Latest / The Shed Organics Show / #36 - Finding the Funny in the Aussie Backyard | The Backyard Naturalist

Transcript

#36 - Finding the Funny in the Aussie Backyard | The Backyard Naturalist · The Shed Organics Show

• 0:00
  Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Shared
• 0:03
  Organics show. My name is Jordan and I'm pumped
• 0:08
  to be able to bring you today's guest.
• 0:10
  We have Darcy or The Backyard Naturalist, and Darcy has a
• 0:16
  channel that I've been a huge fan of for a couple of years
• 0:20
  now. I was very fortunate to discover
• 0:22
  Darcy's channel early on and I was captivated by the way that
• 0:27
  he distills the information of, well, we talk about it in the
• 0:31
  conversation, but distills all of this kind of scientific
• 0:34
  research and information down to the everyday person and helps us
• 0:39
  understand our backyard here in Australia.
• 0:42
  Now Darcy resides in Melbourne in the inner West and has taken
• 0:48
  his observational humour I guess as well because there's plenty
• 0:52
  of humour in his content and his observation of nature and the
• 0:56
  plants and the animals, the flora and fauna of our natural
• 1:00
  communities and is wanting to highlight some of those lesser
• 1:04
  known species or lesser appreciated species.
• 1:09
  And the just the way he does it is just so clever.
• 1:11
  So after this conversation, if you hadn't heard of Darcy
• 1:14
  before, I really encourage you to go and check out his channel.
• 1:18
  But if you're coming here as a fan of Darcy, it's really nice
• 1:21
  to be able to get to know the person behind these videos and
• 1:25
  get to know the reasons why and the observations and the
• 1:28
  perspectives in which he's trying to share.
• 1:31
  So I had so much fun chatting to Darcy today.
• 1:33
  I can't wait for you to hear the conversation.
• 1:36
  So let's jump in to that conversation with Darcy.
• 1:40
  Here it is, the backyard naturalist.
• 2:00
  But what struck me is that your content is so well put together
• 2:04
  that I just felt engaged from start to finish in a topic that
• 2:08
  sometimes I often thought was either not that fascinating or
• 2:15
  overlooked or, you know, for example, like the Magpies or the
• 2:19
  lawns or something like this. And the way you package your
• 2:22
  content had me hooked from start to finish.
• 2:26
  I was trying to, I was trying to sum up before I started about
• 2:31
  what I thought your content did really well.
• 2:34
  And I think it has this amazing familiarity in the fact that
• 2:39
  it's almost like doco like. But then you throw in this twist
• 2:44
  of your little signature humor and things like this and the
• 2:48
  Aussie larrikinism that really just makes me keep smiling every
• 2:52
  couple of seconds because it's like I'm learning something but
• 2:55
  smiling. So give me a little bit of an
• 2:58
  insight into the journey of starting to create this type of
• 3:01
  content for you. Yeah, sure.
• 3:05
  So I think it's no surprise to anyone who watches my videos
• 3:09
  that I've got a background in video production.
• 3:13
  So I've been doing that for probably 7 or 8 years now.
• 3:17
  Cool. I I started my career as a
• 3:20
  graphic designer, went to uni for that.
• 3:23
  Nice. Probably should have ended up at
• 3:25
  Macca's dishing out fries and stuff.
• 3:30
  But you know, I, I got into that that field and then I started
• 3:34
  working at a place that did video production and they
• 3:39
  offered me some jobs doing that. It was predominantly doing
• 3:44
  videos for the caravan industry of all things, but it was
• 3:49
  interesting enough. Learned a lot about.
• 3:51
  Sharpens your skills too on the camera, right?
• 3:55
  100% like I'm not going to say no to any kind of video
• 3:59
  experience, like it's all good. And part of that job was doing
• 4:04
  some TV shows for Seven, mate. So I got hands on experience
• 4:10
  making TV shows, filming them. And perhaps most importantly,
• 4:15
  what kind of you're you're alluding to before, which is
• 4:18
  like the pacing and keeping things kind of like that doco
• 4:22
  style, but also keeping it chugging along, just learning
• 4:28
  how to edit for TV, which is quite a competitive space.
• 4:35
  If someone's watching ATV show, they could just switch over to
• 4:39
  another channel like that. Yeah, you've got to keep bums on
• 4:43
  sites. You've got to keep people
• 4:44
  engaged. And YouTube is like that, except
• 4:48
  there's a million different channels like a go and watch
• 4:51
  instead. So it's it's very, very
• 4:53
  competitive. Yeah.
• 4:55
  And I thought to myself, wow, I, I want to have a go at that.
• 5:01
  Yeah. So that's kind of how that
• 5:03
  developed. That's great.
• 5:05
  I hadn't really Rd. tested my writing abilities, but did you
• 5:10
  want to interject? Well, all I was going to say was
• 5:14
  that makes a lot of sense in terms of how your content then
• 5:18
  comes across because it seems so professionally well done and it
• 5:23
  seems like there's a lot of thought put into it.
• 5:25
  I think you said to me something like in our communications back
• 5:28
  and forth that you were, you were working on a video, right?
• 5:32
  Something like this, you're working on your next video.
• 5:34
  And I just thought to myself, and I saw on your channel as
• 5:37
  well, you, you have 20 videos. I have over 400 videos.
• 5:41
  Not all, you know, the long standard format.
• 5:44
  There's a lot of shorts in there.
• 5:46
  But my videos are one shot, one take one, like one edit, that's
• 5:54
  it. Like there's no pre thought.
• 5:56
  I just turned the camera on myself and fire away.
• 6:00
  And that's my content. And I thought about it and I
• 6:03
  think I was like, wow, there's so much thought that goes into
• 6:07
  the reason why I'm so captivated by that video.
• 6:10
  And there is so much that's that I'm not understanding about the
• 6:15
  pacing and the writing and things like this.
• 6:18
  So what are these other aspects that you're thinking about in
• 6:23
  creating that video? I, I almost break it down into
• 6:30
  like a YouTube's toolkit. I think as a like when I look at
• 6:35
  people like Mr. Beast or some of these high level Youtubers,
• 6:40
  they've got a skill set that includes writing, acting,
• 6:46
  videography, video editing, like a little bit of graphic design,
• 6:51
  social media management. Like it's, it's probably, yeah,
• 6:55
  7 different jobs in one and you kind of have to master all of
• 6:59
  them. It's really fucking hard.
