Latest / The Overland Journal Podcast / Brad McCarthy on Australia, Land Cruisers, and Having Fun Along the Journey

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Brad McCarthy on Australia, Land Cruisers, and Having Fun Along the Journey · The Overland Journal Podcast

• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to the Overland Journal podcast. I'm your host,
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Scott Brady, and I'm here with my co host Matt Scott.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: I'm kind of over here. Yeah, I'm here exactly.
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: We're here with Brad McCarthy, Australian explorer also the Max
• 0:26
  Speaker 3: Tracks guy.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we're very lucky, very lucky to have brad On,
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  Speaker 1: one of the most prolific travelers in all of Australia.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: He started the Dirty Weekend's book series, which anyone who's
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: traveled Australia knows that it is a wealth of information
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: for traveling the back country of Australia and amazing stories.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Brad and I have done some fun adventures together. Matt
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: and Brad have done some fun adventures together. In fact,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: we drove across Australia all the way to Perth a
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: few years ago, across the Great Australian Bite and everything.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: That was a fantastic trip. So thank you so much
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: for being on the podcast.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: Thanks for having me. Good, let's welcome. Yeah, Well, where
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: should start?
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: So I want to know about well, actually I know
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: all of these things, but they're fascinating. So they're really fascinating.
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: So you've always kind of been into four wheel drives,
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: started off as a plumber, and then guidebooks and then
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: max Tracks and then running a major company, and just
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: the trajectory of Brad has just been like up. But
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: I think the coolest thing with Brad is that Brad
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: always makes time to explore right.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: You've never gotten away from your what you love.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: It's in my day and I and special thanks to
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: Equipped for supporting today's podcast. More than fifteen years ago,
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: Equipped Expedition Outfitters became the first American company to import
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• 1:42
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• 1:58
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• 2:01
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• 2:05
  Speaker 1: gear increases your capability, comfort, and confidence during any adventure.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: Is it Equipped one dot com to gear up?
• 2:15
  Speaker 4: I've got to see what's over the hell around that bend,
• 2:17
  Speaker 4: And I've been like that, says I was a kid.
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  Speaker 2: I think it started.
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  Speaker 4: My old man used to look after like knockdown sugar
• 2:23
  Speaker 4: mills and power stations and those sort of things back
• 2:26
  Speaker 4: in the day. And he'd throw my brother and I
• 2:27
  Speaker 4: in the car and we'd go for a drive to
• 2:29
  Speaker 4: have a look at a job. And that job might
• 2:31
  Speaker 4: be a thousand cas from home, but we'd have a
• 2:32
  Speaker 4: packet of biscuits and a couple of Kansas Soft drink
• 2:34
  Speaker 4: and that'd be it, you know.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: So but he would we'd be driving.
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  Speaker 4: To somewhere, to a town somewhere and it's a dirt
• 2:40
  Speaker 4: raid and he'd turn off the dirt raive and we
• 2:41
  Speaker 4: drive down to a beautiful beat, something like that. And
• 2:43
  Speaker 4: I think that was ingrained in me from a young
• 2:45
  Speaker 4: age and it just it just went from there. So,
• 2:48
  Speaker 4: you know, when I was fifteen, I got offered an
• 2:51
  Speaker 4: apprenticeship as a plumber and at that stage unemployment Australia's
• 2:54
  Speaker 4: eleven percent. My old man said, get a job as
• 2:55
  Speaker 4: a plumber. You'll be nineteen, you'll have a plumber's license
• 2:58
  Speaker 4: to print money. And if you don't like it, in
• 2:59
  Speaker 4: going to something else. It wasn't what I really wanted.
• 3:01
  Speaker 4: To do with my life. But you know, the opportunity
• 3:03
  Speaker 4: was there, I took it and I did that for
• 3:05
  Speaker 4: about twenty years. Got to the point where I was
• 3:06
  Speaker 4: working in major construction sites, you know, hospitals, shopping centers, hotels, casinos,
• 3:11
  Speaker 4: that sort of stuff, and the weekend would come and
• 3:13
  Speaker 4: I would head for the hills. It was my escape
• 3:15
  Speaker 4: from the noisy city to the beautiful natural environment we
• 3:19
  Speaker 4: have in southeast Queensland. And I just, over the years
• 3:21
  Speaker 4: built up this knowledge of all these amazing places within
• 3:25
  Speaker 4: three or four hours drive of my home. Because I
• 3:27
  Speaker 4: only had weekends to spare, I had two or three
• 3:29
  Speaker 4: days to go and explore these places. So I'd go
• 3:31
  Speaker 4: to the local government map shop and get the forestry
• 3:33
  Speaker 4: maps or the National Park maps and plot of route
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  Speaker 4: and you look at the map and go, there's a
• 3:38
  Speaker 4: waterfall there, there's a patch of rainforest. There's a few
• 3:41
  Speaker 4: creek crossings to make it interesting, and I just I
• 3:43
  Speaker 4: go exploring and I just loved it. But in the
• 3:45
  Speaker 4: back of my head, I was sort of thinking, I've
• 3:47
  Speaker 4: spent a lot of money on field and repairs and gear,
• 3:50
  Speaker 4: and why am I doing this. It was basically building
• 3:52
  Speaker 4: my skills, building my knowledge of the place, and that
• 3:55
  Speaker 4: became valuable. You know, I'd get to a job on
• 3:57
  Speaker 4: a Monday, the carabbe dirty, all the camping gear in
• 4:00
  Speaker 4: the car on the roof, and guys have come up
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  Speaker 4: on the job site and say, oh, Mac, where have
• 4:03
  Speaker 4: you been? And I'd say, oh, Fraser Island or the
• 4:05
  Speaker 4: Connon Dares or Sundown National Park. This is pre internet,
• 4:08
  Speaker 4: this is like the mid nineties. I'd have a Farer album,
• 4:12
  Speaker 4: so I'd bring a farto them s shalm the places
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  Speaker 4: I was talking about, and they'd be like, wow, how
• 4:16
  Speaker 4: do I get there?
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  Speaker 2: What do I need to know?
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  Speaker 4: So in the end I ended up with these fact sheets.
• 4:20
  Speaker 4: So I had a mud map and the details of
• 4:23
  Speaker 4: you know, where it starts, where it finishes, how far
• 4:25
  Speaker 4: it was, what the terrain was like, what the highlights
• 4:28
  Speaker 4: of the place were, and a little mud map with
• 4:30
  Speaker 4: the number one, two, three, four along the map showing
• 4:32
  Speaker 4: you where to go want to see. And you know,
• 4:34
  Speaker 4: I was on the job at one stage. Here I
• 4:35
  Speaker 4: had I was looking after a major casino building in
• 4:38
  Speaker 4: the middle of Brisbane and there was I had fifty
• 4:41
  Speaker 4: plumbers working under me, and I had a folder with
• 4:44
  Speaker 4: all the plumbing stuff in it, and I had another
• 4:45
  Speaker 4: folder with all the dirty weekend stuff in it. And
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  Speaker 4: I'd be constantly handing out fact sheets to people. And
• 4:50
  Speaker 4: one day I came out of a site meeting in
• 4:52
  Speaker 4: the head architect for this job sort of pulled me
• 4:54
  Speaker 4: aside and said, I've heard you're the man to talk
• 4:56
  Speaker 4: to about places to go for driving in southeast Queensland.
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  Speaker 4: And I said, yeah, you said, We've just brought a
• 5:00
  Speaker 4: land cruise and a camper trailer and he said, I
• 5:02
  Speaker 4: want to get the family into it. I want to
• 5:04
  Speaker 4: you know, I know what's out there, but I don't
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  Speaker 4: know how to find it. I gave him a couple
• 5:07
  Speaker 4: of fact sheets over the next few months and he
• 5:08
  Speaker 4: came in one day and he said where hooked? He goes,
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  Speaker 4: what else have you got? And I said, what else
• 5:12
  Speaker 4: do you want to do? What do you want to see?
• 5:13
  Speaker 4: He said to me, you should put this in a book.
• 5:15
  Speaker 4: He said, this is gold. You can't find this anywhere.
• 5:18
  Speaker 4: And that was for me the light by moment to go.
• 5:20
  Speaker 4: I can go and do what I love and hopefully
• 5:21
  Speaker 4: making a living out of it. And so I spent
• 5:24
  Speaker 4: the next twelve months basically going out doing the trips
• 5:27
  Speaker 4: meticulously mapping every turn, every bridge, every gate, every cattle grid.
• 5:31
  Speaker 4: And I don't like to backtrack, so I tried to
• 5:33
  Speaker 4: make the tours starting at A and finishing at Z
• 5:35
  Speaker 4: and not coming back or backtracking.
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  Speaker 1: You know.
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  Speaker 4: Sure, spent the next five months doing it. I'm still
• 5:39
  Speaker 4: a one finger typer. So I spent the next the
• 5:41
  Speaker 4: next five months every night working on my next do
• 5:43
  Speaker 4: over's house on his little tiny computer, typing up spreadsheets
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  Speaker 4: with the distance between the trip notes, the details, and
• 5:50
  Speaker 4: then the GPS coordinate's for every single trip note. Launched
• 5:52
  Speaker 4: the book at the Brisbane Fall Drive show in nineteen
• 5:55
  Speaker 4: ninety nine. I had a wall of photos my old
• 5:57
  Speaker 4: sixty series cruise are coven in dirt, and people just
• 6:00
  Speaker 4: coming up looking at the photos, picking up the book
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  Speaker 4: and going take my money, And I went, I'm onto
• 6:04
  Speaker 4: something here. I ended up doing six editions of that guide,
• 6:07
  Speaker 4: and in the meantime I did a guide to Fraser Island,
• 6:09
  Speaker 4: which is the world's largest sand island and one of
• 6:11
  Speaker 4: my favorite places, so beautiful.
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  Speaker 1: In fact, if I remember your story correctly, it was
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: Fraser that got you your first ward rave, wasn't it.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, Yeah, Well we went on a day trip from
• 6:20
  Speaker 4: the Sunshine Coast to the Fraser Island and I was
• 6:23
  Speaker 4: just blown away that, you know, something so magnificent. You know,
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  Speaker 4: it's the world's largest sand island or national park, and
• 6:28
  Speaker 4: it's got over one hundred fresh water lakes, some of
• 6:30
  Speaker 4: them surrounded by rain forest, beautiful white sand just to makenivous.
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  Speaker 4: The traditional owners call it gurry, which means paradise, and
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  Speaker 4: it truly is, you know. So we went there and
• 6:41
  Speaker 4: I went this place is three hours from my house.
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  Speaker 2: I'm getting the fall dive.
• 6:44
  Speaker 4: So I bought an next Army land driver and the
• 6:46
  Speaker 4: old soft top had many usually don't tell people. I
• 6:50
  Speaker 4: tried to keep that on the downlight.
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  Speaker 2: And that it all started with a land I think
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  Speaker 2: that means all of us.
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  Speaker 4: And then I drive a mate's lane cruise of one
• 7:01
  Speaker 4: day to sell that. So that was what really got
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  Speaker 4: me into and I thought, if this is three hours
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  Speaker 4: in my house, I'm coming back, you know, I'm going
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  Speaker 4: to fall of Dive and I'm coming back. And I've
• 7:10
  Speaker 4: probably been the Fraser Island fifty times in the last
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  Speaker 4: thirty years and I can never get enough of the place.
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  Speaker 2: It's just it's magnificent.
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  Speaker 4: And it's it's one of those special places in the world.
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  Speaker 4: And for me, it's in my backyard, so that makes
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  Speaker 4: it even better. I mean it's just literally a run
• 7:23
  Speaker 4: up the beach for you. Now, Yeah, pretty handy. When
• 7:26
  Speaker 4: was the first time you were on friezer around like
• 7:28
  Speaker 4: for your own trip? Like when did you start doing
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  Speaker 4: the guidebook two freezer around? That would have been two
• 7:34
  Speaker 4: thousand and one. The first trip was probably mid eighties,
• 7:39
  Speaker 4: I think when we went on a tour and then
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  Speaker 4: I think I bought the old Landy in about nineteen
• 7:43
  Speaker 4: eighty eight or eighty.
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  Speaker 2: Nine, something like that.
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  Speaker 4: It's one of those things where I live on the
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  Speaker 4: Sunshine Case now and it's it's a fifteen minute drive
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  Speaker 4: to the ferry and then it's a one hundred kilometer
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  Speaker 4: drive up the beach and then a twenty minute drive
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  Speaker 4: on the ferry and one Fraser Island and then I've
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  Speaker 4: got one hundred and twenty five kilometers of beach to
• 7:58
  Speaker 4: that I can drive on and numerous there is the
• 8:00
  Speaker 4: tracks to explore and yeah, bors and likes and it's
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  Speaker 4: just heaven.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: And what's that beach that you drive on before you
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: get on the ferry to Frasier.
