Mindful Prepping with Nutta Ledingham
I had a long chat with Nutta about self responsibility; being prepared for the unexpected, and being able to take care of yourself, feed and care for your family in the case of a natural disaster or something along those lines, instead of sitting around and waiting for the government to come and save you or fix it for you.
We spoke about uncertainty, the dramatic nature of the news, the creation of fear through dramatisation, and touched on topics like;
the preparedness mindset
generational differences
family and community
making do and going without
fighting bushfires
sustainability
eating what's in season and sharing your bounty
water and survival
gender roles and the sacredness of family
the fragility of the supply chain
green energy and reliance on the electric grid
"We had to take time off school to move through Ash Wednesday to protect the house. Droughts come and go, things happen. But as a young man in the 80s and 90s on a rural farm in Australia, nobody was coming to help you. Like nobody came to help you. You relied on yourself and your neighbours...
That taught me that if you can't put your hand on it and you need it, you don't have it. That's right. And so the way of life of a small holding farmer, and it's always been the way, is you don't know what's coming in the future. So it's like that adage that I always use about hunting. You're going hunting for rabbits, but you're armed for bear because you don't know what the future holds...
We have two generations that have no concept that you don't actually get to eat strawberries in the middle of summer. It's only because of globalisation and the fact that we can fly these things in from who knows where, to here so that we can have it...
I remember as a kid, when there was that glut of fruit; the jams being made, the preserves, all the things. And if I've got it, I'm going to make, apple puree, apple pies, all that...
Preparedness was instilled in rural communities."
A long meandering chat that covered many 'hot' topics. Nutta has strong opinions about some things and you may not agree with him, and he is absolutely fine with that. By the same token, you may hear some things here, that cause you to take action that might hold you in good stead at some point along the way.
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Episode Transcript:
Stan (00:15)
Nutta, it's lovely to see you this morning. Thank you so much for having a cup of coffee with me over the internet to have a chat about prepping. Now, you and I have been friends for a very long time, which is why I know that you are very, very knowledgeable about this stuff and why I've invited you to chat about it. So good to see you.
Okay. Thank you, Karen. Knowledgeable, I think is a pretty big term, but any hoo.
No, I think, let's be real, you are very knowledgeable.
Well, I've been doing it for a long time.
Exactly, exactly. Yeah. And there's a lot of negative talk about prepping and people talking about tin hats and things like that. But we both know that there's a lot of unrest in the world at the moment. There's a lot of uncertainty, yeah.
I think a lot of it, yeah, and I don't think there's any more uncertainty in the world than there ever has been. What I think it is is it's our instant access and the fact that we live in a society now where all your news is instant, all your news is very dressed up, so it has to be stimulating and very short. Our attention span is three seconds. Yeah, like the last big disaster, probably can't tell you because we're already talking about the next one. Yeah. So we've developed this overrating in modern society, it's fear. Everything's fear. We've to be scared. So I think the world's now, we're closer on a lot of levels, but we've always been in turmoil and there's always been uncertainty on the planet. I think because we live in such an instant society where everything's instant, people have forgotten that you need to prepare the road. You don't know what's around the next corner. I think that's where people are becoming, they're seeing through the veneer, the veneer of modern society with all its technological advances and everything like that is only as thin as the electricity supply to whatever computer it is that's running everything that controls your life. Yeah.
We could almost go down a rabbit hole right there, but we won't. Let's stay on track. So because I'm very tempted to do that. I watch this great program on Netflix. Maybe we'll talk about that another time. The whole electrical thing. You've mentioned disasters. You've mentioned electricity, that things can change. I'm interested. What got you into thinking about sustainability and prepping, I guess, for want of a better term?
