBC Green Sport Awards in the United Kingdom, he has achieved notable international standing as ‘the first sportsperson to transition into politics on a purely environmental platform’ (emphasis added. BBC Sport, 2022; see also Edge of Sports, 2020). Pocock was the first independent (i.e. not aligned with a political party) candidate elected to represent the ACT and he subsequently doubled his share of the vote in the recent 2025 federal election. Described as ‘the climate election’, the 2022 federal election in particular was framed as an ‘unprecedented’ turning point in Australian politics and culture more broadly (Climate Council, 2022: 2; Tana, 2022). It also saw numerous other independent ‘teal’ candidates claim seats previously held by Liberal Party members. These candidates were supported by a ‘community crowdfunding initiative’ called Climate 200, which was created by businessman and political activist Simon Holmes à Court (Climate 200, 2023). Employing sporting parlance, Climate 200 describes itself as ‘a group of concerned Australians’ who ‘cannot stand on the sidelines and let climate science denial and vested interests delay meaningful action on climate change’ (Climate 200, 2023). Pocock's political career is thus constitutive of a shift in the Australian electorate driven by climate focused political campaigning.
The breakdown: rugby, masculinity and environmentalism
Establishing an understanding of Pocock's popular image as an athlete offers a starting point for analysis and situates sporting masculinity as another important lens through which it can be parsed. This section seeks to highlight how his simultaneous embodiment and contestation of rugby's traditional heteronormative masculinities during his long playing career becomes more compelling when considered in relation to his environmentalism. Over time, Pocock's determination to navigate and transform a rugby field saturated by masculine hegemony is interlaced with his commitments in the fields of environmental and climate politics. These fields demand examination given the interconnected ways in which ‘different masculinities enhance or influence environmental [and sporting] issues’ (Hultman and Anshelm, 2017: 20).
When searching YouTube for highlights from Pocock's sporting career, results prioritise titles that reference his skill at the breakdown – ‘David Pocock Tribute – The Breakdown Master (RWC 2015)’ (Rugby Life, 2015), ‘David Pocock: The return of the breakdown king’ (Rugby.com.au, 2018) and more – often with thumbnails that show him with a bloodied or bruised face. In rugby union the breakdown is the phase of play immediately after a player is tackled and before a ruck forms. It is a high-stakes moment of collision and heightened vulnerability for both attacking and defending players, who often attempt to steal the ball. Effecting a turnover in the breakdown is risky. Done incorrectly, it can result in being penalised and risks potential injury. When done successfully, however, it can significantly alter the flow of a match. World Rugby, the sport's international governing body, notes:
The breakdown places unique physical demands on the player. To be effective in the breakdown, players must possess a high level of physical competence, body awareness and control, flexibility, and dynamic movement. (World Rugby, 2023)
The work of players in the breakdown does not make for spectacular viewing when compared to speedy line breaks or clearance kicks under pressure. In reaching for the ball, key players are often obscured by the bodies of others piling in to compete, which means their feats are not always captured clearly by broadcast cameras. Physicality at the breakdown characterises the violence of rugby as a sport and its link to the concept of masculine hegemony (Bryson, 1987: 350, 353). Pocock's excellence in this area is reliant on a willingness to place his notably muscular body in an extremely vulnerable position. That he maintained success over a long career denotes incredible physical power, conditioning and competence, and also signals his dedication, hard-nosed persistence and appetite for risk.
David Rowe describes rugby union in Australia as ‘a settler-colonial import’ that signifies the nation ‘at its apex’ (2018: 97). After migrating to Australia from Zimbabwe as a child with his family, Pocock represented Australia in age grade rugby and later played for the Wallabies from 2008 until his retirement in 2019. Pocock extols the virtues of both rugby and Australia, sometimes in the same sentence: ‘As an immigrant to Australia, rugby has provided me with somewhere to make friends, to feel like I belong and obviously go on to get huge opportunities…’ (Classic Wallabies, 2023). Pocock captained the Wallabies in 2012, which is when he first articulated a political position on climate issues by stating his support for a proposed carbon tax. One news outlet reported this statement with the headline, ‘Pocock pulls on green guernsey’ (Mullany, 2012), which is a lacklustre pun given the Wallabies wear a green and gold playing kit. Nonetheless, this statement and news story signal how the positioning of Pocock's environmentalism and politics started to take shape in Australian media and popular consciousness.
