Heather Hillier - Throwing caution to the wind on horseback & motorbike
EPISODE 9
This episode is about following the call of the heart and my guest today Heather Hillier, is a woman who did this with grace and ease. A humble yet tenacious Canadian who embarked on an incredible journey of the heart and spirit back in 2015. Upon meeting her Aussie love interest filmmaker Matty Hannon, she joined his ambitious surf adventure of travelling from Alaska to Patagonia on motorbike and documented the whole journey in the hopes to make a film. Heather joined the trip starting in Puerto Escondido, Mexico and headed South riding a motorcycle for 9 months. Then, they had an urge to connect deeper to the environment and switched to horseback for the remainder of the trip, with Heather travelling for another 6 months, finishing in Pucon, Chile, while Matty continued on to the southernmost accessible point of the Americas. Their film ‘Road to Patagonia’ has now been released and screened across Australia and overseas, winning copious accolades and awards. It is a breath-taking exploration of humanity’s current connection to the natural world, told with the intimacy of their blossoming romance and hardships and joys on the road.
Heather’s background in regenerative farming and permaculture, ensured that the prospect of such an epic adventure was too tantalising to pass up. Not having any motorbike experience might have deterred many people but no obstacle was too hard for her and she made it her reality. She talks frankly about romanticising the idea of riding both motorbikes and horses, and how this idealised view crumbled with the actual reality, forcing her to readjust her mindset and approach to the whole experience.
Once the couple were on horseback, their responsibilities grew tremendously, as having to find food and water for the horses everyday was challenging. But this shift of connecting more to the natural world, also ensured they showed respect for the locals and indigenous communities. They also had to remain humble as they were being guided by the weather patterns and terrain instead of their predetermined plans.
I was struck by Heather’s sense of openness when it comes to making bold decisions about one's life. Her take is that all women are capable of doing a trip like this, if only we weren’t warned of the dangers before even setting foot. Coupled with Heather’s stoic approach to doing hard things, there is a beautiful softness and appreciation for other people, creatures, and energies that exist outside of her own, making the trip undeniably formative in shaping who she is.
We also unpack the trials and tribulations of motherhood, the frustrations that arise when travelling and working with your partner and lover, and of course about the film which they made together while travelling. We recorded this episode before the film was released so admittedly it was some time ago, but Heather’s insights are timeless and I thought the episode was still relevant to share. The film (Garage Entertainment, Madman) is currently screening and is a must-see. I myself was absolutely blown off my feet when I saw it, I laughed, cried, and felt completely inspired to learn from this incredible couple.
PLUS DISCOUNTS!! If you like the headwear that Heather was wearing on her trip, they were made by sustainable Aussie hat brand Will and Bear, who have generously offered this community a 20% discount off their products. Head to their website and use the code SUNSMITH20 at checkout.
Show Notes:
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TRANSCRIPT
Please note that this transcript is automated and may not be 100% accurate
Brigid Moloney
Welcome to the Moved by Nature podcast. I'm your host, Brigid Maloney, and this is a show that celebrates spirited women who embrace life with Mother Nature. They inspire us through their stories of adventure, personal growth, and connection to something greater than themselves. This episode is about throwing caution to the wind and following the call from your heart and spirit.
It's hard to put into words the admiration I feel for people who can do this with such ease. People like my guest today, Heather Ilia, a humble yet tenacious Canadian who embarked on an incredible journey from Mexico to Chile for nine months on motorbike and a further six months on horseback. Upon meeting Aussie filmmaker Maddie Hannon in Canada, a spark of love was ignited and she decided to join him on his ambitious adventure of traveling from Alaska to Patagonia Surfing and filmmaking. The film Road to Patagonia has now been released, and screened across Australia and overseas, winning copious accolades and awards. It is a breathtaking exploration of humanity's current connection to the natural world, told through the lens and intimacy of their blossoming romance, plus the hardships and joys on the road. Heather's background in regenerative farming and permaculture ensured that the prospect of such an epic adventure was too tantalizing to pass up.
Not having any motorbike experience might have to turn many people, but no obstacle was too hard for her and she made it her reality. She talks frankly about romanticizing the idea of riding both motorcycles and horses, and how this idealized view crumbled with the actual reality, forcing her to completely readjust her mindset and approach to the whole experience.
Once the couple were on horseback, their responsibilities grew tremendously as having to find food and water for the horses every day was challenging, but this shift of connecting more to the natural world ensured they showed respect for the locals, indigenous communities and the land. They also had to remain humble as they were being guided by the weather patterns and crazy terrains, and forced to let go of any predetermined plans.
I was struck by Heather's sense of openness when it comes to making bold decisions about one's life. Her take is that all women are capable of doing a trip like this. If only we weren't warned of the dangers before even setting foot. Coupled with Heather's stoic approach to life, there is a beautiful soft as she has and appreciation for other people, creatures and energies that exist outside of her own.
Making the trip undeniably formative in shaping who she is. We also unpack the trials and tribulations of motherhood, the frustrations that arise when traveling and working with your partner and mother, and of course, about the film which they made together on the trip. We recorded this episode before the film was released, so admittedly it was some time ago.
But Heather's insights a timeless and hence I thought the episode was still relevant to share. The film is currently being screened and is a must see. I myself was absolutely blown off my feet when I saw it. I laughed, cried and felt completely inspired to learn from this incredible couple. I hope you get to feel something when you hear this story, and also feel inspired in any way that aligns with you.
Apologies for a few sections of this chat where the reception was a little dodgy and the audio plays catch up. And if you love the sustainable Aussie hat brand, will and bear, which Heather wore while on her trip, you could head to their website and enjoy % off your purchase using the code Sam Smith , at checkout. The link will be in the show notes for this podcast to grow.
Your help would be greatly appreciated. Please consider any of the following meaningful gestures. Share this episode with a friend. Hit subscribe on your podcast app of choice. Write the show with five stars or leave a review. Thank you so much for joining me on this journey of Uncover tales of inspiring women. And now over to Heather.
Brigid Moloney
Thank you so much for joining us today. We're chatting remotely, and I am in the northern rivers of New South Wales in and country. Where are you, darling? And from exactly? Where did you meet you? Because you were here. Living here? Where are you now?
Heather Hillier
Yeah, we're down in Valerie now, which is kind of right in between Bellingen and Coffs Harbor. Up in the hills. And it's on combine gear. Country.
Brigid Moloney
Amazing. And do you like it there?
Heather Hillier
Yeah, yeah I do. We're up in the hills. Are about minutes from our closest little local beach, and, Yeah, it's beautiful here. There's. It feels like real mountains. Like it kind of reminds me of being at home. It's like mountains in the background. And, we're right in the middle of a lot of places and really beautiful towns and close enough to Coffs Harbor that you can get all the things done that you need to get done.
Heather Hillier
And. Yeah, yeah. And really loving it here. And we're on sort of the dream farm. So yeah.
Brigid Moloney
Because where is home.
Heather Hillier
West coast of Canada. So Vancouver region.
Brigid Moloney
So you grew up in the city or in the outskirts.
Heather Hillier
In the country, in the suburbs. So sort of the same old story. It was country. And then, was turned into suburbs. But I grew up sort of in a little beach community there. You wouldn't call it a beach, really, in Australia, but it's like a big mud bay that drains out when the at the low tide and then fills back up again.
Heather Hillier
So yeah, but we spent our summers in a little, like off grid cabin on the off the coast of it. So yeah, lots of forest and ocean adventuring there.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah. So you've got the outdoors in your blood. Really grew up amongst the.
Heather Hillier
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I'm pretty comfortable outside. Yeah.
Brigid Moloney
So I definitely want to talk to you about this epic adventure that you went on in South America, but maybe you could talk to us about, I guess, the lead up to that decision. So what you were doing before you went on the trip and. Yeah, like maybe what happened after you left school and, if you did much traveling or.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah, what you started doing for work and living, etc..
Heather Hillier
Yeah. So I guess after I left school, or during university, I went to school in the States, and, I was studying like kind of sustainable development and kind of stuff, and I thought I would be off working in different countries. I always just thought it would be so rad to live somewhere else and work there, I guess.
Heather Hillier
And in development, I just felt like that was really important work. But through that started reading a lot about farming and how, you know, the global food systems are really that seemed like the root of all disharmony in the world. You know it. Yeah. So started reading a lot about food systems and then kind of realized that, like, it's our Western food system that really has the issues.
Heather Hillier
So why would I be telling other people in other countries how to grow food when we are the ones doing the most damage? And so I thought I would try working on farms and see how that went. I ended up going to Central America for or months, and I thought I would be woofing and working on farms there, but ended up just doing the whole traveling circuit thing and partying lots and hanging out.
Heather Hillier
And then, yeah, I came back and I actually met someone in Central America when I was there and ended up going to California to see him and ended up kind of living there and working on farms for a year and a half and, just fell in love with it and fell in love with the plants. And it really just hit me that that was like, oh, my God, this is this is what I was made to do.
Brigid Moloney
Oh, wow. Did you just learn from the farmers you were working with or how did you. Because you seem quite like educated and informed. Now, is that just the passing on of knowledge as you were on the farm?
Heather Hillier
Yeah, mostly, I guess. After that I moved back to Vancouver and I wanted to do, I did like a three month sort of, organic gardening course. I ended up doing a permaculture design course later, and this one was pretty similar to that without the title. And then I also interned on an urban farm in Vancouver, and the next year that urban farm came up for the woman who ran it.
Heather Hillier
She was weaving. And so she was trying to look for someone to take it over. And so a friend and I took it over, oh, wow. And ran it for the next year after that. And yeah, it was such a good learning opportunity because it's pretty small scale. We ran a CSA, so everyone pays at the beginning and you provide them with veggie boxes throughout the season, no middlemen.
Heather Hillier
And you're kind of just. Yeah, doing everything, planning, planting, marketing, running the business. But it was micro. Micro, you know, like, I think the business paid our rent at home and that's pretty much it. Yeah, but but it was perfect. We both had part time jobs on the side and, Yeah, it really taught me a lot about, I guess, the full cycle of farming, of doing it all, I guess.
Brigid Moloney
What does it involve? Like when you sow a seed, what's the cycle like? Do you then use the seeds again for the next crop, or do you save them or is it seasonal or do they replenish themselves? Like how does it if you are managing the farm, which yeah, it sounds like a great like learning opportunity, was it hard to figure out when to plan, plant what and how and or is that all part of permaculture?
Brigid Moloney
And yeah, like how did you figure all of that out?
Heather Hillier
Well yeah, that was a big learning curve, I guess. But, the woman that we got the farm from, she actually, had this amazing spreadsheet system of, like, I don't know how to do Excel or spreadsheet at all, but, she showed us how to input the date that you wanted to harvest. That would been the formula that and loops around and it tells you when to plant it.
Heather Hillier
And so yeah. So say you wanted like one bunch and like you'd be like, okay, that takes this much space in a bed and you plant this many seeds in February in order to get that harvest in July. And so that really helped. But then that helped with like, I guess conceptualizing it and getting our heads around exactly when to plant it.
Heather Hillier
But it's totally different everywhere. Like here, it's completely different. And in terms of seeds, most probably most market gardeners just buy seeds. There's some things that are easy to save, but you kind of and I, have gotten into saving seeds a lot in my home gardens, but they tend to mix a lot, a lot of the different things.
Heather Hillier
And so you're not going to you're not going to end up with what you thought you were saving if, say, rocket flowers at the same time as your turnips, your I don't know if rocket and turnips cos they're both in the same family, but then I don't know if they're closely related enough to do it. But yeah, it's kind of complex.
Brigid Moloney
And so yeah, that sounds really complex. And then obviously really specific to the region. Like you said.
Heather Hillier
Yeah.
Brigid Moloney
So when you moved to Australia, was it a whole nother level of learning and figuring it all out again? Like have you been working on farms here too?
Heather Hillier
Yeah. Not not the entire time, but the last or years. I had, when I first got here, I wasn't really sure how to get into the farming around here, and it seemed to me that there weren't any jobs, like, you kind of had to start up your own thing to, to do it. And I just, I guess it wasn't there yet.
Heather Hillier
I just wanted to get to know the area and but yeah, I had a home garden when I first got here and, you know, I was like, oh, it's getting into summertime. I'll plant all the things. But summer here is actually the hardest time to grow stuff that we're used to eating because it's so hot and humid and there's so many pests and diseases, everything just goes crazy.
Heather Hillier
Unless you're growing all the tropical veggies like winged beans and sweet potatoes and yeah, all those like really luscious things that love the humidity, but lettuce and rocket and cauliflower and all that stuff just dies in the heat. So yeah, yeah, I was a bit of a learning curve. Winter is actually the best season for growing here.
Brigid Moloney
Wow.
Heather Hillier
Okay. Yeah, yeah yeah.
Brigid Moloney
And how did you find being a female farmer was is a stigma around female farmers. Did you find it challenging at all stepping into that industry as a female?
Heather Hillier
Not really. There's a few things that like when you're first working somewhere, you don't get assigned all the jobs all the time. And it took a while for me to be able to drive tractors. Actually, I've always noticed that the first farm I worked on, there was a guy that worked part time, but he was like worked in forestry and was you know, like a manly man.
Heather Hillier
He when I went back to visit, he was driving the tractor and I was like, oh, wow, I never got to drive the tractor. Not that it was that big of a deal, but it was just like, yeah, it's sort of not really tested, but machinery is readily. But that being said, that's a bit of a generalization because there are a lot of female farmers and it's actually something that, yeah, you just have to kind of gain respect to be like, no.
Heather Hillier
So we'll compost as fast or faster than all the rest is. So yeah, I think like there's more female farmers out there than, than people think. And I think one of those statistics is that I don't remember what it is, but definitely a majority of food in the majority of countries is grown by women on some sort of really small scale.
Heather Hillier
Yeah, small scale, diversified farms. So there you go. It's definitely not grown by male farmers with GPS, tractors, like industrialized food doesn't actually feed the entire world.
Brigid Moloney
Is that a developing nation?
Heather Hillier
Yeah. Mostly. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, it's a bit of a rising movement. There's all these things coming up with. Yeah, women's farming articles and everyone's trying to jump on board because it's sort of realized that women have been there the entire time. They just haven't been as recognized.
Brigid Moloney
I feel like being so in tune with the land is, I don't know, like, maybe I'm saying this because I feel like that when I had a baby, like you just become really into something outside of yourself, like, you know, the whole natural system and ecosystem of the world. Maybe it's the qualities that a farmer needs if it's not industrialized, a really akin to female energy and qualities.
Heather Hillier
Yeah. That's interesting. I think that that makes sense because it's yeah, it's really intuitive and there is a lot of I don't know if that's a generalization, but there's a lot of multitasking. Like it's not, like if you say that men are able to focus on one thing and that's like if a patriarchal, male dominated society has become more specialized, then farming is anything but specialized.
Heather Hillier
You're doing tons of different things on any given day, and you need to know how to do a lot of different things and think about, what the next move is while everything else is happening. So yeah, yeah.
Brigid Moloney
The planning, the forward thinking.
Heather Hillier
Yeah, yeah.
Brigid Moloney
Which is very much the role that we typically play at home. Have you had that sort of like be like you're the one that's like okay, like when, when is he going to sleep? And then I need to feed him, but where am I going to feed him and how am I going to feed him? And you just consider.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah. Like thinking ahead.
Heather Hillier
Yeah, totally. Which is kind of satisfying that you're like, I don't know. It's like this little director's role of like sitting in a chair eating, but thinking about, oh yeah, that thing.
Brigid Moloney
I love that analogy.
Heather Hillier
The director's chair.
Brigid Moloney
But it also can be quite texting. I don't know if you've had that.
Heather Hillier
Yeah.
Brigid Moloney
Lately the mother's mental load. Women are talking about it a lot in the mothers group circles. Just that that mental load of thinking about all the things can just bring you down, you know? And often you might be breastfeeding. Your body's already a bit depleted. And so your brain isn't functioning as well as. Yeah, usually. But you're right.
Brigid Moloney
Like, maybe we're just. Yeah, it's just ingrained in us, like we are quite good at it, so it makes sense to do it. Yeah.
Heather Hillier
I think I read somewhere that, the multitasking was because of that. Because because we have to take care of babies while we are working. And I mean, I guess traditionally you'd have lots of people to do lots of things and you'd have way more support than we do now.
Brigid Moloney
So, yeah, the village.
Heather Hillier
I don't know how true that is, but yeah, yeah, but keep an eye on babies while you're doing other things. And so our brains are more able to be expansive like that.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah, that that makes sense. So you were you were living and working on farms and getting really into permaculture and living off the land, and you ended up going on this amazing journey. So was was this epic trip something that you had in the back of your mind that you always wanted to do, or did the opportunity just get presented to you and you just jumped at the chance?
Brigid Moloney
Like, could you tell us how it came up and the decision making around actually going on the trip? Or maybe you could tell us first what the trip actually was, and then maybe you can tell us how you got to that point.
Heather Hillier
Yeah. So, basically my partner now, Maddie, he was on a motorcycle journey from the very northern tip of Alaska to the southern tip of South America. So in Argentina. Wow. To be in Patagonia. And so that was his big goal. He set off from Australia and did the whole thing. And I ended up meeting him on Vancouver Island.
Heather Hillier
And yeah, it was very not a planned thing. So that was the year I was, running the urban farm. And it was late August, early September. And so I was very burned out by then and just ready to for the season to be over, I guess, because we'd been working every single day with our part time jobs and then on the farm.
Heather Hillier
And so I'd been working seven days a week since April, I guess, and. Well, yeah, it's very not sustainable. But we learned our lessons like that, I guess. And up until then, basically, I had been like, I'm just going to, like, I don't need to travel. I'm just going to be a homesteader. And I really want to, you know, focus on providing everything for myself and community and, you know, making my world a lot smaller than, than I'd previously thought I would have wanted it when I was in union wanting to travel and, and everything.
Heather Hillier
So I was very much in the stage of, like, I don't know if you'd call it nesting, but just didn't have any desire to go anywhere. And I guess I was just really interested in. Yeah, and supporting community and the people around me and, you know, making my world a lot smaller really is what it felt like.
Heather Hillier
And then I had a friend come up to visit from California, and we were like, you know, let's just take the weekend off, let's go camping. We'll go to the island, go surfing, and that'll be great. First weekend off for the summer. So we ended up meeting this weird motorcycle dude that didn't look like a motorcycle guy, and he had this weird looking sidecar and like, who is this weird Washington plates?