• 7:01
  Yeah, I totally understand. Yeah, particularly the editing.
• 7:07
  I think a lot of people find that either just quite boring or
• 7:13
  over challenging and they they give up at the first hurdle.
• 7:17
  But I just sort of pushed through and and and fell in love
• 7:20
  with it. So I think, yeah, the editing
• 7:24
  really is what makes the pace of a video.
• 7:27
  I can kind of take even just not very good footage of a
• 7:32
  particular animal, you know, a bird, a reptile, and you can
• 7:37
  kind of create a story out of that with the right amount of
• 7:39
  writing and editing. I see what you mean.
• 7:43
  So like if if they've just sort of they're sitting there staring
• 7:46
  at something for ages and then eventually turn to the camera,
• 7:50
  if you paste that about them thinking about something,
• 7:52
  thinking about something and then going, yeah, I got the
• 7:55
  idea, then the storyline fits what the visual is doing and
• 7:59
  you're playing to that. I think so.
• 8:04
  And and also just thinking about a story that isn't contingent on
• 8:09
  getting particular bits of footage because like, animals
• 8:15
  are wild. They're not going to perform the
• 8:17
  way you want them to. They're not like this perfect
• 8:19
  little actor that you can script and give lines to.
• 8:23
  They're just going to do what they do.
• 8:25
  You've got to work with what they give you rather than the
• 8:27
  other way around. OK, so if you are coming from
• 8:33
  this, working in TV, putting shows together, editing, using
• 8:38
  the camera and all of this, where does the knowledge, the
• 8:41
  ecology, ecology knowledge and the naturalist part of you come
• 8:44
  from? Well, that's, I suppose that's
• 8:48
  the most interesting bit of all. Like I'm not, I don't have a
• 8:53
  background in it at all. I didn't study.
• 8:56
  I didn't study ecology. I did.
• 9:00
  I think the last formal education I did was like year 11
• 9:03
  biology. I enjoyed that.
• 9:06
  Me too. Yeah.
• 9:07
  Yeah, it was good. Yeah, it was fine.
• 9:11
  I mean, yeah, it didn't grip me enough to to make a career
• 9:14
  diarrhea out of it. But I think it was coming out of
• 9:17
  COVID and like, we're in Victoria, so we got locked down
• 9:22
  quite, quite harshly. Yeah.
• 9:25
  And just a real like appreciation for nature again.
• 9:29
  I think I felt that a lot of people around me felt that.
• 9:33
  And it was around that time that I just started reading books on
• 9:36
  Australian native wildlife and plants, and I was living out
• 9:41
  near, I don't know if you know where Mount Dandenong is here in
• 9:45
  Victoria, but it's a very, very beautiful place.
• 9:49
  There's a lot of like king parrots, yellowtail, yellowtail,
• 9:52
  black cockatoos, all sorts of interesting bird life here.
• 9:58
  And it was almost like I rediscovered it.
• 10:03
  Like, I think when you're a kid, you have a kind of wonderment
• 10:10
  for nature and it's all new and exciting for you.
• 10:14
  And then you become an adult and you get a job and and you just
• 10:18
  sort of ignore that stuff. And it was like a reawakening.
• 10:22
  I think that's what happened. Yeah.
• 10:23
  In 2022 for me. But well, why?
• 10:26
  Why the choice to make that the channel then if you had so many
• 10:29
  kind of strings to you bow? I think it was just the, for me,
• 10:37
  it was like, here's this amazing new thing that I've rediscovered
• 10:42
  and I watched David Attenborough style documentaries my whole
• 10:48
  life, as I assume most people, including yourself have.
• 10:53
  And it was this thing where I realized animals like the magpie
• 10:58
  or, you know, the Karawang or even the possums, like living in
• 11:02
  my roof at the time, like they didn't get their moment in the
• 11:07
  spotlight in those dockers. It was always like the African
• 11:10
  animals in the Savannah, like the graceful elephant.
• 11:14
  Colours and stuff, yeah. Yeah, and it's just like, why
• 11:18
  can't these animals in my backyard get the star treatment?
• 11:25
  And that was kind of the thing. And when I clicked that in my
• 11:28
  head, I was like, that's, that's the YouTube idea.
• 11:31
  Yeah, it really is because I think especially like you said,
• 11:36
  the ones on those types of animals or on lawns where it is
• 11:42
  the just the neglected forgotten animals or areas and things like
• 11:47
  this. What's one that has resonated
• 11:51
  with people that you didn't really expect so much?
• 11:54
  Like I said, one that's really stands out that everyone was
• 11:56
  like, yes, Darcy, this is this was epic.
• 12:00
  A particular video. Or a yeah concept.
• 12:03
  Or yeah, video or concept, you know?
• 12:06
  Oh, the the shut Insurance Guide to Native Australian Plants.
• 12:10
  Yeah, the reception that that got blew me away 'cause I
• 12:15
  thought, I guess I was trying to do something that hadn't really
• 12:20
  been attempted yet on on YouTube, which was to try and
• 12:24
  take like all of Australia's plants.
• 12:28
  It's just like the plethora of all of it, like, you know,
• 12:32
  hundreds of thousands of species potentially and, and turn it
• 12:37
  into one comprehensive guide for beginners.
• 12:40
  And that's a hard thing to do. And I just, I really just picked
• 12:45
  probably like 12 to 15 of the ones that I thought in my mind,
• 12:50
  here are the most well known ones.
• 12:52
  Here are the ones you'd see on like, your street corner or in
• 12:56
  someone's garden or out in the Bush and like, cover them and
• 12:59
  cover them well and just, you know, find out new facts about
• 13:02
  them. And you know, I added my jokes
• 13:05
  to that as well, which probably sweeten the deal.
• 13:09
  Yeah. And people loved it.
• 13:12
  I didn't expect a plant video to go that well compared to some of
• 13:17
  the animal ones. True, true.
• 13:19
  I guess it's just the the animal ones are kind of like, to me,
• 13:24
  it's more of a obvious people pleaser because everybody loves
• 13:28
  animals and the plants are the ones where it's like you have to
• 13:31
  be a little bit more clever in terms of trying to get people to
• 13:34
  really understand. Because as you say, they're,
• 13:37
  they become part of the background, all of these things.
