How to Survive in the Australian Outback

Chris, are you ready for our hike? What are you doing? I'm cleansing my inner wisdom. I've been reading all about aboriginal culture, and I'm ready to go on a vision quest. Your what? You know, a walkabout. A vision quest. Okay, whatever. Just don't get lost. As if I'd get lost. Shelly? Shelly! Is that my spirit animal? Friendly koala? G'day. Who are you? I'm Jake. I'm a bushcraft teacher around here. You look lost. Are you alright? No, I'm fine. I'm good. Alright, well, if you're okay, I'll get out of here, but I'd watch out for the drop bears. Drop bears? They're kind of like a koala, just a really angry koala, and they drop from really tall in the trees. There's a bush guide around here, but when you go down to the ridges, they could drop down and stick their claws into your neck. Generally, if you just step off to the side quickly, once you hear that rustling in the leaves, you'll be alright. You know, maybe I'll tag along with you. Alright, no worries. So, what does a bush guide do? Well, my job is to make sure that people can stay alive in the bush. Do you think you can teach me how to survive in the outback? Well, I'll give it a good go, but it's not the outback. It's a bush. That's intense. They'd use this again, the powerful astringent, it would tighten everything up and stop them from losing everything that was in their tummy through diarrhoea. You don't have that? Inhale that for a little while, and give yourself a bit of a head massage, and it might sort of bring the pain to the surface a little bit at first, so you feel like your headache's getting worse. Okay, yeah, I definitely feel way worse. Yeah, this is what we call the grandmother tree. It is a sacred tree. Here's the glyphs. Whoa, these look like Egyptian hieroglyphs. Look right up high, you can see. It looks very much like a pharaoh or an Egyptian prince. Different people have got different views. Some people say it was aliens that did them. Some say it was Egyptian brothers. One of the local elders told me that two Egyptian brothers got shipwrecked out here. One brother got bitten by a snake and died, and the other brother lived his life out here with the local Aboriginal people. So what's the most rewarding part about the work you do out here? Well, as a young fella, growing up around here, and probably in many different neighbourhoods all over the world, there's a lot of opportunities to head in the wrong direction, and head down quite a negative path. And for me, the bush was always my sanctuary, and just having a love for nature, I guess Nearly losing our possum there. Yeah, it really gave me a gentle side, it was a real gift, and a fascination, I think, the gift of giving somebody fascination with nature and with the wilderness is a really, really important thing. And being able to pass that on to young people, particularly I work with troubled youth, youth that aren't fitting into the mainstream at school, or have been in trouble with the law in the juvenile justice system. I just feel really, really privileged to be able to use what I've used to find my way through the maze of being a young man, and growing up to being a bit of an older man now in these young fellas' eyes, to be able to show them the way through using nature, it's an incredible gift. All right, fresh grubs. Well, that's a big part of it, having the stomach to be able to eat this kind of thing. If you've got that down pat, then you've got half the battle won. All right. Hey, that's really good. Not bad, eh? Hand me some of that possum. Oh, boy. Oh, yeah. This is the stuff. It's great. I'm a real outdoorsman. Yeah. The wild, it calls to me. I love it here in the outback. We call it the bush. All right, so this will be where you'll be tucking in for the night. Okay. You make yourself comfortable. I won't be too far away, and I'll see you in the morning. You're not going to be here, no? I've got my camp a little bit further down there. Do you reckon you'll be all right? Yeah. Yeah, I got this. You sure? Yeah. See you in the morning. Okay, well, I'm only a yell away if you need me, okay? You've got a good set of lungs on you, so... I wouldn't need to yell. I'll just be down the rocks down here. See you tomorrow. Night-night. Bye, Jake. How'd you sleep? Oh, I slept great. Brought the fresh air. I really was relaxing. Thanks for teaching me the ways of the outback. It's the bush. What was that? A drop bear? Shelly? You're a drop bear? You know drop bears are something Australians made up to scare tourists, right? Where have you been? I've been getting some outback survival lessons from my new friend, Jake. Jake? Was he my spirit animal all along? Hey Jake, thanks so much for taking care of him. I knew he was going to get lost. No worries, but you're keeping an eye on him, okay? Did you enjoy our time in the outback? I mean bush. Well, give a big thank you to all of our supporters on Patreon. Patreon is a website that allows fans of a YouTube show to contribute, for example, a dollar per episode. Because of support from viewers like you, we were able to come here to Australia and meet Jake and see those mysterious Egyptian hieroglyphs. So leave a comment below saying thanks.