Unveiling it
Fresh talkative show, with topics that can help you to understand how the South American culture and the Australian culture can be blend together without any judgments. Stay and listen, I will be here to answer your questions. Please leave a comment, your voice is important here.
Estás en un show fresco y relajado donde vas a conocer sobre la cultura Australiana, sus diferentes matices y vivencias, con un estilo moderno y tranquilo. Quédate y escucha el primer episodio y déjanos tus comentarios.
Unveiling it
Unvelining The Lyndon's Great Australian Expedition
How many of us can say we faced a cassowary, walked the vibrant streets of Byron Bay, and delved into the heart of Australia all in one adventure? Our esteemed guest, Lyndon, can say so. In our recent podcast episode, he leads us on an exhilarating journey across Australia, regaling us with tales from Sydney to the Northern Territory and the wildlife-rich landscapes of Queensland. Our shared past as tree planters opens up fascinating conversations about Australia’s diverse flora, and Lyndon’s captivating storytelling makes you feel as if you're right there in the midst of it all.
Imagine the thrill of barramundi fishing, the fear of being in crocodile territory, and the awe of experiencing Australia's rich pearl and opal industries firsthand. In our discourse with Lyndon, we traverse these experiences and more.
Happy days,
George
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So weird. We just introduced Mike.
Speaker 2:Hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey. Alright, welcome everyone, everybody. We just here for another good episode of having dinner with George and today, today, I'm just playing this. I didn't plan anything actually. I just decided just to start recording because I got a friend here. He's been traveling Just a second, I think. He went to the hotel. He's been traveling around this area for a long time, just getting in to the coffee shop. Today it's a long midday and we came to my house, we start playing a little bit of, and I just had a break time and I recorded everything. So you guys are going to have the chance to have a visit or whatever it is you do today. So that's our. So just get the as though you can go and visit and go with me. So that's what we're going to do today. We have a double mind.
Speaker 3:Hey, speaking into the ether Woo, have I been on a podcast before? Never, never. I feel like I'm in an alternate universe Inside the headphones.
Speaker 2:That's right. That's what I felt the first time.
Speaker 3:I feel like I'm in a little cave with you. We're just chilling out the back of a cave somewhere. It's nice.
Speaker 2:With some tasty food. What are we eating today Do?
Speaker 3:you like it, it's delicious. My mouth is just humming with a little bit of spice. I was going to say before. It reminds me of a really good Indian place that we discovered when we were in a, in a spale.
Speaker 2:I didn't know what you have like an echo of rubber. Did you hear that echo or your point?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm pretty fine with it. I don't mind too much. You can kill it if you like.
Speaker 2:How have you been?
Speaker 3:Oh have I been? Yeah, in the lastin the last couple of weeks Sydney, sydney, new South Wales. So Blue Mountains, royal National Park, karangai Chase National Park, all around Sydney. Really nice walks through there, sunny swimming beaches, subtropical rainforest down to the coast, all that kind of jazz.
Speaker 3:And then and then to Northern New South Wales. So it's like an extinct volcano that's just erupted like 24 million years ago and it's just been eroding ever since. So it's 40 kilometres wide. It's the caldera, so you can go to a particular spot and see the whole thing at once. It's pretty spectacular.
Speaker 2:I think that's okay. Yeah, now you've built some.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You were talking about volcanoes. Where was that?
Speaker 3:It's like Northern New South Wales, almost to the Queensland border. Yeah, they call it the Tweed Caldera. How do I say the word?
Speaker 2:And then, what do you find in there? What was the interesting thing you did?
Speaker 3:So Interesting thing was I was. I hadn't made plans of where I was going beforehand.
Speaker 3:I was just sort of like, you know, flying on the wind and asking locals. When I came across a local like, oh, it's a nice place around here, and this guy in Nimbun said a place called Naman Bar. Naman Bar it's like a pass us through, I think, the rim of that volcano. It goes into Queensland across the border, yeah. And so I just met this guy in the street. He was like, oh, mate, it'll blow you out. Go to Naman Bar, you'll blow out. It's not real. And so, yeah, I went to Naman Bar, but I'd just been in the border ranges National Park looking at these 2,000-year-old Antarctic beach trees and that already blown me right out. So by the time I got to Naman Bar, it was kind of, it was nice, it's scenic, but yeah, just there's so much scenery you can get in the day before you know, before it all just starts to like permanently blow your mind out.
Speaker 2:So you're the second guest I have, let's say, like a local Australian in my podcast, and the first one I had was Alvaro. And we can connect now because I got an episode you're doing. But now we can connect because we weren't sure who met who. First I thought I met you. No, I thought I met Alvaro and this job. Remember the job we had? It was like a tree planter. You say we were tree planters in Australia. Well, do you remember what we were planting? It was a landscape job. Yeah, in Truganina, is it?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, there was like Some LaMandra in there, some of that power. I remember the grass named after I think it's like named after French botanist like Leville Po-11. Oh my God, I was like it's Po-11. It's all good.
Speaker 2:So we can say, like we can talk to our children, like, look, we helped to, we planned all this park and we built, we helped, you know, in the development of some of the suburbs West. Wasn't it Truganina? Is it Truganina? And what was Craigibon? No, no, Truganina. No, yeah, craigibon.
Speaker 3:What's out there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, up that way.
Speaker 3:Yeah, west is the best. I believe that, everardo.
Speaker 2:Did you lay down turf as well now?
Speaker 3:on the cricket grounds no. No, I didn't do a turf with those guys, a turf elsewhere, really, yeah. Some random job. Yeah, it was a classic Landscaping days. It was interesting. One of those companies I worked at like a native nursery. So you know it's like when you're working a particular kind of nursery for a while you just get to know the names of all those plants and then I remember they had this heap of these crazy psychads up the back and like for some job that they were waiting to do.
Speaker 2:It was just like 50 psychads in bags, big ones, you know, like taller than me, the bells, like the bells around, like the things we were on the waist.
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:With the plants in there, like in the small like.