Heather Hillier
But he was really blond, and, like, nobody from there was that blond because the sun is not out enough. Get that long. So we're like, what's going on? And, so we had a little chat in the car park there, and, and he ended up inviting us for a, his friend and giving him a salmon. And so inviting us over to share that.
Heather Hillier
And we were like, oh, yeah, maybe I think we're, like, hitting some house. I don't know, took a while for us to actually head to campsite and, and hang out. And then after that he came back to our house in Vancouver, to our little farm there and hang out for a week. And by that time I was, yeah, I think, burned out.
Heather Hillier
And just like meeting him really opened me up to this other possibility of like, wow, there's just people out there going on adventures. And he was planning on making a film out of it, and I'd just never really met a filmmaker before, like an independent filmmaker and live like that, like someone I had seen in a documentary or something.
Heather Hillier
I was like, oh, you can just go do that. So I don't know. I don't know why that hadn't really crossed my path. But yeah, I was very inspired by what he was doing, and I had plans with that friend that came up from California to go to Mexico that winter after the farming season. We're going to drive down to Baja.
Heather Hillier
And Maddy was like, oh, well, I'll be in Baja by December. And I was like, oh, how convenient. Yeah. It kind of just ended up being this thing where I was like to see him again, determined to make it happen. So I drove down by myself and met him in Mexico, and we hung out there for a couple of months.
Heather Hillier
He was like, well, do you want to just keep going with me? I was like, well, yeah, we've gotten we've sold the farm and or, you know, sold the assets, sold the urban farm, the business.
Brigid Moloney
And why did you sell the farm? Was that because of the trip or you were going to sell it anyway?
Heather Hillier
I was ready to move on. At that point, I didn't I knew I didn't want to live in Vancouver, and I was going to maybe move to the island or something to Vancouver Island. And, I wanted to keep farming, but I just didn't want to in that capacity. And so I'd been planning on doing that anyway.
Heather Hillier
And it just worked out that I didn't end up moving to Vancouver Island. I ended up coming back, getting my motorcycle license, flying down to Mexico, buying a motorbike, and continuing on in.
Brigid Moloney
Wow. That's just it's like I don't even know where to start with that. Like, I just got my motorbike license and headed down to Mexico border by. Did you know anything about about motorbikes? Had you been on one before?
Heather Hillier
No. Never sat on one before. Never had any interest. I was like, no, I just thought it was this weird cultural thing that I was not into. Yeah.
Brigid Moloney
Did you have to learn basic mechanics? Because I, I've always wanted to do a trip like you've done. I will be honest. I feel like I might have missed the boat. Now I'm a bit older, but that was actually one of the things that held me back a bit was I thought if I was really remote, I would really need to know how to fix my bike.
Brigid Moloney
And I'm sure I could maybe, I don't know, do it a course or something, which I never got to. But again, there's something about females doing mechanics that, you know, there's a bit of a stereotype there, isn't there? So, but I really would have wanted to. Yeah. Not rely on someone to come and save me if I got in trouble.
Brigid Moloney
Like I wanted to be able to know how to fix the bike myself. But did you did you have to do that or you didn't really need to because you were at that remote? Or how did it work?
Heather Hillier
I guess you never feel that remote in. At least in Central America, there's always someone. There's always like some guy that fixes tires on the side of the road. I don't know, it's just like people come to your rescue there all the time. It's crazy. There's so such beautiful people. But then, I don't know, I guess I didn't feel the need to learn that Maddie hadn't even changed the tire by that point.
Heather Hillier
I think he had learned how to. Well, but I just kind of went into it blind and was like, we'll just figure it out. And there's always someone there to help. And we would often we would kind of watch and learn as we went. And I mean, I guess I just don't really have an interest in it that much.
Heather Hillier
I don't know why.
Brigid Moloney
Do I, but I thought it might have been a necessity.
Heather Hillier
I don't know, there's always someone to come help. Otherwise, you're pretty selfsufficient. And so you just set up your tent and sit there and back home.
Brigid Moloney
Well, I guess I'm really interested to know the decision to go on the trip. How are you feeling emotionally? Was it a hard decision to make? Or you just went, oh yeah, of course I'll just do this, this thing that I've never done before. And with this guy, I don't know that. Well.
Heather Hillier
Yeah.
Brigid Moloney
No, no, it's just stupid. Like you took a risk. It's paid off. Like that's what life is about, taking calculated risk. But I think as females, often we find that difficult. So tell me about the decision making process to actually go. Was it difficult or you just was so.
Heather Hillier
Excited you just went yeah, it was more of the latter. I was just I don't know, I don't really make calculated decisions because I can't I get overwhelmed and it's like planning. I've never been a planner. I've just never been able to. And if I stop and think about it too much, I just kind of get overwhelmed and overthink it.
Heather Hillier
So yeah, I'm kind of just to like, fall in love easy. Kind of just, Yeah, let's go for it. We'll figure it out. That's kind of. Yeah. What happened? There wasn't much practical thinking about it with.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah.
Heather Hillier
I got a little bit nervous when I was doing the whole motorcycle thing because, I had to come home and, like, take a little course. And I was home for two months, and that was like, the minimum time that it took to get my license. And, I think it was expedited because I did, of course, maybe I remember how or but yeah, because I just had to learn from scratch.
Heather Hillier
And it was it's pretty like it's a pretty intense thing. If you've never been on a motorbike, there's like so many things going on, like, you're right, hands involved, you left hands involved in the clutch, and then you're right. But, and then you foot brake, handbrake, throttle. Like there's so much happening and but I'd ridden bicycles a lot through the city, and that really helped because it feels the same as being on a bike.
Heather Hillier
The leaning and the turns and plus the, I guess, the spatial awareness of, okay, that guy's backing out, he probably won't see me. I'm going to slow down. And there's a lot of like risk assessment going on while you're riding. And so I think being a big cyclist in the city really helped me with that.
Brigid Moloney
Like, for example, I think in but more Australians die in Bali on motorcycles than any other way. Like it's there, there's a lot of injury and well, I guess death involved around motorcycles. So my dad particularly was because I floated the idea for years and he was always like, yeah, never getting on a motorbike in a foreign country.
Heather Hillier
But yeah, I.
Brigid Moloney
I had the same thinking as you. I thought, well, if I'm careful, surely I will be okay. But he was always like, you know, but cars won't see you and trucks won't see you when, So did you feel like that was dangerous? So you had a grip on it? Like with it? Any moments where it got a bit hairy?
Heather Hillier
Yeah, definitely. But only really further into the trip. Like, Peru was really hard. The driver there, for some reason, it was across the border. It was just like, well, it's just different. It was. Drivers were insane there and then, but the worst thing that happened was Matty actually crashed into me because he we were going really slowly in traffic and I forget what it was, but he was watching.
Heather Hillier
There was a car, like, inching into his lane. And so he was sort of watching it and trying to get over it. And then I had stopped ahead of him and he just crashed into me. And we both just went down. Oh, but it wasn't to drop the bike a lot, but in, in off road situations like on bumpy roads, it was really because our bikes were so loaded down.
Heather Hillier
I had two surfboards and like A wetsuit for when we hit Chile. And all this like the food and everything. We had way too much stuff and so they were just so heavy you could barely lifted off the ground, but you actually couldn't lift it off the ground by yourself. So just going over bumps and off road stuff was really tricky.
Heather Hillier
And I'd dropped it a lot, going really slowly. I had one scary situation in Chile riding on the Atacama, where it's just like hundreds of kilometers of endless straight road, and it's beautiful in its own way, but it's really, just the same. Everywhere you look around you, it's just like hilly desert. And you're just going straight.
Heather Hillier
And at one point, I was sort of. I used to do this thing where I was like, you look at the road signs and look at how far away some city was. And then I'd like look at our odometer or the speedometer, and I would calculate, I would like, try and do math in my head about how long that would take.
Heather Hillier
And like, I don't know, it was just a way to pass the time. And I remember doing that and all of a sudden waking up on my bike with like, speed wobbles, which is where you're the front tire is just like wobbling along. And bikes are amazing. They write themselves like they, you know, as long as wheels are spinning with the centrifugal force, they, they go, and they stay up.
Heather Hillier
And so, yeah. So it was wobbling and I was going k's an hour and yeah, this I don't know, that freaked me out. We pulled over that after that and tried to have a nap, but I was just way too wired. Yeah. So I just like, done a quick little knot off and, well, woke up again.
Heather Hillier
But that's really the scariest thing that happened. There's no one else on the highway, and it's just me and. Oh wow.
Brigid Moloney
Because did you have to cross mountainous terrain or was it or you're in Todd Roads a lot.
Heather Hillier
Mostly on roads, unless we wanted to find something like we ended up on a pretty hairy little road through Guatemala. And once in Costa Rica, trying to get to the beach. But, mostly we were just on the PanAmerican highway, which is full of tracks like not the nicest spot. My face would be black by the end of most days, because you're just behind these big diesel tracks that are, like, chugging along and one minute sticks the base.
Heather Hillier
Oh.
Brigid Moloney
And I guess you don't have your beauty regime at the top of the priority list.
Heather Hillier
No, there's no beauty regime.
Brigid Moloney
Have you learned to be a minimalist now, or you mentioned before that you actually had too much stuff, like how did you how was that experience of trying to travel with just what you needed? It was that tricky?
Heather Hillier
Yeah, because, yeah. I don't think I learned anything from that trip of how to be minimalist, and I'll never be a minimalist. I find it hard to say, like, well, what if you need this? What if we need to go spearfishing because there's no one around and we can't get food? We need this. Like we just convinced them we needed all these things and yeah, and I'm still like that.
Heather Hillier
But just in case. Yeah, I don't know.
Brigid Moloney
How long did you stay in each spot or when you would pull up each night. Was it laborious unpacking, setting up and then packing down again the next day? What was that experience like?
Heather Hillier
Yeah, it was definitely a bit of a pain to to pack up and set up camp and everything, and I would, I would try and work as well, either like trying to back up footage or whatever. And so we'd need to stop at a place where you could get, electricity and internet and. Yeah, so we had a few like week long stints or we'd stay somewhere for a few days, or if the waves were going to be really good, then we'd stay and wait for a swell of the few times where we just, or lots of times we would just stop overnight.
Heather Hillier
But it was, mostly trying to get somewhere and stay for a little bit. Yeah, the pack up, it was just really tiring. And the writing is more tiring than I think we realized at the time. Like on a bike, it's like the stimulation really just gets to you. It's pretty intense.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah, I would imagine. Yeah. Because you're taking in so much.
Heather Hillier
Yeah. I actually remember that the first few rides I did in Mexico like I feel like when you're in Mexico, the everything's overstimulating or overstimulating but more stimulating than it is here anyway. Like there's new smells, there's people everywhere. There's like people honking horns, cars with like loudspeakers on the top, advertising things like there's just so much going on everywhere and it's so exciting.
Heather Hillier
And that's what makes it so wonderful to be there. But then add to that the like, okay, there's a truck there that might hit me, and it's like a little kid playing soccer over here that might run out onto the road. And there's all these extra things to think about and okay, shift up and brake and don't stall here.
Heather Hillier
And yeah, a lot going on.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah. Gosh, that sounds tiring just hearing you talk about it.
Heather Hillier
I definitely got used to it.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah okay. Yeah. Like drive it I found if I haven't done long distances in the car I'm not driving it. And then yeah you get out. Yeah. Well I was just concentrating for so long. Just that focus. Yeah.
Heather Hillier
Totally. Yeah.
Brigid Moloney
Then you've got the added component of having your body also incorporated in that, like was when you would get off the bike where you just like, oh my God, I'm walking like John Wayne and it all hurts.
Heather Hillier
Yeah. It was you'd get pretty stiff. And I think mostly the lower back, like I was really I focused a lot on trying to like, keep my core, you know, do all the right things with the core and pelvic floor and everything like that. But it's still you're just in one position. There's no real, like, fluid movement to it.
Heather Hillier
And, like, I felt strong, but not in a healthy way. Okay.
Brigid Moloney
I see, did you have the energy or time to do any other exercises for your body while you're on the trip?
Heather Hillier
Not really. Till South America, I was yeah. The first like few months in Central America maybe. It was just so hot and we were surfing a lot more or a bit more. I got kind of intimidated at one point because we're always chasing these massive barreling waves that Maddy wanted to surf. And so I'm like, oh yeah, okay, I'll go out here.
Heather Hillier
It's like, I've lost my confidence in it. But yeah, in Peru it started doing a bit more yoga and that definitely helped.
Brigid Moloney
But did it okay. Do you, meditate as well or you do that within the yoga?
Heather Hillier
No, I've always wanted to, but never really gotten into it. Yeah. Okay.
Brigid Moloney
And what was the actual itinerary of the trip and how long were you on the road for too long.
Heather Hillier
It was like ended up being months, I think. Six of that was on horseback. And so that was a way slower pace. And just. Yeah, a lot, a lot different. And, felt healthier, I guess. But yeah, by the end, you're just, you know, appreciating the things as much as you could be. And so I think that was too long for me.
Brigid Moloney
And why did you switch to horseback?
Heather Hillier
Because of a romantic whim, I guess. Just another romantic whim. I think Maddy mentioned it. He was like, oh, imagine. Like, I don't know, I remember being at a, like, eating lunch somewhere, and then he just made a passing comment about like, oh, I always thought I might do a horseback trip through Indonesia or something like that.
Heather Hillier
And imagine if about horses or something. And I had always wanted to do, I don't know, like a weeklong backpacking trip on horses or something. I just thought that would be cool. My dad had done it a few times. He had a horse, before I was born. And I just always thought it sounded so cool. And then after he mentioned that, I just couldn't stop thinking about it and I was like, oh my God, imagine riding horses through Patagonia.
Heather Hillier
It's like where it's meant to be. And just crossing rivers and camping, and that'll be so amazing. I just couldn't stop thinking about it. And so the next time we stopped, we just chatted. I don't know, we just kind of were like, should we do it? Let's just once we get it, feel like it's like, sell the bikes and get horses and see how far we get.
Heather Hillier
Oh my God. Yeah. We kind of made a bit of a beeline to Fiji, Lamu and there to like mid coastal Chile and yeah, set the plan in action.
Brigid Moloney
There you are on a bike from Mexico to where.
Heather Hillier
Halfway down to like oh yeah the beach in July which is couple hours from Santiago on the coast.
Brigid Moloney
So how many cases that roughly.
Heather Hillier
Oh, I think Maddie's trip was like , k's. And so maybe mine was, I don't know, something in the . I don't even know.
Brigid Moloney
Sorry. How long were you on the bike for? How long did that bit take?
Heather Hillier
That was a month. Fish. Yeah. Yeah, that's a long time. Yeah, it's a lot.
Brigid Moloney
And then so when you got on the horses, how did that feel? Was it liberating. Yeah. What was your relationship like with your horse or horses. Were there one h or H each.
Heather Hillier
So one to ride and one to carry surfboard and yeah, food and camping gear and stuff. So each had to it was way harder than I thought I'd be. It was a crazy experience, but it was it was freeing and and draining. Constricting at the same time. So it took us two months to actually train the horses when we first found them.
Heather Hillier
When, selling the bikes to these guys that were actually from Australia and they both grew up out on stations in Central Australia, and so they knew a lot about horses. And we taught them how to surf. And so they came around with us and checked out different horses and they were like, nah, this one will be any good.
Heather Hillier
This one's oh, this one's blah, blah, blah. And so they helped us find the right ones and then sort of taught us how to ride, taught us how to saddle up. And the Chileans are amazing horse people as well as well. And they we had a few people that taught us a few things, gave us some tips on how to strap things down.
Heather Hillier
But, we couldn't find any examples of how to put a surfboard on the horse. So we tried all these different things, like strapping it to the side or like, but the horses, they hate them. It's like they're funny animals. They freak out at weird things. I hate plastic bags. But yeah, the surfboard. You could knock on a surfboard like, m away from them, and they would perk up.
Heather Hillier
The nostrils flare, and they, like, shy away, like they're just the sound of it and everything. So we had to feed them around the surfboards. We've tie them to trees and like, you know, put a carrot on top of it or something and be like, okay, scary.
Brigid Moloney
The boat is your friend.
Heather Hillier
Yeah, yeah. And then figuring out how to strap the bags onto them, we ended up getting these, like, army bags at a market in Santiago and kind of bringing those up on either side of the horse. We didn't have proper horse packing gear at all. So we just improvised. And so that took two months. And it took longer than that for me to lose my fear of them.
Heather Hillier
I was like, really freaked out and regretting the whole thing. Really.
Brigid Moloney
But really. Do you have much prior experience with horses before the trip?
Heather Hillier
I had done some horse riding lessons as a little girl and, you know, doing the whole English thing, like going around the arena and jumping and all that. And after a jump one day I fell off and really freaked me out. The horse stepped right on my inner thigh and just I just got a little bruise.
Heather Hillier
But, and I unfortunately did not get back on the horse. And so that's a real thing you have to get back on and it'll like it kind of helps you work through the trauma of falling off. Really. I.
Brigid Moloney
Can relate to that. That happened to me. I got kicked by a horse. I got, like, boxed in, and another horse kicked me. Went down another horse. Yeah. Got my shield. It wasn't. It wasn't, like I didn't break my leg or anything, but I was actually on the side of a cliff, so I couldn't get I, I was trapped unless I wanted to fall down the cliff.
Brigid Moloney
And a similar thing to you, like, it was just like the, trail ride that I would go on, you know, it wasn't like a horse horse person, but since then, I never got back on, and I'm still a bit scared to.
Heather Hillier
Yeah.
Brigid Moloney
But I didn't know. Yeah. Then I wish I did. I would have got on.
Heather Hillier
I know, and I. Yeah, well good on you. I don't know like.
Brigid Moloney
The courage to do that because. Do you think you know how you were saying before when many replanted the idea in your head that it was this dream that you actually had filed away in the back of your head, and he ignited that dream was was the trauma experience of getting kicked a pod of that? Like, did you consciously think, I want to do this so that I can move through that fear or you just thought it would be a cool way to travel?
Heather Hillier
I just thought a vehicle was really because I had been on trail ride since then, but didn't love it like I always ended up with some horse that was just frustrating and wanted to do its own thing and wanted to eat. And bumping your finger against the western knob thing on the saddle or I don't know, I just had all these annoying experiences with horses, but I still just romanticized it, I think.
Heather Hillier
So I was like, oh yeah, I'll figure it out and we'll get a relationship with the horses. And that happened eventually. It was pretty incredible. The whole experience. Once we were off and down the road, it it really just opened up and I spent that first night camping and it was like, wow, this is incredible. It just felt so good.
