Sep 5, 2026 · 1 hr 25 min · 14 segments
David McMahon and I both came to social media through tour guiding, but that’s really just where this conversation begins. We talk about what years of guiding and travelling can teach you about…
you reckon the actual sharing of knowledge and culture, do you reckon that's the most important part of it or the most inspiring part for the people whose countries you travel through?
Because I see guests, you know, when we enter Arnhem Land, I want to word them up for a few things.
But You can't really prepare people for going out and spending that significant time with Aboriginal people.
And you see they come away very different than when they stepped on the country.
See these guests really grow as people learn about Indigenous culture, things that they never knew, realise how much more complex it is.
I think we've got this colonial notion that there's simple hunter-gatherer people that have just lived here forever.
The knowledge systems, the clan boundaries, the kinship system, they come away thinking, wow, At the very least, they understand how little they know and I think that's an important step forward.
Yeah, it's one of the, like, the groups and the people that I've learnt with and lived with and studied with over the years.
Like everything is known, you know, there's not one plant, not one animal, not one aspect of nature or community or like, you know, your own even emotional cycles.
Like everything is, you know, completely understood and recorded and taught about like a thousand times more than, you know, like we've got our education system like in the West, but I think in terms of learning about nature and life, You know, it doesn't compare to the systems that are, you know, still very much practiced.
30, 40,000 years in some parts of Australia, 65, 70,000 years up in the north.
you reckon the actual sharing of knowledge and culture, do you reckon that's the most important part of it or the most inspiring part for the people whose countries you travel through?
Because I see guests, you know, when we enter Arnhem Land, I want to word them up for a few things.
But You can't really prepare people for going out and spending that significant time with Aboriginal people.
And you see they come away very different than when they stepped on the country.
See these guests really grow as people learn about Indigenous culture, things that they never knew, realise how much more complex it is.
I think we've got this colonial notion that there's simple hunter-gatherer people that have just lived here forever.
The knowledge systems, the clan boundaries, the kinship system, they come away thinking, wow, At the very least, they understand how little they know and I think that's an important step forward.
Yeah, it's one of the, like, the groups and the people that I've learnt with and lived with and studied with over the years.
Like everything is known, you know, there's not one plant, not one animal, not one aspect of nature or community or like, you know, your own even emotional cycles.
Like everything is, you know, completely understood and recorded and taught about like a thousand times more than, you know, like we've got our education system like in the West, but I think in terms of learning about nature and life, You know, it doesn't compare to the systems that are, you know, still very much practiced.
30, 40,000 years in some parts of Australia, 65, 70,000 years up in the north.
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