Speaker 3:Little tube stock. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then we were using like a pot of putty, you know, the little red, the long, the long.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you drop the seedling in there, you put it in the ground, and then we just with a pedal, you got a pedal and then we just put it in a pedal bag, yeah Easy. And then we plant a lot of stuff.
Speaker 3:Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2:They were remembered. Hey, I remember you doing yoga in the mornings.
Speaker 3:Hey, yeah, remember that yeah. Yeah, yeah, still do that.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah. Yeah, as often as I can, but remember you like there was some lady called Lili. Her name is Lili Lili Johnson. I think is there in this day you got a good memory.
Speaker 3:I do, I do.
Speaker 2:And I remember you were. There was like an old house in the area and then, you were, you know. I think you were inside the house or around the house.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:And I remember you doing yoga hey. Before the shift.
Speaker 3:before the shift started that sounds like something I would do oh really Are you still doing that? Yeah, Just yeah, just getting a real nice stretch in the morning. Yeah, it's like. It just makes me like 80% more able to cope with whatever's coming my way, you know. Get a good stretch in.
Speaker 2:So well, I remember. Last time I remember I saw you. I think you were driving one of these wagons. Remember the wagon?
Speaker 3:A wagon.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like a wide wagon.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, yeah Little wide wagon.
Speaker 2:Yeah, station wagon. Yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 3:I used to be able to sleep in that thing. Oh really, yeah, oh my God, I wasn't and like that's periods. Yeah, it was nice because you could fold the seats down and then, instead of being like a straight hatchback, the car had like a little bit of a booty on it, so it's just that little bit of extra room to spread your legs out. I'm not that tall anyway, so that's fine. I think I drove that thing up to Byron Bay and back as well.
Speaker 2:Crazy journey from Melbourne up to there. How many kilometers is that Probably?
Speaker 3:900 or more. Oh, melbourne to Sydney is like. Isn't Melbourne to Sydney like 900Ks, yeah? And then Sydney to Byron Bay would be like. At least that again let's say so. It's probably like 1800Ks yeah.
Speaker 2:Was it good that car which brand?
Speaker 3:No, it was a piece of shit. Watch it at least.
Speaker 2:I remember you bought it, like you know, as a secondhand.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I remember you told me I think you paid like 115, like $1,500?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, that car. Yeah, I probably spent more money fixing it up than what I paid for, and then you had to pay you some extra to fix it. Yeah. Remember that yeah Classic.
Speaker 2:But it was good because it took you up to Byron Bay.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like it did what it needed to do for the period of time that I was.
Speaker 2:So, lin, can you please tell me, and the people who got holdings in seven countries, so probably I won't cut people with a lot of curiosity here. So would you like to tell me what's the lifestyle in Byron Bay, like what's the things you do or what are? How's the life in there, out there, because it's not a big city?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So, like all of sort of, all of northern New South Wales they call the Northern Rivers region is pretty much like a hippie on alternative mecca. I guess I don't know so much about Byron Bay other than that, but it's there's definitely like a cluster of places around it which all sort of really cement that reputation. Byron Bay itself is, from what I understand, become fairly gentrified and sort of almost like gimmicky. There's been, you know, like reality TV shows made about it and all that kind of stuff. But there's all these towns in the hinterland of there that, yeah, like Nimbun is just this crazy place where they had a massive hippie festival in the 70s and then a bunch of hippies stayed and now it's got this reputation as being this full on hippie town where you know everyone there is just smoking weed and will just sell you weed. Like you get like three, three offers before you've even got Nadia Carr, sort of being just wild. But it's actually got a really interesting history outside of that. Most people just associate Nimbun with weed because they have an annual Mardi Gras festival like the Mardi Gras. But Mardi Gras, yeah, but no, it's got like an interesting.
Speaker 3:What about the cops? You just saying I don't know. I don't know what the deal is with the cops. I don't know that story. I think they had like a community sort of security thing for a while, but I don't know. I don't know what's going on. I feel like they just that's one instance of the cops just giving a little bit. They're just like look one town, one kooky town in the hinterland, let's just let them do what they want. Whatever, keep it here.
Speaker 2:All right, I don't know, probably I will have too many people right now, after you say all this, that they just want to move out there. So if I want to move, I'd say half of the people you want to move over there. What will be the main activity? Like economic activity they do in over there, like what is? Is it industry? Is it mining? Is it? What is the economic sector that helps the contributes to the economy?
Speaker 3:of the area. Well, I feel like I'm giving too much light to that one particular area in Australia, because there's actually other places that I like heaps more. I mean up there I don't know what they do just like surf, surf and I don't know do carpentry or something I don't know. Oh, there's lots of farming up there and there's also just lots of tourism, I guess.
Speaker 2:So there's a lot of new books like energy.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, there's like, yeah, there's solar farms popping up all over Australia. Yeah, like, definitely driven past some big ones.
Speaker 2:So what was your deal over there? So did you just went there and have fun, stay a couple of days, or did you leave one year, two years?
Speaker 3:Both.
Speaker 2:Because I'm sort of after you left. We just get a little bit disconnected because I think you're not on social media. But I, like you, don't.
Speaker 3:Yeah, not so much.
Speaker 2:You're like old fashioned. Yeah, what's that? All you don't like in the social media.
Speaker 3:It's really good to just have random people that you catch up with right now. Yeah, you know you're just like ah, you know, just because that's the tricky thing. If you move around all over the place then you end up meeting friends here, there and everywhere and you know it's hard to catch up with people. So it's a bit of a. I caught up with another friend recently.
Speaker 2:Yeah, same deal, but the good, like I just want to say. I just want to sound contradictory. You, you text me using your Instagram, even though you like it you text me on your Instagram.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I think you got my phone number. I haven't changed it.
Speaker 3:Do I? Oh, but I would have gone through at least like three different phones since then.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, just like you change the line your mobile, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think I've got a different number now from what I definitely have, a different number now from what I had like five years ago. I've probably had like two different numbers. All right, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I just sorry, I just I just interrupt you and I will say, like I was asking but what were you doing up there? Just tourism living.
