Welcome to the For Love and Money podcast, the show where business and social purpose meet to inspire a movement for positive change. Here's your host, Carolyn Butler-Madden. I've travelled a fair bit in my lifetime, but I've realised that there is so much of my own country I have yet to explore. Now, Central Australia is one of those places where I've dreamed of learning from the traditional owners of our country.
I've wanted to know more about their culture and to build a greater understanding of our country's history, which ultimately connects with who I am, who all Australians are. Yet, this desire hadn't materialised into reality because it never seemed to be the right time, you know, time that foe and friend, foe because the perceived lack of it, keeps us from doing so many things that are actually very important. Important and friend when we discover what time well spent actually means.
I know you will all feel this because it's something that we learn the lesson over and over and over again. And then a few weeks ago, I got my wish through a business I love, Intrepid Travel. Intrepid, one of Australia's best examples of purpose-driven business. They're B Corp certified and anyone who's listened to this podcast regularly will know I speak about them quite a lot and I absolutely love them.
So imagine my delight when Intrepid invited me to experience a new cultural immersion in the Red Centre. Five days exploring sacred sites of the Western Oranti people who were the traditional owners of the land. This was a brand new experience born born from a partnership with Benji Kenney of 100% Fink River Culture and Adventure. Alongside my fellow intrepid travellers, my heart opened to the land that we call home.
Our generous tour leader, Benji, welcomed us to his country, Rodner Homelands, and we all followed him as he took us to special places where he shared dreaming stories passed down to him by his ancestors, bringing to life the trees, the rivers, the rocks and the gorges. And in the evening, the stories continued around the campfire and the stars joined the cast of actors. We visited Chor-Ridja, I hope I pronounced that correctly, West Macdonald Ranges.
We visited Hermannsburg, Palm Gully, the asteroid crater and sacred site of Tenorala, which is Goss's Bluff, and Stanley Chasm. We swam in waterholes at Glen Helen Gorge, at Ormiston Gorge and Red Bank Gorge, it was absolutely stunning. And we were shown amazing rock engravings at Roma Gorge that were apparently between 6,000 to 8,000 years old. And the Fink River, who travelled with us, apparently it's the world's oldest river, 500 million years old. Who knew that?
You think about the world's oldest river and we immediately think about the Nile, at least I do. It is one of the world's oldest rivers, the Fink River. Look it up. It's amazing. This is Albert Namatjura country. It is truly stunning. The colours have to be seen to be believed. But it was the stories that Benji shared that made this more than an appreciation of the wild beauty of our land. It brought home just how ancient this land is and a civilisation that has been its oldest custodians.
And the stories he shared stoked within me the embers of a deep and primal relationship with nature, you know, recognising that we are part of nature itself all the while we seek to dominate it and fashion it to our consumption needs. But this, this was an experience I'll remember forever. Now, I had the privilege of interviewing those involved in this experience for this podcast.
I got to interview our tour leader, Benji Kenny, Stefan Helmut, who is Intrepid's product manager for Australia, and my fellow travellers. So there are two parts to this very special show. Here is part one, where I get to share some of this incredible experience with you. And my hope is that you will consider doing something similar if you haven't already. Maybe you'll even consider doing this amazing Intrepid trip.
So in the opening of part one, I interview Annette Sharp, who is Intrepid's Global Social Impact Manager. I really hope you enjoy this episode. Annette, welcome to the For Love and Money podcast. Thank you so much for joining us today. Well, thank you for having me. So this is a special episode featuring a very special and new cultural immersion experience that Intrepid has created.
I wonder if you can kick us off by sharing a little bit about you and your role at Intrepid today, but then give us a bit of background into, you know, the pivotal moments that brought you to where you are today. So I am a Taunui Wahine from Aotearoa, New Zealand. I have been at Intrepid for the last two years. My role is Global Social Impact Manager, which is a bit of a mouthful. The role was new when I stepped into it.
In September 2022. It was post-pandemic and the role is really, really broad. So the pivotal moments that brought me to Intrepid were really varied. So I had worked in multicultural communications in my previous role in advertising. Post that, I did a lot of community building work with smaller tourism communities in the Pacific. So I worked in Fiji and Vanuatu and New Zealand and tried to build capacity in community to work with international tourists.
I also worked voluntarily for the Salvation Army in their emergency relief centre and I was very interested in human rights and did some work with an academic having a look at modern slavery statements in Australia. So all of that collectively has helped me in my role. I'm a generalist. I don't have a specific skill set, which I thought would maybe be a little bit of a detriment, but it turns out that that's what a tripple was looking for, someone with a really broad range of skills.