Situated alongside the rising popularity and profile of women's rugby union, Pocock has contributed to rugby's social and political discourses in ways that disrupt masculine hegemony (Connell, 1995). White and Anderson describe how homophobia and stigmatisation of homosexuality have historically been constitutive of rugby's orthodox masculinity, before observing that male ‘rugby players’ attitudes to homosexuality’ have shifted towards stigmatising homophobia in recent years (2017: 127). Pocock is widely perceived as helping to instigate this shift, with an Australian rugby news columnist claiming he ‘changed rugby’ after complaining to a referee about an opponent's use of a homophobic slur during a game between the ACT Brumbies and New South Wales Waratahs in 2015 (Cully, 2019). Off the field, Pocock also publicly advocates for LGBTQI+ rights and marriage equality in Australia – he and Emma refused to officially marry until same-sex marriage was legalised (Ward, 2018).
Research and writing on environmentalism and gender has rightly focussed on the work and leadership of women, particularly where activism and cultural production are concerned. Michelle Yates summarises how ecofeminist scholarship highlights the many ways ‘Western culture has tended to frame nature in feminine terms’, with men ‘framed as closer to culture, as the embodiment of civilization’ (2022). Greta Gaard observes, ‘Women comprise an estimated 60–80 per cent of members in environmental organisations worldwide’ (2018: 74). In Australia, Belinda Smaill proposes that women are ‘a core audience for environmental documentaries and also more likely to be pivotal to the activism they mobilise’ (2023: 446). Observing the Australian environmental movement several decades ago, Raewyn Connell writes of a countercultural capacity to ‘remake’ masculinity when men commit to ‘collective practices that, partly because of the feminist presence in environmental action, provide social leverage on conventional masculinities and offer highly relevant models of political practice’ (1990: 476). In such contexts, Pocock is not alone as a powerful, charismatic male figurehead with an outsized media presence and cultural capital; one need only think of the longevity of David Attenborough's career or the high-profile persuasive efforts of Al Gore. However, Pocock is a unique figure in terms of how he sought to combine professional sport with environmental activism and then moved successfully into electoral politics. It is a story (or set of stories) with multiple overlapping frames and discourses, with documentary arguably a key means through which these have been given expression over time through the representation of resonant moments that award narrative coherence and political power to a complex lived reality (cf. Ivakhiv, 2013).
Australian Story: True Grit
Now in its 29th season, Australian Story is a weekly half-hour series on Australia's national broadcaster, the ABC. Adopting a documentary style under the banner of current affairs journalism, it profiles notable Australians, often in response to timely social issues or events. The name of the programme designates its subjects as Australian and the series emphasises Australian traits and values through an ‘almost constant’ thematic focus on ‘heroic achievement’ (Bonner and McKay, 2007: 648). Writing in 2007, Frances Bonner and Susan McKay posit that Australian Story employs a sympathetic, ‘soft’ journalistic approach (2007: 642) and its focus on celebrity makes it ‘readily seen as a feminized media form’ (2007: 641). However, they also note that while it has consistent themes, Australian Story does not advance ‘any simplistic, singular Australian identity’ (2007: 645) and, to this end, each episode has a unique title and focus.
Pocock's story is titled True Grit, a name that occasions affinity with two prominent U.S. Western films exemplifying that genre's frontier machismo. True Grit consists of two parts broadcast on consecutive weeks in 2016. Through one-on-one interviews with David Pocock and his family, viewers learn about Pocock's childhood and his family's move from Zimbabwe to Australia in 2002, as well as his professional sporting career, political awakening and commitment to environmental issues. Two intertwining biographical threads run throughout the two episodes to shape the representation of Pocock: dedication to sport and dedication to the environment. This focus upholds David's self-assessment: ‘Since I was a kid I’ve had two passions – nature and rugby’ (Pocock and Pocock, 2019: 18). Viewers first see David and Emma Pocock on a return trip to Zimbabwe where David is shown visiting a wildlife conservancy, photographing rhinoceros and zebra, sitting at campfires and exercising outdoors. This imagery frequently repeats throughout both parts of True Grit, intercut with interviews and archival footage that evidence Pocock's various commitments and his character. The detailing of both Pocock's lifelong passions together within one televised programme risks elision, and here we explore how Pocock's passion for nature and his commitment to protecting it is obfuscated by the programme's appeals to a broad sense of national identity that is most readily accessible via sport and masculinity.
