Aussie English
Aussie English
AE 1414 - The Goss: Farm + Camping Culture in Australia
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G'day you mob, Pete here, and this is another episode of Ozzy English, the number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English. So today I have a Ghost episode for you where I sit down with my old man, my father, Ian Smithson, and we talk about the week's news, whether locally down under here in Australia or non-locally, overseas in other parts of the world. Okay, and we sometimes also talk about whatever comes to mind, right? If we can think of something interesting to share with you guys related to us or Australia, we also talk about that in The Ghost. So these episodes are specifically designed to try and give you content about many different topics where we're obviously speaking in English and there are multiple people having a natural and spontaneous conversation in English. So it is particularly good to improve your listening skills. In order to complement that though, I really recommend that you join the podcast membership or the Academy membership at oussieenglish.com.au where you will get access to the full transcripts of these episodes, the PDFs, the downloads, and you can also use the online PDF reader to read and listen at the same time. Okay, so if you really, really want to improve your listening skills fast, get the transcript, listen and read at the same time, keep practicing, and that is the quickest way to level up your English. Anyway, I've been rabbiting on a bit, I've been talking a bit. Let's just get into this episode, guys. Smack the bird, and let's get into it.
SPEAKER_00How's it going, Dad? Good, Pete. How are you? Hang on. I didn't I we already opened the can. What are we thinking? It was open. We've been working on some other projects. So this conversation's likely to be either boring or sensible. Yeah, that's it. Just caffeinated.
SPEAKER_01Maybe it'll be um I'll have to slow it down later by 0.75 speed.
SPEAKER_00Just get your recording down to 0.8 and it'll be fine.
SPEAKER_01So we went away for my birthday on the weekend to my grandparents' grandparents' um farm in Bendigo, which we've talked about on the podcast multiple times. But I thought it might be a good excuse to, I guess, talk about what we did there as just, you know, fun kind of family information. And then um maybe we can talk more broadly about camping culture or vacation.
SPEAKER_00Vacation. It's not a word. Vacation. You've got to you've got to say that word in an American accent. Apologies to all my American friends and relatives. There's so many listening. There's so many listening to the podcast. All learning how to speak English in Australia.
SPEAKER_01Maybe maybe we should make it mandatory for it.
SPEAKER_00Mandatory, yeah. All Ian's friends and relatives listen until we make a fool of himself.
SPEAKER_01The farm is near Bendigo. Takes about what two and a half hours to get to.
SPEAKER_00Two and a half hours to get to from here, yeah.
SPEAKER_01It's kind of a nice drive. I enjoy it. Going through, what do we go through? Backersmarsh. That's one way.
SPEAKER_00Backersmarsh, Gisbon, Kinton. Yep. Well you sort of skirt around Kinton. You can choose to. Once they build the freeway, uh the old Call to Highway is now a freeway. So um 110Ks an hour, baby. Yeah, bang. So it just it and it goes around all of the small towns. So uh you can get off at Kinton but not have to go through Kinton, which is a shame because you know some of those towns I think have have lost a bit of their tourist stuff. I didn't thought about driving through it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but you have to go out of your way if you're on the colder highway.
SPEAKER_00You have to cut into that. We get to the highway out of Gisbon, yeah. Um, but Gisbon's not on that freeway anymore. The old highway goes straight through the main street of Gisbon, the main street of Woody and the Main Street of Kinton. Yeah, and um no longer uh is that the case. But at the same time, they don't have to put up with all the shitty truck traffic at one o'clock in the morning. Yeah, that's trade-off.
SPEAKER_01So it's a trade trade-off. Yeah, but I I enjoy the drive. The freeway's so smooth. It's just like there's not as much tire noise when you're driving along. I know, I know. And you drive for like what 60 K's or so on it? I can't remember what it is. About that. It's about an hour or so. Um, anyway, so we get to the farm, we we turn off one of these highways onto a dirt road and drive for a few minutes and then get to the farm, and then we have to open the gate. That was always such a big part of it. It was all the case.
