The fate of the gate

Tommy: It's The Daily Talk Show. I'm Tommy Jackett.

Josh: And I'm Josh Janson, and this is the show where we unpack what's on our minds, ask big questions, and have fun every single weekday. Tommy, what do you think of the intro?

Tommy: There was, at first I thought of Tim Ferriss, 'cause he's always talking about unpacking.

Mason: Should I fuck the word off unpack?

Josh: I thought that he says things like deconstruct the lives.

Tommy: Oh yeah, he says that. Also, What was the other bit about we ask the big questions?

Mason: Yeah.

Tommy: What about we talk to people?

Josh: Yeah, we talk to people could be good. Yeah, we have conversations.

Mason: How about we have conversations?

Tommy: Yeah, we have conversations.

Mason: All right.

Tommy: We, yeah, connect.

Mason: Conversations. I'm gonna write this down.

Tommy: Are we in the show? Is this the show?

Mason: Mate, this is the show. This is the only chance I have to talk to you at the moment with you being away.

Tommy: You might, there might be a plane that lands I'm literally standing at the airport. It's the tiniest airport you've ever seen.

Josh: There's no A380. You're gonna be fine.

Tommy: But I'm right near the Qantas Museum, which is like, yeah, I mean, just makes money for the town. Yeah. It's like, it's a bit expensive to go in. I haven't actually done a tour.

Mason: Supporting the locals, great.

Tommy: I'm looking at one of the first hangars, like the sheds for the planes. Qantas. It says on the big sign writing, Qantas Ltd. Qantas Limited.

Mason: You know Trevor Long on the tweets?

Tommy: Yes.

Mason: He was trolling me for not knowing about Qantas and the history. He says I should go to do a stint in regional radio to get my shit together.

Tommy: Mate, you'd have to come out here because I did a stint in regional radio and I know fucking nothing. And so what is the— Oh, you know what? You get schooled very quickly doing regional radio. Is not— when you are driving and you think you're seeing a cow, there's a chance that it's actually not a cow.

Mason: What do you mean?

Tommy: Well, because they become cows. So, like, they're all— like, I still don't even know, but I got called out when I was talking about cows on the radio.

Mason: What are they first?

Tommy: Well, there's all these different— heifer, and then they— there's like a process that they go through, which we'll get Rupert on, who I stayed with out here. He knows it all back to front. But yeah, there's like, well, bulls aren't cows, but bulls are from the same, like a bulls are a male. So, you can't even say a bull is a male cow.

Mason: Really?

Tommy: Okay.

Mason: Well, no, because a cow is a female. I don't know.

Josh: Anyway.

Tommy: A cow is female, but it's at a certain stage, but we won't butcher it.

Josh: You've really, your thought process has really shifted since you've been away. Like all of a sudden to the table, you're bringing a lot of sort of cow, cattle, grass science chat.

Tommy: Well, I'm in Outback Australia staying on a cattle farm, so you'd hope. Oh, and I tried to close the loop on, um, our foxes, dogs.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: And, um, all I got, uh, was that, um, dingoes are classified as— they're like a protected species.

Mason: So you're not meant to— because they're native.

Tommy: Dingoes are, yeah. And, but what they've done is to get around, and the councils and the, you know, whatever they are out here, the municipalities have classed, because they're, you know, so detrimental to livestock and people's businesses, they've actually classed some of them as wild dogs, which means you can kill them.

Mason: Ah, so it's all a classification sort of thing.

Tommy: Dude, I tell you what, living out here, you just, the perspective that you gain, I mean, we're so far from the life that's here. And it just gives you such a really fucking interesting insight to what it's like living out here and just the struggles. And you know, like I think a lot around meat or a lot around eating meat in a restaurant and how long that process is before and all the people involved. It's crazy.

Mason: Yeah, you said this last time. So, do you want to eat more meat, less meat, or are you just more mindful of the meat that you do eat? What does it actually do? What are you actually going to change?