Heather Hillier
But that's it. There's been so many people that have told us how dangerous that was and how lucky we were that we didn't know anything about horses and nothing happened to us. But I think that's what made us do it, is that we were so naive about the risks. Because they are such big animals and they at anything.
Heather Hillier
And we ended up along roads for a bit of it because that's the constricted part of riding a horse. You can't just like, pop a fence or if there's a little, thing that you might be able to scale if you're walking, then like, you can't do it with a horse. And so, yeah. So there were a lot of times when it's like, we can't get through this where we'd have to backtrack and go to a road and.
Heather Hillier
Yeah. But you know, it was an incredible place to do it because there I've got a really strong horse culture there. And only you know a generation or two ago everyone was like oh my grandparents used to travel like this. And they still have the cultural identity of, of horsemanship. And so they were it would made them so happy seeing us.
Heather Hillier
And they would all want to help us and you stay in my paddock for the night. I've got this. And I know this guy that's got, bales of loosen or alfalfa, like, I'll call him up and we can go pick them up for you.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah. Because you would have. Did you have to carry the state aid for the horse? So they.
Heather Hillier
Had.
Brigid Moloney
A whole nother component. Feeding the horses is.
Heather Hillier
Yeah. Well, it was late summer. It was kind of autumn by the time we took off. And they we probably should have been feeding them, but it means it would have meant carrying around an extra ten kilos of grain. But we always stopped where there would be really lush grass like. And whenever, like we weren't on a big mission.
Heather Hillier
Like there'd be some days where we'd only go a few K's and be like, oh, this is a good campsite. I don't know what we're going to find after this. So there's water, there's grass. This are we can hide our tent. Let's just stop here. Yeah. Or we'd see a good wave or something like that. I think later on we had a couple k days, but.
Heather Hillier
And we rested so often, like, yeah, I was pretty well, I think, I mean, buy feed for them whenever we stopped said yeah.
Brigid Moloney
And what, what was the relationship like with your horse. Because it's a whole nother level of trust and reliability and connectedness. I actually keep thinking of.
Heather Hillier
The.
Brigid Moloney
Australian woman Robyn Davidson, who went across the desert from Alice Springs to the West coast in the s with her four camels and her dog.
Heather Hillier
Yeah. That's incredible.
Brigid Moloney
And she I think she spent one year learning about the camels. I think it was a year. But yeah, I mean, I've read her book tracks and a few of her essays since, and, it just seems amazing. Like the thing the, I don't know, the trust and the emotional part of relying on this animal to get you from A to B, it's like a whole nother mindspace like, can you tell us about that relationship you had with the horses then?
Heather Hillier
Yeah, yeah, it was a whole other element, I guess, because it's not just you anymore. There's this for animals that have these needs and that sort of turned into our needs. We were like, okay, well, we need to find water and grass and that's basically all we need. We'll carry a bit of food, but, we're able to like, go fishing and pick blackberries and eat seaweed and like, we'd always be okay, but the horses can only go a day without water, you know, they're like, yeah, they're they need water and they only drink clean water.
Heather Hillier
So I'm picky. So yeah, the what am I trying to say I guess. Yeah. The depth of the relationship. Trying to get somewhere. It's, it's kind of, I guess a lot of it. I found it, like, frustrating again, because my horse was this mare, and she was pretty cheeky, and she was always just pushing my limits to like, at one point she didn't let me put a bridle on, and we were in an awkward spot and I couldn't.
Heather Hillier
She was higher than me and I couldn't get my arm around her head in order to, like, keep her head steady and pull it on. And she was just being so cheeky and tossing her head around. And this was like two months into the journey or something like a, you know, she was just testing something out on me.
Heather Hillier
And it was about to rain and we didn't have a campsite, and we were kind of stuck in this pine forest. And yeah, there was supposed to be a huge storm coming through these massive clouds. And I was like, oh, man, we just need to get going. Like, can you put it on her? Because he could reach around and from then on, she just didn't let me put the bridle on anymore.
Heather Hillier
So they're just they've got these, like, crazy personalities. That. Yeah. It was. I find it hard to manage, sometimes, but it was just another element, like traveling for six months with a family. You're all going to bicker like it turns into a bit of that. But I guess seeing the transformation that they made, like, from being scared of surfboards to then just kind of became this unit of like, this is how we're traveling, and by the end, we didn't really ride them any more.
Heather Hillier
We would just walk alongside them. At this point, we were up in the mountains and, we were trying to find them a good home. So we were had a bit of ground to cover and we were just walking beside the horses. And it was this. Yeah, it was such an incredible feeling because we were all just walking like they weren't straying off the path at all.
Heather Hillier
They just kind of followed us and they would all look back for the last horse. Or if there was one of us walking behind, like the last one would look back and make sure we were still coming. And yeah, just by then it just was this incredible family unit.
Brigid Moloney
Well, so did you have like a love hate relationship with them, like you often do with human family members?
Heather Hillier
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And some of them were easier to get along with than others. We had this one big black horse, Matty's riding horse. Big Sal called him Salvador at the start because he was this majestic beast. And then he just turned out to be the softest one of all. He would just stand there and you could cuddle him, and he just loved it.
Heather Hillier
And horses are amazing, because if you stand with them, they will match their heartbeat to yours. If you'd stand with them and just breathe and, you serious? And yeah, you can meditate with them. And that's why they use them for, equine. For therapy. Yeah, because they, like you, actually foster this heart connection with them. And you really felt that with being so because you would just.
Heather Hillier
And the other ones would be like, oh, I don't have food. I'm going over here. But you you could just probably, it was the most incredible thing.
Brigid Moloney
Wow. So did you find yourself just cuddling Big Sal quite a lot?
Heather Hillier
Yeah, yeah, we had a lot of nice moments with them.
Brigid Moloney
Oh. That's beautiful. Because I, I have a dog and I. I think I'm obsessed with my dog because I just, I cuddle him all the time. It's just, I feel like my mum thinks that I spoil him, but, because she's staying with me at the moment and I'm always cuddling him, and I try to explain to her that it's actually for me, like I love.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah, I am instantly soothed because he's super cuddly and affectionate. He's a German shorthaired pointer, so he's crazy psycho on the beach. But when he gets home, he is obsessed with sitting with us and being with us and cuddling us. And it's just this connection. Then it just calms me and I don't know, I like resets me. I think.
Brigid Moloney
And yes, I imagine if I was with him on a trip again, like Robert Davidson, who had her dog on the journey with the camels, it would be the connection would be like unparalleled. And that just must make you feel so a part of the world around you. Like you're just completely interconnected with nature and all its creatures.
Brigid Moloney
Was it a bit like that?
Heather Hillier
Yeah, definitely. The horses definitely made us feel so much more connected to the land, and if only just because we had to find grass for them. And so we were always just like looking. And, you know, you come over a ridge or something and there'd be a little valley down there and you'd just have this little inkling of, oh yeah, that seems like there's a river down there.
Heather Hillier
There's got to be a waterway. Let's go down there and check it out. And yeah, we were just so much more dependent on the land because we were dependent on the horses to, take us somewhere. And there depended on the land. And so it was. Yeah. Well, and on the communities too, like being along the coast, you're never far away from.
Heather Hillier
But it was all just small fishing, seasonal villages where people would show up for the summer, harvest seaweed and, and leave for the winter. And so we'd come across those and lots of little towns, where we'd just pick up the horses and, like, go in and get in. I'd been out or something like that. So we were.
Heather Hillier
Yeah, like, really? I wouldn't say we were like super remote at that time. Up in the mountains. We got a lot more remote. But then it was just, yeah, the communities around us and the land, and you could just see how interwoven it all was, the fishing communities and the land and the rivers.
Brigid Moloney
Did it feel good being a part of that?
Heather Hillier
Yeah, it felt that was so special. Yeah, it was incredible. Is the best way I've ever traveled. I'm not going to say it's the only way that I want to travel, because it was such it was so hard. Like just the energy and, we were so fit by the end of it, like in the morning, it would take three hours to pack everything up.
Brigid Moloney
Wow.
Heather Hillier
Yeah. And get going and check the horses for and saddle them up. And it was. Yeah, it was a big job. But it was just kind of turned into part of it. Sorry. This dog barking in the background.
Brigid Moloney
So does that mean then you're obviously living through life in this case, was it hard to assimilate back into the world once the trip was done?
Heather Hillier
I guess I made it easy on myself and I went back to our, off grid cabin off the coast. So when I came back to Canada, it was like June and coming into summertime. And so I was just going to go up there and find a job doing whatever. And, yeah, be able to live up there for the summer.
Heather Hillier
And then I would see what I would do after that. And so it was quite a nice assimilation. I found a job cooking in a kitchen, in a cafe four days a week. And just like did lots of fishing and gathering clams and mushroom hunting and swimming. And yeah, I had it pretty good that summer. So yeah.
Brigid Moloney
I actually just wanted to touch base on what you said about the seaweed harvesting. How did you do that? You because you're also quite a bit of a spearfishing woman, aren't you? Oh, yeah. Know.
Heather Hillier
I wouldn't say I'm like, yeah, I did it a bit in Central America. But I haven't really done it in Australia. And I think it's a shark thing, but I just don't really want to have that encounter, so I just avoid it.
Brigid Moloney
But how did you get the seaweed?
Heather Hillier
Just stuff that's washed up on the beach. There's this, it's actually like a really popular cuisine in Chile. They call it Q yeah, and it's it's like the, you know, in a kelp plant, there's like the long piece that's like round and or.
Brigid Moloney
Like the stalk.
Heather Hillier
Yeah. The ropey part. It's kind of hollow in Chile. It's quite. It's really tender. Like, a lot of them are really tough and hard to eat, but in Chile, they. So they gather these long pieces and then they wrap them up, and you can buy them even in Santiago at markets. You buy them as this little bundle of seaweed, and they chop it up and make salads out of it.
Heather Hillier
And so you can just find it on the beach there. Oh, wow. Made that. Yeah. Really good. Really satisfying. It's beautiful texture.
Brigid Moloney
You know, it's a bit of a trend that's taking off, with our food shortages around the world, like seaweed. It's a it's a growing industry, but I've often thought about maybe I'll do a course to sell. I could get it from my local area how to go about it, but it's obviously different in different location.
Heather Hillier
It's so easy. There's only one seaweed. There's only one seaweed in the world that's not edible. It's called acid kelp.
Brigid Moloney
And oh, okay.
Heather Hillier
Yeah, familiarize yourself with that one. But otherwise they're all edible. They just like range and palatability, I guess.
Brigid Moloney
Okay, that's good to know.
Heather Hillier
Yeah. It's one of those, like, intuition, instinct things. Just like, if it looks gross, don't you know, if it looks like it's been lying on the beach for hours and it stinks, then maybe not. But if a storm is just washed it up and yeah, just don't cut it off the rocks and you'll be good.
Brigid Moloney
Why? What does cutting it off the rocks do?
Heather Hillier
I just, I guess because there's plenty floating around. And so if cutting it.
Brigid Moloney
Is from a sustainability point of view.
Heather Hillier
Yeah, yeah. If you don't need to cut it off the rocks, then I mean, if it's getting a little piece to test it than that. Right? But yeah, a little tester. Yeah. I think it's probably better to just get stuff that's floating around in the ocean.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah, for sure. For sure. And tell us about the day, the journey back on your trip. I just wanted to have a sidebar on seaweed. It tell us about the day the trip finished. Like, what were you feeling then, when you handed over your losses to their new home and you came to the end, were you just utterly exhausted or was it an anticlimax?
Brigid Moloney
Or you just elated? Like, how did you feel then.
Heather Hillier
Think a bit of everything. It was so intense. Like I think, nervous system, everything was so like. And my relationship with Matty at that time was really intense because we were filming all the time. And so it was kind of this working relationship that, and then also dealing with the horses and, it was just really like the highest highs and the lowest lows.
Heather Hillier
It was just so intense. And so coming off of that and, we ended up selling the horses to some friends that we'd met in Chile. There's an American girl and, Venezuelan guy. They. Yeah. Partners. Whatever. What am I trying to say? Yeah. And they had been living down there for a couple of years, and they had just finished a horse packing journey through where we were.
Heather Hillier
And so their journey was pretty intense, like really remote areas in Patagonia, out in the mountains all by themselves. And so they had three horses from that journey, and we were like, maybe they'd want for more. And, because we had tried to sell them before, but turned out that the guy that we were had agreed to sell them to was a butcher.
Heather Hillier
And the lady whose paddock we're staying, and she was like, no, you can't trust him. I sold my milk cows in the last year, and he he killed her. He was supposed to just, you know, have her for six months while while I was away. But he killed it and so. Oh, dear. Yeah. And we were we just didn't really want that to happen to our horses that we, you know, there was so good, and so, like, just beautiful horses, like, maybe if you do that to an older horse or something that, you know, like, I don't know, they eat horse in Chile.
Heather Hillier
And so it's kind of a normal thing, but we just I don't know, I don't want to be a hypocrite and say, no, not our horses. But they were they were so well trained and they were just such beautiful beings that we just didn't want that to be there. And, and so and they've got so much, so many years left in them, of good living.
Heather Hillier
And so yeah. So we asked these guys if they wanted to take them and changed our course and took them up into the mountains to work on, which is like a tourist town up in the mountains up there. And, surrounded by volcanoes and rivers and so beautiful. And so we got there and ended up staying in there.
Heather Hillier
They had a little cabin out the back, and it just felt like luxury, like it was incredible just staying inside. And like, I remember looking in a mirror and thinking like, oh, but is this body like a head? And I think for the last three weeks before that, I hadn't like taken off my clothes because it was so cold.
Heather Hillier
And so you just like, get into the sleeping bag at night in the same clothes you're going and then get back like it was just, I don't know, it just felt weird to look down on a body that didn't have like three pairs of pants on and, I don't know, all these layers. It was just. Yeah, it was the craziest feeling to be inside.
Heather Hillier
And I don't know, everything felt really easy. And I think I felt a really overwhelming sense of, relief at the end of the trip, but also the sadness that like so many things were coming to an end, like the yeah, the horses, the relationship there and, Maddie was going to continue on after that, and I was going to go home because I was just sort of ready, ready to be finished.
Heather Hillier
I didn't really care about reaching the end. The bottom. But Matty just had it in his head that he had to do it. And so, yeah, he ended up flying back up and meeting me in Canada, but, it was sort of.
Brigid Moloney
A so he continued on to the tip. Yeah.
Heather Hillier
Yeah, yeah, for another month or two. Okay. So yeah.
Brigid Moloney
Well, and did you remember though like now when you're going through your everyday routine in life, do you think of how you felt in that moment, like with the gratitude and is it changed how you move through the world now, like everything that you learned on that trip?
Heather Hillier
I think it changed me in one big way. Like, I don't, I don't know, you kind of get used to all the luxuries again, but, I felt myself a lot calmer after that, like it did something. And especially the horses. It just changed the way I was able to deal with stress. Really? Yeah. Yeah, for whatever reason.
Heather Hillier
Because it was maybe just so high intensity and I don't know what it was, but I just could feel myself after that being like, this isn't a big deal. Like, I'm not going to, you know, I could just, like.
Brigid Moloney
Physically, I can handle anything now.
Heather Hillier
Yeah. I mean, obviously not anything, but I could just feel, you know, and you feel the stress rising, and I just can kind of breathe through it or something after that. Obviously, I still get stressed, but yeah, it just felt different after that. And so I feel like I've actually changed and maybe coming back to, yeah, you don't realize it until you come out of it, I guess.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah, I yeah, I would imagine you wouldn't have much time to, to think about it.
Heather Hillier
No. And.
Brigid Moloney
And then what it was doing to and what it would be until you were done. I actually listened to again. Robin Davidson did an interview recently, and the interviewer was talking to her about how she felt on the trip, and she just was really honest. She said, look, I actually can't remember. Like, luckily, National Geographic commissioned her to write a book about her experience, but she actually wasn't even planning on doing that.
Brigid Moloney
She needed to do it in the end so that the trip was funded. However, she said had she not had that book and that memoir memoir, it she wouldn't have been out a really recall.
Heather Hillier
Brigid Moloney
Besides a few logistically logistical things, she wouldn't have been able to recall how she felt because she was just so in it. And then when you come out of it, it's all hindsight. So effectively kind of like trying to piece it back all together. And if you can't actually remember how you felt in the moment, how you can remember how you felt out of the moment, it's just you're in this you're a changed being, I guess, like you just have things have changed inside of you, but and maybe when you start moving around your day to day life again, I'll.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah, you can sense the changes, but you can't really pinpoint how you got there.
Heather Hillier
That makes sense. Yeah, I actually I read another one of her books. I haven't read tracks, but I saw the movie, but another one about when she was living with nomads in India. And I just always remember appreciating how honest she was about, like, how she hated it sometimes. Like, like it wasn't all this or, like, depreciating their culture all the time.
Heather Hillier
She's like, it's gross. There's rats running over me all night. Like it was just. Yeah, like, she's one of the most honest people I've read about that kind of situation. And I just, Because I kind of felt the same. A lot of the stuff, like a density of emotions. And I think being in a relationship, and working on a film as well, I just felt like, yeah, so many negative things a lot.
Heather Hillier
And so it was just like, oh, God, yeah, yeah.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah. What was to.
Heather Hillier
Hear that from her?
Brigid Moloney
What was the relationship like with Maddie by the end of it? Was it how did you get through the ups and downs with him?
Heather Hillier
Brigid Moloney
Is that. Yeah, that would have been so intense. Like, I go camping for the weekend with. And I'm like, I'm about to kill you.
Heather Hillier
Yeah. It was, I don't know, I couldn't handle it by the end, really. Like, I, I got over it by going home like, that was I just had be finished because it was. Yeah, it was too intense. Like, I think it would have been intense just having the horses and not having to film everything into like because he was the director, you know.
Heather Hillier
And so and then I'm just like, I learned how to do a lot of the, all the filming and taking photographs and started enjoying it as well. But then I started getting my own ideas of how I wanted it to look, and then he'd be like, okay, we're going to like, I want to do this shot or something.
Heather Hillier
And I'd be like, well, this is how I want to do it. I don't know, you know, just those stupid arguments. Yeah. And he was so motivated by that point to just like like, I don't we didn't really have much a relationship. I didn't feel like I didn't feel like because, I think we were both just feeling like getting to the end of it.
Heather Hillier
And, you know, he had this huge goal in his head that he'd worked up for years and years of planning and then finally, eventually eating the the whole journey. And it, you know, it was near the end and it was it was just all coming to a head. And yeah, I think it was just really intense for both of us and just head to head to finish it on.
