Transcript of AE 1056 - The Goss: Lost in the Australian Bush? Here's What to Do!

G'day, you mob. Pete here, and this is another episode of Aussie English. The number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English. So, today I have a Goss' episode for you where I sit down with my old man, my father, Ian Smissen, and we talk about the week's news whether locally down under here in Australia or non-locally overseas in other parts of the world.

Okay, and we sometimes also talk about whatever comes to mind, right. If we can think of something interesting to share with you guys related to us or Australia, we also talk about that in The Goss'. So, these episodes are specifically designed to try and give you content about many different topics where we're obviously speaking in English and there are multiple people having a natural and spontaneous conversation in English.

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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.

Welcome to The Goss', guys. What's going on? How are you, dad?

Hey, good, Pete. Yeah. Have you been lost in the outback recently?

No, not recently. Good segue. It's always hard, I'm always like...

In the bush rather than the outback. The outback is actually quite hard to get lost in. But yeah, getting lost in the bush.

Well, yeah, they'll find you in the outback, it's just whether or not they can get to you.

Yeah, and whet- Yeah, and whether or not you survive the conditions...

Stay with the car, guys, stay with the car. Yeah. So, this was a cool article that popped up on ABC News where I get most of my news from, getting lost in Australian bush can happen to anyone, but being prepared could save lives. So, I'll read the first little story here, which is about a guy called Trevor Salvado. He's probably of Brazilian or South American heritage.

Well, I guess Portugal, Spain as well. But anyway, Trevor Salvado is not the kind of person you'd expect to get lost in the bush. He's an experienced hiker who loves the outdoors and has been involved with search and rescue operations. But in 2019, Mr Salvado and his wife, Jacinta Bohan, were on a hike in Victoria's Mount Buffalo National Park when things went very wrong.

Quote "we were walking on the track and the bush was just getting thicker and thicker. And then we walked into a position where we couldn't see any more of the track markers. And with the scrub thickening up, we actually weren't quite sure which direction we'd come from."

The couple stopped and spent five minutes having a chat, each convinced that they had come from a different direction. "Then we just came to the conclusion okay, we're lost. What do we do now?" So yeah, it was an interesting little story about them. Obviously, they, you know, spoiler they got rescued.

Yes, exactly.

We had a recent touching story in the news, too, about a young kid, a three-year-old called Anthony AJ Elfalak, who was a non-verbal autistic child who disappeared into the bushland. And I think a lot of people were thinking, you know, was he abducted or something. Because I think they searched for him for, was it three days?

Three days.

And they ended up finding him 200 metres away from where he'd gone missing in a creek in a puddle of water, just splashing his face and drinking the water. And it was like, it was a really touching scene because it was from the bird's eye view helicopter eye view where the helicopter had obviously found him and just kept the camera on him.

And that was going live to the news, and you could just see him whilst he was waiting for the people to be shown where he was and get to him. He was just in the water playing. But it's crazy how much shit like that affects you once you're a dad of a young child.

Yeah, it changes your perspective...

Oh, my God I almost cried when I saw that, I was just like imagining it was Noah.

I'm a, as your mother keeps saying to me, you're an old sook, you're a softie. Because I fall apart whenever there's a story about, you know, kids or partners or...

Cats.

...You know, cats.

Beer.

...In my early 20s and I was, I thought I was, you know, fairly empathetic and sympathetic to things. But yeah, you'd hear that story and go, oh, that's sad. But now you just go, oh yeah. I look it and go, what if that was my grandchild, you know?

Oh, man. Not even that. But yeah, just thinking about it, right? Like, it's fucked. I was, you know, to go on a segue, I was reading that book, I think it was trackers, about the indigenous trackers that worked alongside the police, and I think it was something like 80% to 90% of their job back in the 1800s. It was just tracking down dumb white people who went into bush and disappeared.

But there was one tragic story about two children who were walking, you know, obviously a huge distance in the time, but kilometres and kilometres. One of them was a two-year-old boy, and the other one was a five or six-year-old girl, and they're walking from one place to another, I think they were, you know, going from school to home or whatever.

And it's this story that I've heard a few times now of just the older child getting pissed off that the younger child dawdling and taking forever and just says, well, you know...

You're on your own.

You're on your own. Yeah. And then the boy just disappears. And the sort of tragic thing about that, not just the boy disappearing, was that the I think the Aboriginal tracker was like, you know what? I think I know where he's gone. And I think they ended up giving up because they were just like, yeah, he's dead now. You know, there's no chance it's been a week or something.

