It's funny, I go and so another two other components of my like anxiety management is I ground quite a bit.

So I head out into nature and I like I as a male, I kind of need to lift things.

So instead of gonna the gym, I lift rocks, I just go somewhere and and lift rocks and carry them.

And I find that quite grounding for me 'cause it slows me down.

But the other key thing I do is I treat myself once a month or once every three weeks and go and get a massage, deep tissue massage.

And for me that's kind of brought into perspective that, okay, well I get a physical body massage and you know, that makes me feel really good for a certain amount of time.

Obviously it's a bandaid to the cause, but it still gives you that space to feel good.

The way I think about the mental component is like for me, talking and being open and being your authentic self at that very time, just whatever you're feeling is for me, like a mental massage.

So for me that just enables like my brain to let go of the notion that I can just be me at this time.

Yeah, be me right now at this time.

That was Richie Lambing and you are listening to the Regenerative Journey.

Good day.

I'm your host, Charlie Arnt, an eighth generational Australian regenerative farmer.

And in this podcast series, I'll be diving deep and exploring my guests unique perspectives on the world so you can apply their experience and knowledge to cultivate your own transition to a more regenerative way of life.

Welcome to the Regenerative Journey with your host, Charlie Arnet.

Good day.

Welcome back to the Regenerative Journey, and welcome to this episode with Richie Lambing.

Now Richie is the Experience and education manager at Lake Har Station on the southern island of New Zealand.

I was privileged to be over there a couple years ago, I think it was 2023, to interview Jeff Ross for the Regenerative Journey.

You'll find that in a previous episode of the Regenerative Journey, Jeff and his wife Justine, their team, are doing amazing things in the field of regenerative agriculture generally.

They've got, uh, Mar Marino growing some amazing wool and a very active and world renowned agritourism enterprise on the farm.

They've got country right down on the shores of Lake Har and a heads up, I think it was a thousand meters up into the high country.

Their use of that high country in different seasons and the low country is, is a fascinating story in itself.

So Richie was actually here at Mino.

Last year, and it was, it was May, June last year.

Did a couple of weeks here just seeing what we do.

And I sat him down.

Actually, it took us a couple of goes.

So this interview might, may sound a little disjointed.

I think we had three, three sessions, just was squeezing it in between other things.

So I certainly got my pound of flesh out of Richie while he was here.

But a fascinating story about his life and his journey and, you know, why he's doing what he's doing there now at Lake Har Station and the, the experiences he's had leading up to that.

And also the, you know, what's in store for him in the, in the future of Lake Har Station as well, which is another story in itself.

And the guys there are doing some amazing things.

And I def definitely check it out.

If you're only in the southern island of, of New Zealand at any point down near Queenstown, you must get there and see what those guys are doing.

Big shout out to Jeff and Jazzy and the team, and especially Richie for this episode of the Regenerative Journey.

Richie Laing, welcome to the Regenerative Journey and welcome to your counseling session here.

Yeah.

In, in, uh, our guest bedroom, which is all, that all sounds a bit weird, isn't it?

Self-appointed, but, uh, voluntary.

I can say the outlook here, I'm already feeling at ease, Charlie.

So that might've been something to do with what I dropped in your tea there this morning.

Yeah.

Perhaps.

Yeah.

Fond memories of this pond in front of me catching Abby's with Lordie.

Yeah.

A few days ago.

That's right.

That was on one of the, uh, you know, a couple of days in, um.

And I haven't done that for a long time.

I, well, did you, did you suggest that or was Laie, I can't remember.

I think it was Laie.

Yeah, I think it was his, he, he's the brainiac.

He, oh, that's a story for another day.

Um, he is a brainiac.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think he was, um, I don't know what he was inspired by.

I know he was trying to go snorkeling in puddles the other day.

He was out and about with his snorkeling gear in his backpack.

Looking for puddles to go snorkeling in.

And a dam.

That's right.

He wanted to snorkeling in this dam and he, and, and then somehow we got onto Yabbies.

So he put the Yabby, the, the, they're called, you may know this, the Opera House Yabby Trap.

Okay.

Yeah.

'cause it sort of got the, the, the, it works really effectively, doesn't it?

It little clip at the end.

So, um, ideally when you catch yabbies, you can just release them easily.

It's, it's a little bit confounded when there's been some yabby homicide going on.

There was a lot of the Y homicide we reckon we caught through, well, we caught three the first time.

And then when you checked it that second time, there'd been a bit of death.

Yeah.

Been there was a, there was a, certainly a scene of the crime was pretty, pretty ordinary there.

I do remember 12 months or so ago, we had, we had two traps and we used one of them the other day and the other one doesn't have, um, the bits of wire that holds the bottom of the funnel in a nice tight hole.

Yeah.

So the Abby can get in but not get out.

The other one has just netting.

And so we actually caught a few turtles.

Oh yeah.

Right.

And they died ah, because it was a couple days later and they couldn't breathe, obviously, which was a bit sad.

It was very sad.

So it was a lesson I learned about, um.

You know, quality of, of, of, of yabby traps.

Yeah.

But we, we digress.

Yeah.

Um, well, no, it's topical because it is, you are, you are a man of ecology, um, which we'll certainly get to and I've made plenty of mistakes on the farm growing up as well.

And, and I guess some of those mistakes I made probably led me to be much more empathetic and be aware of the life and the land around around us too.

So, yeah, it's interesting.

I always wonder whether I would have that same empathetic streak without making a few stuff up on the farm too.

So, yeah, it's an interesting one.

I I people are, people say that some people can be born with empathy.

For others, empathy can be, uh, honed or developed throughout their life, uh, throughout their experiences too.

I think I would probably be in the latter knowing I was a little terror as a kid running around on the farm.

And when you say empathy, you mean empathetic to the environment, to ecology, to nature?

I think so looking at the environment or looking at our surrounds from the perspective of something else.

You know, whether it's, uh, biotic living or abiotic from, you know, just the landscape in general.

But I think when you are able to take yourself out of your perspective into the perspective of nature, you know, def definitely delivers a greater understanding, um, of the surrounds around you and Yeah, enables you, I think, to develop empathy.

And there's a, excuse me if I cough, it's because I've got some congestion going on.

Um, it's interesting, uh, you know, the, the comparing the, the concept of empathy and compassion.

Yeah.

Because they're a little bit different, aren't they?

I think, I reckon they're, and, and what I'm learning now is compassion.

As I get older, I want to bring my compassion more to the fore than my empathy, because my empathy, I believe, can sometimes be a double-edged sword.

Compassionate.

It's being kind, but also I think protecting your own energy and in the knowledge that the energy and, and kindness that you have, you're gonna bring to a situation without it being affected at the same time.

Because that is what's gonna help, whether it's people with the surrounds nature, um, yeah.

That compassion.

But, uh, yeah, for me, the, the journey has been starting with empathy, I believe, and that's what probably led me into the, the career that I'm on at the moment.

And I think, um, I totally agree.

And also I, I, my kind of addition from my point of view of compassion is it's actually like a, it's a bit more of, it's a bit more active.

Mm-hmm.

Like empathy's, like, oh, you know, that's a pity that happened.

Or, you know, you might feel empathy for something in a situation.

Yeah.

For me, compassion's like the next step, which is actually the consoling of someone or the helping of someone or the.

Or the whatever.

That's just another sort of layer for me of sort of compassion.

Not that I'm terribly good at it, by the way.

I'm nobody as and I agree.

That's what makes us unique, Charlie.

That's right.

Yeah, that's right.

That makes, that's what makes you more compassionate than me.

Oh, I'm not sure.

Yeah.

I've received some wonderful hospitality in the last couple of weeks.

Um, that's definitely compassion, I think.

So we ion involved.

Well, just getting back to what you said before about making mistakes on the farm.

Mm.

You haven't made any mistakes?

I don't, not that I'm aware of.

Was there anything you've done that, that I dunno about?

Just yesterday, all that's where we sort of cleared that up in the cattle yards, but looking, learning about that stockmanship working in really close quarters with large cattle where they are animals of consequence and generally they herd.

So if you move one, a lot can move together and that's a lot of collective weight.

So, um, for me, you know, I can be guilty sometimes of having, you know, a reactionary mindset, well, I'll do this and see what happens, but, you know, and you sometimes have to identify those environments that have consequence and probably take on more of like an engineering perspective.

Like, if I do this, what's going to happen?

And, and I think yesterday that was a big learning curve for me.

It wasn't a, it wasn't a biggie, but I realized that, Hmm, I should have just thought about something a little bit more there and, um, what?

Yeah.

Uh, well not, yes.

And as I said to you on at the time, I said you didn't do anything wrong.

It was a bit of a comedy of errors because.

Everyone know there's a couple of panels and a gate that that popped out with some cattle yesterday in the yards.

And it was as much to do with the fact that that strainer post needed to come out.

It was wo wobbly as shit.

Anyway, so, you know, I was doing you a favor.

Yeah, you were.

'cause you actually were like, sometimes it's a, it's a bit of an analogy, isn't it?

Sometimes you have to get to the point of destruction or disturbance to then go and do something about it.

Yeah.

Which is a bit of a pity.

I mean, we should have fixed that a long time ago.

But as you know, farm life and it's kind of like, it just trickles down the bottom of the priority list 'cause it's still there.

Mm-hmm.

It still does a job until bit of pressure's put on it.

And away it went.

So was that your only fuckup?

Oh, I think almost burnt the sausages yesterday and I almost forgot about Laie sausage rolls too.

And then Laie had to remind me, so that shows were, his intellect is compared to mine.

Uh, although the, were they in the oven?

Yeah, they were in the oven.

Oh yeah, he's a classic.

Um, I did step in, uh, ketchup.

It actually in the smoker room the other day too.

So up here?

Yeah.

Oh really?

Oh, that'd be murmur.

Stuck in there.

Yeah, I think did.

Oh no.

Yeah.

Um, that's a classic, but now the rental cast or in one piece, so yeah.

That's good.

Yeah, I haven't got a great track record with rental cars, so, um, I've only got three days to go, so hopefully I can fulfill a clean record there.

You do have to get back to Melbourne though.

I do, yeah.

It's a bit of a seven hour trip from here.

Yeah.

On, on the Sunday.

Let's, um, get back on track a bit.

Um, not to say we shouldn't go off on tangents.

I, I love it.

Um, and they're always the best interviews when you start with whatever happens.

I did one with Scott Gooding a couple years ago, and I had my plan, and then the door across to our, it was like here to our right is, as it were at his place at Whale Beach, just it either shut or opened.

With no one there.

And we then went on a rant about it.

Paranormal about ghosts.

I have, I've had a couple of ghost ghost.

A ghost ghostly experiences.

Yeah.

Here?

No, not here.

No.

But interestingly enough, I thought the other day when I came in for a cup of tea, I think it was one or two in the morning, I thought, I just started thinking about ghosts and In your house.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

I thought give it, how old is this house?

Oh, the middle of, it's probably 1950s.

But you don't, it's hard to tell what that even is now.

Yeah, that's interesting.

'cause um, uh, that, that camera's not focusing.

See there, maybe we're a bit far away.

See how the, you are a bit outta focus.

So if I sit here, maybe, maybe it doesn't, maybe it you've, do you reckon you're a bit more outta focus than me?

I wonder if I just move over slightly.

Yeah, go on.

I don't, yeah, if you're feeling uncomfortable, just let me know.

That's cool.

You look a bit more outta focus than I do.

Yeah.

Why is that?

It's, it's weird.

Um, uh, so, so back to back to the question.

Um, or you reference edit to ghosts and things.

We had, um, three weeks ago, I dunno if I told you this.

Mm-hmm.

Three weeks ago we had, um, Gary McDowell and Kim Kiss, who were part of a new entity, a not-for-profit called.

Um, uh, quantum, no, hang on.

Subtle energy.

Quantum leap.

Leap.

Subtle energy, quantum leap.

Um, uh, limited.

And they're not-for-profit and it's a sort of a, it's the next chapter in the work of Dr.

Patrick McMan Way, who is an amazing guy that RCS Australia brought out to Australia.

Um, gee, we is in the, in, I think 2015, might've been the first time they brought him out of 2014.

And he's an amazing guy who is a, um, we're on another tangent, but let's stick with it.

He's another amazing guy who did, um, uh, subtle work with subtle energy teaching heaps of Australians.

Anyway, long story short, Kim and Gary represent this new entity of subtle energy practitioners and geo mancy practitioners, and they were here and they stayed little planes and they did a bit of a correction on the landscape and they did some corrections in the house, right?

Corrections being realigning and balancing energies, manmade and, and natural.

Um.

And they did sort some stuff out in the house.

So is that like a, a, a Reiki that go a a reiki.

A reiki that goes, there's more of a a, an all-wheel drive.

Four-wheel drive Reiki out into the landscape.

Landscape, yeah.

Yeah.

But the, but the principles apply certainly for humans, so, yeah.

So balancing and correction of human, do they do work on you specifically or is it more on, um, not, not this time.

Yeah.

Um, Linda McDowell, um, Gary's wife did just work on Lila.

Um, we've been doing this sort of stuff for many years and getting fixed ourselves and that sort of thing.

It's uses a bit of kinesiology conscious that we're talking about things that aren't about you.

It's okay, but then the go, did you see anything when you came in that night?

No.

No, I didn't.

No.

And sometimes you think, is this intuition or am I just putting ideas in my head?

But it's all very relevant to me.

I, I attend reiki, uh, reiki practitioner.

I'm a huge believer in energy and I have had ghostly encounters as well.

You have not many, but, um, yeah, there's been a couple.

Yeah.

Well.

Or, or tell us.

Yeah, probably the third.

This is about you.

So that's all.

That's what, that's the main thing.

I was at my brother's, so my sister-in-law's who's married to my brother, of course.

And very, at that time, my life was a very deep sleeper.

And usually I would just not off about 11 o'clock at night and wouldn't wake up to six o'clock in the morning.

How, how long ago is this?

This was 10 years ago.

Okay.

And I was in the old part of the house, similar, kind of similar setup to this house just here.

And I woke up very spontaneously at one o'clock in the morning.

And, uh, my heart rate was just elevated.

Mm-hmm.

So, and I looked over into the corner of the room and there's like a black haze just sitting there in the corner of the room.

And I had the sense at the time to look elsewhere and just like adjust my vision.

And I looked back and the black haze was still there, but it wasn't elsewhere in the room.

And then that black haze started to fade.

Um, and that was a lot to swallow at one o'clock in the morning.

So I was up for about half an hour, and then I sort of came to the conclusion.

I was like, well, if I wanted to do something, it probably would've done it by now.

I did not that I had felt that it was benevolent, but I didn't think it was malevolent.

Yeah, yeah.

So, but that was a, um, it was a very interesting experience and something I can still see very clearly in my mind right now.

Really?

Yeah.

That was in New Zealand.

That was in New Zealand in an old house, in, in an older section of like a, an Auckland house, but an older section of that house too.

Well, I, I didn't, this is the first time I've actually talked about it, so Yeah.

That's cool.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, this is the place to do it because of this, not that we had a whole lot of spooky awas in this house, but look, every, there wouldn't be any structure.

I don't know, I wouldn't wanna even say give it a timeframe, like a number of years, but, you know, structures where people inhabit.

Mm-hmm.

Um.

Uh, for any period of time, generally take on the take on residual energies of those people, especially if there's, um, conflict between people.

Like it could be living people who have a brow.

Yeah.

And the residuals can stay in that room.

Um, and so it's almost So the energy hasn't been resolved or, yes.

And is it stored in a, is it emotion?

Is that, or Yeah.

So it's, you know, my understanding is it's the, the root of it is the emotions that happened at the time.

Okay.

And the energies of that interaction, you know, um, conflict, um, uh, stay reverberating resonating in this space.

Now, I think in this room, and the, Gary said in this room, uh, 15, 16 years ago, something happened.

Right.

And he fixed it up the other day.

He didn't elaborate on any detail.

He just said there was a, there was an energy misalignment.

Yeah.

And, and, and you don't have, sometimes you they do.

Um, you know, the practitioners do have to, um, uh, find the root source.

Yeah.

Which may go back.

Some generations can even, you know, seven generations is generally the, the timeframe for which energies can stick around in a, in a place.

Um, and he sorted that out.

And then sometimes, yeah, he doesn't have to find out, but sometimes he does.

And sometimes he doesn't have permission to tell anyone else, uh, but he always seeks permission to do something with it.

And he got rid of.

He got rid of someone over in the shed over there.

Right.

Um, 70 years ago, a very mean man, um, did some awful things to animals and people.

Yeah.

And he picked that up and that's something that Tess had picked up as well.

Yeah.

And he got rid of that.

Gee.

Yeah.

It makes you wonder, I guess, 'cause you hear more about intergenerational trauma these days.

And is that trauma that's passed down through the bloodline or is it passed down through via environments?

Both, yeah.

Okay.

So, so you can have, um, and the, the Dawson program is something that Gary is a practitioner in and, and quite a few other people in.

You know, it's interesting, the regenerative farming space seems to be the, the tribe in which these sort of, you know, will, you know, in, in case in point, subtle energies are of interest to people.

Yeah.

Because they're generally, you know, dear I say a bit more open-minded.

So, um, so in the Dawson program, which is a, um, you know, it's a, it's series of courses that you learn to be a practitioner that Ange and I did many years ago.

They talk about intergenerational trauma and how that is definitely passed on.

Yeah.

And then I think it's after three generations of, of trauma that sits in as a, um, as an epigenetic continuation.

Yeah.

It actually becomes genetic.

Wow.

It goes beyond the influence of environment actually becomes a genetic blueprint in your body.

So the the nature become, sorry, the, the nurture becomes the nature.

Yeah.

In the sense, yeah.

Fascinating.

Yeah.

And that could, so in the, in the program, you can go back seven generations, you might have to go back seven generations to start correcting someone's great-great-grandfather Yeah.

Of a trauma they experienced Yeah.

All those years ago to then relieve you of the intergenerational trauma that you are carrying because you don't wanna pass that on to the next generation.

Totally.

Not, totally not.

Yeah.

I'm gonna goosebumps just think about it.

Yeah, no, I'm a, I won't disclose what goes on in the reiki sessions I have, but you know, there's definitely a, like these kind of things are talked about as well, not specifically for me, but it just makes you a lot more aware, especially when you feel, feel energy too.

Oh, totally.

Um, and we, you know, we've lost, we've lost the, um, we generally have lost the, the muscle, the strength in our muscles of intuition, of which, you know, picking up subtle energies.

Um, is is one of the kind of the, the layers of intuition.

Yeah.

You know, and practicing dowsing and, and geo mancy and that sort of thing strengthens that, that muscle.

And I'm by no means strong in that department, I'm aware.

And I'm, you know, probably weak, but I'm, you know, at least sort of, I carry a pendulum in my pocket all the time.

Um, Lila is, she's great.

She just picks it up.

She goes, oh, can I borrow you a pendulum?

Actually, she's got her own one the other day.

And, um, she'll just work out what's happening with the horses and whether she should work them today or give 'em a feed or whatever else.

It's fa you know, and at that age, at 13, yeah, it's really cool.

Yeah.

Not cool.

It's just, it, it's just kind of, you know, setting up for, and it's never too late of course.