Brigid Moloney
And yeah, understandably. And do you think anybody could do a trip like that or is there a particular kind of person. Because what what would you say is your personality type. So you're a bit of a risk taker. Well, not a yeah.
Heather Hillier
I never would have said that about myself I didn't like I'm pretty. I guess I said I wasn't calculated before, but like, I've always been someone that's like, okay, if I jump off this, then it's just like I go through all the scenarios in my head. And so, I don't know, maybe like emotion kind of comes over me and, and I kind of get blind to all the risks, but I guess there's some risks that seem more immediate and some that aren't.
Heather Hillier
And I'm. Yeah, I like I'm a pretty thoughtful person when it comes to lots of different things, and I can imagine scenarios and overthink lots of things. But, I feel like anyone can do it. It was pretty physically demanding, I guess, and I've always been pretty physically capable and athletic. And so that's probably all it all it really demanded of thinking, I don't know.
Heather Hillier
Yeah, I think anyone could ever do.
Brigid Moloney
An emotional strength to get through the tough times.
Heather Hillier
Yeah, yeah. Or just I don't know, I used to like, practice opera singing in my helmet on the motorbike or practice screaming. I would just like, scream into my helmet on the highway. That probably got it. Oh, that would be fun. Yeah.
Brigid Moloney
Just a nice release.
Heather Hillier
Yeah, it was good.
Brigid Moloney
I do think you're. You're a mother now. How how old is your baby again?
Heather Hillier
A six and a half months.
Brigid Moloney
Do you think it affected how your mother or helped you get through pregnancy and labor and.
Heather Hillier
I was going to say that about, birth earlier when you sort of look back on something and it's like with. Yeah, you don't remember all the all the hard things like, oh, that was so great. Yeah. I kind of view birth that way, I guess, like while you're in it, you're like, wow, definitely having no more kids.
Heather Hillier
I wish I'd never done this. But immediately after that, I was the best thing I've ever done. I'm like, oh, God, let's do it again.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah, that's such a mind trick, isn't it?
Heather Hillier
Yeah. It's crazy. I don't know. I don't know how it affected me in that way. I guess maybe the stretching, like, I've noticed myself being just a little bit more able to go with things and not be too worried about it. And, and it definitely helps my relationship a lot. Like, I kind of know what our boundaries are and what I want to do to get to I don't want to live together.
Heather Hillier
And we've kind of been in all situations together. And so yeah, we we know how to trust each other. So that definitely helps in that regard. Yeah.
Brigid Moloney
And did you feel like you were just super in tuned with the natural world like you because of. Wait have you bought a ranch. Like I just want to know how this went full circle. Because you did farming very in tune with the land and then you went on and it sounds like the whole part of the trip, like you were saying earlier, you were just a part of the environment looking for order, looking for grass, and then you finish the trip.
Brigid Moloney
But it's like you found yourself, are you with horses again, or have I made that up?
Heather Hillier
Yeah, we actually are. It was a long process of finding it, but, we've bought acres with Maddie brother and sister. So three of us, all three parties, all went in together on it. Which is the only way we can get land at this point in time. So, yeah, we it made us a, made it affordable for for all of us.
Heather Hillier
And the acres used to be a horseback riding center. They used to do trail rides. And we got six horses at a bargain. So there's stables. There's all this infrastructure for horses, and lots of space. There's, like three big paddocks. And so, I'd like to get some different animals, and we'll definitely get chickens and ducks, and, I don't know, I'd love to get the cattle, maybe, or goats or something.
Heather Hillier
And yeah, plenty of space for growing, lots of food and better food. Forest land. And because that's what I was working as in Byron, I was working for a market garden. And before that, sort of a successional agroforestry system where you're growing veggies and lots of different things in amongst longer term perennials and trees and super long term trees.
Heather Hillier
And yeah, it's all this big system of plant cooperation, I guess.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah. Did you always want to have land with the horses? Like it's just so uncanny.
Heather Hillier
Brigid Moloney
Like was that the plan to have the horses or this property just popped up with horses and you were like oh this is fitting.
Heather Hillier
Yeah I think this one popped up and it really like I don't think I'm that into horses too. I mean I definitely I'm not I still romanticize them and I'm like oh so cool. And we go for rides and such, but it's not something that I, it's like anything, you just have to make it a habit, I guess.
Heather Hillier
And I and I don't have time for it right now. And so I don't have time to really forge relationships with horses at the moment. So, so I don't make a habit of it. And so it doesn't happen, but it really appealed to Matty because he works a lot on the computer. And so he wanted to be able to have something to, you know, to focus on this, like outdoor work and physical.
Heather Hillier
And he goes out in the morning and feeds the horses. And I think we might get rid of a few because it takes us a lot of supplemental feed and everything. But yeah, I think the land appealed to us because of the horse situation and it felt right, I guess. Yeah.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah, it's just full circle accomplishment.
Heather Hillier
Yeah.
Brigid Moloney
How amazing. I mean, it sounds like you were just destined to be fully ingrained in your natural environment. I it doesn't sound like you would be able to live in a city anymore.
Heather Hillier
No, I don't think so. Yeah, I think it would get to me. So lucky here. Yeah, yeah. So much National park and state forest and. Yeah, there's just forest everywhere down to the beaches and then open beat with nobody on it. Yeah. Pretty incredible.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah. Land is so scarce around. Yeah isn't it. And it's expensive. I'm so happy for you that you found that. So that's really cool.
Heather Hillier
Yeah. We're really lucky.
Brigid Moloney
And also I just think it's gonna be really cool bringing up your little boy in that environment. Can you imagine when he's older, you telling him about this trip? You're going to be the coolest.
Heather Hillier
Mother.
Brigid Moloney
Going around. He's going to be like, my mom went on a motorbike trip. And on this trip.
Heather Hillier
I didn't even think about it.
Brigid Moloney
Did anybody try to say, no, don't do it. Like, did you come up against a lot of people telling you it was too dangerous? You know, it'd be like me and my dad.
Heather Hillier
Yeah.
Brigid Moloney
Like, do you have to push through that a little bit?
Heather Hillier
Not from my parents. My parents are amazing. They've always encouraged me and never showed me any fears about that kind of thing. And that's always frustrated me about traveling places, that the women always get warned that it's dangerous. But I don't know, I feel like, yeah, it just feels like this whole conspiracy against women of like, the predatory men or telling the women that it's dangerous and then they're the ones that are predatory.
Heather Hillier
And I don't actually know if there is any more danger for women. I don't know.
Brigid Moloney
I didn't feel that on the trip. Was it because you were like, could you have done that trip by yourself, or with a female?
Heather Hillier
I think with another female, for sure. I think I just get freaked out by myself. Like it'd be freaked out camping in some spots. And camping in Central America in general felt a little bit like you're always very close to people. And, yeah, it's like it's hard to get away from people, and people feel like the most dangerous thing, but they're also the safest thing, like, because for that reason, they're like, why are you doing this?
Heather Hillier
It's so dangerous here. You can't trust anybody. Let me take you into my house and I'll feed you and help you out. You know, like, that's the that's the vibe everywhere you go. And they're like, oh, you're going that way. Not you can trust them.
Brigid Moloney
What if those were the people that were untrustworthy and you didn't know and they were you in?
Heather Hillier
Yeah, I know it's weird, but they never are.
Brigid Moloney
I guess you had a good gauge of intuition of, like, if that person was dodgy or not.
Heather Hillier
Yeah, I guess that's it. But yeah, I've only met incredible people on road. Really. They're just so welcoming and even. Yeah, ones in really rural villages where there's, you know, like the general living conditions or like it would be considered poverty. But yeah, they always take you in or feed you and I don't know, they're the most generous people, I think.
Heather Hillier
Yeah. Yeah.
Brigid Moloney
Well that's cool. You would have had to learn to trust your gut tenfold, right? Like, did you have a good emotional connection to your instinct before the trip or it grew on the trip?
Heather Hillier
I don't know. I've never felt like I did, but like I said, that you just get a good feeling about people. Go with it. I don't know, I wouldn't have said that I had a particularly good instinct or anything. And if anything, like a lot of the stories you hear, that's like an equal part. Men and women like, especially in Mexico, there's a lot of issues with the cartels and even the cops, you know, like it's just it's kidnaping.
Heather Hillier
And yeah, it's pretty gnarly, but it's not specifically female. You know, I just think we have to stop telling women that it's dangerous to be off by themselves, because the whole fear, the idea that it is dangerous for a woman to be out by herself, it just seems so dated and I haven't found it to be true.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah, it's very disempowering, isn't it?
Heather Hillier
Because, yeah.
Brigid Moloney
Every trip starts with an idea and a concept. And if that's the stage where we get shut down, then of course we don't do the trip like little, you know, something happening along the way. We might need to come home or it gets cut short or whatever, which could happen to a male or a female.
Heather Hillier
But yeah.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah, I think it's dangerous when the rhetoric is. Yeah, getting spun around. Yeah. In those early stages. And I'm a perfect example of that. Like your trip. Honestly, I don't know why. It was something that I also romanticized. I just wanted to get the motorbike with probably with someone like a guy or a girl and pretty much do exactly what you did.
Brigid Moloney
But any time I mentioned the idea to someone, they just, that's crazy that you can't. And then I just got kind of stuck in there, you know, the cycle of work, hard work on your career, but, yeah, yeah, I think it's a real credit to that. You actually did it and that you could inspire other people to do it with this message, because the spirit is probably so different to anything else you've experienced in your life.
Heather Hillier
Yeah, it was definitely extremely formative. Like it stands out as being like this and apex. So even though now I guess I'm like less amazing, other things that I'm proud of and it's not really what I define myself. It's like I'm not this adventure person that is going to just keep going out and pushing the limits and doing that.
Heather Hillier
Like, I just don't even want to do that. But, but yeah, it was it was so formative.
Brigid Moloney
Like, that's a beautiful way to look at it because you're not. Yeah. Ego hasn't taken over, you know, like all those mountaineers and they climb one mountain and then they went home. And that's kind of nice to hear you say that. That was what you did at that point in time, for reasons that were motivated by your inner world and your inner self.
Brigid Moloney
And now you have different motivations, and you have a child now.
Heather Hillier
And,
Brigid Moloney
So whatever the next adventure is.
Heather Hillier
Yeah.
Brigid Moloney
Through that base.
Heather Hillier
Yeah. Yeah, totally.
Brigid Moloney
Because, do you camp a lot with your baby? Like, how do how do you, do you go outdoors with them a lot. And is it really different or is it.
Heather Hillier
Yeah, we've we've been camping a few times. And it definitely seems like the easiest thing to do with the baby. Like, it actually feels easier than being, Yeah. Because, like, really, you're with. Well, we've only camped with other people and it just feels like you're suddenly in a tribe of people, and this is how you're supposed to be raising kids.
Heather Hillier
Like you're cooking communally as people around. There's toddlers to distract him, like someone's holding onto him. And even if you're holding him, you're talking to other people. You've got people around all day. You're not sitting in a dark house by yourself wondering when nap time is. It's just feels.
Brigid Moloney
It's really. Wow.
Heather Hillier
That's cool.
Brigid Moloney
And what about logistics? Like, I don't know, because he does reusable nappies, don't you? And so how does something like that work? Like, you know, you have to set up all your stations.
Heather Hillier
Well, I haven't been that good. We haven't done, like, really extended ones. We've just done mostly weekend trips. And to be honest, I just use disposables for that. I could probably buy more, read the ones and like, get a big stash and then wouldn't have to do washing until I got home. But yeah, I don't. That would be tricky.
Heather Hillier
Find a laundromat is. Yeah.
Brigid Moloney
I mean, you've got to pick it up.
Heather Hillier
Yeah, exactly.
Brigid Moloney
I think that's really cool. Like, that's such a cool concept because I haven't had that experience. I haven't camp with my daughter yet and she's months old. And maybe if we had, we don't have a huge network of friends where we live. So maybe if we were down home and we did it with.
Heather Hillier
Friends.
Brigid Moloney
Would be easier. So I think in my mind I'm thinking about it. Yeah, just as us and you would get the benefits that you were just talking to because that sounds really cool. That makes.
Heather Hillier
Yeah, it's yeah, I just want to be like permanently camping. I've in a way, I feel more free as a mother than I've ever have because, like, all of a sudden I don't have work constraints. Like, I'm really lucky that I haven't had to go back to work. Yeah. And so I'm just like, oh, well, I can I can do this anywhere.
Heather Hillier
All I need is breast milk. And me and Maddie, like, we could be anywhere. Yeah. Doesn't really make him.
Brigid Moloney
Oh, yeah. That's so true. So, have you enjoyed motherhood?
Heather Hillier
I have, yeah, yeah, it's been been a fun. I don't know, I guess I'm just I can try everything once kind of person. So it's like the motherhood, hits and you're like, oh, yeah, the instinct is strong. And, once I was ready, I was ready. And then. Yeah, it's been amazing. He was kind of a miracle baby at the start.
Heather Hillier
I had a really beautiful postpartum, lots of support, and I made tons of meals for the freezer. So we were just like, yeah, the three of us kind of just hanging out at home. We were living on the farm where I was working up until weeks pregnant. And, I could just go out and pick veggies whenever I wanted to.
Heather Hillier
And, it was really magical. So, so easy. And he was pretty, like. He didn't cry much. He was pretty happy, baby. And we were cosleeping, bed sharing. So just like I never felt sleep deprived. And then or months hit and he was a bit more awake and wasn't napping on time. And I was like, oh, now what do I do with my day?
Heather Hillier
What do we do?
Brigid Moloney
We go camping.
Heather Hillier
Yeah. I couldn't really put him down. Like he was definitely a contact napper. But then my mum came and helped with a bit of confidence with, like, oh, just try putting him down in his mouth. Just try it. Like it doesn't hurt. Try pinning down, yeah. And so it's getting a bit easier. Again, I think we're just figuring out some schedules and starting to meet people around here.
Heather Hillier
Like I've gone to some mother's groups and, have and we started sewing lessons. So we have some weekly activities, which is good.
Brigid Moloney
Yes. They're always handy.
Heather Hillier
Yes. I want to get out of the house.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah, yeah. You do. You need that interaction with other people and other mothers to just bounce off and yeah, talk to about about what you're going through and if it is sounds crazy or normal or.
Heather Hillier
Yeah, it's huge. I thought it would be this like nature mum that just like call me back onto National Park and I thought I would just be out walking the paddocks all day and like, you know, exploring the forest. Showing him nature. But I'm like, get me to town. I need people around me.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah. It can be super isolating. Can't. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I, I went through it when we were in lockdown, so.
Heather Hillier
I feel like it.
Brigid Moloney
Definitely affected my mental health because.
Heather Hillier
You know.
Brigid Moloney
No one could visit, our families couldn't visit, and yeah, it was just the three of us. I mean, we all went a little bit crazy.
Heather Hillier
Yeah.
Brigid Moloney
But now I really enjoy like, she's at the age where we can go outside and she's fascinated by different leaves and objects and stones and rock. I thought that when she was a baby she would be into that. But of course she's not. She's just a blob.
Heather Hillier
Yeah.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah, it's funny, the ID having you and I remember I didn't know about awake time. Like, I don't know, you heard about. Oh, yeah. There's like a rough guide. Like, if your baby's three months old, they. The maximum amount of time they're awake is, I don't know, they an hour and a half as an example.
Heather Hillier
Yeah.
Brigid Moloney
It's probably not accurate. And I remember putting her under a tree on the farm that we used to live on. And I'm like, what? She needs the nature. She needs to look up at the sky like she was awake for, like four hours, and she was only, like, two months old. And I had no idea that it was a thing that she had to decide.
Brigid Moloney
But I set.
Heather Hillier
The tone.
Brigid Moloney
Because I was just obsessed with what I thought she needed, which was all the natural stimuli.
Heather Hillier
Really.
Brigid Moloney
She just started to go to sleep.
Heather Hillier
So funny.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah. All your expectations and preconceived ideas of what you think it's going to be like, just blather. We know that. Yeah.
Heather Hillier
Yeah. It's.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah. Was it like that on your trip? Like, did you have an idea of what you thought it would be like? And then once you were on it, you were like, Holy shit, this is not what I thought.
Heather Hillier
Yeah, I think so. I mean, you always romanticize, like, traveling and the freedom, and I'll just be on the road of exploring and. Yeah, but there's a lot of downtime and boredom and being on your phone, you know, it's like, oh, I should be out exploring, but we're in this tiny beach town and it's the middle of the day, and it's degrees and % humidity and I don't want to go anywhere and sit in the hammock for six hours with the surf.
Heather Hillier
It's, Yeah, I don't know. And I guess when you're working out all day, you're like, oh, that sounds so great. But then when you're in it, it's kind of boring and you just want to community and you want to be able to go outside and pick parsley and I don't know, you just want wait, you don't have gas?
Brigid Moloney
Yeah. The grass is always greener.
Heather Hillier
Yeah.
Brigid Moloney
Many. And you made this epic film. It sounds like. Is that going to be something that we can all see?
Heather Hillier
Yeah. It shouldn't be too. Like he's pretty much done. There's some sound stuff and color grading that he needs to do. But yeah, it's pretty much there.
Brigid Moloney
Because will you be quiet? Will you be featured in it seven because you're the only one with him?
Heather Hillier
Yeah, I'm going to love interest.
Brigid Moloney
Well, I was I was picturing the sweeping landscapes, but maybe it's a film about.
Heather Hillier
No, no, there's definitely sweeping landscapes. There's. Yeah, beautiful shots in it. And then, it's a love story that then I don't have my elevator pitch, but, Yeah, it's mostly a love story that, then discovers some other things about. Yeah, connected to nature and.
Brigid Moloney
Wow, like, literally about the two of you and your relationship or.
Heather Hillier
Yeah, a little bit.
Brigid Moloney
Like, is it fiction?
Heather Hillier
So not like it doesn't go really deep into that, but but yeah, it's like it's not fictional. It's basically like a verité documentary. And so we just filmed as we went, we filmed each other a bit and we filmed the places we went. And so yeah, it's like it's got a couple different storylines running through it.
Heather Hillier
But yeah, I guess there's not that many like, verité love story documentaries out there. And so it kind of unique that way, that we were able to capture a bit of that and create a story around it. And then also, yeah, probably the next or the underlying story is like, I guess, yeah, the loss of connection with, with nature and environment, I guess.
Heather Hillier
Not the loss of it, but how do we regain that? And how do we, like, truly connect nature, you know?
Brigid Moloney
Oh, wow, that sounds super fascinating.
