Three mates on a boat for 40 days. Sounds like a recipe for the ultimate bromance or a thriller on the high seas.
Matt: When I left, I was quite excited, but I wasn’t sure if all three of us would make it back on the same boat.
Did you step on each other’s toes?
Matt: My fondest memories were of this very tense card game. We’re all reasonably competitive and no-one likes to lose, but you can’t go as hard as you might when you’re not on a boat. You can’t storm off in a huff without everyone knowing about it, because you’d be brushing your teeth next to them, you know, waiting for them to go to the toilet.
Nick: Ross pissed Matthew and I [sic] off all the time, which is why we love him. What he lacks in self-awareness, he makes up in humour. Needless to say, I never need to see Ross in his underwear again.
What was the sleeping situation like?
Ross: The sleeping situation was a little tight. There was no bunking up, although it was a bit tempting. I was voted the worst snorer on the boat. Everyone else would snore but I’d be snoring first. I think I was victimised just because I could go to sleep very quickly.
Did you brush up on your fishing skills?
Ross: This was one of our more successful fishing trips, I’d say. Our strike rate’s getting a lot better on television, anyway.
Matt: Oh, look, I’m still a rubbish fisherman. I guess, wearing my other hat, it actually means I’m really, really sustainable because I don’t catch much.
Still, it looks like you had your fair share of fresh seafood. Any standout moments?
Matt: Over on the west coast, we went out with an old fisherman mate. He took us looking for the famed striped trumpeter and just as he was losing hope we finally pulled up the fish.
Ross: It’s a cold-water, deep-water fish, so you’ve got that beautiful subtle flavour to it. You can make sashimi out of it, you can grill it, you can poach. It just comes up fantastic.
Nick: [Another] seafood moment would be the abalone cook-off in Granville Harbour. We had about two or three thousand dollars of abalone on the table and we went head-to-head with a bunch of local guys. That was a hoot.
Tell us about the Indigenous ingredients you came across.
Nick: In Moulting Lagoon, we were handed a swan egg by a couple of Indigenous lads. That was an absolute privilege. It’s about 98 per cent yolk with quite a strong taste, a bit like a duck or a goose egg. The way Ross handled it was beautiful. He did a very simple Asian omelette.
Ross: It had a real anchovy-style – more of a mutton bird – smell to it. It was almost like it curdled when I whisked it up and threw it into the pan. It was so thick and rich.
Matt: That was a really special moment. It’s very easy – if you read the history that I grew up with – to forget that this land was full of thriving culture; people who lived off this land and had done so sustainably for tens of thousands of years.
Matt brought some heritage cookbooks on board. How did you find the early settler-style of cooking?
Nick: It was a cross between British traditionalism and Australian ingenuity. They came with recipes but without the raw ingredients in which to make them, so they used our native wildlife instead of beef or mutton. The results are very, very interesting.
Ross: I think, back then, it would’ve been [more] about the product, which is the way we’re turning these days. People are relying on better quality meat and doing as little as possible to it.
Matt: There were a lot of recipes in those old books that wouldn’t look unfamiliar today. Things like salsify, which is an ingredient they were using at Quay restaurant when I was a reviewer.
You cracked open a bottle (or two) of the wine you made back in Season 1 of , called The Low Hanging Fruit. Level with us, what was it really like?
Matt: That wine is amazingly interesting, it’s like every bottle you open is from a different batch. Some of them are really cloudy; they taste a little musty and perhaps not that flash. Others are brilliantly clear and gently aromatic – delicious.
Ross: The funny thing was that everyone we served it to said, “Gee, that’s not that bad!” so I don’t know whether that was a compliment.
Nick: I’ve put it in front of a bunch of winemaking mates, including the guy who gave us the grapes, and they all rate it. We did a good job. It’s good gear.