You know, and so I don't know if there's any end endorsement practitioners in New Zealand.

Um, it'd be interesting to find that out actually.

Yeah.

And there's probably different mode, different versions of a similar thing.

You know, Reiki definitely kinesiology's the mode for the, um, the uh, um, the protocol of um, uh, you know, you go, what do you go to a doctor and they work, work out what's going on?

Diagnosis.

Diagnosis, thank you.

Diagnosis of using kinesiology.

And it's fascinating where.

That, um, where that can lead.

Yeah, it's great.

'cause my practitioner, she's actually a radiographer.

She comes from a, a medical background, but then she's moved into, um, yeah, dare I say again, more alternative approach to, uh, ailments and health and yeah, I mean, it, it's great talking to her because she can cover things from all perspectives.

And I guess it all, ideally the medical aspects, the anatomical, the energy, everything is going to be related.

Mm-hmm.

Um, so yeah, it's nice to have that holistic perspective.

And, you know, I guess the, the blessing is that, um, again, in the region, ag space and similar sort of spaces, you are exposed to these sort of things.

So one is given the opportunity to do an awesome program, see a practitioner.

Mm-hmm.

Um, reiki iss probably more a better known, um, uh, modality Yeah.

In a similar sphere because that's human related and Yeah.

You know, you don't have to be in sort of a, a farmer or a landscape steward to then to know about reiki, reiki, iss a, you know, a human based kind of thing.

But again, it probably, it, in using reiki, there's probably correction of, um, potentially environmental based.

Um, influences and energies that have, you know, fucked someone up.

I think so.

Yeah.

But at the same time it's, uh, it's funny 'cause I have anxiety and I guess we're, again, diverging.

Yeah.

You seem pretty chill kind of guy.

We're diverging.

Yes.

Yeah.

But I have my modes to shift the energy within my body.

So what, which I'm slowly learning.

How do you, can you divulge that or are they Yeah, no, it's, are they special?

It funny, some of them, some of them have self discovered, um, this section's gonna be ing Yeah.

We can just trim, we can trim this later on.

Um, for me, like o ings a big one, so I'm really trying to produce like a sound within where, where I feel my anxiety is trapped is in my chest.

I, I know for a lot of people, you know, when they're stressed they might get cramps, stressed, they might get a sore back or a migraine.

For me, I get a tightness over my chest.

Mm-hmm.

And I now can acknowledge that.

Right.

That's energy.

And for me, like what I'm beginning to understand now is that's a positive thing.

I've got energy and if I move that energy, um.

Then I can transform that energy.

But the, the beginnings for me at the moment are just moving that energy.

Like if I can start to transform it over time through manifestation and things like that, then I'm really excited to see where that goes.

But currently I just, I'm working on just moving the energy around, aware of where it is in my body.

Um, arming, I do, it's quite funny you've seen the Wolf of Wall Street.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, when, uh, in the restaurant, no.

You know, when Yeah.

When Leo's, um, giving it that one.

Yeah.

But that for me, if I'm talking and I can actually feel when I, when I have a stress, when I, I'm stressed, I can feel the energy.

I don't know whether it's just a fiction of my mind, um, but I could feel the energy being spread and it's no, no longer trapped just there.

Because I did see a healer at the start of the year and, and she said, look, everywhere over your heart, everywhere up here is fine, but there's a constriction kind of around your solar plexus.

Mm-hmm.

And that's exactly where I feel and know.

If I wake up in the middle of the night and I'm super stressed, that's exactly where I feel it.

And now it's just kind of flipping that paradigm and thinking, okay, well this is energy.

Like this is good.

You can, you can move energy and you can transform energy.

Um, but that's, that, that comes with I guess, more understanding too.

And that, that I'm not quite there yet.

Um, I'll never be quite there, but, uh, it's exciting too 'cause yeah, the anxiety can definitely, um.

Knock you around, that's for sure.

What's the, what's the gland just here?

It's, uh, you got your, your thyroid.

Your thyroid, your, yeah.

Thyroid.

Your thyroid.

So there's a thing in the Dorson program, again, where exactly what you are doing.

Mm-hmm.

Tapping your thyroid.

'cause it's such a critical controller of Yeah.

Hormones and, and, and dare I say, energy and so on that in tapping, I often do it subconsciously when I'm kind of feeling a little stressed.

I'll just do that.

And it, and it, and it's one of those things, I guess it's now, as I said, an un unconscious thing.

Yeah.

And I don't know, I don't go, oh my God, I feel so much better straight away.

But it's just a thing.

It's almost like a, just a practice.

It's a habit, which then triggers a response some subtly, which seems to then seems to then help.

Yeah.

You know?

Yeah.

You dunno whether it's your mind focusing on that and not focusing on the symptoms or if it's actually a direct, um, treatment of that, of that certain area.

But yeah, when I wake up in the middle of the night, I tap.

So, um, and I'll like, quite often it can be, and I, I'll just, I'll just do that until I fall asleep again.

Mm.

Um, yeah.

And it's, yeah, it's pretty powerful.

It definitely works for me anyway.

I saw you picked up that book there.

Stop worrying and Start Living.

Yeah.

Carne.

Yeah, it's great.

It's, I've got that years ago in God knows a book.

I don't even know where it was, but it's an old copy.

Like it's from 1980 something.

Yeah.

Never been read.

It was brand new at the time.

So I think I'm the first reader there and I've been.

You know, the thing I love is it's, it's highlighted so when I go in, yeah.

I can go straight to my, you can go straight to the call.

I've done that for you.

But the thing is, it's such a, it's such a simple, it's an old book.

I mean, that was just the copy I had.

It was written in something like 1939 or something.

It's not, not not a, and it's the way references everything.

It's classic, but it's good yarns.

Yeah.

And it's, it's basic, it's basic, um, strategies, you know, what to do.

And I'm only sort of, not even halfway through, but it's like, this stuff has been around for a long time and he's just collected lots of stories and applied it and put it into a book.

And it's a lot of, it's really simple.

And I think it's helping.

I don't, I don't go the finish of a chapter and then do the exercise and sit there and do, I kind of just, it's just that absorbing of it.

Integrate it.

Yeah.

Integrating it somehow.

I love that some of those, and I know where you're coming from, some of those old school perspectives that it's not over complicated purely.

'cause they don't, they're not fully aware of everything that's going on at a micro level yet.

But they just give you very simple sentences and, and, and, you know, with your knowledge you can integrate that.

That's what I picked up just before reading a few snippets outta that one.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's a cracker and it's, I knew, I mean, it's like, you know, you buy a book at some point and you may not get to it for years, but it's, it, it's, it rises to the surface.

Yeah.

At the right time, you know?

Um, 'cause my sleep's not been very good recently.

Um, I got up last night 'cause I thought of something, I was thinking at night, the night before I actually slept the best and I had in months.

But last night I woke up thinking, oh God, I.

Need to email my accountant.

That's funny.

Re-forecasting the budget.

And I got up and said one, and I must have went in a blur.

'cause when I woke up this morning and said, no, that's not right.

I've, I've told her the wrong thing.

And then, and then she emailed back saying, I'm very concerned that you are doing emailing this time of night.

You know, and then she said, oh, but I'm, you know, it's a pot call in the kettle black.

That's funny.

Yeah.

I was, I was gonna comment on your, on your Instagram post at two o'clock the other when I was up too.

But yeah.

I thought, yeah, I'd better.

And I, I generally, I don't, when I do get up, it's to read.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and very real, like last time, last time getting on an email was the first time in months and months in the middle of the night.

I just generally don't do that.

Yeah.

I just read and try and slow myself down again.

And then I had a sleepy time tea Yeah.

Last night.

And then, and I actually slept quite well till Lordy jumped in the bed at six o'clock.

Um, scary spot.

Now let's get back on track.

Um.

A bit of rain on the way this evening though.

Charlie looking out the window.

Yeah, apparently.

Are we, so we are scanning tomorrow, scanning and news tomorrow.

Yeah.

Um, and so it'd be nice not to have the rain.

I won't ever complain about the rain, but it'd be nice not to have it just so we can get that job done that too much, who are, 'cause then we have to do some drafting and some scanning and that sort of thing.

However, you and I are gonna be at a biodynamics workshop tomorrow.

I know.

So you Skyped outta that pretty well, didn't you?

And I deliberately haven't researched kind of anything on biodynamics.

'cause I wanted to come in from a very fresh perspective as well.

So yeah, I'm quite excited.

I, I'm very excited in the knowledge tomorrow that there's gonna be, uh, some new neural synapses going on in my brain.

I think, I think, um, now that we've had some, you know, many days together here, and just for those who haven't picked that up, Richie, um, arrived here, what, 10 days ago?

Yeah, 10 days, 11 days ago.

Um, for two weeks sort of a, a stint.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and, uh, we'll get back to your life and, and um, and uh, lake Har station there.

Very soon, but given the time you spent and even this conversation we've just had, um, you are, I think you'll, you'll love it.

Yeah.

Because it really touches on, as I say to people, it's not just about growing a better cow and a better cow, you know, farm food.

It's as much about your individuality and your place in nature and your engagement or relationship with nature and the practices.

And, you know, we, as I always say, but keep reiterating for good reason, Hamish is a master at taking you to the end of the cosmos with some pretty crazy ideas, and then bringing you firmly back to earth with an anecdote or a story or something.

Like he's a, he's a legend like that.

He can just, and, and so discerning and so level in his approach to all that, and he, he, I gotta say he does speak with some authority, a lot of authority.

And that's not the, not in a wanky way, it's just that he's just, he just absorbs stuff.

Yeah.

He's knowing.

Yeah.

I'm particularly excited there because I work as an astronomy guide.

With Lake Lake Har Station too.

So we are actually, we're always working on our storytelling capability.

'cause we might only have guests for three or four days and we are thinking, okay, what is the best way we can provide them with this information?

Generally it's through a story and finding an alignment and alignment between all the experiences and the things they do on the property.

Mm.

Um, and the direction of the property too.

So, uh, with our astronomy, we often talk, so we, uh, and this is knowledge that was given to me, um, by some Maori elders in New Zealand's about Papa Nuku, who is Mother Earth, and then Nui, who is Sky father.

Um, and basically, you know, if you think about regeneration, Papa Nuku is regeneration.

So the soil holds the health and that is where all things flow from.

But where does the energy come from for that, for that biology?

It comes from outer space, you know, so at Nui Sky Father is a massive role to play, um, in regeneration from our perspective at Lake Hawi Station.

And, and even that, like, people come to a regenerative farm and think cool soil health, and we're like, whoa, whoa.

It goes even further back than that.

It comes from above first.

So the knowledge that, you know, what we are made up of, you know, if it's carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, all those little elements are floating up in their, their own space.

And somehow they've made their way through some miracle, probably some knowledge that I don't have to here and be transformed from the abiotic into the biotic to the living.

And that's, uh, pretty special.

I always find.

Um, that's awesome.

Yeah.

So that, I mean, you've usually got guests on the front foot.

We've got a beautiful Did you go to the viewing platform?

Was that We did.

It was actually being built.

Yeah.

Oh, mate was up there.

The chippy, Dan.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Putting that together.

Yeah.

He did an amazing job.

Um, central Lake Decking, Dan from Queenstown, he, uh, he's the ultimate Yes man and problem solver.

Yeah.

Because we, uh, we That's what you like.

Yeah.

We gave, uh, we gave him quite a ambitious design, a crescent moon shaped platform.

Mm-hmm.

But yeah, the, the finishing product is amazing.

And the view up there, obviously that's, that's, that's where it is.

Um, you mentioned the other day about water.

Mm-hmm.

You wanna mention that?

Yeah.

So that's something that we, we talked to guests about.

Are you talking about where water's come from?

Yeah.

As well.

Yeah.

I've been reading this book by Stephen Hawking, who I think is a, quite a credible source.

Which one?

Uh, Stephen Hawking.

Uh, actually I'll get the name for you.

Uh, it's maybe even if I research it.

Um, it's, it's got the universe in its name anyway.

Yeah.

But it's written with his daughter, so that the best thing is it's kind of in layman's language.

Yep.

Um, and what he was talking about in this book, that all the water that exists here on earth right now.

Is all the water that's ever been and that water he believes, or they, they believe has come from outer space.

Um, the, the, the, well I guess hydrogen and oxygen.

Yeah.

The sort was, was, was those elements out there?

I'm not sure whether it came an elemental, elemental form, um, or actually came as the liquid or the, whether it was ice, whether it was water, vapor water.

Could have been, it could have been hydrogen or oxygen and something else.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Carbon.

No.

Who knows?

Yeah.

But anyway, the, the cool thing is, is now it's here on, it's here on earth.

Any living organism is come into contact with that water.

So they say that if you drink a cup of water, it's very likely that, or not likely, but it's a possibility that some of those, um, molecules of water have actually passed a OSA rex.

Mm.

Or uh, that's cool.

Isn't it?

Another pretty cool animal from millions and millions of years ago.

And kind of, I always think, and this is just wonder by the way, disclaimer, I think, you know, there's a big discussion about water holding memory now, and you know, what is contained in this water if it's passed through, and if ourselves are 70% water, what is contained in this water still from millions of years ago?

Are we still having information transferred to us from that time?

Or has that water been cleansed over time too?

It's just, that's pure wonder.

Well, I know it's a really good point because, you know, water is a, is a storage of, is has memory.

Mm-hmm.

And it's the ultimate.

Hard drive.

Yeah.

You know, and there's some great work done by, I always forget his name, that I think he's Japanese chap chappy, um, is it a moto?

And he's, have you seen those ones?

And he does the, the water in a jar and he puts the word love and he puts the word hate on two separate jars.

And then he'll, um, analyze the water, the, the particles.

He'll then freeze it, he'll freeze the water.

And then he'll, the, the say for instance, the jar with the word love on it is imbued with love.

And the crystalline structure is just beautiful, like snowflakey kind of wow things.

And then when he analyzes the one that says hate on it, it's um, it's like a horrible, ugly sort of a I have heard of this.

Yeah.

And there's also, and then the other interesting thing is, there's a third part to that, and I'm thinking, I'm right in saying when um, you do another jar and you put the word, um, it's not, not hate.

You put the word, um, isolated.

No, it's not word isolated.

Someone's gonna pick me up on this one is a word.

Like when you are neglected, it might be the word neglected.

Okay.

When you are neglected, that's actually a worser looking crystal.

Than hate.

Than hate.

Yeah.

So we as, and Zach Bush had talked to this very freely, I'm sure you know, we are social creatures.

Yeah.

And isolation is one of the biggest killers physically and mentally and spiritually.

And that cancer is a.

Is is essentially at a biological level, um, an isolated cell or collection of cells.

It has this sense of abandonment.

Yes.

Yeah.

And that generally in my view, and I think in his, and, you know, some doctors, not many Yeah.

But kind of our solo doctors would say, would agree in that, you know, that is a mental construct.

Mm-hmm.

And not to say that people, oh look, you're not isolated.

You'd be right.

But just, yeah.

That feeling and that sense of isolation is, has something to do with the creation of disease.

Yeah.

And, and how we deal with it.

Right.

And so z was saying himself a vets a mentor construct or, well, I, I dunno if that's a word he would use.

Yeah.

But in terms of.

Um, how one feels, and even in that book, right, I think it's def definitely consistent because he talks a lot and I was lucky enough to spend a few days with him.

He talks a lot about human beings being the creator of their own experiences.

Um, and he said something very poignant at a, we were, um, about 10 of us were having dinner.

This was at a, a retreat we had at Lake Har Station, which I'm sure we'll talk a little bit more about shortly.

Um, but he said, you know, the original wound is kind of that separation from nature and not being seen by nature.

And when we all have those moments, for me it's often, whether it's in New Zealand, walking through some beautiful beach forest or a waterfall cascade nearby in Australia, just walking through pockets of bush, I feel like I'm seen, like, I feel like I'm being watched in the best, in the best possible way.

Um, and that's like a sense of fulfillment.

I wouldn't say it's happiness or joy or anything like that, but I just feel at ease, um, because I feel like I'm being seen as I just wander through.

I think we should get to you.

We've actually gone on so many tangents.

Like it's, it's not a tree, it's a shrub where we've gone.

It was like, I read the stars last night, Charlie, and it was ridden in the stars the first half hour.

This.

We're just gonna ramble on.

Yeah.

So, um, let's get to you.

Um, so Richie, where did, where did life begin for you?

Life began, Napier Hospital, Hawkes Bay, New Zealand.

Uh, cannot remember exactly what time of the day I was born, but my parents were sheep, uh, sheep and beef, or were sheep and beef farmers in the Hawkes Bay region at that time.

So that's the east coast of the North Island.

Probably the best description of this province is almost the California of New Zealands.

We had 26 degrees Celsius the other day in on Haw Bay and Hawkes Bay.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

So, and that was like er Yeah, Australia.

You I was pretty hot outta here even on June.

No, no.

We were, we were like threes and fives.

Yeah.

And tens and you are, and then 26 Avenue.

Yeah, we have, um, we have a mountain range that separates New Zealand and when, when the hot nor west blows, it dumps all its moisture on the west side.

When it comes over the other side, it descends and heats up along the plains.

So you can just have this unseasonably warm weather at any time of the year.

It, it's quite incredible.

And so what did that, you know, is that, uh, influence you So born on a farm?

Yeah, it has.

Um, it's definitely influenced me 'cause I spent probably my first 18 years of my life on farming properties.

So we farmed, uh, the first, I think six years of my life, we farmed quite close to a river called the Tookie Tookie.

That was, uh, just 15 minutes outta Havelock North.

So that's one of the townships in Hawkes Bay.

Lovely wine growing region, uh, probably world renowned or is world renowned now for beautiful gimlet gravels and red wines.

And then from there we moved further south to Central Hawk space, so the central part of the province quite close to a beach called AKA Beach.

Um, and that was a beautiful farm.

It was tile drained, had a lot of silt.

Sorry, tile, tile drain was that?

Yeah, so it meant, uh, they, the past farmer had put small tile like, uh, almost drained pipes underneath the silt to assist in the drainage because it was on a historic floodplain.

Um, and that meant that, I mean, we almost had it at, at, at one stage before they put a large retention.

Water retention program, and at one stage they had too much water flying down there.

Um, so it was just to assist in the dispersal of water.

Mm-hmm.

Um, so what's the rainfall there?

Yeah, the rainfall there.

So we were tucked in underneath a range.

We're about 1000 mils, but only 15 minutes or 20 minutes from us, a thousand meters up.

They had two to 3000 mils.

Oh god.

Of rain per year.

So yeah, it was very prone to localize rainfall events too.

Hence the, the need to, we had a creek running straight through, hence the need to redistribute water sometimes.

And I guess they might get more rain than you, however their rain probably goes past you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It, it does.

So, um, yeah, they had a particular rainfall event, I think it was about 10 years ago, where they received it was they worked it out, I think it was a one in 500 year event.

Uh, but they received about, I think it was between six to 800 millimeters of rain.

Overnight almost.

Oh my God.

Yeah, it was a phenomenal, um, that's outrageous.

And just in my time living in Hawke's Bay, like from when I was a youngster to, to now anecdotally I'm speaking is I've noticed these shifts in, you know, these kind of rainfall events.