Life. I grew up in Northeastern Victoria on a small dairy farm. Life was, I'm not going to say hard. No. It’s hard for everybody, but I mean, so we lived through Ash Wednesday. We had to take time off school to move through Ash Wednesday, to protect the house. Droughts come and go, things happen. But as a young man in the 80s and 90s on a rural farm in Australia, nobody was coming to help you. Like nobody came to help you. Like you relied on yourself and your neighbours. So that's, I'm talking 40 years ago. That taught me. If you can't put your hand on it and you need it, you don't have it. That's right. And so the way of life of a small, holding farmer, and it's always been the way, is you don't know what's coming in the future. So it's like that adage that I always use about hunting. You're going hunting for rabbits, but you're armed for bear because you don't know what the future holds. And that's really, really apparent. It was really, really apparent growing up because Jesus, we had no money. So it’s like, I'm going camping, I'll go and buy a tent. That wasn't a part of it. If you didn't have it, you didn't have it. So as things came, and you learn to look at things, saying, hey, hang on, I had that scenario where this broke and I used that to fix it. So next time I see one of them, I'll keep it. Because I see, you know, like I understand that it's all well and good saying that I can get you and stuff like that. But I live here. It's over there. I've got to get it. It's got to come here. And in the downtime. So that was a fact of life growing up. Seasonal stuff. We ate fruit and veggie fruit from our orchard when it was in season. Yeah. Because it was free. Yeah. That's right. It builds on that. Again, I've got to keep on track because I could just dig in a rabbit hole and say why we've got to the point that we are… So at the start, it was just a case of the realistic view of if I don't have it and I need it, tough. If you don't have it, you don't have it. So when you put that into really basic things like milk and bread, and then you apply that across all the aspects of your life. you start, you know, like without water. I mean, it ties into something else that we were going to talk to about, is what people say, what you can do to get into this. The preparedness mindset is that what can I control now that will be advantageous tomorrow? Yeah. And what is, and then you get into your priorities. So the first priority forever in any prepared situation is water. That's right. That's the first thing that people don't think about. But it's the most important thing because without water, you're dead in three days. It doesn't matter what scenario, if you don't have water, you are dead in three days. Yeah. And clean water. yeah. Yeah.
Okay, cool. So it's really your childhood, your upbringing, and you've gained a lot of skills because of the way you've grown up on the land…
And our generation too. There's a generational thing. So I'm obviously a generation X, which is, they call us the feral generation. And it's true. We were out before the sun came out. We didn't come home until the sun went down. If you went home, you got a job. But it wasn't you didn't go home because your mum and dad pissed with you. You didn't go home because you got a fucking job. it wasn't, it's not like modern days where we go, I gave my child a job and he mowed the lawns. No, if you got a job, it was getting the hay in, it was cutting enough firewood for the winter. They were jobs, they were real jobs. So we would disappear. You didn't hang around when you had nothing to do because you got something to do. So we would disappear, which made us very, very self-reliant and able to put up with ourselves in our own company. So we didn't need mobs of people around us and you overcome things as they happen. Then you take that forward by 20 years or 30 years or 40 years, the same situations apply. We're different input and we're getting the input, the information in a different way. But you always revert to, don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. and 40, 50 years down the track, you realise that all of the people that said they're going to be there and that your tax money is going to help you, and this government organisation is going to come in and in the event of…and you look back because they tell you this repeatedly and repeatedly, but a normal person, your listeners are the same. They might not be as far down the rabbit hole as me, but they'll see and they're picking up on it. They don't do what they say they can. After 50 years, you realize, hang on. Sure, I've got this insurance. Sure, I've got this. Sure, I've got money in the bank, but it's all electronic. And if you haven't got your hand on it, look what happened during our last four year ago social experiment that we did. All things that we said would never happen in Australia…. overnight. Even just that bleep that happened a few months ago and people couldn't use their credit card machines and the system in the supermarket and buy their food. Remember when we were in high school when they brought out debit cards? Everybody ran to get a debit card. The Australia card, that was another great one, you know, like, we're going to give you this ID card and no, no, no, we don't want that. Because back then we wouldn't stand for half of the crap we have to stand for today. Yeah, and they went, well, we'll give you this number, this tax file number, which is what they wanted to do all along so that they've got us. And I mean, the way that they've driven technology to surveil us, ‘for our own protection’, even the most indoctrinated or mainstream person is now starting to say, hang on, hang on. They tell us they're gonna do these things for us and look after us, make us safe and all of this, but it just seems like, everything's