Latest / Adventure Sports Podcast / Ep. 1191: Walking Across Australia With Five Wild Camels Revisited with Sophie Matterson

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Ep. 1191: Walking Across Australia With Five Wild Camels Revisited with Sophie Matterson · Adventure Sports Podcast

0:06
[SPEAKER_00]: your listening to the Adventure Sports podcast.
0:09
[SPEAKER_00]: We talk with adventures from around the globe to give you the inspiration you need to get started in the outdoors or keep moving if you're already there.
0:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Hello everyone and welcome to the Adventure Sports podcast.
0:21
[SPEAKER_01]: This is Caleb.
0:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Whenever I'm doing these revisited episodes, I try to bring unusual and unique episodes from the ASP backlog, and this one definitely fits the bill.
0:36
[SPEAKER_01]: In this one, Mason interviewed Sophie Madison.
0:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Sophie, after needing a break from her career in film and TV, decided to take on a new adventure in her life by deciding to pick up the interesting location of camel milking.
0:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And through that experience she fell in love with the animals and never returned back to her old career.
1:01
[SPEAKER_01]: And this episode specifically is about Sophie's crazy idea to cross Australia on foot,
1:08
[SPEAKER_01]: will be an accompanied by five wild camels.
1:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Very interesting episode, I hope you enjoy it.
1:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's Mason.
1:17
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, folks, welcome to the Adventure Sports podcast.
1:20
[SPEAKER_02]: This is a, gosh, this is, this is an interesting one right here.
1:24
[SPEAKER_02]: We, you know, we get a lot of cyclists, a lot of hikers and, you know, folks just doing random things, but this is, this is out there for us.
1:33
[SPEAKER_02]: It's, I don't even know what you call it.
1:35
[SPEAKER_02]: So if you camel tracking or something, but anyway, Sophie, Sophie matters and welcome to the show.
1:40
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you, Mason.
1:41
[SPEAKER_04]: Thanks for having me.
1:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so is this a thing walking with camels or you kind of out on on your own on this one?
1:48
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, I mean, I guess it's a thing for some people.
1:51
[SPEAKER_04]: It's not super common, but yeah, I'm out on my own.
1:56
[SPEAKER_04]: So it's me and five camels and we're walking across Australia at the moment.
2:03
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what you're doing.
2:04
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, as you do, folks are going to hear my disbelief when I do the intro, but I wanted to go all the way back if you don't mind, you know, I'm judging here, but it sounds like you're from Australia.
2:18
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, I am.
2:19
[SPEAKER_02]: So where did you grow up and what kind of kid were you?
2:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Were you real adventurous or is this totally strange for you?
2:27
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, Camel's actually said it came quite out of left field for me.
2:32
[SPEAKER_04]: I grew up.
2:33
[SPEAKER_04]: I traveled a lot as a kid.
2:36
[SPEAKER_04]: I was actually born in Hong Kong and we moved around a lot when I was little.
2:41
[SPEAKER_04]: But mainly, you know, through high school, grew up through primary school and high school, grew up in Australia.
2:47
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm from Brisbane, I guess.
2:49
[SPEAKER_04]: I guess Brisbane is where I'd
2:53
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I was actually working in film and TV and looking to take, I don't know, I was kind of sort of wanting to take a little bit of a break and I wanted my job, I guess, to be a little bit more outdoors and I ended up stumbling upon people that were camel milking, they were milking camels for the milk and it was a friend's auntie who had this camel dairy and so I bugged her, I said, can I go on meet the camels?
3:21
[SPEAKER_04]: And then I just fell in love with them and so yes, so it started from from this bizarre path of milking camels, but was I adventurous as a kid, um, not I not particularly like we never went camping or anything, particularly actually when I was growing up, I guess I guess I always had the travel bug, I did a lot of lot of traveling when I was younger and both my parents are big travelers as well.
3:46
[SPEAKER_02]: You mentioned a lot there, so you were in TV and had a career and you were unhappy with it.
3:55
[SPEAKER_02]: What kind of, I don't know, gave you the confidence or was it easy to walk away from or was it really a taxing decision?
4:03
[SPEAKER_04]: No, it would to be honest, it just sort of started as I thought, I thought I'd just take a break from it and I thought I'd take maybe I'd do something totally different for six months.
4:13
[SPEAKER_04]: And and that's all it would be and then I would go back to doing film and TV and yes like I said I stumbled across this this camel dairy and I started milking camels kind of on the weekends and at one point I was doing half film and TV and half milking camels was that a paid job the milking of the camels yeah was it was just a bizarre combination of two jobs they guess.
4:36
[SPEAKER_04]: Going to film shoots during the week and then, you know, milking the camels on the weekend, it was quite strange.
4:44
[SPEAKER_04]: But yeah, and then the camels just started taking over more and more.
4:48
[SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, so it wasn't, it wasn't planned or anything.
4:51
[SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, like I said, I thought it might just be sort of a little six month break and then I'd go back to film and TV and I just kept going.
5:02
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, I got too busy to do film and TV and I worked at milking camels full time, and then I had a trip planned overseas and so while I was overseas, I thought, I'm going to go and see what other people are doing with camels overseas.
5:17
[SPEAKER_04]: So I actually ended up.
5:18
[SPEAKER_04]: on your side of the world, I ended up at a dairy in Michigan of all places, milking camels with a family of men and nights over in Michigan, which was an incredibly interesting experience, a lovely family, lovely area, bizarre seeing camels, I guess, in the green pastures of Michigan and the U.S. And so then I went down to Texas, I met a guy who had camels
5:46
[SPEAKER_04]: And then from there over to India and spent a bit of time with the nomads and their camels over there.
5:53
[SPEAKER_04]: And then came back to Australia and got really, I was really interested in pursuing more camel tracking.
5:59
[SPEAKER_04]: So I worked for a company down in South Australia who took tourists out on nine day tracks.
6:05
[SPEAKER_04]: out into an area called the Flinders Ranges and fell in love with that and then moved to Uluru which is the the big beautiful sacred rock in the middle of Australia and that's sort of where I started preparing for my trip so it's been about four years that I've been hanging out with camels now and like I said yeah it was only meant to be a little six month break from film and TV and yeah four years later
6:34
[SPEAKER_02]: You got to be careful.
6:35
[SPEAKER_02]: You got to be careful catch that camel fever, you know.
6:38
[SPEAKER_02]: That's right.
6:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
6:40
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm sorry.
6:42
[SPEAKER_02]: I've nothing against folks in Michigan, but there's a, there's a lot.
6:47
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.
6:47
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe more interesting parts of the country.
6:49
[SPEAKER_02]: I hopefully you were able to see more of the US.
6:52
[SPEAKER_02]: There's some great places.
6:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Michigan.
6:54
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's great.
6:55
[SPEAKER_02]: It's fine.
6:56
[SPEAKER_02]: But especially doing what you're doing.
6:58
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't realize it were camels there.
7:00
[SPEAKER_04]: No one does.
7:01
[SPEAKER_04]: No one does.
7:02
[SPEAKER_04]: I, uh, yeah, I love to the beautiful red barns though.
7:06
[SPEAKER_04]: I was obsessed with those.
