Transcript of AE 1414 - The Goss: Farm + Camping Culture in Australia

G'day, you mob! Pete here. And this is another episode of Aussie English, the number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English.

So today I have a Goss episode for you where I sit down with my old man, my father, Ian Smissen. 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 Goss.

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 AussieEnglish.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 practising. 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.

How's it going, Dad?

Good. Pete, how are you? Hang on, I didn't- we already opened the can. What are we thinking?

It was open. We've, we've been working on some other projects...

On some other projects. So we've already opened a can, but it's not beer. So this conversation is likely to be either boring or sensible.

Yeah. That's it. Just caffeinated. Maybe it'll be, I'll have to slow it down later by 0.75 speed.

Just get your recording down to 0.8. It'll be fine.

So we went away for my birthday on the weekend to, with my grandparents.

Happy birthday!

Thank you. My grandparents' 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 maybe we can talk more broadly about camping culture or...

Camping vacation. It's not a word vacation. You gotta, you 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.

Yeah. Maybe. Maybe we should make it mandatory for..

Mandatory! Yeah. All Ian's friends and relatives, listen to him make a fool of himself.

I know. No, exactly. Yeah. So we went away. The farm is near Bendigo. Takes about, what, 2.5 hours to get to?

Two and a half hours to get to from here. Yeah.

It's kind of a nice drive, I enjoy it. Going through, what do we go through, Bacchus Marsh.

That's one way. Bacchus Marsh. Gisborne. Kyneton.

Yep.

And you sort of skirt around Kyneton.

Yeah.

You can choose to. Once they build the freeway, the old Calder Highway is now a freeway, so um...

110 Ks an hour, baby!

Yeah, bang. So it just, and it goes around all of the small towns. So, you can get off at Kyneton, but not have to go through Kyneton, which is a shame because, you know, some of those towns I think have, have lost a bit of their tourist stuff.

I hadn't thought about that.

Driving through it.

Yeah..

But...

You have to go out of your way. If you're on the Calder Highway.

Choose to go. We leave into that. We get to the highway out of Gisborne.

Yeah.

But Gisborne's not on that freeway anymore. The old highway goes straight through the main street of Gisborne, the main street of Wood End, the main street of Kyneton.

Yeah.

And no longer is that the case, but at the same time, they don't have to put up with all their shitty truck traffic at 1:00 in the morning.

Yeah. That's great.

It's a trade off.

Yeah, but I enjoy the drive. The freeway is so smooth. It's like there's not as much tyre noise when you're driving along. It's just...

I know.

And you drive for like what, 60 Ks or so on it. I can't remember what it is about that. It's about an hour or so.

Yeah.

Anyway, so we get to the farm, we, we turn off from 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 when I was...

Who's going to be the gate boy and the gate girl? You and your sister fighting over who would open the gate.

Gate bitch!

And then, and then once you got to be teenage, it was fighting over who was not going to have to get out to open the gate.

Yeah, it's funny with my kids at the moment, trying to encourage them to get involved and know it's kind of like, I'll do it! I'll do it! I'll do it. But you still need someone else to get out to help him, obviously...

Because it's actually a...

He's six years old.

Physically challenging thing to do because A, it's a big farm gate. But B, it's got the chain around it and the latch is, you know, when you- when you know how to do it, you don't even think about it. But as a six year old child, yeah, it's not an intuitively obvious...

Well, how would you describe it? It'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..

With that same shape so that it slips over, but you have to orient it correctly, right?

Yeah, exactly.

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 just not doing anything.

Eyes on the road, dude!

Yes.

I know she's looking at me. She's like, this is fun. And then we come in. It's always funny. I remember as a kid always coming in. It was always night time. It seemed like...

Cause we would do it after school and we'd go up there on a Friday night, usually. And if we were just going for the weekend. And so we wouldn't get there until, you know, particularly when you were little because we were coming from Kallista on the other side of Melbourne. So.

Yeah.

It was about 3.5 hours to get there. So.

Yeah. And it's funny because I think I would fall asleep in the car and then wake up once we had arrived at the gate.

Huh?

Why have we stopped?