Skills, as I said, the role was new. So I got to shape it a little bit and focus on the things that I thought were immediate and important. And also I got to do things that I really, really loved as a priority as well, which is, yeah, I feel very, very lucky that A, I get to do this role and B, that there is an organisation in Australia that has a role like this available. So we're going to get into more specifics around the role in a moment, but what attracted you to Intrepid?
Like, why did you take that job with that company? And what I love about Intrepid is two things. One is its entrepreneurial spirit. It is a business that sees an opportunity and allows their staff to go after that opportunity and try it out and see what sticks.
And also the fact that the founders are still around and they are in the office, they're sitting next to you, they're having coffee with you and they're sharing the values of the business which have not changed in the 35 years that the business has been running. You know, we are founded on the values of Daryl and Match and they are still the values that we adhere to today. Yeah, that comes through so strongly in all my interactions with Intrepid and all the research I've done.
And I interviewed Mitch for the first interview, episode two of the podcast. And I remember him saying, oh, we've only just recently articulated our purpose. And I'm like, yeah, but you've been purpose-driven from the word go. Look at the actions. Like actions speak louder than words, right? Yeah, I agree. I think that putting words around what they do has been great and it's easy to communicate that in a soundbite.
But, yeah, if you look at the timeline of all the purpose actions that Intrepid have been involved in, it does go back right to the beginning. Yeah. And the world's largest B Corp certified travel business? I think actually we're not anymore. Oh, okay. The first. The first. Yes. I think we're the first, and I think we're aiming to get back to that status.
But yes, we are no longer the world's largest Trouble Bay Corp. Well, the positive framing of that is you've clearly inspired others to follow in your footsteps. Yeah, and it inspires us as well. To go even further. Amazing, amazing. So let's get into your role as Global Social Impact Manager. What does it mean? What do you do? I do a lot of things. Which is wonderful in terms of the breadth of people that you can touch and communities that you can touch.
So specifically my responsibilities are human rights actions. So Intrepid is very focused on looking at our supply chain and making sure that there is or we reduce the risk of modern slavery in our supply chain as low as possible. And also child protection is another area that I look after. I also look after reconciliation, which is where a lot of our efforts have been going to recently because we are just looking at or submitting our reconciliation action plan.
We are doing a stretch wrap, hopefully, in 2025 for the next three years. So that will set up our actions in Australia. But the other thing that's been amazing is that Intrepid has set up a global reconciliation working group. So we can learn from all of our officers around the world where reconciliation is a focus. And we can share our issues and our learnings and we can establish ways of working and protocols and guidelines together.
That's huge. That would have so much value, I imagine. It's just incredible. The knowledge that sits around the world that we really didn't tap into until this year. And, you know, in Australia we have a lot of frameworks and we have a lot of, you know, we've got our plans and we've got our goals. And we didn't realise until we started talking to everybody around the world that everybody else behaves in a similar way. They just don't have the framework around it.
Learning from all those communities has been really valuable for Intrepid and it's a shame if you don't share that knowledge and get that out there. And the other thing that I have been responsible for is the volunteering program at Intrepid. So every staff member at Intrepid gets 20 hours a year to volunteer. It's a very different volunteering program to others because we allow staff to pick their own volunteer action so they don't have to do a group thing that's been organized.
We do have those options to do it as well. but you also allow volunteer time to go and sit on a board for a not-for-profit or go and write a sustainability plan for a kindergarten or go and work with our TIF partners. We've just done a social audit for one of our TIF partners. What's TIF? Sorry, the Intrepid Foundation. Oh, right. Yes, of course. The Intrepid Foundation has 50 partners and we offer skilled volunteering to those partners.
And we have a guy in Central America who has his pilot's licence and he flies an aeroplane and flies medical supplies into remote communities. That's amazing. It just opens up the idea of volunteering on a much wider scale. Absolutely. And when we investigated, we did a survey at the beginning of last year when I first started and what we found was a whole lot of people at Intrepid were volunteering. But didn't even recognise it as volunteering.
And so we were able to say to them, that can count towards your hours. You know, you don't have to do the volunteering within business hours. You can do it outside of business hours and then claim it in lieu. Yeah, right. You know, if you're going to board meetings at night, if you're working at home or working on the weekends. ends. But we also do team building exercises during the working day.