And that's just speaking from my 33 years of experience.

But, um, so less rain, uh, sorry, sorry.

More rain.

More rain.

More say necessarily more rain, but more extreme.

Extreme extremes.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

More tropical based weather as well.

More moisture led and humid weather that's just has more volatility, more thunderstorm like, yeah.

Weather.

But, uh, yeah, I was very fortunate to, to grow up there.

It was a beautiful farm.

Rolling Hills.

Dad is a very, was and probably if he still farmed now, is um, a very astute farmer.

Um, knows, knew how to limit overheads, but knew how to get the best out of his livestock as well, and just farmed so independently.

So for that reason, um, probably worked out pretty early on that I wasn't gonna be a farmer, but I loved hanging out on farms because while dad was working in the yards or out, um, doing stock work, I'll just be roaming the property.

And I think just having that independence early on and, uh, often returning quite late after nightfall or chasing ducks in a dam or catching frogs or things like that.

Just, it developed that idea that, hey, I'm at ease out here.

And that's probably that idea that's consistent with being seen by nature.

And so that was a childhood thing.

You, you went to school?

Yeah.

When you weren't chasing frogs.

Yeah.

I went to a little country school, which is great.

It's funny with country schools 'cause um, you know, like the one where, where I was based education wise, um, you know, I probably, uh, became more of a non-linear setup.

Like in terms of, um, learning the forums of maths, English, science, things like that.

But in terms of my experiences, um, you know, they were, you know, country.

I almost feel like every child should have at least one or two years of the country skill just to build that bank of country experiences that my favorite often was the principal joining us for.

Like the lunchtime game of Bull Rush and he would just choose not to ring the bell for the afternoon period.

So we'd just play through to three o'clock in the afternoon.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's like, I'm holding on.

I guess now when you get, when you get older, sometimes you all you hold onto are those memories and they become pivot points.

And for me, I'm like, that's just, you know, it's a, it was a super fun time, but I, from that country school, I then moved into a more urban based setting and more intellectually based setting.

I, I guess, rather than life experience that, you know, it's, it's that being playful is a really, you know, thing.

Getting back, referencing Patrick McMan, I remember he did some clearing of some stuff.

Of us at a property up at, um, the Northern Rivers of New South Wales some years ago, and he stayed with us.

And I remember him saying to Lila, you know, just never lose your imagination.

And, you know, I was reading something recently about, you know, surveys have shown that when a child is born in this first few years, I'm not sure quite how they measure it, but, you know, 98% of children, what they would term a genius by definition, a genius.

And then they clocked them at, you know, ages 14 and then 20 or something or 18.

And by the time they're like in their late teens, early twenties, it's like 2% of genius because the school system knocks a crap out of them.

It's not well, essentially knocks your creativity outta 'em.

Yeah.

You know, and that, and that I guess that sense of playfulness and you know that as you experienced and I did too on a farm of there are boundaries and you always need to find them and push them and, you know, the cons, the consequences of, but having, working that shit out yourself Definitely.

And having the scope or the, the permission and the environment in which to be creative.

Yeah.

It's creative and curiosity.

Um, I was fortunate to work for education based consultancy.

This is, um, just during the onset of COVID actually.

So it was my.

Foray into, um, online based learning or online or working at home style employment.

And this education based consultancy actually looked at a theory from a Harvard professor.

That was the theory of multiple intelligence.

And that is via both kind a genetic basis, but also an environmental basis that there's different parts of our brains that have evolved due to different kinds of societal needs.

And it depe, you know, might have been argue that it was more environmentally based, but, um, the argument for myself is that there were all, that there were nine intelligences, there was nature-based intelligence, there was, um, linguistic intelligence, uh, there was, uh, what else was there in interpersonal?

So between people, intrapersonal, existential, they're asking of the big questions musical.

Um, there's a couple more too that have just evaded my memory.

Like, like, like, like the math.

Analytical and mathematical.

Mathematical, analytical, definitely.

Yeah.

And um, yeah, I know personally for me, I'm more of a nature-based kid and I think what I discovered and looking back in the beauty of hindsight, it's not necessarily what we are learning.

It's kind of the process of how we're learning.

So it's moving back to that process and how are we actually gonna work out?

You know, that maths problem.

And if you shift the how to, Hey, let's use an environmental or a nature-based approach, for me that immediately becomes much more tangible.

I become more curious.

And also often the learning happens when, you know, you give someone a project and there's all these other learnings that are operating on the peripheral.

I could go out and try and count those ducks there while I'm counting those ducks out on that dam.

Um, you know, I wish Tailed Eagle could come through and swoop at little kangaroo or something like that.

And I could, and then that's just like, through that how of learning, I've managed to make some observations elsewhere.

And that's, I, I feel the journey of learning, you know?

That's the beauty, isn't it?

Well, it's nature.

Nature.

She, she, nature.

Mm-hmm.

And that class, that is the ultimate classroom.

Yeah.

Isn't it?

And she is the ultimate teacher.

She is.

Or, and it's not almost like teaching, it's just, it's just like putting stuff there and you in your own character and personality and opportunity and curiosity.

The key, key, key part of the, the recipe finds, picks up, observes, you know, absorbs those, those experiences.

And that is deep seated learning, isn't it?

It is, yeah.

It's, uh, it's experiential.

Well, it's, it, it's, it's, it's actually relevant, isn't it?

It's super relevant.

Yeah.

And yeah, it's, uh, you know, like we, I mean, again, I'm not expert in this, but I know personally I learn from experience and I, and I always, you know, ride that line of making mistakes as well.

Because obviously, you know, they say the old adage, you don't make mistakes, you don't learn.

But then also, you know, you need to be mindful that you're aware of what an action, what the consequences of their action can be.

So it's a, it's a, it's a balance, but I think, you know, nature provides that medium and that environment for you to gauge that understanding too.

Um, which, yeah, I mean, which is again, which is the lovely thing about growing up on a farm, because working with livestock early on enable me to realize that there's more than just me.

And that's a good thing too.

Takes, takes the weight off my shoulders a little bit.

Um, we could go on, I've got, yeah, another idea about, um, consequence about kids, but, we'll, we'll touch on that maybe later.

I'll probably mentioned before.

So inspired by nature, learning in nature.

Mm-hmm.

Farm life, finished up school.

Mm-hmm.

And then, then where'd you go?

Yeah, it was probably, uh, when I was 15, I won't forget here.

I remember when, um, Steve Irwin died and when Steve Irwin died, it was funny.

I was like.

It was like I was missing a mate all of a sudden because I used to watch him quite religiously every Sunday on on Animal Planet.

And I sort of made a decision then I was like, I'm gonna study some animal based sciences and I'm gonna travel the world as a conservationist or do this or do that.

And obviously lots of things happened in between, but that initial intention just there, uh, it was kinda like my inner child that I sometimes fall back on every now and again.

That led me to, from high school to Otago University, um, where I sunk my teeth into a zoology.

Marine Science and wildlife management degree.

Um, cool.

Yeah, in three years, that was three initial years for the undergraduate and then a further two years, um, for the Master's, which you did.

Yeah.

Wow.

So, masters in, uh, wildlife management.

Um, and during, and I sort of, uh, cut it up a little bit because finishing the undergraduate, um, I had a, a major in zoology, a minor in marine science, but I really loved marine science.

So I actually went over to Townsville North Queensland and studied under the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority for a year.

I was based at the Educational center, reef Age Q Aquarium, and we were conducting research there.

And so that gave me a, a more of a focus on the marine environment.

That's cool.

Yeah.

It was, uh, it was kind of stuff that dreams were made of actually, I, I remember, um, you know, I could be guilty sometimes as being a little bit too keen and just mm-hmm.

You know, just giving it 100.

But definitely in my career, I think giving at 100 um, has enabled me to work out very quickly what's gonna work and what doesn't.

But to get to secure that position.

And it was only voluntary.

I had to support myself for that year when I was in Townsville.

Uh, that's another story.

I'll tell you how I supported myself over there.

Um.

Yeah, when you were there.

Yeah, when I was there.

When, when I hear this story, you know, finish that bit, we'll get to that story because now you've got thinking better.

But, uh, no, no, it's not, not too creative in that sense.

But, um, where was it?

I've been, uh, I've lost my train of thought now.

Sorry.

I do it right town.

Townsville.

Um, yeah, Townsville.

Um, studying there for a year.

Yeah.

And I, yeah, it was just, it was a nice focus on the marine science a hundred percent aspect of thing and giving it a hundred percent.

Um, 'cause yeah, for me, I wouldn't have been able to pick up that position without flying myself over and saying, here I am.

You know, for others I think they, they might've been content and just being like, oh, well just put that application in more, let it be.

But I know now in hindsight, and with my parents' support so that they push me in these, in these moments to be like, you show face front up, front up.

Yeah.

Your presence is pretty much 90%.

Yeah.

If you are there and physically there, then that'll make a huge difference.

So I always definitely try and remember that good little habit in life.

Uh, so did your time there, so how did you support yourself?

Uh, yeah, I used to, um, I became very, I became like the human metal detector, so I had, I remember I worked up to that point for six months in an apple.

Apple, um, packing shed.

And fortunately I was living with my parents so I could save everything I had.

And I think I went over with about eight to 10,000, uh, New Zealand dollars.

Sure.

And I was paying a hundred dollars a week in rent.

Uh, I'm just trying to do the math there.

So it was about half my time was paid in rent.

Uh, half my $10,000 was paid in rent over there, and I used to bike the streets and look for shrapnel.

Ah, ah.

But, but this is on the way to gra this was on the way to, um, the reef, uh, the aquarium and on the way back.

And, 'cause I worked out, just, just down the road from where I lived in Gall, uh, there's a little veggie, a little veggie store, and they had off cuts as well.

And that the season or the off cuts were often like $2 a box.

Yeah.

And I could eat so well, like incredible fresh like, or like, um, sweet potato, uh, vegetables.

And then that would just be complimented with a little bit of meat that, um, the boys at the aquarium may have spear fished or things like that, so.

Okay.

Oh, a dolphin passed away.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Pretty much in the aquarium.

It was, it was an amazing experience actually, because we used to, it was, it's the largest living, or at the time, the largest living coral reef exhibit in the world.

So indoors, um, it was a huge tank and we used to, so all the coral was propagated and then, um, as you put in the tank, I think it was like 40 meters by 10 meters by six or seven meters deep.

But we used to have to get in every.

Weak to actually clean the tank.

And then when you're in the tank, you can see all the public are looking at you as well.

So you Oh, so you're in, you're in your scuba gear.

Yeah.

You're in your scuba gear and all, and you become actually part of the experience as you're actually cleaning the tank.

But you are sharing territory in there with, uh, I remember Sienna, the Sawfish, she was uh Oh, cool.

This enormous sawfish.

And every now and again there would be a little bit of aquarium homicide.

When you would come in, at the start of the day, we had a predators tank and then a coral reef exhibit tank.

And sometimes you'd walk in at the start of the day and there's half a giant elli just floating, um, up turns.

Oh no.

Yeah, because they're not small, John.

They're not small.

And seeing a, a sawfish actually per date, it's, uh, when she moved past, you sat very, very still because a lot of these animals, I guess, drawn to movement and they have that instinct where, you know, I guess if they get that, that message from the environment that they either need to protect themselves and they need to hunt this prey, then that saw is gonna wildly move left or right.

So it wasn't something you wanted to get.

So literally like a slash Yeah, like a slash Yeah.

So we, we would find, yeah, giant elli that were just chopped in half.

And that was just purely because they got a little bit too close.

Um, I don't think she had the intention.

She was so well fed anyway, but she probably just felt the need to exercise her prowess every now and again.

Well, I guess the good news is that, yeah, that she can still express her sword freshness.

Yeah.

She, when I was there, she actually got shipped to a Singapore aquarium, which is a larger exhibit.

It was so great working for Reef HQ because they were so.

Animal welfare based as well.

And we had a, we had a turtle hospital there, and that was a terrific experience where we had these turtles that were, um, struck by boats, and then you'd have these other turtles would come in with mystery injuries and you'd have to work out was it a shark, was it a crocodile?

Was it this, was it that, and then actually heal these turtles, um, back to good, a good bill of health and then released them.

And it was a, it was a great exercise early on for me where these releases became a community based thing.

So, ah, we'd say, oh, we're releasing this certain turtle at Bowen.

And, you know, he, three or 400 people we released Gary the Turtle once, and Gary, he was a big gza.

Yeah, he was a big unit.

Which sort of, what's the turtle?

Was he leatherback?

He was, he wasn't, no, we only had one leatherback that came through.

They're not, they weren't super common around where we were.

Um, gee, it's Eva, me, uh, green Sea, green Sea Turtle.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah, yeah.

But still pretty big.

Yeah.

Yeah.

A bit of, a bit of a, uh, an event.

Yeah.

It was a total event for the community and a great way to get up close to these, these animals as well.

I, that's the thing, I guess, I guess if you studies zoology, generally you, you're drawn, or this is, again, speaking from my bias and so as animals of consequence, the animals you grow up watching on tv, you know, it's the big wildebeest or giraffe or the big sharks or the big orca are the animals that really captivate your attention.

Um, so giving the public an opportunity to be.

In quite close contact with sort of the modern day mega fauna.

You know, like a one and a half meter long turtle was quite special.

One and a half meter long.

Yeah, I think they at least really?

Yeah.

So I mean this turtle would, would be the length of this.

That's enormous.

Yeah.

I think Is that bigger leatherback?

Leatherbacks are the largest.

Yeah.

Leatherbacks.

That's enormous.

Again, don't, um, yeah, don't quote me on the ex exact, but that just from memory, that would seem about the, the size.

Um, and I'm, and I, I just wonder whether being a reptile, they just continue to grow throughout their life as well.

You know, like crocodiles continue to grow throughout their life.

So the older Arturo is, I wonder if it just, the larger it is as well.

Yeah, right.

I did eat turtle once upon a time up in a land my year after school went pearl diving and Yeah.

And that was because there was lots of Thursday islanders up there and that was kind of part of, you know, their culture I guess.

So we, we ate turtle.

Yeah.

On the odd occasion.

Yeah.

I can't remember what it was like.

Yeah.

Didn't, I didn't, I wasn't there at the, you know, point of dispatch and everything, but I remember eating the stew.

Yeah.

Well this is, this is pretty tasty.

This is all stuff I have to learn.

I'm looking to take a.

A winter guiding position in Kakadu National Park next year, um, which will be super exciting.

But I'm very, I'm, I'm particularly looking forward to the indigenous perspectives on, you know, um, utilizing these animals and, you know, or how they view these animals too.

Um, so obviously they have this very intricate kinship system that I'm in no position to interpret, but it's been, I'm doing a course at the moment.

It's been very fascinating learning about it.

Um, yeah, and it's, you know, it's just because they're eating turtle, you know, there's still a connection there.

There's still ceremony around, there's still, you know, there's really powerful thing that enables us to be part of a natural experience.

Yeah.

And I guess there's death obviously involved.

Mm-hmm.

But I guess, um, where there's life, there's death.

Totally.

It can't, yeah.

It can't exist, um, outside of each other.

And, you know, it's about nutrition and so on.

And then it is, you know, in theory those people can.

You know, if they're doing it in a, in a respectful way, they're, they're providing each other with, with new, you know, sustenance.

Yeah.

Um, and in the quantities of people up there.

And, you know, I don't, it's just part of life, you know?

It is, it is.

Yeah.

It is life and it is death.

And it is funny 'cause you think like, when you're in a more spiritual focus on life for that, for want of a better term, you know, like, and without getting too existential here, but you know, when you observe death frequently, you know, like your perspective on it may be different to what is presented to us, where, you know, someone dies and in the media it's presented as great sadness and this and this.

Um, so you just wonder how, how they differ and their interpretation of death compared to, um, you know, someone who's even like myself, you know, who's, who's confronted more with the sadness associated perhaps.

Well, that's a really good point.

You know, on a farm there's a lot of, there's a lot of death, there's a lot of life.

There's also death.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and so, you know, I've seen things and, and had to deal with things as a farmer that most farmers do anyway, that would horrify a lot of people, understandably.

But that's kind of life and that's normal.

That's my normal kind of thing.

Yeah.

Um, and then that's just a, a function of, you know, environment.

Mm.

Uh, and, and, and career.

Yeah.

Uh, but again, getting back to the Biomics workshop you are gonna be at tomorrow and Saturday, then we do talk a lot about, well, somewhat about.

Reincarnation.

Mm-hmm.

And I was listening to, um, Paul check the other day, who I'm interviewing when I'm in the States.

Um, living four day with Paul, check legend.

He, um, I can't remember the guy who he was interviewing, but they, they talk about, um, reincarnation and, you know, if we don't, you know, reincarnation or the concept of reincarnation is a really healthy way or really good motivation for looking after this planet.

You know?

'cause it's like, I've got this thing if I can digress, but not really digress about, it's not my concept and it's pretty broad, but it's like, be kind to your future self.

And until recently I thought about my future self in terms of my life.

So what I, this silly little not silliest little thing I do now, and it's kind of a, it's, it's a seed I'm planting for my, for habit is in the evening before I go to bed and turn the lights out in the kitchen, I put a breadboard next to the kettle.

I put my cup and I put my apple side of vinegar.

Yeah.

And I fill the kettle up with water.

So all I have to do in the morning is flick it on.

I'm being kind to my future self being my morning routine.

Yeah.

I'm making it easy for me to have that glass of warm apple ci of vinegar.

Yeah.

And then the day, it's a bit of a ritual.

But more recently, you know, I'm thinking, well, my future self is not just this lifetime.

No, it's, it's, God knows how many more, you know, so, yeah.

Am I gonna be here to honeymoon?

No, probably not.

Yeah.

I could be a woman in pick a country.

Yeah.

God knows what, you know, and I could be very different situation in I don't know how many years time.

It's like, wow.

If you start thinking about, oh, I know your generational stuff.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, it's like that's, you know, and let's not be, let's not be scared about the future.

Let's contribute to it potentially being better for everyone in whatever way we have the capacity for.

Yeah.

But, um, well again, it's like, for me, I always just think about along those lines where, um, you know, like when I'm doing my astronomy talks and I talk about the energy coming from, you know, outer space beyond the common line, beyond a hundred kilometers above earth, but that's somehow miraculously being turned into biology here on earth.

Well, you know, in a very pragmatically, if we die, we become almost physics again.

Okay.

But that physics has been transformed into biology.

It's already been proven like, and so, you know, I think this existential nature, and again, it was in, in our, my nature based education consultancy.

It was just amazing to hear.

I think these unfiltered responses you would get from children regarding this, um, that were, yeah.

There was a purity there and, and it was just saying that was coming from completely within themselves.

Um, yeah.

Which, which was great.

And it certainly opened up my perspective because when you work down the science route route, I guess you always have to be mindful to keep open-minded to, we tend in science to Yeah.

Silo things.

And because, you know, there's the science and then there's the research or the Yeah.

The, the pulling apart essentially, which is what research has to be in some, some ways to identify its parts, to analyze it.

'cause otherwise there's too many variables.

Yeah.