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  Speaker 2: I'll tell you why Beach that's it. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: And I drove that earth Cruiser on that that was fantastic. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: it's amazing. Plant it was so cool.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, the whole area of Southeast Queensland, Like, I
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: don't know, I have a soft spot in my heart
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  Speaker 3: for it because of you. I mean just all the
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: times I've been over there and the things I've been
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: able to see that, you know, going to the Glasshouse Mountains,
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  Speaker 3: and I don't know, I mean, I guess I really encourage,
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: like any of our any of our listeners that if
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  Speaker 3: you're looking for a beautiful place to explore and you
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: don't maybe necessarily have the time to drive across Australia
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: or do Cape York or Simpson or whatever, Southeast Queensland is,
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: I mean, truthfully one of the most beautiful places in
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: the planet I think to explore.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: My four wheel drive. Yeah.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: And Brisbane is Brisbane such a special my favorite city
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  Speaker 1: in Australia.
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  Speaker 2: I'm in the thirty two Olympics study. Oh really is
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: that a That's a that's exciting, very exciting.
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  Speaker 4: A little the infrastructure happening at the moment, you know,
• 8:58
  Speaker 4: ride up rides and lands and all that sort of thing.
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: So a bit of roadworks in that around.
• 9:02
  Speaker 4: But I'm on the Sunshine cases, not really affecting us
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  Speaker 4: at this stage. But yeah, it is an amazing part
• 9:07
  Speaker 4: of the world. I think it's just its location. You know,
• 9:09
  Speaker 4: It's latitude is such that you get the tropical and
• 9:12
  Speaker 4: the subtropical species and also the temperate species. So the
• 9:15
  Speaker 4: diversity of wildlife is quite amazing. And the same with
• 9:18
  Speaker 4: the flora. You know, the plants can sort of grow
• 9:21
  Speaker 4: in Brisbane and the southeast Queensland region don't grow too
• 9:24
  Speaker 4: much further north or too much further south. You know,
• 9:26
  Speaker 4: the population of Southeas queens And is probably about five
• 9:28
  Speaker 4: million people significant. Yeah, and Queensland itself is you know,
• 9:31
  Speaker 4: if you combine so California, Arizona and Nevada and Utah,
• 9:36
  Speaker 4: they'll fit into Queensland. So yeah, queens it's a big
• 9:39
  Speaker 4: place to cross.
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: See like when you leave Brisbane, how long it takes
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: you to get anywhere? I mean, I remember the first
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: trip we did, well, not your first trip, with the
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: first trip I did up Keep York with you.
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: It felt like we were driving for.
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: Two weeks straight and then all of a sudden Papua
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: New Guinea is there and then going farther and then
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: you're like, no, I don't want to go bare.
• 10:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's it's a big place and that's that's just Queensland.
• 10:03
  Speaker 4: So you know it's a drive across to the West coast.
• 10:05
  Speaker 4: We've done a futures where you know, it's a good
• 10:07
  Speaker 4: solid week if you if you're non stop driving to
• 10:09
  Speaker 4: get to the West coast. You know, from Brisbane to
• 10:11
  Speaker 4: Perth is about four thousand and two and a kilometers.
• 10:13
  Speaker 4: They're pretty much in a New York to San fran
• 10:15
  Speaker 4: or New York l you know, not much in between.
• 10:18
  Speaker 4: Dirt roads yea, Yeah, there's a lot of dirt.
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: You can't go east to west on pavement unless you're
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: along the coast. Yeah, if you're in the middle, you're
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: on dirt.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 10:25
  Speaker 4: Highway one basically circumnavigates the country and if you want
• 10:28
  Speaker 4: to go through the middle is it's dirt highways that
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: are maybe four lanes wide. And every now and again
• 10:32
  Speaker 4: there's a there's a tad section with some aircraft landing
• 10:35
  Speaker 4: strips on it for the flying doctor.
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I always try and you know, remind people that
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: it's not that the infrastructure in Australia is poor.
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: It's not. It's just that it's different.
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: You know, you're you're on a two lane highway and
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: then you're still going through the small towns. It just
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: takes longer to get places. You know that the Bruce Highway,
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: for example, you know that runs from Brisbane. Where does
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: that ends?
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: They got to Canes.
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's for most of it's two lane and
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: that's the major road in Queensland. I mean, I think
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: that's wonderful and us but you know, Americans tend to
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: get this opinion like, oh, well, I'm going to go
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: over there and I'm going to drive from Brisbane cans
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: in a day, and then I'm going to go to
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: Uluru the next day.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: And You're like, no, no, no chance, not happening.
• 11:15
  Speaker 4: Everything is a long way apart most of the population,
• 11:17
  Speaker 4: I think ninety percent of the populations along the coastline,
• 11:20
  Speaker 4: you know, and focused on the big cities like the
• 11:22
  Speaker 4: capital cities of Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. Every everyone would know.
• 11:24
  Speaker 4: The rest of the country is fairly sparsely populated. You know,
• 11:26
  Speaker 4: a little little country tans it might be fifteen people
• 11:29
  Speaker 4: wonderful people in them though. I mean, so we've kind
• 11:31
  Speaker 4: of talked about where you came from. We've talked about traveling,
• 11:35
  Speaker 4: you know a little bit in Southeast Queensland. But what
• 11:37
  Speaker 4: I know Brad for, and I think you know Brad for,
• 11:40
  Speaker 4: are these massive trips where you're gone for a month
• 11:43
  Speaker 4: or two months and you don't necessarily bring like a
• 11:46
  Speaker 4: lot of like luxury stuff with you, so to speak.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: Like you an earth roamer.
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: You know, you're usually in the land cruiser and then
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: you have a swag and you throw it on the
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: ground and you know you're going like it charges you,
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: you know, like I think everybody around you know, is
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: like Brad has to get out and you come back
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: with this you know, this this fire in you. I mean,
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: what was that? What was your first big trip? Like
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: what was the transition from Southeast Queensland, Brad to Rising
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: Australia to cross in Australia and doing these crazy adventures.
• 12:14
  Speaker 4: Well, once I had the success with the South Theset
• 12:16
  Speaker 4: queens and book, I thought, well, you know there's a
• 12:18
  Speaker 4: need for this right rend Australia. You know, people, most
• 12:20
  Speaker 4: people are working, have only got a few days to
• 12:22
  Speaker 4: have a break and you know, as I said, Queenslins
• 12:25
  Speaker 4: a massive state. So the plan was to do a
• 12:26
  Speaker 4: guide for each region. So the next goud I did
• 12:28
  Speaker 4: was Central Queensland. So it's a coastline between Bunderberg and
• 12:32
  Speaker 4: say Bowen on the east coast and now as far
• 12:34
  Speaker 4: as the Canarvans and the Great Sandstone build Out in
• 12:37
  Speaker 4: the Central queens And area. So I did that guide,
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: and then the plan was to do a guide for
• 12:40
  Speaker 4: North queens and a kapill and then do one for
• 12:42
  Speaker 4: the Northern Territory, one for the for the Kimberley region
• 12:45
  Speaker 4: in northwestern w A. Not been there yet, Yeah, it's
• 12:48
  Speaker 4: a magnificence, magnificent place.
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: Hint, hint, Brad, we haven't been there. Have you not
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: been there yet either? No? Oh yeah, just give me
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: the call. That's been the universal thing.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: If I asked people who are well traveled in Australia,
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: like what's the most remote beautiful they I'll see the Kimberly.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's amazing place.
• 13:05
  Speaker 4: So you know, so the idea was I would just
• 13:07
  Speaker 4: do a series of guides around Australia. I just keep
• 13:09
  Speaker 4: doing laps of Australian update in the book. Every couple
• 13:11
  Speaker 4: of years and the books were selling well. So I
• 13:13
  Speaker 4: was like, I can make it a good living and
• 13:15
  Speaker 4: I can be doing what I love every day of
• 13:16
  Speaker 4: the week.
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: And that was the plan.
• 13:18
  Speaker 4: And then I was doing the field research for the
• 13:21
  Speaker 4: North Queensland and Cape York Guide and I drove out
• 13:23
  Speaker 4: onto this remote beach and I was on mand I
• 13:25
  Speaker 4: was meeting with a mate in it.
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: Do you remember what beach it was, Yeah, I want
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: to go there.
• 13:30
  Speaker 4: It's a place called Cape Bowling Green, Okay, so it's
• 13:33
  Speaker 4: south of Townsville, but back in those days it was
• 13:36
  Speaker 4: quite remote. And I drove it onto this beach and
• 13:38
  Speaker 4: I started because there there's an old lighthouse and some
• 13:41
  Speaker 4: graves and that at the end of this peninsula. So
• 13:42
  Speaker 4: it's just a sandspit that pokes out into the Coral Sea.
• 13:45
  Speaker 4: And it's about thirty forty killing me as long. So
• 13:47
  Speaker 4: I'm driving along the beach following what I assume was
• 13:50
  Speaker 4: a little Suzuki or something. It was only living a
• 13:52
  Speaker 4: very shallow tire track, and I'm in a three and
• 13:54
  Speaker 4: a half tunnel end cruiser and I started to bog
• 13:57
  Speaker 4: down through this sand and I thought this isn't good.
• 13:59
  Speaker 4: And then I look at it, and I see dead
• 14:00
  Speaker 4: mangrove trees coming down to the water's edge. I thought,
• 14:03
  Speaker 4: you know, mangrove mud. That stuff's not real good. So
• 14:06
  Speaker 4: I tried to turn the car around to leave, and
• 14:08
  Speaker 4: I broke through this crust of sand into this black
• 14:11
  Speaker 4: mangrove mud, and just the car just ballied out. And
• 14:13
  Speaker 4: I thought, no, this is going to be fun. So
• 14:15
  Speaker 4: I got on the radio. No one within couwie of
• 14:17
  Speaker 4: you know the radio, nobody around. This is pre satellite
• 14:21
  Speaker 4: phones and mobile phones. So I thought, well, this is it.
• 14:23
  Speaker 4: So I had a handwinch. I didn't want to go
• 14:25
  Speaker 4: any further forward. I want to get I tried to
• 14:27
  Speaker 4: go back on my tracks and just couldn't get any
• 14:28
  Speaker 4: tracks near The wheels were just spinning in mid air.
• 14:30
  Speaker 4: So got the winch out, got the handwinch out and
• 14:32
  Speaker 4: the old turfer and a tree up on the up
• 14:35
  Speaker 4: on the sand dune, and ran every single rope and
• 14:37
  Speaker 4: strap that I had out to that tied, and I
• 14:38
  Speaker 4: got to go and put the tension on it and
• 14:40
  Speaker 4: pulled the tree out of the ground and there was
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: another tree on about a forty five degree angle, and
• 14:44
  Speaker 4: did the same thing. Tried it pulled it out of
• 14:46
  Speaker 4: the ground. So then I'm going to have to get
• 14:47
  Speaker 4: the tire out f underneath and bury the tire and
• 14:49
  Speaker 4: witch off the tire right so, and of course it's
• 14:51
  Speaker 4: sitting on the belly and the tire was under the
• 14:53
  Speaker 4: back of the back of the fuel tank. So I
• 14:55
  Speaker 4: had to igle a slop out from under the car,
• 14:57
  Speaker 4: get the wheel out, you dig a trench, took it
• 15:00
  Speaker 4: all up, and start winching off the off the spare tire.
• 15:02
  Speaker 4: So in the meantime, you know, this is hours going by,
• 15:04
  Speaker 4: and the tide started to turn, so the tides lapping
• 15:07
  Speaker 4: under the car.
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: So I'm dealing with all.
• 15:08
  Speaker 4: This slippery, greasy, black, oily mud and it's you know,
• 15:12
  Speaker 4: thirty degrees and sunny, and I'm just working my butt
• 15:16
  Speaker 4: off to try and get this car out with this handwinch.
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: And you know you're doing and you've used a winch,
• 15:20
  Speaker 4: you know you're doing half an inch at a time
• 15:22
  Speaker 4: and making a little bit of progress. But I was
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: shoveling dry sand in. I was I put the floor
• 15:26
  Speaker 4: mats in, I was shoving whatever I could in under
• 15:28
  Speaker 4: the tires, and I was peaking up bits of driftwood
• 15:30
  Speaker 4: and like logs and things and shoving them in to
• 15:32
  Speaker 4: try and get up onto the sand.