Well, it used to be the same without, the first dog- well, they're not the first dog your mum and I had, but the first dog you had. Because we used to take him up there all the time.

The first dog you had when I was alive.

Yes. And he would, he would sleep the entire way there. And as soon as we turned on to the dirt road, he was like, Oh, he's up. He'd go like, well, we're there. We're there.

Yeah. 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, where the cabin is, that is in this kind of small grove, right, halfway down one of the hills.

Yeah.

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. So do you want to describe the cabin and, and when and how it was made?

Yeah. Well it's a, it's a, an old kit log cabin. You know, treated pine logs, that were pretty common about 50 years ago of kit homes and particularly holiday homes that people were putting up. So you build a concrete slab and then you design the...

Layout?

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 this is back before the metric system was being used in Australia.

This is the 70s?

So yeah, it would have been the 70s. So it's, it's sort of built in, I probably four foot panels, you know, it's 4 to 6 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, and 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. There's no internal walls or anything in it.

Mhm.

And your grandparents built all the internals. They, they lined the ceiling and, and built the, the internal walls and things. And in the kitchen evolved originally it was, it was basically a couple of old tables with a kitchen sink. No, not built into a bench, but just suspended between two tables and, and the plughole 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. And it's got a great big, 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 3 or 4 months of the year because it's 35 degrees outside.

Well, 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...

Why 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 that's, everybody wants to sit on the, on the, on the fireplace and, you know, poke the fire and...

It's so funny.

Throw bit, throw things into the fire.

It'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, 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. And your sister's children do exactly the same.

Yeah. It's such a deep evolutionary thing.

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.

Well, if you can't start a fire and control a fire..

You're dead.

You're dead. So it's built into our evolution that yeah, you just that you have to be able to manage fire.

It's. It's funny. I've been reading about William Buckley recently, right? 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, in Sullivan's Bay, in 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 the story of 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 smouldering.

Yeah.

So that they could more easily start another fire.

It's a pain in the ass to start a fire from scratch.

He has to cross this river and...

Cause we don't have- sorry, we don't have flint in Australia.

Yeah.

We don't. So we don't have that 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.

Yeah. 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! I don't know. That's not an exact quote.

It is! It is an exact quote!

But he was, it would have been something like "He very much lamented the loss of his fire."

You can just imagine. Yes, you can just imagine his, his indigenous friends going Dumb whitefella! Go through the shallow end!

So 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 eat raw shellfish for a few days because it was raining or whatever. But 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.

Yeah, no electricity. So everything's, everything that is electrical up there is battery powered.

Mhm.

And there's gas for the hot water system and the fridge is gas operated. And, and there's water obviously. So 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.

Mhm.

There's an amplifier in the house, to amplify the phone signal. But if you've got a shitty phone signal in the first place.

As I discovered!

And you, "You've got full bars!"

You've got five bars between you and the amplifier on the wall., But the the amplifier has got one bar from there on.

Yeah, exactly.

You don't, you're not streaming video up there, but.

It's funny though. When I was younger, I was always like, God, I wish we had more technology up here. I wish we had electricity and TV. And the older I get, the more I'm like, I'm so glad we don't. You can just tap out and not think about those things. And it's funny noticing with my kids how little they hire 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. They may sometimes.

Until it gets dark.

Yeah.

And then they're. Oh, now, now there's nothing else to do. You've stopped me poking the fire.

I need stimulation.

Yeah.

Go to bed.

Can we watch videos?

Exactly. 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 to see what's going on.

Yeah, as Noah would say, Can we go and throw rocks in the pond? The small dam that you can see from the house. So he sits there, yes. Can we go and throw rocks in the pond? So we go and throw rocks in the pond.

Like the fire thing. I wonder if that's a massive human.

Yeah. I can't see the evolutionary value from it other than practising throwing rocks..

Practising throwing rocks, which again...

Who could throw it the furthest.

Yeah. 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 survive by eating.

But 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.

.. the pond!

Or the dam. There's a big, big dam..

Yeah, but Noah calls it the pond.

That's it. And I guess I spent a lot of my time still lifting up rocks, looking for critters.

