Episode 138 - Tony Park

Welcome

00:00:17Melissa Erbacher: We're getting in bright and early this week for episode 138. very excited it is the pointy end of the week or the end closest to parkrun because that means all the memories are still vivid and fresh and raw. I'm Mel Erbacher, my co-host is Scotty Trickett. Welcome to episode 138, Scotty.

00:00:42Scott Trickett: Thanks, Mel. Thanks, Mel. What do you say we're getting in early? So we're recording early.

00:00:47Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, I know. We're recording early. It doesn't mean that episode's going to be out early. I wasn't. Let's not jump the gun. Well, the thing is people will know when the episode came out when they start listening to it.

00:00:59Unidentified speaker: Yes.

00:01:00Scott Trickett: Yep.

The Perlustrationannual listener survey

00:01:01Scott Trickett: It's an interesting perlustration question we've asked. When would you prefer the podcast? You know what the winning answer at the moment is? Winning answer. Is that the right word?

00:01:10Melissa Erbacher: The first finisher? Yeah.

00:01:12Scott Trickett: The first to finish, the most popular response so far. Here's a little preview to our perlustration.

00:01:16Melissa Erbacher: So remind me again what the options were. It was like Monday, Wednesday and Friday, right?

00:01:21Scott Trickett: Monday, Wednesday, Friday, which is interesting because we've never released on Monday. But it was kind of like, do you need it as early in the week as possible? Wednesday is that nice soft spot where we're far away from it.

00:01:34Melissa Erbacher: You're just bridging the gap between two parkrun days. Yep.

00:01:38Scott Trickett: On Fridays, which is what we're doing a bit more because we figure we're getting you excited. You're excited you're going to parkrun or you're listening on your way to parkrun. Or we're just being really busy and the episodes are slipping during the week. But the most popular response is Wednesday, Mel. Yep.

00:01:54Melissa Erbacher: Oh, okay. So to facilitate a Wednesday release, we used to have to record on a Monday. Yep. That hasn't really been a viable option for a while now. I hope we haven't asked for something and given people the hope that they could receive something we can't deliver, Scotty.

00:02:14Scott Trickett: Well, it's never going to be a Monday release. Wednesday? Hey, Wednesday, you never know. Let's aim for Wednesday this week. And if you're listening now, you know the answer to this already. But I'm on location, Mel. I've got a view overlooking Pitt Street and some other streets in Sydney.

00:02:33Melissa Erbacher: Well, I'm glad you know what your location is, Scotty. What are you doing in Sydney?

00:02:37Scott Trickett: Well, we're working. We're here taking a couple of meetings, but also getting the opportunity to go for a few runs, which is always nice. I love Sydney. I could see myself living here. Okay. It's a big city. I don't mind a big city. And there's always sort of stuff happening, and it's a really pretty place. It's a pretty place to run, that's for sure.

00:02:58Melissa Erbacher: So have you got any Freedom Runs in yet then?

00:03:00Scott Trickett: Not yet, not yet, but planning it tomorrow. But we're a bit hampered by transport. And you know what we really need in Sydney? We need an Opera House parkrun. I know we've recently got Centennial parkrun, but I'm right in the middle of the city, so I want to run the Opera House parkrun.

00:03:18Melissa Erbacher: And the Botanical Gardens near there and all that.

00:03:22Scott Trickett: And it makes sense. It makes sense. There's a path all the way around there.

00:03:25Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, there's also a lot of tourists all the way around there.

00:03:29Scott Trickett: They can join in. Okay. That's a good thing. So all the tourists, when you're in town, you just have to go to the Opera House parkrun.

00:03:36Melissa Erbacher: Oh, I'm sure it would be huge.

00:03:38Scott Trickett: Yeah.

00:03:39Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

00:03:40Scott Trickett: Huge. But it's not at the moment. Hey, but you're not in Sydney.

00:03:43Melissa Erbacher: I'm not.

00:03:44Scott Trickett: You're on the Sunshine Coast.

00:03:45Melissa Erbacher: Yes, I'm on location in my house.

00:03:48Scott Trickett: I really hope your parkrun day was much better than last week. Have you recovered from the Geeveston experience?

00:03:55Melissa Erbacher: I think I have. I think I've made my peace with it and You know, it's not Tasmania's fault. It's not the – well, maybe it is the parkrun weather fairy's fault. But, you know, these things happen. And it has been pointed out to me that there are other people who have had worse experiences. They've planned flights to the U.S. and trips based around different locations to be somewhere on a Saturday. And cyclones have come in, or hurricanes as I like to call them over there, and put paid to that idea. So, yeah. Yes, Team Taylor have trumped me and my Hobart experience and it helps to put things in perspective when people remind you of their own parkrun adventures.

00:04:37Scott Trickett: So it was all happy days on Saturday for you again? You went to Victory Heights Trail?

00:04:41Melissa Erbacher: The thing is, do you not pay attention to our Instagram account?

00:04:46Scott Trickett: Somebody said something about something.

00:04:48Melissa Erbacher: There may have been a tow truck picture loading my car onto it for, yeah, they're There was a bit of a parkrun misadventure last weekend. To be honest, I'm a little bit worried about this coming weekend because three weeks ago, I just had a regular parkrun day. Nothing went wrong. Everything was normal. Everything was fine. The last two weeks in a row, and I would venture so far as to say last week was worse than the week before. I did make it to parkrun. I did get my barcode scanned. However, it was all pretty touch and go there for a little while. So Victory Heights Trail parkrun, it was their launch. It's about a 50-minute drive, just under an hour drive from where we live to get there, it's in sort of a suburb of Gympie and about 20 kilometres out of Gympie on the highway. We were doing 110 kilometres an hour. And in the median strip, there was a kangaroo and this kangaroo was eating grass. And then, so I'm in the left lane driving. There's no other vehicles ahead of me on the road. There was one about maybe 300 metres behind me, also in the left lane, and I just saw this kangaroo and he was eating grass and then he stood up and then he turned around and in slow motion he decided, I'm going to get out of the median strip and I'm going to jump across the road. So I broke, put the brakes on. I didn't slam my feet on the brake. There was no whiplash or anything like that happening there. The poor blighter connected with my vehicle right in the centre of the car. So we hit him square on or her. I don't know. And it just sort of everything, like I said, it was slow motion. Everything was really, really still. We barely felt the impact really. But then it was like, well, where's the kangaroo? And then a few seconds later, it was like, and it was under the car and then off to the side. So, yeah, it was a really crap day for that kangaroo.

00:07:16Scott Trickett: Well, that's actually a little bit sad. Did the kangaroo –

00:07:21Melissa Erbacher: survive Scotty I don't I I highly I highly doubt it okay so we were in 110 kilometre an hour zone there was no you know how some sections of the highway they've got those like wider side areas that you can pull off on well there were none of those so there was it was no there was no safe spot to pull over and go back and check to see if it was a female or if it had a joey or if indeed it sort of got up and hopped off. All I saw on my windscreen, my rear view was that it came out the side of the car after it went under and I saw a leg flailing in the air on the side of the road. And whether or not that's what happens when they try to get up or if I had just completely broken the poor thing, I don't know. What I do know is that for the next 15 minutes, I bawled my eyes out.

00:08:18Scott Trickett: That is a bit sad. Yep.

00:08:21Melissa Erbacher: And so that was about 6.30 that we hit it. The car seemed okay. There was a light on the thing, you know, where your radiator temperature gauge is, the H that stands for hot, I assume. It was red. And I said to Adam, I'm pretty sure that's not usually red. The needle was still in the middle, so the car wasn't overheated or anything, but the light was on. I said, I'm pretty sure that's not normally red. But from what we could see in the car, like, you couldn't see any damage. The bonnet was fine. So, yeah. But about four, three or four kilometres from parkrun, we had slowed down because we were in Gympie. And then all of a sudden the car started beeping. The temperature gauge was up and there was steam and whatever smoke coming out from underneath the engine. So we had to pull over. And the car was dead. So we got out and completely lost the bumper and all the grill was pushed in. I think the radiator's been toasted. Car wasn't going anywhere. Fortunately, my brother and sister-in-law and their kids, Team Sando, were on their way up from Brisbane to the launch as well. We knew they were behind us because they'd left a bit later. And so we gave them a call and, you know, explained we'd been hit by a – well, we had hit a roo. We hadn't been hit by one. And, yeah, so they didn't have room in their car for all of us and certainly not for the car seat. But Nicholas said, well, you know, get the car seat out of the car and get ready and I'll go drop, um, shell and the kids off and I'll come back and I'll get you. So we did get to parkrun in time. And, um, fortunately we got to go and have as normal of a parkrun event as you can after you've just sort of, you know, made an animal deceased and, um, Yeah.

