OUTBACK MIKE

Interviewing someone is supposed to be a process of uncovering what makes a person different to (and more special than) you. But with Outback Mike (aka Mike Atkinson), the interview begins with discovering how similar we are, at least in our backgrounds. He’s only a year older than me, and also grew up in suburban Canberra’s mighty Weston Creek, with us both attending local government schools. We even had brief modelling interludes, my role in a 1980s Thai TV commercial (sporting a pink beret and lots of blue eye shadow) matching his fleeting appearances in Canberra ads and fashion parades. But, aside from being married with kids, that’s where the similarities end.

The differences between Mike and I (and just about everyone else on Earth) are contained in the following life summary. He was a defence force pilot for fifteen years, doing everything from helicopter peace-keeping missions to breaking the sound barrier in fighter jets. Mike is a survival expert who has lived off the land for months at a time, with skills learnt directly from Indigenous folk across Australia. He’s also a filmmaker— Surviving the Outback was his award-winning first film, selected for the Banff Film Festival—and he’s partway through making his first feature. (He is cameraman, writer, director, producer, on-screen talent and everything else.) And he’s also an adventurer, one who has skied solo across Iceland, trained camels in Saudi Arabia and headed off across the Dannah Sands. Mike’s latest expeditions have been solo trips escaping historical survival scenarios: Sailing an improvised raft up the Kimberley coast then trekking out; and a 1,500km trip up the Great Barrier Reef in a home-made dugout canoe.

I suspect Mike will soon be a big name in the TV/adventure field too. He finished his Great Barrier Reef trip in August 2021. When we meet fourteen months later, he’s working on his book’s second draft, and the long, painstaking process of turning footage into a film. This year will be big: He’s self-publishing his book to coincide with a planned year-long film tour, and planning to grow his YouTube channel massively.

My family has just got hooked on Alone, a winner-takes-all reality TV show where ten individuals compete to last the longest living off the land, solo, in remote wilderness. When I meet Mike, I immediately think he’d be a perfect contestant. Then I see a trailer for the next season, filmed in Tassie: In one shot there’s someone who looks suspiciously like Mike …

The Foundations

But for all the amazing stuff he’s done and is doing (yes, my Alone suspicion has been confirmed!), most startling to me is Mike’s confidence. It’s not arrogance, just a supreme belief in his skills, competency and ability to manage risk and handle situations. The most obvious example of this is his twin directions in life—aviation and survival filming—and their origin: Watching the movie Top Gun and the TV series The Bush Tucker Man as a teenager. I put it to Mike that a lot of people wanted to be Top Gun’s Maverick, but not all of them trained as fighter pilots, and he’s a little perplexed. “I probably had an ill-founded self-confidence in my ability to achieve things. I don’t know where that came from. It’s kind of weird, because I always assumed that I could do whatever I wanted to do.”

Mike and I are talking as we walk towards Brooklyn on the Great North Walk, a beautiful stretch dropping down to the Hawkesbury’s Jerusalem Bay. When we met at Cowan Station, one potential source of confidence was obvious. Mike’s a good-looking man, a mix of Zoolander doing a permanent ‘Blue Steel’ mixed with Rami Malek playing Freddy Mercury. And although it will make me sound pervy, a quick (and purely professional) perusal of his Instagram page reveals that he’s quite a fit human.

Physical attributes only get you so far though, and I spend most of the walk trying to work out the nature/nurture confidence split. First stop is 1980s Canberra, a hotspot of mullets and desert boots. Mike was a confident, competent kid and things came easily to him, both academically and physically. He was (and still is) deeply uninterested in social structure and

Mike casts a nervous glance behind to check for breaking waves and assess the severity of an approaching squall. He had to take the biggest waves stern-on, or the canoe would broach sideways and capsize approval. He had deep passions and interests—fishing, skiing, exploring, building stuff—and a few close friends, and didn’t care what anyone else thought.