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: Everything. You know, things had slide off and it jammed
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: underneath them. I have to try. I had an air jack.
• 15:37
  Speaker 4: I'm trying to jack the car up to get the
• 15:38
  Speaker 4: debris out. And so you got to the point where
• 15:40
  Speaker 4: it's probably six or seven hours. I eventually started to
• 15:43
  Speaker 4: get the back up onto the sand again. So I
• 15:45
  Speaker 4: jumped in and just reversed over the winch and the
• 15:47
  Speaker 4: cables and just got the hell out of there, up
• 15:48
  Speaker 4: on the high ground and I just laid under the beach.
• 15:51
  Speaker 4: I thought, that really sucked. There's got to be a
• 15:53
  Speaker 4: better way than that, if you had your wife with you,
• 15:55
  Speaker 4: or your family with you, if you're getting divorced.
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: Because it was.
• 15:57
  Speaker 4: Such a traumatic thing, I nearly lost the car. I'm
• 16:00
  Speaker 4: looking at the high tide and the high tide marks,
• 16:02
  Speaker 4: you know, six foot above the roof of the car,
• 16:03
  Speaker 4: and I'm thinking, oh, I'm a goner, and I'm going
• 16:06
  Speaker 4: to be walking back to the nearest town. So eventually,
• 16:08
  Speaker 4: you know, I got it out. I just thought, never
• 16:10
  Speaker 4: again if I'm traveling solo around Australia and I'm going
• 16:13
  Speaker 4: to be encountering these sort of situations all the time.
• 16:15
  Speaker 4: I want something that I can rely on to get
• 16:18
  Speaker 4: me out every time. So that was the impetus for
• 16:20
  Speaker 4: Max Tracks, you know. So I spent the next couple
• 16:21
  Speaker 4: of months doing the research on that, that guidebook, and
• 16:24
  Speaker 4: then I came home and you know, I've been getting
• 16:25
  Speaker 4: fulled by for Australia magazines since day one, and I
• 16:28
  Speaker 4: trolled through the magazines and there was nothing that sort
• 16:31
  Speaker 4: of was designed to do that job, you know, and
• 16:33
  Speaker 4: I thought, well, I want it, so I'm going to
• 16:34
  Speaker 4: make it. And so that was a whole four year
• 16:36
  Speaker 4: process of how do I do it. I went home
• 16:38
  Speaker 4: and I was I was doing some renovations on the
• 16:40
  Speaker 4: house at the time, and I had the back stair treads,
• 16:42
  Speaker 4: the timer's stair treads that were about a foot wide
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: and about two inches thick. You still have those bowchecks, yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 16:47
  Speaker 4: so oh wow. So I thought, you know, usion one, yeah,
• 16:51
  Speaker 4: because the issue was like when I was shoving things
• 16:53
  Speaker 4: under the tire because everything was greasy, there was nothing
• 16:55
  Speaker 4: the t I couldn't grab on anything. It just everything
• 16:57
  Speaker 4: was just sliding all over the place. So I thought,
• 16:59
  Speaker 4: I need I need grip whatever it is, it's got
• 17:01
  Speaker 4: to have grip on the top of it. So I
• 17:03
  Speaker 4: got some stainless steel plates made up about probably three
• 17:05
  Speaker 4: inches square radius, the corners about half an inch, bent
• 17:08
  Speaker 4: the corners up about three quarters about half an inch
• 17:11
  Speaker 4: or three outs of an inch, and then fitted and
• 17:12
  Speaker 4: bolted them onto these timber stair treads. And then the
• 17:15
  Speaker 4: next time I did a trip, I took these with me.
• 17:16
  Speaker 4: And once you got onto the metal teeth, the tie,
• 17:19
  Speaker 4: the carver just launch out of the hole, and I'm like,
• 17:21
  Speaker 4: that's what I need. But these things were hardwood, and
• 17:24
  Speaker 4: they were heavy. You know, there are probably twenty kilos each,
• 17:26
  Speaker 4: and once the covered in mud and crap, you know,
• 17:28
  Speaker 4: it's thirty five kilos. I thought, I need something that's light,
• 17:31
  Speaker 4: so I had So what I did basically was I
• 17:33
  Speaker 4: wrote my wish list of you know, I want handle
• 17:35
  Speaker 4: so you can carry the maneuver it on. You're able
• 17:37
  Speaker 4: to use it as a shovel if you're digging in sand,
• 17:38
  Speaker 4: and it's got to have grip on the top and
• 17:40
  Speaker 4: the bottom. It's got to have ramps so you can
• 17:41
  Speaker 4: gem it under the tire and the tier can actually
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: grab hold of it. You know, it's got to have
• 17:45
  Speaker 4: those features that make it work, that make it work.
• 17:47
  Speaker 4: I want to be able to take I want to be
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: able to take twenty of them. So if I'm going
• 17:50
  Speaker 4: somewhere room mate, I know I'm going to be in trouble.
• 17:52
  Speaker 4: I've got a boordable road on the roof. So I
• 17:54
  Speaker 4: had my wish list and actually created a magazine ad
• 17:57
  Speaker 4: and I was basically a fato of a car bogged
• 17:59
  Speaker 4: in the middle of a salt pan in the middle
• 18:00
  Speaker 4: of Australia, and that said ever been bogged, He's a solution.
• 18:03
  Speaker 4: And I had the list of the features of the
• 18:05
  Speaker 4: Max tracks, and so that was my spec sheet. And
• 18:08
  Speaker 4: I wasn't sure what to do next. I was sort
• 18:10
  Speaker 4: of lost as to how do I and I produce
• 18:12
  Speaker 4: this because I want twenty or thirty of them. I
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: just had been watching TV show one night. There was
• 18:16
  Speaker 4: a guy come on and he just walks down the
• 18:17
  Speaker 4: street with a microphone and the cameraman and walks up
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: to someone says, get out on, Brad, what's your name,
• 18:21
  Speaker 4: and gets their live story out of him over the
• 18:23
  Speaker 4: next half an hour, and he happened to I happened
• 18:24
  Speaker 4: to turn it on my night and he's talking to
• 18:26
  Speaker 4: this guy who was an industrial designer. The interviewer said, so,
• 18:28
  Speaker 4: what's an industrial designer do? And he said, well, if
• 18:30
  Speaker 4: you've got a TV or a toaster, or a lawmar
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: or a car, an industrial designer designed that that product.
• 18:35
  Speaker 4: So I got the yellow pages out and there's three
• 18:37
  Speaker 4: or four industrial designers in Brisbane and one of them
• 18:39
  Speaker 4: who had one already won four Australian Design Awards. I thought,
• 18:42
  Speaker 4: all these guys know what they're doing. So I'd got
• 18:43
  Speaker 4: on the phone the next morning and said, I've got
• 18:45
  Speaker 4: this idea. That's this product that I'm trying to make,
• 18:46
  Speaker 4: you know, can you help me? And they said, that's
• 18:48
  Speaker 4: what we do, Come and have a chat. So I
• 18:49
  Speaker 4: went in and then we spent the next probably three
• 18:52
  Speaker 4: years making product, designing it, making prototypes. So we would
• 18:55
  Speaker 4: get a block of HDP, so how I dentity polyethylene
• 18:59
  Speaker 4: and see and see the profile out of it, and
• 19:00
  Speaker 4: then we'd go and test it and go that's not sure,
• 19:03
  Speaker 4: not quite right, you know, it's not ideal. Needs this
• 19:05
  Speaker 4: needs that. And we made about half a dozen prototypes
• 19:07
  Speaker 4: and we've got the point where we think that's that's
• 19:09
  Speaker 4: going to work, went and tested and went yeah, that works.
• 19:11
  Speaker 4: And then the next thing was making the tool, so
• 19:13
  Speaker 4: the mold, and that was like a big investment and
• 19:17
  Speaker 4: a big plunge. And I had a few people say
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: the house. Yeah. I had a few people say to
• 19:21
  Speaker 4: the issue about this, and I was like, well, I
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: want it, and you know, if I've got a need,
• 19:25
  Speaker 4: there's probably other people that have a similar need. So
• 19:27
  Speaker 4: I think, you know, if I do it right, I think,
• 19:29
  Speaker 4: you know, it might be a product that I can sell.
• 19:31
  Speaker 4: I went saw the bank manager and he said, so
• 19:33
  Speaker 4: what's your plan. I said, well, make them and hopefully
• 19:35
  Speaker 4: someone buys them. And that was it. So you know,
• 19:37
  Speaker 4: remortgaged the house. Sure, mortgage the house, and went had
• 19:40
  Speaker 4: the tool done. And then once we had the tool,
• 19:42
  Speaker 4: then we could test the material. So we the guys
• 19:45
  Speaker 4: obviously Industrial Design has had relationships with the plastics supplier,
• 19:48
  Speaker 4: so j'pon a German company called group ol G Plastics
• 19:52
  Speaker 4: and a couple of Australian companies were making different versions
• 19:55
  Speaker 4: of nylon. All the experts had said, you know, we
• 19:58
  Speaker 4: think nylon is the right material. This product, what it's
• 20:01
  Speaker 4: got to cope with, you know, the conditions it's going
• 20:03
  Speaker 4: to be used under, and all.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: Thats I thing.
• 20:04
  Speaker 4: So they all gave us samples of material and we
• 20:06
  Speaker 4: had maybe five or six grades of their different variants
• 20:09
  Speaker 4: of nylon and we tried and put them in the
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: tool and we end up with all these different boards
• 20:13
  Speaker 4: in different colors and different materials that we went out
• 20:15
  Speaker 4: and tested and basically did the goldilocks until we got
• 20:18
  Speaker 4: it just right, which took a while, was probably twelve
• 20:20
  Speaker 4: months of testing and refining and testing and refining, and
• 20:22
  Speaker 4: then we went yeah, we think that's the material. And
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: then we went and set off on a ten thousand
• 20:26
  Speaker 4: k lap around Queensland. So we basically left Brisbane, drove
• 20:29
  Speaker 4: to Kpe, York, go out to the Simpson Desert, across
• 20:31
  Speaker 4: the Simpson Desert and back to Brisbane in a month,
• 20:34
  Speaker 4: so ten thousand k's in a month, towing a camp trailer.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: Which pretty much guarantees getting stuck.
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and in the height of summer, so you know,
• 20:40
  Speaker 4: you're out in the desert it was fifty degrees celsius
• 20:43
  Speaker 4: and up north it was probably high thirty. So the
• 20:45
  Speaker 4: sands like lava, you know, and it's you're guaranteed you're
• 20:47
  Speaker 4: going to get suck. So every time we got stuck.
• 20:49
  Speaker 4: We'd more or less set up a tripod with a
• 20:51
  Speaker 4: camera on it filmed the video of us using the
• 20:53
  Speaker 4: max tracks to get out, so at the end of
• 20:54
  Speaker 4: the trip we had probably ten or fifteen instances of
• 20:57
  Speaker 4: actually doing a legitimate recovery using the boards. We went
• 21:00
  Speaker 4: to the fall Dive Chambersbine, almost the same spot i'd
• 21:02
  Speaker 4: launched the book about five years earlier, had the maxtracks
• 21:05
  Speaker 4: on display, and I had a palette of maxtracks sitting there,
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: had the one hundred from the trip, you know, covered
• 21:09
  Speaker 4: in red dirt, and we had the screen playing with
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: all the recoveries on just on loot. Ron Moon came
• 21:13
  Speaker 4: up and had a look at it. Was standing in
• 21:14
  Speaker 4: the record at the video and I was talking to
• 21:16
  Speaker 4: a potential customer at the time. And Ron Moon was
• 21:18
  Speaker 4: the editor of four by Fourmata is very experience, a
• 21:20
  Speaker 4: very experienced guy. And he's looking at the video and
• 21:22
  Speaker 4: he's shaking his head and I'm standing behind him seeing
• 21:24
  Speaker 4: him shaking his head like the side to side, thinking
• 21:27
  Speaker 4: that's not good, but shaking his head, you know. And
• 21:29
  Speaker 4: I went up and i said, I'll Ron, how are you?
• 21:31
  Speaker 4: And I'd send him books over the years to give
• 21:33
  Speaker 4: me a plug in the magazine and he said, bad,
• 21:35
  Speaker 4: is this yours? And I said yeah, I said, I
• 21:36
  Speaker 4: saw he's shaking your head. He goes, I'm shaking head
• 21:38
  Speaker 4: thinking why didn't I.