00:10:25Scott Trickett: We don't know that, Mel. We don't know. We don't know. She, he could have just had a little bruise and jumped off. Let's not dwell on that. And I think – what are you going to do next or this parkrun Day? I reckon maybe have it all.

00:10:42Melissa Erbacher: I'm down to volunteer at Nambour. So it's my NENDY. It's the closest possible event. It's – I'm volunteering, which is different than running, which is what I've been doing the last two weeks. So maybe the curse isn't on for volunteers. I don't know. All I do know is bad things happen in threes and I am superstitious. in that kind of thing. So, yeah, I'm a bit worried. But, hey, misadventure aside, the launch was amazing. You know, this event, 21 months in the making, just was absolutely brilliant. I had Wes in the carrier because it's not pram-friendly. He started out on the front, but after our first couple of kilometres, I moved him onto my back, and then he fell asleep, a little bugger, became a dead floppy weight instead of just a wiggly little other kind of weight and yeah, walked it with my sister-in-law who was very kind enough to slow down for me with my extra 13 kilos of resistance. Yeah, and so the event itself was great. I think everything went off without a hitch. Jodie should be very proud of himself and the volunteers were amazing. Like even, do you ever find you go someplace and You're an experienced parkrunner. We all know who you are. Like the listeners of the pod know who you are, but you don't sort of go and showboat it when you go places. And the Tail Walker had no idea that I work for parkrun or that I've been in the parkrun world for six years. And she was like, oh, don't worry. There's no pressure. Nobody gets left behind. She was amazing. She was just exactly the right amount of supportive and not, you know, had a sense of humour about things. Like when we stopped to change him around from front to back, she's like, oh, look, you take as long as you like. I'd be quite happy to pull up and have a picnic if, you know, if I'd bought food, I should have bought food. And And, you know, she just had a good sense of humour and was just happy to be out there. And, yeah, that's, you know, you need volunteers like that. That was an amazing experience. And, you know, the rest of it as well, when people found out afterwards that our car was a bit toast, there were other parkrun adventurers from Brisbane area and some from the Sunshine Coast who offered us lifts, which was amazing because our car had to be towed from Gympie and Obviously, the tow truck driver couldn't fit two of us and a toddler in a car seat so it was nice on the one hand we'd had a bit of a experience um in the morning but it was just so much good in the world afterwards with everybody you know we had people offering um to take us shopping if we were going to have trouble without not having our car you know we can can they take us shopping and things like that which is just the sweetest the parkrun community is awesome and it's just nice to know as well that the general wider community there are strangers out there that are willing to help so that's the positive that's the positive that's nice that's a nice reminder you got a nice reminder from the Tail Walker volunteer and a nice reminder just from the general parkrun community that they are awesome yeah so so there's always positives Mel we always try and look for yes and fingers crossed it's just a quiet uneventful weekend this weekend

00:14:07Scott Trickett: I don't know if I can top that, so I'm not even going to try. I had a quick visit to Albert Park for those that are still interested, and it was a lovely morning. Melbourne's turning it on weather-wise at the moment. And one thing I did do, I was down to volunteer at home at Westerfolds with Yvonne and Kasia, and I had a late-minute change of plans, and I headed to Albert Park. And I was separated from my girls. And I was separated from volunteering at Westerfolds, which I was kind of looking forward to. And I felt like I let the team down because I had to pull off the roster at the last minute. And as a current Event Director, I know that that's a crap thing to do just because then you've got to scramble to find a replacement, which they did easily. But the positive side of all that, Mel, is that I had an awesome morning at Albert Park because, again, I was reminded, over the community because you know what they did? Joanne Watkins, who is a regular listener to the podcast, has her own podcast, Call Me Watkins, if you love reading books and stuff like that. Nice tie into our guest coming up. Put that into your search engine, Call Me Watkins. She pointed me out. So she said, here's Scott. He's doing this thing. He also hosts the podcast. And she refers to all her tourists as adventurers. So they're really on brand. Yeah. Are we brand?

00:15:23Melissa Erbacher: Is that what we are? I think we're common.

00:15:27Scott Trickett: We are brand, but you know what it does? So when I get pointed out, like secretly I kind of like it because then people come up. No, no, no, no. I don't like that they point me out. No, no, no, no, no, no. No, let me rephrase that. I secretly like it that as a result of being pointed out, people come up and introduce themselves and just say, hi. We just want to say hi. We listen to the podcast. We love it. And it's not people that I know. So that happened to us.

00:15:52Melissa Erbacher: Oh, that is nice.

00:15:55Scott Trickett: It is nice because, oh, you know, I was walking the course and I was doing some other stuff. So I wasn't really that approachable. Like I wasn't seeking, standing around lonely looking for a conversation. But that's always nice.

00:16:08Melissa Erbacher: Or wearing a I'm a parkrun adventurer, ask me how T-shirt. Yes.

00:16:12Scott Trickett: Yes. So again, another nice morning and it's pushing me up on what I did think about at the end of it driving home is that this is good for my P-index because...

00:16:25Melissa Erbacher: Wait, sorry, what?

00:16:26Scott Trickett: My P-index. Don't tell me you don't know about the P-index, Mel.

00:16:30Melissa Erbacher: It sounds rude or dirty. I know I'm... Have we had a conversation about a P-index?

00:16:38Scott Trickett: We haven't, but it's part of the running challenges.

00:16:40Melissa Erbacher: What's the P... Oh, okay.

00:16:42Scott Trickett: Okay.

00:16:43Melissa Erbacher: Enlighten me.

00:16:44Scott Trickett: My P-index currently is seven, which means that I have done – what does it mean? Now, the P-index is a complete mystery to me as we've just tried to discover what it is. But I think it's linked to how many times you go back to a parkrun. So it's – yeah, I'm not even going to try and explain it because, honestly, I don't really understand it. But I think this helps.

00:17:10Melissa Erbacher: Okay. So my P-index –

00:17:13Scott Trickett: Is that clear? That's perfectly clear. We don't need to discuss this anymore.

00:17:15Melissa Erbacher: That's pretty terrible, Scotty. My P index is three. And according to running challenges, it's like doing this many parkruns this many times. And so I have done three different events at least three times. But then there's like one, two, three, four, five, six. There are six other events that I've done two times. So I guess if I go do one of those… three times then does that mean my p index is still three or does it make it four because I've done four events three times I have no idea who is this p person who's made up this index and um why do they not have a better description to make it clearer what it is I know I know the um the running challenge is getting a lot of love in the parkrun community we need to speak to these people yeah we should get them on the pod before anyone else does so Danny Nicola Just hold your horses, all right? We call dibs.

00:18:08Scott Trickett: Yes, we want to speak to them first, and we'll clear up the mystery of the P index, but I think mine improved. Okay.

00:18:14Melissa Erbacher: Well, well done you for getting a little bit further on something that you don't understand.

00:18:22Scott Trickett: I'm on seven, you're on three. That's got to be a good thing.

00:18:24Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, I'm assuming it's not like a par on a golf course, and the higher the number, the better it is for you. So, yeah, nice work, everybody.

Interview Tony Park — Best-selling Australian author; Hazyview parkrunner (South Africa) and Willoughby…

00:18:41Melissa Erbacher: last weekend was the seventh anniversary of parkrun in South Africa and to celebrate we thought we might have a bit of a chat to somebody whose home parkrun is at Hazyview in sa um He's a bit of a big deal, really, actually. He's an author, an Aussie author, who has written 16 novels and co-written several autobiographies and memoirs. And his new book, Scent of Fear, will be available as an e-book worldwide and in print in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa from the 28th of November this year. Tony Park, welcome to the parkrun adventurers podcast.

00:19:22Tony Park: Hi, Mel. Hi, Scotty. Thanks for having me on.

00:19:25Melissa Erbacher: Now, we don't know too many big time authors who are also parkrunners. You're the first to be a guest on the parkrun adventurers, so we're very excited to have you. You certainly bring something different to the kind of conversations that we usually had. We had to read books and things like that to prepare ourselves to have a chat with you, which was nice for a change. Let's start with how your parkrun journey started. Where did you first hear about parkrun and how did you get involved?

