Pete Smissen

Yeah, exactly.

So, he was this escaped convict in the early 1800s, 1803, I think he escaped from Sullivan's Bay, was it?

Yeah, exactly.

And he ended up living there for 35 years with the indigenous people, you know, no Westerners, no white people, just by himself or with them.

And there was one scene in the book that I was reading his account, right, the stories of- the story of William Buckley.

And there's one part of it where he has to cross a river and he's got a fire stick.

And they had these fire sticks that obviously they- They always carried a stick that was smouldering.

Yeah.

So, that they could more easily start another fire.

It's a pain in the ass to start a fire from scratch.

Yeah.

There's this one scene where he- I guess he'd been travelling for a few months and had these sticks with him and then he had to cross a river and he lost them and he was like,

That's not an exact quote.

It is an exact quote.

But it would have been something like, he very much lamented the loss of his fire stick.

And you can just imagine, yes, you can just imagine his Indigenous friends going, dumb white fella, go through the shallow end.

So, it's really, I don't know, it was funny reading that and being like, oh, poor dude.

And he was like, and I had to eat raw shellfish for a few days because it was raining or whatever.

But, yeah, so, anyway, we go up there and every, what, few months and it's kind of cool because it's just off the grid.

It's funny, though, when I was younger, I was always like, God, I wish we had more technology up here.