Transcript of AE 1221 - The Goss: Dog Turds and Veggie Ice Cream

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 weather 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 AussiEnglish.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.

All righty, Dad. How's it going?

Hey, Pete. It's good to be back. What's the goss? There's a few bits of goss.

Yeah.

Yeah. A few stories you've been sending me over the last few weeks. One's a piece of crap.

One's a piece of crap? Is that the pun or is it?

It's the pun. It's the pun. "Is leaving dog poo in the street really so bad?" Question mark. "The science says it's even worse than you think." How do they know what I think? I could think it's the worst thing ever.

So I think, yeah, the first few lines "Beyond the obvious unsightliness and the likelihood of making unwanted contact with dog poo. There are some other important reasons to pick up after dogs. Here's what you need to know and what the science says about common efforts to deter dogs from pooping on the yard." So what were the main efforts, Dad?

The main efforts or the effects? So salmonella, E.coli, giardia and internal parasites are being spread by dog faeces.

Yeah. Not your first choice. I wonder what kind of parasites. I assume worms.

They'll be worms. Yeah.

Yeah. Hopefully. Just what we used to call grog worms. I don't know why it was grog, but grog worms as in the worms you get- the little ones that come out of your bum.

Yeah. Yeah, well, there are actually. Well, domestic dogs are not going to be a problem, but there are actually some pretty bad ones that you get from farm working dogs because their parasites typically go through pigs and sheep.

Oh God.

They're pretty ugly but..

Do not want. But yeah, so they're trying to cut back on this. It was interesting, though, that I feel like we're already doing pretty well, at least locally here with, with the kinds of amenities that they have for dog walkers. Right. You will see, you know, the little baggie station all over the shop anytime you go to the beach or anything. Yeah, yeah. There's always bins there. Always absolutely horrible to throw anything in because you lift up the top and you're like, "Whoa!"

"This hasn't been cleared for a couple of weeks!"

"This smells like shit!"

Particularly in summer.

That's it. Yeah. This smells like shit. Dog shit. Yeah, it's horrible. But. Yeah. So do you think people are getting better at cleaning up after their dogs, or do you think..

Well, I certainly- better than when I was a child. When I was a child. Well, firstly, dogs just roamed. You know, the idea of keeping your dog on your property was sort of unheard of. That dogs would, you know. Mostly dogs are trained and they're territorial, so they'll sit on their own property, but they'll just walk around the street. So if your dog's walking around the street, you've got no control over where it's doing its business.

Yeah.

And you're not going to be going around cleaning up after something if you don't think you're responsible.

Yeah, I don't know if this is my dog poo, but I'm just going to go around the streets and clean up..

You know, I certainly, I reckon 30 or 40 years ago, if you were walking around and people got a dog that, you know, the best you would see is somebody who would try and sort of kick it under a bush or something. Rather than picking it up.

They would just lay a big banana leaf over the top of it.

Exactly. Yeah. So but now, look, I would estimate, and this is completely unscientific, I reckon 95% of people are walking around with their little baggies and picking up their dog's droppings. And so..

You think it's become much more of a taboo then? Because I think today I was sitting in my bedroom on the computer. I think one day with mum would have been here, the kids were here, so she was probably helping out with them. And this huge dog just came past the window and just dropped a massive log on our front yard. And I was just like- and the person walking the dog was like a seven year old girl. I was like, 'You've got to fucking be kidding me.'

I was just like, I'm going to have to go outside and totally abuse this poor child. No, no. The good thing was, after the dog had finished, because she just fucked off and I was like..

Of course she's going, What's she going to do? She's run down there, jumped on the dog and ridden it down the road.

That's it! I was like, 'You bitch just took. Bolted.' No, but then the, the dad was walking behind her with the bag and came and cleaned it up and I was like..

Yeah, thanks, mate.

..'God damn right.' Like, there's more poop than grass on my front yard now. What the hell, man? But yeah, it is funny. I feel like the older I've gotten, I've noticed that it's become a massive taboo. And that's, you know, I'm sure all of us have walked a dog where you've forgotten a bag and you've let the dogs had to shit suddenly in the middle of the road or whatever, and you're just like,

'Don't look at me.' Yeah,

The older I get, I'm like, 'Quick, hurry up. Like, you know, we gotta get out of here. Someone's gonna see!' You know,

Someone's going to be sitting in their bedroom looking out the window.

That's it. 'He's shitting on the front yard again!' Like, 'Call the cops!' But yeah, it's interesting. One other thing I've noticed is that you don't find white dog turds everywhere anymore because they've removed the calcium powder or whatever..

And they're not, and the dog dogs aren't eating bones as much.

Yeah. So they used to always be these dried up..

We get that. We get those. You can guarantee a week after our dog's had a bone that. Yeah. The turds in the backyard, that when we're cleaning them up they'll be 'Oh a little brown one' or 'Oh, a hard white one!'

Yeah. That's, that's 50% bone.

It's a- bone fragments.

Yeah. I know. It is pretty insane. I love that. Yeah, you can just give dogs like Banjo a beautiful big- What would it be? Like a femur-.

Cow femur.

Cow femur. And the first thing he does, like, it's fresh out of the Glad wrap. You know, you've unwrapped it, it's clean, and the first thing he does is bury it, right?

Yeah.

Put it in the filth, and you're just like, 'Mate, you just..'

Predigest it.

.. touch anything..

.. bacteria on it that it's predigested.

It's gross. But yeah, so..

Which is part of the reason why the dog poo is a problem. Because dogs' digestive systems..

Burn through everything..

..are ridiculously good but there will be some of these parasites and bacteria and things that survive it. And then they're just sitting there and, yeah, people aren't out handling dog turds on the street.

Well, adults.

Yes, But it's mostly the it's just getting into the water. It gets into the water systems. Now we're not drinking stormwater, but the stormwater goes into the local, local lake or whatever.

And you know how many kids are down there playing and mucking around and.

Yeah, well that's it. Right? So yeah, don't, don't let your dog poo..

Don't let your dog shit in the street.

The thing that shits me at the moment, we've got like, there's an enemy cat. I don't know which one it is, but there's one of these bastard cats in the neighbourhood that keeps coming over to my front yard. And Noah and I made a little- not a flower bed, but a little garden,

.. A little cactus garden and succulents..

Got some succulents in there. And there's, I've left space for these things to grow and grow out horizontally over the top. And I put nice soil down with perlite mixed it in nice and airy, so it drained well and the plants didn't die. But there's a neighbour's cat that keeps coming and digging a hole and laying a massive turd and not burying it. It just leaves it there. It's one thing- I have to go and bury it! Because I'm like, I'm not picking this thing up, but I'm, you know, I'm like, every, every few days I come outside and I'm like, 'He's shat in the garden again!' Like, he's obviously found his favourite spot.

You've made the perfect cat litter tray! The outdoor litter tray.

'The soil moves between my claws so nicely when I'm digging my little hole.' He's just like, you know.

Well, you spread cat litter over it. You know, that was the problem.