Heather Hillier
Yeah, yeah, I'm excited for it to go out to the world. Yeah. Matt has been working so hard at it for the last few years, so really good to get it out there.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah, amazing. Yeah. Thank you so much for your time today. And squeezing us in between. Yeah, the busy life of motherhood in those first few months. It's it's so lovely that you shared your story with us. And I really can't wait to hear this because it's so inspiring. And yeah, what you've done is so inspiring. So thank you for giving us the time today.
Heather Hillier
Oh well, yeah. Thank you. I really appreciate you wanting to have me on the podcast. Oh God is good to go over these things again. Yeah.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah. And you can reflect a little bit.
Heather Hillier
Yeah. Yeah. It's important. I don't really get it very often.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah. Thank you so much I really appreciate it. It's been really lovely chatting.
Heather Hillier
Thank you. See, Bye bye.
Brigid Moloney
Thank you for carving out some time to listen to this story. You can see any links in the show notes. This show was produced, hosted and edited by me, which is a huge undertaking. So if you would like to sponsor the show or know anyone who would, please get in touch. In a spirit of reconciliation, I acknowledge the traditional custodians of the bungling nation and their connections to land, sea and community.
Brigid Moloney
I pay my respects to their elders past, present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today. I hope you'll join me next time. Through another head of inspiration told through the lens of Mother Nature and these incredible women. Thanks and bye for now.
Brigid Moloney
I. Welcome to the Moved by Nature podcast. I'm your host, Brigid Maloney, and this is a show that celebrates spirited women who embrace life with Mother Nature. They inspire us through their stories of adventure, personal growth, and connection to something greater than themselves. This episode is about throwing caution to the wind and following the call from your heart and spirit.
Brigid Moloney
It's hard to put into words the admiration I feel for people who can do this with such ease. People like my guest today, Heather Ilia, a humble yet tenacious Canadian who embarked on an incredible journey from Mexico to Chile for nine months on motorbike and a further six months on horseback. Upon meeting Aussie filmmaker Maddie Hannon in Canada, a spark of love was ignited and she decided to join him on his ambitious adventure of traveling from Alaska to Patagonia.
Brigid Moloney
Surfing and filmmaking. The film Road to Patagonia has now been released, and screened across Australia and overseas, winning copious accolades and awards. It is a breathtaking exploration of humanity's current connection to the natural world, told through the lens and intimacy of their blossoming romance, plus the hardships and joys on the road. Heather's background in regenerative farming and permaculture ensured that the prospect of such an epic adventure was too tantalizing to pass up.
Brigid Moloney
Not having any motorbike experience might have to turn many people, but no obstacle was too hard for her and she made it her reality. She talks frankly about romanticizing the idea of riding both motorcycles and horses, and how this idealized view crumbled with the actual reality, forcing her to completely readjust her mindset and approach to the whole experience.
Brigid Moloney
Once the couple were on horseback, their responsibilities grew tremendously as having to find food and water for the horses every day was challenging, but this shift of connecting more to the natural world ensured they showed respect for the locals, indigenous communities and the land. They also had to remain humble as they were being guided by the weather patterns and crazy terrains, and forced to let go of any predetermined plans.
Brigid Moloney
I was struck by Heather's sense of openness when it comes to making bold decisions about one's life. Her take is that all women are capable of doing a trip like this. If only we weren't warned of the dangers before even setting foot. Coupled with Heather's stoic approach to life, there is a beautiful soft as she has and appreciation for other people, creatures and energies that exist outside of her own.
Brigid Moloney
Making the trip undeniably formative in shaping who she is. We also unpack the trials and tribulations of motherhood, the frustrations that arise when traveling and working with your partner and mother, and of course, about the film which they made together on the trip. We recorded this episode before the film was released, so admittedly it was some time ago.
Brigid Moloney
But Heather's insights a timeless and hence I thought the episode was still relevant to share. The film is currently being screened and is a must see. I myself was absolutely blown off my feet when I saw it. I laughed, cried and felt completely inspired to learn from this incredible couple. I hope you get to feel something when you hear this story, and also feel inspired in any way that aligns with you.
Brigid Moloney
Apologies for a few sections of this chat where the reception was a little dodgy and the audio plays catch up. And if you love the sustainable Aussie hat brand, will and bear, which Heather wore while on her trip, you could head to their website and enjoy % off your purchase using the code Sam Smith , at checkout. The link will be in the show notes for this podcast to grow.
Brigid Moloney
Your help would be greatly appreciated. Please consider any of the following meaningful gestures. Share this episode with a friend. Hit subscribe on your podcast app of choice. Write the show with five stars or leave a review. Thank you so much for joining me on this journey of Uncover tales of inspiring women. And now over to Heather.
Brigid Moloney
Thank you so much for joining us today. We're chatting remotely, and I am in the northern rivers of New South Wales in and country. Where are you, darling? And from exactly? Where did you meet you? Because you were here. Living here? Where are you now?
Heather Hillier
Yeah, we're down in Valerie now, which is kind of right in between Bellingen and Coffs Harbor. Up in the hills. And it's on combine gear. Country.
Brigid Moloney
Amazing. And do you like it there?
Heather Hillier
Yeah, yeah I do. We're up in the hills. Are about minutes from our closest little local beach, and, Yeah, it's beautiful here. There's. It feels like real mountains. Like it kind of reminds me of being at home. It's like mountains in the background. And, we're right in the middle of a lot of places and really beautiful towns and close enough to Coffs Harbor that you can get all the things done that you need to get done.
Heather Hillier
And. Yeah, yeah. And really loving it here. And we're on sort of the dream farm. So yeah.
Brigid Moloney
Because where is home.
Heather Hillier
West coast of Canada. So Vancouver region.
Brigid Moloney
So you grew up in the city or in the outskirts.
Heather Hillier
In the country, in the suburbs. So sort of the same old story. It was country. And then, was turned into suburbs. But I grew up sort of in a little beach community there. You wouldn't call it a beach, really, in Australia, but it's like a big mud bay that drains out when the at the low tide and then fills back up again.
Heather Hillier
So yeah, but we spent our summers in a little, like off grid cabin on the off the coast of it. So yeah, lots of forest and ocean adventuring there.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah. So you've got the outdoors in your blood. Really grew up amongst the.
Heather Hillier
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I'm pretty comfortable outside. Yeah.
Brigid Moloney
So I definitely want to talk to you about this epic adventure that you went on in South America, but maybe you could talk to us about, I guess, the lead up to that decision. So what you were doing before you went on the trip and. Yeah, like maybe what happened after you left school and, if you did much traveling or.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah, what you started doing for work and living, etc..
Heather Hillier
Yeah. So I guess after I left school, or during university, I went to school in the States, and, I was studying like kind of sustainable development and kind of stuff, and I thought I would be off working in different countries. I always just thought it would be so rad to live somewhere else and work there, I guess.
Heather Hillier
And in development, I just felt like that was really important work. But through that started reading a lot about farming and how, you know, the global food systems are really that seemed like the root of all disharmony in the world. You know it. Yeah. So started reading a lot about food systems and then kind of realized that, like, it's our Western food system that really has the issues.
Heather Hillier
So why would I be telling other people in other countries how to grow food when we are the ones doing the most damage? And so I thought I would try working on farms and see how that went. I ended up going to Central America for or months, and I thought I would be woofing and working on farms there, but ended up just doing the whole traveling circuit thing and partying lots and hanging out.
Heather Hillier
And then, yeah, I came back and I actually met someone in Central America when I was there and ended up going to California to see him and ended up kind of living there and working on farms for a year and a half and, just fell in love with it and fell in love with the plants. And it really just hit me that that was like, oh, my God, this is this is what I was made to do.
Brigid Moloney
Oh, wow. Did you just learn from the farmers you were working with or how did you. Because you seem quite like educated and informed. Now, is that just the passing on of knowledge as you were on the farm?
Heather Hillier
Yeah, mostly, I guess. After that I moved back to Vancouver and I wanted to do, I did like a three month sort of, organic gardening course. I ended up doing a permaculture design course later, and this one was pretty similar to that without the title. And then I also interned on an urban farm in Vancouver, and the next year that urban farm came up for the woman who ran it.
Heather Hillier
She was weaving. And so she was trying to look for someone to take it over. And so a friend and I took it over, oh, wow. And ran it for the next year after that. And yeah, it was such a good learning opportunity because it's pretty small scale. We ran a CSA, so everyone pays at the beginning and you provide them with veggie boxes throughout the season, no middlemen.
Heather Hillier
And you're kind of just. Yeah, doing everything, planning, planting, marketing, running the business. But it was micro. Micro, you know, like, I think the business paid our rent at home and that's pretty much it. Yeah, but but it was perfect. We both had part time jobs on the side and, Yeah, it really taught me a lot about, I guess, the full cycle of farming, of doing it all, I guess.
Brigid Moloney
What does it involve? Like when you sow a seed, what's the cycle like? Do you then use the seeds again for the next crop, or do you save them or is it seasonal or do they replenish themselves? Like how does it if you are managing the farm, which yeah, it sounds like a great like learning opportunity, was it hard to figure out when to plan, plant what and how and or is that all part of permaculture?
Brigid Moloney
And yeah, like how did you figure all of that out?
Heather Hillier
Well yeah, that was a big learning curve, I guess. But, the woman that we got the farm from, she actually, had this amazing spreadsheet system of, like, I don't know how to do Excel or spreadsheet at all, but, she showed us how to input the date that you wanted to harvest. That would been the formula that and loops around and it tells you when to plant it.
Heather Hillier
And so yeah. So say you wanted like one bunch and like you'd be like, okay, that takes this much space in a bed and you plant this many seeds in February in order to get that harvest in July. And so that really helped. But then that helped with like, I guess conceptualizing it and getting our heads around exactly when to plant it.
Heather Hillier
But it's totally different everywhere. Like here, it's completely different. And in terms of seeds, most probably most market gardeners just buy seeds. There's some things that are easy to save, but you kind of and I, have gotten into saving seeds a lot in my home gardens, but they tend to mix a lot, a lot of the different things.
Heather Hillier
And so you're not going to you're not going to end up with what you thought you were saving if, say, rocket flowers at the same time as your turnips, your I don't know if rocket and turnips cos they're both in the same family, but then I don't know if they're closely related enough to do it. But yeah, it's kind of complex.
Brigid Moloney
And so yeah, that sounds really complex. And then obviously really specific to the region. Like you said.
Heather Hillier
Yeah.
Brigid Moloney
So when you moved to Australia, was it a whole nother level of learning and figuring it all out again? Like have you been working on farms here too?
Heather Hillier
Yeah. Not not the entire time, but the last or years. I had, when I first got here, I wasn't really sure how to get into the farming around here, and it seemed to me that there weren't any jobs, like, you kind of had to start up your own thing to, to do it. And I just, I guess it wasn't there yet.
Heather Hillier
I just wanted to get to know the area and but yeah, I had a home garden when I first got here and, you know, I was like, oh, it's getting into summertime. I'll plant all the things. But summer here is actually the hardest time to grow stuff that we're used to eating because it's so hot and humid and there's so many pests and diseases, everything just goes crazy.
Heather Hillier
Unless you're growing all the tropical veggies like winged beans and sweet potatoes and yeah, all those like really luscious things that love the humidity, but lettuce and rocket and cauliflower and all that stuff just dies in the heat. So yeah, yeah, I was a bit of a learning curve. Winter is actually the best season for growing here.
Brigid Moloney
Wow.
Heather Hillier
Okay. Yeah, yeah yeah.
Brigid Moloney
And how did you find being a female farmer was is a stigma around female farmers. Did you find it challenging at all stepping into that industry as a female?
Heather Hillier
Not really. There's a few things that like when you're first working somewhere, you don't get assigned all the jobs all the time. And it took a while for me to be able to drive tractors. Actually, I've always noticed that the first farm I worked on, there was a guy that worked part time, but he was like worked in forestry and was you know, like a manly man.
Heather Hillier
He when I went back to visit, he was driving the tractor and I was like, oh, wow, I never got to drive the tractor. Not that it was that big of a deal, but it was just like, yeah, it's sort of not really tested, but machinery is readily. But that being said, that's a bit of a generalization because there are a lot of female farmers and it's actually something that, yeah, you just have to kind of gain respect to be like, no.
Heather Hillier
So we'll compost as fast or faster than all the rest is. So yeah, I think like there's more female farmers out there than, than people think. And I think one of those statistics is that I don't remember what it is, but definitely a majority of food in the majority of countries is grown by women on some sort of really small scale.
Heather Hillier
Yeah, small scale, diversified farms. So there you go. It's definitely not grown by male farmers with GPS, tractors, like industrialized food doesn't actually feed the entire world.
Brigid Moloney
Is that a developing nation?
Heather Hillier
Yeah. Mostly. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, it's a bit of a rising movement. There's all these things coming up with. Yeah, women's farming articles and everyone's trying to jump on board because it's sort of realized that women have been there the entire time. They just haven't been as recognized.
Brigid Moloney
I feel like being so in tune with the land is, I don't know, like, maybe I'm saying this because I feel like that when I had a baby, like you just become really into something outside of yourself, like, you know, the whole natural system and ecosystem of the world. Maybe it's the qualities that a farmer needs if it's not industrialized, a really akin to female energy and qualities.
Heather Hillier
Yeah. That's interesting. I think that that makes sense because it's yeah, it's really intuitive and there is a lot of I don't know if that's a generalization, but there's a lot of multitasking. Like it's not, like if you say that men are able to focus on one thing and that's like if a patriarchal, male dominated society has become more specialized, then farming is anything but specialized.
Heather Hillier
You're doing tons of different things on any given day, and you need to know how to do a lot of different things and think about, what the next move is while everything else is happening. So yeah, yeah.
Brigid Moloney
The planning, the forward thinking.
Heather Hillier
Yeah, yeah.
Brigid Moloney
Which is very much the role that we typically play at home. Have you had that sort of like be like you're the one that's like okay, like when, when is he going to sleep? And then I need to feed him, but where am I going to feed him and how am I going to feed him? And you just consider.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah. Like thinking ahead.
Heather Hillier
Yeah, totally. Which is kind of satisfying that you're like, I don't know. It's like this little director's role of like sitting in a chair eating, but thinking about, oh yeah, that thing.
Brigid Moloney
I love that analogy.
Heather Hillier
The director's chair.
Brigid Moloney
But it also can be quite texting. I don't know if you've had that.
Heather Hillier
Yeah.
Brigid Moloney
Lately the mother's mental load. Women are talking about it a lot in the mothers group circles. Just that that mental load of thinking about all the things can just bring you down, you know? And often you might be breastfeeding. Your body's already a bit depleted. And so your brain isn't functioning as well as. Yeah, usually. But you're right.
Brigid Moloney
Like, maybe we're just. Yeah, it's just ingrained in us, like we are quite good at it, so it makes sense to do it. Yeah.
Heather Hillier
I think I read somewhere that, the multitasking was because of that. Because because we have to take care of babies while we are working. And I mean, I guess traditionally you'd have lots of people to do lots of things and you'd have way more support than we do now.
Brigid Moloney
So, yeah, the village.
Heather Hillier
I don't know how true that is, but yeah, yeah, but keep an eye on babies while you're doing other things. And so our brains are more able to be expansive like that.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah, that that makes sense. So you were you were living and working on farms and getting really into permaculture and living off the land, and you ended up going on this amazing journey. So was was this epic trip something that you had in the back of your mind that you always wanted to do, or did the opportunity just get presented to you and you just jumped at the chance?
Brigid Moloney
Like, could you tell us how it came up and the decision making around actually going on the trip? Or maybe you could tell us first what the trip actually was, and then maybe you can tell us how you got to that point.
Heather Hillier
Yeah. So, basically my partner now, Maddie, he was on a motorcycle journey from the very northern tip of Alaska to the southern tip of South America. So in Argentina. Wow. To be in Patagonia. And so that was his big goal. He set off from Australia and did the whole thing. And I ended up meeting him on Vancouver Island.
Heather Hillier
And yeah, it was very not a planned thing. So that was the year I was, running the urban farm. And it was late August, early September. And so I was very burned out by then and just ready to for the season to be over, I guess, because we'd been working every single day with our part time jobs and then on the farm.
Heather Hillier
And so I'd been working seven days a week since April, I guess, and. Well, yeah, it's very not sustainable. But we learned our lessons like that, I guess. And up until then, basically, I had been like, I'm just going to, like, I don't need to travel. I'm just going to be a homesteader. And I really want to, you know, focus on providing everything for myself and community and, you know, making my world a lot smaller than, than I'd previously thought I would have wanted it when I was in union wanting to travel and, and everything.
Heather Hillier
So I was very much in the stage of, like, I don't know if you'd call it nesting, but just didn't have any desire to go anywhere. And I guess I was just really interested in. Yeah, and supporting community and the people around me and, you know, making my world a lot smaller really is what it felt like.
Heather Hillier
And then I had a friend come up to visit from California, and we were like, you know, let's just take the weekend off, let's go camping. We'll go to the island, go surfing, and that'll be great. First weekend off for the summer. So we ended up meeting this weird motorcycle dude that didn't look like a motorcycle guy, and he had this weird looking sidecar and like, who is this weird Washington plates?
Heather Hillier
But he was really blond, and, like, nobody from there was that blond because the sun is not out enough. Get that long. So we're like, what's going on? And, so we had a little chat in the car park there, and, and he ended up inviting us for a, his friend and giving him a salmon. And so inviting us over to share that.
Heather Hillier
And we were like, oh, yeah, maybe I think we're, like, hitting some house. I don't know, took a while for us to actually head to campsite and, and hang out. And then after that he came back to our house in Vancouver, to our little farm there and hang out for a week. And by that time I was, yeah, I think, burned out.
Heather Hillier
And just like meeting him really opened me up to this other possibility of like, wow, there's just people out there going on adventures. And he was planning on making a film out of it, and I'd just never really met a filmmaker before, like an independent filmmaker and live like that, like someone I had seen in a documentary or something.
Heather Hillier
I was like, oh, you can just go do that. So I don't know. I don't know why that hadn't really crossed my path. But yeah, I was very inspired by what he was doing, and I had plans with that friend that came up from California to go to Mexico that winter after the farming season. We're going to drive down to Baja.
Heather Hillier
And Maddy was like, oh, well, I'll be in Baja by December. And I was like, oh, how convenient. Yeah. It kind of just ended up being this thing where I was like to see him again, determined to make it happen. So I drove down by myself and met him in Mexico, and we hung out there for a couple of months.
Heather Hillier
He was like, well, do you want to just keep going with me? I was like, well, yeah, we've gotten we've sold the farm and or, you know, sold the assets, sold the urban farm, the business.