Tommy: I think, you know, I don't think I'm going to stop eating steak. I've got no problem with eating steak for myself. But it's, there's a bit of gratitude for the process. We take it really for granted. Just being able to get a fucking, oh, what? It's a fucking, it's $18 steak night, not fucking $14. It's like, that's the reality that I go through with Amy and I. Like, oh, it's too expensive. That's $18. The other one's cheaper, $13.50. But it's like, that is so cheap for the process and the amount of people that have spent hours and, you know, they're living their life, cattle farmers, like they're living and breathing their occupation.

Mason: So mid-May, which it is now, like what is the weather like in Outback Queensland?

Josh: Is it like real sunny all the time?

Tommy: Yeah, it's been super sunny, really hot yesterday, drops down at night. The first night we got here, it was freezing, but it's nice. This is ideal temperature right now. The sun though is just like extremely hot when you're in it. Here's an interesting thing. Rupert, who I stayed with, he said when he moved to the city, because from growing up out here, he said everyone sees sunlight, it's like, oh, let's go sit in the sun. He said, growing up out here, you're always going, let's go sit in the shade. Where's the shade? Because it's so hot and so open. And so, it's like you try and get out of the sun up here, and in Bondi everyone's trying to get in the sun.

Mason: I feel like I'm more like Rupert in that regard, because that's the big sort of fight that Bree and I always have at cafes, is I'm always trying to find the shade.

Tommy: You're part albino, though, so I get it.

Mason: Hey, I wanted to close a loop as well. You know how you were talking about the dogger? And I was— And I sort of went on a bit of a tangent, realised what I was talking about was dogging, which is sexual slang. And dogging is a British English slang term for engaging in sexual acts in public or semi-public places or watching others doing so. So, I wasn't completely off the mark. I wasn't some sort of deviant that just sort of takes any word and sexualises it. It was an official slang word.

Josh: And that's on Wikipedia.

Mason: That's not even Urban Dictionary.

Tommy: Interesting. So, mate, what's going on? What's going on back in Melb Town?

Mason: Melbourne. I've just been, if you can believe it, obsessing about podcasting a little bit.

Tommy: You know how you can tell, and anyone else out there that follows you on social media can tell, because it's— I mean, I like your tactics. Yeah. But yeah, I can tell.

Mason: Oh, I'm just tweeting people.

Tommy: I'm just—

Josh: no, well, it's not even a tactic.

Mason: It's purely like out of interest. I'm just, I feel like for me to be able to do a good job, I need to be around other people doing a good job. I need to be sort of just on the finger on the pulse with this sort of thing. But I've just, I literally just did a post before we started recording this. It's, what, it's 12:30 PM on Thursday here. And yeah, so, I was going through and writing out how we could potentially do the intros to the show. And yeah, it's that fine line of obsession and like containing obsession. What, I mean, what have you been obsessed with in life and has it served you? Or do you think obsession is something that we should stay away from?

Tommy: I think I was talking to Sandy, who I'm here with. She's a part of the business that we're making the video for. And we would, I can't even remember the thing we were talking about, but she said, oh yeah, I used to do that. And I said, you probably just weren't obsessed with it enough. And I think about video.

Mason: Yeah.

Tommy: For me, it's probably the one thing I've been obsessed with, which allowed me to persevere through the painful times of learning. You know, in the very first years that you're starting to make videos, it's like, your capacities stretching and, you know, you're learning hundreds of new things. How a programme works or camera and all these things are going on and it's super painful. And you have to be in some way obsessed with it. You have to be able to persevere through that and be interested. I think for me, obsession is gauging my level of interest in something.

Josh: Yeah, absolutely.

Tommy: I mean, it's probably not the, the actual definition of obsession.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: But for me, when I'm— when I think about obsession, it's, yeah, I just think about it a lot. It's the thing I want to do most, and when I'm not doing it, I want to do it, you know? Yeah.

