Robyn Fox = Silver Fox

An adventurous life is a gross  understatement when listening to the rich stories that have defined the life and work of Foxy.  Robyn's early years  were defined by whitewater kayaking and sailing excursions in Victoria, whilst still at school. Foxy's passion for whitewater kayaking and rafting continued as a young adult undertaking over thirty multi day trips down the Franklin River in Tasmania, the first as a nineteen year old.

After such an upbringing Robyn was perhaps destined to work in the outdoors, where she could share her passion, deep connection to country and innovative ideas to students and colleagues  around the world.   So she packed her backpack and headed to Sudan and Thailand  where she designed and developed outdoor education programs in international schools.   

Enjoy the Chat 

Bridget and Pete 

Show Notes 

Franklin - The Movie 

https://franklinrivermovie.com 

Trailer to Franklin the Movie 

https://youtu.be/E5ooCUgv45A?si=9zL3oXvX0Bu15eMT

Death of a River Guide - Richard Flanagan 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_a_River_Guide

Bob Brown 

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Brown 

New Book 

Defiance by Bob Brown 

https://defiance.org.au/

Bob Brown Foundation 

https://bobbrown.org.au

Meroe Pyramids 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramids_of_Meroë 

Contact Bridget and Pete 

Email: 2roampodcast@gmail.com 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to episode seven of the Two Roam podcast, where host Pete Flying Solo has had much experiential learning. I'd like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land called Australia and their connection to land, water, and community, and recognize that this is the world's oldest living culture. Enjoy the chat, Romers. Greetings and salutations, fellow Romers, and welcome again to episode seven of the Two Rom podcast, where the we have the pleasure and privilege of interviewing the second of the two foxes, aka Robin Fox, or goes under the pseudonym the Silver Fox. Welcome, Robin.

SPEAKER_01 0:52

Thank you, Pete.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

Uh just first and foremost, I guess uh my co-host is off on a roaming adventure.

SPEAKER_01 1:02

I believe she's Llama sitting.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

Llama sitting in Peru and also doing some work. So it's Robin and myself um against the world. Uh so the way the podcast starts, Robin, is uh we ask our guests to perhaps tell a story about uh um how you first got into the outdoors and perhaps enlighten the listening audience about your relationship with the natural world.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Thanks, Pete. Uh having two parents who loved the outdoors, I suppose I was just brought up following along in their footsteps and being, I suppose, in many ways indoctrinated into a love of the outdoors. Dad had a love of nature and sailing. So from a very young age we were messing about in boats and bidding gears. And Dad was also an engineer, so he had a tree house in the backyard that he designed. So we were climbing up the trees, we had a pulley, we had a slider to get down and a rope to climb up. Uh and when we're up at the tree house, we would uh be investigating all things you might find up at in a tree house, such as nests and birds, eggs, um looking up at the clouds and the sky and connecting all the dots. We also lived in uh Chadston at the time in Melbourne, and the we had down the end of the road a creek, which I believe now is Gardener's Creek in the middle of a freeway, but we'd go down there and we'd go tadpole hunting. And mum was from Kahuna up on the Murray. So Mum would tell us stories about Gumbower Creek on the Murray River and the fairies that she'd find in the trees on the Murray River.

SPEAKER_00 3:00

And yeah, Mum were they mystical fairies, Robin, or what sort of fairies were they?

SPEAKER_01 3:05

Well, I think in Mum's mind when she was growing up as a young girl, they were real fairies, but uh yeah, mum had an affinia affinity affiliation with the flatlands of uh Kahuna, and uh yeah, dad had a real uh affiliation with the ocean and all things ocean-like. And as I was um growing up, I had the opportunity to also sail on the Armadopel, which is a youth sail training ship in Port Phillip Bay. So that was a very pivotal moment in my life, I suppose. Being on a ship with uh 16 other trainees and climbing up the yard arms and just messing about in a bigger boat was a great experience. And I also had at school a teacher, uh Robin Galloway, who was in the Australian kayaking team, and she really introduced myself and uh my close friends to a love of rivers and and paddling. And she took us up through the Black Spur. I remember on one occasion, and as we drove up through the Black Spur under all the beautiful mountain ash trees, we actually collected a jar of air from the Black Spur and then went we went up to the Goldman River. And I think it was the first time in my life that I'd actually taken a drink of water from a river and uh, you know, swallowed that water, and we also collected a jar of river water. So a really pivotal moment, uh yeah, form formative moment, um, connecting me to rivers and the love of rivers, and I suppose all the journeys that a river can encompass and the places you can get to that you can't get to by foot.