• 13:40
  It just it's like that picture on the wall that you walk past
• 13:43
  in your house every single day and it just becomes part of the
• 13:46
  wallpaper. But like, yeah, having some like
• 13:52
  the way you framed it, I think it's the perspective shift and
• 13:56
  not necessarily going, yes, this is the the type of tree or the
• 14:01
  type of species. And this is what it does.
• 14:04
  You may have seen it like because everyone, every single
• 14:06
  one really. I was like, yes, like I've seen
• 14:09
  that. Oh, OK, learnt a fact or two
• 14:12
  about it. But it's the the change of
• 14:15
  viewpoint. It's like you've brought the
• 14:16
  viewer into a different way of looking at all of these things.
• 14:19
  Same as the lawn. Like I bring that one out quite
• 14:22
  a lot because that one's quite just quite funny.
• 14:26
  So is that that's deliberate as well, trying to really just
• 14:29
  shift the perspective or do it in a way that hasn't been done
• 14:32
  before? I think almost the strength of
• 14:36
  not being not having studied ecology is knowing what the
• 14:41
  average person wants to hear about.
• 14:44
  Yeah, I'm not coming at it from a a super learned point of view.
• 14:49
  Like obviously I do research like it's all just no, just
• 14:52
  chat, JBT, all of that. But like, because I'm coming at
• 14:58
  it from kind of a layman point of view, I'm able to, I get the
• 15:03
  word I I've heard a lot is synthesize.
• 15:07
  How do you synthesize like a lot of knowledge into like a
• 15:10
  digestible package for the average person who's not
• 15:14
  necessarily going to sit through a lecture on plant ecology and
• 15:18
  like the different, you know, there's 800 Acacia species or
• 15:22
  whatever. And it's just like, do you
• 15:25
  really need to know all of them and like all the different
• 15:27
  orders and stuff? Or do you just need like an
• 15:29
  overview And what are the main, you know, if there was like 10
• 15:33
  cool facts about acacias that your average person, you know,
• 15:38
  wanted to know? That's like the main thing I
• 15:41
  want to convey. They, you know, they do like the
• 15:43
  nitrogen fixing. They, they grow quickly after
• 15:47
  the bushfires. Like that's all the stuff that I
• 15:49
  think your everyday person wants to wants to know.
• 15:55
  That's true. And that's a critical part of
• 15:57
  keeping the knowledge in the culture, I guess, too.
• 16:00
  Because you're right, no, not everybody needs to understand
• 16:04
  all of the differences. They can be the experts that
• 16:07
  dive down those rabbit holes and need to know everything.
• 16:09
  But then if everybody has a general understanding of all of
• 16:13
  the wildlife, flora and fauna around us, then we're going to
• 16:17
  live more harmoniously with it because we understand what it's
• 16:20
  doing and why it's there. Yeah, exactly.
• 16:24
  And I think if there was, if there was a mission statement
• 16:28
  for the channel, that would be it to try and raise that level
• 16:34
  of understanding from from where it is now, which is like getting
• 16:39
  better. But can can we lift it a bit
• 16:41
  higher? Yeah, I really like that.
• 16:44
  And it is appealing to the everyday person because it's
• 16:46
  just so digestible and as a as a sort of media.
• 16:52
  What let I'm going to bring it back to lawns again.
• 16:56
  What have you learned about people's reaction to the lawns,
• 17:00
  One in particular, because I know that nearly everybody has a
• 17:07
  bit of lawn like somewhere on their property.
• 17:11
  Nearly everybody, especially in suburbia.
• 17:15
  Let's categorize because that seems to be kind of your lane
• 17:19
  somewhat is your suburban everyday kind of garden and and
• 17:24
  the natives obviously. So the the lawns, what's, what's
• 17:29
  the reaction from everybody in terms of how they found that and
• 17:34
  specifically why did you choose to highlight that again?
• 17:39
  So I would say the reaction was mostly positive.
• 17:43
  I I was actually expecting it to be a bit more controversial.
• 17:46
  OK, I did have a lot of comments saying like, you know, I just
• 17:52
  like my lawn. I don't want there to be snakes
• 17:55
  in there. And that's a fair enough
• 17:57
  argument. You know, if you've got kids
• 17:59
  running around, you probably don't want snakes crawling
• 18:02
  through your grass. But that's that's.
• 18:04
  Yeah, that's totally understandable.
• 18:08
  But most people were supportive of it, I think.
• 18:12
  I think if you click on that video, you kind of know what
• 18:14
  you're going to get. Yeah, maybe I was selecting for
• 18:17
  people who already I already didn't like lawns that much and
• 18:23
  wanted to to read wild. I wasn't, I wasn't attracting
• 18:27
  all the lawn enthusiasts out there.
• 18:30
  But. Because that's my like that was
• 18:32
  my thinking is just going, you know, I very much loved that
• 18:38
  video because I agree with you so much on so many of those
• 18:41
  points in which you raised. And I forever am telling people
• 18:46
  to convert lawn into gardens. And I'm actually doing that on
• 18:49
  my channel, converting my front lawn into a bit of diverse
• 18:53
  gardens. And I just was, I know lots of
• 18:57
  people are so, you know, proud of their lawn and they love that
• 19:02
  as much as any other garden or gardener loves their garden and
• 19:06
  they're happy to mow it and they have to look after it.
• 19:08
  And I feel as if, as long as you know, you're not doing damage
• 19:12
  with chemicals and things like this, for me at least, that's my
• 19:16
  perspective. Look after your lawn and make it
• 19:19
  look like a beautiful place to be, then that's great.
• 19:22
  It's the lawns that are usually the neglected and their spaces
• 19:26
  that are being left to sort of wither away is a terrible mono
• 19:31
  monoculture rather than, you know, turning that into a
• 19:34
  productive land space. If it is productive for you and
• 19:38
  children running around and kicking a ball around on or
• 19:40
  something, then happy days. Yeah.
• 19:44
  But then you've got those people that, yeah, would have said a
• 19:48
  few things. Was there anything nasty or are
• 19:51
  you pretty, you know, thick skinned?