00:19:55Tony Park: Yeah, it's funny because my wife, Nicola, and I, we are Australians, but we live this kind of weird life where we spend half of every year in Australia and we're based in Sydney and half of every year in Africa and in South Africa in particular. We have a house in South Africa and that's where I write my books and all my novels are set in southern Africa. And we were talking to some friends in South Africa and they mentioned this thing called parkrun to us, which we hadn't actually heard of. And then we just, you know, did what a lot of people do. We got online and had a look and found out that there was actually one near us in South Africa. Little did we know there'd be one just around the corner from where we live in Sydney. Will it be happening for quite some time? And we went to the Hazyview parkrun in South Africa. It was one of their first runs, actually. And I just thought this is a really good way for us to get some exercise when we're away, when we're in South Africa, where, you know, it can be difficult to find space and time to exercise. And the thing I learned very quickly, and I know you guys across this, is the parkrun is particularly popular in South Africa. Like it's massive over there. And we found that it was a great way to sort of connect with people in our community because we live in the bush over there. We're a little bit away, about 40 k's away from our local town. So as well as being a good outlet for fitness, it was a really good social activity for us as well.

00:21:20Scott Trickett: So are you coming from a running background, Tony, or do you just want to get involved with the local community as such?

00:21:28Tony Park: Yeah, I never sort of been a part of a running club or anything, but it's funny, I was always very bad at sport at school. There was nothing when I was growing up that I was particularly good at. I'm six foot six, two metres tall, but I'm no good at basketball. I was too slow and I had a habit of falling over too much to be any good at rugby league or anything else that we were playing in soccer. Um, but, uh, I found that, uh, as I got older, I needed to do something to, to stay fit and to get fit. And I was in the army reserve for about 34 years and fitness is a bit of a part of military life. And I was never particularly fit, uh, but I did the army parachute course, uh, when I was about 25 and I had to stop coasting and I had to be able to run 5k's in under 25 minutes to pass that parachute course and to be honest in my time in the army for sort of four or five years before that I used to struggle to pass the basic fitness course but having a goal helped and I found that after I started running to train and pass the parachute course that I actually enjoyed running it was something I could do by myself because I wasn't really into team sports and And then, you know, as I got older, I think like a lot of us, particularly as I sort of hit sort of 40 and a little bit later, I found that, you know, I could no longer eat what I wanted to and drink what I wanted to and think that I could still fit into the same clothes. So I just really like running. And I find as a writer, it also gives you time to think, you know, just be out there by yourself and just empty your head a little bit. So running is a good pastime for me. It keeps me fit and I think it keeps me motivated. I think it helps with the writing a bit as well.

00:23:09Melissa Erbacher: 25 minutes is not a slow pace for a 5k. So as part of the parachute course, is that not all just jumping out of planes and learning how to pull ripcords and things like that?

00:23:21Tony Park: Yeah, I mean, the Army has an incredible knack of turning the funnest things into something quite arduous and something quite uncomfortable. A parachuting, which should be this kind of crazy, mad, fun, adrenaline sport, is actually this really regimented, you know, justifiably serious activity in the Army. One thing this is very big on is safety and professionalism. And they require a basic level of physical fitness to get onto that course, which is at least as good as what they expect in the rest of the army, but a little bit tougher. So we had to do 5Ks in under 25 minutes, had to do seven chin-ups, which doesn't sound like a lot, but when you're two metres tall with skinny T-Rex arms.

00:24:04Melissa Erbacher: I can't take one. It sounds like a lot to me.

00:24:08Tony Park: Yeah, and 50 push-ups and stuff. So they just want to make sure that you're nice and fit to undertake what in the army is actually quite an arduous course. And, yeah, my running had never been up to scratch, but I found it was a good excuse for me to kind of get into the swing and get going. And I've kind of carried on that interest in running ever since.

00:24:28Scott Trickett: Tony, you mentioned that you split your time between South Africa and Australia, and I've had a look where Hazyview is, and you said you're in the bush. What is running in South Africa in the bush like compared to running on the streets back at North Sydney?

00:24:45Tony Park: Yeah, well, it's a good question, Scotty, because one of the things we can't do where we live in South Africa is run. So just to put you in the picture, and this is why parkrun was such a great fit for my wife and I, where Nicola and I live, we actually live in a house inside a little game reserve in the bush. And that game reserve joins on to the much larger Kruger National Park in the northeastern part of South Africa. So it's animal country. We have giraffe and zebra and wildebeest wandering around our house every day. We also have, which is interesting, we've got leopards that live around us and occasionally we get the odd lion crosses the river in from the national park next to us. So for a variety of safety reasons, we're not allowed to run around where we live. We can walk during the day, but not at night. And so your opportunities for exercise are quite limited. So the area is called the low veld. I mean, any South Africans listening or living in Australia would be very familiar with it, but it's bushy country. So you can't see necessarily what's around the next corner. And it could be a dangerous animal. It could be buffalo. It could be elephant or it could be lion or leopard. And a lot of people that live in that area work in the kind of the safari tourism related industry. And they're in kind of the same boat as us where, because we can't run around where we live, if we can go to town, like to Hazyview. Hazyview is a nice little town that kind of services the national park and the local safari industry and the local tourism industry. It has a number of nice B&Bs and hotels there. And the run itself is done in a place called the Sabi River Sun, which is a kind of a hotel, golf course, timeshare, holiday complex with lovely big grounds. And even though that's not... in the bush per se by the nature of where we live there is a lot of wildlife just kind of hanging around even outside of the national park so Hazyview is quite a built-up little town but the sabi river runs through it and there's quite a lot of hippos in the sabi river even outside the national park and crocs And so our running course on the Sabi River Sun Golf Estate has numerous signs up saying, beware of hippos, crocodiles and bilharzia. And bilharzia, for your listeners, is a particularly nasty virus that lives in freshwater dams and, you know, golf course water features and things. So you've got to just sort of keep one eye open while you're running.

00:27:21Melissa Erbacher: I imagine they have a very colourful risk assessment. How do they mitigate the risks? Like I know hippopotamuses kill a lot of people every year. I'm assuming that's mostly in the water. Can they run like on land? Would that be, I mean, I'm sure it would be scary because they're massive, but does that actually happen?

00:27:39Tony Park: Yeah. It's interesting you mentioned about risk management and stuff and risk mitigation because a lot of things we take for granted in South Africa, people would absolutely have a pink fit about over No problem. With a lot of things like going on safari on a holiday and living in the area, you very quickly kind of develop the healthy respect for wildlife and the natural environment. And you know there's some things you don't do. The thing with hippos is hippos are most active at night time. So during the day they live in the water. And on the golf course they live in like the water features during the day. And they just kind of, you know, bob about doing the hippo thing in the water. And as dusk comes, hippos, their normal pattern is to then leave the water and they graze, they eat grass during the evening. So basically from dusk to dawn, the hippos and movie rain are active. And funnily enough, in Hazyview, there are signs around town saying beware of hippos. And so if you're driving at night time, coming home from a restaurant or a pub or something, you've got to keep an eye out because there might be a hippo crossing the road. So where the danger comes in is, yes, they are very fast male, and what you don't want to do is get between a hippo and the water because if a hippo gets frightened, its natural instinct is to run. But if you are between it and the water, which is its kind of happy place, its place of sanctuary, they will run over the top of you and quite possibly chomp you and kill you.

00:29:03Richard: So, yeah, they are dangerous animals.

00:29:05Tony Park: But where we run on a Saturday morning, you would have very low chances of seeing a hippo out of the water. And I dare say if we did see any hippos out of the water during parkrun, we would be making a very serious detour around that.

00:29:20Scott Trickett: So how's that all working out for you, Tony? Are you accepted into the part of the community or are you the Aussie guy who visits for six months of the year or do they consider you a local when you run at home?

00:29:30Tony Park: Yeah, it's... It's been really interesting, you know, because the books are all published in South Africa and a lot of them are set in that area where we live because what I tend to do with the books is I tend to write them wherever I happen to be and I do spend a lot of time in that Lowveld Hazyview area near where we live. So a lot of our neighbours and friends have read the books and they kind of identify with the locations in there and that's helped us kind of be welcomed into the local area, uh local community so um yeah we we I guess we're kind of pretty well known in in the area they're probably more well known than in Australia um and and I find people out there are really incredibly welcoming and friendly you know um it it is um what's a different country uh you know it is a country town you know and and I think uh once you once you kind of cross that imaginary line you know in a small community where people might say hey who are these strangers that have come to live here and then you're kind of very quickly drawn in and accepted but having said that because of the safari industry and the popularity of the safari industry in South Africa it is quite a diverse community so You know, where we live, it's a place called Sabi Park, this little game reserve with houses and Hazyview itself. There are people there from Germany, Holland, other Aussies, Kiwis, pretty well everywhere you can think of because there's a lot of people like us uh went through what Nicola and I did where we went on what was supposed to be a holiday or like a once-in-a-lifetime holiday 23 years ago uh and we got hooked you know there's something about Africa whether it's the wildlife or the landscape or the people or whatever or the excitement or the the safari experience that we just got hooked and wanted to go back and spend more time there and so you you get a it's a it's kind of a common phenomena you get people who come on holiday and decide they want to live there out in the bush so It's a welcoming, diverse community. And parkrun is a really important part of that because it is a means of bringing people together from outlying area. You know, we have people that live on farms, you know, quite away from Hazyview who come in for the parkrun as well too, and people from town and people from the safari industry. So it's a really good mix of people, yeah.