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: Think of it?
• 21:39
  Speaker 4: I think so many instances where this would have just
• 21:42
  Speaker 4: saved me so much grief, you know. And he said
• 21:44
  Speaker 4: this is his sheer genius. He goes, you're going to
• 21:46
  Speaker 4: sell a million of these, and I said, I hope
• 21:48
  Speaker 4: you're right, because I've put the house on it.
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: And that was it.
• 21:50
  Speaker 4: So he said, send me something, I'll play with them,
• 21:51
  Speaker 4: and I'll give you right up in the magazine and
• 21:53
  Speaker 4: it sort of went from there, you know. But the
• 21:55
  Speaker 4: hardest part was initially it was convincing people that two
• 21:58
  Speaker 4: bits of plastic coul get your car out.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: A lot of people like them. That's not going to work.
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: People like hated them at first over here, like it
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: was like I'm not using those, that's never going to work.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: It was such as a learning curve, like anything new,
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: any new technology.
• 22:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, it was like that in Australia. You know,
• 22:13
  Speaker 4: people were very skeptical, but they'd look at the video
• 22:15
  Speaker 4: and go, oh, it seems to work, and then people
• 22:16
  Speaker 4: would buy them and go and use them and then
• 22:18
  Speaker 4: come back or send us an email and say, holy cow,
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: I would have lost my car on the beach if
• 22:22
  Speaker 4: I didn't have the Max tracks.
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: Oh that was what it was for me.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: I mean I had used them successfully, but I always
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: had a winch or a there was some other way
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: to get out. We had when we were in the
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: canning stock and fourteen hours we were stuck, we built.
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: A road and that was the only way we got out.
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: We were so deep in the mud.
• 22:36
  Speaker 4: That's basically how it all came about, and then it
• 22:38
  Speaker 4: just went from there. It took us quite a few
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: years to sort of get a roll on and actually
• 22:42
  Speaker 4: get people believing in the product. And then because they're
• 22:44
  Speaker 4: bright orange and they're big and people put them on
• 22:46
  Speaker 4: their rooffrack, we would have people ring us and say,
• 22:48
  Speaker 4: I mates got some of those orange things.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: Do you sell them?
• 22:51
  Speaker 4: It was spiky or yeah yeah yeah. So that's how
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: it started. It just sort of went from there, and
• 22:57
  Speaker 4: you know, then we went to Seema in twenty ten.
• 23:00
  Speaker 4: Remember that that was quite memorable for us because we
• 23:02
  Speaker 4: rocked up and I just had three or four mates
• 23:04
  Speaker 4: with me and we booked it in and we got
• 23:06
  Speaker 4: to see him and walked into the exhibition hall in
• 23:08
  Speaker 4: Vegas and I was like, oh, we're playing with the
• 23:10
  Speaker 4: big boys now.
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 23:11
  Speaker 4: Ford was there to add it was there, good Year,
• 23:13
  Speaker 4: all the big brands, AB and TJM and everything, all
• 23:16
  Speaker 4: Australian all drive equipment companies, and I was like, we
• 23:20
  Speaker 4: might be out of our depth there.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 23:21
  Speaker 4: We spent a couple of days in the Home Depot
• 23:23
  Speaker 4: car park building a pyramid out of plywood to make
• 23:26
  Speaker 4: a sand dune. Oh hour display at SEAMA was a
• 23:29
  Speaker 4: We had an FJ cruiser all sign written and we
• 23:31
  Speaker 4: had in a sand june with the Max track sticking
• 23:33
  Speaker 4: out of the front of it. We used real sand,
• 23:35
  Speaker 4: so we had it. We had boxes and boxes of
• 23:37
  Speaker 4: red sand that we made this sand june out of.
• 23:39
  Speaker 4: People were just coming up and shaking their head and
• 23:41
  Speaker 4: we picked up probably half a dozen international customers at
• 23:44
  Speaker 4: at that show and a couple of awards for best
• 23:46
  Speaker 4: New Product in you off Road space. So we you know,
• 23:49
  Speaker 4: we walked away from SEAMI thinking we can play with
• 23:51
  Speaker 4: the big boys. You know, we've got the right product
• 23:53
  Speaker 4: and we've we've done it, well, you can do it.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: It can be done.
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: So that ten thousand k trip, was that, at the
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: time the longest you had kind of been out in
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: a four wheel drive.
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that was probably the longest.
• 24:04
  Speaker 4: That was a month, and it was a month just
• 24:06
  Speaker 4: living out of the car, you know, I mean I'd
• 24:07
  Speaker 4: done a lot before that, so my car was pretty
• 24:10
  Speaker 4: well set up.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: I had a good fridge in the back.
• 24:12
  Speaker 4: I just used to sleep on a stretcher and just
• 24:13
  Speaker 4: boxes of food and spare parts and tools, and you know,
• 24:16
  Speaker 4: that was about it.
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: But it was you. I was driving the.
• 24:18
  Speaker 4: Toy so reliability wise, I knew that sure I didn't
• 24:21
  Speaker 4: have to take too many spares and if I did
• 24:23
  Speaker 4: need something that wasn't helped not too far away. Despite
• 24:26
  Speaker 4: Queen's and being quite vast as a toyder dealer in
• 24:28
  Speaker 4: every town just about.
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: And you're mister land Cruiser. Yeah.
• 24:31
  Speaker 4: Well, I always say to people, if you want to
• 24:33
  Speaker 4: go there and come back alive, it'll.
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: Be a lanker.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: There's a great there's a great Australian commercial that they
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: ran and it was it was like a border checkpoint
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: to go out into the desert, and you know, people
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: would drive up in some lesser vehicle and they'd turn
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: them around and send them back and.
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: They would only let the people through with a high
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: lux or land crew. But I think it was a
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: clever ad. It was a very clever ad.
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: Until very recently there just weren't that many vehicles, although
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: the Lancers that truthfully could put up with conditions.
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah you patrol, yeah, true.
• 25:01
  Speaker 4: Well, I mean lan cruise arrived in Australia in the
• 25:03
  Speaker 4: fifties when they're building the Snowy Mountains hydro electric scheme.
• 25:06
  Speaker 4: So leslie Ts who had that contract for that, imported
• 25:09
  Speaker 4: a heap of them from Japan and they were the
• 25:10
  Speaker 4: forty shorty forties and they were mountain climbing through the
• 25:13
  Speaker 4: Snowy Mountains and people sort of kept them afterwards. And
• 25:16
  Speaker 4: when this thing's unreal, there's the Land River.
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: Guys in Australia love to tell that same story too,
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: because I'm the Snowy Mountain hydro project. They were actually
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: the first vehicles and they want to say there were
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: series ones. Yeah, and then they became land cruisers.
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: So yeah. But it's funny because when you like, you know,
• 25:31
  Speaker 4: the Great Dividing Range on along the East coast of
• 25:33
  Speaker 4: Australia pretty much on the top to bottom, and once
• 25:35
  Speaker 4: you cross that mountain range, it's pretty flat all the
• 25:37
  Speaker 4: way to the other side of the country. There's a
• 25:39
  Speaker 4: few little bumps along the waivers, pretty flat, lots of sand,
• 25:42
  Speaker 4: and once you cross that mountain range, you can pretty
• 25:44
  Speaker 4: much guarantee ninety percent of the vehicles you passed will
• 25:46
  Speaker 4: be a land cruise of one variation or another.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: So what's been your favorite land cruiser that I'm.
• 25:50
  Speaker 4: Driving US three hundred series now and it's pretty damn good.
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: So you got to talk about this. Yeah, we don't.
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: We don't get it. We're not going to get it here.
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: I guess we're going to get the Lexus version, but
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: Alexix pretty Yeah, we don't get the lockers. We don't
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: get the e kd SS the diesel like you do. Yeah,
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: it's a beast. It's like I've had.
• 26:08
  Speaker 4: I've had all of them, and the last cars are
• 26:10
  Speaker 4: two hundred series that we had were really good, you know,
• 26:11
  Speaker 4: the V eight twin turbo, plenty of power, quite comfortable.
• 26:14
  Speaker 4: But the three hundreds is that next step up. You know,
• 26:16
  Speaker 4: they've had twelve whatever you used to refine it and
• 26:19
  Speaker 4: it's you know, it's got the EKD s s and
• 26:21
  Speaker 4: it's the ride's amazing. The interior they've really stepped up.
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: You know, the interior is quite high end now. It's
• 26:25
  Speaker 4: got adjustable suspensions. They can have comfort made if you
• 26:27
  Speaker 4: feel like it, or you can have sports plus or
• 26:29
  Speaker 4: custom or whatever. It may be pretty cool. It is
• 26:31
  Speaker 4: pretty cool. And you know you've been there, scot you've
• 26:34
  Speaker 4: been there. Mat You know, the corrugations out west up
• 26:36
  Speaker 4: north could be pretty severe. You know, it can be
• 26:38
  Speaker 4: driving on corrogated road for a couple of days solid.
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: I remember one time we're on the road north of
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: Addams Grove that goes up towards.
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: You know heads a pup Gulf. Yeah.
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And I took a beer can and I put
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: it in between the corrugations and I like got down
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: on the ground and I'm like, I can't see the
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: beer can.
• 26:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah, they're big and they shake everything to pieces. Yeah,
• 26:59
  Speaker 4: so we did. Actually, I got the car just before
• 27:00
  Speaker 4: Christmas and we went for a run up to place
• 27:02
  Speaker 4: called Lawn Hill, which is sort of remote northwestern Queensland
• 27:05
  Speaker 4: and most people don't go there at that time because
• 27:07
  Speaker 4: it's forty five degrees celsius plus. But I said, we'll
• 27:10
  Speaker 4: we're gone there because there we no one else there
• 27:11
  Speaker 4: and there wasn't. We did about nine thousand k's that trip,
• 27:14
  Speaker 4: and we were getting about ten and a half liters
• 27:16
  Speaker 4: for one hundred k's, which is an amazing economy for
• 27:18
  Speaker 4: a car of that size. And you know we weren't
• 27:20
  Speaker 4: nursing it. So they're running a V six, do you
• 27:23
  Speaker 4: get Yeah, just V six diesel twin turbo, so more
• 27:27
  Speaker 4: power and talk than the V A a lot more comfort,
• 27:29
  Speaker 4: comfortable ride, and just an all round much better vehicle.
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: Really. You know, there's a lot of kickback from people
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: with the V eight saying, I don't know, it looks great.
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: I think it looks better.
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: I think all the technology they brought in at factory
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: available lockers now it's just so much better.
• 27:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a nice car, But my favorite of the
• 27:46
  Speaker 4: lot is my nineteen forty three Geep. You've actually got
• 27:50
  Speaker 4: to drive that thing, you know, the cruisy you're almos
• 27:52
  Speaker 4: sitting in your lange.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: There is not a photo that exists of you driving
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: that Jeep where you are not grinning ear to ear
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: with bugs stick. And I mean, I remember when you
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: first bought it. It was a crazy story. You were
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: just going to have one for like a prep Yeah,
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: and they couldn't deliver it, and then you buy one.
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 28:11
  Speaker 4: Well, when we're doing we actually we're going to make
• 28:13
  Speaker 4: a video for SEEMA for the first year at SEMA.
• 28:15
  Speaker 4: And the storyline was that we had a there was
• 28:17
  Speaker 4: a World war a jeep bogged in the jungle up
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: in North Queens and we went up to Cape York
• 28:21
  Speaker 4: to film it. And so we had a couple of
• 28:23
  Speaker 4: Islander guys who were the natives who find the Max
• 28:25
  Speaker 4: tracks washed up on the beach. There's a jeeps stuck
• 28:27
  Speaker 4: in the jungle full of coconuts and coconut farm fronts,
• 28:30
  Speaker 4: and they find it and they go and stick the
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: Max tracks in and back it out onto the beach
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: and drive away. And I had the actors organized, I
• 28:36
  Speaker 4: had the film crew organized, and we had them flying
• 28:39
  Speaker 4: into this remade airport, and I had a couple of
• 28:41
  Speaker 4: mates coming up in their cars to be support. We
• 28:43
  Speaker 4: were leaving on the Thursday to go to the Cape
• 28:45
  Speaker 4: to meet these guys on the Monday, and last minute,
• 28:48
  Speaker 4: the guy that was going to lend me his jeeps,
• 28:49
  Speaker 4: and I can't do it in a family thing, can't
• 28:51
  Speaker 4: do it. So madly got on the web and found
• 28:54
  Speaker 4: one in rock Campton, which is about halfway up up
• 28:57
  Speaker 4: the coast, and this guy had home Lucky. Yeah, this
• 29:00
  Speaker 4: guy had one, and he said, oh yeah, it's not registered,
• 29:02
  Speaker 4: but I can get it registered. So we got there
• 29:04
  Speaker 4: on the Friday afternoon. I said, can you get it
• 29:06
  Speaker 4: registered on Friday? I don't want to be at the
• 29:07
  Speaker 4: transport department trying to register a seven.