7:07
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and the men and nights are so interesting.
7:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Men and nights, very interesting.
7:12
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't realize they work with camels.
7:14
[SPEAKER_02]: I, maybe I'm just a dumb American, but I didn't realize you could get so much milk from camels.
7:21
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah, less than a cow, but the milk is very popular in the sense that a lot of people use it for gutting bowel disorders.
7:32
[SPEAKER_04]: Some people use it actually with autism.
7:35
[SPEAKER_04]: So it has a bit of a sort of following in, yeah, in that market.
7:41
[SPEAKER_04]: And they're also making it into skin care products now, so similar to how you would find goats milk soap and that kind of thing.
7:49
[SPEAKER_02]: very, very fascinating.
7:51
[SPEAKER_02]: You learned something new every day.
7:52
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, let me ask you this.
7:55
[SPEAKER_02]: You talked about, you know, I think of a lot of folks can relate wanting a change, falling in love with something, a hobby, or not a hobby of passion, like a new direction in life.
8:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Why can't we?
8:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Why can't we?
8:08
[SPEAKER_02]: What was it about them?
8:10
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I had grown up riding horses.
8:13
[SPEAKER_04]: So I sort of, I sort of knew large animals and I was interested in large animals.
8:18
[SPEAKER_04]: They play a huge role in Australia's history over here, so I found that part of it fascinating as well.
8:26
[SPEAKER_04]: We actually have a huge population of what we call ferrule or wild camels in the outback here.
8:35
[SPEAKER_04]: So anyone, it's something from anywhere between a quarter of a million to over a
8:44
[SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, and a lot of even, even Australian don't realize that, because most of our population is on the coastline and not that many people travel to the outback.
8:55
[SPEAKER_04]: So I'd started to learn about that and I thought that was fascinating in itself as they were brought over here for basically exploration of the outback and setting up, developing outback Australia.
9:08
[SPEAKER_04]: So they had a very, very important role in our history over here and then once the cars started coming in and truck started coming in there was no more need for the camels and so
9:19
[SPEAKER_04]: the men that ran, and they let them go, and from there they bread up in the wild.
9:23
[SPEAKER_04]: So now we actually have the only population of wild, one-humped camels in the world, in every other country they domesticated.
9:34
[SPEAKER_04]: So that was interesting, like being able to work with a wild animal is incredibly special.
9:41
[SPEAKER_04]: And they're just they're fascinating in the way that they're so well adapted to the desert.
9:48
[SPEAKER_04]: All of their whole physiology and makeup is so perfectly adapted to the desert and most of our country here, you know, if you're going to cross Australia, most of our country is made up of desert.
10:04
[SPEAKER_04]: So they're the perfect, perfect vehicle for that, perfect vehicle for exploration, I think.
10:10
[SPEAKER_04]: Maybe a little slow.
10:12
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's what makes me wonder why camels versus what we see in here a lot on the show is cycling.
10:18
[SPEAKER_02]: Cycling across Australia is a big one.
10:21
[SPEAKER_02]: You obviously had a passion for camels at this point.
10:26
[SPEAKER_02]: What led to the idea to walk across Australia?
10:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Did that just seem like the ultimate goal, the ultimate?
10:34
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know, you know, challenge.
10:37
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it's sort of, I guess there was, it's really hard to sort of give one particular reason why.
10:43
[SPEAKER_04]: And probably a lot of your other guests on the show will be able to relate, it's, you know, you get so taken up by an idea.
10:50
[SPEAKER_04]: It happens, I don't know, somehow the sea gets planted and then, you know, you spend years of preparing and then, by the time you get to set off, you're like, Why did I even decide on this?
11:01
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, it seems like so long ago that I can't even, I can't even remember where the idea came from.
11:06
[SPEAKER_04]: But yeah, partly I guess it was I wanted to see more of Australia and I wanted to see the outback and visit some of our most remote regions and like I said, the camel was just the perfect sort of vehicle for that.
11:23
[SPEAKER_04]: I guess I, yeah, for me, I was never particularly a cyclist.
11:27
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, if you're going to do a walk, you have to tow a cart and I thought, how good would this be?
11:32
[SPEAKER_04]: I've got animals to, uh, to take out my equipment.
11:35
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't have to carry anything, um, but, I mean, obviously, there's a, there's a lot more work in having five animals with you as well, but, uh, I think part of it as well is with, um, the whole challenge of, so my five camels they came from the wild.
11:52
[SPEAKER_04]: So sort of in some ways for me, the adventures started when I,
11:57
[SPEAKER_04]: I took those camels from the wild and I trained them myself, so that was, that was all sort of part of the challenge of it.
12:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, is that in tail training a camel?
12:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I know horses are, you know, you can tell you horses, there's a lot of, there's probably 50,000 wild horses in the US.
12:14
[SPEAKER_02]: I think.
12:15
[SPEAKER_05]: Yep.
12:16
[SPEAKER_02]: Yep.
12:16
[SPEAKER_02]: I know that's a thing to break them.
12:20
[SPEAKER_04]: Yep.
12:20
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
12:20
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, camels similar.
12:22
[SPEAKER_04]: Similar thing to horses.
12:23
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
12:23
[SPEAKER_04]: You have to break them in.
12:26
[SPEAKER_04]: They're incredibly smart animals, very, very smart.
12:29
[SPEAKER_04]: So they learn things very quickly.
12:32
[SPEAKER_04]: It often revolves around a lot of repetitions.
12:38
[SPEAKER_04]: So, you know, settling them up every day, unsettling them every day.
12:42
[SPEAKER_04]: And in some ways, the trip itself has all been part of the training of my camels because they
12:49
[SPEAKER_04]: And as we walk and as we cross Australia, they're seeing new things and new landscapes or we might come across a new scared, you know, what seems like a scary thing for them.
13:00
[SPEAKER_04]: So, so slowly it's just it's exposure to that and and yeah, so but yeah, it was it was good fun training them training to training to ride on them, training them to sit down, you have to
13:18
[SPEAKER_04]: because camels are so tall you have to sit them down in order to load or the gear on their backs and then stand them up with all of that gear.
13:26
[SPEAKER_04]: So that all had to be trained, you know, teaching them to have pack bags on their back and all of that.
13:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Why five camels?
13:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Why not one or two or ten, you know, well, well, what made you lean on me?
13:44
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
13:44
[SPEAKER_04]: To be honest, it's too many, probably, it's more than what I need, I would say.
13:51
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know, in my head, originally, I sort of thought the trip I thought that I might have people maybe set a jump on, jump off the sections, and so I thought that having five would enable me to have a few extra, to carry extra pack bags, but in the end it worked out well
14:14
[SPEAKER_04]: are slightly younger and so and also because it's like it's like humans going into training I guess for us you know to do a big a big walk or whatever you need to be you know trained up and used to carrying pack bags and stuff and mine weren't mine weren't used to carrying to carrying any of that gear so
14:36
[SPEAKER_04]: So I was kind of able with five.
14:38
[SPEAKER_04]: I was able to distribute it a little bit more, so they weren't carrying a super huge load.
14:43
[SPEAKER_04]: Whereas, you know, if I had just had three, they would have been loaded up a lot more, lot more heavily.