Josh: Well, I think a lot of people see obsession as a bad thing, and I think, yeah, uh, it can— it could be bad. It could, like— but I think that if it's the right obsession, then there's, like, a lot to gain. So I'm just— and it's also partly because I'm on the home stretch with all these projects that I'm working on. And once they finish up, the main creative project that I'll have is the Daily Talk Show while I'm travelling.

Tommy: Yeah. And just actually hanging out with your girlfriend.

Josh: Yeah, exactly. Well, Bree did say that. She's like, I sort of mentioned, I sort of pre-warned her with sort of the caveat of like, look, I'm obsessed at the moment, but it's, you know, I'm not going— I will be focusing on the trip as well. Like, I'm not just going to be like in— Italy, trying to find a good 4G signal to see where I can record the podcast with you, which I still will do that, but I'll just contain the time, I guess.

Tommy: Yeah.

Josh: So, what have you been doing today? Give us a rundown of the day.

Tommy: The— we've driven an hour and 40 minutes back into the main town of Longreach, and that's the road, the road that I filmed the King Brown snake or the brown snake.

Josh: Yeah, sure.

Tommy: Yesterday on my podcast.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: Which one? Oh, my podcast.

Josh: If you've got another fucking podcast you haven't told me about, I'd be so pissed off. If I found out that you're building the real dailytalkshow.com.

Tommy: The real. So, we, yeah, we ran over a snake yesterday on the way.

Josh: Really? And do you have to stop or like to make sure that it's not like hanging around and waiting for you?

Tommy: We killed it. Well, I didn't kill it.

Josh: Does Rupert have a gun?

Tommy: Yeah, on the property.

Josh: Okay.

Tommy: But not while you're driving. I don't think you're allowed to just whip it out on the main road and shoot a snake.

Josh: Shoot a snake. It's probably pretty hard to do as well, I guess.

Tommy: But we stopped and had to put it out of its misery. We ran over it, so to say. They just slither around the road and it breaks its back. Poor thing. And then, yeah, had to kill it. But that's the road we drove in and we've just been— had some nice lunch. It's interesting, you wouldn't really get a sense, like Longreach where, you know, Qantas is from, it just, it feels like a regional town.

Josh: Yeah. It feels like— It doesn't have that outback vibe that Rupert's property has.

Tommy: But you drive 10 minutes one way and you're on a dirt track that goes for hundreds of kilometres.

Josh: Have you worked out how we could— because even Bree was saying it, she saw the photo or the little video that you did of the stars and she was just like, man, we've never seen stars like that before.

Tommy: Like, so that, that, that showed a few more, like, because of the the lenses open. What do you call it, Josh? You're the camera expert.

Josh: Well, did you have— you had like a long shutter as well to sort of let more—

Tommy: yeah, 30 seconds it was open for. And but you, you've literally never seen stars like this unless you are out here. There's no noise, there's no light pollution.

Josh: Yeah, it's—

Tommy: you're seeing Milky Ways. I saw two shooting stars. It's so fucking quiet. And what's crazy is like you look one way, and it's so flat that you can see it just keeps going. Yeah, you know, in the distance all you see is like grass and then blue sky. So there's no trees that are, you know, showing a line. Like in some directions there's tree lines, but out on these properties you see so far that it just turns into sky. Do you think so?

Josh: Do you think it would be something like— I always think about eventually having a, not like necessarily a holiday home, but somewhere where we could go and visit and unwind and sort of get away from the noise. What's your take on—

Tommy: They're called hobby farm. Hobby farms.

Josh: Hobby farms. What's your take on, say, seaside versus outback in regards to relaxation? And is it a different feeling?

Tommy: Yeah, really different. I would probably— I think money-wise, if I had the money to buy a place on the water, yeah, definitely, because you would surf and all that sort of shit. Yeah, and there's something like being on the edge of water, so the earth being on the edge of land to the seas, like something about it. And then going in, it's just like refreshing. But spending more time out here and like even living inland, Shepparton, and going to properties out there It's fucking unbelievable. It's so— even the quietness and the bugs and hearing everything, all the sounds and the freshness of the air. It's a— I don't know, I'm liking it more being coming this far inland.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: Um, it's definitely—

Mason: yeah.