• 19:56
  I mean, I, I think you have to be on YouTube.
• 19:59
  Yeah, My, my, my audience is pretty good.
• 20:02
  I think actually the interesting thing out of that video that I
• 20:05
  noticed, 'cause I look at the analytics on the back end and I
• 20:10
  can see where. Where people are watching from
• 20:13
  and like, you know, stuff like that.
• 20:15
  That one actually has a higher American viewership than
• 20:19
  Australian. So I actually had a higher US
• 20:23
  audience on that one. True.
• 20:26
  They were still pretty supportive.
• 20:29
  But there's a lot of lawns in Loving over there.
• 20:31
  Yeah, that's definitely Lawn Central over in the USA.
• 20:37
  Yeah, I, I don't know, there's there's a weird cultishness to
• 20:42
  owning a lot on which rubs me the wrong way.
• 20:45
  But at the end of the day, it is your property.
• 20:48
  I'm not going to I'm not going to knock on your your door.
• 20:51
  Yeah, but you're also your content comes with that, that
• 20:54
  element of tongue in cheek, right?
• 20:55
  It's kind. Of oh, for sure, yeah.
• 20:57
  Yeah, it's not. You're not having a go at
• 20:59
  people. You're just having a having a
• 21:01
  laugh essentially at some things.
• 21:04
  Let's talk about that side of it as well, the humor.
• 21:09
  Have you always been a funny man?
• 21:10
  How do you write your jokes? Like, these are really funny
• 21:13
  little clever twists that you put into your writing, and I'm
• 21:19
  interested to know how naturally that comes to you.
• 21:23
  Yeah, it's interesting. I don't think I've always been a
• 21:26
  funny man like I've, I've, I've always had some some weight and
• 21:32
  I've been able to write decently.
• 21:35
  But I think I threw a couple of jokes into my first video on
• 21:40
  Magpies and people like that. And then it was like, OK, I'll
• 21:45
  throw a few more in the next one and then a few more in the next
• 21:48
  1. And I kind of realized how fun
• 21:52
  it was to write humor. And it just became this thing
• 21:56
  where, yeah, I want these videos to be educational, but I want
• 22:01
  them to be entertaining and humorous as well.
• 22:05
  And I just enjoy the process of writing jokes so much that it
• 22:10
  has like woven itself into like the the core of how I make the
• 22:16
  videos. Yeah, true.
• 22:18
  And I imagine trying to come up with a way to make something
• 22:26
  funny that's not all that interesting at all.
• 22:28
  But I suppose the fact that maybe that it's not interesting
• 22:31
  is the fact that it's funny in some cases.
• 22:33
  So are you, you know, spending a lot of time trying to come up
• 22:37
  with the jokes? How naturally are they flowing?
• 22:40
  And do you just think of something randomly and then go,
• 22:43
  oh, I'll write that down for the for the show, for the episode.
• 22:47
  It's funny you say that, it's literally the last one.
• 22:50
  I I've got my little like notepad on my phone.
• 22:56
  If I think of something, it's just like writing it down that
• 22:58
  second, and if I don't, it'll slip out of my head and I'll
• 23:02
  never remember it again. Yeah, those forgotten jokes that
• 23:05
  were always the best ones when you've thought of them, but.
• 23:08
  That's a great technique, actually.
• 23:10
  Yeah. To add to that, some of the best
• 23:12
  jokes have been lying awake at night, like on the verge of
• 23:17
  sleep, and something just comes to me and I have to, like,
• 23:20
  quickly grab my phone and write that down.
• 23:23
  It's just like some horrible pun.
• 23:25
  I don't even know if it's going to be useful or not, but I still
• 23:28
  write it down. Yeah, that and I've heard that
• 23:33
  technique a lot from people, creatives myself.
• 23:39
  Like I would often get a lot of good melody lines or music ideas
• 23:44
  when I was writing music and at that stage.
• 23:47
  And it's from my understanding it's got something to do with
• 23:50
  moving in between those different brain waves in your
• 23:53
  sleep and getting towards that more kind of dreamlike state.
• 23:58
  And it's amazing because I feel like some of these ideas, we're
• 24:04
  not consciously constructing them.
• 24:05
  They just appear out of nowhere. And you kind of just, they're
• 24:09
  just in your head and you go, hey, that's a great idea.
• 24:11
  Let me write that down. Yeah, and kind of like accessing
• 24:17
  a certain part of the brain, the more you do it, the better you
• 24:21
  could become at it. Like humor is something you can
• 24:24
  learn. Like contrary to popular belief,
• 24:27
  I think it's something you can learn how to do.
• 24:32
  Isn't it more of a, like it's a notice once you start noticing
• 24:36
  that or being more receptive to that, it could be anything as
• 24:41
  well. I, I believe you start seeing
• 24:43
  more of it in your life and you start being open to it and it,
• 24:46
  it trains those pathways in your brain, right?
• 24:50
  Definitely, yeah. And having like, having a
• 24:54
  YouTube channel and having to produce videos on a regular
• 24:58
  basis and like, to put it maybe crudely, like it forces you to
• 25:04
  do that. It forces you to activate that
• 25:06
  part of your brain. So whether you like it or not,
• 25:10
  you're going to be funny. Yeah, that's true because you're
• 25:13
  you're almost constantly in that mode, aren't you?
• 25:15
  Yeah, Yeah, I've I've definitely found that in terms of just like
• 25:20
  the making the content. And as I said to you, I'm a
• 25:23
  point and shoot type person. Not much thought past that.
• 25:29
  It it helps me be on guard to be able to create content a lot and
• 25:34
  just kind of get the camera out when I need to and be ready and
• 25:38
  receptive for those moments and notice something you're oh, that
• 25:40
  would be really good B roll or that I didn't notice that
• 25:44
  flower. Let me take a photo of that
• 25:45
  flower because I want to share it to everybody else and show
• 25:48
  how the different look of that and the light or the fact that
• 25:51
  that's being pollinated. Something like this.
• 25:55
  I've noticed on your Instagram, for example, you share a lot of
• 26:00
  your, you know, shots of, of animals and things like this.
• 26:04
  Are these all ones you've taken yourself?
