 That is gold, so the pub saved your life. The pub, yeah, look, it's done a lot of things in negatively to me at times, the pub, but you know, it's, you know, there's some credits on that day. That is amazing. But I mean, what you have to go through, man, when you're in that space, it's you switch into a different mode, like on that, when I'd left it to walk and try and outrun this fire. By the second day, I'd got my rifle, I'd filled up the magazine and I had an extra five bullets in my pocket because I'm like, this fire comes through. You're gonna shoot it? I'm gonna shoot all the camels in me. Like, I'm not being alive. I'm not fucking putting this all through that. So you mentally, and what I suppose shocked me after is like, how casually I did that? Welcome to the Cebo Show, guys. We have a guest by the name of John Camelman. Elliot. That's the one. The great man, someone I only met just last week and had no idea who he was. And then I saw him in this suit and hat, just like you can see here. And it was like, that guy does stuff. And he does a lot of stuff. But I'll let him tell the story. It's a very interesting one. Please stick around, because the stories I've already heard that I'm gonna get him to repeat are insane. And it's something that's like better than a movie, in my opinion. I can't wait for the movie, actually. Thanks for being here, man. Thank you for inviting me. Yeah. It's good to meet you last week. We've had it off a pretty interesting discussion there. Yeah. Oh, bro, man. So how is everything, firstly, for you now that you're back before you reveal what you actually have done? Yeah, look, it's a bit of an adjustment. Like any big change in life, like any kind of change, it's, you always go through that initial kind of adjustment period. But I kind of like being in that zone. I like forcing myself into that awkwardness. So I'm enjoying the awkwardness of adjusting back to city life. Live for the awkwardness. Yeah. And what do you do? Well, some would argue not much. Some would argue a whole lot. So I suppose I semi-retired when I was 35, so had a whole lot of time on my hands. And I previously worked in financial services, not the most exciting of careers, some would say, in insurance, of all things. And I started up my first company when I was 25. I started up a company called Elliott Insurance Brokers. And that grew quite well to the point where I no longer had to work in there day to day, but I still was craving a bit of a challenge. So I just had no idea where to direct that enthusiasm and energy. And one night I was having a chat with a girlfriend of mine and we were about, oh, four or five bottles of red deep, I reckon. Good. And we're talking about adventure or chasing in an adventure. And she mentioned this crazy story she had when she was 19 years old. She was in Kenya and she entered a camel race. She's the only white person, only female in the race. It's a two-day race. It's not just running down a stretch. It's a two-day race. She comes second. So she wins enough money to fund her whole entire African trip era in this one race. So gets me thinking. I'm like, yeah, I want a bit of adventure. We've got a few camels here in Australia, I think. So I said to her, I think I might do something with camels. Previously I was thinking maybe with motorbikes, you know, doing the Ewan McGregor thing, you know, and just head off on a bike. All the way around? Yeah, there's a lot of that. And then my mum said motorcycles are dangerous. So I called her up at like midnight, you know, five sheets of the wind and said, oh mum, don't worry, I'm not taking a motorcycle. I'm gonna take camels around Australia. And it was just from that crazy moment something switched and I couldn't get the idea out of my head. The next day I got into the office and I googled how do you buy a camel. Because I had no frigging idea about any of this. I'd never worked with animals or anything before. So yeah, just from that dinner, from that moment Googling there, one thing led to another and within two, three months I had left my job as CEO of Elliott Insurance Brokers and I had headed across over East to learn how to tame and train wild camels. So it all kind of clicked into place within about three months and the adventure started. Far out, just like that. Just like that. As much as that's the tail end of it, I kind of knew that I wanted to leave and chase adventure about 12 months before. So I'd been gearing the business and getting ready to depart. I just had no idea what I was departing to do. So the idea and the concept came at the right kind of time. That's an adventure in itself. Not knowing. It is. Not knowing. What year was this when you decided to do it? It was 2018. Yeah. Or 2000 and back end of 2017, front end of 2018 when I started to learn how to tame and train camels. And what's your background before growing up? Did you like sports? Did you like the outback? Or did you go bush camping out in the bush and stuff? I went bush the same way most Aussie blokes go bush with a bunch of blokes, a bunch of beers and a bit of bacon pretend to catch food but unsuccessfully do it because you're too busy sinking cans and then a few days later it wound up back home and how it was a fishing trip. I didn't even throw a line in. We ate it all. Yeah, it was that good. So that was my outback experience just grabbing a couple of boys and getting away. So I hadn't really had a real outback experience and never worked out there and done much. I did spend a bit of time growing up just outside of the city in a place called Chittering Valley. So I got a little bit of a taste for what it's like to have a bit of space around you. But no, I'd never really drunk the Kool-Aid as hard as I have over the last five years. That was a big switch. So you're in Victoria and you start day one of training camels? Yeah. What was the first day like? I dressed like this. I've got a picture. I'll pass it 30 seconds, throw it up. But I literally came up. I think I was wearing this pocket square actually. So the guy who was training us for a Russell Osborne, he'd done a six and a half thousand kilometer trip around Australia. Oh, camels. Yeah, yeah. So he'd done a big one. I thought if you want to learn how to play tennis, don't get a swimming coach. Go to the guy who's actually done something like this before. So I did a course with him for about 10 days. So I eventually lost the suit and slowly progressed into Camelman mode. But it did 10 days with him there and then he flew over to Paribidu and we caught some wild camels and trained some actual wild camels as well. That was about another 10 days. So all up, I had 20 days of training in camel handling. And then a few months later, I bought my first four. Yeah. I ran around trying to catch some, but I had no fucking clue what I was doing. So I was literally trying to round up wild camels with a drone, you know. So I ended up just busting the oil. So I'm from my car and I got stranded out in the little sandy desert for three weeks straight, waiting for more oil to come out. So yeah, that was a disaster. It was just to catch the camels. Yeah, it was just to try and catch them. So then being so unsuccessful in there and sharing my journey on Facebook, someone reached out to us and said, hey, I've got a few extra camels. We just caught out of the Simpson Desert over in Millmaron in Queensland, near Toowoomba. And so I said, oh, yeah, right. Or maybe I'll go over to Queensland and get my camels from over there. But then the commitment was like, it goes from being a WA desert adventure now to, fuck, that's all the way over in Queensland. I'm from WA. I guess I'm gonna have to walk all the way back. So took me about 24 hours to make the decision to say yes and turn it from a 1,000 kilometer trip into a four and a half thousand kilometer trip. So that was the first big jump, I suppose, from a small trip to a big trip. And I was sucked in by the deal. It was buy three camels, get one free. So like five. But you have to walk back all the way to progress. No, yeah, but the savings, the savings. What a bargain. Most people go across the country to get a decent car to just drive it back. But you got a free camel out of it. And how long did it take you to come back? Oh, we'll get there, but yeah, it's fucking slow. So I get these four camels and we're over in Millmaron. So here I am loaded up with me 20 days of training and all of a sudden I got these wild camels to start playing with. The guy who I got the camels from, he let me stay in a caravan and work with the camels in the yards for a little while. Very quickly, he's like, this guy's got no fucking idea what he's doing. It was clear, like this guy does not know how to handle animals. I'm doing my best, I'm just taking my time to do it. So I eventually figure I need a little bit more of a hand. So I truck me and the camels from Millmaron to Gimpy to a Camel Dairy. So... Camel Dairy. A Camel Dairy, yeah. There's a growing thing that people are right into camels milk. They pay 15 bucks a litre for it. It's insane. Is it like taste better or different? Well, my camels were all males, so the milk was terrible for it. So but then the female milk, which I think is the more marketable popular one, they're, if you're lactose intolerant, you can generally have camel milk with lower in allergens, but I know everything's a new fucking superfood these days. So, you know, they've all got their sales pitched, but by all accounts, there's advantages to camel milk. Yeah. Especially if you've got allergies. Yeah. So I'm out there with this guy, Wayne Morrison, his wife, Mel, and he's just really relaxed around camels. You know, he's going up there, slapping them on the ass. I find him asleep in the paddock with a few of the young ones. He's just... He taught me how to have a relationship with my camels, you know? So I spent a few months there. And then I'm like, we've got to actually get up to this start point. And I had no idea where I was going