JOHN SCARINCI: Are you guys doomsday preppers? You're going to build a bunker under the ground and blah, blah, blah. No. 

DAN ILIC: Meet John Scarinci. 

JOHN SCARINCI: In fact, bunkers under the ground are not only expensive, they're not always the best way of being a prepper. 

DAN ILIC: John is a prepper - one of a global sub-culture of people who are getting ready for disaster to strike. Or, as a prepper might put it: for the end of the world as we know it.  And John isn’t just any prepper, but the president of the Australian Prepper Survival League. 

JOHN SCARINCI: We're a nonprofit organization that encourages Australians to be better prepared for emergencies. Pretty much it in a nutshell.  

DAN ILIC: When it comes to what prepping actually involves, John suspects a lot of people have got the wrong end of the stick.  

JOHN SCARINCI: Often people still have the mindset of the TV shows, and I think that I have to bug out. And that means preparing a few goods and bugging out, running away and hiding in the bush somewhere. What they don't realise is that there's a huge burden on you if you're going to do that. You're in the middle of the wildlife. There are other threats. So why run into the bush when there's nothing wrong with where you currently live at the moment? 

DAN ILIC: For John, the idea of hiding away from civilisation, be it in a bunker or the bush, is a bit of a nonsense. 

JOHN SCARINCI: We actually advise mostly against that because that's not the way forward for us in society. What we strongly believe in is mutual assistance because you cannot survive alone. 

DAN ILIC: And it doesn't matter whether you live in a mansion or a mine shaft, you can always find space for your preps. 

JOHN SCARINCI: What have you got under your bed? Often it's nothing, or it's just piles of junk. Lots of old shoes you don’t wear anymore. Well, clear them out. And now let's make that an important stash of food and water, the absolute necessities. And throw in a first aid kit while you're at it. 

DAN ILIC: John's a pretty regular guy. He lives in regional Victoria, works a full-time job in law enforcement, is married and has a couple of young kids. So the fact that he spends his spare time preparing for disasters might have you thinking he’s a little... unconventional. But his efforts have already started to pay off. 

JOHN SCARINCI: We had some big storms, almost cyclonic storm that came through here and it took trees down and power was out. Now, me being a prepper, I had all the equipment that was necessary and I was the only house on the street that had every room in the house with lighting. Because I have power back up, I have batteries, I have solar panels, and power was out for up to two weeks. 

DAN ILIC: Witnessing the impact this storm had on his town inspired John to take his prepping to the next level. 

JOHN SCARINCI: In all of my life, my town had never, ever been hit by any major disaster. I'm like, what on earth is this? It did bring me into the forefront that we need to do something because communication was cut off, etc., etc. And that's where I assisted in the founding of our organisation, the Australian Preppers Survival League.  

DAN ILIC:  I'm Dan Ilic, comedian and climate activist. And like John, I've noticed that the frequency of extreme weather events is on the rise.  

JOHN SCARINCI: I honestly do not remember any of this going on 15 years ago. Disasters and things that happening around the world has been on an uptick. It just seems to be more pronounced. 

DAN ILIC: John is not wrong. The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction has described the increase in extreme weather events over the last 20 years as “staggering”.  And research out of the Climate Council shows that since 2019, a whopping 80% of Australians have experienced at least one of these events.  

NEWS GRAB 1: Hundreds of thousands are still without power as wild storm swept across the state yesterday, crippling transmission tower. 

NEWS GRAB 2: Most of the farm dams in the district are dry or, you know, dangerously low.  

NEWS GRAB 3: It took 2 hours and we had over a metre of water in my daughter’s house.  

NEWS GRAB 4: A number of houses in the street have been lost – a number of outbuildings, a number of garages, cars 

NEWS GRAB 5: Many have lost everything.  

NEWS GRAB 6: You don’t really think it’s going to happen to you. 

NEWS GRAB 7: It feels unfair. We know now to be better prepared.  

DAN ILIC:  I don't know about you, but living through all the fires and  floods of the last few years has dialled my eco-anxiety up to 11. And all the reports, the chart, the headlines, the heat maps - it can all start to make you feel quite dizzy and dare I say, a touch powerless. 

As the world fails to meet its climate goals and as we inch into an era that marks time by the rate and severity of disasters - with a pandemic in the rearview and floods lapping at our doorsteps, isn't it about time we all started to prepare? 