Speaker 3:This most recent one was just on a catching up with old friends mission who are, like I said, here and everywhere. So it was, but it was a free trip over East for a for a work trip, and then I just decided to stay on afterwards and take advantage of the opportunity the first time. Yeah, the first time was like back in probably 2017 or 18 or something like that.
Speaker 3:Did you know it already so you just, yeah, well, I'd been through there a couple of times and but but um, this time was the first time I'd sort of got deeper into the place. I think in the air there's like some really interesting spots and like interesting stories behind all of that.
Speaker 2:So how's the people over there friendly? Are they friendly, are they open minded?
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, like I said, so, yeah, that Northern Rivers area is like extremely um, I don't know, um, yeah, just the full on hippie alternative thing, everything you can think of that's associated with that. And then it's funny because there's some kind of invisible line and you cross that line and all of a sudden you're back to like normal Australian culture. It feels like that. Anyway, yeah, there's like all these towns that sort of have that full on hippie thing going on. And then and then you drive like another I don't know 50 Ks or something, and get to some town and you're like, oh, back in the normal place yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean, I'm from WA, so I just fully biased on.
Speaker 2:I just want to go all the day and cross that street, by that road that you mentioned. Just go and then wow, and then cross back, and then in Australia and then over there. I mean. I was the name of the place.
Speaker 3:Nimbun. Nimbun, I can't pronounce it's got a um, the original, uh, bungalung word, which is, I'm pretty sure that's the indigenous. Oh no, wigible, wyable. They might be a clan in the Bungalung nation. I may be butchering those facts because I'm not from the East Coast, so apologies if I'm forgetting that wrong, but the word is something that I have trouble pronouncing. It's like Nimbunji, Nimunjij, nimbunji or something. So how to spell that? Like N, that's like N-B-N-M-J-E-E or something. But the anglicized sort of name is Nimbun. That's what the white people who didn't know how to pronounce it said. They're like oh yeah, nimbun, but the word, the original word I read on a sign that it apparently Nimbun is the name of the language. Uh, it's like small clever men that run around in this like hills, mountains near there. It's like a very special spot, some certain kind of small being that is yeah.
Speaker 2:Have you ever? Have you ever experienced during your German year? Have you ever had experience with a native? So have you learned a language, or a language in your own language?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I had a couple of good cracks at learning the Nong'a language from Southwest WA, where I'm originally from. There was a lady that gives lessons. Sal's cool because you learn. Yeah, I don't know, you just learn heaps of cool stuff like oh, this thing that I've looked at all my life has actually, you know, got a name already and it's this which is pretty cool. And then up in the Northern Territory as well, a few like communities there that visited this. Yeah, super interesting languages in Australia though, yeah, for a few months, yeah, yeah, oh man, yeah.
Speaker 3:It's yeah, especially up in Arnhem Land. That's a really beautiful place. It's really it's a lot of yeah, so many interesting languages, and it's so interesting the way the languages kind of like vary from each other and all the people speak, you know, multiple languages.
Speaker 2:Oh, really, so is this the same community or different communities?
Speaker 3:All different communities, yeah, oh really, yeah, yeah, it's really really amazing place, really luscious yeah, yeah, just all kinds of different vegetation. It's really amazing the diversity that we have in Australia.
Speaker 2:How long are half the original being here in Australia? How long do you?
Speaker 3:think you'll recognize I don't spend a lot of time reading like archeology papers, but the generally accepted figure at the moment, I believe, is 60,000 years, although I'm aware that there's some kind of archeological evidence from the southern part of Victoria, where we are now, that might have a date that, if it's proven, would push it back quite a bit more, maybe another couple of tens of thousands of years or something like that. But then I think that that would interfere with some other well-established theories about, you know, the movement of humans in the deep past. I think there's like a lot of caution that the scientists are using because they're like, well, you know, if it is that old, it kind of throws all these other things out of whack.
Speaker 2:Yes, the theory is like we came from Africa, is it?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean yeah, I really don't know enough about it the theory we came from Africa, yeah, we have a couple of nations or communities more ancient than the Africans, and why we're going to do.
Speaker 2:It is guys. Let's say there are Australian Africans.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Let's call it like that.
Speaker 3:It's a weird thing because in the culture there is much more kind of like circular, cyclical kind of style of time as opposed to like a linear thing. So it's strange, that kind of like thinking in that linear way, kind of I don't know, makes like, makes you compare things to other things. That's maybe like not as relevant as, like I don't know, the relationship between all of us.
Speaker 2:Anyway, what is the population of the northern territory?
Speaker 3:I'm not sure what it is in the northern territory. I think it's actually like the highest population of indigenous people are actually in New South Wales. Most people think that it's northern territory, but it's actually New South Wales, I'm pretty sure. I've heard that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's definitely indigenous population in Victoria and all states as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I guess Melbourne is what like five, six, seven, eight, nine, eight, what like five, six million people or something. So the proportion of indigenous folks might be sort of smaller than what it is in other places. You know by proportion. So maybe it's kind of like you know, it's only like one out of every 50 people that you see might be indigenous or something like that. So like there's a wide range of indigenous first nations and yeah, there's a wide diversity of like appearances, like for you know, anyone really like a person of indigenous Australian descent can look any which way and you might not even know that they're, you know, indigenous from looking at them. It's tricky Sometimes you just have to ask like a human indigenous person. Awkward question, sorry, I didn't know that. Yeah, because the whole stolen generations thing, the Australian government policy for most of its history to remove indigenous kids from their families and then raise them in white settlements, and then it kind of yeah.
Speaker 2:Because every time, the only thing that I know is that every time I fill it up like a job application or something, and there's always a question like you consider yourself indigenous tourist as a tourist, or?
Speaker 3:something.
