Connecting the Dots...with a Baker (Steve Sparling)

Dive into an unexpected journey as I chat with Steve Sparling, a co-host from a podcast I frequently listen to. This conversation uncovers a side of Steve that listeners rarely get to hear, revealing his struggles, triumphs, and the multi-layered life he leads beyond the podcast. Hashtags: #PodcastCommunity #InspiringStories #LifeJourneys

Transcript

Speaker 5: 0:00

Week 30. Since I turned 49 and I set out on a quest to chat to people each week, people I know, people I don't know, and this week I'm reminded of a quote that is, inside every person you know is a person you don't know. And that was certainly the case here. This was a guy, he's a co host on a podcast I listen to a lot. So I formulated in my head, uh, who, who I thought he was. And so I sat down, I reached out to him and I sat down with him and had a conversation with him and realized There's a person I didn't know inside there. So, I really enjoyed this conversation learning about him because I think he's a top bloke. And, well, I've come away from this conversation thinking he is a, just an amazing human being that's been through a lot. So, come meet a baker.

Speaker 3: 0:49

This is Steve or sometimes known as Sparling. Yeah Let's start with I always like to ask people what they do. But in your case, that's a little bit different right now.

Speaker 4: 0:59

Yeah Straight out of high school. I was aiming to be a So during school did all the stuff, the technical drawing did TAFE and everything. And then in the beginning of Year 11, sort of going down that path, was getting really good grades. Halfway through year 11, the guidance counselor called me up and said that I put down something we did to test at school and I put down that I was colorblind and he wanted to know how bad and I said I didn't really know that. Obviously had glasses as a kid growing up and then once my eyes corrected I lost them but I never knew how bad. It's from mum's side and I'm really bad. Like in a book where they flick through it. There might be pictures that say, what is this picture? What number is it? I got to about 87. I still can't see anything. The hardest ones are at the start,

Speaker 3: 1:43

the easiest ones are at

Speaker 4: 1:44

the end. So about 80 or 90 goes, well, you're really bad. By the time you get to the back of the book, say, what number is this on this page? And I can't see it. It's, it's more red greens. So like just, I guess, you know, park, everything's green, but I can't tell if there's red flowers or, you know, red flowers on the ground or in a tree or such. So I do find it kind of difficult. So that's kind of, the guidance counselor talked to me about schooling and he said you've done everything from year 9 onwards, like prepping year 12 senior years to go towards being a graphic designer. But I don't know if that's going to work because you have to be normal colour vision to be able to use CAD, to be able to use computers. I see computers and things how I see them, but at the time I just thought, well that's a bit of a bummer. And then at the same time. I was working weekends at the bakery down at Petrie, so French's Forest just working every Saturday night as a from probably when I was in year 10, so 15 or 14 maybe. It was a 10 hour shift. Dad had dropped me off at 7. 30 and picked me up at 5. 30am, and that was my job. Just, just something to do. A friend of my mum's got me onto it and said there's a position there if you just want to earn a living. you know, a bit of pocket money. And I said, cool. So back then that was quite a lot of money, you know, 50 bucks for one stint at work. And sort of getting towards the end of year 12, I didn't really know what I was going to do then given that everything leading up to that, but I still continued with my subjects. I was doing maths one, maths two graphics and architecture and things like that. Trying to, trying to still pursue it, but talking to the boss where I was working and he sort of said, you know, If you wanted to get a trade, you could always do baking. I'll put you through as a baker pastry cook. You're smart enough, you work quick enough, you're quite a big guy, so you, you're gonna be able to pull your weight. And if you decide you're only 17 year 12 if you decide in four years time when you're 21 that you wanna do something else, you've still got your whole life ahead of you. But from there I stuck with it and I was really good at it. I got good marks in college. I topped my class in the third group of college that I did. I think 93%, which is kind of pretty high for what it is. I had the opportunity to go to New South Wales to have a bake off with the rest of the country, but at the time I was playing baseball and playing rep baseball and I sort of preferred to do the sport thing than the, I was already working, I didn't want to do something else, sort of, I wanted to sort of keep it more balanced. So yeah I finished up December last year, 31 and a half years doing night shift without doing a day shift job ever.

