We’re big believers in experiencing the world beyond our four walls. And whether it’s a hike in the wilderness, a music festival or just a really cool experience – we want to showcase what our Lefties have been up to!
Family trip to the Top End and Kakadu – Caz, CEO
My husband Andrew and I recently took our two daughters on a family holiday to the NT. We hadn’t been to NT for about 10 years, and we wanted to take our girls who had never been there to experience it.
We feel like to live in Australia and to not have visited the top end, is a real missed opportunity. We often refer to it as the “real Australia” and as a family we’re a bit obsessed with the land, climate and wildlife. It’s harsh and a little bit dangerous, but intoxicating.
While our daughters are still little, we wanted them to experience this and to learn things about this part of Australia and its history that you’re just not going to learn in the classroom or via a textbook. We took them out of school a week before the end of term to do that.
It was an adventure. We are not a camping family, but we hired a Land Cruiser and camped at different bush camps throughout Kakadu. The wildlife is just incredible. We loved listening to the Whistling Kites in particular. You can’t get sick of seeing crocodiles in the wild and so much incredible flora. Kakadu really shows off Mother Nature at her finest.
We did a lot of cultural classes with Aboriginal people in Kakadu and learned more about how they care for the land. It’s really unbelievable and impressive how connected they are to Country.
We learned about the many uses for paperbark in the bush, how to find water and went on ‘safari’ one day with a local lady named Patsy looking for bush tucker. She taught us how to forage for mussels in the dried creek beds and find tubers in the ground (a small root vegetable). She caught and killed two magpie geese and we helped her prepare these and some barramundi for dinner in a bush oven on her property. It was awe inspiring how she was able to live off the land.
We learned about women’s business and men’s business and how the two never shall meet! We also learned what happens to men in Aboriginal culture who commit crimes and need to be punished. It was pretty intense!
To anyone considering a trip to the region, it’d say do it and take a week to visit Kakadu so you can drive to the different watering holes and falls. Everything worth seeing is at the end of a 4WD track.
Splendour in the Grass (or mud) – Ty, Junior Traffic Manager
I recently attended Splendour in the Grass (SITG) – which is possibly the largest music and arts festival hosted in Australia, located in Byron Bay each winter.
This year was 3 years in the making after years of cancellations due to COVID restrictions.
As someone who is constantly listening to music, I really enjoy attending as much live music and try to do so as possible. This time around, several of my favourite artists were playing which made SITG a must. Little did I know the experience that was about to unfold.
From the start, the festival was unique. The event itself probably should have been cancelled due to heavy rainfall which lashed the region in the lead up to the weekend, causing flash flooding and much of the event area to be extremely muddy. Cars were getting bogged at every turn and much of the actual stage areas were under a foot of mud (which was well covered in the media).
One of the most unexpected things to happen was being told to camp in the carpark after 10 hours of waiting in line to get into the venue, only to be told that we would be unable to get into the festival grounds.
With all that being said, my favourite part was the unanimous decision to make the most out of a really bad situation. After day 1 was cancelled, pretty much everyone in the crowd just decided to have fun regardless. Whether it be the group of guys doing mud slides, or joining the large conga lines that formed as people navigated the foot-deep mud. Everyone just decided to enjoy the fact that the event was a mess and that practically every piece of clothing that was packed, would inevitably be destroyed.
Everyone I ran into was very caring and helped each other out, thanks to a Facebook group that went from a few hundred to almost 20,000 all while we were waiting in line to get into the festival grounds. The group was a very wholesome place to be in and it was quite a bit of fun whenever you would bump into someone who was also in the group. There was a “this is sh*t but let’s have fun” kind of vibe.
It was also my first break for a few years, so it was nice to come back feeling refreshed and ready for work. Of course, after such a fun weekend you just want it to continue, but overall, it was awesome to go and experience such a wild event.
My advice for anyone considering SITG next year would be to bring gumboots – and buy them early because they will sell out quickly across nearby towns. Also just have fun and control what you can –despite the event’s organisation being a bit of a disaster, we all made the best of the situation and ended up probably having as much fun as if it went ahead normally.