Speaker 2:And you have to ask that question. So I suppose they put it all yeah, and they kind of should have a make an advantage, like yeah, yeah, right To get a job.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, there's Indigenous identified positions out there where it's kind of like the role something specifically about the role sort of implies that it would be done by an Indigenous person. So it might be like a cultural heritage advisor or something, and it's like doesn't make any sense for a non-Indigenous person to advise on Indigenous culture. It should be an Indigenous person doing it. So that kind of stuff, you know, just as an EEG. So it might be like oh, this is Indigenous applicants only sort of thing, which is good because there's, yeah, definitely so much knowledge and information and general wisdom about the Australian continent in the context of environmental management, but also, I don't know people management, everything management to be learned, and shared.
Speaker 2:So we went from Byron Bay then we used to constitute, I don't know the territory. What was the city of the then the city like?
Speaker 3:So in the Northern Territory I spent most of the time on a station cattle station. That was probably about 300 kilometres west of the border of Queensland and Northern Territory and the nearest town, which was still 100 kilometres away from where I stayed, is called Borrelula and it's like a small kind of Aboriginal community and it's Borrelula, it's great. They're having troubles because they got a mine nearby there that I don't know. The mine is poisoning the river. You know a classic story, something like that, just classic yeah, extractive industry mischief. Was I working? Yeah, the mine? No, no, that was just there. No, I was just doing stuff on the cattle station nearby. No, no, no, I mean defining these ones as a private company, I believe so yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah. So, what about Queensland? So you get to part of the living then that you just jump into Northern Territory.
Speaker 3:No, my favourite time in Queensland was when I was living in Far North Queensland with my beautiful partner and we stayed there for seven or eight months and we were doing some ecological surveys there. So hiking into the rainforest, deep into the rainforest, off of the track and just setting up these plots to measure these trees and shrubs and everything, and I just got a heap of nostalgia for that time, it was just such a time we were just deep in the rainforest and then going to these beautiful beaches where the rainforest meets the sea. Going inland into like Laura and Chilago there's some nice caves there, a lot of Indigenous cultural stuff. Going on Mission Beach yeah, all these places basically like all up between from like, yeah, like around Cairns and north of there as well, yeah, yeah, cairns nice.
Speaker 2:Is that tropic? Is that tropical rainforest?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Mixing with Australian like Australian, on roads, buildings, houses, people and in the rainforest farm landscape which is a great world.
Speaker 3:Yeah, what about the?
Speaker 2:north territory. What's the vegetation looks like? Is there rainforest as well?
Speaker 3:Well, like in that far north Queensland they call it the wet tropics. So there's the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area and that's kind of like that luscious rainforest kind of stuff, and then you get over the mountain range heading west and you sort of go into they call it dry tropics. So it's just like wet tropics is just, I don't know, raining all year round, and dry tropics just has the classic wet and dry season. So wet season over the months, sort of like December, January, February, March kind of thing, just raining all the time. What about animals?
Speaker 3:Like have you spotted them in like a castle warrior. Yes, wow, accidentally came face to face with a castle warrior. Oh really, you would see them all the time in Mission Beach and like out at a banana farm I was looking at, they'd just be pecking around in the rubbish pile or whatever, and the town ones would be pecking at some roadkill somewhere. But yeah, we've seen one deep in the rainforest, which is really nice, and I was exploring.
Speaker 3:There was an abandoned resort in the sort of forest a little bit south of Mission Beach and so I was just on foot just exploring through there. It's like really eerie because it's once, you know, once sort of like a five star resort and now it's all just slowly being eaten by the rainforest again, the coconuts germinating everywhere. I was walking on a little boardwalk thing and then I moved a big fern out of the way and on the other side was a castle warrior standing right there. I think he was just shocked to see me, as I was to see him. We were just like whoa, okay, I'm going back this way now.
Speaker 2:So you just run away. You run away, Not run just run away.
Speaker 3:I walked very briskly and calmly in the other direction, so it was not to give it the chase, I guess.
Speaker 2:Alright, so next, because we're talking about castle warriors, so let's explain what is a castle warrior.
Speaker 3:A castle warrior is a big bird, it's a big dinosaur bird. It's got like talons that if they, sort of you know, scrape out, you will just like cut your body in half. They're just crazy talons and these powerful legs. And then they have like a black sort of sheenie coat on them and then they actually have tiny little wings. But you can't really see the wings. They're just very sort of tiny Like an ostrich.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think emus are quite related to castle warriors. They just have the funny little wings as well. They aren't really wings. It's like our T-Rex has tiny little arms. Emus just have these tiny little wings, and then the castle warriors got this sort of like blue head and then like a big horn on top of its head, and then it would have like this red what do you call the thing that dangles down from the throat Like a peacock's thong? A crop? No, I thought the crop was on the top of the head, I don't know, but anyway it's got some red on there as well.
Speaker 2:The cox has it. The cox, yeah, Like the roosters. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, the roosters has it, yeah, so just imagine a rooster with the red thing on the throat of the animal. It's the one and it just moves.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they make the deepest call out of any bird. Apparently it's like a low subby rumble.
Speaker 2:Is that territorial or what's the area?
Speaker 3:I think they can be. Yeah, like, if you're in there, they'll have a little zone where they're like that's their feeding territory. You know, maybe for like a day they're just like this is my spot, and if you get in between them and their food, you know they're going to be like get out of here. And I don't know, maybe when it's like the breeding season or something, maybe they get aggressive. I don't know. I don't know too much about their behavior?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that would be interesting to know. And everyone who's listening is one can see the good things. You guys got good bullet and also have a look at how old is that animal, how many years have you been? In this plant. How about this? How about this? What do you? Can you just throw a?
Speaker 3:number 200 million years, Maybe 150. Crocodiles I think crocodiles they're really old lineage of animal and they're yeah, I think crocodiles as they are today have existed for, yeah, it's like over 100 million years at least, I'm pretty sure. Real dinosaurs you know the whales as well, probably the whales, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, whales are probably my favorite animal. So nice, so have you seen?
Speaker 2:have you seen, crocodiles in the North? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was waiting for you to ask that question. Classic crocodile stories yeah, a big one yeah yeah, yeah, a really big one.