Bonner and McKay explain that Australian Story narrates its subjects’ lives, offering viewers ‘revelation of the private life in the public arena’, and conjuring ‘extra insights into material which may previously have been secret’ (2007: 645). When True Grit details Pocock's dedication to sport, it offers revelation by contextualising his rugby career in ways that both supplement and contradict his popular image as an athlete. His dedication to the environment contributes to this complex representation and is exemplified by his declaration that ‘rugby isn’t everything’. This reflexivity is aimed directly at rugby in a way that both appends and disrupts Pocock's associations with physical force and masculine power. A strongly resonant sequence of True Grit deals with difficulties faced by the Pocock family after migrating to Australia. David's brother notes, ‘Dave just threw himself into sport’. Pensive music plays while the Pocock family detail how David's dedication to early sporting opportunities produced a notable ‘brutality toward the self’ (Miller, 2001: 6). Pocock explains, ‘I knew I had some trauma stuff in there…’, and, as viewers see a shadowy re-enactment of a male figure doing crunches, he frames training as an almost pathological obsession: ‘In my head I had to do 450 crunches a night or else I was going to get fat, or if I didn’t do it, I was mentally weak’. This obsessiveness is not valorised, as it would be within many masculinist sporting contexts or in a conventionally hagiographic sports documentary. Rather, in the ‘softer’ form of Australian Story, it is framed as limiting Pocock's capacity for personal growth and harmful to interpersonal relationships. Pocock admits, ‘I certainly now wouldn’t like me then’.
Pocock's representation in True Grit via thematisation of the environment becomes a hyper-signaletic motif, as it resonates with a type of ecologically engaged, masculine celebrity figure that has a privileged position in Australia's recent cultural memory. Viewers repeatedly see him travelling through wilderness and at the Zimbabwean conservancy dressed in a collared khaki shirt and shorts. As a patron of the Save African Rhino Foundation, he is shown assisting an anti-poaching unit tracking a rhino through the bush. In this, Pocock is represented as an ‘“environmental celebrity” who play[s] a substantial role in communicating and diffusing wildlife conservation aims’ (Northfield and McMahon, 2010: 413). The figure most commonly associated with this form of celebrity in Australia is Steve Irwin, the Australian conservationist star of the 1990s wildlife documentary series, The Crocodile Hunter. This type of character is also apparent in many other Australian television series described as ‘travelling television’: ‘a regular and popular presence on broadcast television in Australia’ that ‘consists of journeys to and through remote and distinctive places’ guided by charismatic presenters (Healy, 2014: 583). By establishing Pocock's connection to nature along these lines, True Grit offers viewers a perspective on his environmentalism that is familiar, apolitical and linked to a well-established, gendered national identity. His dedication to the environment resonates with notions of celebrity and philanthropy, of animals and wildlife conservation, of the bush, and is consistent with travel and entertainment television genres.
A largely apolitical framing persists when Part Two of True Grit details Pocock's 2014 coal mine protest and arrest. During the 2022 federal election, this arrest was attacked by his conservative political opponent as ‘radical green’ and likened to the protests and civil disobedience of Extinction Rebellion (Barlow, 2022; Troon, 2023). Pocock's environmental activism, as well as his advocacy for same-sex marriage, is substantively detailed only in the final ten minutes of the programme. Both are recounted for viewers via an extended montage that combines Pocock speaking in assorted media settings with archival footage of newsreaders and pundits reporting on his protest and arrest. This footage is accompanied by images of Pocock and another activist, farmer Rick Laird, locked to mining equipment while being addressed by police. Pocock describes the advent of his protest in general terms:
I had been asked to get involved with a few things that were maybe a little bit controversial … I think it came to the point where I just knew that I had to put myself out there a bit.
He goes on to explain:
I felt like making a personal stand against mining our food bowl and the implications of coal mining in a world where climate change is a reality was far more important than rugby. If that was going to jeopardise playing for the Wallabies, then that's how it was going to be.
Pocock is careful to contextualise his actions amidst worsening climate change impacts and the environmental harms caused by mining. Yet, the programme elaborates his activism largely in terms of personal conviction and the potential risk it posed to his sporting career, cutting to his parents who express pride in their son's courage. This largely accords with ‘the prevailing view nationally’ which, as Turner notes, ‘seemed to be that this was an admirable thing for him to have done’ despite it being ‘radical action by community standards’ (2016: 812). True Grit can readily be interpreted as an instance of a disruptive protest action gaining credibility with the public by means of a story about the commitment and authenticity of a celebrity protestor. However, it also raises broader questions about Australian Story and media framing of environmental conflict in Australia.
