¶ Preview & Introduction
That was the world that I grew up in .
I was on sets for as long as I can remember , in the makeup trailer , sitting next to the director watching Dad and Mum on do their thing growing up , watching Dad on the TV in our room while he's sitting next to me and him being shot to death or his brain's blown out , Trying to compute that as a young , all those . .
Scott: did he always makes you watch his movies ?
G' day , Anthony James here for The RegenNarration on Nyikkina Warrwa Country , just outside Derby in the Kimberley region of far north-west-western Australia . And a very strange and wonderful day it's been here with some big but friendly wet in the heart of the dry season , green and dripping around me .
Right now the savanna smells delicious , especially where we are back at Wendy's permaculture paradise at Kimberley Cottages . More on that later . But today a vegan woman and paleo diet guy walk into a bar . Well , in their case they meet on a podcast . Aren't podcasts romantic ?
That vegan was Matilda Brown , daughter of famed actors Brian Brown and Rachel Ward , and actor in her own right . Rachel was my guest on the podcast last week talking about her new film Rachel's Farm , which Matilda plays a powerful part in .
It's the story of Rachel's unexpected and inspired turn , as a grandmother no less , to regenerative farming A change Matilda initially didn't want a bar of .
The regen thing , was this whole new thing for us ?
Mum had been talking about regen quite a lot and I'd sort of been like la , la , la , la , just not , it didn't , it was her thing , she was talking , she talked to Mick about it , but we weren't really listening until , i think one Christmas we spent quite a long time up here and that's when , like it really kind of , oh okay , it started to make sense and
coincided with , you know , the fires .
The paleo guy was Scott Gooding , star performer in My Kitchen Rules , author of The Sustainable Diet and subject of an extraordinary recovery from debilitating injury through nutrition .
The nutrition sent me a very loud , clear signal that if you give your body the right inputs , it opens up the capacity and the bandwidth to heal and repair .
As Til and Scott came together , so did many other threads , and they set about thinking how they could access regeneratively sourced meat then how to make it available for others . The Good Farm Shop was born , but oh the trouble they found with incumbent systems and some persistent personal and cultural narratives .
A recent series of pivots , though , is seeing them successfully combine their respective skills to help weave a healthy supply web together stemming from the regeneration of farms like Rachel's . Before we start , it's great thanks to Joann Eastwood and Laura Fisher for becoming treasured subscribers of the podcast .
It's the way this independent , ad-free , listener-supported podcast happens , so if you're also finding value in this , please consider joining Joann and Laura and a great community of supporting listeners .
With as little as $3 a month , or whatever amount you can and want to contribute , you can enjoy a variety of benefits , like hearing from me behind the scenes , event invitations and advanced news here and there , and , of course , you'll continue to receive the podcast every week . Just head to the website via the show notes regennarration .
com/ support and thanks again . Now it's back to the Brown/ Ward Family Farm on Gambaynggirr Country in the Nambucca Valley , New South Wales . Let's take a seat with Til and Scott at dusk on the back veranda of their log cabin . Til and Scott , it's great to be with you out back at this little cabin , overlooking the fields here . Thanks for being with me .
Pleasure mate . It's a pretty lovely spot right .
It is a lovely spot . I think the place to start is selecting itself , in that sense , Til, with your history with this place . And , of course , having spoken with your mum about the film and everything that's going on here , what's your sense of connection , which I guess has been for what, all your life ?
¶ Family, Farming, and Regeneration
Yeah , so mum and dad were filming The Umbrella Woman in the area and fell in love with this part of the world and then went looking to buy a farm and they found this one first and they bought it . And that was when my sister was about eight months and I'm two and a half years younger than her .
So it's always been here since I've been here And , yeah , we've come . you know , it's so much a part of the family . We come every holiday , long weekends . I mean it kind of feels like we grew up here and well , whale Beach , where I was until I was nine , and then Birch Grove .
So I'm wondering I was really moved , actually , of the moments in the film that is really like oh wow feeling . That was when you spoke about how your mum was struggling before all this took hold . So I'm wondering for you how it feels now to be here . Does it feel different to the way it used to be ? Like what layering has it developed over that time ?
Mum's always . Mum's so into whatever she loves , which I do talk kind of a little bit in the documentary . Mum is , she's a bull at a gate with whatever she's doing And you know she's always whenever we're at the farm there's a level of relaxing , but there's also mum kind of going .
Wouldn't it be lovely if we had you know a river or something or a dam going along there , you know , and dad's like I think it's fine the way it is , you know .
But you know , the next minute , the last two hours , is testament to that . Yeah , yeah , digging logs out of a river so it can be clear and free of debris .
And With a vision , with a vision , like that lake , for example , wasn't here . That she , that was sort of like a dark gully with you know some of the catfish .
She dug it with a bare hand . Took her four years Amazing .
There will be photos of this for listeners .
Yeah .
It is something to behold now . Yeah , yeah , yeah , that's incredible .
No , it's amazing . So she's someone who's very aesthetic , like that is mum . She's very , you know , she really appreciates beauty . She would always be sort of driving along her back oh , look at those flowers , look at the colour of those flowers . Like she's so visual . She was saying her mother instilled that in her Yeah Would stop the car and have them watch .
Yeah , and that's definitely the past .
She dresses a party or a dinner table Like that to her is the exciting part of it , Like dressing it . And then when people come , it's like , oh God , they're here now .
You know making things look wonderfully , stunningly beautiful , like that's that's really interesting to me , Cause it's like the artists background meeting the farm life now . but they're not , they're not apart there . And of course explicitly in the film , but even just in the farm work .
But I mean like a Regen farm . It really isn't like for her she struggles with the Regen part . She loves the Regen kind of philosophy of it , but she doesn't like the scruffiness of it .
So she really has to kind of wrestle with that , like , oh , i really want to clean those logs up , but it's like , well , they're supposed to be , you know if you don't really you leave them . It's part of the ecology , you know .
But you know it's a beautiful property because of you know the love that mum puts into it , above soil and below soil , and I don't think that answered your question . We went on a bit of a yeah , we did , didn't we ?
I mean , it still leaves me partly wondering how I guess yeah , how the place feels to you now in light of all that .
It doesn't feel that different .
Really No .
So the feeling is You mean like the Regen , like the farming we were doing , versus the Regen now .
And I guess , incorporating what you were feeling so deeply about your mum . That's different now , because she's absolutely on fire .
Oh , yeah , well , that's different . Mum's always well , mum's always struggled with depression which . I don't think , not , I don't think that's in the documentary .
Yeah , it's more in you that it shows .
It's a subtle hint to it . Yes , yeah , so we've always , you know , we've always . That's always been a big part of mum . But she's like when she has something that sets her on fire , that she's passionate about she's , you know that goes away . She's really , she's really involved . You know , it's like being in the flow . That is like medicine for her .
And I think she also is someone who she holds the weight of the world on her shoulders , a little bit like she with the . You know , she's always been an advocate for the environment . She's always cared about that and wanted to do , you know , wanted to help it if she can . And I think with the farm there was such an opportunity .
You know she thought like well , great , like here's my chance to really to do my bit , which she talks a lot about in the documentary .
But I think the thing that was sort of surprising for all of us was just how much it gave her how much it like regenerated her to have that , And also like she's such a strong physically like she's a lean , lean , lean machine , but she's physically like nothing will stop her , Like you didn't see down at the this afternoon , but like she's in there pulling the
logs up .
She's not just really directing like she's Well , the film is just pulling up .