I know, I know. But yeah, that's one of those other things that's probably become a taboo in the time that dog, you know, letting your dog poo in the street has. It's just letting pets roam.

Well, I don't know. Geelong City Council were talking about making it illegal to have cats outdoors.

I'd welcome that. I mean, you mean not, not supervised? I imagine that if they're on a leash or something someone's backyard..

Ah yeah. But just, just cats just running around, running around outdoors and there was no pushback against it. So I don't know why they didn't do it.

Because they've done that in Canberra. They had all these suburbs that were no outdoor cat suburbs.

Yeah.

And it was for the sake of the wildlife.

Yeah.

Right. The native wildlife. Like it's one thing, you know, if you could just say cats, you can kill anything that's not native, go to town.

..to town on the mice and the rats.

Yeah, exactly. Unleash the fury.

Eat those weeds.

That's it. Yeah, that's it exactly. But they tend to just indiscriminately kill whatever they can.

Exactly.

And so..

Most of the stuff in people's yards, even in suburbia, is native.

Yeah.

Particularly little reptiles and birds.

I always feel like just buying a large mammal trap and putting it in the backyard. And every time I get a cat, just taking it to the pound and being like, 'Oh, someone lost their cat.'

You're entitled to do it.

And I think they have to pay a fee, right? Every time it happens.

Do your block of land.

I just the thing that irritates me because I've got one of these stories where I remember when we first moved to Curlewis. Kel and I moved in at Brompton Street down the road there, and we would go down the street and drive up to or walk up to the supermarket that was around the corner. And I remember driving up one day- it was either driving or walking and someone's cat had been run over and like not just like hit by a car. But the car, or cars, had run over the centre of the cat and it had gone everywhere. There were intestines, all sorts of stuff, all over the road. And I remember thinking. That's fucked up. Like. Like that's someone's pet. That's not just a random animal. So, you know, they're probably going to see it. And then the next day, I think, or later that day, Kel was taking the kids, you know, and they would have been, you know, babies at the time, small children up, up to the supermarket. And she was like, she told me when she got back, 'I was going up there and there were these people all sort of standing around a small kind of like little grave in the front yard.'

'And the kids were crying and the, the woman there was crying and everything.' And I was like, 'Was that in this spot?' And she's like, 'Yeah.' And I'm like, 'Fuck. It was their cat.' And it was right out the front of their house. So the cat had left the house, walked across the road and just gotten squashed. And so that was one of those things where that's another reason that I just don't- I can't imagine my kids coming home from Day-care and finding Peaches squished all over the road, you know. And you're- it's one of those things, Kel was like, 'I feel so bad for them.' And I'm like, 'Fuck that.' You know, like, 'Why were they letting the cat out? Like, God damn it.' You know, it's irresponsible to the cat. It's irresponsible to your children. It's irresponsible to, you know, environment. Yeah. So.

Nobody wins out of this.

I know. Exactly. So, yeah, keep your pets inside, guys. But yeah, that irritated me.

Yes.

So, anything else you want to say about dog poo?

It sort of ran its race, I think.

Do you reckon people are more likely to allow their dogs to shit and walk on the road versus on the beach in Ocean Grove? Or do you think more people on the beach..

I don't know..

Allow them to poo because they can kind of just let it wash away..

Let it ride- oh yeah, the high tide'll take care of that.

Because you always see heaps of shit at the beach.

Yeah, I know. I've seen people picking it. Well, we used to do it. We haven't walked the dog on the beach for a while, but.

Well, Mum does. I don't know. You kind of do the dodgy don't you. And just bolt. You're like everyone's, everyone's on their own..

Do I look like I'm bolting up the beach? This is-.

A snail pack.

This old fat guy with a heart problem running up the beach. This dog's dropping a turd here.

You're on your own, Banjo. You dug your little hole..

Pick it up.

That's it. Cool. All right. Short cuts episode. Yeah. I'm not sure how we can follow that one up.

Can we make it a twofer? Is there anything..

Make it a twofer?..

.. that links well, or should we just.

Ah, here we go!

All right?

Speaking of food, turning veggies into ice cream.

Turning. Turning ice cream into shit!

Exactly. Well, don't feed your dog ice cream.

We can. We can make this a twofer. Two for one.

A two for one.

Two for one. All right. Okay. So the veggie ice cream one.

Yeah. This is a sort of a cool idea that there's these people now who are using rejected vegetables. So stuff that either never gets in the supermarket or is no longer saleable in the supermarket and they're mixing it into commercial ice cream mix.

What blew my mind- before you get into that, it blows my mind that so much gets rejected. That is 100% fine, not even blemished. And it's because it's too small or too big.

Or the wrong shape or-.

Yeah, you'll go in and see all, say, the Granny Smith apples or the avocados or whatever, and they will be within a certain tolerance, right? There's a uniform kind of..

Oh, the avocados are all identical. The only thing is they have sort of- today, 2 to 3 days a week, you know, but they're all the same size, the same shape.

But when you see..

They don't fall off the tree like that..

.. Where they're like, don't squish them. And you're like, 'How am I going to know? I need a test.' Like, I don't want to buy an avocado that I want to have today. And I get home and I touch it and I'm like, 'God damn it, it's going to be ready in about a week'.

Or not! Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. So they're taking- This is good. I feel like it's useful because I imagine that at least a few years back and and before that it just went to landfill.

Yeah.

And there were all those stories during Covid too. I think of the avocado growers in particular. I remember they got down to like a dollar each or $0.50 each or something at the supermarket.

Some of them, they were saying it just wasn't worth picking them.

Yeah.

And so they were just rolling straight into the ground.

They just let them rot on the ground. They had tons and tons and tons and it was something like they wouldn't make the money back, that it would cost them to get them to the supermarket chains to sell. And so they were like, there's just no point in even bothering. Throw it in the rubbish. So I remember that blowing my mind. I mean, at least the farmers were keeping it and could, you know, use it as fertiliser and put it back into the chain if you want that way. But yeah, massive waste you would imagine. Yeah. So they're taking vegetable waste.

Yeah, pumpkin ice cream, cauliflower ice cream.

So yeah, because initially I read this and I'm like, okay, are they just like making ice cream from these products? But they're not going to taste anything like these products and they'll just add in flavours on top? Or is it that the ice cream is actually flavoured, cauliflower-flavour or pumpkin-flavour and maybe sweetened or something?

I think probably a bit of both. Yeah. Cauliflower doesn't have much of a flavour.

I was going to say out of the lot, I would probably pick cauliflower. Because it'll taste like nothing.

Whereas- yeah, pumpkin ice cream would be okay. It'd be..

Yeah.

Would you have it savoury or sweet?

Savoury! Yeah. Well you know, you eat it like ice cream but it's a savoury flavour. My favourite flavoured ice cream, I used to buy when I was in Singapore a lot. Because the street vendors were selling ice cream over there.

Jesus, don't tell me it's that smelly fruit.

No.

What's it called again?

No, no.