• 26:06
  And how often are you going out to go and collect these types of
• 26:10
  this footage? Hey guys, really quickly jumping
• 26:12
  in. I just want to remind you if you
• 26:14
  are not subscribed to this show, that is the number one thing
• 26:17
  that you can do to show me your support.
• 26:20
  So if you're finding value from this conversation and you're
• 26:22
  deeply engaged, I would love you to hit the follow or subscribe
• 26:26
  button. All right, back to the.
• 26:29
  Show not as often as I'd like to, to be honest.
• 26:31
  That's that's the short answer. Yeah, yeah.
• 26:34
  All of the stuff I share on Instagram is is my stuff.
• 26:38
  I think. Yeah, it's interesting.
• 26:40
  When you do YouTube and you do Instagram, it's trying to figure
• 26:45
  out how those different social media platforms should be used.
• 26:49
  I think the Instagram for me is more of it's a place to put less
• 26:55
  polished material, just stuff from my everyday, hey, I saw
• 26:59
  this cool bird, I'm going to put it on there.
• 27:02
  And, like, how sick is that? Yeah, like here's a compilation
• 27:04
  of things I saw on this trip to like, Castle Maine or whatever.
• 27:09
  Yeah. I don't want to call it like a
• 27:12
  dumping ground because it's all good content, but yeah, I mean
• 27:17
  that that's what the Instagram page is for me, OK.
• 27:20
  And have you dabbled in any short form content at all?
• 27:23
  I don't know if you have or not, but I'm just.
• 27:27
  Well, yeah, I I I've got a reel sitting on my desktop right now
• 27:33
  and I haven't got the balls to post it yet because I'm not
• 27:35
  happy with. Isn't that just the creator's
• 27:39
  mindset summed up in one one line?
• 27:42
  For real. Yeah, yeah.
• 27:45
  But I'd like to double double with it.
• 27:47
  Man, I'm telling you right now, you would hit it.
• 27:51
  You just need to put bulk volume of clips of your stuff out
• 27:56
  there. I mean, I'm not trying to tell
• 27:58
  you what to do. I'm just like, I just would
• 28:00
  watch the shit out of it to put it like, Oh yeah, just see all
• 28:04
  the clips. Like just even just the little
• 28:07
  one liners of you just roasting some person's lawn or, you know,
• 28:12
  a bird, which is is classic. So I encourage you to step into
• 28:16
  that world and post it. Just post it.
• 28:22
  Yeah. So then like taking these, is
• 28:26
  this footage that you're going out and getting deliberate based
• 28:30
  on the episode or are you just observing and filming and then
• 28:35
  things just make their way into the episodes?
• 28:38
  When I'm doing a particular video.
• 28:40
  Yeah. Yeah, it's a bit of both.
• 28:44
  I think the stuff I've already collected doesn't form like the
• 28:49
  ideas that I can do like going like going forward like that.
• 28:55
  I've got a wealth of echidna footage now just from, like,
• 28:59
  seeing them around the place. They just kind of appear
• 29:02
  sometimes out of the aether and come say hello.
• 29:06
  And I've got enough now where I could potentially make a video.
• 29:12
  But it's, yeah, it's a difficult thing.
• 29:15
  I've chosen a weird YouTube niche where I'm making
• 29:19
  documentaries all by myself, so I'm having to be the cameraman
• 29:22
  and the director and the writer. A. 100% so and the researcher
• 29:27
  and everything. Yeah, literally, literally so.
• 29:31
  But yeah, no, that's, that's the lot in life I chose.
• 29:35
  So I, I go out. Generally if I'm going out
• 29:40
  whilst making a video, it's because I've chosen a topic
• 29:44
  where I know where I can find these animals or plants and I
• 29:48
  can reliably get them. And if I can't, I can source the
• 29:52
  footage from someone who'd be willing to share it with me.
• 29:55
  Yeah, true, true. And looking at topics that
• 30:01
  you're, well, I don't want you to give away anything that's
• 30:05
  coming up in the future. But when you're thinking of
• 30:07
  topics to move forward and kind of come up with the next idea.
• 30:12
  And that is are you finding that there's a, a long list of ideas
• 30:17
  that you're having or it gets longer and longer?
• 30:20
  Or are you finding that you you're just kind of going, well,
• 30:23
  I've covered this, I've covered this, some sort of going to tick
• 30:26
  everything off sooner or later. It's an interesting 1.
• 30:31
  The idealist is growing by the day, which is good.
• 30:35
  A lot of it's a lot of it's just cover this animal that I haven't
• 30:40
  covered yet. But I'm increasingly like with
• 30:44
  the lawn video coming up with ideas that are a little bit
• 30:48
  outside the box. They're a bit more like a theme
• 30:52
  rather than an animal or a plant.
• 30:55
  Maybe something that intersects with attitudes and society and
• 31:01
  community and philosophy and history and things like that and
• 31:05
  how it relates back to nature. I think those kind of ideas are
• 31:10
  definitely something I want to explore more.
• 31:13
  So the channels, The channels. He'll be glad to hear of you is
• 31:16
  it's not running out of content anytime soon, but.
• 31:21
  No, the, I guess the reason I asked is because I find that the
• 31:25
  more I dive into it, the more avenues I feel like I could go
• 31:29
  down. And I was just interested
• 31:31
  whether that resonated with you because you do find all of these
• 31:36
  different things that you could cover that you didn't think that
• 31:39
  you could cover initially. And I love what you just said
• 31:42
  about just societal norms or attitudes or just viewpoints and
• 31:50
  the observational way in which you look at that.
• 31:53
  So you kind of are taking the population as a whole or as a
• 32:00
  stereotype or various stereotypes, and then you're
• 32:03
  playing that out in the scenarios of the videos that
• 32:06
  you're coming up with. So like how you're, you know,
• 32:12
  say everyday gardener that just shops at the big green shed or
• 32:15
  the local garden and might treat their garden versus like
• 32:18
  somebody who's a horticulturalist or something
• 32:20
  like this. And you can contrast viewpoints
• 32:23
  and, and see how society interplays with each other.
• 32:26
  And I feel like that's a really clever reflection and and
• 32:31
  showing people back what society's like or what it's like
• 32:35
  from a different perspective that we're not all used to.