If a team wants to go and volunteer together and make it part of a planning day, then we can help organise that kind of volunteering as well. I love that because you're tapping into people's individual. Like desires, where they want to spend their time, but you're connecting it back into the organization and saying it has value with us too. Absolutely. Yeah. Because it has value to them individually. Yeah. That's brilliant. I love that. Love that. So I'll tell you one quick, funny story.
We had a post from somebody because everyone that travels at Intrepid posts about their travels afterwards, and that's actually everybody because everyone travels, and she had gone to a lost dog's home or a dog shelter while she was on her travels and she went and walked the dogs just because she loved doing it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we saw that. My team and I saw it and went, you know that's volunteering, don't you?
She's like, what? We're like, yeah, it's volunteering. Go and have those two hours back. So that's how it works. It's you give them time in lieu of what they've spent doing, what they would have done anyway. Anyway, yeah. Oh, brilliant. Brilliant. Just grab that. If you're listening to this podcast, think about that and think about how you might apply that in your business or your team because I think that's absolutely genius. Yeah. A really easy example is blood donation.
Right. Because lots of people donate blood. Yeah. And we do it as a team, but also people do it individually. Yeah. Love it. Love it. Okay. So your role, human rights, reconciliation. Volunteering, that's a lot already. Is there anything else? Or then our community impact, which is kind of, I guess, connected in all of that. Yeah. So tell me about, actually, for the benefit of our listeners, let's sort of zoom out and look at Intrepid.
And if you could just give context to this by explaining, you know, what is Intrepid's purpose? How are they contributing to a better world? So the purpose of Intrepid is positive change through the joy of travel. So everything that we do, we try and make sure that we have positive impact. So the joy of travel is connected to not just our itineraries and our trips and our customers, but also to our staff.
So it's travel not just as a process, but it's travel as an industry, it's travel as an impact. So we try and do lots of work with the industry as well as trying to get our customers to make a positive impact when they go traveling as well as making a positive impact on the communities that we travel to and i mean one of the things i know about you guys is you don't contribute to the sort of mass tourism spots, do you?
You take people off the beaten track and introduce them to, and you could so overuse the phrase authentic experience, but it really is about, you know, giving them that real genuine experience of being in that country and being amongst people.
Those people yeah and and the connection that people have with a place through the people that live there makes the their trip really memorable and share worthy and also you know we through having links with the foundation they can actually make contribution to those communities yeah it's It's not a one-way experience.
I took my first Intrepid trip last December. I went to Morocco and did a hike, bike and camel ride tour, met my daughter who was in Europe for the year and we did it together and it was a highlight for me. Like it was an amazing trip and I remember it wasn't long after the earthquake and, you know, I remember getting an email from Intrepid saying, you know, we hope you will do this trip.
You know, and not be put off by the earthquake. You know, we make sure that you are going to be safe, rah, rah, rah, but, you know, these communities need tourism. They need that support. So it feels like it's, you know, not just you going to travel to take away an experience. It's what you contribute as well, and I think that comes through loud and strong with Intrepid, with everything they do. So can you frame this cultural immersion trip, which inspired this podcast.
Can you frame it up a little bit for us? You know, what drove it? This is so typical of Intrepid. What drove it was somebody was on holidays in the Northern Territory and decided to go exploring and came across Finky River and came across 100% Finky and just went, this would be great.
And so I brought it back to the office and brought everybody into a room and said, I've just met these people, this is what they do, this is their country, it is amazing and here's how I think we could do it and brought everybody on board and the benefits of working with them beyond just our customers, it involves us from an impact point of view, community impact point of view, it involves leader training, it involves getting beautiful imagery and content for the way that we talk about
country, as well as obviously having amazing customer experiences. So I. So it's a little bit organic, like a lot of stuff that Intrepid is, but it just fitted so beautifully with what lots of people in the business are trying to achieve. Yeah, brilliant. And it sounds like it came about organically, you know, by Stefan and his experience. But it also aligns with your Reconciliation Action Plan, doesn't it? So can you talk a little bit about that, in what way that aligns?
Yeah, so with our Reconciliation Action Plan, we have great ambition to form meaningful and shared value partnerships with First Nations communities and organisations. So we have put goals into Reconciliation Action Plan about how many and where and who. And so we need to make sure that every relationship that we enter into is beneficial for both sides. Yeah. So this is where Finkie River sits.
But also there's opportunities to train our leaders because we really want to make sure that we don't have permission to tell the stories, but we are telling the history of an area. And the leaders are the conduit through which we do that to our customers. So making sure that they're trained properly and they know the history of that area and they know how to talk about it, that we also have employment goals.