SPEAKER_00Who's gonna be the gate boy and the gate girl? You and your sister fighting over who could open the gate. Gate bitch. And then and then once you got to be teenage, it was fighting over who was not gonna have to get out to open the gate.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's funny with my kids at the moment trying to encourage them to get involved, and Noah's kind of like, I'll do it, I'll do it, I'll do it. But he still needs someone else to get out to help him, obviously.
SPEAKER_00Because it's actually a six year physically challenging thing to do because A, it's a big farm gate, but B, it's got the chain around it and the latches. Yeah, when you when you know how to do it, you don't even think about it. But as a six-year-old child, you know, it's not an intuitively obvious. How would you describe it?
SPEAKER_01It's got this kind of like bit of metal hook that pokes up with like a bulbous end that's in a weird sort of half and a chain cone shape with a little latch thing on the end of it that's with that same shape so that it slips over, but you have to orient it correctly, right? Yeah, exactly. So and so it's a bit of a it's a bit finicky. Yes. So anyway, yeah, we open the gate, we drive in. I normally get one of the kids to steer. I got Joey to, although she didn't, she was just sort of looking around. Yeah, she's just not doing anything. Eyes on the road, dude. I know, she's looking at me, she's like, this is fun. And then we we come in. It's always funny. I remember as a kid always coming in at it was always night time, it seemed like we were.
SPEAKER_00Particularly when you were little, because we were coming from Callista on the other side of Melbourne, so yeah, it was about three and a half hours to get there.
SPEAKER_01So three hours. It's funny thing because I think I would fall asleep in the car and then wake up once we had arrived at the gate.
SPEAKER_00Why have we stopped? Well that used to be the same when with our uh the the first dog, well the not the first dog what your mum and I had, but the first dog you had um when because we used to take him up there all the time.
SPEAKER_01The first dog you had when I was alive.
SPEAKER_00Yes, and he would he would sleep the entire way there, and as soon as we turned onto the dirt road, he was like he's up. Like, wow We're there, we're there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, it's good. So anyway, and then we drive down this. Oh, I guess we go up and down because the farm is set on this location that has a lot of these gullies, right? A lot of these sort of rolling hills with steep gullies, and so the road kind of goes up and down over these things, and then we pull into um where the cabin is that is in this kind of small grove, right? Halfway down one of the hills. Yes. So it's got like a bunch of trees around it, sort of sheltering it from the wind, and then you have this view looking down the sort of mountain. Towards Mount Macedon. Yeah, exactly. So it's a beautiful view with all the sort of big windows in the house on that side of it, right? Mm-hmm. So do you want to describe the cabin and and when and how it was made?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, it's an it's a um an old kit log cabin. Um you know, treated pine logs um that were pretty common about 50 years ago of kit homes and particularly holiday homes that people were putting out. So you build a concrete slab and then you design the how you want the the layout in terms of where you want the windows and the doors. And it's all built in panels that are I don't know, probably they were this is back before the metric system was being used in Australia. So yeah, it would have been the seventies. Um so it's it's sort of built in I don't know probably four foot panels, four to six foot panels. So you've got a block of logs and then you've got a window block and then you put a door block in and so on. So um and you you just design it that way, and they they when it was built they come and stick it up and then it's just a shell that there's no internal walls or anything in it. Um and your grandparents built all the internals. They they uh lined the ceiling and um and built the the internal walls and things, and then the kitchen evolved. Originally it was uh it was basically uh a couple of old tables uh with a uh kitchen sink. Um no, not built into a bench, but just suspended between two tables and and the plug hole just dropped into a bucket and you'd have to go and empty that out and stuff. So but eventually all that got plumbed in. Um and it's got a great big um rock open fireplace, which is a sort of centre of the living area, and you know, everybody wants to put a fire on as soon as you get there, except you don't do that for three or four months of the year because it's 35 degrees outside.
SPEAKER_01Well, that's yeah, it doesn't probably doesn't get as much use during summer as a result of that, right? Because it's kind of part of the appeal. If you can't put the fire on at the farm, you can't.