Speaker 3: 4:10

That's, that's amazing. Same place or did you have? I only ever had

Speaker 4: 4:13

three bosses. I had, I did my apprenticeship and stayed there for about 13 months after, so five and a bit years. Yep. I went to One of the guys I was working with that was doing extra work on weekends he rang me as soon as he heard that I was leaving and said, if you want a job, you have to wait about eight weeks or so. Cause we're prepping a brand new shop. No one's, it's going to be a new bakery. It's not one that's obviously sold and we've taken over. It's going to be brand new. And he goes, I'd like you to come and, cause I've worked with him a lot. He said, I'd like you to come and have your input. I had to design it so it works best, the best way to have the layout for the bakery. So I qualified as a baker pastry cooks, which is a certificate in baking and a certificate in pastry cooking. So people would call pastry chef, but that's more of a chef thing. Whereas pastry cooking covers the whole lot. It's, it's making everything from scratch cakes, patisserie stuff, everything that you find in the bakery and then the bread side of it. So all your rolls and, and that side of it. So I qualified with both those sort of, tickets and. We set out a pretty good shot and I ended up staying there for 12 and a half years. Yeah, wow. So that was my first ticket to have long service. Probably back in, I left there and my sister was sick at the time. So I kind of left there and took long service to spend a bit of time with her. She had pancreas cancer. So pancreatic cancer. But at the stage, I just wanted to sort of have a break from work as well. Like just doing that continually. And I put everything into work at the time I wasn't running. Never a runner. I was playing baseball as a, as a junior right through to, from seven years to twenty five. And then sort of gave that up at twenty five. And I needed a break. My wife had already had two breaks from work. And I'd been working extra shifts doing whatever I could do. Mostly like seven day weeks. And maybe on the third week I might have a day off. So I was doing, you know, twenty day breaks. 20 days and having a day off basically and it was just running me into the ground. But it's all to do with your future. You think ahead and think if I can get this done now, I can sort of relax later.

Speaker 3: 6:12

Yep.

Speaker 4: 6:13

So I took my long service and coming from that background where you're just constantly working. I got about six weeks in. It was Anzac Day that year. I went up the road and I run into the guy that I did my apprenticeship with. And he says, hey Tony's, Tony there was his wife actually, and she said if you're after work, Tony's after someone, straight away if you can. I said, no, not really, I said, I'm taking long service, I'm having a break with Miles, he's three, at the time. And said I'll have a think about it, but I might be able to do some weekend work for you, just to give him a break, because I know how hard he works as well. And then I lasted about a week or so and I said I'll come and start. So I only got about 8 weeks into my first lot of long service, which at the time I think was supposed to be maybe 12 and a half weeks. Yep. And plus a few holidays that I got paid out and ended up going back to work before the 8th week. So, yeah. I stayed at that job for 11 and a half years. Yeah, wow. Just got to the point where I just felt getting older, you know, You sort of can't work as hard as you used to and it's a quite a physical job. Yep. Doing split sleeps, trying to fit in running that I sort of started up about eight years ago. So I'd come home from work and go for a run, go to bed at 11, get up at 2 to go to school, pick up, go back to bed at 7, get up at 10, go back to work again. And they were long shifts, so we didn't get paid for the hourly rate. It was all, it was a wage, so we got paid to be there until we finished. Yep. This is roughly 10 hours every day. Six day weeks and then same thing again, I'll just put my hand up and did whatever extra work I could do there. So I was doing seven days, six days, seven days, six days, sometimes working the same thing again, seven, seven, because I thought I used to be able to do it. But yeah, I just sort of run myself to the ground and got to the midway last year. I had a talk to my wife and said, I think sorry, two years ago, 20, so it was Christmas 23. I said about November, I told my boss, I said this year when. We finish up at Christmas and have that break here. I don't think I'll be coming back. I said, I think it's time you could find someone. We've got two people in urgently to train up because he had his intentions to sell the shop, but he couldn't sell it. Just the market was quite crappy at the time. And for the last 12 months, we just had no one coming into trial until I said I was going to leave them. Two people showed up. So we trained them up and I finished up Christmas Eve. So having a bit of a gap year at the moment. I don't think I want to go back to. Baking, but I'm not sure what I want to do yet either. And despite you

Speaker 3: 8:35

cooking probably my favourite food in the world, that's not how we know each other. No. Well, before I move on to how we do know each other, what was your favourite thing to cook or bake?