to start. So I'm looking at the map on the... I know I want to start on the coast in Queensland. And I see this place called Elliott Heads. I'm like, what's her name's Elliott? Fucking done, all right? So that's the science that went into the start point. So I get up there and it takes me probably about three months to put the finishing touches on. I have to finish building all the saddles. You know, you can get horse gear from horse land. There's no camel land. So everything you're pretty much going to build or design from scratch. So I'm no good at working with leather. I've never done anything before. I'm an insurance broker. You know, these hands hadn't seen too much hard work. They're a bit rough now. They're a bit rough now, mate. But yeah, so I spent seven weeks in a salary shop learning how to work with leather so I could build all my own saddles. Far out. This just sounds like a Skyrim quest. Every single time you make it to one level, you know, another two need to be unlocked. Yeah. You know, if I was a tradie or I had a bush background, I would have brought something to the table. But I'm having to start from scratch because I just don't have any skill set or anything to bring to the table other than, you know, stubbornness and, you know, I'm going to fucking do this. So we build the saddles. We get them done, put the finishing touches on and now it's time to get rid of the car and actually start this war. That takes me two months. To get rid of the car? It will just build up the courage. Oh, okay. As soon as that car's gone, there's no popping down the shops anymore. Yeah. And I know where the way I am as soon as I start, that's it. You're not stopping until this thing's done. So. No way. It's a good trait for a CEO. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Some of it's hard to back things up. You can actually see it through, sorry. So how many countless did you have when you pulled the trigger? So it's still four. Okay. We've got these four. Did you name them? Yeah, yeah, sir, they've got names. So we started off with Ted at the lead. We had Jackson named after my son. We had Arthur named after my father and Bill the bastard named after my grandfather. Yeah. The bastard, the Bill bit. The bastard he earned himself. So that was our four team. They were pretty young camels. They're only about five years old. They're not too big. So what's the general age like life expectancy for a cow? Cows live up to about 45 years. Wow. Yeah. So out in the wild, probably not too much longer past 25. It's a hard life out there. Hard seasons, droughts, a lot of fighting. Yeah. When they're domesticated, they can live up to 40 odd years. Cool. Yeah, get milked. I've got my boys for a long time. Yeah. You know what I mean? So I've got my boys now until I'm like 70, 75. That's awesome. It's a long-term commitment. So yeah, so we get off and finally get the finishing touches on, build up the courage to get rid of the car. So what town did you leave? So we left from a place called Kunar Beach. Kunar Beach. Right next to the Elliott River. In North Queensland. Queensland. Yeah, cool. And their plan is to head straight across Australia. Head straight back towards home. So it's about a four and a half thousand kilometre trip. And it's a bit of a rough start. Bit of a rocky start. But I go, all right, let's just take off. The first half of the trip will train me for the second half of the trip, right? So we're going to go through a bit of shit, but I'm not going to be able to learn everything I need to learn before I take off. We're going to have to learn a lot of this stuff as we go. So we take off and within 300 Ks, I'm having a great time. I'm nervous and it's a little bit nerve-racking, but I'm having a great time. So I decide to stop heading west. I'm like, this is the first detour. There was a few, but first detour is like, let's head south. Instead of heading towards WA, let's head towards Canberra. I'm going to try and make Canberra for Christmas to see my sisters. So that decision was, all right, well, that's going to be about a 2,000 kilometre detour. So we're going to add 2,000 Ks on to do this. All right, well, what's the difference between four and 6,000? You know, fuck it, let's do it. So literally in one afternoon, decided to head to ACT. Jeez. So we get there to ACT and that takes us April through to about December. So now we've been on the trek for, you know, we close out the first year. 2018? Yeah. 2019. 2019, okay. So we close out the first year and people kept on saying, where are you going after Canberra? I said, well, I'm just heading south. How far south are you going to go? So let's see how far south we can get. So that was the mentality when I left Canberra. Let's see how far south we can get. Within 70 Ks, bushfires just start ravaging the east coast of Australia. There's bushfires everywhere, the whole thing slid up. And I'm in the high country coming out of Canberra. So I'm trapped in the middle of state forests with raging bushfires all around us in a little town called, a little place called Brindabella. So we've walked in, we've got to walk out. There's no other way out, but you can't out round a fire. So we decide we're gonna bunk it down in Brindabella and try and wait this fire out. We thought the fire was gonna come over the top of us, right? So we'd camped out by the Goodridigby River and we were running training drills, taking the camels into the water, tying them up in the water. And the local fire brigade had given us a pump and a hose to throw a stream of water up over the top of us to prevent against amber attacks. So we're up for about, I probably slept about five hours in five days because we're waiting for this fire to come through and we have no idea when it's gonna come. As soon as the wind comes up, gets closer and closer, it gets within five k's of where we camped. And then the wind changes. All of a sudden the wind starts to push the fire back on itself and they go, you've got a three day window. If you can walk 100 k's to tune it in three days, you've got to go, but you've got to load those k's like now, start loading now and go. So I'm like, all right, we can do this. It's pretty rocky and up and down. It's 40 plus degree every day and you're covered in smoke and visibility is pretty terrible, but I'm like, we can do this. So we've got a fire at my arse. I can do 100 k's in three days. So we get out, we start the run. First day is good. Towards the end of the first day or the beginning of the second day, one of the volunteer fire guys comes by and he goes, oh, mate, you must be hungry. Here's a bunch of sandwiches. Here's me a heap of beef cheese and pickle sandwiches by that afternoon. Gastro's got me hard. Oh, no. The beef was bad. Oh, did you want? So old maverick's trying to make her volunteer firefighter sandwiches has just taken me out and also taken out half of the volunteer fire force. So I start throwing up and shitting and it's just not pretty, but you've got the fire up your arse. You've got to keep going. You've got two fires up your arse. Yeah. Yeah. Up and out. Yeah. So we get to the last day and it's a stinker. It's like 44, 45 degrees. I've got 40 odd Ks to do. And I'm about halfway through that day and I finally get it back out onto a main road and then we're closing in towards Chumit and another attack starts to hit it. So I'm like, I've got a shit and I've got a spew right now. So I lean up against a tree. I'm holding up against a tree, pants round the angles, throw all my cuts out and having a shit and that's when a car goes past. And I had no idea what to do. I had a spare hand. So I just wave, I just, what do you do? If that was you, hit us up, fuck. So we close out one of the most difficult days of the trek. I got into Chumit and one of my favorite photos of the whole entire trip is as I'm approaching the show grounds and walking through overhanging trees over the road and there's a bit of defence force, vehicles and stuff in the background. There's a smoky haze and I'm texting mum saying, hey, I made it through to the other side and the local photographer just happened to snap that moment. And it's like the end of the hardest day of probably my whole entire life up until that point because it was worse days to come. Oh, shit. That was probably the first big challenge that we hit on the track. Oh my God. So that was after Christmas? Yeah, yeah, so early January. Damn, because I remember like on the news, it was like, oh, wow, how can it get any worse than this? And, you know, 2019, 2020, what a shit start to 2020, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we thought. Yeah. So then, so then after you've come out, which state are you in at this point? So we're in New South Wales now. Yeah, yeah. And how close to the coast are you? So if I had gone towards the coast out of Canberra, I wouldn't be here today. So I would have been trapped in between the fire and the ocean and I would have been on logging tracks, going through places that we just completely wiped out. That fire came through really quick. So on a whim, I decided to head out towards Tumut before the fires were becoming a thing. Had I gone, there was two projected routes, I was going to go, had I gone the other way, I'd be dead, there'd be no way we would have got out of that. And no one would have been able to get in to get us out. So that was a good roll of the dice. So what, that moment, take me back to that moment where you're deciding, unknowingly going whichever way, what made you go to Wumba? The pub was closer to Tumut, so. I just had a look, I was like, all right. That is gold, so the pub saved your life. The pub, yeah, look, it's done a lot of things in negatively to me over the time to the pub, but you know, it's, you know, you're doing some credits on that day. That is amazing. But I mean, what you have to go through mentally when you're in that space, it's you switch into a different mode, like on that, when I'd left to walk and try and outrun this fire, by the second day I'd got my rifle, I'd filled up the magazine and I had an extra five bullets in my pocket because I'm like, this fire comes through. You're going to shoot it? I'm going to shoot all the camels and me. Like, I'm not burning alive. I'm not fucking putting us all through that. So you mentally, and what I suppose shocked me after is like, how casually I did that. Like, I didn't even think, like, it only hit me afterwards. Mate, you fucking put bullets in your gun, intended for you and your team. And it just seemed like an okay, a normal decision to make. Yeah, the aftermath is sitting down once I kind of escaped the fire. I didn't realise the gravity of it until I was out of it. Jesus Christ. You just operate on, like you're on autopilot. Yeah. In that situation, it's subconscious. Survival just kind of kicks in. Flight or fight, you kind of do both. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm a fence sitter. Make it cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's insane. So now you're into February, March, 2020. Yeah. Where, which direction are you going? So I'm heading south with the intention to go straight through the guts of Melbourne. But as we know, February, March, 2020, things start to change. So COVID starts to hit. Yeah. So I get as far as Mansfield. COVID's starting to kick in. Mansfield's the first time I rocked up to a town and the pub was shut and I'm like, shit, serious. Like, I can't even get into a pub. All right, there's no point in going to Melbourne. It's only going to get worse. It's the only good thing about Melbourne. It's the only good thing about it. Yeah, that's like, if they're shut, what's the point? Yeah. You don't go there for the lovely weather. So I decided what I was going to do is I'm going to head through the Victorian High Country in winter, which is probably not the best time to do it. But they're disappearing to the high country. By the time I get out at the other side, all this COVID stuff, it'll be all disappeared. You know, they would have sorted it all out, you know? So head off up into the Victorian High Country to go through a place called Jamison over the top of Mount Skeen, the 1600-metre-high mountain, and then down the other side through Lecola. So it was about 300 Ks of high country that I was going to go through. So we get through Jamison. Absolutely beautiful. It was the turn of the season, all the different coloured leaves. It was like you're in this little English country town. It was beautiful. And then we head up and start the approach up Mount Skeen. We get only like three or four days into that. And a local had told me to take these little bridal trails or goat tracks that kind of weave through the hills. I've got a 15-metre-long, two-metre-wide camel train. So it becomes... And we can't turn around on these tracks. We can't do anything. And the tracks start to get a bit gnarly. So I made the decision and bad weather's coming in. So I made the decision I'm going to camp out. And then the next day, I'm going to walk straight back out the track I just came in on because this is getting too hectic. Weather had other plans for me. Right, over the next 48 hours, we get 190 mils of rain come through the area. So being in the high country, all of a sudden there's waterfalls coming off everywhere. The river starts to rage. The river's coming up and rising. And we're stuck on the side of this now, extremely slippery and shitty kind of mountainous country. And camels are soft-footed. They've got bugger-all grip, right? It's like a soft foot that, you know, it'll slide all over the stop. My camel's turned into, like, Bambi on ice. You know, they've got no stability. So I wait for the rain to subside. I've been trapped there for four days now. And I'm like, fifth day, we're running out of feed. We've got to get these boys out of here. So we've just got to have a run for it. So we have a run. I get about 4Ks down the track. And there's this big lot of water coming over. We can't turn around. We can't stop. We've just got to go. So I push through this little section and I get the first two camels across, all five are attached together. And I hear a noise. I hear one of the camels yell out and I turn back and I see it's the third camel on the line. The whole entire track's just given away underneath him. All right, so I've got him dangling out. The two camels in front and the two camels in behind are kind of holding him in. But he's about to drag the whole entire team down attached together. Do that, I lose all five. So I make the split-second decision, all right, we've got to cut him out. Rather kill one than see all five go. So jump out, just leave the lead rope, go around the outside of those five camels, get to the third. His lead rope's connecting him to the camel in front and then there's another lead rope that goes from his neck to the camel behind. So I get into both of those ropes, cut them out and bang both of us are off the side of the cliff. So I fall about 20 metres until I get tangled up in some of the Blackberry bushes. And as soon as I stop in those Blackberry bushes, then boom, that camel comes and smashes straight through me and just keeps going. So I get hit by this one-ton camel coming down a hill at speed and then I watch him just continue to roll. And I'd just seen him go down towards the... Yeah, I seen him go down towards the river. I think that river's raging and he's got 200 kilos on his back. Like, he's... Yeah, I like... I thought I'd killed my mate, you know? And then about 10 metres before, he hits a tree and he stops just before the water. So I start getting out of my situation. I mean, meanwhile the dog's the only one who's voluntarily fucking jumped off. He's looking me in the face and he's jumped off the side. We get down the camel and start just cutting the gear off. And bugging my daddy stands up. I thought his legs would be snapped. I thought I was going to have to put a bullet in this camel. And yeah, he stands up. He's got a bit of blood, you know, his scratches and bruise, but he's yelling, but he's all right. What's the name? That's Arthur. Arthur? Oh, no. The dad camel. I'm like, I'll kill dad. So yeah, so we can't walk back up. It's too steep. He's got a shovel on him. So I start digging these goat tracks into the side of the hill and then just anchoring him tree to tree. So I've only got about two metres of rope, two and a half metres of rope. So we're fighting for each metre. We get him to about 10 to 15 metres from the top. And there's some great video that I'll share that you can throw up whilst we're talking about this. And we get him about 10 metres of a place where I can actually just secure him. So he's fine. So I can go and check on the other camels. I can't get him all the way up. It's too steep for the last bit. So I'll worry about that later. Let's go see what's happening with these two lots of two camels that are now just roaming, you know, along on the track. With no idea where they are. So I get up. I see my little camel and Bill the bastard. They're fine. I tie him off against the tree. Can't see the others. No, no. I get around the corner. I see two more camels off the side. So now I've got three camels off the side of this cliff. And so I jump in there. I don't know how long they've been lying over on their side as well. I don't know how long they've been down there. So again, get down there. They just start cutting, ripping gear off them. It takes me about 40 minutes just to get the camels sitting up again. So they've been through a lot, you know, then. That's, I made the decision then, oh, I can't get out of this myself. Now I need help. Now I need support. So I've got my Garmin in reach navigation. It's got an SOS feature on it. So I hit that. It sends an alert to emergency services. I can also SMS from this device because they don't generally come out geared for automatically to rescue camels off the side of a cliff. So I'm able to text and convey my situation to the local CFA, SES and police. So they can come out with the equipment and winches and pulleys and stuff that they need to help us out. So they can't drive in. They'll obviously have to walk in. So they have to get to within about five Ks of where we are and then walk all this recovery gear in. So three hours before they arrive, by that stage I've got all the camels close to being recovered. I just, you know, can't pull a 700 kilo animal up that last bit. Need the recovery equipment. So they bring out like four wheel drive recovery equipment, you know, so to try and manually winch them up. We get them all back up to the top. First thing I'm going to do is load all the gear back on them because we've got to walk all this gear out. So by the time we get them all back up, load it up, now pitch black. So I've got five Ks to do in pitch black with a tiny torch. To get out of that shit area. To get out of that shit area and keep going with the same issues that I've just gone through that I was struggling with in the day. And it was kind of funny, we had all those rescue people there and they were all helping and I left and they were still abseiling down to recover saddles and gear and stuff like that. And they said, you just get the camels out. And all of a sudden, you know, went around a couple of bends and I'm completely by myself again. You know, like even though all those people are back there, it was just this moment of like, I'm pitch black on the side of a mountain with a bunch of these camels on a load again. But we got out. Couple of close calls on the way out, but we kept going through. The camels are so good, so forgiving to be able to be loaded up and immediately go through that again. Yeah, and we get to the end and back out to where the track is and where all the support vehicles are. And yeah, that was the cliff fall incident. It was lucky that Arthur had the shovel on him. Yeah, lucky. Couple of things. He had the gun, he had the shovel and he had a bit of spare rope