SPEAKER_00Why would you go to the farm if you can't sit and poke the flames in the fire? Yeah, and of course, every child is a pyromaniac, so uh that's everybody wants to sit on the um on the on the fireplace and uh you know poke the fire and throw bit throw things into the fire.
SPEAKER_01It's so funny seeing my kids going through that process at the moment of being like hyper-fixated on wanting to interact with the fire one way or another. Sit near it, start it, throw things in there like paper, cardboard, get a stick, but burn the end of the stick and poke the fire and watch the flames and everything. And my sister and I did exactly the same. Exactly the same.
SPEAKER_00And your sister's children do exactly the same.
SPEAKER_01It's such a deep evolutionary thing, I think. Playing with fire. Yeah, for humans in particular. I feel like no matter where you are, if there's a fire, there is something hypnotic captivating.
SPEAKER_00If you can't start a fire and control a fire, you're dead. You're dead. So it's built into our evolution that you know you just that you have to be able to manage fire.
SPEAKER_01It's it's funny. I've been reading about William Buckley recently, right? We're we're thinking Where did he go on holidays? Yeah, exactly. So he was this escaped convict in the early 1800s, 1803, I think. He escaped from Sullivan's Bay, was it? Yeah, Sullivan's Bay and what became Sorrento. Yeah, exactly. And he ended up living there for 35 years with the indigenous people, you know, no Westerners, no white people, just by himself or with them. And there was one scene in the book that I was I was reading his account, right? The stories of uh the story of uh William Buckley. And there's one part of it where he has to cross a river and he's got a fire stick, and they had these fire sticks that obviously they they always carried a stick that was smoldering so that they could more easily start another fire. It's a pain in the ass to start a fire from scratch.
SPEAKER_00He has to cross this river and we don't have sorry, we don't have flint in Australia. Yeah um we don't so we don't have a really hard, sharp rock that you can just bang against another rock and create a spark. Yeah. So they had to literally rub sticks together and put little bits of bark and stuff on it to create a fire, which is hard work and long work.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but there's this one scene where he I guess he'd been travelling for a few months and had these sticks with him, and then he had to cross a river and he lost them, and he was like, fuck. In fact, I don't know. That's not an exact quote. It is an exact quote. But he was it would have been something like he he very much lamented the loss of his five. You can just imagine yes, you can just imagine his his indigenous friends going, Dumb white fella.
SPEAKER_00Go through the shellowing.
SPEAKER_01So it's really I don't know, it was funny reading that and being like, Oh, poor dude. Now he's and he was like, and I had to r eat raw shellfish for a few days because it was raining or whatever. But um yeah, so anyway, we we go up there and every what few months and and it's kind of cool because it's just off the grid. There's no electricity.
SPEAKER_00There's no electricity, so it's everything's everything that is electrical up there is battery powered, um, and there's gas for the hot water system, and the fridge is gas operated, um and and there's water, obviously. Um so um yeah, it is off-grid, so there's no electricity, so no television, there's internet, but it's based on whatever phone you can get. The phone coverage up there is pretty poor. Um there's an amplifier in the house um to amplify the phone signal, but if you've got a shitty phone signal in the first place, then you it you've got full five bars. Yeah, you've got five bars between you and the amplifier on the wall, but the wall the amplifier's got one bar from there on. Yeah, exactly. You don't you're not streaming video up there, but it's funny though.
SPEAKER_01When I was younger, I was always like, God, I wish we had more technology up here, wish we had electricity and TV. And the older I get, the more I'm like, I'm I'm so glad we don't. And you can just tap out and not think about those things. And it's funny noticing with my kids how little they require or request technology when we're up there. They're not there constantly like, I want to go home and watch TV, I want to play Minecraft, Dad. Can I look at your phone? They don't really do that that much.
SPEAKER_00They may sometimes until it gets dark. Yeah. And then they're, oh, now there's nothing else to do. You've stopped me poking the fire. You need stimulation. Yeah, go to bed. Can we watch videos on your phone?