14:48
[SPEAKER_02]: So, so five camels.
14:53
[SPEAKER_02]: You're out in the five to one.
14:55
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, is it difficult to wrangle that many large animals at a time?
15:01
[SPEAKER_02]: I would feel intimidated with one.
15:04
[SPEAKER_02]: Honestly, with one horse or something similar, like a camel five.
15:07
[SPEAKER_02]: You've got a, you've got a crew to maintain.
15:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, what is that look like?
15:12
[SPEAKER_02]: What's the practicality of kind of the logistics of doing that?
15:17
[SPEAKER_04]: It's definitely a crew.
15:20
[SPEAKER_04]: I think the main thing is, is you sort of have to work out their personalities.
15:25
[SPEAKER_04]: So just like any animal, they all have their own very unique personalities.
15:28
[SPEAKER_04]: So some will make great leaders, some will be better followers.
15:33
[SPEAKER_04]: So you know, as I was training them, I started to pick who was going to be my lead camel.
15:38
[SPEAKER_04]: So in my little string of five, they all have their position in that string.
15:43
[SPEAKER_04]: So they're always in the same order.
15:45
[SPEAKER_04]: and so that gives them, I guess, a sense of security and, yeah, so it's kind of, you know, you've got to take a little bit of time to work that out.
15:58
[SPEAKER_04]: But yeah, for sure, it's, you know, you put a lot of trust into your lead camel because he's the one basically towing the rest of the game behind.
16:10
[SPEAKER_04]: So you have to be able to have control over him or to be able to have a good
16:14
[SPEAKER_04]: you know, working relationship with him, I guess, because he's sort of really controls the rest of the four behind him as well.
16:22
[SPEAKER_04]: So, but like I said, they're just so smart.
16:24
[SPEAKER_04]: So, you know, and this took me probably about a year to train them before we set off.
16:29
[SPEAKER_04]: And so you start to develop that relationship.
16:32
[SPEAKER_04]: He knows my lead camel is Jude and he knows, you know, lots of words,
16:41
[SPEAKER_04]: They pick up very much on your mood as well, so, you know, there be times where I don't feel very confident because it's the first time I've, you know, walked in this area or walked in this, you know, remote location, but But you sort of have to have to sort of fake it almost you have to be a strong leader for them because they will pick up on your energy and if you're nervous, then it'll make them nervous as well.
17:04
[SPEAKER_02]: my goodness.
17:05
[SPEAKER_02]: So interesting.
17:06
[SPEAKER_02]: What did what did you look for in the camels when you when you were picking them out?
17:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Is there any sort of qualities you're looking for, or most camels going to farewell with this type of thing?
17:18
[SPEAKER_04]: You can probably get most camels will probably probably do it like I said, you know, not every camel will make a leader.
17:26
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, so I was lucky that I found, uh, I think I was lucky that I found a really, really great lead camel.
17:34
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, but otherwise, no, no, I mean, it's a bit of a gamble really because when I took them from the wild, it was, you know, all you're looking, all you're looking at at that point is whether they're a nice, you know, whether they've got nice confirmation, I guess, whether they look like a strong camel and, you know, whether they look like they can carry a load and then,
17:53
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, you only really get to know what they're going to be like to train, you know, as you get further down the road then.
17:58
[SPEAKER_02]: To your kind of just you got to pick it, you know, pick the crew say, this is, this is our team.
18:05
[SPEAKER_02]: We're going to go make it happen.
18:07
[SPEAKER_02]: We're going to work it out.
18:08
[SPEAKER_02]: We're going to get fresh.
18:09
[SPEAKER_04]: That's right.
18:10
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, 100%.
18:12
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, they've, they've, like I said, they very much have their own personalities.
18:16
[SPEAKER_04]: Have a little camel Clayton and, um,
18:19
[SPEAKER_04]: A lot of people always ask, you know, one of the major questions people ask is to camel spit, which they actually don't spit.
18:27
[SPEAKER_04]: They vomit.
18:28
[SPEAKER_04]: So if camel's are very unhappy, they will puke up their guts on you.
18:35
[SPEAKER_04]: And I had a little camel Clayton, yes, taking a long time for us to get to an understanding between one another.
18:42
[SPEAKER_04]: He has covered me in a fair bit of regurgitated
18:47
[SPEAKER_04]: plant matter many a time, which I tell you what does not smell good, but he's a very, very hard little worker, he just is never probably going to be a cuddly camel, he just does not like affection.
19:02
[SPEAKER_04]: particularly but an incredibly hard worker and so it's just it's just working out, you know, where as I have another camel Charlie who a door's being padded and cuddled and loves kids and so they're very very different and you just got to respect them for who they are, I think.
19:21
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, if you treat them well.
19:22
[SPEAKER_04]: they will treat you well and I think that's probably one of the hardest being one of the hardest things of my trip is it is round the clock, camel care so you know they are your lifeline out there and you have to look after them so well because you know they're doing all the work and they're all you've got out there.
19:47
[SPEAKER_02]: So speaking of that, what do they need?
19:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Because, you know, I think we all know, or at least it sounds like it has the potential to be folklore that camels don't need to drink that often.
19:59
[SPEAKER_02]: How true is that and how often do they need water and what other kinds of things do they need?
20:05
[SPEAKER_04]: Mm.
20:06
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, well, the water one is really, really tricky.
20:09
[SPEAKER_04]: It's an equation that I've almost never been able to work out
20:16
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, how hard they're working, what the temperature is, uh, what the feeds like camels get a lot of, um, a lot of water from, uh, their, what they're eating.
20:26
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, so, so that was probably one of the biggest troubles I had as well as the, um, actually when I, when I, when I cross WA, um, Western Australia is that it was, um, a lot of the area was in pretty pretty severe drought.
20:40
[SPEAKER_04]: Which comes actually, you know, they do a lot better than a lot of other animals out there in a dry season, but but still you, you know, they require a lot of feed and to keep them going and.
20:54
[SPEAKER_04]: And also, you know, the drier it is the less moisture content they're getting from those plants and the more that they need to drink.
21:00
[SPEAKER_04]: So, so I was carrying 12 Jerry cans on me and most of that was for the stretches in the desert where I would need to actually get my camels of drink.
21:22
[SPEAKER_04]: drink of water just because they're eating amazing, you know, succulent, succulent feed.
21:28
[SPEAKER_04]: So it's pretty incredible six months without a drop of water.
21:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Six months, unbelievable.
21:37
[SPEAKER_04]: We're really nuts, so as you think, a cow, they have to drink, you know, every day, horses, you know, definitely
21:44
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, I think I think you might be able to push them on that 100% rupture on this, but you know, two maybe three days max, but my camels, you know, often I did a stretch where I didn't give them a drink for two weeks.
21:58
[SPEAKER_04]: Wow.
21:58
[SPEAKER_04]: So yeah, they start to get it's a little bit depressing sometimes when you're out there, though, because they get thirsty.
22:07
[SPEAKER_04]: They can do it but they think that they need a drink of water and so every time you have to fill up your water bottle You're kind of doing that secretly like they'll be off grazing And you've got a secretly fill up your water bottle back at camp And hope that they don't hear the sound of the water Or hope that they don't smell the water Because otherwise they're right over there after your face So you're always hiding hiding about trying to fill up water bottles and have a drink on your own
22:33
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm just blown away by this whole experience.