And the Aboriginal tracker ends up going back to where the guy, the boy disappeared and ends up tracking him down and finding him in shelter, in a cave, up in a mountain that he just starved to death up there. And you're just like, God. Brutal. Just brutal.

So, yeah, anyway, getting lost in the bush, it's a very common thing, especially along the East Coast here, where you do have a lot of thick bush. And it can happen even if it's not an incredibly remote area, right?

Yeah. Yeah, you can. And look, these guys, these two, the couple, Trevor and his partner, they did the right thing. You know, they were experienced enough. And I think that's part of the story is that, yes, you can be, you know, you can be lost, whatever that means out in the bush.

But if you're prepared in terms of both carrying the right stuff with you and its water, food, equipment, mostly protection and it's clothing as much as anything else. And ideally, you want to have first aid of things with you as well, because a lot of the times people get what we call lost is that the people are not lost, they're just incapable of coming out.

Yeah.

So, somebody, you know...

Breaks a leg.

...And sprains their ankle and they can't walk. It doesn't have to be a particularly severe, life-threatening injury. It just means that you can't walk out. And typically, the best thing to do and this is- This comes back to a combination of is it a rescue? Is it first aid? Or is it just bushwalking? Is that typically you say, well, yeah, you should never go bushwalking by yourself.

That's the first thing. And secondly, you want, you know, more than two. Because if somebody is injured, you should, and if they're badly injured you need to leave somebody with the person as well as having somebody to walk out. And then you look at and go, well, then it should be four because you don't want somebody walking out by themselves.

And then it becomes a ridiculous argument of just multiplication of risk factors. But I think that's the key point is that always assume that you're not going to get back in the time that you think you're going to get back in. Always assume that the weather conditions are going to change and therefore you need to have food, water and shelter.

You don't necessarily have to take machetes and everything to build shelters, but just have waterproof and warm clothing with you and things like a hat and sunscreen and stuff if it's going to be hot. And the problem that we have in this case, it was, you know, Mount Buffalo and, you know, it's not going to get particularly hot there, even in the middle of summer, it'll be hot, but during the night time, it'll cool down.

And but it's, you know, people don't realise how much water you go through in the heat and there's lots of stories of people getting, you know, particularly cars breaking down or and so on out in the outback, where it can be 50 degrees in the shade and there is no shade. Ironically, the only shade you'll have is the car that you've just broken-down in.

Yeah.

So, it's better to stay in the shade, and it's also better to stay with a big thing, like a car where you've got, you know, particularly where you've got air-based search and rescue, where they'll see you...

I saw a story a while back about someone who is a marathon runner and, you know, had come from Germany or something...

This is the couple. The woman was the marathon runner...

Was it? Yeah.

Yeah.

And she ends up being like, oh yeah, I got this... (both talking)

...And the track from the Stuart Highway to Lake Eyre is about- And I've been on it. It's about 40 kilometres of sand track. And under normal conditions, you can drive a bus down it. It's fine. But they got to the car park at the end and got bogged, and they couldn't get the vehicle out.

And she was a marathon runner and she decided that, you know, it's only 40 kilometres. She wasn't going to run back. She said, it's 40 kilometres back to the main road...

I got this.

...I'll make it. And off she went, and she was carrying water, she was carrying a couple of litres of water. But you go through in under normal conditions in say 35 to 40 degrees, you'll need at least a litre of water an hour when you're not exercising. If you're then walking in it, you're going to need to carry two. So, 40 kilometres, the average person is going to walk that in about 10 hours.

So, in 10 hours, you're going to have to carry 20 kilograms of water with you. And most people don't carry 20 kilograms of water with them, let alone be able to carry 20 kilograms of water. So, stay with the resources that you have. And the stupid thing with this one was when they eventually were found, she was found dead on the track...

Yeah.

...And the car kept coming in, you know, figure, you find a person dead on the track. They kept coming in, found the guy, he was a bit dehydrated, you know, and so on. But he was fine, and it took the person 30 seconds to get the car out, all you had to do was lower the tyre pressures to drive the car out.

That must have been the most brutal part about it, where you realised you had the capability of resolving the situation and someone not dying, and then they died.

And that's the problem that we have with tourists coming to Australia. They land in Perth or Darwin in particular, and they go, you know, you can- In Darwin, you can drive for 20 minutes and you're in the outback...

Yeah.

...And they hire a four-wheel drive when they get there, they have no experience of driving with a four-wheel drive. Yeah, they might have an all-terrain vehicle or an all-wheel drive vehicle in Germany, but they're driving on the autobahn. But it's very different when you get off on sand and mud and so on, and they don't have the skills to drive in those conditions. So, that's one part is just having the skills to drive.