SPEAKER_01Exactly. But yeah, it is it is very interesting, isn't it, how much they're not. You take the kid out of the kind of modern world a little bit, and they're they tend to actually do pretty well without being much at least my two, you know, N of two, yeah. Without being a massive pain in the butt, constantly whinging about it. Yeah, they're not teenagers yet. Yeah, and so what what do we do? We get up there, we sort of get ready, have something to eat, sleep, wake up the next day, and then it's sort of like let's go check out the farm, just see what's going on.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, as Noah would say, can we go and throw rocks in the pond? Well, the small dam that you can see from the house. So he sits in. Can we go and throw rocks in the pond? So we go and throw rocks in the pond.
SPEAKER_01Like the fire thing. I wonder if that's a massive human.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I can't see the evolutionary value from it other than practicing throwing rocks. Which again you can throw it the furthest, yeah. Yeah, if and the most accurate. If you can throw a thing a long way and hit something, you're more likely to hit an animal and be able to uh to survive by eating.
SPEAKER_01But that was again something I did when I was younger. We would go for walks and it'd be like, let's chuck rocks into the pond. Or the dam. There's a big, big dam.
SPEAKER_00But Noah calls it the pond.
SPEAKER_01That's it. And I guess I spend a lot of my time still lifting up rocks looking for critters. Yeah. Animals.
SPEAKER_00Snakes and lizards and frogs and centipedes and insects.
SPEAKER_01It's real life Pokemon, Dad. It's like oh wild Pokemon has appeared. Every time you lift up the rock, you don't know what it's gonna be. Well, normally it's frogs, spiders, scorpions, and lizards. And I guess I'm really happy when I find a really cool um lizard or or frog. Although the scorpions are pretty cool too. They have these big blue scorpions up there, right? Yeah, yeah. I've I've been tempted a few times to be like, I wonder if I could take these hermes.
SPEAKER_00You know they're bioluminescent, they glow in the dark.
SPEAKER_01Scorpions do, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you could use a black light, right? Yeah. UV light. And I think people still don't really know why. I can't remember. After there's probably an update, but I remember when I was going through biology.
SPEAKER_00If you're a nocturnal, you'd think there would be an advantage to not being able to be seen. We can do we can do this right now with the power of technology.
SPEAKER_01Power of technology. Why are scorpions? And then oh, it's in there already. Bioluminescent. Okay. They glow a bright blue-green under ultraviolet light because of fluorescent compounds beta carboline in their tough outer skeletons. The answer the question was why, not what? Prey attraction and confusion. The glow might lure insects or confuse prey in low light environments. UV protection, it may also act as a natural slash protective sunscreen against UV radiation, because I guess you're reflecting it, right?
SPEAKER_00That's a good idea.
SPEAKER_01And the entire body acts as a light detector, helping nocturnal scorpions find shelter by sensing the shade of a hiding spot, which reduces the glow.
SPEAKER_00Interesting. I think some of those are just high in the skies, but I guess it's hard to know, right? It's very hard to tell. It's a little PhD project generating scheme, that one.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I wonder how you would set those experiments up. That'd be fun.
SPEAKER_00Anyway, so going to the farm on holidays, it's one of those things where yeah, I'm not a destination holiday goer, naturally.
SPEAKER_01What does that mean, Dad?
SPEAKER_00Um, as in I'm not gonna go, we'll go to this place for two weeks and sit in a hotel and then maybe you know go to the beach or go shopping or do whatever you do when you're there. I either a road trip person or I'm a wilderness is a bit extreme, but it's a wild camp sort of thing. You know, and yeah, I'll go to campgrounds. I'm not backpacking anymore at my age, but I used to.
SPEAKER_01Um what's the appeal there though? Why? Because I know there's those two types of people. There's the ones who like going to a specific location, setting up a high base and exploring, versus you don't like that. What do you think the pros and the cons are?