What's that damn fruit you guys will have to tell me.

Yeah.

I've had a brain fart. I can't remember.

That's all right. You'll remember it. No. Corn, Sweet corn.

Oh, really?

Ice cream. It is to die for!

Durian.

Or durian.

Or durian.

Durian. God damn. That stuff's horrible.

It is. It smells like..

Probably what you guys think of Vegemite. That's my version of Vegemite as a foreigner. That's what ..

.. smells like the Vegemite has already been eaten.

Yeah, It smells like used shoes.

Yeah, it smells like our previous story.

Yeah. Yeah. So I reckon that would be a cool idea. And then the tale of this story is also saying that vegetable boosted plain flour could be next. So actually just putting cauliflower meal as an example into flour.

It's an interesting thought, right? In the future, will we find a way of convincing people to eat objectively worse tasting food that's better for you? Or will we take objectively better food for you and make it just..

Make it taste better? Yeah.

And I think it's probably going to be the latter..

A bit and it depends on what you're doing with it. I know the sort of 'pre-pared'- I hesitate to use the really bad use of the 'pre-prepared'. Because the whole idea of preparing something is that you do it beforehand. But the 'pre-prepared' pizza bases that you buy at the supermarket, we get and you do it the same. You get the cauliflower ones, which are about 40-50% cauliflower meal in them as well as, you know, bread flour.

But they kind of don't taste like anything. Right? It's weird.

No, they don't. But I actually, I actually prefer them to the standard.

Well, they're thinner.

They're thinner. A bit crispier.

Yeah.

A slightly different flavour. You couldn't tell. 'Oh that's got cauliflower in it.'

Nah, you wouldn't even know.

But it's, but you know that's different.

Yeah. It's one of those doing that like it's pretty those things that subtracting something from the actual, what you're used to, right. Like, you think white bread. Okay, you have white bread or you have something that's made from flour and you're kind of like it doesn't really have a taste, but it does. And you don't realise it doesn't have a- it does have a taste until you've kind of subtracted it and you use something really bland like cauliflower. I remember having- I think it was when I was first getting into the gym, and I was trying to have those medium chain triglycerides type fats and I had coconut oil. And I started using that as margarine or butter on bread.

And I remember being like, What the fuck? The toast tastes so different now. Like it's- and it doesn't taste like coconut.

Salty?

Yeah. It's just..

Butter and margarine is salty.

Yeah, it just tastes like the bread. But you, all of us. I didn't realise that margarine and butter, you know, had such a strong kind of. I mean, it seems stupid now, but thinking about..

Strong flavour of..

It's strong flavour, that was kind of pairing with the bread to make toast that you had put butter.

I don't know about you, but one one very rarely just pops a piece of bread in the toast. It takes it out and eats it.

Yeah, that's..

You're putting something on it.

Too crispy. Yeah, it's just too. Yeah, It's like having dry biscuits just by themselves, sicko. Although you sit down and eat chips, but yeah, I remember that. And being like, 'Oh, wow.' Okay. So something like margarine, which I thought was, you know, just some sort of bland kind of like you put something on top of the margarine to actually give flavour to the toast or whatever. It's like, no, it actually has a quite significant flavour. And my wife would be like, 'No, Da Pete.' She pretty much just has margarine or butter on everything. Just as is. For, you know, she'd sit there and eat it with a spoon if she could, I think. But.

Well, it sums the same. 'No, I want butter on it', which actually means margarine. He's never actually experienced butter.

Probably not. But yeah. So which would you, you'd be smashing the pumpkin one.

I reckon the pumpkin one would be good. And I'm just trying to think of some other thing that, you know, another flavour. There you go. What would, what would you- give us some feedback here. What would your favourite vegetable-flavoured ice cream be?

I think it's one of those things..

'Cause I've already done sweetcorn, but I know that one's good because I've eaten it.

Is it favourite flavouring that you like it or it's the least offensive?

Well, that's actually the same question. You're just starting at a different end of the spectrum.

I mean, as in like you're actually searching for the flavour versus trying to avoid..

Sweet corn would be like, it's that standard gag about, you know, in those sort of rapid answer 20-question things, of strawberry or chocolate. The answer is vanilla. But for me, for ice cream, it's sweet corn. And people look at you, like 'Idiot!' You know? But yeah, so there is that. I would actively look for sweet corn flavoured ice cream as opposed to going, 'Can I live with spinach flavoured ice cream?'.

What is a, what is a vegetable? Because I'd probably go rhubarb. I imagine that's not a fruit. I'd have rhubarb ice cream over everything.

Pretty much. But, but the thing is that, that's a flavouring in the ice cream because it's- rhubarb has no substance. By the time you cook it, it's just mush. So I don't think you could actually make ice cream out of it.

I imagine you could take just flavouring and just sprinkle it.

Yeah. It's not adding any texture or filler to it. It's. It's like saying, you know, strawberry flavoured ice cream is strawberry flavoured, but you can also put strawberries in it.

So yeah, I don't know, I probably go the cauliflower just because I would be the least offensive.

Cauliflower or pumpkin.

I'd try them all! But if you had broccoli or- no, you know what the worst one would be?

Spinach flavoured?

Brussels sprouts.

I like Brussels sprouts! But I'm not sure Brussels sprouts ice cream would be that great.

Brussels sprouts can fuck right off.

Nah, if you, if you want to try Brussels sprouts, put Vegemite on them.

Ah yeah well that's it. If you put, put anything on them to make them taste better.

I actually love Brussels sprouts.

You could probably put a dog turd on a Brussels sprout and make it taste better than it does by itself.

That sort of wrap that one up then, hasn't it?

Yeah, that was a train wreck. Anyway, thanks for joining us, guys.

And he might actually publish this.

Yeah, no, that's it. This will be a Members-Only episode.

See you guys!

See you!

Transcript of AE 1220 - The Goss: 135 Year-Old Message in a Bottle

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 weather 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 to 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.

Dad, how's it going?

Good, Pete! Yeah, thanks. Hang on. Apologies for those who haven't listened to the previous couple of episodes that we've been recording using the using the new technology. I was about to apologise for what Pete just did. That we're wearing remote mikes that are lapel-attached, so they're right below the beer drinking orifice.

I thought you were going to say 'beard drinking orifice'.

Beard and drinking orifice.

Hard to drink a beard. Yeah. So this was a cool story. The amazing Victorian time capsule, 135 year old message in a bottle. "Message in a bottle", found in Edinburgh. So, Scotland.

Yeah.

The thing that blew my mind. So they have this photo in this, of a very old bottle, below a wooden floorboard that's been cut through.

Great isn't it?

It looks like it's been framed.

Yeah,

But it turns out..

I don't think..

.. the person- plumbers, literally dug through and went through and it was right there.

Oh! Look at that! You couldn't have done it better. Mind you, that's. We see the after shot. He probably was digging through and went, 'Oh look, there's a bottle cork or something in there.' But yeah, it looks amazing.