Speaker 3:Yeah, kind of walked around a corner and accidentally walked in on it, trying to walk across this sort of rocky crop that goes in the middle of the river. And because they don't like to be seen, they like to do the seeing. It just kind of took off and ran across the rocks to get himself in the water and out of sight and yeah, it was just a massive animal getting into the water. It was like watching a boat launch or something. And then it was just such a pristine sight, pristine, remote stretch of river, no clearing around or anything, natural bush there and this big animal and, you know, knowing that it was so old and it's just in its natural environment, it's just a really beautiful sight. It's just sort of like felt like I could have been put in a time machine and sent back, you know, 500,000 years and still be looking at the same thing. Yeah, like timeless kind of vibes. Oh, yeah, I know, you know, yeah, it's super nice Crocodiles, you know.
Speaker 2:Was that a rainforest?
Speaker 3:No, that was sort of like a savanna kind of area. You call it, yeah, savanna. It's kind of like, yeah, sort of moderate to sparse distribution of trees and then like grasses in between grasslands, but then by the river you'll have like big paper bark trees and pandanus a lot of pandanus there, Wow.
Speaker 2:Oh my God, that was in Whitton, queensland.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's northern territory in the sort of if you know the shape of Australia where you've kind of got on the top right there's a point that goes up and that's called Cape York, and then to the left of that point there's kind of like a bit of a square area of just where the ocean comes in and that's called the Gulf of Carpentaria. So that coastline below the Gulf of Carpentaria, that's kind of the zone that I'm talking about, about, how you know, right in the middle of that. Wow, that's where. But I was in England.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, All those crocodiles. They just jump into the ocean as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, they'll go in the ocean too. Yeah, yeah, heck, yeah, everywhere, everywhere, above a certain degree of latitude, you've got to be extremely careful about crocodiles. People get attacked, oh really Is that common.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I feel like at least once a year oh, maybe that's over. I'm sure I've read one this year and last year, so I don't know about the years before then, but there's definitely been people like attacked and even killed by crocodiles in the last, really, yeah, in the last five years. Oh, it happens, and people have survived as well. One lady I heard about survived a crocodile attack because they grab you and take you in the water and do a death roll to, like you know, break your bones immediately and then stuff you under a log underwater somewhere so they can come back and munch on you periodically and grim, oh, but the crocodiles, the crocodiles just trying to live. He's doing his bit, you know. He's like look, I'm doing my bit, I'm eating. What are you doing?
Speaker 2:Are they able to eat you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, hell yeah, they'll stalk you. You know, if you're going down by the river, you never do it at the same place more than one time, because that crocodile will watch and it'll wait, it'll see you go there and then, if you go there the same time the next day, he'll see that, see that pattern. And then you go there the same time the next day and he's waiting for you and boom, they'll just launch out. You can't even see them. Oh, they're quick. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they're quick.
Speaker 2:Oh, they can move when they want to yeah, they, besides human things, what else do? They eat.
Speaker 3:Big barramundi. Big barramundi fish in the river up there, yeah, you know, you get them like half a meter long and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, I caught one of my first go fishing Absolute beginners like I. Just I think someone even cast the line and form in was like, oh yeah, here you go hold this rod. And then I was just chilling there holding that for like a minute and all of a sudden massive tug and I started reeling in and then this massive fish comes out of the water and I'm like Jesus, so this is fishing. Oh my.
Speaker 2:God. So the crocodile is saying to you the barramundi is dead there?
Speaker 3:Yeah, they'll like steal you know. If there's like feral goats or cows or whatever, they'll like pinch them off the shore. What about dogs? Oh, yeah, yeah they'll definitely take a dog as well. Yeah, crocodile will eat the hell out of a dog. Yeah, I think that's also happened in the last five years, as someone's dog being eaten by a croc. They don't discriminate Anything. With a pulse you know they'll go it. There was another story.
Speaker 2:Anything with blood inside.
Speaker 3:Yeah yeah, yeah, give me that. I need that crocodile, I need my protein.
Speaker 2:So those guys. So that's why they survived all this year, eating, eating whatever, yeah, just really good at what they do.
Speaker 3:I reckon They've honed it.
Speaker 2:Did you think that they live for a long time?
Speaker 3:Yeah, crocodiles live. I'm pretty sure they live up to like 80 years or something. I'm talking about all these things that are outside my field of expertise.
Speaker 2:No, I think more than 80 years. Yeah, yeah, they get pretty old Also they like the turtles, like the turtles like the big ones, the lapagos or whatever. These big turtles like Big ones.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah, like a, like a monk or something you know, up in the mountains, they just sort of sit in one place.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Just chill forever.
Speaker 2:That's why, that's why people, people in.
Speaker 3:Yeah, islanders. Yeah, lots of chilly. It's a good time. It's a good time. Yeah, I did live on a.
Speaker 3:I stayed on an island, but I was in Croatia was overseas, not not Australia, it's like the, the island that's the furthest west in the island chain off of the west coast of Croatia. Island called is yeah, it was not. It was really nice because Climate-wise it felt similar to Southwest WA, where I'm from, and even, like you, go to some beaches and then sort of be this sort of Low heathy coastal scrubby kind of vegetation sclerophilus, you know, and it's kind of similar to we started in Victoria.
Speaker 3:Or further across west. Oh, brune can honor. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the west side, the best west Is it? Yeah, in my biased opinion, yes, but it's so much. It's much like slower and like quieter than the eastern states, which is, in a way, where it's like Lots of places is just the best kept secret, you know. So in a way it's like you don't want to People use, like I feel like I'm a hobbit that lives in the Shire over there. You know, I'm just sort of like all this crazy stuff happens in the world and I'm like who me? I'm just having a cup of tea, yeah, so what about?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so like tropical north, you got. Broom is the major sort of place up there. Broom is like quite a. There's a lot of tourism in broom. There's like a Big beach. Yeah, yeah, I've driven both ways from from the east to the west and From the west to the east. But yeah, the last time I went up to, but, yeah, the last time I went up to broom, I learned actually learned stuff about it because I was there for a couple of weeks. Yeah, it's like a history of a lot of Japanese and Chinese and other Asian Workers there doing Pearl farming Probably a lot of exploitation as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, like that. So there's a big pearls are a big deal in in broom. Yeah, there's a big industry of that and there's all this. Some of them like I walked into a shop just to have a look, because they have all these you know, high-end jewelry shop selling, yeah, pearls there and I know I think someone was in there buying something for like three grand when I was in there. Yeah, but they do some pretty nice designs with them. To be fair, some of the stuff's quite creative, like just sprays or everything like yeah, earrings, necklaces, bracelet, oh, with the pearls.