00:31:53Melissa Erbacher: Tony, you mentioned that all your novels are set in South Africa, and I've had an opportunity to read a couple of them in recent times, and it definitely paints a picture. Obviously, the fact that you've had such an opportunity to live there and really experience the places has given you the chance to put that into words so eloquently so that we can picture what's going on. Your new book, Scent of Fear, is actually also set in South Africa. But it also has another link to parkrun because I understand some of your characters, it's not out yet so I haven't read it, but some of your characters go to parkrun for a training run.

00:32:38Tony Park: Yeah, and thanks for having a look at the books. I really appreciate that. Yeah, so what happens is, like I said, I kind of write on location and I draw my inspiration from everything around me, whether that's the animals and the landscape and the people, but also like what happens. And so it just seemed to me that parkrun is part of society in South Africa. Like nobody doesn't know what parkrun is in South Africa. Everybody knows that. And so I thought, well, if I put that in a novel, people will kind of relate to it and it will resonate with some people. So I'd actually been on a run and I thought, you know, how can I work this into the story? And then I thought, well, I know that friends of mine that work in the safari industry and work in things like anti-poaching are have the same issues that I have in that they can't really exercise and run. So some of the guides and the rangers and things go to parkrun as well. So Scent of Fear is about dogs. It's anti-poaching tracker and sniffer dogs are becoming a really, really valuable weapon in the fight against poaching in Africa. And in South Africa, the big problem at the moment is rhino poaching. Rhinos are killed for their horns that are used as status symbols in Southeast Asia. Elephants are killed for their ivory. And poaching extends into many other areas. And it's a war that's being fought in the bush. And so you have these anti-poaching forces that are engaged trying to protect wildlife and stuff. The book is about an anti-poaching dog team And a couple of members of the team go on a parkrun to get their weekly exercise and as part of their training. And I thought, how can I work this in the book? Because there's a scene where there's a rookie dog handler, a lady by the name of Tumi, who has just joined the team, an African lady. And there's a guy called Sean, who is a senior dog handler, and he's helping her train her as a dog handler, and making sure her fitness is up to scratch because working in the African bush, as you can imagine, chasing poachers and trying to catch armed bad guys is also very physically strenuous and physically demanding activity. And the dog handlers who I spoke to while researching the book said they have to be fit because if your dog catches the scent of an armed rhino poacher who could have an automatic weapon, that dog's going to chase that poacher and you've got to be able to keep up with your dog. So in the parkrun scene in Hazyview, I've got these two people going for a run and then what happens is the senior handler then like pretends to be a dog and he has a leash and he gives the other end of the leash to the trainee handler and it says, right, we're going to run the course a second time and I'm going to drag you around like I'm your dog and you've got to keep up with me. So that's where I kind of tried to work the training and a bit of fun into this scene with people doing the parkrun, you know, doing two circuits in the parkrun as part of their training. So I thought it would hopefully kind of show the arduous nature of the training that these people go through. And also for like ordinary people like me that do the parkrun, they'll be able to say, oh, yeah, there's our parkrun. I've been there and I've done that.

00:35:51Scott Trickett: Love it. parkrun's seeping into all forms of life. It's a great promotion. I've got to be honest with you, Tony. I wouldn't call myself a prolific reader. And if I do, it's probably a sports book or it's an autobiography about a sportsman. But Mel got me onto your book, The Cull, and I've been enjoying it. Like it's an exciting sort of an action. I'm picturing myself like it's going to be made into an action movie one or something like that. So is that your dream or, you know?

00:36:19Tony Park: Yeah, I'd love that, you know. I mean, I think writing's a funny thing. I write, you know, primarily for myself, I have to say. I enjoy the process. It's just like a great outlet for me. And I kind of – I relate it to running, you know. Like I don't do parkrun because I think I'm going to be first, you know. I am the second fastest 50 to 54-year-old in Hazyview, but never the first and probably never will be. But I think writing is one of those things where you have to do it because you love it. And if you can give people entertainment and joy along the way, I think that's a great thing. And, yeah, the books are kind of there, as you would have seen. There's a bit of action, adventure, a bit of romance as well. They're kind of for men, uh men and women but if they could be made into uh into a movie uh I think that'd be great interestingly um just with Scent of Fear there's one other thing I thought of because as well as getting inspiration from uh the local area where I am in South Africa one of the things that um that did kind of give me an idea for that scene on the parkrun uh where the guy like the girl do the run tethered you know with this leash where he's like joking pretending to be the dog and she's trying to keep up with him is um on a serious note something I saw that was really inspiring on our local run of Willoughby in Sydney we have um volunteers there from the achilles foundation and if you know about them they help people with disabilities go on runs And there's a blind guy that does the run at Willoughby sometimes and he has an Achilles volunteer who runs with him. And they're linked together by this sort of rubber ring that they both hold on to. And it's great to see them there. It's like really inspirational. And that sort of gave me a bit of an idea for two people partnering, like running the run together as part of their training. So that was kind of another link to parkrun, but actually a link to the Australian side of things.

00:38:20Melissa Erbacher: It's very cool. The Achilles guys do an amazing job. Do you have anything like that in South Africa?

00:38:26Tony Park: Not that I've seen, but I think it would go down really well. You know, I think one of the things we perhaps take for granted in Australia is, you know, we can always do more, but I think we are a very inclusive society in Australia. I think, you know, we sort of rightly go out of our way through government, various bodies and charitable organisations to make sure that, you know, everybody gets a fair go and everybody's included. A lot of African countries... You find that there aren't sometimes the same resources for people with disabilities. You know, things like mental health don't get the same levels of funding and importance as they do in Australia. And I would like to see something like that available in South Africa. So what I want to do when I go back, and it's a really good reminder, thank you for asking the question, is to mention to our parkrun people over there if there's some way that we could start doing something like that because I'm sure there's some people in our community in South Africa who would probably like to get out there and have a go and and feel like they can't for whatever reason but it's um I think that's one of the strengths of parkrun you know just how inclusive it is You know, people with disabilities and then you've got, you know, people with their kids and their dogs and people of all ages. I think it's a great thing that brings people together, which is so important. That's important wherever you live, whatever community you live in.

00:39:47Melissa Erbacher: Absolutely. Now, at the risk of making it a bit of a spoiler alert, can you tell us whether or not your characters remember their barcodes?

00:40:02Tony Park: I always have to try and remember mine. I've probably done good work for printing, small printing shops and laminating shops around the world because I'm always forgetting mine and having to at the last minute find the email on my phone. I did one in London. My wife was overseas working in the UK a few weeks ago and I went over to do a book talk over there because the books are sold in the UK as well. And I found myself in London and I wanted to do the Finsbury parkrun. And I was actually out having a beer the night before and I thought, oh, my goodness, I don't have my barcode. And I thought, what am I going to do? And so I got my phone and I went into this funny little kind of internet cafe printing shop and emailed them my barcode off my phone and said, can you please print this out for me and laminate it for me?

00:40:51Melissa Erbacher: And they laminated it as well.

00:40:53Tony Park: He probably is well on the spot to handle that.

00:40:55Melissa Erbacher: That's excellent service. How did you find the parkrun in the UK versus, you know, your normal experiences at Hazyview or even, you know, your experiences here in Australia?

00:41:07Tony Park: Well, let me tell you, I'm not the second fastest 50 to 54-year-old in the UK. I'm about, at Finsbury Park, I was about the 30th, I think, because it was bigger. You know, being in the heart of London, it was like a really big run. And so there was like 300 or 400 people there or something. So in Hazyview, yeah, our numbers are growing in Hazyview. You probably might have seen the latest stats, but, you know, we're getting bigger there. But we are like a fairly small group, rural community um but I know that uh like in johannesburg for example there are hundreds and hundreds of people in many many runs there so I found um going to London to Finsbury Park was like hey this is like the big time and the big smoke here but it was uh yeah it was really nice just that change of pace and I know a lot of people are kind of into the parkrun tourism thing and I think it's fantastic because uh one thing that that I I I liked, you know, when travelling is I used to always like going for a run when I was travelling and if I'm in a different city. But, you know, sometimes you don't know where to go and you don't know how safe it is or where you should go or whatever. And that's one of the brilliant things about parkrun is you just get online and say, where's my nearest parkrun? And you know that whatever city you're in, wherever you are in the world, there's going to be a safe, secure place to go for a run with a bunch of like-minded people. And I was kind of half lost trying to find my way there to Finsbury Park because Finsbury Park is this massive park in the middle of London. And I'm like, which entrance do I go in? And then you just look around and you see this kind of conga line of people in active wear and you think, okay, that's where I'm going to go. And everyone's like, oh, you're here from parkrun, where are you from and everything. I just love it.