True Grit's representation of Pocock's protest arguably renders the personal so pointedly that the politicised environmental significance of his actions is almost totally omitted. Lester and Hutchins address how Australian Story's ‘soft journalism’ approach presents significant complications in the coverage of environmental politics due to ‘unresolved tension between human-interest narratives and fact-based reporting’ (2011: 657) in the programme's structure. The tension they identify remains apparent here. A heightened focus on the strength of Pocock's character and his personal, emotional experience means that the wider social and political circumstances surrounding his ostensibly heroic protest are muted. For example, True Grit does not detail the environmental harm caused by the Maules Creek coal mine. Viewers are left unaware that, as the third mine in Leard State Forest, it is part of an area ‘home to 396 species of plants and animals’, including ‘34 threatened species and several endangered ecological communities’ (Greenpeace, 2014). There is no mention of sustained opposition to the mine through the Leard blockade or the mine's role in ripping ‘apart the landscape’ and ruining ‘relationships in Indigenous groups and farming communities’, including blocking Indigenous leaders from ancestral land (Laughland, 2014). Pocock's protest is not framed as part of a campaign or a broader environmental movement and the protestor he is pictured alongside, Rick Laird, is not acknowledged or included. This is a notable omission because around 30 other protestors engaged in civil disobedience were also arrested in 2014 for trespassing and blockading equipment at the mine (Australian Associated Press, 2014). When spliced with testimony from other rugby players, coaches and media commentators, Pocock's activism is represented, contrariwise, as a personal undertaking – a courageous but sentimental extension of his readiness as an athlete to put his body on the line. Detached from the context of environmentalism as a broad social movement, Pocock's political actions are positioned as highly individualised acts of heroic moral courage that parallel his apparent fearlessness in the breakdown as a rugby player.
Over the course of True Grit, another element becomes prominent across and between the two intertwining narrative threads detailing David Pocock's dedication to sport and the environment: the presence and role of Emma Pocock. Steven Schacht notes that while many scholars have analysed how ‘men use sports such as rugby to socially construct different, sometimes competing, images of masculinity’, there is little critical attention directed towards ‘images of femininity and of women that are simultaneously and relationally constructed in settings where men do masculinity’ (1996: 551). While David Pocock remains the core focus of True Grit, he is often represented with and via Emma, and his dual passions for rugby and the environment are frequently represented as joint undertakings with his partner. His representation is therefore constantly constructed relationally, with Emma Pocock both complementing and effacing the popular image of him as an athlete. This is exemplified humorously when she narrates their first meeting:
I’d said to him, ‘Oh Dave, so what do you do?’ And he said, ‘Oh, I play a bit of rugby.’ And I was like, ‘Oh great, what do you do for work?’
True Grit cuts to David, who says he and Emma ‘talked a lot about feminist theology and, umm, a pretty strong critique of sports culture in Australia’. By centring Emma Pocock's voice and role in this way, True Grit challenges any lingering resonances of masculine hegemony by diminishing rugby's significance in this regard with humour and then immediately broaches feminism and a critique of sporting culture.
True Grit softens Pocock's sporting image with its ‘feminized mode of address’ (Lester and Hutchins, 2011: 657) and opens onto fields beyond rugby by threading intimate biographical detail throughout its two parts. The result is entertaining and contrasts with Pocock's forceful on-field physicality and the celebration of male toughness and violence that defines rugby union historically. Yet, the overall effect also works to displace Pocock's environmental activism and politics from its social and historical contexts, thereby rendering anodyne his remarkable coal mine protest and determination to force a transformation capable of ameliorating ‘climate breakdown’ (Pocock, 2020). Attention now turns to a campaign documentary that centres Pocock's environmentalism in explicit terms.
An Unlikely Union
An Unlikely Union (2019) is an 11-min video embedded on a dedicated page of Canon Australia's website and is also available on YouTube. It documents David Pocock visiting takayna/the Tarkine in Tasmania prior to his last engagement as a professional athlete: the 2019 Rugby World Cup where he represented Australia playing for the Wallabies. The video emulates some conventions of wildlife documentary by showing Pocock walking through rainforest, speaking with local conservationists, and photographing an endangered Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle that takes on the role of charismatic megafauna. It continues to advance an image of Pocock as more complex than most male athletes, as indicated by the video's title which suggests an unlikely synthesis of environmentalism and rugby union. It thus builds further nuance into Pocock's representation as both an environmentalist and an elite athlete. Where True Grit downplays the political contexts of Pocock's environmentalism, An Unlikely Union engages directly with environmental politics. The video's location in takayna/the Tarkine recapitulates a tensely politicised history of conflict between the environmental movement and the forestry industry in the southern island state of Tasmania (Lester, 2010). It also reflects significant recent developments at the intersection of environmental campaigning and documentary filmmaking in Australia.