inside of his packs. So after that, I really looked at, you know, what each camel has on him and it was like, all right, now we have spare rope on every camel. Now we've got a little, you know, there's a few things that we had on every camel. Every camel's got snacks and a bit of water and, you know, so no matter which camel down the bottom of a cliff with or wherever I am, you know, I can, you know, bunk it down with that supplies from that one camel. So now that you're out of it, which state are you in? So we're in Victoria. Yep, yep. And we're still on, we're not even halfway up this mountain. So Vett comes out the next day to check over the camel and it turns out there's saddlebags and everything acted like a roll cage. So there was no internal injury. Couple of little cuts like he, you know, he came with a built-in roll cage. So he was fine. They're one day rest and we're straight back into it. So there's about five days later, we get towards the top, we'll get to the peak of Mount Skiing. So the project sends this camera guy out there to do a live cross about the camel incident, the bizarre camel rescue. Do the interview with them. They head off and then we're up on top of Mount Skiing and he goes, oh, I think there's some bad weather coming. We've got more bad weather, but now we're on top of the mountain, which is a completely different experience. So now we've got 140 kilometer-hour winds and two foot of snow dumped on us in the first night that we're on the top of this mountain. So we're snowed in. We can't go anywhere. The camels, I've created some tarps to divert the wind, but I'm having to wake up every hour or two hours and scrape the ice off the camels because they're starting to freeze over. So we get trapped in the air, I'm lighting fires around them, we're trying to strap blankets onto them with grunt straps just to wait out the storm until the wind goes. So the wind died down after a couple of days and we're like, we've got to get these camels going. One of them is starting to shiver and when they start to shiver, that's the onset of... You don't want to leave that situation too long. So people will get up, will load them up, will get moving. So we walk out and we get down to below the snow line and go, we've made it. Done. So I had the guys doing a bit of a doco with us and another local guy that's out with us and we're like, we got over, we got over. So we get on it. You know, we start throwing beers back, dancing around the fire, having to get all the time, wake up with a banging head the next day and slept until about eight or nine o'clock. Over my swag, get out and I'm like, oh, fuck, the camels all escaped. I got too drunk at in time-up. They've busted down the fence that I put down. Enough of your shit. Yeah, they're like, this guy shouldn't be the captain of the shit. But we are out of here. So there's no fences for ages. This is like millions and millions of hectares of Victorian high country. So I'm running around thinking where the best food is, trying to figure about five hours, nothing. But they're all tied together? No, no. Oh, no. They're just Roman. Shit. So one of the guys, the local fella, he goes, I'm going to go check out back in the snow lawn. We hadn't thought to go out there because like- No way. Why would you get back up into that shitstorm we just got out of? And he calls us pretty straight away and he's like, mate, there's camel prints going the other way in the snow. We found them right back up the top. So they'd gone back by ice addicts. They were straight back for another hit. So yeah, we had back up to the top of the mountain and walk them back down again and you know, and they were pretty well tied up. Look at your lesson. Yeah, look at your lesson. Oh, you'd think so, but yeah. It's better. I've repeated that error again. But yeah, so that was our experience. We got through the end there and made it all the way out to La Cola, then out to Lake Sancturans. And so we did make it through the other side, but there's probably that section of both in New South Wales and the Victorian high country. Yeah, probably presented some of the biggest challenges that I faced on the whole trip. You did the hot and the cold. Yeah. Cold kind of. Fire and ice, mate, fire and ice. And then the wet as well. And then the wind. So you've covered all four elements. And we've just, you know, cracked over one year on the trek. Far out. So now we're about 14, 15 months into the trek. So what date is that? At the end of the... We're about June. June. June 2020. Yeah, June 2020. So... Did you ever get flagged for, like, not being in lockdown or any bullshit like that? So I was going through Jamison and these cop carpools. So this is during Victorian lockdown. And, you know, the cops, and you saw the footage and sociability and the cops burned heavy-handed and this and that. So that's all playing out. And then you got me and my camels just, like, strolling down the road. And these cop carpools up. Sergeant Kenny was his name. If you're watching. Shout-out. You know? And he goes, Mate, what are you doing, mate? You're meant to be in lockdown, you know? Like, and I said... Pretty much I am. Yeah. Couldn't find any pet-friendly places to stay, you know? Like... And he just looks around and he just says, I can't be fucked with the paperwork and gets back in his car and just leaves. So thank you, Sergeant Kenny. Can't be fucked. I hope I didn't get you in the shit, mate. That's classic. So what are you gonna do, put masks on all the camels and isolate in the bush or some shit? Well, I think... You pretty much are. I slid under the radar because I don't think they were expecting that, oh, you know, you let one camel guy loose and then all the camel guys go loose. So I kind of... I didn't really fit into any rules or categories. So everyone was just like, yeah. By the time they figured out whether you should or shouldn't be doing it, you're gone. You know, I'm moving five times a week. So I wasn't staying in one place long enough to ever be an issue. Yeah. No, that's fair enough. Well, did you even get it? No, maybe. I don't know. I didn't check. It wasn't really a thing. Like I said, I was pretty much set up to self-isolate. So I'm just off doing my own thing. So... When you're travelling, by the way, like just a curious question, every day, every night, you had to stop and get the swag out, settle the camels down, tie them up, start a fight every day. Like I said, it's quite a process. I'll run you through, like, a typical day. So I'd generally be up... You're up and down with the sun around the other end of the time on the track. So you're up, a bit of brekkie, start packing all your stuff up. By the time you get to the point where everything's packed up, swags rolled up and everything like that, and you've had your break, it's an hour into your day. Then you've got to start loading up the camels. So you've got to take down the fence, the electric fence that we've got there, and then we've got to start loading and brush down the camels, load them all up, that's about another hour. So we're two hours before we take off. You only do it about four to five kms an hour, so you've got about seven, eight, ten hours of walking every day. And then you've got to take all the gear off. There's 1.1 tonne of gear. So that's a tonne on and a tonne off every day. So we moved about 700 times over the whole entire trip, 750 odd times, which means that we've moved, what was that, 14,000 tonne? Jesus. Yeah, 1,400 tonne. 1,400 tonne over the course of the trip. So the trip ended up going for three and a half years. So we've kept on heading south. The detour south is still going. Victoria's shutting all their pubs, and I'm like, this is a shit hole. Get out of here. So I booked a ticket, put me and the boys on a boat. We went to Tassie, the land of open pubs. Yeah, yeah. So we hired a 40-foot stock crate, put all the camels in there and all the gear. I went on the Spirit of Tasmania and into Tassie we go. What month was this? So now we're into September. Oh, and how long were you in Tasmania for? Mate, it took me six months to walk 1,200 kms. I was going so slow. You were in Tassie for six months. Yeah, I stopped at every winery, every distillery. I was there, I was in Tasmania when you were there then. Yeah, right. Because I was there for, yeah, for, was it? Oh, actually, no, I lie. That was the year after, my bad, my bad. Oh, I was there. Did you go to Bruny Island? No, no, it didn't take me out, but there were camels on Bruny Island. Yeah. Yeah, so someone had camels out there for a while. Yeah. And we ended up, we kept it in south. We waved at Bruny Island by the way past, but we wrapped up at Cockle Creek. So it's the most southern point that camels have ever been in Australia in history, maybe even the world, because I don't think they've been to that southern extent down in South America. So, yeah, we got down there on New Years 2021. Yeah. So now we're like, all right, we've actually got to start heading back to Perth now. We cannot get further away from the original objective. So turn around, start heading back up. So it was two and a half years of trekking, so now we get up to around Miljura. So it's two and a half years of trekking before we even hit like Camel territory, or where we should be. So you're completely uncharted territories with the crew. Yeah, far out. So we get to Miljura. Now we're gonna start doing the desert runs. So I didn't really have too much of a plan. I was just like, let's just start heading out there, chat to locals, and we'll sharpen up a route as we get there. So, yeah, over the next few, it took me two years to get through, but we got through seven of the 10 Australian deserts and wound up on the coast of Geraldton about four weeks ago. Four weeks ago. Four weeks ago. Far out. I feel like there's about a hundred more hours worth of story between Tasmania and Geraldton. Yeah, yeah. It's funny, I skipped past the last 6,000 Ks. Yeah. That's where I was cutting my teeth, you know? Or everything went to shit because I was still learning what I was doing. I was like, fishing out of water. So that's where all the fun stuff happens. Like you go to a car race, you wanna see when someone crashes. I crashed a lot when I started. So that second leg of the trip was a lot easier. Yeah, it presented different challenges, but we didn't have as many. My life wasn't on the line as much. It was probably in a section of the trip that I was worried about the most at the start. You know, like you're so remote when you're going through these places, especially when I was going through the Gibson and Tanamai Deserts. The closest human being to me was the International Space Station every time it went over my head and you're on foot. So, you know, you're nervous about that part of the trip, but that's where Camels come from. That's Camel territory there. They're at home out there. They were more relaxed. Did you ever wish you could like kind of... You rode the Camels at times? No, no, I walked the whole way. You never rode the Camel? Never rode them. 26,117,000 steps. 