Josh: Did you get a sense? Because you said that like Rupert's got something like 100 kilometres worth of land or whatever it is.

Tommy: Square.

Josh: Square. Which is fucking more, isn't it? I mean, I'm not good with maths. That means it's like— Anyway, who gives a fuck? I'm about to show my ignorance. But the thing that I'm curious about, would he like— If he's got so many kilometres of it, could you be like, Rupert, can you give me a kilometre? Like, how much would you want for a kilometre? And create your own little hobby farm.

Tommy: Mate, the problem is getting here.

Josh: But he wouldn't even fucking notice, would he? You would literally be like, I wonder what— the legalities of that is, which is like, hey Rupert, Rupert, we want to— but even just being like, look, I know we'll give you $10,000 or $5,000. That's probably a lot of money, isn't it, for like land out there? Like how— I don't have any sense of—

Tommy: There's still houses out here that you can— there's a house that's bought for, I think, $40,000.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: And they pay $80 a week rent.

Josh: Fuck.

Tommy: I pointed, he pointed one out and he's like, "Oh, that one." Yeah, how much do they pay a week? $80 rent.

Josh: $80 rent. And what sort of people are they? People who are obviously working around the area?

Tommy: Towns. Yeah. Yeah, so in the towns, because here you've got like small towns and then as soon as you drive out, you're on people's property that are then moving into 30,000 acres or like what Rupert's got, his family have. Yeah. —then there's people living on those, that's their job. They work, it's a working farm. And so the people that live in the city, I said— into the towns, I said, "What do these people do?" And they might work in the general store or, you know, work in the pub or, you know, a café somewhere or in town. But interestingly enough, these smaller towns— this is taking a bit of a darker note, but they're still drug-affected. There's a problem out here and this is— very far away from the city.

Josh: City problems or even, yeah, but even because when you think about the drug epidemic, you think of, you know, bigger sort of country towns. Yeah. Like your Shepps and place like that. But what you're saying is that even in these super, super regional areas, remote areas.

Tommy: Super remote, yeah. There's still, and not just alcohol. Like ice problems out here. Is it like homeless?

Josh: Can you be homeless in the outback? I'm sure you could.

Tommy: There was homeless people in Shepparton living in the bush. Yeah, in the bushland. And so, I mean, we drove, we were driving around paddocks last night and there was, you know, it literally looks all the same to me. And you know, Rupert's got inbuilt GPS and he's just fucking taking a left here and right there, going through gates. It's so big. Someone could live in there, but they surprisingly, they've never seen anyone on their own property. Yeah.

Josh: What about like the indigenous, like community? Is there like, do they have like traditional? I don't know any of the correct language, so I feel like it's a minefield in regards to— I'm going to caveat all this with if I say something. I said the other day, I was talking to someone, I said Ayers Rock instead of Uluru. Got my head chopped off because I just don't know. I don't fucking know these things. So, but I don't know, Aboriginals. Can you say Aboriginals? Is that the correct terminology? I don't know. Indigenous Australians. Yeah, Indigenous Australians. Is there like, do they have their sort of mobs around?

Tommy: What's the— Not here. So, I said to the family, is there Aboriginals? Whatever you— The right word.

Josh: I said the right word. Well, you think it's the right word. We don't fucking know anymore. Correct.

Tommy: Yeah. And that one was— that conversation wasn't recorded. Yeah. I said, is there— just digging out, are they living here? Yeah. Is there groups, you know, is there a community here? And they said, years and years and years ago— and this is probably why we're being so fucking delicate with how we're talking— yeah, when the train pulled in here, they got told to knock it off. And so, they got told to stay on and then, you know, they went on to the next place. And there's Aboriginal communities in the next town, like a town across. And this is, you know, we're talking probably 100 years ago, you know, very, very, very long time ago. When it was, you know, telling people to stay on a train because of their race is horrible.

Josh: Wait, as in, so, who's on the train at this point?