Speaker 4: 8:45

I love the, for the first probably half of my 30 years, I, we did a rotational thing. And we made all the things on the premises. So everything there, like croissants, Danish, everything like that. I love doing Danish for some reason. There's a, there's an art to it. If you get it right, you get the perfect puff and it looks appealing. And then you get the right flavors. Plus the butter pastry makes it click. You know, I don't, I don't think there'd be anyone out there that tried a Danish when that was yuck. Yep. They can be, if there's too much of it, it can be sickly sweet, but in small amounts in the right amount, it could be probably the probably the most favorite thing in the bakery, I reckon. And it's a, it's a, it's a morning, a morning tea, a lunch thing. Yep. Even if you felt like that in the afternoon, I don't eat doughnuts. Yep. Don't know. It's just not appealing to me. Never had them. Never sort of really ever wanted to try them. But but I was particularly good at bread. We won so many baking awards for bread.

Speaker 3: 9:40

Yeah, awesome.

Speaker 4: 9:40

Which was my, my secondary thing. I love doing the pastry in the early days. And then, sort of when I got that job opening up that new bake bakery. The boss had only ever worked at as a cake maker. So I had to teach him bread. It was just kind of cool as a 22 year old teaching, you know, a 33 year old man to make bread. That's just bought a bakery. So we got on pretty well and meshed really well. And it built up the business. He still has it. I'm still rolling on with it. And

Speaker 3: 10:09

so a couple of years ago, I started listening, I stumbled across a podcast that I described to people is it's like going for a run, but you're with four or five other guys, you're talking about running, and you don't have to talk, you just got got these conversation going on on your ears. And it's a great way to fill time running. You're one of those hosts.

Speaker 4: 10:31

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 10:31

And so I feel like this is the first time you and I've ever sat down and chatted. But I know about your baking, I know about your, and I'm going to ask you about this sec, after I ask you about the podcast, I know about your sleep disrupted, you know, period you've gone through this year, because I get to listen to you in a, a unique, intimate conversational way on a podcast, but it's one way. Yeah. So tell me about the podcast and how that happened.

Speaker 4: 11:00

It was a few years ago now. I think we're up to about episode 140, I think, roughly. So that's a bit over two years. Nathan, one of the hosts on the show, I only met him maybe the week before at Parkrun at North Lakes. And I was just cruising along doing my regular Saturday thing at Parkrun. Just doing laps around the lake. And I caught him sort of towards the end. I seen him and Steve Woolley at the end. And as I crossed the line I had no idea they were doing a time trial, as Nathan was doing a 20, sub 20 minute time trial. I think he ended up getting I think on the day it was like 2046 or something, and I got 2051. Like, so a few seconds after him. And as I crossed the line, because Steve Woolley was videoing it for, like, his YouTube thing as well at the time, I crossed the line and he said, ah, local legend Steve Sparling. And from there we had a bit of a chat and it would be only Maybe a couple of weeks before Christmas that happened and then over Christmas I went and met them and said they got an idea to do a podcast, would you want to come down and do some intervals down at Deception Bay? I said I don't really, not that athletic really, like I, at the time I think, I think my PB was around maybe 20, low 20s, I don't think I'd ever even cracked 20 minutes yet, and I knew Steve from Parkrun because I obviously know a lot of people from, that come and visit that Parkrun, and I just have a good memory for names. And I knew he was quite quick. He was like 17 minutes. So he is like the Ferrari, you know, and I'm, and, and I thought, how am I gonna fit in here? He goes, oh, you'll be fine. I said, we're just gonna talk, you know, regular stuff about running local scene, a few elite stuff, you know, what's happening in the world and all over the country. And I said, oh yeah, I'll give it a crack. But I don't know how I fit in. I honestly had no idea. I said, Oh no, everyone loves a Ubi, right? And so that's how it evolved. We did one episode and just kept rolling with it and rolling with it and kind of got better at it. We were all sort of novices really. But it's, it's kind of

Speaker 3: 12:52

good. It's certainly my favorite go to listen when I'm out running and I just want to be, you know, feel like I'm part of a conversation without having to put in any effort. I wish my running was like that sometimes. So you're a runner. Yeah. Tell me about your running