Brigid Moloney
And why did you sell the farm? Was that because of the trip or you were going to sell it anyway?
Heather Hillier
I was ready to move on. At that point, I didn't I knew I didn't want to live in Vancouver, and I was going to maybe move to the island or something to Vancouver Island. And, I wanted to keep farming, but I just didn't want to in that capacity. And so I'd been planning on doing that anyway.
Heather Hillier
And it just worked out that I didn't end up moving to Vancouver Island. I ended up coming back, getting my motorcycle license, flying down to Mexico, buying a motorbike, and continuing on in.
Brigid Moloney
Wow. That's just it's like I don't even know where to start with that. Like, I just got my motorbike license and headed down to Mexico border by. Did you know anything about about motorbikes? Had you been on one before?
Heather Hillier
No. Never sat on one before. Never had any interest. I was like, no, I just thought it was this weird cultural thing that I was not into. Yeah.
Brigid Moloney
Did you have to learn basic mechanics? Because I, I've always wanted to do a trip like you've done. I will be honest. I feel like I might have missed the boat. Now I'm a bit older, but that was actually one of the things that held me back a bit was I thought if I was really remote, I would really need to know how to fix my bike.
Brigid Moloney
And I'm sure I could maybe, I don't know, do it a course or something, which I never got to. But again, there's something about females doing mechanics that, you know, there's a bit of a stereotype there, isn't there? So, but I really would have wanted to. Yeah. Not rely on someone to come and save me if I got in trouble.
Brigid Moloney
Like I wanted to be able to know how to fix the bike myself. But did you did you have to do that or you didn't really need to because you were at that remote? Or how did it work?
Heather Hillier
I guess you never feel that remote in. At least in Central America, there's always someone. There's always like some guy that fixes tires on the side of the road. I don't know, it's just like people come to your rescue there all the time. It's crazy. There's so such beautiful people. But then, I don't know, I guess I didn't feel the need to learn that Maddie hadn't even changed the tire by that point.
Heather Hillier
I think he had learned how to. Well, but I just kind of went into it blind and was like, we'll just figure it out. And there's always someone there to help. And we would often we would kind of watch and learn as we went. And I mean, I guess I just don't really have an interest in it that much.
Heather Hillier
I don't know why.
Brigid Moloney
Do I, but I thought it might have been a necessity.
Heather Hillier
I don't know, there's always someone to come help. Otherwise, you're pretty selfsufficient. And so you just set up your tent and sit there and back home.
Brigid Moloney
Well, I guess I'm really interested to know the decision to go on the trip. How are you feeling emotionally? Was it a hard decision to make? Or you just went, oh yeah, of course I'll just do this, this thing that I've never done before. And with this guy, I don't know that. Well.
Heather Hillier
Yeah.
Brigid Moloney
No, no, it's just stupid. Like you took a risk. It's paid off. Like that's what life is about, taking calculated risk. But I think as females, often we find that difficult. So tell me about the decision making process to actually go. Was it difficult or you just was so.
Heather Hillier
Excited you just went yeah, it was more of the latter. I was just I don't know, I don't really make calculated decisions because I can't I get overwhelmed and it's like planning. I've never been a planner. I've just never been able to. And if I stop and think about it too much, I just kind of get overwhelmed and overthink it.
Heather Hillier
So yeah, I'm kind of just to like, fall in love easy. Kind of just, Yeah, let's go for it. We'll figure it out. That's kind of. Yeah. What happened? There wasn't much practical thinking about it with.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah.
Heather Hillier
I got a little bit nervous when I was doing the whole motorcycle thing because, I had to come home and, like, take a little course. And I was home for two months, and that was like, the minimum time that it took to get my license. And, I think it was expedited because I did, of course, maybe I remember how or but yeah, because I just had to learn from scratch.
Heather Hillier
And it was it's pretty like it's a pretty intense thing. If you've never been on a motorbike, there's like so many things going on, like, you're right, hands involved, you left hands involved in the clutch, and then you're right. But, and then you foot brake, handbrake, throttle. Like there's so much happening and but I'd ridden bicycles a lot through the city, and that really helped because it feels the same as being on a bike.
Heather Hillier
The leaning and the turns and plus the, I guess, the spatial awareness of, okay, that guy's backing out, he probably won't see me. I'm going to slow down. And there's a lot of like risk assessment going on while you're riding. And so I think being a big cyclist in the city really helped me with that.
Brigid Moloney
Like, for example, I think in but more Australians die in Bali on motorcycles than any other way. Like it's there, there's a lot of injury and well, I guess death involved around motorcycles. So my dad particularly was because I floated the idea for years and he was always like, yeah, never getting on a motorbike in a foreign country.
Heather Hillier
But yeah, I.
Brigid Moloney
I had the same thinking as you. I thought, well, if I'm careful, surely I will be okay. But he was always like, you know, but cars won't see you and trucks won't see you when, So did you feel like that was dangerous? So you had a grip on it? Like with it? Any moments where it got a bit hairy?
Heather Hillier
Yeah, definitely. But only really further into the trip. Like, Peru was really hard. The driver there, for some reason, it was across the border. It was just like, well, it's just different. It was. Drivers were insane there and then, but the worst thing that happened was Matty actually crashed into me because he we were going really slowly in traffic and I forget what it was, but he was watching.
Heather Hillier
There was a car, like, inching into his lane. And so he was sort of watching it and trying to get over it. And then I had stopped ahead of him and he just crashed into me. And we both just went down. Oh, but it wasn't to drop the bike a lot, but in, in off road situations like on bumpy roads, it was really because our bikes were so loaded down.
Heather Hillier
I had two surfboards and like A wetsuit for when we hit Chile. And all this like the food and everything. We had way too much stuff and so they were just so heavy you could barely lifted off the ground, but you actually couldn't lift it off the ground by yourself. So just going over bumps and off road stuff was really tricky.
Heather Hillier
And I'd dropped it a lot, going really slowly. I had one scary situation in Chile riding on the Atacama, where it's just like hundreds of kilometers of endless straight road, and it's beautiful in its own way, but it's really, just the same. Everywhere you look around you, it's just like hilly desert. And you're just going straight.
Heather Hillier
And at one point, I was sort of. I used to do this thing where I was like, you look at the road signs and look at how far away some city was. And then I'd like look at our odometer or the speedometer, and I would calculate, I would like, try and do math in my head about how long that would take.
Heather Hillier
And like, I don't know, it was just a way to pass the time. And I remember doing that and all of a sudden waking up on my bike with like, speed wobbles, which is where you're the front tire is just like wobbling along. And bikes are amazing. They write themselves like they, you know, as long as wheels are spinning with the centrifugal force, they, they go, and they stay up.
Heather Hillier
And so, yeah. So it was wobbling and I was going k's an hour and yeah, this I don't know, that freaked me out. We pulled over that after that and tried to have a nap, but I was just way too wired. Yeah. So I just like, done a quick little knot off and, well, woke up again.
Heather Hillier
But that's really the scariest thing that happened. There's no one else on the highway, and it's just me and. Oh wow.
Brigid Moloney
Because did you have to cross mountainous terrain or was it or you're in Todd Roads a lot.
Heather Hillier
Mostly on roads, unless we wanted to find something like we ended up on a pretty hairy little road through Guatemala. And once in Costa Rica, trying to get to the beach. But, mostly we were just on the PanAmerican highway, which is full of tracks like not the nicest spot. My face would be black by the end of most days, because you're just behind these big diesel tracks that are, like, chugging along and one minute sticks the base.
Heather Hillier
Oh.
Brigid Moloney
And I guess you don't have your beauty regime at the top of the priority list.
Heather Hillier
No, there's no beauty regime.
Brigid Moloney
Have you learned to be a minimalist now, or you mentioned before that you actually had too much stuff, like how did you how was that experience of trying to travel with just what you needed? It was that tricky?
Heather Hillier
Yeah, because, yeah. I don't think I learned anything from that trip of how to be minimalist, and I'll never be a minimalist. I find it hard to say, like, well, what if you need this? What if we need to go spearfishing because there's no one around and we can't get food? We need this. Like we just convinced them we needed all these things and yeah, and I'm still like that.
Heather Hillier
But just in case. Yeah, I don't know.
Brigid Moloney
How long did you stay in each spot or when you would pull up each night. Was it laborious unpacking, setting up and then packing down again the next day? What was that experience like?
Heather Hillier
Yeah, it was definitely a bit of a pain to to pack up and set up camp and everything, and I would, I would try and work as well, either like trying to back up footage or whatever. And so we'd need to stop at a place where you could get, electricity and internet and. Yeah, so we had a few like week long stints or we'd stay somewhere for a few days, or if the waves were going to be really good, then we'd stay and wait for a swell of the few times where we just, or lots of times we would just stop overnight.
Heather Hillier
But it was, mostly trying to get somewhere and stay for a little bit. Yeah, the pack up, it was just really tiring. And the writing is more tiring than I think we realized at the time. Like on a bike, it's like the stimulation really just gets to you. It's pretty intense.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah, I would imagine. Yeah. Because you're taking in so much.
Heather Hillier
Yeah. I actually remember that the first few rides I did in Mexico like I feel like when you're in Mexico, the everything's overstimulating or overstimulating but more stimulating than it is here anyway. Like there's new smells, there's people everywhere. There's like people honking horns, cars with like loudspeakers on the top, advertising things like there's just so much going on everywhere and it's so exciting.
Heather Hillier
And that's what makes it so wonderful to be there. But then add to that the like, okay, there's a truck there that might hit me, and it's like a little kid playing soccer over here that might run out onto the road. And there's all these extra things to think about and okay, shift up and brake and don't stall here.
Heather Hillier
And yeah, a lot going on.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah. Gosh, that sounds tiring just hearing you talk about it.
Heather Hillier
I definitely got used to it.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah okay. Yeah. Like drive it I found if I haven't done long distances in the car I'm not driving it. And then yeah you get out. Yeah. Well I was just concentrating for so long. Just that focus. Yeah.
Heather Hillier
Totally. Yeah.
Brigid Moloney
Then you've got the added component of having your body also incorporated in that, like was when you would get off the bike where you just like, oh my God, I'm walking like John Wayne and it all hurts.
Heather Hillier
Yeah. It was you'd get pretty stiff. And I think mostly the lower back, like I was really I focused a lot on trying to like, keep my core, you know, do all the right things with the core and pelvic floor and everything like that. But it's still you're just in one position. There's no real, like, fluid movement to it.
Heather Hillier
And, like, I felt strong, but not in a healthy way. Okay.
Brigid Moloney
I see, did you have the energy or time to do any other exercises for your body while you're on the trip?
Heather Hillier
Not really. Till South America, I was yeah. The first like few months in Central America maybe. It was just so hot and we were surfing a lot more or a bit more. I got kind of intimidated at one point because we're always chasing these massive barreling waves that Maddy wanted to surf. And so I'm like, oh yeah, okay, I'll go out here.
Heather Hillier
It's like, I've lost my confidence in it. But yeah, in Peru it started doing a bit more yoga and that definitely helped.
Brigid Moloney
But did it okay. Do you, meditate as well or you do that within the yoga?
Heather Hillier
No, I've always wanted to, but never really gotten into it. Yeah. Okay.
Brigid Moloney
And what was the actual itinerary of the trip and how long were you on the road for too long.
Heather Hillier
It was like ended up being months, I think. Six of that was on horseback. And so that was a way slower pace. And just. Yeah, a lot, a lot different. And, felt healthier, I guess. But yeah, by the end, you're just, you know, appreciating the things as much as you could be. And so I think that was too long for me.
Brigid Moloney
And why did you switch to horseback?
Heather Hillier
Because of a romantic whim, I guess. Just another romantic whim. I think Maddy mentioned it. He was like, oh, imagine. Like, I don't know, I remember being at a, like, eating lunch somewhere, and then he just made a passing comment about like, oh, I always thought I might do a horseback trip through Indonesia or something like that.
Heather Hillier
And imagine if about horses or something. And I had always wanted to do, I don't know, like a weeklong backpacking trip on horses or something. I just thought that would be cool. My dad had done it a few times. He had a horse, before I was born. And I just always thought it sounded so cool. And then after he mentioned that, I just couldn't stop thinking about it and I was like, oh my God, imagine riding horses through Patagonia.
Heather Hillier
It's like where it's meant to be. And just crossing rivers and camping, and that'll be so amazing. I just couldn't stop thinking about it. And so the next time we stopped, we just chatted. I don't know, we just kind of were like, should we do it? Let's just once we get it, feel like it's like, sell the bikes and get horses and see how far we get.
Heather Hillier
Oh my God. Yeah. We kind of made a bit of a beeline to Fiji, Lamu and there to like mid coastal Chile and yeah, set the plan in action.
Brigid Moloney
There you are on a bike from Mexico to where.
Heather Hillier
Halfway down to like oh yeah the beach in July which is couple hours from Santiago on the coast.
Brigid Moloney
So how many cases that roughly.
Heather Hillier
Oh, I think Maddie's trip was like , k's. And so maybe mine was, I don't know, something in the . I don't even know.
Brigid Moloney
Sorry. How long were you on the bike for? How long did that bit take?
Heather Hillier
That was a month. Fish. Yeah. Yeah, that's a long time. Yeah, it's a lot.
Brigid Moloney
And then so when you got on the horses, how did that feel? Was it liberating. Yeah. What was your relationship like with your horse or horses. Were there one h or H each.
Heather Hillier
So one to ride and one to carry surfboard and yeah, food and camping gear and stuff. So each had to it was way harder than I thought I'd be. It was a crazy experience, but it was it was freeing and and draining. Constricting at the same time. So it took us two months to actually train the horses when we first found them.
Heather Hillier
When, selling the bikes to these guys that were actually from Australia and they both grew up out on stations in Central Australia, and so they knew a lot about horses. And we taught them how to surf. And so they came around with us and checked out different horses and they were like, nah, this one will be any good.
Heather Hillier
This one's oh, this one's blah, blah, blah. And so they helped us find the right ones and then sort of taught us how to ride, taught us how to saddle up. And the Chileans are amazing horse people as well as well. And they we had a few people that taught us a few things, gave us some tips on how to strap things down.
Heather Hillier
But, we couldn't find any examples of how to put a surfboard on the horse. So we tried all these different things, like strapping it to the side or like, but the horses, they hate them. It's like they're funny animals. They freak out at weird things. I hate plastic bags. But yeah, the surfboard. You could knock on a surfboard like, m away from them, and they would perk up.
Heather Hillier
The nostrils flare, and they, like, shy away, like they're just the sound of it and everything. So we had to feed them around the surfboards. We've tie them to trees and like, you know, put a carrot on top of it or something and be like, okay, scary.
Brigid Moloney
The boat is your friend.
Heather Hillier
Yeah, yeah. And then figuring out how to strap the bags onto them, we ended up getting these, like, army bags at a market in Santiago and kind of bringing those up on either side of the horse. We didn't have proper horse packing gear at all. So we just improvised. And so that took two months. And it took longer than that for me to lose my fear of them.
Heather Hillier
I was like, really freaked out and regretting the whole thing. Really.
Brigid Moloney
But really. Do you have much prior experience with horses before the trip?
Heather Hillier
I had done some horse riding lessons as a little girl and, you know, doing the whole English thing, like going around the arena and jumping and all that. And after a jump one day I fell off and really freaked me out. The horse stepped right on my inner thigh and just I just got a little bruise.
Heather Hillier
But, and I unfortunately did not get back on the horse. And so that's a real thing you have to get back on and it'll like it kind of helps you work through the trauma of falling off. Really. I.
Brigid Moloney
Can relate to that. That happened to me. I got kicked by a horse. I got, like, boxed in, and another horse kicked me. Went down another horse. Yeah. Got my shield. It wasn't. It wasn't, like I didn't break my leg or anything, but I was actually on the side of a cliff, so I couldn't get I, I was trapped unless I wanted to fall down the cliff.
Brigid Moloney
And a similar thing to you, like, it was just like the, trail ride that I would go on, you know, it wasn't like a horse horse person, but since then, I never got back on, and I'm still a bit scared to.
Heather Hillier
Yeah.
Brigid Moloney
But I didn't know. Yeah. Then I wish I did. I would have got on.
Heather Hillier
I know, and I. Yeah, well good on you. I don't know like.
Brigid Moloney
The courage to do that because. Do you think you know how you were saying before when many replanted the idea in your head that it was this dream that you actually had filed away in the back of your head, and he ignited that dream was was the trauma experience of getting kicked a pod of that? Like, did you consciously think, I want to do this so that I can move through that fear or you just thought it would be a cool way to travel?
Heather Hillier
I just thought a vehicle was really because I had been on trail ride since then, but didn't love it like I always ended up with some horse that was just frustrating and wanted to do its own thing and wanted to eat. And bumping your finger against the western knob thing on the saddle or I don't know, I just had all these annoying experiences with horses, but I still just romanticized it, I think.
Heather Hillier
So I was like, oh yeah, I'll figure it out and we'll get a relationship with the horses. And that happened eventually. It was pretty incredible. The whole experience. Once we were off and down the road, it it really just opened up and I spent that first night camping and it was like, wow, this is incredible. It just felt so good.
Heather Hillier
But that's it. There's been so many people that have told us how dangerous that was and how lucky we were that we didn't know anything about horses and nothing happened to us. But I think that's what made us do it, is that we were so naive about the risks. Because they are such big animals and they at anything.
Heather Hillier
And we ended up along roads for a bit of it because that's the constricted part of riding a horse. You can't just like, pop a fence or if there's a little, thing that you might be able to scale if you're walking, then like, you can't do it with a horse. And so, yeah. So there were a lot of times when it's like, we can't get through this where we'd have to backtrack and go to a road and.
Heather Hillier
Yeah. But you know, it was an incredible place to do it because there I've got a really strong horse culture there. And only you know a generation or two ago everyone was like oh my grandparents used to travel like this. And they still have the cultural identity of, of horsemanship. And so they were it would made them so happy seeing us.
Heather Hillier
And they would all want to help us and you stay in my paddock for the night. I've got this. And I know this guy that's got, bales of loosen or alfalfa, like, I'll call him up and we can go pick them up for you.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah. Because you would have. Did you have to carry the state aid for the horse? So they.
Heather Hillier
Had.
Brigid Moloney
A whole nother component. Feeding the horses is.
Heather Hillier
Yeah. Well, it was late summer. It was kind of autumn by the time we took off. And they we probably should have been feeding them, but it means it would have meant carrying around an extra ten kilos of grain. But we always stopped where there would be really lush grass like. And whenever, like we weren't on a big mission.