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: Year old jeep.
• 29:09
  Speaker 4: It's left hand drive, no doors, no seat belts, you know.
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: And so did that.
• 29:13
  Speaker 4: We got there, took it for a drive around this
• 29:15
  Speaker 4: newer state up the hill and put it in low
• 29:17
  Speaker 4: range and just went, yeah, here's the money. You see
• 29:20
  Speaker 4: you later. We took it up there, we did the ad.
• 29:21
  Speaker 4: We actually had the AD in the can before we finished,
• 29:23
  Speaker 4: and then we finished. We did the rest of the
• 29:25
  Speaker 4: cape in the jeep and drownded in one of the
• 29:27
  Speaker 4: rivers and revived it and drove it and just went, well.
• 29:29
  Speaker 4: I got back from the cape and I said, so
• 29:31
  Speaker 4: you're selling that jeep.
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: I said, no, wait and help.
• 29:34
  Speaker 4: That deep going nowhere and you still have it?
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: I still have it.
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: Yeah, So it's done a few We've done a few
• 29:39
  Speaker 4: big trips and it's been to the Cape again, and
• 29:41
  Speaker 4: it's been across the Simpson and it's been across the
• 29:43
  Speaker 4: greatestrain and bye the trip we did.
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: We've taken it across there, remember that. Yeah.
• 29:47
  Speaker 4: And it's been a phrase of numerous times. And we
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: also have a couple of other sand islands off the
• 29:51
  Speaker 4: coast of Brisbane and we take it to and you know,
• 29:53
  Speaker 4: at the Glasshouse Mountains, as he said, Matte and yeah,
• 29:55
  Speaker 4: it's just it's just so much fun. You know, you
• 29:57
  Speaker 4: can't help but smile everyone that drives it.
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: Remember the motor not running, putting it in a low
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: range and then you turning it moving it forward by
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: the starter one. It's just such a different vehicle to
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: what we get these days.
• 30:11
  Speaker 4: It's amazingly capable life of something. That's that all. I
• 30:14
  Speaker 4: just niled that dos on like it. Sometimes it puts
• 30:16
  Speaker 4: the land cruise. It's a shime and you put it
• 30:17
  Speaker 4: in some situation.
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: I mean, there was genesis for all of those things, right,
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: they saw this, you know, I mean the land Rover
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: was it wasn't the original ver built on a jeep
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: on a chassis from a GP.
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 30:29
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, it's a great machine and It's just
• 30:33
  Speaker 4: it's not much fun to be driving along the beach,
• 30:35
  Speaker 4: you know, at sixty mile an hour with idols and
• 30:38
  Speaker 4: windscreened ice.
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: Eight belts.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: And a special thanks to on X Maps for supporting
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: this week's podcast. For me, being prepared is all about
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: having the right tools. One tool I use is the
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: on X off road map and navigation app on my phone.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: I use it to find trails and off grid camping,
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: and I use the fully functional GPS when I'm out
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: of service. We all know that's usually where the best
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: parts start. It's intuitive to use, and let's be find
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: open trails anywhere you want to explore with just the
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: tap on the map, access detailed trail information like difficulty ratings, duration, clearance, level, opening,
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: closed day trail photos and more. Plus there's color coded
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: public and private land boundaries which are very helpful for
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: when I want to try to find op grade camping.
• 31:21
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• 31:23
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• 31:26
  Speaker 1: me to access all interactive land and trail data and
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: custom map markups. When I'm out of cell service. Your
• 31:33
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• 31:37
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• 31:39
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• 31:42
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• 31:43
  Speaker 2: I think the really cool.
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: Thing is, like you always kind of describe Australia's a
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: bit of a nanny state. You know, you can do this,
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: you can't do this, you can do this, jump this
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: high whatever. But then for some reason the jeep is legal. Yeah, yeah,
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: I don't know why.
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: Well, apparently the rule is if it didn't come with
• 31:58
  Speaker 4: state belts, it doesn't have to have them. I've been
• 32:00
  Speaker 4: pulled up by the police a few times and they're like,
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: where's the seat belts.
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: I'm like, you're serious. This car seventy five years old.
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: So when I roll it, I'm capped in the car
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: crash exactly.
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: That is such a fun vehicle that you've got.
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: What other thing vehicles or equipment that have just delighted
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: you like that, other things that you've had in your travels.
• 32:19
  Speaker 4: Forty Series Cruiser and you know, most of my cars
• 32:22
  Speaker 4: have been for work purposes, you know, for big stuff.
• 32:25
  Speaker 4: I've had a good hundred Series that was the original one,
• 32:28
  Speaker 4: and that's two thousand and five.
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: Sorry it wasn't original two thousand and five. Yeah, yeah,
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: up north.
• 32:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah, well we had a collision with a sleeping driver
• 32:36
  Speaker 4: on a bridge. A sleeping driver wasn't making Yeah, yeah,
• 32:39
  Speaker 4: that's terrifying. Yeah, it was pretty bad. I had the
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: family in the car. Wasn't wasn't very nice, but we
• 32:44
  Speaker 4: got out of it. I think if we're in a car,
• 32:45
  Speaker 4: we probably wouldn't have. But in a cruiser, you know,
• 32:48
  Speaker 4: this guy fell asleep and cleaned us up and we
• 32:50
  Speaker 4: rolled down the highway about ten times and ended up
• 32:52
  Speaker 4: on the wheels and thankfully no serious injuries. The car
• 32:55
  Speaker 4: was right off that. But yeah, so one hundred series
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: is that's been the workhorse pretty much since one. It's
• 33:00
  Speaker 4: done a lot of miles and just reliable. You know,
• 33:02
  Speaker 4: we did some testing The Australian Army invited them yet
• 33:05
  Speaker 4: when they were implementing or they're doing the g wagon
• 33:08
  Speaker 4: testing program and they rang me and said, oh, you know,
• 33:11
  Speaker 4: we're going to be doing this testing trip through the
• 33:13
  Speaker 4: Simpson Desert and we're going to put max tracks on
• 33:15
  Speaker 4: the vehicles. Do you want to come and make sure
• 33:16
  Speaker 4: we're using the properly? And then I of course hands
• 33:18
  Speaker 4: straight up. I'm there, I'm met Youanella Springs and so
• 33:21
  Speaker 4: we did this. We did this trip the first time,
• 33:23
  Speaker 4: and there was a few mechanical issues with the with
• 33:25
  Speaker 4: the G wagons, and at that stage the cruise of
• 33:28
  Speaker 4: this is end of twenty twelve, so you know, the
• 33:30
  Speaker 4: cruise was seven years old at that stage and done
• 33:32
  Speaker 4: quite a few miles and you know across the Simpson
• 33:34
  Speaker 4: Desert cross country nowherries at all. No mechanical issues, you know.
• 33:38
  Speaker 4: And then we did another one with ten G wagons
• 33:41
  Speaker 4: in February the following year, so you know, the hottest
• 33:44
  Speaker 4: time of the year.
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: Same deal.
• 33:45
  Speaker 4: You know, the G wagons pretty much every G wagon
• 33:47
  Speaker 4: had some other issue, and I still loved them the cruise.
• 33:51
  Speaker 4: They look great, but give me a lankers or anything.
• 33:54
  Speaker 4: So you know, the old Landkrus just did it again.
• 33:57
  Speaker 4: You know, no issues.
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: Amazing.
• 33:58
  Speaker 4: So you know, probably I spent probably more time in
• 34:01
  Speaker 4: that car than any of them. You know, they're sitting
• 34:03
  Speaker 4: in the garage at the moment. Every time I walk
• 34:05
  Speaker 4: in on like I should take it for drive, but
• 34:07
  Speaker 4: I hop in the three hundred.
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: I think it understands.
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it might. It's in retirement now. It's
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: living a nice slave up on the beach. Exactly gets polished.
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: On Tuesday, I.
• 34:19
  Speaker 4: Drive in one of the six will drive long range
• 34:21
  Speaker 4: petrol vehicles when we're doing the G wagon testing, and
• 34:24
  Speaker 4: you know, in that rough terrain because in the middle
• 34:26
  Speaker 4: of the Simpson, you know, we're going cross country and
• 34:27
  Speaker 4: a lot of it's loguls, so you know, there's a
• 34:29
  Speaker 4: shrub and the sands blown from away. So you're driving
• 34:32
  Speaker 4: through and it's it's walking pace. You know, you can't
• 34:34
  Speaker 4: drive any fast because it's just so rough, and you know,
• 34:36
  Speaker 4: I'm in the wagon and getting belted around, and then
• 34:39
  Speaker 4: I hopped in one of the g wagons and the
• 34:40
  Speaker 4: difference was amazing. When we finished those trips, I said
• 34:43
  Speaker 4: to this friend who had set up this business doing
• 34:45
  Speaker 4: sixuel drive conversions with the aim of building some six
• 34:48
  Speaker 4: will drive lankers of patrol vehicles for the military. I said, well,
• 34:51
  Speaker 4: you know, if you wait for the military to order
• 34:52
  Speaker 4: or go bankrupt, it'll take them. It'll take your ten
• 34:54
  Speaker 4: years before you get a military order. I said, we'll
• 34:56
  Speaker 4: build me a six will drive two hundred series.
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: So we did that the first one. Yeah.
• 35:01
  Speaker 4: So, and I got the number plate six w D.
• 35:03
  Speaker 4: Because every time we pull up somewhere people would go.
• 35:05
  Speaker 4: Is that a lazy axl? Is that a real six
• 35:08
  Speaker 4: well drive as a real six drive?
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: And it was.
• 35:10
  Speaker 4: You know, it's great for that sort of long distance
• 35:12
  Speaker 4: expedition expedition stuff. You know, you can carry five five
• 35:15
  Speaker 4: adults in all the year and do it comfortably and
• 35:18
  Speaker 4: go anywhere basically.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was so impressed with how that vehicle did
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: because we were remote when we did the Australian Bait.
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: I mean it was Pate trails and yeah, really remote.
• 35:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a good machine, but a little bit on
• 35:29
  Speaker 4: the thirsty side, especially when we're paying the price to
• 35:31
  Speaker 4: feel what we do down there.
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, you were saying it was like thirty leaders. Yeah,
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: we did the Maddigan line.
• 35:37
  Speaker 4: Mick, that friend of mine who was building the long
• 35:39
  Speaker 4: range petrol Vicause based on the seventy series Cruiser. He
• 35:42
  Speaker 4: wanted to test his vehicles on the same route that
• 35:44
  Speaker 4: we did the g wagons, and so we're doing that
• 35:46
  Speaker 4: and they had some issues or they had some problems
• 35:48
  Speaker 4: and they had to wait in out of spring. So
• 35:50
  Speaker 4: friend of mine and I went solo across the Madigan
• 35:53
  Speaker 4: line in the six Feel Drive and we were using
• 35:55
  Speaker 4: thirty five leaders F one hundred k as someone had
• 35:58
  Speaker 4: towed a trailer across and just chewed the dune to pieces,
• 36:00
  Speaker 4: so you know it was pretty rugged.
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's a heavy vehicle. It's about five tons,
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: so it's like a tr rex probably.
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: I think there done a little bit better in the dens.
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, or you jump for one to the next.
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: I think we should talk about what the Madigan Line
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: is for people that don't necessarily know what it is.
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: I mean, obviously it's a remote northern route across the
• 36:21
  Speaker 3: Simpson Desert.
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 36:22
  Speaker 4: So the Simpson Desert's one of those bucket list items
• 36:24
  Speaker 4: for people in Australia. In the full drive, you know,
• 36:26
  Speaker 4: it's about six hundred k's across. It's the world's largest
• 36:30
  Speaker 4: parallel sand Juan Desert, so there's about eleven hundred parallel
• 36:32
  Speaker 4: sand dunes that run south southeast to north northwest and
• 36:36
  Speaker 4: on the eastern side in Queensland. They're sort of really high,
• 36:39
  Speaker 4: maybe sixty meters high and two kilometers apart, and then
• 36:42
  Speaker 4: as you get further across the desert they get lower
• 36:44
  Speaker 4: and closer together. So it's a bit of a challenge
• 36:46
  Speaker 4: everyone that's got a full drive, you know, I want
• 36:48
  Speaker 4: to do that before I die, and there's a few
• 36:50
  Speaker 4: routes across. Most of them were put in by mining
• 36:52
  Speaker 4: companies looking for oil back in the fifties and sixties.