26,000? Would you have your phone counting every step? You get points on the Contasat. Free points for life. So, I was just thinking and I was like, man, surely this guy's designed a rig where you could put yourself on the Camel, fall asleep and just like cruise control autopilot. Nutt. Nutt. Like an outback Tesla. No, no, you'd fall into your zone and five or six hours would just disappear. The walking... When I first started training with this guy, Russell Osborne, he's like, mate, the walk's the reward. I'm like, mate, you've got fucking rocks in your head. Walk, this sounds like the worst part of the trip. And it turned out that the walk was the reward. They're both juring and also it's one of the parts of the trek that I'm really proud of. You know, I've walked through every state in Australia. There's less than a handful of people that have ever done that. Yeah. Let alone so slowly. I became the second slowest person to do a trek around Australia on foot. That's... Damn. I know, right? I should have spent more time in Tassie drinking wine. I know. So, what was the moment where it all came crashing down where you were like, fuck this? Gotta get out? Yeah, like you weren't sure that you were gonna continue on. Yeah. What did you have? Oh, on the trek. They hit a couple of those walls. Yeah, there was a few times that we had to go through a bit of a mental battle in order to justify carrying on. There was one section where I spent three days where I didn't even get out of my swag. I just couldn't justify, well, why am I doing this? Why can't you get out? I think I was thinking way too big. Like, on a nature of a trip that goes for so long and it's such a big thing to bite off, sometimes it can just suffocate you. Like, if you just consider the gravity of it too much, I'd try to, as much as I could, just focus on the next hundred Ks. Occasionally, you know, your mind plays tricks and it blows out. So, I couldn't get out of my swag for three days. So, I really just brought things back to little bite-sized chunks to get out. So, I'm going to get out and I'm going to tidy up that one saddlebag. And then, when I finish that one saddlebag, I'll just do two more. And, you know, eventually all the saddlebags would tidy up. Oh, well, tidy up the saddlebags. Might as well roll up my swag. Well, I've rolled up my swag. I've done all this. We might as well put it all onto the camel. And once it got going, the momentum started to go and you're back on track. But if I thought about how big this trip was going to be right at the start, I never would have taken the first step. It had to be telling myself it's a thousand-k trip and then telling myself it's okay to go four and then to six and then to... Yeah. Like, just step by step. Yeah. Break it down. Action to action. I heard it's like what are called chunky or blocking. Yeah. I think marathon runners do it. Yeah. Where they just set themselves little blocks within there and little rewards that they give themselves along the way. So, yeah, that was definitely one of the tools that allowed us to be able to go for so long. Yeah. That's definitely the way to do it for sure. Did you go, like, across the Nullibor at all? No. It was quite an all. So, we got up to Uluru. Went up to King's Canyon. Did you go over the rock or around it? There was a very similar to Uluru looking rock only in the last 500Ks of the trip. And it felt like I was going across the top of... Yeah. It's the same... What kind of rock do they call it? It's the same kind of make-up of rock as Uluru. There's a few other ones in Western Australia. So, I got to take my camels across the top of a non Uluru, one you're allowed to take them across. When you're in the NT, did you go, like, back up north again to go across the top? Yep. Yep. So, I went up as far as Lake Mackay and darted through several Aboriginal communities. So, I went through Mount Liebig, Kintour, Kierakura, Kuna Wurruji and then down to Waluna. Any of these places that you've never heard of before as well? No, I think I'd heard of most of them, especially being a WA boy. Yeah. You're pretty aware of the communities around. I hadn't heard of Mount Liebig before, I suppose, or wound up there. I'd never been to the territory before. First time I went through was on foot. So, it's a cool way to experience that. So, I was learning a lot about it as I was going. I hadn't been to many of the places on the east coast other than Canberra. I hadn't been to any country towns on the east coast or anything like that. So, every town was a new experience. Every corner, I didn't know where it was around at the side of it. And did you go to the broom part where you did the across the beach thing? No, no. I decided to wrap up in Geraldton. The mayor of Geraldton actually, he planted the seed. I got on the turps with him and he's like, Mike, you've got to finish this different Geraldton. I'm like, fuck, Gerald. But then anyway, the more I started to go through, I started to appreciate and love country towns a whole lot more. And I was like, Geraldton's actually a really good place to finish a real beautiful ocean there. And I called the mayor from my sat phone. I'm like, Mike, what happens if I finish in your town? He's like, Mike, we'll open the pubs in your honour and you can walk down the street. You can do whatever, you know, do whatever you want with the camels in the town for the whole weekend. I was like, sold her. We'll finish up in Geraldton. So it was really nice finishing up there. No, there's like a statue of you with your camel. Working on it. Working on it. Fuck yeah. So during the three and a half years, how did you go with just yourself and no shealers around? Just your camels? Yeah, that was a bit of an adjustment. There was, yeah, there was, if you want to get laid, don't take camels around Australia. It doesn't happen very often. It's a bit of a drought out there. But yeah, even human interaction at all was, you know, at a minimal for the last year or two of the trip. So I did have a couple of people join us along the way. So out of the 12,000 K's, probably had someone with me for about 3,000 of them, whether it was a filmmaker, there was a French girl that came here that joined us for a while. French girl? Yeah, always got to wait. So, no, no, we had, a few people joined us along the way, but the last half, the last year of the trip was mostly solo. So I went up to a three and a half week period where I didn't even see another person and never interacted with anyone. So there was, those gaps were slowly introduced. It's like I had one or two days by myself. Then a little bit later, I had three or four days. So it would have been hard if it was just banged three and a half weeks. So I slowly fed that into the trek. The East Coast, it was just town hopping and bar hopping and winery hopping. And then once I started to get closer towards the centre, the gaps between towns got bigger. So I got to wean myself off people, which was good. Oh, there you go. Yeah, so like I said, the parts of the trip that I was worried about, concerned about at the start, ended up being some of the nicest parts of the trek. Yeah. So if I find myself randomly taking camels across the desert, what's your go-to meal for, do you recommend for me? Sustainable. Camel. Camel? Yeah, yeah. Would you like just cut out a little bit every now and then? No, yeah, yeah. You've got a bunch of three-legged camels now. No, no. So when you're going through the desert, one of the biggest concerns you've got is wild bull camel attacks. So you've got these 1.2-ton absolute units charging you, trying to kill your camels. So it's a very competitive space out there for mating. And the camel's out in the wild, running three main different groups. You've got your family group, which would be the big bull camel. His harem are females and a bunch of younger calves. And then you've got the younger bulls as they get to a certain age. That big bull will kick them out so they don't become a threat. So they form a bachelor pack. They've got all these young bulls as well. Sounds familiar. Yeah, right. They're like Northbridge. Yeah, and they're just as scrappy and just as gnarly. So there'll be one big dominant bull in there. In both of those groups, occasionally one will challenge for the leadership. One will lose. He gets discarded and he becomes a solo rogue bull camel. And that guy just wants to fight or fuck. So he will see a pack. Doesn't matter whether you've got boys or girls. He's coming in to fight for leadership of that group. They're such intensely a herd animal. They want to be with a herd. So they will challenge for the leadership so that they can become a part of the herd. They don't want to be out there by themselves. So when they come in, it's like, they've got nothing to lose. It's like destined solitude and loneliness for the rest of his life or go in there and fight