Speaker 3:Um, I feel like there was some random pearl fact that I learned that was interesting, but now I just, yeah, it's still done with a pearl, probably the coolest, yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh.
Speaker 3:Yeah, pearl, yeah, get pearls that are probably like I don't know, eight mil diameter, something like that. Yeah, what talk about pearls made me think of oise Opals sorry, opals are the other like classic Australian jewelry item. Yeah, opals. There's a place called Cougar Pety in the middle of Australia, where Um sort of slightly south of the middle of Australia, where everyone lives underground because it's so hot and they filmed Part of Star Wars episode one there on the desert planet. That's Cougar Pety. So there's like the one of the spaceships from Star Wars is like in the town as a little you know. The crew left it behind there. Yeah, just cool, but yeah, so they have all these, have all these opals there. And then another place in New South Wales called Lightning Ridge where they also Mine for Opals.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yep under the ground and then they have their opal, their opal, mine, kind of. You know where they're living and they're just kind of Chip away search for Opals. You know, but at the Australian Museum in Sydney, where I was recently, they've it's just people's individual houses. Yeah, yeah, yeah, people just have their houses underground. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for everything, all living quarters. Um, yeah, the town itself has like a shop and service station that's above ground and you know, the general kind of Commercial buildings are above ground but everyone, everyone's private dwelling, so they just live underground. So you know, get pretty hot out there. It's the middle of the desert. So Cougar Pety, not many, oh, yeah there's a pretty Maybe.
Speaker 3:Maybe there might be, like I don't know, a few hundred or something.
Speaker 2:If that not even.
Speaker 3:I don't think a thousand, not even a thousand. Not it's super small, definitely not a thousand. But the cool opal factors that at the Australian Museum in Sydney there's a Opalized thing. It's called a pliosaur, it's like an ancient, an ancient Ocean dwelling Dinosaur. Yeah, and so there's a. There was a full fossil of it discovered in one of these opal fields Opal mine. I just found a bit of it and then archaeologists come down and they just dig out this entire fossil and it's all opal like Opalized dinosaur. I saw that and I was like Jesus Christ.
Speaker 3:What an epic thing to be looking at. Sometimes you know things like that you see in museums or whatever, or even in nature Just blows your mind thinking the antiquity and just just how amazing nature is crazy the north of. North of Territory, yeah.
Speaker 2:Today, yeah, you drove, so 50, so you put the air-conditioner. Yeah, of course you put the air-conditioner, so you fry yourself in the car or something at 50 degrees.
Speaker 3:Or do you have a different? There'll be places where it gets to 50, but you know, like it's not necessarily like Well, you travel at night. Oh, yeah, you can travel at night. That's, yeah, a nicer time Probably, the more like reasonable temperature might be. Like you know, it could be like 47-48 in a day, and on a really hot day, like you know, maybe once a year or something, in certain places you get 50, yeah, but like more broadly across sort of the arid areas of Australia, you just, you know, you just be chilling, and it's 45, 46, 47, something like that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean Winter you might start getting some colder nights, some cooler nights, yeah, rather than it just being hot as hell all night as well. Yeah, yeah, um, well, like Cuperpete, for example, is just driving through on the way to other places. But this year I've been doing a lot of work in the arid zone, semi-arid zone, where it's like that red sand and just scrub Shrubs that are just sort of you know, two meters tall but they're like 80 years old or something like that. Everything's just really like slow Out there, except for the reptiles that run around everywhere real quick. I actually like larger goannas, yeah, heaps of snakes.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's like King Brown snake put in the Northern Territory Tiger snakes to get down the Southwest of Australia where I'm from. I mean the other places as well, but yeah, most recent time I've seen one is in the Southwest.
Speaker 2:What's the other one?
Speaker 3:that black is a black snake, yeah, red belly black snake. I feel like I've heard that, but I'm not so much an animal person. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:But it's a red. I think it's a red belly is the big one. Really big one is the biggest. Yeah, we have in Australia and that one that one can eat, like the brown and the tiger snake.
Speaker 3:So is it good if you that's yeah, so that's the snake you want to have around, then, oh, snake handling no, no, no, no no no, no, just make a way, just make a way.
Speaker 2:No, I just met the person who just gave up this training and he was like Through the previous incidents. Yeah right, the one in the incident that I went, like I, just I, just Because he's a right man, he just get into the hospital, right on point. So yeah, just said to, just went to and told the driver, the embo Evelyn's Driver. He told me like guy, look man, you saved my life Because they just get right on time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, man and then he just woke up from this. Yeah, you just get into like Sleep a couple of hours and then recover.
Speaker 3:I tell you the Australia's not, as I feel like it's not as dangerous as what it gets a reputation for, because I look at the north, you know, like North America, where they got bears, having a bear in the forest is like having a crocodile. That's not restricted to the water, we just chase you everywhere. Yeah, that's intense and yeah, and those big like mountain lions and stuff.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like introduced, introduced. I test species. Yeah, so like deer and goat and donkey and even Water buffalo up in the Northern Territory Wild wild water buffalo run around out there. Various other things, yeah, yeah, introduced stuff. Yeah, there's heaps of deer running around.
Speaker 2:Reptiles.