Speaker 4: 13:07

journey. I got into running after losing my son about 11 and a half years ago. He passed away in an accident up the road, in the main road there at the Red Dog service station on the corner of Naringba Road and Marsden Road. And I think getting into running I already started my job at that place, the most recent workplace, 11, you know, 11 years ago now. And I sort of already had my journey of putting on weight when I was on my long service and losing weight again. So I didn't get into it for that reason, it was more just to take my mind off everything that's happened. Yep. We sort of seeked a bit of you know, someone to go talk to and things about it, but it didn't relate to our situation losing a five year old. A lot of, The people we talk to and therapies and stuff, talking about sudden infant death where kids are maybe only a day to a couple of weeks old. And, and that's, that's fine for people that are related to that, but it's not after having a kid and teaching him how to ride a bike and having five years of memories, you know, it just didn't relate to me and my wife. So I originally started walking and I got into running, probably just jogging, I guess, just non social, just by myself. Two thousand and fifteen. And I was just doing laps of the bush up over here, there's a 2k circuit. And one day I said to the lady up the road, that was a fitness instructor, I said, Oh, I just did, did two 2k's in thirteen minutes. That's 2. 2k's. That's a full lap back to my house. She said, you should be able to run faster than that. I said, well, can you do it? And so she went and laid down a time of 11 minutes 30 or something. So it gave me something to chase. Obviously I got into running. It's addictive. And at the time I had no idea about parkrun. It's already obviously been going forever. And one of the guys at work goes, you should just get into parkrun. It's like a weekly thing. You don't have to pay. It's free. Sign up, go along with everyone else that's in the same boat as you. And it's more of a community feel to it. He goes, I do it at Mitchelton all the time. And one of the guys was working with his. Went there quite regularly at Mitchelton. They said you just go to look it up and there'll be a couple around there everywhere. So I looked it up and I saw there was Petrie. I already knew off Sweeney's Reserve I knew it was quite hilly so I thought if anyone's running through there it's going to be quite hilly. I thought what's Norflakes? So I went and had a look at Norflakes. Not on a, on a Saturday I just went and had a look and I thought oh this is where they run by the looks of the map. Went for a walk around and went. Yeah, that's pretty cool. So I might show up on Saturday and have a go. And for me, a Saturday morning was finishing work, 6, 6. 30, driving from over at Fanny Grove and trying to beat the start time at Norfolk. So on a day where I finish at 6, I could quite easily make it, do a couple laps after doing like a 10 hour shift and then get in and do my run, meet a few people. And to meet a few people ends up meeting more of their friends and so on. Somehow or other, I just got a name as the local legend of Norfolk's Parkrun, as Steve Wooley calls it. So, I don't know how, but How many you done now? I'm sitting on 330. Excellent. So, I'm close to 300 at North Lakes and the others have all been touristy type ones. Yeah, wow. So, on a day, I was so addicted to parkrun after a while. I was at work and I was looking at the time and I knew how long it would take me to get to North Lakes. I knew how long it would take me to get to, say, Warner Lakes or Mitchelton. Last resort Mitchelton was only five minutes from work. So I've done quite a few there, just showed up, I even showed up at Mitchelton, I knew I'd missed the start but still run, just to, just to run. So yeah, sitting on 330. And so,

Speaker 3: 16:35

it's been, what 10 months, 11 months since you don't have a, you know, night time job. Yeah. I heard on one of the podcasts you were chatting about a few weeks ago, maybe, you know, a couple of months ago, you were still trying to find your way with sleep. How's that going?

Speaker 4: 16:52

It's all right. I was sort of on and off still, still, still debating whether I saw the doctor and it was late May, everything was going fine till about May. So it was just like having a holiday, sleeping was nice sleeping through running. And then all of a sudden I wasn't sleeping so much. And then the running became harder because like, I don't know whether it was just, for me, I was doing split sleep, so I, I wake up fresh after three hours, go again until I die, and then go to bed again three hours, and I'm fresh for work, you know, so I was, in related to that, after going to bed for eight hours, I should be fresh, but I wasn't waking up right, and then all of a sudden the running, I had to take a step back from running, I just thought, I don't have the energy, and then I stopped sleeping, so I was going to bed in, say, early June, and I just lied there, just lied there the whole night, without falling asleep. And so I'm not thinking about going to work and not thinking about anything. I just couldn't sleep. To the point where I went and saw the doctor and he said, you've never, for all the night shift you've ever done, you've never ever like opted for sleeping tablets. So, which is a good thing. So we'll start you on that and maybe just having one at the same time every night and try to create a routine that cause obviously my body after five months of doing not night shift is it's the first time he's ever done that long a day time. And night time sleeping, so I thought, yeah, I'll give that a go. I gave that about five or six weeks and it didn't work, so I went back and saw him. He said, we've got other options, and the next thing is Metazapine was an antidepressant, a depressant that they They had years, years ago, it was one of the first ones and in the lowest dose of it, it was making people drowsy. Right. So, but in the high dose, it didn't affect them. It was the whole point, it was as an antidepressant, but people were saying in the low doses, and I'm talking like maybe 60 milligrams is the maximum dose, 7. 5 is the lowest was making them drowsy. So he said, we'll put you on that. He goes, I've heard some big things with people. It puts them in a routine. They get drowsy, go to bed and they sleep. And I said I'm willing to give that a go because up to this point I've never even had any antidepressants either. And it kind of worked, and then it didn't work, and then it did work. And then I thought maybe I was juggling between the actual brand and the chemist's own brand. You know, they say we got the chemist's own brand, the generic brand we can do that a bit cheaper. Do you want to try that? Oh yeah, whatever, it should be the same ingredients. But I think the actual original version I'm getting better results with. So I've gone back to that and the last couple of weeks I've really noticed that I've been sleeping better and that, so I think I'm almost on top of it.