your way back into a pack. So they come in and they main business. Yeah, not much different to human culture, is it? No, Northbridge culture. Yeah. So, yeah, we had about 60 bull camel attacks as we've gone through it. 60? Yeah. Jesus. And we had to shoot about 40 of them. But, you know, we didn't have to go hunting. It's like the Uber Eats at the desert. You know, like, oh, here comes dinner. And you line it up, take the back straps out, and the dog and I ate like kings. So, you know, like that scene on Forest Gump. Yeah. Whereas like, you know, at Shrimp Sandwich, Shrimp Soup, Shrimp Gump. And do that with camels. You know, roast camel, stew camel. Camel jerky? Yeah, camel jerky. Even cutting, trying to do camel bacon. Camels in our wraps during the day. Camel meat in the wraps during the day. I've never had camel before. Is it like... It's like beef. Just like beef. Yeah, it's just like beef. Amazing. Amazing. You feel like me being Westernized, but me being from overseas in the mountains of Russia. I've seen some shit. Yeah. And you know, you're Westernized, but you had to. You have to. Yeah. You know, like right now, they're like, oh, go out and go shoot something and then eat it. I'm like, nah, nah. I'd rather go to the butcher thanks. You know, get paid to do it. But at the switch of a fucking flick of a switch, I would snap a chicken's neck straight up. Yeah. I'm having chicken tonight. Yeah. You know. But I'm seeing all the, like, from all your stories so far. I'm like, man, such an incredible thing, but I can relate, but I'm kind of like, I'm glad I don't have to go through that. Yeah. But man, like at any moment, just with the 60, well, 40 camels you shot. Yeah. You know, it's good that you obviously ate them as well. They didn't die in vain, but also you saved your herd and you saved yourself. You know, you got to defend yourself. And it's like, I do dress on the trip like, what do I consider food? Like, yeah. I'm prepared to eat whatever, whatever kind of moments notice. So I've eaten way more roadkill than I'd probably care to admit. So my test with that was if it's still got its eyes, it's good to go. You know, like, eyes are the first thing to go, so. Did you shoot yourself a couple of times from those experiences as well? No. No, it was only that beef cheese and pickle. Wow. I've eaten roadkill, preparing food with dirty hands. Yeah. I've done everything you should not be doing. Drink dodgy water. Like, I didn't always check the organs of the animals, so I could have been eating dodgy. I ate a kidney, a bush turkey. And a kidney, fuck. Trigolinas. A kidney was probably one of the best days to meet. Oh, don't say that. Now, your kidneys are going to be extinct. Yeah. And they've got toothpicks after as well. But it's like a sweeter version of pork. Wow. Okay. All right. And it was already dead, or did you just find it and kick it? You know, it's on the side of the road. And I was just going into one of the guys, Ted, named the lead camel after. He's an old camel man, old bushman. He traveled for 25 years with his Aboriginal wife and six camels in a wagon. And I said I'd just passed in the Kidner when I was going to his house. He's like, go back out there and grab it. So I went back out there and grabbed it. He's like, well, I'm going to have that. We're going to put that in the camp oven tonight. We've got a Kidner for ages. So yeah, he prepared it by, you have to gut it. There's a little sack. It's under here. If you accidentally bust through that, then the smell of bile and ant goes all through the mactake. So yeah, you've got to be really careful there. Steamed it, skinned it, and then just treated it like a roast. I would have completely fucked it up and would have tasted like ants. Hang on, hang on. I've got a phone call. Peter's on the phone. Yeah. Yeah, no, no good. Well, it was already dead, so it wasn't really... Oh, that's all right. That's all right. Freshy, you know. Freshy still had its eyes. Had a bit of roux. Yeah. Had a bit of... Did you get any koala in there or anything? No, no, no. That's probably the worst one. Not endangered species, right? No, no. A lot of the time, these experiences are with the locals or some of the Aboriginal communities that I went through were really accommodating. All the kids were running around. The camels loving that. So I'd go out for a hunt with a couple of the boys to take us out. Yeah. And not everyone always had a gun, so I was like, oh, you've got a gun. Jump in the car. Let's go for a hunt. Get some foxes, get some widgets, and let's go for a fish. I've got a cat. Oh, a cat. All right, so your cat's around kintour and some other places that, you know, cats on the menu. It's the only time I declined. Okay. Yeah, yeah. I ate a lot of other kind of stuff. I don't know. Cats is where I went. I don't know. Yeah, I only had horse mate recently this year. Yeah, right. First time. And it was in Holland, and it's a thing there. I mean, it's a thing anywhere. Yeah, in France as well. Yeah. And it was like in the form of the sausage. And you had this placebo effect. You're like, this is going to taste like so different. And I had it. Oh, that's all right. It's just like beef, is it? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I haven't had specific horse steak, but I've had like, they, initially they had the horse like meatballs. Yeah. And I was like, yeah, go on. Yeah. There you go, you know. Not really the, that, again, westernized, right? Yeah. Kangaroo's fine. I've had crocodile. That's fine. Yeah. Tastes like kind of more chicken. Yeah, it's like fishy chicken. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Eel, fucking love eel. Yeah. You ever get a chance to have smoked eel? Yeah. Tastes so good. Yeah. And people are like, you're a weirdo. And I'm like, yeah. Eel's great. Eel's great. Taste it. I don't, I definitely can never have dog. Cat, no. Yeah, dog and cat. I don't like most things. I don't know why. Dog and cat is probably off of me. Yeah. The bush tucker out in Australia is, I mean, some areas on the east coast, it's not too bad. You can get out of the desert. There's a few little treats out there, but it's pretty rough. Yeah. They've got bush coconuts, which taste like a eucalyptus kind of coconut kind of thing and the flesh on the inside of a, I think it's a larva shell that grows on the bloodwood tree. Yeah. It's okay. You've got yams. Now, there's some seed pods that come off one of the Eucasia trees. But it's all like, all right, I can eat that. It's a thing, but it's not like, it's not going to be served up in a restaurant anywhere here. Australia's got stuff where you can go, you're going to eat it to survive, but it's not... Was there a time where you didn't have that much food left and you were like... No, it was pretty good the whole time. I always had plan Bs, but I ended up with food left over because I would always try and lean into the experience of what's available around. So I had my plan B always just tucked away in the back pocket and that meant that if one of the camels got injured, I got injured or whatever, I was in no time pressure in order to have to push forward to a schedule. I could sit there for a week, two weeks until that injury had healed or whatever. Any close calls with cars or anything? Yeah, so we had a couple. Yeah, we were going through Tassie, coming out of a place called Bishinau and we're going down the side of this highway, going with a boat. He got so close to the camel train that the camel kicks the boat, he's got the car on the boat, kicks the boat on the way past. That's how close he got. I don't know if he really didn't see us or whatever, but anyway, one car, another one in Tassie, he peed later in a Commodore and he comes screaming up behind us, slams on the brakes, locks it up his sideways, just misses the back of our camel train stops and then he goes around. Not about 10, 15 minutes later, we get up, we come around the corner, he's spun out and he's off the side of the road in the ditch, instant karma. Did you let him know about it? I was like, oh yeah, what are you doing? I was on a slippery road. Oh mate, I know exactly what you were doing. So that was pretty good to see that. But the gnarliest, closest incident we had with traffic was probably the first incident we had on the track. So we're coming down the highway in Queensland and I'm following the service road for the railway instead of walking on the highway because there's a lot of road trains. We get up to this section where there's a dog leg of highway over the railway tracks. So I got the option to either go up over that dog leg with two blind corners with a bunch of semi-trailers and road trains going up and down it or go underneath the bridge on the railway line. And so I'm like, I haven't seen a train all day. Oh shit. That's the safer option, right? So what there is, is there's like the tunnely bit and then there's like the side of the road, the dirt's like ramped up by the side. So you've got the railway track, a little groove either side and then the walls. That goes on for about another 500 metres. So all up to probably about 750 metres which for me would be about a 10 minute crossing. So I'm like, alright, let's get on the track. So I did the whole put my ear down on the track and I'm like, oh yeah, there's nothing coming. So, you know... Does that actually work? I don't know. Clearly not. Because after I get through this tunnel and I'm in that second bit at the 4pm Sydney to Brisbane because it's a passenger train, it's flying, right? So he's on the horn and I'm like, oh shit, what do I do? So if I really pull my camels and try and get them to do anything quickly, they'll resist, they'll pull back. So I have to slowly take my whole camel train off and try and get them all... A little, yeah. Very lucky because the camels can see the train coming towards us. If they could hear it behind but couldn't see it, they'd be in all sorts but they can see it. I've got no shit. That much gap