Yeah. So, "A rather incredible discovery occurred in Edinburgh, Scotland, where a woman found 135 year old message in a bottle under her floorboards. Everything started in October 1877 when two local workers left a note under the floorboards at Morningside Villa. The message was placed in a bottle and left untouched. Until now, when-" I don't know how you would say this name. Is it Eyelid? Alyth. I don't know. It's one of these Gaelic spellings.

Yeah. Eilish.

Eilish. You reckon?

Eilidh Stimpson, a mother of two, found it in her Morningside home in Edinburgh. I can't imagine living in a country where, the buildings in which you live, are hundreds of years old. And have the potential to have those sorts of things just around under the floorboards in the walls, you know, because anything in Australia...

The first house- Yeah, but the first house that we, your mum and I lived in, we were only renting it so we weren't going to be digging the floorboards up.

Was this back in the 40s?

Back in the- No. Yeah. Ha ha ha. That house was at the time when that house would have been 90 years old and we were living there.

Well, I guess, yeah..

When I was living..

Certainly houses built in the 1850s and 60s in Australia that are still around.

Well, how old would the one have been that I was living in on Driberg Street in North Melbourne?

That would have been 1880s.

Really? That old?

1880s to 1900.

Okay.

It's- it's end of Victorian era. It was not Edwardian. They built a different style of place then.

Jesus. Yeah. Crazy. Crazy. But it was interesting. So they they got the plumber in, he cut through the floorboards and was..

Found a bottle..

A bottle that had a rolled up message..

With a note in it!

So what did the notes say?

The note says, hang on, I've got to try. And it's handwritten and scrappy, so..

Ah, I've got the thing in front of me here. The message..

It says, James Ritchie, John Grieve. Laid this floor but did not something or other. Something or other.

Drink the whisky.

Yeah. October the 6th, 1887. Whoever finds this bottle may think our dust is blowing along the road. Now, that's pretty rhetoric and existential. Is that.

I can't believe you can read that.

Like, that's. You sit there and you go, What am I going to write? And this is the question. When I suggest this story, this is the question I'm going to give you in a minute. But what am I going to write for something? I'm going to stick this note in here and go. Our ghosts are still here.

Yeah.

Our dust will be blowing down the road. This is. That's highly existential for somebody to put as a note in there. Assuming that somebody is not going to find this until well after they're gone,

Well, they would be waiting for the house to be demolished, I guess.

Yeah,

I guess it's one of those things where you often look back in the past and think that people didn't have the same kind of existential thoughts or feelings or conversations that we have today. But you forget that they were grappling with the same kind of things with mortality. And, you know, the shortness of life and everything.

So the question and I can't remember the whether the whole article, I don't think it does go into who these dudes were, but..

Ah, it does. It says that they were two men registered as living in the new Newington area by the same names in the 1880s. So they found the men. I think they were just workers of some kind.

So the question is they were not living in this house. This is not the gay couple, secret gay couple living in there. As in 'We're about to build our our living home, we'll put it in here'. These were the two workers who were building the floor on this house, obviously, and went, "Hey, this would be a cool idea. What do you reckon? Hey, Jimmy!" "Yes, Johnny?" "Let's put this wee bottle in here with a note in here. What can we possibly say that'll fuck with their means in 100 years when they find it?"

Well, it makes you wonder if..

Apologies to my Scottish friends and relatives for my really bad Edwardian Edinburgh accent.

It makes you wonder if people are doing that today and if, and if and when people will find it in the future. I guess they're probably doing it digitally, more so than physically like that.

I can't remember it. Were you at the- you were at the primary school, but you can't probably remember it happening. But when I was the president of the primary school that you went to. There was a..

Time capsule.

A time capsule put in, and I think it was put in for 25 years or something. So it's probably coming up soon.

Yep.

And it was, you know, kids designing things and putting it in and what message do we want to send and so on. But that's the question I had. If you were going to put a time capsule somewhere, what would you put in it? I suppose it's dependent without pre-empting your answer. It's dependent on the context and where you're going to put it and why. But you're building a house. Like these guys were, whether it's your house or something. What message are you going to send that you're expecting to be found in a hundred years time?

I don't- It's one of those things. You ask them questions so that they get an idea of what you're wondering.

Like, "Get a bottle!" isn't it, and go find it?

Yeah, that's it. This is "Is Elon Musk eternal yet?"

Yeah.

Did he finally..

Did he get to Mars?

Yeah. I don't know. I guess that would be kind of superfluous, but it would be funny. I don't know what you would. I feel like they're kind of. I'd probably be thinking more about what can I leave that'll be interesting to the people who find it.

Whether or not it's a physical message, I'd probably leave something like put an iPhone in there, You know, buy a brand new with a battery charger.

Yeah. Buy a brand new iPhone with a battery charger because..

Excuse me.

You think they're everywhere at the moment. But how easy is it for us to find a Nokia 3310 or whatever, 3210 or whatever, they were from the 90s, right. I imagine they're still floating around because they were pretty.

They've actually just been reintroduced.

Yeah, but the original ones, right, Especially in mint condition with..

Annie's little purple one that she had.

And I think that's one of those things when we think about Roman times or even, you know, indigenous cultures around the world. When we think about the past, a lot of the time what we would like to have, besides obviously their thoughts and what they were, you know, having conversations about, is the physical objects that they were potentially using or interacting with, you know, and a pristine mint condition version of whatever it is. So yeah, stuff like that. I don't know, maybe. What are your concerns? What are you worried about? At the moment, like, my biggest issue at the moment is housing. It's fucked. You know, I'm worried about if I'll ever be..

Did Donald Trump ever go to jail?

I know. Yeah. I don't know if you'd. What would you leave in there that would be funny. Do you think, like..

This?

Practical..

This story? I love this! It's so cool.

Besides that..

Because it's, yeah..

.. If you can leave an object in there that would make them laugh or make them think about 'What the fuck is this?'.

I don't know.

You know, would you leave maybe a CD? You know? You know, something can be like "Hopefully you can work that the answer to life is on this CD. Good luck."

Yeah, it's on this. You don't even put CD.

Can you find something to use it?

Yeah. Although I suspect that there's almost nothing that we could do now that in a hundred years time, people wouldn't instantly be able to work out what it is. Because even..

I think there'd be plenty of things that you could show me from 100 years ago. And I..

Ah yeah! I agree. I agree. But fast forward 100 years- even now. And you can grab your phone, take a photograph of something, post that in a search to Google and it'll tell you what it is.

Well, I guess that's the difference between them having access to technology that can tell them what it is or if they can just look at it and see,

Yeah, but that's that.. But what's the- how is this technology going to go in 100 years? What, at what point are there going to be where they just don't understand what something was?

Yeah.

And because- I can't fathom what the world's information collection and retrieve ability is going to look like in 100 years time. But, but you're right. What sort of what object would you you put in there? I was thinking about this a while ago, totally independently of this sort of bizarre things that are so familiar to us now that are just different. A white tennis ball.

Yeah. But..

You mean as it looks like I used to use.