• 32:38
  Yeah, exactly. Because as much as it's about
• 32:42
  the animals and plants themselves, and they're
• 32:44
  interesting, like the story of the channel is also about
• 32:48
  people. And the lawn video was about
• 32:53
  ultimately the attitudes of people towards this particular
• 32:57
  gardening style and the fact that it's become so, so
• 33:01
  ubiquitous in our society and the commentary on that.
• 33:05
  And I think that's why people people enjoyed it or some people
• 33:09
  didn't enjoy it and made the thoughts known in the comments.
• 33:11
  But but that's why, because it it, it struck something a bit
• 33:16
  more human. Yeah, it's a story that people
• 33:20
  can kind of latch onto a little bit.
• 33:24
  Now, Darcy, do you garden yourself?
• 33:26
  Do you have a lawn? Do you have what do you have
• 33:29
  that you look after? Or is this something that you
• 33:31
  just observe in the community? I mean, I've got my pot plants,
• 33:37
  I've got a few natives growing. I don't own any property at the
• 33:41
  moment, so it's hard when I do. Yeah, yeah, it'll, I'd really
• 33:47
  love to buy a place that's got a lawn and transform it just for
• 33:52
  that experience. That'll be sick.
• 33:55
  But yeah, at the moment just got my pot plans.
• 33:59
  Microvillas are doing well. The sun is starting to shine
• 34:02
  here in Victoria again, thankfully.
• 34:05
  I know it's crazy the four, The Four Seasons in one day type
• 34:09
  thing. And people have been talking
• 34:10
  about these seasons and things lately as well.
• 34:12
  I think especially down in Melbourne, you, you guys just
• 34:16
  have this, this crazy shift of weather all the time.
• 34:20
  Yeah, but it, it also means there's a totally different
• 34:25
  ecosystem here compared to up in Queensland.
• 34:29
  You've got plants and animals that have to survive sometimes
• 34:33
  like freezing cold weather, which is, which is really
• 34:36
  interesting. But back to your point, I
• 34:39
  suppose. Yeah, I would, I mean, my, my
• 34:43
  observations are generally of what's going on in the community
• 34:48
  generally. So it'll be much like in the
• 34:52
  long video to bring that reference up for the 4th time.
• 34:56
  What's going on in people's yards, What's going on
• 34:59
  particularly at the local parks? I feel like that's a good metric
• 35:04
  for like the community's view on ecology.
• 35:09
  A lot of them have been transformed and you can see
• 35:12
  planting projects going on and a lot of thickets of natives have
• 35:17
  been planted in there, which is great to see.
• 35:20
  And that just didn't exist, you know, 20-30 years ago.
• 35:23
  You're right, and I feel like now that you've dived head first
• 35:27
  into this kind of land and you're educating yourself
• 35:30
  obviously very well at all of this kind of stuff.
• 35:33
  You know, you're doing your research and you're presenting
• 35:35
  it and through that you learn a lot.
• 35:38
  How do you see yourself continuing on in this space?
• 35:42
  Obviously you want to continue doing what you're doing with the
• 35:44
  YouTube, but are you, is this something that now you're going
• 35:48
  to think about maybe shifting into a little bit more generally
• 35:51
  as a as a career rather than in the land you inhabited before?
• 35:59
  I think that's the big question on my mind at the moment.
• 36:03
  It's a hard one. It's a big, old, big old life
• 36:06
  decision. Yeah.
• 36:07
  But I think at my core, I'm I'm a creative and I will always
• 36:15
  want to do video production and documentary making.
• 36:20
  I do care a great deal about ecology and doing the channel
• 36:25
  has made me care more. So I think it's it's bringing
• 36:28
  those two things together. There's way bigger documentary
• 36:34
  ideas that I've got in scope that I just can't pull off at
• 36:38
  the moment. Yeah.
• 36:39
  But if I was able to, you know, do this full time or crowdfunded
• 36:45
  or whatever I need to do, there's, yeah, there's far
• 36:50
  bigger things that I could do with this channel and with this
• 36:54
  brand that I'm doing right now. I believe so.
• 36:58
  I got very excited just seeing, you know your growth from what
• 37:05
  you've just done. I mean, it's not to take away
• 37:09
  from what it is, because what it is as a product is a is an
• 37:12
  amazing thing, the video or the videos.
• 37:15
  But you know, in one instance it's just your, it's your, your
• 37:20
  documentary format of the videos.
• 37:22
  Then you've got all of these other things that you can do,
• 37:25
  you in real life, you taking documentaries to, you know, like
• 37:30
  you said, to the next level, taking more of your shorts,
• 37:37
  reels, short form content, recapturing these types of
• 37:41
  things. There's so many different
• 37:42
  avenues that I saw. I was like, man, he's, you know,
• 37:44
  you've got so much that you could do in front of you and you
• 37:47
  can make such a huge impact with that Channel without having to
• 37:51
  go in like you said. Yeah, go and be an ecologist and
• 37:55
  go into Parliament or whatever that you know, whatever kind of
• 37:58
  changes you could make. Yeah.
• 38:00
  You're doing it through your medium of creativity in the way
• 38:04
  that you can really shoot the message the best.
• 38:08
  I think, I think that's it. I think everyone has a skill set
• 38:14
  that they're great at. I know what mine is.
• 38:17
  I'm not necessarily the most scientifically minded person.
• 38:21
  I'll leave that to the the people who are really good at
• 38:24
  it, many of whom I've met through making these videos.
• 38:28
  But yeah, I, I think that's it. I know my strength and I'm going
• 38:33
  to continue to play to it and I think that's the main thing.
• 38:38
  We need people to take the big information and make it
• 38:42
  available for the masses, and I feel like you're doing that
• 38:45
  very, very well. So it is just you doing
• 38:51
  literally everything. There's no help that you have.
• 38:54
  And is this something that you started obviously in your spare
• 38:57
  time, you're still working a normal job?
• 39:01
  Yeah, so or to answer the first part, I have had a bit of help
• 39:06
  here and there. I've actually had some people on
• 39:10
  Instagram DM me and offer to give me some footage that
• 39:14
  they've shot or they've actually gone out specifically to shoot
• 39:20
  stuff for a video for free. I mean, I'll shout them like a
• 39:24
  beer or a gift basket or something to say thank you.