22:36
[SPEAKER_02]: You've got these massive animals that have these super natural powers on most, and you're walking across one of the largest continents in the world, and it's like something out of a sci-fi movie.
22:53
[SPEAKER_02]: It's incredible.
22:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Do they feel like your protectors, they're like walls around you, do they feel like that?
23:04
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, absolutely actually, um, yeah, they do.
23:07
[SPEAKER_04]: I think it would be a really different experience without them.
23:11
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, you know, like you said, there's a lot of people that cycle across Australia and for me, I almost can't even imagine that because, um, I think for me, you know, the camel's really hold off a certain amount of loneliness.
23:25
[SPEAKER_04]: When you have them, you have another sort of, um, I don't know another spirit out there and, uh,
23:32
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah.
23:33
[SPEAKER_04]: So you become very, yeah, you become very, very attached to them.
23:36
[SPEAKER_04]: And one of my favorite things is to, you know, when I sleep at night, I sleep, you know, really only a couple of meters away from them, partly because I, you know, I have to, they're tethered to trees.
23:49
[SPEAKER_04]: So just in case they get tangled up in the ropes, I need to be able to hear or if I'll over wild camel comes into our camp, I need to be able to deal with that situation.
24:00
[SPEAKER_04]: my favorite thing is lying, is pulling a sleep with the sound of them chewing their card.
24:06
[SPEAKER_04]: I love that.
24:07
[SPEAKER_02]: So what are you doing about that now?
24:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you have that playing in the bathroom?
24:11
[SPEAKER_02]: You've got to sleep not on the street right now?
24:14
[SPEAKER_04]: I should have recorded that so I could go to sleep.
24:17
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think that's an option on most of the little Michigan.
24:20
[SPEAKER_04]: That's right.
24:21
[SPEAKER_04]: No, I don't think it's up there with the rainfall
24:26
[SPEAKER_05]: what noise.
24:28
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow, that's hilarious.
24:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's uh, you'll need that.
24:31
[SPEAKER_02]: So, I mean, there's just a million questions I want to ask, and I know it might sound basic, but we've just never talked to someone doing this.
24:40
[SPEAKER_02]: You're not on paved roads for the most part.
24:44
[SPEAKER_02]: It looks like it's mostly dirt tracks, dirt roads through through the outback.
24:49
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, old roads, so I don't think I crossed any
24:54
[SPEAKER_04]: paved road in the, I've traveled about 2,300 kilometers.
25:01
[SPEAKER_04]: I think roughly.
25:02
[SPEAKER_04]: So far, so I actually was looking in this up because I suddenly thought you guys were working miles.
25:06
[SPEAKER_04]: I think that's 1,000 about 1,400 miles roughly.
25:11
[SPEAKER_02]: My right there.
25:15
[SPEAKER_02]: Let me look it up.
25:16
[SPEAKER_02]: We have so many folks from all over the world on this show that our listeners are used to it.
25:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it looks like about 1500 miles.
25:25
[SPEAKER_05]: Good.
25:26
[SPEAKER_05]: Thank you.
25:26
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, when you overlay Australian the US, it's about the same distance, or it's about the same size, and so this is very similar for American listeners to literally walking coast to coast across America with a tenth of the population.
25:52
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know what their population is, but it's tiny.
25:56
[SPEAKER_04]: I was thinking today, the largest town I went through was, I think about 800 residents.
26:06
[SPEAKER_04]: That's the largest township I went through.
26:09
[SPEAKER_04]: Otherwise, otherwise, I pretty much did not go through a single other town.
26:19
[SPEAKER_04]: Australia's largest desert, and I think the seventh largest in the world, it's a stretch of 1,000, 1,300 kilometers.
26:31
[SPEAKER_04]: So say roughly 800 miles, I think that is.
26:35
[SPEAKER_04]: And all that is is one little
26:48
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, that's it.
26:49
[SPEAKER_04]: There's no one else out there.
26:51
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, it's a, it's a four-wheel drive track that I was following, but actually, well, as well, because of because of COVID, um, no one was, a lot of the time that I was walking, no one was traveling.
27:04
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, that road that I, that I went along in the Great Victoria Desert, it was actually shut.
27:09
[SPEAKER_04]: I was the only one you have to get permits to go across that road because a lot of the land that you're traveling across is Aboriginal land.
27:17
[SPEAKER_04]: no one else was able to get permits because of um because they went allowing people onto Aboriginal land because they didn't want to spread the the disease but because I was taking so long to get on there um you know I would have gone through my own amount of quarantine basically I was sort of doing my own extreme form of social distancing so I was the only one traveling down that road which was actually incredibly special experience
27:45
[SPEAKER_04]: that does attract to myself.
27:48
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I know I keep saying it, but this is so unbelievable of an adventure, so incredible.
27:55
[SPEAKER_02]: Something that we hear a lot, because we do have a lot of Americans on the show, who are exploring America.
28:03
[SPEAKER_02]: And they, you know, like myself, born and raised here, but when you see it from the seat of a bicycle or on your own to feet, going to these reaches of the country, your home country that you've never perceived even existed.
28:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Have you had that experience with Australia?
28:23
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, definitely.
28:24
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
28:25
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
28:25
[SPEAKER_04]: Absolutely.
28:26
[SPEAKER_04]: Um,
28:27
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm actually I think one of the one of the reasons why I wanted to go into the Great Victoria Desert is I felt like I had not a single other person I knew from Australia, even new of where that desert was.
28:40
[SPEAKER_04]: This huge huge area of land and no one even knew where it wasn't Australia.
28:47
[SPEAKER_04]: So so I guess that kind of that really intrigued me and and we're very,
28:55
[SPEAKER_04]: such huge areas of, you know, remote wilderness.
29:01
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, it's really quite humbling to stand on the crest of a hill or on the crest of a sandjoin and look out.
29:08
[SPEAKER_04]: And you can see 360 degrees and there is not a single sign of human inhabitants.
29:16
[SPEAKER_04]: And that happened, you know, I wasn't like I found one spot like that, that happened many, many a time on my trip.
29:25
[SPEAKER_04]: a tiny speck out there in this wilderness.
29:28
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think, you know, and you'll probably, I'm sure a lot of your listeners will agree with me is that the nice thing about traveling, you know, rather than traveling in a car where you're sort of shielded, whizzing through in this bubble is when you travel slowly by bike or, you know, walking or by camel like I did, which probably even slower than you regular hike, we only travel about three K an hour.
29:51
[SPEAKER_04]: Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh
30:15
[SPEAKER_04]: You know the sandstorms, the duststorms, the flies, the beautiful fresh crisp mornings and beautiful sunrises and sun sets out in the desert and and you get to really see that the detail in that that I just don't think you you pick up when he was through on a car.
30:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely not.
30:34
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a sensation that we hear described a lot, and one you can't really explain until you've gotten to it yourself.
30:42
[SPEAKER_02]: It's so much desert.
30:46
[SPEAKER_02]: It's almost primarily desert, what you're crossing.