Yeah, you look at that. You look at me like it looked at me like 'What the fuck are you talking about?' It is lime green. They're yellow! There's bright lime green colour. But I grew up with tennis balls being pink. Yeah, they were actually white, but we used to play on clay court. So you'd play with them for five minutes and they were this sort of light pinky colour. So yeah, those sort of weird things where, you know, if I'd showed you one of those you'd go, was this specially made? Like what? What's this? It's not real. So yeah, one of those sort of things of what could you put in there? I don't know. I asked the question ambitiously that you might be more intelligent than me, which we know is true, but would you come up with something?

One of those things that I think about quite often is how much, how much of a person's, how much someone in the future will actually give a shit about the past.

Because it's one of those things. And I imagine that it was like this for people that wrote this note. Where they're probably thinking they live in the present when it was 1877 and they're probably like, Who gives a shit? No one cares. It's not special. But we look back now and think, Wow, it was so different. This was so interesting and blah. And I wonder how much it would be like that where we feel today that, well, there's not really anything interesting that we can instantly pull out and share with the future or..

What are these guys going to do? Here's a hammer.

Yeah, exactly.

And funnily enough, their hammer from 1877, would look pretty much identical to the hammer that we use, except that now the cheap ones have got fibreglass handles, the expensive ones have timber handles still. Why..

Have you seen those surgical tools from the Roman times?

Yeah?

Compared to the modern ones? And you just like 'What?! We worked it out with that long ago?'

I know!

It's like. Yeah, we needed a few basic..

We needed a small, sharp..

.. hold things open. Yeah. And to poke at stuff.

Yeah I know. And, and that's the thing that I find amazing. These guys just got it! There was nothing that they could say other than something existential. Like "It'll be our dust blowing down the road." "But we're still here."

I feel like I would..

It's genius!

I would try and mention someone, right? You know, being like. The hope, hoping the person who finds it can look the person up or find out about them, or it's someone famous. Be like, "I once met so-and-so. And he was a cunt. He was a horrible human being or something." Or like. "Yeah, it turns out this guy was right."..

Or like, you know. Or are you guys still listening to Bruce Springsteen?

Is there new music or do you guys just keep listening to the old stuff?

That's right.

AC DC.

Who's the new Taylor Swift?

I know. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's it. 'I'd love to ask you guys something, but I'm dead and don't care.'.

'I'm dead. Don't care. I'm never going to know what your answer is, but I really want to find out.'.

I don't know. It is one of those things where I feel like. You probably could never work out what the future is going to want to know or what would be the ideal thing, because the time would come and it would be something you'd never have realised.

And that's what these guys got it.

Yeah.

There's nothing we can say that is going to improve your lives except giving you an insight into yourself.

Have you seen. I think there's something I remember reading about Roman, the Roman era, where they would have wells that people would throw kind of curses into so they would have issues with neighbours or so on and so on, and they would ride it on a piece of clay or whatever.

Yeah. The neighbours..

And your cat.

Neighbour didn't pay me for so-and-so. Yeah. Go screw yourself. And they would chuck it in the well. And so now they've, they found one of these places and dug them all up and then got all these like bitchy notes from Roman times where people were complaining about, you know, 'So-and-so's neighbour had an affair with my wife and I hope he dies', you know, throw that.

He did!

Yeah, that's it. I think that is always one of those things for me at least. Looking back in the past, it's when you get the day to day conversation or life or thoughts or feelings or emotions is that you often don't get, you know. It's one of those things when I was doing a lot of reading about Australian culture and history from the initial settlement period.

Yeah.

You read that diary by Watkin Tench, right? The first diary.

.. is amazing!

About colonisation of Australia because he came..

If you guys can find it and you want to have this,

Tim Flannery republished it, so it's out there.

Yeah.

Watkin Tench.

Watkin Tench. Yeah. He was a lieutenant in the First Fleet.

Yeah. And he obviously was, you know, probably one of the few people on the fleet that was literate and could write because I imagine even the officers or the other people's soldiers..

Well, the officers could, but the soldiers wouldn't.

So he would..

Sort of be an illiterate,

..Sitting down and writing, you know, about the occurrences like the spearing of Arthur Phillip. Right. And so you get to..

Just day to day stuff! What it was like walking up the muddy street in Sydney..

That sort of stuff is ironically really precious where I think at the time you would think it's something so mundane. Why would I share that kind of thing? Why would anyone care? But I think that would be the thing maybe you would share with. I mean, it probably requires a lot more than just a single note to do it justice.

It does. Yeah. But so it is interesting because in his case, he was probably one of 2 or 3 people who were actually recording daily life.

Who else was doing it?

Well, I assume Arthur Phillip's journals. I haven't read them, but his journal, his journals would have been much more around the management of the colony, whereas Watkin Tench is about events and daily activities.

Just sorry to interrupt you. The thing I would kill for is to have a convict's daily diary.

Yeah.

So-and-so is a fuckwit. This person I've got a crush on. This guy robbed me- the gossip of this, like all the interesting..

And the really good rum can be found at number two in the basement!

That I would kill for. It is funny. It's kind of like- I think it's the reason-.

Daily life!

We watch soap operas and all the bullshit about drama between different people. But I think if you could go back into the past quite often because we don't have access to that, we don't associate the two and don't think about those things happening. And I think, you know, it's why we love things like Pompeii the- where you..

It literally is that frozen moment in time.

Yeah. You have food that's still on plates, you know, people's excrement still in the toilet, dead people holding their most precious belongings that, you know, they were running down the street with when they died. And so you have all of this information that you, that never really gets left to the future. Right. And so I think that sort of stuff would really interesting, would really interest me. So I think what would I leave? Probably a diary, right? If you could find just an average person's diary with drama in it, and especially if they had one that they wrote in on a regular basis for a significant amount of time, if you could put that in a time capsule. I think whether the person was important or famous or not, I don't care about. But if they wrote- like Anne Frank's diary, right? Yeah, like she was a 14 year old girl. But in the middle of a circumstance that was just horrific. And yet the reason the diary is so good, she writes so well, but it's about what was going on on a daily basis during that period.

Right. That was so fascinating!

Personal!

Yeah.

It's not a historical political statement.

No.

It's just- this is my life. It's for a period of months. I think it's knowing, knowing that other people are human and experiencing the same sort of thing as you are. Because like Julius Caesar, you know, I recently saw that they've opened up the temple where he got stabbed to death in Rome, and it just blows my fucking mind. Like to think that you can now go to Rome. I mean,

Stand on the steps.

And stand where he was stabbed to death and think you have a connection to that period in time. Like that was such a significant moment, you know, in Western culture and Western history. You know, it must be like what it's like for Muslims to go to Mecca and think about Muhammad, you know, or people to go to Israel and be thinking about Jesus or whatever, like these these figures that are so significant. And to be like, I've gone there. So I can't imagine. Yeah. Having like, you know, if you had Julius Caesar. Like the writings of- what's his name is again, Marcus Aurelius, is it? His thoughts? I need to go back and read those. But that sort of stuff I find, you know, really precious. I would kill to have a diary from an Aboriginal person from a thousand years ago.