Yeah yeah , It's brilliant . Well , back up a bit before we go forward with the shop and everything and how you guys got the the bug and came together . But going back a bit further for you . Scott , you sound like you've got the background from her part of the world too . Hey came from the UK .
My gather From the UK , yeah , so how did you come to be here ? So I left the UK when I was 23 . So I'd done . I grew up in pubs in and around London for about my mum and dad ran pubs for about 37 , 38 years , so that was my childhood . And then I went to uni and I did exercise science there , which I hated .
uni I enjoyed the course but I hated being a student . I spent the least amount of time on campus as I could And then I guess it was a . it wasn't a particularly vocational . It wasn't obvious to me what I was going to walk into . You know , it was exercise science .
It's like maybe now there's more opportunities , but then to me anyway it didn't seem particularly obvious what job I was going to . So I remember finishing uni , going back to my mum and dad's , and I was like I've now got to make that decision . You know , i'm out of school , i'm not going to do any other course anytime soon .
I'm now on the brink of that decision that I've got to make , that what is my job , what is my career ? And so my mum and dad at that point had been doing the same thing , the same job , for like 30 years .
There was a bunch of people around me that hadn't gone to uni , that were in their occupation for the fifth , sixth , seventh year , and I was like , right , i've got to make that decision . Like now , i know that you can jump around and it doesn't matter , fall into things , you know . Whereas then I was like what am I going to be for the next 40 years ?
So I wasn't equipped at that point to make that decision , nor did I want to . So I went right . I'm going to go on the other side of the world . So I remember sitting on the toilet reading a magazine and it was a little article about where to be for the millennium , The top 10 places to be And number one was Rio de Janeiro .
Number two was Sydney , like I guess , because it's so far . you know , it's one of the first cities in the world to experience welcome in the new year sort of thing , And then sort of in parentheses was and also hosting the Summer Olympics . So I was like , oh , be there for the millennium and stick around for .
So I got a couple of thousand pound together and called a mate and said let's go , And then that was it .
Wow , it's so interesting when you do look back now . I mean the decision you in part put off , deferred . But you can look back and see you . You were on to it , yeah , but what's become your defining passion ? You're on to it already in terms of the body and health .
I mean not to the same extent , I guess , but that you can see that you were already on the path after all , on the path .
Well , yeah , he went on to be a personal trainer for years .
So did I , by the way .
Oh really .
Yeah , i went to this Yeah . But I've been lit up to garden path in other things first and then went . Then went to that .
I was like , oh , this is good , yeah Well that that in in of itself isn't a clear and obvious path either , like I because of so I get to Australia and I've got a working holiday visa , so I'm OK for a year to to work legitimately .
But it was just easy getting construction jobs , and I'm not sure I did hospitality , but I was working in construction And then at the end of my work in holiday I jumped into tourist visas and I'm not supposed to be working , you know like , legitimately I can't get .
I can't use my an ABN or tax file number , So I stuck around construction because you get cash in hand And then I hurt my back So I couldn't do so . I entered that world of workers comp which is Shocking , like it's good that it exists and it helped me . But anyway , that's another story . And so I couldn't . I couldn't now lift anything .
I was convalescing and part of that work workers comp system , they and it's good , like they get you talking to career guidance counsellors And she she was like , ok , well , you know , let's put a CV together and you know what's your background and what have you studied . I was like , oh , i did like a degree exercise science .
She's like well , you've got to be a PT . Then I was like that was so That greated against who I am inherently , really The thought of standing up or sitting down or whatever and telling someone what to do and how to do it . I'd never done anything like that in my life All through .
You know , i avoided any public speaking or presentation , like that was just not me . So I was like , but I kind of just went . I was like , oh , yeah , i could do that , but you know , i don't feel like I'm qualified .
She's like you've got to exercise for science degree , like you're overqualified , but actually so much time at laps that I had to go and do a third three and a third four , which is going over like such elementary stuff . But it was fine because it kind of delayed the , the impending standing up in front of the other than what to do .
So I kind of yeah , it wasn't . I sort of fell into it and you know I'm passionate about it and I still am , but it wasn't , and I had it . I had a . I didn't know what I was experiencing at the time , but it was a full blown panic attack the night before my first . Was it really ?
Oh yeah , i was just like writhing around in the bed just going fuck , i can't do this .
Like a husband and a wife . What Was he ?
your first client .
It's like a husband and a wife , like this , like I remember I don't know how- it came about .
But I met this guy . Somebody introduced me to this guy who had a PT business and had done for like four or five years and he was going back to the UK And he handed me and told all his clients what the deal was . But he handed me a client list which was like , okay , i'm up and running already . This is coming in fast .
You know , like Monday morning is my first session . So it was a husband and wife who had been training with this guy for a couple of years . So you know they had expectation on that . You know it wasn't their first PT session , but yet it was mine . I would construct a session with every possible event eventuality .
Be like okay , well , what if he turns up and he sprained his ankle over the weekend and he can't run ? So you know what if she turns up and she's pregnant ? You know like , just send myself mental over the . How did it go ? It was all right . It was all right , yeah . It was so critical of myself that no sessions for years were any good , really .
Yeah , i didn't enjoy it for like two years until I settled into like being okay with talking to people and telling them what to do .
I'm already picking up like the rigor of your preparation . We can put that lens on . It is something that you seem to have carried through and ultimately has held you in good stead with the rigor you apply to now your own health and of course what you guys have embarked on together . Is that true to say ?
His own health for sure , Yeah , I guess . So I'm not whimsical , I don't just go with the flow particularly well . So I do prepare and I do probably over prepare , and I certainly did then . I probably less so now . But yeah , you're very , very prepared before you do things . Yeah .
Any talk he's ever had to go to . You know , since we've been together . Yeah , the preparation is a lot , a lot , but also it's like you know , the low level anxiety that you get as well , like it's . I mean , you've definitely gotten more chilled about it , for sure , as you do when the more things you do , and also the less weight you put on it .
I guess now there's other things as well that make it put in balance , I guess you know when you're doing things like that . You're kind of more , much more chilled about it these days .
Yeah , i kind of almost enjoy it now , like you know . I'd rather stand up and speak to like a thousand people than I would one , yeah , that's
¶ Personal Narrative Shifts
for sure .
Like I was doing a presentation like the more the better , because you do go into this wonderful flow , call it what you will , but you do go into , you know , and if you time it right with the anticipation , a bit of caffeine , some you know lines main , and some rhodiola , like you kind of get to this like point and time where your focus couldn't be any
greater and I thrive in that space , like you know . It's like all these words come to you . You're way more articulate than you are in your normal day to day . You kind of you recall , and your vocab is like it's as good as it'll ever be and I kind of love that .
Yeah , I hear yeah yeah , it's kind of cool , but still not really when you're when you're working directly with people . Are you saying that it's harder to access that sensation than when you're presenting to big groups ?
No one on one's fine , like so I do a bit of coaching and things like that , that's totally fine . But I would have more anxiety if I was to walk into a room armed with a presentation and there was two people sitting there in the audience six or something yeah , that'd be my nightmare . Yeah , Yeah , like 600 , great .
Mind you , you have done that a fair few times you always come back and I'm like how was it , babe ?
and you were like great yeah it's normally six and not 600 , yeah , there we go , let's keep it real . And then that's the same six , right the guys again . That gets easier something like that .