• 36:55
  Speaker 4: So there's a couple of routes that most people take.
• 36:57
  Speaker 4: But the Madigan line you have to get permit, you
• 36:59
  Speaker 4: have to get missions from the traditional owners to cross
• 37:01
  Speaker 4: their lands, and it's fairly remote. Most people don't go
• 37:04
  Speaker 4: that way it was put in. It was actually plotted
• 37:07
  Speaker 4: by an explorer called Cecil Mattig and he was an
• 37:09
  Speaker 4: Antarctic explorer originally, and then he did a camel trek
• 37:13
  Speaker 4: across here in the nineteen thirties. It's named the Simpson
• 37:15
  Speaker 4: Desert after the manufacturer of washing machines. He was the
• 37:18
  Speaker 4: president of the South Australian Geological Society Geographical Society, sorry,
• 37:23
  Speaker 4: and so named the desert. Yeah, Simpson is the desert
• 37:27
  Speaker 4: named after the washingtone. He basically crossed it on camels
• 37:31
  Speaker 4: and his camps were plotted some years later by one
• 37:34
  Speaker 4: of the full drive clubs way back in the day.
• 37:36
  Speaker 4: And so there's a star picket, whether someone saying Camp
• 37:38
  Speaker 4: sixteen or.
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: Whatever, it may be amazing.
• 37:40
  Speaker 4: So it's basically drive across the desert, just doing the dots.
• 37:43
  Speaker 4: And you know, these days with GPS it's quite easy
• 37:45
  Speaker 4: to navigate, but back in the day it would have
• 37:46
  Speaker 4: been on a compass bearing and you know, you can't
• 37:49
  Speaker 4: drive straight on sand jeans, so quite challenging. So not
• 37:52
  Speaker 4: a lot of people have done it, and now with
• 37:54
  Speaker 4: some of the restrictions, it's it's becoming more and more
• 37:56
  Speaker 4: difficult to actually get a permit to do it. That's
• 37:58
  Speaker 4: one of those things where it just feels and for me,
• 38:01
  Speaker 4: I love that sense of remoteness. I just love that
• 38:03
  Speaker 4: there's no other human being for however many one hundred
• 38:06
  Speaker 4: Gillomans Trojan. Yeah, it's just I think when you're in
• 38:09
  Speaker 4: those environments, everything's sent your senses are all heightened. You know,
• 38:12
  Speaker 4: you hear everything, you smell everything. You know, it's just
• 38:15
  Speaker 4: one of those places where you feel alive. And for me,
• 38:18
  Speaker 4: I do. I just that that really brings me to
• 38:20
  Speaker 4: life when I'm out there, and that's why I enjoy it.
• 38:22
  Speaker 4: I suppose I just any chance to go on an expedition.
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: I'm there. Yeah. And the other one is it the
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: French line.
• 38:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah, the French line goes by the standard.
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, more of a standard cross not that it's still
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: not fun and amazing, than they shouldn't do it and
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: we see a standard crossing.
• 38:37
  Speaker 4: Still it's still a challenge for most people that have
• 38:39
  Speaker 4: never done much sand driving.
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: You know, it's same thing.
• 38:41
  Speaker 4: You're still crossing eleven hundred sand junes, but it gets
• 38:43
  Speaker 4: a lot more traffic, so you have to be aware
• 38:45
  Speaker 4: of oncoming traffic over the dunes. Everyone's on the same
• 38:48
  Speaker 4: radio channel. And then there's another road sort of down
• 38:50
  Speaker 4: the bottom of the desert called the rig Road that
• 38:52
  Speaker 4: was actually put in for the drilling ricks to get
• 38:54
  Speaker 4: it into the desert. So it was the clay capped
• 38:56
  Speaker 4: all the june so they dug the clay out of
• 38:58
  Speaker 4: the clay pans and capped the junes. But that's all
• 39:00
  Speaker 4: eroded in the last sixty years. So sure that's pretty
• 39:03
  Speaker 4: challenging as well. But Madigan is probably the toughest route
• 39:06
  Speaker 4: across the Simpson but the most fun.
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: And what's the what's the track that goes north that
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: the Canning Stock No no no, in the Simpson.
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: K one line.
• 39:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and then there's the Colson track that runs on
• 39:19
  Speaker 4: the western side.
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: Colson Track, that's the one I'm doing because you've done
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: that one.
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, done pretty much all of them a few times.
• 39:26
  Speaker 4: It's one of my favorite places to the Simpsons because
• 39:28
  Speaker 4: it is that it's that sense of it's that excitement
• 39:30
  Speaker 4: of heading into the wilds, you know, where you self reliant.
• 39:33
  Speaker 4: You know you have to you have to be on
• 39:34
  Speaker 4: your game and you have to be careful and be
• 39:37
  Speaker 4: well prepared and know what you're doing, because you know
• 39:40
  Speaker 4: you can come to grief. People have come to grief
• 39:42
  Speaker 4: out there.
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: Well, if I remember, you were in a UTV one
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: time and nearly came to grief.
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Well it was funny.
• 39:47
  Speaker 4: We were testing the six will drive land Cres patrol
• 39:50
  Speaker 4: vehicles and we've come in from the French line heading
• 39:53
  Speaker 4: north to a There's a tripod in the middle of
• 39:55
  Speaker 4: the desert, the geographic center of the desert, and the
• 39:57
  Speaker 4: plan was to get to that tripod and then get
• 40:00
  Speaker 4: the matting in line, which is about one hundred and
• 40:01
  Speaker 4: something CA's further north, and then head out towards Alice
• 40:04
  Speaker 4: Springs in the middle of Australia. We had a camera
• 40:06
  Speaker 4: mean with us was filming it for you know, the
• 40:08
  Speaker 4: content and the commercial for the product. The guys that
• 40:11
  Speaker 4: we were traveling with the Army. So six o'clock the morning,
• 40:14
  Speaker 4: they're gone. And we'd had a late night editing and
• 40:17
  Speaker 4: downloading footage and stuff, and we got to bed at
• 40:19
  Speaker 4: midnight and so we wake up and they're up the
• 40:21
  Speaker 4: track somewhere. So I got on the radio. I said,
• 40:23
  Speaker 4: and do you want to wait for us, because we're
• 40:24
  Speaker 4: trying to film this. You know, this is a bit
• 40:26
  Speaker 4: we want to film going cross countries through the middle
• 40:28
  Speaker 4: of Simpson Desert. And they said, oh, we'll wait for anyway,
• 40:29
  Speaker 4: long story short, the cameraman and I were in the
• 40:32
  Speaker 4: raiser Colaris raiser and got separated again.
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: A mate called Tom okay, that wasn't Geordy Okay.
• 40:38
  Speaker 4: We got to the point where we're following tracks and
• 40:40
  Speaker 4: then the tracks split because there's two other vehicles and
• 40:43
  Speaker 4: three other vehicles, sorry, and they split and we went
• 40:45
  Speaker 4: left and off we went followed this track and after
• 40:47
  Speaker 4: about an hour and a half it peeded out and
• 40:49
  Speaker 4: we sort of and I went, I don't really want
• 40:51
  Speaker 4: to backtrack.
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: I don't like backtracking, So.
• 40:53
  Speaker 4: I just went and I had had my phone with
• 40:56
  Speaker 4: the Hema maps app on it, and I knew we
• 40:58
  Speaker 4: were about one hundred k's sort of south southeast of
• 41:01
  Speaker 4: the G Center, and I said, we'll just head north northwest,
• 41:03
  Speaker 4: you know, we'll get there eventually. The guy that was
• 41:06
  Speaker 4: with me was a sort of luck really, So after
• 41:08
  Speaker 4: about five hours we got to this We got to
• 41:10
  Speaker 4: this area and it's hard to believe, but it looked familiar,
• 41:13
  Speaker 4: you know, it's all it all looks the same. But
• 41:14
  Speaker 4: I got to this partner, I just had this sense
• 41:16
  Speaker 4: that this looks a bit familiar from when we're out
• 41:18
  Speaker 4: there with the g wagons, and because we'd been there
• 41:21
  Speaker 4: in the G wagon convoy. So I said, I think
• 41:22
  Speaker 4: we're getting closer. I turned the phone on and we're
• 41:24
  Speaker 4: about five kilometers east of the GS Center. So we
• 41:27
  Speaker 4: drove across to the tower, expecting these guys to be there,
• 41:30
  Speaker 4: and they weren't there, and the guy I was with
• 41:33
  Speaker 4: us starting to panic a bit, like we're in the
• 41:35
  Speaker 4: middle of this literally the center of the where we
• 41:40
  Speaker 4: had We had water, but we didn't any food, and
• 41:41
  Speaker 4: it was winter time, so nighttimes freezing sure, so we
• 41:44
  Speaker 4: only had t shirts and shorts on, and.
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: It was like, what are we going to do?
• 41:47
  Speaker 4: And I said, well, you know, we'll gather up some firewood,
• 41:50
  Speaker 4: which there is not a lot of it's basically just
• 41:51
  Speaker 4: spin effects. So I said, we'll just get as much
• 41:53
  Speaker 4: stuff that could burn us possible. While it's daylight. You
• 41:55
  Speaker 4: don't be walking around in the darkest snakes everywhere. I said,
• 41:58
  Speaker 4: we'll get as much stuff as we can. We'll build
• 41:59
  Speaker 4: a pile, and then we'll just set the fire point
• 42:01
  Speaker 4: the car in the direction these guys will be coming from.
• 42:04
  Speaker 4: We took the seats outside of me in front of
• 42:05
  Speaker 4: the car because it was quite breezy, and just lit
• 42:07
  Speaker 4: the fire and just sat there and waited, you know.
• 42:09
  Speaker 4: And then about nine o'clock at night, we saw headlights
• 42:12
  Speaker 4: pressed the June and it turns out there about twenty
• 42:14
  Speaker 4: kilometers away, and they took it another three hours to
• 42:16
  Speaker 4: get to us. But the whole time we were there,
• 42:17
  Speaker 4: I was just thinking, this is the moon was half
• 42:19
  Speaker 4: and it was just fantastic. Yeah, I was just thinking
• 42:22
  Speaker 4: this is amazing. He was starting to panic and he said,
• 42:24
  Speaker 4: you know, what are we going to do if they
• 42:25
  Speaker 4: didn't come. I said, oh, we'll be fine, And I
• 42:26
  Speaker 4: said we've got five wheels on the razor. We can
• 42:28
  Speaker 4: burn and smoke signals if we need to. And then
• 42:31
  Speaker 4: the jet flew over between probably other springs in Sydney,
• 42:33
  Speaker 4: and I said, you know, we're going right sos in
• 42:35
  Speaker 4: sticks on the play pounded like that at about eight
• 42:38
  Speaker 4: o'clock tomorrow night. They might see it. A couple of
• 42:40
  Speaker 4: dutes down there lost, you know, but it all turned
• 42:42
  Speaker 4: out for the best.
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: They came.
• 42:43
  Speaker 4: They came and arrived at about midnight, and I sort
• 42:45
  Speaker 4: of said, I was I was hoping you guys wouldn't
• 42:47
  Speaker 4: come for a couple of days.
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: I was.
• 42:48
  Speaker 4: I was loving it. Yeah, that was just I mean,
• 42:50
  Speaker 4: that's just probably experienced it. I didn't panic. I just went,
• 42:52
  Speaker 4: you know, we've got to get there, and this is
• 42:53
  Speaker 4: how you do it, and just navigate by the sun
• 42:55
  Speaker 4: and you know, pull out the technology when you can.
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because you didn't want your battery to go.
• 42:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I didn't have a charger, so the battery is
• 43:01
  Speaker 4: about ten percent on the phone. So I was turning
• 43:03
  Speaker 4: it on and checking and turning it off, and you.
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: Know, right now compulsively brings chroachers with him everywhere.
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: Well.