Yeah.

Animals.

Snakes and lizards and frogs and centipedes and insects.

It's real life Pokemon, Dad. It's like, Oh, wild Pokemon has appeared.

Yeah, exactly!

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 lizard or frog. Although the scorpions are pretty cool too. They have these big blue scorpions up there, right?

Yeah.

I've been tempted a few times to be like, I wonder if I could take these home.

You know, they bioluminescent, they glow in the dark.

Scorpions do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you gotta use a blacklight, right?

Yea.h.

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...

I know, I know...

When I was going through biology.

I think there would be, if you're, if you're a nocturnal, you'd think there would be an advantage to not being able to be seen.

We can, we can do this right now with the power of technology!

The power of technology.

Why are scorpions, and then 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 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 protective sunscreen against UV radiation. Because I guess you're reflecting it, right?

Yeah, that's a good idea.

And 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. Interesting. Yeah.

Yeah, I think some of those are just pie in the skies, but I...

Don't know. Well, I guess it's hard to know, right?

Yeah.

It's very hard to test that.

It's a little. Yeah. Phd project generating scheme, that one. Yeah. We've got these ideas. Go and test them.

Yeah. I wonder how you would set those experiments up. That'd be fun. Anyway, yeah.

So, going to the farm on holidays, it's one of those things where, yeah, I'm not a destination holiday goer, naturally.

What does that mean, Dad?

As in, I'm not going to go We'll go to this place for two weeks..

And just sit there.

Hotel and 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 wild camp sort of thing. Yeah. And yeah, I'll go to campgrounds. I'm not backpacking anymore at my age, but I used to. And...

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 home base and exploring versus.. You don't like that. What do you think the pros and the cons are?

Well, there's two, two aspects for me. I'm, I'm a road trip person. I like going, if I'm going to 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'. Because I like that, you know. For me, it's about the journey, not the destination. Yeah.

But is it that stimulation, seeing all the different places? It's not just one location.

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. And, and so if I've got to go from A to B and there's a six lane highway, 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, and the forest and whatever that you're going to miss.

Ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding. Off the beaten track! Yeah.

And you know, I'm also, I'm a photographer. I'm a landscape wildlife photographer. So I'm looking for things all the time.

Oh we're in another town!

Yeah.

Oh, we're in another town! It looks like the previous town.

Exactly.

Yeah, gotcha.

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...

And I'm one of those people that, you know, you walk into the bakery and, you know, you go.

Show us your snot block!

Yeah, exactly.

Where's your vanilla allsorts?

I'll have a ten minute conversation with the person serving. How do you live here? You know, what I...

G'day, love?

What is there to see?

Yeah. Hey, darl.

Hey, darl. How you going? I've never seen you before...

Hey, Shazza! How's it going, Shazza?

So I enjoy that sort of stuff, but, um. But then there are plenty of people who go. I don't want to sit in the car. You know, I'd rather fly to the Gold Coast 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, and.

Yeah, but that's a different beach. And it's slightly warmer.

Well, yeah, there is that.

The water is warmer. Yeah.

You don't tend to-

In Queensland.

Swimming in our beaches in winter. But.

No, not unless you're crazy. The polar bear club, right.

And like your mum and I are about to go on a, 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...

Just really want to see those ponies, huh?

Yeah, exactly.

He'd be like, there it is! Done.

Pony. Yeah.

We can go!

We can go now. Yeah. So yeah, again, road trip holidays. So...

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 miniature.

Or with tv show, crime show now that's been on for the last eight years or so. But.

Yeah, I wouldn't, I have no idea about that. But I know Shetland ponies.

.. ponies are what. And, and wool, knitting. They've got. Yeah. Sheep.

Yes. Yeah. 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.

I don't know. And some people like you know the combination of the two, you know, there's, there's plenty of 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 got, we booked this site for the next 20 years, and we're going to 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...

We'll be in Rosebud, you know, and, and we 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. And...

That's much more about the relationships 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, but it's not like there's..

They work with each other..

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 no, they go from Melbourne to their camping spot.

Yeah.