And I know you've written really frankly about having your like talking about Rachel's feelings being challenged over time , that you've had similar moments of hitting places like that yourself and you . You wrote a recent blog which really stood out to me around your personal narrative shift . So the blog wasn't that long ago . Was this the shift ?
the shift itself wasn't long ago as well ? that that personal narrative shift , and and how has that been for you ?
I guess it's twofold . So one shift came prior to me until maybe like six or seven years ago , where I found it very difficult , if somebody asked me like how was your day , to say , you know , i would always err on the side of oh , you know , it was all right , even if it was a pretty good day . That's the most I could manage .
But most of it was like most of the most of my responses were oh yeah , just like really busy at the moment , like yes , you know it was . It was a negative , somewhat pessimistic , and so what I realized I'd been doing is like chalking up only the shit days or the hard days .
And so I started to like tune into that and so so I would only chalk up the shit days . And so then , when you look back and you reference how your days have been because you've only chalked those ones up , the negative , you know the harder days like that's your only .
And so when you start to chalk up the good days and the average days and the brilliant days , all of a sudden there's more of a contrast , there's more of a balance of , and so when you flick , you know , when you reference back , you go oh yeah , i've been good . Yeah , you have a good day .
You mean like by chalking up , you're not like literally kind of going like no , mentally chalking up Mentally you're remembering the shit days more than you're crediting the good days .
Yeah , so I'm probably not articulating very well , but let's say , over a month you might have seven shit days . You know things haven't gone your way .
Work's been tough , a bit of disappointment thrown in there , and they would be the only days that I've mentally chalked up , and so when I cast my mind back to that last month , i go it's dominant it's dominant , it's the only .
But then when you go , no , i'm gonna chalk up all the days that I have , and most of those are okay and some of them are good and some of them are amazing , and then so , when you cast your mind back to the last month , you go oh yeah , my world's pretty good , yeah , and then so that was one sort of reframing , if you like , and then I've spent , i
don't know . There's probably three parts to it . That's one .
The second part is tuning into a , a prominent psychologist who has helped me understand that life in general is difficult and so the best thing that we can do or the , you know , the best thing that we can do is to have some meaning and purpose to buttress against the difficulty and hardship of life .
The third thing is spending an insane amount of time looking at world war , two various other wars , you know , in trepit explorers that have gone through hardship . You know I'm reading um bury my heart , wounded knee at the moment . So all that stuff . When you go , okay , well , maybe I've got it pretty good . I've born in .
You know I'm living in a time where things are great , and so you need to acknowledge that , because it's not always the case and lots of people have died and certainly struggled , and you know , amongst all that there's lots of resilience and phoenixes from the fire and all you know there's some good , amazing stories of trials and tribulations .
But , um , on the whole there's been a lot of suffering from you know till an eye in our family , like we don't , we don't suffer on the magnitude of there's no is you can't even compare our lives with the lives of those people .
So you go , okay , well , it's pretty good , yeah , listen to that shift just in the tone of voice from we started that explanation and , yeah , a sense of taking responsibility too , isn't it for that ? arriving at that meaning and purpose which leads us to , of course , some of what you're doing today , but let's hold off on that .
Tomorrow bounce back to you till and your story , because you were , you followed the path into film . I did follow the path , yeah and it was your passion then , for a fair while oh yeah , no , it still is .
Yeah , it's coming back is it ? yeah , i definitely lost the passion , but also , yeah , i follow the path . I mean it's funny , like when you're I'm , i guess , like sons of plumbers often become plumbers . That was the world that I grew up in on .
I was on sets from as long as I can remember , in the makeup trailer you know , sitting next to the director watching dad and mum on . You know , do their thing growing up watching dad on on the tv in our room while he's sitting next to me and him being shot to death , or you know . You know his block , his brain's blown out .
You know , trying to compute that as a young . You know all those like that he always make you watch his movies no , there were certain movies I absolutely loved of his , like the shirley um . Did you ever see ? that , yes , i did beautiful and I and I really struggled with the relationship that he had with the little girl .
Yeah , um , of course , but you know other films where he's , you know he gets killed and you know you're like I don't . You know , sometimes when you're that young you don't really understand the reality like what is what are you talking ?
oh , from pretty pretty young like as young as I can can as young , i guess , as you you were to like be able to sit down and watch a movie that's not cartoons yeah and I guess , like dad being in , it was more compelling for me yeah , you know six till whenever , yeah , but yeah .
So I remember you know those being at school and you know , going to the careers counselor and she being like , well , you know , i sort of went , oh , i'm interested in being a lawyer . She's like you're probably not going to be a lawyer , don't think you're going to get the grades to be a lawyer .
I think everybody the consensus in my family was like I don't , yeah , i don't think you're going to be a lawyer till like I was a pretty woo-woo child .
My whole room was decked out like a you know with like candles , which dad was always , you know , panicking about but , it was like a psychic story like come in , i'll tell you , tell you know , read your tarot and , but there's a lawyer bit
¶ Navigating the Film Industry
coming , i don't know . I think I , i think I like , liked , i think as a kid you just go , you kind of go . I don't know , lawyer sounds good yeah , i wanted to be a paleontologist , because I learned how to say the word and I was like that sounds cool , yeah yeah , you know it was lawyer , paleontologist and you know .
And then I guess the other option was like an actress or not even a director . At that point was mum who said well , if you're going to be an actress then you better go to film school , because your career will be over by 36 . But anyway I did . I did not become a lawyer , i did not become a failure and I went to film school . I did .
You know , i did a film with mum when I was 15 called Martha's New Coat and I and really I guess at that age I worked out that I could act and that I loved it , that it was really fun to be on set and to work with mum .
But then , you know , she did say if you are going to be an actor then you should go to film school so that you can have other strings to your bow . Yeah , i was like , okay , i will . So I went to film school in Melbourne , i went to Swinburne and then , did you know , did a film degree . Didn't really learn as much as I could have . I was quite .
I didn't like the technical stuff . I'm like quite good at the technical stuff now , like I learned , i learned , you know , i learned to edit after film school . Basically , when .
I when I worked out that I yet to pay people to edit when I started making films , i was like I probably can work this out . I relate to that .
Yeah , yeah , yeah right anyway , and then I went to professional screenwriting school after that RMIT . So I did about five years of study and then came back to Sydney and then we're coming back and basically kind of being like 23 and not knowing like how , what do I do now ?
yeah , i didn't have an agent , so I but I adopted mum and dads who was John Kan management , but then John died and became Winston Morris , but I didn't . I didn't ever feel like I'd earn those things . Like those things were things that I was really lucky enough to have a leg up into , but equally so I did a lot of like work to get you know .
23 I was . I said what should I do ? and he was like , well , we should do . Whatever film maker does , they make a tropfest film . So I was like oh god , okay , i guess I've got to make a tropfest film . I'm hearing so many parallels in the story .
I don't know if you guys have thought that before , like that that you would get this skill set in the bag to a degree , but then be like , oh shit , what now ? sort of thing and then confronted with what now ? Oh no , really .
Yeah , i feel like isn't that every young person potentially ? you know when you're pushed out of the nest you're like God , here I go in big wide world .
Yeah , try stuff .
Yeah , you've got to do it Like it's scary . You've got to actually make it step and potentially fall on your face .
Well , this relates to even remaking yourself too .
eh , i imagine you went through some of this with the farm shop and yeah , and so , in a sense , then it's that realisation which more of us are cocking on to , just even with what we're learning about human capacity , that you're not finished , that old idea of the 40 year you know , once you've studied , that's , that's your path and enjoy it , and you'll slowly
decay as you go , type of thing . But we can actually remake ourselves right through to , again , your mum's evidence .
