Mitch Drummond

Beau Miles was asked to come in and talk on breaky TV about Backyard Adventuring. Beau said sure, "but why don’t I have a Backyard Adventure instead? I’ll run around Sydney with my wheelbarrow and collect up junk wood, make stuff, and present it to the TV presenters on air the following morning, 24 hours later". So that’s what he did.

When COVID-19 locked Beau Miles and his family down on the small farm, he decided to build his wife a cabin-office in the paddock without her knowing. Using whatever materials were on the property, which were gathered up piles of other people’s junk over time, and with their 6 month old daughter as accomplice, Junk Cabin emerged. What started out as a stunt to see how much secretive, ad-hoc building he could get away with, turned into the most satisfying building project he's ever made.

I’m on the verge of YouTube burnout, caught in the wicked world of shoot, make, upload, repeat. It’s a good life, and this ain’t a grizzle, no, it’s more of a reflection of how I’ve been sucked into the belief that more is better and consistency is king. I’m sure this can be the case, but it sucks to live by it. And I haven’t fished in too long, and I like fishing. I’m patient when I fish. In fact it’s one of the only places I’m happy to wait. Today is a day of attention restoration. Listening to my wandering mind. Paying attention to how and where a fish might be. And trying to do as much as I can while doing as little as possible.

You can buy a paddle, or buy wood to make a paddle, but what about making one from junk? Collecting junk wood found between the train station and the office, this is the story of a junk-made-paddle.

Beau Miles loves wood. When the old farmhouse at Outward Bound Australia was set for demolition Beau couldn’t shut his trap and said ‘give me three days before the excavator arrives’. In the baking heat of summer, he and his old schoolmate salvaged 3 ton and 15k worth of bug-free timber before the giant arm of an excavator had its way with the building.

The Cooks River: Australia's sickest urban river is located in the glamorous and famously pretty city of Sydney. This makes sense, given it’s also Australia's largest, hard-surfaced, drainified, leaky-sewered, city. In my little red kayak I decided to trace all 23km of the Cooks River, inspired to do so after paddling my boyhood river over 4 days in the name of Backyard Adventuring. Finding it not only challenging, but shocking in terms of its ill health, I’ve since shifted from wanting to see the wildest and most pristine places on earth, to the most degraded and sick. This is a journey of ill-health, sadness and hope; putting a test to the local saying, ‘if you fall in, you’ll dissolve’.

The Monash Outdoor Education shed is awesome, aside from one feature - the office. The department asked for it to be outfitted with basic shelving and a long desk. When a contractor quote came back at $12,900, Beau choked on his banana, spilt his coffee and swore at the computer. Using old desks and a bucket full of second hand screws, Beau decided to make the office himself.

Beau Miles rafts the Queen river, which is after 100 years of runoff from a mine, the most polluted river in Australia.

This is the story of spending a night in a big old gumtree. Strapped to three builders planks (one of which had a large crack that I thought was spilled paint) I slept with one eye open, which was pleasant because I could see the view. Originally driven by the premise of backyard adventuring, using old climbing equipment, dodgy ladders and 4x4 recovery gear, a simple night out, 30-foot up, ended up being a reflection of how much I like trees, particularly the vulnerable Strzelecki gums I live among. Dinner, breakfast, bad coffee, podcast, and sitting on a park bench I should sit on more often, Big Gums is the story of a man who is no longer a boy, spending time with an endangered, iconic tree.

Beau's neighbours have given him a huge pumpkin for a project he's been meaning to do properly for years; go on a three day running and riding adventure while eating a single item of food.

Beau Miles searches the bush for his cameraman's wallet

There comes a time in every parenting life when you decide to buy an animal for your child. I was pushing for a goat but I was outvoted and we got chickens. Problem: no place to home them. Buggered if I was going to buy a chicken coop, or materials to build one, meaning I had another junk-made project on my hands. I had no bloody time to do it, but squeezed it in over two months (yep, i thought I’d get it done in a weekend…idiot!) This, my egg loving friends, is making a junk chicken coop from junk*. *noting that many good chicken palaces are made from second hand stuff.

Beau Miles was asked to come in and talk on breaky TV about Backyard Adventuring. Beau said sure, "but why don’t I have a Backyard Adventure instead? I’ll run around Sydney with my wheelbarrow and collect up junk wood, make stuff, and present it to the TV presenters on air the following morning, 24 hours later". So that’s what he did.

Each day Beau Miles does something he's never done before.

Beau Miles' magnificent hat has lost the will to live. After fifteen years of sun and body fluids, with a heavy heart and a head full of memories Beau takes his favourite, thread-bare, stinking, beyond-repair hat for one last run.

Beau Miles renovates a canoe, while running a marathon.

Beau Miles runs a half marathon with a rock and a wheelbarrow

As there are 1440 minutes in a day, and Beau Miles love planting trees, he decided to plant a tree a minute for 24 hours. It was (swear meaningfully) hard.

Eating only the contents of 191 tins of beans over 40 days transforms Beau into The Human Bean, and in doing so gives him a front row seat into how one food, totally and utterly, dictates how he feels. Beau uses his intimate knowledge of running to compare his former self to his bean-self, logging lacklustre training for an ultramarathon that he plans on running during the final day of the experiment. Epiphanies are had, saddles are blazed, and genuine insight emerges from what is strangely appealing day-to-day of mediocrity.

Beau Miles' decimal age on March 2nd, 2022 was 42.195, which by no coincidence is also the length of a marathon in kilometres. To celebrate being alive, based on the actions of two people almost 43 years ago, he decided to run the famous distance around his district, retracing his history via schools, homes, memories and odd experiences that have shaped him, his mum and his dad over this marathon-chunk of time.

When signing 1812 pre-sold copies of his book The Backyard Adventurer, Beau Miles decided to have a backyard adventure while doing it

Haircut hater gets a makeover by wife

Packing on the pounds after writing a PhD, Beau's running again. He's also back in the shed; fixing stuff, making things, tinkering. For most of us, running was once a form of survival, hunting- or being hunted. Now, it can be as meaningful, or meaningless, than any other aspect of life. Running for Beau is practical- it gets him places, yet like a lot of runners, deeply embodied.

Following two rivers, one drain, one sea and one creek, it turns out that paddling to work, which ends up being mostly a drag, over four full days, is bloody hard work.

Setting off with no food, water or shelter, Beau Miles walked 90km to work a bunch of years ago to see if a stripped back adventure could give him the kind of buzz that far away, exotic, heavily planned expeditions have given him over the years. It did. Different, but familiar feelings of challenge and insight came through. When he was asked to give a lecture about adventuring at a new building at his university, he said ‘no worries, why don’t I walk to work and deliver the lecture as soon as I get there’? So he walked to work, again.