• 39:26
  Yeah. And then, yeah, I mean, I've
• 39:30
  recently met a guy who lives in Melbourne and he's been helping
• 39:34
  me out with the scripts because he's got some comedy experience
• 39:37
  and writing experience himself and he loves his bird watching
• 39:41
  and bird photography and stuff like that.
• 39:44
  So we've been working together, but predominantly, yeah,
• 39:48
  predominantly it's me handling most of this channel and then
• 39:54
  and then working as well on top of that to make ends meet.
• 39:58
  Exactly because you're. Your passion projects on the
• 40:02
  side, and I spoke about this in in one of the previous episodes
• 40:06
  with a few guys that have just got it.
• 40:08
  Getting a business off the ground, getting any kind of
• 40:10
  project off the ground requires you to put in free hours, yeah,
• 40:14
  and invest a lot outside of your normal daytime job.
• 40:18
  So presumably now, because you've built up a a pretty cool
• 40:23
  community on YouTube, are you feeling the effects of that
• 40:28
  community? Are you feeling like you've got,
• 40:33
  you know, some people that can give you some good feedback and
• 40:36
  can communicate with you in some discourse?
• 40:40
  Yeah, 100%. I mean, there are those people I
• 40:43
  just mentioned before. Like, I'd trust their feedback
• 40:46
  any day. I've made a few friends just
• 40:49
  from doing these videos and yeah, their feedback's always
• 40:54
  valuable. I've got my patrons who they've,
• 41:00
  most of them stuck with me the whole time, which is great.
• 41:04
  I appreciate their feedback. I do a poll, or I at least try
• 41:08
  and do a poll every few months just to kind of do a temperature
• 41:12
  check and like, how are things going?
• 41:16
  Which of these video ideas sounds good to you?
• 41:19
  That sort of thing. Yeah, I suppose that's kind of
• 41:24
  where I'm at with with getting feedback.
• 41:27
  That's cool. Tell me about the Patreon then.
• 41:29
  What's what was that like into? I mean, obviously I know the
• 41:33
  reasons why people set up Patreons because they're a
• 41:35
  really good way of having that extra community engagement for a
• 41:38
  little bit of support financially.
• 41:40
  But what, what sort of things are you using your Patreon for
• 41:44
  or what are your patrons getting out of upcoming and being a
• 41:48
  member for with you? Because I'd like to try and
• 41:50
  point some people towards supporting your channel that way
• 41:52
  if they can so. Yeah, OK, there's a little poll
• 41:57
  that Patreon runs itself for, I think it's new, new joiners and
• 42:03
  they state why they support the the Patreon page from.
• 42:08
  For the most part, it's because they just want to support the
• 42:11
  videos financially, so I keep keep making them.
• 42:14
  I think that's the big reason that people do it.
• 42:16
  Exactly right because I know that there's there's a lot of
• 42:19
  people that have these sort of tears and they go, oh, you can
• 42:21
  come in you get all this access to all this kind of stuff and
• 42:24
  it's it's puts creators under a lot of pressure to have to do a
• 42:28
  lot of extra stuff and I. I do.
• 42:31
  I do do that stuff as well. Yeah, I do like the, I do like a
• 42:37
  48 hour prior release for the patrons and I do the video, the
• 42:43
  video polls and just little things like that.
• 42:47
  Their names, if they're in like the the second tier, their name
• 42:51
  gets put in the credits at the end of the video.
• 42:56
  So there's little perks. I deliberately designed them so
• 42:59
  they're not straining me because I think that would would destroy
• 43:04
  my creative flow as as you were saying.
• 43:07
  Exactly. And as you were saying, the crux
• 43:11
  of the reason why they're supporting your patrons because
• 43:15
  they're supporting your channel and helping you to continue to
• 43:18
  do what you're doing. Because as we said, it is a
• 43:22
  unpaid job until you reach a a certain level of which seems to
• 43:28
  be more, you know, bigger and bigger and bigger year after
• 43:32
  year to try and get to this stage.
• 43:34
  But it is what it is and it's a fun journey I guess.
• 43:38
  Yeah. Lastly, man, let's let's go
• 43:42
  through a couple of things in terms of what you've learned
• 43:46
  from video. So I'd like, I mean, I'm not
• 43:49
  expecting you to be able to pull 100% facts off the top of your
• 43:52
  head, but like you did with the acacias earlier, not specific
• 43:58
  through acacias. But if you had to give us a
• 44:01
  couple of things that you've learnt that really stood out to
• 44:04
  you over all of these videos from any of the animals or
• 44:07
  plants, what are they and what are some of the ones that we can
• 44:11
  take away? I.
• 44:13
  Think some of the overarching themes that come up again and
• 44:16
  again and again are things like a lot of our bird species are
• 44:22
  hollow nesters, so they need tree hollows to nest in.
• 44:26
  And those are increasingly in short supply, which which sucks.
• 44:31
  And those hollows take a long time to form.
• 44:34
  A lot of it's due to relationship between fungi and
• 44:41
  insects slowly breaking down a small hole in the tree and then
• 44:46
  wearing it over potentially hundreds of years until it's
• 44:50
  ready to be nested in. And like, that's just an example
• 44:56
  of some of the challenges that our wildlife is facing.
• 45:01
  And that's a crazy one just to yeah, stop you there.
• 45:07
  That's I didn't even know part of that because hundreds of
• 45:12
  years that now I'm thinking like there's I barely ever see a
• 45:16
  hollow in a tree. Like the amount of hollow trees
• 45:19
  with hollows and you see compared to normal trees.
• 45:21
  Like it's small small population.
• 45:25
  I'd, I'd wage the reason for that is because most of the
• 45:29
  trees you're seeing were planted in the last 50 years or so.
• 45:32
  It's not old growth trees. Those would be the really huge
• 45:37
  ones that when the Europeans came to colonize were massive
• 45:43
  and they cut them down for wood and turn them into houses and
• 45:47
  lumber and all that. And so we've lost a lot of those
• 45:51
  old growth trees. Goodness me.
• 45:54
  OK. That's just an example.
• 45:55
  That's a really good one, do you have any others?
• 45:58
  Yeah, it was a big, it's kind of a funny one.
• 46:03
  I I keep talking about it with people.