Yeah .
Remake yourself right through to the end .
Yeah , yeah .
Anyway , back to this point in time .
But so basically I you know I did make a truck fest film and it got into truck fest and that you know opens doors . but I just , you know I made lots of different films , blah , blah , blah . I don't need to give you my bio , but then I guess I kind of the film ministry is so like .
I kind of think the film ministry is similar to that boyfriend or girlfriend that strings you along , you know , the one that really like you , kind of infatuated with , and they give you a little yeah , all right , yeah , here you go And you're like , okay , I'll take
it , You know that's right , I'm even . I'm thinking a few things , but I'm thinking some parallels with music , the music industry .
Yeah , I would say very similar music industry . Yeah .
But also I say it , i don't say it to too many people modeling . Oh yeah , so that experience which I thought would be an interesting accompaniment to music because I could take it any . No , in theory , take it anywhere . Yeah , Jobs are scarce , So good , I spend much time .
But when you get a pays and yeah , well , exactly , I mean they're not , they're not , they're not just handed out to you .
You really , and there's such competition And you know when you , when you , when you get the job , it's really fun Being on set . It's so much fun . And you make great friends and there's great food And you know you don't work that much , you know depending treated , well treated really well And it's a really great job .
But you know , then you're six months without a job . but you've done so many auditions and you put so much work into each of those auditions and no one sees them . Sometimes it's your best work . Yeah , totally I was like I nailed that audition and no one saw it . Yeah , you know , and I wrote as well and and I went to LA .
I got an agent , a writing agent in LA , and he said write a pilot , come to LA and we'll pitch it . So I did that , wrote a pilot , went to LA , wrote three episodes of it and a company . You know . I took it to a few different companies and this one company loved it And they're you know the sort of back and forth between my agent And then .
This is around the time that Scott came into my life . It was the last time I went to LA , but I basically been going back and forth to LA nearly getting things and then not getting them , nearly getting things and not getting them , and in Sydney as well , like getting things but like not things , things that you're like .
Well , this would be a game changer , you know , this would probably open the doors wide open for me and I'd be good to go , and so nearly got it and then didn't and came back to Sydney and felt like just so energetically exhausted and kind of really fed up and angry , also angry with the way that people just don't , that it's so unkind to not give you a
polite answer , just a ghosting , you know , just your agent saying don't think it's going to happen , like they're just not writing back anymore . You're like why don't they just write back and go ? sorry , changing our minds ? No , it's harsh , you know .
I just was like so rude From an outside I'm like as a partner of a actress like yeah , i saw it play out and I'm like how , how are these people like not ? so you're kind of like left in limbo . I mean , the way my brain would work is like I'd still be hopeful that I was going to get that audition from two years ago .
No , i mean your agent . You get to the point where you know , you know , or you the agent says hasn't gone your way or whatever .
What other industry operates like that ? It's like a . It's a bit shitty that side of it .
Well , probably the music industry and probably the modeling industry . Yeah , exactly Any industry where you're competing a bunch of with a bunch of other people and people don't feel like they need to give you an answer . It's gone to someone else and so you didn't get the job .
Yeah .
So you do and you have a like a resilient , you build up a resilience to it and I had built up a resilience to it , but I think I basically built up a resilience to it and then really acknowledged how painful that accumulative rejection , you know , had made me , you know , and I and I just came back and I was like I'm so tired , i'm so exhausted of doing
, of trying , trying , trying and not getting , you know , the equivalent in reward .
But it's not . It's not just like auditions that you wouldn't hear back from . It would be like a production company would pick up her idea . You know , feed her all the the rhetoric that it's going to happen . Yeah .
It's , you know it's going , it's going , it's a no brainer , except for me , with this , you know , talk The talk , the cheap talk , yeah , yeah , and all of that to not have the you know the phone call which says I'm .
I just want you to know that . You know we did everything we can and you know you deserve it And . I'm sorry that it's not going to you know , just like a slow burnout where you just you are left hoping until you're you're like okay , i guess I need to move on .
Yeah , it's been four years now . Yeah .
Yeah , But again I hear like even in the regeneration space , again the talk is can be cheap and you can get all excited about ultimately nothing Quite a lot . So it feels like we're at this moment and it'd be interesting to hear your thoughts on that now , with your experiences too , but about the reality versus noise .
But to come back to then to the meeting point , So you're in this point in your life when Scott reaches out to ask you on the Yeah , So then .
so I come back to LA .
Yeah .
And Scott and I knew like , basically , like he'd set up , can we do this podcast , Like you know , when you get back from LA . So I come back and I
¶ Falling in Love, Starting a Farm Shop and Changing Diets
am like . I came back from LA , like you know , and he made a date and so he was messaging me and said are you still up for this podcast More ? and I was like , so not up for it ? I've been to see a kinesiologist . I'd had my leg had gone into spasm on the way home .
I just want to hide under a rock .
You're a tetaculcule , you know , i just wasn't , i just felt like but I also felt like I didn't want to do to him what I had been done to me . I didn't want to be like you know , i just was like we said we were going to do it . Yeah , let's do it . So I was like no worries come over . Well , you know , this is my address .
Yeah , and , as I said , that was before this podcast , telling you the story . that was our first conversation available for everyone to hear . Oh God , let's delete it now . No .
I can't do it .
But yeah , and so that was our first , and that was yeah , that was our meeting , a proper meeting , and isn't that beautiful , by the way , that you still finding the gumption to do the right thing despite being burned and feeling like well stuff , and I'm just going to indulge myself . Everything I mean . the rest is history type .
I mean , I'm really glad that I did it Exactly , i'm sure it wouldn't have . I'm sure there would have been . I mean maybe not .
I mean Scott's a pretty um you know , you said to me I just had a quite emotional session with my kinesiologist .
And you said , oh , don't worry about it If you don't want to . You know if you're too tired of it .
I was like , oh no it's fine , but I'm already at the door .
Cool , so you did this on the public record , yeah .
And six months later I was pregnant .
Okay , i got it , it did fly I don't muck around .
I don't muck around , yeah .
Was it that ?
soon It was pretty soon . Yeah , it was pretty soon . No , I mean , we were about four months later . what we started looking for places , It didn't take long .
Yeah , we were lying in bed fairly soon after meeting and she was like where are you going with this ?
Well , this is a bad story ?
Yeah , no . Well , just setting the scene for people I won't say what you were wearing , um , and you were like , yeah , we should have , we should try for kids This is like you know pretty soon . like you know , we're talking weeks and months , not years , and I was like oh , maybe we should live together first .
Like , let's take that step I was like no worries , got my computer outside and looked typed in domain .
Yeah , we're picking up keys on Monday babe .
I was like I want a baby , i'm ready If you're not see you later . There you go , i'm looking for the man I had the babies with .
And as the bloke who was seeking till first , like before the podcast , even you had this encounter and you asked if she was up for it . She wasn't available at the time to be confronted by the rapidity of the news . Yeah but , But . I gather it was only a couple more months before you thought no , you're right , this is good .
Well , i had a son from my previous marriage And once that broke down I pledged to myself that I was never going to have any more kids , I wasn't ever going to get married , I mean that sort of dissolved a little bit . As time passed , I was like , yeah , maybe , but definitely no more kids .
