Coast commando on mission to save planet

He’s a formidable former counter terrorism special forces commando by the name of Ant, but he’s not into setting prime time torture tests for Aussie celebrities.

Ant Moorhouse (centre) was in the thick of counter terrorist action as a commando.

He's a formidable former counter terrorism special forces commando by the name of Ant, but he's not into setting prime time torture tests for Aussie celebrities.

Ant Moorhouse is so busy trying to save the planet through an initiative called EarthTech, he hasn't the time for TV's SAS Australia featuring chief instructor Ant Middleton.

Noosa's action Ant served with Australian special forces as a commando before running his own rescue and retrieval company called Dynamiq.

Long distance running was a training method for former commando Ant Moorhouse.

That was before falling under the spell of techno start-ups in the United States.

He then launched a mission to be a positive force for change and teamed up with a like-minded Brian Keayes in Noosa to co-found EarthTech.

Mr Moorhouse said a close call with an IRA bombing in London as a teenager helped set him on a life of adrenaline fuelled adventures.

"My dad and I went to the UK and were half an hour away from getting blown up by an IRA bomb in Victoria Station," Mr Moorhouse said.

"Afterwards we went to a movie Patriot Games and there were these special forces guys going in … as a 14-year-old kid, I wanted that," he said.

"All my mates had beach babes, or footy stars or surfers or whatever on their walls, I had this counter-terrorism guy."

He was serving in the infantry when the September 11 terrorist attack happened and then went through the special forces selection process.

"It's hard, you've got to have the right temperament and be a team player, I felt like I was born for it," he said.

EarthTech co-founder Brian Keayes and Ant Moorhouse. Picture: Rebecca Colefax

"Things were a bit slow in Iraq and Afghanistan so I ended up getting out.

"I was just at the airport and I picked up this book by Richard Branson and it was talking about this thing called entrepreneurism."

Mr Moorhouse, who these days has a masters degree in international relations, said he fell in love with the challenge of starting out with a blank sheet of paper and coming up with an idea and "really make something of it".

"I was in Iraq for a year working on (business plans) and then came back to Mooloolaba to start what was to become Dynamiq," he said.

"That did national evacuation support to medical emergencies, kidnap and ransoms and security operations.

"If it was on the front page news we were there, pulling people out of the Arab Spring, getting helicopters in to pull people out of floods in the Philippines, responding to terrorist attacks."

He then sold that business in 2014 and relocated to Bolder, Colorado, where he discovered the

tech start-up scene and in particular social enterprise using capitalism and technology for "the

benefit humanity and the planet".

He returned from the United States at the end of 2018.

It was while taking his two daughters out to the Great Barrier Reef that he had a "crisis of conscience" after seeing how damaged this world wonder was.

"I then met (TEDx creative) Brian who had had his own crisis, and so we fused those two beliefs into EarthTech," Mr Moorhouse said.

They held their first EarthTech summit in late February this year on Makepeace Island which brought together some of the best creative young minds across the globe with ideas to make a real difference in the world.

"And then COVID hit two weeks later, so we had to reinvent ourselves on the digital only world," Mr Moorhouse said.

"We're just finalising our second innovation challenge.

"Again, we've had teams from all over the world with some really impressive, ready to scale up social enterprises that are solving some of the big issues in the world.

"We've got a company out of Rwanda providing online education to impoverished refugees camps."

They've short-listed the top 40 teams who are now in front of the judges.

Mr Moorhouse and Mr Keayes are bringing together major non government organisations, law firms and brands in the world to announce the top 10 teams at a November 26 summit.

The aim then is to establish networks for the finalists to scale up their businesses.

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