going out. All my money, all my rights, all my freedoms seem to be going away and nothing's coming in. As a society, we're waking up to that. And this obviously gives rise to people starting to ask questions, and this interest in prepping. And then prepping is a whole industry as well. Like anything in life, some people got a hold of it and they can make money out of it, like telling people what to do. Doing things like this for money. And really, this is not something that's new. I mean, I remember as a kid, your mum, you when there was that glut of fruit, the jams being made, the preserves, all the things. And if I've got it, because like my orchard, you know, has got mainly apples. So I'm going to make, you know, apple puree, apple pies, all that. And you distribute that, share and swap, because you've got potatoes, and in the summer Mr. Barton grows watermelons to feed his stock but we get some every year. You know what I mean? And preparedness was instilled in rural communities…. there was an old lady who lived down the road from us, she was in her nineties when I was a teenager. Every time I went down there to mow her lawn, I'd come home, with a bottle of preserves or something that she's made for me to take home and that is like a currency, you know? It wasn't expected, it just happened…
The theory behind prepping with us is that it's just to smooth out the road. There's so many indicators about so many potential threats. And when I say threats, it's just to the way of life that we have today. And I don't know if the systems in place, like the organized systems in place that we have, as a society are going to work because I keep seeing evidence of not working. Plus, I've been to some pretty horrendous natural disasters. I was involved in East Timor. I was one of the first contractors that actually went on the ground over there once they let civilians in. And during the course of my career as a Linesman dealing with natural bushfires and floods and stuff, putting things back. So I've got a bit of experience in that. As to the discrepancy between what we are told as a member of the public and what actually happens, so I've seen it in action and there's a discrepancy there. That's where our theory comes from, because nobody's going to come and knock on my door and say, hey, I see you've run out of toilet paper. Here's a roll of toilet paper.
We've seen how society acts, not that long ago. A lot of people are starting to just ask the question. Why did that actually happen that way?
I've seen on TV just a bit of a flash that it's, we're coming up to the 50 year anniversary of Cyclone Tracy in Darwin. Now I'm a bit older than you and I remember as a little girl that happening - Christmas day, Darwin was wiped out. Now in this country ,that we know and love and have always called the lucky country and felt lucky to be here, even back then, 50 years ago, people behaved in really appalling ways, in what we might call un-Australian ways because when they were faced with such trauma they went into survival mode, and some people did some pretty weird stuff. And that's something that in the normal course of life, I know for somebody like me, I don't like to think about people behaving in...
Unpleasant ways. Horrendous and I agree. I'm actually rocking a couple of lest we forget flags on my car at the moment because we've forgotten. We've forgotten as a society, we've forgotten a lot of the lessons that we learnt. And what you're saying is true. In the 1970s, there were some people that did some horrendous things. We both lived in Darwin, we both know the history. However, I would argue that in 1971 or whenever it happened, the ratio to good people, to honourable people would have been a lot better than today. We live in an instant society now. Nobody thinks about tomorrow because everything's instant through the phone. We're so reliant on technology, and some of the cracks are appearing, because of a lot of the scenarios, and I'm talking big picture scenarios, that we've gone through, the war in Ukraine, the potential war that's brewing in the Middle East - or so we're told, we’re told this is what's happening, this is what's happening, this is what's happening and then we see things on the other side, and people are actually starting to go, “Hang on, is it really?” But we've lost so much trust. Yeah. And I'm not just talking in Australia, I'm talking globally. Look at how everybody reacted to Donald Trump getting in. I mean, it's not even our country. People are losing their minds here. That's right. And the world model that we've been operating on since 1945 has changed. People are aware of that. Like, globalisation has changed. And people ask you, we're very dismissive of big groups of people because the herd mentality, and we tend to do well. We've seen. We've all seen. We do go with the flow. The whole metronome thing where everybody starts to move in the same direction just through the power of numbers. Yeah. And but we've seen like natural disasters, are they getting bigger or is it just our awareness of it getting better? Yeah, with this instant thing again, everybody's got a recorder in their pocket, everybody's got a potential news device in their pocket. So yeah, we can get a lot of information, but is it good information? So now the arguments around the misinformation bill that they're trying to push through, the way they're doing these things. People look at them, whether you agree with the way that they do it or they're not doing it. Is that right? Yeah. You know, so people are losing, well, not even losing focus. People are just asking questions. That's right. They are asking questions and that's always a good thing to question. It doesn't mean that you are going to go this way or that way, but the questioning is an indication of intelligence, I think.