He remembers a childhood with freedom to explore and set his own limits, to build things, make and learn from mistakes. (One example is building exploding arrows from nitrous oxide cartridges, cap-gun caps and other parts, then firing them in an abandoned road cutting—there was shrapnel pinging off the rocks.) Most weekends he spent bush with best mate Andy Tomkins, fishing and exploring. Mike was seventeen when the two walked and skied 220km from Mt Kosciuszko to Canberra.

While he was given love and freedom, in his teenage years there wasn’t much cash. Without money to buy gear, Mike made it a personal challenge to do bigger and better adventures on cheaper and more ridiculous equipment. He remembers wearing skis from the tip to compete in the interschool ski competition, taking on private school teams wearing one-piece matching Gore-Tex suits. As he puts it: “I took pride in beating people that were given a better leg up. I guess it’s the underdog cliché, but it works. Being told you’re not good enough for something is usually the best motivator to do it.”

By the time Mike finished school, he had confidence aplenty: He had the brains and brawn, disregarded others’ opinions but was motivated to do well, and had plenty of adventures behind him. At eighteen, Mike set himself two life goals based on his favourite fantasies: become a fighter-jet pilot, and do something similar to the Bush Tucker Man. Piloting was a young man’s game, so he figured he’d tick that off first. What came next was the adversity needed to harden up.

Toughening Up

Ready to start his own Maverick journey, Mike applied for pilot training in the Air Force. He expected to get in, and it was a huge shock when he didn’t. The next year was tough, working as a ground-force soldier while he waited to apply again. But again he didn’t make the grade. He was, quote, “very sad”—my translation is “devastated”. Dreams in tatters, he took off around the world on a shoestring budget, having solo adventures from Alaska to Nepal. It sounds great, but for Mike it was rock bottom. He was lonely, broke and—worst of all—didn’t have a plan.

Mike is extremely driven and logical. I think his confidence partly comes from his ability to break down any plan into steps and then just begin. For example, with his Great Barrier Reef trip, he first had to find a four-tonne log, then craft it into a boat that could handle strong winds and choppy conditions. (He hoped construction would take four months; it took fourteen.) Then there were the test runs; transporting the craft from NSW to north Queensland; the three-month expedition itself; the months of book writing, film editing, and creating YouTube content; all of which will be followed in 2023 with the year-long film and book tour, starting with a fortnight living on his dugout canoe in Sydney Harbour.

In 1996, when he was lost and lonely, travelling the world, Mike used a similar approach to plan his way out of his slump. If he couldn’t get into the Air Force, he could still fly: He’d just become a geologist, start an exploration company, and fly helicopters instead. Simple! Armed with a plan, he returned to Canberra for two years of science at ANU, before passing the exams to become an Army helicopter pilot. He was ecstatic: This would give him access to the best survival training, just like the Bush Tucker Man.

Experience

This was Phase Three for Operation Super Confidence: gaining skills and experience. In eight years based in Darwin, Mike did all the training he could, including a NORFORCE course run by a predominantly Aboriginal unit. This taught him everything from survival skills to bush tucker to finding water, and involved living off the land for three weeks. (He later instructed this and other courses.) He jettisoned the Army’s heavy-drinking culture, and began putting his skills into practice on solo adventures, including an epic 2,000km tinny trip from Darwin to Derby.

During this time, he flew Kiowa reconnaissance helicopters over most of the continent, picking out Queensland’s 1770 and NSW’s Mid North Coast’s Port Stephens as his preferred future homes. It was also an opportunity to scout for locations, plan photogenic adventures, and work on his photography and filming skills. As it turns out, it was also a great time to find a wife.

While visiting his mum in Canberra in 2003, he met the gorgeous Melinda. A first date at a restaurant led to a second that sounds like some sort of Bachelor/Survivor reality TV hybrid. “I took her to the Kimberley and we did 500km in the tinny and got a chopper and got dropped down the coast,” says Mike. Melinda must have passed her initiation, because they got married in 2007, had Tom in 2008 and Zara in 2010, the same year they bought their house at Port Stephens.