And I lost previous girlfriends because of that , my attachment to that decision that I didn't want more kids . So in that moment , laying in bed until says we should try for kids , I was like , OK , I've got about 10 , 15 seconds to answer this woman .
And I knew in that moment that if I wanted to be with Teal which I did I would have to quickly pull away from that , That belief that I'd had for about eight years or something . And I went right , well , she'll walk if I , if I say I don't want kids .
So I was like , yeah , it sounds like a good idea . And here you are And you had a couple of kids now into beautiful kids , a little tribe . So bring us to then this point of epiphany for you guys that you start the good farm shop with . How did that spark ?
Well , also I had been vegan for a long time just to give some context to .
Yep seems important .
I had one of those . I'm sure there's other people who've had this experience sat down one weekend and watched a bunch of those documentaries that turn you vegan And didn't want to be part of any .
I didn't want to be part of any kind of farming system that contributed to that sort of animal treatment , which I thought was the general way that animals are treated .
And right .
And so if I'd been sort of vegetarian and vegan for about probably about 10 years , going from vegan to vegetarian and then just really vegan and then back to vegetarian , and my body had really suffered over the years from it .
Yes , And you know , like I had these times where I was , I thought like far out , you know , I don't really know what to eat anymore to like To . I think when I was eating meat I didn't have these problems . I didn't feel this way like I . But I didn't really know . No , I'd never really gotten really into nutrition , I didn't really know much .
I grew up having a model mother as someone who was kind of prescribed diets quite early on , So I'd had a really unhealthy relationship with food leading up to you know , and all through my 20s really , and didn't really know what I was supposed to be eating . I was really lost in , like the world of food .
Oh yeah .
And so Scott enters my life and he's like you know , he lives for meat , he lives for a slow cooked piece of lamb or , you know , a blood sausage And he , and after dating him for a while , and he's , you know , he's a wealth of knowledge when it comes to nutrition .
So he just like , slowly and not not in so unjudgmental He never was like why don't you eat meat ? It was always just like a curiosity . So you know why , why don't you eat meat , you know , and I said I just don't want to , i don't like hate the idea of this horrible treatment of animals , you know , and food sovereignty was a really big thing for him .
So he knew butchers that knew where their meat was coming from and knew that those animals had a nice life on a farm like this . And I was at the point where I was like really willing to like , i kind of wanted to start eating meat again , but I just I didn't want to go against what I really felt and believed for like so long .
So anyway , i kind of was like , you know , i'm actually , if you , if , if you do know , like and if we can go to your butcher , i'd be willing to have some meat . And so , anyway , he made me like this slow cooked lamb , and for like the seven hours that it was cooking I was just couldn't wait .
Interesting .
And after that I was . I just felt like my body . I felt like it was like WD 40 to my joints .
Like I felt , I ate the fat Like it was like .
I mean , it was a gnawing on the bone . It was like medicine for my body After years of eating air . You know air and like starchy vegetables or you know whatever . Then I don't know , you probably maybe want to take over .
¶ Regenerative Farming and Online Butcher Shop
Well how it came about .
Yeah .
So I guess that was that was fairly early on in our relationship . So we'll have to sort of fast forward to COVID times . And we were at home at Whale Beach and we we knew how the cattle up here were being raised .
You know we were coming two or three times a year and you know you only have to cast your eyes over there and you can see these very lush paddocks with very healthy , happy animals . We were like , well , how do we ? and there didn't seem to be that type of beef available to us on the northern beaches .
Well , i had also always seen cattle raised like this as well , so it wasn't , i think I just I couldn't comprehend that there must be like some other thing . I'm not , you know . I was sort of blinded by those documentaries . I was convinced that that wasn't .
I don't know , you can't get that cow on your plate Yeah .
But I had the regen thing . was this whole new thing for us ? Mum had been talking about regen quite a lot and I'd sort of been like la , la , la , la , just not .
Really .
Yeah , Like I just it didn't . It was her thing , She was talking , she talked to me about it , but we weren't really listening until , I think , one Christmas we spent quite a long time up here And that's when , like it really kind of oh okay , it started to make sense and coincided with , you know , the fires .
We couldn't have our wedding up here because the fires swept all the way around the property And you know , and the news was constantly talking about climate change and That made you more receptive to this thing that had been buzzing around there , yeah . So the the regenerative farming had started to slight .
Oh , it'd be great to be able to get that meat on our plate , and we had tried the butcher shop . Do you guys use sauce ? Do you know where the cows come from ? Is it a regenerative farm ? No , it's not Okay . Supermarket as if ? Yeah , and so yeah , anyway , we knew that .
Yeah , so , as you were saying so , i just wanted to give context to mum talking of this . The regen thing that had been wasn't just about the way that they were raised . It was really about how you treat your soil and you know the things that mum was doing on the farm that we were like God , it would be great to be able to eat our cattle .
No , it's a . It's a . You know there's an obvious lineage there . You know like if we can tap into that , the the family has raised and been the custodian of . There's a just the I don't know it's . it's not something you can . It's a , it's a feeling , more than it is a Something you can place your hands on you know it's a feeling .
Yeah , so you embarked on . So we embarked on what initially was a cow share scheme . So Till and I put an email around to friends , family net you know , our network , probably only like 30 , but maybe 50 people who wants to go in on a cow . Like so , if you pull a cow off off one of our paddocks , like who , who wants to go in on that ?
And there was like a fairly decent response . So we were like , okay , well , let's do it . So we , we worked out . Logistics were hard , like what are all the links in the chain to get a cow off this property into our hands at the other end . And so you have to like , you can't avoid plugging into an existing , somewhat industrialized system .
And we are one cow , we are a tiny embryonic business wanting to pull one , push one cow into this system . Well , you're talking to like transport chains that have large trucks . They're not interested in one . Anyway , it was . We finally got there .
Obviously we had to , and so we it became this monthly cow share , which was a great place to start And it sort of set the wheels in motion . But we realized pretty early on that there was limitations to that once a month model . So we broke it down to be you know , you can order whenever and get it , you know , within two or three business days .
And then we started to add wouldn't it be cool if you get eggs with that order of beef ? Wouldn't it be cool if you can now get chicken ? So we started to plug into other farms who had the same values and ethics and philosophy that we did And we do . Up here on this farm we met some extraordinary farmers with amazing stories .
This is the beautiful thing when you tap , it just expands in front of you And young people , young people , like we were using this guy for some beef at times And you know I at this point I'd only spoken to him on the phone And then we used to talk about . you know , when you've spoken to someone on the phone you have this sort of picture of you know .
you kind of fill in the gaps of what they look like And what . anyway , i asked him one day , or maybe you did it .
I asked him how old he was . He was like 19 .
Oh , dear , yeah You know he didn't .
he did sort of like accommodate some land from his father's property And he was managing in a holistic way , in the way that he wanted to .
So , mate , you're 19 years old , the beef tastes so good . He's such a legend .
Yeah , so young , so awkward And a few words as well , you know we met some like some farmers Totally .
I'd love this . Tell me more That's . I mean , it's some of what Quint , essentially , we love about people who live on the land , home produce that they're humble salt of the earth , not self-aggrandising Great traits , and when they cross over into this space , it makes a real powerful combination . Yeah , yeah . So you ended up with what ? seven farms that ?
were small . Yeah , about that , seven different proteins , you know .
Basically a farm for each species , and this was operating as a full shop online . Yeah , so online You would deliver to ?