In this podcast we’re going to explore some of the ways we’re getting ourselves and the next generation ready for what's coming.  

And where better to begin than with people who think about it more than most: preppers. When it comes to getting ready for climate change, is there anything to be learnt from people who dream of disaster - or are they all just a bit crazy? 

NEWS GRAB:  A doomsday prepper has been jailed for stockpiling a huge stash of illegal weapons at a property in the Macedon Ranges.  Aleziah Spears was getting ready for the end of the world after being discharged from the Army and rejected from the Australian Federal Police. The judge told Spears, “Hopefully you can leave the zombie killers and survivalists to their silly games.” 

DAN ILIC: Believing in the end of the world as we know it, might seem like the wheelhouse of paranoid fringe dwellers with a penchant for tinned pineapple, The Second Amendment cammo pants and too much time on their hands. But it wasn't born out of some kind of anti-government, scared of authority, grassroots movement. In fact, doomsday prepping, as we understand it today, began with a government edict, issued by no less than President John F Kennedy.  

In the wake of the Second World War. The international arms race got properly underway. Today, we're sort of used to the idea of thousands of nuclear warheads just hanging out in missile silos all over the world. And we kind of trust that our mutually assured destruction is enough to prevent them from being used. But during the 50s and 60s it was a different story. Weapons of mass destruction were relatively new, and America had ended the war by actually using them...twice. First on Hiroshima, then Nagasaki, killing hundreds of thousands of people. 

They did the job they were designed to do: scare the crap out of everyone and end the war. But a failure of American security meant that a bomb building know how had made its way to the Soviet Union and not wanted to be left behind, they quickly built their own. As the 1950s ticked by and relations between Soviets and the US grew even colder, the idea that Russia might try to annihilate the United States became real enough for President Kennedy to write an open letter to the American people about it. 

“My fellow Americans. Nuclear weapons and the possibility of nuclear war are facts of life we cannot ignore today. There is so much that you can do to protect yourself, and in doing so, strengthen your nation. In these dangerous days, we must prepare for all eventualities. The ability to survive, coupled with the will to do so, therefore are essential to our country.” 

Thank you very much, President Kennedy. It’s great to have you in the studio. 

On the 15th of September 1961, these words appeared in a special edition of Life magazine, alongside ads for ready-made survival kits and prefabricated fall-out shelters. Detailed drawings of how to build your own were complemented with cross-section illustrations; Enid Blyton's style snapshots of life underground, all very cozy stuff. Mum tucking the kids securely into their bunk beds while Dad casually lights up a cigarette... hey, it was the 60s. 

President Kennedy urged readers to look over the whole edition and seriously consider taking action. And millions of Americans did. They started digging up their yards and the first doom boom was born. 

KEZIA BARKER: I mean, the classic picture that people have, the deviant, the sort of pathologised idea of what, you know, a prepper looks like, it would be somebody who is obsessed with stockpiling different things that they anticipate being useful or valuable to support survival in the future - food and medicine - and keeps those sorts of traps hidden from ridicule, but also hidden because of a concern about in the moments of social collapse, whether you would then be at risk of either the government itself or, you know, other people who haven't been prepared coming and, you know, stealing your preps. 

DAN ILIC: Kezia Barker is a senior lecturer in Geography at Liverpool, John Moores University in the UK. 

KEZIA:  But those stocks are seen as sort of comic because they mix different high and low value items. And so you would see sort of a wall of, you know, weaponry and then you would see a tower of toilet rolls and pot noodles and baked beans. And so these sorts of high and low value items - items which don't really carry any prestige at the moment are kind of, you know, mixed together. 

And then there's also the sense that they're sort of wasting their own time. They're ready for crises, the catastrophe that's to come. Rehearsing certain scenarios. And that catastrophe is always something huge and something that is made to feel improbable. You know, nuclear war or complete collapse of Western civilization or meteorites strike or something. And they're so busy and focused on that - their preps for this future catastrophe that they completely overlook and sacrifice the present. 

DAN ILIC: Kezia is one of the few academics who have spent serious time researching this subject. She’s spoken to hundreds of preppers - trying to find out who they are, why they do what they do and if the stereotypes ring true.  