So potentially, you know, we can bring people on country into the employment of Intrepid either as, you know, working within the ops team or within the office or as a leader. So it ticks many, many, many areas of our WRAP that we have to achieve in the next three years. Yeah, brilliant. And also on the customer side as well, because giving customers that experience, you're helping to connect them to our history.
Yes, we have had so much beautiful feedback around customers' experiences on Country. Some of the customers we take have never even met an Aboriginal person before and they come with quite entrenched ideas and once they go on Country and they meet people, you know, we've had major changes that customers are really proud to talk about.
And they go in being very honest about what they thought beforehand and they come out being champions of country and people and reconciliation and that's going to trickle through community. You know, we know that they're going to be telling their friends who have similar sort of ideas that, you know, that things are different once you get out of country. That's so true and it just feels like...
The time is so ripe for it you know post the result of the voice referendum I feel like there are many many people I know there are many people I'm having conversations with people who want to understand more who want to connect more who want to do something but don't even know where to start and just having an experience like that like for me was incredible and And I was thinking, you know, you talked about Intrepid and what drew you to Intrepid was their entrepreneurial spirit.
And I think about Benji, the tour leader of this experience and the founder and owner of 100% Finky Cultural Adventure Tours. And he is so entrepreneurial. What, you know, he told us that as he was sharing the stories, you know, he told us that he got those stories partially from his ancestors. There were stories that were told by the elders and, you know, people in his family and community.
Community but he also said that he did a lot of research into Hermannsburg and the Strelows in Hermannsburg and what they had documented and you know one of the things that they did which I was really surprised at but they had gone out and they wanted to document the stories that the Aboriginal people were telling them.
And so they documented those stories. And Benji said he could find the connection between what he was told, you know, through his family and elders, and then what was documented by the Strelows and put them together to get a fuller picture. And he has done so much research, right?
He's obviously a sponge and a seeker and an entrepreneur entrepreneur and you know is someone who is looking for all of that information and what to do with it and it goes back to what you were saying about what attracted you to intrepid and i think it's that there is a common narrative there isn't there without doubt yeah explorers intrepid people likes explorers they are intrepid explorers so so yeah okay so this cultural experience it's it's
i guess it's a risk you're kind of building the plane as you're flying it but it is aligned with so many things intrepid's purpose you know the work you're doing on your reconciliation action plan your community work your stakeholder engagement amazing yeah and ultimately the customer experience 100 i mean you're you're living proof of the outcome Thank you. 100%. 100%. 100%. And hopefully the stories we share will drive more people to take it.
And, you know, that experience grows and everyone benefits from that growth. Thank you. That has given some real context. We're going to sort of move into sharing Stefan's story and Benji's story. And I've interviewed some of the intrepid travelers on the trip as well. Well, what I'd love to end on, Annette, is thinking about the future, 2030, a little more than five years from now.
If you could realise your greatest ambition, your dream, it could be for the work you're doing at Intrepid, it could be for the world, it's up to you, it's Annette's dream, what would it look like? So from an Intrepid point of view, we would have First Nations experiences on all of our trips. And some of those would be 100% First Nations owned and led experiences for a number of days. And that would be all around the world.
From a nation's point of view, from a global point of view, we would have conquered some of the barriers that are really stopping First Nations people from self-determination. So we would be looking at education and justice systems that supportive of First Nations situations, a whole country that listens and understands and engages with First Nations people.
It's not unusual in 2030 in my world to work beside, to walk with, with, to socialise with, to invest with, to whatever it is with First Nations people. And learning from them. I think if we all just opened our ears, we can learn so much from First Nations people. And so that would be my dream, that everybody has access to that information and respects it and uses it wisely. Love it. Thank you so much for joining us. Oh, thank you for having me. Next up, I want to introduce you to Stefan Helmut.
And Stefan is Product Category Manager for Australia, and he shares here how the trip came about. So Stefan, can you share with us how you actually started? Why did you create this tour with Benji? So last year, around about May, June, I actually walked part of the Loro Pinto trail. And in order to do that, I took a hire car to drive out here. And on the way back to Alice Springs, I had half a day left.
And I thought I'm going to head down to Hammondsburg because I knew of that company, 100% Think, that is actually operating a two-hour inclusion on one of our central trips in Australia, here in the Red Centre. And I thought I'll head down to Hermannsburg and see if I can meet the owner, the operator. And also in Hermannsburg, there is the historical precinct. And I thought I always wanted to visit this because I'm German, so this is very much of interest to me as well.