Speaker 3: 19:28

Awesome.

Speaker 4: 19:28

Yeah, so I'm still starting to feel myself, but at the same time, I don't know if you remember, but about a year ago I was probably a lot lighter than what I look now and that was one of the side effects of, he said to me, you know, you're a runner, you shouldn't be an issue, you don't have any problems with weight, and I said not really. But at the same time I wasn't sleeping so I sort of cut back my running to make sure I was trying to get to sleep. And one of the side effects from the tablet is you put on weight gain, about 90 percent of people say they put on weight. Yep. So instead of just being a slow increase, I backed off and the weight come on and I'm sort of struggling to lose it at the moment, trying to get back into running. I sort of got down, I was doing about 90K weeks, somewhere roughly around the same as what you're doing. Yep. 80, 90Ks. Yep. And then I go all the way down with my sleeping issues down to just one run of five kilometers, which I really struggle with. And at the same time the weight come on, which sort of kind of makes it even harder. So yeah, I was 90 kilos in June and I'm 104 at the moment, so it's tough. You're also not a shorty though. No, so that sort of stretches it out, so people don't notice. They say they might see it, they notice it in my face. But they don't notice, like, that I've put on, you know, 14, 13, 14 kilos, it, it doesn't look it, I guess I notice it because it's my body.

Speaker 3: 20:48

Yep.

Speaker 4: 20:49

And it kind of reflects on the things I do. Running's difficult. I'm just trying to get 30 plus minutes a day at the moment, which is about 6k. Yep. So that's where I'm at. Yeah, slowly getting there.

Speaker 3: 21:02

We're sitting in a lovely park here and I believe you live not far from here. Yep. But tell us about this park.

Speaker 4: 21:08

This park here is called the Miles Sparling Playground. It was donated to us by, One of the councillors at the time, when Miles passed away, he was in the accident up the road. She thought he was only five and was taken down at, you know, at a very playful and young part of his life. So, they put this park in place. It's, it doesn't have anything that the older kids are going to like, but it's things that five year olds and kindie kids and people his age would appreciate. Like swing, slide, some sort of little fort and some noughts and crosses and an area underneath where they can play, you know, serving or dolls or whatever they do, but it serves its purpose. You come past here anyway, see people with prams and stuff, they come and sit here. It's a really, here's our little superhero Miles was into Hulk and Spider Man, always dressed up as them to go to this kindy, you know, on weekends he'd just be dressed in a Spider Man outfit. This was donated as well by the council. They painted it it's got Spider Man and Hulk, which is his two favourite characters, and they coated it with some sort of nano. Coding so it couldn't be graffitied. So if it got graffitied, they'd just come and, they'd gurney it off, but it doesn't take the original picture off. So, it's still kept pretty well. It's 11 years old now. It's, you can obviously, if you stand back, you can see what it is, and that's the main thing.

Speaker 3: 22:25

Yep. Yeah. That's awesome. What's have you thought about what's next for Sparling?

Speaker 4: 22:31

Not baking. I spoke to Carly, she's a, Carly Barkle, you know Carly? Yeah. Yeah, I spoke to her on the weekend, two weekends ago. She said she listened to the same podcast you heard me talking about my sleep and she can totally relate she had a couple of Stints where she tried to do something else and just went back to baking She goes who just thought just go back to baking and and just stop this whole horror, you know Like fix it because it was okay beforehand and I thought I don't want to do that anymore Is there

Speaker 3: 23:02

is there a daytime baking?