Speaker 3:Reptiles. I Learned a new species of reptile that lives in the arid zone that I, the parentee, and I know I just saw that word written somewhere and I was like what the hell is the parentee? And then turns out this type of goanna that I'd seen I'd seen heaps when I was up there and then I was like, oh, it's actually different from a goanna, it's a parentee, and I think the difference is something with its muscles that it uses to breathe with, because it's got this big neck, so it'll like it can run and breathe at the same time I think is the gist of it Whereas, like other goannas that don't have those special, special neck muscles use the same muscles to run as they do to breathe, so they can only run for a short time. Yeah, yeah, I think that's the case. Yeah, yeah, it's my understanding of a parentee, but they're pretty cool, I like them. They look fun with their big neck.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, we're so broom, not all in, not all at once, but like, yeah, definitely all of it, yeah, yeah. So there's only interestingly, there's only two major sealed road Entrances into Western Australia one in the very north, through Kananara, and one in the south, the air highway, which is like the Sort of goes along the Nullipaw plane in the bottom and If one of those roads gets, you know, flooded out or impossible for whatever reason you know, if a truck needs to go through there, it has to go all the way to the southern part of Australia and go the other road, which is like a 7,000 kilometer Detour or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, All right, so look, so we went down there. So you really said you don't want to talk about.
Speaker 3:I'll talk about it.
Speaker 2:Because otherwise this episode will be three hours. Probably People is listening. They will listen Whatever we do, but let's make like, like.
Speaker 3:Now.
Speaker 2:Skip Other like, yeah, like South Australia.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah but wait.
Speaker 2:So what's the? Let's talk about states, so northern territory, and, and then in the center of Australia, do we have an?
Speaker 3:yeah, so South Australia is below northern territory. Yeah although they're pretty arbitrary kind of boundaries. Yeah yeah, yeah, it's the whole sort of Western part of the continent.
Speaker 2:Yeah, south is the center, so South Australia, so South Australia, so part of South Australia. They live under the ground. It's all over the world Up in.
Speaker 3:Curvapedi in the desert area. Yeah, Is it Uluru? Uluru is in the well, yeah, like by the sort of modern state boundaries in some northern territory. Yeah, but I always butcher the pronunciation of the indigenous names for those areas. I think Uluru is like on the country of Aranta people and possibly some others I actually don't know so much about old. Have you been there?
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, yeah yeah, is it nice over there? Yeah, where do you live under the ground?
Speaker 3:No, like Uluru's, just got like a couple of big resorts there, because it's, you know, this massive tourist thing that people come from all over the world for. So there's, you know, airplanes flying in there and heaps of tour buses and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:There's another, so they're only from the ground possible.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Super out there too.
Speaker 2:The tourist under the ground. Hey guys you just stayed down down there. Yeah, so can you open the gate of my house, the house is just underground, it's just a pit. Yes, it's just a pit.
Speaker 3:I just live in a pit. There's another massive rock in Western Australia, in the arid part of Western Australia, that's bigger than Uluru, but it's like I think if you get into the technical kind of geological terms, it's like a different type of formation from what Uluru is. So it so people often say it's like the real biggest rock in Australia, but it's a different kind of rock.
Speaker 2:The one on Uluru is very ancient.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I guess they'd probably be of similar antiquity. Most of Australia is really ancient. Yeah, it's like I think it was. Quite it didn't you know where the rest of the world was like, having volcanoes and glaciers and move you know continents, drifting over the latitudes and all that kind of stuff and moving into different places. Australia has been relatively steady and stable for a long time, so it's just sort of Just been chilling out for a long time. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Just isn't New Zealand part of what's it been?
Speaker 3:the past. Yeah, yeah, new Zealand, it was all split away. It was all split away when you had Gondwana. It was like a Papua New Guinea as well. Yeah, yeah, the Gondwana Supercontinent was all A bunch of places all joined together. I think Antarctica as well and all that. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Australia has been steady for years. Yeah, yeah, yeah long time.
Speaker 3:There's some rocks in the northwest and the northern part of WA that are like two billion years old. Wow, super old.
Speaker 2:All right, so we went to South Australia. So what about Adelaide? Have you stayed there?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I only visited Adelaide once. There's some nice gardens there and you know, yeah, it's a relatively pleasant city, smaller than the other. You know bigger ones, so it's chill in that way, more like north of Adelaide, it's like South Australia has. If you look on a map, there's kind of like a big triangle, like a tooth cut into it where the ocean comes in, and so that goes up and there's kind of like another bit and it makes like a sort of a peninsula. But at the top of that ocean bit, that tooth shaped thing where the ocean comes in, is a place called Port Augusta, where you it's the main place that you would drive through if you're going from Western Australia over to the east, or sometimes if you're going from maybe you know Victoria, southern, up to the Northern Territory.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, port Augusta, yeah, port Augusta, and then there's three towns around there Port Augusta, waila might be, iron Knob, yeah, just industrial towns, yeah, yeah, all that kind of stuff, yeah, ports and stuff, yeah, going on, and then to the north there's like the Flinders Ranges and Mountain Range and you kind of, if you're heading east, you go like through those ranges and out the other side and then you get into like a really super barren area where you cross from South Australia into New South Wales, western New South Wales, and people think that you know the Nullarbor has this reputation of being like a, you know, isolated place. But I think that other place, when you get off the Nullarbor, go through Port Augusta, go through those ranges and then try and get to Broken Hill in New South Wales and that's that stretch is so barren, so isolated. It's a real challenge. You always don't want to like stop your car in case it doesn't start again. You're just like I'm so remote, let's just get on to the other side of this wasteland.
Speaker 3:There's nothing in there yeah, lots of.
Speaker 2:What is it there Like when you drive? There's, I heard there's like a road that is like a lot of kilometers and it's just like a straight line.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, that's on the on the air highway along the Nullarbor sort of road. Yeah, I think it's like how do you do? I think it's like 146km or something like that, no bends, yeah, just straight. Yeah, I know that's a risk, right, people can get complacent with a straight road and then kind of get distracted and there might be something that causes an accident unexpectedly.