Tommy: Like, so, You're saying Indigenous Australians are coming on the train and they're being told, don't get fucking—

Josh: don't get off here, this isn't—

Tommy: don't you get off here, this isn't your area, this isn't your area, keep going. And so, but the point of it is, you know, a couple of hundred kilometres into another area, there is these communities that are, you know, all throughout. But they're more up into, um you know, centre of Australia near Uluru, Ayers Rock, but also up into like Arnhem Land up in the north of, you know, the tip of Australia. Yeah. Which, yeah, Rupert has worked up in the— up in Arnhem Land.

Josh: Oh, cool. Yeah, I've had friends who have worked up there. There's someone that's done a doco up there as well. But you went to a primary school today. What's the primary school vibes like? I mean, it smells exactly like the primary school I went to. What does that mean?

Tommy: You know, primary schools, like the older types, the carpet. I don't know.

Josh: Dusty. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know what you mean. It's got a smell. The cubicles?

Tommy: Were there cubicles? I didn't see the cubicles, mate. What the fuck am I doing near the cubicles?

Josh: The cubicles is the fucking— isn't that what it's called? No, what are the things called? We have— we portable—

Tommy: the cubicles of the toilets.

Josh: Yeah, I meant the portables.

Tommy: I knew I was fucking something up.

Josh: Yeah, so the portables—

Tommy: there was no portable. I didn't see any portables, really, but there's just classrooms. Legit, you would have loved it. There was— they look like radio studios because they're airlocks, because that's where they do the remote— what's it called? The School of the Air. That's what they used to call it when it was over radio. Now it's School of the Internet. I don't know if they use that term, but it's where they use Skype and, you know, they have like a conferencing programme that all the kids log into and the teacher can see the kids.

Josh: Yeah, that'd be so sick. Were you watching? Did you see this setup? Oh no, there was no—

Tommy: I saw the setup, but there was no classes happening. And so, yes, it's— it almost— it looks like a radio station.

Josh: Yeah, maybe we could have— you could have asked to do the Daily Talk Show in there. We could have got IP down the line working.

Tommy: That probably would have been better quality than ours.

Josh: Yeah, that's awesome.

Tommy: Um, but yeah, just— it's just a normal primary school. Oh, there's tours. So there's all these like, um, they call them grey nomads.

Josh: Oh yeah, old people in caravans.

Tommy: Yeah, that's the, I guess, polite way of saying it. Um, there's tours twice a day. The tour— it's a tour program. You come and they get taken around and showing the school, because the school we went to is like, it's the one that is all about the, um, technology and stuff. No, it's about, um, what's the word, uh, remote education. Yeah, cool. So the name of the school is all centred around kids living remote. They come in here every now and then, but there's school going on over the, you know, over the internet to these really remote places within Outback Australia.

Josh: Is their internet connection really good? Did you do any internet speed tests? I didn't do any. Okay.

Tommy: I've got— what am I on? I'm on 4G, 3 bars of 4G.

Josh: You're doing fine. And so that's where the primary— so the primary school is in Longreach? Yeah, I'm a—

Tommy: it's a couple hundred metres from where we are at the airport. 500 million. But the, um, yeah, so it's, I mean, it's a, there's probably not many tour, there's probably not many primary schools that have old people doing tours.

Josh: Yeah, how weird. And so the, um, what's the, the airport like? Is it sort of your classic regional town airport? Has it got, so yeah, what's, what's sort of the, I guess they're all small planes. Are there anyone with private jets or anything?

Tommy: I can't see any private jets here. There's— oh, hang on, here we go. There's a, um, a little Cessna. It's just like, um, propellered, uh, little aircraft. Yeah, there's 3 that are sitting there. They're probably private planes. But my plane that I'm getting out of here on is not here yet. And I'm looking over at the shed that is the Longreach Airport, and it's literally that. It's a a big tin shed with a big sign on the front that says Longreach Airport. It's, um, a food court.

Josh: Is there any food?

