Hands-On In The Aussie Outback

Lessons In Living Off The Land And Sea On The Rugged Eyre Peninsula Text & Photographs.

- Rishad Saam Mehta

“Watch Where You Step,”

Lunch said, trying to warn me about the ants underfoot. I didn’t see what the fuss was about, but he broke off a twig and poked it into an innocent-looking pile of mud. In an instant, it was swarming with big, angry ants. Lunch told me his grandfather had been stung once. He had also been shot with a bullet, but maintained throughout his life that he’d rather have been shot twice than bitten once. After hearing that, I walked more cautiously.

David Doudle, better known as Lunch, grew up on a family farm in southern Australia’s Eyre Peninsula. Falling off trees, being kicked by a kangaroo, getting bitten by spiders—these experiences were all a part of growing up, as was walking about barefoot until it was mandatory to wear shoes to school. There were no supermarkets or public swimming pools back then, and definitely no Internet. Lunch learned to swim in the ocean and fish and hunt for the table.

My guide tried to impart some of the hands-on outdoor education to me as we walked into the bramble forest around Mikkira Station, a historic homestead 30 kilometres from Port Lincoln. This was the first part of the Eyre Peninsula to be settled, as early as 1842. When Lunch’s ancestors had arrived in this strange new land, they had gone through the process of learning about its surprising flora, fauna and marine creatures. The knowledge they gathered from aboriginals and through trial and error metamorphosed into the Australian outback way of life.

We had driven to Mikkira in Lunch’s Land Cruiser, its tyres red with mud, in order to see koalas in the wild. I had almost rolled my eyes at the prospect, but Lunch quickly put me right. “Try to cuddle these chaps,” he said, “and they will tear you in half with their claws.”