Yeah, so I went down to Hermannsburg. I did a tour of the precinct with an Aboriginal guide. and the caretaker at the precinct actually called Benji who was out on country at the time and told Benji that I was in town. So Benji actually came in, the owner of 100% Fink, and we started chatting. Okay. And what happened then? So Benji was telling me about the program that they have for school groups, cultural immersion trips here out on country.
And immediately, if that is something that can be offered to school groups, why wouldn't we be able to offer that to our customers and intrepid as well? Yeah. Okay, so let's give a little bit of context to our listeners here. You're Product Category Manager for Australia. What does that involve? I look after everything product-related here in Australia. So that's our trips for our domestic customers and also for inbound customers traveling from overseas to visit this beautiful country.
Okay. So you meet with Benji and you start talking, he tells you about, you know, the tours for school children, your ears prick up. What specifically has piqued your interest in this? It's really difficult to come by cultural immersive experiences in Australia, especially for Australians, because obviously Australians know the country. So finding a culturally immersive inclusion into a trip has always been a challenge. And that really ticked all the boxes immediately.
I thought this is exactly what we need to offer to our customers as well because that is what people are looking for. Okay, so you've had that feedback from customers that they're looking for something like that? Yes, and that is globally the case as well. Yeah, okay. And why do you think now people are looking for something like this? I just wonder if these experiences have been available before. To us, you know, forever, if
we wanted them. But there seems to be more a consciousness and a knowledge, Having the oldest living civilization in the world right here. That is a reason as well. But also, I think a lot of people obviously living in the cities and where there might be First Nations experiences available in the cities, often these are off the shelf. These are readily available to customers to buy online and then just join for two or three hours.
But never or rarely does anyone actually go out onto country for four full days five full days and properly immerse themselves into the culture that is something that is really rare and yes as you said I think there is a heightened interest or more of an interest now for people to find out about this culture about this age-old culture yeah and I guess you know I talk about intrepid a lot on the podcast.
Any regular listener will know, you know, I drop Intrepid into conversations frequently and Intrepid's vision is one that I just find so inspiring to be the best travel company for the world. And, you know, it seems that that includes helping Australians and foreigners to actually experience, like, you can't connect to a culture unless you experience it, right?
That is right, yes. You can hear other people talk about it, but it's only when you actually experience things that you get it, you understand. I mean, we're talking here after the first full day. You've learned so much, haven't we? Yeah, like all the stories. Yeah, quite amazing. You stop by and you see a tree or a set of rocks and there's this amazing story. And for me, and I'm sure for everyone else, it's kind of like, that's how you connect.
That's how you connect to country. That's how you connect to nature. It has meaning. Yes, it does. And so often nature is just a backdrop for us taking something from it. It's a, you know, it's a walk or it's a surf or, but this is actually trying to understand and connect with it, which is different from taking something from nature. Yes. That's right. So tell me about the actual experience. Obviously we've just done day one, but if you could give our listeners an overview of nature,
the experience is. This is totally new. And this group here is the first one to experience it. But yeah, if you could, as the tour guide, I know Benji's tour leader, would you call yourself a tour guide? No. No, I'd be, perhaps the closest thing you could call me would be a host. Okay. But really, I'm just a participant. I'm just enjoying the trip as much as you do. Yeah. So I'm just, I'm just here to see. But you know what's coming. Kind of, yeah.
So tell us about it. So the idea is for, obviously we're here on Rodner Holmlands on country. So this is different to the national park. And this is this country, you can't just list it by yourself. You can't just drive here and drive around. Especially also, it's not possible because you wouldn't know where to find all these amazing things that Benji is actually talking to us all day today. days. So for example, he took us to a creek bed that actually is not just a creek bed.
To your eyes, it might just be a creek bed, but he was telling us the story that it was actually a guana fleeing the dog, the dingo. Which is his totem animal, yeah. Yes. And the guana was digging into the ground and the dog was following it and kept digging after the guana. One guana actually made it out alive. The other one actually was caught, by the dog, and that is actually the beginning of the creek bed. So you can see where the pores actually clawed into the soil.
And interestingly, where one of the granas actually had died, there's now a tree, and the tree sap is red. So that actually represents… It's blood red. Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing. It represents the blood. And you will never know this story if you just walk past. You will probably not even spot that creek bed. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's incredible, isn't it? And there was story after story after story. And, you know, we'll get some of the others to share some of those stories as well.