00:42:46Scott Trickett: Well, on that, Tony, have you got a wish list of places you'd like to parkrun at?

00:42:51Tony Park: Yeah, definitely, yeah. I haven't really done much in the United States, but my books are published there and I'm really keen to get to New York sometimes. They have a big Thriller Writers Festival every year around July, so I'm keen to get there professionally and I think it would be a really cool place to do a parkrun in there. I'm probably going to be doing a run in... in Leeds in the UK this weekend because I'll be back in the UK this weekend. But I think my view is that wherever you are, it's a good chance to just get out and not only exercise but to have a look around. And you know the other thing I like about parkrun is that encouragement for people to get there by walking or running or uh or you know not take your car or get public transport so the the really cool thing was uh when I went to Finsbury Park in London is that I got an uber there and because I was running late um but when I walked home I actually took a stroll home it was about back to where I was staying in London it was about And it was through a part of London I'd never been before. So like you can say, I want to go do this run in this particular city, but you're in fact going to see probably parts of that city and parts of that country that you wouldn't see otherwise. There's a couple of runs around where we live in South Africa that I also want to do. There's a run at a town called Hoedspruit, which is about 150km north of where I live. And their parkrun is on the property of a place called the Thirsty Giraffe, which is also a pub. So I'm kind of looking forward to doing that one sometime as well.

00:44:36Melissa Erbacher: Well, if you're going to be in Leeds this weekend and you haven't chosen a parkrun yet, our... UK counterparts, Nicola and Danny, they do a podcast over there. Nicola's home parkrun is a parkrun called Woodhouse Moor, and I'm not sure if she's going to be there this weekend, but I hear it's a wonderful parkrun, very warm and welcoming and friendly, so you should pop by that one.

00:45:01Scott Trickett: I'm curious about the life of an author. So here you are describing you get to jet set all around the world. You get to spend half your life in Africa and half your life here in Australia. What does the life of an author actually look like? Do you have a lot of downtime? Are you like crazy busy? Are you always thinking up new ideas? Like it sounds like a pretty good life to me.

00:45:19Tony Park: Yeah, it's an interesting sort of interesting question, Scotty, just to look at it because there's a couple of cliches, but they're probably true, um people say it's a lonely life and and it is in one respect because so much of your time not just the writing time but the the time you spend thinking about what you're going to write it's very internalized you know and and it's good to have quiet time you don't necessarily have to be by yourself but if you ask my wife like she's used to it she just I just kind of shut myself down for large parts of the day when I'm just thinking or I'm kind of monosyllabic if she asks me a question or something. So you turn into yourself. As I said before, I think it's like anything, you've got to love doing it. You don't do it because you think you're going to get published or make a lot of money one day. I think you do it because you love it, and that's why I run, because I love it, not because I'm going to win an income, record times I'm never going to do that so I think I'm lucky to live a life like this where I'm kind of living my dream but it's a job as well too so like any job you know you've got to work at it and the thing with writing the trick I find is you've You've got to chip away at it. I mean, there's about 120,000 words in one of those books that I write, and it takes me about sort of six months to do a first draft. And to do that, because I do a book every year, I've got to do a certain amount of work each day. So you need a little bit of self-discipline. You've got to say, I've got a target every day and I have to meet that target. And once I've done that, I can knock off, but I can't knock off until I've done that. So, yeah, life of an author, you spend a fair bit of time thinking, emptying your head. You've got to write every day if you can or five or six days a week if you can to keep the momentum up. And so you spend all of this time kind of internalised and just in your own little world. But then when a book comes out, you've got to switch to a different mode. And I'll be travelling around Australia constantly, through several states talking about Scent of Fear, the parkrun book, when it comes out. And so I've got a number of speaking engagements over the course of three weeks from late November through to December where I've got to be out there every day talking to people, like almost nonstop. And I enjoy that because, I mean, as you can hear, I am a talker and I'm quite gregarious. So it's like you have these two incredibly contrasting parts of your life as an author. You're either locked away by yourself not talking to anyone or you're out there talking to the world. So that's kind of, it's kind of fun, you know, it's kind of interesting. And I travel and I try to do runs wherever I travel. And, you know, to kind of bring it back to the parkrun thing, the life of an author is very sedentary. I've had back problems. I had a really bad back, I had a bulging disc, which took me out of running for a few months. And a lot of that was traced back to this life of mine for the last 20 years or so, the last 15, 16 years, where I've spent too much time sitting, you know, And I've got bad posture. And so writers tend to get bad backs. It's kind of a common thing. And that highlights the need to exercise. And I guess you can say that for any workplace. I guess all of us increasingly, not all of us, but many of us work in industries that are, you know, these days increasingly dependent on technology. So we're not out walking as much as we used to be or running or exercising and doing physical work. And this is where I think if I give advice to writers, I say write every day, you know, if you can, do a little bit every day and get out and do some exercise and some activity to stimulate your mind and just to keep your body moving because it's like an occupational hazard of the life of a writer is to spend too much time sitting on your bum.

00:49:04Melissa Erbacher: Yeah. I think that's an occupational hazard for a lot of occupations. Tony, you don't write in, let's say, a traditional sense the way many writers do. You know, they create a plot and then they sort of structure everything and then they write afterwards. You have a bit more of a chronological writing experience, if that's a good way to describe it. You just sort of write as you travel around and it follows the places that you go and things like that. All your books are very tense. How do you keep... Like, page-turner is... a cliche, but it definitely applies to your work because it's very difficult to go to bed early when it's just like, oh, just get to the end of this chapter. And then the next one's like, oh, damn it. I just have to read that one now because what's just happened here. And, you know, it's very tense. I've been tense a lot recently and I blame you. But

00:50:06Tony Park: I'm so excited. That's the nicest thing you could say to me.

00:50:09Melissa Erbacher: But how do you keep that up? Because obviously, you know, you're travelling around a little bit more at a leisurely pace. Your wife's there. She's obviously not, you know, writing with you. So she's having a different kind of holiday experience or travel experience, as it were. But how do you, yeah, keep up that level of like thrill, as it were?

00:50:31Tony Park: No, I think that's a really good question. So you touch on a couple of things. Yeah, the way I write, probably more of the authors I know write that way than most of the textbooks tell you where you have it all mapped out before you start. I can't do that. I'm incapable of thinking up an entire story before I start writing. So I do make it up as I go along. And I do that for a couple of reasons. One, because it's the only way I can write. And two, it just gives me a chance to kind of, work in wherever I happen to be at the time into the story, whether I'm going on parkrun or I'm going on safari or something like that. But one of the things I find is because I enjoy the process of writing, I love it, but I have to keep myself interested and I have to keep myself motivated to do this. This is my job and it's something I want to do for as long as I live, you know, and I have to keep myself motivated engaged and surprised, I think. So I work on the basis that if I don't know what's going to happen next in this story, then hopefully the person reading it won't know what's going to happen next in the story as well too. And I find that when I get to the end of a first draft, my wife Nicola, who's working while we're travelling, she does IT work, so she's often working from the bush as well, is that she's the first person that reads my finished book. And she's one of these people who picks up a book and reads the first few pages and then goes to the end of the book and reads the end.

00:52:01Melissa Erbacher: Oh, I can't do that. I can't do it.

00:52:04Tony Park: Can you do that? When I first saw her doing it, I'm like, you can't do that. But I know there's people out there that do that. I said, why do you do that? And she says, well, I get to the start and I know how this book's going to end. And I said, well, why do you read the end? And she says, just to prove I was right. And I said, like, really? And she says, I'm always right.

00:52:21Melissa Erbacher: I do that in movies. I don't do it in books so much. But maybe that's because movies are more a social experience that you do with somebody sitting beside you and just sort of nudge the person beside you and go, oh, I know what's going to happen.