30:50
[SPEAKER_02]: Does it get a notness to you or are you enjoying kind of the consistency of it?
30:57
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, I think that's a thing is that a lot of people that do drive in these places will say, oh, it's all the same because because I don't think you you see those subtle changes.
31:08
[SPEAKER_04]: Whereas for me, yeah, I mean, there was a few areas where I said, I thought, oh, god, here we go.
31:14
[SPEAKER_04]: Another, another manga forest, which is like a similar type of, you know, scrubby tree out there.
31:19
[SPEAKER_04]: But, um, but.
31:21
[SPEAKER_04]: I felt like I really started to appreciate all the differences in vegetation so no I didn't find it, I didn't find it boring or monotonous because actually there is so much variety out there and the landscape can change very very quickly you know you can go from I mean even when we were out in the desert there was huge areas where it had been burnt
31:51
[SPEAKER_04]: 2018, I think it was so huge areas of just sort of very sort of desolate looking dunes.
31:59
[SPEAKER_04]: And then you walk over another dunes and then it would be totally different.
32:03
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, a lot of people think about the desert as they think about the Sahara, they think about bare dunes that you're crossing.
32:12
[SPEAKER_04]: Australian deserts are not like that at all.
32:14
[SPEAKER_04]: They are actually incredibly vegetative.
32:17
[SPEAKER_04]: um we have one of the oldest land masses in the world and so our genes are quite stable because there's um there's been a lot of time for that vegetation to grow.
32:28
[SPEAKER_04]: There's quite a lot of bird life, a lot of reptile life in the desert.
32:33
[SPEAKER_04]: So there's actually a huge amount of life out there.
32:36
[SPEAKER_04]: And then I got a big change in weather too and I had right at the end of my trip I got or coming into sort of at the edge of the desert.
32:46
[SPEAKER_04]: We had a lot of rain and so it was magical.
32:49
[SPEAKER_04]: It was something I'd always wanted to see and I finally got to see it was with the desert come to life after rain and literally the day after rain you see these flowers called
33:06
[SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, it became, there was sea of wildflowers out there.
33:12
[SPEAKER_04]: Birds started to migrate in.
33:14
[SPEAKER_04]: It was really, really special.
33:19
[SPEAKER_02]: I can only imagine, honestly, just the payoff of the rain and the life it brought in.
33:26
[SPEAKER_02]: And you were in tune with the landscape to sense those subtle changes.
33:33
[SPEAKER_02]: And that it takes that.
33:35
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I've gone places on a trip that took a lot of effort to get there.
33:40
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was so much more vivid, so much more impactful, and then I'll go back and visit, you know, with my wife and we'll drive there, and it just doesn't feel the same anymore, you know, because it wasn't very hard to get there.
33:55
[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely.
33:56
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it's so bizarre, like the places aren't as magical, which is sad.
34:00
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's all, you know it's there.
34:03
[SPEAKER_02]: You're just not looking at it that way.
34:04
[SPEAKER_02]: You're your saturation of your eyes are turned down.
34:08
[SPEAKER_02]: The, you know, it's not as vibrant.
34:10
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not as, I don't know, so I'm not as incredible.
34:15
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, absolutely.
34:16
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like I always think, you know, you can have Lewis, you can make a terrible cup of tea in the most dirty cup out there, but
34:25
[SPEAKER_04]: When you're out there and you don't have a day's walking, it feels tastes like the best cup of tea you've ever had.
34:31
[SPEAKER_04]: And everything is like that, you know, you appreciate that much more because you've worked for it.
34:39
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, there's there's some recipes I've come up with out there that uh I love and then I get back home and try it and I'm like how in the world that I ever think this takes I think it's good I absolutely know what you make So speaking of that what are you carrying for food and how often you know you're going to you know towns of 800 at the most Where are food?
35:03
[SPEAKER_02]: How often and and what is it?
35:06
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, it was a big logistical sort of, well, yeah, I had to do a lot of organizing beforehand.
35:12
[SPEAKER_04]: So, so I carry about a month's worth of food on one of my camels.
35:18
[SPEAKER_04]: And I had to, I basically organized about five months worth of food before I set off out there.
35:25
[SPEAKER_04]: So, so before I, I tracked the camels, I actually bought
35:31
[SPEAKER_04]: bought a camel truck loaded the camels on it to Uluru in the centre of Australia and drove to the coast of Western Australia with the camels on board and I had all my food boxes packed up in the truck and as we went along I actually managed to drop them at a few places.
35:49
[SPEAKER_04]: There was a couple that had to you know one that went out to a more remote area in the desert.
35:55
[SPEAKER_04]: Everyone's everyone's so helpful in the outback.
36:01
[SPEAKER_04]: So one of those food boxes it got run out by the guy who tops up the fuel out at that one remote roadhouse in the middle of the desert.
36:10
[SPEAKER_04]: He took my food boxes out there on a fuel run.
36:12
[SPEAKER_04]: So they sat out there for several months before I'd even before I'd even got to them.
36:16
[SPEAKER_04]: So yeah, so most of the stuff obviously is long life.
36:21
[SPEAKER_04]: I tried to stick away from cans.
36:24
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, you can eat a little bit better.
36:26
[SPEAKER_04]: I think then, you know, if you're going on a hiking trip because you can carry a bit more weight since you're not carrying it on your own back.
36:34
[SPEAKER_04]: But yeah, I try and stick away from cans because, you know, that does make it heavy for the camel.
36:38
[SPEAKER_04]: So, a lot of rice, a lot of lentils, a lot of, you know, dodgy things, pastas.
36:45
[SPEAKER_04]: I actually did what the old explorers used to do.
36:49
[SPEAKER_04]: I salted some,
36:51
[SPEAKER_04]: some beef so you basically get a big hunk of meat and you just pour salt all over and then you just dry it out that way.
36:57
[SPEAKER_04]: Took me a while to work out how to cook that the best way because it doesn't seem to say not matter how many times you watch it, it's still insanely salty.
37:06
[SPEAKER_04]: But that's what the old explorers used to survive off in Australia.
37:09
[SPEAKER_04]: They would pretty much eat salt beef,
37:15
[SPEAKER_04]: Dan for being sort of a type of bread that we do here just on the fire.
37:19
[SPEAKER_04]: So no wonder they ended up with scurvy.
37:21
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't think I was, yeah, I was eating a little bit better than that.
37:26
[SPEAKER_02]: But I was craving just fresh food and salad by the end.
37:39
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, no, I ended up walking the whole way, um, my lead camel Jew, he's a, I trained him to ride and, um, look, we're pretty good at it.
37:49
[SPEAKER_04]: We're, it was one of the last things that I trained him to do.
37:52
[SPEAKER_04]: So, our ability to go in a straight line is great.
37:55
[SPEAKER_04]: Our ability to, to turn left and right, not so good.
38:00
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, but I, in the end, I sort of, I decided to, I decided to walk mainly because,
38:06
[SPEAKER_04]: Partly to make it easier on him, it's not like you're walking very fast so it's not particularly strenuous walking.
38:14
[SPEAKER_04]: It meant that he could carry more pack bags if I wasn't riding.