So far, so good: all peachy on the home front. And Mike’s survival skills, adventure experience, photography and instructing abilities were almost ready for his tilt at adventure filming. But there were Maverick moves ahead: Through a series of manoeuvres, he was accepted into the Air Force for jet training, but was scrubbed from the course after a few years. At 36, eighteen years after his fighter-pilot dream began, it was over.

But it wasn’t a failure. Along the way he’d forged a career and gained the skills necessary for goal number two: adventure survival filming. A five-year stint in Saudi Arabia instructing Air Force pilots shored up the family finances; meanwhile, he taught

IMAGES - CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT

Sailing the remote Kimberley coast (Balanggarra Country). Mike was in an improvised raft, recreating the historic (1932) predicament of lost German aviators Hans Bertram and Adolf Klausmann

Catching yabbies as a kid (1987, age 11). Credit: Ian Atkinson (Mike’s dad)

Mike in Timor Leste as a reconnaissance helicopter pilot with the Australian Army, 2002.

Credit: Eric Larsen himself as much as he could about film production. During a sixweek ‘holiday’, he completed his first filmed expedition: Surviving the Outback.

So what’s it like walking with a survival expert? It’s like any other bushwalk, only more interesting. Mike details making damper from lomandra longifolia seeds, and how the stems from grasstrees are excellent for traditional fire lighting. At lunch, we eat water lilies, and he stops me stepping on what I think is a tiny snake but is actually a legless lizard. (If a catastrophe wiped out the world while we walk, my chances of surviving would be far greater than on a usual day.)

As we hit the Hawkesbury, looking out over water framed by orange sandstone, I ask Mike to identify a weakness. He nominates storytelling, although through book writing and film editing, he’s learning fast. We move on to talk about the difference between filmmaking and writing, and the challenges of each. We discuss the importance of authenticity, about telling the story that happens rather than the one you anticipate. About framing a story, and how the most interesting thing of all is the truth. We also talk about Mike’s realisation that “part of the trick to a good adventure is having the imagination to come up with it.” On his two most recent trips, he’s found his sweet spot: taking a historical survival setting as the starting point and challenging himself to escape.

For his first film, this starting point was that of two German aviators stranded in the Kimberley in 1932 after running out of fuel. The two men made a raft from a seaplane float and attempted to sail to civilisation: They were days away from death when local Balanggarra people rescued them.

On his expeditions, Mike doesn’t re-enact historical survivors’ actions, just the starting conditions, surviving on bush tucker and using only materials originally available. In the Kimberley, to cover the 200km between Wyndham and Seaplane Bay before beginning the trip proper, Mike motored for eight days on a raft he’d made from bush logs and mock seaplane floats. Then, using sails made from bathrobes, and sleeping on spectacular but croc-patrolled beaches, he sailed for four days, before crossing 70km of rough terrain on foot to reach the since-closed Pago Mission.

For his latest trip, Mike chose the starting point of James Morrill. Morrill was shipwrecked in 1846 off the Great Barrier Reef, setting off on a raft with 21 others. There were seven left alive when the raft landed just south of present-day Townsville 42 days later; soon it was just Morrill. He was cared for by the Birri-gubba locals, living as part of their society for seventeen years, before eventually being re-assimilated back into white society.

Mike challenged himself to escape Morrill’s situation one year after reaching shore. His plan was to sail 1,500km to the 1800s emergency haven set up on Booby Island, off Australia’s northern tip. Morrill was a carpenter and sailor with tools and skills; after a year, he would have known how to survive off the land.

But for this trip, picking a good adventure was the easy bit. Fashioning a dugout canoe that could cope with rough seas and strong winds took more than a year, even using power tools to speed things up. (Mike did every task once with hand tools to show it was possible. There’s a YouTube video of the build with more than 12 million views.) Even then the vessel was only just acceptable: Mike came close to capsizing once, in rowdy seas with a hulking croc nearby. The canoe was designed so he could cut away one outrigger and right the boat, but in wild water (particularly if injured) all bets were off.