00:52:32Tony Park: Exactly. She doesn't read when she doesn't book. So when I first gave her my early books to read, I just gave them to her like one page at a time and she hated that. But she can still look at my books and she'll say when she does the first read through, she says, I know what's going to happen next. This is going to happen. And I said, how can you know that? Because I didn't know it. And she says, yeah, but I know you and sometimes you drop little hints. But I can go and erase those. So when I do my second and third draft, I've already had someone who is good at picking endings read this book. So then my challenge becomes to fool her as well. So as I'm writing, I'm trying to keep myself interested. I'm trying to keep myself surprised, and I'm trying to fool my wife as I go along so that's where you get the kind of hopefully the unpredictability where people say oh I didn't know that was going to happen to which I say well you know neither did I so

00:53:24Melissa Erbacher: Well, I have a lot more book-related and writing-related questions, but I'm not going to ask them now. I think I might head along to one of your Brizzy Library talks so I can ask more questions there. But I do want to ask today, Tony, because every time we speak to somebody who's from overseas, and I know Australia has a reputation. We've got all these deadly animals and things like that. Not scared of any of our animals or our wildlife, our spiders, none of it. I'm cool with all that. I can't deal with big animals. So, you know, bears, polar bears, black bears, Canada, all those sorts of places freak the hell out of me. And reading your books and just all this, like, I'm just imagining wildlife is just running around all the time. Have you got, and I mean, obviously you even mentioned earlier, for a variety of reasons you're not allowed to run, I'm guessing that variety consists of lions and elephants and rhinoceri and buffalo, all the big things. Have you had any close calls or like experiences that have just really stuck with you or, you know, made you need to change your pants? Yeah.

00:54:35Tony Park: You know, I think living for sort of 20 years in the African bush, yes, you do have the odd close encounter. I think... You know, sometimes it's because I've been in the wrong place at the wrong time. There's a couple, yeah. My wife and I were driving through a national park in Zimbabwe a few years ago and I saw these tracks on the ground and I fancied myself a bit of an amateur tracker so I leaned out of the Land Rover and I thought they're rhino tracks and I thought they're actually black rhino tracks and the two rhinos, the black and the white, the black is the rarer and also the more dangerous. These things have a reputation for being dangerous very skittish, very aggressive, you know, and quick to anger, whereas the white rhinos are like big fat cows. Unfortunately, that's why a lot of them are killed by poachers because they're kind of just so placid. But black rhinos are a different kettle of fish and you don't see them that often. So I drive down the road a bit and I look up And there's this black rhino, and she's staring at me. She's about 20 metres away. We're in our old Land Rover, old Series 3 Land Rover. So she puts her head down and she charges the vehicle. She comes straight at me towards the driver's side door, and I took off as fast as I could go, which was not very fast. And we're driving down the road, and I thought, okay, it's going to give up. But this rhino followed us. It took a turn, a corner. and got onto our tail and started running after us. Now, our little old Land Rover, I was actually going uphill. I was coaxing it up to about 40 kilometres an hour. This rhino chased us for five kilometres at 40 kilometres an hour, which is actually a gallop, you know, in terms of... Oh, my God.

00:56:13Melissa Erbacher: You were making all my worst fears, like...

00:56:15Tony Park: I don't like freaking out because it's like this really two-handed, two-edged experience. You think it's a black rhino. So I'm saying to Nicola, look, it's a black rhino. Take a picture. And she's going, drive, drive. It's trying to kill me. We were looking at the back with everything. It's just about got its horn up the back of the truck. And we got around a bend and I finally managed to shake it off and we got away. We went up to the nearest National Parks camp and with the guy on the gate, this African ranger guy, Oscar, I said, Oscar, I just seen this black rhino and it was trying to kill us. It chased us for like five kilometres. And he goes, oh, that was Chiwori. And I'm saying, like, I didn't know it had a name. And he says to me, she was hungry. And I mean, what do you mean? Like she doesn't eat Land Rovers and Peoples. And he explained the story that she was actually, she had been an orphan. It was a little bit sad. Her mum had been killed by poachers and she'd been hand raised by National Parks Rangers. And she would forever associate green Land Rovers with the National Parks food truck. So she said, thank you.

00:57:17Miriam: Poor darling. And you didn't give her any food. No.

00:57:23Tony Park: You just wanted an apple or something, but it was quite a terrifying experience. Yeah, look, I mean, I've had lions around the tent in the middle of the night. That can be quite confronting and quite scary. I had four hyenas actually killed a little antelope in my fire pit barbecue area a few weeks ago. I woke up on a Sunday morning, there was terrible noise. And you look at it, you don't expect this to be happening on your front doorstep. You've got to be careful, but I would recommend a safari holiday to anyone because probably contrary to the impression you might be getting from me and my books, they do take safety seriously and safety of guests is absolutely paramount. And so as long as you do the right thing, follow the rules, it's like anything in life, you know. If you listen to the people that know what they're talking about, stay in your vehicle when you're supposed to stay in your vehicle, don't run at night. Don't run. We always say, whatever you do, don't run, then you're going to be safe. And that, again, is why we need something like parkrun so we can at least get some exercise because I dare say that if I decided to go for a run around our place sort of in the middle of the night, I probably wouldn't last very long.

00:58:28Scott Trickett: Well, despite all those warnings, you've done a great job selling South Africa to me, Tony. I think we're planning a parkrun adventurers Contiki tour. I think South Africa is well ahead on our destination. I think that's where we're going to go.

00:58:42Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, it's top of the list of 20 countries, definitely.

00:58:45Scott Trickett: Yeah. So we might even put Hazyview on the itinerary.

00:58:48Tony Park: I think the great thing about parkrun is you get to meet so many, you know, genuine people, you know. with a shared love of the outdoors and fitness and stuff. So, yeah, you must. And I recommend it to anyone, Scotty. It's a brilliant country to travel in. Super friendly people and a great variety of landscapes. I mean, I've done a run, down at Franschhoek, which is this beautiful old French Huguenot town outside of Cape Town in amongst the vineyards. It's just, it's heaven, you know, and a completely different landscape from Hazyview, which is out in the bush with hippos and crocodiles. Down there, you know, you've got the wine lands, you've got the majestic Table Mountain and you can do runs on the coast as well too. It's just ideal for holidaying and a really good diversity of landscapes as well.

00:59:35Scott Trickett: Another one for the list, Mel. Tony, thanks so much. Another one for the list would be your new book, Scent of Fear, coming out this month. We're calling it the parkrun Book. You called it the parkrun Book, so we're going to run with that title as well.

00:59:47Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, we're going to take that as a direct quote, Scent of Fear, the parkrun Book.

00:59:54Scott Trickett: So good luck with all that. Thanks very much for joining us on the parkrun adventurers this week. It's been a real treat chatting to you.

01:00:00Tony Park: Scotty and Mel, it's been wonderful. Thank you. Thanks very much.

01:00:03[14 seconds of audio that could not be transcribed]

Roving reports & the Channel 5 News crew

Roving report Melissa Ellis — Christie's Beach

01:00:17Melissa Ellis: Good morning parkrun adventurers, it's Melissa here reporting in for the Channel 5 News crew and I'm coming to you from Christie's Beach in South Australia. So we've had a bit of an adventure this weekend and we've specially travelled out to Christie's Beach to get our seventh sea and join the Pirate Club, wow, Christie's Beach is pretty nice it's along the coast the sun's out for us very friendly locals having a chat to us I'm here with Zoe we're walking the dogs today because they've had to come on holiday with us and yeah we'll see if we can chat to a few people Okay, we're post parkrun now and I'm here at the Ripple and Swell Cafe with Richard and Miriam and you're the EDs of the event, co-EDs, is that correct?

01:01:05Richard: Correct, yes.

01:01:06Melissa Ellis: Yep, and the founding EDs?

01:01:08Richard: Miriam is. I was one of the core volunteers that was recruited before the startup. And Frank Finn was our other co-ED, who's now become one of the event ambassadors for several of the Onkaparinga events. And that's left a position then for me to step up from the regular RD to the ED realm.

01:01:30Melissa Ellis: Very good. And how did... We're standing out on the street. How did the Christie's Beach come to be? Who was...

01:01:39Miriam: Okay, so, yeah, I'll help you with that one. So Frank is a really keen runner and usually went to Torrens parkrun, a bit far away, and thought that it would be great to have something down south and said, wouldn't it be great if we had something a little bit closer to home? So, yeah, we looked at all the different prospective sort of parkrun courses that we could think of and he was fairly forward thinking and Christie's Beach was the first one, until we started that in July 2016. Okay, and it's a beautiful location here.

01:02:11Melissa Ellis: I described it earlier as along the coast, but if you want to describe your course a bit better than what I've probably done?