SPEAKER_00 4:55

Sounds like Robin Galloway was an awesome mentor in your life. Um had you paddled most of the Whitewater rivers in Victoria during that time you were sort of in school with Robin Galloway?

SPEAKER_01 5:09

Uh yeah, I think we we probably had paddled most of the rivers. I mean, most weekends we went to a Salem competition somewhere, and then in the week time we'd play canoe polo. When sprint kayaking season came around, we did sprinting, sprint kayaking, downriver racing, dragon boating, anything we could get involved in, we we would do so. Um, and then after school, when I got into outdoor ed, I did the traineeship at OEG, you know, then I suppose the longer river trips started happening with uh friends and colleagues, and uh holidays were spent yeah, going up and down the coast of Australia on river journeys.

SPEAKER_00 5:51

And did you have any special interactions with the natural world while you were doing all that whitewater paddling?

SPEAKER_01 6:00

Oh yes. Uh I had an amazing moment with a platypus on the Golban River, and the platypus was surfing this wave next to me, and I was surfing in the kayak, and we were just surfing as one. Uh, yeah, that that was an amazing pivotal moment. And I suppose before I touched on places you can get to on river journeys, so other beautiful moments would be, you know, in an evening sitting around a campfire made from driftwood, looking up at the stars, um, or yeah, just exploring the beautiful rainforest pockets of the Mitchell River. Um, and then I was very fortunate at the age of 19 to go down the Franklin River with my uh cousins. Uh I was in a raft with my cousin and one of their friends with another cousin and another friend in a kayak. Um, yeah, and we had an amazing journey and and I also learned a lot. That was my first uh multi-day, you know, over 10-day journey on the Franklin River. And uh by by the time I came out at straw and at the other end, I'd really grown um in my own rafting abilities, but also just in my appreciation of nature because the Franklin River um trip, the the 10 or 12-day river trip really takes you on a beautiful immersive journey where by the end you're actually all Franklin River water because that's what you've consumed for the last 10 to 12 days.

SPEAKER_00 7:40

Yeah, it it it is indeed a special place, uh the Franklin. And I have uh spent some time there myself, and you do get into that real immersive relationship with the river environment.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

And there's also many spots, Pete, you'd be able to remember these where you get to these rapids and you think, oh my gosh, how can we even navigate or negotiate this uh the Great Ravine, for instance, and slowly by slowly you sort of work your way down, and each rapid you come to is a little problem to solve, and you either work out whether you have the competency to paddle that rapid or you need to ra line your rafts or you need to deflate your rafts and carry your rafts or your kayaks. Um, but it's it also teach you teaches you humility because you need to sort of know your own strengths and the power of the river is as we know unforgiving. And I I do have a funny story about the Franklin because at one of these rapids with my cousin when we were, I think I was 19, we got stuck at in some rocks at the top of a rapid, but my cousin was at the bottom, so I threw my camera down and my camera hit a rock and then it disappeared and I lost my camera. And then a few years later, working at OEG, Pete Griffiths came up to me and he goes, Foxy, I've got all these photos of you on the Franklin River, and some punter had found the camera, and Peter got the photos developed, but I never got the camera back, but I did get the photos, and I've still got my cherish the photos of myself and my cousins, and we still talk about that trip quite fondly today.

SPEAKER_00 9:20

That's an amazing story about the recovery of the camera. I think that's quite a uh it's just one of those amazing human moments, I think.

SPEAKER_01 9:30

Yeah. It's a full 360.

SPEAKER_00 9:34

Yeah, the f the fact that I I mean obviously maybe the river had gone down a little bit when um the the person who found the camera found it because you know obviously it disappeared when you lost it. And uh yeah, it's just interesting that they were able to find it and uh and then get it back to you. I think that that's a amazing story.

SPEAKER_01 9:59

And another river another time we tried to do the Franklin from the uh headwaters to the sea, so that was actually the year when they had the Sinead Hobart disaster, which was uh very sad um with all the people that uh lost their lives in that sailing uh boat race. But uh we we were due to start this river trip from the headwaters to the of the Franklin to the sea from Lake Dixon, and we walked into Lake Dixon and actually it was like a raging grade four rapid, and we were going to initially river sled the top section, so we had to walk through all this button grass with a lot of leeches, and eventually we did a little bit of river sledding from the Franklin River Bridge to the Collingwood River Junction, and then we walked out and we got the rafts, and then when we got to St. John's Falls, we got sea kayak, so we went uh all the way out to the ocean. So that was a three-week trip down the Franklin River, and that was uh, yeah, as we were talking about before, one of these amazing immersive experiences where you know when you actually get to the end, all you really want to do is go out Hell's Gates and turn left and keep on circumnavigating uh Tasmania. It's sometimes it's hard to come back from those trips to the hustle and bustle and the routines of daily life.