KEZIA: There were moments where I absolutely met people who scared me. But, you know, I was more struck by the sense, by the generosity, by the narratives of people who had, you know, health vulnerabilities and economic vulnerabilities and had had something bad happen and didn't trust that they would be protected, be saved.  

DAN ILIC: Now the kinds of doomsday preppers or survivalist you might have seen on TV are out there, with their bunkers and guns and towers of baked beans ready and waiting for nuclear fallout – but your average prepper is far more likely to be focused on disasters of a more personal nature, that are much closer to home.  

KEZIA: It's not just the sort of the, you know, the Hollywood catastrophe, the social collapse. It's also the more sort of everyday crisis where you lose your job. And there could be a two month wait for you to get sorted in the benefits system. 
 
It could be that you are so sick that you can't get out. These sorts of moments where you feel also sort of abandoned by social networks of support and government networks of support. So whether it's that that support won't be coming for five days, two weeks, you know, longer periods of time. It's - it is about the individual having to fend for themselves. 

It's not like it's the idea that, you know, the government is coming to get me. It's more that the government isn't coming to get me. 

DAN ILIC: While the stereotype sees preppers as secretive, ready to turn their back on society when the shit hits the fan, what Kezia found more likely is an emphasis on the collective.  

KEZIA: I would often hear people say, well, you know, you're only actually as safe as the people around you are ready. You know, it's all very well having your own practice. But of course, you know, if your neighbours and you know, if your community isn't ready, then the lone wolf, the idea of sort of, you know, surviving this alone, it just doesn't play out in practice. 

DAN ILIC: The idea of having to fill gaps left by the government or emergency services - preparing as a community for the community is what John and the Preppers Survival League are all about.  

JOHN SCARINCI: Most people think ‘She'll be right’. The police, fire, ambulance, etc., will take care of everything, the SES. And time and time again, that's not always the case. They have a finite level of resources through the bushfires, through the flooding. Those examples alone highlight how run off their feet the emergency services are, and they are.We don’t purport to be an emergency service - we’re an emergency response.  

What we do is lend a helping hand where we can, and if the emergency services don't arrive, we are the help. And by being involved in a structured organization, you can undergo some training that, will make you aware of the most important thing, and that is your safety first. Because you don’t want to become the casualty as well.  

DAN ILIC: The civil emergency response training offered by the League is only available to the paying survivalist members who want to step up and do it. Most of the members are just after the basics.  

JOHN SCARINCI: For a beginner, it's important to be prepared for emergencies that are likely to happen in Australia. We have what we call a threat assessment matrix, and we constantly review the content that's in there and they can keep reassessing their preps. 

DAN ILIC: So what’s is the crisis at the top of the threat assessment matrix? Nuclear fallout? Meteorite strike? Brain eating zombie ex-girlfriends? While these are all on the list – maybe except for the last one - it turns out the number one concern is a little more mundane.  

JOHN SCARINCI: And the number one thing I'll tell you right now here in Australia, surprisingly, is a lot of people underestimate how hot weather and what can happen to you if you have heat stroke. That is a big one. And then this fire and flood emergencies. 

DAN ILIC: John’s league provides its members with resources and offers training courses in everything from how to prep food supplies. 

JOHN SCARINCI: Currently, I would easily be able to sustain 30 days. But at the same time you don’t want to leave it there for 20 years – you want to cycle through it, so utilitse that every now and then.  

DAN ILIC: Survival first aid. 

JOHN SCARINCI: How to make a very basic antibiotic. 

DAN ILIC: Gardening edible food. 

JOHN SCARINCI: You don't have to have a ginormous backyard. In fact, there are even ways to grow food on balconies. 

DAN ILIC: Alternative power sources.  

JOHN SCARINCI: Just one basic solar panel, will give you the ability to charge you communication devices and charge your lighting equipment. 

DAN ILIC: Through to what to do if the mobile network goes down. 

JOHN SCARINCI: Communications as simple as a CB radio could be a lifesaver in keeping in touch with your family. 

We encourage anybody to become a member, to be well-informed, because you should be having the basics down pat. It's not hard to do. It's easier than you think. 

 

Supermarket atmosphere.  