Um, back to the kids, you know, children's and their unfiltered thing, you know, there's many, many examples of children in their unfiltered, wonderful way telling about previous lives.

Yeah, I bet there is.

Yeah.

You know, and, and there's even been cases where people have kids, you know, I'm, I'm talking in their, before their teenagers generally, you know, they've actually gone back and shown people, their parents or police the site at which they, in the previous life were murdered, dispatched.

Wow.

Literally.

And like, and, and then, and then I think in one case there was the guy who did it was arrested because they actually found DNA back at that site.

Like it's fa like, it's just fascinating stuff.

The, there's just too much of that for kids making up stuff.

Well, maybe, but then they sort of do the research, investigate and goes, actually, there's too much lining up here.

Yeah.

For, for some kid just to make up a story, you know?

I know coincidentally happened to be, you know, but that's my, I mean, that's my belief at the core there.

Like it almost comes from, I guess my science-based training is, I look at it from that, from that micro level, from, from that physical level.

But at some stage there's been that transformation of energy from like an elemental, like a, an abiotic to a biotic form.

And it's happened before, so why wouldn't it happen again?

And yeah, and that's where I started.

I guess I try not to overthink it too much because I guess the beauty will be in the spontaneity.

Like, where, where, where else are you going after this?

Um, what also does shed a different light on, um, the life we have now that, you know, and it's a hard concept to sort of get your head around or swallow or kind of accept is, you know.

Death isn't the end.

No.

I'm a firm believer it isn't.

And I, and I try, I even now I try and exercise, like I know I've got a, um, I've got a 3-year-old blue heeler Aussie kettle dog go home in New Zealand.

And I often think, oh, if he's not here tomorrow, I'm gonna make sure I give him the best li date or life today.

But I also know I'm gonna be hugely sad, like enormously sad, sad if he, if he one day he goes.

But I try not to view that sad and sadness.

I'm trying to view it, I guess, as the human experience.

And it's funny when I, uh, like for me, I, I often think daily, I'm like, what, what do I wanna feel today?

And as I've laid, it's just been grounded or humbled.

Grounded or humbled.

And I think if there's one thing that really humbles and grounds and brings you right back to the present is when something that you've had that you really love is isn't just there anymore.

And it's funny 'cause, because for me, I'm like, I really enjoy that feeling.

Like I, I love the groundness it brings, but it comes with that real heartache as well, so.

Well, it really spices it up, doesn't it?

It does.

Like, yes, there's a deadline.

Yeah.

You know, all dogs die.

Yeah.

Hopefully.

Well, hopefully, but you know, generally before us, unless you are 99 yourself.

Um, but it's, yeah, it's the, let's do it for the, make this the most beautiful experience for the dog because I, I, you know, I reckon too many sort of things have happened and too many.

Interesting experiences.

You know, dogs.

And dogs.

'cause that's more of a domesticated, you know, example of interactions with humans and us as, as, and me personally, you know, coming back or, or you know, that the dog, I don't believe, I don't know, but I don't believe that someone can reincarnate as an animal.

I think there's too many, and who've learned about this in biodynamics as, you know, the etheric, etheric and astral and mineral and, and the sort of the I am.

So we operate on a different plane to animals and plants.

Um, so that doesn't necessarily allow for a human to come back as a dog.

Yeah.

But I do think that on some level, you know, animals do come back around in some way.

You know, the way that animals find people.

There's some terrific movies on there, isn't it?

What's that movie?

Um, A Dog's Purpose that brought a tear to my eye.

I haven't write that down.

Yeah, I think it's a dog.

There's a book about it too, but it's about that.

It's about the, this, the soul that's traversing through all these canines lives.

Um, and it, and it completes the full loop because the owner identifies that, uh, this dog did a particular, that daughter spontaneously That's red.

No, that's red.

Talking about dogs.

Yeah.

The um, yeah, the owner detected because the, the, this dog did the exactly sa exact same trip, uh, trick that his previous, previous one.

Yeah.

Yeah, I reckon.

See that just case in point, red is just behind us.

He's off camera.

I dunno if you can see him.

He's lying there in front of the door.

Big beautiful marma.

Beautiful marma.

He was, um, I'm not sure if I've told this story to the general public before, but he, um, was rescued from a farm some couple, well, three years ago now by um, some lovely people who work with us and we went to see him.

I think I might have told you the story.

We, we went to see him on Sunday and his other mates and he was living at that 0.5 Ks from here at least.

You know where Bonnie do is far away.

Yeah.

Anyway, the next day he turns up here, he escaped.

With his mate.

The mate stayed there, he kept on coming and he could have gone north, south, east, west.

Yeah.

He gone and visited a number of other houses and he, he literally trotted into our garden and sat on the, on the mat outside the front.

Never been in a house or a building before in his life, I don't think.

And took some months for him to overcome his shyness and he just stayed here and he's now integral part of our Yeah.

You know, we, his new chickens, 'cause he was a chicken guard.

Now he is a people guard for us.

So we're his new chickens.

You're his new purpose.

Yeah, totally.

That's, that's exactly, it feels like that.

And you know, it's funny because he took some time to even get put a foot inside.

And again, I might have told you this, you know, some months later we're going, where's red?

He's, he was here a minute ago and I walk into one of the bedrooms.

Could have been this one.

He's just like, yeah, he's just dropped his guy.

He's going, oh, that was a good idea.

Escaping and finding it.

But that was, yeah.

You know, that to me is more, more than that than just the dog happened to turn up here.

Yeah.

You know, there's so much more than that.

And definitely what his purpose, long-term purpose is.

I mean, he's a lovely, lovely dog.

He's a joy, he's a protector.

He so many things.

Um, let's get back to.

So did your time in the coral reef.

Yeah.

Coral Reef, uh, had a year there.

And then I remember I, at that time I was a weather nut too.

I loved the climate and I used to, you know, just when I, when I was in, I always wanted to be a weather forecast.

I used to write emails to New Zealand, met Service all the time, asking them when the next tropical cycling was happening.

It was an obsession of mine as a child.

So I wanted to actually, I thought, well, if I'm in the, uh, sort of marine science space, I wonder if I can get into the atmospheric space and work for the National Institute of Water and Atmosphere, niwa in New Zealand.

And at that time I sent an application to them, uh, which was declined.

And I called them up for some feedback.

How, how rude.

Yeah, I know.

Yeah, yeah.

Uh, but anyway, some very valuable feedback came back to me and it is interesting.

It was a matter, and I, I say this point blank now, I've just working the system funnily enough where she said, well, if you want really want to work for us, um, you're gonna have to change that BC into an M.

So yeah.

So that's when you did your other couple years?

Yeah.

Find my master's.

Yeah.

It was more things, actually more, you know, that next level of study that you are able to operate and the skill set required and things like that.

So I wanted to keep my options open.

So I chose having a kinda zoological background in marine science, which involved quite a bit of chemistry and things like that and physics.

And I worked, I thought I'll just keep my options open and move into wildlife management.

And thankfully I did because when I finished that master's degree, I had an opportunity come to me, um, to guide in the Blue Mountains in Australia.

And when, when I was finishing, uh, my master's placement, I remember I was, I.

This was all physical.

So, uh, it was a research placement based at Cape Kidnappers in the Hawke's Bay Luxury Resort there.

And we had a, a predator proof fence, which is, and within was a sanctuary.

We had kiwi, we had, um, kaki, beautiful native birds, native insects, um, some beautiful fauna only find a New Zealand.

And it was my job whenever we had guests coming through to actually show them certain areas of the enclosure, show 'em certain areas of biodiversity.

And I remember I would leave some of these trips with a nice fat 50 or a hundred dollars bill in my hand.

And I thought, huh.

It's funny, I've always been sort of, well, been around an environment where if you can't make the money yourself, maybe just position yourself where that waterfall of money is.

And I thought at that time, bit of a poor student, significant student loan.

Um, maybe I should just look where this money's coming from.

And that's what, when, this is quite funny, within a couple of months, this opportunity to guide in the Blue Mountains at mm-hmm.

Um, I think I'm not perhaps Australia's only six star resort, GaN Valley, uh, Emirates owned, managed by one and only.

And that's where I spent my next five years Wildlife guiding nature based guide.

It was five years.

Yeah.

Gee, that's a long time, isn't it?

Yeah.

Yeah, it was, uh, I think I took the role just before my 25th birthday and I went through to after 29.

So yeah, certainly during my time there, I mean, it's a, for anyone who's been to Wolgan Valley, Nestle, between two stunning national parks, it's a former cattle station that's now been turned into a conservancy.

Um, and like for guests that stay there where they're from, Australia.

Uh, or, or abroad.

They can wake up and there's wombats on their doorstep.

It's, it's a pretty special experience.

Uh, we had one of the highest capital rates of wombats, I think per Hector found anywhere in, within New South Wales.

Is that because they were comfortable there, they were getting fed, or they were just, you know, I think protected or a combination where they felt, um, comfortable but also geographic sort of separation.

Where we surrounding us, we had escarpments that were four to 500 meters high, and a wombat, um, tends to think smarter, not harder.

It's like that old legend where, you know, the common ancestor of both the koala or the wom and the womba, the koala.

Decided, saw this food around above ground level and thought, I'm gonna climb trees and eat and eat those leaves.

Not knowing what those leaves would actually be mean nutritionally.

And we know they're not great nutritionally versus a wombat was thinking Australia's pretty hot, I reckon I'll spend the daytime underground and I'll come out and graze at night.

I see plenty of grass.

So I was thinking, um, a little bit more.

So, yeah.

And, and wombats, we, we sort of developed some good relationships with, with some resident wombats.

They're obviously wild based relationships, but you began to understand their personalities as well.

And you reckon you went for a bit of a night scout round here a couple nights ago.

Yeah.

You reckon?

You found, I reckon, and it's interesting, thinking back to my Wolgan Valley days, I think one wombat can occupy between a 20 to 30 hectare home range.

Um, ter Like territory?

Territory, yeah.

So that if I found a, I found a borough that was about.

Oh, it would've been a foot across Mm.

Um, and a foot deep as well.

And it wasn't, it didn't look like it had been used that night, but there was fresh poo um, found within the door.

I sort of had looked down and felt my hand, uh, put my hand down.

Found some for fortunately nothing reptilian, but found, found a bit of scat and that scat resembled the square luck scat that, um, we had in GaN Valley.

But I, I'm under the knowledge that one Womba will probably have multiple homes, a few holiday homes here and there as well.

He'll scoot over there and yeah, visit there.

And Yeah, you might have your girlfriend's room.

You might, yeah, you might have to jump the fence every now and again.

Both literally and, and figuratively.

'cause this one was within a shelter belt, so it was all fenced off.

Well, I'm glad you did find that because we So you found that the day Yeah.

And you went back at night to sort of suss it out.

Went back at night and, um, funnily enough, I'd sort of walked the shelter belt and didn't see any, didn't see any wombats, but I found a lot of engineering, um, underneath some beautiful growth trees in there.

And the engineering could have been, you know, the soil engineering could have been because of, um, you know, potentially pigs could have been due to, um, you know, wallabies, kangaroos, things like that.

But I did find some more of that square like poo in these areas where, um, the soil had been dug up and it was quite cool looking at the soil.

And I, I talk about it from an ecosystem engineering space where you see all this grass being propagated.

Through the soil.

That's been disturbed in the past too.

So, um, yeah, I guess that's something I learned at gon Valley, especially as these animals when they overturn the soil.

I guess because they have evolved with the other elements of the environment, um, they could be providing a benefit.

Well, I guess they're sort of tending to their garden.

They are, yeah.

Yeah.

Now they, uh, super cute.

The old wombat got a hard plate on their backside and apparently, um, the stories, yeah, the stories were that, uh, in Wolgan Valley, the old fox used to be trapped between that hard plate and the side of the borough as, as the fox was, was found within the wombat borough.

So they can be very territorial when, when required.

Um, but I'd say if I came across a wild one that was the only one in that territory, it would've scarped as probably as soon as it heard me.

Yeah.

With a, a human.

I did.

I also told you this story many years ago.

My dog at the time, barking at the back here, just behind us at the, the door, the door of the house just behind us here and me walking around the corner, there's Awo back sitting.

I'd never seen Awo back hand me No.

Ever in my life, sitting on the back doormat, literally sitting on the doormat.

And I picked it up and, you know, it just sort of sat there and I rang Wise and I said, whatever you do, don't pick it up.

And didn't, it didn't attack or scratch me.

And then she came out and, and, and released it out in the paddock.

Um, yeah.

And suggested that it was probably had already been.

Cap in captivity at some point handled and then that's why it could be handled.

Yeah.

And it might've been end of life, sort of bit of a visit here, just as, 'cause I was looking for some shelter or some warmth or something, but it was fascinating.

So, you know, I don't mind the idea of wombats here 'cause I, I just don't know given the, you know, I can't see them exploding in population to a point in my, well in the next couple of decades where that'd be a real problem.

'cause I do know there's a lot of people who don't like wombats because, for, for a number of reasons.

Yeah.

Um, impact they have on pastures and soil and Oh, just, yeah, like, you know, like paddocks and erosion and that sort of thing.

You know, it depends on where and how and how many and that sort of stuff.

But also, I mean, they're not what you want to hit in a car or a road.

No.

'cause they can total cars.

Yeah.

Just 'cause of their, their, their, their size.

Like kangaroos are much bigger generally.

But in terms of the, the solid and their plate and the whole thing.

Like many a cars been written off.

I have a little, um, a rescue wombat based in Blaney.

Um, a lovely lady called Deb.

She is, these people who, who care for wombats are like super humans.

But, uh, I came across a wombat on the road, mom dead, but I cut open the pouch and found a little 400 gram Joey Oh wow.

Inside.

So I took her home and um, I called Emergency Vet, wildlife Rescue.

They said, look, you're gonna have to look after it for the night and we'll find someone in the morning.

But it was touch and go for the night.

And I, it was quite cool.

Remember I was sleeping off a little baby woba that night.

The little noises it was making.

It was so cute.

What'd you put it in?

A sock or something?

Sock in a hot water bottle and just had to be very mindful.

They didn't roll it onto it during the night just to keep eyes on.

They ring up if one goes the how.

Yeah.

So Richard, how'd you go?

That wombat and went, oh, well, Womba pancakes didn't, didn't get through the night.

Yeah.

But anyway, and it was on that touch and go at like a sort of size range.

And then, um, yeah, so we gave it to Old Dave Rescue and it ended up at Debbie's house.

This little wombat's now called BS and Bes.

Yeah.

Bs.

Oh cool.

And, uh, this, this womba still periodically comes and visits Debbie, but she has 120 acres space there where she basically releases them, um, in, into that area.

So that was, um, yeah, it was a nice, various, made me feel a little bit more Australian.

Which is funny when you come from New Zealand and, and you're educating people in the environment about Australia, but you, having grown up here, you're always thinking, oh, am I as authentic as I should be?

But having those bank of experiences working with Australian wildlife in particular.

Well you are now officially accepted by Australia, given you've looked after one of our wildlife, so thank you.

No worries.

You've, you've got, you've got unofficially permission to Yeah.

To stay and come and go as you please.

Unofficial accreditation.

Yeah.

If you just let the people at the passport office know that I will.

I'll go.

Oh, that's right.

Richie and Bells.

Yeah, that's right.

I have a little where the passport photo is.

I'll just have um, two-sided pad.

That's pretty much, so we have bells as well, pretty much that you don't need a stamp every time you come and go.

Just flash a picture of bells.

Oh, Richie, yes, of course.

Always wanted to do that.

Just kind of you're taxi away.

That's right.

Just be important enough where you can just flash something and just be diverged.

I remember watching a documentary on, on the box of many pack hour and, and they held up an entice public 7 4 7 that was traveling somewhere else because Manny Pau had made it to the airport air.

Um, and it was a public flight, but no one on the plane was annoyed 'cause he was a national hero.

And I just thought, yeah, it'd be.

Just experiencing that once.

You know, like that feeling once in a lifetime.

It's like kind of what comedians might have as well.

Yeah.

The whole crowd in the room is for you that, that like there was 1000 people just there.

Yeah.

That you are, you, you're experiencing something there that not all humans will experience.

Well, you've got many years to live, which, um, that's a fair chance that might happen.

Yeah.

You know, depending on your career choice, I mean, you've obviously got, you got made a choice somewhat of your career, but you know, how you, how you develop and grow that you just never know.

You might do that.

You start banking more.

You go, why are we waiting on this plane?

Oh, Richie Lamb's coming.

Oh yeah, yeah.

Oh, just hang, just hang 10 fine.

I wait an hour or two.

Put the feet up.

Jeez.

Like an all, like an all black.

Yeah, it would be great.

Yeah.

Wouldn't, yeah.

I think those times have come and gone, but.

We were discussing last night.

Oh, rugby.

Yeah, rugby.

Yeah.

It's a, it's a union stronghold around here.

Yeah.

Look, it's, it's, I wouldn't say, and the, and the leagues are the same.

Yeah.

So we call them MGOs.

They call us Rah rahs.

But there's some, there's some respect between the two of us.

Yeah.

Um, and there's, you know, defection every now and again.

Yeah.

One or the other.

Um, but tho the, the, the rovers, the ball rovers won the GF last year.

Wow.

Yeah.

Big year.

Big year.

Yeah.

Um, and no, no, it's, it's probably half and half I would hazard to say.

Yeah.

Um, so pretty two reasonably strong codes.

Do they share territory in the club rooms?

Every now and again?

They do share club, uh, the change rooms.

Yeah.

And, but not, not fields wouldn't go that far.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Not that far.

Yeah.

Um, no, no calendar shoots coming up for like kind of cross code, no.

Inta code shoots.

Well, that might be a bad idea though, but I don't know.

There'd be a bit of a, everyone would be just showing off then.

It'd be a bit of a Yeah.

You know what it'd be like.

Yeah.

It would be.

Yeah.

Roosters in the hen house.

Just strutting around.

Uh, we are referencing a calendar, a nude calendar that bought a rugby club did in 2000.

We actually did it in 99 in, in support of a, a Hong Kong football club trip.

Um, in 2000.

I'm not sure how much we raised.

We had a lot of fun.

We raised a lot of eyebrows.

I know that.

Yeah.

Probably in Hong Kong too.

In high.

Yeah.

Oof.

Eight days of, yeah.

Atrocities.

It was homicide and the best possible sense.

Yeah, no, in a good way.

Like no one was injured.

Yeah.

Oh, there were a few injuries, but, um, that's not for this, this isn't, that's not for this forum.

No, no.

This is, that's that's a subscribers.

Yeah.

That, so this is the PG only.

We'll get to that.

So tell me GaN Valley five years.

Yeah.

And then what happened?

I'm just conscious of the time.

Yeah.

Sweet.

So I'm thinking I've got a, I've got, um, I've gotta talk to my accountantss at 11 o'clock.

Yeah, of course.

But this is not the end of it.

'cause I reckon we are just gonna have to find another little niche.

Oh yeah.

No.

Maybe a couple of niches.

Nice q and a to do at the end of it.

Yeah.

But, um, maybe a bit later on today, we, we'll work it out off offline, but, so, 'cause this is great.

I'm loving you.

So, yeah.

Let's, um, 'cause we haven't even talked about Lake Harvey Station.