SPEAKER_00 11:22

Can you speak a little bit about that uh reintegrating with society, please, Foxy?

SPEAKER_01 11:29

Yeah, well, I think sometimes uh something that probably draws me to the outdoors is a is the simplicity of being on a trip uh and you're in the zone with those people you're on the trip with, and you're that little community, and you don't really need to think outside of that community, and often you have all your food already packed because you've been shopping and you've procured all that. Uh, and yeah, it's just uh it's a nice sort of way of being in the moment and just living life as it unfolds in front of you as opposed to probably our daily routines where we've got deadlines and we've got uh more responsibilities, perhaps to partners or to family or other friends, work, sports, etc.

SPEAKER_00 12:21

And those long trips that you speak of where you're actually in the natural world for sort of, shall we say, more than a week, do you think they're different to perhaps trips where we only go into the natural world for a shorter amount of time?

SPEAKER_01 12:40

Well, I I suppose when we talk about the natural world, we're always in the natural world because there's no uh delineation between this world and that world. Uh, but when we're on, I suppose, outdoor education trips, uh journeying, maybe in more places of natural vegetation. Uh less developed, as we should be able to do that. Yeah, less less human developed, because the natural world is very developed and it's it's very complex actually. Uh a lot more complex than we take, you know, we take it for granted, all the complex ecosystems and uh biodiversity that happens in nature and even the other systems, geomorphology, hydrology, um, you know, everything. But uh getting back to your question, Pete, I definitely think uh longer journeys for me are one are often a reset. You know, they take us away from our normal routine and they give us an opportunity to slow down and reset. And uh often we get to connect with that place in a different way, and we get to see the nuances of that place, whether you know it's the running water or the mountain peaks that we're passing um day to day or the sunsets, the sunrises. I think all those things re-energize me, and then it's the relationships with the people uh as we're journeying. You know, you get time to have conversations and get to know people in different ways and hear their stories and also connect and form a story with that place as you're journeying through it. And that does remind me of a story actually on the corroid track in Victoria uh years ago. This trip was for 33 days with the year nine group of students, maybe 12 students and myself and a teacher, and then we had some specialist people come in at different points, and we had this book, and it was called the Poetry and Motion Book. And the idea was that you took this book with you when you went to the toilet to undertake a motion. And initially, you know, it was a bit of toilet talk, you know, burping, farting, weing, and pooing. But as the trip went on, the students suddenly realized that this time was the time where they got to be alone, and it started to become a bit of a philosophical memoir of the trip, and uh they'd start to philosophize about journeying in nature and relationships. Um, and then all of a sudden, the toilet each night became more and more elaborate. They'd find a spot which was a little bit more remote, or they'd decorate the toilets with some wooden tree branches, or get some flowers and decorate around the toilet. But I I don't know where this book ended up. Uh, when I went overseas, uh, maybe it went in a box somewhere, but I really don't know where the Poetry Emotion book went. But I think it would have been a great thing to have kept and uh yeah, it could have made a really good story book.

SPEAKER_00 16:00

Yeah, it would have been amazing to uh perhaps share with your students in your current world uh working as an outdoor environmental educator at the University of the Sunshine Coast.

SPEAKER_01 16:16

Yes, at the moment I currently teach uh inter-outdoor environmental studies at the University of the Sunshine Coast, and that's uh it's a really great job in in the fact that you know when I was 19 I did a traineeship and now I'm in my mid-50s, and that really my whole life has been around taking people in on outdoor education trips, or you know, now training other people to be able to facilitate outdoor education trips or outdoor environmental education trips for young people, for anyone really, or nature guiding or nature therapy, just connecting people with the natural world um and with each other, and I suppose standing up for nature and giving nature the voice and recognition it deserves. Um, I've also dabbled in a bit of uh classroom teaching and teaching PE, um, and that was a lot of fun uh and spent 16 years uh working in international schools, so I definitely recommend anyone listening. Um, you know, there's a big wide world out there, and there's a lot of rivers to be paddled, and I've been fortunate to, yeah, travel and journey under the stars and on the um water of many rivers around the world.

SPEAKER_00 17:42

Uh Foxy, could you perhaps share with the listening audience uh some remarkable outdoor adventure moments from your times working in those international schools?