between the side of my saddlebags and this train as it rockets through. I get them off. 10 seconds later the train comes through. That much distance. If one of my camels just steps out sideways just a little bit, boom, we're all gone. My heart is just like... Yeah, so we keep walking. I've got to be on that train line as well for the next week. So I'm not as close to it but I start to develop this relationship with the train driver. So a bit of a rocky start. He's on the horn like... But by day three he's out with his phone taking photos. He's like... Flushing his locks for a different reason. Had a John LinkedIn yet? Yeah. But yeah, that was probably the first... That was probably the most gnarliest, closest call we had with traffic. But I reckon we had three... No, probably five odd dickheads on the road out of the hundreds of thousands of cars and trucks and everything that passed us. Oh, that's alright. Amazing. Yeah. Percentage was, that's sensational. I had a really good experience on the road. Australia... My faith in humanity is peaking. Everyone was so nice. People were stopping, throwing beers out at us. In Tassie there was a lot of joints thrown at us. They just see me and just go bearded hippie. Yeah, he'll love a smoke. Like in Queensland, everyone had an angle on the back of their car, so a cold six-pack would get thrown out all the time to you. Yeah, nice. Yeah, Aussies are great. Yeah, absolutely. So you're finishing Geraldton. You're now back in Perth. Where are your camels? They're up in Geraldton still. Looking at some places. Actually, it's the same function we met at. Met another girl who's got 800 acres in the Chittering Valley. Perfect. It looks like they'll be going there. So I will bring them down on the 22nd of this month. Once they're close enough to Perth, I can go up and see her. Oh, man, I'm keen to go meet the boys. Oh, you're going to come out. You're going to come out and meet the boys. Yeah, absolutely. Make a thing of it. So how have you adapted back into civilisation with the basic folk? Yeah, with the mouth breathers. No, no, it's been interesting. You can see I've donned the suit back on. You just kept the hat. Yeah. But interesting. It's been as much of an adjustment coming out of it as there was going into it. The things that I was most concerned about or nervous about at the start of the camel track ended up becoming my comforts that I was really weary of letting go of. We're letting go of my alone time of... You were institutionalised like a prisoner. Yeah. In a weird way. Yeah, yeah. That's cool, though. I left my life in Perth whilst I really loved it. So I was not worried about coming back to that. I think it was... I also left the trek whilst I loved it. Oh, yeah. Which is a good thing, but it means I've just left something I love. Yeah. I enjoyed it right up until the last day of it. I was at tears in my eyes on the last day because I just knew this part of my life was over. And I really enjoyed it. It ultimately seeks discomfort. Like the yes theory. You shit on the yes theory right now. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So what was the maybe the top takeaway from the trip that you found out about yourself that is discovered? Yeah. I've been pretty weary about dispensing any advice on what I've learnt about myself or takeaways from the trek just yet because it's like I feel like a university student that's just come out of uni and got his first job. I don't really know where all that thought and knowledge really applies because I haven't road tested it. I haven't even soundboarded it with catching up with people like yourself with a few beers and back and forth a little bit. So I get after three to six months. Yeah. I'll start to see what actually applies, what actually fits into real life. I walked into one house right and there was a sign on the wall that said, life is short, lick the bowl. And I'm pretty sure they should have hung that in the kitchen not the toilet. Right? If you apply the wrong advice into the wrong fucking area, you end up eating shit, right? Well, you ate the bowl completely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, and shout it out and ate it again. Yeah. That's fucked. So what's something you don't miss from the trip? Like, you go, fuck that shit. Oh, loading and unloading, fuck that, that's fucked. Like that, yeah. I suppose I switch to consider it like, it's just let me go into the gym. I'm just lifting weights. Yeah. And for the first two and a half years, it was probably only the last few months where I'm like, all right, lean into it. But I hated it for two and a half years. Yeah. Which is what, and that's the first thing you've got to do to get your day gone. Yeah. It's like, you have to push through that shitty part. Unloading, fine, because you're in a new spot. It's exciting. You're setting something up. Yeah. Yeah. How can you shit away and load it on? And I shit the misses. I shit the misses for not making, I'm not making the bet. Yeah. She hates me for that. She hates me for that. Yeah. The only thing she hates about me is I don't make the bet because I'm fucked. I'm sure there's other things. Yeah. So I get up and I'm just like, it doesn't add to the productivity of my day. Yeah. You have an accomplished, you accomplish it. Yeah. But yeah. For me, I'm like. On the exact same load, I don't see the point in it. Yeah. I'm not one of these people that puts 749 pillows on my bed for looking at. That's right. And you have to switch on the track. Like your swag has to be packed away and your bed's got to be done every day. Yeah, it had to take that with you. You don't have to take it. It's got to be packed up all the fucking time. Yeah. And that was not a strong point that I had before. Like, I wasn't the neatest and tidiest of people. Like, because I'm just like, I just get someone else to do that. There is no someone else on the camel track. It's like, you do it or it doesn't get done and you don't move. Yeah. Sucked. I know you mentioned that you're still kind of really figuring out how it's kind of changed your life. Mm-hmm. As well and what you've learned. But now that you're back into the career that you've left behind, are you back in working for someone else or have you precisioned yourself back into your own business or what? Yeah. So, whilst I left, the company actually grew. It's nearly doubled in size since I left it. Blessing. It's great. So, they've filled out the office or just about to fill out the office they're currently in. So, we've got to start, you know, planning. So, it's still your thing? Yeah. So, they've earned 100% of Elliott Insurance. Sick. So, yeah, they need a new home to go into. So, that would probably be the next project that I'll take on and get a new office. Yeah. Maybe do a bit of a co-working space as well. We've discussed that a little bit as well. But I think I really like that. Like I said, I left the job whilst I loved it. And I don't think I'd step back into that CEO role. But I do love helping people with business. I do love that process. The testing to see if something works, to see if something's viable. So, creating a co-working space with people in there just having a shot, I think would be a cool project to take on. So, maybe I'll get a whole lot more office space than what I need for my company and try and create that community. I'm keen to see how that will work. And I see it flourishing really well. And I think I'm excited to hear your first story about how someone goes, mate, it's just not working for me. Like, fuck, I had to do this this morning. And then you just get this flashback of the last three and a half years of doing something that's 20 times as hard. How do you think you're going to relate to people? I went to an event and it was good to see a few people. But I saw some of the stuff that people were complaining about. And after you've had such a big perspective thing, you're like, how are you worrying or complaining about this? But everything has perspective. So, they could be feeling that just as hard as some of the hardest moments of my trek. I may not see it as that, but for them, if they're feeling it, it's a lived and real experience for them and it's just as hard for them to navigate and get through. I think the toolkits that I had learnt on the trek hopefully will apply to someone to be able to navigate through that issue. And I think I've got to stop thinking about everything being a competitive or comparative state. I've got to switch back out of that. Because it's very hard to plug my experience comparatively into everyday life. You've got to be empathetic. You show that empathy to people. But the toolkit has value. So hopefully sharing the stories and sharing some of the things people will be able to extract from my experience, some of the toolkits, in order to navigate through some of the complexities of everyday life. Absolutely. I'm keen to see how that unfolds and I reckon that will really help your career or wherever you may be going in whichever direction. Are you planning on eventually down the horizon doing something else extraordinary like this? I'm going to leave the dance card pretty open, because who knows what doors will open. We've got the book coming out middle of next year. We've got 14 terabytes of footage that the documentary crew has done. So who knows what we're going to do with that? So we're exploring some options with that as well. So you never know if that could go on a streaming service or we could just release something. They just do it for the hell of doing it. So no idea what's going to happen there and therefore no idea what doors could open up or slam straight in my face. It's weird like with what you've done and there's a spot for your book signed copy on that shelf. So thanks for that. When you rocked up, I mean, I didn't hear about you. Never heard of you until I met you that day. And why do you think that is? Because I've told a lot of people, I'm like, hey, I'm meeting John