And, you know, emergency self-rescues are a big thing in the four-wheel driving community, and you need the experience to be able to do it. And often it's not difficult if you know what you're doing...

Yeah.

...But the other thing is...

Just to pause you there quickly. If you guys are interested in this sort of stuff, there are plenty of courses that you can do you, you know, weekend courses, multiple day courses to learn how to drive four-wheel drive safely.

Even if you don't have one, you can probably find courses where you can go along with other people and do all the exercises about how to get unbogged and how to get over sand dunes, how to pump the tyres up or lower them...

And the pumping the tyres one is the classic one because the best thing you can do in a four-wheel drive for almost anything is lower the tyre pressures.

And have an air pump in your car.

Which just gives you- Exactly. Which is the lowering of tyre pressure just gives you a greater surface area of the tyre on the ground, which means that you get more grip and therefore you're more likely to get out.

But if you have to lower them to the point where it is unsafe to drive, you then have to have a compressor in the car to pump the tyres up. And that's the first thing you should ask if you're hiring a four-wheel drive is do you have an air compressor on board?

Yeah.

And if not, insist that they have one before you get it. If you're just going to be driving on the road, you're probably are going to be alright, but as soon as you go off road, you need it. But getting back to this, you know, the bush stuff in addition to the, you know, the water, food, equipment and first aid.

The other things that people really need to think about when you're going out is understanding the environment, knowing what the weather changes are likely to be. You know, I've been up in the high country, so-called high country for those who come from North America, Asia or Europe...

Is that behind you in the video here, dad?

That is a little bit. Yes. That's high country. Well high-ish country, that's halfway up.

Mountain country.

Even in the Victorian Alps, where we're up to, you know, 1,500-1,600 hundred metres high and you can still drive there, so, yeah, you're not out. But you can go off on a bushwalk there. I've been up there in summer, and it snowed, and so you can be 35 degrees and then four hours or five hours later, it's snowing.

Well, we had that with China recently, right, where they were doing some crazy marathon run and all these people went up a mountain dressed for running a marathon. And it ended up suddenly having these sort of like cyclonic crazy blizzard conditions. And a whole bunch of them ended up freezing to death.

Yeah. And so, that's something you need to take into consideration. You don't just assume, oh, I can go walking around in a T-shirt and shorts and running shoes...

She'll be right, mate.

Yeah. Yeah, she'll be right. Because and you might go, I'm only going to walk for a couple of hours, you know, an hour in an hour out. But if something goes wrong, you get lost or you sprain your ankle or something and then you've got to stay overnight, then you need that ability.

So, understanding the weather conditions and the environment. Secondly, understanding a bit of local knowledge of the geography, so study the area before you go.

Or find a map, right.

Yeah. And no map- Basic map reading skills. Carry a map with you and carry a paper map. Don't rely on, you know, the map on your phone because, you know, most places you're going to go out bushwalking you're not going to get a signal anyway and or the battery runs down, so. And understand how to do some basic map reading, not just reading the map, but reading the environment...

Orienteering. More courses that you could do.

More courses you can do. And the other one is carry a hand-held GPS with you and spare batteries if you need to. Not- The GPS is never going to get you out of somewhere, but it's going to tell you where you are.

And so, if you can point on a map to exactly where you are or even if you don't have the map, the thing I do and if I go out, yeah, particularly go out birdwatching up in north-western Victoria, where you're up in the Mallee and there are no landmarks, you can be 100 metres away from the road.

And if it's during the daytime and the sun's up, obviously you can go, oh, there's the Sun. I know which way North is, and I know where I originally walked, and I just turn around and go back the other way.

But if it's suddenly cloudy and you've got no idea where the sun is and so on, you can get disoriented rather than lost very quickly in places with no landmarks. So, what I have is I just carry a handheld GPS, I put a waypoint at the car and then I can turn the thing off.

I don't have to have it on all the time, I'm not using it to track trails, do any of that sort of thing. I can walk two kilometres off into the bush somewhere, and all I then do is turn that thing back on and go, I need to go into that direction to get back to the car. So, this is one of those sort of old school GPS as...

It'll cost you a hundred bucks.

...Telling you which way things are than necessarily having a map on it... (both talking)

...$1,000. And having this stuff on your phone is all very well. But the phone, typically, unless you're going to do the preparation and download the maps to your phone and everything else with certain maps. But, you know, using Google Maps, is only useful if you've got a connection to a telephone network. So, just having that ability to navigate around yourself is going to help you.