Yeah , just all the things that you would expect to find in a high street butcher shop . Yeah , yeah , you know the lamb , the quail , the chicken , the eggs , the beef , the dot , dot , dot dot . And then we started to add some unique products , which were like the condiments that might go with the lamb and the beef , some marinades , all that .
One chapter of Scott's life that we didn't add into the people is his time on my kitchen rules , so Scott can cook for those who are listening really well . I mean , like there's a lot of people who eat Scott's food , who go friends of ours , who are like I just God , i don't know how he does it . How does he make everything taste so good ?
I've tried doing this what he says , and it just doesn't . Doesn't taste like the way Scott cooks it .
¶ Passionate Cooking and Food Sovereignty
And this was , I imagine , a fair chunk of where you know . You got into the space , so to speak . You got your train rolling , And this is part of what , to the love of me , you were describing and your expansive knowledge in gastronomy . I guess this is what really took hold of you as those years evolved .
Yeah , I mean how I got you know nothing , you know , as I'm sort of verbalizing this the story , i guess . But sort of a lot of these things were born out of either adversity or circumstance . So how ? I got truly , truly passionate about cooking . So I've always cooked . My mum and dad ran pubs and they were busy pubs .
So there was two opportunities to make my own food in the course of a normal day . One was when I got home from school . My mum and dad might sound odd now , but they would be asleep because it wasn't . This was predating 24 hour liquor licenses , or you know , you had to . You had to , by law , close at three and then reopen the doors at six .
So there was this three hour period where my mum and dad would recharge their batteries and I would get in from . You know , the last thing I'd want to do was awake Certainly my dad , but you know I'd respect their rest and so I'd make something downstairs and I had .
You know it was a commercial kitchen , obviously , and you know so double door fridges full of fresh produce which was not emulated in my pee , you know , like I realized that I didn't realize at the time , but I realized subsequently that it was a privileged position to be in , you know , have access to steaks and gallons and fresh produce and prawns and all this
stuff that you know allowed me to kind of experiment . And then over the evening I had two choices whether I could write my order in the book this is before iPads and all that stuff . I could write it in the pad , along with , you know , a dining room full of other orders and the chef where I grew up , the pub that we spent most of my time growing up .
He was a bit of a . If it wasn't my mum , it was this chef and he was this Scottish . He was an ex-military chef , he was a bit of a , so he would see my order and he'd be like , well , i'm not , you know , that can slip right down to the , so I'd invariably jump in and make you know , be under their feet , but I would make it myself .
So I've always cooked , i've always taken pleasure in cooking , but the thing that really sort of dug it in for me was trying to heal my heal , an injury that I had that had lingered for longer than it should have , and I'd tried all these mechanical interventions , massage and physio and Cairo .
It was a back injury And I started to dabble with playing with nutrition to see if that would move the needle , and so the philosophy that I was living by was like this sort of paleo diet , right , low , inflammatory foods . So I became very militant about what was in and what was out , and the only way I knew what was in my food was to make it myself .
I didn't really want to be the guy that goes to the cafe or the restaurant and says do you ? mind asking the chef who is that ? that's like boring , and invitations to people's homes like pretty quickly dried up .
And so because I was that guy you know that the pain in the arse to cook for So I was like , right , okay , i know what's potentially going to fix my back , so I'm going to make it myself . And so that that sort of started to dig in .
I started to experiment with those types of foods And then I got onto a cooking show And we did reasonably well , which meant we stayed on for six months And that's all we did was research recipes , practice , practice , practice , showtime . You know like it was .
It was an immersive experience that meant after six months like if I played guitar all day , every day for six months , you'd get reasonably good at it and you'd get quite passionate about playing .
So what happened then ?
What do you mean Playing guitar ? I don't play guitar , though .
So what happened ?
with the cooking .
Then My joke kind of fell flat .
You'd already said I wasn't all right .
You can cut that bit out .
I'll leave it in .
Yes , there we go . So anyway that I guess learning to cook often an experiment because it was helping me in my physical condition . That was step one and then step two was the cooking show and then from then I've , cooking has been such an integral part of not my personal as well as my personal life , my home life , but a lot of my work .
You know I've written cookbooks and health books that you know have a big focus around not just nutrition but like cooking , like you can't have nutrition without cooking , you know . Like being the custodian of your own health , like taking control , like has to start in your own kitchen .
So what are you , what's your feeling then , having tapped regenerative sources ? what difference did that make ?
Well , so I wrote my first book in 2013 and I was talking about that then . Not not regen , yes , because it wasn't a thing , but I was talking about food sovereignty , which is a fancy way of saying you know , kind of coming to terms with or understanding where your food is coming from . Yes , and in every book I talk
¶ Sustainable Food Business Evolution
about that . And my last book , which nobody read because it was a flop it's called the sustainable diet and it's about looking at the food systems that are currently available to us .
No , but if it had come out now , it would be yeah , it might be a different story , but it came out at a time really , when , anyway , we don't need to go into it . I've let it go .
What time was it ? When did it come out ?
2000 .
I think it was the fire , I think everything was happening with like the fires and then we entered into COVID it was very much like no , i think like people were so overwhelmed with everything that was going on . I think the last thing they really wanted to do was like I've got to go on a diet and I've got to care about how , where I get my .
You know what I mean it wasn't . I think that it came out at the wrong time , yeah thanks .
It's great book . So where we are now , it's interesting like it's such a departure for Teal , although food has always been such a big thing in my life whether it's like dealing with an eating disorder , you know , because lack of information around nutrition .
Or , you know , and struggling with my weight from lack of information around nutrition , like when I was younger to loving food .
It's lovely when this reconciling of all your loves essentially Yeah yeah , so yeah , i guess .
For me it's like it's the , it's the amalgam of all the things that I've been working on for the last nearly 20 years . So this sort of marriage of nutrition , provenance , food , it's all kind of come together in the good farm shop .
But what I will say it's so it's it's more of a departure from Teal because , as we've just said , like she's come from a , an industry that's acting , directing , writing , and she's very gifted in that space . But what is incredible is that she's so .
She's clearly a talented but incredibly creative , and so you go okay , well , we now run this essentially a ethical ready meals business . Like how , where's the creative part in that other than making the food and coming up with the recipe , ideation stuff ?
but she's taking all this creativity and she's just like repackaged it into ideation and problem-solving , like she's incredibly proficient at problem-solving and coming up with ideas , like she's a fountain of . You know , she's Mount Vesuvius of ideas .
I'm just annoyed at that time , as soon as my eyes crack in the morning , she's like she's down near to the bed , like I've got some ideas for you .
I wish we did have film rolling for that moment .
But what , what the thanks ? that's really nice , funny thanks . But just to add in so it was you know , beef . It wasn't online butchery right . We then started . You know , when you buy whole animals from farms , it's really hard to get rid of that whole animal , but firstly , it's really expensive to buy a whole animal .
What I think most people don't know is that butchers most butchers do not buy whole animals . They buy crates of cuts that have come from an abattoir right . So a lot of the animal gets wasted , or it gets turned into dog meat or dog food , or it gets you know , i don't know yeah , what happens to it ?
There are these examples we've talked about , and we know about a feather and bone in Sydney .
Yeah , exactly .
But you were saying , because they're in Sydney , at least gives them a shot even this . It's not straightforward and easy , but it gives them a shot at making it work . Yeah .
They've been around for a long time . They have a great reputation , i think , for us being such a small business . It yes , it is expensive to buy a whole animal , but it's just . I guess the better way to put it is that it just ties up a lot of capital And then you have to have it butchered , which is again tying up a lot of capital .