38:19
[SPEAKER_04]: And also partly a safety thing, you know, like you were saying it's having five large animals and it's not you're not just riding one animal, you're really riding five, you know, you've got the others in tow.
38:32
[SPEAKER_04]: So I had a pretty scary experience actually where my camels took off on me early on in the trip.
38:41
[SPEAKER_04]: So after that, you know, and I wasn't riding then, thank God, but I remember thinking, yeah, it probably would have been a whole lot worse if I was riding.
38:51
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
38:51
[SPEAKER_02]: So they just took off running?
38:55
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so you know how to tell the start if you don't want to.
39:00
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, no, no, no, I can tell it.
39:03
[SPEAKER_04]: It was a good learning curve.
39:05
[SPEAKER_04]: That's for sure.
39:07
[SPEAKER_04]: I was weird actually.
39:09
[SPEAKER_04]: It was sort of before we'd got to desert stretches.
39:11
[SPEAKER_04]: So we were on station country and when I say station country, I mean, like farms, but stations in Australia are a huge, huge vast area, basically.
39:22
[SPEAKER_04]: You might as well be in the middle of nowhere.
39:25
[SPEAKER_04]: And I had actually that day.
39:27
[SPEAKER_04]: I wasn't even following a dirt track or anything.
39:29
[SPEAKER_04]: I'd gone cross country because I had gone 5k in the wrong direction the beginning of that morning.
39:36
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, right, that's annoying, but oh well, I'll cut cross country.
39:49
[SPEAKER_04]: you know, enjoying the, enjoying the morning and then all of a sudden out of nowhere, Jude saw a dark shape in the bushes.
39:58
[SPEAKER_04]: It was actually just a, it was just a cow of all things.
40:02
[SPEAKER_04]: So nothing scary, but for some, for some reason, he just totally freaked.
40:07
[SPEAKER_04]: So I was holding on to the rope.
40:09
[SPEAKER_04]: His rope at the time, he poured away from me, poured me flat on my face.
40:19
[SPEAKER_04]: he shied and pulled off and it toppled all of the other camels over so my camel Mac went down with all the jerry cans on him things started to fall off and you know my bedding what we call a swag which is kind of like a bed roll was hanging half this half the way off due and then they sort of all recovered themselves got up and
40:48
[SPEAKER_04]: I never, I always try not run after my camels because, you know, it's only going to spook them more if you're sort of, you know, crazy human running after them, but, you know, there was nothing I could do.
40:58
[SPEAKER_04]: I had to run after them.
40:59
[SPEAKER_04]: There was, you know, I had, I had to go catch them.
41:02
[SPEAKER_04]: So I was running and in the middle of, in the middle of nowhere, and as I started to run, I realized I don't have my, I'd been using my phone to navigate.
41:12
[SPEAKER_04]: That had been, that
41:17
[SPEAKER_04]: So as I started to run, I realized I didn't have any navigation on me.
41:20
[SPEAKER_04]: I didn't have my curve on me.
41:22
[SPEAKER_04]: I didn't have my sat phone on me.
41:24
[SPEAKER_04]: I didn't have any water on me.
41:25
[SPEAKER_04]: Everything was packed in the saddle bags and they're all taking off into the distance with all of my safety equipment on their backs.
41:35
[SPEAKER_04]: And I so I'm running after them.
41:38
[SPEAKER_04]: I started to lose sight of them at one point.
41:41
[SPEAKER_04]: I had to keep stopping and listening to the sound of the jerry cans, flapping about on the back camel, because they're all sort of spooking one another as, you know, you know, the lead camel he hears the sound of the back camel with all the gear thumping around and then that spooks them more and he runs more and then they're all running more and, you know, they're getting to that herd mentality.
42:01
[SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, it's just a vicious cycle, exactly.
42:03
[SPEAKER_04]: And I caught up to them at one point and all I had on me was my little pocket knife and so I got my pocket knife out and I
42:10
[SPEAKER_04]: I'll cut the last two camels off because at least then I'll have some of them and then the others might stop.
42:15
[SPEAKER_04]: And as I sort of reached out with that knife, they took off again and Clayton bold me over and I was on my face again and then I'm running after them again.
42:23
[SPEAKER_04]: And became totally disoriented, realized I had no idea where I was because you're focused on them and you, you know, all the bush can look exactly the same.
42:33
[SPEAKER_04]: And
42:35
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank God I managed that the only reason I actually caught up with them was because Jude spun around a bush and he sort of spiraled in and They stood at the strings spiraled in on itself so he couldn't escape because of because of the other camels and so I managed to catch up to him grab the rope and oh my gosh, it was yeah it was one of the most.
42:57
[SPEAKER_04]: scary experiences of my life, you know, I suddenly, I just realized just that if I, you know, what would have happened if I hadn't caught them, and I was just in such a friends who and I, when I got to them, and it was funny actually, I remembered to reading this survivalist book, and they say, you know, when you, I think it was obviously in Australia one, because they
43:24
[SPEAKER_04]: when you're lost in the bush, one of the first things you should do is boil the billi.
43:29
[SPEAKER_04]: So a billi is like a teapot basically.
43:33
[SPEAKER_04]: And so it was saying, you know, like you'll never make a good rational decision for your safety when you're in a state of fear and panic.
43:42
[SPEAKER_04]: So boil the billi have a cup of tea as this takes stock.
43:46
[SPEAKER_04]: So I actually did that so I so I tied due to a tree and I was
43:54
[SPEAKER_04]: of tea.
43:56
[SPEAKER_04]: It was probably the best thing I did because it meant I had to calm down.
44:00
[SPEAKER_04]: And then it, yeah, it took sort of once I'd done that and sort of regained a bit of composure.
44:06
[SPEAKER_04]: It took over an hour.
44:07
[SPEAKER_04]: I had to retrace their footprints and I took us over an hour to get back to where it had all happened and all the gear had started falling off so I could recover my phone and everything.
44:19
[SPEAKER_04]: So yeah, so big learning curve, I, after that, I changed a lot of things.
44:24
[SPEAKER_04]: I always made sure I carried water on me.
44:26
[SPEAKER_04]: I had always my sat phone on me, my e-purb on me, just in case that was ever happening again.
44:31
[SPEAKER_02]: So was there any lesson you learned in that about dealing with those kinds of situations or dealing with just chaos?
44:43
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I think even from, even from,
44:47
[SPEAKER_04]: working with camels, not even necessary, that particular situation.
44:52
[SPEAKER_04]: I've kind of developed a bit of a mentality of when things go wrong, do nothing, or like, you know, kind of like don't panic.
45:04
[SPEAKER_04]: Like I said, like the camels pick up a lot on your energy, that particular situation.
45:09
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I guess my main, my main things that I learnt was
45:12
[SPEAKER_04]: I needed to have all of that safety equipment on me, just in case that was there ever happen again.
45:18
[SPEAKER_04]: It's so easy to become complacent, especially with the animals because, you know, you're like, are they doing really well and everyone's really chilled and all, you know, can take one tiny little thing and it'll be on the day that you least expect it, you think that they're so super relaxed and then
45:35
[SPEAKER_04]: some tiny sound, some thing in the bushes will scare them and you're with a fight or flight or you're with a flight animal.