But the boat didn’t capsize, and Mike didn’t drown or get eaten or even injured. Instead, it all went according to plan; he landed on Thursday Island fifty days after setting off. Even Mike says this was amazing, crediting it to good management combined with not being unlucky. “It kind of makes it look like it’s all a bit easy, but it’s not. With both the Kimberley one and that one, if I did them again, there’s still a 50% chance that I wouldn’t make it.”

This is one downside to filming a survival epic in paradise: It looks like a holiday. But it definitely wasn’t. Mike trawled for 700km before catching his first fish—a huge queenfish. He was so happy he cried. And he rarely got off the boat: Getting ashore was too risky, so he spent most of the time onboard and slept on deck. His high-tech crocodile defence plan was to sleep in the dugout, take a whopping knife, and put the slatted deckhatch on. He figured that if a crocodile came aboard, he’d stab it through the slats until it jumped off again.

There were lowlights—almost capsizing, loads of rain—as well as highlights. It took Mike 46 days to work out how to use the big sail properly. “Sailing along a beautiful reef in full sunlight … I’d put the big sails up and I’d just caught a fish. There were moments when you’re like, I’m doing what I dreamed about right now.”

Influencer

After his last two expeditions, Mike’s found that adding a real story adds depth, boundaries, survival skills and the potential to spread messages. “If you just do an adventure for the sake of adventure, there’s not as much to bring depth to it—the historic angle brings depth. And because I also have this goal of influencing things, it’s a good way to bring Aboriginal people into it. You get to tell Australia’s actual story.”

Mike wants to bring change: first through his book and films, then through a YouTube channel of challenges, bush tucker and survival. He wants Australians to realise that in pre-colonial times, when only Aboriginal people managed the land, it looked different to te way it does now. He believes we should return our wilderness areas to this previous state by managing them in the same way, to better suit the conditions our plants and animals are adapted to, and to reduce the frequency of severe bushfires.

The first step, says Mike, is recognising how different this landscape was. He points to pictures and descriptions from early colonisers, with one example from Captain Cook at Botany Bay. “The woods are free from underwood of every kind, and the trees are at such a distance from one another that the whole Country, or at least great part of it, might be Cultivated without being obliged to cut down a single tree.” (Mike challenges anyone to find anywhere in a national park fitting that description now.)

Mike sets his adventures in Australia so he can interact with First Nations people, talk about how the land has changed, and to look for (and spread) the truth as he sees it. It lets him discuss not only the knowledge that’s been lost but also what hasn’t, and to raise awareness of the answers staring us in the face.

Mike, as always, has a life plan. In five years, his film will be done, and he hopes to have paid himself a reasonable wage for the years of work. He’s not planning other big trips—probability-wise, he thinks he should have died by now—but will put his efforts into shorter YouTube adventures, hoping for half a million followers or so.

And in ten years? “Maybe politics,” is the surprising answer. But only if he thinks that’s the best way to make a difference.

So Mike Atkinson for Prime Minister? Perhaps … and after reviewing his life to date, I wouldn’t bet against it. But first he might need to find a fictional version for inspiration: maybe one starring Chris Hemsworth as PM? W

IMAGES - LEFT TO RIGHT, TOP TO BOTTOM

Mike with his camel Sultana and her baby Pom Pom (named by Mike’s kids), as he attempted to cross a Saudi Arabian desert using traditional Bedouin gear. Mike needed a lactating mother so he could add camel milk to his diet of dates and dried goats’ milk

Rounding Cape York (Yadhaigana Country) on his way to Booby Island (Ngiangu)

A freshly speared mullet taken with traditional spear and woomera on a remote sandspit (20km offshore) in Umpila Sea Country, halfway up Cape York

Mike marked the days off on his canoe’s stern during his 50-day journey up the Great Barrier Reef

Mike with wife Melinda, and children Tom (14) and Zara (12), holding baby Tasmanian devils at Aussie Ark. Credit: Adam Mowbray and Aussie Ark

CONTRIBUTOR: Megan Holbeck is a Sydneybased writer. She’s convinced that an ‘adventure mindset’ is a real thing, and cultivates it at every opportunity. Sometimes it even works.