SPEAKER_01 17:54

Well, I do remember in Sudan we'd take students up into the Jebels, which were sort of rocky outcrops north of Khartoum in Sedan. Um, and one trip we'd yeah, sort of base ourselves walking around between the Jebels. Um, and then uh we went to the pyramids and we took the students uh camel riding um around the pyramids of Meraway. That was a really beautiful memory. And there was another memory actually south of well south of Khartoum. Uh there was a lake, like Jebalawia, and we took the students there and we were doing a sort of orienteering course, and some students came back and they said, Oh, uh, they called me Miss Robin. They said, Miss Robin, we've found a skeleton. And I was like, What? You found a skeleton? And they said, Yeah, we've found a skeleton. But they didn't seem too concerned about the skeleton. Uh so when they were doing another activity, I went and f went to the location they'd described and I found this skeleton, and it was actually a full, complete skeleton of a young child. And I sort of checked, looked over the skeleton, and it was fully intact. And um the students didn't seem too concerned. So when I went back to school, I said to the principal, look, we found a skeleton. And I know in Australia this would be a crime scene. Um, and but I said, really, probably what's happened is someone in the village has died, and in that culture they buried people before the sun set. So they probably buried this uh young child, and then eventually over time the sand has, you know, just drifted off the top of the skeleton. So yeah, it's it was very insightful just uh connecting with different cultures in in different ways and trying to understand, you know, their ways of being, doing and knowing, I suppose, and how they lived and connected in those um to the environment.

SPEAKER_00 19:59

Can you speak a bit to uh perhaps the relationship of the students in Sudan and their relationship with the outdoors or the natural world versus say students that you've uh taught and mentored in Australia? Are they different, the same?

SPEAKER_01 20:21

Well, I think all young people, when they're young, uh have a natural curiosity with the natural world, and maybe as they get older, uh you know, that is then they're more influenced by their peers and friends. But I would say in Sudan, the school I worked at, um there were a lot of students that were either children of N NGO workers, UN workers, uh quite affluent Sudanese people, or people working um in Sudan, expats. So, I mean, they were very interesting people due to the parent, their parents, um, I would say that in Thailand, I worked in Thailand for a few years, that the students there and and in Sedan, you know, a lot of their relationships with nature were to do with their worldviews, whether they're religious or environmental worldviews. And that's probably similar here in Australia, but I'd definitely say probably there's more of a disconnect with youth and their worldviews today than there was in the past. And you know, today a lot of young people are spending more time inside on in on technology or consuming technology, whether playing it or watching it, or creating it potentially. Um, and yeah, trying to think of ways we can get students and young people outside and connecting to nature, and also, I suppose, with their parents or their caregivers to. Trying to uh educate them that, you know, being outside's a a good thing, you know, we can do it in safe ways. Um yeah, I think life's changed a bit since we were children, Pete.

SPEAKER_00 22:16

Oh come on. I feel like it's exactly the same.

SPEAKER_01 22:19

Even though I feel st still feel quite child like childlike inside. Uh yeah, I think definitely we're a lot more risk adverse and parents uh you know, children go to a lot more sports these days. They're after school they're a lot more regimented in what they do, uh, and that's parent-led as opposed to when we were young. Uh we'd just be out in the street playing with the neighborhood kids.

SPEAKER_00 22:45

Yeah, absolutely. I I I think that that aspect has changed. Um so there we go. Um I guess uh one more remarkable outdoor adventure moment, and uh then we might uh get your opinion on a few other things, but uh let's go with that.

SPEAKER_01 23:08

Oh, one last moment. I think uh bike riding. Bike riding, I've always been a bike rider, and luckily my parents let me outside when I was young, and I had two older brothers, so it's always trying to keep up with them on their bikes. But bike riding has been something I've carried through uh my life, and that's allowed me to journey uh in many places around Australia and around the world on a bike. So I've I did some cycle touring in Laos and Cambodia and Vietnam and Thailand when I lived in Thailand, and then I uh also did a big 10-week bike ride from Lyon in France to Greece one summer. Uh, and that was fantastic, just carrying all our gear on the bikes and staying predominantly camping. Often we'd just rock up into an area and find someone that had a big front yard or a paddock and knock on their door, and more often than not, we'd find ourselves being invited for dinner or breakfast at their house and being sent off sometimes with lunch in our panniers the next day. Um, yeah, we just met a whole heap of wonderful people and yeah, got to experience some beautiful cultures and countries.