SPEAKER_00Well, there's two two aspects for me. I'm I'm a road trip person. I like going. If I'm gonna go away for two weeks, it'll be right. How many places can I see in two weeks? Yeah. Not how do I get to this place as quickly as possible, stay there for two weeks and get home as quickly as possible. Uh, because I like the you know, for me it's about the journey, not the destination.
SPEAKER_01But is it that stimulation seeing all the different places? It's not just one location.
SPEAKER_00But I'm also an off the road sort of person. I've you know, we've had four-wheel drives all of your life, most of it. Um, and and so if I've got to go from A to B and there's a six-lane highway, um, I'll get off it as quickly as I can. I'd much rather go through the little country towns and you know, see the farms and the um and the forest and whatever that you you're gonna miss.
SPEAKER_01Ding ding ding ding ding ding ding um off the beaten track.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, big and you know, I'm a also I'm a photographer, I'm a landscape and wildlife photographer, so I'm I'm looking for things all the time. Um, we're in another town. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Oh, we're in another town. It looks like the previous town. Exactly.
SPEAKER_00Gotcha. Uh where's the bakery and the pub? That's all you need to know. So they're pretty good. I kind of that's part of the fun. Going to those small country towns and finding those. Yeah, and I'm one of those people that you know, you walk into the bakery and you know you go, show us your snop block. Exactly. Where's your vanilla? I'll I'll have a 10-minute conversation with the person serving. Hey, do you live here? You know, what's what is there to see? Yeah, hey Dale. Hey Dal, how you going? Yeah, they've never seen you before. Hey Shazza, how's it going, Shazer? So I I enjoy that sort of stuff. But um, but then there are plenty of people who go, I don't want to sit in a car. You know, I'd rather fly to the Gold Coast uh in Queensland and lie on the beach or go shopping in the high-end shopping or the markets or whatever. And I look at that and go, I can do that at home. I live on a beach. Yeah, but dad, it's a different beach, and it's slightly warmer.
SPEAKER_01Well, yeah, there is that. The water's warmer.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we don't tend to be swimming in our beaches in winter, but no, not unless you're crazy. No polar bear club, right? And like your mum and I are about to go on a um on a holiday to Scotland, and people say, Where are you going? I said, everywhere. Yeah, who cares? Just to Scotland. Everywhere, yeah. We're going everywhere. We're getting a car in London and we're driving to Shetland. Yeah. As far as you can possibly. He'd be like, there it is, done. Pony, yeah, move. We can go. We can go now. Yeah. Um so yeah, again, road trip holidays.
SPEAKER_01Um I guess I guess I should explain the the joke there is that pretty much every English speaker will only know of Shetland because of Shetland ponies, which are those more the TV show, the crime show now that's been on for the last eight years or so.
SPEAKER_00But yeah, I wouldn't I have no idea about that, but I know the ponies. And and wool knitting. They've got sheep. Yes.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I don't know. I guess that's yeah, what I wanted to kind of talk about. So you prefer that. Do you think most Aussies are like that? Do you think they prefer the kind of four-wheel drive, go somewhere, explore, or do the I don't know.
SPEAKER_00And some people like you know, the combination of the two. You know, there's you know there's plenty of oh friends and relatives and things who who will go camping, but they'll go to the same place with the same people every summer. Yeah, they've got yeah, we've booked this site for the next 20 years, and we're gonna get be here every January, for the you know, the second week to the fourth week of January. Yeah, yeah, that's my uncle and auntie. And that's what we do, and we go with the same people and we go fishing on their boat every time, and we do because that's much more about the relationships and everything than the novelty of a new location or whatever. The irony is that a lot of those people live near each other and they go camping with each other. We'll we'll come and we'll, you know, we've got friends in Queensland. Let's meet somewhere on the coast of New South Wales every year and uh no, they go from Melbourne to your camping spot. Yeah, and and some people just like the the experience of camping, which I do too. That you know, even if it's pouring with rain or whatever, you know, sitting in a tent or a van or whatever and living with the rain is fine. But but then when you instead of sitting around in a hotel bar, you can be sitting around a campfire and having a beer and a chat and stuff. It's just a different experience because for me a hotel bar is like you know eating and drinking at home. It's you know, it's you don't need to and it's the same anywhere. Yeah, yeah. That's yeah, you can find a good bar bar or bad bar anywhere.