• 43:08
  Speaker 4: The ironic thing was we had a bug out bag
• 43:10
  Speaker 4: with a SAT phone, an eperb flares, firelighting equipment times three,
• 43:14
  Speaker 4: all that sort of stuff. And it was in one
• 43:15
  Speaker 4: of the cars. You can be prepared and then things
• 43:18
  Speaker 4: can still go pear shape. But I think the thing
• 43:21
  Speaker 4: is it's experience and it's not panicking when in those
• 43:24
  Speaker 4: situations where it could it could have turned bad. It
• 43:27
  Speaker 4: could have been really bad for sure. If they couldn't
• 43:28
  Speaker 4: have found us, who knows. I mean, it would have been,
• 43:30
  Speaker 4: as I said, lighting the tires on fire and then
• 43:32
  Speaker 4: lighting the buggy on fire, and then if that didn't work,
• 43:35
  Speaker 4: you know, walking back along our tracks to the main
• 43:37
  Speaker 4: track and hoping that someone came along on the next
• 43:40
  Speaker 4: week or so.
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 43:41
  Speaker 4: So, yeah, it pays to be prepared, but sometimes you've
• 43:43
  Speaker 4: just got to use the old gray matter as well.
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: And do you still use do you still drive you
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: TV's at all? Yeah, there's no.
• 43:49
  Speaker 4: I mean you can't drive them legally in Australia most places,
• 43:51
  Speaker 4: you know, there's properties where you can take them and
• 43:53
  Speaker 4: drive them. A lot of cattle stations at the size
• 43:55
  Speaker 4: of small countries that you can drive around.
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: And I just remember we were at sand Dunes in
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: the South by the Great Australian Bite.
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: You were going to demonstrate a roll over. I think
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: it's the first time. No, he's what he said. He says,
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: I'm going to go roll the u TV.
• 44:11
  Speaker 4: We're going to test some of the gear and we're
• 44:13
  Speaker 4: going to do a winching exercise. I thought, well, we'll
• 44:15
  Speaker 4: just roll the rise drive and we could just wed
• 44:16
  Speaker 4: step back on its wheels, but I'll hit the I
• 44:18
  Speaker 4: hit it a little bit hard and I went and
• 44:21
  Speaker 4: cracked a couple of ribs, so I had had brack
• 44:23
  Speaker 4: bags for the rest of the trip across the boat.
• 44:25
  Speaker 4: I remember, that's the second time that's braking my rooms.
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: I think that's why I was wondering if you still driving.
• 44:31
  Speaker 4: We call that buggy tippy because it's been on its
• 44:32
  Speaker 4: roofs that many times.
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: Well, it rolled over one time when the one of the.
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: Other guys was driving you just and you told him.
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: He said, it's going to roll over really easy, and
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: sure enough.
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah that was good.
• 44:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah, now I'll get to draw it casually. It's always fun.
• 44:44
  Speaker 4: But yeah, he's still a five.
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: You've obviously had some changes. You have more time in
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: your life. Now, what's like, what's next, like not next,
• 44:52
  Speaker 3: like business idea or whatever.
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: I want to know where you're going next, and I
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: want to know how I come with.
• 44:56
  Speaker 4: Well, I think you know I've got. As I said
• 44:57
  Speaker 4: early on, I've got that d and I you know,
• 44:59
  Speaker 4: I've I've got that explorer gene. I remember while back
• 45:02
  Speaker 4: they isolated a gene and it's the risk taking gene.
• 45:05
  Speaker 4: And it's only twenty percent of us have it. And
• 45:07
  Speaker 4: how ancestor was were the ones that went out of
• 45:09
  Speaker 4: the cave and looked over the hill and brought over
• 45:11
  Speaker 4: there and brought back the food, you know, and.
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: We're selled a boat Australia.
• 45:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly exactly those people with that adventurous spirit, and
• 45:17
  Speaker 4: I've got it. And you know, I sort of classed
• 45:20
  Speaker 4: myself as an explorer because it doesn't matter to me
• 45:23
  Speaker 4: whether I'm exploring a desert or an island, or a
• 45:25
  Speaker 4: jungle or a city. You know, it's exploring. It's new things,
• 45:28
  Speaker 4: it's new encounters, it's new people, it's new environments, new wildlife.
• 45:32
  Speaker 4: You know, that whole thing is just novelty. I suppose
• 45:35
  Speaker 4: I can't get enough of it. So I've got to
• 45:37
  Speaker 4: Now that I've got a clean, empty calendar, you know,
• 45:39
  Speaker 4: there's a lot of places on this big blue ball
• 45:42
  Speaker 4: that I want to have a look at and experience
• 45:44
  Speaker 4: from myself firsthand. You know, that trip that you and
• 45:46
  Speaker 4: I did to Namibian that beginning just before COVID just
• 45:49
  Speaker 4: like opens your eyes.
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like you know that was the last time I
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: saw you was in the movie. Yeah, I realize that.
• 45:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah, So you know things like that where it's just
• 45:56
  Speaker 4: so different to it.
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: It was South Africa. We were in South Africa together
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: after maybe, Oh that's right, so's after that.
• 46:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so those new experiences, new place is totally different
• 46:05
  Speaker 4: to where you live, you know, new cultures.
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: I just I just love it.
• 46:09
  Speaker 4: So girlfriend and I going to Italy for a month
• 46:11
  Speaker 4: in August and then when we come back, I'm sort
• 46:14
  Speaker 4: of planning a trans Australia trip from the East Coast
• 46:16
  Speaker 4: to the West coast straight through the middle in probably
• 46:18
  Speaker 4: September October.
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you're like mass around with Vanlafe now too.
• 46:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 46:23
  Speaker 4: We're up north North Queensland in September last year and
• 46:26
  Speaker 4: there was a young couple that pulled up in one
• 46:28
  Speaker 4: of the camp sites and they had Max tracks on
• 46:29
  Speaker 4: the roof. So I went up said good ay and
• 46:30
  Speaker 4: had a chat and gave them a couple of key
• 46:32
  Speaker 4: rings and stickers and patches, and I said them, where
• 46:34
  Speaker 4: you're heading, where you've been and they do in the
• 46:36
  Speaker 4: Lap of Australia. Having a year off and COVID perfect timing,
• 46:39
  Speaker 4: you know. They said, you know we're doing the lap.
• 46:41
  Speaker 4: We're going to go down to Melbourne and then we're
• 46:43
  Speaker 4: going to basically offload the van. We're going to Tazzy
• 46:45
  Speaker 4: and we're going to offload the van. And I said, yeah,
• 46:47
  Speaker 4: I'll be interested in buying it off if you're ken.
• 46:49
  Speaker 4: So it's a Mercedes Sprint, a short wheelbase, four by
• 46:51
  Speaker 4: four and I went, that's that's the way to travel.
• 46:53
  Speaker 4: So I said, leave it in Tasmanine. I've got a
• 46:55
  Speaker 4: friend that's got a house in Tazzy and so they
• 46:57
  Speaker 4: left it down there and we did the deal and
• 46:59
  Speaker 4: went down and in April and drove around for a
• 47:01
  Speaker 4: couple of weeks in Tasmania and it's fantastic. You know,
• 47:05
  Speaker 4: the weather Tasy can be. It's amazing place, but it
• 47:08
  Speaker 4: can be sketchy. You know, we had pretty good weather.
• 47:10
  Speaker 4: But to be able to just pull up somewhere I'm
• 47:12
  Speaker 4: in a bed, not have to worry about setting up
• 47:14
  Speaker 4: a tent, doesn't know if it's raining, if it's snowing,
• 47:15
  Speaker 4: if it's blowing a gale it's pretty good way to travel,
• 47:19
  Speaker 4: a bit better than sleeping on a stretcher next to
• 47:21
  Speaker 4: the gee.
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: And then we talked a little bit at lunch. You
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: did a little sailing recently and that was fine. Yeah,
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: well it's a couple of years back. I've always wanted
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: to do the Wit Sundays.
• 47:30
  Speaker 4: Like the Wit Sundays is a bunch of about seventy
• 47:32
  Speaker 4: four islands off the central Queensland coast, so beautiful chain
• 47:35
  Speaker 4: of islands and it's very popular for sailing holidays and
• 47:37
  Speaker 4: you can sail yourself. You see, you're charted the boat
• 47:39
  Speaker 4: and you can grab half a dozen friends and just
• 47:41
  Speaker 4: go where your li like for a couple of weeks.
• 47:42
  Speaker 4: And so we did that, and you had to have
• 47:45
  Speaker 4: some sailing experience before you could do it. So we
• 47:47
  Speaker 4: went three of the crew and I went and did
• 47:49
  Speaker 4: a sailing course a couple of weeks before so that
• 47:52
  Speaker 4: we could rent the boat. We're out on Morton Bay
• 47:54
  Speaker 4: off Brisbane and the day we went out it was
• 47:55
  Speaker 4: blowing thirty five knights and then we were the only boat
• 47:57
  Speaker 4: out there and we're in a monorhle. The guy gave
• 47:59
  Speaker 4: us basics and then let us go and we just
• 48:02
  Speaker 4: we were just skipping across Morton Bay at thirty five knights,
• 48:04
  Speaker 4: so I was just thinking, this is this is this
• 48:06
  Speaker 4: is great. It's a it's a whole other world. That's
• 48:08
  Speaker 4: a whole other world. So you know that's potentially in
• 48:10
  Speaker 4: the future. Is something on the water.
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 48:12
  Speaker 4: I've got a jet ski that I go out. There's
• 48:14
  Speaker 4: a little island off the coast, so I go out
• 48:15
  Speaker 4: to occasionally and you can snorkel and dive and swim
• 48:18
  Speaker 4: around and you know, lots of marine life and that.
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: But that's easy.
• 48:21
  Speaker 4: Because it's are you running a thing up to Morton. Yeah,
• 48:23
  Speaker 4: we've been across the Morton Island a couple of times
• 48:25
  Speaker 4: and pretty serious crossing. Yeah, it's about probably twenty five
• 48:28
  Speaker 4: thirty k's across the bay.
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: On your jet skin. You've got it. You've got a
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: pretty big one.
• 48:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's about half an hour if it's if it's calm.
• 48:36
  Speaker 4: If it's The thing with Morton Bay is it can
• 48:38
  Speaker 4: chop up really, really badly. So you've got to go
• 48:40
  Speaker 4: early in the morning and sort of get back before
• 48:42
  Speaker 4: lunch because the breeze comes in and turns it into
• 48:44
  Speaker 4: washing machine in the afternoon. Yeah, but it's it's one
• 48:46
  Speaker 4: of those things that the same thing. It's exploring. You know,
• 48:48
  Speaker 4: there's a nice riven here where I am, and you
• 48:49
  Speaker 4: can drive fifty k's up this river on the on
• 48:52
  Speaker 4: the jet ski. So it's the Marchi River, you know,
• 48:55
  Speaker 4: so you've you've got a lot of natural environment. There's
• 48:59
  Speaker 4: there's bits of it were you got little creeks and
• 49:00
  Speaker 4: you could be in the Amazon, you know, and it's
• 49:02
  Speaker 4: in my backyard. So it's that explorer, you know's I
• 49:05
  Speaker 4: get a jet skin, I go what's up there and
• 49:07
  Speaker 4: what's out there?
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: And you know it's I count help myself, that explorer.
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: Geane. You know something you told me a long long
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: time ago to it stuck with me because you see
• 49:15
  Speaker 3: correlation between like well for you like father and daughter.
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: I think it's so cool that Lauren's out there and
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: her sprinter doing the same thing, and you know, like
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: Ray Hyland with his kids doing the same thing. Like
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: it is it's a certain person that just has to
• 49:29
  Speaker 3: go yeah, you know, yeah, you can't help yourself. My
• 49:32
  Speaker 3: Maldot daughter, as you said, she's doing the van.
• 49:33
  Speaker 4: I think she's been on the ride for about six months,
• 49:35
  Speaker 4: traveling in Australia and her sister went down and spend
• 49:38
  Speaker 4: a month with doing South Australia and the Red Center recently.
• 49:41
  Speaker 4: So yeah, they've got it. But I mean they were
• 49:43
  Speaker 4: camping with us when our babies. You know, I think
• 49:45
  Speaker 4: the first time we went to Fraser and Lauren was
• 49:47
  Speaker 4: about six weeks old.
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: That story where they were going where they going up
• 49:52
  Speaker 3: to Kuber Pete or something.
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they take this.
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: Dirt track that's like one hundred ks long, and it's like,
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: I don't know, we might make it.
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: I'm like, yeah, she's definitely.
• 50:00
  Speaker 4: She wisn't take the tag me when you get to
• 50:02
  Speaker 4: the other get to a tam and you got Mattwick.
• 50:04
  Speaker 4: Just give me a call device you got through, although
• 50:06
  Speaker 4: I was ill.
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: Have to draw it Dan then get you.