No, I know.

That's a whole different kiddo of fish.

Yeah.

As they would say.

Yeah.

So tell us, so what, yeah.

So, um, came back, uh, from, uh, Australia and so actually had one more year up in, from Olgan Valley up in the Whitt Sundays LY beach working on Hayman Island, just there.

And that was more Hayman?

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah, so they just recovered from a cyclone.

They were being rebuilt and it was, I knew I was sort of returning to New Zealand in time.

So I had a, had a short stint up there, actually finished.

Um, at that time I was doing a paramedic diploma.

So through the Australian Paramedical College.

I had an instance at Wolgan Valley where.

Uh, this is just amazing.

I always think like how things work out.

I had Ana anaphylactic experience on a guided trip.

You did?

Uh, not myself.

Oh.

But with, oh, one of the, one of the 7-year-old, yeah, a 7-year-old, um, young lad.

And it just so happened within my group was an allergy specialist from Victoria, and she knew exactly what to do and when to apply the EpiPen and what other medications to give.

'cause up until that point you sort of come out of doing first aid or wilderness first aid.

But I didn't have a medical backbone to my understanding.

And, and working in remote locations, I thought it would just be great just for peace of mind to have a great understanding of what's happening in the body medically.

And so that led me to do a paramedic diploma, which is the equivalent of sort of emergency medical technician, but in a, in the private sector.

So.

Wow.

How long was that?

That was a year and a half of study.

Wow.

Uh, which involves a few, uh, workshops, a few placements as well up.

One of those was up in Haman Island, so this was via Australian Paramedical College, but Oh, so they put you there.

Yeah, so I was doing a little bit of work too, and then worked on the, I worked on, at the medic center on the island too.

So we used to get people with fish hooks coming through the hands.

You know, it was a bit of, it was quite cool.

It was like you sort of come out of, um, studying and you're like, oh, I've got these formalized approaches, this, this, this.

And then you work out pretty quickly that you work within that template.

But the ingenuity is also required.

Especially in those situations where you come up against things that, um, you know, you didn't encounter in your training, but you know, you can modify.

And I, and I say that I'm very, I'm very mindful of working within your scope of practice as well.

Um, but yeah, there you, you have to be, um, you have to make certain adjustments.

God, that must be handy to know all that stuff.

It is, yeah.

It is.

It's, it's quite funny.

I've, I've got a mindset that can, I guess that relates to my anxiety, where my mind can really rev up my body as well.

So I had to be very careful that when I was doing paramedicine, I, I, for a time I didn't know how to switch off.

Um, and especially during some of my later placements, you know, I'll be working underneath, um, intensive care paramedics, sort of the, the super paramedics who can do, you know, these incredible things almost like surgery, can do surgery out in the field.

And these people have such a pedigree, you're thinking, right?

Well, I am, I am working almost not with life or death, but I'm working with some pretty significant stuff here and, and you really, really start to rev yourself up in a sense and a big learning curve for me.

Um, because as I was thinking more and more and also.

You're trying to anticipate what could happen, you know, if you're at horse riding event or mountain biking or motocross, what kind of trauma you could encounter, what kind of equipment you could need, just so you can be on the front foot.

But with that forward thinking also comes like this imagination when we're talking about imagination, but then being able to dial it back as well.

And it's something that I, I'm only just learning over time.

It's, you mean like gonna worst case scenario, gonna worst case scenario.

Yeah.

That, and it can, you can quickly feed into catastrophic thinking.

Yeah.

And then, um, yeah, so it's, it's again, just dialing it back to thinking, you know, stepping stones, stepping stones to ultimately will lead you to, to the outcome that will be the best possible outcome that you can deliver.

Um, but yeah, the mind's a funny thing, isn't it?

Um, I tell you what, and it years, it can really get carried away.

And again, getting, referencing, you know, start, stop worrying and start living.

It's, yeah, it's just the practices to sort of stop you, get it, you know, to stop you going to that doom loop of thought.

And there's a great quote, which I'm gonna completely butcher, but it was, you know, like many, many horrible things have happened to me in my life, but only.

10% of it ever happened, you know?

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

Like Yeah.

I've had somebody, I can't remember who even said it, but you there is that we do spend 99%, 90% of the stuff we worry about never happens.

I know.

Because we are in that doom loop.

We're in that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

In that, in that, you know, anxiety.

Yeah.

I, the one book I really wanna, I dunno if I should say this entire name here, but you might have to bleep it out.

The subtle art of giving a Of not giving.

Oh, giving a vote.

Yeah.

You swear, Richie.

Swear.

I can swear.

Yeah.

So the subtle art of not giving a fuck.

I think that's something that in time is probably my own self-awareness.

I'm like, and I was having this, this discussion with Tim, um, you talking and the other day and I said, look, if someone fell over in a street in front of you, would you even think, or would you just go over and help them?

And he'd be like, oh, I'd probably just go over and help them.

And a lot of the time, intuitively I think, where he's helping people, but then our mind revs it up.

My mind just keeps revving it up.

And so for me, I, I just kind of in my mind, if I know that I am gonna be helpful in these situations, it'd be nice if my mind just was able to dial back a bit and, you know, like almost come from not, I'm not giving a fuck, but, um, just yeah.

Sometimes giving yourself space to be like that too.

Well it's, it's sometimes it's about just kind of being more objective about it.

Yeah.

And standing back and being, and literally being objective.

And not getting, letting emotion, emotions.

Yeah.

Get away with, you know, it's sort of like the stoic, stoic philosophy.

It is.

Yeah.

Hey, I'm looking at the time.

Cool.

I don't wanna talk, talking about Lake Haria until we've got, we can sit and just continue.

So let's, let's just turn this one off.

I was gonna say accountancy advice for myself probably.

You are gonna sit in No, that's an hour and 25 mate.

We are, we are cracking or we haven't even got, I can't believe it.

Well, I do believe it 'cause we're having good yarns.

Oh, we can edit it down if necessary.

No, we won't.

We don't, we don't.

Fast burs interruptions.

We don't.

So I'll just turn it off here now and we'll pick it up.

Um, head lake station.

Awesome.

Thanks Richie.

Sweet.

This episode of the Regenerative Journey is brought to you by MJ Bale, an Australian men's wear brand, challenging the status quo in 2021.

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If you haven't got some of MJ Bale gear in your wardrobe, I highly recommend you go to find one of their shops and get yourself some of their rig.

Thank you MJ Bar for sponsoring this episode, and we'll get on with the rest of the episode with Richie Laming.

We're on.

We're back welled, we're back here at the gaba and, uh, it's no longer two for 22.

It's, uh, no, it's actually the time being one 10 to two.

It is not close.

Ten two, two ten to two.

So we've had a bit of a, uh, a break.

I had to get on a call.

We had a bit of lunch.

We had some leftover gluten-free lasagna, which MAD's made, which was sensational.

You, you actually had a cold.

Yeah, I had it cold.

Uh, I had warm mine up.

Yeah, I set up a cooler system down every now and again.

Pretty hot, pretty hot, hot conversation earlier.

Yeah.

So this is what we might call Part B.

I'm not sure if it'll be a separate episode, but it's certainly the, the, um, the next chapter because we had a lovely chat there before.

And time went away.

So we are back at it.

And we did promise ourselves.

Oh, two things.

Yeah.

You did a bit of homework in the break.

Yeah.

So that the thumping of the chest, it's not, we, we said the thalamus.

It's the thymus gland.

Oh, I said thyroid.

Yeah, you're right.

Thymus.

Thymus.

It is, um, interesting.

There's quite a few medical journals online, um, describing technique of thumping on the chest.

Yeah.

And, um, basically there's a, yeah, there's quite a bit of discussion about how it holds.

I don't know, the key for transfer of energy from that top, top part of your body through to the, the rest of your body.

So certainly works for me anyway.

So the tapping, the pumping and the tapping Yeah.

Is, um, has some, we just, we didn't just make it up.

Has some merit.

Has some merit.

Yeah.

So well done, Sherlock for finding that out in the break and the other in the book by Stephen Hawking and his daughter is unlocking the universe.

Ooh.

So it's it's a good, it's uh, it's written.

Yeah.

Like I say, from a very good perspective of kind of the InBetween almost the child and the scientists.

Um, but written from a storyteller's perspective.

Oh, cool.

Stephen Hawkins.

So he had kids.

I didn't know that.

Yeah.

I don't know.

Have you seen his movie?

The, oh, not his personal movie, but the movie about him That's No, it's a fascinating, yeah.

Oh, that it was actual, um, they had actors.

Yeah.

It was a feature movie a couple of years ago.

I to watch it.

Yeah.

It was incredible how long he held on, but, and did he have.

Did he have his, you know, like he had kids mm-hmm.

At some point in life.

Was he nor was he, uh, a fit and healthy chappy at some point?

Yeah.

Laying.

Yeah, he was up until the age.

I think he was in his twenties when he was diagnosed.

What was it?

Motor neuron?

Yeah, maybe.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so he lived, you know, I think that, uh, prognosis of motor neuron isn't very long, but he defier the odds.

Good on you.

Yeah.

Oh, Steven, one heck of a purpose, that's for sure.

Um, I'm just gonna take, put this blind down 'cause I think it's a bit bright on us now given we've had, um.

I had an hour or two off, off, off camera.

Yeah.

I feel like I need to warm, warm up the system again.

That's a bit better.

Yeah.

I'm, I'm trying to stop coughing my way through it.

Now tell me, um, we promised that we would get straight back into Lake Haria.

Mm-hmm.

Um, station.

So let's, so you finished at Walden Valley?

Finished at Wgan Valley.

Went up, you went up to Haman Island.

Haman Island for about a year, and then traveled back to New Zealand one week before the COVID lockdown.

So it was, um, well your timing was good.

Yeah.

The timing and it was, it wasn't because of COVID as well.

So, um, we just, I just already booked flights to come back at that time, and it just so happened to be that, that COVID happened a couple of weeks later.

So, uh, lockdown happened for me in the south island of New Zealand and, uh, I guess for someone who was working in the ecotourism sector, conservation sector in Australia, those kind of opportunities quickly dried up when New Zealand started to function again.

But fortunately.

Uh, at that stage I had worked for a cousin in a primary industry, um, working with an electrician, electrician's business, driving trucks, heavy machinery, that kind of thing.

Oh, right.

Um, which keeps you were laboring.

Yeah, laboring kept the proverbial wolf from the door.

Right.

Um, and then I worked my way into an opportunity with a company called Wanaka Water Action Initiative, and they were doing a lot of replanting on farms around the AKA region.

Uh, and at that time there was a program called Jobs for Nature, and the funding has either completely been removed or, or ceased since, but there was funding available for, uh, for planting on farms.

So, and why one could provide the labor and the expertise and, uh, the advice on where to plant.

And there's a lot of riparian zones, wetlands, shelter belts, um, being installed, which was terrific because all of a sudden, you know, we started looking at these farm systems as more as, as farm ecosystems.

So incorporating and, and providing habitat for not just livestock, um, but all these other beautiful animals as well.

Did, did the whole COVID thing, I mean, what it did over here was everyone was shut down pretty much, but it created interesting different social situations.

Some good, some bad, um, people tended to find their tribe and a lot of people, um, like in, in New Zealand was, was the planting of trees almost like.

Antidote to isolation.

I went like, I'm at home.

I've gotta be on this farm 'cause I can't go anywhere.

I might as well plant trees.

Like, was there kind of a bit of a correlation between, I think so.

I think the idea was there first before the feeling and the feeling's just catching up.

Now that's, that's the way I see it.

Um, you know, there's a lot of research about, at that time, you know, limited flights around the world and all of a sudden the carbon dioxide emissions were far lower and the world was gonna be in a healthier state.

So there were all these silver linings.

We kept telling ourselves that at that stage, well this is from my perspective, but we're not, we weren't entirely feeling it necessarily because there are all these other social challenges that were involved with with COVID.

But now that we've moved through that we see the enor and we're kind of moving through the other side, we see the enormous benefit of spending more quality time in nature.

Well that, that's the way I see it for sure.

Uh, 'cause at that time, I guess you sort of come back as a young professional in your late twenties to New Zealand and you're hoping and inspiring for a role that's going to take you to the next step.

Um, but it was a good lesson, um, for me, especially that life is a non-linear process.

Um, so you can keep taking stepping stones forward and forward, but sometimes to cross that river you might just have to take a step across or even a step back.

Sink and swim.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Excuse mate.

Um.

Yeah.

Cool.

So you were, you were hands on there or you coordinating hands on?

Yeah, so a lot of tree planting.

That was my, yeah, so a lot of tree planting on different farms and um, and I just sort of got to know the AKA folk and the AKA farm landscape then, which was really cool.

It was a, it was a lovely opportunity to actually travel around AKA at the time.

Uh, and that took me from there, I was then presented with a role as a first aid and pre-hospital emergency care instructor.

So I was sort of putting a bit of pressure on myself to maintain all the skills I'd learned in Australia at that time.

So I wanted to stay in the nature space, but also wanted to do what I could to stay in the pre-hospital care space as well.

So, worked as an instructor in the central Otago region.

That was for about a year to a year and a half.

And then I was working about four days per week, about 10 to 12 hour days.

And then it just sort of came to a point where at that time it was.

I just thought, like at a challenging point for me, I was like, do I head back to Australia?

Where it was super fun.

Um, say for me, I was in, I was in my element, or should I just take a real risk and stay here in New Zealand and almost subtly take that knock of a fuck approach and throw myself at any opportunity I come along and it was almost immediately within the next couple of months that I was throwing out.

Uh, yeah, I sort of had a very shifted mindset.

I was throwing out a lot of opportunities.

I was throwing out, um, a lot of feelers to different places, and I stumbled across Lake Harway Station.

I knew they were in the regenerative farming space.

I grew up in a farm.

I knew I had something to offer from the biodiversity point of view.

Uh, and it was simply a matter of just sending my CV in and walking out the driveway and, and knocking on the door.

Excuse me.

So, like you were saying before you turned up at the North Queensland.

But you know, the Great Barrier Reef Authority.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So had you sent your cv, sent my CV in, and then you, you ri rolled up and said hi, and then, and then showed face and, and rolled up.

Did you know that the CV had been received, had any feedback?

I hadn't, hadn't known at that point actually, but I did receive an email.

It was all within, it was very, within a very short amount of time.

Um, but then I received an email to say, um, look, we're interested, and especially from the tourism point of view.

Um, but then I had it, it was quite cool.

I had a sort of, and I, and I enjoyed it.

I had a bit of a, I guess, probation period with Lake Hawi Station initially where, and Jack, the farm manager were like me saying this, I was a full-time lawn mower, so I was roaming around the beautiful grounds of Lake Hawi station, um, mowing lawns, doing labor tasks, things like that.

Um, and it was the perfect foundation to really understand the landscape there too.

And tell me the, um, uh, the, oh, I thought I was gonna take that one then.

Now, oh, back to New Zealand.

So you had the choice to go like, I mean you, I think you might have said, play it safe or, yeah.

So it was sensible to go back to Australia.

'cause you, that's where you did your training and you kind of knew the land that at that time it was, and then, but staying in New Zealand was more of a risk it sounds like to me.

It would be.

Sounds like the opposite.

Like, I'll stay at home Yeah.

Because I know everyone or I go back to Australia and where anything could happen that sort of sounds like an interesting dilemma or choice or decision, you know?

Yeah.

Like this or that.

The garnish I didn't throw in there was, my anxiety during the COVID period had come to probably its peak.

So I first started having anxiety attacks, um, when I was younger, probably 12, 13.

And then they died down.

And, you know, as my social environment from school became much, much better, um, I could lubricate the environment at university of a lot of alcohol.

So that became much better.

I spent lots of time in nature in the bush in Australia, and then all of a sudden coming to this point, almost immediately, where a lot of those things were removed during COVID, um, just exacerbated the symptoms that I had of anxiety from a very early life.

So I was that, that first two years, um, I guess of the, of the, the COVID period, because we weren't, we didn't really have a choice, I guess it was simply a matter of just push on, push on, but.

For me at that time, um, you know, there's, there were gray zones as well.

So, and, and those gray zones couldn't be helped from a professional point of view.

But I guess as soon as the, the COVID Cloud started to lift, then came a point where I was like, okay, I've gotta make a decision now.

And it was almost like the urgency of, gee, those two or three years went by quick.

How about I just, and where have I got myself?

And it was probably quite a bit of ego involved.

Where have I got myself and I thought, gee, you know, I'm floundering a little bit here.

Let's just put the E accelerator down and, and see what happens.

So it was a, it was an interesting, it was as a result of my anxiety, I feel that I ended up at Lake Harbor Station.

But as you were saying the other day, like might been today, I'm just putting this blind down a little bit.

See if we can reduce that.

Is that better?

That's fine.

Yeah.

It's interesting because, um, it's all about how you channel that energy or that anxiety, isn't it?

Yeah.

Because it, can it be, you know, someone else, I can't just think who it was now.

Said a similar thing.

It's about, you know, it can be a superpower.

Yeah.

If, if, if, if maybe it was you when, when you first got here, when we were talking about it, you know, it can actually be, you know, a little bit of anxiety or a little bit of nervousness mm-hmm.

Is sometimes the motivation or the drive.

I think it shows first that you care.

Um, and there's sincerity involved with anxiety.

'cause there's, especially with a lot of uncontrollables as well.

Um, but for me it was, and this has come with time, it's recognition that, hey, I've got an energy source.

And that, like, I feel very privileged and very lucky to have that energy.

Um, but it can be a little bit of a beast at times.

And sometimes I don't channel it as I should.

So I need to be, it's kind of the burden of having the privilege for me.

That's the perspective I take now that I have to just work daily to ensure that it's heading in the right direction.

And, and sometimes that anxiety gives me a, a couple of, um, reminders that I might just need to reshift re maneuver where I'm heading.

Let's stay with that.

Mm-hmm.

I'm not trying to avoid like No, because that's, that's, that's the gold.

Yeah.

Um, but tell me about like what, what's your anxiety management?

I'm interested 'cause you, you were speaking with Zi the other about breathing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So my, because my, the thing with my anxiety is.

Uh, mentally I feel, and this is again, stoking up the ego, I feel I'm very mentally strong, but, um, the messages sometimes, you know, the 10% of messages from my brain that might conjure up worry or fear or panic or something like that, my body really holds onto.

Um, and then that manifests.

And what happens is, excuse me, during the day, I can push those aside.

Uh, come nighttime when I'm trying to sleep.

When I let the guard down, then that's when a lot of those symptoms, I have a lot of panic.

I can, I've had a lot of panic attacks during the nighttime.

So for me, um, the, the, the first step I took, I think, in kind of managing that was having something to look forward to immediately the next morning, which would make me feel better.

So I knew that as soon as I got up in the morning, no matter how shit my sleep was, or, um, you know, how anxious I was feeling.

'cause it, it's not great when you wake up feeling anxious.

I knew immediately I could tamper that down, actually feel better.

And it's kind of like the textures of life, you know, it's like the contrast.

And, and that's where real satisfaction came from me.

Cold dips early morning.

Um, I say 11 minutes a week, but I very fortunate to live on the shores of beautiful Lake Hawi station.