Speaker 2:But I know you just get, I guess you settle in to the drive, you know, just chill, put a leg up, just like, because there's cars that has this yow like, yow, yow, yow detection on something Like if you're driving your car and you go into the lane, so it's this system that just put you again inside the lane.
Speaker 3:Ooh, that's clever technology.
Speaker 2:Yeah that's good yeah, it's called like a yow, like a yow yow detection system, something. You just press the button and then the car just goes. But, I'm just wondering what about the other cars, Like that doesn't have an assistant, like the old-time cars?
Speaker 3:So what you do is you put your leg up and you're going and yeah, sometimes for me, when I'm driving a long time, just you know, you can kind of I don't know you just kind of like settle into the drive and then, sort of the I guess you just slip into a different mode. Time passes differently. By the time you've driven, like you know, 600ks and then you've gone another 400, you just sort of like, well, I'll just go another 300 on top of that.
Speaker 2:Then so hug your sleeve on the road, like not on the wheel on the road, like just stop there, yeah yeah, yeah, all the time, yeah, the distances.
Speaker 3:sometimes the distances are just so great that you just need to drive.
Speaker 2:Don't tell me that you did the trip with the wagon.
Speaker 3:No, no, not that wagon. No, no, no no. That's a different car. Yeah, no, yeah, a different car? No, no, no. But sleeping on the side of the road is nice, you know, especially in remote places, like when you're driving through some parts of Australia like the Nullarbor, or there's the Barkley Table Land, when you're going from North Queensland into Northern Territory. Yeah, it's just, it's so fast and so much space. Yeah, you stop there and you sleep and it's just dead quiet.
Speaker 2:Did you do like what's the? Thing, like these curtains, like curtains on the windows.
Speaker 3:Oh, I slept in a swag.
Speaker 2:Usually Swag is like oh a swag yeah Like a sleeping bag.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's kind of like a mattress, a thin-ish, like yeah, decent mattress that rolls up and it's like encased in like a canvas Sort of lining, with a zip that opens it up. So yeah, yeah, so you usually have like a mattress and a sleeping bag in it and you roll all that up inside of this canvas and the canvas kind of keeps the rain off in a bit, you know. Oh, do you love that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Are you calling it. It's not my tilt A swag. We say I think my tilt. It might be like some old fashioned term for it, from like a Benjy Patterson poem, something like that. But in Colin Collins it's just a swag. It's a swag. Oh, that's nice, sleeping a swag.
Speaker 2:So you sleep in a yeah that's it, oh nice. So you put it in there and you got the sleeping bag or whatever nice mattress bed. Yeah, and then the other day you just walk up and organise and yeah, that's it Back on the road.
Speaker 3:Yeah, another 1500Ks to drive.
Speaker 2:Wow, have you ever Did you use these rest areas that we find on the road? Oh no, there's no rest areas, it's just in.
Speaker 3:Victoria, yeah, there's rest areas everywhere, yeah. Yeah, rest area is good to use so that you don't, like you know, someone could be driving tired and then you know, especially if it's late at night and you've just gone to camp on the side of the road and then they're driving tired and they kind of drift off and you could be in the path of that I guess. So it's good to use a rest area. That's like off the road a bit.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's a good spot, and then you put the swag on the, on the new rest area.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah yeah, some of them will have like water tanks where you know and a little bit of a roof, you know. Whatever rainwater falls, they collect in a tank and then you can. There's a bit of water there you know you can use. Yeah, wow, which is nice.
Speaker 2:Wow, so well. So we went now south Australia and after You're going to Victoria. Yes, yes, and I'm just it's funny, though, because I've been through Victoria for quite a good time, so I just don't.
Speaker 3:You know more about Victoria than me by now, for sure.
Speaker 2:But that will be another episode. I'll just be more of another episode because Victoria will be like wow, Victoria is huge, Huge.
Speaker 3:I don't know, and yet it's the smallest state, victoria, yeah, apart from Tasmania. But yeah, victoria is.
Speaker 2:Oh, Tasmania is a small area.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah and ACT.
Speaker 2:But Victoria is huge, like if it's a smaller Victoria is huge and the Pyrenees, you know, the skip resorts like oh my god, there's a lot of stuff.
Speaker 3:Yeah, all the Australian Alps there, like Grampines. Yeah, yeah, grampines on the other side.
Speaker 2:And the Pyrenees has, like a wine tradition. So, wine, wineries and stuff. And the. Pyrenees they are when I don't drink alcohol. And then this guy's now stolen the podcast about drinking alcohol Whatever, oh sorry. And then this when I used to drink, there was a wine asheras from the Pyrenees. It's called El Gato, no, no, no, el Gato no, el Nino el. Nino you can write it down.
Speaker 3:El Nino guys.
Speaker 2:Amazing and from the Pyrenees, well delicious. And also, the carbonates are really nice, really strong body, nice wines. Remember when we used to do the the Mald wine.
Speaker 3:Oh, mald wine, yeah, mald wine, oh, that's nice stuff, remember. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah panerino, oh, just good times, good tucker, yeah, good chills.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but now it's better we just play with the DJ yeah. And then we just recorded a podcast.
Speaker 3:Hey, I kind of need a pee. Maybe that's like a natural way to Okay.
Speaker 2:yeah, we're just going to end this now. Maybe we need to record another one, right?
Speaker 3:You need to do. There's so many stories to tell.
Speaker 2:The New South Wales podcast.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:The Victoria podcast. I think those two states deserves like a separate episode to talk about it, especially in Australia, because I think you might know all the states and like the separation of Western Australia from the Eastern States.
Speaker 3:Western Australia, I feel like it's definitely a very different kind of place. A lot of you know you can go around the Eastern States and there's lots of, like, some tropical rainforest and all these big cities, but then on the Western side it's a very different story.
Speaker 2:All right, so okay, we're going. Now Just go to the level of the other side. We don't know how this is supposed to. I don't know anything. We're in Georgia.
Speaker 1:We had today a special guest. I hope you guys enjoyed it.
Speaker 3:Thank you, yeah, yeah, bye.
Speaker 2:Bye.