Alot of my preparedness came from doing without as a young man. So like I've got a few issues, like a lot of issues, but like I've got a big bucket of socks because I always used to get my father's hand me down socks and I always had holes in them. So I've got a psychological issue about socks. I've got a big pile of black socks and whenever I get a hole, I throw that sock away but I keep the other one because I've done without. I also know because I've done a lot of remote work, you get out into a place that's removed from modern conveniences and you don't have a razor blade, you don't have a sock, you realize then hang on, the veneer of modern society is only as thick as everything that goes into the supply chain to bring it from where it was manufactured to you. When you start thinking about it like that, when you think about, hang on, so there's a boat that's got to pick this up. There's a truck that's got to pick that up. And you start putting the dots together, hang on, this is a huge system. In the past, a pair of Blundstone boots was made in Hobart. We'd kill the animals here in Australia. We had leather work, tanneries, we'd tan the leather. The leather would be processed. There'd be a synthetic manufacturer that's making elastic. All the products would go to Hobart and would be assembled and then the boots would be distributed. Back when I was a kid, for the grand total of $40, you'd get a pair of blundstone boots that would last you for two or three years. Today, the leather comes from Chile or South America. It's tanned in India or somewhere where they've got really shitty safety standards. The leather then goes to Taiwan or Vietnam or wherever the latest, you know, blundstone shop is, and get, put together there. Then it's put on a boat. Then it goes to, let's say, Perth, and then it's distributed from there.
All of those things have failed at one stage in the last couple of years and people have seen that. There's a lot of steps and opportunities for things to fall down hey. And then you can't fix anything, nothing's fixable. We don't, like we live in, everything's designed obsolescence. I'm driving a 30 year old car because it's the only thing that I've got a chance of fixing. I'm not stupid, but I'm not a mechanic but you know and simple basic stuff, we can't do that with a modern car. And I know because I tried it. I bought a brand new car and we got burnt because everything is plug a computer in. Computers were meant to make life easy. Okay. It did on the surface, but it didn't underneath…
Electricity. Everything today relies on electricity. People living in the cities and built up areas. And I think like the consciousness, people are starting to wake up. There's a push for this net zero. Everything to go to clean electricity. It's a fantastic concept. It's an amazing delusion. It's a wonderful, theoretical goal. It can't be done practically. Not anytime soon. Well, it's just a simple fact. I've been in the high voltage lines, and as you know, I worked for the State Electricity Commission of Victoria back in the day, back when the electricity system was actually maintained and then I worked in it with the transition to privatization and I've seen how our infrastructure has been raped for want of a better world. Just used and used and used, never maintained, Everything's band-aided. Well, simple maths. If we go to Albert Easy's Net Zero, how are you going to get the power from where you want it? First, we can't make it because we don't have the facilities to make it. People are waking up to the fact that wind is a farce, a wind turbine causes more carbon footprint to build it than will ever give back. It just can't. The fact of the unreliability that it's never on the right time when it's producing, the fact that we have no reliable way of storing it in such volumes, all of these points people can debate, but the facts are we can't. And we don't have the technology to do it for a cost-effective way. People, even if they don't understand the concept, they're starting to ask about the next step… of that because everything in modern society is controlled by electricity. So if you live in a city, your water, your food, your heating and cooling, your lighting, your sewage, everything is controlled by electricity. And now we don't have it. It would create madness, wouldn't it, if you can't get fuel. You can't get toilet paper. How do you alleviate that? Well, instead of buying two rolls of toilet paper, I buy 40 rolls of toilet paper and I always buy more than I use.
So the point that we’re talking about is how do you get started in it? It’s like you buy one extra?