So I'm generally in most mornings for three minutes, I had a dip one or two mornings I was there.

Mm-hmm.

And it's pretty fucking cold.

Yeah.

Yeah.

In it was May.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's, uh, and it gets cooler, um, with snow melt come October.

Wow.

It probably gets down to seven or eight degrees.

And this is a 350 meter deep lake, so it's got a lot of water, a lot of ability to hold onto heat, but yeah, it gets very cold late winter.

Yeah.

So dips.

Yeah, so dips.

And then after that I make a decision.

I'm like, okay, well energy wise, uh, do I need something to eat or can I kind of burn off these anxious feelings I've had overnight by simply having a fast up to lunchtime?

So for me, it's kind of, and that it's a simple message to my body to be like one less thing to worry about, chill out.

And it's, it's a move for me that moves, that creates change from the sympathetic to the parasympathetic.

So I just make a simple decision.

Do I eat before 12 o'clock or do I hold on?

And that just because it's really important for me during the day amongst the anxious up ups and downs, that I remind myself that I can feel good.

So, and, and, and I guess from a positive mindset, you can just bring yourself back to those moments.

And even at the height of a really bad panic attack, you're like, whoa, hang on.

Six hours ago I was feeling so good.

Mm-hmm.

So, um, that for me is a really.

Yeah, that's really important.

Um, that fast and just a reminder of, of feeling good too.

And I guess the, having the responsibility and you said then the privilege, but you know of or knowing you can make a decision, I'm gonna fast or not mm-hmm.

Depending on how I feel.

Yeah.

Is a management is a positive management strategy, which in itself might make you feel more empowered and in control because it's actually a point of reference every morning, how do I feel?

I'm gonna, I'm gonna manage it either way, either fast or I eat.

Yeah.

So there's kind of like a check and balance in place.

Yeah.

Which in itself gives a state of control, state of control.

Yeah.

So that takes me up to lunch generally.

And then at lunchtime, I, uh, there's a little creek, uh, at Lake Highway Station called Bushy Creek.

It's a riparian strip, but I follow that creek to, at lunchtime, generally most days, I follow that creek to the point where the water starts flowing.

It's flows underground at some stage.

Sometimes I have to take a jog, the sound of trickling water for me, um, in a natural environment where there's complexity.

And I think that's the beauty of nature, is there's complex interactions that are happening that our brains crave.

Like we, a lot of our environment now is homogenized.

We live, say between four walls.

Um, that prevents spontaneity from happening and that prevents us also from seeing.

Those beautiful moments of abundance in nature too.

Like when you go outta nature into a complex environment where there's lots of interactions, you know, for a nature child especially, and I speak from my perspective here, all of a sudden my perspective turns from, oh, I want to feel good to, I have this around me.

And, and that's really important too.

So again, that's just another reminder and it's another little ritual where I, I try and do daily is just follow this creek system up to where water is and, and enjoy those moments.

That's so cool.

Yeah.

It's, uh, it's come through trial and error because Yeah.

Did Jeff and Jazzy know that?

They go, where's bloody, where's Richie?

The good thing is we don't have two-way radios, so Yeah.

Yeah.

I just say I'm, I'm off to, uh, yeah.

I mean, they're terrific.

They give a sense of autonomy to their staff because, I mean, from their knowledge, they believe they have the right staff in place.

Mm-hmm.

And they're very task focused people.

So rather than giving a timeframe necessarily, they're like, we want you to do this task.

And then you have the option to do that in your creative time, and then you have space for yourself to look after.

You look after your personal wellbeing too.

So that's cool.

So, so, so, um, uh.

Um, oh, not starving.

What's it called?

Fasting.

Fasting, yeah.

But it's like starving at the top.

I, I, I, I, um, it's a classic, you know, we, uh, I saw me a while ago and it said like, back in, back in our days is like, we just skipped breakfast and then, but now it's called fasting.

Yeah, totally.

And I have to get, be very careful.

I don't wanna get to the point where I'm depriving myself.

It's not about that.

It's more about.

Making a conscious decision actually.

Do I have energy?

Do I have mental energy right now?

Do I have physical energy?

Okay.

I probably don't eat to eat right now.

Well, yeah.

Yeah.

And then I, I make a decision somewhere around 12 o'clock and have something nice to look forward to as well.

And so, so for the listeners and viewers, Richie spent his first was Tuesday after a long weekend here, and I presented him with like a 5,000 gram steak.

Yeah.

Tuesday morning.

Tuesday morning.

Yeah.

It was breakfast.

It was a breakfast first ca first cab off the rank.

Yeah.

For my eyes, you probably, you're probably like going, oh, I think I'll fast today.

Yeah.

And then turned up and like, bingo.

This half, half bullet on a plate.

Probably my, um, my grandmother used to say, win and Rome do is the Romans do.

So sometimes you just don't question the process.

You're pushed on.

And then, then there was bacon and there's sausages every other morning with eggs.

But the cheese exuding from my paws at the moment too.

On, on the Charlie diet.

It's, it's been a revelation.

You're on the, you, you, you, animal animal, um, animal protein.

Yeah.

Rich.

No, it's great.

Um, all of it.

Of it from here except for the cheese.

But having said that, MAD's with her milking every morning, which is incredible in itself.

Yeah.

Um, that's the next step.

Yeah, it is.

Yeah.

That'll be the next one.

So, um, lunch take you up to lunchtime take, yeah, yeah.

Where do you do, you mentioned to Mads about breathing, is that Yeah, so I do, I do some breath work throughout the day.

I Good have a good friend Josh in New Zealand who is a breath work practitioner and he's given, so he is, he got a business.

Yeah, his, this is called two six Wellness.

Two six Wellness.

Yeah.

So that's Numerical two six Wellness.

Yep.

Uh, sorry, not numerical.

It's in words two six.

Oh, okay.

Um, but he does a lot of integrative work with corporates as well, but he gave me a simple technique to, is it too sucks?

Yeah.

Two sucks.

Yeah.

Well I've got a, I've got a, you've apparently got a twang now, so you've got an Australian australianized.

I just re So you are like, not, you are an Australian on New Zealand.

I'm somewhere in the middle of the Tasman Sea.

You are?

Yeah.

You're bobbing around on a I'm bobbing around somewhere there.

Yeah.

I will take you.

Yeah.

Okay.

So two sucks.

Wellness.

Yeah.

And uh, and so he, his, a lot of his breath work is around stimulating the vagus nerve.

So he has simple integrations throughout the day and it could be two to three minutes and it's having a longer exhale than your inhale.

Very similar to the box breathing approach.

Um, but it's just putting a little bit more emphasis on the exhale.

And it's something that I find very beneficial.

'cause when I do a cold dip as well, the way I control my movements and I try to be calm when I'm cold dipping is just lots of breathing out.

Breathing.

I just breathe out.

I don't even get up breathing in.

Breathing in, because to my knowledge, the lungs are a vacuum.

So as soon as I stop breathing out, I gonna refill.

So if I concentrate on breathing out, that helps stimulate the vagus.

Again, just stay there.

I'll be feeling anxious at some stage again.

Well, what's very whim, hof, isn't it the breathing where the, you breathe out.

When you breathe in.

Expel, expel, expel to a point.

Yeah.

And then hold your breath for.

As long as totally in that breathing exercise.

And then obviously combining that with the, with the ice bath.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's the whole biochemical, I guess there's so many different aspects that go into breath management, but that's the biochemical approach is that balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide.

Or do, um, some breathing called BTE breathing as well.

Um, can't remember this, how you spell that.

B-U-T-E-Y-K-O.

Oh, hang on.

B-U-T-E-Y-E-Y-K-O.

Bko, uh, breathing is about, uh, limiting your breaths.

Um, not necessarily res Oh, so respiration rate, but also the amount you breathe in.

And the idea is to build up an ear hunger.

And the idea is to build a, a more efficient exchange of oxygen within your body.

Because we perceive carbon dioxide as a weight, or like general consensus is, oh, carbon dioxide.

We breathe out as a waste gas.

Uh, you actually need, you know, upwards of about 5% carbon dioxide in your body.

It's like the gatekeeper for oxygen to go into your cells.

And if that carbon dioxide isn't there, you don't get effective respiration from your oxygen.

So it's a, it's a matter of building up a slight air hunger to ensure that you get fully oxygenated by introducing a bit more carbon dioxide.

So, alright.

This is still, I'm just gonna sign it on my computer.

I suspect it's, oh, there you go.

It's still going.

Yeah.

Thank God for that.

Jeez.

Got a fright when I saw that on the screen.

Did you?

Yeah.

I hope, um, I'm sure it's still ticking over.

I know.

I was talking about the two faces that's got really white look how pasty and white.

I'm a free shift.

Yeah.

Oh, that's not a bad idea.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Cool.

Yeah.

Good work.

Check, check, boy.

Yeah.

So tell me, oh, I'm got worse here.

Now tell me, um, what, oh, I dunno, what's going on there?

Tell me.

Yeah, breathwork, that's a combination of ma management is management techniques.

Yeah, definitely.

And I say in all this, I say that in, in the sense that I'm on, I'm continuous continuously, not continuously, but in a nonlinear way, improving and improving my way to manage anxiety and also live with it.

And, and I dunno what the ultimate goal is to never feel anxious again.

I'm not sure it's entirely human and almost normal to me now.

Um, but, and I'm saying this in the sense I do these things throughout the day because they're working for me and they're pushing me in a new direction.

And I know because things in my external environment are definitely improving too.

Which is, uh, I guess is the way I look at it is, is what, whatever I'm trying to manifest within myself, what's happening externally.

So, well, if your external, um, external, um, what am I trying to say here?

Your external expression and yourself from a, from a, from an outside's point of view experiencing you in the world.

You've seen, you're doing a good job, I reckon of like.

So maintaining your calm and, and, you know, composure.

Mm-hmm.

Because you don't strike me as, you know, I haven't caught you having a convulsions out the back yet.

You know, like that.

It was a bit of cheese lunchtime yesterday, so I haven't, you know, so you, so from an outside's point of view, whatever you're doing seems to be working.

Yeah.

You know, like you, you're not like going, oh my God, I can't handle this.

I've gotta go and have it lie down for an hour.

Yeah.

Which would be fine too, but, you know, and it's funny, and it's funny because in a sense I wish I could do that because that would be a management technique as well.

But my, the way that anxiety happens for me is I feel it in my body, but again, mentally I'm like, and it was probably almost that whole people facing kinda lifestyle I've had for the last 10 years.

Medic facing, you've gotta be that moment of calm amongst whatever's happening around you.

And, and you get really good at having a poker face too.

Um, so, and that's why I have to really habitually do these things because I guess I'm not one to be like, when I probably should, oh, I just need to go put the feet up and have a lie down.

I choose to go and do something else, uh, or keep myself busy or whatever.

So it's just, yeah, having these habits in place.

Well, you, you pulled that quote out of the, um, stop worrying and start living book the lunchtime about distraction and keeping in action, you know, so that's, yeah.

That's a very male thing to do anyway.

Not, not that females don't, of course.

But you know, I guess if you were to stereotype the sexes, um, then, you know, we tend to kind of just push on and keep doing things and get distracted, which is, which, which I reckon has its benefits.

But at the same time, you know, thinking from a farmer stress and then leading to suicide, kind of a, in the world of farming in Australia, there's, there's a huge amount of suicide in the farming space that um, at some point there has to be acknowledgement of, you know, needing help.

'cause you can distract yourself to death pretty much quite literally.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There's, I'm not sure if you saw it, there was a great almost numb yourself.

Yeah, well there's a great, there's a great ad and, um, I, I think I might have seen it earlier this year, late last year, well, I think it was based in the States and it was about men, men's mental health.

And there's two guys sitting in watching the soccer.

I might been the rugby in the States.

I saw that ad.

And there one guy's like pump and the other guy's looking quite worried.

And then there's a series of games.

Yeah.

You know, like five, 10 seconds of each.

And you're going, oh, the bloke on the left's.

Buggered.

Yeah.

And then on the last frame, the guy who was yahooing, he's not there anymore.

I know.

And, and there's often the guys who are, and I was, I wasn't expecting that either.

No, that's why it's so powerful.

It's funny.

I go and so another two other components of my, like anxiety management is I ground quite a bit.

So I head out into nature and I, like, I, as a male, I kind of need to lift things.

So instead of gonna the gym, I lift rocks, I just go somewhere and, and lift rocks and carry them.

And I find that quite grounding for me 'cause it slows me down.

Um, but the other key thing I do is I treat myself once a month or once every three weeks and go and get a massage, deep tissue massage.

And for me, that's kind of brought into perspective that, okay, well I get a physical body massage and um, you know, that makes me feel really, really good for a certain amount of time.

Obviously it's a bandaid to the cause, but it still gives you that space to feel good.

The way I think about, um, the mental component is like, for me, talking and being open and being your authentic self at that very time, just whatever you're feeling is for me, like a mental massage.

So for me, that just enables like my brain to let go of the notion that, uh.

I can just be me at this time.

Yeah.

Be me right now at, at this time.

And ultimately you want to get to that state, I feel where you're just, your, I don't know, is your, yeah.

Is that whole discussion is your best possible self?

Is it just your most authentic self at that very time at, you can get pretty deep on these things, but, uh, you know, I mean, it is for me, like having this anxiety has given me such a great understanding of the world because for me, I'm, so, I'm almost searching for a way out of it, but the search has taken me on this road that, you know, it's almost like the hard road and it's given me a story and it's given me these new experiences that I'm Yeah.

Just loving and very grateful for.

I mean, it's, it's not an unusual story.

Um.

Uh, that through adversity.

I mean, there's no growth stimulant like pain, you know?

And that's what, that's what's forced you and you'll be a better, a better man.

Yeah.

A better man for it.

Totally.

It's funny, just recently I, um, my reiki practitioner, 'cause I've had a couple of sessions with her recently.

And, and the first one she went pretty soft on me in terms of, um, 'cause she's a counselor as well, so in what we talked about afterwards, but the second time she just got a little bit fed up and she's like, Richie, you just gotta get outta your own way.

Just gotta, and it was quite, um, it was really good advice for, for, for me to hear because again, it probably comes back from the discussion we had earlier on, um, intuitively.

You know, we, we've all done good things in our life and we are here doing good things.

Why do we need to think about it so much as well?

You know, like, and I guess that authentic self is being a more natural self.

And if you're not feeling right at the time, it's, Hey, just have a mental massage.

That's my perspective.

And, you know, I've got a good tight group of mates who we openly talk sometimes we get fed up with each other and we're like, right now we shut up about this and we get on with it because we're so open and talking about these type of things.

Um, which is good.

But we, we've got each other's backs too.

Well, it gets back to the, the action.

There's, there's the action Men in Action kind of just keeps, keeps us, you know, forging.

And then I read something in a, I get an email every day.

The sto The Daily Stoic, yeah.

From Ryan Holiday.

And this one, this morning's one was interestingly about, you know, talk verse deed or verse action.

Mm-hmm.

You know, and.

It just speaks so much more and so loudly, you know?

Yeah.

Um, and you are putting those things into practice Now, if we don't start talking about Lake Har, Jeff is gonna flog you when you get home.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There's always gonna be an upsell when you work, um, for Jeff and Justin, which is the fun.

Which is the fun of it.

So tell me, so you started there, you started there, your lunchtime, you sneak off up the up the up the creek, yeah.

Do a bit of grounding, lifting rocks, listening to the water, things like that.

Yeah.

And so when you're actually working, yeah.

So tell me and tell us about like how your station, just a bit of backstory.

Um, uh, I'd been following you guys for a while and then plenty.

What was it?

It was like, oh, this, this is really interesting what these guys are doing.

And I think, I'm not sure if I, Michelle did in message on Instagram or an email.

Might have been an email and then someone replied.

Anyway, before I knew it, I was gonna New Zealand AI for a biodynamics conference over there and.

The, and you guys kindly put me up for two nights.

I interviewed Jeff.

We had a feed, the boys had a feed on the first night.

Beautiful lake house.

Yes.

It was so good.

And then, um, Jeff and Joie took me for a feed somewhere, I can't remember quite where the next night, nonetheless.

And you took me for a trip up and a thousand meters up into the high country.

Yeah.

Which is, which is phenomenal.

And so that's how I got to meet you and kind of get to know, um, Jeff and Jazzy and the whole, you know, in a short period of time, you guys are so good at kind of imparting information and demonstrating and so on.

We're lucky with the environment.

It facilitates that for us there too.

Yeah.

People come open-minded because they're immediately in awe from what they see around them.

So we try and come from that strength-based perspective.

So tell us about what, what, what, what do you guys do there?

Why, what's the, you know, like what, paint a picture for people who, um, haven't already jumped on Instagram.

Yeah.

So a little plug here.

Lake Hawi Station, living on Instagram.

Um, but we are a 7,000 hectare high country station in the bottom end of the south island.

A little township called Haa, which is just out of Wanaka over the hill from Queenstown.

And this high country station, uh, involves both low country, so that's glacial formed country.

So that's very fertile.

There's a lake there that was formed by a moving glacier.

And when that glacier retreated and the river flowed.

Left behind very alluvial soil.

So we have some more intensive pastures down low.

Then we have the front country, and that's the front country is the entrance to the high country.

So there'd be approximately, um, 1000 hectares of low and front country.

And then we have about, I think five and a half thousand hectares out the back, um, in the high, in the high country.

And that's, um, your quintessential iconic, uh, uh, sort of semi alpine, um, golden tussock, you know, at Otago landscapes that we often see, you know, representative of wines and tourism in the region, which we weren't to see in the buggy.

Mm-hmm.

On that treacherous Yeah.

Climb up the hill there.

It was a bit nailbiting.

Yeah.

Um, and what amazing, um, combination or, or variation in.

In landscape.

So farming, there's farming imp consequences of implementations.

Mm-hmm.

Um, implications of that.

There's the, the richness of the agritourism experience.

Mm-hmm.

And you, what's your role there?

Yeah, so, uh, my role, and so before I get into my role, I should say that we farm approximately 300 he of black Angus cattle and approximately 10,000 merino sheep too.

So it comes from, uh, a primary focus of merino fiber with some meat.

Um, but the animals spend their life amongst all three of those me, like environmental mediums, the high country, front country, and low country.

So we do farm the, the entire system, which, which is, um, makes it a lot of fun.

But my role there, um, initially I started once I'd sort of moved through my probation period of mowing lawns, mowing lawn, lawn boy, and not breaking stuff and working out how to fix stuff.

Uh, I moved into the position as of experiences manager.

So, um, the kind of fire flagship experiences we have there involve high country trips involving a TV, uh, a TV vehicles.

We have astronomy experiences, regenerative farm tours.

We have beautiful hikes into remnant forests, and we have a children's program too.

So that was my initial focus is getting, you know, the, the tourism offerings that tell the story about the station off the ground.

And so it's effectively been a startup.

Yeah.

Start up and you started there.

Oh, how long there In 2022?

Uh, I think it was around October.

So let's say it's 18 months.

Yeah.

So the, so the, the guts of the agri agritourism and you facilitating that mm-hmm.

Really started 18 months ago.

So 18 months ago.

Yeah.