01:02:17Richard: I would see it as a beachside run with an undulating path. We do have a challenging rise at our first turnaround at the north section. We It's a long downhill section in the middle back and a double back from the south turnaround to the finish. It's a very wide path. It's very friendly, obviously.

01:02:43Miriam: Very user-friendly.

01:02:44Richard: Very user-friendly. We have a lot of people with buggies, pushchairs, wheelchairs.

01:02:50Melissa Ellis: And a dog buggy.

01:02:51Richard: We do have a dog buggy. Karen is a regular and she volunteers as well. Blessing Bridget, the pug. Yes, we walked with Bridget. Oh, cool. It is, and it's just such a friendly community. I know personally when Frank put the call out in February, I'd not long moved to Australia. We'd been here about four months at that particular point. So I wanted a parkrun, and I never really wanted to... be the one that organises it because I just wanted to run but I figured and I said to Miriam and frank before if if if I don't do it who will yeah so I got involved and to be honest it's it's defined my uh my move here it's become part of my life and helped me become more civic minded did you parkrun in the UK Yes, in South Wales. There was an event that regularly attracted 300 to 400 a week.

01:03:49Melissa Ellis: Wow.

01:03:51Richard: But I'd only been parkrunning for about a year before we emigrated.

01:03:56Melissa Ellis: So mostly now I'd say you're based here because of your involvement with the event team. Absolutely, yeah. Do you get around venturing much?

01:04:04Miriam: No. I think family-wise and everything, Rich is really more... yeah you're sort of not stuck with us you're stuck with me look we are so fortunate to have had rich from the get-go yeah because without rich I don't think we could have really done it without him because he was so much part of our parkrun and and someone that we could just rely upon that he you know he'd take the kit he'd look after everything because Lots of things happened in Frank's life that changed a few things and we had to travel and then we had to work away. And if we didn't have Rich as a backup, you know, it would have been a lot more difficult. No, that's the thing, isn't it? It's the community. It is. He's been the rock. on which everything has been... There you go. No, seriously, it's been absolutely wonderful to have him. And he just notched up over his 100th volunteering stint. Congratulations.

01:05:01Melissa Ellis: Thank you very much. And you're very welcoming to the tourists, so thank you.

01:05:06Richard: I think that's part of... what we try to engender at Christie's Beach because we've all come from somewhere else and it doesn't matter where our paths take us from we always end up meeting somewhere and as long as we meet at a happy place

01:05:23Melissa Ellis: I like that. I collect friends every parkrun I go to.

01:05:26Richard: Friends all around the country. You bump into them at some other point in time.

01:05:31Miriam: And we have one of our founding sponsors here today, Katrine Hildyard. So she's the member for Reynell. Oh, that's good. She's still supporting. She's supporting in the fact that she comes here every time. She volunteers on it. She's got a very busy schedule, but she does volunteer with her husband, Charles. And we're really, really lucky that we've got a very supportive council. Like if we have anything that we need doing, we can ask the council. And since we've launched this one, we've started up another three. So, yeah, Frank and I have started up another three. And then we've had great teams who have originated in the Christie's team model in the core team and they've been part of our core team so we now have four in the city of Onkaparinga. So this is the support that we've had from our council, this is the support that we've had from our volunteers, our whole community, and yeah, we're spreading the love. And this way, you know, most of them in the city of Onkaparinga, they only have to drive about 12 minutes max or 15 minutes maximum, and they're hitting a parkrun. So what are the other parkruns called in there? So there's Aldinga Beach, which launched in August 2017, and then Reynella East in December 2017. And then recently Moana, which is just a little bit down there. It launched in April this year. And fantastic. And we have then a team of all the Event Directors that we all communicate together. So, you know, coming up Christmas run, that type of thing. Yeah, I was just going to ask you that.

01:07:14Melissa Ellis: So a lot of people are looking at the compendium at the moment. Have decisions been made for the Christmas compendium?

01:07:20Richard: There's... We've always... Pushed that it's a volunteer-led event. We're not going to be committed into providing an event unless volunteers are willing to come first.

01:07:36Miriam: To step up, yeah.

01:07:39Richard: There's a potential at the moment that Moana and Aldinga Beach, the rosters are looking very healthy. But anything outside of your normal Saturday morning, we do need to get the council approval. And once we get them on side, we can sort of really publicise and really put out to the community that this is an option for them to get a run and maybe a volunteer offer.

01:08:03Miriam: of the same day so you know it's a win-win for parkrunner win-win for parkrunners yeah and it's been it's been very well received and there's quite a bit of excitement out there for the new year's run we won't be doing a Christmas one the new year's um and then uh yeah we'll just we'll just see but I think council is just about done with uh with with their communication and they have to communicate with parkrun HQ and we need to get that permission then to run the event on the New Year's Day. Once we've got that, once we've got our volunteers set, we're done. Pretty right. But it's a lovely opportunity for our parkrunners to either try something different travel a bit further, you know, because otherwise they're quite loyal. But the good thing is, you know, like we also have, it might get a bit wild in the winter on the Esplanade. So, you know, it might get a bit windy and quite stormy. But then the... Reynella East is a little bit more protected so then there'll be quite a few going to Reynella East and we'll try that one out because we've got a bit more protection there.

01:09:13Melissa Ellis: It's a good introduction to tourism because I remember myself when I just went to my local every week but then Christmas Day was a bit tempting so off I ventured to a different parkrun. Yeah. Yeah, no, it's good. Opens up the new parkrun world. All right. Well, thank you very much for talking to me this morning. Thanks for coming to Christies. And thank you for being so friendly to a bunch of rogue pirates from Victoria. I love the pirates.

01:09:33Richard: Well, I'm glad you managed to knock off one of your seven seas.

01:09:36Melissa Ellis: Yes. Yeah. Job done. Well done, yeah. All right, thank you.

01:09:39Richard: Thanks very much.

01:09:40Miriam: Thank you.

01:09:41Melissa Ellis: Okay, so that's a wrap from Christie's Beach parkrun. I'm sitting here with Paul back at the caravan.

01:09:46Tim Oberg: Hi, Paul.

01:09:47Melissa Ellis: Hi. Just thought we'd give a little shout-out to the tourist park here at Christie's Beach. We're camping in. It is basically at the start point. So for the tourists out there, if you're looking for convenient accommodation, Right behind the surf club, beautiful caravan park, nice green grassy sites. Toilets are beautiful and clean and very friendly park, dog friendly if you need to travel like we do with your pooches. So that's all from us from Christie's Beach and we'll see you next week. Bye.

01:10:20Melissa Erbacher: Bye. So, Melissa Ellis was at Christie's Beach parkrun this week. Thank you for the reports from down that way. I'm glad to see more entries into the Pirate Club because it's one of our favourites.

Top Three

01:10:32Scott Trickett: Hey, Mel, we've created a problem, but we've found a solution. So, we've created this problem that we're going to start talking about top threes every week. And we've quickly realised that we're going to run out. But so this week we're going to have a – we've got a great idea for a top three. So this is the top three locations where you can fit in a parkrun and head along to a safari.

01:10:54Melissa Erbacher: Just following on from – And inspired by Tony's interview.

01:10:57Scott Trickett: Yep.

Interview Tim Oberg — CEO, parkrun Australia

01:10:58Scott Trickett: But because I've never been to South Africa, you've never been to South Africa either, we're going to hand over to our – An old favourite. You may remember him from past episodes, including episode 135. He's also the CEO of parkrun Australia. But he's married a South African, so he's an expert in this area. So take it away. Thanks, Scotty. Hey, Mel. Hey.

01:11:26Melissa Erbacher: Hey, Tim. Now, we've brought you in as our resident guru about safari parkruns in South Africa. Can you take it on?

01:11:34Tim Oberg: Look, I can give it a crack. And I'm also prepared to be shot down by any South Africans listening to this podcast. But I think I've pretty much got a grip on where parkrun adventurers can see some of the great wildlife that South Africa has on offer.

01:11:50Melissa Erbacher: Awesome. Can you give it to us in a South African accent?

01:11:53Tim Oberg: You know, I definitely can't do that. It's been a while since I watched Die Hard. I think from memory, wasn't the villain in Die Hard South African?

01:12:02Melissa Erbacher: No, no, no. Yes, he was, but it was Alan Rickman. No.

01:12:05Tim Oberg: Yeah, Die Hard 1, the bad guy, Alan Rickman, as Mel's telling me, is South African.

01:12:10[crosstalk]

01:12:10Tony Park: So I was right.

01:12:11Tim Oberg: Yeah. What are you right about? Sorry, listeners, I've got Scott yelling at me in the background here. Anyway, right, Scott, go away. Okay, so let's do this, Mel.