The other one is that if you're going into places where it is likely that you're not going to have any electronic access to anything, carry an EPIRB that is a- It's a little device that you can carry around, and if you press the button on it for three seconds, then it'll send out a GPS message to emergency services and they'll know exactly where you are. And it is not just here I am, but it's here I am, and I need to be rescued.

Yeah. So, these are emergency personal locator devices or beacons? Yeah, so PLB's. But I guess sort of, yeah, to rehash that the New South Wales police have a good guide, I think it's called think before you trek.

Yeah.

And they outline these things, of the four main things of taking up water, food, equipment and first aid supplies. Register your trip with someone, so you can go to police stations, right, in the local police station and just tell them where you're going to go, especially...

...National Park officers if you're in a national park.

...Especially if it's a hike that's going to be multiple days, take an emergency personal locator beacon. Yeah, and then always keep to your planned route, is number four, right.

So, don't deviate. One of the big things they were talking about in this article that's an issue is that when you get lost, when the SES, the search and rescue come in and try and find you, if you're moving around constantly trying to, you know, get out. Every day, they effectively have to reset the search because you could be in the place that they looked yesterday.

Yeah, they've got to do a search over and over and over again.

So, they say, you know, stay still. Yeah, because you'll be found faster, even though it feels like you won't.

And if you- If- With your clothing, carry something that is bright and light.

Or wear something that's bright and light, right. Yeah.

Even if you're not wearing it, carry it with you so that if you need to wear it, it might be a jacket that you've got to put on if it gets cold. But you can, and in the case of this couple that we saw here, they had a bright blue jacket and they just spread it out on the ground.

Well, they bunched it together. They've got a few things here, like a backpack, it looks like a cover of something and the jacket. And they spread it, spread them all out with rocks and put them next to one another and created an "X" with branches, which is a shape that is obviously not very natural. And so, people would see it from the sky.

...Obvious marker that people can see.

But then, yeah, and they ended up building a shelter and just staying in the one place and waiting to be rescued. And then they were.

Yeah.

So, anyway, yeah, that's about it. I guess, here what have we got at the end? What to do if you get lost? Stop, don't panic. Give yourself a chance to plan wisely and make good choices.

The ability to keep a clear head is probably the most powerful resource you've got. Only if it's safe to do so, go to any nearby high ground to look for clues or mobile phone coverage. And then if you were- You are well and truly lost and it appears you need to be rescued there are six extremely important words of advice, Stay put and make yourself seen.

Yeah, that's it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, yeah, hopefully that helps if you guys go out. But I think it's just the, what is it, the five or the six P's? Preparation prevents piss poor performance.

...Performance.

So, just don't over assume your capabilities and even me, if I were to go out bush or, you know, to go four-wheel driving with friends, I feel like I'd need to do courses or do a bit of research. Because you couldn't just throw me into the bush, and having grown up in Australia, I'm automatically going to know what I need to do and everything. I'm just as, you know, clueless as the next Aussie.

Yeah. And look, I'm a reasonably experienced bushwalker. I'm no longer fit, so I've got to choose where I go. And I've turned around from places and gone, no, I've walked a kilometre in like this and I know it's another three and there's no way I'm going to be able to walk the three or four kilometres back out again.

Just jog it.

Yeah, exactly...

And my legs broken.

...Driving as well. You know, I've been on tracks where I go... (both talking) ...People in the car. If I look at it and go, I don't have another vehicle with me, so I'm not going to put myself in a situation where I'm stranded by myself.

It's a bit iffy, a bit sketchy, a bit dodgy.

A bit dodgy.

Turn around.

Exactly.

Awesome. Well, thanks, guys. Hopefully that helps. And hopefully you stay safe next time you go out in the Aussie bush.

All right, see ya.

See ya next time.

Alrighty, you mob. Thank you so much for listening to or watching this episode of The Goss'. If you would like to watch the video if you're currently listening to it and not watching it, you can do so on the Aussie English Channel on YouTube. You'll be able to subscribe to that, just search "Aussie English" on YouTube.

And if you're watching this and not listening to it, you can check this episode out also on the Aussie English podcast, which you can find via my free Aussie English podcast application on both Android and iPhone. You can download that for free, or you can find it via any other good podcast app that you've got on your phone. Spotify, podcast from iTunes, Stitcher, whatever it is.

I'm your host, Pete. Thank you so much for joining me. I hope you have a ripper of a day, and I will see you next time. Peace!