Introduction
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Premature Planning

I started planning this trip 23 years ago, without quite knowing how or when it would play out, or even if it would eventuate. Back then I was a young buck. I loved anything that moved and I loved adventure.

At first the idea was to get some motorbikes and go around Australia with some mates, just riding and camping. The fact that we’d need to eat along the way, let alone fix some piece of machinery, never really crossed our minds. The trip was to start somewhere down south and end up in Cape York, as far north as we could go. At sixteen or seventeen years of age, what happened in between didn’t really matter – we just wanted to ride epic bikes through epic conditions. As far as I can remember, I don’t think the months of preparation needed to pull off such an expedition, or how hard it might be, ever occurred to us.

As the years went by, we all got busier and busier working our day jobs, and talk of the trip tailed off. Until about two years ago, that is, when I got the itch again, sparked by various short trips to the Gulf of Carpentaria and the vast wetlands east of Darwin. In fact, the whole bloody country inspired me, reigniting the original idea – but this time with a sense of purpose and curiosity.

I wanted to meet the people who grow and harvest some of the produce I’ve been using at Biota for the past eight years, to connect with them, and I wanted to understand how the wild fish, animals and plants live in this country. It’s easy for cooks to get complacent, to get caught up in all the bullshit that surrounds the industry. Don’t get me wrong, I still wanted an adventure – just something that had been thought about first.

For me, the last few years have been about trying to find a way of disconnecting, of escaping all the commercialism. Chefs talk about connection, how our dishes connect with nature, but the real question should be how do we connect with nature? I mean, do we get out there and connect with nature, or are we all just waking up each day in the same place, doing the same thing... To connect with nature you need to listen, and you need to be in the middle of nowhere, with no lights, people, sounds, cars or shops to distract you, just natural beauty to take in.

Personally, I felt I needed to go off the grid, to ‘go bush’. I needed to challenge myself, both mentally and physically. I wanted to sleep under the stars. I wanted less. But I also wanted more; I wanted to learn and develop a sense of belonging, something that would hopefully influence the next stage in my cooking. I wanted to see what this country is all about, and not through someone else’s eyes, but through my own.