Tommy: Uh, no, there was not food court. We went to the Qantas Museum and there's a full— we had like a full schnitzel sandwich and it's like, it's very nice. You would have liked it.

Josh: Yeah, I would have. It sounds right up my alley. But the only reason—

Tommy: the only— they're pretty lucky to have this here. I mean, not lucky It's where Qantas started, but the only reason that they run a flight per day to Longreach from Brisbane is because Qantas founded— you know, this is where it was founded.

Josh: So your client paid for the flight, but was it an expensive flight to get there? I—

Tommy: you and I could have gone— how much was it, $1,200 return or something?

Josh: Fuck, we could have gone out. No, no, more.

Tommy: $4,800. Near— yeah, nearly $1,400. Yeah, return to Melbourne. And I think that's a bit of the issue with tourism here, is because it's so expensive. Like, yeah, imagine if they subsidised it somehow, or Qantas. I think they said that they're actually looking into it at the moment about, um, the expense of coming here, because I think if, you know, it'd be worth coming out here if you, if you've never explored it.

Josh: Well, I guess they just need the infrastructure. Like, just think Yeah, the schnitzels are good and all that sort of thing, but— and visiting the primary school is good. But I think there would be a really cool sort of like— if there could be a ranch that you could stay on. Yeah. Like you were on a— I saw you were on a motorbike without a fucking helmet, you idiot. It's the fucking— it's the outback, mate. Your skull cracks the same way in the outback, don't you worry. The—

Tommy: God, it's beautiful around you when you do it.

Josh: And so what's like— what— yeah, were they they were a motorbike type of thing? Did they have four-wheelers? What was like the setup in regards to getting around their property?

Tommy: It's so big. They drove a lot.

Josh: So, for instance— They drove a lot.

Tommy: Actually, just a bit more comfortable and quick in the car. Oh, this is the funniest saying. Hang on, let me just think about it. So, when you were driving in the car, so in the ute around the paddocks, there's like rules, and I picked up on a bunch of these farm rules. It's like, you don't go through a gate and not close it. You've got to always close the gate.

Josh: It's a good life lesson.

Tommy: Fuck. And there's a saying— hang on, I'm gonna go ask Rupert because this is so fucking funny.

Josh: This is great.

Tommy: So it's a saying about— Rupert, I need you to quickly say something to the phone. You're on the podcast. Hi, Rupert. Hang on, I'll put you on loudspeaker. Is that all right?

Josh: This is Josh. G'day, Rupert. Hi, Josh. Howdy. Tommy's saying that there's a great saying. He's been telling us the rules of the land. One of them, always close the fence or the gate.

Tommy: So what's that? When you're driving through the gate and there's a newbie like me, a city slicker, What's the saying? The saying is, the fate of the gate lies with the cunt in the front. That's perfect. The fate of the gate lies with the cunt in the front.

Josh: We need to write that down so we can, that can be a thing. We can make that our official tagline of the podcast.

Tommy: That's it. Now back to, I asked who came up with that. He has no idea.

Josh: It wasn't Rupert himself.

Tommy: It definitely wasn't.

Josh: We could get t-shirts made. Maybe that would be the first Daily Talk Show t-shirts. Real sort of niche audience.

Tommy: So, I was the bloke in the front closing the gate every single time. Oh, it's hilarious.

Josh: My time's up. Yeah. Yeah, you've got to—

Tommy: I'm running out of credit.

Josh: Yeah, you've got to head off, but we've got the Friday episode, we are going to be doing that. We're picking you up from the airport. So, with a special guest. So, that's going to be fun. So, that's something to look forward to. It's The Daily Talk Show, everyone. TJ, enjoy your flight back. How many people are going to be in the plane, do you reckon?

Tommy: Probably maximum 30. Okay. No, less. They're just 2 seats on each side. Okay, well, that's, that's exciting. But you get Mentos, they walk through and give you Mentos.

Josh: It's bloody Uber, it's the original Uber.

Mason: All right, cool. Have a good one, mate. Catch up.

Tommy: See you, buddy.