Heather Hillier
Like there'd be some days where we'd only go a few K's and be like, oh, this is a good campsite. I don't know what we're going to find after this. So there's water, there's grass. This are we can hide our tent. Let's just stop here. Yeah. Or we'd see a good wave or something like that. I think later on we had a couple k days, but.
Heather Hillier
And we rested so often, like, yeah, I was pretty well, I think, I mean, buy feed for them whenever we stopped said yeah.
Brigid Moloney
And what, what was the relationship like with your horse. Because it's a whole nother level of trust and reliability and connectedness. I actually keep thinking of.
Heather Hillier
The.
Brigid Moloney
Australian woman Robyn Davidson, who went across the desert from Alice Springs to the West coast in the s with her four camels and her dog.
Heather Hillier
Yeah. That's incredible.
Brigid Moloney
And she I think she spent one year learning about the camels. I think it was a year. But yeah, I mean, I've read her book tracks and a few of her essays since, and, it just seems amazing. Like the thing the, I don't know, the trust and the emotional part of relying on this animal to get you from A to B, it's like a whole nother mindspace like, can you tell us about that relationship you had with the horses then?
Heather Hillier
Yeah, yeah, it was a whole other element, I guess, because it's not just you anymore. There's this for animals that have these needs and that sort of turned into our needs. We were like, okay, well, we need to find water and grass and that's basically all we need. We'll carry a bit of food, but, we're able to like, go fishing and pick blackberries and eat seaweed and like, we'd always be okay, but the horses can only go a day without water, you know, they're like, yeah, they're they need water and they only drink clean water.
Heather Hillier
So I'm picky. So yeah, the what am I trying to say I guess. Yeah. The depth of the relationship. Trying to get somewhere. It's, it's kind of, I guess a lot of it. I found it, like, frustrating again, because my horse was this mare, and she was pretty cheeky, and she was always just pushing my limits to like, at one point she didn't let me put a bridle on, and we were in an awkward spot and I couldn't.
Heather Hillier
She was higher than me and I couldn't get my arm around her head in order to, like, keep her head steady and pull it on. And she was just being so cheeky and tossing her head around. And this was like two months into the journey or something like a, you know, she was just testing something out on me.
Heather Hillier
And it was about to rain and we didn't have a campsite, and we were kind of stuck in this pine forest. And yeah, there was supposed to be a huge storm coming through these massive clouds. And I was like, oh, man, we just need to get going. Like, can you put it on her? Because he could reach around and from then on, she just didn't let me put the bridle on anymore.
Heather Hillier
So they're just they've got these, like, crazy personalities. That. Yeah. It was. I find it hard to manage, sometimes, but it was just another element, like traveling for six months with a family. You're all going to bicker like it turns into a bit of that. But I guess seeing the transformation that they made, like, from being scared of surfboards to then just kind of became this unit of like, this is how we're traveling, and by the end, we didn't really ride them any more.
Heather Hillier
We would just walk alongside them. At this point, we were up in the mountains and, we were trying to find them a good home. So we were had a bit of ground to cover and we were just walking beside the horses. And it was this. Yeah, it was such an incredible feeling because we were all just walking like they weren't straying off the path at all.
Heather Hillier
They just kind of followed us and they would all look back for the last horse. Or if there was one of us walking behind, like the last one would look back and make sure we were still coming. And yeah, just by then it just was this incredible family unit.
Brigid Moloney
Well, so did you have like a love hate relationship with them, like you often do with human family members?
Heather Hillier
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And some of them were easier to get along with than others. We had this one big black horse, Matty's riding horse. Big Sal called him Salvador at the start because he was this majestic beast. And then he just turned out to be the softest one of all. He would just stand there and you could cuddle him, and he just loved it.
Heather Hillier
And horses are amazing, because if you stand with them, they will match their heartbeat to yours. If you'd stand with them and just breathe and, you serious? And yeah, you can meditate with them. And that's why they use them for, equine. For therapy. Yeah, because they, like you, actually foster this heart connection with them. And you really felt that with being so because you would just.
Heather Hillier
And the other ones would be like, oh, I don't have food. I'm going over here. But you you could just probably, it was the most incredible thing.
Brigid Moloney
Wow. So did you find yourself just cuddling Big Sal quite a lot?
Heather Hillier
Yeah, yeah, we had a lot of nice moments with them.
Brigid Moloney
Oh. That's beautiful. Because I, I have a dog and I. I think I'm obsessed with my dog because I just, I cuddle him all the time. It's just, I feel like my mum thinks that I spoil him, but, because she's staying with me at the moment and I'm always cuddling him, and I try to explain to her that it's actually for me, like I love.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah, I am instantly soothed because he's super cuddly and affectionate. He's a German shorthaired pointer, so he's crazy psycho on the beach. But when he gets home, he is obsessed with sitting with us and being with us and cuddling us. And it's just this connection. Then it just calms me and I don't know, I like resets me. I think.
Brigid Moloney
And yes, I imagine if I was with him on a trip again, like Robert Davidson, who had her dog on the journey with the camels, it would be the connection would be like unparalleled. And that just must make you feel so a part of the world around you. Like you're just completely interconnected with nature and all its creatures.
Brigid Moloney
Was it a bit like that?
Heather Hillier
Yeah, definitely. The horses definitely made us feel so much more connected to the land, and if only just because we had to find grass for them. And so we were always just like looking. And, you know, you come over a ridge or something and there'd be a little valley down there and you'd just have this little inkling of, oh yeah, that seems like there's a river down there.
Heather Hillier
There's got to be a waterway. Let's go down there and check it out. And yeah, we were just so much more dependent on the land because we were dependent on the horses to, take us somewhere. And there depended on the land. And so it was. Yeah. Well, and on the communities too, like being along the coast, you're never far away from.
Heather Hillier
But it was all just small fishing, seasonal villages where people would show up for the summer, harvest seaweed and, and leave for the winter. And so we'd come across those and lots of little towns, where we'd just pick up the horses and, like, go in and get in. I'd been out or something like that. So we were.
Heather Hillier
Yeah, like, really? I wouldn't say we were like super remote at that time. Up in the mountains. We got a lot more remote. But then it was just, yeah, the communities around us and the land, and you could just see how interwoven it all was, the fishing communities and the land and the rivers.
Brigid Moloney
Did it feel good being a part of that?
Heather Hillier
Yeah, it felt that was so special. Yeah, it was incredible. Is the best way I've ever traveled. I'm not going to say it's the only way that I want to travel, because it was such it was so hard. Like just the energy and, we were so fit by the end of it, like in the morning, it would take three hours to pack everything up.
Brigid Moloney
Wow.
Heather Hillier
Yeah. And get going and check the horses for and saddle them up. And it was. Yeah, it was a big job. But it was just kind of turned into part of it. Sorry. This dog barking in the background.
Brigid Moloney
So does that mean then you're obviously living through life in this case, was it hard to assimilate back into the world once the trip was done?
Heather Hillier
I guess I made it easy on myself and I went back to our, off grid cabin off the coast. So when I came back to Canada, it was like June and coming into summertime. And so I was just going to go up there and find a job doing whatever. And, yeah, be able to live up there for the summer.
Heather Hillier
And then I would see what I would do after that. And so it was quite a nice assimilation. I found a job cooking in a kitchen, in a cafe four days a week. And just like did lots of fishing and gathering clams and mushroom hunting and swimming. And yeah, I had it pretty good that summer. So yeah.
Brigid Moloney
I actually just wanted to touch base on what you said about the seaweed harvesting. How did you do that? You because you're also quite a bit of a spearfishing woman, aren't you? Oh, yeah. Know.
Heather Hillier
I wouldn't say I'm like, yeah, I did it a bit in Central America. But I haven't really done it in Australia. And I think it's a shark thing, but I just don't really want to have that encounter, so I just avoid it.
Brigid Moloney
But how did you get the seaweed?
Heather Hillier
Just stuff that's washed up on the beach. There's this, it's actually like a really popular cuisine in Chile. They call it Q yeah, and it's it's like the, you know, in a kelp plant, there's like the long piece that's like round and or.
Brigid Moloney
Like the stalk.
Heather Hillier
Yeah. The ropey part. It's kind of hollow in Chile. It's quite. It's really tender. Like, a lot of them are really tough and hard to eat, but in Chile, they. So they gather these long pieces and then they wrap them up, and you can buy them even in Santiago at markets. You buy them as this little bundle of seaweed, and they chop it up and make salads out of it.
Heather Hillier
And so you can just find it on the beach there. Oh, wow. Made that. Yeah. Really good. Really satisfying. It's beautiful texture.
Brigid Moloney
You know, it's a bit of a trend that's taking off, with our food shortages around the world, like seaweed. It's a it's a growing industry, but I've often thought about maybe I'll do a course to sell. I could get it from my local area how to go about it, but it's obviously different in different location.
Heather Hillier
It's so easy. There's only one seaweed. There's only one seaweed in the world that's not edible. It's called acid kelp.
Brigid Moloney
And oh, okay.
Heather Hillier
Yeah, familiarize yourself with that one. But otherwise they're all edible. They just like range and palatability, I guess.
Brigid Moloney
Okay, that's good to know.
Heather Hillier
Yeah. It's one of those, like, intuition, instinct things. Just like, if it looks gross, don't you know, if it looks like it's been lying on the beach for hours and it stinks, then maybe not. But if a storm is just washed it up and yeah, just don't cut it off the rocks and you'll be good.
Brigid Moloney
Why? What does cutting it off the rocks do?
Heather Hillier
I just, I guess because there's plenty floating around. And so if cutting it.
Brigid Moloney
Is from a sustainability point of view.
Heather Hillier
Yeah, yeah. If you don't need to cut it off the rocks, then I mean, if it's getting a little piece to test it than that. Right? But yeah, a little tester. Yeah. I think it's probably better to just get stuff that's floating around in the ocean.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah, for sure. For sure. And tell us about the day, the journey back on your trip. I just wanted to have a sidebar on seaweed. It tell us about the day the trip finished. Like, what were you feeling then, when you handed over your losses to their new home and you came to the end, were you just utterly exhausted or was it an anticlimax?
Brigid Moloney
Or you just elated? Like, how did you feel then.
Heather Hillier
Think a bit of everything. It was so intense. Like I think, nervous system, everything was so like. And my relationship with Matty at that time was really intense because we were filming all the time. And so it was kind of this working relationship that, and then also dealing with the horses and, it was just really like the highest highs and the lowest lows.
Heather Hillier
It was just so intense. And so coming off of that and, we ended up selling the horses to some friends that we'd met in Chile. There's an American girl and, Venezuelan guy. They. Yeah. Partners. Whatever. What am I trying to say? Yeah. And they had been living down there for a couple of years, and they had just finished a horse packing journey through where we were.
Heather Hillier
And so their journey was pretty intense, like really remote areas in Patagonia, out in the mountains all by themselves. And so they had three horses from that journey, and we were like, maybe they'd want for more. And, because we had tried to sell them before, but turned out that the guy that we were had agreed to sell them to was a butcher.
Heather Hillier
And the lady whose paddock we're staying, and she was like, no, you can't trust him. I sold my milk cows in the last year, and he he killed her. He was supposed to just, you know, have her for six months while while I was away. But he killed it and so. Oh, dear. Yeah. And we were we just didn't really want that to happen to our horses that we, you know, there was so good, and so, like, just beautiful horses, like, maybe if you do that to an older horse or something that, you know, like, I don't know, they eat horse in Chile.
Heather Hillier
And so it's kind of a normal thing, but we just I don't know, I don't want to be a hypocrite and say, no, not our horses. But they were they were so well trained and they were just such beautiful beings that we just didn't want that to be there. And, and so and they've got so much, so many years left in them, of good living.
Heather Hillier
And so yeah. So we asked these guys if they wanted to take them and changed our course and took them up into the mountains to work on, which is like a tourist town up in the mountains up there. And, surrounded by volcanoes and rivers and so beautiful. And so we got there and ended up staying in there.
Heather Hillier
They had a little cabin out the back, and it just felt like luxury, like it was incredible just staying inside. And like, I remember looking in a mirror and thinking like, oh, but is this body like a head? And I think for the last three weeks before that, I hadn't like taken off my clothes because it was so cold.
Heather Hillier
And so you just like, get into the sleeping bag at night in the same clothes you're going and then get back like it was just, I don't know, it just felt weird to look down on a body that didn't have like three pairs of pants on and, I don't know, all these layers. It was just. Yeah, it was the craziest feeling to be inside.
Heather Hillier
And I don't know, everything felt really easy. And I think I felt a really overwhelming sense of, relief at the end of the trip, but also the sadness that like so many things were coming to an end, like the yeah, the horses, the relationship there and, Maddie was going to continue on after that, and I was going to go home because I was just sort of ready, ready to be finished.
Heather Hillier
I didn't really care about reaching the end. The bottom. But Matty just had it in his head that he had to do it. And so, yeah, he ended up flying back up and meeting me in Canada, but, it was sort of.
Brigid Moloney
A so he continued on to the tip. Yeah.
Heather Hillier
Yeah, yeah, for another month or two. Okay. So yeah.
Brigid Moloney
Well, and did you remember though like now when you're going through your everyday routine in life, do you think of how you felt in that moment, like with the gratitude and is it changed how you move through the world now, like everything that you learned on that trip?
Heather Hillier
I think it changed me in one big way. Like, I don't, I don't know, you kind of get used to all the luxuries again, but, I felt myself a lot calmer after that, like it did something. And especially the horses. It just changed the way I was able to deal with stress. Really? Yeah. Yeah, for whatever reason.
Heather Hillier
Because it was maybe just so high intensity and I don't know what it was, but I just could feel myself after that being like, this isn't a big deal. Like, I'm not going to, you know, I could just, like.
Brigid Moloney
Physically, I can handle anything now.
Heather Hillier
Yeah. I mean, obviously not anything, but I could just feel, you know, and you feel the stress rising, and I just can kind of breathe through it or something after that. Obviously, I still get stressed, but yeah, it just felt different after that. And so I feel like I've actually changed and maybe coming back to, yeah, you don't realize it until you come out of it, I guess.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah, I yeah, I would imagine you wouldn't have much time to, to think about it.
Heather Hillier
No. And.
Brigid Moloney
And then what it was doing to and what it would be until you were done. I actually listened to again. Robin Davidson did an interview recently, and the interviewer was talking to her about how she felt on the trip, and she just was really honest. She said, look, I actually can't remember. Like, luckily, National Geographic commissioned her to write a book about her experience, but she actually wasn't even planning on doing that.
Brigid Moloney
She needed to do it in the end so that the trip was funded. However, she said had she not had that book and that memoir memoir, it she wouldn't have been out a really recall.
Heather Hillier
Brigid Moloney
Besides a few logistically logistical things, she wouldn't have been able to recall how she felt because she was just so in it. And then when you come out of it, it's all hindsight. So effectively kind of like trying to piece it back all together. And if you can't actually remember how you felt in the moment, how you can remember how you felt out of the moment, it's just you're in this you're a changed being, I guess, like you just have things have changed inside of you, but and maybe when you start moving around your day to day life again, I'll.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah, you can sense the changes, but you can't really pinpoint how you got there.
Heather Hillier
That makes sense. Yeah, I actually I read another one of her books. I haven't read tracks, but I saw the movie, but another one about when she was living with nomads in India. And I just always remember appreciating how honest she was about, like, how she hated it sometimes. Like, like it wasn't all this or, like, depreciating their culture all the time.
Heather Hillier
She's like, it's gross. There's rats running over me all night. Like it was just. Yeah, like, she's one of the most honest people I've read about that kind of situation. And I just, Because I kind of felt the same. A lot of the stuff, like a density of emotions. And I think being in a relationship, and working on a film as well, I just felt like, yeah, so many negative things a lot.
Heather Hillier
And so it was just like, oh, God, yeah, yeah.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah. What was to.
Heather Hillier
Hear that from her?
Brigid Moloney
What was the relationship like with Maddie by the end of it? Was it how did you get through the ups and downs with him?
Heather Hillier
Brigid Moloney
Is that. Yeah, that would have been so intense. Like, I go camping for the weekend with. And I'm like, I'm about to kill you.
Heather Hillier
Yeah. It was, I don't know, I couldn't handle it by the end, really. Like, I, I got over it by going home like, that was I just had be finished because it was. Yeah, it was too intense. Like, I think it would have been intense just having the horses and not having to film everything into like because he was the director, you know.
Heather Hillier
And so and then I'm just like, I learned how to do a lot of the, all the filming and taking photographs and started enjoying it as well. But then I started getting my own ideas of how I wanted it to look, and then he'd be like, okay, we're going to like, I want to do this shot or something.
Heather Hillier
And I'd be like, well, this is how I want to do it. I don't know, you know, just those stupid arguments. Yeah. And he was so motivated by that point to just like like, I don't we didn't really have much a relationship. I didn't feel like I didn't feel like because, I think we were both just feeling like getting to the end of it.
Heather Hillier
And, you know, he had this huge goal in his head that he'd worked up for years and years of planning and then finally, eventually eating the the whole journey. And it, you know, it was near the end and it was it was just all coming to a head. And yeah, I think it was just really intense for both of us and just head to head to finish it on.
Brigid Moloney
And yeah, understandably. And do you think anybody could do a trip like that or is there a particular kind of person. Because what what would you say is your personality type. So you're a bit of a risk taker. Well, not a yeah.
Heather Hillier
I never would have said that about myself I didn't like I'm pretty. I guess I said I wasn't calculated before, but like, I've always been someone that's like, okay, if I jump off this, then it's just like I go through all the scenarios in my head. And so, I don't know, maybe like emotion kind of comes over me and, and I kind of get blind to all the risks, but I guess there's some risks that seem more immediate and some that aren't.
Heather Hillier
And I'm. Yeah, I like I'm a pretty thoughtful person when it comes to lots of different things, and I can imagine scenarios and overthink lots of things. But, I feel like anyone can do it. It was pretty physically demanding, I guess, and I've always been pretty physically capable and athletic. And so that's probably all it all it really demanded of thinking, I don't know.
Heather Hillier
Yeah, I think anyone could ever do.
Brigid Moloney
An emotional strength to get through the tough times.
Heather Hillier
Yeah, yeah. Or just I don't know, I used to like, practice opera singing in my helmet on the motorbike or practice screaming. I would just like, scream into my helmet on the highway. That probably got it. Oh, that would be fun. Yeah.
Brigid Moloney
Just a nice release.
Heather Hillier
Yeah, it was good.
