Sydney-based comedian, actor and presenter Susie Youssef swears by a daily perambulation to put everything else in perspective. “I try to get out every day, whether it’s 30 minutes in the morning to clear your head or a proper meet-up with a friend to go on a longer coastal track,” she says. “It takes about seven kilometres for me to sort out any problem I have in my life.”
Even still, she hesitated momentarily when good mate Julia Zemiro invited her and fellow new recruit Gina Chick to divvy up the journey on the second series of much-loved show Great Australian Walks. “The only reason it wasn’t an instant yes was because I was a bit terrified that audiences would be like, ‘Well, this isn’t Julia Zemiro,’ because nobody can be except Julia,” Youssef says. “It’s going to sound like I’m just blowing smoke up her arse, but I adore her. She’s one of the funniest and kindest people in the industry. So I had an existential crisis.”
Great Australian Walks hosts Gina Chick, Julia Zemiro and Susie Youssef. (Credit: SBS).
After a breath, Youssef pulled her runners on to cover four of the season’s ten episodes. In Victoria, she covers Melbourne’s Bay Trail, heading south from bustling bayside suburb St Kilda, and then Ned Kelly country in the historic regional town of Beechworth. In South Australia, she tackles the mountainous Wilpena Pound track, tracing the Flinders Ranges, then makes time for wine along the Riesling Trail in the Clare Valley.
Beechworth may be infamous for its connection to the bush ranger so ingrained in colonial Australia's complicated mythmaking, but it's arguably just as well known for slightly more wholesome reasons: the local honey production. “When I was a kid, mum and dad used to collect all kinds of honey and explain to us that they were a taste of that place,” Youssef recalls. “The bees are pollinating those specific flowers.”
Susie Youssef stops at Beechworth Honey during one of her Victorian walks. Credit: SBS
Meeting Jodie Goldsworthy, a fourth-generation beekeeper at the Beechworth Bee Arboretum, was a treat. Suiting up to extract fresh honeycomb to take home to her mum, Youssef battled the inclination to run from buzzing bees. “I just had to calm my breath and be there,” she says. “And it was truly incredible.”
Youssef also chatted to Mark Monshing about reclaiming his Chinese ancestry – his family emigrating to Beechworth during the Gold Rush – in the local cemetery. “I find cemeteries to be quite calm, relaxing places, at least during the day,” she says. “It’s this lawn of history with all these stories in this one place.”
The Ned Kelly story is inescapable. “I remember him from art history, mostly, and Sydney Nolan’s work,” Youssef says. “And then Heath Ledger playing him made it a lot easier, because he was so beautiful to look at.”
Historian Dr Deborah Rechter reframed the Kelly gang’s fate as she and Youssef sat outside Beechworth’s sandstone courthouse. “The media reporting at the time, and the government’s determination to capture and make an example of him, was a bit of a conspiracy, and it's a really interesting angle, whatever your opinion is on him,” Youssef says. “Every kid in Australia could probably sketch a picture of Ned Kelly, but whether they know the intricacies of his story is another thing.”
...speaking to this beautiful, generous woman about her complicated story was extraordinary.
Much of the history Youssef learned at school is being reassessed, including an expanding understanding of First Nations narratives that were once all but obscured from curriculums. High in the hills outside Beechworth, Youssef meets Waywurru woman Megan Carter, who only discovered her Indigeneity as an adult. Her great-grandfather, a famous boxer and a VFL official, had concealed his identity in the genuine fear that his family could be torn apart by the insidious policies behind the Stolen Generation. “That was one of the most beautiful views I’ve ever seen, and speaking to this beautiful, generous woman about her complicated story was extraordinary.”
Later, in South Australia, traditional owner Izzy Patterson takes Youssef into a sacred gorge in Ikara that has been closed to the public because ancient rock engravings that are countless thousands of years old have been vandalised. “I had never really done anything quite like it,” Youssef says. “I love a beach walk or wandering around a country to town buying tea towels that I don’t need, so I knew Wileena Pound would be a challenge for me. But loved it, because, like my therapist would probably say, it was exposure for me.”
Susie Youssef and Izzy Patterson during her visit to Wilpena Pound, South Australia. Credit: SBS
Yousef felt privileged to hear these stories. “Getting to meet First Nations people like Izzy and Megan and hear their stories was extraordinary,” Youssef says. “They were quite frank conversations, with a history that is both tragic, in parts, and also beautiful, and I think we got a real mixture of those stories.”
Many parallels popped up on Youssef’s travels, chatting to people like fellow comedian Rachel Berger, whose family set up (cake) shop on St Kilda’s iconic Acland Street stretch. “My parents moved out here from Lebanon in the mid-50s, and my grandfathers came four years beforehand to set up shop, quite literally, with a corner store like the one we visited in St Kilda,” Youssef says. “So you’re talking to people so different from yourself, but somehow we seem to connect because we’re in this mixing pot of human beings in this country, and I think we're better for it, I really do.”
Youssef reminds me that the voices that push back against this are often a noisy minority. “There are so many quieter, calmer, more balanced voices out there that we don’t get to hear enough from. I feel really lucky that I got to sit down with some of those people and hear them talk about the places that they love. There's so much love in this show.”
Youssef’s comedy skills really came in handy when chatting with locals. “I started off in improv and it helped me having that in my back pocket,” she says. “Obviously Julia is one of the best improvisers in the world and it teaches you to listen. That's a lesson you have to learn over and over again, so the more people you talk to, the more skilful you become. It helps you grow. Just be present.”
Great Australian Walks season 2 premieres 7.30pm Thursday 22 August on SBS and . The ten-part series continues weekly. Season 1 is streaming now at SBS On Demand.
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