So we had, uh, because it, it was more like farming might a bit more hardcore farming.

We've got sheep, we've got cattle, yeah.

Manage them.

And we do some grazing management, but it's all farm related.

So you sort of, and opportunities had come to the station from other sectors, um, in that time.

But I think the real impetus was.

Uh, grace and Joie had applied to Conde Nast and Conde Nast Traveler for American Travelers is a magazine that's probably one of the best representations of where you should travel for that particular year.

And, uh, they got wind of Lake Hawi station and we, they were gonna come down for a visit, uh, visiting some other properties.

This was, this was at the end of 2022.

And we thought, cool, they'll come and visit.

We'll get a wee snippet in the April edition of, uh, the 2023, uh, Conde Nas Traveler.

And it turns out they liked the property that much, that they made us the feature piece and named us in their gold list.

And also one of four properties worldwide in the sustainability category.

So with that came an impetus.

We're like, okay, we need to start building some tourism, tourism experiences.

Had to, you had to walk the talk now.

Yeah.

And formalities as well.

So, um, yeah, there was a, a should I say a heightened sense of urgency?

Yeah.

Uh, but yeah, it came just at the right time.

And you came just the right time too, or it sounds like?

I think so.

Yeah.

You know, it's, uh, well you're still there.

You haven't got the sag.

Yeah.

As much as, as much as my, my, my suggestions must have been ignored when there might not be a job when I go back.

Yeah, you might be, you might be sending testimonials back across best this might.

Yeah.

Well actually, you know, Jeff and Jazzy said, look, if he wants to stay Yeah.

That's actually for the best.

Just him a passport.

Keep him here.

Keep him here.

Yeah.

Um.

Yeah, more continue.

Yeah.

So, uh, and that set us to those kind of fire flagship experiences, but then we were with a lovely lady called Lauren Roxborough, who was formerly, um, American, uh, so US Space, she's from California, but she is a global expert in fascia.

So the connective tissue that moves through our body and uh, holds, it's responsible for a lot of fluid retention, but also covering the muscles.

And it, there's a lot of evidence now to suggest that it's involved with, uh, you know, holding of emotions and trauma within the body too.

So she was just doing a little bit of work with us in the sense that, um, she was promoting what we do at Lake Har Station, but also she was using the residences, um, for her photo shoots and, and personal advertising.

And then ju being, um, the rocket ship of ideas she has, uh, thought, right, we'll we'll move into wellness now.

So it was literally the next day that in the following week, it's pretty quick fire.

Uh, there was a, an Instagram story and it was a advertising low, and this is on the Lake Hawi station page advertising low, what she's doing at Lake Hawi Station residence.

And there in the bottom right was a little inscription.

Uh, and feel free to contact wellness director Richie Laming on our new wellness offering.

So, um, being the Virgo, I am, as I've been told, Virgo iss a problem solvers.

I was like, okay, well we've just gotta commit to this.

So now we're, um, building a.

Yeah.

What has become a, a globally renowned wellness experience at Lake Harway Station, which is looking at, uh, both human health, but also basically how that's, that governs the soil, the plants, the animals, and the ecosystem health around us.

And almost looking at it from a human perspective, but realizing that it's from a bottom up.

We say in farming, like it's so the body keeps the score and stress the soil keeps the score.

If you get the soil regulating itself, then those good things tend to follow.

So that's our wellness approach now, is we're involving humans and the entire system of farming.

And it seems quite paradoxical, but we think there's a direct alignment between wellness of humans and wellness of farm systems.

Uh, given that farm systems in New Zealand, occupy farm and horticulture, about 50% of our landscape as well.

I mean, to me it's all the same stuff.

Yeah.

I mean, literally you can look at the gut flora, you know, human gut flora and the soil flora.

And there's similarity, many similarities.

Um, um, the, you know, our source of our nutrition is the soil.

Um, there's so many crossovers and obviously the food, you can't grow nutritious food in a, in a, in a wounded landscape.

You know, it's gotta be health, it's gotta be, it's gotta be healthy.

To then make the humans healthy.

So it makes so much sense that it is, you know, similar principles and similar values.

Mm-hmm.

Um, one's in, in environment and, and one's obviously the, the human that it really is so much of the, um, of the same stuff and Totally.

And yeah, it's, we and I, and I guess we speak from the perspective of having been raised on the land.

And I, I guess what Lake Hawi Station effectively does was, is number one, is it broadens the interpretation of high country landscapes.

Like they're always gonna be farms.

That's the beautiful cultural thing as well about these properties is, is they're farms and, and they're iconic, but we're trying to diversify what these landscapes can represent too, and we think that's wellness.

Um, and also we, we wanna link the growers with the consumers.

So, you know, we want to provide those connections and that this involves, with, this is involved with events on the property too, where those consumers from other parts of the world can actually be linked with the growers at grassroots level as well.

So I guess that's the angle we're coming from.

Given that, given that I work for, you know, expert marketers too, um, they're looking at it both from a growers and a marketer's perspective, being jazzy and being ju Jesse and Jeff.

Yeah.

Who, who, who are this, this, we made that clear.

Are.

Owners and principals and the, and the drivers.

Business directors and strategists.

Yeah.

Yeah.

If you, um, if you wanna know more about Jeff then, I can't remember the episode, but it was in season.

Oh shit.

It was about this time last year.

Yeah.

Season last season seven.

It would've been, um, fascinating.

Um, story.

And so, um, what's the future look like there?

Well, how, well you've got a, you've got a, did you mention the deck?

You did mention the, or the dick.

Yeah.

You didn't say Dick.

I wasn't jumping up on the dick though.

Jump on the dick.

Yeah.

But you mentioned that before, didn't you?

That's right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, and that, and that.

I don't know if you really went into the star gazing part of that.

'cause you, your, you, one of your interests is Yeah.

Um, and it isn't that interesting to, like, for people to get grounded sometimes they've gotta look to the heavens, you know?

It's almost to make themselves again, that I, I often find feeling grounded, grounded and feeling humbled for me is quite synonymous that the two thing, the two words that almost represent the same feeling for me, but allowing people to feel small.

And we, and we kind of, we have to remember that, um, like I guess in lives we can compartmentalize things.

And for those living busy corporate lives, um, who are families to feed or focus on their children, focus on these things and urban landscapes, they might not even, they just might have forgotten, just forgotten to look up at the sky.

Every now and again, that's often what we find is the reaction they get when.

They come and do these astronomy experiences and it, it's just, it's something in their brain that's always there, but we are just facilitating a reminder of it.

And it, and we, we often, you know, get that exact comment.

I just, you know, New Zealand skies as well is so beautiful silhouette by the mountains that they just feel so small and, but they're saying it from a really good perspective.

What, what, you mentioned the other, is it dark skies?

Black sky?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So dark sky reserve, that's up at Tepo.

Um, there's a lot of discussion in New Zealand.

I think another, uh, tier of sort of dark Sky Conservancy is a dark sky sanctuary.

And there's even discussions one, one year or lobbies to potentially explore New Zealand as a dark sky nation.

I, I'm not, so what, what does actually mean?

Like, what, what would that Yeah.

Be particular, I'd say, um, you know, average light level emissions, but also clarity, uh, of night sky, um, you know, population density, all these different variables would go in, but also access too.

Um, to that night sky.

We, I can say from experience.

And Did you get the aurora over here?

A couple of, oh, we we had the, I wasn't looking for it.

Yeah, we had the, uh, we had the, I mean everyone, a lot of people might've seen this who are listening, but we had the Aurora Australis and I could say it was one thing who get someone who's got used to the night sky now and exploring it that immediately, that made me feel very, very small.

Uh, and it just opened up new pathways in my brain immediately.

What did you say before?

You know, you make, you, you, you, you, I can't remember how you framed it.

You wanna make people feel small or what was that you said?

Humbled.

I think grounded.

Yeah.

So perspective, isn't it?

Yeah, it's a shift in perspective, I think.

And it, and it, it's almost an, an invitation to be made to feel small, I find with the night sky.

Because, you know, there is that famous quote about, um, you know, ultimately we are all made up of stardust, so it's not like.

We are being made to feel small.

We are just being made to feel like we're part of something much bigger.

I think if you switch that sort of paradigm and people realize, oh, there's way more than just my life just here, you know, there's all this going on out there and in a very organic way.

I think that's the, the thing in the reaction.

I really appreciate about doing astronomy experiences.

Guess what I'm looking at the time.

Yeah.

Farm tour in 25 minutes.

Yeah.

We are gonna not stop here.

We're gonna stop, but when this is not the end.

Um, let's make sure we clock.

I wanna know about the future a bit more.

You had some plans for the high country mm-hmm When I was there.

So 12 months ago you had a few little things we can talk about.

Um, I wanna talk about.

Carbon.

Yep.

And the wool.

Mm-hmm.

And animal welfare.

Yep.

Um, and some of the other practices.

Cool.

Can we do that?

Yeah, we can.

Or do we need to phone in Jack Lifeline?

You got it pretty covered though.

I think I've got it mostly covered.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Jack, the farm manager.

Yeah.

No, Jack.

Jack.

He's in a different timeframe.

He'll be asleep on that.

Different, yeah.

He'll be at the pub I reckon.

Right then Richie, we will, uh, Richie, we'll just sign off here and we'll have to go again later.

Sounds good.

So let's, um, so day one, complete day two today where you have to get two 'cause it's early in the morning.

Um, what thoughts so far?

I just liked, because I'm quite philosophical.

The opening three hours, um, blew my mind and then in the afternoon I had to remap it again.

So I almost had to like reform my brain by, through the physical application of creating those two preparations.

It was great.

'cause that was really integrative as well.

Um, and it's, yeah, for those who are listening, I guess I can't really talk in detail what happens in the biodynamics workshop because most of it just goes through one ear and then is in one part of your brain that just comes back later on.

So for me to describe it now, it's uh, it's quite difficult.

It was more, more of a feeling, I think, and, and in an intuition rather than, um, I guess a description for me.

But yeah, loved it, loved learning.

I think the.

The concept that stuck to me most was the fact that humans are the channel between the measurable and the unmeasurable.

So, um, we are starting a, a wellness campaign or a wellness program at Lake Hawi Station that has jumped ahead quite remarkably and we're now gathering a global audience.

But, you know, we talk a lot about humans having this position where we can either positively or negatively affect the environment around us.

So it really is poignant and it runs parallels with the concept of, um, biodynamics too.

So, yeah, for that reason, uh, I was enjoying it yesterday.

Well, it's certainly, biodynamics is about wellness.

It's wellness of self, wellness of animals, wellness of soil, wellness of environment generally, and landscape and ecology.

So, um, and it is all in parallel, isn't it?

Is, you know, human health and if we're not healthy, we can't look after the steward landscape very well.

Um, and you, and you, you know, there's not many people who, who come to our workshops who.

Finish that first morning at lunch and go, yep, I've got it all.

I'm so across it all, I'm ready to, you know, like it does take a while to absorb and things sort of fall to place later, or, or, or once the, you know, the, the practice is understood and and done.

Another idea that stuck with me was when Hamish was saying that as of three 30 AD the earth is dying.

Mm.

So it's past its halfway point in its life.

Uh, and then he is talked about now, it was almost as children, children caring for their parents.

Uh, and I, and I love that too because it almost, you know, sometimes you think, am I overthinking?

Do we just need to live and just like enjoy it?

But it almost gives you permission to be like, actually we can look after this planet around us and we can do a really good job at it.

Also.

'cause up to that point, nature and the world, the earth was looking after us, our species.

Yeah.

And so on.

And we weren't necessarily the best children, you know, the best, the best students of of that care.

And Yeah, you're right.

Now it's really up to us.

'cause that question was yesterday.

Why, why if the, if, if the biodynamics helps link plants to their organs in the cosmos, then you know, why, why do we have to do it?

And, and, and Hamish's response was, was pretty much that wasn't it?

Yeah.

At the stage of the earth's life, it is our, now our turn to help reconnect.

'cause we are nurturing, nurturing nature.

We're almost that key that's gonna unlock that next.

Mm-hmm.

I don't know, dimension of nature or dimension of, uh, natural consciousness, if that's a term.

Oh, totally.

Yeah.

Um, let's get to, so that's good.

We've got day two today, so we're gonna do some theory back in town.

Um, and then we'll come back out and do some, uh, some more of the prac, more of the sort of this next stage.

So yesterday we built compost heap.

We put a cow concentrate pit in the ground.

We used the biodynamic compost preparations, um, the practical application of them.

And today is sort of the next step, uh, as if that is all now made and complete and, and, and, um, finished.

And then we, we learn about spraying those preparations out on the landscape with a bit of gear, you know, simply with a bucket and a stick and a brush.

And then also a bit more mechanical with a, with a, with a spray spray.

Very simple spray rig that, um, that we have.

And if I can find that fox that either the fox use or the fox ice or the dead ones, um, we will.

We'll do a pepper.

I'm excited.

It's either that, it'll have to be a kiwi, I reckon.

Oh no, we better keep you for a little.

No, we can't, we can't send you home in a box, you know, in a jar, Ash.

I'm already going home in a capsules, so, so look, I, because if we don't do the fox, we can do, I know I've got, um, rats in the freezer.

Um, I've got a steak, but I might save that snake till, um, the spring brown steak.

Yeah.

So rats or mice is the other thing.

I dunno, I might have a rabbit actually in there, which would be probably quite pertinent given there's a few rabbits under the shed up there.

We saw 'em last night on our, um, on our return home from the rubber dub dub.

So, uh, like carbon, let's go there.

Yeah, let's that, so you are, you are not the farm manager, Jack's the farm manager, but you are certainly across sort of the focus on carbon and soil.

Yes.

There.

And the, um, I, I often get it wrong.

It's, it's car, it's it's climate positive, climate positive and carbon neutral.

Dig carbon po.

Yeah.

There's a, there's a little bit of ambiguity around the terminology and I have to make a, a mention to Finn Finn Ross here because he's the resident climate scientist for Lake Hawi Station.

Um, the son of Jeff and Jesse who own the station and.

Finn's, uh, a go-getter to say the very least, but he's currently finishing a PhD in climate science investigating the uses of seaweed, uh, at Deakin University at the moment.

So some very exciting things happening in his life.

But he was responsible for leading the charge in measuring the carbon sequestration and emissions on Lake Hawi station.

And an Or an audit?

Yeah, an audit.

So, um, to put it very concisely Lake in 2019, we had our measurements taken on the station.

We sequestered, uh, fi, uh, sorry, sequester 5,000 tons of equivalent, uh, CO2 equivalent emissions and emit two and a half thousand.

So that makes us two times, um, in the clear.

Mm-hmm.

And so at that very time, we had.

That measurement audited by a couple of companies.

So, uh, with the help of carbon crop and carbon canary, carbon crop did the measurements.

So they use artificial intelligence and satellite imagery and then ground truth.

So that's very important.

They incorporate both technology and humans to actually measure how much the range land is sequestering.

Then we have those numbers audited by carbon, uh, carbon canary.

And, uh, following that audit, um, that was where we were settled on that, on that figure of two times climate po or two times carbon positive, that was verified by a government agency called to two, uh, to two en en biocare.

Um, and at that very time they didn't have an official climate positive status.

They only had carbon neutral.

So we attained our carbon neutral certification.

Finn, like I say, being the go-getter, he is, um, one of his company's climate action company actually has a climate positive status.

So we are currently going through that accreditation to become climate positive.

So essentially you are sequestering twice as much carbon as you are emitting as a business, as a.

A farm at the very least.

Um, because currently we are measuring, uh, through our sequestration, we are measuring the trees we plant, which is approximately 5,000 per year.

We've planted about 22,000 trees.

And also, uh, the reforesting land.

So the land that we are naturally led, let go, uh, that could be, uh, marginal land along riparian zones, uh, up on hillsides, just anywhere where I guess stock, can't get to deer, can't get to where they, uh, less palatable species, colonizing species like Kama Mataga, Cara in time.

They'll create habitat for, uh, some of those more fragile species like Cofi, cabbage tree that we have in New Zealand that produce beautiful nectar for birds as well.

And carbon.

There's a fair bit of carbon in wool.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that, that's, we get, I get that question asked quite, quite a lot from guests.

Mm-hmm.

And at this very time, I don't think there's a, or we haven't.

Made an exact, well, I'm not sure what technology is out there at this, at this time, to ascertain what kind of carbon is um, yeah, is collected via wool.

We also don't measure the soil sequestration.

Um, and also the tussic in the high country, but there is sequestering as well 'cause there's an enormous amount of cover and other components of our farm.

Um, we've got small probes on the property, uh, that measure gas flux.

So, um, these are only measuring a, a small area, so I think it's approximately 100 or I think it's between 50 and 100 hectares.

And they're measuring gas flux.

So your typical greenhouse gases, uh, nitric oxide, methane water vapor, carbon dioxide.

So it's sort of getting a measurement of what the soil is doing.

But we don't have a way at the stage of doing it on scale because there was quite a pertinent fact that came via the movie Kiss the Ground, that soil potentially is the second largest carbon sink in the world.

Uh, one being the ocean and three being the rainforest.

Was it in that case?

It's a reasonably untapped, um, uh, sink, or excuse me, opportunity to measure and.

Measure that sequestration, which would, would, would significantly add to your current Yeah.

Record.

I imagine our goal, and it's again, I guess it's, you know, we we're all quite entrepreneurial at the station, so these goals always reformed, but our, our current goal is 10 times, um, in the clear.

So we're currently two times we'd love to sequester or be able to measure the fact that we can sequester 10 times more carbon than we are currently emitting.

You want a fair bit of country that, that sort of alluvial country there, that's rich soil.

I mean, it might have a pretty high carbon level anyway, or soil, soil, organic matter, but measuring it is, is reasonably easy.

Yeah.

So we, um, so we use a company called Verde and they have taken A-V-E-R-D-I, they have taken initial soil measurements, um, of our alluvial land, and they're the ones that are covered with our mixed species pastures.

So, um, you know, we can have between 10 to 15 different species of plant on these soils.

Um, you know, and the, the whole idea, I guess with the regenerative pastures is to bolster that carbon cycle to pull more carbon into the ground.

Um, so, you know, the, the ground in time it can hold onto that and, and, and via the biology within the soil.

And so that's exciting.

But we don't at the stage and, and I sort of channel fin here.

We've got the baseline, but we are not in a position to say what those levels are doing just yet.

And so that's an exciting prospect for the future, is actually being on that step towards what is the soil sequestering.

And in terms of practices there, you're doing, um, grazing, excuse me, grazing, you know, time controlled grazing.

Managed grazing.

Mm-hmm.

Um, multi, um, adaptive.

Um, paddock Graz.

It's a new one.

Yeah, it's a new one.

Um, and so that's what, that would be one of the main, um, practices or methods for sequestering carbon.

And you've been, and it's mainly sheep?

Yeah, mainly it's 10,000.

10,000 he of sheep and then about 300 he of vet black Angus cattle.

Uh, so yeah, it's, it's quite interesting with, with the whole regenerative movement and, and I didn't have too much to do with it prior to working at Lake Hawi Station, but the science made sense to me.

Mm-hmm.

Um.

Yeah, it's very, it's, I mean, it's super unique and applicable to your property, and you kind of have to work out how to adapt.