Like if you could find out what what was your daily life like? Tell me about the, the mundane, you know.

So for them it's mundane..

What is it like living- what is it like living in a clan with all of your closest friends and family? 24-7. It's like Big Brother all the time, you know, like.

But nobody ever gets voted out.

Yeah, well, and they do. But permanently with a rock to the back of the head. Yeah. How do you guys manage conflict like that? Like, I would love to know so much more about those sorts of things. I feel like that would be the really precious stuff. More than, you know, objects, I guess. I don't know. You think that's.

Yeah. Well, I was thinking about.

Stories.

Stories, yeah. And that. Is that because. The interest that I have had for a long time and still have in family history is once you get the birth, marriage, death dates and where they lived, if you if you're lucky enough to get where they lived, it's what was going on in their daily life. Unless you find somebody famous, then it's interesting to, to- to link into that and you can sort of interpret that. And you've got lots of that in your family. Not in my side and your mother's side. Your Highness.

Only just- only took you guys like a decade of digging.

Well, you know, your mother finally got there.

Yeah. And for those the aside here is that Peter is the 20th cousin of the late Queen Elizabeth.

Yeah, well, the 21st cousin of King Charles.

Noah, yeah. Your son and daughter are the 21st cousins of King Charles.

So you can go back and listen to Mum's episode with me. I can't remember what number it is, but I chat to my mum, Jo Smissen, about our family history and who we're related to, what she discovered. And it was pretty interesting. Because, yeah, as soon as you get into the Royal line,

Then there's, there's obviously, yeah, there's lots of documentation about Edward the first who was the, the first or the last person, the royal that or directly descended from, all the others are associates. But but yeah that, that sort of what was life like for the people who were living here at that time because. The personal stories. Yes. You get now, even today, we can go back 100 years and read newspaper articles and those sorts of things. But there you read an obituary of somebody and you go, well, that's a snapshot that somebody else is writing about someone and they're never going to tell you the day to day stuff. It's like, you know, Pete was a lovely guy. Everybody loved him. He's an arsehole, really. But we can't say that in the paper. Whereas if you get the Here's Pete's diary.

I think if..

..this is a year in the life of Pete.

If these guys are left a little longer kind of note in the bottle. And it had been like an anecdote of like confessing to something they did at school back in the day. You know, just I had to like..

My sister, who James had confessed to steering the Freddo frog, the little chocolate frog,

.. and James and John here we were in class of 1853. And, you know, Miss Edwards is now dead. But it was us who stole it.

But we knocked the vase off the table. Sorry, Miss X.

Sorry. Not sorry. So, that would be, I think, you know, hilarious. I feel like something like that where you just like..

And Miss X's great grandchildren they go, "She talked to me about that!"

Imagine being able to make someone laugh 135 years from now.

I know you know I know. Well, I'm sure Billy Connolly joke would do it.

Yeah.

That's what you put in a Billy Connolly joke.

How much? How much? I forgot to mention his, his joke about dogs in the dog shit episode that we did. You remember that one?

I can't. I do, but I can't remember the details.

He's like, what does he say? He's like dogs are smart, right? And you can never do a justice with an Australian accent. But he's like, 'Have you ever seen a dog step in a human shit?' Yeah. It's like, amazing.

There you go. That's the line you write in there. Here. Pete Smissen and the date. Have you ever seen a dog step in a human shit? In 135 years, someone will laugh!

And be like this. Can't know..

'He knew! How could he predict this? We still have the same problems. Dog shitting.'.

Yeah, well, that's it. If you want a good comedian, go and listen to Billy Connolly's back catalogue. Oh, man. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. So that's worth thinking about. It's just an interesting thing. The story was cute, but I was blown away by the, as I said, the existential nature of what these guys wrote and and what would I have done? I don't think I'd have been anywhere near that clever. But.

Yeah, yeah, it is fascinating. I guess it's just one of those things of like trying to contact people in the past or the future, thinking about how you can be..

So in the past, you can because you know something about it.

Well, they get to contact you, you get to contact them.

But, but when you reverse it and you're trying to, you know, tell somebody in the future about you.

It always makes me wonder. I remember, you know, after a few years on Facebook, I'm like, Man, it's going to be so good in the future. You'll be able to go back and just read all this stuff.

You can.

Yeah.

Have you?

A few times, depending on the situations. Like certain. I think there was one recently. Like when I went through a break up with my ex, Hannah, and I remember I had a friend who I was like, Why don't I talk to this person anymore? We don't really talk anymore. And I was trying to work it out. Like, at what point did we stop kind of interacting on a regular basis? And so I just opened up Facebook and went through our chat.

And went, Oh, that was the last time.

And I didn't even need to really like read through all the messages. But I was just looking at the times of like, okay, there's like 20, 21, 20, 19, 2018, 2016. I'm like, So we send the old message and be like, Hey, how are you? Yeah, good. You? Yeah, good. And that's it. But then at what point were we like on a daily basis.

Yeah.

Chatting to one another And yeah, it was just, it was interesting because I remember like during my relationship with this person, I was always friends with this person and then after it, maybe it was around that time and it was just interesting going back and reading these messages and to it's kind of cringey at times. I go back and look at the things that I was saying or the way that I would talk to people.

Oh yeah,

..conversation. I'm like, Oh my, I...

Don't read what you wrote ten years ago.

Yeah.

Like, I can't imagine what I'd go back and read my thesis from 45 years ago and you go,

Well, but that's not even like, interpersonal.

No, I know, but I just go, Really? I thought this was clever? Really? Yeah.

I think. I wonder how often, though, you would ever live up to your future self, because I feel like the older I get, the more I look back on whoever I was a year. Five, ten. Usually the further I look back, the more of a dickhead I was. So I'm always thinking like, wow, the person who I will be in 5 to 10 years is really going to look back and think, I'm such a fuckwit. I'm like, I wonder..

What, they already is? You're the only one who will really know.

I know, I know. I'm like, I wonder what I could do in the present to actually make my future self proud, to impress your future self. And then I'm like, probably nothing.

Nothing now.

Yeah, that's it.

Because if I have the wisdom to be able to do that in five years time, I'm going to go, Yeah, you weren't that clever.

Exactly. Oh, you're switching. Oh, my God. You went into this? I'm so into this now.

Yeah, exactly.

How many plants did you end up selling?

I don't know, exactly. Anyway, hopefully you enjoyed this episode, guys.

Yeah. Think about what you want to send the message to the future.

I know. See you!

See you!

Transcript of AE 1219 - The Goss: Aussies Are Eating More Crocs Than Ever!

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 weather 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 are you going?

I'm good. How are you, Dad?

Good.

Dad's off to the fridge.

I am off to the fridge. Do you want one as well? Hello, pussycat.

So we're using microphones, different microphones, lapel mic.

Yes, we're on mobile mics.

Dad can actually..