SPEAKER_01But it is interesting how much uh that like four-wheel drive camping culture in Australia, especially among younger guys, it for me growing up it was just a normal thing. You just like isn't that what all young people do? Yeah. And then once I started, I think I probably realized more when I started doing Aussie English.
SPEAKER_00And you went to a certain school.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, no, it was more about Aussie English and meeting foreigners and then asking them, Oh, like, you know, in China, where do you go camping? And they're like, No one does that. Like, what do you mean? I'm like, don't you have four-wheel drive? I mean, I'm sure they do. There's probably people who do do that, but by and large, as a cultural thing that is seen and done everywhere by a lot of people. I don't believe that from what I've understood from my students who are Chinese, they're like, No, you don't do that. No. You go on holidays, but you don't just have a four wheel drive car that you've kitted out and just drive from Beijing into the middle of nowhere. Sleep in a tent. Yeah, exactly. Then celebrate and come home. Yeah, like that is that is very weird Western like behaviour. But the funniest thing, I've got some Chinese students who um that I was teaching and they were like avid campers. And I was I was like, Did you guys do this back home? And that was when they told me, like, fuck no. We came to Australia, so we can do it. We came to Australia and we fucking love it.
SPEAKER_00Like and I'm like, the other the other uh thing now you cannot go out you know off-roading or camping somewhere without running into hundreds of Indians.
SPEAKER_01In Australia. In Australia, yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00The the the sort of Indian holiday culture has become camping. So they've adopted it as well. They've adopted it. It's fantastic. And and like the typical Indians, when they do something, they do it. Yeah, they turn up and they turn they turn the four cars turn up, and and it's never it's never the sort of big caravans and everything. Four little you know, family sedans turn up, and then this tent palace appears. The Taj Mahal of tents. Where do they put all that? They have a great time and they come and have a chat with them. It is funny, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, how much so I wonder if it's a disproportionate number of migrants or um foreign people having holidays in Australia who end up uh taking on the camping culture and doing it than the same number of Australian, quote unquote Australians doing it, right? Because I think we take it for granted.
SPEAKER_00We've already had we've we've already well in your case, we we didn't camp when I was a child. My parents looked at me and you, what?
SPEAKER_01It's funny. So you went ballistic with it, and now I don't really camp because we went ballistic as a child.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. So um, but I think you might be right because if you've always had it as an option, yeah, then you've made the active choice to do it or not do it. Yeah, whereas if you've never had it as an option and suddenly it's available, yeah. Shit, let's give this a try. Well and it's something that's completely different from your normal experience.
SPEAKER_01I felt like when I was a teenager living at home with you in Ocean Grove, you and Mum living at the home the family home, the beach was right that you could see it, you could hear it. Yes. And I remember there were times where I hadn't set foot on that beach for over a year. Yeah. Because I would just be like, well, what's there? Yeah, I can go anytime.
SPEAKER_00No, we love living by the beach.
SPEAKER_01But then I would go away to somewhere like Queensland when I was doing turtle research, and you would be on living literally on the beach and there every single night, and you're like, fuck, I got one of these at home, I should go to it more often. And then you would get home and all of a sudden you're like, Oh yeah, I should probably go to the beach. And then you're I got something else to do. Then it descends into winter and you're like, Oh fuck this. Like, why would I come down here when it's like 10 degrees?
SPEAKER_00Exactly. Well, you know, as my um Canadian and American friends who live in the north in the United States would say, You're saying 10 degrees and calling it winter. Yeah, the old gas that one of our friends did when it said, if the water is still liquid, it's not cold.
SPEAKER_01But when we went to Canada as a kid, I still starkly have this image in my mind of my cousins, Megan and Iona, at the beach, and we were, I think we had wetsuits because it was Vancouver.