You know, that all these things that fall under the umbrella of regenerative farming to your property.

And I guess that's why there's such a need in the world to collaborate on these things because all these properties do different things really well.

Um, and they create, you know, an education point that lots of different farms can learn from and also practice in time.

So we, uh, what Jack will generally do, because it gets so cold during the winter there, and we have, we're surrounded by lakes.

So we have this inversion layer that forms, and basically what happens is water holds onto a lot more heat than the deserted land in the high country.

The land cools down very quickly when it snows, cool air sinks into the valley.

Um, but then you've got this warm layer of air that's released by the lakes that sits on top.

So you have this layer of low cloud that can sometimes, you know, only sit one or to 200 feet above, um, above where you're standing, and it traps the cool air below it.

It's a temperature inversion.

Um, and for the month of June, generally it doesn't sit below three a above three or four degrees Celsius or in the day, sometimes you won't see the sun and like humans get depressed.

That's why the animals Yeah.

That's why I'm over here exactly at this time.

Yeah.

Nothing to do with actually heina.

Just, and I just wanted to see the same Oh, you just gotta get outta here.

Yeah.

Uh, but yeah, it's an, it's an interesting weather phenomenon that's factored in year on year.

And so for that reason, um, the bulk of our sort of, um.

Winter also, uh, rotational grazing actually happens during the winter.

Jack will bolster the feed, um, during our key growing periods of autumn.

We, we seed in, uh, spring and then come winter when the stock needs some of that additional nutritious rich feed, um, that's when we actually vibrate feeding.

Um, yeah, we, we graze through these regenerative pastures.

And you when I was over there in May last year.

I reckon those, you reckon those there are ducks out there.

See those?

You reckon they're foreigners?

No.

Yeah, they, I can't remember the Oh, you mean the ones just outta your coop?

The fancy black and greens?

Yeah.

I don't think they are.

They're like Pacific black ducks to me.

Yeah, but these are, so, you know the ones in the coup though, you saw them, but uh, are they black though?

Yeah, they're black.

Yeah.

These one, so these ones are similar to our gray ducks in New Zealand I think.

So these are actually gray in color.

Which ones?

These ones out in the dam.

You can see them, I'm pretty sure.

Yeah, right.

Those look bigger than the normal wood duck.

There's a wood duck down there and then they see these black jais.

I reckon they, I reckon that's them and I hope, I hope they're all anyway.

Um, that's good.

So I hope we'll have to a headcount and make sure the foxes doesn't get em last night, the first night out of the prison.

Seeing those ducks out there reminds me, it's funny.

Dad and I were observing ducklings on a farm on, on our pond growing up.

Day by day the ducklings were just disappear and we were trying to find out why monster eels living in the dam.

No way.

Yeah, so they're just coming in up from below and just plucking them Like jaws.

Yeah, like jaws.

Yeah.

Just a megalodon, a slower version of jaws.

Slower Slimier version.

No, that's them.

Cool.

That's loving.

I'm flapping around there.

Yeah.

I wonder where they spent the night though.

Not in their coop by, look at that.

'cause that's not open yet.

So tell me when I was over there in May, um, we, you and I, and uh, I'm not sure if Jack was there.

Um, and Jeff had a look at the, were you there when we looked at the compost tape?

I wasn't there.

No.

But maybe Jack was.

You may be j Yeah.

Or at least, um, uh, Jeff.

And we went to a compost heap and there was a lot of timber that you guys had had cleaned up.

Mm-hmm.

Um, you were wondering whether you should chip it, um, what to do.

Some of it was quite sort of, um, broken up and splintery anyway.

And there were a few other piles of things and I just suggested that, um, to put some vitamin preps in it, well actually to.

Don't save your money on the chipping of it all.

And, and that it was a, it was a soft timber.

Yeah, I remember that.

It wasn't like a hardwood.

Um, and mix it all up in with whatever you had there.

You had old hay, you had maybe some bag silage or something.

Anyway, had some great merch as well, some merch, some grape merch, some like, oh yeah, that's right.

That, that, um, it was, yeah, it was almost alcoholic and smell when you were down there.

It was quite potent.

I did black out at one stage, um, unrelated though, and I said, just pick, mix it all together.

Don't worry about chipping and pissing around and put some binary preps in there.

Mm-hmm.

And apparently that's what you guys did.

Yeah.

And you, I'm not sure, we'll have to confirm what preps you actually put in there.

Yeah.

Um, but, and you said the result was pretty good.

We got the sample, so we also added clover seeds as well to fix nitrogen.

Oh.

'cause that's right.

'cause I might have suggested that once you do the thing, plant it with clover because it makes a lovely blanket and then we'll put nitrogen.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So anyway, we, um, we had a plan just to kind of do it our own way.

Uh, but we thought, like, in terms of spreading it on the pastures, but we thought we'd just get it tested just out of interest in terms of what it contains.

And it turns out, um, the preparation was absolutely nuclear.

And we got direct orders, uh, from the lab we sent it to, just to stop.

Uh, they want to have a closer look at this.

How long ago?

This, this was about a month ago.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

So it sat there for a while.

It sat there would've, yeah, it would've sat, would've static pole.

That's you.

Yeah.

It would've sat there probably for at least, I don't know, 10 months.

Maybe nine to 10 months.

Yeah, it would've been, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

So anyway, that's, so they said Stop, put, put that weapon down.

Yeah.

Pretty much.

That's super exciting.

And the best analogy I've, I've kind of been given is almost like a, a scoby culture and, uh, kombucha where this stuff is so full of biology and you just wanna, I mean, the idea is to place it out amongst your pastures and it's, it's gonna grow and feed, isn't it?

And is it amoeba?

Uh, so these, these organisms consume 500 times their body weight per day.

They're some of the, some of these bacteria that are all this biology that's growing and these preparations have a voracious appetite.

And so that's interesting, isn't it?

So, so my thoughts around that would be, um, if it's that powerful, you would still, what, what the, the, the easiest prep, easiest way to do that.

So you want to keep some of it somewhere.

Yeah.

You don't use it all up.

No.

You could spread it by, um, so that stuff that you keep, you would inoculate other piles with.

And you probably keep a fair bit of it too.

Um, 'cause it sits there for a while.

It's, it's gonna be fine.

Like it's gonna keep on breaking down.

Um, the goodness will, will remain.

And then the other stuff you could was gonna learn this afternoon, mix it with water and you might put some worm we in there or some other liquids and spray that on your pasture at a very low rate.

And we'll talk about the rates up here.

'cause they still kind of would apply.

Um, and if you, if you spread it as a solid, you would just tone, tone your application rates down here.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But that's, um, that's really exciting.

Yeah.

And I think it's, how many tons have you got?

Do you reckon?

Geez, it was a big pile.

It was a lot of wood there.

Yeah.

There was a lot of, yeah.

What would it be?

Would it be 10 tons?

Oh shit.

No, I reckon you have.

I don't, I wouldn't had, I'd hate to.

I'd hate to.

There'd be tens and tens and tens of tons of, yeah.

Yeah.

I reckon towards 50 tons or so.

Oh, there's a lot there.

Yeah.

Now, you know, a normal application of compost would be, uh, say a ton to the hectare.

Mm-hmm.

That'd be kind of like a pretty standard kinda thing.

Yeah.

But you might, may not need, need, um, that, and then, you know, we sort of always say that a, um, a physical application of, um, compost will last a a few years.

Mm-hmm.

Um, in terms of its, you know, continuing impact and kind of, um, so on.

Yeah.

Um, a liquid, a liquid application would last six, six months to, to a year kind of thing.

So the solids will kind of keep Yeah, keep going a bit little, but you, you guys will worked that out.

Um, so, but it's definitely, um, prick day is up, you know?

Yeah.

Because we are, we are so new to the biodynamics thing, and I guess now having that result and me over here doing the workshop means that we can just start to scale up.

And I think that's, you know, and especially with, with, with fun, there's so much information out there, um, now regarding, you know, regenerative farming movements and like, how, where do we start?

I guess sometimes you just, it was like Hamish was saying yesterday, you just start, you just do, it might just be a little thing, it might just be a stepping stone, but you can scout it up and you can always, um, change, change track as well and find your way through it.

Mm-hmm.

Um, so.

So I, when I was there last year, I did a, went to the, the Biodynamic Association of New Zealand.

Um, awesome group of people.

So that's somewhere to get, um, preps from.

'cause I don't think if we came over and did something with you guys, I dunno, we'd be able to bring anything with us.

Mm-hmm.

I dunno what the quarantine thing is in the New Zealand.

I say it's stricter than coming back to Australia.

I mean, yeah, it would be, but then it would probably make more sense to get your, you know, get the, get the Kiwi preps from, you know, from over there.

You get 'em.

We just, you know, we'll work that out.

Yeah.

Now let's get onto animal welfare because, um, I know it was a little controversial some years ago.

Jeff told me about it.

Um, you know, there was a, there was a, a show, um, probably like the equivalent of landline we have here in Australia where Country Calendar.

Country calendar.

It's a, it's an institution at seven o'clock every night on Sunday.

I think it's New Zealand's longest, uh, continuing television show.

Yeah.

I think it's been operating since the sixties and Jeff was on that some years ago and caused a stir because it wasn't the, the story about their animal welfare kind of, um.

Uh, you know, practices?

Yes.

Um, which sort of didn't shine a light, but it certainly made other farmers a bit more uncomfortable or they got, got gone up in arms a bit.

Few of them, didn't they?

So we, on Lake, how stationed the farm has four kind of cornerstones we rotate around.

So animal welfare being one, carbon being another, biodiversity enhancement, uh, and then regenerative pastures.

I haven't repeated any of those.

Have I Regen pastures, carbon biodiversity and animal welfare.

That's it.

Uh, so a we thing I guess about, um, this episode of Country Calendar, we tried to incorporate, and I wasn't here at this time, so we tried the station itself, tried to incorporate each of those four cornerstones into the farm's, productivity and profitability, enhanced stocking rates, things like that.

But then at the end of the day, we didn't have control over the finished product.

Um, and television being television, usually you're put in a bit of juicy content.

To, to grasp more viewers.

Um, and it just so happens that that content was focused on the animal welfare cornerstone.

So at that time we, um, the station had developed a sharing metric.

So the sharing metric was non-numerical.

So rather than a sharer being paid per animal, um, for the day, so they could wake up in the morning and be like, we've paid $3 an animal.

Let's shear 300 sheep, we might earn a thousand bucks.

Um, the paradigm was shifted to look at the shearing experience from an animal's point of view, given that the animal, uh, animal's stress response is in control of the wool quality.

And also, um, probably the welfare of the human handling.

The sheep too.

If the human's fighting the sheep all day, you know, significant stress on the posterior chain of a human already leaning over, she, uh, their hamstrings in their back.

And we felt as a station that, um, we could change the paradigm of sharing, um, simp and also we're looking at.

I try not to complicate it here.

Not just looking at the practice of sharing, but the entire supply chain too.

So, um, when we developed the sharing metric, we developed five key criteria.

It was a qualitative model, so it was, um, it was a behavioral measurement that was measured.

Uh, it was developed by the station, measured by, uh, Kevin, the head chair and Jack, the farm manager.

And they were looking at things like the paid behavior of the animals in the pen, behavior of the animals on the board.

Um, whether there was any, uh, physical signs like bleeding cuts, scarring, things like that During the sharing process, the calmness of the animal leaving, um, leaving the shed, the calmness of the she during that time, the overall experience for the animal.

So it was just, um, it was more just a, initially a flip of the model and looking at it from a sheep's point of view and the knowledge that the station at that time was listening to their consumers and they had, I identified that there was an education gap.

There were people overseas who were receiving New Zealand wool who thought that sheep at that time might be harmed during the process.

There were even some, believe it or not, uh, that thought the sheep could be slaughtered during that process too.

Has to be, has to be murdered to, has to be murdered to, yeah.

So was pretty, pretty terminal kind of a.

Exercise 1, 1, 1.

Yeah.

One harvester wall.

Yeah.

You wouldn't call that regenerative.

No, but fair enough though.

That's, that's, that's what, that's the results were, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

So, um, that was the key incentive is we, we were under full understanding that we could incorporate our story as a station, um, carbon positive, uh, this animal welfare cornerstone, all these other accreditations we'd accrued and we could create a more premium product on the other side of the world by letting our consum, uh, our consumers know our story.

And that was via talking directly to clients.

And that we felt filled that education gap where, um, and we felt filled that idea that Hay farms, uh, like can be world leaders and animal husbandry during the shearing process, the animal doesn't have to be harmed.

Um, the animal can actually have a pretty good experience.

Uh, so that, that was our, that was our belief.

And I guess, you know, we've had discussions and I've talked to quite a few people, and again, I wasn't there at the time.

Um, it probably, what, what ruffled feathers I would imagine amongst, you know, the local farming community or domestic farming community was as marketers, you have to stick your head out.

You have to be like, Hey, um, this is what we are doing.

Um, and this is, we, we we're doing it for these reasons as well, and it was almost like.

Um, that country calendar episode because other farms weren't doing what we were doing.

Other farms could be perceived as you're not doing enough.

Yeah.

And that wasn't, or, or, yeah.

Yeah.

You guys are right.

They're wrong.

Yeah.

Like exactly.

Creating a bit of a divide.

And that wasn't our intention at all.

I guess the mindset at Lake Caraway Station is that growth mindset and that that comes with that criticism, and we we're fully understanding of it, but I, that was the intention.

But I guess, you know, with the power of social media, power of communication these days, um, everyone throws in their 2 cents worth and particular comments can gain traction and things like that.

But, uh, talking to Jeff and Jesse, I guess in time now is as the dust has settled, um, there's, you know, a deeper understanding as we're getting more people to visit the station now, a deeper understanding of that sharing concept and animal welfare cornerstone is being developed.

Well, I guess also, you know, it's those times when there are challenging and there's, there's some conflict or upset or disturbance that one may not have expected.

It, it does give one the opportunity as a business and individuals to go, just to reflect on it.

And I'm not saying those guys, you know, you guys did anything wrong.

It's, it's, you know, I'm sure because of that.

The impact or the, the kick the pushback or whatever it was, you guys are now doing a better job of communicating and telling the story, and over time will actually turn enemies into friends because you kind of, in your, you know, graciousness and reverence for the farming community, kind of like create stronger collaborations, um, uh, in the future.

Totally.

It's almost like you have to be sold to the idea, don't you?

You, and we're talking about this, like objectively looking at something and the idea here we believe is more powerful than the criticism, the idea that we can look after sheep better, and we, you know, what we're doing today, we can potentially do better tomorrow.

And that makes farming a, a really exciting thing.

And a, and a, and again, a, um, you know, an industry and a landscape that has enormous growth as well.

And there's lots of aspects that I love about farming that I could just happily keep as they are.

Um, but you know, it's, I think that, that, that's the environment we have at Lake Har Station is, um, where yeah, we're all committed to growing as individuals in our personal lives, but also, uh, within the farming industry as well.

Um, and you are, I mean, you're raising the bar.

You guys are raising the bar for, you know, now wellness, that's kind of the, the next thing.

Mm-hmm.

Um, for agritourism, for animal welfare, for carbon farming, you know, sequestration and climate positive kind of stuff.

And that really should be celebrated and embraced, I imagine, because if everyone's.

If everyone's can agree on, you know, we can do a better job.

I mean, who's per No one's, no one Anywhere is perfect, is a perfect farmer.

Um, except maybe Joel Sullivan.

Um, gold Standard there.

Goldhead.

Yeah.

And maybe Will Harris for his, uh, he crazy.

He did have a dream about him last night.

I had a dream about Will.

He was, he wasn't in it.

He wasn't in it.

Uh, but he's, but, but members of his family or his staff who I've never met, have never been there before.

Were certainly in it.

And it was, it was interesting.

I can't remember all the detail.

It was all above board, I have to say.

Um, it was, it was really cool though.

Were helping me fix something or creating something there, but it was, it was, it was cool.

I was a bit confused as to why Will wasn't there helping us, but he was probably moving to Stone question the process sometimes.

So, um, we get with that.

Oh yeah.

So, you know, but if we're all we can all agree on, we can do a better job.

And the best way to, to do that is to share our, um, experiences and, and, and, and, and avoid making the mistakes of others by sharing and acknowledging and just being generous with our, um, with our, with our experiences.

Yeah.

And then that is a positive for everyone.

Everyone can be drawn along.

If people don't wanna go on their journey, that's fine too.

Like get off the bus and don't throw rocks at the bus.

Mm-hmm.

Go, go on your own bus.

That's fine.

Like, you go on your own journey and that's absolutely, and, and that's the way things should be.

Everyone shouldn't be on the same bus.

It's one of those great quotes, like if everyone's saying the same thing, it's time to.

It's time to change you if everyone's doing the same thing.

I know actually it's time to, to, to start doing something else, you know?

Yeah.

Because it's like, no, that's, there has to be the biodiversity or the diversity of, of thought and practice and principles and so on.

Um, I think we should wrap it up there.

We've got about, uh, 40 minutes, 30, hang on, 40 minutes to get into town.

Cool.

Um, on there.

I just, I thought I'd say on that, that note, I reckon there's space in, at least between New Zealand and Australia to begin for like a regenerative network.

Um, like I've worked for luxury lodges, um, between New Zealand and Australia, and there's networks of luxury lodges that collaborate on bookings and experiences.

And now farming, regenerative farming properties are moving down this route of agritourism consultancy, um, research, you know, university inclusion, all these things.

There's even more potential to collaborate and share this knowledge because like for example, we might at Lake Cow Air Station specialize in carbon or animal welfare.

Here at H Amino you got natural sequence farming, biodynamics.

There's lots of knowledge that can be shared to enhance your own farm system.

So that's something that I would love to be involved with.

Well, we're, we are talking about that in, in little bits here and there, so We'll, we'll continue those conversations.

Um, in the spirit of the anzacs, I think that that would be a lovely thing.

Not, not taking the piss at all by the way.

I'm just saying that, you know, we all were on site and all, you know, pally in the, at the times when people had to pull together New Zealand and Australia.

And I think there's a reason, really good reason for that.

Um.

And we shall you gotta come back.

I go back over there to Lake Haria.

Um, we're gonna get a dyna biodynamics workshop.

I think that'd be awesome.

You know, it did when I was there that time, we compost and everything.

It was like, this is a no brainer in terms of what you have there.

Um, the opportunity, your, your, the, the business and, and Jazzy and Jeff's and the team Jack and yourself and everyone there.

Their willingness to embrace new ideas.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and you've got a really good association over there to support that as well.

They're, they're awesome.

Um, the BD Association of New Zealand.

So we will, we will talk further.

We have to get to town.

We have to do a quick q and a before that though.

Um, Richie, that was awesome.

3, 3, 3 sets, three parts, three takes.

Three tangents.

Three tangents.

Well, no, about a thousand tangents.

Um, it's been been a joy, a pleasure and honor.

And, um, we'll have a one minute break and then we'll get into the q and a, which is actually, you reckon it's been tough.

You reckon that right?

I'm gonna come under scrutiny Q and A.

Oh, this is it.

You're gonna be your blood.

I'm gonna get some tissues.

But you love DMS.

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