So you're going to- hang on. Hang on. I'll give you the fridge sound.

I know, but like..

.. the fridge opening sound.

Yeah, that's it. So he's getting a beer out of the fridge.

Beer? Wait.

So I think we're talking in this one about Aussies going crazy for crocodile.

Oh yeah!

As more people sink their teeth into crocodile products.

Hang on, hang on.

Oh man, that always reminds me of Rodney Rude, the Australian comedian, really crass guy. He would come out to his shows needing to fart and he would be like, 'Hang on!'

'Hang on! Hang on. I got one, I got one, I got one.' And walk up to the mic and then (funny sound).

Which do you want?

I'll have the weaker of the two.

The weaker of the two.

Well that's 6%. So what's this one? 6.2. I guess I'll just have the 6.2. Mix it up. I'll have to..

Are you exaggerating? This one's only 5.9.

Only 5.9?

Yeah.

Yeah. So, 5.8. You recently went to the Northern Territory?

I did. We did an episode on that on the Goss about it. Go check that out. Obviously guys, if you can. But did you eat any crocodile or emu or other weird shit while..

I ate crocodile and it's not weird shit.

No?

Emu is weird shit.

Really. I haven't had either, so I wouldn't know. I've had kangaroo. I've never had platypus, never had koala.

A koala?

I think I'd be..

.. unlikely to get. Yeah.

There's an old joke about that, that- I'll work that one up and tell it in another episode. Yeah. Okay. Yes, I had crocodile. And I've had crocodile before, but we did have crocodile on that last trip.

Nice. Yeah. So there's an article saying "Crocodile buyers are flying out of the kitchen at Yvonne Tani's Cafe in Queensland.."

Crocodile burgers.

Yeah. What am I. What do they say?

Buyers.

Buyers.

Burgers. My God.

Beer?

Yeah. Have another beer. Burgers. I thought people were crocodile. People were going up and buying crocodiles to sell his burgers.

Yeah.

Yeah. So crocodile meat is apparently flying off the menu in a lot of these places up in the north. And, you know, tourists and locals alike apparently are snapping up crocodile meat. In higher numbers than ever before. And so at least for me personally, I feel like it's really good if you can eat native animals. I think a lot of people are kind of freaked out about it, especially in Australia, where we probably can care less about crocodiles and care more about things like kangaroos and God forbid we ate platypus. But I feel like it's a good thing because it means you have an interest in wanting to actually conserve your native species.

And when you've got a species like kangaroos and like crocodiles, where, for better or worse, you're having to cull the numbers when they get to a certain level, yeah, you might as well be using the meat, you know, to- it's better for the environment. You know, you're not, you're not having to farm as many sheep or cows or other non native invasive species that aren't as good on the land. And everything..

Yes, you're getting, you're getting the meat for free in an environmental sense, not in an economic sense, but environmentally you're getting it for free because you're going to take it anyway.

Yeah.

You might as well use it for some commercial purpose.

Well, and crocodile numbers are higher than they've been in what, since like the before the 70s I imagine. Isn't the 70s when the, the law came in to prevent people hunting crocodiles. Because at least saltwater crocodiles have been hunted almost to extinction up in the northern parts of Australia. And I think since then, in the 50 years following, they've really bounced back.

They have.

And numbers are now booming in a lot of these locations. So they're, and they're getting a lot of problem crocodiles in, you know, people's- close to people, campgrounds, farms, all that sort of stuff. So they're having to get rid of a lot anyway and bring numbers down. But then you also have loads of industry stuff like crocodile farms, right? Where they're using the leather, they're using, you know, they're making all sorts of stuff with it and then they can also use the meat.

So I feel like it's a positive thing overall. The same with kangaroo meat and other products.

Yes, exactly.

So yeah. What does it taste like?

It's an old gag, isn't it? Yeah, it tastes like chicken. Everything tastes like chicken, but it's a light white meat. So.

I heard it's kind of like fish, but not as fishy.

Not as fishy and..

.. chicken like..

It's a cross between fish. A cross between a light white fish and chicken.

It'd be interesting if we get to a point where you can just get crocodile from the fish and chip shop.

Yeah, well, we did. We were up there.

That's where you got it, huh?

Yeah. Well, like I added a couple of times, but when we went and got a friend who lives up there, took us to one of the beaches, one of the common beaches that people go to for sunset. And, of course, what do you have on a beach where you've got a sunset? You have fish and chips. And the fish and chip shop is right there. So we went there and they had crocodile nuggets. So like chicken nuggets, but actually made out of crocodile bites.

Would you- do you reckon you would objectively choose those over, say, chicken nuggets or fish nuggets?

Oh, I'd choose them over chicken.

Yeah. Really? Okay. So they're that good?

Yeah, they're good.

Interesting.

But it's not the sort of flavour that you're going to rave about.

Yeah.

But.

What's the absence? Isn't it.. in the article they..

.. inoffensive.

They use it for dishes where they actually want to get the meat to take.

Yeah, so I think the burgers- I read the story again this morning. I think it was a curry burger that they made. So they're really saying this is about- it's a substrate for the curry flavouring.

Sort of like tofu.

Yeah.

You wouldn't be like, oh, I just love eating a..

.. tofu burger.

Tofu nuggets.

Yeah. But, no, crocodiles? It's inoffensive. It's flavourful. And it does. I think it's one of those meats, too, that it, it- unlike most fish, it hangs together in different styles of cooking.

Yeah.

So whereas, Yeah, it's hard to make a fish curry without making the curry and then throwing the fish in right at the end because it'll just fall apart. Whereas the crocodile hang together a bit better.

Yeah, it is. I don't know. It's one of these things I think- I would probably be weird the first time or so. Like, because you don't even give eating chicken or something like that a second thought. But any time you try a new meat or animal, you would be like paying a lot more attention to it. And for some, for one reason or another, I feel like it's going to have a high probability of grossing you out.

Yeah.

Before you become used to it. Right. And we were talking about previous episodes, in a previous episode, like Indigenous Culture and everything. It is one of those things where, through history, when you read about some of the interactions between, say, like the colonists and settlers with the indigenous people here. Whenever they live with them or interacted with them, that initial kind of like, 'Oh, they eat these things.' And you imagine, I imagine that it was the same thing. Was that Bennelong, sitting down with Governor Arthur, right? At the table, and eating Western food and being like, 'What the fuck is this exactly? It tastes like shit.'.

Pretty much!

Have a witchetty grub! Jesus, you know!

I've eaten witchetty grubs.

Yeah, are they good?

Yeah, they are. I haven't eaten them raw. I've eaten them cooked.

I saw something creepy as the other day. And again, this is just from my, you know, ignorant Western position. And it was, I think it was bamboo worms in Vietnam. And they just put them in a little pot and have them with garlic and chilli sauce just rolling around in it. And they absorb the- they must be like on fire, like they must the- poor bugs! But then the trick to eating them is apparently using the chopsticks to get a hold of the head and eating everything except for the head, because they've got large pincers. I was thinking you wouldn't surely you wouldn't just swallow this..