• 46:06
  People love Ravens and so do I Yeah, people don't know that
• 46:10
  we've got crows and Ravens and there's 5 total species.
• 46:15
  There's 2 crow species and two 3 Raven species.
• 46:19
  They all kind of look quite similar, which doesn't help.
• 46:24
  And they've all got a slightly different call.
• 46:29
  This is not something I can teach people how to do, but if
• 46:32
  you just listen to the different calls long enough, you can kind
• 46:35
  of tell the difference between them.
• 46:37
  I can do it by ear. But again, it's not, it's not
• 46:41
  something I can, I can translate across to people, but I, I just,
• 46:45
  I just love that fact. That is really cool.
• 46:47
  I don't know that because I would have just thought there is
• 46:51
  the black crow and that's that. Yeah, I think that was most
• 46:55
  people's thoughts on it. Mine too.
• 46:58
  I I that's the great thing about the channel.
• 47:01
  Like I didn't know any of this stuff myself when I started.
• 47:05
  I think maybe the most rewarding thing is teaching myself the
• 47:10
  things I didn't know. Yeah.
• 47:12
  And then it's fascinating and you kind of go wow, and you can
• 47:14
  share that fascination of just learning it with everybody else.
• 47:18
  100%. Yeah, wow.
• 47:21
  So what's top of mind for you then at the moment in terms of
• 47:27
  the channel in the next chapters without again, without giving
• 47:30
  away too many ideas and things, what's the what's your top
• 47:35
  focuses at the moment? I think as we were saying
• 47:39
  before, videos with a more of a grand theme around society,
• 47:46
  culture, philosophy, history and tying that back to ecology.
• 47:51
  Yeah, I think perhaps the reason subconsciously I mentioned the
• 47:56
  the hollows and cutting down trees is that I don't think a
• 48:00
  lot of Australia's history is taught from an ecology point of
• 48:04
  view. Like the entire continent used
• 48:09
  to be Bush. Some of it used to be like huge
• 48:13
  temperate rainforests. There was just Bush and trees
• 48:19
  everywhere. And most of it's kind of been
• 48:21
  turned into farmland now predominantly for grazing sheep
• 48:26
  and cattle. And that's a story that hasn't
• 48:29
  really been told yet, at least not on YouTube.
• 48:32
  There's there's like a little hint of kind of one idea I'm
• 48:36
  thinking about. I like that the big scale one,
• 48:39
  it's not going to come out in the next, you know, six months,
• 48:42
  but it's it takes. A long time to edit.
• 48:46
  Yeah, for sure. But that's kind of the themes
• 48:52
  that I'm rattling around in my brain at the moment.
• 48:55
  I like that. And then anything kind of
• 49:00
  outside of the ideas space, like more practical or more personal
• 49:04
  or something. Yeah, I mean, I'd love to do a
• 49:08
  bit more travelling around the country because I haven't like
• 49:12
  I've been very much Victorian focused.
• 49:15
  I'm lucky that like Victoria shares a lot of ecology with
• 49:19
  NSW, Queensland, SA, so there's a lot in common there.
• 49:25
  But I'd love to do AWA episode, I'd love to do an NT episode
• 49:31
  because there's just so many interesting animals and plants
• 49:33
  up there. There definitely are and you're
• 49:36
  you're, you're right that it translates a bit, but then you
• 49:40
  can really focus in on the different aspects of all over
• 49:44
  the place and you can come really good.
• 49:45
  But what about, I know you're very Australian focused, but
• 49:50
  what about kind of world global systems and, and ideas together
• 49:58
  as well and global history and ideas And I don't know, you said
• 50:03
  you've got a lot of audience in, in the US as well.
• 50:06
  So it's not just an Aussie sort of thing.
• 50:09
  Yeah, I suppose on that, that's probably very far in the future
• 50:15
  that I'll be thinking about that.
• 50:16
  Well, there's a lot. To I kind of, I kind of like the
• 50:21
  fact that the channel is focused on Australia.
• 50:25
  I don't think there's a, there's not a lot of content that's
• 50:30
  about specifically us on YouTube or even on TV in movies.
• 50:36
  I like the fact that this is a channel that's just about our
• 50:39
  country and if anyone from overseas wants to watch and and
• 50:44
  become informed about what we're about, what kind of animals live
• 50:48
  here, what the people are like from my very skewed perspective,
• 50:55
  they can come and come and watch and enjoy.
• 50:57
  But it's kind of a celebration of Australia.
• 51:01
  You know, I wouldn't mind going over to New Zealand or or Borneo
• 51:05
  for like a one off, but I think this is very much an Australia
• 51:08
  focused channel. All right, everybody, there it
• 51:27
  is. Thank you again to Darcy for
• 51:29
  joining us. His insights into content
• 51:32
  creation and just the thought that goes behind some of these
• 51:35
  videos is really, really cool. And the way that his perspective
• 51:38
  is of sharing some of these lesser known or lesser
• 51:41
  highlighted parts of our flora and fauna, which is so, so cool.
• 51:46
  Really, it's just so awesome to have somebody like that that's
• 51:49
  able to use their creativity to distill this information for us
• 51:53
  in the wider community. So thanks, Darcy, and please go
• 51:56
  and check out his links if you haven't already.
• 51:59
  If you enjoyed the episode, please share it around.
• 52:01
  Just let Darcy or myself know if you enjoyed the conversation and
• 52:06
  any kind of review for the podcast.
• 52:08
  It's greatly appreciated wherever you are listening to
• 52:11
  this. Now finally, from me, there's a
• 52:14
  couple of things that are up on my YouTube channel now.
• 52:17
  Remember my transformation of a front lawn space here at home
• 52:21
  into a thriving garden is now well underway and you can see
• 52:25
  it's plenty of those updates. So I'm excited for you to see
• 52:28
  those. Head to the YouTube link in the
• 52:29
  description. And lastly, the organic growers
• 52:33
  guides, don't forget those. There's a free one on the
• 52:35
  website that you can download to get yourself started into
• 52:38
  organic growing as a beginner. But if there is something that
• 52:43
  you want that's a little bit more challenging, then there is
• 52:45
  always the intermediate guide there as well.
• 52:49
  So that's it. Thank you so much and I'm
• 52:51
  excited to see you on the next episode.
• 52:53
  Take care, bye for now.