Camelman. And now who's that? Like literally all of them. Well, who's that? Well, I suppose in business it was all about pushing my message out there. We want to get our product. We want to get our services out there. So I spent 10, 15 years shoving whatever I had to offer down people's throats or attempting to at least. So when I started this experience, I'm like, I just want to do it and see you notices. Do it and see who gives a shit. So there wasn't any press or PR or anything of a relation to it. And I had nothing to sell. Up until whilst I was on the track I never mentioned my company name. So even if I was on the news they're doing an article. No plugs. No, I just say I'm in financial services. They want to investigate that further. That's up to them. But I didn't want to have anything to sell or anything to plug because there's a freedom in that. Like, I don't know, I can be whoever. I can say, shit, fuck, whatever. Whatever I want to say. I've got nothing to sell. So that doesn't, you know, you can bleep that out. No, it's cool. But that was, that was, that was nice. There was like, there, all the, the, all the Johns that previously had to exist, like the personal John, the CEO John, the John for your friends and the John for your clients. There's a lot of similarities between across those Johns, but you know, each one hides a little bit of you. And all of a sudden, you know, over the last few years I've got to amalgamate all of those into just one. Yes. And be okay with the ramifications of whatever because I'm not, I'm not asking you to buy anything from me. I'm not asking anything from you. I'm just doing my thing, you know, and I'm happy to share the story about it. Did you have to put on the CEO hat at all during the trip for your company? No. Never? No. They, they kept the. Just before I started, we had a guy running the place. He was doing a bit of a, he was farming it. He was doing a shit-ass job. So I flew back, sacked him, and put in place the four longest serving employees that I have as a four-way management team. And they nailed it from day dot. So that's why my company grew. I had a lot of trust with these guys. And yeah, they absolutely smashed it out of the park. So because of those four people, I did not have to put the hat on at all. Four people? Fuck. I checked a few reports every few months. Every few months. That's it. And you're just like, yeah, it looks good. It's growing. Yeah, there's not too much red. Even in COVID, it grew without you. And you just, it's, yeah. And that's something that like talk about another time. But yeah, it's just the power of finding the right people that you trust that are invested with, with what you're doing. It's key. And that goes along into trusting the camels and then trusting in you. Obviously they don't have that emotional intelligence, but you're training with them. You're bonding with them. And then over time, you know, how they're all, you know, the back to front, the mannerisms and things, the ones that are a bit more clumsy, the ones that are heavier, which ones are heavier? Well, they've all got their different ways. So when you're trading a wild camel, the methods are all exactly the same, right? So because you're dealing with the wild instinct of the animal. Yeah. But so you use the exact same methods and you'll pretty much 99% of the time, you'll get the exact same response. But as you train them through to reduce those natural wild instincts, they start to go down in the individual personality, the animal comes up. So even though you might train them all initially the same, you will handle them all slightly differently once you understand the personality. Now translate that to your business, your company. Yeah, you're not really allowed to put nose lines in them, cut their testicles out and, you know, run them around the yard until they start obeying you. So again, I'm not sure what I've learned on the camel track and how that applies to... I'm seeing some similarities without the physical shit. But it's cool how that's how I see it unfolding and it would be cool to do a follow-up 12 months from now to see if... It's already started to happen. So being involved in a couple of management meetings and going through some scenarios and you're like, all right, there's something... Now I can take this bit of knowledge from over here and I can plug it in there. And it does work and I've set it in front of people and no one, you know, was like... There he is talking. Oh, he's carrying on again? Yeah, he's lost it. So yeah, I'm starting to make those connections and those links. Yeah, looking forward to, like I said, in six months being able to go, hey, this one does... Yeah, absolutely. Link. What about the contrast between the staff and how they talk to you before you left versus now, since you've come back? So my key management kind of team there, we've been in contact those a few years, but there were several staff members that I'd never met in nature of a growing company whilst you're away. It's a little bit different. When I left, I was kind of on the tools and now I'm kind of not. So it is a strange kind of feeling, but I don't have much to do and the management team wouldn't even give me access to the invoicing system. I said, why not? They're like, you might invoice something. So they have taken it on as their own and taken ownership of it. So yeah, I'm still fine on my feet and what my relationship or interaction with the staff is going to be like. So I'm trying not to force it. I'm just trying to sit back and see where I'm needed and try and read the queues and be okay with how that comes out. It's very, very similar to your journey. Yeah, very much so. So when we first spoke, you mentioned you were homeless. Yeah, still. Still? Yeah. So when you left, was it like you put up for rent? Your house for rent or something? Everything just went into a storage shed. Everything else was gone. So cars, this, that, everything just got rid of absolutely everything. So I kept stuff that meant something to me. So you didn't even have a house that you just rented out? No, just everything gone. So there was no contingency plan just in case you pushed out or whatever? No, I backed myself into the corner. I love that shit. This is why we're talking, right? So I think the same reason I had all the camels really loaded up. So it was never the option to ride. To ride, I would have had to get rid of stuff. So the last thing, I didn't want to give myself a way out. That's why I got rid of everything. That's why I committed to it then. That's why I loaded the camels up. So you have to walk. There is not the option to do anything else. Yeah, excellent. Back yourself into the corner and see what happens. Absolutely. Back yourself in a corner and see what happens. Fight off more, you can chew and chew like fuck. I fight. I vibe with that. Well, I've pretty much covered everything that I wanted to cover and some. This is a extra long episode. Normally it just goes for an hour. So I'm just going to let him talk. How long are we going? I think 20 minutes over. But mate, the value in that for anybody who's thinking of taking a leap, taking a punt in themselves. I reckon that's where the value will be. Because for people, it's a good story. Great story. Thank you. I'm keen to see how it goes further. And being a man of like a very successful business and just going, nah, I'm going to go do that. And coming back with a lot of stories and, you know, maybe... You seem like there's not many emotional scars. Maybe I'm wrong. But now that you're back, those stories will unfold, like you said. And I'm just keen to just re-listen to it again and again and again, you know. I suppose the advantage of going through those deserts towards the end, I had a lot of processing time to just be okay with all the events of the trip and really break it down and process it. So there's no escaping your own thoughts and you can't escape yourself with that amount of solitude. So certain things are brought to the table and they have to be addressed. So I got plenty of chance to do that, which was a great way to kind of wind down and really unpack the whole adventure. And I was pretty remote right up until the last day or two of the trek. So we were going through the back of station country. So second last night, third last night, I'm still camped out in the station by myself. So I got to have that solitude right up to the end, which was great. Excellent. So now that you're back again and you're still homeless, you're looking, you're in the property market yet? No, I just booked trips to Bali today. So I'll get back on the road. I've got my son coming across from the UK, which I'm excited about. So I get to spend some father-son time with him to see if we can get that accent out of him and nice kid, terrible accent. So spend some time, go some father-son adventures, show him some of the places I went through and a bit of family and friend times. So all the adventures and things that I'm planning and doing at the moment, all the mini kind of little things, it's all about doing it with the people that I care about and trust. I didn't miss Perth. I missed the people. I missed the people. Yeah, I love it. I love it. Well, thanks for coming in, John. Thanks John. Thank you for inviting me. Absolutely. It's been a pleasure. Absolutely. Everybody listening at home, John, yeah, John Elliott, look him up. And we're going to open up the comments on Spotify that you can drop in a question and we'll get him to look at it or forward him some interesting bangers. And yeah, hope you enjoyed the show. I'm going to be thinking about all those stories later on and I'm going to be sharing some of the snippets from his trip. So thanks for sharing those. And everybody else at home, I hope you got a lot of value out of that journey and overcoming all these different things in the trip and finding yourself and being at peace with yourself and just taking a leap, just taking a punt. I love it.