That's a witchetty grub thing. You just grab by the head, take a bite off.

Yeah.

Like I said I've only eaten them cooked, so.

Really.

I can't speak for what they are like raw.

What a witchetty grubs tastes like?

Um. Sweet chicken.

Yeah. Really? Really? Far out. But, like, chewy-like chicken or..

No, very soft.

Yeah. That's what I-.

Again, I don't know what they're like fresh. So.

Yeah. It's funny. Apparently the indigenous people around Victoria, and I think New South Wales during the- would have been springtime, I imagine they would go to some of these sort of mountainous areas and absolutely gorge themselves on the Bogong moth.

Yeah.

So you would have these moths. I think they're Australia's largest moth or one of them.

No, no they're not huge. But they're huge in numbers. So you're getting millions.

They're the size of your hand. They fit in your hand. Bogong Moths.

They're pretty big. Hand Yeah, yeah,

Probably. Wingspan is probably, I don't know, 7 or 8cm.

So there's a bit of a handful.

Yeah.

Not a tiny little moth.

You're not going to eat one of them. You'd eat 100 of them.

Yeah. There's loads of fat in their abdomens. Right. And so indigenous people finding that a difficult food source to get a hold of usually would go there and just scarf them down, apparently. But the numbers have been getting less and less and less, which has become..

But they were extremely seasonal because that was their, you know, they'd come out and they'd off they go in there, you know, lay their eggs and fly around and..

Maybe, too, that they hibernate there? Because I think they were some of- they were a crucial food source for the pygmy possum, right? One of Australia's most charismatic little possums that live up in the Alpine region. And they kind of live in these rock screes.

Yes.

Right. Which get covered in snow, but they can sort of live below that.

They live under the, under the snow, in the rocks.

Yeah. And they would eat a lot of these moths but..

Yeah.

Yeah. Sidetracked. What other native animals do you reckon would be worth chucking on the menu if you could go to any restaurant and be like,

Well, I've eaten kangaroo and I've eaten emu. Emus. Yeah, you sort of go, what's the point? Because it. It's one of those weird ones. I've only eaten it in minced. I haven't had an emu steak and I think it'd be one of those things where it'd be almost impossible to cook as a whole steak.

Yeah.

But yeah, because it's very lean, as is kangaroo burger. So I've only eaten an emu burger and it was just. Flavourless. So. So. So you go. Well, yeah. All right. You know, if I have to.

If I was starving to death!

I mean there's plenty of other things to eat.

A restaurant with..

Kangaroo's really nice.

Oh, yeah. I lived off that for years at uni.

I've eaten- not Australian, but I've eaten snake.

Really?

In Hong Kong at a street market.

Geez, Dad. Adventurous!

Grasshoppers.

Yep. Had them too.

Roast grasshoppers.

I think I'd try scorpions. I've seen..

I didn't go to scorpions and spiders. They had those as well. But no..

You pussy.

Snake and- snake and..

Grasshoppers!

Grasshoppers were as far as I..

Why do spiders gross you out more than grasshoppers?

Well, grasshoppers you look at and go, 'All right, there's something to eat.' But spiders, what is there to eat? Like, this..

The abdomen, the legs? I don't know. It depends on the size.

But anyway, didn't eat them.

I think spiders would freak me out a bit too. I think the hair on them- Kel is telling me that they in northern Brazil they eat tarantulas. Yeah. I mean I assume indigenous people are probably, not the average Brazilian wandering around, but..

Get out of your supermarket, buy a bucket of tarantulas.

But you just chuck them on the fire and then they're ready..

.. hair off them, and..

I know. It is pretty funny. I wonder- you wonder how long it takes, right, for those people who did, say, colonise Australia and then end up stranded somewhere. You know, like Buckley, right. Running off and living with the indigenous people here in Victoria, you're kind of like, 'How long did it take him to get normalised with the food?' Is this the kind of thing where initially you kind of push back? You're like, 'Yeah, I'm not eating that shit.' And then starvation comes..

Starvation! After a few days..

I'll eat whatever!

After a few days it'd be, yeah..

But sensibilities are out the window. I don't care..

Again, and depending on time of the year and so on. But you know, because he landed in that initial colony..

In Sorrento.

In Sorrento, Yeah. And ended up on the other side of the bay..

Right here, effectively. Where we're talking now.

Effectively.

It'd be interesting if he wandered through this area..

Well he would have.

Yeah.

And. And so he would have walked all the way around the bay over a few years of things and most of the indigenous people around there were eating seafood. As well as, you know, other mammals and birds and things. But, but the other thing too, is that at that time, around certainly at the top of the bay, and I suspect down in Corio Bay, would have been a lot of expansive wetlands with lots of birds.

Well, I think swans,

Hundreds of thousands of swans and ducks.

Yeah. Just raid their nests.

And yeah. And so you're eating swan eggs, but eating ducks as well. And we still eat duck. Yeah. So, um, so I don't think it would have been, well, you know, throw the goanna on the fire and you know, in this part of Australia.

So it's harder to get your hands on one I think, than a bird.

Yeah. It'd be a lot harder to find a goanna than a duck.

Around here, yeah, for sure. I know. Yeah. So, Yeah. What would you chuck on?

I don't know. I'd eat possum.

You reckon?

Yeah. Not in Australia because they're protected, but in New Zealand. I don't know whether.

Imagine anything..

I'm surprised- I'm surprised there aren't possum sort of pies and things in New Zealand because they hate them.

Well they're invasive.

They're invasive. Yeah. They're Australian. They're horrible over there.

I feel like that could be something that would have been solved by Dame Edna.

Obviously we've eaten. I mean, I've eaten lots of venison. Deer. But, you know, they..

Have you had camel?

You have it in camel.

Yeah.

Yeah. Is that any good or is that..

Yeah. Camel is pretty good.

Yeah. You had camel milk.

Camel? No, I haven't had camel milk.

That's pretty good.

Yeah, it's very rich, apparently.

I think a lot of middle Easterns favour camel milk over, say, cows. Milk cows from what I've heard. But yeah. No.

And obviously goat.

Yeah, but native Australian animals, I guess I'm thinking about.

Yeah.

What do you reckon would be the worst tasting native Australian animal?

Seal?

I think a pelican.

Seals? Well, fish eaters. Fish eaters would be pretty- fish eating birds and mammals.

Cormorants.

Cormorants.

Seagulls.

Seagulls.

Seagulls would be offensive.

No, seagulls would taste like potato.

Well, they would, with chips.

Yeah. Oh, God.

Well, maybe marsupial moles.

Yeah.

Will you get your hands on them? Yeah.

Yeah.

Cool. All right.

I think- I think any animal that eats fish is probably going to be a problem.

So you wouldn't eat other humans, huh?

No, I'm not.

All right, well, I guess it's a short episode.

It sure feels very short.

Do you want to add? Nothing?

Done.

All right. That's great.

Go on and eat crocodile.

See you guys!

See you!