Speaker 4: 23:04

Oh, there probably is at Woolworths See the bakeries I worked in are all small one off bakeries. So they're not like a chain bakery And for us, it was the importance of starting early. So we start at 10 o'clock to have the product out by 5. Alright, so it's a bit of a process to getting everything tasting right, and lasting long. So, we can push through a loaf of bread, you know, in a couple hours, but it's not going to last. It'll last that day and then the next day it'll be stale. It was the process that we do, it's a traditional way with no preservatives. And it identifies as getting the best loaf. And my, my bread that I made, I'd bring home and it would last four or five days. And you just throw it out because it's been sitting there. It's not that it's gone stale or tasty, tasting wrong. It's just that you've already got the next loaf, and the next loaf, and the next loaf. So, there is, but it's called, they do, they do a thing called a retard. Where they make the dough and then they put it into refrigeration to stop the yeast working. And then it goes on an automatic timer to go to proof cycle. So, So basically they, you make during the day.

Speaker: 24:08

And then the bakers come in the next day, it's all automated and then it's proved up, they walk in, turn the ovens on, pull everything out, stop it moving and then when the ovens are ready to start baking. So there is that way, but it's still, I don't think you still get the same result. Yep. There's, there's nothing, you can't, there's nothing quite like the bread. We won so many awards King of the Bakers. It's like a Australian competition held at Toowoomba. We won that five times I was there. We only ended six. And my boss, my boss won it before I started there twice as well, all by himself without my help. So it just goes to show we, we did the same work when I was an apprenticeship and we still did the same process as 25 years later to get the same result. It's a proven way. It is the best bread. And a lot of people that I run with if I was on a Sunday or I was meeting them up for a long run or something, I'd take them a loaf of bread and say, here, try this. Best bread ever. Yeah. But yeah, we can't find anything around. Close to it in this area other than trying to make it ourself at home, but it's just different environment different machinery as well. So, still, still dabble a bit with stuff like that. Make quiches and you know, the, you know, Vegemite scrolls and things like that for the kids to take to school. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 25:20

So, back to running, because that's obviously something that, you know, we're connected on. Um What, what's the future for running for you?

Speaker: 25:29

I want to, I want to get back into it and sort of be myself again. So I need to lose a bit of weight, increase the volume and sort of, and start enjoying it. I'm not enjoying it at the moment because of the weight obviously, and the sleep's coming good. So I think I'm on the right direction. Yep. I love following, I don't do Facebook. I have Facebook Messenger, but I don't have the actual Facebook app. Yep. So if anyone. Tags me, I don't see it if someone says, Hey Steve, unless they actually message me. I have Instagram for the podcast that we do, the Eat, Sleep, Run, Repeat, that's how we communicate. And apart from that, I've, I, my Strava and my Instagram, I follow a lot of people that are connected. So for you, for example, connected in both of them Taz, you know, they've got their own, you know, And they, and they showcase things that they do in their running and their social life as well as Strava. I get to see their running side of it, a hundred percent of their running side of it. Yep. And I think that's a big part of me. Yeah. I don't, I I love running.

Speaker 2: 26:28

Yep.

Speaker: 26:28

It, it was always, once I got going, it's, it was very hard to say no to coming to someone, invite me along to a run or in, in the community. They, they just love you. Like, and, and everyone's in there for the same purpose. Running is addictive. And it's something, if you keep showing up, it gives back.

Speaker 2: 26:47

I mean, you're a host of a podcast called Eat, Sleep, Run, Repeat. So, you've got a bit of hiccup with sleeping, a bit of hiccup with your running. Is your eating okay? I love eating.

Speaker: 26:58

I have no issues with eating. Yeah, eating's good. But I'm hoping to pick all the rest of them, put them back in line, and get back on top of it all.

Speaker 2: 27:06

Awesome. Thank you very much for chatting with me today. Yeah, no worries. Cheers mate. Thank you.

Speaker: 27:12

So

Speaker 2: 27:12

it makes it hard to want to move from here ever, doesn't it?

Speaker: 27:15

Yeah. We've we bought our house here in 2000. Yep. Cheap, like a brand new, it's only three bedroom and double garage. With a two way bathroom, but we've renovated the garage in to become the entertainment kids area. Yep. We've got a pool table and the washing machine and whatever, shoes, lots of shoes. And then we've put a big patio on, couple big sheds and we've made it our home. We just, we just last, last year, early in the year, we redid the, the fence. The old sleepers all rotted out. That's what we got. Full concrete, made it a new home again. Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah. But we got it cheap and it's probably worth maybe five, six times what we paid back then. Yeah. And we own it now, so it's a no headaches. We don't have any loans as such. Yeah. So that's the only reason I can do what I'm doing now, having a bit of a break while we don't have any bills to pay really. Yeah. Awesome.