And, and some people just like the the experience of camping, which I do too, 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.

Yeah.

You know, it's you don't need to. And it's the same anywhere.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's, you know, you can find a good bar or a bad bar anywhere, but.

It is interesting how much that like four-wheel drive camping culture in Australia, especially among younger guys.

Yeah.

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 realised more when I started doing Aussie English.

And you went to a certain school.

Yeah. 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.

And sleep in a tent.

Yeah, exactly.

Turn around. Come home again.

They're like, that is that is very weird Western-like behaviour. But the funniest thing I've got some Chinese students who, 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.

Yeah, we came to Australia so we could do it.

We came to Australia and we fucking love it!

Like. And I'm like, that's amazing!

The other thing now you cannot go out, you know, off roading or camping somewhere without running into hundreds of Indians.

In Australia.

In Australia.

Yeah.

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 they, your typical Indians. When they do something, they do it.

Yeah.

They turn up, and they turn, they turn. Four cars turn up and it's never, it's never the sort of big caravans and everything. Four little, you know, family sedans turn up and then there's a tent palace appears.

The Taj Mahal of tents!

Where did they put all that? They have a great time.

They have...

Come and have a chat with them.

It is funny, isn't it? Yeah. How much?

So.

I wonder if it's a disproportionate number of migrants or, foreign people having holidays in Australia, who end up 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.

We've already had, we've we've already. Well, in your case, we didn't camp when I was a child. My parents looked at me and they go, What?

It's funny. So you went ballistic with it. And now I don't really camp because we went ballistic as a child.

Exactly. So, 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. 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.

I felt like when I was a teenager living at home with you in Ocean Grove, you and mom living at the family home. The beach was right there. 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, because I would just be like, Well, pssh, it's there. Yeah, I can go anytime.

Don't we love living by the beach?

But 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 I got something else to do.

Well, then it descends into winter and you're like, Oh, fuck this. Like, why would I come down here when it's like ten degrees?

Rain and ten degrees. Yeah.

Exactly.

Well, you know, I am Canadian and American friends who live in the North in the United States would say, You're saying ten degrees and calling it winter?

Mhm. Yeah. This is summer.

At one of our friends did when they said, if the water is still liquid, it's not cold.

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.

But this is the middle of summer.

Yeah. And but the water was 4 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. And I was just like, you psychopaths. Like.

But that's their experience.

Yes. Well, and I don't appreciate the rest of the year when it's probably frozen over and they can't. This is as good as it gets. Like. 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.

And the water doesn't get very deep. It's like a metre deep.

Yeah.

You know, at its deepest point, or at least for like kilometres. And I think the people we were there with said, Oh, you can go fishing here, but you got to walk for a kilometre 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?

I know.

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.

Yeah. 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.

You know. Yes. You're not going to get out into the wilderness, but, you know, there's plenty of really good places to go camping around, you know, here. Around- well, around Victoria.

All right, so your top three in Victoria. If you had to give recommendations for people listening,

Camping?

Yeah.

Or holidays?

Camping.

Anywhere along the Great Ocean Road.

Yep.

And there are towns like Anglesea, Lorne, Apollo Bay.

And they all have campgrounds where you can pitch a tent...

Yeah. Yeah. It'll cost you, you know, 30 bucks a night or whatever to have your tent or your camper or whatever there. Or you can go and get a cabin 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 hotel.

So 100, 200 bucks a night, right? For like a proper cabin or a bit more?

About 100 bucks a night.

Yeah. Not too bad, right? Depending on the size you want. How many rooms..

Yeah, if you want six people in there, it's fine. If you want 16 people, you...

You'd need a few of them.

Yeah. Um.

All right. So Great Ocean road, number one...

Wilsons Promontory.

I knew that was going to come...

Is the best place in the world.

Fuck, it's hard to book a place there. Within four months?

On school holidays. Yeah..

Oh my god...

You can just go. You just drive in on days that are not school holidays. But school holidays, you book a year in advance.

It's crazy. Yeah. How busy it is. Like even on around summer. Good luck.

You can't. Yeah. Summer and Easter.

Book now.

They are. Well, they only open...