45:44
[SPEAKER_04]: So they just have that heard instinct and they just they just want to run from a predator.
45:49
[SPEAKER_04]: And so yeah, so that was the main thing I learnt from that one.
45:52
[SPEAKER_04]: But in general, working with camels, I've, I really struggled on my trip because my camels were all new and so they did use to, they used to spook it, this, that, and everything else,
46:05
[SPEAKER_04]: 44 gallon drum in the bushes, a, you know, some little pile of rubbish or something like that, it was like the scariest thing in the world and then and you're walking along and you have all of your five camels like sort of running up behind you.
46:18
[SPEAKER_04]: And you feel at first when you're training them, you feel like they're just going to run over the top of you.
46:24
[SPEAKER_04]: And then you sort of start to realize that they won't do that.
46:28
[SPEAKER_04]: So I developed this ability to just be at a, they would spook at something and they would run up from behind or, you know, buck and things would flap all over the place.
46:37
[SPEAKER_04]: And I would just literally not even turn my head to look at them, I would just keep walking.
46:41
[SPEAKER_04]: And I would just totally ignore that behavior.
46:45
[SPEAKER_04]: And I found, yeah, I found that there's just no point
46:50
[SPEAKER_04]: In panicking, you have to sort of breathe and take it back down to basics, you know, no one's injured, you know, no one's dying.
46:59
[SPEAKER_04]: We're all okay, you know, just keep moving forward.
47:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Hmm, some lifeless ones right there.
47:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, my flesh is so good.
47:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Forward, grin and bear it and just don't panic.
47:14
[SPEAKER_02]: Don't panic, I'm sure that kept a lot of things from going wrong later on.
47:20
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, speaking of this, speaking of, you know, safety and being spooked and
47:24
[SPEAKER_02]: all that.
47:25
[SPEAKER_02]: How is it traveling, you know, as the only human of the pack, but also in, you know, coupling with that, what has the interactions been with other humans and locals?
47:39
[SPEAKER_02]: How have those gone?
47:42
[SPEAKER_04]: Actually, amazing.
47:43
[SPEAKER_04]: So, so amazing.
47:45
[SPEAKER_04]: I've met just the absolute best people out there.
47:49
[UNKNOWN]: I
47:50
[SPEAKER_04]: I haven't had a single station, say, no, I can't walk across their land.
47:56
[SPEAKER_04]: Everyone has said, yes, straight away, everyone's, you know, because I contacted all of these all of these farms before I left and asked permission to walk across their land and to ask them where it was about the water points were and so on and all of them have been above and beyond helpful, you know, they were all like you can come and stay if you need a shower or, you know, if you want to put
48:20
[SPEAKER_04]: So, yes, I had some amazing interactions with station owners and Aboriginal communities out in the desert, I had a lovely community oak valley community that they actually there was a stretch that I just would not have been able to make it without someone dropping water to me.
48:40
[SPEAKER_04]: It was something like over set, you know, close to 700 kilometers without any water.
48:48
[SPEAKER_04]: And I just thought it was too much to push my camels to do.
48:51
[SPEAKER_04]: And so they had agreed to bring the water out to me.
48:54
[SPEAKER_04]: And their community wasn't even anywhere nearby.
48:56
[SPEAKER_04]: Like it was two hour, two hour drive for them to get to me.
49:00
[SPEAKER_04]: So a four hour round trip on rough roads, towing a trailer with 1,000 liters of water.
49:07
[SPEAKER_04]: So they were incredible and they ended up doing not just one water drop, they ended up doing four water drops for me.
49:13
[SPEAKER_04]: And it was just lovely too.
49:15
[SPEAKER_04]: It was lovely to be surrounded by these communities out and the desert as well.
49:20
[SPEAKER_04]: They have a really strong sense of culture.
49:23
[SPEAKER_04]: They inlish is not their first language.
49:26
[SPEAKER_04]: So they're all speaking in,
49:28
[SPEAKER_04]: will pigeon to her is what they speak out there.
49:30
[SPEAKER_04]: And so it's sort of almost strange because it's like you feel like you're surrounded in a different country and then you realize that actually this is the language of this land and they have yeah very a very strong connection to that land and yeah so it had a beautiful experience with them the ladies were all super lovely that they they really
49:54
[SPEAKER_04]: So it's a group called their unannungaloo people and they really really take it personally if they feel like when you're walking across their lands they're sort of because they're the custodians of that land.
50:08
[SPEAKER_04]: Your safety is their responsibility.
50:10
[SPEAKER_04]: So they really really take it personally if if something was to happen to you.
50:14
[SPEAKER_04]: So they said to me, they said, please just call us on the sat phone.
50:18
[SPEAKER_04]: If there's anything, if there's anything that you feel worried about
50:23
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, please safety first.
50:24
[SPEAKER_04]: We don't want anything to happen to you out there.
50:27
[SPEAKER_04]: So so they were awesome.
50:29
[SPEAKER_04]: And the ladies actually brought me a whole, they set up some tarts.
50:34
[SPEAKER_04]: So I could have a shower out in the middle of the desert.
50:36
[SPEAKER_04]: And they brought up shampoos and conditioners and the whole little gift packed for me because I had been sort of three months on the road basically at that point without a shower.
50:47
[SPEAKER_04]: So that was awesome.
50:50
[SPEAKER_04]: And then actually, after the camels have taken off on me, I met someone who was so very helpful for me before I hit the desert.
51:01
[SPEAKER_04]: I ended up staying at a station and there was a guy care taking a station and he was ex-military.
51:07
[SPEAKER_04]: He was actually an ex-sniper and he helped me because I knew I was heading into the desert and because, like I said, there's a lot of wild camels out there.
51:17
[SPEAKER_04]: I actually had to carry guns.
51:18
[SPEAKER_04]: on my trip because it can be a real problem with feral bull camels are in season and they will come in and they will either try and late or fight with your camels and that can be a big big problem because my camels are all loaded up with gear and they're restrained, you know, they've got ropes on and these balls can be really, really aggressive.
51:42
[SPEAKER_04]: Big, big teeth on them.
51:44
[SPEAKER_04]: They can do a lot of damage
51:47
[SPEAKER_04]: So yes, I had to carry rifles on me to shoot them if I had to and I felt the full going into this desert stretch.
51:56
[SPEAKER_04]: I felt totally unprepared, you know.
51:59
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't think I even had the rightful sighted properly, I didn't really know what I was doing.
52:04
[SPEAKER_04]: And so I stopped at this station and this guy basically just taught me everything from the ground up.
52:09
[SPEAKER_04]: He helped me sight the rightfuls.
52:12
[SPEAKER_04]: He took me out shooting, taught me about breathing, taught me about, you know, where to shoot the camel and how to deal with it, and how to check if they were dead.
52:20
[SPEAKER_04]: And then not only that, he went through all of my pack here, because, you know, people are so, you know, they've had to march with 40k packs on their backs.
52:29
[SPEAKER_04]: They know all about placement of gear and how to make things easily accessible, how to balance loads and that kind of stuff.
52:37
[SPEAKER_04]: So he basically did all of that with my camels and rearranged all the equipment on them.
52:42
[SPEAKER_04]: So after staying with him, I just went into the desert feeling so much more prepared.