Yeah. And where am going to spend my money? Do I need an extra air fryer or do I need maybe some bottles of water and maybe a 20 litre drum of petrol in the garage just in case? Yeah. It can be very daunting, but it can be simple as well, can't it?
It doesn't necessarily have to be, I have to support a family of five for the next five years. It can really be about getting over the hump where there's just say, for example, like, I mean, you're in WA. So if there's a flood and the roads go out and the trucks aren't going to get deliveries through to the supermarkets, you know, there's a timeframe for people who say live in Perth where they need to be able to feed their family for that week or two, and not be under pressure because the supermarket shelves aren't full. Absolutely. And another reason why in our family it's such an important thing, as you know, well, your listeners won't know, we lived for quite a number of years remotely. So we did approximately 10 years in Weipa, which is right at the top of Australia. So we would get out, like we had a supermarket, but as you can imagine, the prices were ridiculous. The food during the wet season would only come in once a month on a barge. We would do big orders because it's a month, you know, and you don't know what's going to be in the supermarket. You don't know what's going to get through this month or this week. So you bought, I wouldn't say in bulk, but you bought enough to get you through. And if next month's a lean month, well, we can stretch through. And when you start, it's not about end of the world, from a community perspective, when you can look after yourself even just a little bit, that frees services up… and being able to help people, see, to me, that's far more tangible than saying, ring this number. get in contact with this government department etc…. Let them get on with their life…, not have to jump through hoops. That builds community and a sense of belonging and there's so many good things that come from that, even for the person who's the beneficiary on one occasion because of their own experience, they're going to feel so affirmed and when the boot's on the other foot or if they have the opportunity to pass that on, they will because they've experienced that themselves. You can't teach that. can't, like we can't as a modern society, we're trying to legislate, like, I'm going to use your tax money and we're going to send it to the Ukraine and I'm going to give it to this group. Well, I guess that sounds great. It's kumbaya, you know, the world's a big melting pot and we're all going to get along. Well, it's not true though… So we're thinking on a global level, which is wonderful. Great. Very philanthropic or whatever it is, the big word. But the person who lives next door to me is doing it really, really hard. But I don't know. because I'm too busy looking at my computer because I've divided the talk until because I've got my head in this because what Elon Musk says on the other side of the planet is more important than what my neighbors going through because I've never bothered to ask. People are waking up to it. So from your perspective, community is very important in real terms, it's everything because the modern technological society has us all as individuals connected through an electronic app. Look at couples that go to the restaurant and they're sitting on opposite sides of the table with their phone in their hand. Why don't you talk about what you did? Well, talk about your kids. Talk about the weather. Talk. Yeah, be present with each other. And the impartiality then, because we've done it to two generations…
So we've got distracted and we've divided our community over crazy stuff. Sex, men and women competing. Where did we get that wrong? Like, we are better together, male and female.
So water, shelter, food. if we were looking at, go on. The other thing is too, so that's to keep life. you can personalise it a little bit. So somebody who's a diabetic, you better have your insulin. Where are you going to keep it because now you're fridge it's no good. You have to look at how am I gonna keep this in the condition that it has to be in to the point where it's usable in the worst case scenario. Now, it's very daunting, but you're not curing cancer. You're not going for Armageddon. You're going for, is this is going to get me through if the power's out for a week.? Okay, it's going to be a pain, but you know, I can, I've got food, I've got drink and I've got a roof over my head….
Yeah, so all of that, that free access to information does make people question. I think that's where the uncertainty, I mean, one of the things that I see is more generalized anxiety in people as a rule. And I guess that whole thing about preparedness, being able to, you know, ride the bumps or something bigger, if something bigger should occur, is that it gives people that sense of, what's the right word?
Control?
Exactly…
One of the things that you and I've talked about is this is about being responsible for myself or being responsible for the people that are in my care or under my protection. So it's an act of maturity. It's not, yeah, it's not about fear mongering or anything like that. It's just about taking care of business and making sure that we're looking after the people that we're looking after. So. even you know for somebody like myself, who just is responsible for myself, I'm then not a burden on someone else. We know that's really what it's about…
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