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: This content is brought to you by Overland Journal, our
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: premium quality print publication. The magazine was founded in two
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: thousand and six with the goal of providing independent equipment
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: and vehicle reviews, along with the most stunning adventures and photography.
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: We care deeply about the countries and cultures we visit
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: and share our experiences freely with our readers. We also
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: have zero averatorial policy and do not accept any advertiser
• 50:39
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• 50:45
  Speaker 1: helping to support our employee owned and veteran owned publication.
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: Your support also provides resources and funding for content like
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: you are watching or listening to right now. You can
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: subscribe directly on our website at Overland Journal dot com.
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: You know, there's a couple of things that we like
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: to ask the people that come on the podcast. One
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: of them is are there any books that you have
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: found in your life, business, or travel or anything else
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: that you've read other than the ones that you've written yourself.
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: But is there a book that you you've really kind
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: of identified with.
• 51:20
  Speaker 4: There's quite a few, actually, it's hard to nil one down.
• 51:22
  Speaker 4: But being an explorer, I like to read about the explorers.
• 51:25
  Speaker 4: I've read a lot of the journals of some of
• 51:27
  Speaker 4: the Australian explorers, and Australia is pretty tough country to
• 51:30
  Speaker 4: explore on footback in the day before aircraft and all that.
• 51:33
  Speaker 4: So Edward John Ayre who went through the middle of Australia,
• 51:37
  Speaker 4: John McDowell, Stewart, Matthew Flint is some of the navigators.
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: Matthew Flinders is an amazing game. Yeah.
• 51:41
  Speaker 4: I mean James Cook that sort of discovered the East Coast,
• 51:44
  Speaker 4: all of those guys, Captain Bly, you know, Win and
• 51:46
  Speaker 4: Bly that survived that mutiny on the bounty in Tahiti
• 51:49
  Speaker 4: back in the day.
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: You know those guys.
• 51:50
  Speaker 4: I've read all the journals and all the books about
• 51:52
  Speaker 4: those guys, and I sort of a lot of my
• 51:53
  Speaker 4: friends have said, you were born two hundred years too late.
• 51:56
  Speaker 4: You know, you should have been born when those guys
• 51:57
  Speaker 4: are out there, because you've got the same genes. I
• 52:00
  Speaker 4: had sot a lot of those books that I've read
• 52:02
  Speaker 4: over the years, just me. John Ayre that walked across
• 52:05
  Speaker 4: the track that we did across the bike, he basically
• 52:07
  Speaker 4: walked that in the height of summer, barely survived, but
• 52:09
  Speaker 4: did it on foot now seventeen hundred kilometers. So you
• 52:13
  Speaker 4: read those stories and you just go for me. The
• 52:15
  Speaker 4: beauty I think of Australia is you can go to
• 52:17
  Speaker 4: those places that are in these journals that these guys
• 52:19
  Speaker 4: are discovering firsthand, and it's the same two hundred and
• 52:23
  Speaker 4: fifty years later. You're looking at the same scenery that
• 52:25
  Speaker 4: one of the early explorers saw and nothing's changed.
• 52:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you can still go see like trees or like
• 52:30
  Speaker 3: Burke and Wills like out of their.
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: Staff into Yeah.
• 52:33
  Speaker 4: So for me, that's probably one of the thrills is
• 52:36
  Speaker 4: to be in one of those places where Captain James
• 52:38
  Speaker 4: Cook stood on that hill in seventeen seventy and looked
• 52:40
  Speaker 4: up the coast and saw this, And I'm looking at
• 52:43
  Speaker 4: the same view and it hasn't changed in two and
• 52:44
  Speaker 4: fifty years. I mean that, and a lot of those
• 52:46
  Speaker 4: places you need a full dive to get to, and
• 52:47
  Speaker 4: that's probably for me. That's that's why I got a
• 52:49
  Speaker 4: full drive. You know, it's not to pull all the
• 52:52
  Speaker 4: gear and I don't make it look flash and all that.
• 52:53
  Speaker 4: It's a tool to get me to those places where
• 52:56
  Speaker 4: you can't get in another review.
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: Well that's a perfect segue into last question we like
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: to ask, which is someone that's getting new to traveling,
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: new to overlanding. What is a couple pieces of advice
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: that you would give them, having seen the world like
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: you have.
• 53:09
  Speaker 4: I think it's preparation is key. You know, a good vehicle,
• 53:12
  Speaker 4: a good reliable vehicle. You don't need to have forty
• 53:14
  Speaker 4: inch tires and six inch lift and all that. You know,
• 53:17
  Speaker 4: my first off road vehicle was a Ford laser and
• 53:21
  Speaker 4: I used to get that thing stuck a fair bit.
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 53:24
  Speaker 4: It was never meant for that sort of job, but
• 53:25
  Speaker 4: I used to take it just before I had a
• 53:27
  Speaker 4: fall the drive and it did the job. It wasn't
• 53:30
  Speaker 4: as comfortable, I couldn't take as much gear, but I
• 53:32
  Speaker 4: used to have a sleeping bag in the back and
• 53:33
  Speaker 4: acts and a shovel and an eski and a gas
• 53:36
  Speaker 4: stave and that was my expliration machine because that's all
• 53:39
  Speaker 4: I had and that's all I could afford. But I
• 53:40
  Speaker 4: still had to get out there and do it. So
• 53:42
  Speaker 4: I think it's just it's preparation. The vehicle is the key.
• 53:45
  Speaker 4: But you know, you can do it in a stock vehicle.
• 53:47
  Speaker 4: Most places you want to go, you can do it
• 53:49
  Speaker 4: in a stock vehicle with decent tires.
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: Like your new Jymneys, your fleet of Jymneys staged around Australia.
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's an amazing little vehicle. We built one and we.
• 53:59
  Speaker 4: Sort of did it as a tribut to the Jape, so
• 54:00
  Speaker 4: it's we've called it Jepney and we put this the
• 54:03
  Speaker 4: Star badges on the side of it and on the
• 54:04
  Speaker 4: bonnet and it's just a great little car. Like it's
• 54:08
  Speaker 4: it's so much fun. But it's like the jape that
• 54:10
  Speaker 4: you've got doors, windscreen, airbags, radio eggs.
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: You're not going to die. It's all like the jeep.
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: You drowned that one, and no one's brooked too.
• 54:19
  Speaker 4: Tru Yeah, not my fault.
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: Are we blaming the same person as the jeep? No
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: they didn't. They didn't steal the snow properly, you know.
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: I mean, I I think it's cool.
• 54:30
  Speaker 3: You guys have both been a huge inspiration, you know,
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: to me to get out and to explore. You know,
• 54:35
  Speaker 3: I guess mine is kind of my questions of further
• 54:37
  Speaker 3: refinement of Scott's. I think there's more young people that
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: want to go explore now than ever because the I
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: don't want to say the barrier to entry is lower,
• 54:46
  Speaker 3: but it's easier, you know. I mean, we have cars,
• 54:48
  Speaker 3: we have reliable cars, We have all the equipment, all
• 54:50
  Speaker 3: the gear. You know, what's what's your advice for young
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: people that you know may get mired in the gear?
• 54:56
  Speaker 3: You know, like, like how do you keep it simple?
• 54:59
  Speaker 3: Because I think that's one the things that you know,
• 55:00
  Speaker 3: I've noticed in your travel style is that you. You're
• 55:04
  Speaker 3: pretty minimal. I wouldn't call you a minimalist, but pretty minimal,
• 55:07
  Speaker 3: pretty pretty minimal. I mean, what what drives you to
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: get out and do it? And how can you offer
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: some advice to the young people to just avoid the
• 55:15
  Speaker 3: stuff and travel.
• 55:16
  Speaker 4: As I said, it's preparation, you know, and it's it's
• 55:18
  Speaker 4: having a bit of an idea when we do a trip.
• 55:21
  Speaker 4: You know, we say we're leaving Brisbane on this date
• 55:23
  Speaker 4: and we hope to be back by this date, and
• 55:24
  Speaker 4: in between, who knows what's going to happen. You know,
• 55:27
  Speaker 4: we work out a rough itinery and we plan to
• 55:30
  Speaker 4: a certain extent, but things can change on a daily,
• 55:33
  Speaker 4: on an hour, on a minute basis, you know, So
• 55:35
  Speaker 4: you have to be adaptable. I think, you know, having
• 55:37
  Speaker 4: a good, good vehicle, a reliable vehicle, because the last
• 55:40
  Speaker 4: thing you want to be doing is having to call
• 55:41
  Speaker 4: someone when you when your car breaks down in the
• 55:43
  Speaker 4: middle of nowhere. So that's probably the key. But as
• 55:46
  Speaker 4: I said, you know, good tires are one of the
• 55:48
  Speaker 4: main things. The first thing I would do on any
• 55:49
  Speaker 4: vehicle is put decent tires on it. If you're going
• 55:51
  Speaker 4: to actually use it off rawn just tires. And then
• 55:53
  Speaker 4: it comes down to just the basics. You know, not
• 55:55
  Speaker 4: driving too fast, drive to the conditions, not driving when
• 55:58
  Speaker 4: you're tired, not driving when you're drunk, where you've been
• 56:00
  Speaker 4: on something, you know, and just enjoying it. If you're
• 56:04
  Speaker 4: going to go, spend the money to buy the car,
• 56:06
  Speaker 4: put the gear on the car, go out and enjoy it.
• 56:08
  Speaker 4: You know, you don't have to do a thousand kill
• 56:11
  Speaker 4: me an expedition to have fun. You know, you can
• 56:12
  Speaker 4: drive one hundred k's and enjoy yourself for the day.
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: But you're out.
• 56:16
  Speaker 4: You're out in the wilds, you're out of the rat race,
• 56:19
  Speaker 4: you're out of civilization, you're surrounded by nature. You might
• 56:21
  Speaker 4: have an encounter with wildlife. You know, you're breathing fresh air.
• 56:24
  Speaker 4: You don't need to take the kitchen sink. Yeah, I
• 56:27
  Speaker 4: take the bare necessities to do the job. And it
• 56:29
  Speaker 4: doesn't that to be flashy and done, that to be expensive.
• 56:32
  Speaker 4: It's just as long as you've got the right kit,
• 56:34
  Speaker 4: you can do the job and get in the car
• 56:36
  Speaker 4: and go well.
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: And it's probably because you didn't spend all that money
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: on the kit early on that you were actually able
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: to go, because then you had money for fuel. You
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: had time because you didn't have to work as much. Ye,
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: so it made a totally different outcome for you.
• 56:48
  Speaker 4: And the classic the example is, you know, I've got
• 56:51
  Speaker 4: a three hundred series land Ceruse and I've got a
• 56:53
  Speaker 4: six will drive two hundred series Crewis and my favorite
• 56:55
  Speaker 4: car is a jeep. No seats, no radio, no econditioning,
• 56:58
  Speaker 4: because it's you're in it so pure. You're in the environment,
• 57:01
  Speaker 4: you surround about. You know, you get the bugs and
• 57:03
  Speaker 4: your taste in that you're and you come back and
• 57:05
  Speaker 4: you're doing it like.
• 57:06
  Speaker 3: A chesty you cat. Well, thanks for lying over specifically
• 57:08
  Speaker 3: for this podcast. We know that's the only reason that
• 57:10
  Speaker 3: you can. Thanks for all that you've done for the community.
• 57:12
  Speaker 3: Thanks all you've done for me. We've all been on
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: some amazing adventures together and I can't wait to see
• 57:17
  Speaker 3: what's next. I think that we need to go to
• 57:19
  Speaker 3: the Kimberly.
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. I think we got to make that happen. Yeah.
• 57:22
  Speaker 4: Well, I've got a big long bucket, Lise. I'll share
• 57:25
  Speaker 4: that with you. You can see what you can feed. That
• 57:26
  Speaker 4: sounds good, you know, Brad, You've been such an inspiration
• 57:29
  Speaker 4: and I'm so grateful for you all of your support
• 57:31
  Speaker 4: through the years, and we're just we're really proud of you.
• 57:34
  Speaker 4: It's just amazing to see what you've accomplished for yourself
• 57:36
  Speaker 4: and your family and the people that are around you,
• 57:38
  Speaker 4: and we appreciate you being on the podcast and just
• 57:40
  Speaker 4: sharing your experience. It shows that anything is possible with
• 57:44
  Speaker 4: a jeep, an old flat fender jeep and some bugs
• 57:47
  Speaker 4: in your teeth, smiling like a cheshire cat.
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks for having me go on. Yeah, I appreciate it.
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: See you dan On and we will talk to you
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: next time.