SPEAKER_00But this is the middle of summer, yeah, and the but the water was four degrees.
SPEAKER_01Four degrees. Yeah, I remember it. Four degrees. And the girls were in bikinis, and I was just like, you fucking psychos. Like, what are you doing? You're gonna get hypothermia. What the hell? And we went in with wetsuits, and I was like, fuck this. Like, why would you do this to yourself? Like, this is awful. This is not pleasant at all. Why would you there's no waves, it's just fucking cold. It's like being in the fridge in a liquid. Exactly. So I pretty quick got out, and they were like swimming to a pontoon and like sunbathing on it. I was just like, you psychopaths. But that's their experience. Yes. Well, and I don't pre appreciate the rest of the year when it's probably frozen over and they can't. This is as good as it gets. So yeah, I'll never forget that. And what was the other one? Lake Winnipeg, right? We went there in the middle of Canada, and there's this huge, vast lake that like it goes to the horizon. You can't even see over it, right? Yeah, oh yeah, it's and the water doesn't get very deep, it's like a meter deep. Yeah. Uh you know, at its deepest point or something, or at least for like kilometers. And I think the people we were there with said, Oh, you can go fishing here, but you've got to walk for a kilometer or two to get to where you can cast out. And I'm like, again, what's wrong with you people? Why would you do that? Anyway, yeah, so I know I the more we go to the farm and I enjoy those sorts of environments, I'm like, maybe I'll save up and buy a four-wheel drive again and try and get into it, as we used to do as kids.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but sometimes you don't even need the four-wheel drive necessarily. You just go to places where you can go, you know, camping at a campground that you've got, you know, two normal two-wheel drive access to. Yeah. Um yes, you're not going to get out into the wilderness, but um you know, there is plenty of really good places to go camping around here, around Lord Brown, Victoria.
SPEAKER_01All right, so you top three in Victoria. If you have to give recommendations for people listening to Camping or holidays. Well, you could camping.
SPEAKER_00Um anywhere along the Great Ocean Road. Yeah. And there are towns, like Anglesey Lawn, Apollo Bay. And they all have campgrounds where you have to pitch a tent. Yeah, yeah, it'll cost you, you know, thirty bucks a night or whatever to have your tent or your camper or whatever there. Um or you can go and get a cabin at them at these places, and you know, if you don't have camping gear, you can go and have the cabin experience, which is far cheaper than staying in a you know hotel.
SPEAKER_01So 100, 200 bucks a night, right? For like a proper cabin or a bit more?
SPEAKER_00Oh, less about a hundred bucks a night. Yeah, not too bad, right? Depending on the size you want. If you want six people in there, it's fine. If you want sixteen people, you'll need a few of them. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um all right, so Great Ocean Road. Wilson's Promontory. I knew that was gonna be. Fuck, it's hard to book a place there within four months. On school holidays. Oh my god.
SPEAKER_00You can you can just go down, you can just drive in on days that are not school holidays, but yeah, school holidays you book a year in advance.
SPEAKER_01It's crazy, yeah, how busy it is. Like even on around summer. Good luck. You can't, yeah. Summer and Easter. Book now.
SPEAKER_00They are well, you you they only open, yeah. They open open a year in advance, yeah, and they're booked out within weeks. Within no a day.
SPEAKER_02I know.
SPEAKER_01I was looking trying to book somewhere, and it was all it was weird. It was like really hard to try and get two days in a row. It was like you could have one night here in this camp spot on this location, or one night there, something like that.
SPEAKER_00This is a campground that'll fit a thousand people. This is not like it's got ten campsites in it.