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Regular listeners to this podcast will know I speak frequently about the role of identity and how important it is for purpose-led organisations to attract people with a shared narrative, you know, whether those people are employees, customers or partners. So I dug into this a little bit when I asked Stefan to share some of his background.
Here's what he said. So Stefan, can you tell us a bit about you and what has brought you from Germany, from Heidelberg in Germany, to Australia to become Intrepid's product category manager for Australia? Yeah, so I actually, my original career actually is medical technician. So I was producing heart pacemakers and blood pumps. Wow.
Quite different. Yes. And obviously working in a a lab all day I always loved travel so I was always jealous of people walking past the window in shorts you know being out there in the sunshine so basically I always worked quit my job went traveling once I was broke came back and worked a bit until I had enough money quit again went traveling until a friend of mine actually told me that Intrepid are looking for tour leaders.
And I had never heard of Intrepid before, but I had a look at them, really liked what they were doing. And I applied. And I do remember I was actually sitting in the lab when I got a reply by email from Intrepid asking me to join leader training in Prague to kick off a leader career. And I quit my job pretty quickly, booked myself a one-way train ticket to Prague. And here I am. Wow. Living the dream. Yes, exactly. And being paid for it. Yes.
Incredible. Quite amazing, yes. Incredible. So with all your experience over all those years, you would, I mean, you could work for any company in the world. How many years did you say you'd been at Intrepid? I was a leader for about three or four years. Yeah. Then I made the move to Australia. Yeah. My partner, she's Australian, also a former Intrepid leader. Yeah. And I've now been in head office for about 12 years, I think. Yeah, I mean, that is a long time to be with one organization.
What is it about Intrepid that has kept you so loyal? Exactly what we're doing right here. That's exactly the reason. You know, being out on country, you know, exploring these relationships, you know, with Benji. We started conversing about this trip about a year ago and the ability to actually explore this relationship and then offer this to our customers. And now we're out here on country and we're having the best time learning so much about country.
Yeah, these things, that's the reason why I'm with Intrepid and why I love working for Intrepid. You told me last night we were talking around the campfire and you said, look, this is a new trip. it's not. The commercials aren't justifying it as a profitable trip. But you told me that you said, we've got to do this. It's really important. Yes. I think it is important for all Australians to have an opportunity to see country like this, especially Australians living in the big cities.
They will never have the opportunity or rarely have the opportunity to experience something like this. And I think it is absolutely crucial for Australia and Australians to be able to experience this. And that's absolutely important. Yeah. I mean, it is incredible. And it's just, we've got this beautiful country and most of us don't really know it. Exactly right. Yes. And we've got this beautiful culture and most of us don't really understand it.
And it's such a rich culture and it's the oldest living culture in the world. So much to learn. So much to learn. Even this one day, like, I just feel filled with, you know, better understanding of how First Nations people are connected to country, connected to nature. Yeah. As Benji was saying yesterday, he doesn't own this country. The country owns him or the country owns us. Yeah. Yeah, I interviewed another guest on this podcast, the CEO of Surfers for Climate.
And he told me, he was talking about surfing culture. And we were talking about, he said, you know, surfers, they actually take from nature, unlike a bushwalker. He said a bushwalker will, you know, they'll be walking in the bush, but they'll be taking in nature. What's around them and appreciating it, whereas a surfer is there to, you know, the traditional macho surfing culture is about banking a wave and, you know, taking from it.
And I think, yeah, I just think this gives you an opportunity to learn that nature, you know, rather than us just taking what we want from it to make us feel good, it's a two-way relationship. Yes, it is indeed. Yeah, and we need to understand it better and connecting to it and connecting to country is an incredible way of doing it. So this tour that you and Benji have created is amazing. Yeah, I agree. Thank you. Thank you very much. So that's it for part one.
That sort of sets the scene. It gives the context for this amazing experience that Intrepid Travel have created, this cultural immersion into the Red Centre. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you got some great takeaways. In part two, I will introduce you to Benji, Benji Kenny, who was our tour leader. He was amazing. He was just such a beautiful and generous person who shared so many incredible stories with us and just opened up and really made us feel a real welcome to country.
So I'm going to introduce you to Benji and you're going to hear what he has to say. But I'm also going to introduce you to the other Intrepid Travellers because I want you to hear what they have to say as well. And they're amazing people too. So, yes, until the next episode, I hope you enjoyed part one. Music. Thanks for listening to this episode of the For Love and Money podcast. If you'd like to take a deeper dive into the purpose movement, visit us at thecauseeffect.com.au.
And remember, doing good is good for business. So if you're not doing good, then what are you doing?