Yeah.

They open, open a year in advance.

Yeah.

And they're booked out.

Within weeks.

Within- no. A day. It's.

I know, I 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 hear one night here in this camp spot, on this location, or one night there.

This is like, this is a campground that'll fit a thousand people. It's not like it's got ten campsites in it. It's huge.

And part of me wants to go when there's not many people there.

I know.

That's the hard part, but you have to go the shit times of year, isn't it? It's such an oxymoron. Or like a...

Well, it is.

But but once you've got kids at school, that's what it turns out to be.

I know...

You. You only go holidays when everybody else is on holidays.

Shit!

But yeah. But yeah, so Wilsons Promontory. Tidal River campground, Wilsons promontory is my favourite place in the world.

It's brilliant. Yeah, well. Whale Rock.

Yeah. And the other ones are the Far East Gippsland.

Yeah, okay.

The Far East..

Like, Mallacoota.

And I haven't mentioned anything inland.

Yeah.

Yeah, Mallacoota.

Can you notice that Dad likes forests and beach?

Forest and beach. The biggest campground in, I think the southern hemisphere.

Really? In Mallacoota?

Yeah. It's huge.

I've never been, yeah.

It's, the campground is bigger than the town. It actually wraps around...

It's just a field, Dad. It's just it's, it's fucking massive field.

It's huge. 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...

Like a golf course.

Yeah. You sort of, you just sort of, it just winds around the, the coast in the town. So that's really good. The other ones, if you want to, are anywhere up in the alpine country. The, the high country in Victoria, some of which require serious four-wheel driving.

Yeah.

Other places, you can get to that, you know, little towns like, Bright is really good. One of the prettiest little towns in Victoria. But if you want to go camping somewhere near there, that is like national park camping, then, there's some, you know, a couple of mountains that are close by. You can go camping up there.

Yeah.

Really good. Mount Buffalo is 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. And it's near Bright. But you just- and there's no village or whatever there. There's a, you know, little visitor centre with a, you know, half a shop. But there's a campground there and there's great walking, there's skiing in winter, there's places that you can go and just be.

Yeah.

And that's what I think I like about, you know, camping out in the wild is you just go and be there. And sit on the beach, sitting next to a river.

It'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 other sorts.

Now, you go to any of those places in January and you're going to hear cars in the background and people talking.

Yeah, yeah.

But unless you get seriously off or, and depending on your physical condition and your, you know, desire to be alone, whether you're alone with people or not, is just bushwalking, go somewhere where you can walk.

Yeah.

That's what I love about Wilsons Promontory is that it's got some really nice walks. Some of which are half an hour, some of which are two day walks.

Yeah.

That you need to get, you know, a permit to camp, on the other side of the promontory and stuff. And it's got a mountain range down the middle. You can go and walk up a mountain if you want to and just walk along the beach and then around the cliffs to the next beach and so on. So it's a priceless place to go. It's fucking cold and wet in winter because it's the furthest south. It's the locations further south on mainland Australia.

Yep.

And so it is. The Bass Strait finishes at Wilsons Promontory.

Yeah.

And so you've got the Southern Ocean and Bass Strait with the south westerly winds just coming all the way from Antarctica and then hitting the coast of Wilsons Promontory. And it doesn't matter whether the winds are coming from the south west or the east, you're going to 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.

The rocks, right. The- is it basalt or granite?

Granite rocks.

Yeah, granite rocks that 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?

Yeah.

That would have formed inside these volcanoes when the lava settled and they just exposed. And you can see all of the stains on them, from I guess, things washing down from the rain and everything.

There's orange lichen and...

Yeah, exactly. And it's funny because I think you see the same rocks in northern Tasmania.

Yeah. And Flinders Island. It's all the same body of.

Yeah.

You know. Geological body.

Yeah.

Yeah. Bass Strait is very shallow.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well you used to be able to walk across it.

Exactly.

It's only 50m deep at its deepest point!

That mountain range that runs through Wilsons 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. Yeah. All right. Well good suggestions there, Dad. Hopefully you guys enjoy this episode and yeah, we'll see you next time!

Bye!