SPEAKER_01And part of me wants to go when there's not many people there. That's the hard part, but you have to go the shit times of year, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00It's such an oxymoron or like a well it's but once you've got kids at school, that's what it turns out to be that you you only go holidays when everybody else is on holidays. But um but yeah, so Wilson's Prometheary, Tidal River Campground at Wilson's Promontory is my favourite place in the world. It's brilliant, yeah. Whale's whale rock. Yeah, and uh the other ones are um the far east Gippsland. Uh okay. So like Malakuta. Um and I haven't mentioned anything inland. Yeah. Um yeah, Malakuta. Can you notice that dad likes Forest and Beach? Yeah, Forest and Beach. Um the biggest campground in I think the Southern Hemisphere. Really? Um MalaCuta. Yeah. It's huge. I've never been it's it is the campground is bigger than the town. It actually wraps around it. It's just a field, man.
SPEAKER_01It's just it's a fucking massive field. It's huge.
SPEAKER_00It's and it's an experience going there. Yeah, okay. Um, but it doesn't feel big because it's sort of linear. It's not like you just drive in and then sort of you just sort of it just winds around the uh the coast of the town. So that's really good. Um the other ones, if you want to, are anywhere up in the um Alpine country, the the high country in Victoria, some of which requires serious four-wheel driving, other places you can get to that yeah, little towns like um Bright is really good. One of the prettiest little towns in Victoria. Uh but if you want to go camping somewhere near there that is like national park camping, um then uh there's some you know a couple of mountains that are close by you can go camping up there. Yeah, really good. Mount Buffalo's just it is an island, mountain island. It's just this mountain that's stuck in the middle of nowhere, it's not connected to any other mountains. Um it's near Bright. Um but you just and uh there's no village or whatever there. There's a you know little visitor centre with a you know half a shop. Um but there's a campground there and there's great walking, there's skiing in winter, there's um places that you can go and just be. And that's what I think I like about you know camping out in the wild is you just go and be there. Sit on the beach, sit in next to a river.
SPEAKER_01It's becoming rarer and rarer to find yourself in those locations, right, where you don't hear cars in the background, people talking, noises of all the other sorts of things.
SPEAKER_00Now you go to any of those places in January and you're going to hear cars in the background and people talking. Yeah, but unless you get seriously off. Or and uh depending on your physical condition and your um desire to be alone, whether you're alone with people or not, um is just bushwalking. Go somewhere where you can walk. And that's what I love about Wilson's Promontory, is that it's got some really nice walks, some of which are half an hour, some of which are two-day walks, um, that you need to get a permit to camp uh on the other side of the promontory and stuff, and it's got a mountain range down the middle. Um you can go and walk up a mountain if you want to, and you know, just walk along the beach and then around the cliffs to the next beach and so on. So it's it's a priceless place to go. Um it's uh fucking cold and wet in winter because it it's the furthest south, uh it's the locations furthest south on mainland Australia. Yep. And so it is uh you know Bass Strait finishes at Wilson's Promontory. Yeah. Um and so you've got the Southern Ocean and Bass Strait with the southwesterly winds just coming all the way from Antarctica and then hitting the coast of Wilson's Prom. And it doesn't matter whether the winds are coming from the southwest or the east, you're gonna cop it. Yeah. But it's priceless, beautiful place to go, even if it's raining the whole time. You just sit there going, there's beach and there's forest and there's mountains.
SPEAKER_01The rocks, right? The the basic basalt or granite? Granite rocks. Yeah, granite rocks that it make up the old volcanoes that have had all the topsoil erode away from them. So you just see the face of these huge, what are they like granite plugs that would have formed inside these volcanoes when the lava settled and they're just exposed, and you can see all of the um stains on them from I guess things washing down from the rain and it is orange lichen and yeah, exactly. And it's funny because I think you see the same rocks in um northern Tasmania.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, Flinders Island, it's all the same body of geological body. Yeah. Yeah. Bass Strait is very shallow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you used to be able to walk across it. Well, exactly. It's only 50 metres deep and it's deep as point. That mountain range that runs through Wilson's Promontory runs down through Flinders Island and then down the east coast of Tasmania. Yeah. It's exactly the same mountain range, and just some of it's worn down and been covered up by a bit of sea. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. All right. Well, good suggestions there, Dad. Hopefully you guys enjoy this episode. And um yeah, we'll see you next time. Bye.