Then you have to freight it all and so you know , when we don't have a huge , you know big deep pockets to kind of buffer all that , it takes a lot of money out of the business and stops us moving forward in other areas .
But the other thing about it is that you're you know most people will buy . They want the eye fillet . Eye fillets are gone in a second you know , there's like six eye fillets to a cow and then you've got a bunch of Scotch fillets .
You've got a bunch of , you know , porterhouse and T-bones and stuff , but you've got so much truck , so much truck on it and so much mints , and that's not . Those aren't the ones , that's so you're left with so much of the cow and then and then people are you're sold out on those cuts that everyone wants . So then you've got to go .
God , we've got to go . What are we gonna do ? all the stuff , which was the actually the great fortune that we , that we started the business like that and what we are now is only is a ready meals company , but we had to get there through . Okay , what are we gonna do with all this extra meat ?
okay , we're gonna make Scott , you're gonna cook meals with one of you , gotta start making ragout with the with the meats . You've got to start making your slow cook musselmum curry with the Chuck . You've got a every other dish that you've made get cracking . And so we did and we bottled them .
We had put them in one liter jars , which was kind of a new thing because we didn't want to do a whole lot of plastic , and we started doing the markets and we started selling ready meals the markets and we had really good feedback . People loved them . We were selling them for way too cheap and we made no money .
We've now got someone helping us with the money stuff very good .
Yeah , neither of us are very good at that department , but it's got .
It's good at cooking , i'm good at ideas , but we're the financial part , but the idea that we should be it's good , everything is part of the problem , isn't it ? yeah ?
and by the way , how ironic when I hear you talk about the humans gravitating to the prime cuts . It's like . It's like the old model , the industrial model farming , where the cows , of course , go to the favored grasses and and wipe them out .
So how ironic that with the good stuff , yeah , we would do the same thing as the model we're trying to get away from anyway , but you have to turn the other stuff into the good stuff yes , well , there you go , which is , which is what a lot of you know , that not a lot , because there aren't a lot but places that do buy butcheries , that do buy whole
animals . They do turn them , they are inventive and they do turn them into meals and as cultures did , and they would , and but they wouldn't suffer it . They find ways to yeah , to prepare it as well , hey , yeah . So basically then we worked out , we went away for Christmas , kind of going what are we gonna do ? because we hadn't made a cent at this point .
We've been going for a year and a half . Revenue was going up you know , it started you know , it started at the top , a passion , which it still was , and I guess the beginning of that .
We need to make money out there you get to a point in a business when you've been doing it for a year and a half and go , okay , i'm gonna keep doing this .
Our savings is gonna go we're gonna need to make money from it .
I relate to this too , and you've got , and then you've got kids are like , yeah , school's gonna come .
Yeah , okay , a bit of board planning after all , yeah , and you're saying , they're saying play with me , and you're going no , no , i've got to do the business stuff yeah , money so we basically came back and we were like we have to pivot the business , we have to . We ready meals , we can sell ready meals , we can get into shops .
We couldn't get our meat into shops because you could only put a 5% margin on them and you make we were making no money anyway , so we were never going to be able to to do that so it's the value edge you could bring the value you can bring and we , so we went away for Christmas .
We went to the UK , so it wasn't like a tropical , exciting holiday , unfortunately , but they are so far ahead of us in terms of green labelling , food probably , but yeah , like it was pretty impressive in the , in the supermarkets , that we're yeah like really cool stuff , like now there's like high street region burger chains , goodness , really , yeah , very ahead of
us , for sure , and you , you know , you walk into so we got .
Inspired I guess , kind of similar to like a Harris farm not main supermarket , but a supermarket similar to Harris one .
But it is a main supermarket , you know , and there's like there's there's stuff about the farmers , there's information about where they get their meat from and why they care about that and how long they've had these relationships for , and you really get the sense in this that this chain of supermarkets is about that yeah anyway .
So these supermarkets and you yeah it was inspiring and there were , yeah , ready meals there . That were beautiful ready meals and they were they were in a great yeah , this great bamboo kind of . They weren't packaged in plastic in this line of plastic ready meals .
It wasn't sure they were , but they were also these other ones that were just beautiful bamboo packaging and I just really cool and we tried some when they were delicious . They weren't , like you know , organic produce , but but it was .
It was high quality , yes , and I got really excited yeah and I was like I I had thought for the for a while , like that I wanted to ditch the buying whole animals thing and like turn the business to ready meals .
But I felt like Scott wasn't there yet and and I I think I might have like mentioned it or something , but then we got back and I was kind of working out how I was maybe gonna make it kind of sound like it was his idea you need to do that anyway , he was like one day , it was like when we got back .
I reckon we should not do the beat the meat anymore .
You're right , you both arrived at it yeah , and I was like great idea yeah , and we just came back with this whole new excitement .
You know and , and you know , let's be , we're always good . It was never gonna be okay . If we can't do by whole animals , let's just buy crates of cuts , and who gives a fuck where it comes from ? it was never gonna be . That was either quit , stop it and let someone else you like feather and bone just continue doing their thing , or it was going to be .
How can we make this work in another way ? keeping the philosophy ? yes and the values that we started with yes which is what it is now . So not an online booktree , but beautiful ready meals that use , you know , 99% organic ingredients , um , and you know only the meat is from region sources .
Yeah , and we know that the company that we we work with . They have the ability and the license and the permission to kill on on site , okay , on farm yeah , which is pretty unique .
Oh , that is and so that takes the whole that like yes , so important yeah so it diminishes the amount of stress that that animal encounters .
So it's big . You know that the business has sort of had various iterations , which i guess is is proves to us that we're married to the , the values and the principles of it and the pillars of it , not not necessarily like what the business is .
Yeah , you know we've gone from a cow share to an online butcher to now we're a ready meal and i just wanted now's a good time to bring you know i think we should ditch the ready meals and Monday morning start something fresh .
It does go to show what i think is a message for all of us to be nimble , yeah , to be open to being nimble with this , with whatever we're doing , which is the creative side right . So yeah , so to and to tap those people we don't all have to be that either , yeah , yeah .
So , speaking of which you said film passion and i know you played a part with this right with behind camera and stuff too in the , in the evolution of how this documentary came to be are you too feeling like that old space you inhabited with this new space are coming together in some form ?
i don't know what that would look like , necessarily like yeah , i haven't that , that idea hasn't gone off in my head yet how to marry the two . But i i think i think the other thing that that hinders creativity is when you're giving so much . I mean , we have two small kids . I basically have been giving so much of myself to keeping two kids alive .
Um , so i really think that a big part of me turning away from the film industry or losing my passion for that , was that i just didn't have enough of that resilience anymore because i was just it was all going into , going into the kids .
¶ Music and Healing Journey
Oh , it's like a little arm , is it ?
it's a car alarm it .
Actually i don't know if that guy's gonna shut up , because that that happens . What ?
is it that's gonna be annoying ? what is it ?
should we just get the rifle out and shoot it ?
yeah , i'll stake the fire . I'll stake the barbie , can you eat ?
it . No , it's acceptable yeah , yeah he probably predates bird life our existence here um predates podcast .
Anyway , i feel like i'm now at a point where i can breathe okay um , and so i probably have more space for things like yeah , you know film industry stuff , acting stuff making , creating yes um that'll be interesting yeah , to see what comes what does come yep and the back ?
how is it in the ? water my back .
Yeah , yeah , great really , yeah , that journey has resolved , oh yeah how that is so interesting .