SPEAKER_00 24:28

And your route between France and Greece, did you ride through a lot of mountains and how was that?

SPEAKER_01 24:36

Uh yeah, we rode some parts were coastal, some parts were mountainous, but we tried to keep off the main roads, and so we went through uh many back roads. We went near Lake Como, there was some mountain pass that to go over the mountain I think was like 15 kilometres and to cycle around was 60. So I was like, okay, I'm going over the hill, but I remember getting to the top and realizing that a push bike is actually called a push bike because one sometimes has to get off and push the bike because the mountain gradient was far too steep. But we got uh very fit uh as we went along down in Montenegro. We went up into the mountains once again and we went rafting on the Tara River Canyon. In Croatia, we went out to some islands and you know, spent some time sunning ourselves on the beach. And I also remember in Slovenia, all these beautiful campgrounds that had hot springs, and every afternoon we'd sort of end up at another hot spring, and it was very uh therapeutic.

SPEAKER_00 25:39

Great pace to uh have therapy for weary cycling muscles for sure.

SPEAKER_01 25:43

Yes, and then the food, every uh, you know, all these back roads, there was people selling sort of food everywhere, um, all their produce that they were producing. So it was great to be able to sample everything. And I was very fortunate the summer before to work at um Aeglong College in Switzerland, uh, and at this uh summer school, st students came from all around the world and I was involved in outdoor pursuits. So every morning students would either do English or French lessons, and then in the afternoon we'd go off and go bike riding or canoeing, overnight adventures. Um, we'd go on these high ropes courses, and uh after that month I put all my money into travelers' checks, which actually paid for the whole next summer's adventure.

SPEAKER_00 26:35

That's a very nice story. Um, can you comment a bit on uh the traveling experience of meeting all these people along the way and how that uh is a I I think just such a beautiful aspect of travel, that human interaction part of it.

SPEAKER_01 26:55

Yeah, I think it stemmed from when I was young. My parents, um, my dad came out from England and mum came from up country. So, you know, we always had people staying at our house and popping in, and we always had Lilos on our lounge room floor and people staying. So uh I've always taken that with me wherever I've gone. And when I worked in Sedan, I would meet travellers at the Blue Nile Sailing Club, which was sort of a camping area, but the bathroom and laundry facilities were dire. So I'd sort of invite people to come and stay at my apartment, and uh then often they'd come to the school and do a talk to students, and I had people driving land cruises, uh, land drovers across Africa, a lady from Germany raising money for a farm, so she rode a tractor with a kelpie. I had uh people riding bikes, I had all sorts of weird and wonderful people. I actually had a person come and stay at my house in Sudan that was the first person to circumnavigate the whole world by human power, and he was trying to get across Lake Aswan in from Khartoum into or Sudan back into Egypt, and he had this um canoe he was gonna put together and eventually he he started this journey across the lake after, you know, going around the world for six years and paddling across the Atlantic and rollerblading across America. And anyway, when he got uh across Lake Aswan, he paddled by night and camped on an island, he got arrested. Um, but anyway, he got bailed out by the British embassy and finally made it back to uh the UK. So yeah, I met all sorts of weird and wonderful people.

SPEAKER_00 28:48

Fascinating. Um, lastly, Foxy, can you just uh perhaps share with the listening audience some causes, some things that you're passionate about that you'd like to share with the listening audience, and then we'll wrap up the session.

SPEAKER_01 29:07

Well, thank you, Pete. I suppose I'm passionate about uh getting other people out into nature, and now I've been blessed with having five young grandkids, so trying to give them the skills and confidence to uh go on journeys and follow their adventurous selves and their adventurous souls. Um yeah, I think also having some charity or some volunteer work that one is uh passionate about is always a good thing to follow. You know, we need more volunteers in the world, we need more people willing to help one another. So trying to find a passionate cause that you're passionate about, whether that's environmental or um not, that's fine. Um, and then another thing I've sort of taken up lately is uh nature journaling, and that's a really beautiful way to slow down and uh be in awe and wonder of nature and people and um plants and animals and the more than human world because it's yeah, it's very it's amazing when you slow down and you have time to watch and wonder.

SPEAKER_00 30:24

Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. Um well we might uh wrap it up there and call it a day, hey?

SPEAKER_01 30:32

Okay, thanks, Pete. It's always a pleasure.

SPEAKER_00 30:35

Thanks, Foxy, and uh Bridget and I will be back uh with the next episode of the Two Roam podcast fairly soon. That's us from uh signing off now. Thanks.

SPEAKER_01 30:48

Thank you.