Brigid Moloney
I do think you're. You're a mother now. How how old is your baby again?
Heather Hillier
A six and a half months.
Brigid Moloney
Do you think it affected how your mother or helped you get through pregnancy and labor and.
Heather Hillier
I was going to say that about, birth earlier when you sort of look back on something and it's like with. Yeah, you don't remember all the all the hard things like, oh, that was so great. Yeah. I kind of view birth that way, I guess, like while you're in it, you're like, wow, definitely having no more kids.
Heather Hillier
I wish I'd never done this. But immediately after that, I was the best thing I've ever done. I'm like, oh, God, let's do it again.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah, that's such a mind trick, isn't it?
Heather Hillier
Yeah. It's crazy. I don't know. I don't know how it affected me in that way. I guess maybe the stretching, like, I've noticed myself being just a little bit more able to go with things and not be too worried about it. And, and it definitely helps my relationship a lot. Like, I kind of know what our boundaries are and what I want to do to get to I don't want to live together.
Heather Hillier
And we've kind of been in all situations together. And so yeah, we we know how to trust each other. So that definitely helps in that regard. Yeah.
Brigid Moloney
And did you feel like you were just super in tuned with the natural world like you because of. Wait have you bought a ranch. Like I just want to know how this went full circle. Because you did farming very in tune with the land and then you went on and it sounds like the whole part of the trip, like you were saying earlier, you were just a part of the environment looking for order, looking for grass, and then you finish the trip.
Brigid Moloney
But it's like you found yourself, are you with horses again, or have I made that up?
Heather Hillier
Yeah, we actually are. It was a long process of finding it, but, we've bought acres with Maddie brother and sister. So three of us, all three parties, all went in together on it. Which is the only way we can get land at this point in time. So, yeah, we it made us a, made it affordable for for all of us.
Heather Hillier
And the acres used to be a horseback riding center. They used to do trail rides. And we got six horses at a bargain. So there's stables. There's all this infrastructure for horses, and lots of space. There's, like three big paddocks. And so, I'd like to get some different animals, and we'll definitely get chickens and ducks, and, I don't know, I'd love to get the cattle, maybe, or goats or something.
Heather Hillier
And yeah, plenty of space for growing, lots of food and better food. Forest land. And because that's what I was working as in Byron, I was working for a market garden. And before that, sort of a successional agroforestry system where you're growing veggies and lots of different things in amongst longer term perennials and trees and super long term trees.
Heather Hillier
And yeah, it's all this big system of plant cooperation, I guess.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah. Did you always want to have land with the horses? Like it's just so uncanny.
Heather Hillier
Brigid Moloney
Like was that the plan to have the horses or this property just popped up with horses and you were like oh this is fitting.
Heather Hillier
Yeah I think this one popped up and it really like I don't think I'm that into horses too. I mean I definitely I'm not I still romanticize them and I'm like oh so cool. And we go for rides and such, but it's not something that I, it's like anything, you just have to make it a habit, I guess.
Heather Hillier
And I and I don't have time for it right now. And so I don't have time to really forge relationships with horses at the moment. So, so I don't make a habit of it. And so it doesn't happen, but it really appealed to Matty because he works a lot on the computer. And so he wanted to be able to have something to, you know, to focus on this, like outdoor work and physical.
Heather Hillier
And he goes out in the morning and feeds the horses. And I think we might get rid of a few because it takes us a lot of supplemental feed and everything. But yeah, I think the land appealed to us because of the horse situation and it felt right, I guess. Yeah.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah, it's just full circle accomplishment.
Heather Hillier
Yeah.
Brigid Moloney
How amazing. I mean, it sounds like you were just destined to be fully ingrained in your natural environment. I it doesn't sound like you would be able to live in a city anymore.
Heather Hillier
No, I don't think so. Yeah, I think it would get to me. So lucky here. Yeah, yeah. So much National park and state forest and. Yeah, there's just forest everywhere down to the beaches and then open beat with nobody on it. Yeah. Pretty incredible.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah. Land is so scarce around. Yeah isn't it. And it's expensive. I'm so happy for you that you found that. So that's really cool.
Heather Hillier
Yeah. We're really lucky.
Brigid Moloney
And also I just think it's gonna be really cool bringing up your little boy in that environment. Can you imagine when he's older, you telling him about this trip? You're going to be the coolest.
Heather Hillier
Mother.
Brigid Moloney
Going around. He's going to be like, my mom went on a motorbike trip. And on this trip.
Heather Hillier
I didn't even think about it.
Brigid Moloney
Did anybody try to say, no, don't do it. Like, did you come up against a lot of people telling you it was too dangerous? You know, it'd be like me and my dad.
Heather Hillier
Yeah.
Brigid Moloney
Like, do you have to push through that a little bit?
Heather Hillier
Not from my parents. My parents are amazing. They've always encouraged me and never showed me any fears about that kind of thing. And that's always frustrated me about traveling places, that the women always get warned that it's dangerous. But I don't know, I feel like, yeah, it just feels like this whole conspiracy against women of like, the predatory men or telling the women that it's dangerous and then they're the ones that are predatory.
Heather Hillier
And I don't actually know if there is any more danger for women. I don't know.
Brigid Moloney
I didn't feel that on the trip. Was it because you were like, could you have done that trip by yourself, or with a female?
Heather Hillier
I think with another female, for sure. I think I just get freaked out by myself. Like it'd be freaked out camping in some spots. And camping in Central America in general felt a little bit like you're always very close to people. And, yeah, it's like it's hard to get away from people, and people feel like the most dangerous thing, but they're also the safest thing, like, because for that reason, they're like, why are you doing this?
Heather Hillier
It's so dangerous here. You can't trust anybody. Let me take you into my house and I'll feed you and help you out. You know, like, that's the that's the vibe everywhere you go. And they're like, oh, you're going that way. Not you can trust them.
Brigid Moloney
What if those were the people that were untrustworthy and you didn't know and they were you in?
Heather Hillier
Yeah, I know it's weird, but they never are.
Brigid Moloney
I guess you had a good gauge of intuition of, like, if that person was dodgy or not.
Heather Hillier
Yeah, I guess that's it. But yeah, I've only met incredible people on road. Really. They're just so welcoming and even. Yeah, ones in really rural villages where there's, you know, like the general living conditions or like it would be considered poverty. But yeah, they always take you in or feed you and I don't know, they're the most generous people, I think.
Heather Hillier
Yeah. Yeah.
Brigid Moloney
Well that's cool. You would have had to learn to trust your gut tenfold, right? Like, did you have a good emotional connection to your instinct before the trip or it grew on the trip?
Heather Hillier
I don't know. I've never felt like I did, but like I said, that you just get a good feeling about people. Go with it. I don't know, I wouldn't have said that I had a particularly good instinct or anything. And if anything, like a lot of the stories you hear, that's like an equal part. Men and women like, especially in Mexico, there's a lot of issues with the cartels and even the cops, you know, like it's just it's kidnaping.
Heather Hillier
And yeah, it's pretty gnarly, but it's not specifically female. You know, I just think we have to stop telling women that it's dangerous to be off by themselves, because the whole fear, the idea that it is dangerous for a woman to be out by herself, it just seems so dated and I haven't found it to be true.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah, it's very disempowering, isn't it?
Heather Hillier
Because, yeah.
Brigid Moloney
Every trip starts with an idea and a concept. And if that's the stage where we get shut down, then of course we don't do the trip like little, you know, something happening along the way. We might need to come home or it gets cut short or whatever, which could happen to a male or a female.
Heather Hillier
But yeah.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah, I think it's dangerous when the rhetoric is. Yeah, getting spun around. Yeah. In those early stages. And I'm a perfect example of that. Like your trip. Honestly, I don't know why. It was something that I also romanticized. I just wanted to get the motorbike with probably with someone like a guy or a girl and pretty much do exactly what you did.
Brigid Moloney
But any time I mentioned the idea to someone, they just, that's crazy that you can't. And then I just got kind of stuck in there, you know, the cycle of work, hard work on your career, but, yeah, yeah, I think it's a real credit to that. You actually did it and that you could inspire other people to do it with this message, because the spirit is probably so different to anything else you've experienced in your life.
Heather Hillier
Yeah, it was definitely extremely formative. Like it stands out as being like this and apex. So even though now I guess I'm like less amazing, other things that I'm proud of and it's not really what I define myself. It's like I'm not this adventure person that is going to just keep going out and pushing the limits and doing that.
Heather Hillier
Like, I just don't even want to do that. But, but yeah, it was it was so formative.
Brigid Moloney
Like, that's a beautiful way to look at it because you're not. Yeah. Ego hasn't taken over, you know, like all those mountaineers and they climb one mountain and then they went home. And that's kind of nice to hear you say that. That was what you did at that point in time, for reasons that were motivated by your inner world and your inner self.
Brigid Moloney
And now you have different motivations, and you have a child now.
Heather Hillier
And,
Brigid Moloney
So whatever the next adventure is.
Heather Hillier
Yeah.
Brigid Moloney
Through that base.
Heather Hillier
Yeah. Yeah, totally.
Brigid Moloney
Because, do you camp a lot with your baby? Like, how do how do you, do you go outdoors with them a lot. And is it really different or is it.
Heather Hillier
Yeah, we've we've been camping a few times. And it definitely seems like the easiest thing to do with the baby. Like, it actually feels easier than being, Yeah. Because, like, really, you're with. Well, we've only camped with other people and it just feels like you're suddenly in a tribe of people, and this is how you're supposed to be raising kids.
Heather Hillier
Like you're cooking communally as people around. There's toddlers to distract him, like someone's holding onto him. And even if you're holding him, you're talking to other people. You've got people around all day. You're not sitting in a dark house by yourself wondering when nap time is. It's just feels.
Brigid Moloney
It's really. Wow.
Heather Hillier
That's cool.
Brigid Moloney
And what about logistics? Like, I don't know, because he does reusable nappies, don't you? And so how does something like that work? Like, you know, you have to set up all your stations.
Heather Hillier
Well, I haven't been that good. We haven't done, like, really extended ones. We've just done mostly weekend trips. And to be honest, I just use disposables for that. I could probably buy more, read the ones and like, get a big stash and then wouldn't have to do washing until I got home. But yeah, I don't. That would be tricky.
Heather Hillier
Find a laundromat is. Yeah.
Brigid Moloney
I mean, you've got to pick it up.
Heather Hillier
Yeah, exactly.
Brigid Moloney
I think that's really cool. Like, that's such a cool concept because I haven't had that experience. I haven't camp with my daughter yet and she's months old. And maybe if we had, we don't have a huge network of friends where we live. So maybe if we were down home and we did it with.
Heather Hillier
Friends.
Brigid Moloney
Would be easier. So I think in my mind I'm thinking about it. Yeah, just as us and you would get the benefits that you were just talking to because that sounds really cool. That makes.
Heather Hillier
Yeah, it's yeah, I just want to be like permanently camping. I've in a way, I feel more free as a mother than I've ever have because, like, all of a sudden I don't have work constraints. Like, I'm really lucky that I haven't had to go back to work. Yeah. And so I'm just like, oh, well, I can I can do this anywhere.
Heather Hillier
All I need is breast milk. And me and Maddie, like, we could be anywhere. Yeah. Doesn't really make him.
Brigid Moloney
Oh, yeah. That's so true. So, have you enjoyed motherhood?
Heather Hillier
I have, yeah, yeah, it's been been a fun. I don't know, I guess I'm just I can try everything once kind of person. So it's like the motherhood, hits and you're like, oh, yeah, the instinct is strong. And, once I was ready, I was ready. And then. Yeah, it's been amazing. He was kind of a miracle baby at the start.
Heather Hillier
I had a really beautiful postpartum, lots of support, and I made tons of meals for the freezer. So we were just like, yeah, the three of us kind of just hanging out at home. We were living on the farm where I was working up until weeks pregnant. And, I could just go out and pick veggies whenever I wanted to.
Heather Hillier
And, it was really magical. So, so easy. And he was pretty, like. He didn't cry much. He was pretty happy, baby. And we were cosleeping, bed sharing. So just like I never felt sleep deprived. And then or months hit and he was a bit more awake and wasn't napping on time. And I was like, oh, now what do I do with my day?
Heather Hillier
What do we do?
Brigid Moloney
We go camping.
Heather Hillier
Yeah. I couldn't really put him down. Like he was definitely a contact napper. But then my mum came and helped with a bit of confidence with, like, oh, just try putting him down in his mouth. Just try it. Like it doesn't hurt. Try pinning down, yeah. And so it's getting a bit easier. Again, I think we're just figuring out some schedules and starting to meet people around here.
Heather Hillier
Like I've gone to some mother's groups and, have and we started sewing lessons. So we have some weekly activities, which is good.
Brigid Moloney
Yes. They're always handy.
Heather Hillier
Yes. I want to get out of the house.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah, yeah. You do. You need that interaction with other people and other mothers to just bounce off and yeah, talk to about about what you're going through and if it is sounds crazy or normal or.
Heather Hillier
Yeah, it's huge. I thought it would be this like nature mum that just like call me back onto National Park and I thought I would just be out walking the paddocks all day and like, you know, exploring the forest. Showing him nature. But I'm like, get me to town. I need people around me.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah. It can be super isolating. Can't. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I, I went through it when we were in lockdown, so.
Heather Hillier
I feel like it.
Brigid Moloney
Definitely affected my mental health because.
Heather Hillier
You know.
Brigid Moloney
No one could visit, our families couldn't visit, and yeah, it was just the three of us. I mean, we all went a little bit crazy.
Heather Hillier
Yeah.
Brigid Moloney
But now I really enjoy like, she's at the age where we can go outside and she's fascinated by different leaves and objects and stones and rock. I thought that when she was a baby she would be into that. But of course she's not. She's just a blob.
Heather Hillier
Yeah.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah, it's funny, the ID having you and I remember I didn't know about awake time. Like, I don't know, you heard about. Oh, yeah. There's like a rough guide. Like, if your baby's three months old, they. The maximum amount of time they're awake is, I don't know, they an hour and a half as an example.
Heather Hillier
Yeah.
Brigid Moloney
It's probably not accurate. And I remember putting her under a tree on the farm that we used to live on. And I'm like, what? She needs the nature. She needs to look up at the sky like she was awake for, like four hours, and she was only, like, two months old. And I had no idea that it was a thing that she had to decide.
Brigid Moloney
But I set.
Heather Hillier
The tone.
Brigid Moloney
Because I was just obsessed with what I thought she needed, which was all the natural stimuli.
Heather Hillier
Really.
Brigid Moloney
She just started to go to sleep.
Heather Hillier
So funny.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah. All your expectations and preconceived ideas of what you think it's going to be like, just blather. We know that. Yeah.
Heather Hillier
Yeah. It's.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah. Was it like that on your trip? Like, did you have an idea of what you thought it would be like? And then once you were on it, you were like, Holy shit, this is not what I thought.
Heather Hillier
Yeah, I think so. I mean, you always romanticize, like, traveling and the freedom, and I'll just be on the road of exploring and. Yeah, but there's a lot of downtime and boredom and being on your phone, you know, it's like, oh, I should be out exploring, but we're in this tiny beach town and it's the middle of the day, and it's degrees and % humidity and I don't want to go anywhere and sit in the hammock for six hours with the surf.
Heather Hillier
It's, Yeah, I don't know. And I guess when you're working out all day, you're like, oh, that sounds so great. But then when you're in it, it's kind of boring and you just want to community and you want to be able to go outside and pick parsley and I don't know, you just want wait, you don't have gas?
Brigid Moloney
Yeah. The grass is always greener.
Heather Hillier
Yeah.
Brigid Moloney
Many. And you made this epic film. It sounds like. Is that going to be something that we can all see?
Heather Hillier
Yeah. It shouldn't be too. Like he's pretty much done. There's some sound stuff and color grading that he needs to do. But yeah, it's pretty much there.
Brigid Moloney
Because will you be quiet? Will you be featured in it seven because you're the only one with him?
Heather Hillier
Yeah, I'm going to love interest.
Brigid Moloney
Well, I was I was picturing the sweeping landscapes, but maybe it's a film about.
Heather Hillier
No, no, there's definitely sweeping landscapes. There's. Yeah, beautiful shots in it. And then, it's a love story that then I don't have my elevator pitch, but, Yeah, it's mostly a love story that, then discovers some other things about. Yeah, connected to nature and.
Brigid Moloney
Wow, like, literally about the two of you and your relationship or.
Heather Hillier
Yeah, a little bit.
Brigid Moloney
Like, is it fiction?
Heather Hillier
So not like it doesn't go really deep into that, but but yeah, it's like it's not fictional. It's basically like a verité documentary. And so we just filmed as we went, we filmed each other a bit and we filmed the places we went. And so yeah, it's like it's got a couple different storylines running through it.
Heather Hillier
But yeah, I guess there's not that many like, verité love story documentaries out there. And so it kind of unique that way, that we were able to capture a bit of that and create a story around it. And then also, yeah, probably the next or the underlying story is like, I guess, yeah, the loss of connection with, with nature and environment, I guess.
Heather Hillier
Not the loss of it, but how do we regain that? And how do we, like, truly connect nature, you know?
Brigid Moloney
Oh, wow, that sounds super fascinating.
Heather Hillier
Yeah, yeah, I'm excited for it to go out to the world. Yeah. Matt has been working so hard at it for the last few years, so really good to get it out there.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah, amazing. Yeah. Thank you so much for your time today. And squeezing us in between. Yeah, the busy life of motherhood in those first few months. It's it's so lovely that you shared your story with us. And I really can't wait to hear this because it's so inspiring. And yeah, what you've done is so inspiring. So thank you for giving us the time today.
Heather Hillier
Oh well, yeah. Thank you. I really appreciate you wanting to have me on the podcast. Oh God is good to go over these things again. Yeah.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah. And you can reflect a little bit.
Heather Hillier
Yeah. Yeah. It's important. I don't really get it very often.
Brigid Moloney
Yeah. Thank you so much I really appreciate it. It's been really lovely chatting.
Heather Hillier
Thank you. See, Bye bye.
Brigid Moloney
Thank you for carving out some time to listen to this story. You can see any links in the show notes. This show was produced, hosted and edited by me, which is a huge undertaking. So if you would like to sponsor the show or know anyone who would, please get in touch. In a spirit of reconciliation, I acknowledge the traditional custodians of the bungling nation and their connections to land, sea and community.
Brigid Moloney
I pay my respects to their elders past, present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today. I hope you'll join me next time. Through another head of inspiration told through the lens of Mother Nature and these incredible women. Thanks and bye for now.