 

DAN ILIC: In the interests of putting my money where my mouth is, I’m going to do some prepping myself. So I’ve found some prepping lists online – there's a couple of good ones. Here’s one from the NSW Govt right here and I’ve also got one from the QLD government as well. Turns out the government wants us to prep. Who knew?   

So NSW – at the very top it says: “We buy insurance for our home, our car and our lives, but something as essential as adequate supplies of food, water and critical items are often overlooked. Please consider building an essential pantry and emergency kit for your household.”  

I am going to go through the list here and pick up a whole bunch of stuff, prepping for 14 days of being confined at home without water or electricity. Alright – let's go.  

Let’s get some cereals. This says I need 850 grams per person, so I need to double it. So let’s get four boxes.  

Organic brown rice – alright, let’s get eight of these.  

There’s no gin nor tonic on this list – what is the government thinking?  

42 two litre bottles. 42! I can’t carry 42 bottles. Here we go.  

Okay. Canned fruit. Well I love pineapple chunks.  

I might need to get the portable radio online but I can get the can opener here.  

So I’m going to take 36 roll of toilet paper. Paracetamol. Band-Aids – different kinds of sizes. Anti inflammatory. Throat lozenge. I reckon get some children’s cough syrup for yourself. Get two bottles, because that stuff tastes better.  

Oh here we go – triple As. You need a triple A every now and then. Alright – Dolphin torch, 6 volt battery, we are good for the apocalypse.  

Oh my gosh, this is going to be a couple of trips – I don’t think I can do a prep trip by myself with one trolley. Oh god.  

As I’m piling in all this  the water and packets of macaroni I get to thinking... if I have no electricity I’m going to need a way to cook all of this pasta. Might have to go the camping store next... and down the prepping hole I gooooo!   

Storing food for when good times go bad is not a new idea  – archaeologist believe the first evidence of this behaviour may date as far back as 420,000 years ago. Prehistoric humans would bring deer bones back to their caves and cover them in skin to preserve the marrow - which they’d crack out when needed. Kind of like a Mars Bar....  

Mmmmmm. Bone marrow. No thanks, I am so full. 

Modern, secular life has allowed us to leave this part of our evolutionary story behind. We trust in the rule of law, the power of our infrastructure and the reliability of supermarket supply chains. To suggest that we need to prepare for the failure of these talismans of modern life would be like needing to put enough lifeboats on the Titanic...(clears throat)  

Well, my shopping trollies are very heavy, but my wallet is light $612.38 and that is just for food. So that didn’t actually include any of the first aid stuff, the big ticket expensive items like batteries – so if you put another 150 bucks on there for that stuff you’re kind of looking at $800 for an emergency prep shop. But. Having lived through huge bushfires and the pandemic as many people have – doing this shop, this way, right now, actually gave me a sense of peace and power. Because I was looking around at everyone and going ‘you’re going to be eating your food in the next two weeks’ I’m going to be putting mine in the shed and if something does go wrong I’ll be ready. I felt a bit smug to be honest. And clever. Not $600 clever. But still pretty clever.  

As I compare the contents of my trolley to other people's very normal-looking  shops, I start to wonder... how many of us have actually done this? 

Well, when it come to people living in high disaster risk areas, research out of Monash University shows that almost a third don’t feel their household or community is prepared for future disaster events. 

And Australian Red Cross data shows that, while there’s an increasing awareness about the impacts of disasters - and a growing sense that anything could happen to any of us at any time - the number of people who take action to prepare sits at around just 10 percent. My supermarket trolley is looking pretty good right now – thank you very much.  

Penny Harrison, the Interim CEO of Red Cross Australia, says that having preparations in place can have as much of an impact on your mental health as your physical health when it comes to experiencing and recovering from disaster. 

PENNY HARRISON: Australian Red Cross experience shows that there is indeed a strong correlation between the emotional impact with levels of preparation so that people who are less prepared find it harder to cope and especially to then recover. So what we've then conversely, you know, is that by going through the steps of building a plan and thinking through what it might mean to yourself when it’s an individual household or a community is a really important way to start to prepare yourself emotionally and psychologically.  

DAN ILIC: The idea that preparation is as much about your emotional wellbeing as it is about your physical safety, is one that is common to the prepping community.  

While the Red Cross wants us to prepare for any significant disruption to our lives – be it a serious illness, a power outage or a natural disaster - preppers often take their scenario planning to the next level, and think through what they would do if something really catastrophic happens. 