52:47
[SPEAKER_02]: So it seems like the common theme we hear on this show is that that most people are good.
52:55
[SPEAKER_02]: It has also been true for your adventure.
52:58
[SPEAKER_04]: Absolutely, yeah.
52:59
[SPEAKER_04]: There's seriously not been a single time that I felt unsafe with, you know, any humidity out there.
53:09
[SPEAKER_04]: There's been no one that's been weird, creepy, or anything.
53:12
[SPEAKER_04]: Everyone has just been above and beyond helpful.
53:17
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, you think you're not going to see anyone in weeks and then all of a sudden it's crazy, you know, and these most remote areas, someone sort
53:27
[SPEAKER_04]: you know, something and then all of a sudden you've got you know a bunch of people offering you a beer around the camp fire.
53:32
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like, oh, it wasn't expecting, wasn't expecting this, but it's nice.
53:37
[SPEAKER_04]: I love those kinds of interactions.
53:38
[SPEAKER_04]: It's really nice to have that.
53:42
[SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, gosh, everyone has been so so helpful to me.
53:46
[SPEAKER_02]: That's wonderful.
53:47
[SPEAKER_02]: That's so cool.
53:48
[SPEAKER_02]: So tell us a little bit about the second half of the trip.
53:52
[SPEAKER_02]: You're about halfway.
53:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Are you coming from Cooper Petty right now?
53:57
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, I will, uh, I will head back to Cooper PD.
54:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, I thought I was seeing that wrong.
54:04
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, Cooper PD, um, it's a, it's a, it's a funny old-place Cooper PD.
54:09
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like a moon scape there.
54:12
[SPEAKER_04]: Very, very bizarre.
54:13
[SPEAKER_04]: Open mining.
54:14
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, but yeah, anyway, so I, my camels are, they're on a summer break at the moment.
54:18
[SPEAKER_04]: So they're, they're stuffing their little faces right now trying to get them nice and fat for the next season.
54:25
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so I'll head back and I'll pick them up, which might might and tell sort of maybe one to two weeks of looking for them because they're on a huge area.
54:37
[SPEAKER_04]: There are about 900 square kilometers of area to Rome.
54:40
[SPEAKER_04]: So it's almost like I've let them go back into the world.
54:44
[SPEAKER_04]: So I'm not sure how happy they're going to be when I, when I have to to wrangle them back in and make them do more work.
54:51
[SPEAKER_04]: But yes, I'll pick them up probably around March and then I will drive them back up to Cooper PD and then we'll start from the same place that we finished off and we'll walk from Cooper PD to Bayern Bay on the East Coast of Australia.
55:09
[SPEAKER_02]: So how long are you thinking that's going to take you and what kind of differences are you looking forward to with this second half of the trip?
55:17
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, um, I think it's probably going to take me maybe five, six months, um, that's just total estimate.
55:24
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, it took me six and a bit months doing this first half.
55:29
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, I think probably because we've gotten the group a bit a little bit more will, you know, probably be able to do some more caves on this stretch.
55:37
[SPEAKER_04]: So, so yeah, probably five, six months.
55:41
[SPEAKER_04]: Um,
55:48
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, having said that actually the first half of it is going to be quite remote leaving Cooper PD and basically because the PD across most of that will be quite remote, but Once I hit these cos then it then it becomes a lot more populated and in some ways that's really the hard part is starting to take the camels into areas that are much more populated.
56:08
[SPEAKER_04]: I think by that point in time will probably will have to take some I don't think we can get away with the tracks the whole way.
56:15
[SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, and then it becomes mountainous too, there's what we have, what's called the great dividing range, which runs all down the east coast of Australia.
56:22
[SPEAKER_04]: So I've got to get them across that, which I really need to go and have a bit of a wrecky of that area and try and find a way to get them, get them through that.
56:34
[SPEAKER_04]: And then find a way to get them on to, yeah, a very popular holiday destination beach.
56:40
[SPEAKER_04]: So yeah, so it requires a bit more logistics.
56:43
[SPEAKER_04]: I think this half of the trip, and all I already sort of, I don't know, I'm wishing that it was like the first half in the sense that, you know, although it's tough traveling through deserts and very remote.
56:56
[SPEAKER_04]: In some ways with camels, it's almost easier.
56:59
[SPEAKER_04]: And I love that isolation, I love that remoteness.
57:04
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it will be interesting, it'll be very, very different this second half.
57:10
[SPEAKER_02]: so interesting.
57:11
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm so excited for you.
57:12
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, we're going to be, you know, posting this before you get started, but it's something that folks are going to be able to follow along for five or six months because you do, you do post about it.
57:22
[SPEAKER_02]: You do share about it.
57:23
[SPEAKER_02]: And you post an incredible picture.
57:25
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's going to be something we're going to have to talk to you about how the second half went when you did it.
57:32
[SPEAKER_02]: And was it, was it what you expected?
57:37
[SPEAKER_02]: The reality of being out there is usually just so, so different, you know.
57:42
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah, no, that would be great to chat to you about the second half, yeah.
57:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, great.
57:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, where can we, uh, where can we point folks to, uh, to follow you?
57:50
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to plug everything all your social, your website, but uh, you can go ahead and Oh, okay.
57:56
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, probably what I'm, I'm most active, I guess, on Instagram, when I'm not in the remote areas of the desert.
58:03
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm
58:04
[SPEAKER_04]: Now at the moment, I'm currently posting some photos from really a couple of months back that obviously I wasn't able to post because there's no reception out there, so my Instagram is Sophie Materson, one word, Materson is M-A-T-T-E-R-S-O-N.
58:23
[SPEAKER_04]: So Sophie Materson Instagram, I'm on Facebook
58:29
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, and I do every now and then I'm trying to do a bit more of it, do a blog on my website, which is www.sofymeterson.com Uh, yeah, and that's me.
58:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, so if it's, appreciate you being on the Adventure Sports podcast and what an incredible adventure.
58:48
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm, I'm, I'm inspired to think outside the box about my next adventure.
58:52
[SPEAKER_02]: What, what kind of got two dogs?
58:55
[SPEAKER_02]: They're pretty much useless.
58:56
[SPEAKER_02]: I got to find another ambulance, something to take.
58:58
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you, carries some pack bags, right?
59:00
[SPEAKER_02]: No, they're not, they're not gonna be there.
59:03
[SPEAKER_02]: They're only good.
59:04
[SPEAKER_02]: The only thing they're good for is to love.
59:06
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's about all we can do with them.
59:09
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it does make it interesting traveling with animals.
59:11
[SPEAKER_04]: That's for sure.
59:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, so if you have a great day and I'll let you know when this comes out and thanks again for being on.
59:20
[SPEAKER_04]: Thanks, Mason.
59:20
[SPEAKER_04]: Thanks for having me.
59:21
[SPEAKER_04]: You have a great day too.
59:22
[SPEAKER_02]: All right.
59:23
[SPEAKER_04]: See you.
59:25
[SPEAKER_04]: Bye.
59:28
[SPEAKER_02]: First of all, thank you so much for listening and means the world to us that you choose to listen to this show.
59:33
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59:41
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59:48
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59:57
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