Yeah , yeah , it took about .
It took about a year to kind of get to the point where it wasn't an every day , you know , it wasn't a presence in my life , and then there was about three or four years where i'd have like an episode where it flare up , and now i haven't had one of those pages for years , but it was chronic pain for like eight years of your life seven , seven years of
like chronic situation yeah , it was , yeah , pretty debilitating , uh , not just physically , like it took a toll on yes you know , it's hard to be present , it's hard to really kind of embrace the world and embrace life .
I was pretty cranky , i was depressed a lot of the time and i lost all my identity because i was like the , the fit guy that used to run around everywhere and use his body and now i , at that point i couldn't use my body . So i had to , like , remodel who who i was . It wasn't , it wasn't a fun time i relate to .
I mean i had , having been the trainer as well , i hadn't had a big motor accident and spinal fractures and stuff and that sort of reshaping of identity . But yeah , i think about the power of your story , that nutrition was such the driving factor in the renewal and i'm wondering then how much emotional work or spiritual work even was part of it .
Like did you was there that wing , if you like , that you worked on too .
I i'd like to say yes , but in all honesty , um , i guess i mean i'm about halfway through that back episode . You know , i was a client , i was a personal trainer . The client was saying to me you're back injury .
You know , it's all emotional , right you know , i heard plenty of it , yeah , and i was going through a breakup at the time , so me too .
There you go , so it was my , it was a marriage . You know degradation of a marriage and she's like it's , it's all wrapped up in that and i was like , i guess , because i have a , a science you know i've done exercise science i can see the scans on my MRI .
It seemed just so uh empirical to me that , you know , a equals a plus b equals c , you know , like it's . I knew when i did the injury , i knew how it felt . There's the scans , that's the and that's the prognosis , and it's hard to then accept . Well , it's , it's your circumstance , it's your experience , it's your trauma , it's your grief , all that stuff .
And so , if i'm honest , i was a bit of a no , no to that . And then , because the nutrition sent me a very loud , clear signal that if you give your body the right input , it opens up the capacity in the bandwidth to heal and repair .
So again , in that i am the case study , this isn't , admittedly , you know , the caveat here is that this isn't a clinical control , you know , blind placebo trial , like it's . I i am any once yeah and so it just reinforced my science logic that you know a plus b equals . You know it's i'm giving , i'm eating these foods . I'm eliminating that there's .
No , there's no sort of credence given to spiritual or energies or grief . Um , but i have it's . You know , when things are stressy for me in the past , i feel it in my back so there's that need to exactly i can't ignore that either . But it's not .
I'm not gonna i'm not gonna sit here and say i went on some deep spiritual mind opening journey that helped my back , because that , yeah , that would be a lie . Oh wonderful guys , it would be a better story .
It would be a better story no , i think that i mean i certainly i can map my experience onto that , and it's it's just interesting to contemplate do you get better when i came into your life ? i ever think i've never been i know , i love way to end .
That's beautiful , but if you've listened through to an end of an episode you'll know we close actually on music . But i want to open the gambit up to film potentially too , if there's been music or film in this case that has been significant in your life being you mentioned a couple before till .
Maybe it's music you that we focus on here for you , but you choose that's been either significant in your life , representative of a transformative time , or or just something you're reveling in right now can you go first ?
all right this is really uh , this is going to sound very English , but there's two bands that i listened to , probably ad nauseam , for till one . Well , i'm sure everyone's heard of both of them , but it's Radiohead and Rolling Stones . For the Rolling Stones , far out , i'm just what can you say ?
some of those riffs and charlie's leads for 50 years , for 60 years , yeah , i was playing it on the on the drive up yesterday and to the point with tashi , my elders was like , can we , can we listen to something else ? it's been like five hours now , but on each one i'm like listen to this tash listen to that , read totally .
I'm saying with one of my , yeah , you know , and so there's that it's a very masculine energy and it's there's something . I was thinking about this on the drive up because i listen to it , and why do i listen to it ? and i know what's coming . I know each verse and melody , but what is it ?
and there's something that it just and it's the same for all people , but the you know , the input is different , but for me it's the Rolling Stones and there's something that speaks to my whatever . It is my dna and it gets , gets inside me , and Radiohead do something similar . His lyrics are somewhat poetic .
They are poems , really when you look at them , transcribe their poems , but just layered with amazing sound a friend actually sent me his current outfit , which i can't remember the name , off the top of the head who's current outfit ?
tom york's the smile . That's what it is , isn't it ?
yeah , amazing , amazing yeah yeah , wonderful mate , wonderful till yeah , i've got one . Scott: i know it's gonna be . Til: What, go on ?
Are you gonna go music ?
it's a bit of a combo . Oh hi , your mum did just why it's so good . Go on . What do you think ?
i thought you're gonna because you've been playing that this is not taylor swift , but it's no , it's not taylor swift , what is it ?
it's somebody , really Billie Eilish . Billie Eilish , i watched the Billie Eilish documentary lover . I have to say i hadn't got into her music . I'd sort of only heard that bad boy . So i was like no , not , not , not . I don't know why brun's talking about , but i watched the documentary . She's a , she's just a beautiful human .
I just really liked her and i fell in love with her music .
Can't stop listening to it . Is there a particular track that switched you on to it ? Scott: it's actually not bad really . AJ: Yeah i've not listened at all, I don't think . Maybe i know some
It's a really good documentary yeah , like it's , i do a lot of good music it's from the when she first releases a song that goes kind of viral and then it's it's sort of i guess it's over a chunk of years to where she basically wins all of the grammy's . Is that the big music awards ?
yeah , when she wins like all the grammy's , it's her relationship with her brother so beautiful . They just make music together in their room and he's just her biggest fan and yeah , just i love , i really like her music . AJ: wonderful you guys .
It's been really special . I mean , we've just lingered into the evening and , yeah , i felt like that's what this was going to be in the end and it was bloody beautiful thanks for spending the time with me . Scott: oh pleasure thoroughly enjoyed myself .
I've just worked out what that bird is as well it's like it was the oscar's song that comes on at the end when it wants you to wrap it up oh , that's right yeah . Scott: it's giving up now , but it was it was like it's falling asleep falling asleep on the branch, they're still going . AJ: that's a wrap .
That was Matilda Brown and Scott Gooding at the family farm in the Nambucca Valley on Gambaynggirr Country on the mid-north coast of New South Wales . For more on Til and Scott , the Good Farm Shop , the film Rachel's Farm , its tour and how to book your tickets , see the links in the show notes . I've put a few photos on the episode web page too .
If you're interested in the next big regenerative agriculture event in Australia , join me in Margaret River , WA , in September . I'm privileged to be emcee and hope to see some of you there . Finally , once again , huge thanks , Blair Beattie from Farmers Footprint Australia for taking that driver's seat on our journey to the Nambucca Valley .
For the series of three episodes that concludes with this one . F or subscribers , i'll continue to send you behind the scenes stuff and other news of what's unfolding as i get around the country . A nd if you've been thinking about becoming a subscriber, I'd love you to join us .
It's with thanks , as always , to this community of generous supporters that this episode was made possible . Just head to the website via the show notes regennarration . com/ support and thanks again , and , as always , if you think of someone who might enjoy this episode , please share it with them . Please also continue to rate and review the podcast on your favoured app .
It all helps . The music you're hearing is regeneration by Amelia Barden off the soundtrack to the film Regenerating Australia . My name's Anthony James . Thanks for listening .