As part of a campaign to have takayna/the Tarkine protected as a World Heritage site, An Unlikely Union is an excellent example of ‘strategic impact documentary’ (Nash and Corner, 2016). This transmedia category is conceptualised by Kate Nash and John Corner as a ‘new kind of documentary’ (2016: 227) that emerges from a sector or ‘parallel “industry”’, which includes ‘foundations; not-for-profits; corporations and brands, as well as documentary producers, makers and distributors’ (2016: 228). Emerging partly in response to persistent challenges in the funding of documentaries, this category ‘intersects with established structures’ by bringing ‘its own sources of funding, its own methods of production and distribution and its own organizational ecology’ (2016: 228). Strategic impact refers to ‘a distinct conceptualization of the relationship between documentary and social change grounded in contemporary strategic communication’ and directed at creating social change (2016: 229). In canvassing these contexts in relation to environmental documentary in Australia, Smaill notes that public service broadcasters (including the ABC) ‘have not supported independent environmental documentary in a significant way’, with filmmakers instead needing to engage with philanthropy and corporate promotional media to support production (2023: 443). The popular advent of strategic impact documentary in this context can be understood as an exemplary new ‘cultural form’ (Rust et al., 2023: 6); a category of film emerging from an ecology of creative production propelled by environmental concerns. This development speaks not only to the urgency of these concerns, but to the increasing valence of ecocriticism as a mode of engagement with culture. David Pocock's appearance as a figurehead for this particular film and campaign positions him as a key figure working at the intersection of the environment, politics and culture in Australia.
An Unlikely Union is presented to viewers as a collaboration between several different parties including Pocock; Canon Australia; Patagonia, Inc; and the individuals and organisations it features, including Maree Jenkins of Tarkine Wilderness Lodge and Adam Hardy of Raptor Care North West. The social change goal of having takayna/the Tarkine declared a protected environmental area is made clear, with the preservation of habitat for the wedge-tailed eagle and other animals a longstanding goal of activists (McGaurr et al., 2015). Staring straight to camera, Pocock's opening words in the video include the statement: ‘This should be a World Heritage site’. Jenkins later attests, ‘It [takayna/the Tarkine] is under threat from mining and logging so it would be really nice to get it made a National Park or put on the World Heritage listing’. Canon's webpage directs viewers to ‘support the protection of the Tarkine’ by signing a change.org petition started by Patagonia. A longer documentary titled takayna: What If Running Could Save a Rainforest (2018) – not featuring Pocock but shot in the same area – was also uploaded in 2018 to Patagonia's Australian website and directs viewers to ‘learn more and take action’ by engaging with the Bob Brown Foundation, a non-profit environmental advocacy organisation founded by the former leader of the Australian Greens political party. These videos and their accompanying promotional text signify a concerted media campaign across multiple corporate brands, not-for-profit organisations and media platforms. Pocock also uses a Canon camera and wears Patagonia clothing in An Unlikely Union. While the involvement of these brands raises questions about corporate greenwashing, it is worth noting that neither brand is mentioned when Pocock writes at length about his feelings of awe when experiencing takayna/the Tarkine (with Jenkins as a guide) in his co-authored book (with Emma Pocock), In Our Nature (Pocock and Pocock, 2019: 377–384). This writing suggests his participation in An Unlikely Union is also linked to Pocock's long expressed love of nature and his political convictions.
An aesthetic effect is established in An Unlikely Union from the first shots, with Pocock's persona and sporting body at its centre. The images and accompanying narrative cultivate distinct ideas of physical encounter with the more-than-human environment and engage a politics linked to environmental protection. Pocock is not shown playing rugby, and in contrast to rugby's physicality and collisions, he appears deliberate and contemplative as he wanders between trees, looking skyward through the camera lens and crouching amongst foliage. The cumulative effect of these resonant moments is one of purposeful calmness. Shots of Pocock are intercut with still images of photographs he has taken and other diverse shots of the rainforest landscape, including aerial footage that pans over treetops and close-ups of flora. Many of these shots are slow-motion and emphasise a feeling of rest. Swaying trees appear to be steadily breathing. An Unlikely Union's aesthetics thus conjure a particular ecological sensibility articulated from an antipodean standpoint. Rebecca Olive describes this sensibility as ‘a way of thinking about and experiencing myself in relation to multispecies places and communities’ (2023: 238). Olive writes that relaxing under the shade of jacaranda, manuka and sequoia trees facilitates ‘comfort, shelter, relief and quiet’, but also generates a heightened awareness of the trees’ ‘surfaces, depths, currents and multispecies interactions’ and help her to acknowledge ‘ecological, relational complexities’ (2023: 243). Similarly, An Unlikely Union shows Pocock's careful observation of the flora and fauna of takayna/the Tarkine creates an awareness of specific ecological interactions: delicate fungi growing amid moss and an enormous eagle gliding on the breeze looking for prey. Aided by commentary by Pocock and Jenkins, the video emphasises the uniqueness and vulnerability of the area's ecology and stresses the need to protect it.