JOHN SCARINCI: With our modelling, we have run through scenarios where we’ve brainstormed different aspects of emergencies, particularly when it reaches a crisis level and as a societal collapse or government collapse, you no doubt will have what we call the Marauder effect. That's where you get these individuals who will just do whatever they have to do. They'll have caches of weapons, and we don't actually promote that side of things. We don't promote breaking the law as a prepper. It's a great way to potentially land yourself in jail. We are not America. We’re Australia. It's something to be proud of here.  

Now we do have an emphasis on leadership training as well, because it's important to reestablish some kind of law and order where everyone's on board and everyone's in agreeance in the local area. We implement that immediately and that has a high importance because what that does is it keeps everyone on the same page. And if you do get the Marauder threats that come in by any chance, it helps to fend them off by using good against evil, if that makes any sense.  

A lot of this requires our members to understand how important it is to maintain their composure, to enhance their calm, and to deliver that information to their community in a way where it's going to be mutually beneficial to everybody involved and to help them understand the importance of maintaining that law and order. 

Because the alternative is not pretty, the alternative is anarchy, and we just don't want that. We want to restore society as soon as we possibly can.  

KEZIA BARKER: The idea of sort of, you know, ‘the end of the world’ or social collapse or the end of the sort of the social and moral contract that kind of holds society together, and whether that's been prompted by a sort of a catastrophic event that's always there. But there’s always this sort of moderation that or merging of what you might say is a sort of an ordinary everyday crisis with this sort of exceptional crisis and a lot of preppers would, you know, would push back against the idea that they're simply preparing and waiting and even slightly eager for ‘the end of the world’. 

DAN ILIC: Imagining societal collapse is a pretty uncomfortable thing to do - and even for John, ‘the end of the world as we know it’ doesn’t rank highly on the threat assessment matrix. Sure we’re seeing an increase in extreme weather events, but surely climate change isn’t bad enough to start talking about end times ... or is it?  

TOMMY WIEDMANN: The change in atmospheric CO2 concentrations and atmospheric temperatures is so rapid that it really threatens the way we have done things before. It will challenge the foundations of that profoundly. 

DAN ILIC: Tommy Wiedmann is a Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of New South Wales. He was a Lead Author on the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is perhaps the longest shorthand way of saying: he’s a world leading expert on climate change.  

TOMMY: So the last 12 months have been quite extraordinary in that we have seen many new records being broken. As an annual average in 2023, for the first time, we have reached 1.48 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times. And this climate scientists say, has been the warmest it has been in at least the last 100,000 years. So basically, during all of the modern times of humanity 

Climate scientists have been a bit surprised to see the extent of this. The way we see ocean surface temperatures increasing, one climate scientist said that's gobsmacking bananas.  Which is a bit unusual for a climate scientist.  

The current policies that have been pledged still bring us to a warming way beyond two degrees Celsius.  When you look at humanity as a whole, then the threat is such that it fundamentally questions our ability to keep up those societies and those cultures that we have developed as humans over the last tens of thousands of years.  

DAN ILIC:  Now, it can be difficult to get your head around the idea that life as we know it now might become unrecognisable due to the changes in the climate. But, maybe it will be slow enough that we won’t really notice. ‘New normals’ will keep coming at us and we’ll just get used them. I mean, I started my adult life in a world without smart phones or online banking. And now we’re used to change. I think nothing of going to the coffee shop and pointing my phone at a cash register and paying six dollars for a coffee – I love change! No, you keep the change! But then... 

ANTONIO GUTERRAS: The era of global warming has ended. The era of global boiling has begun.  

DAN ILIC: ....when the head of the United Nations starts saying things like this.. I do start to have a better appreciation of why some preppers find climate change... motivating.  

KEZIA: Preppers would use that language of, you know, having a veil lifted, having their eyes opened.  
 
And once you start to start seeing it, you see this language everywhere of, you know, the need to kind of, you know, wake up to crisis or that we’re sleepwalking into disaster and things. But I think, you know, the crucial thing is that bringing of crisis into our everyday life worlds. That sort of being able to overcome that double reality, the way that we keep climate change and concern in one sphere but managed to stop it is changing, you know, everyday life and everyday concerns that we can both absolutely believe and absolutely care about climate change, but we still carry on our normal lives as if we don't. And I think that sort of, you know, moment of awakening, that moment of realisation that it could happen to us breaks through that sort of exceptionalism that I think can stop us really getting serious about climate change. 