01:12:20Melissa Erbacher: We'll go for it, Tim.

01:12:21Tim Oberg: Okay, okay. I'm just going to go for it. So, I think my number one location for seeing the wildlife is actually going to be Nkomazi parkrun. Now, we might want to spell that for the listeners. I think it's N-K-O-Z-M-I, something like that, Nkomazi parkrun. And the reason I have that as my number one is because that's actually the parkrun I visited when I was on safari in South Africa. I was actually with Paul Sinton-Hewitt and Bruce Fordyce and a lot of the the parkrun, I guess, senior people from the UK. And we were staying on a place called the Crocodile River, which is a river that borders Kruger National Park. And from memory, the gate to get into Kruger National Park was actually called the Crocodile Gate, um and yeah we we were staying there and we we got up and uh went to Nkomazi parkrun which is over towards sort of Mozambique uh and had a had a wonderful wonderful parkrun experience running through the cornfields and we're really um treated like royal well we had psh with this so of course we were all treated right like royalty but yeah did our parkrun um hung around the village afterwards and had a chat and gave shoes to a lot of the kids. And then we went back to do safari. So from personal experience, that's my number one. Number two is Hazyview parkrun, which is, I think, renowned as being the parkrun that is actually probably the closest one to Safari. I think it's the closest one to Johannesburg in terms of if you're in Johannesburg and you want to go to a parkrun in Safari, I think Hazyview is the one.

01:14:05Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, it's right on Kruger National Park.

01:14:08Tim Oberg: Exactly, yeah.

01:14:09Melissa Erbacher: It's super close.

01:14:10Tim Oberg: It is. So Hazyview's number two. And then just for something a bit different, I'm going to say Hermanus parkrun, which is over on the Western Cape. And although this is not one for seeing the famous Big Five, it's a safari of a different kind because in the winter months, it's famous for whale watching. And people from all over South Africa and probably all over the world go to Hermanus to watch the whales. So I think they're my top three for having a safari slash wildlife experience in South Africa.

01:14:40Melissa Erbacher: A post-parkrun safari. Thank you very much for that, Tim. I love this top three brought to you by a special guest every week. We're going to have to make that a regular thing.

01:14:48Tim Oberg: Watch what you say. The listeners will hold you to it.

01:14:52Melissa Erbacher: They will. They will.

Launches and anniversaries"Where is the cake?"

01:14:54Tim Oberg: Thanks, Mel.

01:14:54Melissa Erbacher: So there are not going to be any launches this week, Scotty. The end of the year is starting to get sparse launches, which is okay because there's plenty of anniversaries to keep everybody busy.

01:15:04Scott Trickett: Should I kick us off? Because we're back at Albert, Melbourne. Mel, they're celebrating. God, it must be seven years, I reckon.

01:15:10Melissa Erbacher: Wow, it is. It must be. They're older than Kawana, and Kawana are six.

01:15:15Scott Trickett: There you go.

01:15:16Melissa Erbacher: There you go. Good mathing.

01:15:17Scott Trickett: Good mathing. Calamvale in Queensland, along with Cowra in New South Wales, celebrating anniversaries.

01:15:24Melissa Erbacher: And Lota and Nambour, both in Queensland as well.

01:15:28Scott Trickett: And from the greater state, Warrnambool.

01:15:30Melissa Erbacher: Hey, Scotty, I have a fun fact for you. Thank you very much for mentioning that Warrnambool is in the, what do you call the state that you live in again? The Great Estate?

01:15:40Scott Trickett: The Great Estate. The Great Estate. Actually, correct statement.

01:15:43Melissa Erbacher: Okay. I have a fun fact for you. Queensland just hit a milestone. We've joined the 100 Club for parkruns. How cool is that?

01:15:52Scott Trickett: Congratulations, Queensland. That's awesome. That's a nice milestone.

01:15:56Melissa Erbacher: I'm going to thank you on behalf of the entire of the state and all the parkrun events we have here. Little known fact, did you know New South Wales have got 86 parkruns? Also a pretty cool number. Not obviously a milestone. And how many do you reckon Victoria has?

01:16:14Scott Trickett: It's got to be close to those numbers.

01:16:16Melissa Erbacher: Close. Yes, you guys have got 70, which is also pretty cool numbers. Pretty good number.

01:16:22Scott Trickett: Nice round number.

01:16:26Melissa Erbacher: Anyway, mostly I just wanted to highlight the fact that Queensland joined the 100 Club this week. So you may live in the greater state, but we think we're pretty damn cool too.

01:16:35Scott Trickett: Thank you. I'll snip that little clip out of you saying I may live in the greater state as an acknowledgement that you've finally come around.

01:16:43Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, the whole sentence just screams but doesn't it? Hey, Scotty. So I still, I finished all my Tony Park books that I had bought. So I'm going to have to go buy another one, I think, because I may be a little bit addicted to the thrillers. And I know I said I've got one on pre-order. I do. It's on pre-order with Booktopia, who are very cool. They were the ones kindly, Simon there at Booktopia, put us in touch with Tony, raised the flag that there was a parkrun book coming, which is very cool. So we've got to thank them for that.

01:17:18Scott Trickett: We do. So this is a shameless plug. We're not going to sugarcoat anything on the parkrun adventurers. We are going to promote the hell out of Booktopia 1. Because he's a parkrunner. Simon's a parkrunner.

01:17:30Melissa Erbacher: He is. Yeah, absolutely.

01:17:32Scott Trickett: And he's a parkrunner adventurer, listener, even better.

01:17:35Melissa Erbacher: I know, right? He listens to our podcast and he's a parkrunner. I swear, when he sent that email through, all my worlds collided because I used to work for libraries and, you know, books and reading and stuff. And then parkrunners, just like, oh, my gosh. I was very excited. So happy that Tony could join us this week.

01:17:53Scott Trickett: And he connected us up.

01:17:54Melissa Erbacher: He did. Yes, Simon connected it up. Connected it up. That's a good new English word. It's got a few extra syllables.

01:18:01Scott Trickett: I thought this reading's paying off for you now.

01:18:03Melissa Erbacher: It is. You know all the words. I think it's because I've been consuming so much so far in such a short period of time. I'm learning new adult words and grown-up things instead of just talking to a toddler all the time. Hey, but if anybody wants to find out where Tony is touring and all those sorts of things, they can jump onto Facebook and he's got Tony Park Author as his page and, you know, it mentions all the cool stuff. I think we'll hook up with him with our Not A Contiki tour. What do you reckon, Scotty? Yeah.

01:18:40Scott Trickett: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I learned a fun fact just in between recording. We can't call it the Contiki Tour, Mel.

01:18:46Melissa Erbacher: Sure, we can't call it that. That's already a copyrighted name.

01:18:50Scott Trickett: Yeah, but do you know what the Contiki Tour, like the rules around the Contiki Tour are?

01:18:54Melissa Erbacher: No.

01:18:55Scott Trickett: Did you know there's an age thing? Like, I just got told that it's between 18 and 35.

01:19:00Melissa Erbacher: Well, that's not all inclusive, like parkrun.

01:19:02Scott Trickett: No. So, we're not going to call it the Contiki Tour anymore.

01:19:05Melissa Erbacher: Okay.

01:19:05Scott Trickett: We need to come up with a new name.

01:19:06Melissa Erbacher: We do. Yeah.

01:19:08Scott Trickett: And we're giving too much publicity to the Contiki people who aren't, as you said, aren't inclusive at all. They're discriminating against you and me. I fall out.

01:19:17Melissa Erbacher: Who are too old to fall in the age brackets. Not bitter about it at all.

01:19:27Scott Trickett: But what goes on on a Contiki tour is going to be quite separate to what goes on on the parkrun adventurers tour. Yeah, we're not that kind of tour. It's not the Contiki tour. No. Okay. Whatever that means. I never went on one, but I'm sure some of that is worth it.

01:19:41Melissa Erbacher: If anybody has any suggestions, because Scotty and I are obviously creatively tapped out now by the end of the episode.

01:19:49Scott Trickett: It's getting to the end of the year. A few more episodes to go before we get our break.

01:19:54Melissa Erbacher: I know, but we've got to start plans for the big final episode of the year as well. That's always a big one. Always fun and exciting, but takes more work usually.

Sign-off

01:20:02Scott Trickett: going to be good so we leave it there let's wrap it up yeah another long episode but an absolute cracking episode this week um reminder last what last last week for reminder for the perlustration I think it's time people have had enough time now so we're going to close that next week and um delve into the results a little bit and and give away that tomtom watch so if you haven't already good god what have you been doing last get onto it people