An Unlikely Union's narrative arc is derived from Pocock's attentive encounters with wedge-tailed eagles, including his efforts to photograph one and his handling of an injured eagle at Raptor Care North West. Birdwatching, or birding, helps establish an understanding of how the multispecies relational awareness that An Unlikely Union represents for Pocock is political. Birding offers an aesthetic engagement that creates ‘positive emotions: wonder, serenity, and delight’ and can also ‘generate moral sensibilities that support a desire to protect’ (Summers-Effler, 2022: 908). Indeed, Pocock writes from takayna/the Tarkine of feeling ‘a sense of deep emotion’ similar to wonder: ‘that feeling you get in the presence of something much bigger than yourself’ (Pocock and Pocock 2019: 378). This feeling morphs into an overtly politicised challenge to ‘the doctrine of relentless economic growth’ (2019: 381) as he summons the immense task of ‘ushering in a new regenerative culture’ (2019: 384). An Unlikely Union locates Pocock's encounters with wedge-tailed eagles as a brief moment of contemplative repose before the anticipated sporting intensity of his final sporting campaign for Australia at the 2019 Rugby World Cup. Viewed from the perspective of several years later, it also prefigures Pocock's post-sporting political trajectory.
In the context of professional sport, references to mental calmness, clarity of intent, and sound preparation function as commentary cliches. However, when compared to the way that True Grit characterises Pocock's 2014 mining protest as fraught with risk, An Unlikely Union represents his flourishing political resolve as a wholly different and more comfortable intertwining of environmentalism and rugby. Reflecting on his early sporting career, Pocock notes that he was ‘so focussed on the rugby that I didn’t allow myself a lot of time outside of that’, and then contends that prioritising environmental engagements means ‘you’re a better rugby player in some ways because you’ve got that balance’. An Unlikely Union implies that Pocock's apparent calmness and sporting success are linked to his politicised dedication to nature. He also finds equivalence in his commitments to Australia, sport and the environment:
When our national sporting teams run out in green and gold, people support them because they love Australia and this is Australia. There's nothing more Australian than the Tarkine and these incredible places on the continent. I really hope that we’ll preserve them…
Pocock's environmentalism is situated here as an extension of his dedication as an athlete who proudly represents his country.
As outlined earlier, the notion of care for the environment is often approached as a feminist concern and framed as ‘an extension of women's gendered role as caregivers’ (Gaard, 2017: 75). This runs against the pronounced and profound lack of care for opponents and the self that is associated with male dominated contact sports and, in particular, the rugby codes in Australasia (Bryson, 1987; Hutchins and Mikosza, 1998). An Unlikely Union (2019) insinuates a far gentler physicality in Pocock's Tasmanian encounters than that associated with rugby's sanctioned violence, which is epitomised by his declaration, ‘I’m very happy to be called a tree hugger these days’. However, the video still offers an impression of his sporting prowess and competitive edge, and some of this force and focus are now applied to his environmental campaigning and political outlook. For instance, the website for An Unlikely Union frames his activism as a ‘fight for at-risk environments off the field’ and his physicality is signalled through a still image of him wearing a playing kit and a shot where his muscular arms are outstretched to indicate an eagle's wingspan. Despite its brevity, this image represents a highly resonant moment that interpolates Pocock's imposing and forceful physical presence into an otherwise contemplative documentary. By engaging Pocock at the centre of its campaign, An Unlikely Union emerges from the cultural contexts of environmental documentary and environmental activism (Smaill, 2023), allying a politics of environmental care with the forcefulness and intent of a rugby union forward charging into a breakdown. Situated amid a long-running environmental conflict in Tasmania, it also evidences Pocock's increasing impact as a player in Australian environmental politics.