TOMMY: There is this day-to-day perception where we don't necessarily worry about climate change. If the weather is fine, then we don't think about it. But there are these points in life where you take a longer-term perspective, especially when you have children, for example, or when you think about the future of your children - and maybe your own future in the next few decades, then yes, definitely this becomes more relevant. 

Most of the climate science and also of most of the communication that has happened, is towards the end of this century and people who are born today, they will live until the end of this century and beyond. So we definitely are in that area, in that time frame where this becomes very significant. Things are progressing very quickly. 

KEZIA: I think, you know, what comes from thinking about the prepper and what the prepper has sort of achieved in this different affective state of being sort of hyper vigilant and ready and this place where they've managed to kind of overcome the elsewhere characteristics of crisis and climate change.  

There's this sort of peculiar disjuncture between the way in which crisis sort of infuses the everyday that we might even have our own experiences of crisis and catastrophe, that it's in the news reports. 

And so, you know, we're aware of that, but then we don't bring it into our everyday. There's also this sort of the sense that it's all going to be okay, that we can we can fix it with sort of small changes. There's this mismatch between the scale and I think, you know, prepping overcomes that sort of false optimism. 

I would hope that in that moment of imagining, you know, possible worst case scenario futures and getting ready for them, that there is something that also brings attention to how our present day practices will be perpetuating and making more likely those futures. There's something ironic, isn't there, in the rejection of gloom and doom or do message these sorts of derogatory terms for taking climate catastrophe seriously. 

That idea that that forecloses a future and brings about apathy. Well, the idea of the indefinite continuation of capitalism also is a for closed and quite depressing continuity of one present. And then I do think it's interesting because we've got so used to the idea that people can hoarded amass money, right? So why do we get so triggered about if someone's hoarding and amassing other items? And I think is because it brings that scenario in, you know, into the present that there would be a moment when you’re in need and would they share with you, or would they not? So think there’s something really ironic there - about that question of them being irrational and selfish. 

DAN ILIC: For Kezia, prepping also challenges notions of defeatism or nihilism – challenges that impulse to look at climate change, put it in the too-hard-basket and party like it’s the end of the world  

KEZIA: In a way choosing to imaging that you will survive, choosing to imagine that you will live in the consequences of your present day actions is powerful. So I think there's some such a real responsibility that's put on us in terms of how our actions are bringing about these sorts of devastated worlds. If we accept as preppers do that, you know, you will have to live with the consequences of your present day actions. 

JOHN SCARINCI: I'd say if it was ten years ago, I would be a laughingstock in a sense. But now people are a lot more attentive to this sort of thing and they're like, maybe there is some... well there definitely is credibility in what we're doing and the fact that our membership grows every year by a number is proof of that. 

DAN ILIC:  If none of this inspires you to invest in a Leatherman and start rotating tins of four beans, I’d say you’re in good company – but it's good to know that even thinking about preparing is a kind of preparation in itself... which gets me wondering.... 

Maybe we’re all already doing it one way or another? One person's community garden, is another person’s air purifier, is another’s Friday night screening of The Day After Tomorrow.  

Maybe prepping is going on all around us. 

Now that we’ve looked under your bed it’s time to look out the window! There’s more than one way to peel this potato – and we’re going to find out what a few of them are. 

Starting with how we might prepare if ‘the end of the world as we know it’ is really on its way. 

JEM BENDELL: Let's go deeper in terms of how we're going to cope emotionally, psychologically, how we're going to avoid making things worse by getting panicked and try and create something better as societies breakdown around us. 

DAN ILIC: That's next time, on Preppers.  

Thanks for listening. 

If you’ve found any of this interesting please tell someone about it. And we’d love it if you could follow, rate and maybe even write us a review.... it’s supposed to help other people find us. 

Preppers is a production of the UNSW Centre for Ideas - produced and written by Sabrina Organo with production support by Cassandra Steeth. Sound mix and design by Julian Vessels. And presented by me, Dan Ilic.  

This episode was made on the lands of the Bidjigal, Gundungurra, Tharawal and Wurundjeri peoples.